MINUTES OF THE CLAY TOWNSHIP PLANNING COMMISION REGULAR MEETING HELD WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 2012 - IN THE CLAY TOWNSHIP MEETING HALL, 4710 PTE. TREMBLE ROAD, CLAY TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN 48001 1. CALL TO ORDER: Chairman Dorothy DeBoyer called the meeting to order at 7:35 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL: PRESENT: Anthony Antkowiak, Edward Keller, Kathie Schweikart, Whitey Simon, Christine Holcomb, Lesly Cahill and Dorothy DeBoyer ABSENT AND EXCUSED: Thomas Krueger, John Blair A quorum was established. ALSO PRESENT: Patrick Meagher, Community Planning & Management, P.C. 3. APPROVAL/AMENDMENTS TO AGENDA: None. 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF MAY 01, 2012: Motion made by Simon, supported by Cahill, to approve the Minutes of May 09, 2012 meeting, as submitted. AYES: All NAYS: None MOTION CARRIED. 5. PLANNING COMMISSION DISCUSSIONS: Chairperson DeBoyer: The one item that I want to discuss with all of you; these are the By- Laws of the Planning Commission, and I didn t know whether all of you had a copy of it or not. What brought this up, I received a letter from John Blair and I would like to share that letter with you and then we ll discuss the By-Laws: I received a phone call this morning informing me that I had missed two planning committee meetings and marked them as unexcused. Please be advised I missed one planning committee meeting, and had sent written documentation to the Township Supervisor informing him I had a temporary scheduling conflict. The second meeting in question, I was out of town for a training and not aware of the meeting until I arrived home. I never received any response from the Township Supervisor / Board Member. I am not sure if the website email is being properly monitored or if it is functioning properly. I was also told that there were some changes regarding Chairperson DeBoyer s tenure and also enquired and never received any response. Please be advised, I would like to continue on the planning committee and will not be able to attend this week s meeting due to a scheduling conflict with my job as a nurse. I had also
Page 2 picked up my package for the meeting prior, went over all of the information and submitted my vote for approval regarding the school house restaurant extension, etc. in writing to the Township Supervisor / Board Member Krueger. I am not sure why I did not receive a response. I am hoping the scheduling conflict with my work is a temporary issue. I hope to be able to attend and or hope to move to a better shift in the near future. As a nurse and contributor to this committee for the last several years I hope that I bring and add value to the team. If the team is not in agreement or cannot allow me to continue on in my current capacity, please let me know and I will understand if you need to make other arrangements. Chairperson DeBoyer: So I responded to John and I quoted from the By-Laws that when a planning commissioner is not going to be able to make the meeting they are to contact the Chairperson or another member of the commission of that fact so that they can be excused. As far as the change in my tenure, I m not aware of anything. So all of you know if you aren t aware of it, John has been going to college to become a registered nurse so that he will have employment and just recently graduated and has been given assignments and that s why he is not able to be here. Simon: At various places, I think. Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. Now, also, the planning law says that if a planning commissioner misses a lot of meetings, then the Planning Commission makes the determination to go to the Township Board and tell them this person appears not to be interested any longer. It is not up to someone in the office to call them and say You re going to be removed. That s all handled by the Planning Commission. So, if you re ever in that position, I wanted all of you to be aware of how it s supposed to work and I wanted to make sure everybody had a copy of the By-Laws. Now, in the By-Laws, there are a couple of things I think we should think about amending. What is says is that if you re going to be absent to contact the Chair or the Recording Secretary. When these By-Laws were written, Val Kulba was the Deputy Clerk and she was the Recording Secretary and she worked full-time here and was always here so that was put in. But that s not appropriate now that a lot of us would call the Recording Secretary. And we have everybody s telephone numbers and emails, so if you were agreeable Kathie, I would just have recording struck. Schweikart: Okay. Antkowiak: It s pretty evident that we can call anyone on the commission. Simon: How about Planning Commissioners? Schweikart: Yeah, that d be simple. Antkowiak: Why even have the Recording Secretary? I mean, it s redundant. Chairperson DeBoyer: You re right. Other Planning Commissioner, because Kathie is a Planning Commissioner. So that could be completely stricken. Antkowiak: Well, what do you consider doing in terms of someone who does miss three consecutive meetings; it s very unclear as to who would do that. Chairperson DeBoyer: Well, we do have a secretary on the Planning Commission. So, it would be discussed here and then we could ask that the secretary write a letter and send it out informing them Schweikart: Informing the person who is missing. Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. Giving them an opportunity to say there has been this unusual circumstance or I just am not interested any more. Schweikart: Just explaining the absence. Okay.
Page 3 Chairperson DeBoyer: But it s the Planning Commission that deals with that. So we would, when Kathie takes roll, then either Kathie or myself would say this person has missed three meetings unexcused. Antkowiak: And then had to be reported to the Supervisor because that s what it says here. Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. But, we as a group let them know that we re going to report it. Antkowiak: Give them an opportunity. That doesn t allow it s not allowed the way it s it has to be reworded. It specifically says any member of the Planning Commission who shall be absent for three consecutive meetings, unexcused, shall be notified and reported to the Township Supervisor. What we were talking about, I thought, is that we would notify this person and if there was a reason, they didn t know or whatever, and said hey, I don t really want to go. Then we would not report it to the Supervisor. Chairperson DeBoyer: Or we can report it to the Supervisor and also cc to the Supervisor that we have sent them a notice. Antkowiak: Correct. Schweikart: That would make sense. That way it doesn t look like we re hiding something. Antkowiak: But then it goes on to say the Township Board shall remove the member and appoint a new member, so I mean, we do have to reword it in some way I think. Schweikart: The last part has to be reworded somehow. Cahill: I agree. Antkowiak: I read this several times, it seems to me that if that person misses three times somehow that person is reported to the Supervisor and the Supervisor takes action and the Board takes action to either remove or retain or get somebody new and what we want to do is have that control or do that and then move it on. Chairperson DeBoyer: Have the Commissioner have the opportunity to plead their case. Schweikart: As far as John Blair himself, because, when somebody is absent I write excused, or if there is no word excused next to it, it s because we just don t know. I know that s happened a couple of times. I can t say it s been consecutive. So, I m just trying to clarify how I do that. Chairperson DeBoyer: And it does say consecutive. Simon: It says three consecutive unexcused. Chairperson DeBoyer: So anyway, it was creating a bit of a problem. John was quite upset about it all and so I thought we should clarify it as a whole Planning Commission. Antkowiak: And I think the members of the Planning Commission knew John s situation and knew that he was not just not wanting to come. He was just getting caught up in different things to improve himself. Chairperson DeBoyer: He wants to earn a living for his family. Cahill: I think we should just take that last sentence right out. Chairperson DeBoyer: Well, it should probably be reworded indicating in some way that they do have an opportunity to plead their case. As I recall, this also came about because we had a Planning Commissioner that was spending six months out of the year in Florida and yet wanted to stay on the Planning Commission. They re really not representing the community when they do that. Antkowiak: These By-Laws may be amended at any regular meeting by a majority vote of the members of the commission providing proposed changes have been read at a preceding regular meeting. Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. So give me an opportunity to Antkowiak: Do so? We can do that, read it next month and then the following month Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. Read it at the next meeting, yes.
Page 4 Antkowiak: It s got to be a regular meeting. Chairperson DeBoyer: The first meeting in the month is considered the regular meeting. The second is considered a workshop. Schweikart: So #3 just needs to be reworded totally. Okay. And you re going to propose something? Chairperson DeBoyer: Right. I ll get with MTA and see what recommendations I can get. Schweikart: Section 4, paragraph 3 needs to be reworded, how s that? Is that more clarification? Simon: I think what we appear to be saying is that the Township Board may upon appropriate examination remove, rather than shall after three consecutive Chairperson DeBoyer: Because when it says shall that means they re going to. Simon: I think that needs to be reworded and that s all we re saying. Chairperson DeBoyer: Like I said, I ll get some recommendations from MTA and I ll bring it back and we can read it. Okay. Good. Thank you very much. And I did, in my response to John, also point out that you cannot vote in absentia. Schweikart: I didn t think you could. Chairperson DeBoyer: No. That s not legal. Simon: How about over the telephone? Chairperson DeBoyer: No. Schweikart: Video? Chairperson DeBoyer: No. That has to be set up specially, has to be voted on, and has to be put into the By-Laws. 6. PLANNING CONSULTANT S REPORT: Meagher: Thank you Madam Chair. I spent the last few months collecting data, putting together information, correcting typos and adding maps and I ll be quite honest with you, I m not sure that materially, the plan has gained all that much from it. I have put them in though and hopefully, at some point in time, it works out for you. I started printing out information that there were typos and so forth. The first few pages you ll see are demographics that either had an incorrect number or needed some type of a note at the bottom to explain some of the symbols within the table. The farmland section changed just slightly because I think we had previously indicated based on the old county map that there was no one enrolled in the PA 116 Farmland Preservation Program and there was one property involved in that and we have now recorded that on the map, which is on the following page, 3-9. You ll have to ignore the page numbers, because the entire document has changed at this point in time so even the numbers you have here may not be correct when you get the full copy. But as you ll see, the one property that does exist is out on the island. The flood plain information as well, the FEMA flood zones were updated based on FEMA s latest changes and that is shown on page 3-13, so I ve just included that because that s a brand new map that you haven t seen before. Simon: Now, is that after they were forced to go ahead and start redoing what they hit us with three years ago, or whatever it was? Meagher: This is the active FEMA map as of today. Cahill: As of today. Very good. Thank you. Meagher: That s all I can tell you at this point because I start talking to all of these techies and by the time I m done I feel like I ve just been in a circle. So, none the less, this is the latest and
Page 5 greatest information on the flood zones. It s a little bit cleaner map as well. The other maps that are provided for you are ones that were submitted to the Township by the Harsens Island Group and first of all, I m going to say, the coverage map that is circa 1800 basically shows what existed back in 1800 with regard to flood plains, woodlands and I guess might be intended to show, perhaps, that we re not doing the best job in terms of encouraging preservation of many of these types of assets. Although Clay Township, with all the acreage you have in terms of preserved land, I certainly think you ve probably done a much better job of preserving natural amenities than 90% of the communities around. The following one is a land cover map that again, kind of shows the same information but I think the rationale behind including it was to show regionally within the county area, the SEMCOG area, all of the sensitive types of properties that do exist within the community and we ve included that as well. You ll notice some paging problems here. The water service area, we had all that data and for some reason couldn t get all the details on the island water lines. The engineers did send us, I guess what they, is they just did a water line extension two or three weeks ago out on Frazier Lane. None the less, we now have a lot of new information so we put the full amount of information. The second sheet just shows the water line details on 7-9. And then if you follow the next page you go to page 7-8, which shows the sewer service area and this map is quite old, but it is the sewer service map and the sewer line map that exists today for the community. Chairperson DeBoyer: There has not been an extension of any sewer service in many, many, many years. Not since they built the middle school out on Marsh Road, that was the very last extension that was done. Meagher: That s what I understand. The last page is really a substitive change and it s based on the discussions we have had with the golf course owner, Mr. Manos, his attorney and family and them asking for a little bit more latitude within the recreation designation. And, in essence, what we say in here is #1 in the recreation districts we are going to support any type of activity that #1 is recreation related, #2 supports recreation opportunities and could be as specific as restaurants, could be as specific as hotels or motels that provide access to some of these areas and entertainment uses for instance, a wide array of commercial activities. However, we do say in here that those types of activities are going to have to be very, very carefully looked at and that s basically master plan talk for they need to be considered as special land use so that they can be looked at very critically and how they are going to impact the environment? How are they going to impact the local area, traffic, etc? So, all of that stuff in red is additions and changes to what was previously in that section. I don t know if everyone just wants to take a second and read it, because this is something I would like you to say Pat, you re way off base and get something that the public stated we don t agree with; or Pat we agree with that and we d like you to continue, because what I m going to ask you to do is set a public hearing again for this. We now have all the map data from the county, some of it s from the county, most of it is from other sources and I think we re ready to move ahead. Simon: The public hearing is still open, right? Meagher: I m going to highly recommend that you reset a public hearing, advertise it; we don t need any type of claims of illegitimacy with regard to the process and I think it s best to let everyone in the public know specifically we re going to have this again. Chairperson DeBoyer: I am planning from this point, to the end of the year, the first meeting to have a meeting for the first meeting of every month; the second meeting is supposed to be a workshop, I don t know if we ll have a second or not, but we ll always have one on the first meeting of the month so we can get this cleaned up and taken care of.
Page 6 Meagher: You know, if anyone is uncomfortable setting the public hearing at this point, what we could do, is if everyone agrees with the changes, I didn t include every map, every paragraph and every typo that was called out, within some of the comments that we were given, and quite frankly I haven t included many of the things that were in the comments that I didn t think had any type of material benefit to the plan. There have already been discussions and too much fluff in there as it is and I don t think adding some more of it does anything substantial for the community. But if you were uncomfortable with setting the public hearing at this point in time, we could hold off, I could email everyone a copy of the plan, it is like 15 megabytes or something. Chairperson DeBoyer: Would you prefer to have a copy of the plan before we set the public hearing? Schweikart: Yeah, because I have two copies here, I m not sure Meagher: You can throw both of those out. Schweikart: Okay. With that being said, I would feel more comfortable, whether it s by email or however you want to do it, that we have the actual, all together. Because if we re all confused because we re dealing with the old version versus the now Meagher: At this point I don t really foresee that there s any hurry. They re not blowing the doors down in Clay Township to develop. We have plenty of time to make sure we do this carefully and safely. Schweikart: I m not looking to drag this out any further, I just, me myself, I have two master plan drafts here and I would rather just have Chairperson DeBoyer: One new one. Schweikart: Yeah. Meagher: I wouldn t have brought it up if I didn t have the same feeling myself. I didn t know how much of a hurry we wanted to push this thing, so I was offering that. Schweikart: Well, I would think in the next couple of months we should be able to come to a conclusion hopefully. Simon moved to set the public hearing for the Master Plan for August 08, 2012. Schweikart supported the motion. Roll Call VOTE: AYES: Cahill, Holcomb, Simon, Schweikart, Keller, Antkowiak, DeBoyer NAYS: None MOTION CARRIED. Meagher: If I could ask a question of the Commission in the general, the Homeowner s Association on Harsens Island sent an email out previously that, I believe copies were brought to the meeting and it said they were having a meeting and they had a list they were going to put together. Did anyone get the final list? Further discussion was held regarding the email and Simon agreeing to send a copy to Mr. Meagher. Simon also mentioned that it is not the Homeowner s Association, but rather Property Owners.
Page 7 7. Z.B.A. REPRESENTATIVE S REPORT: Antkowiak: Nothing spectacular, just busy. We had four variances last month, well actually five and I limited it to four. We have some business, we re busy, but that s it. 8. CHAIRPERSON S REPORT: Chairperson DeBoyer: Nothing to report, other than I was not able to attend that planning seminar in Port Huron. 9. PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS COMMENTS: Simon: The only thing I would say I believe the public hearing announcement will be favorably viewed by some of the residents from Harsens Island, they have been asking about the public hearing. They will be very happy that we are finally coming up with the public hearing. The other thing that I would like to mention to everyone here, the spawning reefs that were put into the Middle Channel have already demonstrated their usefulness because underwater cameras have shown sturgeon eggs being deposited on those spawning reefs. Further discussion was held among the board members regarding the spawning reefs and sturgeon eggs. 10. PUBLIC COMMENTS: Don Molnar: I m running for Township Clerk and I appreciate you folks letting me come to your meeting and I believe we can be doing some business. 12. ADJOURNMENT: Motion made by Schweikart, supported by Cahill to adjourn the meeting at 8:14 p.m. AYES: All NAYS: None MOTION CARRIED. Respectfully Submitted, Victoria Brobst Recording Secretary Dorothy DeBoyer, Chairperson Clay Township Planning Commission