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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03/06/2007 MAPLEWOOD PLANNING COMMISSION Tuesdav. March 6, 2007, 7:00 PM City Hall Council Chambers 1830 County Road BEast 1. Call to Order 2. Roll Call 3. Approval of Agenda 4. Approval of Minutes a. February 20, 2007 5. Public Hearings 7:00 Ramsey County Correctional Facility (297 Century Avenue South) Conditional Use Permit Revision 6. New Business a. Comprehensive Plan Review - Goals and Policies 7. Unfinished Business None 8. Visitor Presentations 9. Commission Presentations February 26 Council Meeting: Mr. Hess March 12 Council Meeting: Mr. Pearson March 26 Council Meeting: Ms. Fisher April 9 Council Meeting :?? (was to be Mr. Grover) 10. Staff Presentations 11. Adjournment MINUTES OF THE MAPLEWOOD PLANNING COMMISSION 1830 COUNTY ROAD BEAST, MAPLEWOOD, MINNESOTA TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2007 I. CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Fischer called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. II. ROLL CALL Vice-Chairperson Tushar Desai Chairperson Lorraine Fischer Commissioner Michael Grover Commissioner Harland Hess Commissioner Gary Pearson Commissioner Dale Trippler Commissioner Joseph Walton Commissioner Jeremy Yarwood Staff Present: Present Present Present at 7:02 p.m. Present Present Present Present Present Dave Fisher, Building Official Tom Ekstrand, Senior Planner Ken Roberts, Planner Jon Jarosch, Civil Engineer I - present until 7:33 p.m. Lisa Kroll, Recording Secretary III. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Commissioner Trippler moved to approve the agenda. Commissioner Hess seconded. The motion passed. IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Ayes - Desai, Fischer, Hess, Pearson, Trippler, Walton, Yarwood Approval of the planning commission minutes for February 20, 2007. Chairperson Fischer had an addition to the minutes on page 3, second paragraph; insert the word over before the number 80,000. Commissioner Desai moved to approve the planning commission minutes for February 20, 2007, as amended. Commissioner Pearson seconded. The motion passed. Ayes - Desai, Fischer, Hess, Pearson, Walton Abstentions - Grover, Trippler, Yarwood Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -2- V. PUBLIC HEARING a. Ramsey County Correctional Facility (297 Century Avenue South) (7:05 - 7:33 p.m.) Mr. Ekstrand said Bruce Thompson, with Ramsey County's Property Management Office, is requesting approval of expansion plans for the Ramsey County Correctional Facility. This proposal would consist of a 56,500-square-foot addition to the existing 130,837 -square-foot facility. Of the 226 property owners surveyed within 500 feet of the site, 34 replies were received. Seven comments were in favor or had no objection, 14 were opposed, 6 had no comment and 7 expressed various comments regarding the proposal. Many comments were repeated and shared by the respondents. Staff included a summary of all the comments received and copies of letters that were sent. Commissioner Yarwood didn't understand the argument for the main driveway from Century Avenue to be relocated to align with Oakwood Road moving the driveway 180 feet to the south. Mr. Ekstrand said staff doesn't think it's a "strong" argument but whenever you construct streets and driveways it's a safer practice to line them up. It might not be a great deal of change in terms of safety but in theory staff thinks it works better. Regarding why they want to do that the applicant can address that issue when they have the opportunity to speak. Mr. Roberts said to expand on what Mr. Ekstrand said the traffic engineers have always told staff you want to line up streets and driveways across from each other and not have them staggered to eliminate potential traffic conflicts with cars going every which way. If the vehicles meet at the same intersection it eliminates traffic concerns because the drivers will know to look out for each other. The Century Avenue road construction plan is going to have center medians installed on the road making for one opening at the new center median verses having two openings that are 150 feet apart and the traffic engineers will tell you that will be a lot safer. Commissioner Trippler said moving the driveway further south moves the driveway closer to the intersection which to him seems like it would cause more of a problem then moving it further north. Mr. Ekstrand said that is true, the driveway would be closer to the intersection but staff doesn't think it's close enough to be a hazard to traffic. Commissioner Trippler asked if the intersection would have traffic signals? Mr. Roberts said yes and that area will have channelized turn lanes as well. Commissioner Trippler asked if the traffic engineers have any idea at rush hour how many cars would be stacked up waiting for the signal? Mr. Roberts said he is sure they do but we don't have that information. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -3- Mr. Ekstrand said staff doesn't have that information and maybe the applicant's engineer may have that information when they have the opportunity to speak. Commissioner Hess said staff mentioned minimum security verses medium security would not really change the "type" of prisoner or criminal that would be housed there. However, after doing some research on the internet he said he found that under state guidelines other minimum security prisons like Faribault, Lino Lakes and Moose Lake house criminals like sexual offenders, sexual psychopaths and drug offenders. What would prevent the Ramsey County Correctional Facility from being forced to house those types of offenders? That situation would present more of a danger to the neighborhood or the area if they were to bring that kind of prisoner in. Are the prisoners that are brought in are they from local areas, from other states or is this strictly for offenders in Minnesota? Mr. Ekstrand said he would suspect the prisoners would be from Ramsey County or the surrounding area and not from other states but the applicant would have to address the question more thoroughly. Staff's understanding was that this addition would still house the same type of prisoners. Commissioner Desai said attachment 8, Jon Jarosch's engineering comments need to be corrected from 63,500 to read 56,500-square-foot addition. Secondly, to clarify a statement that was made regarding the number of parking spots, he saw a comment on attachment 7, David Hagen from Loucks Associates indicated in his letter that the facility is staffed continuously with the maximum shift being about 65 and the minimum about 20. Staff overlaps at shift change and 105 off-street parking spaces will be required to meet the parking needs of the back-to-back shifts with the greatest sum total of employees. He would expect Century Avenue would have no parking. What is the parking plan forthe employees at the shift change, what does the applicant propose to do about that? Mr. Ekstrand said staff's interest in reviewing the parking situation was to make sure they were providing adequate parking for their needs with this expansion. The applicant did provide justification but staff didn't include that because the conclusion was simply that they have enough parking to suit their needs. Staff's view is that if that turns out to be the case they have sufficient land to provide parking should they need to, but that is a good question for the applicant. Commissioner Walton asked how the applicant came to the decision that this is the place they wanted to expand versus another area in Ramsey County? Mr. Roberts said this is the only correctional facility in Ramsey County so this is where they propose to add space to their current location. They are not proposing to acquire a new site in which to build a brand new correctional facility. Commissioner Trippler asked what a mechanical penthouse is as shown on the first page of the staff report? Mr. Ekstrand said staff would expect that to be a room on the roof where the mechanical equipment is contained. Often times with architectural plans the city sees the top level is where the HVAC equipment is labeled as the mechanical penthouse. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -4- Commissioner Trippler said on page 5 the Assistant Fire Chief lists there shall be a 20-foot-wide minimum wide fire access road around the building and I didn't see that on the plan. Mr. Ekstrand said that is a common statement included by the Assistant Fire Chief, Butch Gervais but we can make sure that condition is in place and the Assistant Fire Chief would have to approve these plans no matter what was put in the report. Commissioner Trippler said on page 5, in recommendation number 1 it says the Director of the Community Development department, he asked iflhere is a Director of Community Development Department or has that person been fired too? Mr. Ekstrand said there isn't a Director of Community Development; that has been the standard language staff has included in the conditions; staff will change the wording of that to whatever is appropriate. Commissioner Trippler said he wanted to thank staff for typing out the citizen comments, it makes it so much easier to read the concerns compared to reading people's handwriting on the comment sheets. Commissioner Hess asked if there is a men's recreation yard, he noticed there is a women's recreation yard on the south side of the site. Mr. Ekstrand said there is an expansion of the recreation yard even though it is not shown on the plan but that is intended to be extended on the north side of the addition. (Mr. Ekstrand pointed out the expansion on the overhead for the commission and home audience.) Chairperson Fischer asked the applicant to address the commission. Mr. Jerome Biedny, Project Manager, Ramsey County Property Management, 660 Government Center West, 50 West Kellogg Boulevard, St. Paul, addressed the commission. He said that they have the architect and the civil engineers as well as the contractor and the facility director so we can address any of your questions. I will mention that this development is totally separate from other work being done on Century Avenue and we don't show the possible second driveway coming where ever it comes in because that should be approved and discussed by the people asking to do that roadway. We are simply saying our plan can accommodate the moving of the road if that happens. We have no control over the road, Ramsey County's design process had told us it would be a divided highway, we are going to move the road down so the intersection happens and there is a right and left hand turn lane, and we don't have conflict within 150 feet and we didn't push back on that so I just want to set the ground rules on that and that is why the plan doesn't show that. Chairperson Fischer asked if they have any problems with the recommendations in the staff report. Mr. Biedny said no. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -5- Commissioner Pearson asked if someone could put people's concern at ease by describing the level of the offender housed here and whether that is going to change or not and what is the program that allows the offenders to work on the golf course? Mr. Biedny turned the questions over to AI Carlson. Mr. AI Carlson, Superintendent of Ramsey County Correctional Facility, 297 Century Avenue South, Maplewood, addressed the commission. Regarding the inmates in the facility, anybody who is sentenced to a year or less, goes to a county facility, if they are sentenced to a year and a day or longer, they go to a state facility. So that won't change, we will continue to hold short stay inmates. The average stay of an inmate is 40 days and 90% of those people will be released back into the community, the remaining 10% of the people will have a hold or retainer where they are picked up for other charges, returned to court, and after an additional sentence they are released back into the community. We classify the inmates as Level 1 , 2, or 3. A Level 1 inmate is the minimum level of an inmate and those people have outside clearance and are approved to work on the golf course and nursery, those inmates have also done things like clean out garbage houses for the city and they work on rainwater gardens. Level 2 inmates work inside the facility in places like the kitchen and laundry, we may have a couple of Level 3 offenders throughout the year and those people are not allowed to work outside their living unit. Typically the reason they are a Level 3 offender is that they have a high bail amount for being picked up upon release. Commissioner Hess asked if it is possible you could house the more serious offenders under the state guidelines with medium security? Mr. Carlson said the state legislature would have to change the criteria regarding who goes to a county facility verses going to a state facility. He said that he is not aware of any intention to do that on their part. At this point anybody who is sentenced to our facility in Ramsey County by virtue of their sentence for a year or less will stay at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility. Mr. Roberts said inmates who are sentenced in Ramsey County go to your facility. If someone is sentenced in Washington or Dakota County they would go to one of those facilities? Mr. Carlson said correct. Commissioner Trippler asked when this addition is completed and your population increases, what is the relative rate of increase over the current population of inmates at the correctional facility? Mr. Carlson said the Ramsey County Correctional Facility was approved to house 316 inmates; we have a variance to hold an additional 48 inmates in a light industrial space in the basement so the count increases to 364. Our inmate count has been as high as 460 and our average daily inmate population last year was 386. When the addition opens we don't expect the inmate population to increase dramatically. We are housing 50 women over at the VOA facility in Roseville and we have 20 women in our facility. Those 50 inmates will come back and if you add those inmates to the 386 average inmate count, it will put the count to 440. We expect a 2 or 5% increase in inmates by the end of 2008 but the population fluctuates. Currently we have 25 less inmates this year than we had last year. Ideally the facility runs at 90% capacity. We have 556 beds but we don't expect to be operating at 556 or at least we hope we aren't. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -6- Commissioner Yarwood said you have proposed to hire 21 new employees. What is the time frame you propose to hire the new employees? Is the hiring of additional employees meant to parallel the increase in the prison population? Mr. Carlson said the hiring of the new employees will coincide with the opening of the addition. We plan to move the inmates out of the light industrial space and into the new addition. Mr. Carlson said dorms that were designed for 36 inmates actually have 48 inmates in them now so we will scale that back which will make for a safer environment for the staff and the inmates. Chairperson Fischer asked if anyone in the audience wanted to speak regarding this item. Nobody came forward therefore Chairperson Fischer closed the public hearing at 7:29 p.m. Commissioner Trippler said he looked for a recommendation in the staff report regarding withholding escrow funds for the landscaping work and he didn't see that in the recommendations this time. He asked why that sentence was not included in the recommendations this time in the staff report? Mr. Ekstrand said often times that is a sentence that is included in the conditions forthe CDRB to review which is usually included in one report, however, staff was under a time constraint to get the report done in time and did not include that for the PC. Staff will include that in the report going to the CDRB and then staff will combine the PC and CDRB conditions into one report before it goes to the city council for their review. Commissioner Hess asked if the 60 additional parking stalls are designed to conform to the 9'6' parking stall width to meet the city code? Mr. Ekstrand said staff will verify that before that goes to the CDRB meeting. Commissioner Trippler moved to adopt the resolution approving a conditional use permit for the expansion of the Ramsey County Correctional Facility at 297 Century Avenue South. Approval is based on the findings required by the city ordinances and subject to the following conditions: 1. All construction shall follow the site plan approved by the city. The interim Director of the Communitv Development department may approve minor changes. 2. The proposed construction must be substantially started within one year of council approval or the permit shall become null and void. 3. The city council shall review this permit in one year. 4. The applicant shall remove the existing temporary office building as part of this facility expansion. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -7- 5. Site lights shall be designed so the light source is not visible off site shall not cause any glare beyond the property lines and not exceed maximum light-intensity requirements of the city ordinance. 6. The expansion to the south end of the parking lot shall be installed with the proposed building expansion. 7. The location of the future garages behind the building is approved. The applicant must submit the design of these buildings to the community design review board for approval before construction. Commission member Pearson seconded. Ayes -Desai, Fischer, Grover, Hess, Trippler, Pearson, Walton, Yarwood The motion passed. This item goes to the city council on March 26, 2007. VI. NEW BUSINESS a. Comprehensive Plan Review - Goals and Policies Mr. Roberts said the Metropolitan Council is requiring all municipalities in the metro area to update their comprehensive plans by December 2008. To meet this schedule, the city will need to submit a complete plan update to the neighboring cities, the watershed district, affected school districts and to the Met Council by June 2008. This timeline will allow for each of these agencies to review and comment on the proposed plan by December 2008. Staff expects it will take city staff, the consultants, the planning commission and the city council up to a year to complete the revisions and to review and adopt the new plan. As such, city staff should start work on the plan update by June 2007 and have significant parts of the plan updated and ready for review by the boards and commissions by January 2008. The planning commission should review the attached policies and goals from the existing comprehensive plan and suggest changes, if necessary, for these elements. Staffwill incorporate all changes into the comprehensive plan update as that project progresses through the city review process. Commissioner Trippler was wondering what legal standing the city has for the goals and policies of the comprehensive plan. If the comprehensive plan can be used by developers to point out that the city is or isn't doing something right then I think the city has to be very careful the way things are phrased. On page 4 of the document it states The City will preserve, protect, conserve and use wisely its significant natural features. Basically that means the city can't do anything else. Chairperson Fischer said there are always overriding rules from someone above, the city can say what they want, but if the city is doing something that is unconstitutional you know its not going to mean that the city can do that. The city can't deprive anyone of a reasonable use of their land, without paying for it of course. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -8- Commissioner Trippler said as the planning commission looks at the goals and policies for the city we should keep that in mind. If a policy says the city shall protect a natural resource, that could be an area someone who does or doesn't want a development to go through could bring up. If this is what the comprehensive plan says then this is what you must do. A developer could point to other rules and regulations and say the comprehensive plan allows it, but he wants to make sure the city doesn't have those potential conflicts waiting to be explored. Mr. Roberts said staff agrees with that statement. On page 5, under Goals, towards the bottom, bullet number 4, says Preserve significant natural features where practical. If you have to develop the land and you have to remove the natural features, then it isn't practical to save them. Commissioner Trippler said there are some inconsistencies within the goals when you look at the goals and then look at the policies they don't match up. For example on page 4, the top bullet, it says Housing Goal: The city will encourage a variety of housing which provides for a choice of type, location, price and ownership versus renting. When you look at the residential development policies on page 8, it says the city will provide a diversity of housing types including apartments, townhouses, manufactured homes, single-family homes, public-assisted housing and low and moderate-income housing and rental and owner-occupied housing which to him is saying two different things. He asked staff what the best way for the planning commission to go through this and provide input to staff. Do you want to do it in a written form or in a discussion? Mr. Roberts said staff thought we could go through it page by page. Hopefully many of these are still good but let's talk about the ones that seem to be an issue or a problem. Chairperson Fischer asked if anyone in the audience wanted to come forward regarding this item. Mr. Will Rossbach, city councilmember, 1386 County Road C East, Maplewood, addressed the planning commission. Mr. Rossbach spoke to the commission regarding this item from 7:45- 8: 1 0 p.m. Mr. Rossbach said he wanted to mention two things to the planning commission to consider. He said he would ask the planning commission to take a different approach to the comprehensive plan. The first thing is he would encourage the planning commission to try to attend some of the training sessions that are offered. There are several seminars and classes that directly relate to the planning process. Earlier in the year he went to a refresher course which was mostly a land planning seminar. It's amazing how much you forget and it's nice to have it fresh on your mind as you enter into this process of revising the comprehensive plan. Once it's done then the goals, policies, and objectives of the plan are going to be used to judge whether you are going to grant variances or conditional uses where there are set standards that you need to look at that. So now is the time you can create the rules that you will use to judge things that will come before you as the commission in the future. So it is extremely important that you understand the process of what you "can" and "can't" do. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -9- Mr. Rossbach said secondly, to just start taking the existing plan and going through it step by step is the wrong approach. It's difficult to get the picture of the whole plan if you do it that way. It's difficult to pick out one policy or one goal and relate it to what you are trying to accomplish if you do it that way. So he would think it would be a good idea for you to understand what the met council's goals and policies are so you have some understanding of what they think is happening in the metro area. Then one way or the other the commission needs to get it in your mind what it is that you want the city to look like. As a group you will have to come to some agreement and then write a comprehensive plan that reflects what you want. Don't be lured into accepting a comprehensive plan that mayor may not have been well written and trying to fix it. If you determine that the plan that we already have truly reflects what you think the city shall be then fine, do some tweaking of it and modernize it. He would encourage you to get your mind set so you can think what it is that you want to accomplish, what you want to allow happen in the city, and what is important to you. He said in the past if he wanted to present an argument and wanted to convince the city about something, he could go through and find the goals and policies to support his position on "any" issue in the comprehensive plan because things are so widely varied and they present every side of every issue. He could argue both sides of the same issue. We as a city need to come to a focus of what we want "for" the city and have a plan that says what you want. Mr. Roberts said it would greatly help staff and the planning commission if we had direction from the city council regarding some of the goals, policies and visions for the city that they would like to see. Mr. Rossbach agreed. You are writing a plan that is going to outlive any city council we have in place so don't be tempted to think that because something is going on now that is what you need to be gearing towards. We are asking you as the planning commission to provide your input into this process. He said he intends to give the same speech to the city council and stress these same issues. It may be that you won't receive a clear direction from the city council and that is why he is asking the planning commission for their help and we need the planning commission to do a good job on this. Then the city council can do a good job on what they are going to do. Mr. Roberts said Mr. Rossbach is right, that the comprehensive plan is a 20 to 40 year planning document. We need to firmly establish how the city wants itself to look and grow and develop in the next 20 to 40 years and we need to spend a lot of time and attention on this very important document. Chairperson Fischer said when the first comprehensive plan was put together many years ago it included an 11 member group who spent many meetings working on that document until after 12:00 midnight. That year the annual report said the planning commission had 54 meetings in 1 year so a lot of time was spent crossing the t's and dotting the i's. Commissioner Hess said Mr. Rossbach mentioned something about the metropolitan council and from what he has seen in the newspaper the met council has an overarching affect over what the different metro areas decide? Let's say for example we decide a light rail system should go through parts of Maplewood, would the met council have the authority to override what the city wants to do? Is there a master plan or booklet for the metropolitan council that we should be looking at? Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -10- Mr. Rossbach said yes the metropolitan council has a master plan book, and yes the metropolitan council can override the cities decision to some extent. Lake Elmo said they weren't going to do what the metropolitan council wanted and the met council won in court. That doesn't mean courts can decide issues in different ways so it depends on what the issue is but the objection of the met council is to try to tie the plans of all the different cities together. City's are terrible about paying attention to what is going on in the neighboring cities. When we talk about the correctional facility we sent some notices to the neighbors across the street in Woodbury but we didn't pay any attention to what was being built in the surrounding area. So basically cities don't tie their plans together. Mr. Roberts said when the met council reviews the City of Maplewood's plan, the first thing the met council looks at is to make sure our plan is consistent with their adopted statements. For example a city may want to have more freeway access or another interchange onto a freeway or major highway like Highway 36, if the met council has not included that in their statement, they won't let the city show that in their plan. Another example is sewer extensions, if they were to say we want to run sewer to a certain area of the city in the next five years the met council could say no, you can't do that for another 20 years. Then they either have to negotiate that and come to an agreement or the met council can just say no. The city's plan has to be consistent with the met council system statements. Commissioner Pearson said this is going to be a very interesting exercise. One thing you have to keep in mind is that a crafty developer and a crafty attorney will find any way they can to get a goal or ordinance to say what "they" want it to say. And many times it can come down to the definition of a certain word such as what does "is" mean? Mr. Rossbach said he agrees. Commissioner Trippler said it seems in order for us to get the kind of information, training, and education, the planning commission needs to get that some place and his guess is the best place to get that is from city staff. However, city staff is already fully booked with projects and other work and he is wondering if you could get the city council to agree to some additional overtime. We may need to have some special evening sessions. The staff could bring the metropolitan council's plan to go over with the planning commission. Or a couple of evenings we could look at the city as a whole and have some discussions about what the individual desire is for what the city should look like so we can reach some kind of agreement. It seems to him that it would be unreasonable to expect staff to do that on their own free time and maybe this is something the city council can instruct staff to do with the understanding that staff would be reimbursed for the time and effort? Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -11- Mr. Rossbach said he has not talked to the staff about this. He partially agrees with what Commissioner Trippler is saying and he thinks there are people whose occupation is to educate people on these topics. We have a wonderful staff in this city who are probably overworked but the staff can be most help to you in helping you understand what our current policy is and the direction the city is going as far as development and their understanding of what the comprehensive plan says. As far as the educational process towards what you should be doing and what your goals are, when you are creating the comprehensive plan and the overview of the document that you made and how you are supposed to use it, you could get a much better sense of that by going to some of the seminars. Going to the seminars requires you to give up a day of work so he would be happy to try to get the city council to see if we can do some in-house training and bring people in. Maybe we could share that cost with city's surrounding us because everyone has to be updating their comprehensive plan we could make it more convenient for everyone by sharing the cost with another city. If your schedules allow you to go to these seminars, it is well worth your time. Commissioner Trippler said he went to the comprehensive planning seminar a couple of years ago and it was an excellent seminar but his recollection was that it was very general in its scope and it doesn't get down to specifics. It costs $125 per person and there are supposed to be 9 planning commission members. It would seem to him that if the city staff could have somebody from the met council come in during one of our sessions and give us an overview of the met council's plan for the metro area it would be worthwhile and a better use of city resources to bring the education to us as a group rather than sending us out individually. Mr. Roberts said if we were able to get somebody to come out to the city for training it would be beneficial for both the planning commission and the city council at the same time. There are at least two or three of the city councilmember's that should get the same level or more education on the process than the planning commission. That way people could ask the questions once and hear everything all at the same time. Mr. Rossbach said he would do his best to make that happen. This is the job of the planning commission. These seminars aren't going to get down to specifics of every city's plan but you have to have a basic understanding of everything behind it before you start changing things around. No seminar will tell you how Maplewood should be, those are decisions that as a planning commission you have to work together to come to an agreement and a plan. We are taking the first steps nowto what is going to happen 50 years down the road. If these steps aren't done right it will mess everything up. This is one of the most important documents in his participation in this city. Improving this document will set the tone for the city. Maplewood is almost fully developed and things will be different from this point forward. Maybe the comprehensive plan should reflect that difference. Commissioner Trippler said he would strongly recommend that between now and the time we finish the comprehensive plan if we don't have a full agenda we should still meet anyway and use that time to talk about the comprehensive plan during a work session. Mr. Roberts said that was one of the reasons staff brought this up tonight because we had a light agenda. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -12- Commissioner Yarwood said he doesn't feel comfortable going through this without getting some training and education and to make some fundamental decisions regarding the direction of the city and these details are lacking at this point. Commissioner Desai asked what the demographic projections for the metropolitan area are in the next 5 to 20 years because as you develop your goals and the land use plan for Maplewood we need to know the demographics before we can know what we want the city to look like. If we are almost fully developed there will be an older stock of homes, there is the potential for someone to purchase land and develop it into condos or senior housing to met the needs of the future demographics. He would like to see more information like this provided for the planning commission to have a better perception of what we want Maplewood's goals to be. Commissioner Hess said he would like to know how much of the metro area is developing senior housing or is Maplewood developing more senior housing than any other area. Commissioner Pearson asked if it would be possible to get information on the senior housing vacancy rate? Mr. Roberts said he didn't know who tracks that type of information. There was miscellaneous discussion amongst the planning commissioners about various things but Mr. Roberts said clearly the planning commission is looking for more information to read and understand so they can do a better job. VII. UNFINISHED BUSINESS None. VIII. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS None. IX. COMMISSION PRESENTATIONS a. Mr. Hess was the planning commission representative at the February 26,2007, city council meeting. They discussed the Comprehensive Plan Amendment - Gladstone Redevelopment Plan (for the English Street and Frost Avenue area) which needed 4 votes to pass but was denied 3-2. Mr. Hess also mentioned he was appointed to serve on the Trunk Highway 49 Task Force committee and Dale Trippler will serve as the alternate. b. Mr. Pearson will be the planning commission representative at the March 12,2007, city council meeting. Planning Commission Minutes of 03-06-07 -13- Items to discuss include the Planning Commission Rules of Procedure, the Resolution of Appreciation for Michael Grover, the request to hire a consultant for the south Maplewood study, and the second hearing for the Comprehensive Plan Amendment for the Gladstone Redevelopment Plan (for the English Street and Frost Avenue area). c. Ms. Fischer will be the planning commission representative at the March 26, 2007, city council meeting. The only item to discuss at this time is the CUP for the Ramsey County Correctional Facility at 297 Century Avenue south. d. Mr. Yarwood volunteered to be the planning commission representative at the April 9, 2007, city council meeting. X. STAFF PRESENTATIONS This was the last meeting for planning commissioner Michael Grover. Mr. Roberts thanked Michael Grover for the time he served on the planning commission and said he will be missed by staff and the commission. The planning commission echoed staff's comments as well. XI. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 8:52 p.m.