After several public comments requesting better transparency from the Historic District Commission regarding future construction in residential neighborhoods, as well as requests for the city to put more funding into code enforcement, council went into discussion of HDC and Planning Commission procedures on Monday evening.
Alderman Harry Meyer began discussion saying that a new construction had failed to materialize after a property owner had taken all the trees down on a property. He said the owner had not been required to show building plans to receive a tree cutting permit and suggested that could be a requirement in the future.
Meyer also mentioned 5 Douglas, a property referenced in Public Comments, saying that trees had been taken down without a tree cutting permit and without an excavation permit.
Meyer seemed to be echoing sentiments that better notification from Planning and HDC was needed, and Mayor Butch Berry said that the issue with 5 Douglas was due to no application being made. With no application there was no notification of excavation. Berry said that HDC and Planning want to be transparent and referenced how at the previous Planning meeting a developer requested the commission’s input on new construction.
Conversation waffled between procedure and 5 Douglas with alderman failing to suggest anything not already done by the city, such as posting the agenda to the city website before meetings. Alderman Terry McClung pointed out due to agendas being able to be amended at meetings this was not a perfect failsafe for the public to be informed of all topics all the time. Discussion came to an end when Berry, alderman Melissa Greene and McClung couldn’t agree what a person needs to bring to Planning to request a tree cutting permit.
Other Items
- The ordinance establishing I&I fees on irrigation meters was explained as an account meant to be used for any infrastructure improvements related to any water infrastructure, and the charge on water bills only comes from water consumption. This discussion answered McClung’s question on where the fee came from, as the way the account is set up in the budget makes it look like 50 percent of the fee comes from the Wastewater fees and limits how the money may be spent.
- David Avanzino, in Public Comments, pointed out that while there are vacancies on the CAPC that there are several people who have had applications in for several months with no votes or discussion. He also said that he is “sick of writing thousand-dollar checks” to the CAPC when he doesn’t see the results of that money being used. He also said that there are employees of the town seen in questionable circumstances and discussions with waiters at restaurants and bars on social media and while he didn’t want to put it on record, he wanted to bring it up.