The City Plan Commission met 09/14/2022. The one information item on the agenda was a review of the roles and responsibilities of the City Plan Commission.
City Planner Don Harp walked them through the document city staff had put together. The Plan Commission receives its authority through Wisconsin State Statutes 62.23, the City Plan Commission statute, and 236, the Platting statute as well as through Chapter 24 of Appleton’s Municipal Code which is the zoning section of the code. Their desire with the document they were presenting to the Plan Commission was to consolidate the things laid out in those three separate areas, so that commissioners did not need to look at three different resources to understand their role and responsibilities.
Pages 4-7 dealt with things that were typically brought to the Plan Commission including rezonings, annexations, special use permits, and text amendments to the zoning code and subdivision code. For those items there were, at times, specific criteria to make a decision within their advisory role to the Common Council. In regards to an application, staff would formulate the staff report to provide background history and tie the application into the Comprehensive Land Use Plan in order that the Plan Commission decisions were consistent with the comprehensive plan. The Plan Commission also utilized other tools such as the zoning code, the official street map, and any relevant neighborhood plans to make recommendations.
Pages 7-15 listed situations that did not come before the Plan Commission on a regular basis. For those items Principal Planner Harp had given a brief description of what they meant rather than providing a more expansive description.
He opened things up for questions.
Mayor Woodford said going back to the staff reports and recommendations that staff put together, in essence for those reports, staffers were trying to think like a plan commissioner through the lens of the criteria the Plan Commission needed to review and account for as they considered approval.
Principal Planner Harp said that was correct. The staff reports were something like an education tool. They listed the criteria, and sometimes staff would react to specific criteria based on what was submitted and explain how a specific standard was met based on the circumstances submitted in a particular application. If the Plan Commission decided they were not going to go along with the staff recommendation, at least staff provided the commission with their analysis and the commission had a basis to approve or deny. That put them in good standing if there was an appeals process that happened on the back end. [It wasn’t clear to me who would be in good standing if there was an appeals process, staff? The Plan Commission? The Common Council?]
Commissioner Sabrina Robbins thought the document was very helpful. Although she was now in her second term, when she had started her first term, she had needed help understanding what her role was as a commissioner. She thought this document would be good for on-boarding new commission members. She noted that, something not touched on in the document, was the fact that commission members may be called on to serve on additional committees or tasks forces such as the College North Neighborhood Project or the Community Development Block Grant Committee.
Mayor Woodford asked if they could talk a little bit about the times when the Commission had discretion in their decisions and when they did not. Understanding that each situation was different and unique, were there examples of times when the commission had very little discretion or they would not be holding up their responsibility?
Principal Planner Harp responded that the Plan Commission had sole discretion over an item that was approved by the Commission but did not need to be approved by the Common Council. Examples of that would be an amendment to a special use permit or things related to a site plan. Those things were taken care of through administrative reviews by staff, but if staff administratively denied a site plan for some reason, there was an appeals process which could come directly to the Plan Commission which could either go along with the staff recommendation or do something else. Often however, if staff did not approve something their decision was based on a city code standard in which case the appeal might not come to the Plan Commission but go elsewhere such as to the Board of Zoning Appeals. He said that there have been appeals that have come through the Plan Commission but those were very rare because staff worked to problem solve and come up with solutions that would bring applicants into compliance with codes without having to go through an appeals process.
Another area that the Plan Commission had discretion over was interpretation of the zoning code, particularly for uses that were not listed in the zoning code. At times, the city might receive a development proposal that was close to a permitted use but was not specifically spelled out in the code. Staff had an interpretation of the zoning code that they continued to update and utilize for consistency, but if someone disagreed with a staff decision, they could bring that forward and it would be presented to the Plan Commission. The Plan Commission could then discuss it and make a determination as to how something should be categorized.
Community and Economic Development Director Karen Harkness added that it was really difficult to capture every potential scenario that may come forward to the Plan Commission. As an example, she mentioned a church that had wanted to build on property they had owned for a while. In that situation there was another law, the Religion Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) that came into play. She said it was sometimes difficult to capture every nuance that could happen, but they had a great Attorney’s Office that helped them through some of the really detailed tasks that came before them.
Commissioner Andrew Dane thought it was a really good document. In reviewing it, what jumped out to him was that state statutes provided a broad scope to the Plan Commission. The things on pages 4-7 were what they more traditionally dealt with but the rest of the document included a number of other additional powers for the Plan Commission that he had not been particularly familiar with, this such as the location and design of public buildings, location of statues, designations of streets, weighing in on official maps, housing.
Most of Appleton’s Plan Commission meeting were fairly short because they were reacting to applications and not dragging the application process out. But it seemed that they had the opportunity to look at bigger picture items and other areas. He said that that State Statute 62.23 gave them the authority to amend, extend, or add to the master plan. He felt that there were other areas in Appleton, outside of Downtown, such as the Wisconsin Avenue corridor or the Richmond Street corridor that needed attention. He wondered if there was a mechanism for the Plan Commission to generate some ideas for those areas and put them on the agenda for discussion, or perhaps the Common Council could identify those are priorities and refer them to the Plan Commission for discussion.
Director Harkness said that when they had put this document together, they had gone back and forth on including the list of responsibilities on pages 7-15 because those topics don’t all come to the Plan Commission. In some instances, they felt that state statutes had not kept up with how municipalities had evolved. A small municipality such as Greenville, for example, might take all of those items to their Plan Commission because they don’t have a lot of other committees, but Appleton, on the other hand, had many committees of jurisdiction which took some of the burden off of the Plan Commission.
In terms of items such as Commissioner Dane had suggested being put on the agenda, typically those would come either at the direction of the mayor or in response to a resolution from the Common Council. The reason for that was because the city only had so many staff people and their priorities were set by the budget. For example, the 2023 budget would be coming up for approval in November, and that would show the areas the areas that the Council wanted prioritized and that staff would direct their time and resources.
Mayor Woodford added that the mayor was responsible for setting the agenda. If there were specific topics that members of the commission would like to talk about, they could certainly do that. In most cases, they would use the city’s Comprehensive Plan as a vehicle for talking about those things. He noted that a lot of work and planning had been done around Wisconsin Avenue, and the Comprehensive Plan contained a lot of detail about that corridor. He said the Commission could certainly talk about that in more detail at a future meeting.
He mentioned that Appleton’s first Comprehensive Plan had been commissioned and completed in 1922, so Appleton was celebrating 100 years of planning in the city. The city had a strong history of planning. The Comprehensive Plan was an actively maintained document that they could use to shape conversations.
He went on to say that one of the challenges for the Plan Commission and Council was that, as a city, there were many things they would like to see happen and they had many aspirations for Appleton. Many of those aspirations depended on members of the community, investors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses taking up projects and putting that vision into action.
Earlier in the meeting the commission had approved a special use permit for a craft distillery in downtown Appleton. It would be the first craft distillery in the city. The city, however, was not starting a craft distillery; that was not the city’s role. They did, however based on the recommendation of city staff, approve the special use permit, and that was what it took in many cases to make progress as a city—to partner with businesses and organizations or, at the very least, not get in their way and they try to bring a vision forward.
He reiterated that he was happy to talk with the commissioners either during a meeting or outside of a meeting, but stressed that those conversations would be based on work the city had already done because Wisconsin Avenue had already been talked through significantly. Many had aspirations for that corridor and views on what could be there.
Commissioner Dane said the city had a reputation of the Common Council approving a lot of resolutions. He thought it might be good to have a resolution calling for a deeper dive one some Plan Commission subjects. He mentioned rewriting the Comprehensive Plan as a possibility, saying that it had been updated around 5 years ago and was, theoretically, supposed to be rewritten every 10 years, so they were getting close to that. He thought there were some opportunities to update the Future Land Use map to support more of the development that they were trying to achieve.
The commissioners had no further comments or questions, so Mayor Woodford thanked city staff for their hard work in putting the document together, then the meeting adjourned.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=920201&GUID=D522770D-80C6-4519-9AED-DBB852289F51
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