The City Plan Commission met 04/10/2024. One of the items they voted on was the preliminary plat for the Lumbini Estates subdivision near Plank and Midway roads.
The land was annexed into the city in 1985 and zoned as an R-1A residential single-family district. The developer was proposing 27 lots with an average size of 16,586 square feet per lot. The developer was also going to install streets and sidewalks.
There was brief discussion at the committee that there was only one access point allowed into the subdivision along Midway Road and the lots with frontages along Midway would be restricted from having driveways connecting to Midway. Additionally, the development’s proximity to Midway/Hwy AP provided Calumet County with greater authority to review the plans for the development, because state law allowed for counties to review plats that were adjacent to existing or planned county infrastructure such as county highways, county airports, county parks, and county trails.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the preliminary plat.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Plan Commissioner Andrew Dane expressed dissatisfaction or concern about how large the proposed lots were. “They’re large. And some of them are 15-16,000 square feet—over a quarter of an acre. I really think going forward, we should at least have some discussion about you know whether or not we want to have a maximum allowable lot size within the city, because I just feel like some of these lots get so large; it’s an inefficient use of precious land that we have. So just want to throw that out there.”
Commissioner Sabrina Robins followed up on that, saying, “Just more on what Commissioner Dane was talking about. Part of the housing centric is the discussion of affordable housing, so as I look at these lots, will there be opportunity to have affordable housing along, mixed in, with this or…?”
Mayor Woodford said, “[O]ne of the things for us to keep in mind in this conversation is that what’s before the Plan Commission is a preliminary plat map. So, as long as the preliminary plat map conforms to our current codes and policies and the conditions that were outlined in the staff report are met, it’s our obligation to approve. But I think these are worthwhile considerations and certainly something that the city has already been having conversations about when we talk about incentives for development and being much more selective about what types of development get incentivized, whether that’s through the waiver of fees or supportive infrastructure related costs.”
The commission went on to vote unanimously to approve the preliminary plat.
[I don’t think Commissioner Dane’s suggestion demonstrates a proper appreciation for property rights, and I find it concerning that a plan commissioner’s first response to something he doesn’t like is to suggest it be banned. That sort of attitude gives the impression that if not the Plan Commission as a whole then at least he himself as an individual Plan Commissioner views land within the city not as the property of the individual owners but rather the property of the city to be used and developed as the city dictates. I think this attitude was evinced in the way the Apostolic Truth Church’s rezoning application was opposed by Commissioner Dane and fellow commissioner Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) both of whom were explicitly concerned about how allowing that parcel to be developed for a church would take away land that could be developed for housing, and I think that attitude was evinced again now when Commissioner Dane expressed the personal belief that these lots were somehow too large.
People need all sorts of different types of housing in multiple shapes and sizes, and I see no logical reason why it would be the place of the city to ban houses from being built on lots that are “too large”. And, basic property rights aside, it seems absurd for a plan commissioner in the city to even be contemplating that sort of regulatory overreach at a time when the city is trying to make itself more accessible and helpful to developers.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1168044&GUID=79D7434E-26C1-490E-8CAE-AC73C340171C
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