City Planning Small Group Meeting Between The Neighborhood And The Church

On February 29th, Steve Castle, Hugh Montgomery and myself met with six members of the Mennonite Church at the request of Larry Larson in City Planning.  City Staff members from Traffic, Storm Water, and Parks and Recreation also attended.  While being a somewhat confrontational meeting, a good discourse on the status of each group was presented.  The main issue at hand is that the church has basically the same plan that they presented in October.  They would like us to back off on our objections to their plan, but we were very firm that the church with the sub-division is the worst plan that has been presented for that corner.  Larry Larson has once again asked them to mitigate the problems identified by the neighborhood and then we will have a second small group meeting.  After that meeting, there will be a general neighborhood meeting to discuss these issues.  Then a formal application will be sent in.  The general neighborhood meeting will not be until April.

A couple of interesting points were raised.  First, city traffic is working on ways to reduce speed and numbers through the Ranch, Nightengale corridor.  They have not seen the traffic study results and could not accurately comment on how it will affect the neighborhood.  They are working with Hugh on some ideas for reducing speed and numbers along the streets.  City Traffic is currently working on getting all the existing stoplights to work and is not very interested in adding another light at Ranch and Union.

Also, Tim from Storm Water indicated that the church needs to be considering how to handle the flood potential at their corner.  They will be responsible for increasing the size of the culverts to handle the amount of water coming down Union and protecting their property.  He reminded us that a few years ago, a routine storm picked up a fairly new bike path and washed it half way down the covered ditch.  The size of the cement moved was about 10ftx15ftx5in.  So you can imagine how much water it takes to move something that big.

Parks and Recreation will continue to work on the preservation of the hillside and a trail corridor.  We are also pressing forward with the conservation easement.  They are also asking that the area down by the cottonwoods be preserved.  Larry Larson indicated that they would require an appropriate buffer between land uses down at that end.  It was not clear what the city code says at this point.

We indicated that the neighborhood would prefer that nothing be built and that this is the last remaining open space in our 30 year old area.  We feel that there is space for a compromise that will allow for a church if the traffic issues can be met.  However, we are strongly against a sub-division and the additional houses in the area.  Plus, we do not want anymore cars driving through the neighborhood.  If the church can extend their time frame sufficiently to meet our fundraising goals, our offer to work on buying the land still stands.

Scot