Crowds at October 17th, 2018 Master Plan Open House Visioning Session & defacto Community Survey
In brief, at this 6/19/2019 meetup of the Northfield Township Planning Commission: Five of the seven planning commissioners were present. Township Board Representative Janet Chick and Planning Commission Chairman Larry Roman were absent. Craig Warburton and County Commissioner Susan Shink comprised the entire audience. A late correspondence from a Dominoes Farms development entity was entered into the record. Dominoes expressed a vaguely described interest in having the new Master Plan accomodate their plans to develop various landholdings in the Southeast corner of Northfield Township, or something to that effect. Maybe we'll get that two hundred foot statue of Jesus rejected by Ann Arbor, eh?
The public hearing was opened and closed but any substantive discussion of the draft Master Plan was tabled until all seven Commissioners could be present. This date was tentatively set as July 17th, the second meeting date in July. .
During the limited discussion, Commissioner Iaquinto berated Planner Lippens for heeding the public comments and modifying the draft Master Plan to reflect the public's wishes. Iaquinto focused his ire on the issues focused on by Township Trustee Zelenock in the letter embedded in this meeting's packet. Iaquinto demanded that Lippens remove any draft plan language written as a response to Zelenock's letter. He posed this demand as a complaint about the process, in a deep dive into irony saying that no single trustee or commissioner had a right to dictate what could or could not be inserted into the plan.
Lippens defended his product vigorously. [Adverbs are for idiots and the tweets of idiots, but I'm using that adverb as a placeholder anyway. More details will follow.] In short, Lippens said that the draft plan reflected his best professional estimate of what the sum total of surveys, visioning, citizen feedback, Master Plans past, and accomodation to a modeled, predicted, probable future, required.
Master Plans, most recent drafts first:
- 6/13/2019 - DRAFT Master Plan, McKenna
- 2/20/2019 - DRAFT Master Plan, McKenna
- 2/18/2019 - DRAFT Master Plan, McKenna
- 6/17/2013 - FINAL 2012 Master Plan, Carlisle Wortmann's work
Meeting documents:
- 6/19/2019 PC meeting Agenda
- Public comments on the draft Master Plan - these were bundled into this meeting packet
- 6/19/2019 PC meeting packet