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| The following summary minutes have not been approved by Simpsonville City Council. An official copy of the minutes will be available after adopted by City Council at City Hall 118 NE Main St. Simpsonville. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, notice of this meeting date, time, place and Agenda was posted on the bulletin board at City Hall and faxed to the newspapers, radio stations, television stations and any concerned citizens. |
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SIMPSONVILLE CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP/SPECIAL VOTING SESSION May 27, 2008 6:30 p.m. City Council Chambers- 118 N.E. Main Street
CALL TO ORDER: Mayor: Call the May 27 th , workshop/special voting session of Simpsonville City Council to order. I’d like to welcome all of you here tonight. Mrs. Bridgeman, will you please call the roll?
ROLL CALL: Councilmember Bridges: Here Councilmember Garrett: Here Councilmember Sanders: Here Councilmember Bagwell: Here Councilmember Curtis: Here Councilmember Larson: Here Mayor Waldrop: Here
INVOCATION: Mayor: Is there any one here that would like to ask blessings upon this meeting in your own personal way? Ok, Councilmember Bridges, would you ask blessings upon this meeting in your own personal way.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: Mayor: Would all of you join us now in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag please.
CITIZENS COMMENTS Mayor: This is the portion of our program where we invite citizen comments. We had no one sign up tonight and no one called ahead to be placed on the agenda, so I guess no one wants to speak with us.
COUNCIL COMMENTS Mayor: Next item, Council Comments, does any council member have anything they would like to say?
Mr. Larson: I just want to say that I had a great weekend at Freedom Weekend Aloft. I think the city did a great job putting that on this year.
Mayor: Thank you very much. Any one else?
Ms. Sanders: We had a really high attendance at the memorial service yesterday and I would like to thank all of the city employees that put out chairs and worked hard with that and everyone who sang and spoke did a very good job. I think the vets enjoyed it.
Mayor: Thank you very much. Anyone else? All right, it was a great weekend, what a great festival. That’s all I had.
NEW BUSINESS Mayor: Next item on the agenda, Mr. Dyrhaug, you’re going to tell us about our Comprehensive Plan Procedure Timeline, with what we need to do and when we need to do it.
Mr. Dyrhaug: Thank you Mayor. Right now the city has a comprehensive plan that was planned and adopted in 1998. The state requires that we update that every ten years. It’s come time and as you may see, other jurisdictions hustling like Greenville County , Mauldin and Greer working on their comprehensive plan; it is our turn as well. The state requires a few things as we go about our Comprehensive Plan. This is a very brief process that identified where we inventory existing conditions, provide a statement or needs and goals and indicate implementation strategies with time frames. They go on to identify nine different elements that are required to be addressed in a comprehensive plan. The list is up here, but I will go through them real quickly. It has population element, economic development, natural resources, cultural resources, community facilities, housing element, land use and these last two are new elements to be included, transportation and priority investment areas. Generally speaking, the generic process for adopting a comprehensive plan is to determine the community issues and evaluate the current conditions of the city. Through reviewing those, coming up with various land use alternatives and draft goals and then refining those a little bit more where we create a preferred land use scenario and draft a plan and then have it adopted and implemented. I just want to bring this up to you because I have been contemplating over the last couple of weeks, maybe longer than that, a procedure that we should follow. I want to introduce that to you and give you time to mull over it. I will be sharing this with the planning commission and getting their recommendations and you may see this coming back to you in a few weeks to perhaps get your blessing on it. First, I would like to start out with initiating the process, mapping out this process and the time line. Maybe hiring a consultant or adding staff and appointing a steering community and in my opinion, would include city officials and department representatives and launch a web site. That can also keep the public informed throughout the process. Staff can be working on compiling the current conditions of the city and compiling data that would go into that. While that’s going on, it is important to identify the community issues and that would be through holding a kick off meeting, conducting surveys at that meeting and through the web site. Having interviews with key stakeholders in City of Simpsonville and holding neighborhood workshops to get impute from citizens and even business owners. The next step would go into preparing the plan and that would entail citizen groups or even committees if there is enough interest. Then to form different alternative land use scenarios and goals that support those scenarios and then have those reviewed by the steering committee that might create a preferred scenario and goals that support that scenario and then after that have been created. Then the next step might be to present the preferred scenario and draft goals at a public open house so that the citizens and business owners can continue to provide impute into that process. Then, finally after all of that has been done, to go ahead and draft the plan. After we have a drafted plan, we would bring that process to the planning commission for their review or they would hold a public hearing and then after their recommendations, city council would review and hopefully we would adopt that plan and then it begins the implantation. And that in a nutshell is what I have been thinking about in terms of envisioning how the process might go and I am open to suggestions and impute that you may have or questions about it. As a reference, it is hard to read and I’m not going to go through and read it, but I did map out what Greenville County and Greer are doing right now and you will see that it’s not far off from where I am suggesting taking this process. There’s some food for thought, if you have any questions of comments, I would be glad to entertain those.
Mayor: Thank you Mr. Dyrhaug for the presentation. Does anyone have any questions?
Mr. Bridges: What kind of time frame will it take to start this?
Mr. Dyrhaug: It normally takes twelve to eighteen months to go through this process. I heard professionals say that if it’s less than twelve months then you normally aren’t getting your work out of it. If it’s more than eighteen months, you are starting to beat a dead horse. Typically, the best plans are made in between that time.
Mr. Bridges: Is there a drop-dead date that we need to have this done by?
Mr. Dyrhaug: I don’t think that there is necessarily a drop-dead date. We are kind of all on the same track as some of our neighboring jurisdictions. We are all probably gearing to have this completed by 2009. I don’t think that we’ll be penalized in having that done then.
Mayor: Ok, anyone else? Thank you Mr. Dyrhaug. We look forward to getting involved with this with you.
OLD BUSINESS 1. AXZ-2008-04- Gressette Property- County R-S to City R-M Mayor: All right, you can just stay right up there, looks like you got the whole show tonight. You’re going to talk to us about an annexation and zoning 2008-04
Mr. Dyrhaug: Thank you Mayor. This is annexation with the docket number AXZ-2008-04. We reviewed this a couple of weeks ago. This is second reading for this proposal of this annexation and rezoning. This entails a portion of a property owned by the Gressette Limited Partnership, currently zoned R-S in the county and they requested it rezoned to R-M and annexed into the city. This map right here shows the location of it, striped in red, and its right off of Burdette Road and Howard Drive, just behind Heritage Park. Just to remind you, at the public hearing the Planning Commission did vote five to zero to recommend approval for this requested zoning and annexation.
Mayor: Thank you Mr. Dyrhaug. I will entertain a motion in that regard.
Mr. Garrett: I make a motion to accept AXZ-2008-04- Gressette Property annexation.
Mayor: Do I hear a second?
Mr. Larson: Second
Mayor: Mr. Larson seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none, I will remind council this is second and final reading. I will call for the vote. All in favor say Aye (AYE), opposed no. Aye’s have it, its unanimous. Thank you very much. Now, I’ve got to ask a question. That’s the end of the program. Why did you feel like you needed to bring a guard with you?
Officer Sibley: To keep him on pace.
Mayor: Oh is that it? Are we over looking something? I just thought maybe you had something to say or he was threatened. Well, thank you very much.
ADJOURNMENT Mayor: I will entertain a motion.
Ms. Sanders: I move that we adjourn the Workshop/Special Voting Session for May 27 th .
Mayor: Thank you Ms. Sanders. Do I hear a second?
Ms. Bagwell: Second.
Mayor: Thank you Ms. Bagwell. All in favor signify with saying Aye (AYE), opposed no. Aye’s have it, it’s unanimous. We are adjourned. We thank you all for coming. It was a short show but maybe it was entertaining.
Respectully Submitted,
Cathy Bridgeman Interim City Clerk |
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| 118 N E Main Street, Simpsonville, SC 29681 |
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