28 January 2019 Dearborn County Plan Commission Meeting Notes

28 January 2019 Dearborn County Plan Commission Meeting Notes

Present: Dennis Kraus, Jr., Chairman,, John Hawley, Mark Lehman, Michael Lynch

Jake Hoog, Bill Ullrich, Jim Thatcher, and Eric Lang

ABSENT: Russell Beiersdorfer 

Also Present: Mark McCormack, Plan Director, Nicole Daily, Assistant Planner, and Andy Baudendistel, Attorney.

Title VI statement read by Baudendistel as legally required.

Election of Officers for 2019: Dennis Kraus, Jr retained as President, Mark Lehman retained as Vice President, Mark McCormack retained as Secretary, and Andy Baudendistel retained as Attorney. 

ACTION ON MINUTES: September 24, 2018 minutes approved. 

OLD BUSINESS: NONE; Scenic Ridge Primary Plat Review to remain TABLED UNTIL FEBRUARY 25TH, 2019 P.C. Meeting

NEW BUSINESS: NONE

ADMINISTRATIVE:

Presentation by Terri Randall, President & CEO of OneDearborn, Inc: Randall forgot about the meeting but can be here in half hour. Decision was made to move forward and go back to this when she arrives. Randall arrived at 7:40 PM. Randall thanked them for adjusting schedule for her. Wanted to talk about what One Dearborn is. Primarily funded by Private sector.as economic development board. Energy companies, Baylor Hospital, Civista, Haag Ford, St E’s , Maxwell Development, IVY tech and Hidden Valley Lake. These are the Companies that stand to benefit from increased economic development. Hidden Valley POA wants to be involved. 12 Companies are lower tier investors, like Perfect Outdoor Slopes, Casey’s Outdoor Solutions, etc. Mike Schwebler from High Point Health is President and Kari Baylor Vice President and Randy Maxwell is Treasurer. Not just about attracting new business- mostly about the quality of life for the people who are living here now. They work with government entities to help them with economic development here. There is business retention and most of the growth will come out of existing businesses. Example to keep Queen its Candy here after they were bought out - they helped Abdon who is her counterpart in Greendale to help polish the proposals to keep them here. Work One and Economic development (One Dearborn) and the advanced manufacturing lab below. Getting Greendale to work on the Gateway Improvement project. Something she’s really excited about - from the 5 year ago meeting to have a shared economic development plan that never got forward then. Now they are trying to get them all involved and open a dialogue with all the entities to keep them together with a common thread that might be in all their individual plans. They think of them as a collaborator and convener to keep things moving. Took all the plans and paid HWC Engineering to combine these plans. They built this as a shared vision of the future. You don’t give up local control. this is regional for all of the county and cities and towns. In the state they want this to be more than one county, How can it impact the entire region. Businesses are looking at regions- including the states. 

They found the top 8 things that were in the plans. Housing market and need was important. They talked to relators and home builders. People want houses and we don’t have any. Apartments were mostly low income- needed more in between that and a first home. Trying to look at socioeconomics. Trail activity. Downtown redevelopment. Tourism and Culture. Business attraction and retention.Work force development. US 50 and transportation. Metro has contacted them to be part of conversation to have a bus stop out here. Still taking about life time resources and bussing. Building a lot of teams to look at all these issues. Trying to see what new ideas can bring. Housing studies coming in. Trying to select a firm to do a housing study for Dearborn County. Just trying to help inform. Our group will pay for that study and bring the information to you and help with comprehensive plan. Sewer is on this too. With this plan we can get grants and funds from outside areas. Would like you to have a copy of the plan and her contact info. Nothing has changed since the last email of that plan per Randall. Region 9 has 10 counties. And she sits on the board and all the examples are from other counties- and she wants to have our employers engaged more in that conversation. Even ex- offender programs  and veterans programs. Trying to decide what incentives we can provide and get higher paying jobs. It’s been almost 2 years now that One Dearborn exists. She’s been talking to John Hawley- County Extension about helping our farms. By mid-year we should have new data on the housing study. 

Can’t have much conversation with developers until we have our plans. And maybe we don’t have enough people to build the houses. Aging population and people to leave county because they can’y find a good setup to downsize. Excited to work with this board. Feel free to call or contact me. Praised McCormack for helping. 

Proposed amendments to Article 5, regarding Zoning Map and Text Amendments to the Dearborn County Zoning Ordinance:McCormack presented the proposed changes that are in accord with the current state code. Discussion centered on some of the proposed changes including one that was taken verbatim from the code that seems to have more than one interpretation. Example- [All petitions not initiated by the Plan Commission must be initiated by a petition or application signed by property owners who own at least fifty percent (50%) of the land involved.]  The Board decided to accept this with their changes to be incorporated and forwarded this to the commissioners with a favorable recommended. 

Three new people hired per McCormack. Dena Collins from Assessors office is Office Manger now. Bev Ester is Admin assistant part time. Bill Miller from Bldg Dept is part time Enforcement Officer. Had over 300 people apply for the 3 positions. 

Updating the  Agreement with the Town of West Harrison: McCormack said that this goes thru the West Harrison Council and they want to use our BZA and Plan Commission as theirs. They are trying to get a comp plan. They don’t have a copy of their old plan. They have very few cases that they see. Our first agreement was in 2007. This new agreement has a cost based on the hours we spend. It’s almost double the old agreement because of all the comp plan and ordinance changes they worked on. We renegotiate whenever we see our time increasing. We log hours in and see what’s happening. We don’t need to make money per Thatcher but we don’t want to lose any. Getting grants for the towns really is a plus for the town. Approved the agreement to go forward to commissioners.

Trying to get back to the Comp Plan. March if the February meeting has a subdivision come back in.  

Meeting adjourned at 8:45PM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township