City of Delafield Common Council Minutes June 4, 2001 7:00 p.m

6:55 PM Board of Review

Clerk Czubkowski called the Board of Review to order at 6:55 p.m. and took roll.

Present:                              Absent:
Mayor Ed McAleer             Ald. Rick Lieblang
Ald. Bud Mathey                Ald. Kathy Aldridge
Ald. Phil Schuman              Ald. Ron Miskelley
Ald. Paul Craig
Ald. Linda Quartaro
Matt Carlson, City Administrator
Marilyn Czubkowski, Clerk-Treasurer

Adjournment of Board of Review to a date yet to be determined.

7:00 PM Common Council Public Hearing

Mayor McAleer called the public hearing to order.  Clerk Czubkowski read the notice.

Public Hearing to consider a zoning amendment and rezoning certain properties owned by Westbrook Church, Parcel No.'s DELC 0784.974 and part of DELC 0784.973, from B-6 (commercial holding district) & RE-2 (two-acre rural estate district) to P-1 (public and semi-public district).  Complete legal description of properties and a copy of the zoning districts are available in the City Administration office.

Mark Schwiesow, Business Administrator and Neil Mooers, Chair of the Council of Elders represented Westbrook Church.  Mr. Schwiesow read into the record “Rezoning Outline” dated May 30, 2001, attached as part of minutes.

The following members spoke in favor of the rezoning:

Dan Schober, 262 Fieldstone Rd.
Eileen Mooers,257 W. Main St.
Mary Kay Hajinian, 663 Garrison Court
Diane Fabian,624 Milwaukee St.
Linda Otzelberger, 1720 Bark River Drive
Ann Yerrick, 2537 Grove Ct.
Tom Aul,815 Genesee St.
Dr. Chuck Hajinian, 663 Garrison Ct
Jeff Nepper, 608 Milwaukee St.
Brad Evans, 2153 Hillcrest Drive

Dr. Chuck Hajinian stated that there were over 200 youth in Westbrook's Wednesday night youth programs.

Brad Evans said Westbrook is involved with other Churches in the area and participates in Community events.

Tom Aul, 815 Genesee Street spoke in favor of Westbrook Church.

Administrator Carlson discussed the timing and position of the Plan Commission.  He received a call from the Ice Age Trail and their basic question was where does the ice age trail fit into the site plan.  Apparently at one point, the church made a commitment to the ice age trail folks to show some kind of easement on the site plan and the question was at what point do you lock that in.  He spoke with them on and off for the last six months.

On April 23rd, a letter was received from the attorney from Westbrook Church to Mr. Tom Graf who is an attorney for the ice age trail.  They discussed prior to this letter, and it was explained that even though there was a preliminary ice age trail, it had never been finalized.  With the two purchases of land and with the plans to lay out a new program and expand the facility, it was decided and agreed to by both parties that the ice age trail issue would be reviewed again after this master plan has been compared, submitted and approved by the City.

Administrator Carlson's suggested that if the easement is part of the site plan, it should be included on the site plan.  His recommendation to the Plan Commission and Council is that property is not rezoned without site plan approval.  There is another church is on the docket for later this evening, St. Joan of Arc, who is basically asking to do the same thing that Westbrook Church is doing.  The major difference between the two cases is that St. Joan of Arc is bringing in a full-blown building program.  The site plan approval and rezoning approval are being approached and considered in conjunction with one another.  That's the recommendation the administrator has made to the Plan Commission and Council how rezoning should occur.  He reminded the group that the expansion of this size will trigger the need for a sprinkler system and to make sure it was included.

The same building materials will be used on the church.  The use has been approved by the Plan Commission and Council.  The original church is zoned P-1.

Mayor McAleer stated it's good policy to have site plan prior to rezoning.  We didn't do it for KM Free Church. It was rezoned to P-1 without site plan.  His feeling is that in order to be consistent, it would be inappropriate to hold Westbrook up for site plan without rezoning because it wasn't done for KM.

Administrator stated what happened with KM Free Church was the zoning was in place before the site plan. Now, when it's time to use that property, the City Council has no say in things like the location of soccer fields.  We have lost that opportunity at the Council because it's only site plan review before the Plan Commission.  Mayor stated they were aware of that when it was done.  Mayor is speaking for consistency.  He stated he feels the ice age trail is important and would make that one caveat to rezoning if we could delineate that without full-blown site plan review.  Mayors stated his comments are meant to be part of the public hearing.

Ald. Craig stated if Council saw site plan before action was taken, it would alleviate both consensus.  Administrator Carlson stated the problem is the church is not ready to commit to a full-blown site plan approval, although it reality, what has been presented is an excellent start.  It could very easily be converted to a final plan, which could be amended in the future.

Someone asked what the advantage would be of waiting to rezone when site plan is ready?  Administrator Carlson stated something could change.  The owner of that key property may sell it to the church.  You may want to say to the church that this area might be a good location for soccer fields, something along those lines.  If you've already granted the rezoning, then the City Council would extract it from that process.  It's really where you want the decision making to occur.  Site plan approvals, consistent with zoning, are approved at the Plan Commission level.  Rezoning are recommended by the Plan Commission to Council.  It's a way of preserving your authority as City Council members.

The concern is the costs of putting plans together and without some assurance that rezoning will be approved for P-1, it's a difficult risk to the congregation.

Mayor stated if it's a private business, it's easy to do that, if you want us to reconsider the rezoning but has similar concern.  It's a church that is already a church, it's not even a proposed church.  It's going to be expanded and you've given us some definition of what that expansion is going to entail.  His only caveat would be to identify the ice age trail so everyone can be assured that it would happen.

Church is willing to give some assurance that they would work with the ice age trail.  Mayor stated decision would not be made this evening, no quorum.

Someone asked what current zoning is. Mayor stated it is mixed zoning of B6 and P1.  Administrator Carlson stated that it could be any commercial use.

It only has private access because when piece of land was bought, there was no access to Highway 83 so it's not compliant. There's no way we could utilize this for any commercial use.  It was closed as part of the sale.  The only way to it is a private drive, not a public drive.

Administrator Carlson stated all uses in B6 category are conditional uses.  Would have to go through the whole conditional use public hearing process.  The other option is they could go residential and it could be combined with the other parcel that the church owns.

Mayor stated the effort to ask for a full-blown site plan or master plan is to protect the neighbors so that it's not such an intense use that it's going to overburden the neighbors.  That's a legitimate question for the City to ask.   He understands fully the reluctance to spend a lot of money on a plan when you're not assured you're not going to get rezoning.  It's difficult to mesh the two.

Someone asked if Council assumes if the neighbors don't show up, that they're in opposition.  Mayor stated the neighbors can't know because they don't have a site plan to look at.  In terms of coming to listen to the presentation and rezoning if they had reservations.

Administrator stated it could be a chicken and an egg kind of thing.  You could make the argument that if I lived adjacent to a church and the zoning on one parcel is residential, I have an expectation that it will be used for residential purposes.  If it's used for church purposes, maybe that means a different intensity of different kind of use.  I don't know whether to object to it or not until I see the site plan.

What the church has shown is the conceptual design, we have not selected our builder, it's not only for your benefit but for the benefit of the people here as well.

Administrator asked what would be wrong with waiting for the rezoning until a design build firm was selected to get to the level of materials of presentation similar to what St. Joan of Arc is at.  Whereby, if one lives next to it, they can come in and look at their plans and say, "OK, I understand what they're trying to do, I understand the elevation and the height and parking, I understand it all", what would be wrong with waiting for the rezoning until you're at that step in your process?  What's the necessity for the rezoning today?

He further stated that in terms of having proper zoning in place prior to or making an assumption that they may or may not get the proper zoning, he thinks that it is instrumentally in their design.

In this case, P-1, he stated, we're suppose to have 20% green area, and we have 50%.  In terms of structure on property, we can go up to .5, this is less than 12%.  In terms of parking, there is more than sufficient parking.

This is a conceptual plan.  A site plan is pretty concrete, it doesn't usually change.  You can make some assumptions on the lot lines.  He stated that he doesn't know what more they would need to do from what they presented.

Administrator stated vertical view points of what the height would be on the building and give and what it would look like.  There's a long list of items that is required for standard submittals for the site plan, anything from landscaping to preservation of trees or natural features that are on the property.  If the interior of the building changes, no approvals are needed from the Plan Commission to change that interior, it's the footprint of the building, the location of the parking facilities, and those kinds of things.

Someone asked if the City has the authority to accept or reject submitted plans?  Administrator stated City Council does not, the Plan Commission does.

Someone asked if the City has a mechanism is place to accept or reject submitted plans?  Mayor stated they can be rejected, but legally it's difficult, once you have zoning.  If plans meet zoning, it would be difficult to reject them.

Someone asked, "If we don't have the zoning but we have submitted plans and for some reason, you just don't like the plans, do you say no?"

Mayor stated, "You don't have a site plan per se, so what staff is saying is recommending that we don't do a rezoning until we see a site plan.  That is meant to protect the neighborhood and that corridor.  Once we do the rezoning, you can come in with a site plan and expand out on that property as big as the code will allow and Plan Commission would have a really hard time denying it, legally."

Someone asked what is the reluctance in doing it?  Representative of Westbrook Church stated the reluctance is if we spend a lot of money, our intentions is to satisfy P-1 regulations.  What are you concerned about us doing in P-1?  Mayor stated intensity of the development.  Size of building, amount of ingress and egress, traffic would be a concern.

Administrator stated P-1 school use generates one impact and a P-1 municipal government building has another.  It is why you go through the process of having a specific site plan.

Mayor stated is a crude way to say it, but if we granted the zoning without seeing a site plan, it's like writing a blank check.

Mayor stated we are asking for master plan so we will know what the final build out is, so it doesn't create such a impact on the neighborhood that it would be detrimental to other people's property values.

Church rep. Asked if there is a way to find out what concerns there are that they should avoid.  Mayor stated the only concern is the unknown.  We have no idea what your final build out would be in twenty years but that unknown concerns us and that's why we would like to see what your vision is for that prior to the City granting the zoning change.  To be consistent, we've granted it the other way in the past and are comfortable asking for something that we didn't ask for just a few years ago.

Administrator stated on another piece of property in the general area, M&I Center.  The M&I center is constructing its second office building.  We had a debate at the Plan Commission the other night about the allowable usage in that office building.  Under the B3 zoning category, there's a longer list of acceptable uses and they include office and retail.  The listing agent in charge of that building sent us a request for an approval of a sign for a retail business establishment.  Then in September of last year gave us a list of potential uses and office uses, dentists, lawyers, professional offices.  It was reviewed it under site plan of an office building by the Plan Commission, certain parking requirements spilled off from the office building.  If it were viewed under retail, it would have a different requirement for parking.  From a process standpoint, the agent that was representing the building only was asking for the approval of the sign before he had received approval of the use.  Our argument is he eliminated use of that building for retail, because in September he had given us this list of office uses.  So even though the B3 zoning permitted a retail use, we argued that he specifically eliminated those retail uses because of what he argued for.

Someone in the audience stated he is not hearing any objections.  Mayor stated he didn't think there was a rejection to rezoning to P-1.  He doesn't have one, Council does not have one. If we went ahead with rezoning and for instance, Westbrook Church came in and wanted to build a flow-blown high school after they rezoned P1, the neighbors would come in and object plenty and say, "that's too big, too intense a use, traffic jams..," etc.  So what we're saying is typically we ask private businesses to give us more than a concept of what they want to use the property before we grant rezoning and it's to protect the neighborhood to protect that Hwy 83 corridor.

Someone asked, "Then why are we here tonight?" Mayor stated he didn't think any of the Council is against rezoning.  Mayor is not against P-1 zoning.

Someone asked about who the neighbors were.  Mayor stated there are neighbors that travel that road and would be impacted by heavy traffic volume egressing out onto Highway 83.  He stated that there's a big neighborhood between Hwy 83 and Lake Nagawicka.

Administrator stated the example of KM Free Church on Hwy 83/Oakwood.  It was rezoned to P-1 without the linkage to specific site plan.  KM Free Church could sell that piece of property to anyone that could convert that piece to any acceptable use under B1.  So theoretically, you could have a high school at that corner.  If that happened, the residents in the neighborhood would come screaming at the Council asking why we gave away that zoning on that corner.  Why did you give away your approval rights on that corner, of that use?

Tom Aul stated if the Plan Commission and Council were afraid of the unknown, the church is saying their fear is going through a heavy cost commitment without having some assurance that they'll get the approval so we've got these two positions.  It seems to him that Plan Commission or Council should approve the zoning subject approval of a site plan that would meet the proposal the church is making, to expand the existing church, that's all their asking.  It seems to him that zoning could be approved subject to approval of site plan at a later date that would fall into the parameters.

Mayor stated since Mr. Aul is an attorney, he is assuming that it's legal to do that.  It would give the church a comfort zone that we're going to approve zoning.  Mayor thought it was a good solution.

Administrator stated this item would be on the agenda for final recommendation by Plan Commission.  He agrees with mayor if the legal precedent, it would give us the linkage that he's arguing for.

The public hearing for Westbrook Church concluded at 7:45 p.m.

Public Hearing to consider a zoning amendment to rezoning certain property owned by St. Joan of Arc Church, Parcel No. DELC 0743.999.004, from A-1(agricultural district) to P-1 (public and semi-public district).  The requested zoning amendment is for construction of a school.  Complete legal descriptions and a copy of the zoning districts are available at the City Administration office.

Tim Knepprath, MSI General Corp. gave the presentation.  Members of the St. Joan of Arc Church Building Committee were present.  Mr. Knepprath stated that the Parish currently is under an A-1 zoning with a Conditional Use Permit.  They are requesting a P-1 for expansion of their facilities.  The request is for a 40,000-sq. ft. educational center, modifications of the detention facilities and parking.  There are 15 acres of land, which currently has a 16,000-sq. ft. Church and 200 parking stalls. The educational center is to house ten classrooms, supporting facilities, a gymnasium, and a multi-purpose room.  Grade levels will be Kindergarten through 8th grade.  St. Joan of Arc would like to start construction by mid August.

Administrator Carlson stated that he would like to meet with members of the Church to discuss soccer fields.

Mayor asked if there were any other comments.  Hearing none the public hearing was closed at 7:50 p.m.

Regular Council meeting cancelled due to lack of quorum.
 
Members of the Council not present at the public hearing will also be provided audio tape of the hearings.

Respectfully submitted:

Marilyn Czubkowski, CMC
City Clerk/Treasurer