12/17/2000 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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ia-i7-oi Page 16 feedback that you can get, the more people understand what's at issue, I think the healthier the discussion, the better ideas that we are going to get. Ultimately, this is the kind of issue that could be amenable to a petition filed by voters directly. Council does not make the decision, under our Charter; as you know, this is a Referendum issue regardless. All Council really would be doing would be to facilitate by identifying this is a particular ordinance, kind of giving it a serial number if you will, what it is. Tonight, Mr. Schiemann has an opporiunity to lay on the record at least a lot of his preliminary ideas. I think that the questioning from here will be useful for everyone because it will help identify the kinds of issues that should be discussed henceforward. Mr. Schiemann said I have presented Council with a basic package that starts with identifying the 3 parcels. There are photos of the 3 parcels with addresses and permanent parcel numbers there. A113 are older houses--50, 60, 70+ years old in the Village. Many of them, it has been expressed to me and to others, as being eyesores in the Village. I think you can simply take a look at some of the pictures with the trash and the overgrown conditions, etc., I think we can achieve something much nicer in the Village. On the second page is a map of the Village simply identifying the three parcels, where they sit on Wilson Mills Road between the Cemetery and the Church. They are landlocked, basically backed up to the parking lot at Heinen's to the Cemetery on the other side. There is a small drawing of basically a building that would be like the dentist next door, that I took down and proposed to Bruce that basically says here's how much building we could put up and we could pave it all the way out to Wilson Mills and make it look like the dental building over here, nothing but pavement up in front of it. During that discussion, Mayor Rinker suggested wouldn't it be neat to turn the building sideways, to let the building back up to the Cemetery. And possibly use the existing parking that is already there; there is enough paveinent there already. This drawing is proposed with the building butting up to the Cemetery. If you see where the existing curb cut is (where the dotted lines are drawn), that actually as Mayor Rinker proposed, could be grass which would be 105' of green space; you could do a little circle with a gazebo thing and a spider cobweb off to the doors of the building off of that little gazebo thing. It could be a nice, beautiful gazebo- type area. I was initially thinking office building; be it professional offices or whatever. Mayor Rinker suggested wouldn't it be neat and wouldn't everybody love an upscale restaurant in the Village as part of a project like this. Wouldn't, if you attended the Candidate's Night that we had here, it was directly proposed that wouldn't it be great to have one of those Arabica-type coffee shops, or wouldn't it be great to have something--that was basically Mayor Rinker's idea as to what else could be done on this property if we turned the building sideways and left some grassy area and did something unique with the parcel. I am a 22-year resident of the Village. I want to do what's right for the Village; this is a project but in essence what we are looking for is to do what's right down the road. If I could analogize what I think we are doing here tonight, being a CPA and an attorney, I think of the tax code quite often and the tax code says we have to file tax returns. There are certainly people who can buy a piece of rental property and use the depreciation to their benefit and other governmental employees who can use a 403B plan to their benefit and corporate employees who can use a 401k plan to their benefit. The tax law provides other remedies for people to use, likewise our Charter provides other remedies for hardship areas. This is basically, I think Joe Diemert would agree, that if I was sitting on June 17 instead of December 17, I could make the November ballot with little or no problem. The issue is, effective today, Village Council basically stops operating until sometime in late January. Planning and Zoning effectively does not meet until February. Those things are basically stopped. That becomes a hardship on this project; it becomes a hardship on getting this to the May ballot in a timely manner. All putting this on the agenda for a