04/21/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting 4-21-03 Page 8 into a Master Plan. It's interesting that you brought that up now in that I spoke to the Mayor yesterday afternoon as a matter of fact (yard talk over the hedges) and I would like to make this coming Caucus, May 12, a pretty comprehensive Caucus where we discuss-from time to time people say what is the big plan? Well we don't always know the big plan but it's something that evolves all the time. I am going to insist that we put as much out there as we possibly can. Sometimes it has to do with getting a rear portion of a property line-whaYs been bantered about is a trail system. I did have the opporiunity to read the 2020 minutes. I got about halfway through it and Bruce knows I fell fast asleep as soon as he got to the meeting and started talking. What I read in the beginning was very interesting about a lot of the different projects that are going on concerning everything from the Church property to these acquisitions and I'd like to get them out on the table and get them before Council. I know there were several places where the Committee asks the Council representative, what is Council's will on this? What have we talked about and maybe we've talked about very little or nothing at all. Part of that is intentional to let the civilian residential committees come up unhindered with what they might see but I think that what we've learned from other communities and from ourselves is when you lose control of contiguous property you really lose control. You end up in a Costco situation (not to keep coming back to that same thing.) And I urge this: we are representatives of the constituency come here each week, you are not required to come but we certainly do anything we can to invite you come each week. You hear little snippets as we go. Our intentions are for some very user- friendly residential-oriented green space (all the cliches of being able to create a center of town and a North Commons area that is somewhere that we'd like to live.) Again, specific uses for specific property is not always identified as such other than we know it lies in a certain strategic location. If anybody wants to add to that? Mr. Riter said I had the occasion for the period of time to live in a community to the west of here. In the early 90's I sat on City Council in that community. There was some property that we wanted to acquire and we were unable to. The property became available after I was no longer an elected official. I felt at the time I was on Council that that property would have allowed that community to define a"city center" if you would. The folks that were there later felt that the cost of that property didn't make sense for what they got in return. I think if you go directly down Highland Road now and you see this community where their City Hall, their Police, Fire Department and their Community Center sit on one side of Highland Road and the other side is a housing development there and all that property was offered at a relatively reasonable price by the School Board to that City; as well as the Church went up for sale and was offered to the City. Had that community been able to buy those two pieces of property, they could've developed a tremendous City Center right there. Instead of that they only have really one part, one side of the street. So when I look at land, I look at it as a very limited resource. And once it's gone, iYs gone. As long as we as a community and all of us can control that resource, we can accomplish an awful lot for our future-be it a trail system, added parks, be it someday trading off a piece of property with a developer for a piece of property that they may have that would be more meaningful for the Village. Land is a wonderful and very limited resource and you may not exactly know what you want to do with it today but once it's gone, it's gone forever. Sometimes you just have to take the opportunity because you know it's a. wonderful resource that's not going to use value and it can bring benefit to the Village. So that's just kind of an example that I'll give you froin 10 years ago and all you have to do is drive down Highland Road and look to the right and look to the left and realize that that community could've