Well, last nights City Council meeting was our final commission hearing on Firenze Plaza and guess what… we got another lecture! We’re two for two from our elected officials. The good news was that they did approve what the Planning & Zoning Commission recommended. We have the street connection midway between Santo Stefano and Mount Etna, the widening/completion of Montague in Phase I of construction, and both parcels A and B zoned as R-8. The City Council did however remove the L-O zoning from the office buildings north of Mount Etna Drive (the Mount Etna that’s inside Firenze) and make it be C-C to allow retail stores. They are somehow going to put something in the development agreement that will still require a mix of offices and retail within the entire complex however.
The developer has agreed to change the name of Mount Etna Drive between Eagle and Montague to some other name that does not correspond to an existing name within the Tuscany subdivision. This hopefully lessens confusion that the new residential development is part of Tuscany and may also make it somewhat less likely to be confused as a “cut-through” street to those not from the neighborhood. Some of the bad news… Steven Yearsley, the President of our HOA, spoke in defense of having R-15 zoning on the parcel closest to Montague. He did want R-8 to be placed on it initially to make it a higher hurdle for the developer later if they requested R-15. But he was very much making a case that R-15 done well would be good for that location. This is something you may want to consider as we vote in the spring on our HOA representatives. A question about crime was brought up and where it most likely occurs. A lieutenant with the Meridian police department responded to that question from the commissioners by stating that the majority of the crime occurs in commercial/retail centers. Unfortunately that didn't seem to sway their concerns about safety. Oh well, why let facts get in the way. On to the lecture – We’ll need to wait for the minutes to be published to get all the details, but the gist of it was that we, the residents, don’t know what’s best for us. We don’t understand the traffic in our neighborhood, the traffic study is correct - we’re not, no one will cut through our development from other developments, etc. If no connecting road is put through between Tuscany and Firenze we’ll all regret it later. Also, they didn’t like how cynical we were about how their minds had already been made up. There may have been some of that last night, but I sure didn’t get much of that feeling from the residents’ commentary. One of the comments from our Commissioner (Luke Cavener) was “if our minds are already made up, why are we sitting here listening to you for two hours?” Perhaps because that is the way the law reads for these meetings and they need to sit through it? It was brought up that some members of the City Council are up for reelection this year, including our own Commissioner, Luke Cavener. Perhaps we’d like to send our own comments at that time?
3 Comments
Warren Cays
1/18/2017 09:16:47 pm
Amen. Is part of this going to be in your letter to the mayor? You have covered most of the things that I have been thinking about all day so thank you for putting them here.
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Ken Mutell
1/18/2017 10:13:07 pm
Yes, plus so much more. I really want to get into the whole process, especially how hard it is to figure out just what the process is. I'll talk about the land use map and how the various commissions and even commissioners seem to interprete differently, the access the developer gets to staff, the benefits to having something like a mediation effort between the developer, staff and residents before we even get to the public hearing stage, etc.
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T.L. Cays
1/19/2017 07:36:07 am
It will be interesting to see how Holly Beech of the Meridian Press spins it in her article.
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