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Tuesday night’s meeting of the Houghton Planning Commission put the finishing touches on the process for how the body intends to tackle revising the Master Plan. The goal this year is to address chapters 10 and 13, focusing on downtown development. During public comment, Craig Waddell asked that neighborhoods also be considered. The commission rejected that, but the scope of the work remains the same. Chapters will be reviewed on a rolling basis, paired together where appropriate, so that the entire master plan has been updated within five years.
Now that revisions will be relatively constant, that changes how the document is presented. Gone will be the professional, bound version. Physical copies could be maintained in a classic three-ring binder, but City Manager Eric Waara says that still poses problems and is ripe for confusion.
Chairman Tom Merz laid out options for the commission to consider as to how it should organize while carrying out the revisions. The first involved three or four members being designated to an ad-hoc committee with public meetings. It would then make recommendations to the Planning Commission as a whole.
Members were anxious to get started, asking Merz to push up his timetable for a decision. They unanimously selected the second choice presented. That consists of having the entire Houghton Planning Commission meet twice monthly, once in regular session and the second as a special gathering, whose only course of business would be to deliberate on the Master Plan. They also set a date for the first extra session for next Tuesday, March 2nd.
Merz brought up how the body would work once public meetings became regular order again in April. That decision will be made next month with the commission hoping that it will have further guidance from the state on whether virtual gatherings will be extended until later this year. Merz gave the body three options to consider.
He personally suggested the first one.
The alternatives were to have meetings in council chambers with limited public participation. Clerk Ann Vollrath said that she tested zoom in that space with Mayor Bob Backon. It did not provide a great picture.
Option C was to have no public participation, outside of the nine or ten people who could gather safely within the chambers.
The overarching goal of discussions regarding the downtown chapter of the Master Plan is to deliver a final recommendation to the Houghton City Council on the big parking deck.
