Progress at the Plan Commission V2.0

I received a call from Cliff Mortenson, Chairman of the Planning Commission, asking me if I would be interested in attending the June 2nd plan commission meeting. The call went to voice mail and was a bit cryptic but I had a feeling something was afoot.

You may recall I had noticed Trustee Jay Olson was quite forceful at the May 6th village board meeting about the need for swift change of the village code to deal with problems the entrepreneurs of Winfield confronted, specifically the bureaucratic overhang surrounding doing anything that resembled commerce in the Village of Winfield. While it generally goes without saying, I am going to say it, the barriers facing Winfield entrepreneurs comes from the village government themselves. I had a voice mail and an email in to Trustee Olson to get his take on what was going through his mind with reference to his comments at the May 6th village board meeting. You may know, Trustee Olson is the adult supervision to the planning commission, otherwise known as the Trustee liaison.

That’s when Cliff Mortenson called.

I called Cliff back and we had a very interesting conversation. It turns out at the exact time I was writing “A Dear John Letter” for Winfield 411, Jenny Saylor from Winfield Fuel & Material was burning up facebook about the injustice of making Gianorio’s (the new sandwich shop on Winfield road just south of the train tracks) have to pay $3300 to get permission to put two tables and six chairs out in back of their own building for people to eat a sandwich on in the summertime. This caught the attention of someone on the planning commission and it was presented, along with the John’s Buffet and Morgan’s Charhouse outdoor seating issue as an opportunity to change the village code. Cliff was recruiting people to come speak at the planning commission meeting on June 2nd to support the change to the village code.

Big deal you say.

BIG DEAL?!!?

First off, when Morgan’s came before the planning commission he was up against the clock. Spring had sprung and Summer is coming fast and furious. If the outdoor seating was ever to be a reality in 2010 swift action was necessary. But the gears of government grind slowly as if someone had mixed the sands of time in their transmission… So one intrepid plan commissioner suggested they do something that hasn’t been done for as long as anyone in Winfield can remember. She suggested they hold a second planning commission meeting.

Sweet mother of pearl, someone at the plan commission decided to be responsive to the needs of the community.

As if breaking a long standing and storied tradition of doing as little as possible as often as possible weren’t enough, that same person suggested they, the plan commission, take it upon themselves to suggest to the village board to change the village code to make outdoor seating a simple permit process.

Let me tell you why THIS is significant. The planning commission is the most important and powerful commission in the village. However, it has typically been used not as a driving tool of change but as more of a court. It generally waits for something to happen and then makes suggestions and recommendations to the board. In this particular instance, the planning commission was stepping out. They are doing that thing, that ever-so-rare thing in Winfield called “leadership”. Not since the Great General Winfield Jebediah Scott told General George Armstrong Custer to go over that hill yonder and check them Indians has leadership been practiced in Winfield.

The amazingly responsive plan is to have the public hearing on outdoor seating happen on June 2nd and have the recommendation written up and delivered for committee of the whole the next day on Thursday at the village board meeting. The idea is to have the village board vote on it that night which would place it into effect for the next day whereby the entrepreneurs of Winfield could pay their $300 and have their outdoor seating.

I applaud the planning commission, I applaud their responsiveness and their leadership. I hope they use their authority to review all of the staid, glacial and cumbersome regulations on enterprise in Winfield and then maybe, just maybe, we can have an economic renaissance that can help create sustainable revenues and a pleasant place to live for all the citizens of Winfield.

Who was that intrepid planning commissioner that came up with the idea to change the village code, to have the second planning commission meeting and to use the plan commission to lead the village? None other than Dolly Pointner, that’s who.

Hat’s off to you sister, a job well done.

Progress at the Plan Commission V1.0

I was going to try to have a little fun with this story but I believe it is best served by writing it straight. It’s some rare good news in the Village of Winfield and with a little bit of luck it will be a trend we can nurture and grow.

I wrote an article called ” A Dear John Letter” for Winfield 411. In the article I talked about the monstrous regulatory overhang of bureaucracy that was involved in John’s Buffet trying to expand their outdoor seating. I also outlined how there was a difference between a “Sidewalk Cafe” and a “Outdoor Patio” and how the difference was $3000 in fees not to mention months of time spent lobbying the planning commission and then lobbying the village board to allow Winfield restaurants to offer dining “al fresco”.

I submitted the article to Winfield 411 and it was about a week before it was published which turned out to be the day after the May 6th village board meeting. In that meeting Trustee Jay Olson was exceptionally animated. I don’t really know how to say this so I will just ramble around to convey the point. Usually at the village board meetings nobody takes a strong position on anything. The trustee’s either spend many excruciating minutes of my life thanking somebody, or congratulating themselves for a job well done. Trustee Jack Bajor is the worst for taking 10 precious minutes of my life that I will never get back to say absolutely nothing of relevance and make me want to pull my eyeballs out the whole time. This time was different, at least where Trustee Jay Olson was concerned. In a very politically correct and executive-esque way he ripped everybody (and nobody) a new orifice. It was a very general (and very specific) call to action in a very forceful (yet very polite) way. He did it twice, and it was so incredibly cool to watch I requested the DVD from the vllage the next day, with the hope that I could cut out the two separate instances I am referring to, so I could upload them here to 411. I really do think you need to see what I saw.

What I saw was Trustee Olson unload to the room about how arcane the village code was and how unworkable it was for outdoor seating at our restaurants. What I believe I heard was Trustee Olson suggesting now was the time the village board should come together to fix our village code to stop inhibiting the businesses in town [John's Buffet, Gianario's Sandwich Shop and Morgan's Charhouse] and start working with them. I may have been reading into what he was saying but I believe it was a forceful call to action to rework Winfield into a business friendly place where outdoor seating is a simple permit process and can be applied for and received in a few days time. From his comments, I believe he is on the hunt for ordinances like our outdoor seating fiasco that needs to be changed permanently to allow an entrepreneur a chance to run his business in peace.

Unfortunately, the DVD the village gave me was bad and I am still working on getting you a video link but I did some more digging and the story gets better.

It involves Winfield Plan Commissioners Dolly Pointer and Cliff Mortenson. It also involves that very rare animal named “leadership” which hasn’t been seen in these parts since old Winfield Scott himself drove the first railroad spike at Hedges Station for the Union Pacific Railroad.

Check back tomorrow around Noon for the conclusion.

A Dear John Letter;

John Karowski, owner of John’s Restaurant & Tavern came to the Village Board meeting on April 15 and requested to expand his outdoor seating area. I reported shortly after the Village Board meeting that the trustees uncharacteristically sought ways to expedite John’s request to make sure that he could be operational in time for summer. Just a few days later, the plan fell apart. The following is a story of a local entrepreneur, dreams and the crushing weight of Winfield bureaucracy;

The Concept;

“Patio’s do well in the summertime.” is what John told me during an interview last week. What he wanted to do was take four parking spaces along the east wall of his restaurant and turn them into a seasonal patio area. What exactly he wanted to do with the 16 x 40 foot space is what every entrepreneur wants, the flexibility to adapt to changing needs on a day to day basis. So he suggested the space would make a great outdoor “smoking only” area that would separate his smoking patrons from his non-smoking patrons. He thought about having an occasional “Baggo” tournament to mix things up. He also suggested it just makes good overflow space for his already popular patio.

The Look

Every entrepreneur needs an attractive, safe and comfortable place to do business in. John’s is no exception and has done a great job with his current trellised patio. What John would like to do is fence the 16 x 40 area and reclaim the space for the summer from the 4 parking spaces on his east wall. In the off-season, he would take down the temporary fence and return the space to be used as parking. The fencing he intended to use was going to have an attractive wrought iron look to it and was going to have footings in concrete so as to provide the structural integrity which is necessary to stand up to the abuses of weather and patrons.

The Costs

John estimated to cost of the tables, chairs, fencing, lighting and installation at about $7500.

The Bureaucracy

In order to get the ‘OK’ from the village to make this patio happen, John would need to pay a $300 permit fee up front and then deposit $3000 with the village. The $300 is just gone and is a revenue generator of sorts for the village. The $3000 is supposed to be an up front deposit for engineering work. The deposit would be drawn against on an as needed basis  as plans needed to be reviewed and professional services needed to be paid for. John would also have to come up with a plan to put before the planning commission. The planning commission meets once a month, so he would have to time the submission of his plan to the planning commission appropriately to get on the agenda. If there is something bigger on the planning commission agenda, John’s proposal could be bumped to the next month. Then, once the planning commission approves the plan, provided they don’t send John back to the drawing board to modify the plan, then present the plan a second time to the planning commission, it can be delivered at the next available opportunity to the village trustees to vote on. Of course, the trustees could choose to ask more questions, sending John back to find more answers and having to wait for the next trustee meeting, provided the agenda for the next trustee meeting isn’t booked with more pressing issues. In the meantime, summer has been eaten up by the glacial march of bureaucracy.

The Editorial

All this bureaucracy serves to create a barrier to doing business in Winfield. It’s sand in the gears of innovation and if you consider this plan John had was to be completely on John’s own property it is a confiscation of his property rights. It is also a metaphor for pretty much anything anyone wants to do here in Winfield and suggests why Winfield is a Ghost Town. I realize that to some degree there needs to be regulations for land development and that is a responsible part of governance but to the extent there is a $3300 bureaucratic overhang for a $7500 project that only appears from May 1 through September 30 each year you would think the village could modulate their response to John’s request. Compounding the problem is the arbitrary regulations. It only costs $300 for a sidewalk cafe license and that needs no trip to the planning commission but to have that, you need to be putting your patrons on a sidewalk. Seriously, how much different are these two concepts? What is more perplexing is for a town that is supposedly promoting commerce in our town center why are we charging anything to the entrepreneur? If we were really encouraging commerce we should bend over backward to help see John’s dream realized. “Encouraging development” what does that mean anyway to our village trustees? Does saying “Go John, Go!” constitute the extent of their “encouragement”?

If you want to see business flourish in the nation, state or town, get the government out of the way.