First off looking at the entire meeting taken as a whole, I feel the City Council Members had an exceptional meeting last night and responded well for all the fireworks that have been going off lately.
The meeting was over four hours long and no breaks were offered to the audience during that time.
I'm sure Nick from the Miner is going to do a fine job with detailed recaps of the meeting so I'm just going to hit a few things from the meeting, and then of course link his article here later on.
Under old business Item (a) almost became a huge problem for REALTORS. I have to admit that when I read over the agenda I didn't see a certain passage on this item. The subject came up a couple of council meeting ago and involved large billboards. There was a movement by some residents to not let any more billboards be constructed, and if some folks had their way all billboards would be removed.
Now I can't say that I'm for this but I didn't poke my nose in at all. I didn't pay attention to this issue. So how did REALTORS almost get affected?? The ordinance that was proposed would have done away with off premises signs, and they included weekend signs such as directional and open house signs (also yard sale signs, etc. -- I wonder if election signs would have been as well??).
I have to admit feeling helpless while the discussion was going on for this issue. Luckily our Association president was in attendance and spoke up on the issue for us. This is also where the Council showed very good sense and asked many questions and in the end defeated the ordinance by a vote of 4-2 (one Council Member was absent).
Old Business Item (d) was pulled from the agenda. This was the resolution to allow the city to utilize ARS-9-500-11 which allows for Arizona municipalities to enter into a retail tax incentive agreement with a private developer to assist in things like infrastructure improvements (think traffic interchange). The city manager requested that this item be pulled for the time being in order to host a public workshop. I was going to comment on this issue, and actually was going to call for the very same thing.
One thing happened here that I feel was symbolic and worthy. It was the city manager that pulled the agenda item. Council seemed to go along with this. A member of RAID, Harley Petit, approached the Council and asked them to make a motion to pull the agenda item. Now I'm not sure Council had to make a motion to pull the item or not, but Council motioned, seconded, and voted to remove the item from the agenda. I believe the message that was sent by Mr. Petit to the Council was that they are in charge, not the city manager. Well done.
The last issue from last night that I wanted to mention was under new business item (f). This is the resolution for a call to election for the sale of city owned land at Kingman Crossing. I had some questions about this and intended to speak to Council on this issue. Before I did though another member of RAID, Mike Bihuniak, was first up. His questions were very similar to the ones I had in mind.
I thought the way the resolution was written up on the agenda was ambiguous... especially the following sentance.
This ballot question should provide citizens an opportunity to decide if this project is desired in the community.
Well, what was the 'project' here?? Is it the retail center, the traffic interchange, or simply the sale of the city owned property?? Council stated that this shouldn't be confusing and all this election would do is grant the city leaders the ability to sell the property, some or all of it, in some manner, when they feel the time is right.
I think Donna Crouse will have more on this subject in the comments.
The other bit of breaking news with Mr. Bihuniak's comments was he said that RAID wasn't against the retail center on the north side, nor was he against a traffic interchange at Kingman Crossing. He maintains that the city owned land should be set aside for parks and recreation, but thankfully the fine folks at RAID have made a wonderful public gesture to agree that a traffic interchange would be beneficial for the community. After hearing what he said last night, I had a moment where I felt like wearing some Birkenstock's and singing Kum-ba-yah.
In closing comments the Mayor commented that the city should have another look into impact fees because he can see how they could be hurting an already depressed market (I'm paraphrasing). It clearly sounded like he was responding to what some residents have been stressing as problems that could be affecting the area in a negative fashion.
I observed some great things for the city of Kingman yesterday. No, it isn't all perfect by any stretch. At the very least all the different groups seemed to move one step closer to each other on issues that there was clear distance on.
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