01-25-1995 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mayor and City Council members January 14, 1995 Page 2 like on the property. The reasonable course of action would have been to require the Grafs to supply a much more comprehensive proposal for the Commission's consideration with full evidence that the requirements for issuing a Conditional Use Permit have been met. My second concern relates to the Planning Commission's apparent conclusion that it had no choice but to approve the application. This conclusion was the result of some muddled thinking on the part of Commission members, and a lack of guidance from the City Administrator. My understanding of the ordinance and regulations concerning Conditional Use Permits is that, among other factors, the Commission and Council must consider potential depreciation in value of surrounding properties. The Commission seemed persuaded that the proposed use of 256 Twin Lake Trail is not consistent with the other homes on Twin Lake Trail and could devalue the surrounding properties, but decided to ignore this factor because of the argument that an owner of 256 Twin Lake Trail could construct a new dwelling on the property that would look like the proposed use. The Commission, in effect, decided to disregard an explicit standard of review for the application based on a hypothetical situation which has not been proposed by the Grafs or anyone else. In fact, it is very unlikely that anyone would construct a new dwelling which would look like, or have the minimal assessed value of the proposed one. However, the point is that this idea is entirely irrelevant to the Conditional Use Permit application which was before the Commission, and is certainly not justification for the Commission to disregard a critical standard of review. One of the Commissioner's final comments before the vote was particularly annoying to me, to the effect that the final decision is the City Council's anyway, so the Commission might as well approve it. If the Planning Commission is not inclined to engage in rigorous and critical review of applications placed before it, one wonders whether having such a Commission is a good use of Little Canada taxpayers' dollars. I request that the Mayor and City Council members do several things in preparation for the meeting on January 25, 1995 at which this application will be considered: 1. If you have not recently visited Twin Lake Trail, in the extreme north end of Little Canada, I would suggest that you drive down the street and notice the homes along Twin Lake Trail. You will see a substantial change in the nature of the homes after the point at which Twin Lake Road joins Twin Lake Page 98