Curb Enthusiasm
A report on the March 4, 2026, planning commission meeting
((((((((( Audio of the meeting )))))))))
It was the first planning commission meeting for new member Jill Fogg and returning member Dan Carter, and all five members were present. Chair Jim Baldwin presided. It was a short meeting, during which Carter and Fogg were brought up to speed on the state of the draft ordinance, with just a bit of other business.
“There’s the potential development of a food truck park on the vacant parcel between Lane Plumbing and the U.S. Post Office near the southwest corner of M-22 and and Pearson Street,” said Baldwin, referring to a new business item. Baldwin asked Ryan Fiebing if there had been a formal request for review or just verbal. Fiebing said his current understanding was that the applicant had revised the site plan, and it no longer includes food trucks but only craft vending, which is a use by right. He said our zoning administrator, Josh Mills, had already approved the plan.
The commission had received version 3 of the draft zoning ordinance on January 30. A few questions remained, and Fiebing said he and Michael Murphy will collect final comments from the commission and relay them to Jen Cram, the planner, to make changes and answer her final requests for clarification.
Dan Carter asked about some marginalia such as “need to define,” which Fiebing said were mostly items that Cram was tasked with looking into.
Jill Fogg asked who the different initials represented, and Fiebing said they belonged mostly to in-house, meaning Beckett & Raeder, staff members.
Carter asked if the planner was going to be attending any more meetings; Fiebing said the contract and funding has run out, and that’s why the two-person, non-quorum subcommittee consisting of Murphy and himself was formed to meet with the planner over Zoom.
Fiebing mentioned that Carter was on the planning commission previously, at the beginning of the master plan revision: “Glad to have you back.”
“Jumping in at the end of the zoning ordinance update may be overwhelming,” he continued, addressing both new members. “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look over the document. Moving forward with the public hearing next month may be too fast. We could give you more time to digest the document.”
Carter said in his reading of the draft he’d noticed there are more zoning districts, and he was in favor of the changes, especially the “liberalized PUD.”
Fogg said she wanted to read it more thoroughly; she didn’t know she had been selected for the commission until she happened to see the Village council meeting minutes the previous week and had just received some of the documents; she didn’t mind if the rest of the commission wanted to go ahead and schedule the public hearing.
The commission decided to review the final draft at the April meeting, incorporating any questions or changes from the new members, and then schedule the public hearing for sometime in May. So look for that, dear reader!
Fogg asked how different the new ordinance is from the previous 2009 version (she had looked through it). Carter said it’s quite a bit different. Fiebing suggested that she look through the 2024 master plan.
“The Village created its first zoning ordinance in 1950 or so,” Fiebing said, “and barely changed it other than a few revisions. It’s really great that we’re able to rewrite the whole thing, modernize it, make it easier to digest, and make some things less restrictive.”
In public comment, Arlene Sweeting asked about the Deep Water Port[Point?] district, saying it looked to her like the entire district is within what is now the land conservancy property, and if so, it doesn’t seem that any of the uses described in the zoning ordinance for that district will be allowed by the conservancy.
Fiebing said the commission had brought that up with the planner, and Cram said there was still benefit to defining what uses would be allowed, even though it will be parkland owned by the Village. “Potentially a marina could be part of it. Looking back at past master plans, those have been longstanding wants by Parks & Recreation,” Fiebing said.
Sweeting said she thought there had been stipulations placed by donors on what could happen on the property, that there could be no building. Fiebing said in the nature preserve portion there would not be any development at all, but a lot of the park portion is still brownfield and needs to be remediated, and possibly capped with concrete, in which case park structures might make sense.
Sweeting asked about zoning moratoriums. In the draft document, a zoning moratorium requires a unanimous vote of the Village council. She asked if that was dictated by a state regulation. Fiebing said his understanding was that a moratorium required an ordinance and therefore a vote by the Village council. He said Cram had brought up the example an Old Mission Peninsula moratorium (unspecified) that had been passed improperly and resulted in “problems.”
Sweeting said the Elberta Labor Heritage Center Board had been discussing traffic safety for people crossing M22. “Knowing that the pedestrian traffic is going to be increasing, with the activities we’ll have at the center as well as the pizza [referring to Elberta Pizza Co.], could we get a marked crosswalk [à la the Betsie Valley Trail crossing] or do something to make it more apparent that people should slow down.” The Village president, who was in attendance, said she’d been trying for years, and that the only problem is that we don’t have a curb with a “receiving end” on the other side of the street, and she gave the example of the area across from the post office and the vacant lot, at the Elberta Campground.
The meeting adjourned.
