The city's Comprehensive Planning Committee apparently is on the right track.
The Common Council and Plan Commission had mostly minor revisions and suggestions to offer Monday night at a joint meeting designed to make sure everyone was on the same page. With the meeting marching along at a mostly steady pace in order to keep it under two hours, alders and commissioners didn't generally engage in the sort of discussion that might inspire any serious brainstorming.
There were a few notable additions and deletions, but mostly the group asked clarifying questions and nodded along as various committee members summarized the goals and objectives of each of the nine chapters required to hold up Verona's end of the Smart Growth law.
Some, for example, questioned all of the of the emphasis on managing growth in the housing chapter, particularly in light of the uncertain economy, but Mayor Jon Hochkammer pointed out that Verona has been growing more quickly than the rest of the county and the same issues that inspired people to flock here in the first half of this decade and before will remain once the housing market returns to normal.
Ald. Scott Manley (Dist. 2) wasn't sure it would be a good idea to try to push "affordable" housing here, particularly with the offered suggestion of using tax credits, or of putting any resources into growing the one-route mass-transit system. And Ald. Clark Solowicz (D-1) was wary of putting a 20-year timeline on a fix for downtown traffic, even though it had been included mainly to ease concerns that big changes would be on the way as soon as the plan was finished.
Commissioner Jack Linder suggested that one goal of the plan could be to look for other, less prominent places to put roundabouts, such as the Silent Street-Enterprise Drive intersection. And commissioner Jeff Horsfall asked that an aquatic center be considered when looking into the future of our community facilities.
The committee plans to approve revisions next month and send out the resulting draft to a long list of area entities, including other governmental units, and hold one final informal listening session at the end of March. The resulting final draft will then go to a public hearing, probably over the summer.
Monday's meeting will be broadcast on tape on VHAT-98. For the schedule, see Page 6.
