BonnerSprings.com

Bonner Springs' new comprehensive land-use plan is on the way to City Hall for approval.

At its Feb. 27 meeting, the city's Planning Commission recommended adoption of the "Vision 2025" plan, which has been in the works for about a year. The plan is not legally binding but rather a tool for guiding future development in the city.

The commission voted unanimously to approve the plan. An ordinance for adoption of the plan and to repeal the previous plan, which was drafted and approved in 1987, will come before the City Council at its March 24 meeting.

The recommendation didn't come, however, before planning commissioners debated some of the plan's finer points. After discussing the plan in its workshop meeting before the regular meeting, the Planning Commission was about to vote on the plan when Commissioner Doug Clements said he was uneasy about the wording for some of the design guidelines in the plan's B Appendix.

The language "leads one to think they are adopted rules," Clements said, which he said made him worry developers might be scared off.

"A more flexible clause at the beginning, that they're guidelines" would ease his concerns, Clements said.

Clements cited a specific guideline on dealing with the offset of garage doors on multiple-car garages as being unclear and too restrictive.

Planning Director Don Slone said it was the developers who look at the plan's design guidelines who "are the ones we want to attract."

Clements lamented that some of the guidelines seem to have come from Overland Park, Lenexa and Olathe.

"The No. 1 thing that came out (in the public meetings on "Vision 2025") was Bonner Springs' image," Slone said. "Some areas of Bonner Springs we don't like, and we don't like today. We're not gonna become Overland Park tonight."

Bonner Springs shouldn't necessarily strive to become Overland Park, Slone said, and Clements agreed, saying the city should maintain and develop its own identity.

Slone recommended a disclaimer that the plan's guidelines are not mandates, instead of "cutting and chopping" its various sections' wording.

Scott Michie, plan consultant with Bucher, Willis and Ratliff, which drafted "Vision 2025," stepped into the discussion and offered that "words matter," and "guidelines are not standards."

Further, he said, Overland Park has standards, the list of which is 80 pages long.

Speaking as a minor developer, Michie said "the most threatening thing is risk."

The more a city can articulate its expectations, the less uncertainty there is for the developer, Michie said.

Clements countered that a danger of being too specific was that the guidelines would be too narrow and not match a potentially good concept for a given property.

Michie said the free market would help determine whether the guidelines were working, and that it should be used to shape decisions.

"If you use it as a hammer it will drive away" developers, he said of the plan.

"That's why (the plan) is in a binder," Michie said. "It's a living document, and you can shape it."

Clements added that he was afraid that the guidelines would eventually become rules and part of the codes.

Commissioner Del Coleman proposed a disclaimer for the beginning of the plan's B Appendix, which read:

"This document is intended to provide guidelines for the quality of development desired within our community. These guidelines are subjective in their application, depending on the specific application. Specific standards are set by ordinance in subdivision and building regulations."

"Vision 2025" is available for download at bonnersprings.com and on the Planning Department's Web site, bonnersprings.org/municipal_serv7.html.

Comments