Report on P&Z Meeting
The Moscow Planning & Zoning Commision meeting on Wednesday night (11/30/05) was our first chance to see the preliminary draft of the Large Scale Retail Enterprise Ordinance. The ordinace can be found along with other documents at the city of Moscow website. The ordinance was written by city staff at the direction of the Planning & Zoning commission, and identifies conditions from certain impacts of large scale retail development that a developer would have to meet by qualification or mitigation. The draft defines a big box as 40,000 sq ft or larger, though commissioners at the meeting were generally in agreement that they would likely raise that threshold to ranging from 50,000 to 75,000 sq ft.
While the draft ordinance is fairly comprehensive in scope, requiring a big box to pay for economic and fiscal studies for the conditional use, there are some additional items raised by citizens addressing the commission that could be included:
1. As part of the fiscal study component, an analysis of whether a big box development would neccesitate the conversion of our fire department from volunteer to paid. Also, the ability of emergency services to provide adequate service to the community.
2. A cap on square footage (somewhere around 70,000 -100,000 sq ft) by general merchandise retailers. This has been done succesfully by other communities and even withstood a lawsuit in Turlock, California from Walmart.
Some personal observations of the meeting:
It wasn’t well attended by citizens. There were only a dozen of us there, and only four of us addressed the commission. We need more people attending Planning & Zoning Commission Meetings, and City Council Meetings. This is an important time to voice our opinions, and to make them part of the official record, during the public comment periods which are held at every meeting. The P & Z commission and the city council need to know citizen’s concerns about a SuperWalmart locating in Moscow.