HomeMy Public PortalAbout03-27-2004 RetreatMinutes of the Retreat held by the Mayor and Board of Trustees on Saturday, March 27,
2004 at the Holiday Inn, 205 Remington, Bolingbrook, Illinois.
9:00 a.m. Trustees present: Steve Thomson, Ron Swalwell, Mike Collins, Jim Waldorf,
Paul Fay, Kathy O'Connell. Trustee Kathy O'Connell then led the pledge to the flag. P.
Fay moved to approve the Agenda to discuss Comprehensive Planning, Traffic Planning
and Community Vision. Seconded by J. Waldorf. Voice Vote: 6 yes, 0 no. Motion
carried.
Round Table Discussion:
· Comprehensive Planning
Should the Comprehensive Plan be followed to the letter or is it just a guide? S. Thomson
feels that it's a very good plan, but it's not a working one, and we should try to follow for
the most part. P. Fay agreed that it is a guide. R. Swalwell stated that it's a planning tool,
and we should be spending the bulk of our time in tweaking the plan, massaging the plan,
and less on the day to day, nuts and bolts. That's staffs job, and they should be
orchestrating the tool. M. Collins feels that it can be changed, but in the same verse,
something should be looked at and taken verbatim. I hate to see some commercial nodes
change from a commercial to a residential node. I agree with Ron, it's a living, breathing
document, and every once in a while it should be tweaked. J. Waldorf stated because of
the cost of the document, it cannot be ignored but sometime you must interpret. It should
be handled by the persons that are hired, and plan commission. The interpretation, when
it comes back to the Board, if its consistent with expectations in the Comprehensive Plan
should almost be a finished product with maybe some tweaking, but nothing time
consuming. People expect us to follow plans since we paid for and authorized them.
Kathy O'Connell agrees with everyone. It's a guide, a good guide. It needs some
updating, and I still do not approve of parts of it. As far as following it, it's an
interpretation, you read between the lines and one person can say it says one thing, and
other person says something different. P. Fay and R. Swalwell suggested to bring up the
plan in sections to review quarterly. The old part of town is mostly involved. K.
O'Connell talked about a couple of farms she would like to see in an isolated district. R.
Swalwell said that you can landmark those separately through the county or the state. K.
O'Connell asked if it's a farm that we label as a historic significance, and in the
Comprehensive Plan that area is tagged for multi-family or high density what happens?
R. Swalwell stated that you cannot prevent people from buying property in the United
States and doing whatever they want with it. The farmer can still sell his farm to a
developer. Historic Preservation is great, Open Space is great, but somebody has to pony
up to the barn and pay the bill, and say I'll pay the $5 million and give to the Forest
Preserve. J. Waldorf said that the difficulty of a quarterly review is that nobody will
know what is going on. It's a blue print; you don't change a blue print every quarter.
How will anyone know what are expectations are if there is a fluid document? K.
O'Connell stated that a quarterly review, not modification, where the 6 of us can interpret
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particular sections of the Comprehensive Plan. R. Swalwell said you can look at it to see
if it needs to be improved. It' s a guide, not a blue print. M. Collins said that you interpret
the issue, and revisit it. P. Fay thinks that whether it is a comprehensive plan or
ordinances, we should be looking at everything under a microscope to say do we
understand this, are we in agreement, to avoid issues like that. K. O'Connell asked the
members, what is the roll of staff in following this plan, or in planning in general? Do we
actively direct staff or is staff directing us? When issues that staff knows are
controversial, ! feel they should be brought to us before they currently are bringing things
to us. When they know there is an issue out there on the streets that it may be in the gray
area, and is being interpreted two different ways, ! feel this Board should be involved. J.
Waldorf stated that we basically want our Administrators to walk on whatever, and
anytime they are challenged it's going to come to us and we are going to be the arbitrator.
K. O'Connell stated that we are the bottom line. J. Waldorf said it does not work, and
never will. M. Collins said that the only thing is you have staff determining what's going
to be controversial. A lot of times ! think the people in house don't know what is going
on in the street. It's us that get the calls that say wait a minute. Kathy stated that she
informed the staff personally in a recent issue almost two months ago. ! felt that it was
an issue and ! knew it was going to explode. ! thought it should have been addressed. R.
Swalwell says it's a good example of how an issue has come up and proves one thing. It
proves that you have a really lousy code. A section of your ordinance is written really
poorly. Let's address and fix that because it is going to come up again. ! think the
Comprehensive Plan you will find deals more with the new growth, not with what's going
on in the old part of town. We as the Village rely way too much on the developers to
make our plan come through. K. O'Connell felt that because of the rate that we are
growing it's really hard to attend to current business and take the time to make sure that a
future plan or vision will be followed. R. Swalwell said it basically boils down to money,
who is going to pay for the roads. ! feel we could be more proactive, where the Village
actually goes out and spends the money to put in your water, sewer and do the road
improvements. Make that road a four lane road before any of the houses are there. Then
when the developers come in and build the houses, or industry, you are doing recaptures
to the developer. M. Collins said his point is that we need to be more proactive. P. Fay
supports R. Swalwell in his position that the Board needs to be proactive and not wait to
react to things. The Board agreed that in a timely manner to review Comprehensive Plan
to be proactive. The decisions of this Board should be for the whole town, and not just
those that bark the loudest. K. O'Connell stated that the plan is a guide, not a law, and we
should not be challenged on it.
· Traffic Planning
K. O'Connell asked, "How do we best accommodate the growing traffic challenges in and
around the Village? What is the role of each developer? When we feel a new road is
essential, to what degree do we compensate a developer? Is it our task to accommodate
existing and future traffic, or relocate it? R. Swalwell felt that you can avoid it, if you go
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build the roads first, and then let the developers come in, and then you recaptures. You
are recapturing money from a developer at an inflated price. We already have the staff; !
don't understand why we the Village can't afford to put a sewer line in. You already have
the trucks, the equipment and the guys; all you have to pay for is the pipe and the actual
material. K. O'Connell stated that a lot of that is land acquisition. R. Swalwell, the point
is that if you do it today, you are going to save millions and millions of dollars, because
you can recapture from the developer and you can actually make money on the deal. K.
O'Connell stated that it is a concept that we can put to C. Minick, just to get an opinion.
R. Swalwell feels that Plainfield is at a crossroad with 3 highways and an interstate, !
think you have to do a big picture view and prioritize it as #1 goal, how to get the semi-
trucks out of downtown. The only way to accomplish this goal is 143rd Street by-pass.
My fear is that as we think about this, Romeoville is pushing for an interchange at
Lockport and 1-55. K. O'Connell asked R. Swalwell if he agreed with the traffic plan that
was presented at the last meeting. R. Swalwell agreed. S. Thomson also agreed with the
traffic plan. ! thought it was a very good strategic move to hire a transportation engineer.
! believe this plan would really help us if we could get it accomplished. 143rd Street is
one way to get people out and away from the downtown area. Push them on the 1-55
corridor. K. O'Connell supported the 143rd Street by-pass and ! still support it. It
something that was a 5 year project, no houses needed to be demolished, Com Ed was on
board, yes, the bridge over the wetlands was expensive, but there was Federal, State and
grant money available. It could have been accomplished just to Rt. 126. ! agree with R.
Swalwell that roads should be built ahead. S. Thomson felt we could turn the tables on
the developer. J. Waldorf said that has to do with being proactive. M. Collins feels that
sometimes you guys are just looking at one issue; you have to look at the other issue of
making Rt. 59 bigger from Overmans corner south. This should have been down how
many years ago, with the rerouting of Rt. 30. All the boards have put these things on the
back burner, and then now we are getting caught in this. R. Swalwell said it is
convenient to blame past boards, but one thing with traffic, Plainfield's finally there. M.
Collins disagrees, before Wallin Woods was put up, Rt. 30 was going to be rerouted.
Also, make a decision on Rt. 126, ! really enjoyed the conversation the other day from
the IDOT, when he said, which ! totally hope that the wetlands does not come into play at
the interchange of Caton Farm Road and 1-55, because that is going to get rid of a lot of
our traffic. P. Fay agrees that we need to look at the whole picture, and ! think we are
doing that very well. ! also agree that it should not be the developers holding the roads in
front of us for their needs. R. Swalwell thought we should have built Steiner/Heggs Road
instead of spending $5 million on a Village Hall. P. Fay stated that he totally supports
proactive, future planning on roads. I'm not opposed to putting new roads in prior to
anything going in. I'm not opposed to rerouting or realigning, however, when realigning
and relocating is basically to accommodate a single development, no, no. R. Swalwell
stated that we need to ask C. Minick on how much money can we borrow, and how much
does it relate back into a traffic fee. K. O'Connell said we need improvement of Rt. 126.
J. Waldorf talked about the issue of Rt. 30 and move the trucks out of downtown, to Rt.
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126 to 1-55. The objection of 143rd Street was the displeasure of 60 people and the
overpass. The Board reacted to the fact that people were not happy about it. It wasn't
done. P. Fay said that a traffic study was done that said the north/south traffic was more
of an issue than the east/west. R. Swalwell said that the traffic study never addressed the
central question, was do you want to get the semi-trucks out of the downtown. That was
the whole reason for 143rd Street bypass. K. O'Connell asked what everyone thinks of
the Rt. 126 realignment out west. J. Waldorf said that he attended the meeting of the
Naperville Chamber of Commerce during which they discussed the extension of
Lockport Street out to Romeoville. That will be extended and there will be a Romeoville
exit, they have invested in the property. M. Collins thought it was not a done deal, just
the Mayor's vision. J. Waldorf stated that 68% of the transportation money in the State of
Illinois is set aside for the greater Chicago metropolitan area. P. Fay said that we need to
involve, solicit and invite Tom Cross and Ed Petka to be more proactive with the issues
of Plainfield. M. Collins suggested that when we have a project that we wish to forward,
lets make sure that we have letters from that meeting and send to Petka, Cross and
Biggert's office. S. Thomson stated that our Mayor and staff should be doing that. P.
Fay stated that the signalization, north in and south of Plainfield have got to be better
coordinated in time. R. Swalwell stated that Romeoville is pushing for an interchange at
Lockport. We need as a Board have a plan of attack, if there is an interchange, how do
we keep the traffic from coming through Plainfield to use that interchange. The Board
needs to let IDOT know that we are not in support of a full interchange at Lockport, and
if there is a full interchange at Lockport, then we have to take Lockport Street to Renwick
or Rt. 126 through the gravel pit. K. O'Connell asked if Eric Gallt could do some
investigating to see if the interchange at Lockport is a reality, and what is the status. J.
Waldorf stated that the homework is finding out in writing what IDOT has on the boards
for 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 years. R. Swalwell also felt that we need to direct Eric to dig into this
thing, and find out the ramifications if they do an interchange there, is it going to benefit
Plainfield, or is it going to kill Plainfield. M. Collins said that sometimes we have a few
Trustees that are only interested in a four block area. J. Waldorf asked how the Board
will handle if some of these things are done deals. Are we going to accept them and
move on? If we can get definite answers on what's happening to the Village, we need to
go with the flow and move on.
· Community Visioning
K. O'Connell asked what your vision is in 5, and 10 years. How do we contribute to this
overall vision? Are we being active or are we reacting? P. Fay feels that opportunities
like this are a great example of how we can work together. To me part of visioning is not
waiting until someone comes to us with a site plan-- that is reacting. Visioning is saying
lets work with the Army Corp. of Engineers, the USDA and the EPA and put in a 300
acre lake that can be used with the Forest Preserve, Park District, School District. Let's
put in an upscale hotel in that area. Let's solicit a sports organization for a training camp
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in this quadrant. Let's go after IBM, because they are expanding in the Midwest, can we
get a corporate office. K. O'Connell stated that we can sit here and vision, but how does
any of our vision come to fruition. Does it go to staff and we direct them to accomplish
our vision. M. Collins asked if it is time to reinstitute Economic Development position.
They all appeared in agreement that now is the appropriate time. P. Fay said I see roof
tops, I see rooftops, and I see congestion. R. Swalwell agrees that future visioning is you
go out before the growth belt ring and you get the farm land that is still at farm land
prices. M. Collins stated that we sent letters out to all the vacant land not being
developed now and we received back one letter. P. Fay said there are hundreds of
agencies and funds available for various projects. I think of terms of vision for Plainfield
the word balance comes to mind. S. Thomson said that when he looks at visioning, the
downtown core is what we need to put our vision on now. If we don't have a Preservation
District soon, we are going to have what we have on the corner of Rt. 59 and Rt. 126 all
over the community. J. Waldorf there needs to be a blend and balance between
commercial, residential and open land. I don't think we are doing that well, and I'm not
so sure any plan can accomplish that unless we are consistent in how we support our
staff. We need to go beyond how many houses are per square acres, how many of the
other details, unless we feel our staff isn't doing its job. I feel they are doing their job and
Eric is a wonderful addition. S. Thomson stated that that's what we are elected for. K.
O'Connell stated that every development that comes through to us, whether it's
commercial or residential there PUD's. PUD means they don't have to follow this, it
means whatever can be decided and agreed upon between the two parties. (The Village
Board and Developer) Our staff has issues with the development, but Planning
Commission passes it.
P. Fay moved to adjourn the open session of this retreat and take a 10 minute recess and
then welcome Mr. Larry Frang, Assistant Executive Director of the Illinois Municipal
League in the Executive Closed Session for discussion of self evaluation. Seconded by
M. Collins. Voice vote. 6 yes, 0 no. Motion carried.
The minutes were prepared by Sue Janik, Village Clerk