COMMENTS ON THE AREA PLAN:

Planning Commission Meeting,  2/15/2005

The commission looks at a site and provides guidance on land use and development of the city of Ann Arbor. There is clear community consensus that goes in the direction of wanting a comprehensive high school.

The Master Plan help guides the planning commission and the city in its land use patterns.

The Master Plan doesn’t necessarily recommend that this particular plan be put on this site. . It also recognizes that the school owns the site, but also recognizes that it could be used for other purposes. The Master Plan recognizes that a school could be built there, but doesn’t necessarily agree with or condone just any plan for use; it's merely that the current use plan calls for a certain use. The use plan should still meet the criteria and the spirit of the Master Plan. Other uses of the site could be a park, or single-family housing. or other school use.

The commission is charged with looking at the land use and weighing public benefits with land use choices.

Planning Commission Guidelines as Applied to High School Site and Area Plan:

It’s not that the commission is necessarily saying “no” to a school. It’s just that this plan is not the best use of the site for this portion of the city.

Going back to the standards to be considered for approval of a plan, area plans should meet four standards

1. Comply with all appropriate laws: some that are mandated by the sate and a few local laws. Although the district does not have to comply for the most part with local ordinances, the district has stated that it may meet, or try to meet the spirit of the ordinances. It has fallen short in a few places.
2. An area plan should limit disturbance of the natural features to the minimum necessary to allow reasonable use of the land. The area plan does not meet these standards. The site is being developed very intensively and will have great impact on many of the natural features of the site. Most important is the number of impervious surfaces. There are alternatives that could have been provided that could have done a better job to limit the disturbances.
3. A plan should not cause a private or public health nuisance. It should not be detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the residents. Here the plan is truly deficient. Traffic caused by accessing the site is a very big safety concern. The non-motorized access of the site falls short. There is almost a complete absence of walkabality. There’s no west side sidewalk on N. Maple. There is no sidewalk on parts of Newport at all. Maybe in the future the city will add sidewalks, but they aren’t there now. Walking to the building even after a student arrives on the site is dangerous. In fact it is actually difficult to get to the building. There could have been a better configuration that could have allowed better safety and traffic patterns. This calls into question the use of the site. There is the question of the impact of the use of the site on the future development around the site. The school may make the area a desirable place in which to live. There are therefore future public health, welfare, safety and traffic issues that will occur due to future development around this site. It could have helped for the school to have been smaller, with fewer parking spaces, The spill-over affect could have been less.
4. The fourth standard for area plans pertains to proposed uses or other uses permitted under zoning. A plan should be compatible with adopted plans and policies of the city. This particular development and future development that could happen around it:
1. might have been consistent with providing a green way
2. might have been consistent with the non-motorized transportation plan
3. is not consistent with parking ordinances.

Perhaps another plan would be safe, provide walkability, and limit disturbance of natural features.

Also at the 2/15/2005 Planning Commission meeting: the introduction and unanimous passage of a resolution to support state-wide legislation that would require school districts to come before local zoning authorities, to get input that would be binding.