About 50 people joined Dave Somers in a community meeting at the Maltby Community Club on April 2. Mr. Somers opened up the meeting a bit after 6 pm. He brought with him a team of county staff representing
- Public works
- Planning and development
- Parks
- Sherriff
The session ran as a question/comment guided by four main topics
- Code changes/comprehensive plan issues
- Traffic issues
- Law enforcement
- Park acquisition
Code changes/comprehensive plan issues
- Unique situation created in 1995 with a creation of an industrial area
- Never really had a plan for Maltby
- Have industrial usage butting up against residential/rural
- Many comments on existing issues
- Suggestion received to set up a standing community/county group to relate issues and work on plans (short and long term) through Mr. Somers office
- Current law does not allow moratoriums or other tools to stop uses allowed by law/regulations
- Best if we can work with the business to find common solutions
- Where a business is in violation of the codes, action will be taken within the existing regulations
- Will continue to work the issues but can’t make any big changes until 2015 when the next revision of the growth plan comes due
Traffic issues
- Mostly people expressing forcefully their particular traffic concerns
- County has documented issues of truck traffic through 206th to 201st
- Survey results also showed high concern with truck traffic
- County traffic permitting process focuses only on designated arterials (Broadway)
- Residential streets are based on studies and community actions
- Primary tool on residential streets is “traffic calming” (speed bumps, traffic circles, etc.)
- Sixty (60%) of area residents must approve of traffic calming measures
Law enforcement
- While vandalism was listed as an agenda item, not a lot of reports from this area in the system
- Need citizens to report (call 911) with all law enforcement issues, even small ones
- Want citizens to work with the Sherriff’s office to be the “eyes and ears”
- There is a cross agency task force focused on car theft
Parks acquisition
- County is watching the Rinker/Cemex site as a possible future park site
- County purchased “Hole is the Sky” among 10 acres across Hyw 9 from 201st
- April 22nd will open 800 acres in Paradise Valley
The meeting closed a bit after 8 pm with promises to follow up on some of the individual issues (Ralph’s cement pumper trucks leading the pack) and on these four main areas.
Please add more observations as comments to this post.
Posted
Apr 02 2009, 10:12 PM
by
Earl