December 8, 2022
Call to Order: 6:00 PM
Roll Call: Nancy Strohschein, Chair; Linnea Barron, Secretary; Joe Bollech, Trustee, Bob Janda, Township Board Representative; Jay Loman, Trustee; Robert Lindert, Trustee. Absent: Donna Preston, Trustee, absent with notice.
Pledge of Allegiance recited.
Guests: Jay Fish
Approval of Agenda: Bob made a motion to approve the agenda, seconded by Robert, all approved.
Approval of minutes from November 9, 2022 work session: A mistake was noticed by Jay that his name was listed as Joe, so that correction was made. Nancy made a motion, seconded by Bob to accept the minutes with the correction of Jay’s name. All approved.
Agenda:
1. Recreation Plan: Jason informed us that the deadline to apply for grants is February 1st. We will not be able to complete our recreation plan before that date. Even without grants, there were many ideas we could do without grant monies: Replace fence at the ballfield, improve dugouts, and a hiking trail at the ballpark were suggested. Jay felt that help from other players could accomplish this. Also the Covid money could be used to fund these projects.
We discussed possibly having a recreation committee, separate from the planning commission, to keep up with the needs of the community. This committee would be completely voluntary and work with the planning commission.
As work on the recreation plan progresses, ways to get input from the community include a survey (paper and on-line); newspaper article; posters at the school, post office, Trading Post, and the Finns; Facebook, Arvon township website were mentioned.
2. Review of rec plans from other townships. Our assignment for this meeting was to go on-line and look at other townships’ recreation plans. Nancy prepared a chart for us to use with suggested townships with categories including: length; recreation committee; DNR grants; other grants, past project updates, public input, comments. We had info from Mueller, Eagle Harbor, Chassell, Baraga, Bergland. We listed what we liked about each including priorities, assets (park/public spaces), survey (paper and electronic). We felt this was helpful.
3. Zoning Ordinance: Word document from Jason sent out to all members. Definitions from Jason that came from Autrain were sent to Kenny to review. Our ordinance is always changing as new issues to deal with are presented. With that in mind, it was suggested that we have a yearly public hearing to present these changes for inclusion in our ordinance. The first part of June was suggested for this hearing. This will be discussed further.
4. Robert talked about the Dark Skies status and regulating the lighting used by businesses, discourage use of LED signs for example.
Adjourn: Bob made a motion to adjourn, seconded by Jay. All approved. Meeting adjourned at 7:10 PM.
Next Meeting: January 12, 2023, 6 PM at the firehall.
Submitted by Linnea Barron, Secretary