Special use permit passes, though strongly contested by Ward III

 

The previously tabled Meadows Phase 2 community unit plan was approved by the Fredericktown Board of Aldermen at 4-2 after some debate between board members and the Meadows organizer.

“I just wanted to make sure we had full council for one. This is a pretty big project, a pretty big decision,” Ward II Alderman Richard Polete began, on July 28.

The Ward III aldermen Nathan Huckaba and Kevin Jones questioned the owner of the property, Dennis Siders, about street widths that don’t meet city standards. They also raised concern about what would happen in the future if the buildings needed to be sold.

Meadows Phase 2 is a set of 20 duplexes proposed to be built near Pine Castle Estates and North Wood to house low income and disabled individuals. It will be on a plot of land in an unused corn field near Phase 1. They will have a 20-foot width on their street.

“If we’re going to advance as a city, we’re going to have to provide housing,” Siders said. “Where else have we got housing in the city? We’ve got 80 people on a waiting list to get into the Meadows.”

He explained how they were subsidized, which was mentioned as part of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) in a previous interview.

“I think this is pretty simple,” Siders said. “The state is giving us $11 million in tax credits. We will sell those to an investor, get $8 million to build, and it’s going to be a great improvement for the city. I’ll take questions.”

“What happens in the future?” Jones asked. “The first time around you built a spur that was city standards for future development. But on these plans I have, it chokes it back down to a 20-foot street width.”

Jones asked about using a secondary exit for vehicles during the construction process. Siders said if they expanded again, they could use their right-of-way near the sewer department, so they don’t interrupt the community. He said development beyond Phase 2 is still tentative, when pressed by Jones.

“Who knows,” Siders said. “If the government is going to crack down and not give affordable housing subsidies, then we probably won’t do it all.”

“Thank you for answering that,” Huckaba said. “Because if the next phase doesn’t happen and we’ve got 20-foot streets, we’ve got landlocked units. Owner occupied single family homes could come in and now can’t, because we have roads that can’t be connected to state streets.”

“I think that’s what scares me the most, is we don’t know what happens when that money runs dry,” Jones said. “Then we’ve got landlocked land where we could fit 20 owner occupied single family homes right in front of Fredericktown city limits. And who owns that property?”

Siders said the reason streets were 20 feet was because that was the requirement by Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC). 

“If you go into any of the planning literature around, you’ll find out they’re encouraging smaller roads in order to get neighborhoods closer together so that they’re not wide apart,” Siders said. “We don’t allow any kind of parking on the street.”

City Attorney Mary Boehner asked if there was any way Siders could negotiate the streets to allow them to meet the city code, while still receiving his funding.

“Maybe in the future we could, but we’re already into this and getting close to the end,” Siders said. It was too much, he said, for the architects and engineers to redo. 

Siders agreed to install “No parking” signs and said if he pursued phase 3 without MHDC funding, they could probably design it like a standard subdivision. 

Outside of potential future issues, the board also asked about safety for fire trucks and parking.

Code Enforcer Jeff Farmer said he never saw a car parked on the shoulder, or any issues to his knowledge. And even though an alderman said he saw EMS several times, Police Chief Eric Hovis said he only had to move cars that were parked by accident, and at very “minimal” frequency.

Siders also addressed a rumor about the residents being from out of town, and said that all of them were from Madison County.

The Ward III aldermen said that the development of Phase 2 was simply unpopular among members of Pine Castle and North Wood, to the Meadow’s east.

“I’ve recently knocked on doors,” Huckaba said. “I have not met a single person who’s in favor of the first phase and wants a second.”

Despite his misgivings, Jones agreed the city needed more residential housing.

“Obviously, this is most developable piece of land inside city limits,” Jones said. “So I think people knew it was going to come eventually. But I think everyone was hoping it would be done with better planning for the future.”

Mayor Travis Parker gave some concluding thoughts.

“We’ve discussed it immensely. So we’re either not going to approve it, or we are. I’ll be the first one to say, yeah, it’s not ideal. But what is ideal? This is going to give us 40 residential facilities and three residences in our community, which no one can argue that we severely need. I’m okay with the streets being as wide as they are. I know not everybody agrees with that.”

City Clerk Teresa Harbison read the ordinance to propose a special use permit or community plan for the property and received a vote of 4 in favor and 2 opposed, those two being Ward III Aldermen Huckaba and Jones.