PC MEETING DCEMBER 5 THURSDAY – PUBLIC COMMENT

1. ZOOM: Since 60% of our residents are second homeowners, we need a new communication strategy. When on ZOOM, the participants tuning in complain of poor audio, not knowing who is speaking from the board/commission table, and not having the “chat” available. Users try to contact the City Manager to tell him that the participants can’t see the maps or read the document on the screens. The technology of the screens needs to be upgraded for the room participants and before more important business takes place can it be fixed now?

To help solve this WLHS would like to offer to invest in a new ZOOM Camera that operates as a OWL https://owllabs.com/products/meeting-owl-3 $800.00.+- The camera would turn 360* and the speaker would be shown on ZOOM.   What do we, the audience here tonight and on ZOOM and U Tube, do next to have these upgrades and corrections and improvements made?  Bill, can you guide us in responding?

2. EMAILS OF THE BOARDS: The emails used by the Boards and Commissions should be reviewed. ? om what we can determine, using a home computer and personal email account to conduct government business is creating public records. Suitable for Freedom of Information (FOIA) capture.  We think it may be unclear how this works in Harbor Springs and for those applying to be on a Board or Commission, could you advise us now?

3. REVISED MINUTES PROCEDURES: If and when the minutes of a previous meeting are questioned and if the minutes are asked to be reviewed and to be revised, we would like to ask that the revised minutes are printed out and made available for audience review. On Monday at the City Council meeting, revised minutes were included, but the audience in the room and on ZOOM were not able to view or access the new minutes in real time. Can we solve this issue? What can be done?

4. INVOLVING THE WLHS: The WLHS went door to door, we had 10-12 Harbor Springs residents that spoke to 900 doors / people and often talked for more than an hour about the town. These engaged representatives for the We Love Harbor Springs are available now to work with the Planning Commission to come up with a plan for zoning. We read in the newspaper that only the fulltime residents would be working on zoning. Is this true? Can you help us in the audience understand the intentions?

5. THE BALANCE OF THE BOARDS & UPCOMING SELECTION OF NEW SEATED MEMBERS: Until the new boards and commissions are seated, the balance of the Planning Commission from what we can see and hear, the balance is all NO voters. The way that you heal the community from such a fracture is to balance the Boards, the meetings and the Planning Commission structure. Every person added onto the boards and commissions should be a new community representative.

6. THE MATTER OF THE COI: It has been brought to our attention in a myriad of ways, from different people, different points of view. It is thought to be a broad enough complaint that WLHS would like to suggest that outside consul review the Chair of the Planning Commissions various hats to see if consequential harm could come to the community by following the very same pattern, structure and philosophy that got us into this in the first place. Keeping the same leader of the Planning Commission may not be wise. 583

7. THE ZONING SCHEDULE: Push the December 19^th Planning Meeting to after the New Year. The new slate of Commissioners should be seated before working on the zoning, without the disruption of the departing members. Please. Do not ruin Christmas.

The wrong schedule for revised zoning plan was attached to the agenda, and a downloadable PDF of the new schedule was not made available on the website. It’s difficult enough to keep track of during the holidays…

As we mentioned we’d like to schedule the zoning meetings after the New Year the Town Halls, Library Meets, Focus Groups by zone/districts. And we recommend that all meeting small and large will be with minutes and by ZOOM meeting. 100% OMA criteria.

8. ALLOWING OUT OF TOWN RESIDENTS, VOTERS & PROPERTY OWNERS TO SIT ON BOARDS & COMMISSIONS & PARTICIPATE BY ZOOM: What is stopping our town from using ZOOM as a means for Board Participation? Is a remote method of ZOOM allowable for Harbor Springs participants to take part in and participate on Boards if chosen. If so, what Boards, and if not why not? What part of our City government prohibits remote participation? Can this be explained to us tonight ?

9. CONVERSATIONAL DIALOGUE FOR ZONING MEETINGS: During the zoning engagement meetings, we want the three-minute rule in the meetings to be waved unless abused.

 and conversations, interactions of the group in entirety to stay civil, allowing folks to be heard

10. SURVEY: Survey data is used to help in “design” only. Questions are created by an outside vendor, based on requirements submitted to them. Before a survey is released, the questions are validatedwith a property owner. Scope – Specific in context. No leading questions. One survey/per property owner. Data analyzed by unbiased people.  Do not want to misunderstand the data or negate survey results. A  two -three week answer period for zoning definition is not enough.