Dear Readers – Hope this is helpful to all who asked….”How did the Meeting go?”
December 18, 2025 We took a few pieces of the transcript about the Admin Review Committee to help us clarity our position on
the Administrative Review Discussion for the January 5 City Council Public Hearing.
A deep dive into our Planned Development position is next. As is the congratulatory part of the meeting – jobs well done, and almost done – not quite?
Bill Mulder, Chair of the Planning Commission
“In our last discussion, we decided to move it [ the Proposed Zoning Code 10.21.25] on to City Council. We knew that there were some issues that could be clearer, and we consciously said, you know what? It’s time to make a move, though. Let’s get it over to City Council. We’ve got residents who are waiting for this and are waiting for clarity, and Planning Commission was inclined to tackle these things in early 2025, or early 2026, if you still want to. But there has been some chatter in the ‘blogosphere’ about a couple things, and one of those is the Administrative Review Committee (ARC). And I thought what would be – and what’s being said is that the way this thing works is that the Administrative Review Committee – which we conceived as just essentially being on ‘standby’ would be able to approve commercial development up to 5000 square feet and what I wanted to do is just check everybody’s recollection and everybody’s intent to see and to confirm that that was not our intent.
Does anyone feel that we were going to give the ability to approve commercial development on that to the Administrative Review Committee? I have no no recollection, no, all right.
As I understand it and I think it’s worth us all making sure that we have our language right, is everything is by you know you think this is almost like water flowing through pipes everything is biased ahead to the planning commission, and Jeff, you correct me if I’m wrong here, but our intent for the Administrative Review Committee is if it needs further review at your level and you need some more expertise, then that would trigger the larger group to handle it outside the Planning Commission. Is that correct?”
Jeff Grimm ”I think my feelings on the Administrative Review Committee have been pretty consistent here. This is not a new topic. The 2005 code has similar language. It was just the wording of it was changed to create this more committee thing because we were encompassing a few more people involved in that process. If we look at the language from the 2005 code, it’s very specific.
The Administrative Review Committee comes into play when Planning Commission has taken action on a site plan review, and that after that site plan review that the Planning Commission has reviewed and approved, it then comes at some point to me as the zoning administrator to issue the zoning permit, which they would take to the building department. But in my review of that zoning application, I see that some aspect of their plan has changed from when it was approved by the Planning Commission.
The Administrative Review Committee is there as a body of more than just myself to make a determination as this plan changed so much that it results in the need for another conversation and re-approval at the Planning Commission or is that change minimal enough that it’s not necessary to have further conversation at a public meeting and that we could just move forward administratively.
With the approval process I think we should probably have the same conversation maybe with City Council if they feel that language needs to be updated or modified to better clarify that we could certainly do so but I believe that’s the intent and clearly in the change from the 2024 code that was adopted under ordinance 439 to the proposed draft now we’ve made modifications to, that to better identify that in the table.”
Bill Mulder Right, yes, the main thing I thought we could do tonight without getting into all the nitty-gritty again is just make a strong statement to city council that it is definitely not our intent anybody other than the planning commission would approve a site plan or a request for a commercial development.
Speaker #9. Chip Everest I agree, I would agree with that and you know i’ve always had problems with the Administrative Review Committee, we talked about it at one point I can’t remember which week it was but you personally said that it was dormant, the word dormant to me means it’s not effective, doesn’t happen, and then I kind of browsed through the code and said well actually it does happen in this situation one of them was the Shoreline Protection and and then when it came to my attention that it was actually where it could be reviewed at a 5000 square foot level in the Commercial Business District we need to come, and get that clarified. So I mean if I approved the code going to the City Council based on John I. talking to the Council about some of these issues that Lynee Wells raised, and I mean the grammatical or whatever, but also specifically in the Administrative Review Committee and limiting the scope of what they can can or can’t do right, right and so that’s my look at it and that’s good so we’re all in sync.
Bill Mulder That was never the intent it is not the intent and yeah if city council is concerned about, that they could modify the wording or they could do it.
Speaker #9 Chip Everest Yes it needs to be presented to them, yes like we’ve talked about, yes all right. i’ve got a question i mean how did the the Administrative Review Committee 5000 square foot issue, come up, and how did we miss that, that’s clearly not my intent to allow that to happen.
Jeff Grimm So that was that was something that was put in the new code because there was no limitation so in the 2005 code, Any size project could go to the administrator.
Chip Everest Yeah, we’re not talking about the 2005 code now. We’re talking about the new code and how the limitation of 5,000 feet got, I don’t remember discussing that. And how did that fall through the cracks, is my guess, and that is my question.
Bill Mulder Good question. You know, we had John Iacoangeli (Beckett & Raeder / Harbor Springs City Planners) , we had John, you know, purposely go and take out the ARC’s in the table. You know, the table is the main thing. And we scrutinized that. We looked at it all up and down. Nope, no administrator review for any use there. We got it. We got it nailed. And I don’t know. Yeah.
Bill Mulder Good and speaking of presenting, when we left the story last we deputized Bob Buckner to represent the Planning Commission and to introduce the updates that we recommended to the City Council and did you all see that, I thought he did a great job and he represented all of you and I appreciate that thank you.
I would also encourage everybody up here to attend that meeting. And we should all be there. It’s a show of strong support for what we’ve done. And to be able to answer questions. I, you know, it’s a 170-page document, roughly. And believe it or not, I don’t know everything that’s on every one of those pages. And it would be great to have you there. It’s cool to me. Yep.