Hello Ann Arbor. Goodbye Northfield.
Biltmore's pitchman took center stage at Wednesday's joint meeting of the planning commission and township board. He admitted that without an Ann Arbor school district address, development was a non starter. Even that slap in the face didn't stop board members from insisting that new residents would flock to Whitmore Lake's basically bankrupt school district because, well, what else would parents who chose their new home based on its Ann Arbor school district address do?
Magical thinking continues to rule Northfield Township.
Watch the July 16 meeting, whenever and wherever you want, here on Livestream.
At the June 4, 2014 Planning Commission meeting, Planners were asked by a civil engineering firm to consider "correcting" our Master Plan to allow development of nearly one square mile of southwest Northfield Township farmland. This land is zoned agricultural and according to our Master Plan cannot be subdivided into 1/4 acre or even 1 acre lots.
Link to Livestream video of the June 4th meeting.
FYI: The video is broken into three parts because of a breakdown of Livestream's broadcasting software early in the meeting. The missing forty minutes of the meeting were salvaged from township audio tape backup, converted to video, and posted several days later. The way Livestream works is that what you upload or post most recently, goes to the top of the page. For that reason, the reconstructed missing middle part appears first. Video from the end of the P.C. meeting appears second, and the abruptly terminated telecast of the meeting's beginning appears third. Counterintuitive, but that's life in Livestream's cheap seats.
If the above link doesn't work, go to Livestream.com, click Watch, search for Northfield Township, then click on the June 4 Planning Commission meeting.
At the August 6th planning commission meeting, your Northfield Neighbors turned out in force to articulate their love for Northfield Township as it is today - and their opposition the Biltmore's proposed remastering.
The takeaway: Northfield Neighbors supports the Right Growth in the Right Place.
The P.C. nevertheless voted to proceed with the master plan re-study. But, over the fantasy fueled objections of the P.C.'s two man smoke-filled backroom, the P.C. restricted the proposal to master plan study area #2, (see map below), the envelope surrounding only the nine Biltmore parcels plus a connecting link to the Sewer Assessment District to the north.
The developer was asked to provide impact studies illuminating the increased costs to us of providing services to one thousand new homes. As one resident pointed out during the single minute he was permitted to voice his opinion on the matter, the P.C. completely missed their chance to obtain an unbiased cost of services studies, which could easily have been had by forcing the developer to pay for independent analysis by a firm of the P.C.'s choosing.
View the August 6th meeting here, on Livestream.
Lizzy Alfs' Ann Arbor News story appeared August 13th, on MLive.com.
Study Area #2:
At the June 4, 2014 Planning Commission Meeting, Biltmore presented its formal request that our Township Master Plan be changed. Below are the pages comprising that proposal.
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