The DeKalb County Public Infrastructure and Development Sub-committee met on Thursday, September 18, 2003 at 7:30P.M. at the Legislative Center’s Freedom Room.  Chairman Frank D. Van Buer called the meeting to order.  Those present were Haakon Andreasen, John McBride, Thomas Zucker and Sandy Quiram.  Those absent were Jerome Bejbl, William Cross, Larry Lundgren  and Nicholas Noe.    Mr. Jim Schneider was also present.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Moved by Mr. Andreasen, seconded by Mr. Zucker, and it was carried unanimously to approve the minutes of the June and July 2003 minutes.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Moved by Mr. Zucker, seconded by Mr. McBride, and it was carried unanimously to approve the agenda as presented.

DISCUSSION WITH PAUL MILLER – COUNTY PLANNING

Chairman Van Buer introduced Mr. Paul Miller, DeKalb County Planning and Zoning Director, to the committee.  Mr. Miller explained that the County’s Comprehensive Planning has been in effect since 1972 and what the County’s approach is towards economic development.  Back in 1972 the plan featured two things:  1.) to preserve agricultural land - it should be preserved for agriculture, and 2.) development should be encouraged but encouraged as part of our cities where the necessary infrastructure and public services that support houses and businesses are located.  Over the 30 years that we have been doing planning in the County, those two points haven’t really changed. 

DeKalb County has never been anti-development, said Mr. Miller.  We have always encouraged development.  The approach can be categorized as “controlled” growth, the County has said that we want to see development and growth, but we recognize that there are fundamental problems with the scattered kinds of growth that we see east of here and that we would like to avoid it.  He further explained that our soils in DeKalb County are 98% primed for agriculture and is a resource that is finite and valuable. People who are in economic development forget agriculture as an element of our economy.   Farmland is a $1 billion industry in our County in terms of agricultural value and improvements on that land. 

There have been updates to our Comprehensive Plan and the last official update was in 2000.  We are currently in the process of updating it through the Regional Planning Commission, said Mr. Miller. 

The question now is, “how do we stop from being a bedroom community for the county’s east of here?” When it comes to economic development in our county you cannot overlook Northern Illinois University as our largest employer and that they are all government jobs.  If you combine those numbers with all the rest of the government jobs in our County it would show that government jobs are our largest sector of jobs here, said Mr. Miller. 

Illinois Law sets out rules and regulations of what counties and cities can do with regards to planning, said Mr. Miller.  If you read those rules it shows that  laws favor cities over counties in the State of Illinois.  Counties are often not trusted, the courts have said.  If a county does not have a specifically granted authority, then it does not exist.  Whereas, cities have much more leeway, they can become home rule municipalities and then they can really rule their own fate, he explained.  The consequences of those laws in Illinois is that the future of the County, while the County itself can have some influence, the real stake is in the hands of the municipality not the County.  Because of annexation rules the moment a piece of property is annexed to a municipality, the County doesn’t have a say in what happens there.  It is totally out of our hands then, he explained. 

The approach that the County has taken to not encourage growth in unincorporated areas has been well received by the municipalities, unlike what’s happening in the counties east of here.  We are not in competition with the municipalities.  They don’t have to worry that the County has it’s own development agenda that’s going to surround them and stop their own natural growth.  We don’t do that, we’re not in that business and we haven’t been. 

Mr. Miller further explained to the committee about the Regional Plan Commission that has been recently created.  There have been agreements that started last year as a cooperative effort between the County and the municipalities within the County.  Thirteen out of fourteen municipalities currently participate in the Regional Plan Commission.  The first thing that we wanted to do, Mr. Miller said, was to get them all on the “same sheet of paper” with respect to growth and development.  What the County did was recommend that state law gives the municipalities the right to have a planned jurisdiction that extends a mile and one-half beyond their boundaries.  In that planned jurisdiction they want to see new houses, new businesses, new industries and improvements.  The County’s jurisdiction goes right up to the City boundary, wherever that may be.  So there could be an overlap, he said.  It makes perfect sense to us to be in agreement with the municipality as to what’s going to happen, where do we want to see growth?  So what they did was to combine our comprehensive plan to the municipal’s comprehensive plan.  They realized that many of the smaller communities had their plans dated back to 1969, if they could be found at all. 

Therefore, the County appropriated $200,000 to hire a consultant to work with those communities to update their Comprehensive Plans because we knew that any money that we put into those communities to help them articulate their own futures would make everyone else better off.  It has now been over a year now that the consultant has been working with about nine individual communities directly on their plans.  All the other communities in DeKalb County are concurrently and cooperatively updating their comprehensive plans.  He believes that in the entire State of Illinois, that is unprecedented, that it has never happened. 

The Regional Plan Commission is meeting every month currently.  The consultant was hired by the County, but they work directly with the municipalities.  Sycamore and Kirkland have completed their comprehensive plans and every other community is scheduled for a public hearing on their comprehensive plan in October and adoption no later than November of 2003.  The County will take those future land use plans for municipalities and place them into it’s own plan and be ready to adopt that as an update to its comprehensive plan in December of 2003.  What they are trying to do this year will be even more in-depth than the latest comprehensive plan.  It will show a larger area of growth around each of the communities and many of them took a build-out approach.  Mr. Miller also said that all of these comprehensive plans matter because they not only show where future uses are expected to go, they also have goals and objectives that talk about resource allocations.  They all call for increase in industrial areas, commercial area, and to strike more of a balance between residential and industrial/commercial growth. 

The Economic Development Cooperation, this is the other half of what communities need, they need an economic development plan along with the comprehensive plan.  Mr. Hopkins, Executive Director of DeKalb County Economic Development Cooperation, is very much in support of this project because he knows that the small community needs to be able to say to developers what can come into their areas.

Ms. Quiram asked if the comprehensive plan is being done by Land Vision?  Mr. Miller said yes, they all are being done by Land Vision.

Mr. Zucker asked if all communities are included in the comprehensive plan update?  Mr. Miller said all except for Maple Park.

Mr. Miller explained to the committee about the road system in DeKalb County.  He said that the best thing that the County can do is focus on it’s road infrastructure.  There was a map from 2000 that Mr. Miller showed to the committee that showed the County’s primary and secondary arterial roads and major and minor “collector” roads.  The reason that those roads are important is because those are the County’s transportation corridors to be able to move individuals from one place to another in the County.  The way that the County can protect the capacity of those roads is by discouraging individual driveways on every single property on those roads,  Because every time you interrupt that road with a driveway, you slow it down, Mr. Miller continued to explain.  The County should try to avoid it from happening on Peace Road, Somonauk Road, Perry Road and Baseline Road, among others. What this committee can do is to look at that network and look at what the County Engineer can do to endorse the maintenance and improvement of the County’s primary infrastructure that helps economic development and protection of those roads as collectors and arterials.  The County needs to be able to work with municipalities to discourage using those roads as local roads with a lot of access points.  He said that the County should also encourage frontage roads to the municipalities. The members of the Regional Planning Commission need to make sure that it’s made part of the Comprehensive Plan that each community is adopting. 

Chairman Van Buer asked, “What do we do about the fact that a road ends in another county?”  He also wanted to know who visualized the collectors or did it just happen because someone took traffic counts?  Mr. Miller said that Mr. Lorence would be able to explain it better to the committee next month.   However, what he understands is that the state routes became arterials because they were state routes and the state controlled the access on them and maintains the roads.  Local roads were determined by solely the traffic counts. The other thing that drives a designation of the roads is what is happening around it.  Does it begin to function as a bypass road?  Maybe it was never designed to be used as a collector or arterial road, but now it starts to serve that function because growth has approached it.  Now a road that used to get ignored, becomes important.  Randall Road in Kane County, as an example, over a twenty-year period has now become an important road. 

Chairman Van Buer then said that the County as a whole needs to figure out what the definition of growth means?  Some people think that it means to continue to expand out geographically.  But, when we are talking about economic growth, we are talking about increasing the per capita income and deepening the investment, not this idea that you have to annex and annex.   Maybe this would be the key to this committee where we should be educating the people about economic development. 

Mr. McBride said that he feels that there are two components when dealing with growth. The one item is what Chairman Van Buer just said. The other component for a small business is that they feel that they may not be more productive, they just have more customers.  Some people want both of the components, they want productivity and a large piece of the pie as the communities grow. 

Chairman said that education is important too. We need to figure out how do we make sure that we keep funding education.  He also said with regards to farmers, they require less and less services because they have fewer people out there.

Mr. Miller said that that is a point that Mr. Cliff Simonson is always saying.  That in terms of our property taxes, farming is the best bet.  He is right about that. 

He also said that the comprehensive plans coming out of the communities all feature investment in existing areas as well.  What he feels we are all talking about when we are talking about growth and development is livable communities, quality of life and resource allocations.  Where are you going to put your efforts, attention, time and money? 

Mr. Zucker asked Mr. Miller, what’s gone wrong in downtown DeKalb? Mr. Miller said that he doesn’t feel that enough attention has been given to the downtown.  DeKalb, he feels, does not value their downtown enough.  There are two ways to kill a downtown.  If you think about the most desirable communities with regards to their downtowns, you will find that is that they have a central business district that is pedestrian oriented with retail uses, ground floor. They recognize that these items are what make people come to their downtown.  They have wide sidewalks, benches, decorative light fixtures, common signage, common theme, and attractive planters.  These are places that people want to go and congregate.  Boutique shops, specialty shops are other items that they have.  The quickest way to kill a downtown like that is to encourage a development on the fringe of town that provides the exact same shopping.  And also, if they attach a grocery store to the shopping mall and make it one-stop shopping, then it all gets “sucked out” of the downtown and kills it.  By recognizing the value of a downtown and then enhancing it as a destination, not allowing it to be occupied by offices that don’t attract people to them, is what they should be doing, he feels.  Investment in your downtown with regards to its aesthetics, the services that it offers, and what retail uses are located there, is one of the wisest things that any community, that wants to establish a sense of place, can do.

Mr. Miller said that there are a couple of things that this committee might want to endorse.  One would be more active involvement in the Regional Plan Commission and make it more effective then it is now and the Economic Development Corporation.

Mr. McBride asked if there were any water supply issues?  Mr. Miller said not that he’s aware of.  Mr. Miller continued by saying that he didn’t feel that there had been a comprehensive study done on the issue. 

After further discussion it was suggested that there could possibly be a seminar that the RPC could hold once or twice a year to listen to ideas from all of the communities (plan commissions and city councils).  Mr. Miller said that the RPC meets next week and one of the items that they will be talking about is agenda items for the upcoming year.  He said that he would ask them if they would like to sponsor a seminar? 

Mr. Miller suggested to the committee that they could recommend that they County encourage expansion of the Regional Plan Commission in terms of its function and the opportunities it represents.  You could highlight some areas that you could recommend to the full committee and the full board.  The ideas is that the Regional Plan Commission could do “these things as well” and that there is a reason to do these things. 

Mr. Zucker said that he felt that public transportation is important to remember to include in our discussion with regards to growth and the RPC. Mr. Miller said that he feels that the two organizations are working cooperatively.  The Comprehensive Plan will have a direct bearing on what the MPO creates.  The intent is that they do not operate independently.  There is so much cross over that they work together, Mr. Miller continued.

Chairman Van Buer and the committee thanked Mr. Miller for a very informative report and discussion.

Chairman Van Buer said that he would invite Mr. Lorence to the next meeting and that the committee was to think about work assignments that they would like to be assigned to.  They also discussed whether or not to invite county bankers to a meeting to discuss venture capital for economic development reasons.  The agreed to discuss this further at the next meeting also.

ADJOURNMENT

Moved by Mr. Zucker, seconded by Mr. Andreasen, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

                                                          Respectfully submitted,

                                                          _________________________________
                                                          Frank D. Van Buer, Chairman

______________________________
Mary C. Supple, Secretary