Years of work will wait a little longer for the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission to consider after the commission self-reported a failure to adequately notify the public about an open meeting.
An hour and 17 minutes before the Planning and Zoning Commission was scheduled to meet to take up Forward SGF for debate and a potential vote of endorsement, the Springfield Department of Public Information and Civic Engagement announced the meeting was canceled.
“The meeting was not adequately posted as required by (s)tate law,” a statement from the city of Springfield reads. “Proper posting of public meetings is necessary to ensure opportunity for those desiring to attend and very important to the (c)ity.”
The statement was sent out at 5:13 p.m. Oct. 25, just more than an hour before the commission was scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m.
Forward SGF is a 20-year comprehensive plan for Springfield’s growth and development scheduled to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission before it will go to the Springfield City Council for formal adoption in November.
“We do not anticipate this will affect the timeline for planned City Council action Nov. 14,” the city’s statement reads. “Additional details will be released as soon as a new date is determined. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
What the Sunshine Law says
Chapter 610 of the Missouri Revised Statutes contains important portions of the Missouri Sunshine Law, a set of requirements written to keep state and local government accessible for citizens of Missouri.
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“All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date, and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered,” the law reads, in part. “The notice of the meeting shall identify the mode by which the meeting will be conducted and the designated location where the public may observe and attend the meeting.”
The law requires the governing body to give notice at least 24 hours before the meeting, except in emergencies.
The law requires the governing body conducting a meeting to post a notice “on a bulletin board or other prominent place which is easily accessible to the public and clearly designated for that purpose at the principal office of the body holding the meeting, or if no such office exists, at the building in which the meeting is to be held.”
The city of Springfield generally posts notices for its boards, commissions and subcommittees on its website, and also offers an option for any interested person to subscribe to email lists that send out meeting notices automatically.
Forward SGF’s goals
The comprehensive plan has 13 chapters, with chapters dedicated to land use, community outreach organizations, economic development, plans for certain key areas of the city, a transportation and transit plan, a downtown plan, a public facilities plan and plans for parks, greenways and natural resources.
Much of the final chapter on plan implementation is about the Springfield city government working with partners, both established organizations and new partners.
“Quality of place,” is a phrase that pops up frequently in Springfield City Council meetings and throughout the 200-plus-page document that is the draft of the Forward SGF plan. Place quality is defined as a community’s ability to house neighborhoods with living spaces that are also full of amenities and commercial districts.
Within the pages of Forward SGF, there are specific plans to revitalize parts of Commercial Street, Trafficway, West Chestnut Expressway, North Glenstone Avenue and the downtown area surrounding Park Central Square.
The final draft of Forward SGF will be used to communicate Springfield’s vision for itself, to inform developers looking at Springfield about what sort of economic environment they will be getting into, to set the framework for development regulations, to coordinate initiatives on housing and recreation, to point out opportunities for investment and to help the Springfield City Council and other government groups set their budgets each year.
Forward SGF’s potential impact on zoning
Forward SGF could change the lens through which future members of the Planning and Zoning Commission examine development proposals. The plan promotes neighborhood-by-neighborhood planning, with the idea that a “complete neighborhood” is well-rounded with different types of housing and different commercial entities close to houses.
Forward SGF contains potential philosophical changes for planning and zoning to shift from governing land use to scrutinizing the quality of construction and the techniques contractors use.
Forward SGF documents will include a massive appendix, and “action matrix” made up of 687 line items of recommendations that Springfield can implement to achieve the goals found within Forward SGF.
Project Manager Brandon Nolin, who works for Chicago-based consulting firm Houseal Lavigne Associates, started with consultants surveying and meeting with Springfieldians in 2019 to get a feel for the city’s present conditions.
“We had a series of really excellent visioning workshops with hundreds and hundreds of people showing up,” Nolin said. “I think between three different major events we had 800 people, so tremendous response from the Springfield community throughout this process.”
The consultants recorded more than 10,000 interactions with Springfield residents, about 2,400 of which were done in person, and 7,600 pieces of input came from online surveys and forums. Nolin said it was one of the most publicly-engaged projects Houseal Lavigne has done.
