Historic southside plan added to city plan

September 17, 2017 at 5:05 a.m. | Updated September 18, 2017 at 3:12 p.m.

by Nicole Roberts

A woman gets out of her car in the reflection of a mural on East Dunklin Street on July 22, 2015. The mural "commemorates the role of the South Side in Jefferson City history. Settled by German immigrants around the time of the Civil War and known as Muenchberg or Munichburg, the South Side became its own distinct residential and business community by the turn of the twentieth century," according to a description on the mural.
A woman gets out of her car in the reflection of a mural on East Dunklin Street on July 22, 2015. The mural "commemorates the role of the South Side in Jefferson City history. Settled by German immigrants around the time of the Civil War and known as Muenchberg or Munichburg, the South Side became its own distinct residential and business community by the turn of the twentieth century," according to a description on the mural.

The Historic Southside/Old Munichburg District and Neighborhood Plan has been added to Jefferson City's comprehensive plan, according to Missouri law.

The Jefferson City Council held off voting on the plan at its Sept. 5 meeting because City Counselor Ryan Moehlman had procedural concerns about how the City Council reviews Comprehensive Plan amendments.

Under state law, the neighborhood plan was added to the city's Comprehensive Plan when the Jefferson City Planning and Zoning Commission passed it July 13.

According to Chapter 89 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, a city can create a planning commission that can "make, adopt (and) amend" a city plan. The commission could either "adopt the (city) plan as a whole by a single resolution, or, as the work of making the whole city plan progresses, may from time to time adopt a part or parts."

Moehlman said: "State law kind of turns the regular processes that the public is used to seeing - where the Planning and Zoning Commission is the recommending body and the council is the decision maker - on their heads (because) in the realm of comprehensive plans, the Planning and Zoning Commission is the decision maker."

However, in a memorandum sent out Friday, Moehlman said the Jefferson City Zoning Code allows the City Council to modify, approve or deny a proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment, as well as schedule public hearings regarding that amendment.

"This could potentially contribute to a certain amount of uncertainty regarding the status of Comprehensive Plan amendments," he said in the memorandum. "Specifically, it could be very difficult to determine the legal status of a Comprehensive Plan amendment that, hypothetically, was approved by the (Planning and Zoning) Commission but denied by the City Council."

Moehlman recommended since the Southside plan was added to the Comprehensive Plan under state law, the Southside plan not be added to the Sept. 18 City Council agenda in its current form; its current form asks the council to endorse the plan.

He said the City Council could instead recognize the plan and the people involved, though, in a non-legislative action, not required by state law.

In the memorandum, he said the city's Law Department and Planning and Protective Services Department will work on an ordinance to amend the city's zoning code so Comprehensive Plan procedures are more consistent with Chapter 89 of the Missouri Revised Statutes.

Moehlman and Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin said deciding the City Council's role in Comprehensive Plan amendments was a simple, procedural concern and was not a reflection on the Southside plan.

"My concerns really have nothing to do with the content of the Southside plan itself," Moehlman said. "The Southside plan just happened to be the vehicle that brought those concerns to the forefront."

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