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At around 3:20 or so, the City finally posted the agenda for next Tuesday’s meeting of the Mayor and Council and, as I suspected, there’s stuff in there that could draw a crowd. First, though, the simple stuff. In addition to the usual approval of the minutes and such, they have a few appointments to citizen committees and requests for staff guidance on some straightforward items they’ve discussed before (the “Asbury bonds” and city code changes for FEMA compliance).
Now for the interesting stuff. There’s four items on the agenda that are capable of generating extended discussion:

1. The City Manager’s latest report on the Day Laborer situation at 117 N Frederick Ave. The background material linked from that item is a report on relevant ordinances that the Council had requested several weeks — if not months — ago.
2. During the Historic District Commission portion of the meeting, they will be discussion an application by Hamza Halici/Halici, Inc. to demolish a historic property at 309 N Frederick Ave.
3. A draft of a new ordinance will be introduced; the ordinance implements a four-month “deferral” on multi-family redevelopment.
4. The third staff guidance item is a little more complex than the other two. It regards the details of the proposed special study area for the GE Tech Park. This is an issue that the Council has been spinning on for months, although it could be that they are finally about done with it. The remaining details are related to allowable densities, sequencing and open space requirements. These are highlighted in the PDF linked earlier in this item.

I highly recommend that everyone interested in these issues download those PDFs and read through them by Tuesday. Some of the documents — especially the Halici application — refer to large numbers of exhibits that are only available for viewing at City Hall, and since they of course waited until just before close of business on the Friday before a holiday weekend to post the agenda, your only opportunity to take a look at those documents will be during the day on Tuesday.

I’ll likely have some more comments on some of these items after I’ve had an opportunity to read them more thoroughly.

This event used to be called “Olde Towne Day”, and I’m not quite certain why Olde Towne isn’t allowed to have its own day anymore, but anyway it will be held this year on Sunday, September 17 from Noon to 5 p.m. Last year they appeared to be trying to ramp things up a little bit by bringing in a nationally-known act, Toby Lightman. This year it appears that the big act will be Josh Kelly, with the Pat McGee Band following up at the concert pavilion. Deanna Bogart, who at least has albums for sale on Amazon, and the oldies standby The Fabulous Hubcaps, will be on the secondary stage near the train station. In past years, the Hubcaps, or possibly even the Jack Diamond band, would probably have been the biggest act in the festival.