Plan Commission — Minutes

Town of Fond du Lac Planning Commission Meeting Minutes Last updated 9/30/25 Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm. Motion to approve the minutes from 8/19 by Mike Guilfoile , second by Lisa McArthur, carries 5-0. Uploaded to website. Review a CSM for Sparkops in the Aeronautical Park (GIS). Lot configuration, access to all parcels, setbacks, easements, etc. Per email from the county, the county needs to review but city does not. Derek Semenas wants to combine lots to accommodate a larger, 156,000 building and another 80,000 sq foot building (as phase 2). There’s a development agreement with FDL county that specifies the timeline. The second building is a distribution center. Tom Ackerman (sp?) realtor and interim CEO for Spark Ops. They do lots of stages for large events (like Fox Sports). Larger contracts means they need a bigger facility. Hours of operation are 6:30 to 5:30 (with OT) with 25-50 employees. Farrell drive has been officially vacated. Motion to recommend the town board approve the CSM by Herb Kedinger, second by Mike Guilfoile, carries 5-0. Review and make recommendations on site plans for Sparkops in the Aeronautical Park. The Planning Commission asked them to provide the development agreement and engineering the next submission in the process Building height and light restrictions exist for the airport and SparkOps is comfortable with all of those. Herb Kedinger asked about material storage and possible ways to mitigate noise concerns. There would be some outside/yard storage toward the back side of the building. Scott Roltgen raised concerns about grading and drainage. County has approved the preliminary site plan per Derek Semenas. Request that Eric Otte review the site plan. Tom says the Aeronautical Park’s covenants address screening and noise requirements. Covenants do not include the hours of operations. Parking requirements? Brandon W6995 Forest Avenue – are the covenants publicly available. We don’t think so. Matt Neuton (sp?) W4768 Forest Avenue – questions about timing and operations. It’s a pre-engineered building. Have not seen building plans. Doug has looked at them. Motion to recommend the town board approve the preliminary plan contingent on engineering consultant approval, review of the covenants, DNR notice of intent, review of the building plans, and review of the developer’s agreement. Motion by Scott Roltgen, second by Mike Guilfoile. Carries 5-0. Discussion and recommendations for updates to the sign ordinance. Refer to the Sign Worksheet. Directions from attorney: “We currently have sign provisions in a couple of different ordinances. The goal would be to get everything into one place. That place should be a single sign section in the zoning ordinance that captures all of the sign-related rules for all of the districts. The purpose of this worksheet is to gather the information needed to draft that section. As we’ve discussed previously, we can no longer categorize or regulate signs according to their content. So any definition or standard that is based on what a sign says has to go. Instead, we now categorize signs based on their physical characteristics with no regard to their content. You’ll see that the worksheet does this. I highlighted all of the different sign types. These are the typical ones, but the PC could come up with others if necessary. They just need to make sure that any new ones are not defined by their content. Once we have a full list of sign types, the worksheet is set up so that they can go district by district to identify which sign types should be allowed in which district. Similarly, it allows them to add dimensional restrictions for signs for each district (e.g., sign size, sign height, number of signs per lot, etc.) They have the authority to add or remove types of standards. We are not married to these ones. Toward the end of the ordinance there are some general provisions that are there primarily so that they see them (indemnification, nonconformities, etc).” The planning commission discussed the sign worksheet. Planning commission members will send their completed worksheets to Jess by October 16th for her to consolidate for discussion at the October 21st meeting. Adjournment at 7:21 pm. Next Meeting is October 21st at 6pm. Agenda items include a sign for Fredland Storage and a coffee shop for Faith and Truth church. Jess to ask Patti about Lisa’s nameplate