Village of Forest Hills Work Session Minutes

June 02, 2026

7:00 PM

 

 

1.      Call to order: Mayor Mau called the meeting to order.

2.      Any additional budget comments: None

3.      Rules and Procedures: Mayor Mau noted that the Village Rules of Procedure have not been updated since 2014 and that document needs to be updated and revised. He asked Attorney Coward to review the document when he got a chance and let the Council know what legally needs to be changed.

4.      Summer Social:

a.       Date:  July 25, 2026, from 1:00 – 4:00 pm.

b.     Location: Catamount Jaxe

c.      Refreshments/Food:  Council discussed doing snacks and appetizers instead of catering a full meal since the social will be held in the afternoon; it was suggested to do trays from the supermarket and possibly trays from Chick-fil-A. Council recommended getting drinks and putting them on ice the day before the social.  There will also be bar service at Catamount Jaxe, with drinks available for purchase.  Councilmember Bollinger said that she would take care of getting refreshments

d.     Invitations: Recommended that invitations be sent a month before the social.

5.       Planning Consultant and Land Use Plan Discussion:

Why update – what are legal requirements – Mayor Mau said that he had spoken with Attorney Coward about the legal requirements and that he will review them and get back to the Council.  Mayor Mau noted that the Council needs to update the Village land use plan occasionally because of the zoning controls, but our current land use plan, if you read it, talks about multifamily and townhomes.  Attorney Coward said he did read the statute, and the current document covers almost all of what the statute covers, missing one.  He noted that revising the plan more often is important because a developer may come in and say that you have said that something is allowed that you did not intend, so that weakens its effect, and zoning against it weakens the position of the Village.  The Council discussed hiring someone, but the statute is clear on what is needed and would like to do as much as possible before hiring someone.  The Council needs to figure out what your community’s trends are, if the values change, or if the guiding principles are the same. Those are the kind of things that if you just follow what's in the statute, the planning board could easily decide whether this is good or that's not good. They need to keep a record of it.  We applied for a grant that could give us up to twenty thousand dollars to help, but it is specific to doing conservation development as part of the land use plan. We received a quote of $50,000 from a Planning Company, and that was even having us do quite a bit of the work. Mayor Mau noted what Jay just said: if we don't have to change the parts that are still the same, then why do we need to hire someone? We just need to change the parts that need changing.  Councilmember Shields noted that the recent village election was kind of clear that they wanted to keep it very residential. There is not a lot of questions about our values at this point. The people spoke in the ballot box; we got our guiding principles there. And I would even say they spoke in all the meetings over the last ten months, too; you have heard lots of people say no multifamily. We have heard from everybody during the Brown Haven meetings. Everyone was very vocal, and if there is anybody out there who has a different opinion, they haven't made it known over the past year and a half.

Can you imagine if we had a conservation land trust in part of that open space? But it lets you build trails, and if there was a bike trail to go down the valley?

Consensus was that we need to tell the planning board that their project right now is just to come up with actionable steps.  If they could maybe come up with a checklist for the July meeting.

·         WATR study-update: No new updates

·         Grant update: We are waiting for a response

6.       Planning Board Vacancy: Mayor Mau noted that we don't have to have a committee, and that members are not elected officials.  Someone can be appointed to serve the remainder of a member's term upon that member's departure. Our ETJ person timed out, so we need that one and then one other. If you know anybody in the ETJ that you think would be good, ask if they would be interested, maybe the guy who wanted to file an ordinance complaint, maybe he would be interested. He's in the ETJ, Rick Swell.

7.      Board Member Replacement: Mayor Mau asked Council members to check with anyone who may be interested.

8.      Website update – live:

a.      Continue to update

b.     Photo collection update: Councilmember Couture posted on the website asking for any photos from residents but has not heard anything so far.

9.       Items to keep on the radar and get completed:

a.       Fund balance policy – no update; long-range need to do a formal review:  Mayor Mau noted that the numbers they put up for what most municipalities are doing now are much higher than eighty to ninety percent of our budget; that's why we just want to make sure we look at it again. We've got one in place; is it best practice based on what other people are doing right now? I guess technically that we already are there because we have all that money sitting there, but do we need to change our policy?

b.     Aggressive animal ordinance – no update

c.      Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) – have information, need to develop

10.Calendar: Again, what should the Village track on an internal calendar? Please get items to Stephanie.   Council recommended a calendar for work to be done in the Village for roads and other maintenance.  We need to map that out and come up with a plan for the next 15 years that guarantees a plan that we can show people what is scheduled to be repaired and when.

11.Adjourn: The work session adjourned at 7:35 PM.