Janesville Community Development Authority Meeting - January 21, 2026
Janesville Community Development Authority Meeting - January 21, 2026
The Community Development Authority (CDA) met on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 at 5:30 PM in City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included a presentation on the city's zoning and subdivision code rewrite, a public hearing and approval of updates to the Rent Assistance Administrative Plan, and a director's report. All votes were unanimous.
Consent Calendar
- Approved the minutes of the December 17, 2025 regular meeting and the Budget Performance Report under consent without separate discussion.
Discussion Items
City of Janesville Planning Presentation on Zoning and Subdivision Code Rewrite
- Dwayne Sherry (Planning Director) and Brian Schweigel (Senior Planner) presented proposed changes to the zoning code, focusing on expanding housing opportunities. Key proposals include consolidating six residential districts into three, allowing residential uses in commercial districts, reducing minimum lot sizes and setbacks, increasing density, and streamlining approval processes. For example, on a five-acre site, the number of possible single-family lots would increase from 25 to 43 under the new R1 district; multifamily density could rise from 96 to 534 units on a five-acre R3 site. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and alternative housing types (e.g., cottage courts, tiny homes) are also included.
- CDA member Michael Cass asked whether parking could be unbundled from lease requirements to reduce costs; staff noted the code allows parking reductions based on location and design but deferred to market decisions. Cass also inquired about incentivizing infill development alongside large-scale projects; staff responded that code changes apply uniformly and that ownership and neighbor preferences often constrain infill, but the code aims to lower costs and streamline review for infill sites.
- No vote was taken; the presentation was informational.
Public Hearing and Consideration of Updates to the Rent Assistance Administrative Plan (Homeownership Choice Voucher Program – A Place of My Own)
- Staff presented revisions to Policy 33 of the Rental Assistance Administrative Plan, which enables housing choice voucher recipients to use rental assistance toward mortgage payments for homeownership. Since the program began in 2021, no participants have used it. Staff consulted with other housing authorities and local lenders to identify barriers and updated the plan to: clarify acceptable loan types (FHA loans allow the voucher as a payment offset; conventional loans count it as income), add requirement for cash reserves of $1,000 at closing for maintenance, include post-purchase homeowner education, and specify grounds for termination of assistance. Staff recommended approval.
- CDA members asked questions about termination procedures and program outreach. Staff explained the due process for termination (including appeals to an independent hearing officer and circuit court) and noted plans to meet with lenders and real estate agents in March 2026 to promote the program.
- A public hearing was opened; no members of the public spoke or submitted written comments. The hearing was closed.
Key Outcomes
- Unanimous approval (voice vote) of the revisions to the City of Janesville Rental Assistance Administrative Plan Policy 33, dated January 21, 2026. Motion by Lisa Hegins, seconded by Scott Greenland.
- The director reported that a federal appropriations bill has been drafted, proposing an 8% increase in housing choice voucher assistance and a 2% increase in administrative fee funding, but a formula reduction may affect Janesville. Community Development Block Grant and HOME funds are expected to be level-funded.
- The director also announced the resignation of CDA member Brian Bridges due to competing priorities, creating a vacancy to be filled through the city's normal board/commission appointment process.
Meeting Transcript
First 2026 community development authority meeting it to order. Jennifer, if you want to go ahead with roll call. Scott Greenland. Here. Michael Cass. Here. Michael Mueller. Here. Max Ryan. Here. Lisa Hegins. Here. And Aaron Burdick is absent. And Brian Bridges submitted his resignation to the CDA. Thank you. Items two minutes of the regular meeting scheduled or held on December 17th, 2025. And item C, I'm sorry, three, the budget performance report will be approved and passed under consent unless anyone wants those polled. All right, seeing none. Item four requests and comments from the public regarding items on the agenda not requiring a public hearing, and on matters which can be affected by CDA action. Thank you. All right, item five, uh 5A, City of Janesville planning presentation on zoning and subdivision coder right. I will have uh Dwayne Cherrick and Brian Swiegel from the planning division. Okay, thank you. Uh good evening, Dwayne Sherry Planning Director for the City, and I am joined here this evening with my my colleague and senior planner Brian Schweigel. And I did not uh misspell his name on the first slide of our presentation, so my apologies to you, Brian. Um tonight uh we're gonna try and walk you through as best we can the uh City of Janesville zoning and subdivision ordinance update focusing more specifically on the zoning code itself and uh housing uh in particular and I think our approach with the slides that you'll see in the discussion that we'll have will uh fall generally into three categories basically uh districts, zoning classifications in other words, and locations where those districts are mapped in the city that get at some of the changes that are being recommended and proposed to expand housing opportunities in the city. We'll also talk about review processes and procedures that coincide with the new set of uh development regulations, and then uh Brian will talk a little bit more about uh development standards themselves. So I guess first you know, as we set out uh 18 to 20 months ago here on this uh code update, it was driven by some guiding principles, and those were generally to make sure that our our code is brought up to uh up to date, meaning consistency with state uh statutes in particular and uh the city's fairly recently updated comprehensive plan. Uh we want to simplify the code uh for variety of reasons. We want to continue to maintain that high quality development and redevelopment that uh we've been experiencing, be responsive to the development community is as well, and then uh balance growth and reinvestment with those impacts to neighborhoods. The uh one of the critical uh aspects of the code update is hearing from uh the community uh at large stakeholders. We've had some fairly extensive uh uh I guess engagement in terms of community-wide survey approximately a year ago, multiple internal external stakeholder meetings. I think we cast a wide net of um folks that were brought in to talk about their issues, concerns from the development community that is uh about uh the existing code and challenges and what they would like to see. And all of that is uh of course available on the city's uh website, which is devoted to this code update. All the materials, all the meetings, uh these items that I'm I'm referring to here on the slide can all be found on the city's website if there's anything that you uh you wanted to uh look at in more particular. Uh but we we have eight articles that make up the code. Coincidentally, we've had eight separate presentations over the course of the last 12-13 months before the plan commission to review draft iterations of each of those articles and the land division ordinance itself. The the code um in basically consists of two parts. There's a set of regulations which we refer to as the text, and then there are the mapped uh zoning classifications that encompass all property located within the city and generally range between the different colors, uh residential, commercial, industrial, and then special districts. The um you know the four bullet points below the zoning map are the elements I think that we're gonna focus on now. We'll we'll get into that right after this slide, but I think it's important to just note as you can see here that we're we're actually consolidating or compressing several of the zoning districts that currently exist into a reduced number of districts. And by way of uh the columns on the left side, we've gone from six residential districts essentially down to three, and then adding two new districts. Uh likewise commercial has gone from seven down to I I guess three primary districts and then uh two in the downtown area. Industrial slight reduction from four to three, and then we're maintaining certain special purpose districts. Um the the I guess this is a good indication of how our code is is changing, evolving. Currently, we have a zoning ordinance that uh essentially separates land uses, meaning that residential land uses predominantly only are allowed or exist within residential zoning classifications. Similar similarly, commercial uses and industrial uses don't cut across uh zoning designations. This code changes that, I think, fairly drastically in the sense that residential uses are now allowed in all commercial districts, uh, commercial uses, some neighborhood-based commercial activities are allowed in residence districts. We're expanding industrial uses to a certain extent into commercial, commercial into industrial, and I think the blue uh tab on the bottom is is essentially the only thing that's somewhat consistent with our current code. And we'll talk a little bit more about what that includes.
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