The meeting became particularly contentious when the commission addressed a city code recommendation amendment that clarified landscaping used to screen parking areas from adjacent properties.

The commission spent the large majority of the meeting discussing their concerns with Planning and Zoning Administrator Darcy Schmitt, who discussed her decision-making with multiple Planning Commission members on the addition of driveways with four or more required spaces to be screened with either shrubbery or fencing.

“We’re trying to reduce the number of variance requests, but now that we add this additional requirement for landscaping of driveways which appears to be controversial, it seems like we are going in the opposite direction, towards more variance requests.” Zoning Commission appointee Chris Wolf said.

Matt Hagan, agent at Hagan Realty, is vehemently opposed to the amendment of the code, and made his opinion clear to the Zoning Commission late Tuesday evening.

“The current proposal discriminates between rental and homeowner properties,” Hagan said. “If you’re going to pass an ordinance, in my opinion, it should be enforced equally across all types of property and not just placed solely on rental property.”

East Lansing Community Development Analyst Tim Schmitt worked on the ordinance and was in attendance for the session.

“Ultimately, I hope the ordinance is adopted in a way that the Planning Commission can recommend to the city council and that the city council can adopt,” Schmitt said. “We don’t have an agenda, we’re trying to make some changes that have been raised to us over the years as being concerns, so we’re trying to address them all.”