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1990 09 24CHPJIHASSEN CZTY CO~TL REGULAR tEETTNG SEPTEHBER 24, 1991) Mayor Chmte! called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.. The meeting was opened w~th the Pledge to the Flag. COUN~XLHEHBERS PRESENT: Mayor Chmiel, Councilman Workman, Councilwoman Otmler and Councilman Johnson STI~FF pRE~.NT: Don Ashworth, Roger Knutson, Pau! Krauss, 30 Ann Oisen, Gary Warren, Todd Gerhardt, and Scott Hart RPPR~aI. OF ~F, JIOR: Councilman Johnson moved, Councilwoman Otmler seconded to approve the agenda w~th the following addit~one under Counc£1 Presentations= Councilwoman Oimler wanted to d~scuss Kiowa Circle, Old St. Hubert's Church and an update from staff on their meeting w~th Met Council. All voted ~n favor and the agenda as amended and the motion carried. CONSENT ~GEN~: Mayor Chmlel moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Hanager's recommendations: a. Lake Susan Hills West 5th Addition Project 90-16 (Private): 1) Approve Final Plat 2) Approve Development Contract 3) Approve Utility and Street Construction Plans and Specifications d. Approve One Day Temporary Liquor License Applications: ~) Chanhassen L~ons C~ub, Oktoberfest, September 28 2) Chanhassen American Legion, Softbal! Tournament, September 29 e. Approval of Accounts f. City Council Minutes dated September 10, 1990 PlannLng CommLssLon M~nutes dated September S, 1990 Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated August 21, 1990 PubLic Safety CommLesion M~nutee dated August 9, 1990 g. TH 101Real/gneent Project, Authorize Acquisition: 1) Resolution ~115: Taco Shop 2) Resolution ~)O-~J,6: Chanhassen Vtllage Apartment 3) Resolution ~90-117: Apple Valley Red-E-Mix 4) Resolution ~)0-11~: Builder's Development, /nc. voted tn favor and the motion carried unanimously. City Council Meet£ng - September 24, 1990 C. RETNTT3EATE WEST 78TH STREET DETACHHENT THPROYEHEJNT. PRO3ECT 87-2, .Cie ! ILL FOR PUBLIC HEARZNG. Councilwoman Dimler: Item 1(c) has to do with the relnittatlon of West 78th Street detachment Improvement Project. We're now at a cost of about $2 million. We're close to $2 milllon. ! just wanted to ask Gary, I dldn't have a chance to come tn and look at the old report. How much of an Increase is that? Gary Warren: Councilwoman Dimler, last time we upped the cost by about 10~ to recognize just inflationary factors and such. Actually this time I believe we may be down a little bit. Gary Ehret is here. Haybe Gary. Gary Ehret: The relnlttatton which occurred in August of 1989, the estimated project cost was about $1.75 million so it is up about 10~ again. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay, and you're sure prices are going to go up instead of down? W/th a recession coming now, let's thlnk about thts. Gary Warren: The oil is going to be a big impact obviously but whatever assessments and project costs will be the unit cost as bid and such so as you're aware, these are estimates in the feasibility anyway. We'll actual[y pay whatever ts constructed at the time it's constructed. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay, so we're Just going to approve the $2 million and It could be less? Gary Warren: Right. Exactly. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay. And then my other concern was that ! want to make sure that we preserve the hard fought for right-in/right-out. Gary Warren: The right-in/right-out ts a part of the construction plans at this point based on Council direction, that's correct. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay, thank you. Did you have anything? Mayor Chmtel: No, you answered the questions that I had. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay. Then I move approval of Item l(c). Councilman Workman: Second. Resolution ~1~0-119:. Councilwoman Oimler moved, Councilman Workman seconded to approve to RetnltLate West 78th Street Detachment :Improvement Project 87-2, Phase ! and called for a publtc hearing to be held on October 8, 1990. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. PUBL)J: ANNOUNCEMENTS= Mayor Chmtel: I have a public announcement regarding a Resolution commending the efforts of the agencies and personnel that assisted at the accident occurring in Chanhassen on September lOth of thls year and tt reads: Whereas, the City of Chanhassen relies on the cooperative efforts of area emergency City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 response agencies, and Whereas, on the morning of September lO, Z990 an accident occurred on State Highway 5 in the City of Chanhaesen, County of Carver, and Whereas, the potential seriousness of this accident cannot be underestimated because of the number of vehicles and victims Involved, Including a school bus loaded with elementary school students resulting in property damage to 4 vehicles and injuries to 49 people, and Whereas, the emergency Mutual Aid was necessary and requested from the following agencies, Carver County Sheriff's Department, Minnesota State Patrol, Chanhassen Fire Department, Chanhassen public Safety, Chaska Police Oepartment, Chaska Fire Oepartment, Eden Prairie Police Department, Excelsior Fire Department, Minnesota Oepartment of Natural Resources, Waconta Ridges Paramedics, St. Francis Regional Medical Center Paramedics and Minnesota Department of Transportation. Now Therefore, Be It Resolved by the City Counci! of the City of Chanhassen, that the professional efforts of the above agencies contributed to effective rescue efforts and management of the accident and It ts with sincere gratitude that the City of Chanhassen commends these agencies and It's personnel In providing assistance on the day of need. Passed and adopted by the Chanhassen City Councl! on the 18th day of September, 1990. I really feel that those accommendations were really needed and recoginition should be given because of the efforts that were extended by them. It was great work. The next item on our agenda Is the Visitor's Presentations. Councilman Johnson= Mr. Mayor? Mayor Chmlel: Jay? Councilman 3ohnson: Would you like to, thts is Values Week here tn town. Would you like to make an announcement on that also? Mayor Chmlel: I think we did last week but it's well worth It to announce tt one more time. The Golden Rule Community Values ts what they have within the School District of ~112 and It's called Be Excellent to Each Other and it's Values Week 1990 which is from the 23rd thru the 29th. It basically is a celebration of the community values within the cities of Carver, Chaska, Chanhassen, East Union and Victoria. It's a week that's filled with activities focusing on responsibility, integrity, learning, human worth and dignity, environmentalism, citizenship and respect for others and generousity. I think that many of the younger adults In the schools are following this and it really is an important value for all of us. As we see the Values Week at a glance. Sunday, September 23rd, the mintsterlum has involved in the planning of the participation of local churches to kick off the week's focus on community values. Monday, September 24th local clubs, businesses and service organizations have identified ways to promote Values Week. Tuesday and Wednesday, September 25th and 16th, John Crode11, a nationally recognized motivational and inspirational speaker will be addressing ways to promote Values Week. And on Thursday and Friday, It's also activities continuing in schools and communities. Each school has planned activities that focus on the community values. Saturday, September 29th there's a huge celebration on the High School campus in Chaska following the booster club's garage sale and that celebration begins at 4:30. Many of these values are just not taught at home. They're taught tn church and they're taught In school. I. thlnk it's Just a fantastic program that they have going on this. Thanks for reminding me 3ay. City Council Meeting - September VISITORS PRESENTATIONS: None PUBL~TC HEARING:_ GERTIFIGATION OF ~LINgUENT UTILITy. ACCOUNTS, Mayor Chmtel: I think everyone has had opportunity to review. If I could get a motlon on thls we can move rlght along. This lsa publlc heartng. Is there anyone else, before [ go that quickly, who would ltke to address this specific 1rem? Councilman Johnson moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The pubL1c hearing was closed. Councilman Johnson: Mr. Mayor, I'd ltke to ask one question. The same one I ask every year I guess. Councilwoman Dimler: Why be different this year? Councilman Johnson: Yeah, why be different this year. It seems as some people utillze thls as a way to use thls as a tax deduction is one of the rumors that I've heard. It comes on your tax bill now instead of as a other btll so they try to deduct it from thelr lncome tax whlch, do ue ever supply thls type of information that these charges are being added to someone's tax bill to the State or Feds or anything? Mayor Chmlel: Maybe the County may have a way to cover that by specifically putting in on there that it's a delinquent utility account. Councilman Johnson: Yeah, I thlnk they do but when you submit your taxes and whatever, you don't submit a Mayor Chmtel: If some people choose to do thts, that's thelr perogatlve. If they get caught, the IRS will take care of Lt. I guess we can't, I don't know if there's any way that we can do anything. Roger, ls there any? Councilman Johnson: Submit the list to them? Roger Knutson: You could submlt the list to the IRS. Councilman Johnson: They probably wouldn't know what to do with it. It's not in thelr book. Roger Knutson: You hear people, that comment made qulte often and that's why they do it but I don't see how the economics work for people. If you look at the late charges that's put on tt, no one's taxes. You lose. You can't win. Oon ~shworth: I believe we do publish the names. That should be a detriment in and of ltself but it doesn't seem to be. Mayor Chmiel: Well, some people may come on hard times too and I guess we can't overlook those. City Council Meeting - September 24, Resolut/on ~gO-lgO: Counc/l~an #orkman moved, Counc/]aan 3ohnaon seconded to approve the Certificat~on of Delinquent Utility Rccounte. All voted /n favor and the mot/on carried unanimously. ~RD OF BIDS: PARK PLACE II (Ct~tL~SEN LaJ~S BUSINESS P~RK 5TH ~DOITION). PRO3ECT 85-13B. Gary Warren: We received bids for Park Place Phase II as authorized. We received 9 bids very favorably and competitively bid. The low bidder, Northdale Construction Company, we are very famtllar with them from their activity in town here over the Last several years and they do satisfactory work. Low bid Is $133,411.50. The engineer's estimate was $140,000.00. We are therefore recommending award of the project to Northdale In that amount. We did want to add a caveat here that it was conditioned on us getting, we have a couple of temporary easements yet we're waiting to come in the door but we expect them to be in here soon. Mayor Chmtel: Where's NorthdaLe from? Gary Warren: Northdale is Elk River. Mayor ChmieL: Elk River? Gary Warren: Yeah, here tn the metro area. Resolution t90-121: Council,Dean Oi~ler ~oued, Councilman gork~an seconded to award the bid for Park Place Phase II (Chanhaaeen Lake~ Busine8~ Park Sth add/tion), Project No. 85-13B to Northdale Construction in the amount of $133,411.50. all voted in favor and the ~otlon carried unanimously. AUTHORIZE PREPARATION OF R FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR t~]INEIJRSHTR PiM~tCM~Y ~. Gary Warren: Mr. Mayor, at the last meeting staff was directed to pursue two questions. One was a consideration whether this feasibility study could be done in-house. The other was to communicate with the City of ¥tctorla since the southerly 1,300 feet of the roadway lies In their Jurisdiction, as to their participation in such. Relative to the first issue, we have looked at staff backlog. We do It as a matter of fact with our project loadings to see where we stand. The decision as far as the use of a consultant in the matter relates more however to the design of the project and the continuity through into the construction phase. We do not have staff time available to eventually deal with the design and as ae did on Frontier Trail, ae found it very helpful to have the consultant involved early on with the project to work with the neighborhood meetings and to take the input. So it was a combination of not having staff time and also to have the continuity through the design of the project that we made the recommendation for EngeLhardt to pursue the project and I think you all can recognize that ! think Bill did a real good job on Frontier Trail. Mayor Chmiel: Yes. I Just have one specific question on that Gary. What's your position on putting this out for bids rather than just assigning to a specific consultant or engineering company? City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 Gary Warren: ! guess my approach has been that there are certain projects appropriate to bidding professional services and that's somewhat a dirty term sometimes when ue talk about professional services because dollars aren't always the prudent bottom line issue here. I have followed a policy to try to work with a limited number of consultants as long as they are performing satisfactory for the City and I do that for a specific reason. That being that if we get too diffused in our assigning of projects, we give every firm in the metro area one little project here, it's a practical matter but ue lose their allegiance. They have bigger fish to take care of so I have tried to be restrictive in using say 4 or 5 consultants. Not to give it all to one obviously, and to choose from those consultants the expertise that ! think suits the project. In this case Engelhardt because of the good local I think impression that Bill has and the ability to work with people in that regard. ! think this is a good choice for him to open this up and put the consultants through an exercise of preparing proposals and statements of qualifications and running through that process. 9uite frankly, that puts them through a lot of extra effort and puts us through extra time and effort to probably come up with the same conclusion. So in this regard, then professional services I think that we look for the best consultant and I think we have several of them out here who have been doing good work for us and I pick from that group. Concerning Victoria, I did talk with their city planner. We've exchanged messages with Hiriam Porter. She's out of town this week. Their indication to me is that they're interested in the project. However, they don't know at this point in time, they haven't sat down budgetarily to figure out how they would pay for it. Preliminary to discussions that I did have with them was the fact that the feasibility study would be an element to identify really what the cost implications would be. This roadway like for us is in their State Aid system but they weren't certain, not having a full time engineer on staff, what their balances were and such so they've got some things to work out. So ! would say they're giving support for the project but there is no firm commitment at this time as far as financing the project. The City can choose not to improve the road for that southerly 1,300 feet. Hy approach to the project has been that the feasibility study is not a large expense in that it would, that's the tool where we can work out the details and the expenses and give Victoria something to more specifically address. Hayor Chmiel: I think there's a real safety problem on Hinnewashta exiting onto TH 5 as was discussed with the residents within that area and [ would like to see us somehow consider that as part of the full project only because our residents probably use that more so than Victoria. I'd like to have probably the safest kind of intersection within there. They presently are, as you well know, taking off on the road that parallels TH 5 and coming back out on that highway. It's a better sight approach for them and ! understand that but ! think we have to look at the overall picture of this thing. Gary Warren: I think the response, overwhelming response at the neighborhood meeting I thought was good and timely as far as this feasibility study is concerned here. To be able to address that issue and also to get HnOot to maybe more commitedly address some of the needs that are out there so I really think that as you say, that's a very important element to make sure that we address in the feasibility study. Hayor Chmiel: Any other discussion? City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Councilman Workman: Gary, what have we budgeted for the engineer's fees? Gary Warren: Bill usually works on a time and material basis. His overall fees basically run about 6~ of the construction cost of the project. BIll Is typically on the low end quite honestly In consultant fees for doing feasibility studies. So he has a standard engineering contract on file with the City like our other firms and we would use his standard contract which normal[y Is about a 6~ fee. Councilman Workman: What is the scope? Gary Warren: What's the total dollars? I think we're looking at the upgrade of Minnewashta Parkway with a trail system ts in the $400,000.00 to $500,000.00 range. Councilman Workman: 24 or 25. Gary Warren: Right. Councilman Workman: Okay. Councilman Johnson: That's his total fees. Not Just the feasibility study. Gary Warren: Right. I'm sorry. That's through the design phase. His feasibility study would be 1~ to 2~ of that. Councilman Workman: So we're talking about 8~ total? Gary Warren: No. Councilman Workman: Okay, you're talking about a total of &~ so about $25,000.00? Gary Warren: Right. Councilman Workman: I don't have a problem with Bill Engelhardt. It's Just the matter of a lot of money. Will those fees and will those costs be picked up by State Aid eventually or are those costs that are merely born by us? Gary Warren: No, those are eligible costs for reimbursement under State Aid up to a maximum of 8~. So it's within the State cap. Councilman Workman: Good. I was at the meeting the other night with you and Evan Green and it was a nightmare revisited almost where a neighborhood gets together and you think they all have kind of a common goal for safety but you hear comments that sometimes don't take Into account the whole picture, etc.. We've had a lot of people that have wanted Hlnnewashta upgraded for a long time. [ want to be certain that we are letting these people know exactly what's going to be happening because [ know when this th[ng's widened and curbed, It's going to be curbed isn't it? Gary Warren: That is a design element we haven't addressed yet but tt needs to have storm sewer and typically we would be. City Council Meeting - September 2~, 1990 Councilman Workman: Storm sewer. Trails. It's going to be a third wider perhaps. I don't know but the whole focus on wanting a better road is going to come down to one person's evergreen tree or petunia or other and I don't know, maybe we can't avoid that. I just hope that we can head this stuff off as qulckly as we can. I don't know how we tell people out there, because the assessments are going to come and we all know how that works. Can we at the tlme of the design and before the design, take 1nrc account safety features as far as crosswalks? Flashing lights you know and the people up on the north end there that have the beachlot that are always trying to get across. Are we going to be able at this point repost speed limits and put in safety features and are those costs golng to, are we golng to be able to take care of those costs with State Aid? Gary Warren: State Aid is available to address the signage packages, painting, striping, crosswalk, attributes of that nature. The plans have to be approved by the State so if there ls any geometric roadway lssues that we would say dictate an adjusted speed out there, this is the time when we would do that. We've done that on all of our projects when we run them through the State Ald so this would be the time to include those elements, that's correct. The total dollars of the project we wlll be taklng a close scrutlny of that to see how it relates to our State Aid budget and our funds that are available. Now we've been gettlng some cutbacks because the legislature's cutted back on the motor vehicle exclse tax contribution again and some of those thtngs are bringing our annual construction funds down a 11ttle bit but as you're aware, we dldn't construct a State Aid road last year to sort of pick up for the road that had to be pald for on Bluff Creek and Lake Drlve East. We're golng to be oonsclenclous on the dollars. We can't, I don't think build a Cadillac necessarily but we certainly are golng to be taking a hard look in the design as far as the safety features and the placement of the trall and utilizing our neighborhood input concept here to try to head off some of these lssues. We can never please them all you know. Councilman Workman: Maybe we're jumplng the gun wlth questions 11ks that at this polnt until we see the design. Gary Warren: We keep a ftle on all the roads like that and we put In memos and such from neighborhood Input quest£ons, comments from other departments and that file is the first thing that I turn over to the deslgn engineer and he goes through that and then I sit down wtth him to try and fill h£m tn on all the lssues as far as the road is, as best I know them so we do have some record of previous input and comments that we want to make sure we address and this Is certainly part of lt. Councilwoman Dlmler: I just have one 11ttle question about, being that the intersection that the Mayor talked about going onto TH 5, is MnOot going to be lnvolved in some of the funds? Can we use thelr money for that intersection? Gary Warren: If they agree. What our approach to this would be is to try to make that happen. I thlnk that ls part of the project. There's golng to be several months now where we will be working obviously In honing the scope of thls. Z thlnk Mr. Green certainly got hls ears full at our neighborhood meeting. Evan fs sympathetic to try to resolve some of these things so he, ltke the rest of us, has to live wlthin budgets and I know the upgrade of Mlnnewashta City Council Meeting - September 24, Z990 Parkway intersection is not programmed in MnDot's vernacular. It's not programmed so we'll have to put a package together w£th some recommendations and see if we can't piggyback that with our project. Counc£1uoman D[mler: I highly recommend that We do that. Councilman Johnson: Both sides. TH 7 and TH 5. Councilwoman Oimler: Yeah, TH 7. Is TH 7 bad? No, it's not bad. Mayor Chmlel: TH 7 isn't quite as bad. Councilman Johnson: It's not as bad as TH 5. Gary Warren: The sight distances are better on TH 7 which makes a big difference. Councilman Johnson: I think the trucks are even moving faster on TH 7 though. Councilwoman Oimler: I think so too. That's all I had. Mayor Chmlel: You mentioned MnDot. We met this morning with them on another intersectlon br£ght and early this morning at 7:00. It's just like trying to take the bark off a tree. They're that close with their money. We were halfway successful. Any other discussion? Resolut[on J90-122: Councilman ~orkman moved, Council,oman Dimler seconded to authorize preparation of a feasLbiLity study for Hlnne"ashta Park.ay upgrade. All voted tn favor and the motion carried unanimously. 1990 SPECZAL ASSESSNENT ROLLS: A. REVIEW ASSE$$HENT RO~L FOR D~NTO~ REDEVELOPNENT. PHP~ ZZ. PRO3ECT 8&-lIB. UPDATE ~F REGUIREO. Mayor Chmtel: I don't thlnk we need an update on that one do we? Don Ashworth: No. Staff did meet with the owners or at [east carried out correspondence. Although they may not totally be happy, I do not think there will be any further appeals. Mayor Chmtel: Okay, ts there anyone wtshlng to address this at this ttme? Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman ~orkaan secolt~ed to approve the ~mseSslent Ro11 for Downtown Redevelopment, Phase Z/, Project 8&-1lB. All voted In favor and the motion carried unanimously. B. REVZEW ASSESSNENT ROLL FOR NORTH SIDE P~J~KINO LOT. PRO3ECT 87-17, ~PD~T[ 1T NECESSARY. Mayor Chmlel: I thlnk that's moving along as well? City Councll Meeting - September 24, Z990' Don Ashworth: Really the same report. Again we have notlfied and I do not anticipate any further appeals. Mayor Chmiel: Anyone wishing to address that at this time? Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman D1mler seconded to approve the Assessment Roll for North Side Parking Lot, Project 87-17. A11 voted In favor and the motion carried unanimously. ADOPT ASSESSN~NT ROLL FOR LAKE OR~UE, TH 101 TO CSAH 17, .PRO3ECT 88-~R. Gary Warren: Mr. Mayor, this assessment roll for 88-22A, staff has directed, taken tlme here to review the appeals that were received which I have summarized in the staff report and basicaIly we have come up with a proposed modif£catlon to the assessment methodology. Specifically speaks to the street assessment. Staff had followed through on our typical approach here for street assessment wherein on larger roadways, trunk highways and such we typically do not assess the full road cost but instead we assess a commercial/Industrial type roadway segment. 36 foot roadway which is our standard for that. In looktng specif£cally at the Market Blvd. project we had done that. However, the Market Blvd. sectlon, whlch is ultimately golng to be TH 101, is a much more beefed up sectlon if you will and therefore the front foot cost for assessment in that neighborhood were $150.00 roughly per front foot whereas on Lake Orlve itself, whlch is a 36 foot roadway, we were closer to $110.00 per front foot. So we sald, well here we have a roadway that is very specifically a 36 foot roadway which is our section and we thought that it would be more appropriate to be consistent throughout the whole project scope even though we had two different road segments to assess so we're proposing that the street assessment rate for the project be modlfled to be unlform throughout the project scope and that specifically the new rate, the $100.25 per front foot rate be adopted for this street portton of the project. Thls impacts most specifically the Ward property and the Rosemount property where it fronts on Market. We also had some front footage, 167 feet of the Rosemount property which lies tn the southeast corner by thelr entrance, that by all rights should have been included tn the orig£nal assessment footage whlch hadn't so we have added that 1nrc the project scope and the actual cost for building Rosemount's entrance which Is about $45,000.00 had been in the tax increment funds but by rights, I mean it was drieway entrance built for Rosemount and it really should be cost that they're assessed for so we dld add that back ln. So there were some slight modifications because of the footages in there to each of the watermain assessment and therefore we have basically recalculated the roll with that but by far the major adjustment that we are proposing is that the street assessment rate of $100.25 per front foot be applled throughout the project. That has a net result of about $51,000.00 reduction on the Ward property which was a major impact with their front footage being all on Market Blvd.. With that, the rest of the discussion I believe, there may be some representatives from the Wards here or others that may wish to address the roll but ! thlnk it would be best if we hear thetr discussion and then we can address that specifically at your d£scretton. Mayor Chmiel: Very good. Thank you. Is there anyone wishing to address this particular issue? If there is, please come forward and state your name and address and who you're representing. 10 City Council Meeting - September 24, [990 Bob Worthington: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. I'm Bob Worthington from Opus Corporation, 9900 Bren Road East, Mtnnetonka. I'm here representing the interest of Opus as well as the alscor investors 3oint Venture No. 2 which are the owners of, on our map Outlot R and the official plat map, Lot [, Block 3, Chart Lakes Business Park. We were here at the last meeting when the issue of the assessment on that particular piece of property was raised. We stated our objection to having the entire parcel completed as a part of the assessment roll given the fact that a portion of it was in wetland and had been declared, during our discussions with the Rosemount project, as undevelopable. We asked staff to Look at the property and find out if there could be any further adjustments made. In talking to Mr. Rshworth earlier today the conclusion was that we could not. For those of you who aren't aware, the property is currently under option by Rosemount. We are hopeful that the whole issue of protest in terms of those costs can be resolved with them exercising that option and accepting the assessments as being fair but since we are still the owner of the property ue want to reserve our right later on if we cannot negotiate a more reasonab[e cost for those assessments to come in later on and take whatever legal action that may be available to us in order to do that. But at this particular point in time, if the Council wants to with that comment in the record, wants to adopt the roll, we're not going to stand up in the door and say never. So I guess that simply is our case and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, thank you. Bob Worthington: The letter, by the way that I sent last week, I have one here and I'd l£ke to have it officially entered as a part of the record. Gary Warren: Is that the September 7th letter? Bob Worthington: Yes. Gary Warren: That is in the Council's packet. Mayor Chmiel: Any questions? Councilwoman Oimler: Am I to understand that tt has been reduced to $181,404.40 and you're still objecting to that figure? Your letter here states the higher figure. Bob Worthington: That $181,000.00 ts the reduction? Councilwoman 01mler: Yes. Your letter states $20[,&24.22. Sob Worthington: I wasn't aware of the fact that there was a reduction. Mr. Warren just stated for the record. That's nice and we appreciate that and it may be after we review ti, that may be something is very satisfactory but at this particular point in ttme, since I only have this opportunity to state my case in a public forum, I'm stattng our case perhaps in a more negative way than ultimately wtll be the result but I have to do my duty. Mayor Chmiel: Good. Thank you. Anyone else? City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 John Ward: Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, John Ward, $g16 Hanson Road for the Ward property owners. We appreciate the assistance of the city staff and engineering consultant in going over figures with the professionals that we hired and we appreciate thelr re-analysis of the roadway but there's sttll concern about a couple of 1rems. The main item that we're concerned wlth ts the fact that even with the reduction it's stfll far in excess of the approximate amount of the feasibility study. I belleve it comes down to around double that amount. The professional people that we hired Indicated that they were puzzled by the total cost of the project tn terms of what they see in other communities and we're wondering about the accountability. We had some difficulty in gettlng a complete numerical breakdown for each category so we could compare it to what an appropriate ftgure should be for certain stretch of road or a certain stretch of sidewalk. We had some trouble gettlng those numbers for comparison. We are also concerned about the landscaping assessment as it pertalns to our property. I belleve we're talklng about an 840 foot stretch and we are being assessed for landscaping az the other property on Lake Drive ls belng assessed and it does appear from a drlve by of the property that landscaping was indeed placed on Lake Orive but as our property, what we received was basically an attempt to put it back in the same condition that it was in previously. There appears to be one roll of sod against the curb to hold the dirt from rolling down and then there seems to be some type of seeding above that. Both of those would amount to a very minimal cost. I would guess conservatively $1,000.00 or $1,500.00 at the outside and we've received absolutely no trees, shurbs, or other landscaping. What it appears to be is basically a restitution of the premlses to what they were in the form of an erosion control rather than any landscaping. We think the assessment in that area specifically of $11,860.00 measured as it is with the other owners who did receive landscaping, it's quite inappropriate and we would ask the Council on a slmple drive by to review that themselves and to see if there ts some merlt to what we have to say. We would ask that the letter that we gave copies to the Council last week, be part of lt. Mayor Chmiel: Would someone like to address some of those specifics? Gary Warren: Z'11 touch brtefly on the landscaping issue. Gary Ehret who has further discussions with representatives from the Ward property can maybe fill in some of the other questions here. The landscaping assessment, total value here on the Ward property is $11,258.40 is based on the landscaping as an aggregate. As far as the project total ls concerned. Some properties got 2 trees. Some got 4 trees. Some didn't get any trees based on the practicality of actually planting certain elements on the project. With the slope and such on the Ward property, there's no question that Mr. Ward is correct that there weren't any trees planted as part of this project at thls polnt in time but the concept, the methodology of assessment is that the whole project is looked at from an area assessment standpoint. On the fllp slde of that issue we could look at the fact that the City did not choose for example to take the extra cost that ue had in processing a Corps of Engineers permit for the wetland that ls on the Ward property. To get approval for that. Now this Is a cost that is specifically we could say was a result of havtng to deal wlth the permit on the Ward property but that project cost goes into the total project and Is spread amongst all of the users out there because they all benefit from lt. So that's why the assessment methodology, we don't count trees specifically on each of the properties and make an assessment based on that. We'd be here forever basically City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 coming up with a uniform assessment rate. I don't know, Gary do you want to address anything else that was mentioned? Gary Ehret: Well, there were a number of concerns there so it's hard to keep track of them but the initial assessments at the time the feasibility was completed, the proposed assessment for Phase ! were about $82,000.00 and some change for the Ward property. The current roll's about $13S,000.00. That is a significant increase. The primary explanation for that is the function of the assessments that the property receives. When the initial roll [s prepared we assume X amount for storm sewer costs. X amount for sanitary sewer. X amount for water. X amount for roadway. We calculate the rates. Come up with the total estimate. If you look at the aggregate costs proposed for assessment now as compared to initially for the project, the costs are extremely close in total to the estimated assessments before. The Ward property is somewhat of an anomaly in the fact that if you took another property such as the Rosemount, when the costs and the project was actually bid, the store sewer cost came in less than the feasibility but the roadway costs higher. In the case of a Rosemount, the reduction in storm sewer costs and therefore storm sewer rate helped offset the increase roadway costs. Their composite assessment did not go up as dramatically. Zn the case of the Ward's, the two assessments that they received, watermatn and roadway, the roadway costs did go up significantly. The watermain was within $2.00 per front foot of what it had been estimated. They did not receive the benefit of a storm sewer reduction because they were not assessed for storm sewer. So on an aggregate, the assessments for the project did not go up significantly but by the method of assessment to the Ward's, they went from 82 to 135. In terms of the availability of information, to the extent that we are the City's consultant and therefore our records are public records, we can share that information. !t was discussed because of the complexity of this project, my file is about yea thick so at this point I can't say that we, we did provide the Ward representatives with the footages used. The rates used and the methodology used. What we did not provide at this time were specific costs. Mayor Chmtel: May I ask one question? On the roadway cost, that $110,258.00. Does that include that $11,000.00 in there? Gary Ehret: Yes. Yes, that is the total for roadway, lighting and landscaping. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Any other discuss[on? Councilman Workman: In my viewpoint, you know we really can do nothing except maybe apologize for increased costs which we don't have a whole lot of direct control over. I don't think we intend to raise the costs of the project but the cost of the project is there and need to be paid for and it needs to be fairly and evenly assessed which according to Gary and Gary we've done that. So if we were to reduce or modify in one area, we'd be all over kingdom come and so I don't know that we can discuss it all night and not come up with a solution. Councilman 3ohnson: The only solution [ would see would be if we could break Market Blvd. away from Lake Drive and assess them separately so Rosemount would get a Market Blvd. assessment and they'd get a Lake Drive assessment. The Ward's would only get a Market Blvd. so whatever the expenses were assessed directZy to Market Blvd.. ! don't know where those increased costs were 13 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990' concentrated. Whether it was on Lake Drive or Market. If it was on Market Blvd, then the Ward's won't want us to do that because it would probably raise thelr assessment and lower Rosemount's but if the increased cost ended up belng on Lake Orlve, where I think we had the bad soils and stuff involved, then that would lncrease everybody elses and reduce the Ward's which of course then we'd have the church not wanting that and a few other folks. Gary Warren: That is the reverse of where we started from as far as the street assessment. Now we're saying okay Market from the specific street construction is concerned was an inflated rate and we're saying okay. We recognize that that should be done so we were saying alright, we'll clear the deck here on the methodology. Let's make it unlform which is an important thlng whlch I'm sure the City Attorney can attest to and we apply that across the rate so the Ward's on one slde have benefited by $51,000.00 in that regard so we're following that through all the assessment methodology. Naybe we can argue about a tree here and there but I think that the integrity of the ro11, I guess tt's our recommendation that it not be arbitrarily adjusted. Mayor Chmiel: John, did you want to say something? John Ward: A brief comment if I might. It appears that the way the landscaping ls set up, that on a portion that's TH 101, there's no landscaping. Then there's everything landscaped on Lake Orive. It's not just a question of whether one lot got 2 trees and one lot got a shurb and 3 trees. TH 101 got nothing except a strlp of sod to keep the dirt off the roadway and all the landscaping, 100~ of the landsacping is on Lake Drive and we don't think we should have to pay for that. We're going to have our own landscaping worries later on. We don't thlnk that we should have to pay for Lake Orlve landscaping to that extent with the fact that all that was applied to our property was strlctly erosion control at this time. Mayor Chmlel: Okay, thank you. Councilman Johnson: Are ue too late to get this on this year's or next year's taxes? Gary Warren: No. Don Ashworth: We're still in line. Gary Warren: October lOth is the certification date. Councilman Johnson: We certify it but if they decide to come tn and pay it within 30 days, then we've got a problem. Gary Warren: No. Councilman Johnson: Because we can still drop it off? Mayor Chmiel: Right. Councilman Johnson: We just can't add anythlng on after October lOth? 14 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Mayor Chmiel: Rlght. Any other discussion? Councilwoman Oimler: I had a discussion on the ones, the Lutheran Church of the Living Christ. Maybe nobody's here to address that one but it did have a provision in there that the C£ty purchase Outlot A. Have you made a formal offer to purchase that outlot? Don Ashworth: We met wlth representatives on two different occasions. I felt that we had agreed to an amount that would solely be dependent on getting the final surveys in associated with that ftnal plat. That process has now been completed and we're at a position where we can meet with the church and finalize it. Councilwoman Dimier: You are planning to purchase it then? Don Ashworth: Part of the project costs had always Included that acquisition, yes. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay. Mayor Chmiel: Any other discussions? If not, I'd entertain a motion of some type. Resolution ~t90-[23: Councilman Workman moved, Counc//man 3ohnson seconded to adopt Assessment Rol1 for Lake Drive, TH 101 and CS~H 17, Project 88-22A. All voted tn favor and the motion carried unanimously. Councilman Johnson: Can we not take thls to the County until after the 8th? Or before the lOth? Don Ashworth: If the Counci[ would like. Councilman Johnson: I've not looked at the landscaping side of this. The streets [ have no problem with but it's true. There was absolutely no landscaping done on Market. I really have a problem then including landscaping throughout the project. Councilwoman Oimler: ! agree with you Jay and that's why I didn't say anything. I would be Inclined to reduce it by $11,000.00. Can we take a look at that? Gary Warren: There definitely was seeding and sodding that was done out there. Councilman Johnson: Yeah. But that's done on every street. Gary Warren: There was difficulty currently because of the way the property hasn't been developed to do much. An alternative would be to include some commitments from the City tn the future when the sight develops to add 'trees or whatever at that point In time. Mayor Chmlel: We can brlng this up at the next Council meeting. Councilman Johnson: That's what I was saying. If there's any action. If we've got one more chance. 15 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Hayor Chmiel: We can bring this up again at the next council meeting. Councilwoman Otmler: That will give us a chance to go out there and look at it. Councilman Johnson: Rlght. As is, you know. Gary Warren: From the standpoint of the City Treasurer, at least the rest of the ro11, if Z'm gettlng the glst of the discussion, you're satisfied wlth, so at least Jean could be preparing the rest of the roll for certif£cation. That would be helpful for her tlme probably. Councilman Johnson: I think she ought to get the whole roll ready for certification and just not submlt it until the gth. Mayor Chmiel: Yeah. That sounds right. Councilman Johnson: Or if we have discussions with the Counctl members. ADOPT STORH WATER UTILITY DISTRICT. Gary Warren: On August 27th the Council received public input on the storm water utility district, surface water excuse me, utility district concept and ordinance. Slnce that time staff has been about the business of further addressing the questions and concerns that were raised at that meeting. If you wi11, ['11 just run through brlefly each of the subheadings here so that we don't belabor the point here but I did want to at least highlight the gist of our report here. The comment was ralsed about double dlpplng, as it was called wherein the city would be, has already charged developers who, they've paid basically to construct thelr storm surface water Improvements and now the City ls coming back and asking for them to pay aga£n for these improvements. This is very definitely not the scenario. We are not proposing to change any of the current city policies as far as developments. When developments come in, even after the adoption of the district, they st111 would be requlred to construct storm systems and meet the watershed oriterla and the city criteria for conveying and retaining storm water. The uttllty distrlct dollars, more specifically address deficiencies in our existing system which at the discretion of the Counc11 there are areas where it may be appropriate to use the utlllty funds to construct some improvements but for sure the...will be to assess improvements wherever we see it's justifiable and sustainable. Further the utility, big part of the utility is to provide documents and water quality and for plannlng purposes to address diagnosis of our lakes and also maintenance of exlsting structures so double dip concept is not the case. User fee versus tax. ! guess nobody here ls trying to disgulse this in any way, shape or form. We wanted in fact to stand on it's own as far as that it's more appropriately, in our opinlon, a user fee but semantics belng what they are, it still lsa payment extraction from a property owner. The user fee though and the utility dlstriot concept in particular where lt's different from a tax in our opinion, is an important dtstinct£on, Is that these are funds that the dedicated to utility dlstrlct to be used tn that utlllty dtstriot and cannot be arbitrarily extraoted from the fund to offset any other shortfalls that may exist within the city and therefore it ls very specifically used to address the goals that will be adopted as a part of the program. Farmland issues. As we know, we've ail been concerned to be falr as it relates to the farmland and the undeveloped land and 16 City Council Meeting - September 24, ~990 we have done some checking in other communities and basically we are recommending the modification at this time in the ordinance such that farmland would be addressed as a residential, single family unit. That would be assigned regardless of the acreage that's involved with it. That being roughly $20.00 per year. This does not address the total impact necessarily and the criteria as far as sediment and erosion but as we know, there are various differences in that between each farmland and how the farmer maintains his property so we are going with that recommendation and that has an impact of maybe 3~ less revenues into the fund. Coordination with other agencies. There are numerous letters that we included which we were able to obtain here in the last 4 weeks from the respective agencies. The concern obviously was that we are being redundant here and duplicating efforts which I think we all are sensitive to. Riley-Purgatory- Bluff Creek Watershed supplied us a letter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Met Council. Basically confirming that and encouraging the program and also basically confirming that we are not, they are in fact looking to the city ! think to be able to be the enforcer. To be the implementer in some of these, in a majority of these programs, a case in point, the Watershed District which adopts it's plans, which the City will then chaperone into it's own plan, they are certainly looking for us to provide the enforcement arm and to take on some of the responsibilities, if not most of the responsibilities for dealing with water quality. So we feel there is not a redundancy here. We still will maintain our contacts with subdivision reviews. We will still maintain our contacts with the regulatory agencies to get the technical support which as we heard Conrad Fiskness offer from the Watershed District, to provide us with, use them as a resource but quite honestly we don't see them as a funding source to be able to address the necessary elements of our program. Therefore that's our conclusion in the matter, again we will also be pursuing any grant funding or anything else. This does not exclude us from being a recepient of grant funds from the Clean Water act or any of the other programs just because we have our own funding source. Involving the City Council in expenditures anticipated in other surface water management utility. ! don't know, Paul maybe you want to touch on that item. as you know we both wrote this report... Paul Krauss: That wasn't one of my hot...at all. Gary Warren: Well, it is now. Councilman Johnson: It's called the hot potato. - Gary Warren: 8asicaIIy that was to address the Council concern as far as estabIishing an entity that was seIf perpetuating. That was going to be out of controI so to speak. That once you started it can't be stopped. By converting the ordinance to an annuaI review of the program, the expenditures and revenues on an annuaI basis consistent with the City's annual budgetary process, there's I guess a commitment there specificaIIy that aIIows the controI to say where are we going. What kind of revenues, baIances are we maintaining in the fund and to review on that annuaI basis what the goaIs of the program are. as we've been trying to convey initial elements of the program are going to give us better definition for the magnitude of some of the improvements out there. The cost of the water quaIity pIan. We've made our estimates on it. The cost of the water surface management pIan. as mandated, we've made estimates on it but until we get into the specifics, we don't have the detaiI cost estimate to put on these things so the program I think needs by rights, to have that adjustment and ~7 City Council Meeting - September 24, lggO accountability and that's what we are certainly proposing in the ordinance. Goals of the district. You questioned as to what are our goals. This is a normal offshoot from the Chapter 509 Surfaoe Water Management Plan and it's healthy in that it takes more than just a casual review of what do we want to do in the City. It takes the input by rights of neighborhood groups, Lake Association members, the community as a whole to formulate what do we want to do for water quallty, erosion control and all the related 1rems. I have taken a.n extract here from the State Statutes which I don't always like to do but I thought it was st111 pretty comprehensive in nature and this really addresses the goals of the 509 plan which I included. Then we also, Paul and I took a shot here at specifically pu111ng out some goals that might be considered by the City as far as water quality, water quantity, ground water, erosion control and such. Each of these goals is a part of the 509 plan would be a detatled policy statement that then would have a policy written on it to establish what are the City's intentions in say achieving water qualtty and controlling erosion and such and can end up being quite lengthy actually in a report if it's given the proper attention. Water quality management plan. The plan itself lncludes $72,000.00 for preparation of the water quality management plan within our budgetary process plus another $50,000.00 for ongoing monitoring. We put in an excerpt which I thought was timely from the City of Eagan. I should note that they charged us $50.00 for their plan so they're belng accountable for thelr budgets. But they're a little bit bigger as we all know than the City of Chanhassen but as far as lakes and I think wetlands and stuff, we're pretty comparable and their water quality plan alone showed the 3 year commitment of about $1.2 mi111on to deal with some of the specifics that they have to or are confronted with. The City of Eagan, for whatever reason, has the ability to go out and spend the money up front for the water qualtty plan which then armed with that they went into the utility district concept to now fund this mi111on and other needs. It's a tact that could have been followed here but when confronted with it we, staff looked at it and said well how are we going to fund the $300,000.00 to start so that ls basically when we said well the utility district concept really provides that and more appropriately so because it's specifically deallng, lnstead of havlng the general public advolorem pay for the cost for these studies, the utility district which would be set up on a user basls for that was preferred. So I ran through it pretty qulckly here but basically our conclusion at this point in time in addressing those issues was that the utlllty conoept still was something that we are recommending the Clty strongly consider as a most appropriate tool for addressing the City's water quallty and water management needs here. We have modlfied the ordlnanoes which are in attachments 7 ls the ordinance and attachment G is the policy that goes with that. We had modified those to reflect the changes here that we're proposing on the farmland and undeveloped status and they are included in this packet for your oonslderatlon. Mayor Chmiel: Is there anyone wishing to address this at this particular tlme? Gayle Degler: I'm Gayle Oegler from 1630 Lyman Blvd.. I have a couple general comments. Flrst of all through the media and through talking with different people, we kind of get the feeling that agricultural has been blamed for a lot of the pollution problems that now exlst in the city of Chanhassen and I for one have to definitely disagree ulth that statement and fact. I think the history of Chanhassen polnts that out and in the last 20-25 years, or say it the other way, 25 years ago there were a lot more agriculture people in Chanhassen than 18 City Council Meeting - September ~4, 1990 there are today and ! think there's a direct correlation. As agriculture has declined in the city, our pollution, our quality of the water has gone down. I'm not saying agriculture has no part in the problem but agriculture definitely is not the major problem that Chanhassen is facing when talking about water quality. Thinking back to the last meeting, some of the Council members comments. One of them had to do with water quality and I did not get the detailed copy of this new form but in what I did receive it didn't mention anything as to where our funds that were being collected were going to go. As to how they were going to be used towards water quality. If that was one of our major concerns, so far I didn't see it. It might have been there but I'll admit I didn't see it. The other thing, one of our councilmembers mentioned at the last meeting was what was the financial impact would such a utility have on farmers and I think I was one of the people that was specifically named. What financial impact would it have upon me and nobody from staff has even contacted me or talked to me so it was hard. I had no way of giving my input and I thought that was a direct comment that was made that it should have been looked at and I'll comment just partly on this. Obviously farming in eastern Carver County, we're at a direct disadvantage compared to even the western part of the County. Our taxes are significantly higher. We have to put up with more transportation and everything else. Other problems Involved in living in this community. As far as other financial impacts, obviously whenever you tax yourself personally, there goes part of your profit. Also, if you're renting land, whenever they get taxes more, they're going to pass that directly onto you in higher rent. Another comment. Eagan was used as a model in preparing part of this and Eagan was just another one of the cities that have this utility concept and no city that uses this utility concept taxes agriculture land. I don't think, obviously I don't think Chanhassen should tax agriculture land either. You sort of subdivide parcels of property, agriculture and non development. I'm not quite sure why the division there. Question now. Are you going to assess each parcel, each agriculture parcel as a residential fee? Is that what I'm understanding? Gary Warren: We are looking at it as a homestead type of standpoint. So I don't know, your distinction between parcel. Several parcels under your ownership, is that what you're saying? Oayle Oegler: Correct. If they're all homesteaded, that would be considered one residential? Oary Warren: Right. Oayle Oegler: Okay. I just wanted to understand that. But that I'm sure was taken from Eagan but Eagan is more specific. They don't call it agriculture. They don't call it undeveloped. They use the green acres classification and ! think by using the green acres classification they do a little bit, I think they're a little bit more specific in protecting agriculture. In order to get the green acres classification, you can't be a speculator or a developer that's holding this land in agricultural use until it's developed. In that way if that's your main purpose in holding it in agriculture until it's developed, then you don't get this green acres exemption and that way you would not be exempt from your program. City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. Anyone else? If seeing none or hearing none, we'll bring it back to the Council. Jay, do you want to start? Councilman Johnson: Sure, I'll start. ! like what Gary has done here. I agree with hls movement of the agricultural land to consider it the same as my lot. I think we weren't gettlng enough from the agricultural land to create the hassle we needed to and like you say, our farmers need as much help as they can get right now. So I st111 oontlnue to be and have always been in favor of thls. We have to have the fundlng source to get this work done and now we have. This will glve us thls fundlng source. There was one correction that we need to put into here. Under appeals of fees, Section 19-14&. I don't know if everybody got thls or not. I think Gary's got a bunch of coples of it. Need to add a sentence in that paragraph does inadvertently left off. Pass those around. No adjustments will be made for property classifications I, II and III. Basically saying that these are the residential classes that are the lowest classification so we're not going to adjust them any lower. Gary Warren: Yeah, they're not based on acreage or any of the runoff concepts. They're fixed rates so there as low and bottom as you go. Mayor Chmtel: That's given already isn't it? Gary Warren: Pretty much. [agan's ordinance also adjusts it from that perspective because there are people that may want to come in and say I've got a corner wetland here on my residential lot. Don't I get credlt but to rte up staff time to deal with that small magnitude, it just doesn't make sense. So it needs to be qualified. Councilman Johnson: Couldn't we or should we say something about no fees will be adjusted to below that of property classifications I, II or III so that becomes our bottom? Gary Warren: What we're trying to I guess stop is that classifications I, II and III aren't coming in for adjustments. That's the intent here. The actual adjustment of other properties. Some properties may get a total credit I guess depending on what their status is acreage wise. Councilman Johnson: So you're saying a large acreage, industrial tract or something that's doing a real good Job and for some reason they get some kind of an adjustment, they could actually end up paytng less than my lg,O00 square foot lot? Gary Warren: ! guess in an extreme case and I wouldn't expect it because of the costs involved but some industrial site plan could come in and they're going to do water treatment on thelr land I guess to the point where we might say hey geez, they're really cleaning things up here and therefore they would not, because of the investment they have, they wouldn't be gettlng lt. Councilman Johnson: Actually a few years, the storm water amendments that were made a few years ago to our Clean Water Act is going to requlre industry to do storm water treatment prior to release. Eventually. Mayor Ohmic1: Okay. Anything else? Any other discussion? 2O City Council Heettng - September 24, 1990 Councilwoman Dimler: Yes. I'd like to, ! have quite a few things here. I agree that we need to maintain our storm sewer system and I agree that we need to address water quality Issues as I've said. Z agree with Hr. Degler that agriculture Is not the main culprit and I'm glad to see that we're treating them as single family residential. I also agree that we need to comply with the S09 plan. [ do however question the cost of $135,000.00 to do that and I'd like to have Gary address how those costa were established. Gary Warren: We established that cost based on Input from our consultant as far as what previous plans have cost other cities who have actually gone through the process and it's based on a per acre cost per city. So we used a unit factor based on the 23 square miles of the city and that's how we came up with that cost. Obviously that cost would be worked out. This Is one case where we would propose, actually taking qualifications and Interviewing consultants before we went forward with tt and the cost would be shook out as a part of that process. But I think from my experience, I did a 509 plan for Shorevtew and Rosevtlle. Grass Lake Watershed and it certainly can get up into that magnitude. I don't think that the cost is very far off. Councilwoman Otmler: It just sounded high to me and I called some other people too. Senator Earl Renicke thought it was high and he was In on the Initial legislation so I just thought I'd comment on that. And I do want to commend Gary and Paul for the comprehensive research and the work that they've done on this. I still have a few concerns. You've answered most of them. I'm still concerned that we're only spending about $122,000.00 out of the $1.7 million for water quality and if that Is our alm, I just think our administrative costs are way out of line with where we should be spending it on water quality. Gary Warren: I would say that what we're showing right now Is the up front costs to do the water quality with the diagnostic studies and the legs to get better definition on what do we need to do the legs. And the actual recommendations which may come out of that report, or which will come out of that report, Indeed could lead to construction costs or other costs that would build from there. So this ts sort of the starting point as far as the water quality is concerned. It's not the final dollar to be spent by any means. Councilwoman Oimler: But Z also agree with Mr. Oegler again who said that we don't have any specific plan to clean up the lakes or anything and I guess that leads me to my next point is that it seems like we're putting the cart before the horse here. We said that Eagan did It the right way. They did the study first and then implemented the plan. I'm wondering why we don't go ahead and do that because It Just seems to make more sense that way. I'm really uncomfortable with getting a program going when we don't really know. We know we have problems but we don't know specifically what they are and we don't now specifically how we're going to eradicate them but we're going to get a program going anyway. You understand what I'm saying? I know you're going to say where do we come up with the inttla! $300,000.00 to do the study? Gary Warren: And I wanted to qualify that I don't think I said that Eagan necessarily did it the right way. I think maybe there's two right ways. It's just a choice as far as funding mechanisms ts concerned on the city. Eagan as you're seeing still ended up Implementing utility district to be able to fund the magnitude of Improvements so the end result Is you still, following this City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 approach, you still end up establishing utility district. It's pay me now or pay me later so to speak. The definition, I mean I guess I won't argue the fact that if Council prefers and we can find a funding source to do the water quality plan and the 509 plan and try to put those specifics together, great. But the dollar commitment and the magnitude there was felt that that's going to have to compromise other programs in the city to do. Since we probably will get to this end result anyway to fund those improvements that would come out of those programs, then let's be up front with everybody about this whole program and address it at this tlme. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay, I understand what you're saying but I think you forget that we have a financial wizard that works for our city. Con Ashworth. Okay. My last point ls that I'm still opposed to increasing city staff to implement this program and I think in light of a recession as I mentioned before, it's pretty tough to justify hirlng more personnel. And I know you're going to say we need them. Gary Warren: Well actually what I was going to say is that we aren't looking, again when we put the study ttself together, we're looking at a 5 year window. I would expect 5 years tlme that yeah, because of the growth of the olty and such, there wtll be some increases there to address it but that that will not happen initially in the program here until we have the reports that we talked about and the definition of the policies as far as one very obvious water quallty policy that some of the cltles will do is that okay, we want to sweep all the streets immediately and catch the spring runoff before it runs off and get all the road salt and such or debrls plcked up and implement more aggressive maintenance programs of that nature. Well, that typically does result in staff additions and stuff but that's after the policles have been established, the Council has had input to it and there's a conscience decision. Councilwoman Dimler: But we're street sweeping now anyway? Gary Warren: We have one street sweeper and one person and he does it Fridays and basically between keeping up with the road construction and just normal complaints and concerns, I mean that's we've got 74 miles of roads in the city and it doesn't go qulte that fast I'm afrald. Mayor Chmiel: We'll have to increase the speed of the sweeper. Councilwoman Oimler: No, I understand. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, Tom? Councilman Workman: I'll make this quick so I can go home and go to bed and get treatment. I have a lot of, doesn't it sound 11ks my voice is like 2 octaves deeper? Mayor Chmiel: That's what happens when you get older. Councilman Workman: If my grandfather the dairy farmer were alive and this were a proposal, he'd be in here and the Mayor would be in a headlock and... I however Ursula don't know that ftnding farmers completely void... 22 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Councilwoman Dtmler: I didn't say they were but they're not the main culprit ~ sa~d. Councilman Workman: ! have a lot of some of the same reservations on the funding and whenever we institute something of this magnitude and nature and one of the telltale portions of a sentence Gary is, on page &, before we are unable to do this for the simple reason that the plan and studies being proposed must be completed before we have adequate understanding of what the problems are and what needs to be done to resolve them. [t's sort of tells us we have a problem. We don't know what they are and then it makes us a Little nervous about shooting in the dark and everything else. [ became heavily Involved £n the Lake Lucy fiasco of trying to get that Lake cleaned up so the rest of the wateshed could get cleaned up and we could get a million dollars but we couldn't put a boat access and everything else. There was a Lot of anguish and a Lot of energy spent on that for the sake of clean water and clean Lakes. ! think thLs is a noble project. ! think we need this proposal and this program of some nature. We've had an awful Lot of concern about calling it a utility and not a tax and maybe we need to call it a tax. ! think we need to come up with money to get this stuff accompl[shed. [ don't think we can get that done without hiring some additional people. Unless Gary knows something ! don't. But [t is still fuzzy. The details of double dipping, [ don't buy that. ! get nervous with all the other agencies that are supposed to be doing this but they don't do it. They don't have the money so why [ say it's noble is because we, the City have to take this on or nobody's going t.o do it. We've got a Lot of water passing out of our city. Emminating from our city that Lsn't in such good shape because of primarily development. OeveLopment pressures and we have to do something about it. i'm open to all sorts of modifications on funding and maybe on what we need to specifically narrow [n on but ! think that the Council thinks that we need to do something l~ke this. We're Just not so sure what it is exactly that it's going to be. Gary brings up street sweeping tonight. We've heard that before that [t can help. That it can do some things. Education. In Eagan's index, they indicate one portion, Segidisk readings. Well, Segidisks. Getting in a boat and Lowering a disk and Looking and if you can see the disk, you have good water. If you can't see the disk, you don't. But clear water doesn't mean you have clean water. And I'm be/ng facet£ous by tak/ng one Little thing out of there obviously. What's new? I'm not going to say let's raise taxes to do this but I think I need somebody to come up with another idea other than a utility or. tax to get this accomplished because I think we need to get it accomplished. Mayor ChmieL: Amen? Thank you. Councilman Johnson: Can I respond to that last one? Real briefly. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Councilman Johnson: I think this utility district wtll provide us a funding source where we can go after other funding sources. It's no longer real cheap to go after federal funds, state funds, whenever. It's not real easy to draw up a grant to do this. The former company I worked for, we had one guy who primarily what he did was go around and get htred by cities and counties to get them federal funds. For doing 509 plans and for doing these plans and for doing clean-ups. Of course, we got paid up front for getting them money. We had to foot up on getting the job to do the plan. Usually we have more detail and 23 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 inside information and such but I think that without a funding source, I think one of the things we should be doing in this utility and I still think it should be a utility, is golng for whatever federal funds we can find and this wlll glve us some of the money we need up front to go after those grants. I think as far as, I don't care if you want to call it a utillty tax or utility fee. It really doesn't matter. We need the money. We've got to do the work. It's been a couple years slnce I read the storm water legislation that went through a few years ago. I know that towns over 100,000 had to have storm water management plans by such and such a date and then towns over 25,000 was a few years later. I'm not sure if our size town ever had to have a storm water management plan but I would suspect we do. Councilwoman Dlmler: Wlth 509 we do. That's what 509 ls all about. Councilman Johnson: What year do we have to have that plan finished? Gary Warren: 1982. Councilman Johnson: 19827 Gary Warren: I'm not being facetious. The legislation initially set up I think WaS. Councilman Johnson: This is different legislation I'm talking about. The Industrial clients even have to have, like Honeywell and 3H and all these guys, they have to have individual water quallty plans for their individual plants. Storm water runoff plans in any town over 100,000 people. Roger Knutson: To bring you up to date. A lawsuit was started against EPA which was resolved fairly recently and EPA is required to have all it's storm water regs by I thlnk November 1 of thls year. In talking to someone over there, they have no idea how they'll do It but a court has ordered them to do it and the flrst cut ls, I thlnk it only applies to clties over 100,000. That's the federal that Gary's talking about the 509 plan. Gary Warren: That's non-point source storm water discharge which is a little different. Roger Knutson: The 509 plan, you're requlred to adopt a response to the watershed management organization's 509 plan. Adopt your own local plan within 2 years basically after the other plans are adopted. Gary Warren: And all 3 watershed districts have draft plans in right now. That's the only reason we tried buffers as far as the deadlines at thls tlme. Councilman Johnson: So we've got 2 years from when they adopt their plans? Roger Knutson: ...Roger, that's what he's saying. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, thanks Jay. Councilman Workman: Can ! make some more comments? City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Mayor Chmlel: Go ahead. Councilman Workman: One I wanted to bring up was that the mapping that maybe would be accomplished. I don't know to what detail the mapptng of wetlands would, how detalled It would be but I know that every meeting that we've sat, just about, has a concern about a wetland in it. We're talking about water just about every Council meeting. Will that help us or will it not and Gary would probably say yes. Maybe what we, Oon you and I were having a dtecussion earlier about how it's, and Gary you'll laugh at, whenever the engineer has an estimate on a project, the bid always comes in just under that estimate. And he's got a good record but maybe he's done it to us again. Maybe we need to take off 25X of this. Keep things honest. I don't know what 25X of 1.7 million is. Zt's a lot of money and then that will keep thtngs honest. Mayor Chmiel: That's what I was looking at. Sort of a 60/40. We've got a 5 year window frame that we're looking at and if we find that the additional dollars are going to be needed, then we go to the additional dollars and get those. Zncrease that appropriation to the Council. Councilman Johnson: We look at the amount we charge every year so what we pass tonight... Hayor Chmiel: Not that ue question your Integrity in coming up utth your est[mates but ue Just don't knou where we're coming from. We don't know the total amount of dollars. Councilwoman Oimler: It never goes lower. It usually goes hlgher. Mayor Chmtel: Well that's the norm. But I think It's something that we need. There's no question. Someone's going to have to do tt and ! think we're gotng to have to do it. We're going to have to be responsible for that. As property owners. As farmers. As business people. Z think we have to do that but that 5 year window is something that you have indicated as well. But I think Tom's saying he's a 11ttle more lenient than what ! am. I'm looking at sort of a of it right now and then moving from there on In. If those additional dollars are needed, then make those appropriations at that particular time. Gary Warren: There's no commitment other than an annual commitment to any of thls if the ordinance is adopted. We took the 5 year wtndow Just to try and give you a feeling as for what we think might be the long term commitment as far as the program. $300,000.00 that we've been kicking around here ts the dollars to get the initial studies, define I guess the need more specifically. I don't know how many different wants I can say that. We all wlsh that we could start construction tomorrow on some of these things but thls is lakes and such are very complex dynamic things that change with development and other thtngs and take detailed study to be able to come up with some conclusion to say yeah, we should have an aeration device in here and over here we ought to be doing a sedimentation pond. Over off of Lotus Lake over here. We can't jump to that stuff without thls initial investment. The commitment to fund this utiltty, I think there's a very honest commitment, at least from Paul and I as far as saylng that we expect thts on an annual basis to have to stand the acld test of the budgetary process which you folks have control over. 25 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Mayor Chmiel: That's rlght. Councilwoman Oimler: But you're not anticipating that at some point the Council's going to say okay, we're going to stop thls now. Gary Warren: May very well. I wouldn't fIlnch. Councilwoman Dlmler: That would be different. Gary Warren: I would say that from what I've seen and the frustration that Paul and I are deallng with I thlnk ls in trylng to follow through on your initiatives as far as ridtng...of the water quality of the oity here and ue're klnd of saylng that based on that commitment, we don't see that changing in the city. This is the type of a program and it may change $100,000.00 here or there and I'm not trying to be casual about that quantlty but it may change as we get into this. I fully expect it because ue're all going to get educated on just want's happening out on our lakes. $80,000.00-$90,000.00 of Eagan's plan was just monitoring and sampling and it's because those lakes change from year to year so dramatically and it takes unfortunately, the expense of evaluating segidisks and other things of that nature. It takes money. Mayor Chmlel: Yeah, as we brought up before. The water quallty withln our lakes I think is pretty good in comparison to some of the concerns it is with the rivers and there's no comparison really when you look at those but I really st111 think that we may be just shooting just a little high dollar wise and I feel that we should probably cut back on it. I'm not saying stop the program. I thlnk it's needed. The need is there but let's be realistic with tt a little bit more and come up wlth a different figure than what we've got at the present. Gary Warren: You mean adjust the actual baseline rate? The $20.00 per year for a residential single famlly. You would like to drop that to $5.00 or something of that? Mayor Chmiel: Yeah. Councilman Johnson: No, no, no. $16.00 I think he said. Mayor Chmiel: Take 60~ of that. Councilman Workman: But we still need to come up with the initial cost of gettlng thls thing up and running. Councilwoman Oimler: You'll have that won't you? Councilman Workman: But by reducing will we be, we'll probably be under funded for the first year and I wouldn't hold out too much hope for federal funding. The federal government's broke. The State's broke. We're broke. It's kind of a coincidence. Mayor Chmlel: Yeah. It ail goes somewhere but saying what you were saying, $8.00. Maybe it should be just a little bit more. City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 Gary Warren: Roughly the program as it stands now with the $5.18 per quarter for residential single family would be generating about $320,000.00 in the first year. Now obviously we go through a quarterly billing cycle so we don't get that all up front. If you drop that rate whatever percentage of that, then &O~ of that is $192,000.00. Hayor Chmiel: Less $128,000.00. That would bring it roughly to about $190 some thousand dollars. Councilman Workman: Can we establish the utility without setting the fee at this point or wait 2 weeks? Then we don't have to do it on the back of an envelope. Mayor Chmiel: I think that could be done. Councilwoman Oimler: With the understanding that we're going to reduce it. Because ! wouldn't want to. Councilman Workman: i'd like a little more accurate. councilwoman Oimler: I'm not going to vote on it if that isn't the understanding. Gary Warren: R question for the attorney if I could. If the ordinance is adopted, then to modify that ordinance do we need any hearing? Roger Knutson: No, but you need a new ordinance. Councilman Johnson: How do we set the fees in this ordinance? I'm looking for that within the ordinance. Hayor Chmiel: What happens if we delay this 2 weeks to the next meeting? Gary Warren: I don't see anything magic about bringing it up again and discussing it. We certainly could table it one sore time and ! can get a little better definition. You're looking for us to look at with the revenues would be generated if we cut the fees down to 60~ of the current proposal. Councilman Johnson: See the fees aren't in the ordinance so we can pass the ordinance without establishing the fees. Roger Knutson: The fees are based upon the budget that you approve separate from the ordinance. This is nothing but a structure for... Mayor Chmiel: This does not have it, right. Councilman 3ohnson: So we can establish the utility and we're not collecting any fees until first quarter of next year anyway right? Gary Warren: That's correct but we'll need time. Mayor Chmiel: We need modification to what's existing. 27 City Council Meeting -- September 24, 1990 Gary Warren: You could adopt the ordinance and then we could come back at the next meetlng with the cost scenario for a different rate structure. Mayor Chmlel: I don't see any problem with that, do you? Roger Knutson: No, it's a totally separate item. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, good. Councilman Johnson: I move approval of the ordinance adoplng a Surface Water Utility District. Mayor Chmiel: Is there a second? Councilman Workman: Second. Councilman Johnson: Wlth the modification to Section 19-146. Appeal of fees as I read earlier. No adjustments uill be made for property classifications I, II and III. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, is there a second? Councilman Workman: Second. Councilman Johnson moved, Councilman Workman seconded to adopt the Storm Water Uttlity District with the modification to Section 19-14&. Appeal of fees. That no adjustments will be made for property classifications I, II and III. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. REDHOND PRODUCTS, 18930 WEST Z8TH STREET: A. SITE PLAN AMENDMENT FOR EXPANSION OF THE PARKING LOT RESULTING IN V. ARIANCES TO THE SETBACK REQUIREMENTS, B. SITE PLAN AMENDMENT FOR EXPANSION OF THE PARKING AREA WEST TO LOTUS LAWN AND GARDEN_CENTER.. Jo Ann Olsen: What we've done is combine the two applications into one. Both applications were held separately tn front of the Planning Commission. They're separate actions. Mayor Chmiel: Let's just address each~ne individually then. Jo Ann Olsen: Okay, the off site improvements. In summary, Redmond is in the need of additional parklng on thelr slte and what they're propoming are off site improvements and on site improvements. The off site improvements are parking lot on the Lotus Lawn and Garden lot located just west of the Redmond facility. They're proposing 78 parking stalls with two variances to the zoning ordinance. The first would be that they're proposing mass parklng versus what's requlred under the ordinance for the parking stalls and the driveway lanes. They're proposing that they have 3 parking lanes right up against each other. The other one is the gravel parking. The ordinance requires that it be bituminous 28 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 surface. It is going to be a temporary parking lot. Only for 3 years and at that time it will be converted to a natural state that can be used by the Lotus Lawn and Garden site. The on site improvements are a reconfiguration of the existing parking lot south of the bui[ding. Just adding approximate[y 104 parking stalls on the site. Improvements on site are resulting in a variance of the impervious surface coverage and the variance to the front yard setback. Staff has met with the applicant several times trying to work out some other way to resolve their problems. We have had a tour of the site as all the Council members. We understand that they are over crowded. That the site first designed did not envision the number of employees that they do have now and that they do need additional parking. The problem is that it is resulting in variances to the setback. You have to prove hardship other than economic. ...variances up to 80~ impervious surface and the setback variance have never been approved in the industrial office... We'd be setting a big precedence by doing that. Staff recommended, or the Planning Commission recommended dental because of the variances. The Planning Commission on the off site Improvements recommended approval with the conditions of staff which essentially made it would have to be bituminous surface and not the mass parking. The Planning Commission also discussed to allow them to design it and build it as an experiment. Staff cannot support that recommendation. In fact that ts being recommended approval with certain conditions...at that time... But we are recommending approval of the off site parking lot with the conditions in the staff report. As far as on site improvements, we recommended again to the planning Commission, again because of the variances, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended denial of the application for on site parking lot improvements. We have provided a recommendation for both the on site and off site improvements. We are recommending approval but the conditions would not permit the mass parking, the gravel parking, covered and would not permit the variances on the on site. Councilman Johnson: Jo Ann? On the off site, one thing that Eden Prairie just recently did was grant Southwest Metro Transit the ability to put tn a temporary parking lot that's going to be within the Highway 212 corridor where they're not putting subgrade in. They are compacting the clay, the dirt that's there and I think there"s an old parking lot there so they've also got some other rock in the area. Just compacting that and throwing asphalt over it and the engineers are telling us that it will last the 3 years.that's being asked for. Before 212 improvements start over there and then they lose the parking lot anyway. For the off site here, is there any idea whether that might be a feasible alternative rather than putting in compacted subgrade and compacted rock which ends up more expensive? Jo Ann Olsen: No. Z'm certain that that would be a compromise that we could do. The reason that, and again we should probably have Gary addressing these but the engineering standpoint was that the gravel with the runoff and being able to paint the parking stalls on the site and engineering reasons for not having the gravel versus the bituminous. As far as the surface, subsurface. Councilman Johnson: It depends upon, you know if you've got your wetland soils in there, then that won't work but if tt is the good hard clay we've got a lot of in parts of the city, it might work. Jo Ann 01sen: I can"t answer on subgrades. 29 City Council Heeting ,- September 24, 1990 Councilman Johnson: The engineers need to answer that and they went upstairs. Up celebrating for passing the last one. They've got the Champagne flowing upstairs. Councilman Workman: Can we hear from the applicant? Mayor Chmiel: Yes. Please state your name and address. Sandra Reitsma: Hy name is Sandra Reitsma. I'm director of Human Resources at Redmond Products and I live in Elk River. We are here this eventng with some requests that ue u111 feel are permanent solutions to our parking problems. I'd like to explain our problem by explaining the demographics of work force a little blt. In 3 years ue have more than trlpled the number of employees that work at Redmond Products. We have over 250 employees and at any given point in tlme ue have had between 50 and 80 additional temporary employees worklng there. We have 175 parking spaces so we know we have some parking problems. The average age of our employees is 32. 56~ of our employees are female and these two facts alone point to one of the major tssues that we have which is dayoare. When looklng at alternatives such as carpoollng, it becomes a major problem where we have a number of employees who are taking their children to various locations in the mornlng. Needlng to go to varlous looations in the evenlng to pick them up. 35~ of our employees live in the Chanhassen area and if we can stablize our operations a blt, I know that we will have more employees move to the Chanhassen area. 30~ of our employees come from a fair distance away. We have people that come from St. Paul, from Rosevllle and as I said, I personally live in Elk River. While we are in Chanhassen to work, we're also here during the day. We're uslng the servlces and the businesses that are located here in Chanhassen. We have had our parking problem for a perlod of time and we have looked at a number of alternatives and I'll just quickly go through a couple of those. We have looked into carpooling. We do have a number of employees who do carpool. We have also looked at Dlal a Rlde and the area that it covers ls restrictive and the hours that it operates does not really cover the time that our facility ls open. We have looked at off slte parklng. We have talked to some other businesses in town but as there is no park and ride in the area, this is only a temporary solution for us. We're looklng for a permanent solution. we have looked at some additional sites to help get us through this such as the Lotus slte and that u111 be talked about a little bit more in detall with the following speakers. I just want to say'that we're a successful company and we would like to keep that success here in Chanhassen and what we're looklng for is a reasonable solution to our parking problem. We need a place to park. I'd like to thank you. The next person that will be speaktng is Gene Strobe1. He is our engineering manager and he'll talk about the specifics of our request. Thank you. Gene Strobe1: As was stated before by Sandy, our parking problem is a fairly serlous one and the reason we came together with two proposals, one being the Lotus site was to provide a temporary relief for that parking problem though we don't want to do a bandaid approach to what we consider a permanent problem. What we're proposing to do ls to take and modlfy our exlsting parklng lot to accommodate 279 cars of permanent parking spaces and this will give us enough parking to basically utillze our facllity to lt's maximum potential. We're looking at the Lotus site as a temporary site, a 3 year site to use for mass parklng and what we're asklng for are basically 4 thlngs. One ls that we're 3O City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 allowed to do mass parking on the Lotus site and that we are allowed to use compacted rock rather than a bituminous surface. Secondly, we're asking that we have two variances to the City ordinance. One being that the setback would we be allowed to go into the setback with cutting into our berm and providing more parking spaces there. And fourth, to change the percent of impervious surface. What we're trying to do is to honor what we believe is the intent of the ordinance. Is to set Chanhassen industria! office park aside from an urban blight of pavement from property line to property line. In doing so our consulting engineer's came up with some solutions that we thought would maintain some aesthetic appeal to the community. One is to do some terracing with retaining walls on the building side of the betas and retain the height of the berm so that the view from TH 5 is more pleasant than seeing a mass of cars. ALso, some of the issues that are involved that the Planning Commission has, or the Planning department has Is the location of the driveway in adjacency to Lyman Lumber. We're willing to relent and keep it where it currently is, our parking entrance. But what we do is this is a permanent solution to a problem that we've been observing for a Long time. One other item that I should note and I'll point out, in this location of the building we do have some plans that are under study to looking at maximizing our site so what we want to do is to square off the building by filling in a little notch in the corner of the building and that would raise our impervious up to 80~. But what we'd like to point out is, and part of that intent is to try to maintain the green space and we do have our property site plan shows our property extending out into TH 5 and we've highlighted the area that the fact that between TH 5 and a frontage road there wiii always be grass and that we're also putting in a Landscaped berm and it will have trees on it so we're going to try to maintain a good appearance in the community. With that I'd like to turn to Larry Perkins who is our Chief Operating Officer has a few comments to make. Thank you. Larry Perkins: Honorable Mayor and members of the Council, we appreciate the opportunity to come before you tonight. I was a City Councilman myself for 3 years in a city just about this size so ! can appreciate some of the tough decisions that you have to make. The purpose of us coming before you Is to ask for a couple of variances because we'd like to stay in Chanhassen. We like tt here. It's a nice community. There are nice people. There's a [or of brain power available in the metropolitan area. As I've talked to a couple of you individually, you know that there are other alternatives that we've had to study as good managers of our business. We're willing to forego those. There are other states that we could save a couple million dollars a day just by being in those states because Minnesota isn't known for it's dramatic attraction for people that like to manufacture products. But it's a nice place to live. We like the area. We're willing to spend about & 1/2 million dollars. Approximately 40~ of that would be to our real estate which would Increase our tax base. We're willing to spend some of those dollars knowing full well that we'll be improving the building beyond it's marketability so I think that's just a statement of another commitment that maybe we'd only get 50 cents back on the dollar that we spend on the real estate and we're willing to do that because we think we'll stay here for a long time. Five years ago we had 40 people. Today we have about 250 permanent people and we'd like to cap this site off at about 300 permanent people. We'd like to, some of this money that we're Investing is to get much more efficient. To eliminate the need for those 80 temporary people so we'll be a much more stable work force and we think that it's a good long range solution to our problems. We've spent about 5 months and a lot of money 3! City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 studylng all the alternatives. We have at least a dozen different variables in the air. Most of them we've solved and that's why we're before you tonight because the parking lssue lsa serious issue that we want to solve before we invest and set our 5 year future plan to work. We're proud of the fact that we're the number one se111ng conditioner, halt conditioner in the natlon. We're the number 5 hair care manufacturer in the natlon and there's about 35 million bottles out there roamlng around the country that say Chanhassen. Manufactured in Chanhassen, Minnesota on the bottom of them. We have talked to our neighbors and there are no objections. They're in favor of what we want to do and the other point that I wanted to mention is that we depreciate your favorable actlon. We want to get started if ue can posslbly before winter comes. At this point I'd like to introduce Tom Redmond. He would like to say a few things. We think we've been a pretty good community member and so wlth that I'll introduce Tom. Tom Redmond: I don't know how I got in thls plckle. Have you got a cold? Councilman Workman: I'm not sure what it Tom Redmond: Want a Contact? I was over at Target's grand opening for their big store and had a cold and stopped into the hotel and paid $10.00 for that. I'm golng to use every one. Anyways, I don't know how I got 1nrc thls pickle you know. When I started this thing I thought I could do maybe a million dollars a year and have a nice qulet 11re and everybody would leave me alone and have a good time wlth the family. It d£dn't work out. So we kind of grew you know and everytlme we made a new move I always thought we kind of over extended ourselves you know. When we built this place the ftrst time, I walked into the $0,000 square feet and I thought, my God. What have Z done? I'll never f111 this place up you know but it always grew and grew and grew and grew until tt always outstripped whatever vlslon I had or plans we had so now we flnd ourselves kind of up against it you know. Where the water hlts the wheel. We don't really want to cause a problem here. I don't think we ever do in our relationship with this community. I think we've always tried to do a little more than we absolutely had to. Z know the way we run our business ls we've never had the federal government come in and tell us to take x ingredient out of our product. I mean if we thought it wasn't right, we never used lt. When we were planntng to move over to this other slte, the ONR and the rest of the people were tlckled plnk wlth what we were golng to do. I don't think anybody is more environmentally conscience than we are. We've bought some land out here in Vlctorla and we've bought some land down in Belle Plain and we're puttlng it back into it's natural surroundings and pulling out all the fences and planting the natural flowers that were. That's the way we run our company. I mean you know we do as much as we possibly can. That's the way we build our products so we just need some help. Z mean we 11ke it here in Minnesota and regardless of the taxes and all the other complaining that people have about M£nnesota, belleve me if you've traveled around the world, there's no better place to 1lye than Amerlca and there's no better place £n the United States to llve than Minnesota. One tlme my wlfe and Z decided well what the hell. We're manufacturers. We can live wherever we want now. So we traveled all over the country. Went to everyplace and we went up and down the west coast you know. They don't have any snow up there and wound up in Walnut Grove, California. Thought that was the place to 1lye you know. But the kids were havlng sex at age 10 so we decided maybe that wasn't the best place to raise kids and so we City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 wound up really with deciding that Minnesota was the place to live and we wt11. a[ways have a presence here you know. ~e wouldn't move away because this is where my family lives and my grand klds and so we need a 11ttle help. Whatever we do you're not going to be ashamed of it and neither are we or we wouldn't do lt. And we're not golng to take advantage of the situation. That's the way we run the company. If we have a problem, we always work it out. We do things by consensus and I thlnk tf you give us a little help in this one, we can work whatever problems we have out and I think between us we can come up with a solutlon to the problem that beneftts you and benefits all the people that work with us over there. So thanks for your-consideration. Mayor Chmiel: Any other discussion? Who'd ltke to start? Tom? Being we ended with a Tom I thought we'd start with a Tom. Councilman Workman: It's a proud name. It would be a first for me to accept pharmaceuticals from somebody testifying here. I have one question and I'll be brief as usual. I noticed we had a State Senate candidate, Terry Johnston in the audience earlter running for the legislature. 6od bless her but to what extent, and maybe Terry will help us someday. To what extent does the City of Chanhassen compromise it's minimum standards to keep valuable industry and taxes and jobs right here where we want them despite the poor record and showing and dismal, sad state of affairs in St. Paul. Isn't that where you're from? Is my questlon clear? Councilwoman Oimler: It's real clear. Councilman Workman: I very rarely miss an opportunity to take a shot at the situation down there. I'm in the insurance business. I know a little bit about workers comp and it used to be workmans comp whtch was better. 'Now it's workers. And it's a sad deal and you guys are in a pickle but that's the one thing that I thought, if it comes down to that with the City of Chanhassen and us and a decision we have to make so to what extent do we compromise those standards. Our crack planning staff and Planning Commission would say forget it. Thus we're political and I don't have the answer. The impervious is dramatic. More dramatic than we've seen in a lot of situations. I worry about how our hard fought TH 5 upgrade, how things look from that as more and more people use it. The U.S. Open's coming by. Gravel lots. Mass parking. How does that look? And I haven't been able to come up with the answers other than I really like Redmond Products to stay in town. So under that statement I'm willing to compromise and I'm anxious to hear the rest of the Council's wisdom as to how far I should compromise. Councilwoman Oimler: I too would like to see Redmond stay. I'd llke to see them be able to maximize their capacity there and I don't know exactly what that means but on page 4, on the handout that we were given, there are some recommendations and as far as I can see, we're not talking about gravel. We're talking about 2 inch bituminous. Is that correct Jo Ann? Okay, and no mass parking permitted? We're talking about landscaping. We're talking about erosion control because there is a wetland there. I think that's great. We're talking about a letter of credit which I assume they've agreed to provide. Okay. And the last point, number 7 is talking about the on site parking. I guess that's where I would be willing to make some compromises. We're talking about 70~ impervious surface here but I thought it was closer to 80. Are we not 33 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 at all including the extension of the building in this? 3o Ann Olsen: What that condition is saying is they must maintain the ordinance requirement. Councilwoman Oimler: At 70% including the extension of the building? Jo Ann Olsen: No. The ordinance only allows a maximum of 70~. What they're proposing with the parklng lot ls approximately 79~. Wlth the additlon of the building, I believe it's about 80~. Councilwoman Dimler: So we're saytng that if we stay here at 70~, that we wouldn't allow the expansion of the buildlng or Is that under a different. Jo Ann Olsen: That is not part of this issue. We have not reviewed the expansion of the building. That would be a totally new site plan so they would be comlng through. Councilwoman Dimler: But we put 70 in there. We're actually excluding that already? 3o Ann Olsen: Correct. If they can work out a way to provide the green space in placement of that. Councilwoman Oimler: I guess when I went to look at the site, being that they're digging into the berming and TH $ doesn't appear to be, visualization from TH 5 does not appear to be affected, I wouldn't have any trouble wlth granting that setback variance. The impervious surface, as far as I can see, they're taking out flowers, 11ghting and thlngs 11ke that. I guess I really wouldn't object to letting those become parking spaces. There's other landscaping provlded ls there not? If they're taklng out the flowers and the lighting and stuff, are we requiring other landscaping to replace that? Paul. Krauss: Well it becomes problematic. There's no place left to put it. It's being paved over. You've basically got parking lot islands, landscaped lslands that w111 disappear. Councilwoman Oimler: I'm not sure that thai will, I mean it's nice to have the landscaping there and the flowers there but I'm not sure that that would make a whole lot of difference from TH 5. That's what I'm saylng. So I think if we need to compromise, those would be the areas where we're going to compromise. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, thank you. councilman Johnson: I have a question as to van pooling. You didn't talk about van pooling and also how much contact have you had with Southwest Metro on trying to establish a van pool and that klnd of work? I thlnk we mentioned that the other day and I'm having problems seeing what's the difference between gettlng plcked up from the van pool or your car pool at your babysltters house or getting picked up at your house. Why is having to stop at a babysitters house different? Can you address those for me for a quick second? City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 Sandra Reitsma: If I could, I'd just to say that we have looked at trying to do some van pooling and as I said, we have employees that are in the area. We do have people that car pool but we also have people as I sald who come from as far away as ELk River, St. Paul, Roseville. All these different areas and when we're looklng at that, a lot of it's not real conducive. The traveling is not real well 11ned up to stop and pick up people. The other thing that we're talklng about wlth the daycare is the issue of being able to go and get your children. To drop your children off. To get your children. If they're sick or whatever and if you don't have a car available to do that, there's a real problem with that. We have real resistance. We have a real fight from our employees when it comes to that. They're the ones that are gotng to be called to get their children. They want to be able to go to those different locations and get those children. Councilman Johnson: That's true. There's a lot of people in this world that take a city bus. Mayor Chmlel: Take a bus and leave the driving to us. Okay. Anything else Jay? Councilman Johnson: well, where do we draw the line? We've pretty much drawn the line in the industrial park at the ordinance. The ordinance was made as the line. We drew the line and that's a pretty good place to stop. Gary, you weren't here earlier when I asked a question as to they're talking a temporary parking lot. 3 years and they want to put rock in. Southwest Metro's doing the exact same thing. 3 year parking lot except for we're not putting rock in. Eden Prairie's going to allow us to compact the soil and put 3 inches of bituminous over the top of the soil. They figure it will last 3 years and wouldn't last 10 or 15 like you want a regular parking lot but they're not asking for 10 or 15. They're asking for 3. Would that be a reasonable compromise on the off site parking? Given adequate soil conditions of course. Gary Warren: I guess that's the quest[on is two. There's two parts. One is the type of use that the lot is going to have as far as the vehicles themselves. Trucks or whatever and also what [s the condition of the subsoils. We know at least from the Jay Kronick property that these are some pretty lousy soils i think. Now [ don't know what the results are. [ haven't seen them specifically in that area but I know that they were pretty bad and we actually disposed of a good portion of the black dirt that was excavated from the City's pond to the north of that property was disposed in that area to level it. So the blacker the dirt, the poorer the subbase and so on. Councilman Johnson: Is there any economic development district correct? There's still some money in it? Can there be money used for correcting soil conditions in an area like this? Don Ashworth: I would have to research that. I'm not sure. You can do soil corrections. The legislature did make major changes as to what can be done within economic development districts, which this one is. Secondarily we're allowed an extension on that district with the funds solely be used for the TH 101 realignment. Councilman Johnson-' So no special legislation? 35 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Don Ashworth: Right. My initial position would be, I think you'd have a very difficult time spending dollars for that purpose. Councilman Johnson: I mentioned when Jo Ann and I were there for our tour of the place, the possibility of looking at ordinance amendment on the setback side of it. If the sole purpose of the setback is aesthetics. If there are no environmental or other purposes, than what they are proposing that you use the same aesthetics as a 30 foot strip of grass. That still leaves the problem of the ?0~ green space which I do not believe is totally aesthetics. It's water runoff. Storm water. A lot of other things beyond aesthetics so I don't know. I can see changing our ordinance to allow the equivalent of the 30 foot setback by a combination of bermtng, vegetation and whatever. Putting up an earth fence there. Mayor Chmiel: Berm? Councilman Johnson: Berm, yeah. The fence on the back side of the berm so the berm's vertical. I'm only a civil engineer. I can't think these technical terms. Maybe I'll borrow some of his Contact. See I'm in a quandry there because I don't think with, I've always been for the last 4 years very tough on variances because they spread like wildfire. I can see why the neighbors would like to support you in requesting this variance because they'd like to do it too. They'd like to expand and expand into the setbacks and they'd like to do it too as their business gets better so you know, if they support you and you get it, then they've got a better chance of getting it. That's what we don't want. We don't want this to continue to grow. We've set our standards for our city and a variance is saying we're going to reduce our standards. Councilwoman Oimler: Well maybe Jay I can help you with your quandry because that was my exact feellng when the St. Hubert's PUD came wlth, they're way above ?0~ and we were saylng they have drainage problems aIready but we went ahead and approved lt. So I have trouble on the other hand giving it to a PUD because they're a PUD and not giving it to someone else. It tsn't necessarily fair. I mean they can't help that they're not a PUD. Councilman Johnson: ...ordinance though. I mean they didn't have a variance. Councilwoman Dimler: St. Hubert's? Well yeah but by granting them a PUD you're saying they don't have to meet our regular ordinance requirements. Councilman Johnson: And that's legal? Councilwoman Oimler: Sure. Councilman Johnson: If we could grant these guys a PUD, we could do the same thing. But that's not legal. I mean you know, it's a legal framework you're working with here. Councilwoman Oimler: You're talking semantics here. Councilman Johnson: Sure we are. Councilwoman Oimler: Let's make them a PUD then. City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Councilman 3ohnson: Can they apply for a PUD? Paul Krauss: I'm sure they could. There's always been the premise for a PUO though that the City is getting something back. Councilwoman Oimler: We didn't get anything from St. Hubert's. Councilman Johnson: Actually we are getting something from St. Hubert's. think we are. Councilman Workman: We're getting a corporate business and viable business to stay in town and provide Jobs. Councilman Johnson: I think they're committed, they're going to stay in town. They've said they're going to stay in town in'one form or another. Whether it's only a corporate headquarters and their manufacturing goes elsewhere. I don't see that and I don't take lightly their threats either you know. Give me something or I'm going to move. I don't do that. Councilwoman Oimler: You do have some Chan people working here though. Councilman Johnson: I'm sure we do. Councilwoman Oimler: So I think that's something to consider. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Anything more Jay? Judy Bedder: Can I say something? I live in Chanhassen and I've lived here many years. Mayor Chmiel: Would you like to come up to the microphone so we can pick you up please on our recordings. Judy Bedder: As a resident of Chanhassen I would like to continue working at Redmond and have the facility there. I enjoy Just having 5 minutes to work. No different than you Don or you Ursula. It's nice. I think we should give them the consideration. I really do. We employ people from town. When we need temporaries we help our youth out. The college kids. You know we use them in the summer. I would really like to see us help them. ~nd I urge you to do so. Thank you. Mayor Chmiel: Can I have your name please? Judy Better: My name is Judy Bedder. Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. I guess I'll put my two cents in now. Councilwoman Oimler: All right. Mayor Chmiel: I think that, I know that Redmond is a compliment to the city of Chanhassen. We appreciate you being here. I think that in looking at a lot of these things that ! have read and what I've been listening to, I too would like to see us somehow do an accommodation of this. I'd 11ke also to sort of take 37 City Council Meeting - September ~4, 1990 something from which the Plannlng Commission discussed. The possibility of treating this proposal as an experiment. I see other businesses in town, as Jay said, who as they develop and as they grow, get 1nrc sort of a bind and back into the pickle and how can we really address those. How can we as a community wanting to support our industries provide that klnd of situation for them. Experimental basis I think would not be a bad idea so we know where we're going if in the event this happens in another location. Maybe you have a little blt of input on that. Paul Krauss: The whole experimental idea that the Planning Commission, or several of the Planning Commissioners had was something that staff frankly took exception to because we had problems visualizing how it would occur. On the one hand we have an ordinance that says thou shalt do this. On the other hand we're saylng well ignore that staff. Just let them do whatever they want to do and we'll see if it works. I can't do that. You can gtve them a variance to do that if you can flnd rationale to do that but I've got to uphold what either you tell me it says in the ordinance. I don't have the discretion to throw the book out of the wlndow whlch ls sort of what the Plannlng Commission was asking us to do to try out that mass parking scheme. You know ordinances are not perfect and there are tlmes that ordinances need to be lmproved and modified to accommodate new situations. And I don't want to get too hung up on precedent here or too much sounding 11ko a bureaucrat but you know nobody's denying that Redmond's been an excellent corporate citizen and we all want them to stayi We would have preferred that they build thelr new plant in the community but barring that we'd like them to expand their old one. The concern we have, and we would have love to have found a solutlon for them, is how do we differentiate between thelr business and the next business to come into town or the next business to expand? PMT whlch is buildlng an expansion rlght now could have come to us with the exact same discussion. Basically saying I employ people in the community. I'm a good employer. I'm growlng and I need you to accommodate me. I'm not saying that we can't accommodate people but I'm leery of using the variances to do that or to use experiments if you wi11. If the ordinance is flawed, if the ordinance needs to build in more flexibility, possibly we should look at changing it and coming up wlth some 1docs. I'm not sure what they'd be at this point. I'm just real concerned, I guess as to the precedent value. Councilman Johnson: There was one other on the percent impervious surface whlch is a precedent I don't like, was purchasing the property that's currently used as a clty retention basin and wetlands behlnd Jay's Lotus Lawn and Garden's area. I think Jay owns that right now and we have an easement over it. It'd end up belng Redmond owning it and we have an easement over it and that would be part of their contiguous lot and they would then be over the 70~. Technically they would meet the ordinance. What they've actually done dld not actually add any drainable surfaces or anything. It just played games with the existlng land but they got to the polnt of technically meetlng the percent impervious. Then the other one would be to change the ordinance to, if there were no other reason other than visual to allow the bermlng in replace of the 30 foot setback under certain conditions, very specific tied in conditions. Paul Krauss: If I could touch on that 30 foot setback for a moment. I think the applicant's admirably shown that from a visual standpoint tt wlll look no different as you're passlng by on TH 5. In thls slte that probably works well. I mean from a design standpoint. From performance standpoint, I support those 38 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 kinds of approaches. Again I look down the road a little bit though and visualize what does that get us into and with the new comp plan, one area where we have sort of a residential industrial interface is along Audubon Road. Now some of the comp plan's been changed by the Planning Commission because of that but we're still going to be facing situations where we have new industrial buildings across the street. Across Audubon Road from those residential areas. We're looking at the possibility of changing the ordinance to require increased buffer yards but right now that 30 foot parking setback is the only thing that will separate that new site from that single family home. And that's the most we can require theoretically under the ordinance right now. When a precedent is established for something less, again I've got to try and think how would we differentiate between that new applicant and this one tonight. Possibly there's something I'm not thinking of but I'm not sure how that would be done. Councilman Johnson: When I'm considering an ordinance change, I would envision that it would not be applicable of decreasing the distance to a residential zoning. That if we're going to allow a decrease of the setback, the only way you could do it is with achieving the identical visual impact as the full setback is but only to another industrial/business/commercial whatever zoning. That distance setback for noise and other purposes to the residential, the berming doesn't do it for me because there's more reasons there than just strictly visual. So over everything else. So that's what I'm looking at as far as the front parking there. Councilman Workman: Jay, if I could interject. A lot of the comp plan discussion involves TH 5 specifically and what is TH 5 going to look like. Now it would appear to me, and maybe what Paul is saying is maybe in the future we want, if we're going to have light industrial office on TH 5 and we don't want to look like Eden Prairie as people are beating the drum, we're going to want it set back even further. Potentially or to dictate how that looks. That's the catch that maybe we're getting into here. If you just have a green fence and a wall up kind of fooling people, does that accomplish the same thing? Councilman Johnson: No, No. I'm saying it has to have the exact same visual impact as what the required 30 foot setback would and I Would not allow fences to give you that visual impact. It'd have to be of natural material. Such as what they are doing. With the berm there they're using sod and trees and bushes and flowers and whatever to give you the visual setback. But to put up a fence across there and paint it green, that doesn't buy me anything. I agree with you. Councilman Workman: Paul, would we be requiring further setbacks from the 30 in the future? Paul Krauss: We're actually looking at trying to change the ordinance to do that, yeah. Councilman Workman: Would this fall under an existing use? Councilwoman Oimler: Then it would. Councilman Johnson: This wouldn't be for them. This would be for their back lot line more or less which is up against residential. 39 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Paul Krauss: ...yes, that's correct. That's their only residential exposure is on the back side. Councilman Johnson: And then they'd be grandfathered because they're already there anyuay. Paul Krauss: Right. Councilman Workman: Well you know, two of these requests, the mass parking and the rock or pavement are temporary so they're not going to be there forever. And we're saying that we're not going to notice any change in the front setback. If there's going to be, we're going to know about it and Dave Peterson's going to publish it in big letters in the front page of the paper. You know the impervious is going to change but I don't know. I refer back to my original questlon and that's... Councilwoman Dimler: Mr. Erhart would like to say something. Mayor Chmiel: Yeah, Tim. Tim Erhart: Tim Erhart and I run a business in the industrial park of Chanhassen. I have for the last 5 years. Our business too has grown dramatically slnce we started and slnce we moved here in lg85. As opposed to coming in here and asking for exceptions to the ordinance, I think we've remalned good citizens. We saw the growth comlng. We planned for it. We increased our space about 75~ last year. We stuck with the existing ordinances on parklng. We're paylng the taxes for that exlstlng 75~ addition. I would be extremely surprised to flnd that another business could come in a year later and be granted variances ina situation where we slmply dld our plannlng properly. Avoided a contest with the city and basically were acting as good citizens. And I just cannot see how you can take one business, for whatever reason or threat and to make exceptions when there really is, as I can see, no hardship other than a desire to stall in order to elther optimlze their profitability or thelr flexibility. I can see no reason other than those two things. If their growth ls there, certainly the flnanoe wlll be there to do the thing properly because usually growth allows spending in that area. So those are my comments and I would ask that you vlew dlsfavorably on thls proposal. Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. Larry Perkins: I'd like to speak to just a few points that may clarify. Also to gtve our commitment. As far as visually, I can assure you and I think those that know about Redmond and have watched Redmond through the years, that we wlll do everything. The place is probably one of the most beautiful sites on the east side of town now. It wlll continue to be that way and I can assure you that our frontal vtew will be equally as good looking as it ls today or better. As far as the experimental polnt, I guess we wouldn't object if you wanted to experiment with that concept but ue couldn't, it would put us in jeopardy in terms of puttlng a time frame on it because we have these multi-millions of dollars that we'd like to spend and that doesn't come lightly and I want to assure you that dldn't come lightly to us. We spent, as I said, 5 months and several hundred thousand dollars in fees studying this project. I'm probably the one to blame for not bulldlng...declded not to bulld out on the new project 4O City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 site. The 55 acre site because it simply was about 5 times too large for good strategic planning as far as where we want to go in the next 5 to 7 years. So then we brought ourselves back to square one and tried to decide what the best thing for the company would be. We don't bring up other alternatives to threaten in any way but you people as business people would look at your alternatives as well and that's the only reason that we've spent these $ months studying, as far as the impervious, I'd like to point out a couple of things. We own 9.2 acres so we own down to here. Now obviously the State has an easement over this but if you consider this green area here which we feel, we've looked at the drawings and feel will always be some amount of green there. It's about an acre of green and if you consider that and not take the 7 acres, if you're looking at the intent we feel that we're at the 70~ then and meet the intent of that total acreage. Not Just the acreage that we're able to utilize. I might point out also that Lyman right next to us has much more than 70X impervious. Also wanted to point out that this gravel area over here, we proposed a berm in front of the gravel area so visually would also be equal and not be able to be seen from the highway. So I just wanted to point out those few things and I'm happy to any other questions you might have. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Thank you. Paul, that issue of the green space adjacent to the highway. Which the highway department has the easement over. Paul Krauss: Mr. Mayor, it's a roadway easement. They own the underlying land but it's got a roadway on it. It's no different than a single family lot that's platted for the center line of a street. We don't include that area in the lot computation for that single family lot. Nor do we include it tn this case for their hard surface coverage. In face some of that area is going to be paved under as TH 5 is widened. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. ~ny other discussion? Oid you find anything in the book Jay? Councilman 3ohnson: I just opened lt. Councilman Workman: [ think Mr. Erhart raises some good points. So getting back to my original question again, how far do we compromise? We could still do all of this tonight and in 5 months they could decide they don't want to be In town anyway and that it would be a nice property to sell. ! don't know. You know that doesn't guarantee, our passing of this doesn't guarantee that they'LL remain in town anyway. ! mean if they're operating on markets and business and they're going to continue to do so despite what the city does for them or against them. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Any other discussion? I'm not hearing any other discussion. [s there a motion? Awfully quiet. You can see it's a hard task for us to come up with a solution. Councilwoman Oimler: Is everyone okay with conditions I thru 6 on the staff recommendations? Page 4 and 5. Mayor Chmtel: Yeah, I don't have any. 41 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Councilwoman Dimler: So we could pass those and take number 7 then and re-evaluate it? Councilman 3ohnson: It's so integral to the whole thing. Councilwoman Oimler: Well no. The other ones are the off site. Councilman Johnson: 1 thru & only cover the off site? Councilwoman Dimler: I think so. Mayor Chmiel: Yes. Councilman 3ohnson: Okay. Councilwoman Dimler: And number 7 deals with the on site. Councilman Johnson: The only variance in 1 thru 6 is mass parking? Councilman Workman: That's not a variance. Hams parking wouldn't be a variance is it? Councilwoman Dimler: Well you're denying that though here. Paul Krauss: It's approved the way it's written. Councilwoman Dlmler: That the mass parking not be permitted? Paul Krauss: Right. Councilwoman Oimler: So how many sites would that give them? Jo Ann Olsen: Down to 60. Mayor Chmlel: 60 to 75, is that what the total was? Jo Ann 01sen: I don't recall. Mayor Chmiel: Yes Tom. Tom Redmond: I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions. We don't have any secrets. Never did. Never will. If you want to know what we're going to be doing 3 years from now, ask us. We'll tell you what we're thlnklng of dolng from now. We have the same agreement with our employees. We have no secrets from them. None. If they want to know what bulldlng plans, 4 times a year we have a big pizza party. We tell them everything we're going to do. All of our bulldlng plans. All of our dreams. All of our products. We have no intention of leaving Chanhassen in 2 months or 5 months. I mean if we could stay here the rest of our carreer, we would. And we will always have a presence here. Now let me deal wlth this gentleman's contention that we're doing this for profit or the blg buslness syndrome. He's rlght. We are. Last year every employee in our place got a $2,000.00 check for Christmas regardless of their position. Whether it was Larry Perkins, our COO or if it was Linda, the lady that keeps City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 the place clean. They all get the same bonus. Everybody got a 10~ contribution to their profit sharing. Everybody got a 50~ matching to their 40l K. We've got the best insurance. We've got the best drug. We've got the greatest hours. Everybody gets summer hours off and at the end of the year when it came to divide the rest on December 22nd, everybody got a check for 20~ of their annual salary. You bet it's for profit but our people share in it and that's exactly what this is going to do. That place is paid for. If I could stay there and guarantee everybody a 20~ or 25~ check at the end of the year, I'd do it so you're absolutely correct. Larry Perkins: ...commitment, Councilman Workman I understand what you're saying but if you put that money into the place, we're not leaving. I suppose we could get the variance and quick sell the place and go someplace else but once we put the money, I think that's our commitment to you that once we do that we are...we want to get busy about that because of growth but I think it's, we're...commitment. Councilman Workman: I'm not accusing anybody of carpet bagging or anything else and thank you for the Congressman. No, I'm just saying there's forces out there that even a well run business has no control over and that could happen. Not by design but by people so. Councilwoman Dimler: I was asking about how many, if no mass parking, that brings them down to. 3o Ann 01sen: 65. Councilwoman Oimler: As opposed to? JO Ann 01sen: 78. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. I think 65 is acceptable. I mean I'd like to give them the 78 but I do see certain dangers in emergencies. Having cars locked in. Councilman Workman: Ready to make a motion on the first Councilwoman Dialer: Yeah. So I move approval of Site Plan Amendment ~85-1 for the off-site improvements with conditions ! thru 6. Mayor Chmiel: And what about condition 7? Councilwoman Dimler: And condition 7 I recommend that we take another look at. down with staff and see what we can come up with. Councilman Workman: Second. Mayor Chmiel: Discussion is open. Councilman Johnson: On item 1, 2 Inch bituminous mat. Is this also assuming proper underlaying and stuff as a regular parking lot? Can we modify the wordlng to allow a designed 3 year lot? Normally you have what? 3 to 6 Inches of rock underneath the 2 inch mat. 43 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Gary Warren: That leaves G right? If they can provide the soil information that verifies it, that we're going to get a 3 year life, proper tonage parking lot, I guess providing that documentation we can look specifically at the design. That wtll obviously cost money for them to do that. Councilman Johnson: No semi's allowed. Of course by the design, no semi's going to get out. They might get ln. They might not get out. So would we be looklng to modlfy condition I somehow or another to state that if bituminous mat is proposed, without the rock underlay? Gary Warren: Gravel? Councilman Johnson: Yeah, the gravel. Councilwoman Dimler: Can we just say something as deemed acceptable by the engineers? Councilman Johnson: Yeah, that could be easier. Councilwoman Dimler: I would accept that amendment. Councilman Workman: Second. Mayor Chmiel: Wait, wait. Amendment to the existing with an acceptance by the first and second. Councilman Johnson: The design of which will be approved by the Engineer. Councilwoman Olmler: Yeah, that's fine. Mayor Chmlel: Clarification of item 7 to be looked at at number 7? Come up wlth a conclusion regarding the 70% impervious. Is that what you were saying? Councilwoman Dimler: Yes. The 70~ impervious and the setback variance. Councilman Johnson: Are we going to look at our mass parking regulation at any tlme to see? Thls ls wrltten, I don't know. We've never discussed mass parklng the 4 years I've been here. We prohibit it and I don't know why. Councilwoman Dimler: It's not safe. Paul Krauss: Well we don't have in town typically places that can benefit by it. When you see the sportlng events where everybody arrlves and leaves at the same time. One of the issues that was raised tonight was that van pooling was unsuitable because people needed to run for daycare and that kind of situation for a sick kid. When you mass park, you're there unttl the bell rings and there's no leavlng. There's some questions I suppose from a management standpoint for if the City in fact has any interest in making sure that lt's run correctly and I'm not sure if there's any problems associated wlth it or not but we don't have any in town just because it's basically not suitable for most places and rlght now the ordinance doesn't allow lt. It says you'll have a parklng stall that's 8 172 feet wide and 18 feet long and it's got to have a drive up... City Council Meeting - September 2~, 1990 Mayor Chmiel: Yeah. Good. Alrtght. We have a motion on the floor with a second to have the recommendations with item 1, the acceptability by the Engineer added to that. Item 2, 3, 4, 5, & and the on stte improvements to be relooked at. Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman Workman seconded to approve Site Plan Amendment t85-1 for the Off-Site Improvements as sho~n on the plans dated August 21, 1990 subJect to the foLtowlng condittorm: 1. A revised site plan shall be submitted for the City Engineer's approval showing that the parking lot shall be paved with a 2 inch bituminous mat and that the mass parking area proposed by the applicant not be permitted. 2. The parklng lot will be permitted for three year (36 months) untll October 31, 1993, and at which time the area must be restored to its original condition. If the use of the parking lot ts extended beyond three years curb and gutter must be provided around the parking lot perimeter and the site must connect to the storm sewer tn West 78th Street. 3. A revised gradtng and landscaping plan shall be submitted providing the requlred bermlng and landscaping. 4. Type III reinforced erosion control shall be installed at all locations shown on the plans prior to construction and maintained for the life of the facility adjacent to the wetland off-site. A detail of Type III reinforced erosion control shall be shown on the plans. 5. A concrete driveway apron (city standard) shall be installed at the entrance to the parking lot. The applicant shall provide the City with a letter of credit tn an amount approved by the Ctty Engineer to cover the cost to remove all of the off-site proposed improvements and restore the slte back to it's original condition. Also to approve tabling the on-mite Improvements and condition number 7 for further revLea by staff, al1 voted Ln favor and the motion carried unanimously. Mayor Chmiel: We will take a look at that portion of tt and then get back to the applicants as well as back to Council. Okay? Paul Krauss: Is there any direction as to what areas we should pursue? Mayor Chmiel: Well that's a good question Paul. I think you're going to have to revlew the completeness of it and come back with some kind of spectfic direction I'd say... Okay? Good. Thank you. INTERIH USE PERU~T TO EXCAVATE 60.000 CUBIC YHRDS OF CLHY tL~TERI~L FOR CONSTRUCTION OF NEW TH 5, SHHFER CONTRACTING. INC,, Jo Ann 01sen: We just wanted you to change from an IUP to an Earth Work Permit. That was brought up at the Planning Commission. Technically it's an Earth Work Permtt. 45 City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 Counc/lman Workman moved, Counc/lwoman Dimler seconded to approve Earth Work Perm/t ~!~0-4 w/th the following conditions: 1. The applicant shall provide the City with a letter of credlt in the amount of $38,150.00 to cover any road damage, maintenance of erosion control measures and slte restoration. 2. The applicant shall submit $401.00 grading permit fee as required by the Unlform Bulldlng Code and all clty and county staff tlme used to monltor and inspect the operation shall be paid at a rate of $30.00 per hour. The applicant shall provlde a Traffic Control Plan for staff approval providing specifications on how truck hauling traffic uill be controlled, specifically durlng rush hour perlods. The applicant shall obtain and comply with all permit requirements of the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District. The applicant shall make arrangements to cap the existing well in accordance wlth all state, county and local requirements prlor to initiating grading operations. 6. The applicant shall supply the Clty wlth a mylar as-bullt survey prepared by a professional engineer upon completion of excavation to verify the grading plan has been performed In compliance wlth the proposed plan. 7. Temporary settling basins shall be constructed during the grading operations on an as needed basls or as requested by the Clty. 8. Topsoiling and disk mulch seeding shall be implemented immediately following the completion of excavated areas. Noise levels stemming from the operation are not to exceed HnPCA and EPA regulations. If the clty determines that there lsa problem warranting such tests shall be pald for by the applicant. 10. Hours of operation are limited to 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and prohibited on national holidays. If the City Engineer determines that trafflc conflicts result due to rush hour traffic flows, the hours of operations will be appropriately restricted. 11. The city u111 work wlth the County Sheriff to coordinate speed and weight checks. If trucks are violating traffic laws, staff will requlre that the operation be shut down and w111 ask the Clty Council to revoke the permlt. All voted in favor and the mot/on carried unanimously. Councilman Workman: ! would say that staff's hard work on the Wanegrln deal paid off on this. Am I correct? Mayor chmiel: Yes. Thank you staff. City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 CONSZDER SCHOOL SPEED ZONES ON LAREDO DRZVE, KERBER BOULEVARD. GREAT PLIIil'NS BLVD. AND WEST 78Tfl ~TREET. Gary Warren: We've got several school speed zones here that we're all Z think interested in seeing addressed and fortunately we've been able to finally get our pedestrian counts. Motion for approval? Councilwoman Oimler: Uh-huh. Councilman Workman: I'd move approval. Gary Warren: With that I'll conclude my comments. Councilman Johnson: actually the only thing Z'd like to show is if the newspapers are aware, make sure they're aware what sections we just approved because [ think this is an important thing in our city. It's probably long over due. Councilman Workman: I could give them my report. Councilman Johnson: I think they have copies of the report. Please refer to the reports and get the streets right because people are going to be expecting their streets to, and some weren't approved and some were. Mayor Chmiel: There's one part in here which I agree with and that's on page 5. It says, it should be noted that establishing school speed zones alone is not enough to decrease the accident potential. Children must be made aware of routes and crossing points and they should take to and from school utilizing crossing guards or crosswalks where the driver anticipates pedestrian activities. I think that would be something possibly for CSO's to talk to the children in the schools or the Sheriff's Department. Whoever, to bring this up to the kids. Councilman 3ohnson: ! think at the beginning of school I think they do this as part of. Mayor Chmiel: Well I just want to make sure. Councilman Johnson: I'll tell you, having the last year, now having a sidewalk out here on Laredo you know. I've driven this for 10 years going to work with children in the street as I drive by and it is. Mayor Chmiel: They're still there with their bicycles and they're still walking. Councilman Johnson: They're mostly on the sidewalks now. Hayor Chmiel: I've seen them on the street unfortunately. Councilman Johnson: I've seen the adults walk down the streets with sidewalks on both sides. In fact I saw somebody walk down West 78th Street the other day. Right down in amongst all the traffic. Just walktng down the street. 3 foot from a sidewalk. 47 City Council Meeting - September 2d, 1990 Mayor Chmiel: Any other discussion? We had a motion. Councilman Workman: I did move approval. Councilwoman Dlmler: Second. Resolution #90-124: Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dtmler seconded to approve the following: 1. Adopt resolutions establishing school speed zones along Great Plains Boulevard (15 mph), Kerber 8oulevard, (20 mph) and Laredo Orlve (15 mph), as noted in the staff report dated September 19, 1990. 2. Adopt resolut£on for No Parking signs along both sides on Kerber Boulevard 800 feet north and south of the drlveway entrance to West Vlllage Helghts Townhouses. 3. Hove crosswalk on Kerber Boulevard south to coincide ulth the entrance to West Village Heights Tounhouses. 4. Implementation of trafflc control signs as indicated on Attachment Nos 2 and 5. 5. Notify bus company to direct thelr drivers to unload in school parklng lot not on street whenever possible. All voted in favor and the motion carried. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Mayor Chmiel: Before we do that, I did forget. I did not ask for an approval on this resolution and I think ue need it. Councilman Workman: So moved. Councilwoman Oimler: Second. Resolution ~90-125: Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded approving the resolution commending the efforts of the agencies and personnel that assisted in the bus accident that occured in Chanhassen on September 10, I990. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Councilman Johnson: I thought we dld that on September 18th? Mayor Chmiel: No. Don Ashworth: It shows it in there, I remlnded Don that we tabled that. That was our work session and we didn't do... Councilman Johnson: Oh, okay. Because Hargle asked me about that. I sald, no I think we already passed that. Mayor Chmiel: Kioua Circle, St. Hubert's Church and Met Councll. 48 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1~0 Councilwoman Olmler: Okay, I'd llke to talk about Kiowa Circle for a moment. Mayor Chmlel: Where is that Ursula? Councilwoman Dimler: Off of Frontier Trail. Mayor Chmiel: Is there anyone I know that lives on that street? Councilwoman Dimler: Yes. That's why I want to talk about It. Councilman Johnson: We've got a former Council member that used to live there. Councilwoman Dimler: Yeah, right and he wrote a complaint. No actually with the improvements on Frontier Trail, they all went wonderfully. However, a lot of the heavy equipment got parked on Kiowa Circle and also they did some digging there to do the sanitary sewer so actually the whole road looks like a mess now. There ls stlll equipment parked there. There's no more other activity. Several of the neighbors have called me and said when are they going to come In and redo or resurface Kiowa Circle now so I would ask for an update on where we are in that project and hopefully it w111 get done before winter sets In. Gary Warren: Yes. Councilwoman Dlmler and I have spoken about thts. I don't know if the crews were there today. You'll have to tell me. Councilwoman Oimler: I haven't seen anybody. Gary Warren: But they will be there tomorrow to patch the sewer rehab excavation that was done. We dld a spot repair of the san&tary sewer tn that area and that has been left to settle out and now actually city crews are going to do it because of the...sttcks and how things are worktng but it should be out there tomorrow to patch that. We've been in contact with the contractor to close up and button up and get hls equipment out of there so hopefully that wtll happen this week yet as well. Councilwoman Dimler: So you're telling me you're not going to redo the whole surface. You're just going to patch the sewer? The area where they repaired the sewer? Mayor Chmlel: Has it been revtewed and looked at? Councilwoman Oimler: Yeah, look at it because I know what the street looked like before and it's much more cracked wtth all that heavy equipment. Even the circle parts where they stored all their heavy equipment. Gary Warren: We've got video from what it looked like before the project started so our original Intentions were to rebuild that as you know because of the construction and such. Councilwoman Oimler: I'm just asking for a resurfactng. Gary Warren: Well to resurface, if we've got a bad sub-base, that's what we have to look at and evaluate. We just have the street swept. It should have been swept last Friday so we can get a good look at what's there so we'll be 49 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 looking at it this week and see what's appropriate. Councilman Workman: And you're going to do the assessment... Gary Warren: I think the Boyt residence has got a big assessment coming. Councilwoman Oimler: We're not getting it... St. Hubert's Church, as you all saw the article in the Uillager about how in disrepair it is. There are many citizens that are concerned about keeping St. Hubert's here in town. The old church. Apparently the Historical Soceity has no money. An idea was presented that since we're having the Oktoberfest on the 28th, if people would like to make donations, if we couldn't have something there to accept donations for that purpose. Councilman Johnson: Should we not form some organization to do that? Preservation organization? Committee? Something of volunteers. Councilwoman Dimler: If we'd like to. Whatever way you want to handle it but I think it's a good idea. Councilman Johnson: I don't think it's appropriate for the City per se to accept donations. Mayor Chmiel: I don't think we should do that in my opinion. Councilwoman Oimler: People like the landmark. Councilman Johnson: I think that is one of our most prestigious landmarks of the old city. I love old buildings like that and I would be willing to be part of any kind of committee for preservation. Councilwoman Oimler: Even Herb Bloomberg mentioned it today as a landmark in Chanhassen so I hate for it to fall apart and we lose it. Don Ashworth: Maybe we can do a pledge type of thing where people can sign up and make a pledge potentially over a period of time. Councilwoman Oimler: Does the City own it? Don Ashworth: That's a continuous 5 year leases. At the end of each 5 year perlod, both sides and relook at it and decide if they want to get out. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. Well I think what they need most drastically at this point is the roofing for about $40,000.00. Mayor Chmiel: $45,000.00 I think was the last one. Councilwoman Oimler: I mean I'm not asking to restore the whole thing you know but just take care of the immediate needs. I'm sure people would be w1111ng to make donations. Mayor Chmiel: We've gotten 2 bids on that have we not? What were those? 5O City Council Heeting - September 24, 1990 Todd Gerhardt: Contentions were that the roofing is the problem. The drainage is a problem. The electrtcal's a problem. Foundation la a problem. The windows were a problem. Councilwoman Oimler: So basically you're saying there's no problem7 Todd Gerhardt: It's a big problem but I mean if you fix, there's two issues. The roof is one of the most, the worst problem but the electrical is also another problem that is shorting out. The wiring has never been redone. It's 100 years old. I mean that's something else we have to seriously look at. I'm also having somebody go back out and look and see if we can't patch the roof for the interim solution. It seems that it's only leaking in one portion of the building and it's in the most northerly easterly corner of the building so I'm having somebody go back and check it and see if they can't go back and patch that. Councilwoman Oimler: Okay. I bring it up because this is the kind of project that the citizens like to rally around. Todd Gerhardt: If you're going to start an organization, you have to almost create a non-profit organization to get the tax break and there are criterias and an application form and you have to elect officers and create By-laws. Don Ashworth: We can do it as an off-shoot of the city. Just make out pledge sheets. Right now we have an old St. Hubert's fund. Todd Gerhardt: Use that as a tax write-off? Oo they write it off? Don Ashworth: If we're spending money, we don't need the tax write-off right? Councilman Johnson: The people donating the money. Don Ashworth: Oh, okay. Well, they're still donating to the city. Todd Gerhardt: Is that a tax write-off if you write a check to the City? Don Ashworth: I guess we'll have to take a look at that. Todd Gerhardt: Hy water bill you can write off? I don't think so. You're writing it out to the City. Don Ashworth: To help out Old St. Hubert's Church. If that's what we billed it and they wrote it out, Help Save St. Hubert's Church Fund. Roger Knutson: I don't know the answer. Todd Gerhardt: It's not a difficult thing. Councilman Johnson: It's not difficult to form a non-profit organization. I just formed one last year. The Chan-Chaska Soccer Club. It doesn't involve a week. I should say Tom Bill did the legal beagle work and he's one of the parents of one of the soccer players. I'm sure we can find some legal beagle here in town that will donate an hour and form a non-profit organization for us. 51 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 It's not that big of a deal. Who knows, maybe even some well known city attorney would donate their time. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, let's look and see what we can do. Councilwoman Oimler: Let's explore that. Mayor Chmiel: And all the legalities. Councilwoman Oimler: And maybe use the opportunity while everyone's gathered at the Oktoberfest to see if they want to make donations. Then the last thing. Councilman .Johnson: Ursula, would you volunteer to be on the board with me of a non-profit organization if we set one up? Councilwoman Oimler: Yes. Councilman Johnson: Okay. You've got 2 board members if you like and he's voluteered. Would you like to be on our board too. Roger Knutson: I'll talk about that. Mayor Chmiel: Paul, do you want to give an update on Met Council? Paul Krauss: Sure. As you're aware, we've had a lot of discussions with the Metro Council regarding a fundamental difference of opinion of how many people live here... We confirmed that the census figure which was 11,700 and the number of households was pretty accurate. You know a lot of communities you read in the paper, New York City and Detrolt are claimlng that huge number of housing units were overlooked in larger cities. We didn't have that problem and I guess we were concerned today because of what you had told us about things being missed. Sharmin went back and caught most of them so the census was pretty accurate. In any case, we had a meetlng wlth 4 people from the Metro Council. 2 from their comp Planning staff, 1 transportation person and 1 person who lsa statistician worklng ulth Mike Munson on the regional model. Marcy Wartiz, our Council Rep was there. The Mayor was in attendance for part of that meetlng. Gary Warren was there and myself and 3o Ann. Councilman Workman: Who are the Met Count11 people Paul? Paul Krauss: It was Ann Brayden, Tory Flood, their statistician is a guy named 8orbog Sing? Relatively new staff person over there. Gary Warren: Rich Thompson. Paul Krauss: Rich Thompson is the new staff person in Comp Plannlng who is handling our comprehensive plan. He was there. Rich is the person also who just worked with Savage when Savage got thelr 2,300 acre MUSA line addition. think those two facts, that fact is significantly hopefully. We didn't ask nor did we expect them to say today that everything that we've presented to them ls hunky dory by lock, stock and barrel. We wanted to re-open that dialogue. See we had tried to have a cooperative approach wlth them. I started meetlng ulth them last September and we've been feeding them information ever slnce. 52 C~ty Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 Somebody over there clearly dropped the ball because they didn't respond to us for 8 months and when they did respond it was something that uss completely different than what we had expected. I think that there's more of an understanding that came out of this meeting today. One of the things that I enjoyed about it is I've never been able to get Met Council people to actually come out and look and we had them do that today. We borrowed a van and we took them around the community. One of the things we really tried to emphasize is that they're very protective and possessive of the MUSA line and some of the discussions that the Planning Commission's had with different alternatives is that we don't want to create a little donut hole in our MUSR because the Metro Council won't accept it. But what we tried to get across to the Metro Council is that Chanhassen is a macro sized donut sized hole in the MUSR. That we're surrounded on four sides by urbanization and I think that came across real well on our trip. He took them over down TH 41 into Chaska and basically said you're now west of our downtown. Further west from Minneapolis outside and we drove them back in on Hwy. 18. Industrial on both sides and bang, there's a cornfield and I said, that's Chanhassen. There's the MUSR line and it comes across visually quite well when you do that. We also skirted Lake Lucy Road and showed them how basically all we have left inside the MUSR now is infill. We tried to get across the point that we have large properties inside and outside the MUSR are tied up for long periods of time. The Temple of Eck is 175 acres that hasn't been on the market and who knows when it will be. That's obviously, from your discussions of several years ago, that's prime land but it's not available. Rs the MUSR's expanded, we took great pains to show the Metro Council that if the plan is adopted the way the Planning Commission has drafted it, it will be taking in two large parcels, Jerome Carlson and Prince's and we said we don't expect these properties to develop in the l0 to 15 year timeframe. Ultimately they may but don't count this against us because they're here and I think there was a willingness to recognize the sorts of realities that we deal with. To the extent that they've never been receptive in recognizing that kind of stuff before and now I think that they are, I think it's made some progress. We'll see shortly. They're aware, we told them that the quasi-official date for the public hearing for the comp plan is October 24th and we told them we're going ahead with that. The Planning Commission's asked us to proceed and that's what we're doing. Councilwoman Oimler: Good, thank you. ADNINZSTRATZVE PRESENTATIONS: POTENTIAL ALTERED SURVEY/VARIANCES. 6285 ~UOUBON CIRCLE. GOROON KOEHNEN. PLANNZNG OIRECTOR. Paul Krauss: This one is quite unusual and is a little bit frustrating to deal with. There's a house being built up on Audubon Circle and it's nearly complete. It's been built very slowly. I think it's taken about a year, year and a half to be built. One of our building inspectors in going up there took a look at it and said it just didn't seem right to him. It seemed like it was too close to the street and when he scaled it off, realized that there were significant variances on the thing. When this was brought back to our attention, the inspector and Sharmin Al-Jarl took out the survey that was used to support the building permit and realized that it sure appeared to us as though the cul-de-sac bubble which should have been shown on the survey, had 53 City Council Meeting - September 24, 1990 been erased. In the text I've shown you copies of both surveys. I called the surveyor. He was a fellow who was pretty reputable and who I've known for a whlle and I said, well what glves with thls? He indicated that when it left his office it was on there and that the appIicant had in fact...remove it because there was no easement covering lt. Zt's rather complicated by the fact that nobody can find an easement document for the bubble. The straight section of the road is covered by an easement that's recorded at the County and the County shows the bubble on their half section maps whlch nobody can figure out but the applicant for the bullding permit was aware of the fact that there wasn't a recorded easement or that nobody could find an easement for the property. We discussed thls matter with our city attorney, my flrst reaction was to try and go and slap a stop work order on it. I thought better to call Roger first before we dld that and we basically have several polnts that shook us up in trying to resolve this matter. The first is that the property is torrance property and apparently State Law is contradictory. On one hand it says if the city uses a street for 6 years it's basically yours. On the other hand it says that or lmplles that thls doesn't apply to torrance property. Apparently there's no case law on it. Roger sald you can take it before a judge and try to have hlm adjudicate in our favor but even if we won, all that would do ls give us the right to then try the fact on whether or not he had submitted a false document and then you've got to prove that it was a false document and who falsified lt. What it boils down to is we're pretty convinced that somebody handed us a jlmmled survey and we've never had thls happen before. We're not sure lt's going to happen again because some of the circumstances around this lot are pretty unlque. There was a clear reason for the builder to do that. The lot is very steep in the back. Slopes off and then the soils get poor so there was probably a desire to push the house closer to the street. If you want us to pursue this, ue wt11. I guess after talking to Roger though, I don't advise that you tell us to pursue it legally because we're not sure that we'd have a terrible amount, a great amount of success. It's frustrating because we're pretty certain we know what happened but we can't do a whole lot about lt. Hayor Chmiel: I guess this has already happened and as I see it there's really no actlon on it at this time. How do we prevent this from happening again? Paul Krauss: Well I tried to get at that in wrapping up the report. A couple of thlngs. First of a11, once you're stung you look for these thlngs a little more. When you're handed a registered survey, I mean that's gospel. You never thlnk that anybody's going to alter it. Alterlng one's 11legal and surveyors can lose thelr 11cense. People can be prosecuted for doing it so lt's really an odd ball deal that happened. We are going to take more pain though. I mean when Sharmin put this down on my desk and she said what's wrong with this surve and Z was looking at it, I couldn't tell unt11 she told me where the cul-de-sac bubble was. We are going to try and double check ourselves where they have a feature on the street 11ke a cul-de-sac bubble, we should have knowledge of that and be able to check it. One of the other things though, we've been talkLng to Roger on and off for months about dolng ls the Clty's always had a problem in filing easements and getting title to property and recording documents. It's done on a real hlt and mlss basls. A lot of tlmes we depend on the developer to do it and that's like asking the devil to do your work for you. You know you're runnlng the risk that they're not going to do it properly. It's not in thelr interest to do Lt. And we've had problems. There's a history in the city, not so much recently because Gary's taken a lot of that over, but of easements on 54 City Council Meeting - September 2~, 1990 the north side sewer project was one where easements were never recorded. They were sitting in a drawer by a former Ctty Attorney or whatever happened, it just didn't, they don't show up anyplace. What we'd like to do is have Roger's law firm be responsible for recording documents and easements. The developer would be required to give everything to Roger. Roger would verify them and have a law clerk file it and we pass that charge along to the developer as a cost of developing because they're paying their attorneys to do it right now. With that we're confident that Roger can take their title and make sure that everything is filed and nothlng gets released in any way, shape or form until everything's been recorded and we're satisfied that it's done. We think that's the best way of dolng it and making sure that we don't get stuck with non-existing easements again in the future. Roger and I have been talking about this. Get Gary and we'd like to flrm up that proposal and bring that to you in another administrative item in the near future. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, thank you. Councilman Johnson: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Chmlel: Adjournment? Councilman Johnson: No. I'd like him to proceed on pursuing the altered document by referring it to the Board of Engineering and Surveyors. This is their jurisdiction. A registered survey's been altered. The State Board should be investigating it. They have investigators that are paid to do this. Hand them over what we've got and let them run with the ball. Not us. Paul Krauss: We could do that. I wasn't aware that we could use that option. It appears that if an alteration occurred, it occurred after it left the surveyor's office. Now we can't determine that. We were given a blue line copy and apparently a copy of a copy because the original that was given to the appllcant...the change is tough to follow so if they have an investigative unit, we'd be happy to forward tt to them. Councilman Johnson: Yes they do. Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman D~mler seconded to adjourn the meeting. voted in fauor and the motion carried. The meetLng was adjourned at 10:45 Submitted by Don Ashworth City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 55