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1988 08 22
CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING AUGUST 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton called the meeting to order. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Councilman Boyt, Councilman Horn, Councilman Geving and Councilman Johnson STAFF PRESENT: Don Ashworth, Barbara Dacy, Jo Ann Olsen, Gary Warren, Jim Chaffee, Todd Gerhardt and Pat Farrell, City Attorney. APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to approve the agenda as amended with the following additions and changes: Councilman Johnson wanted to discuss a change to the Zoning Ordinance for Conditional Use Permits, Councilman Boyt wanted to discuss the Fire Marshall, Don Ashworth wanted to discuss the water restrictions, Barbara Dacy wanted to discuss Reuter Compost, and Councilman Geving wanted to move item 9 to after Visitor Presentation and to move item 11 to the Consent Agenda as item (1). All voted in favor of the agenda as amended and the motion carried. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Horn moved, Councilman Geving seconded to approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's reconmendations: e. Resolution #88-84: South Lotus Lake 2nd Addition, Accept Roadway and Utility Improvements. i. City Council Minutes dated August 8, 1988 Planning Con~nission Minutes dated August 3, 1988 Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated August 9, 1988 j. Resolution #88-85: Set Date of Bond Sale for Various City Bonds. k. Resolution #88-86: Approve Resolution Designating Polling Places and Election Judges for the Primary Election on September 13, 1988 and the General Election on November 8, 1988 1. Resolution #88-87: Approve Supplemental Assessment Roll for Chanhassen Hills Trunk Watermain Project 86-2 and Set Assessment Hearing Date for September 26, 1988 Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. (B) REQUEST TO WAIVE TRAIL DEDICATION FEES, GARY BROWN. Mayor H~milton: On (b), I certainly didn't agree wi. th the comments that were made by staff that says regardless of when construction approval is given, we can assess, go back and assess a trail fee. Now, I didn't know Lori was an attorney but I'd like to ask our Attorney if in fact that's true. If it is true, that means we can go back and assess anybody for anything we wanted to. If we wanted to change the rules as we're going along here, we'll just go back City CouncJ 1 MeetJ.ng - August 22, 1988 aF~i keep assessJ, ng right along. Den Ashworth: Roger is the one ~Jno reviewed it. I did not alert Pat to tine question. We're not charging the previous buildings. What you're charging is the new construction. If there's a ~ay in which you can divide out the acreage asseciat~l with the new permits versus eld, then we should de it in that fashion. The problem is, I believe there ~.~re 8 buildings in that first phase. Mayor He-nj. itoh: Well you and I had talk~--d and I guess I'm a little dJ. sappointed. You and I talked about having this as an agenda item so we could dJ. scuss how the Council wanted to even handle items like this and here .we have it coming back. Den Ashworth: I'd suggest doing just that. If you'd table the item and I think the Park and Recreation Commission should look at it as well. Mayor Ham] lton: I agree. Councilman Horn moved, Mayor He~ilton seconded to table the request to waive trail dedication fees for Gary Brown until the Park and Recreation Con~nission has looked at this item. Ail voted in favor and the mot]on carried. (C) APPROVAL OF LAKE ANN PARK EXPANSION SITE PLAN. Councilman Johnson: It's a good plan. I think ~p~ need to go forward with this. One thing I want to do is, they show some soccer fields on here which one of them has a fence running through the middle of it and it won't be too effective. I'd like them to take a look to see if they can maintain two soccer fields on ~here. That's really my only co~e~ento They show two proposed soccer fields but one of the~, when they put up a fence for the softball field, it will be tough to play soccer with a fence through the center of the field. I'd lJ. ke to just make that as my only cos~-~ent. Otherwise, it really is bec~ning an all softball place. I'd like to see _it be multiple sports too. Not just softball. M~yor Hamilton: I see softball, baseball, Little League, soccer. Councilman Johnson: Soccer's do,~q to one fi. eld out there. Mayor Heeilton: There's two. I think the intent is to use two of them and I'm sure that that can be done. Dale, did you have any comments? Laurie, perhaps you could address the issue that Jay has. Would it be a removeable fence or how would you handle that? Councilman Johnson: This ].sn't a final. Nothing's to scale or anything so you'd still have to do the design. This is just concept. Laurie McRostie: Tine Park Co~7missJon ~.~muld like to see the overlappJ, ng fi. etd there. The dJ. scussion that happenet at their meeting two weeks ago was that for the time being we net put that 3g~ foot fence all around the edge of the field so you could use the soccer at the same time that you'd be using softball. Until Chanhassen J.s able to acquire more parkland and additional co, unity play se you can have a larger soccer... Ci[y Counc~l Mee~J_ng - August 22~ 1988 Councilman Johnson: Okay. That was different than we were told at the Athletic Association meeting the other night. We were told there was definitely going to be a fence there and there wasn't going to be a soccer field so now I've heard two stories. Sounds good to me. Mayor Hamilton: I would suspect there are fences that could be put up on a temporary basis to use for softball and then they can take them down for soccer. Councilman Horn: I just had one con~nent on transportation. I would like to see us develop a plan where we don't need entrance through TH 5. I would like to get that off of TH 5 and I know we talked about an alternate going through a residential area but I think there might be a frontage road type of option that could eliminate that. I'd like to eliminate totally a park entrance on TH 5. Mayor Hamilton: That's significant dollars. We're trying to work within the budget. Lori is given a budget to work with. Councilman Horn: I think we have to look at the developments that take place and plan it with developments. Councilman Johnson: As Eckankar develops, or the land to the east, we need to look to, I'm sure that's in their plan. Mayor Hamilton: We've always, in years past, said as that property develops we would try to piggy back off that as far as access to the property in any way. Councilman Johnson moved, Councilman Geving seconded to approve the Lake Ann Park Expansion Site Plan as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried. (D) APPROVAL OF CURRY FARMS S~COND ADDITION DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT. Councilman Johnson: I was a little concerned, we got the Ren~ner's letter and their concerns about this. We've already done final plat on this and this is the final step? Barbara Dacy: The final plat has been approved but it has not been signed. We're waiting to sign it until the development contract has been approved. Councilman Johnson: Has any more work been done with the Renmers on this one? Mrs. Ren~ner: No. Mr. Remmer: No. Councilman Johnson: It seems to me we're at a small inpass here. While it is kind of an odd thing to do to say that a development next door to me means they should redo my yard, which in this case happens to be ~eds, they've offered to put the dirt in but then they've got the concrete curb. I'm wondering if they can bring a bulldozer up and dig up the concrete curb. It won't take much to dig that up. The problem with it is how to get rid of that curb once it's -'-City Council MeetJ. ng - August 22, 1988 there. If that can be ~orked out, it seems we're gett].ng closer here but I think they have a real problem if they can't get this easement vacated. Where are we on the planning of this if the easement isn't vacated? Barbara Dacy: The easement is not a public easement such that it would require City approval. It's a private roadway easement. Councilman Johnson: They couldn't built a road or Ashton Court until they've solved that easement problem, Barbara Dacy: That's not my understanding, They can go ahead and plat the road right-of-way and the Returners can still maintain that easement over Lot 1 to gain access to theJ. r property, _Mayor Hamilton: You could make that a condition of approval, that the Re~xmers be satisfied. Councilman Johnson: I wish we had a group within the City as a neighbor arbitrater group that can arbitrate this kiP~ of problem in that it's, I don't think the City Council should s].t in arbJ. tratJ, on on something like this but it is a type of thing where ]_f you want to fully satisfy everybody, everybody can take that to, we can't tie a neighbor tie down a development by having veto power over anything done until he gets everything he wants. Councilman Geving: Gary, have you worked out the details wi. th Mr. Natoli for the turn around access and the easement requirement for that? Gary Warren: Centex has not worked out with Natoli because we've been concentrating en trying te get Donovan's cooperation on it. Councilman Geving: But now that that's no longer pess]ble, you've swJ. tched your ebject]_ve to Hr. Nateli. Is that successful? Ga_fy Warren: Centex has not, to my knowledged, talked with Natoli yet. Councilman Ceving: So are you telling me that that's a developer responsibility and not ours? And you're going to stay on top of it then. Gary Warren: If Centex could come down with Donovan for a proper turn around, I guess I wanted to have the option that if it fits into either one... Councilman Geving: That's all I had, Councilman Boyt: I have a quest]on about the turn around situation. Are we at a point where the City is guaranteed that that turn around will be built? As to where it will be built, that may be up in the air but that it will be built? Gary Warren: Yes. Councilman Boyt: How is the developer going to have the power to get that built if neither one of those people wants to sell that property? Gary Warren: If the developer, I discussed this with Roger and basically ].f the developer is unable to come to reasonable terms sJ.milar to what we're looking at City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 with the drainageway on the Kerber property, the City could just condemn for what it needs at the developer's expense. Councilman Horn: I don't think that's too likely in this case though because it's a definite benefit to Natoli and he indicated to us at a meeting that... Gary Warren: I would agree with you. Councilman Boyt: I just wanted to be sure that we were covered because that turn around is a vital key to this whole thing. Then the other one, I would sense that what we're talking about is adding a condition to approval that would involve removing the curb. Is that main hang-up here in terms of the Ren~ners reaching satisfaction? Mr. Remmer: Can we address this? We're the Reamers. Mayor Hamilton: Yes, I realize that. Do you have any other questions? Councilman Boyt: My questions are basically what is it going to take? What kind of guarantees can the City give that Centex and the Rerrmers will sit down and work this out? I'd like to see us incorporate those into the conditions of approval so we can approve it tonight. Mayor Hamilton: Can you explain that Gary? Gary Warren: I think all that would benefit is to read the Remmer's letter which goes into quite a lot of detail and they reference having their Attorney prepare a document that would enumerate their conditions. I think that that would be the place to put the issue so we can see that and specifically know where they're coming from. Maybe they chose to verbalize what that is this evening. Mr. Remmer: We're preparing it right now and we certainly want you to arbitrate this. We appreciate the concern you've expressed already in past meetings and I think it was a condition of the approval, this second part, that they try to satisfy the needs of the neighbors and that just simply has not been done. We don't believe we've been unreasonable at all. I won't go on because I know you have a busy agenda tonight but you've got it all there in front of you on paper with diagrams and so forth. I hope you're fair enough. We have prepared the conditions under which we will vacate the easement and we're preparing to run that by our Attorney and then send it to Centex. Mayor Hamilton: So we could make that a condition of the approval. That the documents that the Remmer's are preparing be presented to Centex's Attorneys. Minimally that their concerns are met as far as curbing is concerned. What else? Gary Warren: Similar to the way we handled the Kerber situation. Was to get their documents and we can serve as the intermediary I guess. Mayor Hamilton: Is there a motion then to deal with l(d) if we add a condition, item (p), Section 8. - -CJ. ty Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Boyt: I have one other question. I was somewhat confused on the Park and trail fees and the analysis by staff, I think it was indicated that they had met those fees in their first addition for their entire development. Is that correct? Gary Warren: I had Lori write that section and that's what she indicated to me, yes. Councilman Boyt: Then why do we have in our contract on page GC-3, item where we indicate that they'll pay them? Gary Warren: Those are the general conditions which are superseded by any special provisions. Councilman Boyt: So we're saying that item lg is struck? Gary Warren: Basically J.t's superseded by the Article in the special provision, that's correct. Mayor Hamilton: But if it hadn't been paid, it's still in there so it's still saying they will pay them. Gary, would you, or the Attorney could word item 8(p) as a condition to deal with the Remmer's concerns. Gary Warren: I would put in a condition to state that the developer will work with the Returners to satisfy their concerns. Enter into an agreeable document, agreeable with the City Engineer to address their concerns. Ymyor Hamilton: Is that satisfactory to everybody? Councilman Johnson: Can we also say that Lot 1 can not be sold until that easement's vacated? Barbara Dacy: As a private easement, we don't have the power. Gary Warren: It's buJ. ldable. Councilman Johnson: It's buildable with the easement. How about informing any potential buyer that there J.s an easement across their property? Barbara Dacy: It's permanent with the land so it will be a part of the title for the lot. Councilman Johnson: Yes, you do the title search long after you buy it. Well, not long after you buy it but you've already decided and put your money down. You don't do it up front. Mayor Hamilton: You sure do. Councilman Geving: That's a ...consideration and doesn't have anything to do with us. Councilman Johnson moved, Councilman Geving seconded to approve the Curry Farms Second Addition Development Contract as amended including an item 8(p) to address the Ren~ner's concerns. All voted in favor and the motion carried. City CouncJ~l Meeting - August 22, 1988 (F) FINAL PLAT APPROVAL, TRAPPERS PASS AT NEAR MOUNTAIN 3RD ADDITION. Councilman Boyt: On the map I didn't see the trails. Barbara Dacy: That is shown on the final plat. Councilman Boyt: How did we go from 17 conditions down to 5 leaving out compliance with the Wetland Alteration Permit, compliance with all erosion control measures? Jo Ann Olsen: They would still have to comply with all those conditions. I was just pointing out specific conditions that we're applying to this phase. It's pointing out to staff, when it does come through that they still have to do these specific things before we can sign off on the final plat. Councilman Boyt: So what you're recommending and what we would be approving are all 17 conditions? Jo Ann Olsen: Those are already conditions that have been passed. Councilman Boyt: Okay, I just didn't want to see us change it. Councilman Johnson: I did remember why I did this. It's a little disturbing that such simple conditions as to redraw a lot line out of the street right-of- way and some of these conditions that were previously said, do these before final plat, have to be repeated. I just wanted to make kind of a con~nent on this. This is ludicrous to me that, a couple of these are very simple things that should have been done and we should have just given our final plat back and never reached us with this kind of sloppiness in work. That's an editorial comment. Mayor Hamilton moved, Councilman Horn seconded to approve the Final Plat for Trappers Pass at Near Mountain 3rd Addition. All voted in favor and the motion carried. (G) FINAL PLAT EXTENSION, ROBERTA BUCHHEIT. Councilman Horn: Just a quick question. This extension on this plat has no effect on the replatting of the lake property does it? This is strictly just the people on the side of the road? Jo Ann Olsen: Right. We have separate subdivisions. Councilman Horn: So this has no effect on that. That's the only question I have. Councilman Horn moved, Mayor Hamilton seconded to approve the Final Plat Extension for Roberta Buchheit as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried. ?P~-City Council ~Veeting - August 22, 1988 (H) APPROVAL OF ACCOUNTS. Councilman Johnson: I've been asking and asking when are we going to get asphalt on our streets so we're not bouncing all over the place and t was told August 15th the last time I asked. Why are we paying Schafer? I haven't seen those guys in tovzn for a long time. l'd like to get some asphalt down here and !'d like to get that word out to Schafer that !'m concerned about paying them $24,ggg.gg or whatever their bill was for this time. Mayor Hamilton: I'm sure they submit work orders for the word they've completed. Councilman Johnson: $75,ggg.gg. We've been told this job would be done. They're getting behind schedule here. Mayor Ha~nilton: They're not getting behind, they've been behind all summer. It's scheduled to be completed and perhaps Gary will share that with us later on. Councilman Johnson: They seem to be able to put a lot of asphalt, the same construction company over at Eden PrairJ.e but we're not getting any. Mayor Hamilton: Your question really has nothing to do with the Accounts Payable. Councilman Johnson: What I would like to do on the accounts payable is, if in two weeks fr~n now we don't see and if the accounts payable comes through and there's no asphalt on the ground and Schafer Construction's on it, I'd like to see it pulled off, but not this time. Don Ashworth: The final wear course has not been put down because they're still in the process of doing the trees. We did not want to take and have that final lift of asphalt literally destroy by them again coming back in and finishing the landscape work that's in the process. That's schedule for the final lift to begin... Gary Warren: Next week we're looking to do the settlement corrections on the roadway and then with that completed, we will put down the wear course. We've also been waiting, this is a cool day today but vse've had extreme temperatures and that wear course would not set up under those conditions. EVen cars would damage it so we've been holding off because of the temperature. That's really been at the City's direction and not Schafer's. Councilman Johnson: Why were the sewers lifted up in May or June if we're not going to put the asphalt in until September? Mayor Hamilton: W'nat I'd like to do is have you meet wi. th the Engineer and ask him that separately. It has nothing to do with the Accounts Payable. CounciLman Horn: Since Jay brought the item up. What's a $4,6gg.gg fiberglass truck body? Are we putting new bodies on our trucks? Gary Warren: When we bid out the vehicles, we bid them in pieces and the fiberglass truck body is a pretty unique manufacturing. They come in separately City Council Mmeting - August 22, 1988 under separate. Councilman Horn: So this is part of the capital purchase? Councilman Johnson moved, Mayor Hamilton seconded to approve the Accounts Payable dated August 22, 1988. All voted in favor and the motion carried. VISITOR PRESENTATION: There were no visitor presentations. SIDE YARD SETBACK VARIANCE REQUEST FOR A BOAT COVER, 3605 RED CEDAR POINT ROAD, JAMES KNIGHT. Mayor Hamilton: This was an item that came before the Board of Adjustments and Appeals. Councilman Geving: The staff recommended approval of this variance for a 7.4 foot variance to the side yard setback for the construction of a boat cover. We had a lot of discussion about it. There are about 25 neighbors that were contacted. None of them had any objections to this proposal. The 25 neighbors represents almost 100% of all the neighbors in the surrounding area of Red Cedar Point. The vote on this issue was 2 to 1 against and therefore the item was denied and moved up to the City Council for further consideration. I think at this point it would be appropriate for Jo Ann to give the staff report although we do have the Chairman of the Board of Appeals here. Either way you want to go. Mayor Hamilton: Jo Ann, why don't you give your staff report first. Jo Ann Olsen: Real briefly, the boat cover is existing, it has been constructed, located within the side yard setback. The reason that staff is recommending approval is because of the location of the boat structure is covered by existing vegetation. It's more visually removed from the lakeshore rather than if it would be moved to the east or within the requirements of the Zoning Ordinance. There would be more visual impact to the shoreline from Lake Minnewashta. There is vegetation that would screen it and they would also have to remove a maple tree. They could locate it and still save the tree but there is some topography here and the boat cover would be closer to Lake Minnewashta than the existing structure. It was felt that there is an opportunity for the applicant to meet the requirements of the ordinance and that a hardship was not justified and that a variance was not justified but it should meet the requirements of the ordinance. Staff's interpretation was that when we look at variances along shorelines, we review the impact of the structure to the shoreline also and we felt that that outweighed it and justified keeping it where it is, where it is more screened from the lake with the existing vegetation. Councilman Geving: There's one other fact too Mr. Mayor. The building is already constructed. It exists. Mayor Hamilton: Willard, did you have any conm~ents that you wanted to make Willard? City Council [%e~ing - August 22, 1988 Willard Johnson: I guess we felt, the ones that denied it felt that two wrongs don't make a right. Mayor Hamilton: So you'd rather see them move t/~e building? Willard Johnson: Move the structure. Whatever you decide but we felt two wrongs don't make a right. It's just a self created hardship... ,Y~. Klick, a representative for James Knight showed a video illustrating where the boat cover is located on the property. Councilman Johnson: This is one of the places where we've got to get with our Attorneys on how to write a variance procedure to allow a variance that's good for the City. ?;% have in this case, and few other cases that have come before us, variances that are good for the City but the rules are, just because it might be good for this one road to drive 45, the speed limit's 4g so you don't drive 45. In this case, !Jteral enforcement of the ordinance would not cause an undue hardship or any difficulty if he'd come to us before he built. It's a self created hardship. It's the ordinance that's the problem here, not the boat cover. Since I have been a stickler, if we've got rules, you stick with the rules, that's the only way you can run. if you just arbitrarily say well, this is good so we're going to ignore our rules this time, that doesn't work. We need these rules rewritten. This is just another example of that and unfortunately I'm going to stick with my normal vote on these things and go according to the rules. It's a self created hardship and therefore, should be denied. Councilman Ceving: I think Todd, in your defense, did you realize ~fnen you constructed this that we dJ.d have a varJ. ance procedure and that what you were doing you shouldn't have been doing? Mr. Klick: It was a cover. I was not under the assumption that it was a building. That it does not have footings on it would constitute that it's a building? If it were on ~fneels, would it be alright? Councilman Oeving: I think the variance here is in regards to the side yard setback ~Jnich is a 1~ foot setback and you're within 2.6 feet of the next yard, which would be your side yard lot line. That's the question, whether or not you were aware that you were building in that no build zone of 1~ feet? ~. KlJ.ck: No, I was not aware. CouncJ. lman Geving: I'm going to slap you on the wrJ. st then for sure. Anyway, one of the aspects that I looked at, sitting on the Board of Appeals, we do have rules and this particular case is a self created hardship but I also understand that you have to live with your neighbors and what is visually acceptable at Red Cedar Point may not be the same any~here else in the community. This is probably the oldest area of the our community outside of Carver Beach and when I see 25 neighbors, which in this case is ahnost lgg% of all the neighbors that the Knights went to and asked if there was any hardship, they had any comments or concerns about this, they basically said it was alright with them. I tend to go with the neighbors. My feeling is, if this is approved in your favor Mr. Knight, that there should be no further expansion of this structure. That's lg City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 all I have. Councilman Horn: How long have you lived out there? Mr. Klick: I'm Mr. Klick. I'm not Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight is the owner. I just represent him. He's in Europe. Councilman Horn: How long has he lived there? Mr. Klick: He's lived there for 10 years. Councilman Horn: One of the things that I recall is, and it surprises me that you got this many signatures because we had a deck come up a few years back for one of the properties along that area which would have been a great enhancement to the property, and everybody objected to it which kind of surprises me. I tend to go along with Dale to some degree that if it's visually acceptable to the neighbors, that's fine but on the other hand, I don't want to get into a situation where we get caught up in who's popular in the neighborhood and who isn't. To me this other development with a deck on here is clearly more beneficial to the area than what this is. I find a very weak defense here for even needing this building. You don't need a permanent cover like that to protect the boat in the winter. Mr. Boyt and quite a few other people cover theirs with a covering for the winter and that's enough. The other question I have is, isn't there a building permit requirement for this? Jo Ann Olsen: Right and when we did make him go through the building permit procedure, that's when we noticed they needed a variance. Councilman Horn: So the building was started even before the building permit was applied? Jo Ann Olsen: Right. Councilman Horn: I can understand how you may not be aware of the variance requirement but it's very common to require building permits. That I find not excuseable. Mr. Klick: When the building inspector came out, he approached me and told me, he said he didn't know why I needed a building permit. He said that as long as there was no wall and there was no footings down. Councilman Horn: You need a building permit to reroof your house. Councilman Boyt: First, I think our variance language is standard variance language and there really isn't any room to create language unique to our con~nunity. The other thing is that unfortunately, part of variances is not neighborhood approval. If the neighborhood came out completely against it, but it fit all five criteria that we have for approving a variance, we would be approving that variance. If the neighborhood comes out all for it, and it doesn't meet the requirements of approving a variance, we basically, in my opinion, can not approve it. To approve this variance is to say that we essentially have no side yard setbacks because anyone else can come in here and say well, here's an example of where it failed 4 of the 5 questions and you approved it. They fail 4 of the 5 questions and they would also demand approval 11 Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 and I suspect they would take us to Court if we didn't give it to them. I don't think we should be putting the City in that sort of vulnerable position. I think that ~.e have a building permit fee that's free for buildings like this. I believe the amount was $2,0gg.gg. Anything being built under $2,0gg.gg you could come in, have it inspected by the City at no charge to you to help people avoid this situation before they get it in the ground, so to speak. I think this is a variance request that makes sense, as your videotape shows but it is not a variance that we can grant and protect the City's ability to enforce the side yard setback anywhere else so for that reason I'd be against it. Hayor Hamilton: I'll take the same poSition I always have too that if we can't work with the neighbors in our cemmunity, people whe are residents here and live here, if we can't work with them, I think we've got real problems. If we don't want te listen te what the neighbers have to say about whether it's a variance or a road or anything else, I think we're doing the wrong thing. Variances are a process that pre~rty ewners have as a right to come to the City and request. That's why we have the precess. You look at each variance on it's own merit. You don't just autematically say because we have an ordinance on our books it says we have te meet 4 out of 5 tests or 5 out of 5 or whatever it is, you automatically turn it down. It seems to me you need to loek at each one on it's o~an merit and this ene certainly has a let of merit. I would certainly be in laver of it. I will mere approval. Councilman Geving: i' 11 second the motion. Councilman Horn: Would somebody review for me what the merit is? The only merit I heard is that the alternative that would not require a variance is a worse alternative but to me that doesn't justify the total merit. You can always come up with another alternative that might meet the letter of the law but it doesn't mean it's attractive. Mayor Hamilton: I believe you have a property owner who's wanting to use his property and he's not using it in a destructive way or in a way that's going to harm his neighbors. He's merely putting up a small structure to shelter a boat. If he did not put it on the side and put it on the other side, as you could see, he's going to be putting it in front of his house and it's going to detract from the beauty from the lake and from his house. It would seem to make no sense to me to do that type of thing. Councilman Horn: And you're assuming if we deny this, that's exactly what he's going to do? Mayor Hamilton: That's his choice. That's what his alternative is. Councilman Boyt: He has several alternatives. He can take it down and put a canvas cover on the boat. He can chose to store the boat in a different location altogether. Mayor Hamilton: But that's not what he's requesting. Councilman Boyt: That's right and our variance process guarantees the City a certain degree of security that this body or any other body can't come in and allow semebody to build a dinosaur next to your house because you're protected. They're not protected if we don't follow our structured procedure. 12 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: That's why you look at each one on it's own merit~ Councilman Geving: I think there is another benefit too. Regardless of the fact that the structure exists, a mistake was made. Admittedly there was a mistake made. They didn't realize at the time that they were that close to the lot line or that they needed a variance. If you'll look and if you understand what goes on at Red Cedar Point, as most of us do, you'll find that nearly every home in Red Cedar Point has had some kind of variance for their home, their front yard setbacks practically exist right on the tip of the lake. Their back yards back up to a road in most cases. There's no room for a garage. Even in this house structure that's protrayed here in this sketch, they needed a variance just to get the h~me and the garage next to the lot line. It's 5.8 feet from the lot line. Nearly every home and if everybody that's here from Red Cedar Point tonight will agree with me on this, that there is a variance requirement for nearly every home on that whole peninusula so this isn't unusual. The lot to the west of this particular boat covered storage, whatever we're going to call it, really is very well secured. It's visually not impacted. I was merely going tonight on the staff's recon~endation to approve this because it's the best location. I would much rather see it on the west side of this garage than on the east side where everybody who drives their boat along Lake Minnewashta can see it every day of the year. Tome that's the best place for this boat cover. To me that's one of the benefits. Councilman Johnson: To the west, which is the side of the house the boat cover is on, how far is it to the neighbor's house? Mr. Klick: There's a street. Red Cedar Point is a road in between. Mayor Hamilton: There's nothing on the other side. Mr. Klick: There's nothing on the other side other than his shed that you saw and that's right on the lot line. Councilman Johnson: So this is 2.6 feet to the street right-of-way? Jo Ann Olsen: To the property line. Councilman Johnson: Which is the street right-of-way? You said it was right next to the street. Jo Ann Olsen: Here's the street. Councilman Johnson: So there's nothing out next to his garage? Where's the closest dwelling to this structure? Jo Ann Olsen: Across the street. Councilman Johnson: One of the reasons for the 10 foot side yard is to allow space between structures. Mayor Hamilton: There are no homes. It would be the north side of the road. 13 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councihman Johnson: There's another alternative too, he can buy 7.4 feet of his neighbor's property. Mayor Hamilton moved, Councilman Geving seconded to approve a 7.4 foot variance to the side yard setback for the construction of a lg' x 2g' boat cover. Ail voted in favor except Councilman Boyt and Councilman Johnson who opposed and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. PUBLIC HEARING: LYMAN LUMBER INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT REVENUE BONDS. Y~yor H~-nilton called the public hearing to order. Mayor Hamilton: We have a public hearing to consider the issuance of one million dollars in industrial develol~nent revenue bonds for the Lyman Lumber expansion facility in Chanhassen. Is there anyone here wino would wish to speak to this item? Councilman Horn moved, CounciLman Geving seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Resolution #88-88: Councilman Johnson moved, Councilman Horn seconded to approve the J. ssuance of $1,ggg,ggg.gg in industrial development revenue bonds for Lyman L~ber's expansion facility in Chanhassen. All voted J.n favor and the motion carried. PUBLIC HEARING: TH lgl REALIGNMENT: A. C~MPREHENSIVE PLAN TEXT AMENDMENT TO ~MEND THE TRANSPORTAION CHAPTER TO IDENTIFY THE REALIG~4ENT OF TH 1~1. B. ADOPT OFFICIAL HAP, FIRST AND SECOND READING. C. CONSIDER AUTHORIZING CONDEMNATION. D. SITE PLAN REVIE~W FOR A 4g,gg0 SQUARE FOOT SHOPPING CENTER (HIDDEN VALLEY CENTER), NORTH OF LIKE DRIVE FAST, JUST FAST OF Q-SUPERETTE, NE%f AMERICAN H(tMES CORPORAT ION. Public Present: Name Address Jerry Schlenk Stephen J. MacDonald Missey Kersch Chuck Bye Scott & Kirsten Melencamp Roger & Dorothy Downing Ulrico Sacchet 225 West 78th Street 8~17 Cheyenne Spur 271 Hidden Lane 271 Hidden Lane 8137 Dakota Lane 72~ Juniper Road (P.O. Box 651) 8~71 Hidden Circle 14 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Philip $cbloss Michael Wi ttrock Stephen Wigg Greg (lniterko Jim Mady Hugh Faulds Karyn Knutson Brad Johnson Jack Atkins Dean & Joan Suamerfield Larry Guthrie Robert & Cindy Myers Doug & Traci Lawman Jeff & Holly Peters Mary & Kay Eidem Debbie Weigel Bill Streepy David Clapp Doug & Helen Chase Ryan Johnson Gary Disch Randl~ Imker Kim Heikkinen Bernard Edel ineider Rich Fears Howard Sharpe Richard Donnay Tom & Sue Lehmann J .W. Cook Gene Berg 8040 Hidden Circle 8022 Dakota Avenue 8023 Dakota Avenue 8121 Hidden Court 7338 Frontier Trail 8136 Dakota Lane 8136 Dakota Lane 7425 Frontier Trail 220 West 78th Street 8140 Hidden Court 520 3500 West 80th, Bloomington 8131 Dakota Lane 8100 Hidden Court 8120 Hidden Court 8191 Hidden Court 8170 Hidden Court 321 Sinnen Circle 8091 Hidden Court 8181 Hidden Court 8143 Marsh Drive 8170 Marsh Drive 8163 Marsh Drive 301 Sinnen Circle P.O. Box 103, Chanhassen 3141 Hidden Court 8121 Dakota Lane 8109 Dakota Lane 330 Sinnen Circle 1800 Meritor Tower 90 Lake Drive East Mayor Hamilton: Just as a little background. I would like to just, I know everybody's here to conm~ent on this item and that's good. I would ask that if there are representatives from a neighborhood or a street or something that can speak for a group of people, I would prefer to have you do that rather than everybody coming up and saying the same thing. I think we know what your concerns are. We received your letters. We've read the Planning Con~nission meeting Minutes so we're aware of your concerns. We would like to hear from you again however if there's anything new that you'd like to add but just to kind of consolidate the con~nents and to save a little bit of time, I'd appreciate if there are spokespeople, if you can come forward at that time. This is, I think a con~nunity problem. It's not just a neighborhood problem on one or the other side of the highway. It's a problem that this City has been trying to deal with for a number of years. I think there's been some cor~nents made that were rather upsetting to me about the staff and about the process that this City has gone through and it's clear to me that some of the ~eople making these comments don't understand the process that you need to go through to accomplish what's attempting to be done here. This process was started I guess in 1980 looking'at realignment alternatives for TH 101. Many plans have been presented. There hasn't been any action taken on them because there was never a pressing issue or a need to do anything. At the present time we feel that there is a need to do something to come up with an alignment. Consequently, we've tried to gather additional information to try to help us make the best decision possible. What 15 t~city council ~eting - August 22, 1988 we're trying to do is to select a right-of-way so that should the road be built, we can tell MnDot where we would prefer, as a community, to have this road built. You have seen a couple of alternatives. We think there are some others. There's been a long process of a lot of people involved. It hasn't just been City staff or Council or Planning Commission. There have been several engineering firms involved in this whole process. It's not something that we've done without a lot of input from a lot of people who supposedly know something about highway development. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered yet. When the project would be done for one thing. The funding questions have not been answered so there are some questions that need to be resolved that we do not have the answers to. I wanted to pass on some of those things to you. Keep that in mind as you make your con~ents. I appreciate that and I would like to then call the public hearing to order. What I will do is take comments from anybody who would wish to make comments. We will not, unless I'm overruled, make a decision on this this evening, t think there is additional information that needs to be gathered and additional alternatives that need to be looked at so once your comments are made and it's a part of the public record, we will then go back and do additional research, take your comments into account and research the item some more and we'll have to discuss it some more. We'll have Council discussion tonight also. Don Ashworth: I think it would be helpful if we could, most of the people here heard the report as it went to the Planning Commission. A nu~mber of comments were made regarding alternatives and what 'type of progress that may be made regarding those alternatives and staff has spent significant time really trying to look into all aspects. I was hoping to spend a little bit of time just going through what has been done since the Planning Commission meeting. We do have Don Ringrose here from BRW to go through s~ne of those. Fred Hoisington. ~Vmyor Hamilton: That's a good idea. We can update you from what's happened since the Planning Commission time. Barbara Dacy: What I'd like to do is have Mr. Hoisington review the Planning Commission action and then he'll introduce Mr. Ringrose from BRW. Fred Hoisington: Your Honor and members of the City Council, what I'd like to do is introduce the feasibility study team first of all, all of whom you know. Mayor Hamilton: Perhaps Fred you could tell us and let everybody know who you are and how long you've been involved in this project. Fred Hoisington: Fred Hoisington and I am a land planning consultant and I have been involved in the City of Chanhassen for about the last 3 1/2 years. We first became involved with our efforts to resolve some of the redevelopment concerns in downtown Chanhassen and then later became involved with what we call the broadened study area which dealt with answering a lot of the questions of access that were not answered, really were posed by the downtown project. What we came up with in the broadened study area study, were recommendations that dealt with access to the major trunkline systems through the City of Chanhassen. We dealt to a great extent with TH lgl, TH 5 and future, heaven forbid, TH 212. So that's kind of been our involvement with you. In this case, we are coordinating the feasibility study team on behalf of the City of Chanhassen. The folks we have involved in this process, BRW, Don Ringrose who is ahead of the feasibility study for BRW has been in this process for really quite some 16 City Council Meeting - August 22' 1988 period of time. Howard Preston, who is also with BRW, is their in-house project manager for this particular project and who has a great familiarity with MnDot. He used to work there which makes him a real resource for us. Jim Benshoof who is the lead traffic engineer in this case, who is the one that is charged with evaluating the alternatives you'll be seeing here in a short time. The purpose of this meeting has really changed since the last time you were here. When you were here on the 3rd of August to meet with the Planning Commission, and I guess those things happen. One of the things that we determined was that we could not provide the Council with the information that we felt was needed in order to move ahead with a decision on this critical issue this evening. We were originally looking for an approval from the Council. We did ask approval from the Planning Commission and now we're not sure we want you to approve what we thought we wanted you to approve only 3 weeks ago. What we're looking for tonight is input. We're looking for that from both the Council and from members of the audience. This decision is too critical, too much involved to make a decision fast and that's a bit contrary to what I told you in the past but sometimes things do change a little bit. So let me tell you what kind of schedule that we would like to have this move along on. Tonight we'd like to review alternatives. September 12th, we'd like to come back and at least give you a staff report of where we are with the collection of additional information and additional analysis. Then on September 26th we would like to be able to come back to you with a recommendation. We may come back with the same recommendation we came to the Planning Commission with. All I can tell you at this point is that I'm cautiously more optimistic about the possibility that there may be one or two other alternatives than I was 3 weeks ago. Now to reiterate the objectives of the study, we have to define, as we think, as part of this process, a place for TH 101 to go. We're afraid if we don't define that fairly soon, we'll lose some options. The window of opportunity is going to close and we simply won't be able to deal with this critical issue in the near term. One of the things that we think we important is that TH 101 have continuity through the City of Chanhassen. It is the only road through this con~nunity that has any chance of having of providing continuity north to south. A lot of the trips that will use and do use TH 101 today, originate outside the study area and pass completely through the study area. Now one could argue that the alternatives we're showing tonight don't really represent continuity. In my judgment, I think they do. Another thing that we're going to be extremely concerned about and it has to be an objective because MnDot has made it an objective and that is, that the level of service at the major intersections along TH 5, the level of service at those intersections be sufficient to accomodate traffic well. The third one is that we separate traffic through from downtown traffic. A fourth is that we develop geometrically sound design. In other words, we can't create accident prone highway designs as a part of this process. One of the things that we're continually and the audience here will recognize is fiscal responsibility. It's very difficult to simply use or take any of the alternatives and implement them no matter the cost. Some of the costs, the costs will be substantially higher for some of these alternatives than perhaps others. The risks that I talked to the Planning Commission about haven't gone away and there are two of them. One of the risks is that there is a shopping center in the way of the south leg of the proposed alternative. What that could mean is if that leg is closed, that alternative is closed for all intensive purposes. If that shopping center is built. The second risk is a delay in the construction of TH 5 which is now on an accelerated schedule. One of the things we've learned since we last met with the Planning Commission was that we would not require additional right-of-way should we adopt the north leg 17 ~.ty Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 option. The conmon leg between TH lgl and TH 5 from the due north leg to Great Plains Blvd.. That has been accomodated and so we're somewhat less concerned that there will be a delay for that purpose. What we will try to do and what we' re trying at this point is to make sure we stay on schedule with that and still satisfy the needs of the City of Chanhassen in the process. The reason we changed course is c~plex. Ams you know, the Planning Commission approved an alternative ~nich was really two alternatives. The preferred alternative was the north leg option. ~Fnile the Planning Commission approved of an alternatives, the last comment made by the Co~mission, I think it was it's Chairman, there has to be an alternative that will work here. What the Planning Co~nission did not want to do was foreclose forever the possibility that we would be able to build TH lgl and I think what they were telling you and telling this community was that if we can do it on the north leg option, fine but if we can't, we want to make sure that at least it can be built. A second choice was of course, to use the south leg. So we thought about that for a while and we decided as hard or as many alternatives that have been considered in the past, we should still continue to evaluate more and we have done that. Another thing that's happened is that the Wards are beginning to show some interest in development of their property. One of the things that they've indicated is that they may wish to relocate at least modestly TH lgl so we look at that as an opportunity. ~Jnether it produces something for us is questionable but it certainly is an opportunity and of course Rosemount has announced that it has selected the City of Chanhassen for it's new facility and since it's next to the Ward property, it also opens an opportunity for some additional consideration of alternatives. Now, we did meet with MnDot in the intervening periods since the Planning Co~nission met. Essentially, what we're saying or what my feelings personally are about this process is that we can be cautiously more optimistic than we were before. Especially about whether one of the other alternatives can be accc~nodated. I aa optimistic but not as much so that we can do it on the accelerated TH 5 schedule. Now the neighbors raised s~e good questions as well. Questions that can not be put aside and questions that we have indicated must be answered as part of this feasibility study process. One of those is noise and the noise impacts on the subdivisions to the south. Pedestrian access to downtown and Q-Superette. Traffic on Lake Drive East. In other words, given the different scenarios, which of them would have the most detrimental effect traffic wise on Lake Drive East. Whether the T intersection at Great Plains Blvd., as proposed, would work. How easy it would be for residents to get onto Lake Drive East and whether there would be sufficient gaps created with the signalization so they could get onto that roadway. One of the questions or concerns raised also had to do with the relatively minor level of service improvements that would have existed with the proposal at Great Plains Blvd. and the new north leg or the proposed intersection of TH lgl. Finally, the neighbors also asked for a request for the consideration of other alternatives. We have, as a team, feasibility study team, looked at those alternatives and not only the ones that we're going to show you this evening but at a multitude of others, many of which do not work from a geometric standpoint and ones we're showing you tonight are ones that we think do work geometrically. So what we'd like to do is present those and then simply ask you to r~-nember that these have not been tested for their traffic carrying capabilities and that we can not suggest to you this evening, but we will by the 26th of September, that they will in fact work. So with that, what I'd like Don Ringrose to do is to make a brief presentation of the four alternatives than we'd like to take input a~ get s~me ideas. If you have any other suggestions, we'd love to hear them and we'd love to hear others from the neighbors as well. 18 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn: I have one question. Were any eliminated because of cost? Fred Hoisington: The only one that has been eliminated because of cost has been the bridging alternative that would bridge the railroad, TH 5 and so forth which is about 10 times the cost of an at grade cost. Don Ringrose: The last week has been, as Fred indicated, as rather hectic one for the people that are involved with this and also as Fred indicated, while we've developed some ideas, we want to present them here to you, bear in mind this was all accomplished in about the last week and it has not had the opportunity of being thoroughly tested from an engineering and traffic standpoint. At the same time, we aren't about to present to you or discuss with the public anything that kind of at our gut level we don't feel makes sense or that wouldn't presumably pass reasonable tests of engineering principles. We have this evening four alternatives and the Council has received reductions of these that you've had an opportunity to look at. For the neighborhood and the citizens, I appreciate this is the first opportunity to become familiar with these. I'll go through them briefly and then entertaining questions that you have. The first one which is presented is essentially referred to as the current proposal. That is basic design that City Staff, ourselves and MnDot started out with about 6 to 8 weeks ago when this whole process started. It consists of the relocation of TH 101 easterly of existing Great Plains, crossing over and then swinging south onto Lake Drive and that is the portion which was discussed through the Planning C~mmission and the neighborhood meetings that were held prior to the Planning Conm~ission. On the drawing, we've shown an extension of that illustrating how that would continue west and then turn to the south and connecting to existing TH 101. One of the issues which was not discussed at length because we didn't feel it was particularly of concern for the neighborhood, was how this linkage would occur. MnDot had made it clear to us early on that the T intersection, that would be Lake Drive and then a T intersection to existing TH 101 would be unsatisfactory in terms of the TH 101 function. So this drawing represents the original proposal expanded to include the linkage to TH 101. Then we also have, in light of the Ward property casual discussions I think is the best way to describe those, and the more specific proposals for Rosemount, expanded our scope of thinking in the sense that the horizons that we can look at here to see how this new activity and new interest would relate to this existing problem entering this one time, and probably not the only time to assure where haste might have made waste in it because I think as we've expanded the horizons our thinking here, we have generated some additional alternatives that have genuine merit. What we then have shown on the same drawing, the extension of Lake Drive, the proposal for a Market Blvd. connection and the connection on into the basic center of downtown Chanhassen's commercial district. We think that as the advantage of tying this emerging job center to the existing retail con~nercial district of the City. This as I indicated is the original proposal. This is also the proposal which the neighbors were very concerned about. P~imarily, as I understand it, because the proximity of relocated TH 101 to the homes along the northerly side of the subdivision and the noise and the issues that they had raised and Fred touched on. Then taking into account primarily the citizen's or the neighborhood issues, we said is there something we can do to address those in terms of a design in terms of some relocation. With respect to the original plan, we can talk about noise berms, noise walls, and some of those issues but I think you were looking for something more fundamental in terms of an alternative location. 19 ~'~City CouncJ. l Meeting - August 22, 1988 In some cases we have to stretch our mind a little bit even to stretch our imagination from an engineering standpoint to come up with these but we felt even though I can't support some of the~ from an engineering standpoint and we don't have a drawing to talk about, it's difficult to have a discussion. I think this represents one that falls into that category. Essentially the same northerly leg but moving the new TH lgl to the north, essentially halfway between Lake Drive and existing TH 5 swinging to the west and then to the south. The objective here is trying to put some space between the new road and the existing homes. That's the only real change. The complication of that is it, in some respects, from an engineering and from a fiscal standpoint, almost has to be considered, I'd say silly. When you look at it from, we have three roads all running east/west in a corridor of about 4gg to 5gg feet. There's tr~nendous cost involved in duplication of facilities. There's substantial cost involved in acquisition of properties to make this happen and while we can certainly draw the line so it would work geometrically and would function, it doesn't have a lot of c~-~mon sense to it. The rest of the westerly portion is the same. The third alternative is what is referred to as the north leg. This is what the Planning Ccm~ission identified as their preference if it could be accomplished. Prior to the Planning Commission's consideration, we had Jim Benshoof, the traffic consultant that's been doing all the work for the City, did some analysis on this north leg alternative. I want to be sure you understand the function here because I'm not convinced the drawing illustrates it as it should. The intention here for the TH lgl through traffic is to move on the existing alignment up to TH 5, then east or west on TH 5 and the north on what we call the north leg. So southbound is to this location, a right hand turn, a left hand turn and so forth. It is not intended that TH lgl traffic would in any fashion go like that. ~ether or not this would even be permitted, in terms of the close spacing, etc. by YtnDot is questionable. It is shown on the drawing as something that we'd like to consider. While the intersections, this intersection and this intersection, can accomodate the turning movements. Physically the southbourJ or northbound. In particular, the left turn movements that would occur here and here, that is by the introduction of a double left turn lane at this location and this location, the predicted left turn movements can be accomodated through the intersection. The issue that surfaces with this design is not the turn movement but the weaving movement. That is, for example, in the design vol~ees there's 80g vehicles in the peak hour that will come south, turn onto existing TH 5, want to move over two lanes and make the left hand turn to go south in a distance of about, it's less than 1,ggg feet. When we presented this to MnDot at our meeting last week the answer which they gave us was the answer which I think we would have predicted that no, it can not work in their opinion and that they can't suggest that we should even pursue it. The solution, and we had talked about it ourselves in terms of the concept of the common section isn't totally invalid if there's sufficient space in which that weaving movement can occur but this isn't sufficient space. For a ~nile we were actually looking for alternatives to where we could move this back up and create space by moving it to the east. However, then we start looking at apartment buildings and all kinds of major issues on the north side so we're just moving one, we' re creating one problem to solve another. But what surfaced out of the discussions of last week and it really was in the form of a brainstorming session in our office when the entire design came on Wednesday morning last week followed up by a meeting at MnDot Wednesday afternoon at which point all we had was tissue paper sketches of some of these things which we were presented but what surfaced out of that discussion is a fourth alternative which we think is substantially different but it begins to address more accurately or more 20 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 appropriately all of these. It's not perfect but it addresses I think more people's concerns in a better way than most. It consists, in a sense it's a modification of what we refer to as the north leg or the last one I presented to you but it solves the defect of the north leg alternative by introducing additional space between the left hand turn movements. This alternative, TH 101 would come down and connect with TH 5 in the same location as in all the other alternatives. However, rather than turning south at existing TH 101 or Great Plains Blvd., the TH 101 through movements would continue west on TH 5 to Market Blvd. and then we would suggest that TH 101 would be relocated extending south to Market Blvd., which exists only to the railroad tracks today but is planned and platted to this location, continue south initially connecting up to existing TH 101 but planning to the future it's suggested that TH 101 would be relocated west of the homes along the lake in conjunction with TH 212 so ultimately it would come down and go in this fashion but on an interim basis it would come down and link to the existing. It might indeed come down and go like that. There's lots of different detailed alternatives. The concept is what's important. We think that this has all the advantages of all the alternatives with the one possible defect that you could argue that it doesn't have continuity for the north/south direction for TH 101. That is, now you ceme up here and you make a jog about 2,500 feet, almost a half mile and then continue north. That is the one negative. I think it provides access to an area that will require access in terms of emerging development within the city. It certainly addresses the issues that were raised by the neighborhood. It' eliminates the problem and Fred indicated, I think he used the term cautious optimism, I think it's a fair statement. Mr]Dot in our discussions with them, did not reject this categorically as they did the other alternative with the short linkage. I guess that essentially summarizes where we are today. As Fred indicated, we are in the process now with Benshoof of testing this out in terms of the traffic capacities required at the particular intersections. For example, we had moved major turning movements and concentrations of traffic from this location to this location. In terms of the overall city plan, long term, we felt this was the 100% corner and it could be that it's moving here because of these changes. So Jim is in the process of doing that analysis. We think that before your meeting 2 weeks from this evening, that we would have completed that analysis and also have gone back to MnDot one more time and be able to be a little more definitive about the ability to work and a little more definitive about MnDot's position. If that is positive, then it's my opinion, based on what our responsibility is in terms of this overall feasibility study that we can catch up in terms of lost time in terms of the City's responsibility. There's still an issue of whether the State can react to these changes and maintain their schedule. Again, we're optimistic and hopeful I guess. Mayor Hamilton: Thank you DOn. Did Mr. Benshoof want to present anything or you're just in the process of working on the numbers? Does anybody else have anything that you want to present frc~ the feasibility side? DOn Ringrose: We're just repsonding to questions at this point. Mayor Hamilton: What I'd like to do is have anyone then from the public who would like to make con~nent and then after the public hearing is closed, we'll make comments and ask questions. Councilman Boyt: Can I ask for a little change possibly? 21 ~-~ity Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor H~milton: %'~nat would you like? Councilman Boyt: I would like to suggest Tom that it might help the public reaction if they had some idea of just a quick where our particular thoughts were initially. That might give th~ something to bounce off of. Mayor Hamilton: I guess if you want to give them yours, you're welcome to. If that's what you're saying to me. t'm interested in what they have to say and I think they have put a lot of time and energy into studying this and I realize that they've just seen a new concept this evening and perhaps it would be appropriate for them to make comment on that. I have more questions than I have just general comments. Councilman Boyt: i think one of the frustrations of having been in the position that they're in is that if they don't know where we're coming frc~n, it's awfully hard for them to react. By the time they do know where we' re coming from, the public hearing is closed. _Mayor Hamilton: The process of a public hearing is to gather input from the public. To take that, to massage it and digest it and fit that into the plans that we're trying to accomplish. That's the the way the process works I guess. CounciLman Johnson: Tom, I believe by providing the input, by giving our input to the public beforehand, it also may speed up some of the comments as they are trying to cover all bases and if we've already covered some bases, it may not cover it. Boy, it's getting confusing. Mayor Hamilton: Well, i'm saying if you want to make your comments known, you're welcome to do so. Councilman Johnson: Okay, so in other words, what Bill suggested here, you're willing to do that? Mayor Hamilton: That's fine. Sure, go right ahead. You're first. Councilman Johnson: Okay. Of the options, I like the, we got these on Friday night so we had a little more time to look at them. I'm leaning most towards Market Blvd.. I had discussed a similar thing with staff and had been looking at it before. I'm glad to see your alignment. My main problems with it are in the affects on those ponds in there. We tend to look at our wetlands and our ponds very cautiously and this particular affect has a maximum affect on our ponds. However, in this case, this is one of those cases where this treehugger believes that it's best for the City maybe that we do put it right through this pond. I'm in the position of Market Blvd. over any of the other options at this time. Councilman Boyt: I started out liking Option 2. I had two major concerns. One of the major concerns is that we not delay TH 5. I would say that's probably my primary concern and I think responsibility to the whole community but my next concern is that we not put this in anybody's backyard. So looking at the options, I would say that on first blush that Option 1 which put it into Lake Drive East and I think with the big concern of the neighborhood, would be the last option on my list and the first one would probably be the fourth option. 22 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn: I can't make a decision until I have a lot of questions answered. I'm not sure we want to do that at this point. To me there are too many unknowns to make a decision. I think though, looking at Option 2, even though Don has hinted that that's not a feasible alternative, appears to me to be the best solution. Councilman Geving: I think the Mayor said it best when he opened with the fact that we've got a lot of public input. We've had a chance to read so much information on this through the public hearing process and I think it's important for us to understand that when we review our packet, we're always looking for other alternatives and that was my first and foremost objective. I said to myself, why not force TH 101 as far to the west as we can get it. How about CR 117 or even TH 101 and Lyman. I drove down to Lyman from Mr. Klingelhutz' property. It's 'exactly 1/2 mile out of the way to get to CR 17 and another 1/2 mile once you get on the north end back to the American Legion. So then I got thinking about the possibility of Market Blvd.. This is long before I even looked at any of these maps and that seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I was happy tonight to see that as an alternative. My personal feeling is that this needs a lot more study. I personally need much more time. This is a kind of decision that's going to be with us for a long time. We don't rework TH 101 everyday. It's been there for years and years and years and it will have a great deal of impact upon the citizens of the City and I'm not in favor of trying to impact any number of citizens who moved into our community at all. I got calls over the weekend from business leaders in the con~aunity. They said, you're diverting traffic away from my business. I built a motel in town and I want that business traffic to flow past my facility and I agreed with him. We have gas stations and we have other facilities that want that business so we've got to look at it from their aspect as well. We've just spent several million dollars redeveloping our downtown. We want the traffic that flows our community to also stop and shop. So we must be concerned about the entry to the Chanhassen business district. Our motels, gas stations, food stores and so forth. Then the question came to my mind, what if we do nothing? What if we did absolutely nothing and let TH 5 continue and proceed along? Maybe that's not a good idea because we'll have missed an opportunity and the opportunity is that we could have the State realign this at a time when it's beneficial to us. So with every negative there's a possibility of an opportunity. I think I look personally differently at this project today than I did in 1981 because I was here in 1981 and this was not a big deal. We knew it was going to happen sometime in the future but the future is now because TH 5 is going to happen. We've worked on it. We've put a lot of money into it from a Chanhassen community standpoint along with Eden Prarie, Chaska, victoria, all the communities along the route and these people want to see TH 5 happen and it's going to happen. I'm not anxious at this time to start marketing the center line on our official transportation map just to get the project on the Comprehensive Plan. I'm not anxious to do that until we do a lot of study. Analyzing it and coming up with the the kind of alternatives that Don mentioned hopefully we've have on September 12th. Some of the other comments in terms of some of the objectives and that is to make sure that this is not a dangerous situation where we're going to have kids crossing highways to get to superettes or to get to schools. I read with interest the comments from Brad Johnson that we have the same kind of experiences on the north end of town. Any of you people that go to work in the morning know what you're talking about when you come down 78th Street and try to get onto TH 5. Just try to get onto TH 101 or what I call Main Street is a chore. I pull up in front of Kenny's every morning 23 City Council ~eetJ_ng - August 22, 1988 and I know that I sat there for sometimes 3 or 4 minutes. That's a long time waiting for 15 or 20 cars to pass so we've got to do something about rerouting that traffic off our main street. My real comments are, let's not rush into this whole project without looking at all the old cards. Let's check the alternatives and bad decisions are generally made when you don't do a thorough and adequate job of planning. That's where I think we were a couple of weeks ago when I started to read s~me of the Planning Commission notes and Minutes, I didn't think that we had done a thorough job, the kind of job that was presented to us tonight and I think we've come a long way in the last two weeks. Another thought, and it's just a thought, is that in this community, for the people who haven't lived here very long, you'll note that there's a lot of things that divide our community. Either it's a railroad track or it's a highway. It's TH 5 or it's TH 7. It's TH lgl, CR 17, CR 117 and TH 41. Ail of those divide and segment our co~munity into little pockets of people and this earlier proposal, the south leg proposal would have done exactly that to Brookhill, Chan Estates, Hidden Valley. Ail of those little pockets of our community that are new to us and had no idea about this project 2 years, 3 years ago when we proposed it, are now faced with this as a real possiblity. In my opinion, we're going to try to do everything we can to remove that and eliminate that as a problem for you. I think one of the things that I'd like to see, at least I do it in my own business, I'd like to see the pros and cons of every alternative. It's nice to be able to present them here and I think you did a very good job Don but I would really like to see a complete list of the pros and the cons for each of your alternatives when you get down to the final selection point so we can see them in bold print. Let us know what the real negatives are and where we're coming from in terms of the positives. The only other big question I have is, what are the benefits to the co~munity of this TH lgl? I've lived here 22 years and I've lived with TH lgl all that time. It has not impacted me a great deal but I have to be realistic and I know that change is taking place. We have an opportunity, in my opinion, with Rosemount moving to Chanhassen, with a payroll in the neighborhood of 5gq to 70g people and the traffic that that's going to bring to this area of Market Blvd., we have an opportunity to reroute that if we can get together with the Ward family. I think personally that alternative number, I'll call it the last one, the Market Blvd. proposal is the best from my standpoint. Thank you. Mayor Hamilton: This process, as t mentioned earlier, I began looking at alternatives for this in 198g and it's been a frustrating process for me because I've never seen one that I liked or felt c~mfortable with and I wrestled with this darn thing a~d I just couldn't, I don't know, there was just something about it that always bothered me. I couldn't find one that I liked. I saw one tonight that I like. That's number 4. It seems to answer the questions and the concerns that we have and I'll be cautiously optimistic, as Don said, in saying that it's an alternative I think that I could really throw my support behind. It looks like it gives the City a lot of new opportunities and it solves some problems that have been existing. We were just talking before the meeting tonight about some other possibilities. I said I don't care what you look at, I don't care if you have to tear down buildings or what you have to move but we ought to consider every possible alternative to putting a road Jn so we can solve this thing and do it properly. I think we've got the solution. We can put in TH 5 if ~nDot will buy it and go along with this and work with us on getting this done. It's a grand opportunity for the City to make Market Blvd. kind of the main thoroughfare into the downtown. It will certainly help our industrial park. It will be a big boom for them. It will help us straighten 24 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 out parts of TH 101 that have been a mess for years. It seems to answer a lot of the questions that I've had and it resolves a lot of the issues that I've had so gee, this is really positive I think. I'm really pleased with what I've seen and although there's additional information that we need to get, Jay mentioned the problem with the pond. We have had, and I don't think that's much of a problem, we've had a development proposed for that site previously and we needed to do some things with the pond and I think we resolved them at that time and I see no reason why we can't resolve them again. That's a minor issue to take care of but I look forward to working with the feasibility study group. I'll certainly do all I can to help and I think we've got a workable solution. Those are the con~nents from the Councilm~mbers. Now if there are individuals who would like to make comments for the public record, please come up to the microphone, state your name and address and give us your corrments please. Who's going to be first? Stephen Wigg: I'm President of the Chanhassen Estates Residential Association. We know there's got to be chances that have to be made and several of you gentlemen said we have to consider some of the different alternatives and some of the probl~ns pro and con, etc.. What is not drawn on this last proposal which everyone seemed to be leaning toward, is that intersection of Dakota Avenue. I've been there for 6 years. I came in right at the end of the controversy where the Estates spent thousands of dollars fighting McDonalds coming into that corner. Now there's a big difference between fighting someone coming in and having an empty building if that would be the situation from lack of traffic. For that matter, two empty buildings sitting at the entrance of our neighborhood. That's the first concern. There is nothing on here that shows. We took in, my understanding is, approximately 8 to 10 years ago, because of the danger of that intersection before there were stop lights there, the Association took and fought very strongly to get stop lights at that intersection for the safety of people crossing. I don't see anything on here that says it's going to address any kind of pedestrian traffic getting across. This neighborhood is a 20 year old neighborhood. It's starting to turn over again. There are a lot more younger children that are growing up in this neighborhood so that concern is something that's got to be very much looked at. There have been things mentioned in the past about pedestrian cross over, etc. but is it feasible once you have these children, all these people are just starting to ride bikes, how far are they going to have to go to get across that highway and what's going to happen to those businesses that are on that corner? There isn't anything that shows an island. There's nothing sketched in there. Mayor Hamilton: I think your concern is genuine and Fred will take note of it and I think that's one of those issues that we'll need to respond to. Jack Atkins: My name is 'Jack Atkins, I live at 220 West 78th Street and I guess first of all I do like the Market Street proposal. I live on the north side here on West 78th Street and I do have some concerns about the north leg there. Mainly the railroad tracks after they cross the existing road there, they go behind Jerry Schlenk's property, they go below grade there maybe 10 to 12 feet and that train, a lot of people say there's only 1 or 2 trains but there are a lot of trains that come through there. If you live near there, you know that. So what you're essentially doing is you're going to have to take out that entire sound barrier for our neighborhood to put that new road in. I just want to make sure that that issue is addressed. Thanks. 25 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Uli Sacchet: ~4embers of the City Council, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Uli Sacchet. I live at 8971 Hidden Circle. I came here tonight to fight for what I think is my right and I'm relieved that isn't necessary, at least to the extent that it se~med necessary when I came here and I want to thank you me~bers of the City Council for having taken our concerns seriously and listened to our concerns. However, I still want to address some other points because it seems that the prospect of the original proposal isn't totally out of the window. It's just a more balanced picture with additional and certainly far more desirable possibilities. As such, i still want to take this opportunity and address sc~ne of the main concerns that I have found at the neighborhood of the Brookhill develo~n~ent of the Hidden Valley area. We handed in petition signatures in t~.~ packages. Originally we handed in 92 signatures at the end of July, the 3~th of July to the City Manager. We handed in another 62 signatures today which I don't know whether you've been informed of. You have, that's great. I personally have been entrusted by 7g of the residents to be the spokesperson in this issue to speak up against the realignment of TH lgl at Lake Drive East. I st~.ll want to make some of the points, some of the key points because as I said, the proposal isn't totally gone yet. It seems like we're addressing some problems. The main problem of the City is obviously traffic wise, TH 5. Then we have a secondary problem which is not necessarily just TH lgl in general as much as it is the intersection of TH lgl with 78th Street. Now it seems that the original proposal takes that problem away from the 78th Street intersection with TH 101. However, it doesn't really solve it in the sense that it's gone. In my view, that problem is just moved to the south side of TH 5 and the impact of the problem that is currently felt on the north side of TH 5 with that intersection of 78th Street and TH lgl would be off loaded onto the residents of the Brookhill development and Hidden Valley or Chanhassen Estates. That I do not consider a solution or solving a problem. Further, in terms of the through traffic need, of course it's an overall concern that we need to accomodate through traffic because traffic is rising. We know that. We've seen it. However, it's an envisioned need. It's based on assumptions. It's based on assumptions that things go on pretty much the way they've been going on. It's based on assumptions that 2g years from now we're going to continue riding the same kind of cars and putting up with the same kind of lights, which is likely. I'm not saying that's not going to be the case but it is an assumption. On the other hand, we, the residents of Brookhill and Hidden Valley, we live there now. That's not an assumption. That's not a plan or proposal. That's reality. We live here now and you Mr. Mayor, you made a remark that you were a little negatively touched, that's not the words you used, by s~e of the comments you got and I sincerely like to apologize if some of my comments upset you. I like to express myself with some spice. Now you can believe that I'm pretty motivated in this case because in my view, the safety of my children is at stake. Tine soundness of my investment I've made a year ago by building a house there and let's just look at that for a brief moment. How did that come about? The City made a commitment by zoning that area for single family h~es. The City made a commitment by giving a permit to build that single family home there and then what happens? Then comes the individuals and make the biggest commitment of all. They make a mortgage that lasts 3g years and they want to live there and make it their home. I don't mean to blame your planning process or what you're doing but I do believe that it's justified to make this statement. In a previous issue you've discussed tonight, you were talking about a self created situation or what was it? This is a self created situation of the City and all we're doing is standing up for our rights. I thank you that you do consider us. Alternate plans are obviously necessary and 26 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 has been heard and very well so. I might just briefly address that obviously the option that is favored by most of you is certainly going to be the option that is going to be favored by the neighborhood that I'm speaking for. The benefit to the City and the residents in general is really the main issue that I would expect you to consider as the City Council. It was pretty striking in the Planning Commission meeting a couple of weeks ago that the only benefit that could really be mentioned to the original proposal was through traffic accomodation. Well, we have a head on collision here of through traffic interest and residents interest if the original proposal would be implemented. Obviously the original proposal is not a solution. To sacrifice the desirability of a whole neighborhood, the safety, compromise the safety, even sacrifice a shopping center, what impact does that do to the tax revenue base of your City? You can also look at it from that angle. After all money has a certain weight in this world. The costs of the right-of-ways of the construction. How does that all fit together with that TH 101 is not even clear in terms of who has jurisdiction. We're trying to build something that was not founded at the time the proposal was made. It's not even yet decided that TH 101 will have an off ramp at TH 212 highway and I would like to encourage you to continue on the track to accumulate information and build this up step by step because it's an important issue and it's not going to get a sound solution by rushing and jumping steps before they're matured and clear. Thank you for your attention. Larry Guthrie: My name is Larry Guthrie. I'm an Attorney and I represent United Mortgage Corporation and Rottlund Homes and I have a few con~ents. I too applaud the efforts of the Council to consider alternatives and the efforts of BRW to come up with alterantives and to listen to the recon~endations that were made by the ?lanning Co~mission and also support the market option. I'd like to make a cogent with respect to some of the concerns made by Councilman Geving on the downtown traffic and perhaps suggest to BRW that when they talk to MnDot, that they see whether or not a business route alternative through downtown could be signed through the old TH 101 so people who want to go downtown who might be not familiar with Chanhassen, will know that there's a business route that they can still hook up with TH 101 by going down the Market Blvd. alternative. The second c~xm~ent I have is with respect to the public hearing and the other items you're going to be addressing later tonight and some of the concerns that were expressed as to the t~ming of this and whether or not the window of opportunity will be closed. My con~nent is sort of two fold. Whether or not you intend to close the public hearing after all the comments are received tonight and then go on and consider the mall that is being proposed to go in because that may or may not exclude certain alternatives and I guess suggest to you that because all the recon~nendations aren't being made to you tonight, that it would be inappropriate to close the public hearing tonight. The public should have an opportunity to respond to the recon~nendations that are being made to the Council. That's the first comment. The second con~nent is whether or not BRW can con~nent, whether or not when they come back on the 26th, what proposals still are going to be viable at that point. At the Planning Commission we were sort of led to believe that there wasn't much time in doing anything until perhaps 2 years from now would be out of the question unless you acted in~nediately. So I think that needs to be presented before the public hearing is closed and secondly, or thirdly or fourthly, wherever I'm at, on all the alternatives, it seems like the north leg is the same and whether or not something could not be done, if there is a delay and the window of opportunity is being missed because you want to make a deliberate decision and make the right decision and consider all the 27 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 alternatives, whether or not some type of compromise as far as putting in the north leg, even if traffic isn't going to be using it into TH 5 but proceeding on that option. Having the north leg in place and then perhaps two years down the road, putting in the Market Blvd.. Thank you. Philip Schloss: My name is Phi. lip Schloss and I live at 894g Hidden Circle. My con~nents basically, I had a lot of them but Mr. Hoisinqton kind of took those all away by the fact that he came in with some other aiternatives tonight and I'm glad to see that he did that as your Planning Commission, even they didn't like the present proposal as it stands. I want to urge you to reject any TH lgl proposal that does go south of TH 5 between Dakota and TH lgl because it seems to me that the impact is still the same as the original proposal. I had a discussion with Mr. Evan over the phone and according to him, Mr. Evan is the project manager of TH 5 on the widening. According to ~Fnat he said, if you were to separate TH lgl as a project from TH 5, they would not delay the widening of TH 5 through Chanhassen. Now you may wonder ~nat is this going to cost us? The cost means that the intersection then would fall totally on the City to do that. As I understand as it is now, that cost will be shared. However, with some of the other options, maybe that is the most cost effective to put the decision off rather than to go ahead with this without any clear understanding of totally what's involved as this has been rushed upon us. What I want to urge you, please don't be afraid to delay the widening of TH 5. As Mr. Conrad said, and he is the head of the Planning Con%mission, he said let it be the City of Chanhassen's decision, not MnDot's decision to delay TH 5. However, if you feel a decision must be made tonight, I urge you that I feel that the fourth alternative, in other words, it's the north leg option only with M~rket Street, I believe that's what we're going to call it, I urge you to support that one. I think that continuity of TH lgl or having a continuity of TH lgl is like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Thank you very much. Mayor Hamilton: Are there any other comments? If there are no other comments, I would, suggest to the Council that the public hearing be continued until such time as we have further information from BRW and from Fred Hoisington and if there is anybody in the public who would wish to either write or make comments to the City, you may do so. Send a letter to the City or contact myself or other councilmembers, you can still make public comment. I think we should hold the public hearing open until after the meeting of the 12th. Councilman Johnson: I move we continue the public hearing and stop receiving input tonight I guess. Mayor Hamilton: I don't think we need to move with this. It will remain open until after the meeting of the 12th. People can still input through the City or through any of us individually. Actually, the four items are all tied together and the one gentleman commented, he wasn't sure if we were going to move on any of them. I don't think there's any intention to make any decisions on any of them tonight. They're all tied together and they all need to be decided together. At least for the present time. Barbara Dacy: Except for item (d)... Mayor Hamilton: I don't think we can do that either until we know what alignment we're going to have. 28 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Johnson: I think we need to discuss it separately Tom[ Councilman Geving: You can't do (d). Councilman Boyt: I would move, when appropriate, that we table (d) for lack of information because we didn't receive the drawings. I think that's appropriate. Councilman Geving: I would second that motion and I think the New American Homes have to realize that we can't get last minute details on a very important subject on the night that we're going to be making the decision. Mayor Hamilton: We have a motion and a second to table item 3(d) for lack of information. Councilman Boyt moved, Councilman Geving seconded to table action on the Site Plan Review for a 40,000 square foot shopping center (Hidden Valley Center), New American Homes Corporation, for lack of information. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Mayor Hamilton: Pat, I guess I'd like to ask your opinion on that. We don't have sufficient information. Pat Farrell: I understand that. Are you tabling it for a time specific? Mayor Hamilton: We tabled it only because we have non-sufficient information so when sufficient information is available, we could consider it but it should also be tied with the realignment. Pat Farrell: You're within your authority to table it then. Councilman Horn: I had a question of either Fred or Don. What provision do you have planned to put along TH 5 between TH 101 to the north and Market? It appears to me that what you're doing in that particular section of the road is you need to create a highway that can handle both the traffic volumes of TH 101 and TH 5. Fred Hoisington: That' s correct. Councilman Horn: So is that going to be 6 lane there? Otherwise you're going to have a bottleneck. Fred Hoisington: I'll answer that in a general sense. The traffic analysis will demonstrate what will be necessary there. We think it would involve two lanes in each direction and two left turn lanes so conceivably for a portion of that stretch, yes it could be 6 lanes wide. Councilman Horn: Otherwise it doesn't do much good to have four lanes beyond it to the west. Councilman Johnson: Create a bottleneck right there. 29 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn: That's right. The road capacity goes with the smallest bottleneck. Don Ringrose: That's MnDot's primary concern is that we don't diminish the service level on TH 5. CounciLman Horn: That's my primary concern. Counci]unan Boyt: I've got a couple comments. Along with Jay, the two of us sat through the Planning Commission hearing and I guess a couple of co~nents. One is driving through ~ayzata fairly frequently, TH lgl is about as fouled up as it can get when it goes down the main street of a part of Wayzata so our existing situation isn't uncommon but it's certainly not one I think we want to stay with. As I mentioned before, TH 5 shouldn't be delayed. My ~eaction to the Planning Con,mission earlier was that I thought they created the impression that this was a mere 2 year delay for TH 5. If we decide to do something that would delay TH 5's extension, it will not be built. Don't kid yourself to think the State is going to come back and give us money to extend it another couple of miles. They won't do it and so what we're deciding is do we want it to be 4 lanes out to CR 17 or don't we want it to be 4 lanes out to CR 17. Personally, I can tell you that the decision may be extremely difficult before we're done but that my vote will be to extend it. Then, as I mentioned earlier, Option 4 I think makes, it certainly makes sense to me from what I've heard. It sounds like it makes sense to a lot of people but I think we'd better be very careful to get Chan Estates reactions to this before we leap ahead. I think that Mr. Wigg made some good points~ as Tom pointed out, and we probably need to hear from more people in that neighborhood so I think we'll have the opportunity to do that. My last point would be, I think that the neighborhood coming together here, certainly you're not done and you won't be done when we make our decision. I think it's very important that the neighborhood continue to take this to ~%nDot. TH 5 is going to change dramatically. You need to have input in that change process so if you want noise barriers, they know that. If you have other concerns with how TH 5 is built and extended, that they're aware of that so don't disban simply because the City of Chanhassen makes it's part of the decision. That's all I have. Councilman Geving: I just want to finish with a couple of comments and questions to Don on how the funding for this project, if it were to proceed, would or could be accomplished. The total realigF~nent of TH lgl to Market or wherever we place. How would that happen Don? I don' t believe there's any money fo~ this. Don Ashworth: We had approached the legislature this past yea_r. In fact, our bill was included even in the ending session. It lost by 2 votes on the Senate side at 3:3g in the morning on the ]_ast day in session. The major stumbling block was contingent from Hennepin County. Some concerns there, staff is already starting to meet with legislative representatives. We've done that on a number of occasions. We're meeting again with them this Wednesday to insure that as we approach this next legislative session, that we will have worked out those p~oblems ~ Councilman Geving: And then just one other cor~nent and that has to do with the whole issue of this realignment process and what impact it may have on the delay, potential delay for TH 5. I can tell you that we've worked for years to 3~ City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 _/ get TH 5 upgraded and expanded to 4 lanes out to Chanhassen and regardless of what's going to happen with our decision on TH 101, I certainly wouldn't want us delaying that project. I don't want to see it falling short to 184th Street just because we did something here that promoted that delay. Whatever it takes, we want to see the committee, Hoisington and Don to proceed along those criteria that we move ahead with TH 5 and push it ahead just like we had planned all along and keep us informed so that we're aware that if our decision is to actually delay, let us know. Secondly, if there's anything that the City can do by bringing in our own architects or engineers or draftspeople to bring this up to speed, as was mentioned in some of the staff notes here, that's a great possibility. Let's proceed in that vein because we can't let TH 5 delay into the 1992-93 scenario. That's the direct I'd like to see the staff go. Councilman Johnson: I'd also like staff, I see Barb's not here right now but Jo Ann probably knows it just as well, tell us what the next steps are. There's a feasibility study yet to be done and things like this. How many more steps do we have going here? Mayor Hamilton: Fred, perhaps you could. Fred Hoisington: I think that Barbara laid that out in her msmo Jay. Councilman Johnson: Well, they didn't read Barb's memo. Fred Hoisington: There will be a feasibility study. It would have to be completed and all the answers providing for us to proceed. If there is an alternative that we can settle on, then we can design...and part of that effort to... Then it will be constructed so that's what we expect the process to be. Councilman Johnson: Okay, Market Blvd. option has quite a bit of streets involved. Quite a bit of roads involved. There's a mileage limit in our envirnomental assessment state laws and environmental quality law, I believe it's called. I think we need to take a look at that real soon and see if an Environmental Assessment Worksheet will have to be done so we can get that going too so we don't come up at the last minute on oh my goodness, we need an EAW for running these type things. This feasibility study is going to decide a lot of the questions that have been asked. Pedestrian crossing is one that I definitely want to see in that feasibility study because that is a problem that this City has right now and if we can tie that in here, we can get that addressed as early as possible. This is a good time, a good excuse to throw that on the agenda. I think it's already in there but I want to make sure it's in there. Whether the feasibility of what the effect this will have on the businesses in that intersection, the Sinclair station and Mac and Don's there, I'm not 100% sure whether that belongs in there or whether that is a free enterprise's responsibility to do that but if that is economically can be added to it, that would be nice to have there too. I do not believe that this would, with movement of Rosemount in and a few other changes going in town, I don't think this will have a marked effect on those businesses. I think as we're growing, they're not going to see any decrease in business to our road. Especially when you throw in 500 to 700 new employees just down the road from them. Their lunch time is going to be even busier. Of course, the feasibility study will look at the noise also that people have talked about. I really enjoy listening to Uli. I've listened to him three times now. At the Planning Commission and earlier, I wish I could speak as eloquently as he does. I do 31 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 believe there is a benefit to this because we have a real problem. This is not just to connect TH lgl north to south. We've got a real problem. TH lgl as it goes through the north side here, goes through a residential neighborhood. It goes past a grade school. It goes past a couple churches. It runs past Kenny's which is where all of our kids go to hang out just like kids on your side go to Superette. We have a present and real danger going on right now with TH lgl on the north side and we have to do something on that but to create a problem on the south side by doing something to solve a problem on the north side doesn't make any sense eJ. ther. That's why i favor the one I'm favoring now. I think the business signage can be handled very easily as far as saying Chanhassen businesses, take a right now and you can go to downtown but that's pretty standard stuff. I just wanted to cover some of the public comment that was made there. That's all I've got to say at this time. Mayor Hamilton: I think you've received a few more questions Fred from the public and from the Council. Especially Dakota Avenue. How is that going to be impacted and some of the others so if you could gather the information on that and bring it back to us, I'd appreciate it. Anybody else have any comments? Councilman Horn: Just a response to Jay. When we first started looking at the TH lgl alternatives, we weren't moving the property to the south because the south wasn't built up like it is. As a matter of fact, when that development went in, we discussed this. It was discussed with the church when it went in and we've always talked with anybody who's developed in any area anywhere in this area about the possibility of realigning TH lgl and what the possible impacts might be. The church people have been debating for some time whether they want to continue with their project until we resolve this. It's not a matter of planning. It's a matter of getting the public sector transportation issue resolved in conjunction with the private development. We don't control private development. That happens. The only option we have when a developer comes in is we can say, well, we might be developing there someday. Go by that property. That's the only option we have when that planning comes in otherwise we have to let them go through with their process. We can tell them that you might be impacted at some point but we can't stop th~. That's the type of process to go through. It might look like bad planning but it's the reality of the fight between the public and private sector. When this whole thing started, the situation was much different. In fact, many of the options that did look attractive at one point don't look that way anymore. Mayor Hamilton: I would like to just thank everybody for your input. It's been valuable to us and we appreciate your coming to the Planning Commission and to the Council meeting to show your support for what's being done in the City. Thank you. PUBLIC HEARING: WEST 78TH STREET DETACHMENT FEASIBILITY STUDY; SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT NO. 1. Public Present: Name Address B.C. "Jim" Burdick Brian H. Burdick Jan Coey 426 Lake Street, Excelsior 5295 Greenwood Circle Taco Shop 32 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Michael J. Leonard Peter W. Fishcer Leo Gray 8016 Erie Avenue AVR, Inc., 6801 150th Street W., Apple Valley AVR Inc. Gary Warren: To give you a quick overview. On July 25th of this year the Council directed staff to call a public hearing for Supplemental Report No. 1 for our West 78th Street detachment feasibility study. Basically the purpose of the report was to address the issue of the right-in/right-out connection to West 78th Street onto Powers Blvd. which was denied by the County. The supplemental report specifically looks at the installation of the cul-de-sac, public roadway cul-de-sac on the or close to the alignment of what was to be a private drive to service the James and the Burdick property. We didn't have an assessment roll in the report at that time and subsequently that has been prepared and sent to the affected property owners. So what we have tonight here is to take public con~nent concerning the supplemental report that specifically addresses the feasibility of construction of the cul-de-sac as a public roadway. Mr. Ehret is also here. Mayor Hamilton: Did you have anything you wanted to add to that Gary? Gary Ehret: I think I would add one thing and that is the original report was received and acted on by the Council a full year ago. Since no action, construction con~nenced I think by Statute the report had to be brought back and a new public hearing held so it's really kind of a two fold situation. To review the new alternative with the cul-de-sac and also to once again hold the public hearing to allow us to commence with the project in whatever fashion we choose. Mayor Hamilton: I'd like to at this point call the public hearing to order for the West 78th Street detachment feasibility study, Supplemental Report No. 1. Is there anybody here from the public who wishes to make cc~ment on this item? J~m Burdick: We're going to file this with the assessment hearing or is this the assessment hearing at this time? Gary Warren: This is just a hearing on the public improvement project. The assessment hearing would be, if the Council authorized this project to be actually built. Jim Burdick: I'm already on record as objecting to it. Mayor Hamilton: To what? The building of it? JJ.m Burdick: Moving 78th Street because of the great harm it is to my property so I'll just let it stand and I won't take your time by going through it again. Councilman Geving: I wish our Attorney was here. I mean that sincerely because this may come to court and I'd like to have our Attorney be present to hear your con~nent. Mayor Hamilton: Jim has objected formally in a letter. 33 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Jim Burdick: That pertains just to the assessment. Councilman Geving: We're not anywhere near the assessment. Mayor Hamilton: We've got to figure out if we're going to do it first Jim and then we'll worry about the assessment afterwards. Councilman Boyt: I have a question for Mr. Burdick. Just so that I understand clearly, I do understand that you're opposed to this but my understanding is also that MnDot has said to us, you can't maintain your access to Kerber Blvd. where it is. We have to move it. Is that your understanding? Jim Burdick: No. No, that isn't correct at all. I think it's time for Chanhassen to shoulder the responsibility with what they're doing in this area. It's not Carver County. It's not MnDot. It's the City of Chanhassen. Councilman Boyt: Since Carver County has denied it, which as I understand it means we cannot keep existing West 78th Street open in it's present status. Is that how you understand that resolution from Carver County? Jim Burdick: Well, let's face the truth. Chanhassen went to Carver County and encouraged this. I've talked to the Commissioners on an individual basis. Councilman Boyt: You're telling me that the City of Chanhassen went to the Commission and said we don't want to have this access as it is now so deny the ability to have a right-in/right-out? Jim Burdick: That is correct. Now I'd like to go back a bit farther. One year ago I attended a very well conducted meeting by Jo Ann Olsen who's here tonight with Roger Gustafson, the Carver County chief engineer. At that time a plan was worked out providing for a right turn in, right turn out onto 78th Street. It was here before the Council. The consensus of the Council's comments that night and most of you probably r~nember, it wasn't a perfect plan but it was the best and my comments were, it wasn't good for me and there was some harm in it but I was willing to accept it as a compromise. I accepted this right turn in, right turn out. This Council and Mayor voted for it unanimously so as far as I'm concerned, we made a contract. The drawing was present, we went over it completely. Mayor Hamilton: 'Wnether we are for it, Which we all voted in favor of it, I would still vote in favor of it, we don't control the accesses off of a county road. That is controlled by the County. Not by us. We passed our recommendation onto them that we wanted to have the right-in/right-out. They chose to not go along with that. Jim Burdick: It is still open with the County. Mayor Hamilton: They passed a resolution saying you can't do it as far as I'm concerned. Jim Burdick: I appeared before them about a month ago and they're going to schedule another meeting on it and they're still considering it. 34 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: Well good. I hope you can persuade them to change their minds. Jim Burdick: And two of the councilmembers told me personally they understand that Chanhassen wanted this. They understood in their minds that Chanhassen wanted this to shut off. Councilman Boyt: And now they understand differently, is that correct? Jim Burdick: I most certainly... Councilman Boyt: I'd be curious from the staff, what was the impression that we tried to create with the County Commission? Don Ashworth: I don't know if anybody attended the meeting. Gary Warren: I sent th~m a letter requesting to get an answer from th~ on the connection because our feasibility, they're aware that our feasibility called for right-in/right-out and we sent that to th~m because they had the access permit control and the letter specifically asked them to put that on their agenda to give us the ruling. Councilman Boyt: Did we, when we sent the request, indicate that this was something that we really wanted? That we weren't just doing this to pass time. Gary Warren: I guess we sent them a letter saying we would like your approval of this concept. Councilman Boyt: I would like you to send a letter or staff to send a letter that says that the City Council voted unanimously to support this and we would appreciate their support. Would you do that? Gary Warren: I will certainly do that. Jim Burdick: Thank you for your generous consideration. Councilman Horn: That was our intent all along. Mayor Hamilton: Anything else Bill? Councilman Boyt: No, I just think it's time that we buried the hachet and got this thing going. We've got to know what you need and what we can give you to get it done. Jim Burdick: I would much more enjoy cooperating than being in an adversal position with anyone. With your legal counsel and others such as this condemnation on Lots 8 and 9 that could have been handled much better with less money to the City. Not less money to me. I came out pretty good but for the City and I'd much rather handle things that way. Councilman Geving: Mr. Burdick would you stay there please. I think we all agree with what Bill just said. That the City's position was that we were in favor of the right-in/right-out. We are here tonight to discuss the public hearing for the amendment of this detached feasibility study as a supplemental report. The reason that we're here to talk about this is because of the action 35 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 of the Cor~nissioners of Carver County and what is being proposed, as you're well aware, is the cul-de-sac in front of your property. The reason that I want te ask yeu specifically for this, because you are probably the ene whe benefits the mest ef the cul-de-sac ente what is now 78th Street rather than geing all the way through te CR 17 se my question to you right now, and this is very important if we proceed, is whether or net we're going to be able to amiably acquire the easements necessary for the cul-de-sac? It's a very important question that I'm asking you. That you will give us the dedicatien of the right-of-way necessary te make the cul-de-sac a possibilty. Can you answer that for me please? Jim BurdJ.ck: No. I can't answer that at this time. I think we have to go into the overall pJ_cture down there. I don't think I can just 9ire you a yes or no answer to that. Councilman Geving: Okay, it probably was unfair of me to ask that tonight without a lot of preliminary information but to make this thing feasible for you as the principle landowner in that area which you're going to develop, it doesn't make a lot of sense to us to have to buy the land from you for the dedication of this roadway easement to make the cul-de-sac and then turn around and assess you back for the cost of building that cul-de-sac. Do you understand? Jim Burdick: Yes, but of course I'm objecting to the assessment. Councilman Geving: We're not at that point yet. Jim Burdick: No, but I will be when the time comes. Councilman Geving: But you see the cost will be considerably less if you'll agree with us to dedicate that land to us at a reasonable price so the project can proceed. %e are making an assumption in this project that we'll be able to acquire the land &eiably and at a price that we can proceed with the project. Now if that's not possible, this project could be considerably delayed and then you are going to not benefit from this. We might want to think about that because that could be the key to this whole proposal in amending our feasibility study to include the cul-de-sac. Mayor Hamilton: C~ry, do we need any easements from Mr. Burdick? Gary Warren: For the bubble of the cul-de-sac area we will. Jim Burdick: ,..this is my list here. That cul-de-sac down there just is not a fair cul-de-sac. It's a left handed cul-de-sac but I think this is some of the plat that can be worked out with Mr. Gary Warren in a amicable relationship. Councilman Geving: So you're willing to work with us on that? Jim Burdick: I'm willing to work wi. th you on that a bit but as you know, as far as developing dov~ there, those lots, it's being held up by the City because the final plat has not been approved and signed so the City of Chanhassen has been holding us up for one year. Mayor Hamilton: I think you have some suhnittals that you haven't made. I don't believe we're holding you up. 36 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Geving: I question your statement sir. Jim Burdick: That's my feelings that it's been held up for one year of development. Councilman Johnson: Why is the cul-de-sac all on Mr. Burdick's property? Why couldn't we have made it a James and Burdick cul-de-sac? That's the first thing that struck me too is why turn down only southward versus just being a regular normal bubble or whatever? Gary Ehret: A couple of the reasons are that the James plat, as you're aware, has been approved and there is, the site plan I believe has been fully approved and construction is underway. Not changing the alignment would have a fairly significant impact there. It certainly could be looked at. One of the things we looked at, one of the things that can be done is to slide that cul-de-sac a little further south and put a normal cul-de-sac on it. Councilman Johnson: Slide the whole road southwards. Gary Ehret: Slide the whole road south. The reason it's shown as it is is because again, it would affect Mr. Burdick more so I guess what we attempted to show here is the least impact to both properties from an acquisition standpoint. The location of the road, maybe another way of putting that is that the location of the road grade is where currently both plats reflect right-of-way. Dedicated right-of-way. We tried to stay within that as much as possible but certainly if there are some benefits or if Mr. Burdick feels a different alignment is desirable, there's no reason a design like this, why we can't do that. Councilman Johnson: The next question is, if the County Board does reconsider and we need to check to see if that is on their agenda. You say they are going to reconsider it in September I guess but if they do reconsider it, does that mean supplement to the feasibility study is going to come out now to relook at, which Supplement 2 would be just going back to the original feasibility study so we'd be doing this over again some night in September or October. Gary Warren: I guess the scenario that I would envision is that this really is a stand alone portion of the project and I will follow up with Council direction here with the County and express our desires again for the right-in/right-out and see if they are reconsidering it but if not, this portion then could be, the public hearing process could be concluded on it and proceed. Councilman Johnson: We'd need a new public hearing again if it does reopen... Gary Warren: What Gary was con~nenting was true is that the one year time has lapsed on Mr. Burdick's study and so the hearing is really, right now is addressing renewal of that original feasibility study. Councilman Johnson: Since we haven't had proper notification, I shouldn't say proper but since this notification was only for these changes, not for the whole project then, we could have included that tonight and say either option of the feasibility study is approved because the old option was the last time. I don't think we have a public notice problem. 37 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Gary Ehret: In the case, this report dees update all the costs for the balance of the project and the assessment roll has been updated for all properties. Councilman Johnson: Both optJ. ons? Gary Ehret: The other option, this is really just an added option. The other option called for a private drive, right-in/right-out. No other items have been changed so in effect the only thing that could occur tonight is the dropping of the cul-de-sac as an option. The r~nainder of the report remains intact. In other words, if we drop the cul-de-sac idea, the original report considered that to be a private drive. Therefore, there were no public improvement costs associated with it so the balance of the report as represent itself in No. 1 will still be intact. As far as I'm concerned, the one year period would have been met again by approval of that portion of the project. Councilman Johnson: Okay. I think I understand what you're saying then. Councihean Geving moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to close the public hearing. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Resolution ~88-89: Councilman Johnson moved, N~yor Hamilton seconded to accept Supplemental Report No. 1 for the West 78th Street Detact~nent Feasibility Study and to authorize staff to prepare the plans and specificatJ, ons. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. Councilman Horn: Can you make that contingent upon what the County does? I think if the County changes their mind°.. Mayor Hamilton: I think all we can do is encourage them to see it our way to change it but it's up to Jim to go down there and talk to them. Do you want to make that a part of your motion Jay? Councilman Johnson: Yes. PUBLIC HEARING: PROPOSED /e4ENDMENT TO THE CITY CODE REGARDING NOISE REGULATIONS. Name Address Mary Decatur Ed Williams Leanne Harvieux Richard Potz Georgette Sosin Jim Hurd 6645 Horseshoe Curve 7gg4 Dakota Avenue 6693 Horseshoe Curve 6991 Tecumseh Lane 74gg Chanhassen Road Lyman Lumber Jim Chaffee: Mr. ~'myor, me-~bers of the Council, you may remember that on July 25th we brought this before you and at that time the decision was made to hold a public hearing and consider some of the comments that were made by the Council. I tried to address those concerns. The majority of them seemed to center around 38 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 the problem that the new ordinance may present with the present ordinance on the books addressing snowmobiles. The ordinance that is presently on the books addressing snowmobiles establishes how snowmobiles may be operated in the City and not when. Councilman Horn: It doesn't have a restriction on time? Jim Chaffee: That's correct. One of the options that Council may want to consider in addressing this ordinance, and I apologize for my staff report. I stated in there that I would attach the snowmobile ordinance and it is not in there. In the snowmobile ordinance it states that snowmobiles may not be operated in a manner so as to create any loud, unnecessary or unusual noise which distrubs the noise or interferes with the peace and quiet of other persons. That would cover that portion so an option that Council may want to consider tonight would be eliminating C-3 altogether in the new proposed ordinance. Another concern addressed the development contracts. One thing Council may wish to consider is changing item B-5, as I've indicated in the staff report, to state that no such noise is to be smmitted at all between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., Monday through Saturday and on Sundays and Holidays. Those are just some of the things and there's a quick overview of what this ordinance is. Councilman Geving: Give me that one more time Jim on the hours. This is on 5. Jim Chaffee: Right. On the third paragraph of the cover m~no, the last sentence, item B-5 could be changed to read, no such noise is to be emitted at all between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday and on Sundays and Holidays and if you'll note on B-5 presently it says, no such noise is to be emitted at all between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.. Councilman Boyt: And you mean all day Sunday and Holidays? Jim Chaffee: Right. Mayor Hamilton: Does that mean that if the City has a watermain break we can't repair it on the weekend? Councilman Horn: That' s what it says. Jim Chaffee: The City's exempt. Mayor Hamilton: We're exempt but nobody else is. This is a public hearing process again and I'd like to call the public hearing to order. Is there anybody here from the public who would like to make comment on this particular item dealing with the noise regulations within the City? Dick Potz: I live up in Greenwood Shores. I trust that everybody got a copy of my letter. A copy of the noise test we did up on one of our snowmobile trails. If you have any questions, I can see if I can answer them. Mayor Hamilton: Did you have anything specific that you wanted to say other than what was in your letter? Dick Potz: No. 39 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Geving: Let me ask you, how do you feel that this unduly restricts snowmobiling in Chanhassen? Dick Potz: ! think it does Dale. The ordinance doesn't indicate a decimil rating. It doesn't indicate the speed. Rather than just a banning, not allowing them, why don't you approach it from a decimil standpoint. The tests that we gave you indicate that a house that was 65 feet away from the trail had zero ratings inside the house so I think the re~ort, the copy of the report I gave you... It's a little tough operating 9g miles of trail out here when you get anybody that's not familiar with the ordinances, when you hit the Chanhassen border to clamp them off at lg:gg so it will be tough to enforce. Councilman Geving: Would this shut down snowmobiling after lg:gg p.m. in your view? Dick Potz: According to the ordinance it would. When you hit Chanhassen at lg:gg, you're not supposed to be there. If you read the ordinance. I don't know if Jim can enforce that. CounciLman Geving: That's what we're trying to get at. Dick Potz: If we have a problem with noise, they were probably traveling too fast or the muffler's inadequate. It's not any different than a car or a motorcycle or anything else. CounciLman Geving: By today's standards, aren't snowmobiles a lot better? Dick Potz: Oh yes° In the report Dale there's a copy of the State Law. After 1975, all snowmobiles manufactured had to be within 75 decimils 15g feet away. There were a couple of machines that were tested that were manufactured in 1973 or 1974. CounciLman Geving: Let me ask one more question about the snowmobile public. I know they're active here in Chanhassen. Have been for many years. How many club members do we have in Chanhassen that do snowmobile? Dick Potz: Paying families. I want to estimate last year we had about 3~. Councilman Geving: Active snowmobiles? Dick Potz: That's paid club members. There's probably a few thousand on the trails though. Councilman Boyt: Mr. Potz, before you sit down, since you're our expert here I have a few questions here. As I understand there are curfews in other comnunities. The map you sent us is very helpful° How have those curfews impacted on sno~nobiling? Dick Potz: I can't answer that. Councilman Boyt: Okay, let me come at it from a different direction. As I understand from your materials, we have a current speed limit of lg mph on city streets so that means when one is off city streets there's no speed limit. 4~ City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Is that correct? Dick ?otz: That's correct. Unless you are on the State trails. State law is 50 mph on the state trail. That's the State law. On State operated and maintained trails. Councilman Boyt: As I remember your test data, you stopped at 40 mph and at that point we had all of them up in the 70's and two that were in the 80's and by a point of reference that's somewhere just around a heavy truck going by. The question I have for you then was, and you cleared it up, we don't have a speed limit. The State has a speed limit and a speed limit would certainly be difficult to enforce. As difficult as anything given that we don't have any snowmobiles to go chase them with. Okay, so 10 mph on a city street, at 10 mph would mean basically 0 decimils from the standpoint of in a house anyway. You wouldn't hear them if they went by at 10 mph? It'd be silent. Dick Potz: In that particular case, that was true. That house was 65 feet away from the trail and at 20 mph in that particular house where we did the test a couple years ago, there was no reading on the meter. Councilman Boyt: Okay. 10 mph, what kind of a decimil? Dick Potz: I would have to say it would be nil. Councilman Boyt: Close to not hearing it? Dick Potz: I don't have data to prove that. Councilman Boyt: But since 20 is a library, we're probably talking library quiet at 10 mph. Dick Potz: Library is 30, if I remember right? Councilman Boyt: Bedroom quiet. Councilman Horn: Library is between 30 and 40. Councilman Boyt: Okay, that's the only question I had. Councilman Horn: Do you know of any trail in Chanhassen where you'd be riding over 50? Dick Potz: Yes. South on CR 17 you can get over 50. Councilman Horn: How close is that to houses? Dick Potz: I don't think we have any problems down there. Some of the closest houses we might get is right on the other side of Lake Ann, there's 3 or 4 of them in there. There's a few of them up by the Fire Station on TH 7. Those houses that back up to TH 7, as you go down the TH 7 ditch. However, a resident living adjacent to TH 7 with the truck traffic and the car traffic, I'm not so sure those residents are that much bothered by snowmobiles. I can think of about 3 of them right on the other side of Lake Ann. There's probably some of the newer houses behind Chan Estates where you go through Rice Marsh Lake. 41 Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 We're probably about 2gg feet away from those. Councilman Horn: Do you consider that a 5g mph area? Dick Potz: Yes. That particular area of the south there, you can go 5g and on the other side of Lake Ann, you can go 5g there. The 5g mph stuff is pretty much eut in the country. Councilman Horn: So you're pretty much south anywhere the speed limit...the condition of the trail? Dick Potz: Yes, that's true. We get a lot of straight stretches and obviously you can get it going. Through the winding neighborhoods and trees, you've got your life in your o~ hands. Councilman Horn: That's all I've got. Mayor Hamilton: Do you wish to ask Mr. Potz a question? Georgette Sosin: Yes, I'd like to ask you, don't you include lakes in this because it's been our experience that the snowmobiles are all over the place and going... Dick Potz: Yes, obviously on the lake you can go faster. There's a State Law that you can, as well as a City ordinance, yeu can enly go a certain speed within se far from shore or within fish houses. That's right in the City Ordinance as well as the State Law. [Zmyor Hamilton: The question he was asked was can you go 5g mph on any of the trails. I den't think a lake is considered part ef the trail. Georgette Sosin: No, but I just wanted to point out that snowmobiles do in fact go more than 5g mph in other areas which are not trails. Dick Potz: I don't deny that. Mayor Hamilton: They probably have to get home before lq:gq. Ed Williams: I'm Ed Williams and I'm with the Lotus Lake Homeowners Association and this noise ordinance, there are two things that I think bother people about the lake and that is, mostly the new Skidoos which are very loud and I don't know what they are decimil wise. Councilman Boyt: You're talkJ, ng about a jet ski is what you're talking about. Ed Williams: Right. Councilman Horn: A Skidoo is a snowmobile. Ed Williams: I'm sorry, but those also. And snowmobiles in the winter. They are all very loud and they have more or less coless the group to come together here and I'm representing the five of us here tonight and some of the other board members could not make it this evening, they're out of town. We want to register our complaints about the noise levels of these various vehicles. 42 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Snowmobiles and what do you call them? The jet skis and jet skis are more in evidence now when we' re talking about this and that's a new development on the scene and T don't know if you people are aware of the noise or if you notice it yourself. I know there's a State regulation as far as decimils are concerned and I have no idea what decimil level these do create but I suspect it's substantially above the State regulations so I think that would automatically, would it not automatically ban use of these vehicles in the lake? Councilman Horn: At those noise levels it would. Mayor Hamilton: If you can set up a decimil meter on the lake when they're running across and you can prove that they've exceeded the level. Ed Williams: In a related reading of this, I think that our ordinance in the City incorporates the State regulations so I've got to compensate regulations and this somewhat, I know we're talking about noise but there is a statement in the application, the State law and local regulations when referring to boats and it says, such rules in this...that this is excerpted from, it says that you can modify the State laws and the Con~nissioner can accept them if the local conmunity requests them. It has here, such rules may restrict any or all of the following: the type and size of watercraft and size of motor which may use the waters affected by the rule, (2) the areas of water which may be used by watercraft, (3) speed of water, (4) times permitted for the use of watercraft or (5) minimum distance between watercraft. In establishing rules, the Con~nissioner shall consider the physical characteristics of the waters affected, this historical uses, shoreline uses and classification and other features unique to the waters affected by the rules. Therefore, I guess it is my reading of this, whether right or wrong, is that we do have the power here to restrict what we do and allow on lakes. I believe that there are offensive vehicles or offensive things that are developed and are not necessarily have a great deal of social merit to them and I would suggest that currently anyway, right at this season, that the new jet skis fit that classification and I'd like to submit that we, if possible, could restrict or ban these vehicles from our lakes. I don't know if it's unique. I would ask the question, is it we, Lotus Lake, who are offended by this noise or has other people brought this up? Mayor Hamilton: I think that's a separate issue completely, banning any particular item or use of the lake. That we need to consider separately from this. Ed Williams: From the noise ordinance? Mayor Hamilton: We're trying to deal with the noise, not with a particular use. Councilman Horn: We in fact have done that. We have a lake use ordinance. We have a speed limit on that also. We can control water skiing. You have to have an observer. We do have local restrictions. Mayor Hamilton: The City has the opportunity to be more restrictive than the State and we have taken that opportunity. We are more restrictive. Councilman Geving: Ed, in terms of noise, don't you also have some very loud motor boats on Lotus Lake? We're talking tonight about snowmobiles and that's just one facet of it but I have to assume that you've got the same kind of 43 ©:"City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 problems with loud... Ed Williams: There is and we have brought up this subject before with Jim as far as the noise level and patrolling the noise level on the lake. There has been some discussion about getting a noise... Councilman Boyt: A decimeter. Ed Williams: Is that what it is? Alright. Getting one of those to check out the boat noise and the level and I don't know what has happened. CounciLman Geving: be_t me ask you this. You're kind of unique in that Lotus Lake kind of lies in a pocket there and there's a hill all the way around it pretty much. I imagine that there's an awful lot of echoing from those motor boats. Have you seen any patrol activity? Have you seen the Carver County. people out there? Ed Williams: There has been some as of late. I'm not aware of anything that's been suggested to any of us that there has been activities related to boats and their noise level. It has been maybe to improper handling or boats and lack of licensing and going the wrong direction. Georgette Sosin: I want to, as a citizen say that I support this ordinance. I think that it's extremely necessary because of our growth. I'm not just talking about the lake and problems on the lake which certainly are things that we have to look into. I think that having the ordinance will give us a handle on what is getting to be a growing concern and I want to speak about it in general, not just about the lake. I think that with the industrial noise that we talked_ about, this will happen more as the City grows and sometimes the person who owns the factories and live in Montana or New York or someplace and might not be as accomodating as we've been seeing the people that we talked about a few weeks ago. I think that having this on our books will give us some very concrete way to deal with this concern. I'm going to make one point which is in relation to what we already have on our books in terms of the snowmobiles and that is that currently on our surface water useage ordinance we have a lg:00 curfew on boats. That is that people who want to go fast and waterski after lg:gg are not allowed to do so. There's also a State ordinance which says that at sunset that motors can not be run at full tiit and it's for the noise so I don't see any reason why snowmobilers should be treated any differently than boaters in that respect so I urge you to consider this ordinance very seriously. I think it's necessary and it will become much more important every day that goes by as more people come to our City. Jim Hurd: I'm Jim Hurd from Lyman Lumber Company. I guess I've got a concern with this ordinance and how it applies to our company and our operation. We've been a long time resident here and the way I read this, we will be limited hours of operation. Is that true? Mayor H&mil ton: Jim? Jim Chaffee: Under B-5, the operation of any construction, earthmoving, building or maintenance equipment for more than 5 days within a 3g day period except during work for which an appropriate City building, grading or other permit has been obtained, no such noise is to be emitted at all between the 44 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.. It doesn't specifically get at something like Lyman Lumber. What I heard at the last Council meeting, I believe it was, it could be construed %hat way. If we get a complaint from a citizen. Councilman Boyt: I would argue that item (e) makes it possible for the Council to grant a variance and this is the sort of thing that we discussed a few weeks ago. It's been a long standing, existing condition that you're working to control. I think as long as you're working to control, Council could certainly grant a variance or maybe we want to look at it as some sort of a conditional situation but I think there has to be room in the ordinance to handle legitimate business operations doing what it can to control noise. You raise a good point. Councilman Johnson: Our rules...they don't have decimil limits and stuff like that. You still have to contend with the State of Minnesota rules which are very specific which do have decimil levels which means that they can sit on their back property line, just the other side of the railroad track and take a 20 minute or 30 minute LEQ reading or whatever the heck they take and at 10:00 at night you violate it or in a 20 minute period of time, your neighbors have you. Mayor Hamilton: I think you'll find that we'll work with very carefully with you. We're not trying to run you out of town. At least I'm not. Maybe some are. You've been a very good resident of our community and we want to keep you here. It's not my intent and hopefully not the intent of the other council members to try to restrict the hours of your operation. Jim Hurd: Thank you. Councilman Horn moved, Councilman Geving seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Councilman Boyt: Mr. Potz, back to you for just a second, are you familiar with the speed that you can operate on a lake within 100 feet of a ice house? Dick Potz: Yes. 10 mph. Councilman Boyt: Do you feel that the general snowmobile operators are aware of that speed limit? Dick Potz: No. Councilman Boyt: Not to pick on you, I know from a previous experience with other members of your group that there are certainly responsible snowmobile operators that are doing everything they can to work with the concerns of the people that they ride around and more credit to you. I think when I look at what other con~nunities have done, Chaska has a curfew of 10:00 to 6:00. Eden Prairie has a curfew 11:00 to 7:00. Dick Potz: Chaska's curfew says that you can operate in Chaska after the hours of 10:00 if you are taking the most in~nediate route from the trail to your house. You can not operate on the main street of downtown Chaska. You can get off the trail and go home in Chaska after 10:00 by the most direct route. 45 City Council ~eting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Boyt: Don't we have a similiar situation in ours? Dick Potz: Currently you can operate on Chanhassen streets at lg mph. Councilman Boyt: And on the trails at any speed at any hour? Dick Potz: There is currently not a speed limit for Chanhassen on the trails. Councilman Boyt: Nor hours. Dick Potz: Nor hours. Councilman Boyt: Chaska has one. Deephaven has one. Eden Prairie. Counci]~an Horn: Chaska doesn't on their trail. That's operation within in the city. Councilman Boyt: Off the trail? Dick Potz: Yes. Councilman Boyt: Okay, do we limit snowmobile operation to on the trail? Does Chanhassen limit sno~nobile operation to on the official trail? Dick Potz: Currently, no. You can operate in Chanhassen on the trail, on the City streets, at lg mph as long as you're not on private property. Councilman Boyt: You can operate on the lake? Dick Potz: Yes, you can operate on the lake. CounciLman Boyt: Maybe you can help clarify some of these other situations but I see in looking at your map that Deephaven, Eden Prairie, Long Lake, Minnetonka Beach, M]nnetrista, Mound, Orono, Shorewood, Spring Park, St. Boni, Waconia all have time periods in the evening in which they restrict or eliminate the operation of snowmobiles. Dick Potz: To the best of my knowledge, that's true. Councilman Boyt: I would suggest that one of the reasons those communities have gone to hour limitations is because they're enforceable. That we should be doing something to encourage all snowmobile operaters to be as responsible as Mr. Potz appears to be and if we don't, we're ignoring a problem. I would suggest that maybe one reasonable way out of this is to say that you can not, since you're telling me that the closest trail to a house is 2gq feet away. Dick Potz: I didn't say that. Councilman Boyt: I thought I heard that earlier. Dick Potz: I was talking about one area that's down south of Chan Estates. There's a trail down there that's 2gq feet in that particular case. Councilman Boyt: Is it closer in other places then? 46 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Dick ?otz: The closest that I can recollect right now is just on the west side of Lake Ann there's about 3 or 4 houses that are probably about... Councilman Boyt: Have these people given you permission to have your trail in front of their houses? Dick Potz: Those 3 houses we pass, you're on another neighbor's property who has given us permission or on a county or public right-of-way. Councilman Boyt: It would seem that what we need to do is restrict travel to maybe on the snowmobile trails. The official established trails between those given hours. I personally would like to see us restrict it from the hours of 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. but I can see that maybe given Chanhassen's rather sparse population in some places that that might not be what we need to do today. I certainly think that it would be reasonable to restrict tham to on trail operation. How would your organization feel about that? Dick Potz: I'm not sure I can answer for the organization. However, to get off the trail to get to my house after 10:00, I'd have to go put it on the trailer to get it down the street. I'd have to pull it into the yard someplace over at the Legion, if it still stays there, or up by Filly's. Councilman Boyt: But if you're on a public street, aren't you doing 10 mph? Dick Potz: You just told me that you're going to quit at 10:00. Councilman Boyt: But on a public street you're 10 mph and 10 mph has a negligable decimil level and I'd be okay with permitting that. Dick Potz: Then I don't have any problem. If I can go by the trail, get off the trail and go 10 mph to get to my residence, I don't have a problem with that. That's basically what... Councilman Horn: That's the current ordinance. Councilman Boyt: No, it's not the current ordinance because we don't limit it to on trail operation. This would limit them between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. to either on trail operation or city streets at 10 mph. Councilman Horh: How is that different than the current ordinance? Councilman Boyt: He just told me the current ordinance does not limit you to on trail operation. Councilman Horn: No, it lets you drive 10 mph on the city streets. That's the off trail operation. Councilman Boyt: Can you run down the middle of Lotus Lake at 11:00 p.m. wide open? Councilman Horn: Not within the restrictions of the ordinance. Councilman Boyt: Where is that? 47 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 CounciLman Horn: If you're away from an ].ce house or a certain distance from shere, then yes. CounciNnan Boyt: Clark, what they're indicating is that they would certainly accept that limitation. It'd be one way to eliminte the irresponsible sno~nobile operation within the city. It might win over some people that are currently troubled, by those irresponsible operaters. Councih~an Horn: So when you're saying off trail, you're talking about specifically lakes... Councilman Boyt: I'm talking about, we have designated trails of operation. I'm saying if you're not on that trail, then you need to be on a city street. Doesn't that seem reasonable? Councilman Horn: That's about the way it works. It's the only place you can be. Councilman Boyt: Lakes. Road right-of-ways. Mayor Hamilton: Did you have another question? CounciLman Boyt: I have a couple of other conments. I'd like to see us add under C, point nut~oer 4. At this point would be basically to address the City would incorporate State statute J.n it's ordinance so there's no question the City would also be ~npowered to enforce State Statute. As I said a couple of weeks ago, we really need this so I support it. Councilman Horn: I have a question under B(4). I'd like to know if the City can legislate over airplanes? It seems to me that they're under the control of the FAA. Jim Onaffee: It's funny, I got a call this morning on an airplane landing on Lake Minnewashta and they were wondering what to do. I reported them to the FAA. I would have to agree with you on that. Councihman Boyt: So do you want to strike airplane from 4? Councilman Horn: Yes. And also on B(7). It's also referring to aircraft in talking about an apparatus or instrument for the amplification of the human voice or any sound. Would you be referring there to the Mayor would be illegal when he gives his public address at the 4th of July celebration? You'd be talkJ.ng about the megaphone? Counci~qan Boyt: That's not true. Councilman Horn: It's an apparatus or instrument for the amplification of the human voice. Without a written permit issued by the City Manager. So now if somebody wants to give a speech, they have to have a written permit. If somebody wants to hold a track meet, they have to have a written permit. We're talking about running out of staff to support these things now and we' re going to give them more work to do? We're talking about cars that have the little song makers in them, they couldn't operate those. A lot of CB's have speakers 48 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 in that they use as PA systems. You couldn't use those Councilman Johnson: That's good. Councilman Horn: That's good in your mind but... Mayor Hamilton: Perhaps you could hold your comments until your turn. Councilman Horn: I think that we're anticipating a lot of problems that are already covered under existing ordinances and I don't believe that, I think we're doing the same thing that we've done for years and years that many other legislative bodies have done for years and years and that is, where we have areas that are not being enforced, we're going to put stricter ordinances on them. We already have them covered under existing ordinances but we beef them up and make them stricter and I disagree with that philosophy. Councilman Geving: I don't believe that we are so urbanized at this time in our development of Chanhassen that we need to shut down snowmobiling after 10:00 p.m.. I just can't see why we are picking on one very small group within our con~nunity. We all work very hard at other jobs and it's fun to recreate once in a while too and I think the snowmobiling club that I'm familiar with in' Chanhassen over the last 20 years has done a good job of policing your own people. We've never had any serious problems with these people. They are a very clean living group. They like to go out on the lakes. They like to go out on the trails. They're recreating with friends and family. A lot of it's family oriented and I truly believe that this is an activity that a lot of people can share in and enjoy in Chanhassen and we're not yet so urbanized that we have to restrict that activity. We don't need the king of restriction on our people. People have a right to enjOy the land. Our lakes are free to everyone. They're open and they're not abused. They're not abused by any snowmobiles that I'm aware. Are we merely creating a problem? Does a problem exist? I've sat here a long time and I'm not familiar with any major problems by our Carver County Sheriff's deputies or by our police people who work for the City of Chanhassen that this is a big deal. I'm going to ask Jim Chaffee, is this a big deal? Have you had a lot of noise ordinance problems within the last year? Jim Chaffee: No. Councilman Geving: I submit that this is not a major problem for us to be looking at and spending time on. We've got more important things to do. We talked about a lot of them this evening with TH 5, TH 101. Let's get on with the major things. Leave the people snowmobile after 10:00 and enjoy themselves. They pay enough taxes in this city to be able to at least enjoy some parts of their living and I just can't see us continually restrict our citizens. I don't know where this ordinance proposal came from. I personally don't believe it's needed at this time. That's all I have to say. Councilman Johnson: I know where this ordinance proposal came from. This is almost identical to the ordinance that used to be on the books and then when we hired a company to put them into our City Code, they accidentally dropped most of it so it's an ordinance that was passed by previous City Councils and from what I'm being told, is basically being put in with a few minor modifications. Councilman Geving: I don't think that's true. 49 ~9'kdity Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: Jay's got the floor. Let him speak. Councilman Johnson: That's what I've been told by staff is that there's not a lot of changes. There are some changes in here but we accidentally gutted our o~n ordinance when we redid the codification. It was an inadvertent mistake. I think that after dark, after lg:gg I would hate to see somebody doing 5g mph on a snowmobile, even on a regular trail. 5~ mph on a snowmobile during good daylight conditions, you might be able to see well enough to drive it safely but I'm not sure at night whether you could. I don't know how good the lights are. I'm not sure. I think that's something we need to look at is whether on the trails we need to have reduced speed limits at night as is. Definitely on the lakes at night. Especially Lotus Lake which is in that valley and Georgette has pointed out to me and other people lately that that valley does work like a parabolic amplifier to a point to throw a lot of noise up on the rims towards those houses so if somebody is in there at night on the lake, the residents really get the brunt of it. I think we need under our snowmobile ordinance restrictions for night time specific to the snowmobiles but I think that needs further study than this very general and somewhat weak ordinance here. Without Bill's little move to incorporate the State regulations is the strongest part of this ordinance now. It gives us something that we can take, you can take your sound pressure level measuring equi~ent, you get a reading. If they're above the reading with the State laws, we're enforcing it. It gives us something very concrete to go with. Issuing a citation because it's a matter of opinion that it's a disturbing or annoying noise, it's all a matter of opinion. That's much harder to prove. I don't have a problem with the ordinance as long as it has what Bill has suggested here for C-4, incorporating the State noise standards. I'd like to see us in the future look at our snowmobile ordinance and whether we should do anything about the sno~obile ordinance for night time use of snowmobiles on trails and on lakes. I would at this time, because I think it is in conflict, I also would support removing that strict prohibition in C-3 where it strictly prohibits after 1~:~ p.m. and before 7:0~ a.m. snowmobile operation. The rest of the ordinance has been fairly general, annoying, etc.. If you're not annoying anybody by this ordinance, we shouldn't be carte blanche saying you can't do it. Maybe you can reword that so a driver operating a minibike, snowmobile or other recreational...between those hours in such a manner as to create an annoying or whatever the general words is we're thrown in through here. That's one way we can modify number 3 is to disturbing noise. That's all I've got. Mayor Hamilton: I think Bill h].t on a point here a few minutes ago that he mentioned that the snowmobile club we have here is a responsible club and the people who operate that club do a good job of trying to live by the laws. You talk about responsibility of people using boats and snowmobiles and I submit that until the State consents to licensing of people to opearate a snowmobile or a boat, there are not going to be responsible people doing it. You will have irresponsible people involved in that. Anybody with $3g,ggg.gg, $80,ggg.gg, $1g~,~.~ in their pocket can go buy a boat, put it in the lake and have absolutely no idea how to drive it and away they go. The same thing with the snowmobile. As long as you've got the money to buy, you've got a license to go out and run it into a tree or a car or whatever you want to do so I think there is a proble~ here but it's not at the local level, it's at the State level. We need to have these people be licensed to go through a driving or some type of written and probably a driving test, the same as you have to do when you're 50 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 operating a car or a truck or anything else. The cc~ments I made about this ordinance previously still stand. I think it's an uneforceable ordinance. I'm not in favor of passing an ordinance that's uneforceable plus it's so vague in some cases you would 'have radios, musical instruments, television, phonographs, etc.. How do you treat someone who is hearing impaired? What might be a normal sound level for th~m is going to perhaps be offensive to someone else? Are you going to tag them and haul them off to jail because they have a hearing impairment? I don't think that's quite right. It~ C(2), if I happen to be out of town and it snows and I come home and there's 4 feet of snow in my driveway and I want to put my car in the garage, if it's been more than 12 hours since the snow fell, I'll just have to wait until, if I happen to arrive home in the evening I'll just have to wait until morning until I can run my snowblower. I'll submit to you I'll get my snowblower right out and do it whenever-I feel like it. I don't care when it snows. I think that's ludicrous to have that type of a thing put into an ordinance. Basically I'm not in favor of the ordinance, period. I think we have the ability to handle noise ordinances, noise nuisances within the City currently and I see no reason to take away more rights. We're continually losing th~m as it is and I don't see any reason to take away some more. Councilman Boyt: I would suggest that on the one hand you say we have the power but on the other hand you say we're taking away more of a person's freedom. Ironic. If we have the power, we must not be r~moving something. Mayor Hamilton: I think I said we have the ability. Councilman Boyt: I'd like to point out that Mr. Potz was comfortable with the changes to the snowmobile situation in this ordinance. That's not to say that anybody else in that group would be comfortable but he's a snowmobile opeartor and he's comfortable with that change. Dick Potz: How is it changed? Councilman Boyt: I was talking about the on trail operations. That one. Dick Potz: I was confused because we went back and forth. Councilman Boyt: What I was saying was that operation between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. would be limited to on trail or if you're on city streets, 10 mph. Dick Potz: If I can speak for myself. Councilman Boyt: That's all I asked you to speak for. Dick Potz: After 10:00 I can either be on the trail or off the trail? Councilman Boyt: I'm saying that after 10:00 you can be on the trail operating at whatever you think is a reasonable speed or off the trail operating at 10 mph or less on the city street. Dick Potz: Personally, I can get home with that. I don't know if everybody else is going on a trail. That means if I'm in, there are areas in St. Peter, I can get home at 11:00 at night without putting it on a trailer. 51 City Counc]~l Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Boyt: That's what it means[ Dick Potz: That'd be a real problem. What you're telling me is I can get home at a safe operating speed on the trail, get off the trail, cross the lake, go up the street and get home. That's basically what we have now the way I understand it. The only thing you're doing is conditioning that I'm going to operate under a safe speed. Councilman Boyt: When you're off the trail I'm saying you're limited to lg mph. Dick Potz: That's the current ordinance. I have a copy of the current ordinance. CounciLman Boyt: That's not exactly the currently ordinance because under the current situation, you can run over any field, any lake, at least any lake at any speed provided you're not within lgg feet of the shore or an ice house. Dick Potz: You can't run over anybody's property... Councilman Boyt: Any lake. Any road right-of-way. This ordinance is important enough to me that if the snowmobiles have got everybody hung up, take them out of it but to deny the ~nole ordinance is to miss a very important point. don't know how you can go out and campaign this coming year and say that people don't have the right to quiet after lg:0g p.m.. They do have the right to quiet. Mayor Hamilton: People also have the right to live. Councilman Boyt: People have the right to live but they have a right to live in harmony and part of that means that they're responsible with their noise level and to say that we're going to turn this down because somebody who's hearing impaired needs special treatment is ridiculous. Mayor Hamilton: It se~s to me I heard Mr. Chaffee say that there have not been virtually no problems with noise. I'm certainly not aware of any. I've lived in this town for 2g years. I have never been offended by anybody's noise. I've never had anybody complain to me about noise. Councilman Boyt: I hope you are not offended in the future. The way this is going right now, this for you isn't needed. That's fine. All it is is a tool for the people who need it. As Mr. Chaffee stated as few weeks ago, we're not out there with our decimeter seeing if anybody is over the limit. We're responding to people who have a legitimate complaint and this lays out how we're going to measure that complaint. It says at your property line. That seems reasonable to me. If you're creating a noise and you're out in the middle of 4g acres and I can't hear it, it's not a problem. If you're creating a noise next to me, I'd like to know that at some point at night you're going to turn it off. The way it is right now, we don't have the ability to limit that. It needs to be. CounciLman Horn: What problems are v~ having today that we can't control with the existing ordinance? State or local? 52 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Boyt: When they hold a party down the block from you and they want to hold it until 2:g0 in the morning, the only thing we've got now is their common sense and their willingness to cooperate. Councilman Horn: You can't close down a party Jim? A noisy party? There's no nuisance ordinance? Jim Chaffee: Clark, I'm not aware of any right now that specifically addresses parties. I could research the nuisance ordinance to see if it does. I'm not aware of any right now... Councilman Horn: If we can come up with specific instances that we're having trouble with, I'd be more than happy to entertain them. To me I see a general statement here and I think Bill totally missed Tom's point. What he was saying is that we have the ability to resolve these problems with our current ordinances without putting further restrictions on. That's what I heard Tom saying. Now that to me is true and unless someone tells me of instances that are totally out of line that we can't handle, I'll still believe that. We haven't heard that yet. The other point I'd like to respond to Jay is, just because we had the law in effect that didn't make sense, doesn't mean we should put it back in if it doesn't make sense. We have other laws that don't make sense. I can't walk my dog down the public access. I can walk every other street but I can't walk them down to the public access. You can't take your dog out on the boat with you. Does that make these laws right just because they're on the books? You can go through and find some of the most interesting laws if you go through the law. It doesn't mean they're still current or they make sense. Councilman Geving: I'm ready to make a motion on this. I think we've discussed it long enough. We've heard a lot of debate. Have we closed the public hearing? Councilman Horn: Yes. Councilman Geving: I think the Council is ready to take action on this. I would make the motion to deny an ordinance amendment to Ordinance No. 22 as proposed, the Chanhassen Nuisance Ordinance by adding a new section pertaining to noise regulations. The reason is that I think we have already enough ordinances in place to handle all the nuisance problems for noise that we will anticipate in the near future or for some period of time to come. Councilman Horn: I'll second that. Ed Williams: I wanted to make conxnent on, you made a statement a few minutes ago and I wanted to... You said you have not heard complaints before...as far as noise. Councilman Horn: ...and I don't think there was a problem getting it resolved. Councilman Johnson: On our current books, our noise, under nuisance ordinance is one sentence. A nuisance is causing or permitting any unnecessary noises or annoying vibrations. That's our present noise ordinance. I think this is a few steps beyond that. I think this gives us much more to stand up with when we go into court. I know of many occasions in the last year where my neighbors have 53 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 called about loud parties. We happen to have some groups of people who come home after the bars close and continue their party in their unair condition~i house with their windows wide open or in the middle of the street. At 2:g~ in the morning they're having frisbee games out in the middle of the street. Things like this. The Sheriff was called quite a few times this last year. Despite what anybody says, the neighbors have assured me that several times at 2:00 in tine morning they were unsuccessful in raising anybody at the Sheriff's office. I'm sure they're there. They're probably handling a 911 emergency or something and weren't able to get to the normal call line but i have registered complaints myself. The one incident is a little more than 2:00 in the morning when the folks came home, opened their back sliding door and turned on the stereo. I'm about 200 feet away from this particular house and the operator at the Sheriff's office could tell me what song they were playing on their stereo from my phone in my house. It was that loud. She thought my radio was on. I said no, that's their radio. Councilman Horn: %~at did they say when you told them about it? Councilman Johnson: That I was the second complaint to come in and that when a unit was avaJ. lable, they would dispatch somebody. At that point that's when I slid my sliding glass door open and the music came blowing through the phone. They did dispatch somebody there. Somebody was there within about 15 minutes actually. They do respond but this gives our Sheriff's department a little bit more to help them to respond with when they do have to respond to these types of problems. I think that we need to look at our snowmobile ordinance also. Beyond this to address the noise problems. Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Horn seconded to deny the ordinance amendment to Ordinance No. 22 as proposed, the Chanhassen Nuisance Ordinance by adding a new section pertaining to noise regulations. Ail voted in favor except Councilman Boyt and Councih-nan Johnson who opposed and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. Pat Parrell: I might suggest to you that under the Public Nuisance Statute in your local ordinance and also under the disorderly conduct, if you have that kind of a problem, you can file charges for disorderly conduct or public nuisance. Am I right? CounciLman Horn: I'll tell both Jay and Bill, if you can come back to me with specific things that we can not address and come up with language to address them, I'll certa].nly support that but I haven't heard that. I've heard s~me vague generalities. PUBLIC HEARING: PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO CITY CODE AUTHORIZING NON-LICENSED PERSONNEL TO ISSUE CITATIONS. Jim Chaffee: Just briefly, this ordinance does not have any affect whatsoever on the use of marked or u~marked vehicles. Ail it is is allowing our people, such as the building officials to issue citations if the need should arise. 54 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton called the public hearing to order[ Mayor Hamilton: Does anyone have questions on this? This I suspect will be closely supervised by yourself? Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Mayor Hamilton moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to approve the proposed amendment to the City Code authorizing non-licensed personnel to issue citations. All voted in favor and the motion carried. PUBLIC HEARING: PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO CITY CODE REGARDING SOLICITORS LICENSES. Mayor Hamilton called the public hearing to order. Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Mayor Hamiton: I would move approval of the proposed amendment to the City Code regarding solicitors licenses. Councilman Johnson: Second. Councilman Geving: There's a couple of con~nents that I want to make. First of all I think that we have to arrive at some kind of a fee at some point in time under 10-144 and whether or not these fees are transferable. They're on a one time fee. They're good for one year and some of the details that are necessary to bring this into operation. Then I feel that under the investigation issuance of a license, we need some kind of a manageable but restrictive type of an operation so that anybody who comes up to City Hall can't just get a permit. I get the impression here based on 10-145 that there is, upon receipt of the application the City shall conduct a criminal history investigation and it just seems like boy, we're getting into a big operation here and going to take a lot of man power to manage the application and processing of these permits. I hope that's not the case and yet we want them to be fairly restrictive. Then under (c) under the same item 10-145 is it issued for one year automatic renewal? Does it come back for the City Council? Is it handled by staff at that point? Some of those, just administrative type items and then most importantly, if we do pass this tonight, I would hope that every citizen is able to read in the newspapers, the Sailor, in the South Shore News, the Villager, just what their responsibility is if they see a peddler come to their door and is a firewood salesmen or is a candy salesmen and to make sure that these people are in fact licensed people by the City. They have a license. They are out there legitimately so we can cut down on, if this is what our ordinance is intended to do, to cut down on the people that peddle and go from door to door, then let's instruct our people, our citizens so that they know when they have people knocking on the door, that they have a real legitimate right to ask them, do you have a license? Show me your license and if not I'll call the Public Safety. So I want to make sure that that gets highly publicized with all the people in Chanhassen. That's all I have to say. 55 ~[City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Bernie: Does this ordinance require then require to have a license for all insurance agents, real estate agents and so forth? If so... Mayor Hamilton: Real estate are already licensed by the State. That's not the intent of the ordinance to cause those people to have to be licensed by the City. That's a legitimate occupation that people are involved in. What we're looking at are those people who are selling fish door to door or wood. Things like that that you don't know exactly what you're going to get. People standing on the street corners selling these paintings and wrenches and those types of things. They come into town, you don't know what you're getting and the chances are the consumer is going to get ripped off. That's what the intent of this ordinance is. Bernie: It would exclude then people licensed by the State of Minnesota? Real estate and insurance agents? Councilman Horn: Not the way it's written. Councilman Geving: it doesn't say that Bernie. Councilman Boyt: %~ can change it. Councilman Johnson: Why? CounciLman Boyt: People licensed by the State? Councibnan Johnson: Why do we want real estate agents, insurance agents coming to our door, knocking on our door saying I'm a licensed insurance agent and he walks up unannounced to your door and tries to sell you insurance. I want him licensed just as much as anybody else. Anybody can get a license to be a real estate agent or insurance agent. All they have to do is pass the test. Councilman GevJ.ng: I disagree. CounciLman Johnson: How many real estate agents or insurance agents have you had walk up to your door, unannounced? This is only unannounced people. If he's got an appointment, he does not need to be licensed. If you are working with that real estate agent or if that is your insurance agent, he does not have to get a license to come to your house. Only if he is going around soliciting new business, walking door to door such as the chiropracter that was walking around the other day in the neighborhood or claiming to be a chiropracter and saying he's coming around looking at Chanhassen for future, putting a clinic in door to door. Councilman Horn: Or the Girl Scouts. Councilman Johnson: The Girl Scout organization as an organization is covered in here. Churches. Councilman Horn: Or the fireman selling tickets. Councilman Johnson: Or the fireman selling tickets. 56 City Council Meeting - August 221 1988 Councilman Horn: They don't have to be licensed? Councilman Johnson: As an organization. The Fire Department would have to be licensed per se. Not the individual. There's an exclusion in here for organizations. Mayor Hamilton: I couldn't disagree with you more. We're talking about legitimate... Councilman Johnson: How do you know a legitimate from a non-legitimate real estate agent? Mayor Hamilton: You ask them for their card. You obviously know the company. If the guy's working out of the trunk of his car, you'd better tell him to hit the road. Those are the people you want to have licensed. I've never had an insurance or real estate person come to my door, ever. Councilman Johnson: Neither have I. Mayor Hamilton: If we're starting to ham~er the legitimate business people in this community, then we've got a real problem. Councilman Johnson: What legitimate real estate agent goes door to door looking, do you want to sell your house? I want to sell your house? Mayor Hamilton: That's very legitimate. You're out seeking business. We do that in your neighborhood all the time. Councilman Johnson: Walking door to door? Mayor Hamilton: You bet your butt. Councilman Johnson: You can do your mass mailings... Councilman Boyt: If I can amend item a, we amend item a to say, or others licensed by the State of Minnesota. Councilman Horn: I would suggest that we give our intent to the Attorney and let him redo the whole thing. Councilman Boyt: I think our intent is to have some means of control. If the State is licensing these people, there's a means to control. If the State isn't licensing them, then what we're saying is we want to do that for their organization so we have some means of control. It seems pretty straight forward. Councilman Horn: I'm uncomfortable that this all states that. Councilman Geving: I think Clark's idea was a good one. I think that we could pass this, give it to the Attorney and let them clean it up. There's a lot more items I think that need to be included in the charitable and business organizations and those that are to be excluded from our intent. There's nothing in here that says anything about public or private school children for example and they are the ones in your neighborhood all the time. I think there 57 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 could be some additions made here. Councilman Boyt: I would then move that we table this to our Attorney. I don't think we should pass anything before we see the final version. Mayor Hamilton: I'll second your motion. Councilman Boyt moved, Mayor Hamilton seconded to table action on the amendment to the City Code regarding solicitors licenses to the City Attorney. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. ASSUMPTION S~'4INARY TIMETABLE FOR SECURING THE BUILDINGS ON THE PROPERTY. Mayor Hamilton: Scott's not here. I guess this is pretty self explanatory. Again, there are a number of items that Jim and Scott have been working on to try to get this property secured. Anyone have any questions or comments or need more information about it? CounciLman Boyt: I have one. I noticed that Mr. Hart had mentioned that maybe boarding up the first floor might be enough. Since your initial intent was to board the whole thing, would you be open to maybe just being sure that the first floor is completely sealed? Mayor Hamilton: You can get in there. Ail the windows are broken. Everything is open so my thought was, if it's totally dark in there, kids aren't going to go in there. You can't see your hand in front of your face. It's not a safe place. I just thought the whole thing should be totally closed up. You have rodents in there and birds and everything else going in and out of the windows. Councilman Boyt: They are putting in a security system and Hart did mention it would be nice ufnen they go in to inspect if there was some natural light in there. The first floor, they're going to have to be pretty determined to get in. Not that they can't but if they're that determined, they can also pull a board off. Mayor Hamilton: I don't know if they could. The way they're nailed on there, it'd be tough. I was just looking for total security because the place is a real hazard and if kids get in there, there are open dumb waiter shafts that they could fall down. There are so many things in there that could cause injury. If we can keep anybody out of there, it'd be the best thing to do. Councilman Johnson: How about to the satisfaction of our Safety professionals? Mayor Hamilton: That's fine. I guess if Jim and Scott are happy with the first floor or whatever they can work out with the guy, if they think that that is going to be secure the building adequately, then that's fine with me. Councilman Boyt: I would so move. Councilman Horn: Second. 58 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Johnson: I have a question. Mine's on number 1 here. Specific times and completion of specific work. I don't know what's taking them so long to figure out the time schedule on this. On the way here tonight on the airplane I spent very little of the flight from Chicago and I worked out a tJ~e schedule for him. They shall hire a consultant within 2 weeks of tonight. The consultant shall review the site, preliminary review of the site within 1 week of being hired. Sampling of the barrels will be performed within 1 to 2 weeks of that timeframe. The barrels will be secured and removed from %he site to a permitted storage facility within 1 to 2 weeks of that. That w~sn't tough. It's taken us 2 months to get this far. Jim Chaffee: I got a call this afternoon, late this afternoon from Mike Shotliff, the Carver County Environmentalist. He feels that Mr. Schumacher is using him as a scapegoat for this. The only thing that he has to do with this is to provide...to us and there is no problem with Mr. Schumacher getting this work done in a... Councilman Johnson: I would like to give him my schedule that I worked out today which is a...but reasonable schedule. I've been involved with the MPCA and given me shorter schedules than this. I usually argue with them and get it extended a little bit but you never start your schedules as wide as you possibly will allow somebody to have them. Mayor Hamilton: Rather than posing a schedule on them, I guess I would like to see Scott or Jim to press them further to get this done as quickly as possible. It says he's waiting for the Environmentalist from Carver County. Perhaps that's a legitimate hold-up so rather than enforce a schedule on them that they can't maintain, I think Jim has heard what we're saying. We want to do it as quickly as possible and we should proceed in that fashion. Councilman Johnson: We've been proceeding on this since what, February or? Mayor Hamilton: That's right and I think we've made a lot of progress. Councilman Johnson: We have but it doesn't take this long to do what they're saying here. If the MPCA were involved, they would not give them a month to come out with a schedule. It's been over a month. It was July 21st, one month and one day ago that we asked them to give us a schedule. Mayor Hamilton: That's what he's been working on so he's moving along. Councilman Johnson: What he's doing is not spending any money. He's trying to let Carver County do it for him and use them as a consultant or something but I'm not satisfied with his actions here. Has he hired anybody? Is there anybody working on this besides the lawyers? Mayor Hamilton: Why does he need to hire anybody? Jim Chaffee: We'll work on this diligently to accomplish our goals in a time frame that's more appropriate. Mayor Hamilton: Maybe you could bring it back to us as an informational item on what schedule you worked out. 59 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Johnson: By our next Council meeting? Mayor Hamilton: Sure. September 12th. CounciLman Johnson: Would you like to add that to the motion Bill? To bring us a schedule by Sept~-nber 12th? CounciLman Boyt: Sure. Councilman Boyt moved, Councilman Horn seconded to approve the Assumption Seminary timetable for securing the buildings on the property as proposed and to direct staff to bring an updated schedule back by September 12, 1988. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. REVIE%{ PRYZMUS DRIVING RANGE AND MINIATURE GOLF COURSE. Barbara Dacy: The applicant is here tonight also and we've reviewed the Conditional Use Permit and what exists out on the property today. The summary on page 4 identifies 3 irons which I believe we resolved and then possibly a fourth one would be also r~oval of the building parts that are located between the parking area and the street. 1~wo items were not discussed during the most recent application process in 1987 and 1988. Those two issues were installation of video games and vending machines and the installation of a sign. As to the sign, that is a typical accessory feature to an operation such as this but video g~nes were not discussed at all. ~yor H~ilton: John, do you have anything you want to present? John Prysnus: I guess I really don't. I opened up on the 5th of July and it's been a long hot summer... The progress so far has been a little slow... Some of our plants and trees will be later on in the fall. As far as the steel building, I'm working right now on selling it. I don't know, I'd prefer to get it sold rather than try to find someplace to store it. If it's a sight problem and i don't get it sold by next month, what I possibly could do...so it wouldn't be visible. Like I say, it's been slow but everything is coming together. Mayor Hamilton: You're willing to put the culvert in and the driveway? That apparently wasn't done. You've got to put a culvert in there. The evergreens you're going to do. Have you gotten permission from MnDot to put them in the right-of-way? John Pryzmus: The culverts are all in. ~yor Hamilton: No, I mean the trees. Barbara Dacy: There are no trees in the right-of-way. Mayor Hamilton: The berm was supposed to be located right? Barbara Dacy: If he wanted to install the berms-that he had originally indicated, they would have to. 6~ City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 John Pryzmus: The berms are there. As far as the trees, I won't be able to plant, only 2 feet out of the right-of-way so I will be working with the Arboretum. Right now they have some different planting shurbs that I'd like to plant all along the site... I'll put the evergreens inside of the fence. Mayor Hamilton: And you're going to take the lights down that you've got in there as recon~nended by staff? The lights that you had put out there, you're going to remove those? John Pryzmus: At this point, all my competition has lights. I wouldn't financially be able to compete with them so at this point, I guess I won't. Mayor Hamilton: So you want us to shut you down then? You're not in conformance with your conditional use. It was from sunrise to sundown. John Pryzmus: That was back when we had the sunrise and sunset. In the original, when just the driving range was approved and I guess we didn't go over it all... Mayor Hamilton: Any questions? Jay, anything? Councilman Johnson: Yes, I want to know how the kids are enjoying the cigarette machine. You say your vending machines were for the children. I don't see, I'm an anti-smoking advocate to a point, I don't see encouraging. I believe smokers need their own little room they go off into and fill each other's lungs but I don't see at a family recreational facility that we should be selling cigarettes. I'd like to see, if we're going to consider it, I don't have any problems with one or two video machines as long as we don't become a video arcade where the primary purpose is to play video games. As a slight accessory to putt-putt, on a hot sun~ner day come in and cool off for a while and play a couple games of Donkey Kong or whatever, no big deal to me but if you start getting 10 or 15 video games in there and the place turns into a teenage video hang-out, that's going to be a problem. Cigarette machine is definitely a problem with me. John ?ryzmus: I have no problem. I don't smoke and I don't have any problem with taking that out. They put them in there. I didn't ask for it. It was part of what came with the machines. Councilman Johnson: You can blame us. John Pryzmus: Well, it don't matter... Councilman Johnson: Does that sign need a sign permit or anything Barb? Normally you can get such and such a sign if you have a business right? Barbara Dacy: Right. A permit would be required except we amended the ordinance to allow a driving range and miniature golf course. Unfortunatelywe didn't address in detail of how big the sign should be. Councilman Geving: I think John you made a lot of progress out there. I'm pleased to see it's coming along. The few things that we've got remaining here are pretty minor. You apparently are working towards getting those trees in this fall and you indicated there were berms there, I don't remember seeing any 61 -~ ~dlty Council Meeting -August 22, 1988 berms but if that's in the conditional use penni, t, we ought to look at that. There seens to be a difference of opinion between yourself and the staff on where the berms are or ~nere they should be. How many video games are there out there? John Pry~nus: There's foosball and hockey. Mayor Hamilton: There must be 4 or 5 I suppose. Councilman Geving: Okay, I guess when we discussed this way back when we were talking about the difference between a business having 1 or 2 machines versus an arcade and ! think we c~me up with, is 6 the magic number? Do you recall that 6 is an arcade? Barbara Dacy: There are no definitions. Councilman Geving: Okay, I guess maybe we were thinking of that at one time. I don't see any big problem with the few items that we've got here. The only one that we did have a lot of discussion over John was the light standards. That there wasn't to be any lighting on the facility. I don't have a real hard feeling about that but I think if we're going to go that route, we're going to have to come back and talk about it again because I can see where that would extend your business day. Does it give you another half hour or something? John Pryzmus: What it does is, in the evening as the sun goes down, before it gets too dark, I would assume that, I've talked with all the neighbors and it will keep it open on a nice evening for another half hour-45 minutes rather than sunset. Basically I've kept my standards. Floods up on the out lights and keep th~m shining down. I'm not putting them in a high place like a ballpark or anything 1 ike that. I WaSh ' t... Councilman Geving: I think our discussion ~Fnen we talked about lights were something far different than what you've got out there. I think we were thinking that we wouldn't let John have these big light poles and lots of problems with any neighbors that might object to that but I see no objection to what's out there now. I don't have any problem with that John except that it's not on your conditional use permit. That's all I have. CounciLman Horn: I guess I don't have any problem with the sign. To me it looks like a reasonable sign for that kind of a business but again, I supposed we should discuss that... Mayor Hamilton: That can be discussed through the ordinance process. Councilman Horn: t also agree about the lights. I don't see anything. The lights are mainly in the mini-putt area aren't they? The lights are mainly in the mini-putt area? John Pryzmus: Yes, they follow the path. There are two rows of trees that follow the path and they shine towards the mini-putt area... Councilman Horn: I realize we didn't allow those but again, Dale said we had envisioned something totally different. I also agree that there should be vending machines out there. People should have access to pop. You don't have 62 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 any water on the site do you? Like a water fountain so this is really the only thing... John ?ryzmus: Yes, I haven't had it hooked up yet. I do have a... Right now I have the Pepsi-Cola Company with automatic cooler. Like I say, the cigarette machine wasn't one of the machines that I had brought it. The vending company brought it in. I didn't order it and I can have them take it out of there... As you get the grass to start growing out there and eventually... As you come in there's one berm that's maybe 7 feet high in front of the building, but some of that might even.., but I will be working on it right on through the fall to hopefully... Councilman Horn: I don't have any problem with anything I see out there. My only recon~nendation would be that I think it would be better, and you may disagree with this, to come to us with what you've done and we would agree with it. Whereas to go ahead and do it before we get a permit to do it can sometimes cause yourself more grief. John Pryzmus: There are some things that I changed... Councilman Boyt: I see where staff recommends 8 foot evergreens instead of 6 foot. Barbara Dacy: Yes but since the berms are 6 feet, there's a disagreement so... Councilman Boyt: I didn't hear it as a point of disagreement along the highway. John ?ryzmus: I don't think that would be done... Not all of them, everyone is put on the road. The shorter ones will be put inside. Councilman Boyt: I hope you're successful with this. I've got to tell you that it bothers me when anyone intentionally violates the standards the City has set for their development. You won't convince me John that when you put those light s~andards in you thought the City gave you approval to do that. What that means is, you decided that you're going to do that business the way you need to do that business and then you'll come back to the City and get approval. I don't think that's a smart business approach. I think that we should definitely look at the sign to be sure that it fits within the standard size for signs. I suspect it does. The light standards, we need to have those inspected by staff to be sure that they're directed so they don't shine on the highway at all and good luck. I hope to get out there and use it sometime. Barbara Dacy: Given the Council's discussion, I guess what I would suggest is that the applicant apply to amend his permit regarding the light standards and the sign issue or the Council look at a ordinance amendment. Councilman Boyt: I think we should consider hours of operation too. Mayor Hamilton: Yes, I think John should come back, hours of operation, light standards and the trees. John Pryzmus: I'll bring that up to staff this week. 63 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: So we need to table this until, oh and the sign also should be a part of that. Bernie: I have not been following this but I am wondering why the restriction is placed on a businessman to have restricted hours when the competition certainly dictates that putt-putt courses, their best hours are from 8:gU to lg:gg at night. I'm wondering why his position is so unique that we should have to restrict him from sunrise to sunset? Mayor H~milton: When we first looked at this Bernie, John had a hand drawn plan that he brought in here and the neighbors objected to it. We tried to work with John all the way through this process and it's been kind of one frustration after another and just as it occurs now he's got lights out there that were not approved and he goes ahead and puts them up there without getting permission from the City. If he wants to have lights out there, he should come in here with a plan like anybody else that's going to try to do something. To just go ahead and do it, like Bill says, that's not the right way to do it. This was several years ago when the first plan came along and we said we weren't going to allow him to have the high pole standards and at that time was when we said sunrise to sunset would be his operation. So I think since that time John has talked with the neighbors and they have seen that it's not going to be the nuisance that they thought it was going to be but he's got to come back to us with an amended plan to try and change it. John Prym~us: ...I have worked with the neighbors... Councilman Johnson: %~nen you started talking about your water system, I hope you realize that when you start serving that water to people, either in that machine or in that water fountain, you have created a public water supply by State Law and you have to do certain water quality tests on that on a routine basis. You'll need to coordinate that with the County Health Department. You'll need to do that and file your reports of this. At one of my rural plants I work with, they have one coffee machine that is hooked up to water, otherwise they have bottled water everyplace. We got stuck because you have more than 25 employees there, as a public water supply syste~. So you're in the same boat there so watch out for that one. Mayor Hamilton: He hasn't hooked it up yet. Councilman Johnson: It's a fairly simple test and I think they're probably going to be annual tests, i'm not sure. Our test requires to be once a year testing for bacteria and that kind of stuff. Mayor Hamilton moved, Councilman Geving seconded to table review of the Pyrzmus Driving Range and Miniature Golf Course until a plan is brought back with additional information. All voted in favor and the motion carried. REQUEST FOR KENNEL PEP~IT, 163g LAKE LUCY ROAD, PHIL MATHIOWETZ. Jim Chaffee: M~. Mathiowetz is here who is the applicant for the kennel permit. He is here because we've had complaints from a neighbor, Mr. Krueger, which I'm sure Council is well aware of since he was sending all the information on the 64 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 problems that were occurring there. As my cover memo states, it's been approximately 5 months since we heard from Mr. Krueger and at that time, 5 months ago, Mr. Krueger did state that we would be hearing each and every time a problem occurred. I would like to point out that as Public Safety was made aware of these problems, we worked with Mr. Krueger as best as we could and we advised the County Deputies that when they responded to one of Mr. Krueger's complaints, that they were supposed to take action. Those remedies still exist. We are not sure that there is a problem. Therefore, we are recorrmending that the kennel permit be approved with the understanding that the r~medies available to Mr. Krueger are still applicable at any time after the kennel permit is approved, if the Council should approve it. Councilman Horn: Have you talked to the deputies? Jim Chaffee: Yes. Councilman Horn: Because we were told by Mr. Krueger that the deputies were actually out there and heard the dogs barking and told him that that wasn't a problem. Jim Chaffee: Right, that occurred one time. Deputy Swenson went out there, verified that the dogs were barking. He did write a complaint to pass onto Steve Madden. From that point no action was taken for various reasons. As a result of that, we advised the deputies that if they should respond again, they can take action. THey don't have to write a report and pass it onto us. They can write a citation. Councilman Horn: So there haven't been any further reports by the deputies of further incidents like this since that time? Jim Chaffee: No, there haven't. Mayor Hamilton: Mr. Mathiowetz have any con~ents? Phil Mathiowetz: No, not really. I guess we work as hard as we could to do anything that anybody asked us to do. Currently all dogs are taken in to an inside insulated garage at night and put in a kennel there. The CSO was out and inspected the facility and I think she has issued a memo also. I guess I would just ask for approval. Councilman Geving: How many dogs do you have? Phil Mathiowetz: Right now? Councilman Geving: Yes, what's the maximum number of dogs that you can have? Phil Mathiowetz: The most I can handle would be 5 and I have 4 at the time. Some of them are gone at various times. Off and on they may be in Iowa for professional training. They spend part of the time they're home. Councilman Geving: Are these show dogs? Phil Mathiowetz: Show dogs and field dogs. 65 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: What kind of dogs are they? Ph].l Mathiowetz: German Shorthair dogs. Councilman Boyt: So far I gather from what we're read, that you have taken some action to reduce the impact to the dogs. I saw some things about screening them so they couldn't see the road for instance or the front of the house. Is that right? Phil Mathiowetz: We built a privacy fence along the whole side... They can't see up onto the road. For all intensive purposes, people can't see in and the dogs can't see out and that pretty well eliminated any problems with people walking by. We require, as people walk by... I think some of Mr. Krueger's concerns may be a bit over stated. We've done everything that I think we can. I'm always open to suggestions if anyone has anymore. I'll try anything if anyone has any concerns. Councilman Boyt: One point that Mr. Krueger made was that the dogs seem to be in control when you were home and when no one was home, there seemed to be more of a problem. How are you controlling the dogs when you're not at home? Phil Mathiowetz: I guess I have a fairly large disagreement with Mr. Krueger over that part because I don't hear them when ! am home, at least on the weekends or during the week when someone is home. We've had people stay and take care of our house when we're gone, and they haven't had any problems. We did have a problem with one dog and we put a bark collar on J.t, put a little electronic schock collar, so i had her surgically debarked and that didn't work all that well so I just sold her. I just got rid of her. I bought a young dog now that has a bark collar on it and that controls him. Councilman Boyt: ! have a couple of cor~nents, just in general. I think some of these I've already mentioned to Mr. Chaffee so I won't go over them but my biggest concern is that this was supposed to be reviewed in April and it's August. Next year if there's a complaint between now and next April, I want to be sure that this is reviewed in April not August as our ordinance requires. I think that from what I've heard, efforts are being made. From what I read from Mr. Krueger's co~mihnents to do things, he hasn't followed up on that. I have some sympathy with him. I think that we can all understand how a barking dog can wake one up and you choose not to call to complain. You just hope the dog stops and 5 minutes later it stops and you go back to sleep. That's still a problem, even if you don't call and complain. I think you've taken reasonable action to stop your dogs from being a problem to your neighbors. I think as long as you continue to take reasonable action, you'll probably be able to have a private kennel there. I think it's the City's responsibility to be very responsive to people who are seeking quiet. I think the City has taken every effort to do that and I would expect they'll continue to take every effort. Phil Mathiowetz: Can I respond? As far as making the application in April, we contacted the City and they said that they were reviewing the application form and they would send it out when they got it ready. It took some time and although I guess I didn't send it back any faster, I will take part of the blame for that but I think the City has got a take a little bit of the rap. Councilman Boyt: I agree with you. 66 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Phil Mathiowetz: I'll apply in April again Councilman Boyt: I'm not holding you at all responsible for that. I think that's the City's responsibility and we didn't follow through on it and I think you should be approved for a permit between now and next April. Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Johnson seconded to approve the request for Kennel Permit for ?hil Mathiowetz at 1630 Lake Lucy Road up to April, 1989. All voted in favor and the motion carried. DISCUSSION OF DECK REQUIREMENTS FOR CHAPARRAL QUAD-UNITS. Mayor Hamilton: Jo Ann, we had asked you to bring this back to us with some, in fact I think we made a motion dealing with some of the things that I thought you had put in your recommendation like still charging $75.00. I think we had said two weeks ago that we didn't want people to be charged for that, as I recall. Since no one else had been charged, we said no one will be charged from hereon. I must have misread it. The size of the deck was my only other concern. It seems like we should say the size of deck, if you're going to put one on there is going to be so big and not give them a choice. It's got to be the full width of the unit, however far out they've been making them so it's about the same as the rest of them. But you know there are some that are like a half a deck. I think it looks like heck. K~e shouldn't allow those to be built. They should make it the full width. They look nice. They do a nice job on those. Councilman Geving: I think Tom the real issue is that the deck shouldn't extend more than 10 feet into the variance area, the sideyard or frontyard or whatever the variance position is so that it doesn't exceed more than 10 feet. We don't care about the size of the deck. Mayor Hamilton: I do. Councilman Geving: The Cimarron Homeowners Associations can control that anyway. Mayor Hamilton: But if we tell them that we want to see just full width decks, it looks much better. Councilman Geving: I hope that they do put a full width but I'm only concerned, personally from a variance standpoint, not exceeding 10 feet into the variance area. Mayor Hamilton: That's fine. For aesthetic reasons, if we made it he full width, that would be much better for the whole neighborhood is what I'm saying. Did you have anything you wanted to add? Jo Ann Olsen: We came up with general guidelines on what we wanted. Are you saying that you still want each one to come in separately? Then you're also saying that any deck that does come in would have to be 10 x 20. 67 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: I think that's a good idea. I don't know ~/nat the rest of the Council things but I would. Councilman Horn: I disagree with that. I think it's a good idea that everybody should have a double car garage too but we can't legislate that. CounciLman Johnson: I like large numbers on the house too. Councilman Boyt: We can require all that if we want to. Mayor Hamilton: That's a totally different issue. A double car garage, we're just talking about a stupid little deck. Councilman Geving: What's wrong with this recomnendation that you're providing here? 1 and 2. The decks can not exceed lg feet from the building and a 2g foot frontyard setback must be maintained. Three, administrative approval with no variance procedure and that there will be no cost to the applicant. Councilman Horn: It doesn't do what Tom is suggesting. Councilman Geving: No, but it does what I want and that's to resolve the problems on these quads once and for all. Councilman Boyt: The Board of Adjustment and Appeals had a different opinion Mr. Geving. Councilman Geving: I understand that. Councilman Boyt: And I anticipated that you might represent the~. They indicated that they wanted to see all these variance requests. That they felt it was important that they review them and that there should be at least a charge sufficient to cover for the posting of these in whatever the official newspaper is at the time. I think that since they're the body that handles this, we should support their request here and require a fee large enough to pay for the public notice of the variance request and require that. I don't think they intended for the person to go through the $2gg.0g expense of identifying all their neighbors and sending a mailing to them but a nominal expense and giving the Board of Adjustment and Appeals the opportunity to review these. Mayor Hamilton: Gee and you were the one that wanted to waive all the fees. Councilman Boyt: I know. I changed my mind. Councilman Geving: How could you flip flop in two weeks? CounciLman Boyt: I listened to them. Councilman Geving: You listened to them? CounciLman Johnson: He listened to you. CounciLman Geving: You listenet to me and now you're flip flopping, t don't understand your statement at all. I don't represent the variance board. I represent one person's opinion on this Council and I think the proposal that was 68 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 set for us tonight with two options and I added a third, will resolve this matter. If you want to add a cost to it, that's entirely up to the Council. Councilman Johnson: I would like to see the Association permit or request a change to the PUD contract because we're requesting a change to somebody else's PUD contract without anybody having anything to do with the PUD contract requesting the change themselves. I think the more appropriate route would be for the Homeowner's Association to request that. I do believe that we should then hold a public hearing. Mayor Hamilton: Why do you need to complicate a very, very simple issue? I don't understand this. Councilman Johnson: We're eliminating 15 public hearings by having one. I don't know if we can change a PUD contract and a whole PUD without going through some process. Barbara Dacy: Staff felt an equal responsibility about this whole issue because of the history involved and how the decks got built. The addendum to the existing development contract will have to be approved by Council. We'll put it on the Consent Agenda but our main object here is, while I appreciate the Board of Adjustment and Appeals wanting to see each and every application, we're basically talking about the same type of setback and we can save everybody time and money becauase it takes time to make these legal ads and notify 500 people around a very dense development. We felt we could accomplish this fairly expeditiously. Councilman Johnson: I want to do it once for the r~maining 15. Get it off the books. Get the remaining 15 of these done. Barbara Dacy: One of the options was to have a blanket public hearing for the remaining 15 lots in the Chaparral PUD. Councilman Johnson: Yes, I guess we have an applicant more or less but the Homeowner's Association is saying they would like this and we would hold it and since the City I think is at fault here, to a point and some previous city employees were granting a lot of decks that didn't meet this in the past, that we should make the public notice this one time. Barbara Dacy: And know that we have no idea whether these 15 other people even want that. Councilman Johnson: I still think that has to go onto, the easiest way is into the PUD contract. I'm not sure what kind of notice we want on that. Barbara Dacy: I think the Homeowner's Association is going to appreciate anything... Councilman Geving: Mr. Mayor I'd like to make a motion on this. I would like to make a motion for approval of the decks located in the Chaparral quad units for the remaining 15 units and the 3 conditions, actually 4 conditions that I am going to add to this is that the decks can not exceed 10 feet from the building. That there will be a 20 foot frontyard setback must be maintained. That these applications will be administratively approved by staff and will follow no 69 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 formal variance procedure. Fourth, we will attach a $25.0g application fee for this process. Counci_h'nan Horn: Second. CounciLman Boyt: I have a question. Councilman Gev]ng: I added the $25.g~ because that did come out of the discussion that we had earlier with the Board. ~ agreed that there was some cost in processing these and others like them. I believe that at least some costs should be attached to this. There is some research and you've got to remember now, the action we're taking tonight might be in existence for an awful long time. Even well into years to come before those 15 ever come before us as a city. CounciLman Boyt: I'm going to amaze you again Dale but stated that way, I would say that we shouldn't charge the $25.gg fee because there isn't any unusual activity going on here. We're not publishing it in the newspaper which is ~nat the Board of Adjustment and Appeals was using to justify their $25.gg fee. And we just two weeks ago granted the opportunity for people to bring projects to the City that were under $2,gg~.gg and have them reviewed for free. I don't think we should turn around and say to these people, you now have to pay $25.gg because you happen to live in Chaparral. Councilman Geving: The fee is conditional. We did talk about your time Jo Ann. Jo Ann Olsen: I think what we talked about was that it... Councilman Geving: So your time would be extremely minimal? Jo Ann Olsen: Yes. Just like any other building permit. CounciLman Geving: I'd like to amend my motion then to delete the $25.gg and state that there would be no cost for this application. Councilman Horn: I' 11 ~end my second. CounciLman Boyt: I'd like to move to amend your motion again because I think the city is going out of it's w-ay to do these people a favor in an area that we never intended to have them pursue in the first place. I think given that special condition, it would be appropriate to say what size deck we want to have so I would support Tom's request that we tell them the decks must be 2g feet wide. Mayor Hamilton: I'll second your motion. Councilman C~ving: I have to ask, can we still get a 20 foot frontyard setback if we allow a 2g foot? Jo Ann Olsen: Width. Councilman Geving: Then I have no problem. 7g City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Johnson: I don't like placing Tom's taste on other people. I like the 10 foot deck myself. Mayor Hamilton: Well, you go out there and look at them and tell me that the 10 foot looks better than a 20. Councilman Geving moved, Mayor Hamilton seconded an amendment to the motion to amend condition 1 to read, the decks cannot exceed 20 feet from the building. All voted in favor except Councilman Horn and Councilman Johnson who opposed and the amendment carried with a vote of 3 to 2. Jo Ann Olsen: If somebody comes in with a 10 x 10, do they have to have a variance? Councilman Geving: I would say yes based on what we just passed. Councilman Geving moved, Councilman Horn seconded to approve the decks located in the Chaparral quad units for the remaining 15 units with the following conditions: 1. The decks cannot exceed 20 feet from the building. 2. A 20 foot front yard setback must be maintained. 3. The applications will be administratively approved by staff and will follow no formal variance procedure. 4. There will be no fee charged for these applications. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Councilman Boyt: I have a question on this now that we've passed it. I'd like to see if we can take action against the developer. Jo Ann Olsen: I asked Roger about that, he said it would be difficult. Councilman Geving: These were built in 1979. Jo Ann Olsen: It's under different ownership now. Mayor Hamilton: Yes, the people who built them went bankrupt. Pat Farrell: You've got two problems. Statute of Limitations and... Councilman Johnson: I don't like seeing and continuing to see violations occur and then afterwards we approve them and not take any action. In this case, because the Statute of Limitations and the previous owner went bankrupt, there isn't anything to do but we do need to get tough on our ordinances eventually. 71 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Mayor Hamilton: Jay, you wanted to talk about a zoning ordinance? Councilman Johnson: I would like staff to put together or actually I've been telling them I will put it together and I've never got around to do it. The zoning ordinance change on conditional use permits and maybe if they believe, other ?ermits would be like the wetland alteration permit, to include an inspection schedule to be approved by the Council and an inspection fee for conditional use permits. What I cc~nprehend here is for construction yards and other places that have some fairly strict conditional uses applied to them that can be broken routinely. That we will have an annual inspection of those facilities against those conditions. Less stringent for and also a group of types of conditional uses where you have an inspection every 2 years and every 3 years and ! believe there is also a category where the conditions may be such that it's only a structural condition. You will use shake shingles or something on your building. %'~natever that thing is. You only need a one time inspection to see if they have complied with those rules. Right now you get a conditional use permit and after you've put it in, you've had your inspection, they say everything meets the conditional use permit and that's the last of it. There are people out there that all the trees have died and the berms have been removed and things like this that we're not getting them inspected. I want to see those inspections made and that inspection should be at the cost of the person that's being inspected who has the special use permit. The conditional use permit. That's what I would like to see. I never have gotten around to writing this up except for on the bottom of my piece of paper again on the airplane this evening as I came in. Those are my thoughts on that. If the Council would like me to write the ordinance and present it to the Council as such, I' tl do that too. Mayor Hamilton: I don't think that's your job. Councilman Johnson: I don't think so either. Take my general guideance here and I think staff can put in an ordinance amendment together and present that to Planning Commission. Mayor Hamilton: Any discussion about that? Councilman Boyt: Makes sense to me. CounciLman Horn: How many people do you have to have for the staff to do this? Councilman Johnson: The fees will pay for it. It's self financing. Barbara Dacy: We'll be happy to take a look at the whole process. We'll be doing that in-house to see how we can keep better track of things and putting then in the computers and so on. Mayor H~ilton: Bill, you wanted to talk about a Fire Marshall. Councilman Boyt: Right. It's my understanding that last week the Council discussed the position of Fire Marshall. You didn't discuss the Fire Marshall? 72 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn: We discussed the specific salary offered to this specific person. Councilman Boyt: And that there was some question first into how we conducted the search. I'd like to clarify that the search was conducted because I know for one that I talked to Mr. Ashworth and the decision was made that we would conduct a search for a Fire Marshall. So the City Manager can speak for himself on this issue but it's my firm understanding that he approved that search. They conducted a search and found somebody that was very highly qualified for a position that was supported by the Fire Department. Was supported by the Public Safety Con~nission and resulted in a salary request that was $6,000.00 over the budgeted amount. I think that we should seriously reconsider this issue and make that offer. This is a position that we definitely need to fill. This is a proactive move that could only make this cc~nunity better and safer and in the long run save us a lot of money for fire protection. And to turn down the opportunity to get a very well qualified person in a hard to fill field, is to miss an opportunity that we may not get in the future. I think for us to look at moving a carousel building, which I supported, which was an expensive move for $50,000.00. For us to look at straightening out a corner, which I didn't happen to support, for a minimum of $10,000.00 and feel that we had the money to do that, to turn around and say we don't have $6,000.00 to make an offer to a highly qualified Fire Marshall is something that I'd like us to reconsider. Don Ashworth: We did look for applications. We have not finished that process. We will hire an individual who I think will be very well suited for the position. It will be within the budget and the guidelines established under your personnel policy. That decision should be made by the end of the week. The person selected will have the support of the Fire Department. Mayor Hamilton: And Public Safety Con~nission. Don Ashworth: I don't know if they will have seen the person but the Fire Deparh~ent will be in on those interviews. Councilman Boyt: Don, are you saying to me that you're going to be able to hire as well a qualified person for $6,000.00 less? Don Ashworth: I'm saying that the position that we would look to is a continuation of a position as it was which is really a Fire Inspector. The individual that we're looking at, or the group of people does not need the highest qualifications that specifically would be obtained by the individual who was brought back to you about one week ago. Councilman Boyt: The individual that was brought back to us a week ago is also a qualified building inspector. Don Ashworth: I don't know that that's a necessary requirement. Councilman Boyt: It's not a requirement of the Fire Marshall but it's certainly something that could help the City. Mayor Hamilton: Do we need more building inspectors? of those. I thought we had plenty 73 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Boyt: We have building inspectors who are bringing in a great deal more money than we're paying the~ so clearly they are busier than we've staffed it to be. We've got a situation in which building inspectors are not catching all the violations that are happening in this City so maybe there is an opportunity for additional building inspectors but above and beyond that, I think our experience in the last year has shown that a Fire Inspector is not sufficient to meet the needs of this city. ~J~en you're looking at a Rosemount. When you're looking at the bakery situation. You're looking at major builders. When you' re looking at the Dinner Theater. We've got situations in which we clearly need the expertise of a Fire Marshall. I think it's short sighted to say that $6,ggg.gg can not be spent to bring in a person with those sort of qual i ficat ions. Mayor Hamilton: One of the major reasons we did not want to do that is simply because it does not follow the guidelines that have been established and follow the practice in the City for the past several years. If we start now with this position, bringing in someone well over the mid-point, the mid-range of that particular job, where do you start? People will start coming in and say, well if you're going to hire this guy higher than where he ought to be, then you might as well give me a salary adjustment too. I would think that you would understand that being in the type of position you're in. You just don't open that door. CounciLman Boyt: I understand it very well and the justification for a mid- point is that that's what you pay a highly experienced person to do the job well. Well, that's what we have so it would be very reasonable to pay the mid- point for that job. It's not a good personnel practice to limit yourself to paying under the mid-point to get an individual and if we had done that, we wouldn't have hired Gary Warren~ Mayor Hamilton: What this City has done over the years is, and the Council talked about this long before your being around, when we hire individuals for the City, we talked about hiring those people ~no were either just coming out of school or just moving into a position. Perhaps their first in charge position with the understanding that they would stay with us and grow and develop and become better in their field. We know that we can't pay the high salaries that Minnetonka and Edina and Hopkins and some of the other surrounding communities can pay. We just don't have those kind of funds. I think we've stuck with that pretty much. We still do have excellent employees. We've been very fortunate J.n that regard. I see no reason to deviate from that. We can still get an extremely good person to do this job that's going to do a very good, very effective job. I don't think we need to be paying the top of the line for a Fire Marshall. We have people to do the job just as well for fewer dollars. Councihman Boyt: I'll stop after this comment. With the mid-point, what you've said is that's what we're willing to pay someone to do that job. It's my understanding that that wasn't what the person was asking for was to be paid at the mid-point. That's not busting your salary scheudle to pay somebody what you've already agreed is a reasonable salary for that job. Because they happen to come in with more experience can be a real benefit to us. We've got it sitting right in front of us. The City is evolving and we can't start with rookies in every position we've got. This is one of the most critical positions the City has. 74 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Don Ashworth: I don't disagree that there's a critical need and we'll have somebody on that I think has the confidence of Fire Department in terms of doing the job. If we're going to make amendments to position classification. If we're going to change the position write-ups. If we're going to change how people are to be brought in and under what guidelines and what not, then that should be considered when we do all of our write-ups. When we update our plan at the end of the year. The proposal, you did not meet the guidelines as far as bringing the personnel. Did not meet the guidelines...position. It's that simple. Councilman Johnson: In general, I've got a reputation for supporting public safety very strongly. I also support Don with what he just said that we will be getting a good man or a good woman for this position. I disagree with Tom's, I don't think we're, while the decision was made before you and I were on the Council Bill, I don't believe that currently, in the current situation, that it's good to always bring somebody in for the mimimum side, 1 or 2 years out of school and stuff. That has worked well for us in the past but in some cases it hasn't worked real terribly well, in my opinion. I do believe that certain positions, you don't want somebody and I don't think we' re going to get a 1 or 2 year out of school person for this position. I think we're going to get somebody with a fair amount of experience in this field. It's a critical field. I think we can also, if something comes in that that person feels is beyond his capabilities, a large project coming in, we pay a considerable review fee. That person should be willing to come and say I need some professional help here and we can hire a consultant to come in and provide him help on that review. There are safety consultants out there who are totally qualified Fire Marshalls that we can get, I believe. Phil Mathiowetz: Besides trying to raise a few dogs, my profession is a Fire Marshall for another community. I guess from a fire protection standpoint for our con~nunity, at the rate we're growing, I have to agree totally with Councilman Boyt. What you're asking someone to do for the money that you want o pay them...first off, I don't believe that you can get a qualified person to do that. I know just about every Fire Marshall and every inspector that's qualified to handle this job in this area. With the projects that we've got coming into this con~nunity, particularly things like Rosemount which is some 300,000 square feet. It's a highly technical project. You're asking someone to come in here and try to take a job that is way out of his league. I've been doing this for some 15 years and a project like that would terrify me and it would take me a long time to sit down and work a project like that out. Someone coming in here with minimal qualifications that you can expect to get for that kind of money, is not going to be able to handle the job. He's not going to be able to provide for this con~nunity what needs to be provided. The $6,000.00 or the $31,000.00 or $32,000.00 that you're asking, that they were proposing to pay that individual is at the middle part of the Fire Marshall salary. We do an overall salary survey every year to determine that. The qualifications of that person are going to be up at a reasonable level. You are not going to find somebody down at that level. I'm sorry. I wish you could because I pay taxes too and I'd just as soon keep down those costs but it's not going to happen. For someone to come in here that has a number of years of experience for that level of pay at $25,000.00, I would seriously question your motives. Mayor Hamilton: I guess that's what we'll have to find out when we interview. 75 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn: I think he might be right and we will have to take a look at that position. The problem is that we're doing this in the middle of a year and I don't think that you set precedent in one situation. You have to set your guidelines for the year at the time that we do that, we may very well find out that that is the thing we need to do is to change up our guidelines for our Fire Marshall but you don't come in just because somebody happens to walk in and say I'm going to change my guidelines. The other thing that I think we should discuss here in the next year is what our procedure is for this. It seems to me if we're going to develop a city management team, we need to let them make those kinds of decisions. If they can find within their budget a means to accomplish this, it shouldn't even come to us. If Jim can live within his budget and he gets this guy and he can get that $6,0gg.gg somewhere else or whatever it is or for whatever it is this year, it shouldn't come to us. We can't manage every ~nployee in this department. That's what we have City Manager' s for. That' s what we have group managers for. Councilman Boyt: He's not saying the $6,gg~.gg isn't there. Don isn't saying that. Counci]~an Horn: I think he implied that it would be outside of the budget guidet ines. Councilman Boyt: He didn't say the money wasn't there. Don Ashworth: It's a matter of semantics. If you want the $6,ggg.gg, I think we could find it but it is not currently budgeted in that fashion. Mayor Hamilton: I think we need to see who is going to be suggested for the position and go from there. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTAIONS: PROPOSAL FOR EROSION CONTROL SERVICES, CARVER COUNTY SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICT, CITY PLANNER. Barbara Dacy: Our recora~endation is on the top of page 2. What we have prepared is that the Council adopt some erosion...to start working out an agreement. Mayor Hamilton: Is this really necessary? This isn't something that we can't accompl i sh now? Barbara Dacy: Just looking at the engineer project board... Mayor Hamilton: The reason I ask is because you look at the fees associated with it and we keep adding on more and more fees everytime a guy turns around. We've got more fees to deal with. That's more on the developer. You can only have so much. Gary Warren: I think it really relates to what kind of accountability you want as far as the erosion control. We can put a high priority on it and really work hard at the platting on the spec process. The plans are in but we are short handed as far as the inspections and... We're dealing more on a crisis basis in the field and with the magnitude with the planning process that we've been 76 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 doing, I think a specialist on this thing should be brought in[ Councilman Geving: I think it's a good idea. Barbara Dacy: We can reevaluate the fees. Those are just... Councilman Geving: I just want to know right now whether we're interested in pursuing this. I think it's a good idea and I think we ought to go ahead with ito Mayor Hamilton moved, Councilman Geving seconded to authorize staff to prepare a letter to the Conservation District Board stating the City's intent to pursue an agreement with the Conservation District. All voted in favor and the motion carried. ANNEXATION/DEANNEXATION REQUEST, MERLE VOLK. Mayor Hamilton: He's not here. Do you want to talk about this or was he supposed to be here? Don Ashworth: No, it's simply a notification to the City Council. I don't know if the City Attorney wants to make any con~nents or not or if you want to have any conxnents from him. Mayor Hamilton: We received some information that needs to be not discussed but I guess... Councilman Geving: This is confidential. Mayor Hamilton: Yes, and I think it states clearly what our position is. I guess the move is up to Merle. Councilman Johnson: I'd like to hear from our committee of councilmen that we sent to Chaska to get tough and do some negotiating over the swamp land they offered us and see if they've come up with a better offer yet. Mayor Hamilton: I talked with Shirley Beyers and with Bob Ropetke, the Mayor. Told them I'd be willing to sit down anytime they'd like to to discuss this. I've never heard from them. I'm not going to chase them around. Councilman Johnson: Have you done this formally in writing that we could take it into the Annexation Board and show th~n that Chaska has not responded to our requests or is it only a verbal that we won't be able to prove anywhere other than standing up and sitting on a stand staying we've got... Mayor Hamilton: I think you'd find that Chaska will still make their original offer. Councilman Johnson: Which Council said we didn't think that was a real fair offer. We'd like them to consider a few other things. Have we counter proposed anything to them? 77 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Mayor Hamilton: Yes, we did. In one meeting you and I met with, I don't recall his name. He was an inspector or something. Don Ashworth: I'm not sure of the meeting that you're referring to. Mayor Hamilton: It probably was this spring sometime and I expected for that meeting that there would be someone there that could kind of make a decision and it was some guy, he just said, well I can't do anything. Councilman Geving: I really believe that we should pursue a meeting with Bob Roeptke and their City Manager with the original team that we proposed and try to get as much out of this as we can. That means whatever negotiation you guys can do, I just don't want to drop the ball on this and let the courts decide. If we've got something to gain from this, and I think we can, one or two meetings with Bob and his City Manager, I think we could resolve this. I don't know if we've got a counter proposal. We've never really come up with a 4g acre tract that we'd be interested in. Mayor Hamilton: Why don't you see if you can get a hold of the manager and see if we can't talk to th~n because I have asked both Shirley and Bob and I've never gotten a reply or response from them. Councilman Johnson: I'd like to see, not necessarily, it doesn't have to be 4g acres but acreage with a future potential as great as what the future potential for this area will be. Mayor Hamilton: I don't think you'll find any. That's why they're saying the property down there by the pickle factory. Councilman Johnson: What I'm thinking of, they want the property by the pickle factory over in this little area over here. What I was looking at is the property by the pickle factory then you cross the railroad tracks and take this little clump there. Just take that. It's less than 4g acres but it's on TH 212. It will be co~mercial when we get sewer there and so will this be con~nercial when we get sewer there. That may have a potential value. It's got probably better taxes on it now because of existing industry on it. Mayor Hamilton: We can discuss some alternatives and see what we can come up with. Mayor Hamilton: Don you wanted to talk about some water. Don Ashworth: We are in the position to move to the next step in our watering ban as far as the restrictions. I would hope that the newspapers would pick this up. I've asked Molly to come in and we'll try to do some type of an article thanking everyone for living through the timeframe while we got the water tower in service. For those people that have held off in putting out their sod or other type of plantings. That we will have a permit system available. Sod, you need 5 days of continuous watering to be able to effectively have that grow and then they can move to an every other day schedule and it operates just fine so there's two points there. One is we're able to loosen the restrictions and secondly that we want to thank everyone for living through this past summer with us. Again, those people who did hold off on 78 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 either sodding or landscaping~ that we are in a position to provide them with a permit to allow them to water a little bit more than an odd/even schedule would allow. Councilman Johnson: Good idea. I'm glad we're finally getting away from the hour restrictions. Councilman Horn: My only con~nent is, like other things, why did the City start doing it before we allowed other people to do it? I've heard a lot of comments on the City watering every day. I think we have to set an example on what we're doing ourselves. Don Ashworth: We tried to address that though in terms of when we went into that whole ban situation, anyone who came in and showed us that they were under contract to lay the sod, they were given permits to go ahead and do that sod work. We held off for as long as we could but we are under contract to get that sod done. There was a question earlier, how much longer do we hold off on the paving, finishing off that wear course down there and on the one side you're kind of questioning why we're not finishing up. On the other side, we're trying not to put in dead trees or dead sod or whatever else. I don't think it's a- double standard. Councilman Johnson: We participate it as a double standard because now it's not a double standard if we pass this tonight but they were watering at all tLmes of the day. 5 days, 7 days a week. There was one Saturday that the guy was watering up to about 12:00. I woke him up in his truck and reminded him we had a watering ban but he said, yes but we don't do that. I said the Sheriff will be over here in a few minutes to discuss it with you and he shut the water off. I think we should have been more sensitive to this and I would like to move that we go to the odd/even watering restrictions if this requires a motion by Council. Mayor Hamilton: I second that. Councilman Johnson moved, Mayor Hamilton seconed to move the watering ban to an odd/even watering restrictions. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Mayor Hamilton: Barb, you wanted to talk about Reuter? Barbara Dacy: Yes. The Chaska City Council is heading toward final' approval on the composting project on Monday night. I was contacted late last week by Mr. Schmidt and Gustafson that live in the area. I updated the Council about the progress of this plan on June 13th. At that time the Council had no major concerns but the Schimidt's and the Gustafson's would like the City to send a letter to Chaska stating their concern for the potential odors from the compost plan in view of the number of homes in the Timberwood subdivision and because their property is situated in a low spot, they're comparing it to the compost site as well as Healthsted Laboratories have done some additional research on other composting facilities and have some varying reports as to the air quality from composting plants and basically have stated it's concern. I told them that the City Staff, myself, there's no way that we can respond to some of these environmental issues because that's why we have the PCA to regulate some of 79 City Council Meeting -August 22, 1988 these larger concerns. We can certainly comment as to alerting Chaska to make sure that as many impacts as possible are realized on the Chanhassen folks. I just wanted to gain your concurrence tonight if that would be acceptable to send to the Chaska Council a letter outlining those general items. Councilman Geving: Can we prove that? Can we prove that there is going to be odor? I didn't smell any odor when I was over at the Reuter plant in Hopkins. Barbara Dacy: That's where I was trying to explain my point that the appropriate agencies are going to have to look at what's going in is according to State Law but basically his intent, or I should say the homeowner's intent is to alert the Chaska Council that the City of Chanhassen is concerned and not necessarily making the recommendation of approval or denial. Just stating a concern to make sure that those impacts are properly discussed. Mayor Hamilton: I would think they would be. I can't imagine that they could put thegn in there without doing those things. Councilman Johnson: I've been involved in this. Plus the State of Minnesota legislature this year passed a new law requiring immediate action to be taken by anybody who releases an obnoxious odor ~J~o irritates somebody so there is something there. I have no problem personally with saying that we have citizens near this plant and our primary concern is the potential for odor. It doesn't accuse anybody that they're going to be emmitting odors. This is an airobic plant. I'm fairly confident that they'll do a very good job. There are some slight potentials in there of my analysis of the plant to produce some odors but they have done quite a bit to control it. This new State law will really give these people some teeth. Mayor H~nilton: Does the Council want staff to write such a letter? It would seem to me that if the Schmidt's and Gustafson's are concerned, they could write a letter on their own behalf I guess. Barbara Dacy: And they have and they've been going to all the hearings and so on but they were looking for an official response from the City. Mayor Hamilton: PersonallY I would not be in favor of writing anything that may sound the least bit negative because I think it's an extremely good project to have in our area and I hope they give it final approval but I guess if it's a vanilla type comment that says make sure you meet all the requirements of noise and odor, why... Councilman Johnson: Should we throw some mother and apple pie and all that stuff in there about our support of the environmental processes and the composting? That we believe this will relieve much pressure on our landfill, however we do have concern over odors since this is bordering on three sides to the City of Chanhassen. Give them support but at the same time saying we support you Reuter but we're watching you too. Councilman Geving: It sounds like you almost have that letter written. Councilman Johnson: ! think Barb does. 80 City Council Meeting - August 22, 1988 Councilman Horn moved, Mayor Hamilton seconded to adjourn the meeting. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 12:35 a.m.. Submitted by Don Ashworth City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 81