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CC 2009 08 10 CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING AUGUST 10, 2009 Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Furlong, Councilman McDonald, Councilwoman Tjornhom and Councilman Litsey COUNCIL MEMBERS ABSENT: Councilwoman Ernst STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt, Roger Knutson, Laurie Hokkanen, Todd Hoffman, Kate Aanenson, and Paul Oehme PUBLIC PRESENT: Gary and Mary Connell 6201 Murray Hill Road Chris Chizinski University of Minnesota David Austin 1411 Eleanor Avenue, St. Paul Peter Sorenson University of Minnesota PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mayor Furlong: Very good and welcome everybody. We’re glad that you joined us here and those watching at home as well. At this time I’d like to ask if, from members of the council if there are any modifications or changes requested of the agenda. If not, without objection we’ll proceed with the agenda as it was distributed. Moving on, we’ll start with our consent agenda items. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilwoman Tjornhom: Mayor I’d like to remove item number (c). Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Want to pick that up new business or, would that be fine or? Councilwoman Tjornhom: That’s fine. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Also I think there was a desire, Mr. Gerhardt help me find the item. Todd Gerhardt: (i). Mayor Furlong: (i) with the code amendments. Some of those relate to the items included in item 4 on our regular agenda so let’s remove item 1(i) and bring that down and pick that up as immediately following. Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Todd Gerhardt: 4(c). Mayor Furlong: Yeah, we can bring it up effectively as 4(c). Anything else? Anyone else in the audience that would like to separately discuss an item on the consent agenda? If not then is there a motion to adopt items 1 (a) through (n), excluding (c) and (i). Councilman Litsey: So moved. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman McDonald: Second. Councilman Litsey moved, Councilman McDonald seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations: a. Approval of Minutes: -City Council Work Session Minutes dated July 27, 2009 Receive Commission Minutes: -Planning Commission Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated July 21, 2009 Resolution #2009-58: b. Sponsorship Program for Park and Recreation Special Events: Approve Resolution Accepting 2009 Donations. Resolution #2009-59: d. Public Works Facility Project 08-03: Approve Asphalt Paving Bid. e. Audubon Road Street Improvement Project 10-02: Award Preliminary Design Consultant Contract. f. Chanhassen Business Center Fourth Addition, Eden Trace Corporation: Approve PUD Amendment to Allow Subdivision of Lot 2, Block 1. g. Approve Land Use Plan Amendment to Re-guide Property from Commercial to Office- Industrial; Lot 1, Block, West One Addition. j. Existing Public Works Building, 1591 Park Road: Approve Selection of Exclusive Listing Agent. k. Nextera, Inc., Wi-Fi Services, TH 5: Approve Water Tower Lease Agreement. l. St. Hubert Catholic Community, 8201 Main Street: Approve Temporary On-Sale Liquor License for Booster Club Fundraiser, September 12, 2009. 2 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Resolution #2009-60: m. Carver County: Approve Resolution in Support of Applying for Federal Stimulus Money for Lateral Connections to the Fiber Loop. Resolution #2009-61: n. Metropolitan Council Livable Communities Demonstration Grant Application: Consider Approval of Resolution in Support of Applying for Funds for Improvements Related to Construction of the Downtown Park and Ride Facility. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None. LAW ENFORCEMENT UPDATE: Mayor Furlong: We do have on a monthly basis we receive an update from our law enforcement and fire department. Lieutenant Olson is here this evening. I asked him to come because we had a couple incidents that were a little bit more well known and I asked him to come and give us an update on those and give the council an opportunity to ask any questions as well so Lieutenant Olson, thank you for coming this evening. Lt. Jim Olson: Absolutely. Good evening and thank you. And these items are pretty timely so I appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk to the council and the community about them. A couple weeks ago we had the bank robbery that occurred here in Chanhassen at the TCF in the Cub Foods here in town. We do have a real solid suspect on that. They are currently out of the state and we do have FBI as well as Minneapolis Police is helping us with that as well but they are currently out of state. We’ve got some court orders that we’ve got that we’re working on that we hope to, that we’re working on to help apprehend her but we hope to have her in custody here shortly. The Holiday gas station happened about a week after that. We should have the criminal complaint that is filed on that hopefully tomorrow. We have a good solid suspect with that and they have been identified through a few different ways but we should have criminal complaint signed on that tomorrow. We’ve also had some issues recently with railroad crossings going th through town at 101, Market, 78 and at Great Plains Boulevard. We’ve been working very closely with TC&W along with city staff and MnDOT. They were out Friday night doing some repairs. We had some more issues on Saturday. They came out again on Saturday and replaced some electronic parts and then they were also out today replacing some parts and that so hopefully we’ll get that resolved pretty soon. I know that that causes quite the gridlock in the city when all 4 of those crossing arms go down at one time along there and from a traffic management standpoint it’s difficult to deal with. We don’t have enough deputies to block off all 4 of those intersections on at one time but we are working on getting that solved so, any questions for us at all? I will be back again in 2 weeks to talk a little bit about the monthly update for the last 2 months but any questions on either one of the robberies or the railroad crossings? Or anything else for that matter. Mayor Furlong: Questions for the Lieutenant? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I don’t know if I have any questions. I mean I think the incidents that happened in town are very unfortunate and very uncharacteristic of our community and I just 3 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 know like during National Night Out you know we were talking to neighbors and residents in town and I think we all still feel pretty safe here. Lt. Jim Olson: Absolutely. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I want to commend the Carver County Sheriff’s Office for what you do and for making us all feel safe and you’re doing your job so thank you. Lt. Jim Olson: Thank you. Thank you. You know both of those in a sense were anomalies here in the city of Chanhassen. I think the last bank robbery we had here in town was in 1997 so that was you know 12 years ago. That also resulted in somebody being arrested in that and charged and I think they’re still in prison with that so. Robbery, bank robberies especially just don’t happen around here. Otherwise the last robbery of a business, I can’t, probably the American Legion and that must have been maybe, Todd help me out. Was that back in 2001-2002, 3, somewhere in there with that one? Todd Gerhardt: I think so. Lt. Jim Olson: With that one. So those both were anomalies. They just don’t happen that often and you’re right, this is a very safe community and we’re lucky to live here so. Mayor Furlong: Well and we appreciate the investigative work as well because it sounds like that’s moving along on both of those issues. Lt. Jim Olson: Yes. Mayor Furlong: To a hopefully successful completion. Thank you. Councilman Litsey: No, I was just going to echo the same thing and say it’s nice to know that you know one, I think the advantages of partnering with the Carver County Sheriff’s Department as our primary law enforcement agency is you have the resources and you can devote what’s necessary to try and help solve these crimes so I think it’s just another example of how a partnership like this works well where you can gather and have all those resources available when you need them. And good work being with the people behind the scenes too but, thanks. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Appreciate your time. Lt. Jim Olson: Thank you and have a wonderful, and I think summer’s here. We’ve had a couple storms now so I think we can say summer’s here. Mayor Furlong: Let’s move onto our next item on our agenda. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA CARP STUDY: A. UPDATE ON STUDY OF CHANHASSEN LAKES; B. MOTORIZED BOATS ON LAKE ANN. 4 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Todd Hoffman: Thank you Mayor, members of the council. Tonight we have a specific request before us and that has to do with Lake Ann. Lake Ann is a non-motorized lake in our community. The University of Minnesota in cooperation with the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District and others has been conducting carp research and water quality research on Lake Susan, Rice Marsh Lake and Lake Riley in our community since 2006. They would like to extend those studies into Lake Ann and Lake Lucy. To do so they require the use of a motorized watercraft or multiple motorized watercrafts, so that’s one of the, that’s the specific request that we have before the council tonight that as a part of this work, that the council approve a temporary permit to allow the University to operate motorized watercraft in Lake Ann for a one year period and that one year period could be extended or the possibility for it to be extended administratively for up to additional year for a maximum of 2 years. As long as the University was out and making a request, we wanted to update the council on what the project all entails with the carp study, the aquatic plants and the water quality so we have some guest visitors here tonight. Peter Sorenson is here with the Sorenson Lab down at the University of Minnesota. Post doctorate student Chris Chizinski who’s assisting with that endeavor, and then David Austin who is with CH2M Hill. They are the engineers for the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District and so these gentlemen have a presentation. An update that they would like to present to the City Council and allow you to learn some more about the study and then ask questions as well so I think we’ll start with Peter. Peter Sorenson: Thank you for allowing us to work within your community and opportunity to speak with you. I’ve got a couple print outs but we can print out more if you want them. Thank you for the fine introduction and I guess this is the control. This will take maybe half an hour. Hopefully not that long. I’ll start out by giving a general introduction to the work in my lab. I’m Peter Sorenson. Professor at the University and then colleague of mine, Chris Chizinski will take over and talk about the specifics of the Ann and Lucy proposed work and then David from CH2M Hill will probably speak to you. At any point feel free to interrupt. I like this to be very informal and informative so you know don’t be shy. So I’ll start out, the talk basically will talk about the common carp. It’s biology. Something on the damage it’s causing and our research. I’m wondering now if this, I guess it’s the right one. It changed a little bit. The common carp interestingly is a species that originated, a fish that originated in the Caspian-Black Sea area of Eastern Europe. It was originally spread, actually believe it or not by the Romans and then the Catholic Church throughout Europe and domesticated as an important agriculture species for the first two millennia. About the turn of the century, last century, it was basically, people thought it would be desirable, particularly the English, to export it to some of their ex-colonies including Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. and it was imported to the United States in the 1860’s by the U.S. Fish Commission. 1877 was the big year in which several hundred were brought across from Germany. Raised in reflecting pool in Washington D.C. and then from there exported across the country in railroad cars by the tens of thousands to cheering crowds and politicians fighting for the honor and privilege of having this species brought to their communities, and that includes Minnesota. It didn’t take long for people to realize the error of their ways, by which time the carp had distributed itself across the country and the red there is a facsimile of basically where you find common carp today and it’s been a disaster. Basically the common carp infests all of our lakes to varying degrees, and I’ll talk a little bit about it. It’s been here so long that people don’t even fully appreciate, your grandfather knew perhaps. Your great-grandfather 5 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 knew what the lakes were like before the common carp, but the lakes as we see them today, to a large extent you know were not like what they once were and to a large extent that we’re trying to understand is because of this particular species of fish. It basically roots around the bottom. Increasing turbidity. Digging up plants and frankly eating little items in the bottom and then excreting into the water column so it serves as a continuous pump and disrupting agent, particularly in shallow lakes making them turbid and increasing things like phosphorus in the water. So they’re really a nasty animal and I don’t have the pointer here but this is a study, just to show you the top graph there is increase in carp population from a lake that we studied in Illinois and the invert, the numbers all going down are the numbers of plants and water fowl and various species of insects and so forth showing that as the carp increase, this was a restored lake, and as the carp reinfested everything went downhill pretty rapidly and importantly, it’s important to note that a few carp didn’t do much damage but there’s sort of a threshold value at which they do and people have been trying to control this species for many decades but we think we might have sort of a, I guess sort of an angle on this that might make us successful and we’ve been lucky enough to start to explore these opportunities within your watershed. The Riley Creek Watershed, largely funded by the LCCMR. The lottery basically, and most recently by the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District, which owing somewhat to our success, now wants to expand that study and that’s why I’m here today. Just a little bit about the carp. It’s highly mobile. It spawns in shallow vegetation and females can have over a million eggs. We’ve got an old version of this slide show here. But that’s alright. Todd Hoffman: We can switch it. Peter Sorenson: If it’s real easy. Otherwise you know I’m really good at making things up. Mayor Furlong: Fortunately that’s on the record. Peter Sorenson: …teaching you get good at these things. It’s probably that one. It’s pretty darn close. I think it’s going to be more important as we go along probably. You’ll find almost exactly the same slides. Yeah. That’s what I just wanted to show you. So we all knew that the adults were incredibly mobile and people knew that as early as the 20’s and 30’s and that’s why some of you may know the relic carp barriers go throughout the system here, and now we’re facing the same challenges with the Asian carp coming up the Mississippi River. That’s another important reason to be studying the common carp. If we can’t get rid of them here, what are we going to do about the Asian carp? They spawn in shallow vegetation in the spring. Females have a million eggs, which is why people traditionally thought nothing could be done with this species. There are so many eggs. The fate of the young is unknown and when they do live, they grow incredibly quickly and these fish are probably right out of the local, probably I think they’re out of Rice Marsh Lake. Down below, but within 6 months period a surviving carp is that big. Bigger any native fish and nothing can really touch it, and as I’ll show you in a second, they can live to be at least as old as I am, which is a pretty sad story as my kids would attest but, we’ve been studying carp in several places in the state but one of our foci has been Riley Creek watershed. Began in 2006 with a population, I’m just going to give you a few highlights here. So I’m sure you’re familiar with Riley which is down below in Eden Prairie feeding into Rice Marsh. Does Chanhassen have a little piece of Rice Marsh? 6 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Todd Hoffman: Chanhassen has about half of Riley and all of, about half of Rice Marsh. Peter Sorenson: Oh you have more of it than I thought. Okay. And then flows up to Susan and then up to Lucy and Ann, which is why I’m here today. And we started out looking at population estimates. The first ever for common carp. Spawning movements and aging survival, with again the support of the lottery and frankly it was a pretty basic study just to see what could happen, and these are just a few highlights. And interrupt me if you’ve got any questions, and one of the things we found out, after a couple years was we estimated the population of Susan, which everyone thought was impacted pretty heavily because it was pretty turbid waters. Very degraded. Was about 4,000 carp, plus or minus about a hundred and that translates to about 300 pounds per acre. About 3 times the value that we estimate to be extremely damaging to shallow lake systems. So this was both bad and good news. Bad news that the lake was actually clearly heavily infested. Good news in that we’re finally starting to get some firm numbers and start to think about what to do about it, and I’ll tell you where we’re going with this in a second. We also found that somewhat to our amazement that the carp move actively between, and this is really important for why we’re looking at Susan and Lucy. I mean Ann and Lucy by the way, that every spring the carp actually migrate actively from Susan and Riley into Rice Marsh Lake and then interestingly they go back again and they actually go back to the correct lake. They know where they’re going and this movement is extensive. As much as a third of them do this. This is thousands and thousands of fish. It’s a very large number, and they spawn when they’re in there and that was pretty interesting, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a second. The point is these fish are moving very actively and then this is probably a really key discovery too which actually just came out in the press today. The, when we aged the fish in these systems, and particularly looking at Lake Susan now. So this is frequency of fish in the Y axis and their age on the X axis. It looks like a broken teeth or something. It’s not a continuum. This is point one perhaps. They don’t survive every year, even though thousands and thousands of them, in fact we calculated. There were 4 billion eggs realized every spring in Riley. Most years not one survived. That’s point one. Point two is the only years they do survive, so once there was a group 3 years old. Another big one 15 years old. Actually precisely coincided with the winter kill event in the Rice Marsh Lake. Precisely. Exactly. You know it was really quite striking the correlation there. Clearly not a coincidence. And then lastly they’re all rather long lived, so this piece of information, the longevity is bad news but the fact that the young very rarely survive actually flew in the face of all dogma about the carp up to this point because it says that they’re not infallible. In fact they fail all the time. Most of the time which means that carp removal strategies are possible because the lakes under normal circumstances, at least in your system here, basically can take care of themselves except in these winter kill events. Which is a natural phenomenon but the carp are really good at coping with it. So what happens? We believe that the carp, as a part of their natural biology, just move. They know to move into shallow watersheds and this is something that they do actually in the Caspian Sea area where believe it or not there are a lot of similarities with here, and they move into these areas early spring after natural winter kills and by being so large and so robust, they get there first and then they release their billions of eggs and they’re releasing them into a productive system without natural predators and when that happens they have it all to themselves and they flood the entire system. So I think the next slide will show you our hypothesis and this is the way we think actually the watershed here is functioning but probably, I don’t know maybe hundreds of watersheds across the entire Midwest and that’s one reason we’re very excited about this work, is 7 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 that it’s the connections between these lakes that drive the abundance of carp and if we can break this cycle, which I’ll explain in a second, there’s a good chance we can do something about this. And we think there is a good chance so I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. So what this means is, is that to control carp, if we’re correct. We’re still not entirely certain of that but getting more certain. We have to do a few things. We have to you know get the problem at it’s source. Stop recruitment. That’s the birth of young carp. We have to stop the movement of carp. Reinfestation. That makes sense. By the way both of these things are things that common carp control programs to date have totally ignored, and then we have to do the thing that everyone’s been always focused on and that is just simply remove the adults. Get them out of there. But we’re saying if you just get them out of there, it’s kind of silly because they’re just a million eggs per female, they’ll reinfest the system so you’ve got to kind of take a holistic approach and that’s where we’re looking to go and that’s where, you know thank you for giving us the opportunity to explore these options in your lakes. So I’ll just tell you a tiny bit more about where we are today and then Chris will tell you why we’re particularly interested now in extending this work up to Lucy and Ann. But, so basically last year we did a carp removal and we’re continuing to monitor movement, and we’ll tell you a little bit about that. And now I guess I’m proud to say with being where we were, the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District has basically matched the lottery money so we’ve been able to expand the study and to get active management practices. So I’ll tell you just a tiny bit about that but the key element and the most dramatic one, the one you’ve probably heard about is that we’ve started removing carp, and this past winter we removed 20,000 pounds of carp from Lake Susan. With under ice, targeted ice fishing. Using radio tracked fish and we know exactly what we got out and now we’re tracking the effects of this removal on that system as we look at the possibility of reinfestation, rebirth of new carp and so forth. It’s just under way. It went very well. We got a lot of fish. We actually removed a lot of fish from Riley too. We’re tracking that. You know people are writing papers about this. We’re going to get the information out there so we can learn from it. At least I hope. And one of the big things we learned was that water quality this spring was, it’s not any better now in Susan. There’s been an algae bloom but early this spring through about mid-summer it was dramatically improved. Perhaps twice. Twice as good as it had been previously and the vegetation has returned to that particular lake, which offers hope for nursriers, for fish and stabilizing it. It’s opening up some possibilities for water quality improvement now and that’s what the orange, I’m sorry the green versus the blue bars are on the top. The top screen there. We’re also monitoring movement of fish in and out of the lake. That’s what Chris has been doing through some temporary barriers that Todd let us construct around Susan, and we’ve learned that we’re correct. The carp move in and out but also we’ve learned that game fish use these passages too. In particular the pike and we’ve now demonstrated and actually created an important pike nursery area in Rice Marsh. By excluding the carp, that area now is filled with northerns and that was an important lesson because there had been an attempt or the thought of building a fish barrier there which would have not only cost a fortune, but would have shut down all the game fish in that system, so we’re working towards improving the whole system by understanding and exploiting the connections between them. And lastly I just want to say that we haven’t seen any new birth of carp throughout the system during this, at least just one year but it does look like there’s a really good chance we’re going to be able to control this. So that’s where we’ve been and now Chris will talk over and talk about expanding the rest of the watershed but I guess I just say one last thing and that, what’s very important to understand is, that we’re looking at the watershed as a whole. We 8 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 realize that no lake functions on it’s own and the carp are particularly able to exploit that so to control carp throughout this watershed and improve it for everybody, and particularly is sustainable. You know ecological in an economic way, we have to look at the whole watershed and understand how does it function as a whole and I guess that’s why we’re moving up, or we’d like to move up to Lucy and Ann and Chris will explain a little bit about some of the specifics. Oh, I forgot to say one thing. I guess you’ll mention it too but along with our work on carp, Professor Ray Newman, who’s in the office next to me, will also be doing some work on invasive aquatic plants throughout the system and of course the watershed district has taken a really keen interest in financing it and supporting it and they have David Austin who’s been doing a lot of that work and at the very end of my talk he’s going to talk a little bit about what he hopes to do throughout this chain too so we hope that we’ll be successful and you’ll benefit from a greatly enhanced watershed and…the process. So Chris. Chris Chizinski: As Peter mentioned we’re trying to move up and do this watershed approach at carp management in this system. Because of the highly migratory nature of the common carp, we can’t just ignore these upper lakes. We also have to pay attention to see how Lake Ann and Lake Lucy fit in with the rest of the watershed. Are these populations isolated? Do they just sit up there by themselves or do they try to interact with the carp below in Lake Susan? So a couple questions we’re trying to answer are, are those populations isolated? Are the carp damaging up in the systems? Is the abundance above that threshold limit that Peter mentioned would actually cause damage to the water quality and to the lakes up there. What controls these populations? Is there, those recruitment events. Are they winter kills that are causing those populations to change? And is control or removal of the common carp up there even necessary or are they below that limit that it’s not needed? We have 3 primary objectives for Lake Ann and Lake Lucy. One is kind of following what we did in the bottom part of the watershed. Is one, find the carp abundance and distribution so estimate the population. Look at the age structure and look at, see if we can find any of those recruitment events that we saw down below. And then look at the movements, not only between Lake Lucy and Lake Ann, but then also looking to see if those fish are trying to come down into Susan and interact with those populations. And then finally do we need to control these fish? First way is, first thing we’re going to do is find some population estimates, and this is typically done through…studies. You go out there. You catch a whole bunch of fish. You tag them with an external tag and then you release them. You come back a year later and you can estimate population by how many you recapture. We’re going to look at these population estimates several different ways. One is through electrofishing boats, and we’re going to need to get a boat out there with probes that we can put in the water. It shocks the fish. We can catch them that way. Another is baiting and seining. We can use cracked corn. Put it out in the water and then take a giant seine. Wrap it around and catch carp that way, which is what we were thinking about doing in Lake Lucy this September. In Lake Ann there’s a lot of vegetation in there that we aren’t able to do a fall seining so we’ll have to wait til the winter. We drill the holes in the ice and put submersible nets underneath and pull them up. And then, so that will all occur this year and then in the winter of 2010. And then we will do some recaptures and another winter seining in 2010 and then also in 2011. And by those population estimates we’ll be able to identify whether we need to remove these carp from the system. And not only in estimating the population of adults but we also want to look at juveniles so we’ll be setting trap nets also in Lucy and Ann this fall. Carp don’t like to be caught, they’re pretty tricky so one is we have to use several different gears. Electrofishing, we can get some basic estimates but even 9 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 using electrofishing and shocking the fish, you still get low counts so we also have to employ the use of large seines and I think you can see that on the right. We can do that during the fall with the baiting or doing it in the winter as we did in Susan. These are the two different gears we’ll need to be using on Lucy and Ann. To study the distribution of the lakes we’re going to implant 10 fish from each lake with radio tags and then track their movement. It’s a tag about this big. It’s inserted into the body cavity. Fish is stitched back up. High survival and then we can go out there with a radio tracking gear and we can pin point exactly where those fish are and we’ll be doing that, to find winter aggregations, which would allow us to use the under ice seining. They tend to move into a big group in the winter so it allows us to get the nets right around them. And then to look at spawning movements, so look at fish movement from Ann into Lucy to spawn or vice versa. We’ll be able to pin point some of that. We’ll look at again trap nets in 2010. Putting out those long traps. Adults don’t like those traps but we can catch juveniles fairly easy with these trap nets in the water. And then we’ll also look at the age of the adults and we’ll need to collect 100 to 200 carp from each lake in 2010 through the use of the winter seining. That will allow us to determine how old these fish are in the system, and then also look at those recruitment events. Looking for peaks that may match winter kills in either of the systems. We’re going to look at carp movement between the lakes as I mentioned before but also within the whole entire watershed so we’re going to start this program of tagging a whole large number of carp. Greater than 500 with these things called coded wire tags and they’re about 1.1 millimeter so you just put them subdermally in the carp. We can then track across many years. They’re very inexpensive and that will allow us to look at patterns across, throughout the whole system. Primarily through the movement of the juveniles to see where they end up in the system. And then carp control. Possibly in 2011, depending on what our population estimates tell us, we can remove the adults also probably through another winter seining, if that’s possible and successful. If the carp appear to be aggregating and if the seining works properly. Doesn’t get hung up on anything. And then another means for carp control is that we can suppress recruitment. As Peter mentioned before this usually, recruitment occurs after a winter kill so one, we can prevent a winter kill in some of these systems by aerating the nurseries. That way the oxygen level doesn’t get too low. Keeps the blue gill and game fish around which then will feed on the young carp. Or we can block the path of adults into the nursery habitats as another means. And it may even be a combination of several different practices if necessary. With that any questions or should we jump into David’s stuff? Here’s David Austin with CH2M Hill to talk about water quality. David Austin: Honorable Mayor, council members. Thank you for taking the time. I’ve got about 5 slides for you here before I hand it back off to Peter. The district is pouring it’s resources into the Riley Creek chain of lakes. As we’ve looked at the tremendous results from the University of Minnesota we realize that we have to compliment those efforts and we have to treat the Riley chain of lakes as one water. They’re interconnected. The carp stitch them together and then also in terms of water quality it’s very clear is that as these lakes flow into each other, the problems upstream become the problems downstream and they do tend to pile up. So Riley for instance would be in much better shape were it the head of the watershed as opposed to at the bottom of the watershed. So as you can see we’re looking at this as one watershed and let’s see I just push what button? Audience: The right arrow. 10 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 David Austin: Right, alright. We’ll talk about activities in Lake Ann. We’re going to be doing some intensive monitoring and really starting this year to be able to do, conduct this monitoring in a time effective manner, especially since we’ll be scampering off to Lucy as well, being able to use our outboard motor on our little Jon boat would be most helpful. And I’ll tell you one thing. Ann is a jewel, as we all know. It’s one of the great water quality resources really in the Twin Cities. It reminds me of being somewhere north of Lake Millacs when I’m out there and the loons are calling. Tremendous place. It’s a jewel. We have to defend the water quality of Ann. It’s very important. Ann is actually threatened. It receives a lot of loading from upstream, via Lake Lucy. Like Lake Lucy and also we discovered that Ann has a bit of a dark secret. We’re doing some intensive monitoring right now. Last year we discovered a toxic cyanobacteria bloom at the thermal coin. Right above that stagnant bottom layer. Deep down in the water where there’s barely just a little bit of light going in. Now the data, it’s just one data point plus some monitoring effort. We’re looking at that more carefully but we believe that this bloom potentially can make people sick who swim in Lake Ann round about Labor Day when this bloom breaks up. It fits the literature. It’s something we want to take a very careful look at. We’re not advertising this right now. We thought we’d tell you about it because we’ll be looking at this very carefully. Getting some very advanced scientific studies on this and if we find a smoking gun, we’re going to sit down and talk with the City. So at any rate so some very intensive monitoring here to defend the water quality of Lake Ann. And one of the things we’re doing is something called sediment oxygen demand studies this year and we’ll need divers to hoist some gear in the lake to study the bottom of the lake and how much oxygen the sediments suck out of the lake. That’s a very important number to have. We’re looking at potentially a pilot project in 2010 where we would rent some gear and inject oxygen in the bottom of the lake and see the effect on water quality of the lake. Theoretically this would destroy the cyanobacteria bloom and reduce the amount of nutrients going in the lake and improve water quality. And potentially if there’s a good study we’re looking at a permanent installation but once again this is a discussion with parks and the city to decide what really happens, but first we need some information on this. We need to get the science right before we start talking about the engineering. So, but the summer oxygenation of Ann, one of the reasons this is interesting to us is that if we put, use the same facility to put oxygen in Lucy during the winter, we can prevent winter fish kills and we can also very much improve the water quality in Lucy, which has been taking a steady dive over the past few decades. And just to illustrate, we send a diver down with basically an isolation chamber when we do the sediment oxygen demand studies. There’s a little dioprobe in there and there’s a little mixer and we just watch the oxygen in that chamber go from positive dissolved oxygen to no dissolved oxygen and from there we just do a little bit of math and we get a number that we can use in engineering. How many grams of oxygen per square meter per day can be removed? This shows the apparatus in action. This is a group of retired EPA guys that do this all over the country. We’re lucky to get them up here. We used them last year in Eden Prairie. There’s their boat. We would need a permit to be able to get that boat out there. You can see the chambers there on the boat itself. Those round things, and then you can see in the murk there’s one of them in action. Very important series of measurements, and these are the same people that the MPCA and Met Council uses for these studies. That’s how I found them. And just to talk a little bit about what we might do. What we’re thinking about right now is this, pulling some cold water out of the bottom of the lake. Putting it into a pressure vessel. Say 100 to 300 psi. Injecting pure oxygen into it. And putting it back in the lake at a very high 11 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 concentration. Over 100 times saturation you get under normal conditions, and that quickly mixes with the water and that oxygen clume disperses and keeps the bottom of the lake sweet so to speak. Good place for fish and to make a long story short, prevents this massive release of phosphorus that we see in the winter after we lose oxygen in the bottom of the lake. And that’s the end of my stuff. Thank you very much for hearing me and I apologize for us not putting in a, at this point in time, a formal application to basically piggy back on Peter’s work. We are happy to do that right now but I didn’t understand that Peter was going to actually present in front of the council. We would like similar consideration for our work as Peter. And we’ll do whatever Todd tells us we need to do here to do that formally. Alright, thank you. Any questions? Mayor Furlong: Mr. Sorenson did you, do you want to follow up then? Peter Sorenson: Sure. Mayor Furlong: Was there something else that you wanted? Peter Sorenson: Oh no. No, I don’t really. I guess I should point out that we’re really not, we greatly appreciate your accommodating us and getting, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the residents of the lakes and everyone, and we really aren’t talking about a great deal of usage here. Probably oh a few weeks in September into early October. As soon as the lakes start to freeze up. You won’t see us anymore. We might go out in January. Track some fish. Maybe an under ice haul and then again maybe a couple days a month pretty much throughout the spring and summer tracking these fish and you know we’re, whatever. We hope and don’t think we’ll be heavy users of motors out there or anything like that. It will be all weekdays and so forth. Mayor Furlong: Whether this is a question for you or Mr. Hoffman or whoever but, one of the things I took away from your presentation was the issue of winter kill in Rice Marsh Lake Park. What’s being done to prevent that because was that. Peter Sorenson: Good question. No, that’s an excellent question. Actually we’re hoping, we will be collaborating with David to check oxygen in there, probably not this winter but next, right? David Austin: This coming winter we’ll be working with a couple of things. We found in our under ice studies that we did in Eden Prairie last year, is that the winter kill happens when there’s a big dump of snow at the end of the winter, so Rice Marsh Lake, we’ll be working actually with plowing portions of the lake because if light can get down into that lake, algae can create oxygen through photosynthesis. Then another thing that we’ll be piloting is actually injecting oxygen underneath the ice. That is freezing something into the ice, an oxygen injection system and instead of running it like aeration over a long period of time, a short blast of pure oxygen into the lake. We believe this could potentially be a very effective method of introducing oxygen into the lake. Mayor Furlong: Currently I think we, the city takes some efforts in Lake Susan I know with some aeration work. 12 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Peter Sorenson: Yes. Mayor Furlong: I mean is it, does it make sense to piggy back some of these same things over on Rice Marsh Lake or are we working at all with that or City of Eden Prairie? Todd Hoffman: The system we have on Susan is a pump and baffle and so we have a pump that pumps the water right out of the lake. Aerates it through a baffle system and then dumps it back down in so the methods that they’re discussing are just alternative methods to monitoring if it’s going to happen. Then you can come in and do these other forms of aeration so they’re all effective. You can plow the lake. You can inject oxygen. You can use a pump and baffle. Just depends on the method you choose for a particular situation. Mayor Furlong: Well it sounds like you want to do whatever’s going to work best to make sure that you don’t have winter kill. Peter Sorenson: That’s correct. We actually monitor all the lakes pretty intensively. We have been for the last couple years so we can respond appropriately and working with the DNR and Todd and now plants. Todd Hoffman: Lucy was close to a winter kill last year but it did not occur so. Mayor Furlong: Okay. And were we ready to take action if it got there? Or are we able to do that yet? Todd Hoffman: No. We had a single homeowner who put a pump in a dock location, but we were not in a position as a city or watershed to do that at that time. The last significant, well there’s, people talk about different years. 2001 but ’97, ’96-97 there was a severe winter kill on Lucy and so if you’re monitoring recruitment at that time, that may have been a time, and they’ll find out… Peter Sorenson: That’s right, we will find out. It’s a little bit of a hypothesis now. Looks pretty strong but another point, you have to anticipate winter kill to prevent it. I think Todd would know better than me but there’s sort of lags built into these things and if you don’t have things in place before it’s a crisis situation, it’s probably too late. Todd Gerhardt: So to answer the Mayor’s question is we are not prepared for Lucy or Rice Marsh at this time to put out oxygen into the lake. Peter Sorenson: At this time but this winter we will be for the Marsh, right? David Austin: We budgeted, so it is part of our activities in Rice Marsh Lake, yes. We haven’t budgeted Lucy but we have budgeted Rice Marsh. Peter Sorenson: We’re sort of in a learning curve. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Great, any other questions here? Questions? Questions? 13 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Councilwoman Tjornhom: I don’t have any questions. Mayor Furlong: Thoughts? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I have, you know what you’re doing is, it’s just fascinating to me. I’ve been to a couple of your informative meetings I think at the Legion. Peter Sorenson: Oh good. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And I think one of the slides that really impressed me, although you didn’t show it tonight was where you had a lake and you would isolate a certain chunk of it and kept the carp out and you did an aerial photo. You could just see the water quality. Peter Sorenson: Right. That was Lake Wingren in Wisconsin, yeah. Councilwoman Tjornhom: The clarity was, it was night and day compared to you know where the carp were allowed to swim free. Peter Sorenson: The carp aren’t all the problem but they’re a big part of it and without removing them, David can’t do anything with sediment chemistry and so you’re stuck because they just mix everything up all the time. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Councilman Litsey: Yeah, I’ve seen a previous presentation too. No, but this just kind of refreshes the information that you had and I think we’re fortunate to have this project going on in our community. I commend you for your efforts too. This is pretty neat to have going on and I never realized there was so much to learn about carp but. Peter Sorenson: Well. Councilman Litsey: I had my own ideas about them before I saw this. I took different measures. No, but it’s really I think neat and it is, it’s such a precious resource for us, our lakes in this community was featured recently in being selected as a good place to live and I appreciate your efforts so thank you. Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. Peter Sorenson: Thank you and I’ll leave a card with Todd if anyone ever wants to contact me. I’d be happy to respond. Mayor Furlong: Let’s proceed. There is a proposal before us. Let’s proceed with this and to the extent something additional needs to take place, we can address that at a future meeting that you’re here to request this evening. So there’s a motion, recommended motion in our packet. Would somebody like to make that? 14 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’ll make that. Mayor Furlong: Please. Councilwoman Tjornhom: The Chanhassen City Council approves a temporary permit to allow the University of Minnesota to operate motorized watercraft on Lake Ann as a part of the carp and aquatic vegetation study. This permit is effective for one year but may be administratively extended for one additional year for a maximum duration of two years. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman Litsey: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on this? Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilman Litsey seconded that the Chanhassen City Council approves a temporary permit to allow the University of Minnesota to operate motorized watercraft on Lake Ann as a part of the carp and aquatic vegetation study. This permit is effective for one year but may be administratively extended for one additional year for a maximum duration of two years. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. Appreciate it gentlemen. Councilman Litsey: Thanks for your time. GARY & MARY CONNELL, 6201 MURRAY HILL ROAD: APPROVE RESOLUTION OUTLINING TERMS OF NON-CONFORMING USE FOR CARRIAGE HOUSE. Kate Aanenson: Thank you Mayor, members of the City Council. As you stated this is a resolution to allow, kind of provides the mechanism to allow resolution of a carriage house for personal habitation. In the executive summary we point out in there that this lot has two structures on it. It does have some history. While the structures were there prior, approximately 1937, the city does have documentation in 2001 that we denied a permit on this property to convert it to a dwelling unit. That, the application or the owner at that time went ahead without permits. Put the use in place and those letters are attached. The letters that we sent out. At that time the resolution was…told them they would use it for their own personal use. As you are aware, we’ve had a couple other applications recently where people want to do that. We only allow accessory structures in the principle residence so we don’t have two units on one lot. In looking at this application itself and how the owner came about the property, how it was represented really isn’t kind of between the real estate agent and the property owner. Our resolution in this is, thank you, our resolution in this is to, based on existing, how the house is being used. How the property is being used. So there was a secondary driveway that the staff did note. We asked that that be relocated. We did investigate that yet today and it was not to our satisfaction yet, the vacation of that driveway so that’s something that we do have in the 15 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 resolution so what we’re looking at is to allow the current owner to allow that for their personal use. It’s not to be used for someone outside their family. For their personal use or members of their family and have structured that in an agreement for you to approve for resolution. So that would eliminate the driveway and allow them, or their heirs to use that carriage house facility so only for their personal use. So that’s the recommendation that staff would have for the council at this time and I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for staff at this point? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I have a question and I don’t, you touched on that we’ve had a couple other requests like this in the past and I guess I’m conflicted because we have had some requests in the very recent past regarding this issue, so what makes this different compared to some of those other issues we’ve had? Or requests we’ve had. Kate Aanenson: Correct. I think those circumstances, the one was for the continuation or to combine, put a larger house. Asking for the need to combine and continue use of a non- conformity. In this circumstance it was, it’s our understanding that the owner of the property bought it with the understand that it hadn’t had legal status. It did not. If you were to come to look at the file, all the letters were in the file stating that it did not have status as a separate accessory structure. It was permitted but that was permitted only for their use only. It didn’t transfer to anybody else’s to cease and desist and so it was misrepresented, in our opinion, when it was sold. So again in this, the only other option would be to go through a variance. We told the applicant we would not support a variance and so this was kind of to allow them to continue to use it as it is. Mayor Furlong: If I may Councilwoman Tjornhom, Ms. Aanenson, when was this garage/ carriage house originally constructed? Kate Aanenson: The original carriage house, with the accessory structure in it? With the dwelling unit in it? Mayor Furlong: Well, yeah. Kate Aanenson: The original structure was built in 1937. In 2001 we denied an application for a dwelling unit up there and it was built without a permit. Mayor Furlong: Okay, but wasn’t there a permit then, a subsequent permit that was requested and issued? Kate Aanenson: After it was, it was an after the fact resolution that it was approved as a building structure, with a letter that went to it saying it can be only used for your use. It cannot be rented. Cannot be anybody but the immediate the family can use it. If they want to use it for an art studio or something like that. That’s the resolution that was intended. Something like that. Mayor Furlong: But it was not, the expectation that it would transfer to a future owner? 16 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. And that’s what the letter stated, and that letter is in the, in your packet. That was sent out in 2001. And also stated the city code about it’s non-conforming and it’s just the fact that it was for their use only and that was to rectify the after the fact construction without permits. Mayor Furlong: Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Just wanted to explain to the mayor and council. The last one that we had was an expansion of a non-conforming use so simply you know, we weren’t going to allow that to occur was our recommendation. That was kind of how you could control that facility to be continued to be rented out. History shows that facility was rented out in the past. There were no letters in the file telling them they couldn’t do that. The other mother-in-law apartment was a subdivision so they were, the reason that one got approved was that they created two separate parcels, so one was Lot 1. The other one was Lot 2 so you had two separate parcels of ownership there. This is under one ownership and is the difference. Councilman McDonald: Well I guess I’m a little confused because you had a letter before that it couldn’t transfer to a new owner and yet that’s exactly what’s happened. How does this stop anything going forward? Roger Knutson: Mayor, members of the council. That prior letter was not recorded against the property. If you approve this agreement it will be. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And who was responsible for recording against the property? Was it the City that was supposed to record it against the property or the property owner? Kate Aanenson: I don’t think it was recorded against the property. I think it was sent to the property owner. Councilwoman Tjornhom: But it was supposed to. Kate Aanenson: It was supposed to. He was supposed to represent it and the letter that was represented to the buyer is also in your packet. …that said that he had rights to do it which were clearly, we were never privy to that. Clearly didn’t represent the property correctly. So as the city manager indicated, those are the facts on that. That was one of the reasons why we wanted the second driveway also removed so it just, it made it appear like a single family residence instead of that secondary driveway too. Because there is a garage underneath and then this is on the upper floor. So the garage is pertinent to the principle structure. Councilman Litsey: So this would get recorded against the property then? Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. That was the intent working with the city attorney that this would be so anybody else in the future would be able to find this document. Councilman Litsey: And there couldn’t be any modifications made to this or any upgrades? It’d have to stay as is other than to maintain it’s structural integrity and looks. 17 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Kate Aanenson: That’s, I believe that’s how the agreement is. Mayor Furlong: Does it speak to, Mr. Knutson, anything about expansion? Kate Aanenson: It’s the third point I believe. Councilman Litsey: Is that? I might have to re-read, third point? Roger Knutson: It doesn’t specifically address that that I see, but under your, under state law and under your zoning ordinance it couldn’t be expanded and if they came in and tried to expand it, we’d turn down the permit. The building permit. You could add that. If you want to put that in, that’d be fine. Councilman Litsey: Okay so when I was reading this over I thought there should be some provision in here just to make it clear that. Roger Knutson: That’s a good catch. We’ll add that. Mayor Furlong: Any other questions for staff before we hear from the applicant? Councilman McDonald: I guess one of the things before we’ve always made people re-divide the lots you know in order to do this. Is that even a possibility here? Kate Aanenson: Well this is a little bit different in the fact that the garage is pertinent to the principle structure so this is their garage so. Councilman McDonald: Okay. Kate Aanenson: So I’m not sure the viability of making it a separate structure. It wouldn’t meet setbacks. There might be some other issues there to create. Councilman McDonald: So at that point we’re right back in the position of having to look at variances. Kate Aanenson: Yeah. We did suggest that. They did follow the other variance which was turned down and chose not to pursue that route. Mayor Furlong: Sorry, what was turned down? Kate Aanenson: The other variance that we had the expansion and non-conformity. It was a little bit different but, so they chose not to go down the variance process. Or to appeal an administrative decision. There’s two processes they could have gone and that was to appeal our interpretation of how this was approved so. 18 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Mayor Furlong: But the Connell’s did not choose either a variance process or the appeals process? Kate Aanenson: Correct, or the appeal process. That is correct. Mayor Furlong: Alright. Any other questions at this point before we hear from the comments. Mr. and Mrs. Connell, good evening. Thank you for coming and listening to carp stories. Although it was interesting to hear. At least it was for us. But thank you for coming and happy to listen to some of your comments this evening. Gary Connell: Okay. Can I ask a question first? How did this, it was my understanding this was going to be part of the consent agenda and it got moved off of that. Why? Kate Aanenson: There’s a number of things that were moved off the consent tonight. Gary Connell: But why was this one? Mayor Furlong: I can answer that question. Todd Gerhardt: I can answer it Mayor. Mayor Furlong: Okay, Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: I moved it off the consent agenda because the two previous applications we had, I thought we’d better clarify this to the City Council so every one’s a little different and so I thought maybe the council may have several questions on it and pulled it off the consent. Gary Connell: Okay. Yeah, my name’s Gary Connell. Current owner of 6201 Murray Hill. Yeah I’d like to add some, offer some comments. I’ll make it, read it. I did write it out so I’ll just read it and then we can kind of go over it. Some of it. Some of this may conflict with maybe some of the things you’ve heard here tonight already but, and those are things you may want to discuss. So originally the property was built in the 30’s, which you heard. Both structures. Actually 3 structures. The main house, the carriage house and a shed which in earlier years was a stable. Used to stable horses. We purchased the property last fall from a family that used both the main house and, for their family, and their father lived in the carriage house. Both structures have you know obviously separate plumbing, water, heat, electric, etc. We discovered the fact that the city took exception to the former owner’s use of the carriage house when we, back when we originally purchased, had a purchase agreement in on the house. We asked for clarification from the owner and they provided us a letter which is in that document that you saw. In that the owner provided, in that letter, their statement basically presented that you know two structures and their use may be continued because they are grandfathered as allowed by city ordinance. In 2001 the City made a declaration that the carriage house could not be occupied to the homeowners. The carriage house however had since been occupied by their father, as I had mentioned earlier, from that time until we bought it last year. Last fall the City sent us, the new owners, a letter stating that we could not occupy the carriage house. I asked city personnel for evidence that the grandfather status was not valid, which was you know the claim of the person 19 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 whom we bought it from. None was given to me. Staff did not provide me with any evidence to indicate that it was not grandfathered. Rather I believe it was presumed by the city personnel, and this is my belief, that the prior notification in 2001 was enough to establish that fact. Their position that it wasn’t grandfathered. In 2001 the former owner did re-lay out the interior of that structure, of the carriage house. This is all of the work that staff suggested was converting it to become an occupiable structure. Habitable structure. That’s not a correct statement. The house was previous occupied and used for habitation. It had water. Had sewer. Had heat prior to that, internal remodeling the interior of the house that the former owner did. They basically restructured it to make it a little bit nicer for their father to live in. In spite of the fact that the city could not provide me with evidence, I repeatedly asked what I could do to establish that it is indeed still in a grandfather state. That’s key to this whole discussion. Grandfathered, I’m under the understanding. Maybe I’m wrong, but the ordinance clearly provides for grandfathering the use of that structure and uses of the structures. If they were in place before ordinance to the contrary, which this was and I’ll throw in a… I did have a visit from a gal, Ella Nagele Fitzsimmons who bought the house in the mid 40’s to mid 70’s. At that time it was used for habitation and that’s clearly long before the 1970 whatever ordinance went in for this. So I interrupted there so what I was saying is I repeatedly asked what I needed to do to establish grandfather status since the city’s position was that it’s not grandfathered I felt it was my responsibility to do what I needed to do to establish that it is. They never provided me with what I needed to do to satisfy them that grandfather status was, that it could be considered to still have grandfather status. I have also told the city personnel, staff that I’m not in a position to retain legal counsel. Obviously we didn’t, we didn’t agree with each other. I thought we were grandfathered. They didn’t. I’m not in a position where I could retain legal counsel, nor for that matter the expenses associated with going through all these appeals, you know and such to try to work out this matter. So hence this proposal that staff put together came forth. We are grateful for this proposal because it means that we have an opportunity to legally occupy and live in the house. Okay. But I am disappointed with the action. With one item with respect to this proposal and that is that staff advised me that this is final. I may not pursue after this resolution goes into effect any future efforts to try to establish that if it was grandfathered or not. Okay. So I don’t know how best to describe, to summarize this entire exchange I’ve had with the city. Whether it’s real or perceived, perhaps perceived but I’m, first of all I want to say again I’m grateful for the proposal that staff has put together to give me this opportunity but at the same time I feel I’ve been railroaded. Almost forgive me, an abuse of power I mean is being applied here because I can’t get help to resolve this matter to get the information I need to provide you to get this understanding remedied about the true status of this property so. But so regarding, regarding the measure before you, if possible I ask that one, at least one thing would be changed. You know your comments about not moving, well about you know, you’re at but also paragraph 2. The Whereas paragraph where it is not in use for one year. That’s a declaration in the resolution that suggests that that’s what dis, would prevent it from being classified as grandfathered. In the ordinance it says if something is not used for a year it’s no longer grandfathered. I’ve asked, I emailed and called staff for evidence to establish that you know when it was not used for a year and I was not given that information so I think that’s a… Second paragraph needs to be removed. In any case however, I mean with all of this kind of offensive remarks I might have made and such, I urge you to approve the measure again to allow us to legally live here in the city of Chanhassen. So I guess that’s, I’ve got some other comments I want to make but not directly, that are, though they’re all point with respect to accessory 20 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 dwelling units but those are the comments I have with respect to our interaction we’ve had with the city so far so maybe I should stop there and see if there’s any questions or further clarification that you have. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Questions for Mr. Connell. Councilman McDonald: I guess the question I have is what do you intend to do? Why do you need the carriage house? Gary Connell: It’s the, our original intent, which remains is to use it as an independent living unit as an in-law apartment. When we first bought it, the respective persona was my mother-in- law who’s in Florida and her husband had just died. She’s, now we’ve gone through all of this and you know it’s not the kind of thing where you want to commit to something like that so that isn’t going to happen, but we also use it to, where my wife takes care for our handicap niece. Does respite care for her and we use it for that purpose, and actually that’s, the secondary driveway which is up by the, you saw the topology of it. We originally wanted to put a ramp in from that, for handicap access, but obviously at this point, I mean that’s the least of our considerations and concerns and desires. We just want to be able to use the house. Going forward we have no other use for it other than as an auxiliary dwelling unit for family. Never intended and never will rent it, because that’s not in code as far as I understand. On a single family lot and we don’t want to go there. And so I guess, and maybe, well. If I can, I’ll jump in. What I also wanted to do was kind of make a, encourage the City Council and members, mayor and council members to consider a new trend that there is going on in residential zoning, well. Or any other questions first before I go in… Kate Aanenson: If I can just give a point of clarification. On the non-conforming because that was where there was a disconnect between the applicant and the city staff. Mayor Furlong: And that was the second whereas that he brought up. Kate Aanenson: Yes. Mayor Furlong: Please, yes. Kate Aanenson: In 1972 the city ordinance was one structure so in our opinion the non- conforming status really wasn’t the critical issue because it’s been in violation since 1972, which and our records show kind of where...so really for us it was a non issue and we didn’t feel the burden of proof was our’s to prove. The city’s to prove that it’s been in continuous use because it’s been in violation since 1972. The introduction of the first city code. So that for us was kind of the non part of the issue. Trying to find if they’ve been vacated for a year or something like that. So in the spirit of compromise, trying to resolve this issue, we agreed to draft it. During the drafting there was, well I still want this burden of proof relieved and we’re saying we’re going to live with it the way it is. That was the staff’s position. With this recommendation. Obviously we’re looking at one modification but that was our position that we thought would resolve their ability to use it for family members, and kind of getting over that hurdle and in our opinion the, 21 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 whether it had been used or not for the one year, it’s been in violation that number of years so we weren’t trying to find that proof. Mayor Furlong: I guess the question, and maybe this is a question now for Mr. Knutson in terms of non-conforming use and what constitutes that. I mean we run into that sometimes with setbacks or impervious surface coverage of things but this is more of a use of a property as opposed to the physical improvements on the property. Are there differences? Roger Knutson: Well this is really non-conforming in two respects. I guess they’re related. You can’t have two houses on one lot. And you can’t use one lot for two dwellings, and you couldn’t have, put up, I don’t know anything about this house but a second floor for another family and use the first floor for yourself. It has to be used as a single family use. So that’s not conforming both as a use and the structure. Mayor Furlong: And is there anything Mr. Knutson that if a, if with the passage of an ordinance of use that it was in existence becomes non-conforming, are they allowed, we’ve used, heard the grandfathered but. Roger Knutson: They can continue. Mayor Furlong: Continue to. Roger Knutson: They can continue unless they’re, been discontinued for one year. That’s the current standard. Kate Aanenson: Right. But again our position was it was never legitimate so it didn’t have that same non-conforming. That was our position. Roger Knutson: There should never have been two homes on one lot. Kate Aanenson: Correct. So that, there wasn’t a burden in our opinion to prove there so. Mayor Furlong: But those were their. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, well that’s the yeah. Right, right. So that’s the disconnect. And I just want to add for the, and I’m sure you want to talk about this too but the city does allow accessory structures and we have those opportunities but it has to be in the principle structure. If your garage is attached, it’s over your garage but it’s attached to the house, we do allow those and those come through a variance process and we do have a number of those that we do permit because it is a nice opportunity for, to have someone live with you that needs the care and we do permit those, and it has been on our ordinance probably 20-25 years so we do permit that. It’s just when you do the separate unit then it’s. Mayor Furlong: The detached. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, sometimes they become other things that we want to control. 22 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Gary Connell: Yeah, right on top of that. I mean what I did, I didn’t know what to come, how to, what to prepare so I asked the question why did this get pulled over to this consent agenda so I thought I wanted to do what I could to make a, make some statements to the council. And what I wanted to add to this was that you know there is a trend. You know that this use that we’re planning on using this house for, is typical of an emerging trend within this country. As a matter of fact Minnetrista just this spring enacted an ordinance, Ordinance 315 which specifies just what is this code with respect to how to build an ADU. Accessory Dwelling Unit. In other words a separate unit. Again the idea is for independence. Behind this whole thing. The American Planning Association is, quotes towns, cities and countries, or counties across the country have done the right thing by proactively amending local zoning ordinance to allow ADU’s. There’s a you know publication from those guys. The Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington has done extensive work to outline in great detail how to make ADU work in municipal ordinances. In other words this is a trend that’s coming. I’m not saying that I am trying to put on the plate that we need to do it here in Orono but what I’m worried about is that you guys are going to well, basically I was kind of prepared if you guys were going to just shoot me down I was going to say you know how can you know, how can this be the, you know you elected officials of this great city of Chanhassen consider you know harming a citizen. No offenses have been committed. No community safety issues are involved. No change to the standing neighborhood community will occur. It’s been this way for decades. Used this way for decades I might add. If you’re willing to expel me and my wife at this time, when you know we’re, because of other reasons which I don’t think we need to go into, it’d be a great hardship because yeah, everybody’s got their financials going on with this economy. So I guess I’m prepared with. Mayor Furlong: Let me ask a question before we go on because these are issues that come up, and I think we’ve talked about that and Councilwoman Tjornhom brought up the fact that we’ve had some other ones and a lot of them are facts are circumstances driven. They do have unique aspects and there are differences and some uniqueness to your situation here that we, that I don’t think we’ve seen in some of the other ones. One of the questions that came up earlier in our questioning about the agreement was expansion and so I guess I will ask the two of you, do you have any intention to expand the size of the carriage house or garage in terms of… Gary Connell: No. Mayor Furlong: Larger living quarters there. Gary Connell: Pardon me? Mayor Furlong: Do you have any intention to expand the living quarters and make it larger? Gary Connell: The carriage house, no. I had requested at one time, staff if I could add to the main house and I was told no, I cannot do that. So therefore the answer to your question is no because I’m told I can’t. Would I want to, to the carriage house? No. Mayor Furlong: Okay. 23 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Gary Connell: The carriage house is a very nice in-law type of apartment. Mayor Furlong: And this agreement is specific to the carriage house use and so I think if we, you wouldn’t object to us including language in terms of no expansion of the carriage house. Gary Connell: Oh, absolutely not. Mayor Furlong: Because that came up and I think that’d be a concern. I’m going to go back to a comment that you just made Mr. Connell. Not able to expand their current dwelling, is that? Kate Aanenson: No. Mayor Furlong: There’s no limit. Gary Connell: Staff told me I could not but. Kate Aanenson: I think that’s why we’re trying because this has been going on for a while. I think we’re trying to get resolution of this first. I’m not positive. I’m not aware of that conversation but that may have been somebody else. Mayor Furlong: I would encourage you to work with Ms. Aanenson or anyone on her staff and make sure that you’re getting, you know that you’re getting answers to your questions because I think the, I don’t know, and I guess I’ll put it back to staff if there’s any reason why the main dwelling unit couldn’t be expanded. Todd Gerhardt: Did you specify which way you were going to go with the expansion? Mayor Furlong: Was it too close to the property line or something? Gary Connell: Oh, it’s about an acre lot. If I did an expansion it would probably be out. You’ve got a picture. Be going up the hill, out the back. And to the. Kate Aanenson: Let’s back up though. There’s two dwelling units on the structure so as the city attorney stated, that means that the lot itself is non-conforming so we’re trying to resolve this issue so we can move to the other issue. That’s… Mayor Furlong: And that could be. I mean I can certainly see that prior to this issue being settled, not providing a person to expand one of the dwelling units would certainly be a reasonable response from city staff. Kate Aanenson: Right. Gary Connell: Of course I’m prepared, I mean I’ve already pretty much, like I said before I mean, you know you can’t fight, I feel I can’t fight city hall. I have to take the best I can get and 24 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 so right now I believe that’s I can’t do anything to anything. Okay. Now if I get any leniency beyond that, I’m grateful for that and I. Roger Knutson: Just a couple quick comments. As far as the ADU, accessory dwelling units. The city has had in it’s city code maybe 20 years the provision to allow that, so if that’s a trend, we’re ahead of the trend because it’s in the city code but it just has to be part of the same dwelling unit. It can’t be a separate structure so it’s there. So we do provide for that. And the purpose of this agreement is considering all the facts and circumstances, to try to bring a resolution understanding the plight of the property owner and the situation with the city’s code, of a reasonable resolution of a difficult problem and we think this agreement is it. I think it’s, with the addition of no intensification of their non-conforming carriage house. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Very good. Kate Aanenson: Yep. Mayor Furlong: If there’s nothing else then Mr. Connell, what I’ll do is bring it back to the council and we’ll consider the. Gary Connell: Maybe just one last comment. I guess the one point I think which is being missed the biggest and that is that it’s grandfathered. Kate Aanenson: Again we’re getting on the disconnect. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Roger Knutson: Do you want the council to approve this agreement? Gary Connell: Okay. I see… Kate Aanenson: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s been the problem and just to be clear, the staff has been the one to advocate getting this on the agenda. We kept delaying it, delaying it, delaying it and we wanted to have this discussion and bring it forward because we want resolution to take the cloud off the property so yeah. Gary Connell: One last thing. Can we remove that second paragraph? That clears that, which is not based on fact unless you have evidence. Roger Knutson: We think it is based on fact and we think it should remain. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, staff would be reluctant to take that out. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. 25 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Gary Connell: Can I get that? Councilman McDonald: Can I ask? You’re talking about the second one deals with driveways? What are we talking about? Kate Aanenson: Again there’s two driveways to the property. That’s. Councilman McDonald: But is that what he wants removed? Kate Aanenson: No. He wants to be able to come back and prove to us later that there’s non- conformity and we’re saying since 1970 it’s been non-conforming so that to us, we don’t want that to, if he comes back and says this is how it was being used, that would really what the effect of that would be would to abate this whole resolution. Councilman Litsey: I don’t see where that would really help you anyway because I mean you’re intended use is as stated in this agreement so to me it’s somewhat moot anyway because you wouldn’t be using it for any other purpose anyway so this agreement accomplishes what you need. Gary Connell: Yeah, I guess just for the record the secondary driveway was also in there since the 1940’s and you see a boat there now. There is a storage area at the top of the garage which is only accessible through that access. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, there’s a car there today. I’m not sure yeah, but. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Thank you. Let’s bring it to the council then for any follow up questions or discussion. Councilman Litsey: I’d be willing to start. I think that adding that addition or addendum to that would be helpful and then I think I’d be comfortable with it. I think, I commend staff actually for working on a creative solution for this and trying to give some reasonable use of that property and still have some safeguards in place in terms of future use so I think you accomplished quite a bit here. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yeah, you know I, Mr. Connell I feel sorry for your frustration you feel regarding you can’t fight city hall and your frustration of staff because I think that our goal as a city, as a council is to be very accessible and to try to work these things out and I think the attorney said it best. That this is probably a reasonable resolution to a very difficult problem. If your main goal is to be able to use the carriage house, I think that’s the road we’re heading right now and I too am willing to go ahead with the recommendation staff has before us to allow you to use it and hopefully the next time you come upon staff you’ll be able to have a better experience. Mayor Furlong: Look for other opportunities. Mr. McDonald. 26 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Councilman McDonald: Well you know I think that the agreement, I mean this is a difficult situation so my hats off to staff and the city attorney who crafted out a good thing. The other resolution to this is we all go to court. You talked about how this doesn’t hurt you. Well unfortunately we don’t look at it from your standpoint. We have to look at it from the city’s standpoint and we’ve had a number of these issues where people don’t follow the code and all of a sudden we have a nuisance and that’s the thing we have to worry about. We have to look out for your neighbors also. We have to look out for other people who don’t have the same circumstances that you do and decide they’re going to turn this into a profit center and they bring in people that just basically are not good neighbors because they don’t live there and they really don’t care and then they come to us and we have to deal with it. So that’s what we’re trying to put in place and that’s why we have these ordinances. Yeah, from our perspective, yeah this has got to end. It should ended whenever you bought the property but something happened along the way and that didn’t happen so I think it’s got to end with your ownership and that’s what we’re trying to carve out here so this is a difficult problem. Again it gives you the use you’re looking for. I think that I can support, as far as what Councilman Litsey had said. You know add that in. Let’s tighten it up a little bit but. Mayor Furlong: And that you, Councilman McDonald was no expansion of use or… Councilman McDonald: Right. Yeah. Mayor Furlong: Well my thought is I want to move this forward but whether or not we insert language right now, Mr. Knutson, into the agreement or whether we propose it with that and then just move it forward. I want to move this forward. If a revised agreement needs to come back, we can certainly bring that back consent because we’ve talked about it, unless we can move it forward. Roger Knutson: I think you can move it forward Mayor. I have the understanding that this will prohibit a replacement, intensification or expansion of the carriage house during such time it is used as a dwelling. Can be used as a dwelling. Councilman McDonald: Okay, I’m fine. Mayor Furlong: And is that, that’s consistent with your expectations as well? Again, it was a question of, the question if you have no intention of expanding it or. Yeah, okay. Alright. Very good. My thoughts are similar. I think this is a reasonable solution to a problem that was created a while ago and that you stepped into. Not intentionally but one that the Connell’s stepped into and you know we need to find something that works best for everybody. Unfortunately these situations turn up from time to time and usually it’s when the property is transferred that they rise to a head, which is what happened here and expectations can’t be achieved with other limitations at the city and so we need to come up with a solution. You know it’s, I think there’s probably some frustration on everybody’s part but that probably means we’ve got a pretty fair agreement inbetween. It may not be perfect for anybody and, but hopefully it’ll be a way to allow Connell’s to use their property as they wanted to and once this is settled look for, if there are objectives on their part to expand the main dwelling or something, that those 27 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 might be available. Those options might also open up and be available to you as well so I would certainly support this again. It sounds like the other council members do as well with the added limitation that Mr. Knutson just mentioned will be added to the agreement prior to signing by all parties. Is there any other discussions on that? If not, is there somebody that would like to make a motion to adopt the resolution agreement? Councilman Litsey: I’ll go ahead and make the motion. And we’ll add that in as we go I guess so, but that we approve the attached resolution and agreement with the additional language that was stated previous by the city attorney allowing the property owner and their heirs to use the carriage house for personal habitation. The carriage house may only be used for personal use while under ownership of the current property owner and their children as named in the attached agreement and may not be rented. I don’t know if you want that actual language stated for the record. Mayor Furlong: With the, yes please do. One addition will be added to the agreement, Mr. Knutson. Roger Knutson: Right, and I’ll paraphrase it. I don’t have the exact wording. Mayor Furlong: That’s fine. Roger Knutson: The carriage house may not be expanded, intensified, or structurally changed during such time as it’s used as a dwelling. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilman McDonald: I’ll second it. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on that? Resolution #2009-62: Councilman Litsey moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the Chanhassen City Council approves the attached resolution and agreement allowing the property owner and their heirs to use the carriage house for personal habitation. The carriage house may only be used for personal use while under ownership of the current property owner and their children as named in the attached agreement and may not be rented. The carriage house may not be expanded, intensified, or structurally changed during such time as it’s used as a dwelling. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. CONSIDER APPROVAL OF AMENDMENT TO CHAPTER 20 OF CHANHASSEN CITY CODE: A. ELECTRONIC MESSAGE CENTER SIGNS. B. BOATS AND WATERWAYS. 28 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Kate Aanenson: Electronic message center. This is the first code amendment. This was pulled off from the Planning Commission. They wanted to spend a little bit more time looking at the nexus between the display area and the sign itself. So the goal again, kind of talking about being more flexible on these, would be permit scrolling. For the message center itself. Allowing multiple colors. Continue to prohibit animation and special effects. Increase the area for electronic message center and then approve these with, instead of a conditional use, we did do them administratively. Right now the CUP requires kind of onerous process which was the 60 day public hearing. A significant larger fee so the goal here was to put the criteria in place that someone, if they could meet the criteria, then they could just come through administrative process. So that was what the Planning Commission spent their due diligence talking philosophically how many of these we have in town. I attached those maps. I’m not going to go through those tonight but kind of look at you know, do we want to be really lit up and how, where would these go and how would they look and, and good for them. They spent a lot of time discussing that. So with the administrative process, much shorter time frame to come through and then an obvious reduction in fee for out doing a hearing notice. So this is where they spent their due diligence. Looking at the percentages and the sign area. Starting with the 24 square feet, up to 50%. 64 square feet, down to 28. Almost 30%, and then at 80, just over 32%. Again that’s, it’ll give you still a place to put your logo, your name, identification which most of the businesses do and then give you that scrolling area. Again kind of, this is the different variations we have in the community. The biggest one obviously the cinema. Different applications of how they’re being used today. So again this is one of those things, looking at the business community, providing that flexibility so with that they have the proposed amendment before you. The definitions we’ll address later when we get to that section of the code but this is what the Planning Commission and the staff is recommending so we do have a proposed motion for you and I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for staff. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I have a question. Once again in the near past we had a variance for a sign and we had a debate whether or not raised letters or not were appropriate. Did the Planning Commission address that at all and what our policies will be for that? Kate Aanenson: Yeah, I think we looked at that one but we do allow a larger logo percentage and then the raised letters doesn’t have to be the embossed. They can still be, as we’ve always said, the relief on those can be, the individual letters go on wall signs but if you look on the monument signs is how we address those. They don’t have to be individual letters on the monument signs. They can just be the panel raised embossed. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Mayor Furlong: Other questions? Councilman McDonald: I guess the only question I’ve got is okay, this is LED technology. Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. 29 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Councilman McDonald: What’s going to happen as this thing goes up…well the future of flat panels and you can do a lot of stuff with those too. Are we going to be right back here again? Kate Aanenson: We may. Roger Knutson: Councilman, absolutely. Unfortunately in many ways laws like these are reactive because someone comes up with new technology and then we have to react to it. We’re not clever enough to figure out what the next generation of technology is to regulate it before it happens. Kate Aanenson: In our community we don’t have any billboards so that would be kind of the next generation up where some of the communities had some, you know had to go through ordinance amendments to address that. Electronic billboards. We don’t have that so we’re kind of moving our way, and again the Planning Commission spent a lot of time on how much light and kind of glitz they wanted to add and where it seems appropriate. Certainly we talked about before, which we’ve already looked at, the community signs which you think are important. The one that we just got here in front of city hall. The high schools as message centers. Those are really important. And certainly for gas stations. When they want to price out gas. That’s an important message center too. So we’re looking at those applications but again I think the Planning Commission felt really good about, they spent a couple of work sessions then, actually two public hearings gathering input on this and it did go to the business group too to review. Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Just out of curiosity. With the new standards that have been put in place and kind of having something to reflect on now and, the sign that we had a discrepancy with south of 5, would that have met this criteria? Kate Aanenson: Yeah, that one’s on here. Mayor Furlong: Is that the recent variance? Is that the recent variance permit? Oh no, no, no. I’m sorry. Yeah, okay. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, they were ahead of this and that sign is actually on here. That’s an 8. Todd Gerhardt: No. Kate Aanenson: Isn’t that the. Mayor Furlong: You’re referring to the one further south. Councilman McDonald: Further south. Councilwoman Tjornhom: South I think on Lyman. 30 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Kate Aanenson: That was over 20 feet high so that wouldn’t, we don’t allow signs over, that tall down there. They could have had an 8 foot one but they wanted I believe something closer to 15. Mayor Furlong: It’s also in the agriculture district, is that correct? Kate Aanenson: Oh, that sign. That’s still, it’s agriculturally zoned. It doesn’t. Mayor Furlong: Agriculture is not allowed. These signs are not… Kate Aanenson: That was on a gas station. Mayor Furlong: …and more residential district. Kate Aanenson: Right. All of these signs are based on the zoning district. So it’d be only the commercial zoning districts and the industrial. We do not allow electronic message centers on any residential or agriculturally zoned property. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, and I just was curious as I was reading this I was thinking why would that sign. Kate Aanenson: So that hasn’t changed. This is still providing those signs that, those properties that can have a monument or a pylon sign now have the opportunity to have electronic message center if they meet the criteria. Mayor Furlong: And this defines the… Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. That’s correct. And light intensity. Some of the things that we struggled with. The flashing. The blinking. Those sort of things. Changeable copy frequency. Mayor Furlong: To your knowledge does this ordinance create any existing signs that don’t, are there any existing signs that would not qualify under this proposed ordinance? Kate Aanenson: I do not believe so. We did look at that on the map in here and I do not believe there was any that would be non-conforming. Some of them were PUD so they had built into that PUD were given some specific criteria for that, which may be the Walgreen’s, if I can go back to that. That’s a 46% and that’s. Yeah, that one would be probably bigger. Yeah. That was approved. Mayor Furlong: But now if it was allowed within a PUD, if it. Kate Aanenson: Or with that site plan approval given a variance. Mayor Furlong: Was it a variance or just… Kate Aanenson: That one may have, I believe that one was probably given. 31 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Mayor Furlong: …cause a problem? Kate Aanenson: That was given a variance I believe. Roger Knutson: If it were allowed by a PUD specifically then that would control it. It’s more specific than this. Mayor Furlong: Even if the ordinance becomes more restrictive later? Roger Knutson: That’s correct because that’s what PUD’s are all about. Kate Aanenson: Right, yeah. Or a variance criteria, which I believe. Roger Knutson: Or variance. Kate Aanenson: Right, which I believe the Legion was given a variance too. So those have a different status. Mayor Furlong: And this proposed ordinance would require alpha numeric characters only? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Furlong: No logos or other types of graphics? Kate Aanenson: That’s correct, and I think that was some additional language that we got from some other communities so. The flashing, the blinking, the animation. Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry Ms. Aanenson. Kate Aanenson: No, I think that was some of the additional criteria that we just added on based on some input from the city attorney and some other ones that he, other communities that he’s been working in and that would be the graphic, the pictures. A lot of that stuff that can be distracting as you’re watching some of the changeable copy. Again these are, our definition is emc, electronic message center intended to deliver, concert tonight. Price of gas. Bingo. What’s showing at the movie theater. Not to be you know, cartoonish or something. Mayor Furlong: Now I know the cinema sign in the past has had some graphics but we worked with them and they’re agreeable to this and the business council down, the chamber was also amenable. Kate Aanenson: Yep, we reviewed it with them so. Yeah. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We will pick up the definitions that were in the. 32 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Kate Aanenson: Yeah, I had separate motions on all of these. Mayor Furlong: Yep, and that’s what I’m looking for right now so, and these are just related to Chapter 20, is that correct? Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: With regard to electronic messaging center signs. Would somebody like to adopt a proposed motion with regard to the proposed amendments to Chapter 20 for electronic message center signs? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Is it just on the front, the first page. Mayor Furlong: 4. Councilwoman Tjornhom: 4? Real quick one? Mayor Furlong: The first page of 4. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So I make a motion the City Council adopt the proposed amendment to Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code as outlined in the staff report. Mayor Furlong: And if you could clarify that by just referring to electronic message centers. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Referring to electronic message center signs. Mayor Furlong: Because the next motion is identical. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I don’t see it. Mayor Furlong: It’s just further down under 4(b). Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Mayor Furlong: This is 4(a). So this is just referring to electronic message center. Kate Aanenson: 4(a), that’s correct. Mayor Furlong: A motion’s been made. Is there a second? Councilman Litsey: Second. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any discussion? Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilman Litsey seconded that the Chanhassen City Council adopt the proposed amendments to Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code as 33 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 outlined in the staff report relating to Electronic Message Center Signs. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. Mayor Furlong: Let’s move on now to item 4(b) which also deals with some proposed code amendments relating to boats and watercraft. st Kate Aanenson: Thank you. On July 21 the Planning Commission recommended 5 to 0 to approve this amendment regarding boats and waterways. As you recall we had this in the Chapter 6 and it had different standards for variances. All structures should be addressed in Chapter 20 which has a mechanism in place to appeal and to process a variance so it’s uniformly applied throughout the city. So the boats and waterways really addresses how you operate on the water. The boat speed. Those sort of things. Not structures. Not docks. That really belongs in the structure section so everything that is being removed is being put into Chapter 20, but the section regarding variances and addressing the City Council because that will be silent on that because that will fall in that Chapter 20. There is a structure, a mechanism put in place to seek relief from those. As a part of that you’ll be seeing in that Chapter amendment for definitions just clarifying a couple things and that would be the definition of cross bars where it’s just easier to measure and that was a recommendation from the Water Resources Coordinator so those are all taken out. And then we did add one other thing and that was that we wanted to add that all structures comply with the DNR regulations. So if some shoreland reg was to change regarding docks, or something like that, then we wouldn’t have to amend the ordinance. It would be consistent with that. So that would clarify the fact that we had variances processes in two section of the code. So I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have on that. Mayor Furlong: This is a combination of clean-up and some improvement to the code. Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions on this? No? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the amendments to Chapter 20 with regard to boats and waterways? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’ll make the motion that the City Council adopt proposed amendments to Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code as outlined in the staff report pertaining to the structures, boats and waterway section of the city code. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman Litsey: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion? Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilman Litsey seconded that the Chanhassen City Council adopt the proposed amendments to Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code as outlined in the staff report pertaining to boats and waterways. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. 34 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 CONSENT AGENDA: (I). CHANHASSEN CITY CODE: APPROVE AMENDMENT TO CHAPTER 1, DEFINITIONS. Mayor Furlong: I don’t know that we need to get into any discussion but these are various definitions. There were six issues, two of which related to the proposed code, the ordinances we just passed so. Kate Aanenson: I can just be really brief on each of the issues if you’d like. Mayor Furlong: That’d be fine. Kate Aanenson: Sure. So the first issue, in general business we were short some definitions. We always go to the industrial classification to identify certain use. Our code do not define auto dealer, auto repair body shop, and auto services so by this amendment, we add those definitions. The second issue was buildable land. We do exempt, and this is consistent with the Metropolitan Council, wetlands, public waters and lands dedicated for streets. We don’t count those towards what we would use for density. Issue three was the Freedom to Breathe, which we’ve talked about before. Those definitions were not added so we’re adding those. Indoor air. Public transportation and then smoking. The definition of what defines smoking. Issue four was a result of what is a vegetation. Acceptable vegetation based on a wetland buffer. There’s certain classifications that are required so we define that. Issue number five relates to what we just approved tonight. Electronic message center. Definition of a electronic message center and then issue six as we just approved on the, or your recommendation for approval was regarding the cross bar and the definition of a cross bar. We’re taking out that L and T shape. It’s just, it seemed incongruous when you’re trying to measure a dock length so it’s really what’s parallel to the shore itself. So we are proposing those amendments and be happy to answer any questions you have on those. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions on any of those items? No? Is there a motion to approve? Councilman Litsey: I make a motion the City Council adopt a proposed amendments to Chapter 1 of the Chanhassen City Code as outlined in the staff report. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Councilman Litsey moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the Chanhassen City Council approve the proposed amendments to Chapter 1, Definitions of the Chanhassen City Code as presented in the staff report. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. 35 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 CONSENT AGENDA: (C). POLLUTION CONTROL AGENCY: APPROVE RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF HOSTING A MINNESOTA GREENCORPS INTERN. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I don’t know how many council members I guess have really read, looked the proposed item (c). I see that there, we have a lot of good projects and this is a good project too but we have a lot of important projects that we deal with and to me this just seemed like one of those projects where, with all good intentions I guess you know…it will start out as a little tree survey and study and I’m not quite sure where it will end and I’m not also quite sure of the validity of it. If it’s something that we really need to be addressing and studying as a city. So I just would like to have a brief discussion I guess along this item and find out some other people’s opinions. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Why don’t we get, this is, relates to a resolution relating to the GreenCorps members being in the city for purposes of tree inventory. Maybe go to a quick staff report then for a little bit of background and then we can discuss it. Todd Gerhardt: Kate, you want to give a little background on GreenCorps and I can talk about the benefits of the staff. Kate Aanenson: Sure. The grant itself is to apply for, it’s AmeriCorps going through a program called GreenCorps so we would provide the space here at city hall. All the money, or the salary for this position would be paid for so we would just be providing the space itself so it’s intended to be a short term contract. The City does inventory all of our trees and we kind of keep that on the management basis of what needs to be pruned, trimmed with our GPS. If you were to add a layer, we have some of that. Street trees and other and specifically concerning species of trees. When we have certain diseases. We like to know where those are and try to manage those a little bit more carefully. That’s one of those areas that we don’t get to. So that was the opportunity to use that to help inventory, continue the inventory. We don’t have the inventory completed. Todd Gerhardt: And the City has made a very large investment into our boulevard tree program and like any type of investment that you make, you have to maintain it. We keep records of our trucks and tractors and pay loaders and you know when the oil was changed and when the tires were replaced and same thing with our boulevard tree program. We want to make sure that we keep an inventory of when they’ve been pruned. When they have been replaced due to disease and what the cause of that was. We thought that having an intern come in and do that and GPS it for locations would create a database for us to monitor over the years. Councilman McDonald: You know I guess I hear what you’re saying but that’s not exactly what I’m reading so it’s like I can understand some of the concern. I mean we do this anyway. I don’t read that this program is to give us help. This program has other ulterior motives to it, to come back and I think, I guess that’s the concern is that it seems to be more than getting just an intern. That this data can be used to come back and tell us what we need to do within the community. Kate Aanenson: Well that’s something that we already do already. We inventory all the trees. We already have a layer, a database created that we GPS’d. The problem is, especially summers like this where we have a lot of disease inspection, we haven’t been able to continue to, just like 36 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 we GPS all of our outlet structures. It’s just a data layer that we, so we are already collecting the data. The problem is we don’t always have the time, it’s as, it’s as you have the time then you can do that sort of thing. So we already have that data, so this was an opportunity. There’s limited ways you can use this resource. On that cover sheet, you know school…prevention. We didn’t meet that. The one that we met was the urban forestry so it’s just an opportunity to get somebody here. Paid to be here to be specifically used for the continued, or complete the data that we haven’t been able to accomplish. Todd Gerhardt: It doesn’t need to be this organization. I mean if we want to turn it into a, you know an Eagle Scout project for individuals. This is just one of the programs that was out there where we could find an available individual for no cost other than management of that individual. We’ve got the equipment. We’ve got the software. It’s just a matter of having somebody physically GPS each of the boulevards. Councilman Litsey: I mean maybe I’m missing something here because by profession I’m suspicious by nature but I didn’t see the down side I guess, if there is one, that this committed us to anything beyond what’s here. Right? I mean they simply do an inventory and there’s no obligation that we commit beyond that. Todd Gerhardt: Well my guess is we will expand our inventory of boulevard tree programs as we develop our community. There may be other areas where we want to put them in, and there’s always the replacement and, but you would have to approve that in the future. Councilman Litsey: I guess that’s what I’m getting at. There’s nothing that, by doing this we could stop after doing this and that would be the end of it, if we wanted to. I mean it’s subject to our approval how far we would want to carry this forward but I mean trees are a huge asset to the community and a resource that I think having an inventory of that is really helpful, especially with the diseases that are, well the ash. Councilman McDonald: I guess I’m not arguing against the inventory. Yeah, we ought to be doing that but you know if you bring up that part of it is, we just want to know what’s out there. Then I’d say yeah, give it to an Eagle Scout or something. Keep everything… Kate Aanenson: The only problem with an Eagle Scout is someone has to know the species of trees as they’re inputting them and that sort of data. Normally what we do that with someone that’s trained in that kind of. Councilman Litsey: Again I don’t, what’s the down side though? I mean I don’t see, I don’t, I mean maybe I’m missing it. I mean I’m trying to I guess find it. I don’t see that there’s any down side. Do you have somebody that knows their, is it species is the right word of trees? Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I think I’m, maybe it’s a gray area for me because I think we have a forester already on staff that should be doing this or is doing this. And what kind of bothers me is the paragraph that says that the selected host sites are responsible for providing professional 37 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 supervision, office space and supplies, necessary training, ongoing reporting to the MPCA and measurable outcomes. You know what, okay we’re getting I guess someone free per se but I don’t think they sound very free you know. What is the cost in time and training, in supervision and everything else and at the end of the day aren’t we already doing that anyway with our forester? Todd Gerhardt: To have Jill take up you know, she works 32 hours a week and to have her take up most of her time to inventory all the trees, she couldn’t do her day to day stuff that she does already. Councilman McDonald: But isn’t she going to have to supervise these people anyway? Todd Gerhardt: You know there would be some up front direction to train the individual in, but they would be able to go out on their own after that. Mayor Furlong: I guess it’s just, you know as we look at things that we’re doing and things that we need to do, there’s plenty that we need to do. I’m still trying to wonder if this, you know trying to figure out if this is a want to do or if it’s really a need. Certainly we’ve made a large investment into trees and boulevard tree program but in terms of going out there and identifying and counting it just, you know I look at this and I just go is this really what we should be spending time doing. Is this something that, when you look at who else does this? And I don’t know who else does this. It’s an asset. Yes, absolutely but I’m just wondering where this, Councilman Litsey to your point, we don’t have to approve anything else but it’s always something a little bit else and that’s where my concern is. That’s where my concern is so you know, it’s again we’re talking about trees so I find some humor in that. Perhaps maybe not but that was just, that was where, it’s just a little bit more. Is this really a need, or is it a want and sometimes we have times for wants but if some of this can be done through Eagle Scout projects or through other volunteer groups or something like that with proper training, perhaps that’s a better way to go. Councilman Litsey: One of the things I just looked, and I don’t know how many ash trees we have in our community or whatever but there are, there’s always just going to be some, I know spruce have some diseases and stuff too and knowing where those trees are and so forth that we can actually plan for the future and say we might want to diversify our boulevards a little bit more so if something comes through, like in Minneapolis and wipes out all the elm trees. Well not just Minneapolis but a lot of communities because they all went with one species of trees. I guess I’d be interested of hearing what Jill has to say. Maybe, I don’t know if this is something we can table but, or continue or something. Mayor Furlong: Well I think in that regard, I think that’s one of the benefits that we do have in this city is you drive up and down the roads you can look at the trees and there is variety. You know you may have a few similar ones near each other but there is variety around town and so we don’t have that situation that the core cities had and some of the neighboring suburbs. We’ve learned from that so. 38 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Councilman Litsey: I guess personally I’d like to hear from Jill I guess as to the value. If she feels it’s valuable and then make a decision based on that but if there isn’t support, there isn’t support. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Any other thoughts? Is this something we want to table or just say you know not this route? Kate Aanenson: I believe the deadline for this is, so if you wanted to table it, I think it would make this moot, which is fine. I think this, to get this in, I think the deadline would probably be before your next meeting. I don’t have that right in front of me but I believe, because they’re going to make a decision to start in September. th Laurie Hokkanen: I want to say August 14. Kate Aanenson: Yeah, that’s what I think too so, yeah. Councilman Litsey: Friday. Kate Aanenson: Yeah. Yeah. So just to be clear. Mayor Furlong: Any other thoughts? Councilman McDonald: Well I guess you know I come back to the question that I asked, why couldn’t this become a scout project? I mean there’s a lot of people within the community that are you know very involved. You look at Arbor Day. We have quite a few people that really care about the trees and those things within the community. They’ve done a lot to I think help put it where it’s at right now. Why aren’t we using our own resources I guess? I mean I don’t see anything here that says you get any kind of special knowledge. That they come here and that they know a maple from an ash and all those types of things. An Eagle Scout would be just as well. I mean that’s part of what they need to be able to do, and I think you’re going to have to provide some supervision anyway of Jill’s time so why not you know use of some benefit to the community. Kate Aanenson: I just want to clarify one thing. There’s only 5 areas that they’re sponsoring and these are people are trained in those areas so it’s, and that would be you know the conservation, living green out so they were trained so I just want to make sure that. Councilman Litsey: I look at this as an opportunity to actually benefit from a grant that’s something that we probably couldn’t accomplish otherwise but is needed at some point in time and so I would support it but. Mayor Furlong: Any other thoughts? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I think that you know. 39 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Mayor Furlong: And that’s fine. I mean I don’t know that we need a motion to deny. It’s just been a recommendation so. Kate Aanenson: No… Yep. Mayor Furlong: Unless there are, at least 2 that would want to make a motion and second. We can just defer on this item? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yeah, I’d like to defer but then I’d also like to put a footnote in there that I think you know it is good to know what our tree status is. You know what’s out there and what’s not out there and we talked about scouts handling it and also sometimes as a council we kind of wondered about the Environmental Commission. You know what their role is in the community and maybe this is a good spot to start with them. Talking about what they can do as a council to. Mayor Furlong: I was thinking the same thing. Councilwoman Tjornhom: To help us out as a city so that would be my footnote that I’m not saying that trees aren’t important. I’m just saying that maybe there’s a better way to account for them. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Is there anyone that would like to take action on this then this evening? Councilman Litsey: Well I’d like to move forward but if there isn’t a second then… Todd Gerhardt: No, we’ll bring this back. You don’t have to take him. We heard… Mayor Furlong: We just defer? Todd Gerhardt: Yeah. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Todd Gerhardt: You can just defer it to. Mayor Furlong: Just because it’s on our agenda Roger we don’t have to take action? Roger Knutson: No. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Is there any other comments or action on this item before we move on? Hearing none then let’s move on with our other items on our agenda. That completes our items of new business. 40 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Councilwoman Tjornhom: I guess we’re all going to comment on National Night Out. Mayor Furlong: Really? Okay. Why don’t you start then. Councilwoman Tjornhom: You know I guess I always look forward to that event every year. It’s just a good time to really get out there with the community and find out what people are thinking and what they’re feeling and Todd thanks for getting that grill for me for last year. Hopefully they had a good grilling event at the park, and it’s just always I guess it affirms to me that what we’re doing as a council and a city is working because you talk to people and you ask them you know what their thoughts are, what their concerns are, and fortunately and we’re blessed that we don’t have a lot of people that are up in arms about something. I think as a city, obviously there’s a reason why we were voted second best place to live and National Night Out really proved that. That we have a great city. We have great residents that live here and just very lucky to say that our home is Chanhassen. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Other thoughts on National Night Out? Mr. McDonald. Councilman McDonald: Well I guess yeah, it was a lot of fun. Went around and I think we were well received by all the neighborhoods and I got a lot of positive feedback. At this point you know I got the feeling that everybody’s very happy with the way the city is running. How it’s put together. I got a lot of good feedback about the responsiveness of staff when people would call in so I think you’re doing a good job there. Taking care of people. That’s, there weren’t a lot of complaints and you know the one I had about a pot hole, they said yeah, it was fixed within 2 days and they just thought that was amazing so my hats off to Paul and everything for being responsive with that. That’s I think really good so overall yeah, you can see why we’re one of the best places to live in the U.S. because I think we are responsive to the citizens and they really do look at this as kind of a refuge from the city and their jobs and all of that kind of stuff so yeah, I’d say we’re doing a good job. Councilwoman Tjornhom: As a footnote I saw Councilman McDonald at one of the neighborhoods and he did ride in the front of the squad car. Councilman McDonald: They tried to put me in back but I knew better. Councilman Litsey: I could accommodate you in a different way. If you feel slighted. Mayor Furlong: Councilman Litsey any thoughts? Councilman Litsey: No, I just think it’s a great night and obviously I have a prior commitment in my other job on that night but it’s a really nice way to get people together and hear what they have to say in more of an informal setting and get some feedback, good or bad but I think it’s usually very good so that’s nice to hear. So I appreciate the rest of the council going out and doing that. 41 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Mayor Furlong: No it was, I enjoy the evening every year as well as all of you do and especially this year when we had a couple incidents that were so unusual for our city in terms of some robberies, and we heard this evening earlier the good police work that’s being done there to bring those to a positive conclusion. But to be out there, to talk to people and to be able to answer their questions honestly with information gives people confidence and the sense that I got was the strong civic pride that we have in this town. I mean it’s real and that’s very rewarding and I think all of us should be, should really take that as a big thank you for the work that we do and for the city staff that’s here, but for everybody. Mr. Gerhardt, if you could just extend our thanks. What everybody does day to day makes a big difference in the people’s lives and differences that they don’t even realize very often but when we go out on National Night Out we get to see people and hear one on one and it is appreciated so thank you for that. Todd Gerhardt: Well we really appreciate your support for National Night Out and going out into the public like that and meeting with people and listening. That’s huge from a customer service standpoint and we appreciate your support in that and commitment so thank you for going out there and supporting our local law enforcement and neighborhoods. Mayor Furlong: I know that Beth Hoiseth, our Crime Prevention Specialist puts in a lot of time for that so again please extend our specific thanks to her and also to the posse that comes out every year. She’s probably already sent letters to them but what a great organization that is. All th volunteer even during the year and they come out. They’re here for our 4 of July parade and for fire department open house and for National Night Out. They do a great job so appreciate everybody’s involvement. The fire department was out in force again and always tough to compete with the fire truck. No, any vehicle with lights, forget it. Forget it. Mayor who? Todd Gerhardt: I haven’t seen a fire truck yet get a pot hole filled. Mayor Furlong: No, that’s true. That’s true. Councilman Litsey: They might create some. Todd Gerhardt: Yeah. Mayor Furlong: Other council presentations? Mr. Hoffman I know you’re here and I’m going to bring you up right now. Miracles for Mitch triathlon is coming up. Is that this weekend? Todd Hoffman: In September. September. Laurie Hokkanen: That’s the Huffman. Todd Hoffman: Oh the Huffman. August, this weekend. Thank you. Mayor Furlong: It’s coming up this weekend. Todd Hoffman: Thank you Mayor. I did write a press release. Forgot the date. 42 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 Todd Gerhardt: Too many races. Mayor Furlong: Way too many races but this is a good one. Miracles for Mitch. They do a great job. It’s a local charity. Locally based charity but they serve families with cancer. Children across the country and I know that they’re out on Lake Ann and this is a premiere spot and I know the city staff has been working with them and getting ready for that, as is our law enforcement with regards to the roads and such so. If you see kids on bikes or running you’ll know what’s going on and they should have a tremendous turnout this year. As I understand they’re entries, the number of entries are way up so they’re approaching, if not this year, soon I’m told they’ll probably be the world’s largest kids triathlon right here in Chanhassen so thank you for that. Anything else? Mr. McDonald. Councilman McDonald: If I could. I’d like to bring up a letter that we probably all received and I guess the reason I want to bring it up is because I feel we were taken advantage of. Kind of a bait and a switch. What this deals with is we were presented with a Milo’s Sub Shop and there was a public meeting about it. A lot of people came in and the big concern they had was about the drive thru and we were given certain assurances about that and now all of a sudden it turns out that it’s probably going to become a Burger King. Not that I have any problem with that but I really feel that it should have been up front with us because I mean part of the things we told the residents was this was not going to be a problem because again as a sub shop the hours of operation of that versus a Burger King’s a lot different and their concern was about the noise going through the drive in and the speakers and those things. I realize there’s nothing we can do about it at this point but I guess I would ask if there is anything we can do as far as limiting some of this as far as the noise and those things, I feel that we as a city council assured neighbors around the neighborhood that this was going to be taken care of. That this was going to be a use that would not really infringe upon their enjoyment and now to get something like this and to find out that these kind of conversations have been going on before even it came to council and that, reading a letter the plan all along was to get someone along the lines of a Burger King, again I feel as though we were taken advantage of and I feel that it was a bait and switch and I realize there may not be anything that we can do about it but I want to get this out into the record that we had nothing to do with this and we were probably just as much victims in all of this as I think the residents around the area are. I think if the applicant had been a little bit more honest and up front about it, we would have worked with him. We would have found some way to come up with something because again it is our job to make sure we have economic development. We would have done something but I think some of the assurances that we made to the residents we can’t keep them now and that kind of troubles me so I just wanted to bring that up that I just feel as though, well I feel as I was personally taken advantage of and lied to and I feel that the City was also taken advantage of and I know that the planning group worked very hard on this and to find out that you know part of the restrictions that we put in there to make this a better deal plays right into their hands so I guess I’m very troubled by that. That’s why I wanted to bring it up. Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council members. I echo Jerry’s comments but you know I want to assure you and the neighborhood that we will be enforcing our ordinances when it comes to 43 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 noise, nuisance, traffic, and you know if they’re that successful and we have some traffic issues, that’s what traffic engineers are for. Staff was very disappointed when the application came in. It’s, I hope the center is really successful. Everybody benefits from that. The neighborhood also. We want successful businesses here and we definitely will be monitoring that and enforcing our ordinances. Councilman Litsey: I appreciate Councilman McDonald bringing that up. Thank you. I think what he said was well stated and I know we’re kind of stuck now with what’s there but it’s good to have that noted so thank you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other items for council presentations? Mr. Gerhardt. Administrative. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: Todd Gerhardt: Jim took a lot of my comments but this last storm we had very limited damage in the community. We did have one basement that did receive water damage and we’re working with that resident right now. But not a lot of debris, trees or branches had fallen so we did not send out crews to pick up branches based on that. We are you know very fortunate. Plymouth got hit pretty good. Minnetrista. We’ve offered up assistance to those communities if they need any help in clean up like we typically do and, but we’re very fortunate to have a limited amount of damage we did have but. From that you know, love the rain. We needed the moisture so things from that standpoint were good. Mayor Furlong: And I’m going to back up, now that you mentioned the rain. We had Chanhassen Day at the Arboretum on Friday which meant that brought the rain so everybody was welcomed. I think that’s the fifth or sixth year we’ve had that event and it’s, the sun has shined one year. Or maybe two out of that. It broke the drought in 2007. But no I should say and seriously how much we appreciate the Arboretum opening it’s door to our residents for one day, free admission and really opening up the asset that they have to all of us and it’s a great organization out there and I know that we have a very good relationship at our staff level, all the way up and down in terms of the work that they’re doing there and they’re working with some of our residents right now to clean up some issues and based on some of the comments that I had and conversations I had before and certainly on Friday, it sounds like they understand the need to do that and that they’re going to take steps necessary to get it done so it’s a great organization and I encourage people to get out there during the year as well. Not just on Chanhassen Day because it’s probably going to rain so. Todd Gerhardt: Well we were thinking of having Chanhassen Day every other week. Mayor Furlong: That would be fine. Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt or his staff? Councilman Litsey: The only comment I was going to make is yeah, I think we dodged a bullet with the storm on Saturday. It went north of here but it emphasizes the fact in what we’ve been doing. Emergency preparedness is important and it’s not a question of if but when it probably 44 Chanhassen City Council – August 10, 2009 will occur. Whether it’s a wind storm or whatever so I think, I commend staff and this council for their efforts in that area so. Mayor Furlong: Yeah you bring that up but real quickly, I put myself back on Saturday evening and watching the clouds go by and just thinking to myself you know if this was coming here what would we be doing and we’ve already been through it in a mock drill and so just being able to think about that, and our role, and my role and I’m sure in staff’s role as well. It does give you a little bit of comfort. It’s going to be unique once you get into it but planning and preparing does have it’s benefits and thank you Mr. Gerhardt for offering up our assistance to all the cities in need and if they are listening or need to take us up on that, I hope they do. So good comments, thank you. CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None. Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Litsey seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 9:15 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 45