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CC 2010 03 22 CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING MARCH 22, 2010 Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Furlong, Councilman Litsey, Councilwoman Ernst, Councilwoman Tjornhom, and Councilman McDonald STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt and Todd Hoffman PUBLIC PRESENT: Trenton Mady PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mayor Furlong: Thank you and welcome for those here in the council chambers as well as those watching at home. We’re glad that you joined us this evening. At this time I would ask members of the council if there are any changes or modifications to the agenda. If not, without objection we’ll proceed with the agenda as published. First thing I’d like to do tonight is make a couple of public announcements. The first relates to a spring time event with the Park and Rec department which is the annual Easter Egg Candy Hunt. We invite families and friends here in town and from outside of town to join us at the Chanhassen Recreation Center on Saturday, April rd 3 at 9:00 a.m. for our annual Easter Egg Candy Hunt where children ages 12 and under can enjoy the musical entertainment by Kid Power by Rachel and hunt for candy and the golden egg with prizes inside. Boys and girls can also enter a coloring contest to win great prizes. For registration, color contest forms and other information please contact City Hall, the Chanhassen Rec Center or the City’s web site. The event is sponsored by the City of Chanhassen and our local businesses and we invite everybody to bring their family and friends. It’s a fun event. Mr. rd Hoffman has again guaranteed good weather. Dry weather for this, that’s in April 3 so coming up a week from Saturday. Also would like to extend an invitation to ChanJam ’10. This is a th musical showcase that will be held on Friday, April 16 at 6:30 p.m. also at the Chanhassen Rec Center. This is a great event featuring several local bands from Chanhassen High School, Chaska High School, Minnetonka High School. The bands will be playing songs and battling each other for bragging rights to be Chanhassen’s best band. The winning band will receive thrd invitations to open for Casablanca Orchestra at our July 4, July 3 street dance and also play at the Minnesota State Fair at the Music Mayhem stage this coming August and September. The winning band will be selected by a panel of judges and it’s a fun time. Tickets are $5 per person available at the door or you can save a dollar by bringing an item for the local food shelf. That’s a fun event. I know the high school bands do a great job and just a lot of fun so if you’re thrd interested in a good time on the 16 of April or for the younger children on the 3 of April for the Easter Egg Candy Hunt, we’ve got some nice events coming up in the next few weeks. At this time I’d like to move forward with our agenda. Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Litsey moved, Councilwoman Ernst 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 March 8, 2010 -City Council Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated March 8, 2010 b. Award of Bid: Portable Restroom Contract to Imperial Porta Palace. c. Approve License Agreement Amendment No. 1 with the Metropolitan Council for Waste Disposal Site, 8001 Park Place. d. Approval of 2010 Liquor License Renewals. Resolution #2010-23: e. Approve 2010 Vehicle & Equipment Purchases. Resolution #2010-24: f. Sanitary Sewer Lift Station #24 Rehabilitation: Approve Quote. Resolution #2010-25: g. Approve Resolution Accepting Donation to the Chanhassen Senior Center from KleinBank Chanhassen. h. Approve Request for Advance Payment of Relocation Assistance, Chanhassen Dinner Theater. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None. LAW ENFORCEMENT/FIRE DEPARTMENT UPDATE. Mayor Furlong: Good evening Lieutenant. Lt. Jim Olson: Good evening. Thank you Mr. Mayor and council. You can tell spring is here. It’s been very nice outside. I’ve got before you the Area Report for the month of February, a copy of the citation list and the Community Service Officer Report. Were there any questions at all regarding the monthly report? Mayor Furlong: Any questions for the Lieutenant on these items? Lt. Jim Olson: I have a couple other items as well. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Please continue. 2 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Lt. Jim Olson: With spring is here, as I again I can certainly tell that spring is here. I want to remind residents of some of the regulations regarding solicitors in the city. They must have a permit issued by the City with a badge. They’re issued a badge and they must have that hanging around their neck or somewhere on them. There are a few exceptions to that however such as if a school, if they’re doing some sales. Non-profit, religious or charitable organization. All of those are exempt and the permit itself does not mean that the City is endorsing the product and that’s important for folks to know is that the City is not endorsing that. It’s just giving them permission to sell these items in the city. And the permitted hours are from 9:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night and they should not be selling any items before or after that and the reason I bring this up. We had a number of folks come in today to apply for solicitors permits and we’ve had a few calls on that already so I just wanted to inform the residents a little bit about that. We also have some road closures currently in the city. Well specifically one. Highway 101 is closed down by the lower Y and of course Highway 41 is also closed just south of Chaska. There’s some rumors that 61 might close just west of Lion’s Tap sometime tomorrow potentially so just so folks are aware that it’s kind of blocking off the southern end of our city a little bit with folks trying to get through and go to Eden Prairie but again we should know something about that tomorrow sometime. Todd Gerhardt: And Jim when you say 61, Flying Cloud Drive. Lt. Jim Olson: Flying Cloud Drive, old Highway 212, yes. And that’s just west of, again just west of Lion’s Tap that’s slated to potentially close tomorrow. And the other thing I wanted to talk about is earlier, I think it was last week we recovered over $100,000 in stolen property from a residence here in Chanhassen. The property had been stolen by an employee of the company and then he was re-selling it. He was arrested as a result of that. The company actually ended up hiring a moving truck with a couple of movers to come in. The garage was packed full of items that he had taken from this company so investigation did a very good job on this case and again he was charged with that. And one more thing just a reminder, a couple other calls I got today. Air soft, BB, paint ball as well as pellet guns are illegal anywhere within city limits. They can only be used in township areas in the county so. Anything else for the sheriff’s office at all? Mayor Furlong: Questions? Just some follow-up on a couple of your items Lieutenant. Lt. Jim Olson: Yes. Mayor Furlong: With regard to the road closings on 101. You said possibly 61, Flying Cloud/212. Lt. Jim Olson: Correct. Mayor Furlong: Any forecast as to when 101 might open up again? Lt. Jim Olson: You know it’s supposed to crest on Wednesday sometime is what the prediction is right now. 3 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Mayor Furlong: Okay. Lt. Jim Olson: I would think it would probably be closed for a few days after that. The Crow River up in Watertown, the Watertown-Mayer area, that crested I think it was on Saturday and there’s starting to be a couple of roads that have opened up since then with that but it’s hard to say right now as far as when that might. I’m hearing there’s maybe 3-4 feet over the road on 101 right now. Mayor Furlong: At this point? Lt. Jim Olson: Yeah, so that may take a few days for that to reopen. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Very good. Any other questions? Todd Gerhardt: Is Chief Smallback going to give the update on General Mills? Lt. Jim Olson: Yes. Yeah, we chatted about that a little bit so. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Lt. Jim Olson: Thank you. Have a good evening. Mayor Furlong: Chief Smallback is here from our fire department. Good evening Chief. Chief Roger Smallback: Good evening. A couple of quick items here and then we can hear about General Mills a little bit too. Just kind of the statistics. 124 calls for service year to date. Ended up with 56 calls total in February compared to 57 in January. Both of those months were significantly above average for number of calls for service. Month to date, at least as of March th 9 when I did the report here, we only had 11 calls in March. That’s much more close to, well I won’t say normal but average so apparently it’s settling down a little bit and we’re getting more th average call volume. There was a structure fire on March 8 and that was at the Applebee’s restaurant. That fire was in the roof area of the restaurant. Burned a hole through the roof. The fire was cut off by a single sprinkler head that activated. The fire, there was a suspended ceiling and then the roof area and the fire was started in the roof area. Got down in below the suspended ceiling. That’s where the sprinkler head activated. Cut it off. The fire was out there about 2 hours. Substantial damage to the building. When you burn a hole through the roof it’s substantial damage but when we got there we put it out fairly quickly. The significance here is the sprinklers. The fire sprinkler systems. Just again emphasize that fire sprinklers save lives. Fire sprinklers save buildings and had it not been for that fire sprinkler system in that building it would very likely have been a much more grim story as far as the restaurant. As it is they were able to re-open. The fire was Monday morning. Early Monday morning. They were closed Monday. They re-opened at noon on Tuesday. They just took and partitioned off part of the dining area where the fire damage was and re-opened. We did have another small fire since I th made the report here Friday, March 19. A garage fire. Fire started on the outside of the garage. Got into the vinyl siding and some of the building material in there. Fortunately they caught it. 4 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 It was noticed quite early and we got onto it. It was a very quick knock down but again it was, won’t say minor damage but it was, damage was confined to a small area of the outside of the garage. The flooding situation, as Lieutenant Olson kind of filled you in on that. Just as far as fire is going. Fire is monitoring the situation daily along with city emergency management so between law enforcement, city emergency management and fire we’re watching it very closely every day. From a fire perspective we do have contingency plans in place if there should be some kind of a call in that area as far as accessibility to things. When we say we’re monitoring it daily, we do have plans in place if these roads do close. A call this afternoon, I would say we’re still putting the report together and getting all of the facts and figures on it together but as Lieutenant, or Mr. Gerhardt stated there was a call at General Mills for a ammonia leak and the situation there was, there was at General Mills there’s a self contained room, they call it an engine room. Within that room there are 4 huge compressors that compress ammonia and there was a relief valve of some kind that stuck or malfunctioned in this engine room that released ammonia into that engine room. The failsafe systems that General Mills has in place there, as soon as it detects ammonia in there, it closes the doors. Shuts down the compressors and then opens a vent in the roof to ventilate the room. All of these systems activated. Part of their SOP is that fire is also notified when this happens. Fire got on the scene there. General Mills had everything shut down. The area of the leak was isolated. All of their employees were moved to a different part of the building as a precautionary measure. Fire did air monitoring. Checked the air around the building and inside this engine room and monitored the air for levels of ammonia there. We did find elevated levels immediately outside the building and within about 50 feet of the building. There were very high elevated levels in the engine room but as that ventilated these levels came down and the ammonia dissipated. There were no injuries to employees or fire fighters or anybody. We cleared there about 4:00. The call came in at about 1:00 and we cleared at about 4:00 once after conferring with General Mills and everybody was comfortable that everything was safe and then we cleared. Councilwoman Ernst: Chief do they know what caused that? Chief Roger Smallback: Well I talked to the building maintenance engineers and stuff and as he had described it to me it was a relief valve and there’s relief valves on these compressor systems so that they don’t over pressure so I’m speculating at this point, it could have been either the relief valve malfunctioned and released when it shouldn’t of or perhaps there was a problem with the compression system in there and it did over pressure the system and the relief valve did it’s job and released. A lot of the time that we spent out there was General Mills employees were shutting down different systems. Purging different parts of the cooling system and things like that to ensure the situation was safe we just kept checking on the atmosphere outside and inside until it dropped down to acceptable levels. Councilwoman Ernst: Okay, thank you. Chief Roger Smallback: One, two final items here. Year to date Chanhassen fire fighters have completed over 1,000 hours of training. We’ve got 45 fire fighters. We train every Monday night. And there’s additional nights of training too but year to date our fire fighters have completed over 1,000 hours of training. To go along with that last month I mentioned that on 5 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 th April 19 we’re going to be at the Edina Training Center, which is a live fire facility that they have in Edina. Very safe environment but it does use live fire and then they practice going into the buildings. Dragging hose lines into the buildings and putting out fires in there. And as I mentioned at our last month and that we’re extending this invitation to City Council, Mr. Gerhardt and the other city people. If you would like to come out there and witness this first hand or participate to some level, you know please let us know. The only thing I would ask that you know you let us know like about a week in advance, especially if you want to participate in any of the fire activities because we’ll get you bunker gear and protective equipment and that that people wear and give you a chance to crawl in on the building. So the invitation is out there. Either to just observe if you wish or participate. You can contact me or Mr. Gerhardt or Ms. Hokkanen and let us know what you think. Todd Gerhardt: Come on, you guys want to go into a burning building, right? Councilman Litsey: I’m just wondering, are we going to be the ones that you try to rescue? Chief Roger Smallback: It may default to that but. Mayor Furlong: Everybody wants to go in. It’s the coming out that… Very good. Any questions for the Chief. Councilman McDonald: Excuse me Chief. Mayor Furlong: Councilman McDonald. Councilman McDonald: Yeah before you leave. Isn’t the pancake breakfast this weekend? Chief Roger Smallback: Thank you for reminding me of that. Councilman McDonald: Yeah, go ahead and give it a plug. It’s for a great thing. Chief Roger Smallback: Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes, this Sunday, or next Sunday, th March 28. Councilman McDonald: Which will be this coming Sunday. Should be. nd Chief Roger Smallback: What’s, today’s the, yes. That’s right. Today’s the 22 so it’d be thth Sunday of next week, yes. Okay March 28, whatever day that is. Sunday, March 28. 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and this is a joint event. Chanhassen Lion’s come in put on a pancake breakfast. Fire fighters are there and it’s a fundraiser for the fire department relief association. Councilman Litsey: It’s a great deal. Mayor Furlong: Great deal. Great family price by the way. It’s a lot of fun. Thanks for reminding him. Very good, thank you Chief. 6 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Chief Roger Smallback: Thanks. PUBLIC HEARING: REQUEST FOR AN ON-SALE INTOXICATING LIQUOR LICENSE, THE CHANHASSEN DINNER THEATER, LLC DBA THE CHANHASSEN TH DINNER THEATER, 501 WEST 78 STREET. Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council members. Chanhassen Dinner Theaters LLC is requesting an th intoxicating liquor license at 501 West 78 Street. Chanhassen Dinner Theaters LLC are the new owners of the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. Staff has performed a background check on the owners and the management and that background check came back clear. Staff is recommending approval of the on-sale intoxicating liquor license to Chanhassen LLC. This is a public hearing so if you’d like to open it up for public comment, you can do so right now. Mayor Furlong: Sounds good. Any questions for staff beforehand? If not I will open up the public hearing. Invite all interested parties to come forward and comment on this. What I did is, we have representatives from the dinner theater here this evening, including Michael Brindisi. I suggested he come up, if you’d like to Mike and just give us an update on the dinner theater and the new group that’s involved and what you have going on. Michael Brindisi: Thank you Mayor. Council members. I’ve not done this before but I have directed Footloose and I will tell you that my favorite scene in Footloose is the council scene. The City Council scene. Councilman Litsey: Well I’m going there on Thursday to see it so I’ll pay attention. Michael Brindisi: It’s a shameless plug for my new show. Todd Gerhardt: No burning of books today. Michael Brindisi: I come to you today with my partners, my friends, my family members. My wife and with a great deal of enthusiasm for the new Chanhassen Theater Company. We are extremely excited about the future and what we perceive to be a great era ahead of us. Our goal is going to be to be profitable, to maintain the high quality of our product and to have some fun. For several years now it’s no secret we have had some trouble and we’ve been spending $12 million and making 11 and I didn’t go to business school but that doesn’t work so our commitment is to spend 10 and make 11. And how we’re going to do that is with a new strategy. Even though it will appear to be business as usual, it is not going to be business as usual. We have a new plan going forward. We have a 4 point plan that involves first making sure that we have a realistic expectation of our attendance and to build our business plan and our production schedule around that realistic expectation. We’re not going to pick numbers out of the sky and hope, cross our fingers and hope that the people come. We’re basing you know our plan on historic averages and we’re budgeting to break even well below those historic averages. And we’re going to scale back our production to make sure that we’re producing just what we need to produce to service our audience. We’re also going to be strategic about our scheduling of the 7 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 opening and closings of our theaters. They’re not all going to be open 52 weeks a year. There are some seasons in business where business drops off and we know what those seasons are and the months are and we can predict that and so we’re going to schedule strategically the opening and closings of our theaters. We’re going to be flexible. On the rare occasion when we have an extraordinary hit, and it doesn’t happen very often, we’re going to extend it. We’re going to take advantage of those opportunities. On the rare occasion when we have a flop, and that doesn’t happen very often, we’re going to get out of it and bring something else in. Normally we do a steady business and then we’ll stick to our schedule. And finally we’re going to get outside of our building. We’re going to have activities that people will see immediately in the building and outside the building. Changes. We’re going to develop our playhouse into a cabaret space that’s going to be an alternative type of entertainment. A comedy club. We’re going to start that right in April here pretty soon. Walk in business. Buy a ticket. Eat dinner if you want. Have drinks if you want. A more Friday-Saturday impulsive buying. Not planned out like the rest of our business and not competing with the rest of our business. We’re going to have touring productions. We’re going to have a lot of industrial shows. We’re going to have the Chanhassen Singers. We’re going to produce our camp in other, our summer camp in other communities around the state and we’re going to just really start to hum. This business is going to be extremely fun and extremely profitable. I will tell you too that this new company is completely committed to staying in the city of Chanhassen. We find it ludicrous that the dinner theater, the Chanhassen Dinner Theater would be anyplace but in Chanhassen. We all feel strongly about that. And finally I want to tell you that I personally am committed to developing the best relationship with the City of Chanhassen that this dinner theater has ever had. Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. The Chanhassen Dinner Theater has been a wonderful corporate citizen for many, many years. Decades in Chanhassen and so we’re, on behalf of everybody we wish you every success. We’re very pleased to hear all the good news that’s going on and we know that historically the dinner theater’s been a good corporate citizen too and be involved in the Chamber and working with other aspects of the city and we look forward to continuing that and building on that so, thank you. Again congratulations to everyone that’s involved and we wish you every success. This is still a public hearing so I would invite anybody else to, if they’d like to come forward and address the council on the issue here. If not, without objection we’ll close the public hearing and bring it back to the City Council for a motion and discussion. Would anybody like to make a motion? Councilwoman Ernst: I will. Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Ernst. Councilwoman Ernst: I make a motion we approve the request for an on-sale intoxicating liquor license including Sunday sales for the Chanhassen Dinner Theater LLC dba the Chanhassen th Dinner Theater, 501 West 78 Street effective May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011. Councilman McDonald: I’ll second. 8 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Mayor Furlong: Okay. Thank you. And that motion is contingent upon receivable of all the necessary documentations correct? Councilwoman Ernst: You want me to add that in there? Yes it is. Mayor Furlong: Yes I would. Very good. Motion’s been made and seconded. Any discussion? Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the City Council approves the request for an on-sale intoxicating liquor license, including Sunday sales, for th the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, LLC dba The Chanhassen Dinner Theater, 501 West 78 Street, effective May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011 contingent upon receipt of all necessary paperwork and the license fee. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. APPOINTMENTS TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION. Mayor Furlong: At our last meeting we made appointments to our, 3 of our 4 commissions. To the Park and Recreation Commission, the Senior Commission and the Planning Commission. After this evening we completed our discussion with all of the candidates for the Environmental Commission. With that we had a number of good candidates. We spent some time as a council with not only the applicants but existing members of the commission talking about areas of common interest and goals and objectives between the commission and the council. It was a very good discussion and with that we have two 3 year positions that are available on the commission and three 2 year positions. What I would like to propose, and I will make a motion to this effect that the City Council appoint Dennis Hansen and Rose Kircher to the two 3 year positions. And that the City Council would also appoint Amy Wenner, David Christianson and Robert Kircher to the three 2 year positions. Is there a second? Councilman Litsey: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Thank you. Any discussion or other comments that anybody would like to make on the appointments to the Environmental Commission. Councilman Litsey. Councilman Litsey: Yeah, I’d just say that I think it was a good group that came forward to serve. Always appreciate people’s interest in the community and giving back and this is one way they can do it is through these commissions. I think as Mayor you said before, it kind of rejuvenates you too as a council to see people stepping forward and having new ideas and wanting to work as a team. I like the idea that we got together earlier at the work session to discuss commonality and working together as a group to, on common projects and so forth so I think that was really a healthy discussion and so I’m excited about the direction that commission’s going to go from here. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Any other thoughts or comments? 9 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Councilman McDonald: Well I would just second what Councilman Litsey said and I you know really look forward to doing all of this and hopefully everything will work out just fine so yeah, it was a good meeting. Mayor Furlong: Great. Sounds good. Anything else? If not, a motion’s been made and seconded. Proceed with the vote. Mayor Furlong moved, Councilman Litsey seconded that the City Council appoint Dennis Hansen and Rose Kircher to the two 3 year positions and Amy Wenner, David Christianson and Robert Kircher to the three 2 year positions on the Environmental Commission. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Mayor Furlong: Last Friday at the Chanhassen High School a little group got together and started talking about outdoor baseball. They weren’t talking Twins. It was great. They were talking about, Mr. McDonald there you have a hat. Councilman McDonald: Yep. This is the new ball cap. Red Birds and a bat. Big C for Chanhassen. I’m really looking forward to outdoor baseball in town. Between that and the new dinner theater I think we’ve got everything anyone needs. Just come in here and you just settle in and away we go. Mayor Furlong: We’ve got a great group that’s organizing the town ball team, the Chanhassen Red Birds as Councilman McDonald said. They’ll be playing out at the new ballfield at the new Chanhassen High School. That was a great addition to the high school fields out there. It’s a wonderful place to watch ball. It’s going to be a great family event. Their first game is on May rdrd 23 I believe, if I’m not mistaken and they’ve got a manager. Tryouts are coming on April 3 as well and I’m sure they’ll be able to get around all the Easter Egg candy hunt on that same day out at the Rec Center but if you’re interested, Mr. Hoffman what, contact information? If someone’s interested, especially players that might be interested in playing. College students. Todd Hoffman: Go to the Red Birds web site and look up all the information right there. Mayor Furlong: Okay. That sounds great. Councilman Litsey: Is there an age limit? Todd Hoffman: No. From 18 to 80. Mayor Furlong: You have to be able to run to first base. Councilman Litsey: Oh okay. Well I’ll think about it. Mayor Furlong: Quickly hopefully. Quickly. 10 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 Councilman Litsey: Quickly. Todd Gerhardt: Darn those tryouts. Mayor Furlong: But they’ve got a good group. A board that’s organizing. Has a lot of things in place. They’ve got the managers and players are starting to form up. They’ll be playing in the River Valley League which is the same league that the Chaska Cubs play in. The Waconia team. The Victoria Vics play there. Belle Plaine. Jordan so those will be the same teams, the same town teams that you’ll see coming through here and so it should be a lot of fun and we wish that group well. Other council presentations? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes Mayor. Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: City Manager Todd Gerhardt and I attended the Crown College event that former member Bob Ayotte hosted a get together for us. I believe that was on Monday. Tuesday. Tuesday. And it was really an organized event and it was really informative to hear what they’re doing out there and the new programs they have going and the amount of students they have and just there was a lot of excitement in the air at Crown College. A lot of opportunities for residents in Carver County to partake in all of the educational programs they have. I know we have a graduate sitting next to me. Councilwoman Ernst graduated from there so I think she knows a little bit about that too so I just want to thank former councilmember Bob Ayotte for putting that together and letting us take a tour. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Todd Gerhardt: Just to add, they do have an accredited business program now and also a nursing program that they’re very excited about so you know it’s a little jewel in our back yard. You don’t have to drive to downtown Minneapolis or Bloomington or St. Paul for a college education. We have one right in our back door out between Waconia and St. Boni and to have that accreditation program now is really a quality school when you have that so. They’re excited. We’re excited to help them get their name out there and have our residents and businesses take advantage of those training and educational opportunities. Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. Appreciate the update. Anything else from council members? If not Mr. Gerhardt, any updates from city staff? ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: Todd Gerhardt: Well somebody’s probably going to be mad at me here but we have to recognize Councilwoman Tjornhom. As we all know she sits on the TAB board and we had the big vote last Thursday and we had, I think there were 6 options for funding packages for 2013 federal funding and we were included in 1 through 5 but not included in package number 6 which 11 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 included Highway 101 from Lyman down to Pioneer. Of course the Advisory Board recommended Option number 6 and Councilwoman Tjornhom took it upon herself to meet with a group of TAB board members that were standing around talking and ask them what was going on and why are they going with number 6 and they said well what are your concerns and she told them that 101 between Lyman and Pioneer was not included in item number 6 and they asked her well if you have the project number we’ll include it and because of her efforts 101 south of Lyman down to Pioneer is in the federal funding package for 2013. Mayor Furlong: Excellent. Councilman Litsey: Great job. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Councilman McDonald: Way to go. Councilwoman Tjornhom: All in a day’s work. Councilman Litsey: One for the home team. Councilwoman Tjornhom: That’s right. Todd Gerhardt: I think it was a 5 to 6 million dollar project. Mayor Furlong: It’s a good project and that’s just the start. I mean that’s a major, has been a top priority of this council and the city for years and last time through the funding cycle it didn’t point out that well. It didn’t compare that well. This time it did. As Mr. Gerhardt said, it was fine through 5 of the 6 packages but fortunately it made it into the last one and that’s the one that counts so. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Well and it was staff that really put that packet together though you know and got us in the game to start with you know and so staff really worked hard and so I want to thank them too for giving me something to fight for. Mayor Furlong: Good point. Very good. Thank you. And with that there were a number of different projects that we received funding for that will be coming up. Over on Highway 5 there’s a project for widening and some lane realignment and widening of the shoulders at Highway 5 and Lake Minnewashta which is just a terrible intersection to try to come out on. Also received funding for pedestrian underpass at that same location to connect our city trail system that runs along Minnewashta Parkway into the Arboretum and to create a trail system and a loop through the Arboretum back out towards Highway 41 and Highway 5 on the east side which, near Lifetime. Some of the meetings that Mr. Gerhardt and I have had with Lifetime, their corporation’s very enthusiastic about having a trail connection into the Arboretum. Up Highway 41 which will, is going to be, construction’s going to be working on this summer I 12 Chanhassen City Council - March 22, 2010 believe or next summer in conjunction with the County so we’ve got a number of things going on along Highway 5, 41 and in a couple years along 101 too so. Todd Gerhardt: Yeah the Star and Tribune called me today. Is probably going to do a story on Minnewashta Parkway and Highway 5 and so they were pretty excited to hear some of the safety improvements and the pedestrian underpass. And one other project that was included in that federal package is the upgrading of Lyman from Powers Boulevard to Audubon and if you’ve been over by the new high school, there’s an upgrade to Lyman from Galpin to Audubon. Now we’re doing the next segment from Audubon over to Powers which will be a four lane curb and gutter. So that’s a huge improvement in that area with 101, Highway 5. I think all three of those had been on our goal list for the past 3 years so to get that accomplished, good job. Mayor Furlong: And a lot of this Councilwoman Tjornhom comes through the biannual regional funding projects, right? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Absolutely. Mayor Furlong: These funds have been available, or coming around every 2 years to pick projects is that correct? Councilwoman Tjornhom: That’s right. That’s right. It’s also a fun time to be on the TAB board because we finally have money to spend. For a long time there were no projects to be let. Now there are some funds out there to be had and projects to be let and it’s exciting that it’s happening here so. Mayor Furlong: Great, thank you. For all your efforts. Mr. Gerhardt, anything else? Todd Gerhardt: Nope. That’s all I have. Mayor Furlong: Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt or his staff? CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None. Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilman McDonald seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 7:40 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 13