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CC minutes 2002 07 08CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING JULY 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Jansen, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Boyle, Councilman Ayotte, and Councilman Peterson STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt, Roger Knutson, Teresa Burgess, Matt Saam, Kelley Janes, Bob Generous, Kate Aanenson, and Justin Miller PUBLIC PRESENT FOR ALL ITEMS: Sherry Ayotte Mark Prihal Amber Bullington Steven Lillehaug Deb Lloyd Janet & Jerry Paulsen Chanhassen Chanhassen 6430 White Dove Drive Planning Commission 7302 Laredo Drive 7305 Laredo Drive PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations: Resolution #2002-58: Authorize Preparation of Feasibility Study for 2003 Residential Street Improvement Project 03-01. Resolution #2002-59: Approve a Resolution Requesting that MnDot conduct a Speed Study in the Oxbow Bend Neighborhood. Resolution #2002-60: Approve Resolution Recognizing the Petition from Concerned Citizens along Highway 101 South of Highway 5 and Requesting MnDot Review the Concerns. Approve Site Plan for a One-Story, 10,434 sq. ft. Day Care Center with an Exterior Play Area; Lot 3, Block 1, Arboretum Business Park 4th Addition; KinderCare Learning Center. Approval of One Day On-Sale Beer License, Regional Softball Tournament at Lake Ann Park, Chanhassen Lions Club. Approve Request from the Environmental Commission to Purchase Blue Sky Guides for New Residents. j. Approval of Bills. City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Approval of Minutes: - City Council Work Session Minutes dated June 24, 2002 -City Council Minutes dated June 24, 2002 Receive Commission Minutes: - Planning Commission Minutes dated June 18, 2002 - Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated May 29, 2002 Consider Request to Revoke a Conditional Use Permit Allowing a Walking Easement to Lake Minnewashta, Outlot A, Kellynne Addition; David Peterjohn. Approve Amendment to Development Contract for Arboretum Business Park 4th Addition, Project #00-11. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to a. E. AWARD OF BIDS FOR TH tat TRAIL IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 97-12-3. Mayor Jansen: I will be brief on item l(e). The reason that I did want to pull that is to acknowledge that this evening our long awaited award of bids for the Trunk Highway 101 trail north improvements is the l(e) item so we have been working on this project, well as a city for 20 years plus, but this council of course has put a great deal of time into it with our residents and we appreciate it. I see a few representatives from the group here this evening, and I just wanted to acknowledge that that important approval is happening this evening so if we could have a motion for that item please. Councilman Peterson: Motion to approve Trunk Highway 101 Trail Improvement Project #97- 12-3. Mayor Jansen: And a second please. Councilman Ayotte: Second. Resolution #2002-61: Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Ayotte seconded to award the contract to Rosti Construction in the amount of $798,366.20 for construction of an 8 foot trail adjacent to Trunk Highway tat, Trail Improvement Project 97-12-3. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to a. APPROVAL OF CHARGE STATEMENT FOR PROPERTY MAINTENANCE & RENTAL HOUSING LICENSING. Councilman Peterson: Just really quickly I guess, the last time we met we had given staff some direction that we wanted to spend more time working through some of the salient issues with regard to the licensing of rental housing and property maintenance. The charge statement, although I understand the intent, goes a little bit farther than I'm ready to go as it relates to supporting. I still don't know whether I support the whole undertaking yet and I certainly don't support adding a position right now until I get farther into it so I would just, I'm concerned that we're under informed yet for us to make a decision that we're supporting adding taxes and adding a position to the city. City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Okay, so it sounds like maybe we just need to possibly rework some of the wording in the charge statement. Perhaps we should move this to the end of the agenda, which we typically would do on something regarding more discussion so if that's fine we will do that. So we will move l(h) under Administrative Presentations, and then we can have that conversation with Mr. Gerhardt. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: Debbie Lloyd: Hi, Debbie Lloyd, 7302 Laredo Drive. Jill Shipley and I were fighting back there over who should go first. I just want to make a constructive comment. In public notices which my neighborhood was a part of a public notice that's going to be listened to tonight, or addressed tonight. I wouldn't have read this and known it applied to my neighborhood, so I'm thinking that Chanhassen wants to be customer friendly. It might be a good idea, a suggestion, to point out specific neighborhoods or streets where items are being addressed. In this notice for example it says that the improvements will take place in Section 1 and 12, Township 116, Range 23 within the city. Well, I as a reader, I mean Craig you're smiling. Would you know what township you lived in or section? Councilman Peterson: I wouldn't know what county that was so. Debbie Lloyd: And it does refer to lift stations too but really I had no idea, as involved as I am, I had no idea what lift station was in my neighborhood. So as just a constructive point I'd like to make. Not a criticism, but it would just be nice to know, because I do read these public notices and I had no clue it was for my neighborhood. Mayor Jansen: Appreciate that. We actually had at one point gone through and addressed trying to make some of our notices more customer friendly so that we all can understand what they are so bringing that to our attention is appreciated. Thanks Deb. Debbie Lloyd: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: And then the notices, Teresa directly are in fact mailed to the neighborhoods that are affected. This is referring to the newspaper publication, correct? Teresa Burgess: Correct. If you are directly impacted we do a direct mail. Legally we are only required to do that on certain types of projects. This one we did it as a courtesy to the neighborhood, and what happened is normally that notice would have come out with a web site address that people could have contacted for additional information, and would have contained the entire text of the feasibility study the council is considering tonight. However, we were in the switchover between our old web site and our new web site, which if you haven't seen it, looks marvelous. And so we didn't know the address and so I apologize to the neighborhood. We tried to get it out there and unfortunately we didn't have an address to give them to reference. That would have answered a lot of those questions because it does, a lot of those people that are interested, like Ms. Lloyd, to go and get more information, but at the same time keeps the notice short for those people that just want to skip through it and see does it look interesting. Do they really care? Mayor Jansen: Okay. And then just maybe as part of, take a look at the newspaper advertisement and I know we probably try to keep those as brief as we can for cost sake but if there's a way to identify it a little bit. City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Teresa Burgess: And we did the same thing in our newspaper. We put that web site address and then typically we tell people if you have questions and don't have web access, which the majority of our residents do, we also take those by phone call. Mayor Jansen: Okay, great. Thank you. Anyone else under visitor presentations? Jill Shipley: Hi. My name is Jill Shipley. I live at 261 Eastwood Court in Chanhassen. Originally I was going to come to the council and talk to you about a really exciting project that the Advance Marketing Students of Chaska High School conducted with the Friends of the Chanhassen Library, but instead I'm going to change my message tonight and maybe I'll tell you about that another time. But coming off of the 4th of July and the events of last week, we're all reminded of the courage and the fortitude and the strength of the founders of our country who did sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, and we're reminded that we're a democracy that is of the people, by the people and for the people and with that in mind I want to thank the 5 of you who serve as our councilors and mayor of Chanhassen because I think you're doing a really fabulous job and I think you need to be recognized for that. Also in keeping with this, a consistent message of mine has always been that I think a new Chanhassen Library will serve as a wonderful vehicle to unite the community. I've always talked about how our community is divided between Minnetonka High School and Chaska School District. How we're divided physically by Highway 5. How we have so many different religions in our community, and how even politics has polarized us all so with that, at this point I want to once again mention that I am firmly committed to having this new Chanhassen Library, which disrupted everybody's parking tonight I know because of the construction. I'm firmly committed to having that unite the community, and I would like to extend an invitation to everyone in this audience. Everyone who is listening at home on their TV to join the Friends of the Library and help us to make this the best library in the southwest metro area. The Friends will be meeting on Saturday morning at 9:00 in this council chambers and I hope we have a whale of a good turnout of people who love this community and want it to be successful and united who show up. Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. And we do appreciate all of the support that the Friends of the Library do provide for the city library. They do a tremendous job as far as the different programming and materials that they do provide so thanks to the Friends of the Library. Anyone else under visitor presentations? Okay, seeing no one we'll move onto our public hearings this evening. PUBLIC HEARING: REQUEST FOR OFF-SALE 3.2 BEER LICENSE, KWIK TRIP #402, 2201 WEST 78TM STREET. Todd Gerhardt: Kwik Trip is requesting off-sale of 3.2 beer and staff is recommending approval. Mayor Jansen: Okay, any questions for staff at this time? Okay, seeing none we'll open this for the public hearing. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to speak to this agenda item, please step forward to the podium. If you'll state your name and address for the record please. Adam Hutzenbuhler: I'm Adam Hutzenbuhler with Kwik Trip. Right now I'm still living in Mankato but. Mayor Jansen: You commuted here this evening. Adam Hutzenbuhler: Yes. I spent my day in Shakopee all day so it wasn't that far. I'm just here to answer any questions for Kwik Trip, if any of you have any. City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Okay, any questions for the applicant? No questions. Thank you for being here this evening. Appreciate it. Adam Hutzenbuhler: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Is there anyone else? Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and bring this back to council. Any comments or a motion please. Councilman Boyle: I'd make a motion for approval. Councilman Peterson: Second. Councilman Boyle moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to approve the off-sale 3.2 beer license request from Kwik Trip, Inc. for their new store at 2201 West 78th Street. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. PUBLIC HEARING: APPROVE FEASIBILITY STUDY AND ORDER PROJECT FOR LIFT STATION No. 10 SYSTEM UTILITY IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 01-11. Public Present: Name Address Mark R. Rolfs Greg Lindsley Rachel & David Igel Kari Romportl Shawn Robertson Deb Lloyd Janet & Jerry Paulsen Bonestroo 10 Hill Street 6195 Strawberry Lane 7417 Frontier Trail 7500 Frontier Trail 7302 Laredo Drive 7305 Laredo Drive Teresa Burgess: Thank you Madam Mayor, and I do have a handout for the council. This is just a copy of the email that was received today. Madam Mayor and council members. The City of Chanhassen has a lift station number 10 that had raised some concerns when the development, Big Woods on Lotus Lake was done. As part of that development council directed staff to hard wire a generator down to lift station number 10 to alleviate some of the concerns about the power reliability at that lift station. We solved that problem for the short term by taking our portable generator down and hard wiring it in. We do need that generator for other functions within the City, and so rather than just go down and put in a new generator we felt it was more appropriate to study the situation and get a good idea of what needed to be done down there. The City hired Bonestroo, and the council did approve that contract, to study lift station 10 and make recommendations for that lift station. As part of the study they also modeled downstream to see what was going on in the system and looked at problems. In addition, the city took and did a contract with a local firm to televise several of the sanitary sewer lines in the area looking for inflow and infiltration problems which we have received those tapes back and are currently doing improvements to correct those problems. We're doing no dig repairs to several sections of line and to some of the manholes. As they did the study Bonestroo found some problems with lift stations 1 and 2, as well as with lift station number 10. Mainly lift stations 1 and 2 can't pump against the force of lift station 10. When it's running those two stations struggle, and so they put together the priorities list 1 through 4 for us to put into our CIP and address. And we asked them City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 to look at it strictly from the standpoint of strictly engineering. Don't take into account politics. Don't take into account the neighborhood pressures of having development coming in in the near future. Just give us a straight study and the city would then look at it from that point. And what they came back to us with was, the immediate need for the city is to put in a generator. The permanent generator. Get our portable back into our fleet so we can use it at other stations, and at the wells if we have a power outage. That will include our ability to respond to emergencies and address the immediate need of this lift station. And that is priority number one. Priority number two, what they originally put this together was to do the improvements at lift station number 2, which included putting in a new forcemain, directional drill so we don't disrupt the neighborhood, or at least limit that disruption, and then drop it back into gravity flow so it doesn't have to fight against lift station 10. What happened after they put this study together, is that we had an incident down at lift station 1 which does priority number 3. And that was putting in the forcemain at lift station number 1. We had a valve issue that happened at lift station 1. It's not related directly to this, however we had to dig up a large area of the beachlot down there, and rather than do restoration twice in the area, we felt it was more appropriate to get this project done now because it's in the same spot we have to dig to do priority number 3. And that is to install that 10 inch forcemain to bypass 24. I'm sorry, I have 24 on the brain. 10 past lift station 1, allowing lift station 1 to use the existing system. It will then go into a gravity flow system. All of it stays in the sanitary sewer system. What we're doing is we're taking the pressure off of 1 so it doesn't have to fight anymore. Looking at it, this is from a standpoint of disruption of the neighborhood and cost to the city. It makes sense to move it above number 2, since that's what's staff is recommending this evening. We are in negotiations with that neighborhood and I believe we've reached a settlement. We're just now working with the attorney's office to draft up the final agreements and to get the easements drafted by the surveyor, with the neighborhood at lift station 1 to get a new access point, and so we feel that it's good to get out of that neighborhood since we have everything under control after this project, and to move onto other problem areas. This project does not legally require a public hearing. However, we knew that it was something that several people wanted to have a chance to speak to so that is why it is on your council agenda this evening as a public hearing. It did not receive the 2 weeks notice because it does not require it. The notice that was sent out was a courtesy to the neighborhood, and it was intended strictly to allow people a chance to speak without having to pull it off of the consent agenda. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I do have Mark Rolfs here tonight from Bonestroo. He is the one that did the majority of the study work and is able to answer most of the questions. And I also have Kelley Janes here tonight. He is our Utility Superintendent. He can answer any questions about how our system functions. And Matt Saam, our Assistant City Engineer is here tonight and he's the one that did the review on the Big Woods on Lotus project as it came through the council process. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Council, any questions for staff at this time? Councilman Ayotte: I have a couple. First off, I'm very concerned because I followed almost every point you made and so I'm either getting better or you're getting better at explaining things to me. What I'm kind of interested in, because I was interested in this event back in the days when we had the original concern and we had discussed it then. In your view is our PM program, or the lack of a PM program, in need of alterations so that we can, on a go forward basis, avoid some of the concerns we have here? Would PM have done any good do you think? Teresa Burgess: I think that we're on top of it. We've had a televising program for some time. We're now working to get that to be a more channeled program. To be more systematic in how we're doing it, and I think we've gotten there. We have had a changeover in our utility superintendent since, in the last 2 years, and that has made a difference how we are doing some City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 things. I think we did them to the best of our ability before and in all honesty we have not had serious problems in our system. I spoke with the MPCA today on the phone and they did not feel that we had any problems that were serious. We have worked with them on every incident we have had in the city in the recent past. I can't speak past about 5 years ago, but recently have worked with them on every incident that has happened and they have approved our responses to those and we have taken any action that they had recommended to avoid future incidences and they felt that we were on the right track with what we're working on here on this lift station as well as 1 and 2. Councilman Ayotte: Do you see any need for any sensing? How are we going to monitor the gen set in terms of kicking on, kicking off'? That sort of thing. Teresa Burgess: The generator will be hooked up to our SCADA system, and so it will give a notice that it's on or off. Councilman Ayotte: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Any other questions for staff at this time? Okay. Councilman Boyle: Where's lift station number 2 located? Teresa Burgess: I don't have my little maps. Station number 2 is right here. And up here, which is just off the north side of Lotus Lake. Lift station number 2 is just off Frontier Trail. Lift station 10. I'm sorry, that's lift station 1. It's hard to read it on the screen. Lift station 10 is up here. Kelley's motioning at me that I'm wrong. So there's lift station 10. You can see this is the existing main. It will probably help if I just look in the one that I'm standing next to. Here's lift station number 10. This is the existing main as it comes down. This is all forcemain. Lift station 1 currently, lift station 10 comes in on an 8 inch forcemain. Lift station 1 then tries to pump into that same main that's now a 6 inch forcemain and it shares that with lift station number 10. What's being proposed is that a parallel line be constructed adjacent to that 6 inch that would be a 10 inch. That 10 inch would carry lift station number 10. It would go parallel to this. Lift station 1 will remain in the existing 6 inch, and up here at Frontier there is a gravity system that we will drop lift station 1 into and it will flow through the gravity system. It does have capacity, and that will flow down to lift station 2 and get picked up in lift station 2. Lift station 2 then tries to pump into that same main. This one has the pictures of the extra main. This is when I get confused. Here's that parallel 10 inch, and then that picks up. You can see that there's a break inbetween. This comes into the existing gravity sewer and goes into the existing gravity. This then carries on through the 8 inch main. The reason for the 10 inch is that it does reduce the friction in the pipe, requiring less head to push. It goes through the 10 inch. And then as we get up into lift station 2 you see that we've disconnected lift station 2 from the forcemain and it will go into a proposed forcemain, 8 inch forcemain. Come down to an existing gravity sewer and then slope from the gravity sewer out into the metro waste system. And that will allow 10 to have this system down to lift station number 10 where it will then pick up. Councilman Boyle: Thank you. Councilman Labatt: Teresa, as long as you have that map up there. Can you just show where all the ground disruption will be? Where you'll be required to dig. From station 1 up the hill? Teresa Burgess: The ground disruption at lift station 1 will be right in the beachlot. It's in the area that is already dug up. The neighborhood probably knows where that is. It's the area that City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 we dug up for the valve repair. So it's all contained relatively close to the lift station. The pit has to be at each end of the directional drill. Assuming that everything goes fine, we drill from there up to here by this existing catch basin, and we'll have to dig up the street in that area. But this is not an open trench. The reason for directional drill in this neighborhood is because of the density of the neighborhood. The established trees. We have homes that are close to it. We don't want to dig a trench through this neighborhood. By doing directional drill we save on restoration and we save on disruption to the neighborhood. So we'll have two pits on either end. Councilman Labatt: So then leading down to lift station 2, at 2 there'll be no disruption? Teresa Burgess: At 2 we will, at this point there won't be any. Yeah, there won't be anything at lift station 2 now. There will be when we get to lift station 2 which we will schedule on the CIP this fall to, for council to approve this fall and then that would be coming up in the next 1 to 3 years. And there will be 2 fits. One on either end. One here. One here. Can we make the curve Mark? Make it to here. And keep in mind, we have not done the plans and specifications yet. This is a conceptual plan. Council needs to authorize preparation of plans and specs before we can prepare those plans. I know there's some frustration in the neighborhood, why can't you tell me where exactly does the pipe go? Does it go on the left side of my lot or on the north or the south side of my lot? We can't tell anybody that yet because we haven't done plans. The council needs to authorize that before we spend the money. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any other questions for staff at this time? Okay, seeing none. I'll open this for the public hearing. If there's anyone here that would like to address the council on this issue, if you'll approach the podium and state your name and address for the record please. Debbie Lloyd: Debbie Lloyd, 7302 Laredo Drive. I live in the neighborhood affected by the, I guess I live in lift station 1. Near lift station 1 in Sunrise Hills and there's an easement in the back of my property that would be where the new 10 inch pipe would be laid. And I just have a couple comments, and that is, I know that this was a courtesy to advise us that this was going to happen, but not everyone along that easement was notified. For example Joel Jenkins who lives at the southern most lot on Frontier Trail did not receive notification because he does not live within 500 feet of the lift station. And that's one of those courtesy issues that I wish could be cleared up because his property actually will be dug up almost more, or more affected than anyone else. He has a lot of mature trees along that easement. The second point I'd like to bring up is that there, in the letter that we received, the public hearing notice, there's a second that says please note. No assessments are proposed for this project, so I think for a lot of people receiving this, no alarm would ever go off. But in the public notice that was in the paper, it says no assessments are proposed at this time. I want to know which it is. If the 10 inch pipe laid in my neighborhood for the benefit of another neighborhood is going to end up being an assessment for me and my neighbors, direct neighbors, or if there's an assessment in the future, if that would be for the new development. So I'd just like that clarified. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Teresa, if you could go ahead and address that question. Teresa Burgess: Okay, I was taking notes. Were those the only two questions? Debbie Lloyd: No, I think I have some more but I'm not really sure. Teresa Burgess: Okay, I'll answer these two while you think about it. I did speak with Mr. Jenkins and the reason he was not notified is correct, he was not within 500 feet of the lift station. However, our process once we have approval to prepare plans and specifications would be to start City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 that preparation and then once we have something to share with those people, to call them and to meet with them that are directly adjacent to the project so Ms. Lloyd will be contacted again when we actually have plans to say okay now this is where it goes on your property, and actually lay out a plan for her to see where exactly it's going to go and to describe what's the impact to your yard. We'll do the same thing with the rest of the property owners along that area. We will actually sit down with them. We usually do it in an open house setting. We send out notices and say if you want to see it, come in. If you're not interested, you don't have to, and people then are encourage to come in and ask questions. We ask them to take a look at the plans. Is there anything that we should be aware of that we missed? Have you installed a sprinkler system or something that we should know about? And at the same time we do that early enough so that we can make changes to the plans if they do bring something to us that we would need to know to make appropriate decisions and recommendations to the council. And so this notice was intended just to let people know that we're going to do a project and just we're on the conceptual stage. Once we have plans, we will start to talk with people that are directly adjacent, not that 500 feet broad band. We'll be talking with the people, the property owners on either side of that pipeline. As far as assessments, the notice that was mailed out was directed specifically to these property owners. At this time, according to the project that we are recommending construction for, there are no assessments. However, when I put the notice in the paper I did not want to bind the hands of future councils to say that well we already said there's no assessments and now we come back in 5 years, based on our CIP projects that we're going to place in from the study, and well we said there were no assessments. Now we can't assess, and legally that does not bind us but I don't want to put a future council in that position of, we've basically said that and now we have to live by it. And so this project that we are discussing tonight, there are no assessments. But I did leave the wording a little bit wishy washy with the intention of leaving the council the final decision for future. Mayor Jansen: So specifically there are no assessments on your recommendation which is the priorities 1 and 3, and you've left yourself open for the potential on 2 and 4? Teresa Burgess: Correct. If we wanted to do assessments on 1 and 3, if the council directs that this evening, we have to go back and hold a public hearing with official legal notice. This public hearing does not meet the notice requirements for assessments. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Does that answer your question Debbie? Debbie Lloyd: Yes. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any others? Debbie Lloyd: Well I'm still somewhat confused about the study recommending that 1 and 3 be implemented before 2. Teresa Burgess: The study does not recommend that. The study recommends they be done 1, 2, 3, 4. Staff did not have Bonestroo revise the study after.., as a staff and we did not have Bonestroo revise the study. The recommendation is coming from staff to do priority number 3 before priority number 2. It is not coming from Bonestroo. Debbie Lloyd: But if... had that information they would change their outcome? Teresa Burgess: If we were to request Bonestroo to revise the study, I'm sure they would do so. We have discussed the recommendation from staff. They did receive a copy of our staff report. City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 I've spoken with Bonestroo several times before the staff report went out and they have not expressed any concern with us doing that, as long as priority number 2 is done within a reasonable time period. Debbie Lloyd: And what is the reasonable time period? Teresa Burgess: Mark, did you have something specific? Mark Rolfs: Well, a little bit depends on the.., so I would say in a few years. Within a few years. Teresa Burgess: My intention as I do the CIP is to try and schedule it within the next 1 to 3, and that seems to fit with what Mark is saying. Mark is the one who did the study. Debbie Lloyd: Okay, thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Sure. Is there anyone else with questions? Rachel Igel: Hi. Rachel Igel, 6195 Strawberry Lane in Shorewood. Madam Mayor and Council members. The reason that I'm coming to you today is I hope that you've all received a letter that my husband and I have sent you from Igel Properties regarding our subdivision on Big Woods on Lotus Lake. The reason that we're here is because we're very concerned about lift station 10, and we're concerned from 3 perspectives. One being that we're the developer of the subdivision. There's 9 lots. Two, that we're actually an owner of one of the lots that's very close to the lift station 10. And three, that we feel we represent those people that have bought lots from us. And so why we're here today is that we have invested a great deal of time and money obviously into the development on Big Woods at Lotus Lake, and in doing so we felt that we had gone through a number of steps with city engineering in order to get to the point where we actually purchased the property. And so as we come here today what we're asking for is that the city actually implement options, or priorities 1 and 4 as they were presented to us back when we decided to purchase the property, and basically what we're saying is that lift station 10, everyone involved in the situation has acknowledged it's one of the most important lift stations throughout the system. The capacity of that station is being maximized. There is an enormous amount of noxious odor that comes out of lift station 10. We also have aesthetic issues with lift station 10. When we went to look at purchasing the property, we had a number of meetings with Teresa Burgess of the engineering department, and as part of that was an acknowledgement that lift station 10 was of concern and that they wanted to do some upgrades. And at that time they had told us, she had told us as well as Matt Saam within engineering, that they'd be willing to consider looking at implementing improvements which would include improving the capacity. There was flooding issues. There was generator concerns. It was apparent that the well had to be increased, and the fact that there was a development going in, that there was aesthetic and odor concerns that were happening. During that period it was also apparent that there was no easement owned by, legal easement owned by the city to actually have a lift station there. In addition to that, we had worked through with Teresa Burgess the idea that there was a number of goals that the city was trying to achieve with our development. One being to get a formal easement, or legal easement. Two, to expand that easement to be able to actually implement a lift station that was going to be able to handle the capacity. Three, there was concerns over the creek that comes through our property and wanting to have conservation easements to protect any sort of impacts that could happen on the creek. And again to also give easements on the back of some of our lots to protect trees and the creek again. We agreed that we would go ahead and provide the city all of these easements without any charge to the city. However in return what she said that the city would do is go out, have a feasibility study done that would not only consider the capacity needs and how we go about 10 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 implementing those, but look at the odor issue and look at the aesthetics issue. As we went through numerous meetings what was becoming apparent is that that in fact wasn't going to happen. We had gone ahead and given all these easements prior to platting. It wasn't a forced hand issue because we had the plat. We said okay, we're working with the city. We were asked to work with the city. We've now given you everything that you need and in return what we're asking for is to consider these issues which are of great concern to us. In looking at these issues, we started out with Teresa saying why don't you take a look at the lift station on Lake Lucy Road. We've got scrubbers in that system. We could look at doing something similar to that. It was over, at that time we understood over a million dollars worth of improvements to get the odor control. We went ahead and looked at that. During that time they said that they would go ahead and implement a feasibility study. The study took a number of months to go through and during that time we went through the platting process. Now we have handed over all of these easements and as of a meeting that we had in April with Teresa, we were told that not only was the city not going to consider doing odor control, but if the city was going to do it, we would have to pay 50 percent of it. Now, we were very frustrated by this because during the entire time that we have looked at going through this issue with Teresa and with the city, we were told that this was going to be an issue the city would take on, and now all of a sudden it was an issue that we were going to have to present 50 percent of. We had already sold all of our lots. We no longer had the option of being able to assess those neighbors that would be a part and would have the benefit of odor control. Have the benefit of aesthetics. In addition to that, we were looking at now instead of looking at a very expensive system, looking at a very minimal system. We're willing and interested in seeing a minimal system put in. In fact we have spoken with the PCA. We understand that a charcoal filtration system can be very effective. We understand that it doesn't necessarily need to be as expensive as it's being proposed here. In addition to that, we originally were told that they would actually put a building around the lift station. Later we were told after the feasibility study that that wouldn't be, that wouldn't satisfy OSHA requirements because of a potential for, oh I forgot the terminology but if you were to go inside and you could be overcome by fumes. So we talked about the idea of having an open roof put on it. Finally by the time April came around of this year, what we were looking at was just a wooded fence that would have you know maybe some sort of wrought iron implemented into it. We're okay with even that, but we need to see something done. We feel that the city has not satisfied their end of the bargain, and we feel very strongly that we have given up all of these rights to our property. We have not been compensated in any way, shape or form for it, and we feel very strongly that if the city doesn't come through, that we should evaluate pulling back the easements because we're not getting what we asked for from them. In addition to that, we're looking into the idea of nuisance law and the idea that these odors are causing a nuisance. Councilman Ayotte: Say that again, I didn't hear you. Rachel Igel: Looking at Minnesota's Nuisance Law, and the fact that these odors are a nuisance to us. They're noxious fumes. They're very strong. And they're something that us within the development are going to have to live with day in and day out for the rest of our time on the property and we feel that what we're asking for, it's not a huge expense on the city and in return what it will do for us in our neighborhood is very important. So again what we're asking for is that, at this time you implement the odor control and the fencing. Finally the whole subdivision right now is ripped up with the road being put in that was required by the city, and when we originally looked at doing this, Teresa suggested that this would be done in tangent with our development, and now it's being proposed that that would not happen. And again, if the city comes in at a later date, they're going to rip up our neighborhood again to go in and implement all of the requirements necessary for the lift station, and so we feel that right now is an opportunity. The city will save money because it's all ripped up and they could take advantage of the fact that 11 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 our development is there. And at the same time give us what we ask for and in return the city has received great value from us in all the easements that we've issued. Thank you very much. Any questions? Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Appreciate it. Rachel Igel: Yep. Mayor Jansen: Teresa. A few questions. I'm sure you kept track of them. However you'd like to address. Teresa Burgess: I don't like to argue in public but apparently we're going to on this one. The only commitment that the city made on this project, and I want to make it very clear, the only commitment was that we would study it. When we met with Ms. Igel down at the lift station, we as the city felt that it did not have a significant odor problem. We've never received complaints, and she does have a good point in that Mr. Swanson did not live directly adjacent to the lift station. However, the lift station was there when she purchased the property. She and her husband. The lift station was there when they did their subdivision, and I remember quite clearly sitting in this council meeting when they did their subdivision and pointing out, you know there's a lift station on that site. And it was pointed out at every stage. The only commitment that I ever made was that as long as we're studying the wet well capacity, we will look at the feasibility of odor control and the feasibility of a building over it. Now it's feasible technically, but it's incredibly expensive. To fit a building over this lift station we would require purchasing the additional lot that is directly adjacent to the lift station because we can't take lift station 10 out of service while we work on this. I don't know how much the lots are going for but I do know that that's a significant impact. And that does not include anything for a building. That's just land acquisition. Now the easements that were acquired were done under the platting process. They were done under perfectly legal platting process. We would have requested them if the Igel's had not been willing to give them. They would have been a condition of the plat. However they were willing participants and chose to dedicate them without us requiring them. The study does address odor control. It specifically talks about the option of odor control. The scrubbers that are down on lift station 24. The type of odor control we have on lift station 24. First of all if you've been down there, you know how well they work. In that case not very well. That is one of the reasons that I did tell them they should go check it out. That's an incredibly expensive facility and it does very little to control odor so I wanted them to understand. You can put a lot of money into this and not get anything. The other thing with that is a lot of that is no longer done. The only thing that is really available to us for odor control now is carbon filters and that is why that's the only thing that's proposed under this study. Finally I'd like to point out to the council that we have 29 lift stations in the city of Chanhassen. We are in the process of constructing number 30. We have a couple more that will be coming on in future developments, and so with 30 lift stations, and you have neighborhoods that are sitting here tonight that don't have odor control on their lift stations. If we just say yep, we're going to put odor control on this thing because you said it smells. Odor is something that is so hard to quantify. If we just say the city's going to do it, no problem. We'll just take care of that. We need to be able to justify why this lift station and not the other 29 in town. Especially when we're talking about an existing lift station that they built the house next to. Not a house that we built the lift station next to. Now, the reason that I was willing to recommend to council that we pay for 50 percent of the odor control is because we are proposing to expand this lift station. We're not building it but we're expanding it. Those property owners will receive direct benefit from that odor control, and I spoke with MPCA today specifically about odor control and I asked them for, as long as they had contacted me to talk about a complaint they had received, I felt it was a good opportunity to kind of pick their brains 12 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 too and see if our view on this odor control was wrong, and I specifically said to them, my view on odor control on a lift station is that it's an aesthetic issue. Their opinion. Councilman Ayotte: Say that last part again Teresa. Teresa Burgess: It's an aesthetic issue. And therefore since it's not a health issue, it's an aesthetic issue, it is appropriate for me to ask people to pay for part of the cost. And as such, in asking them to pay for it, if they feel that an assessment is not appropriate for odor control, then it doesn't smell that bad. And his statement back to me was, you're probably right. If it's not worth putting some of the money towards, it's not smelling that bad. Now in this case it seemed appropriate. We were trying to work with the property owners. I'm sorry, I can hear somebody whispering. I didn't want to interrupt. We were trying to work with the property owners. The reason for doing this project and proposing to do it all at once was first of all we were not aware of the problems at lift stations 1 and 2 at the time that we did this study. The study pointed it out to us. That did change our priorities. The Igel's have received several copies of the draft so as come to the city we have shared them. We have contacted them repeatedly. We have email back and forth. We did sit down with them and discuss specifically odor control and what it can do. What it can't do. And up until we had the valve break at lift station 2, our intention was to do, I'm sorry lift station 1. Our intention was to do the improvements to lift station 10 with screening and doing the generator and working with them on, is odor control something we want to pursue. Should we talk about it as an assessment project to all of the properties? And then we had the valve break at lift station number 1. That changed our priorities and we did contact them when our priorities changed and we told them what was going on. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact of the matter that the utility budget does not have the money to do all 4 priorities this year. We have to pick and choose and staff has decided that our recommendation to council is priority 1 and 3 as the most appropriate for the year 2002. And it's unfortunate we don't have an unlimited budget, but we do. Mayor Jansen: Okay. And just so I'm clear, the aesthetic issue dealing with the fence, and I heard Ms. Igel say that they're fine with the fence. Under option number 1 it's an estimated cost, correct? Is this the station we're talking about? Teresa Burgess: Lift station 10, option number 1. Mayor Jansen: Okay. With fence and without fence. Teresa Burgess: We would be required by our planning, our zoning requirements to screen the permanent generator and so the fence that's included is to screen the permanent generator. The boxes that are down there, the control boxes are painted green to fade into the greenery. Unfortunately they do stick out in the snow, but they have been there for quite some time. By zoning code and by our planning codes we're required to fence, and we do try to meet our own codes and that is why fencing is included. It was put in here as with and without just to point out that there is some cost involved in that. Mayor Jansen: Okay. So it will be screened with the fence so that's already been addressed. Teresa Burgess: Only the generator will be screened. The intention was to screen the generator. Now we could certainly, if the council's directs, add on screening for the control boxes. That is not something we generally do, and so we would need to have direction if that's what you would like to see us do. 13 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Okay. In comparison to screening the generator I don't have a clue as to the size comparison. Teresa Burgess: The generator, we would be screening just like you would see around the large sized air conditioning units. We would be putting in some form of fencing with some architectural interest. We would work with our planning department to make sure it meets all of their requirements. They have concerns about the viewscape from the lake as well as from the neighborhood. They're much more concerned actually about the viewscape from the lake with that being probably the area that will get the most traffic and visibility of this area. Mayor Jansen: But if we added screening of the control boxes, what would we be adding potentially? Half again? Is it the same cost as screening the generator as far as the size and amount? Teresa Burgess: Part of the problem is we need to have access to those, and so we would have to look at what's involved in getting that screened. We couldn't answer that tonight. We'd have to relook at it. Most of the screening issues are probably, if we were to screen the box probably what we're going to do is plant some trees, which are already around it. There's several trees around it. We cannot screen the actual wet well itself, except to put fence around it. We can do a lot of things with a fence but the house that's proposed next door to this lot, or to this parcel is a two story home. There's not going to be much we can do. You're talking about some pretty high fence to be able to screen from that. And I have talked with that person. He's called me periodically for updates and I know that he's called the Igel's also several times for updates. Where are we in the process? What's going on? And he actually lives on Highway 101 and so I've had a lot of contact with him on Highway 101 as well. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Otherwise the only other aesthetic part of the project that moved into 4 that we wouldn't be doing right away is recommended to change the light pole, and I take that as a minor compared to if we in fact can screen the rest of the project. Teresa Burgess: And we can certainly take that minor piece and move it up. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Teresa Burgess: You do it as part of the major project and make it look nice. Mayor Jansen: Okay, if it isn't a big deal. And then I noted within your notes that any of the odor issues can in fact be addressed if it does become a situation as far as being able to add the odor control after the project is completed, if there does seem to be a great deal of issue around that. Teresa Burgess: Right. That is something that we would offer to any neighborhood that surrounds a lift station. If they feel that it's appropriate to do odor control, we would go through the process of a petitioned project, just like we do any other public improvement project, and my recommendation to council would be that it at least a portion assessed and we would evaluate each lift station as it would come to us. In fact I had a discussion with the property owner near lift station number 1 asking why is lift station 10 being proposed for odor control and we're not? Well, because they asked for it. If you want it, hey. Come in and ask for it and I'll be happy to work with you and we'll do a cost estimate and we'll tell you what it's going to cost and decide. And then you can tell me if this lift station still smells, or if it's not that bad. And with this many lift stations, it's the only way I can see doing it and being fair to everyone in the city. Certainly 14 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 we can talk about them as they come in about what's appropriate for city share, and if we get a lot of these we may have to talk about that. But at this point in time, if we've never had somebody ask for it, and talking with the consultants that do this type of work, we couldn't find any place that did it consistently. Put in odor control. You do it here and there where you have to but nobody that does it across the board. Mayor Jansen: So of the 29 current lift stations, we don't get a lot of nuisance complaints around the odor, or have we gotten any? Teresa Burgess: We get an occasional once in a while. Not anywhere near where we get for instance smelly ponds. We get an occasional complaint about a lift station. We try to take care of them in a timely manner, as quickly as possible and do what we can with them. Some of them there's not anything we can do. But we don't get a lot of complaints about our lift stations. Mayor Jansen: Alright, thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council on this issue? Greg Lindsley: Sure I would. Greg Lindsley. Mayor and council. I'm the gentleman Teresa was talking about. I live on 101 plus I also own, now own the Lot 8 of Big Woods, which is one of the easements for the lift station. My intent here is to really obviously would be to support the Igel's since I bought this property with the intent of some improvements being made, and I can understand what.., and some of those things. And as we talked in some of these meetings we were at, there's no guarantees on odors. Charcoal can help. I got the impression maybe the larger wet well might help with some additional cleaning. So as I sit here and take notes on what's going on, I would like to make a few points. We bought this property based on many things. A lot of positives. It's on Lotus Lake. Very nice. It's wooded. But one of them was some improvements by the city to this lift station, and until tonight I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. We had some conversation and I wasn't a part of this letter but, I'd like to at least recommend that you seriously consider the control boxes be fenced in, or screened or whatever the term is that we're using tonight. And the other question I'd have is, if it's put off for future, when might that be? Would the larger question might be... 10 foot wet well, would that maybe possibly help odors? You know we've already discussed that charcoal might help the odors. When might that happen? Next year? 10 years? Or is that just something that can't be answered? I'm not sure how the city works... Mayor Jansen: The comment from staff was, as part of our CIP projects Teresa would be looking at the next 1 to 3 years, correct? Teresa Burgess: We'd be looking for the next 1 to 3 on lift station 2. We probably would look at how quickly this neighborhood develops and work with the neighborhood, but I would see it being at least 3 years out, just for budgetary purposes. We try to do projects as soon as possible but we have to look at our budget and see when do we have money. We'd like to get it done before we have the big bill for the water treatment. Mayor Jansen: Okay. So take that as an estimate and not a promise. Greg Lindsley: Right. So...but in the meantime we also have the issue of screening and you're considering screening the boxes. Mayor Jansen: That will be part of our conversation tonight, yes. 15 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Greg Lindsley: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Anyone else? Kari Romportl: I'm Kari Romportl and I live at 7417 Frontier Trail and I developed the property on Big Woods on Lotus Lake with Dave and Rachel and we originally did it with the intent we were going to be living there and we did live there before that and have had the opportunity to smell lift station 10 numerous times and our house was quite a bit a ways from the lake and I know the people that bought our lot are going to be quite a bit closer. But also my big concern is all 3 of these lift stations have very close access to Lotus Lake, and I'm sure there's quite a few homeowners on Lotus Lake that get kind of concerned when sewage can overflow into a lake and that'd be my recommendation is, I live, currently live very close to lift station number 2. My next door neighbor is here and she lives right next door to lift station 2 and wasn't aware that she could complain about the smell. So that's my recommendation is to, that we can do whatever we can, especially to protect the lake from, I know there was discussions throughout this whole development about expanding the wet well at number 10. That there was issues when the power would go that it would overflow into Lotus Lake so that would be my recommendation is we can do whatever we can to protect this nice city and the lake that is in it, so thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. That is why we have been having these conversations and had attached the temporary generator. Teresa Burgess: And just for council's information. We have not overflowed lift station number 10 since I've been here, and I've been here for 2 years. I asked Kelley this morning what his recollections were and we couldn't really nail down a timeframe but we have not overflowed 10 recently. We have had some issues with 2 and we have had some issues in 1. The most recent overflow in 1 was when we had the valve break, and that was directly related to the valve, not to flow size. Lift station 2, we've had some issues with inflow which is why we're doing those inflow infiltration improvements to the existing sanitary sewer, and also why we are stepping up our sump pump inspection. A lot of that is coming from people's sump pumps, and we know it and we're out there looking for it. Mayor Jansen: Okay. So the issue is known and you're working on it. Okay, great. Anyone else who would like to address the council on this issue? David Igel: My name's David Igel. I live at 6195 Strawberry Lane. Madam Mayor, council members. I'd like to take just a brief moment and thank you for taking the time to address this issue and also I wanted to commend, I heard nice talk earlier but commend the city staff in this process that we've been through for a year and a half. We dealt on an earlier project. To name them individually would take too long but everything from planning to engineering, it's been a tremendous, it's a big project for us and probably for the city. Excuse me, they've done a great job. Mayor Jansen: Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. David Igel: Yes. Now I don't know that they get enough accommodation. I hear them getting kind of hit here and there but, there's a few issues and I won't take up much more of your time. There's definitely a smell coming from the lift station. I'm not sure why some people can smell it and some people can't. As it relates to what smells bad and what doesn't, you know there are objective standards on feedlots and different farms and it seems odd to me that if there could be feedlot standards for farmers essentially miles away, why wouldn't there be for someone who's 16 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 house is 30 feet. I really, I don't think it's in the best interest for anyone to spend a great deal of time arguing about what those counts per billion are, or having different professional sniffers out there perhaps. I think that time would be better spent and the money would be better spent just doing what we felt, what we felt we were bargaining for when we made the voluntary easements, which we didn't charge anything for. I think we calculated if they were to be purchased, you know upwards of $80,000. I think we've done our part. I understand you're in a tough situation with all of the other lift stations. I think we've heard from a couple people tonight and if someone were to go and ask everyone around all of the 29 lift stations, I think you'd probably get a few more complaints about the smell than you've gotten so far so. I would just ask that you would consider addressing that. I think it's the right thing for the city to do. My one other point is regarding the screening. I'm looking at Option A on the site plan that was produced by Bonestroo, but it appears, at least in this, that the intent has always been to screen the entire thing including the control boxes and the wet well. If I'm reading that incorrectly, perhaps someone could correct. Teresa Burgess: You're looking at the Option A with the expanded wet well and when we do the expanded wet well the intention was to screen the entire area. However, when we do just the generator we were not proposing to do the entire screening at that time. It's certainly something if the council feels that's appropriate, that we would revise our numbers and look into, and we can certainly bid it both ways if the council directs plans and specifications be prepared this evening and see what the price comes to. Mayor Jansen: Okay. David Igel: Okay, thank you for that clarification. Thank you for your time. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Anyone else to comment on this project? Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and bring this back to council. Council, any questions for staff? Councilman Ayotte: A couple. And first off...what she has to deal with so Teresa thanks for putting up with all the concerns and pushing forward. Nuisance law, Rog. Do you know anything about nuisance laws associated with odor? Roger Knutson: Yes. Councilman Ayotte: Could you tell me more? Roger Knutson: First, it's my understanding unless something has changed in the last 6 months, just as an example for feedlots, there is no odor regulation for feedlots. I was involved in a feedlot issue, representing townships and the PCA does not want to go there. Some other states I believe have, but Minnesota does not have anything on the books on, per se on parts per billion of this or that for odor. It's a difficult issue. How many people is disturbed? How strong is it? How many complaints do you get? Councilman Ayotte: So are you stating. Roger Knutson: We really can't quantify it. Councilman Ayotte: Okay, there's no mode of measurement. No vehicle for threshold. Roger Knutson: There's no objective measurement for it. 17 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Ayotte: Okay. Another question ifI may Mayor. The Igel's stated that, first Mrs. Igel stated that there was no legal easement and then she stated that there were easements that they provided to the city and then she stated that they can be pulled. Is that true? Roger Knutson: I believe we have all the easements we need and no, they cannot be pulled. Councilman Ayotte: Okay. Teresa Burgess: Her statement Bob, if I can just clarify. Prior to the Igel's purchasing the property we were in negotiations with the previous property owner. He did not want to give easements to the city or to have us purchase easements. He preferred to operate under a handshake agreement with the city. We periodically stopped in and said you know Mr. Swanson, is it okay if we continue to use this? And he would say yes, go ahead and we would plow his driveway in return. That was how he preferred to have it. We, approximately 3 to 4 months before the property was purchased started talking with him about we'd really like to purchase that easement and he sold the property before we were able to negotiate that. But we had not, we had access through an alternative location, it just was not convenient access. We would have had to put in a new road. This access was the most convenient to this parcel and Mr. Swanson was very accommodating and willing to work with us but he did not want a legal piece of paper on his property, and we respected that request on his part. Councilman Ayotte: One last question. Is there a correlation between odor, whether or not it's measurable and the capacity of the system's that we're addressing? So the greater the capacity the less the odor. Can we make that statement, yes or no? Teresa Burgess: The greater impact on odor is really the demographics of the waste. This is mainly residential which means it's mainly water. It's gray water. It's what comes out of your sink. It's what comes out of your sink. It's what comes out of your shower. That's the majority of the flow. If it was industrial, like lift station 24 was prior to Chaska shutting off, those have a much stronger scent because we're talking about more volatiles. As long as the lift station doesn't sit there and just sit there and decay in the lift station, it really doesn't have much of a difference how long. How much is coming through the system. It's what's coming through the system that's more important. Councilman Ayotte: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any other questions for staff? Councilman Peterson: Teresa, as a matter of course in the Igel's memorandum they cite that the easements would have had a value of 27 and 76,000 respectively and various other numbers. Again as a matter of course, would we have normally in a subdivision like this reimbursed the property owners or developers for that? Teresa Burgess: No. If they had not willingly donated those easements we would have required them as a condition of the plat approval. Councilman Peterson: Okay, thank you. Teresa Burgess: The only way we would have purchased the easement is if they had not platted. If they had purchased the property and lived in the house, we would have purchased the easement and we would have paid probably about what they've estimated. 18 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Peterson: Yep. The second question. On priority number 1 where we talk about the cost with the fence and without the fence. I look at $20,000 for a fence over a small area seems exorbitantly high, and I don't know whether I'm not seeing something. Teresa Burgess: The fence includes some architectural interest and some screening elements like trees. We have to meet, we don't have to. It seems right that we meet our own planning ordinances and our own zoning ordinances and planning requirements and so what we did was we directed Bonestroo to estimate, assuming that we would meet all standards as they would apply to any private developer. And so the fencing includes some extras that are above and beyond just putting up a standard split face fence. Councilman Peterson: So it'd be reasonable to assume, but it wouldn't be substantially higher if you had to make a guesstimate, it wouldn't be all that substantially higher if we did the control boxes along with the generator? I got one head shaking no in the back of you so. Teresa Burgess: In the scheme of things it's not, no. Todd Gerhardt: We can do that as a bid alternative. Just the addition, you can break it into two phases. Councilman Peterson: I just want to get a sense and the sense is it's not exorbitant. Todd Gerhardt: Right. I mean you can even, I don't want to play with the architectural style of the fence but you can look at other varieties of fencing too as alternatives. Councilman Boyle: Is the current lift station partially protected by landscaping now, or by trees or bushes or anything? Teresa Burgess: Prior to the Igel development to Big Woods on Lotus development, I'm sorry. I don't mean to refer to it as Igel. I know it's two property owners. The Big Woods on Lotus development, that area was wooded. A lot of that was saved under a conservation easement but it is much more exposed now than it was prior to the clearing for that grading. And so it is more visible. Another issue is that it is right at the curve of the cul-de-sac as they come in. It's very visible and there's not much we can do about that except to put up some sort of screening fence with landscaping. And unfortunately the gate will have to be on the side of the street. There's not a way around it. Mark Rolfs: Probably you won't downsize the fencing. The whole thing now is that we have to rip part of it back down when we add the wet well in the future. So that would be, in 3 years you'd be tearing part of it down. But keep in mind the whole cost is so small in relation to the whole thing that I think you can pretty much do what you want to. Councilman Boyle: I think you've answered this question before but is it feasible that one lift station would have more odor? Teresa Burgess: Certainly. Councilman Boyle: Consistently? Teresa Burgess: Certainly. 19 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Boyle: Than another lift station. I'm not talking industrial. We're talking residential. Teresa Burgess: The bigger thing is going to be how much wind do you have in the area to dissipate odors. What do you have to contain odors? How sensitive is the person living next door to it? Those are going to be bigger factors than almost anything else. There are certain smells that I can tell you if you're wearing certain colognes from here. I can tell you if you've got it on. And there are other smells that I can't smell at all, and other people have that same thing. Some people are very sensitive to these odors. Some people are not. And that's why it's one of those things where we really can't quantify it because what doesn't bother one person, may drive another up the wall. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Ayotte: Could I ask one more question? Mayor Jansen: Certainly, Councilman Ayotte. Councilman Ayotte: With respect to the lift stations and we may not be able to address for some period of time. Is there anything that we can do, a more aggressive PM program? A more aggressive service program that would mitigate risk to those lift stations. Teresa Burgess: I think our I&I program, our Infiltration and Inflow program is doing a lot of that and we need to keep on top of that program. We need to keep the funding in those program that's already there and to use it. And that is probably the biggest thing. We haven't, you know when we've gone to budget cut, that's always been where we kind of go well, we don't really need to do that. We need to keep on top of that. We need to keep the televising program going. We need to keep on top of our sump pump program. And then as far as odor control, there are some things we can do operationally, and we try them. We don't usually make it real known that we're playing over here trying to make it better because then what we do is we just wait to see if the public, you know if we've received some complaints we try to address them. If we quit receiving complaints, it worked. If we don't, it didn't and that way we're not getting a false response that we did something and people perceive that it is better because we did something. We don't want to lead anybody down the garden path. We want to be truthful about it and so there's some things we do and we do try, but there's not, without expanding the size of our staff and really going into intensive work on these things, there's not a lot we can do maintenance wise. Councilman Ayotte: But what you said was very key and that's in our surveillance program we should make sure that we keep it alive. That's. Teresa Burgess: We need to keep on top of that program, and as there come better ways to do it we need to look for those so that we can save the funds without, we don't want to just throw money down the hole. We want to be looking for the cheapest way to do the same program, and we're always looking for that. Looking for cheaper ways for us to do the televising. This year one of the cost savings we were able to use that is highly effective is, we're having our intern in- house do our sump pump program and he's going and doing that much cheaper than having a consultant do it. And all those things, we need to look for cost effective ways to do it and still keep those programs functional. And so far we've been able to do that. We've been able to trim from the budget the last couple years. Save some money back and still do the same projects. 20 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 This year we're doing a very intensive program on our infiltration and inflow, specifically because of the outcomes of this study. It identified some things that we were not aware of. We are also at this point doing a sewer metering program that will identify other areas that we need to do work on. Mayor Jansen: Okay council, if we could see if we can move this to comments or a motion. I think we've covered the issues pretty extensively around this particular one and it sounds as though we can address the screening issue through the bid alternatives as was suggested by Mr. Gerhardt. But if there are any other comments, otherwise I'll call for a motion. Councilman Ayotte: I would like to consider, to see whether or not staff can see if they could formalize a surveillance program a little bit more. Those lift stations that could potentially be an issue, so not to do it all across the board, but to see if we can increase the surveillance. Mayor Jansen: I think that might be something to address at another time in that that's covering more the general system. If we could do that, okay. Appreciate it. Councilman Labatt: The only comments I'll make, Teresa, how far is the lift station from the proposed house on Lot 8? Do you know? Teresa Burgess: I don't have the dimensions in from of me. I know that there were discussions, and I haven't seen building permits yet on that house, but there were discussions on could the deck encroach on the easement or not so we're very close to the home. Councilman Labatt: So when you say very close, are you saying within 40 feet? Teresa Burgess: Yes. I would say we're within 40 feet. I can't guarantee that because I haven't seen building permits. Councilman Labatt: Now lift station 26, which is the end of Moccasin Trail, is that right? Is that the one? Which is right at the end of my back yard. There's no screening there. Teresa Burgess: No. Councilman Labatt: The screening that was put there was done by the homeowners. Teresa Burgess: Correct. Councilman Labatt: Okay. So I'm just wondering, are we opening up a can of worms here by potentially having to screen 30. The lift station was there. They subdivided. Created the lot. They created the problem. In our development we have a house right next door to our's that is about 22 feet from the lift station and those homeowners screened it themselves with pine trees and lilacs. Mayor Jansen: Of the existing lift stations, and this situation I wasn't aware of. How many of them are screened? Is that a question you can answer tonight? Kelley Janes: ... screening, most of them sit out in the open. The only one I could say that is screened, and it isn't directly screened, is just that there is a fence marking the easement area next to Miles Lord's place on the Excelsior/Chan border. There's a fence and gate there but that is 21 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 just, that's on the border and that's the access for our machines to get through his fence to get to the lift station which does sit out in the open... Mayor Jansen: Okay. Interesting point. Teresa Burgess: And as was pointed out earlier though, the generator would, by our own codes, be required to be screened. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Labatt: That's what I'll comment. I mean you know, it seems like a self created problem here. Councilman Peterson: I think as we move ahead, I think we'll, are we not apt to screen them as we move ahead and build more of them, just to follow our code? Teresa Burgess: As we've built new ones, the lift stations are really pretty much non-obtrusive from a visual standpoint. The boxes are a green. They're not, they look like an electrical box. The wet well is under ground. We don't put buildings over most of them so they aren't that obtrusive. Wells, we have been screening our wells and we don't do a full screening. We just put in some landscaping so it looks a little bit nicer. It would be on a basis by basis. Typically they're being built by developers now and so we typically see them being a little bit more screened, just because they're going to try and sell that house that's adjacent to it. But it's not required. Councilman Labatt: All the lift stations have that same antenna, correct? Teresa Burgess: Correct. Councilman Labatt: So I think that's the most obtrusive thing personally as you look out and see this 25 foot antenna, but you know. I'd rather look at a green metal box than the 25 foot antenna if I had a choice. Todd Gerhardt: That's a very important antenna. Councilman Labatt: Yeah I know it is. Todd Gerhardt: That's the most important part because you don't want, if that's not working, we have trouble. Councilman Labatt: I know. Mayor Jansen: Well I appreciate your bringing it to our attention. Thank you. Todd Gerhardt: The council should also know that each lift station doesn't have a generator with it. We have only a couple that I'm aware of. Teresa Burgess: This is the only one. Todd Gerhardt: The only one, okay. And because of the environmental sensitive area that we're working in is why we added the generator to this one. And what we're doing is installing a 22 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 permanent one and taking our temporary away so we can use it at our other lift stations. So that's why we're screening is because of that generator. Councilman Boyle: Well I think as long as we're screening the generator I would like to see what the cost would be to screen the boxes. And precedent setting, possibly but case by case. That's my thought. Mayor Jansen: If you want to do, I guess I'm leaning towards the consistency and not wanting to really stray from that, but if you wanted to include it as a bid alternative certainly you could include that as part of a motion to take a look at, but I do think we need to look at the long range implications of what we do. But certainly you can include it as a bid alternative. If we could maybe go to a motion at this point, if someone could make the motion. Councilman Ayotte: Well I'll go with the move to approve the feasibility study and authorize preparation of plans and specs for improvements to lift station 2 and 10 as recommended. Teresa Burgess: IfI could clarify, that's a typo. It should be lift stations 1 and 10. Councilman Ayotte: So amended. With the caveat that I would like to see screen options in... Mayor Jansen: Looking for bid alternatives. And if I could have a second please. Councilman Boyle: Second. Resolution #2002-62: Councilman Ayotte moved, Councilman Boyle seconded to approve the feasibility study and authorize preparation of plans and specifications for improvements to Lift Station No. 1 and No. 10 as recommended, including screening options as a bid alternative. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Jansen: And Teresa, you mentioned that the next step in the process, just so everyone's aware that is here. There will be your open houses then. Teresa Burgess: The next step in the process, we'll be coming back to council with a cost proposal for the design of specifications and plans for these two pieces and we'll be scheduling the remainder of the project in the CIP. Once we're approximately 60 to 70 percent plans, when we actually have something to share with people but we're not too far to make some major changes, we'll send out a notice for an open house and meet with the neighborhood to make sure that we're on the right track. That we're not missing something important and so they have a chance for input in the design process. Mayor Jansen: Okay, great. Thank you. 23 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 PUBLIC HEARING: ASSESSMENT HEARING FOR 2002 MSA STREET IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 01-08. Public Present: Name Address Phil Thiesse A1 Finstad A1 Weingart Tom Pzynski William Asplin Eric Rivkin 1675 Steller Court 1701 Steller Court 1685 Steller Court American Legion Post 580 1665 Steller Court 1695 Steller Court Teresa Burgess: And council I again have some handouts. Councilman Ayotte: Is this similar to what's in the packet then? Teresa Burgess: This is more than what's in the packet. This evening council we are holding the public hearing for the assessment roll for MSA Project 01-08. And that is the public improvements to Saddlebrook Curve, Steller Court, Lake Drive, Lake Drive East and Audubon Road north of Lake Drive. What I handed out this evening is we did receive a couple of assessment contentions after the packet was mailed out and I handed out those, as well as the staff report included a final assessment roll and there were a couple of changes that were made based on consistency and also on the legal counsel. I just want to point out those differences, and these are also a little bit different than what was sent out for legal notice. Unfortunately we're required to give legal notice, we're required to give 2 weeks notice, and so sometimes we're still working and massaging. We send out worst case notice with the intention that council has the legal right to reduce assessments but they don't have the right to change them up from what's noticed to people. So with that if we can go through these real quick. Saddlebrook Curve, the assessments have been adjusted from the original feasibility study to be $810 per parcel. This follows the city's assessment practice that we discussed at the time of the feasibility study being put together. These assessments are 40 percent of the project cost and then further reduced to be equivalent to a 31 foot wide road instead of the road that's currently 35 feet. So they are, 31/35 of 40 percent, if that made sense. The next one that I'd like to point out, because it is different than what was sent out in the notices to the public, as well as to what we sent to the packet is Steller Court. These assessments were adjusted to $2,671.57. The number that was sent out in the packet, and it was in the notice to the neighborhood, was based on just the raw numbers. We went back and looked at the feasibility study and the feasibility study number was the $2,671.57, so we maxed the assessment at the maximum of what the feasibility study had in it for assessment rate. Mayor Jansen: Just so you're aware, this is the number that we received in our packet. Teresa Burgess: Right, but it's not the number the public received. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Labatt: Can you tell us what number they received? Audience: $3,790.00. 24 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Teresa Burgess: I knew it was 3,000 something. Mayor Jansen: $3,790 was the original number. Teresa Burgess: Right. And that's based on the assessment being 40 percent of the pavement cost plus 100 percent of the new curb and gutter because they do not currently have concrete curb and gutter. Is reduced down to being maxed out at the feasibility study assessment roll. Lake Drive is maxed out at the feasibility amount of $4,050. I believe the feasibility actually came out $4,052 but you know if we're going to be exact let's, you know. The assessments actually would have come out closer to $9,000. However we did, as staff, feel that it was appropriate for us to max them out at the feasibility cost estimate. Lake Drive East, you'll notice that the first assessment is $1,875. That is because that lot has been split since the original assessment and one of the things I am asking council for this evening, in addition to adopting the assessment roll, will be to call a supplement assessment hearing for the parcel that was split off of this parcel, and they will share the assessment that would have been on the original parcel. We have to do a public hearing, a supplement public hearing for that parcel only. The remainder assessments are $3,750. That is based on our 40 percent of cost, and the $1,875 is 50 percent of the $3,750. It being equally shared between the 2 lots. And then finally Audubon Road, north of Lake Drive, and the assessment is calculated at $4,050. Again that is because that is the amount shown in the feasibility study. This one again came out close to $9,000. If there are any questions I'd be happy to answer those. This evening we're holding the public hearing so that the public has a chance to speak to the council directly. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff at this time? Councilman Ayotte: I'm afraid so. Mayor Jansen: Councilman Ayotte. Councilman Ayotte: With the disparity, you know we've got industrial activity and with residential activity. The payloads of some of the companies, would that have an adverse affect on the roads versus other companies? Teresa Burgess: The roads are designed, depending on what they're being used for. Certainly if you've driven Lake Drive East lately you've seen that it has been impacted by the type of traffic that they receive. Audubon Road also because of the heavy traffic. They are impacted by that, and you can see that as you drive them. And that does impact the cost. That's why you see a substantially lower cost on Saddlebrook Curve which mainly serves residential type traffic. It's serving, it's a collector route but at the same time it's serving residential needs. It's not serving industrial park type needs. The other roads are built to a higher standard. They're wider. That's why they see a higher cost per parcel. Is because first of all they have larger parcels, but second of all because it's a heavier duty road and it costs more to keep it up. Councilman Ayotte: So let me play it back to you. Where we have corporate activity, corporate businesses along the road, do you see, you do not see a disparity in the breakout of costs for an industrial application vis a vis an industrial application with people on that road? 25 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Teresa Burgess: They are a heavier duty road and so it certainly does cost us more to maintain those roads. It costs us more to build those roads, and you see that in the assessment roll. When you look at the cost that these people are getting, Saddlebrook Curve at $810 is substantially less expensive than Lake Drive or Audubon or Lake Drive East. And it's because of the additional width of the roads. Because of the additional wear and tear on the roads. The additional need to make repairs. Councilman Ayotte: If we were to have an industrial rate for assessments, is there a way where we could establish a criteria for an industrial rate for assessments? Teresa Burgess: The way we've done our assessments is we've said 40 percent of actual cost. In this case we maxed them out on the feasibility study and that was something that was done just because, out of a sense of fairness. This is what we told people their assessment would be. It didn't seem fair to go higher than that. If we're going to save 40 percent of the cost of the road, if the road costs us $1,000 to maintain and we share, cost share at 40 percent versus if it would cost us $10,000 to maintain and we cost share at 40 percent, they're seeing a proportionally higher share of the road and proportionally higher assessment. It seems appropriate from the city's standpoint of implementation to keep the policy consistent. And you have a copy of the practice that we used in preparing these. We went with a very simple practice of cost share 60/40. 60 percent city, 40 percent property owner with it then being prorated on collector type streets down to a standard 31 foot road for residential properties. So if we'd have a residential property on Lake Drive, which we don't, we would have taken the width of Lake Drive and we would have prorated the cost based on the width to a 31 foot. It seems appropriate and it's simplistic. It's easy to explain. It's easy to understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. It's not, you know the property next door to you is a house that gets assessed at this rate and you're, you know we get into what should a church be? Should a church be residential or commercial? You have a gas station in the middle of a residential neighborhood. To do this appropriately, it just seems right to be consistent, and some people will get a great rate. Some people will really come out of this with a pretty decent project for a really cheap rate, and some people are going to go, well it's not fair. But it's consistent and that's the best we can offer people is consistency. And in keeping it simple it makes it easier for us to be consistent and it makes it easier for the public to understand when they come in and ask us, how and why did you do it this way? And so I would recommend to council we keep it as simple as possible, and just accept that more expensive projects, you pay a higher amount because 40 percent of more expensive is more. Did I answer that or did I just talk my way out of the question? Mayor Jansen: Okay, any other questions for staff? Okay. I will open this up for the public hearing. If there's anyone here that would like to address the City Council. We do have several projects that are listed on the public improvements and I know it's helpful for us to be able to follow these if we go in a group of order according to the projects, so if you could maybe come to the podium as I call off the projects so we can group all of your comments together, it would be helpful. The first on the list is the Lake Drive East. If there's anyone here that would like to address the Lake Drive East project. Go ahead and step forward to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Tom Pzynski: My name's Tom Pzynski. I represent the American Legion, Parcel Number 25- 0131900. As Teresa indicated, there is a problem with the assessment on our property because the land has been sold. We had a message from the city earlier today that they would go ahead and split the assessment between the American and Park Nicollet. Park Nicollet hasn't been notified at all, as far as I know and Teresa indicated that they're going to have to have a supplemental hearing so I'm here tonight just.., notice. 26 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Teresa Burgess: I'll take the written notice. And we have discussed the issue of notice with the city's attorney. I talked with Roger this morning. Since the property was split after our notice, our legal notice to the American Legion is also legal notice to the new property owner. We are not required to contact them at the time of split. We did our due diligence at the beginning, and it should have come up during their due diligence at the split and when they purchased the property. The reason for the supplement hearing is because they were not notified of this evening's meeting and did not have an opportunity to prepare a formal objection to the assessment. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Anyone else on the Lake Drive East? Okay. How about Lake Drive? Audubon Road north of Lake Drive. Coulter Boulevard from Audubon Road to Pillsbury. Saddlebrook Curve. Then we're to Steller Court. Anyone here on the Steller Court? William Asplin: William Asplin, 1665 Steller, S-t-e-l-l-e-r Court. I rise in objection to this assessment because we were not properly notified, or we feel that we were not properly notified of the planning process to this project at all. We feel that it's unnecessary project. I've so notified Ms. Burgess. I appreciate her willingness to share her time, her thoughts and comments on our thoughts and comments but we feel that this is an unnecessary project. Had we been afforded the opportunity to know that the project was in the planning stages we would have expressed our thoughts at that time. I thank you for your time, thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Teresa, can you address that? Teresa Burgess: I apologize for the typo. My computer automatically changes it because Stellar is for some reason Word and Excel automatically change it and you'll notice I caught it once and didn't catch it on the others. This project came up on our pavement management program. It came up and was evaluated with Lake Lucy Road, along with several other roads in that area. Lake Lucy Road was postponed based on we had received a petition from the property owners requesting sanitary sewer. Since that will require us to dig up the road, we felt it was only appropriate to allow that road to continue to age and deteriorate until it does reach beyond rehabilitation and go into a rehabilitation which means we rebuild the road from the ground up. We dig it all up and start over from scratch. And when we add sanitary sewer we've got to go down 7 feet anyway so what the heck. We might as well squeeze every ounce of life out of that asphalt. Steller Court on the other hand, the asphalt's in good shape. Those lots are zoned large lot. They are, by our own zoning codes, allowed to stay on sanitary sewer as was pointed out by several of the property owners. They were required to put in a pretty substantial septic system when they each built their homes, and were required also to have an alternative site on site for, if that system ever failed. They're all on wells. They did not come to us and request to not be put on the project and it's unfortunate that they did not feel that they had received public notice, but it does meet the legal requirements and our pavement management system says it's time to do this road. As far as putting in curb and gutter, I know there's been some complaints about should we really do that? Is it necessary? Curb and gutter extends the life of the road. It is our city standard. We would require a developer building this road to install curb and gutter. Again it only seems appropriate that we meet our own requirements and our code requirements that we would place on any developer that would be coming in to do this type of project. Mayor Jansen: Okay. And I went back to the original hearing and like these other projects were listed separately from the Lake Lucy Road project so I was just concerned that if there was some confusion that maybe it had been listed differently than the others, but it in fact was listed the 27 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 same as well Saddlebrook as an example. As an off shoot from Lake Lucy so I did go back and take a look at that. Is there anyone else then to make comment on Steller Court? William Asplin: I'm sorry, could I make one inquiry then? I had requested a copy of that original notice that I think we all received prior to the January 28th meeting is I believe the one you're referencing Mayor. Did you by chance find a copy of that? We're not able to, any of us find a copy that was addressed to the Steller Court residents. Teresa Burgess: I do not have it with me but I can certainly, if you want to leave your, oh I have your address. I can certainly mail you a copy of the original notice. William Asplin: I'd appreciate it, thank you very much. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Teresa Burgess: Mr. Asplin, off the top of my head I can't remember. Did I receive a written objection from you already? William Asplin: I sent you an email which you acknowledged... Teresa Burgess: Okay. I've received several so I just wanted to make sure that you didn't think your verbal would cover it so, thank you. Mayor Jansen: It was one that you handed us out this evening. Teresa Burgess: I received a lot of them. Mayor Jansen: Okay. A1 Weingart: A1 Weingart, 1685 Steller Court. I put together a letter, I think as most of the residents did on our cul-de-sac outlining, apart from the notice issue, just the logical sort of progression that you're going to go about with improving this road before you made a decision on whether you're going to do Lake Lucy Road. My understanding, and tell me if I'm wrong on this, was that Lake Lucy Road was deferred for purposes of studying whether or not you're going to run sewer and water down Lake Lucy Road to somewhere near Galpin. And if that's done, you know some of us want sewer and water, some of us don't, but we at least would like the option to have sewer and water up Steller Court. And if you're planning on doing that within the next 5 to 10 years, it seems to be a little premature to start tearing up Steller Court because as you can tell by all of us here that we've written letters about, the road isn't that bad. It might not have curb but the couple resurfacing I would think could get that road another 5 or 10 years of use. Now that's a laymen's sort of assessment of that but the road is not in bad condition and if we have to come back again in 5 years and rip that road up again and then get reassessed once again for sewer and/or water, it seems to be, that's a sticking point with me is to why wouldn't you just wait. Prolong the life of this road for another, you know whatever years you decide until figure out what you're going to do with Lake Lucy Road, and then do it all at once. Seems to me to be a more cost effective and logical way to kind of go about this. So that's all I have. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Teresa, if you might explain the Lake Lucy project. It's not that we're studying it, correct? We're. 28 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Teresa Burgess: No. We have received a formal petition from the property owners stating that they intend to request sanitary sewer in approximately 10 years as we start to see septic systems fail out there. Councilman Ayotte: Talk a little louder Teresa. Teresa Burgess: We've received a formal petition from the property owners on Lake Lucy Road talking about, they are interested in sanitary sewer, at the time that they start to see failure. Now obviously that's not binding, but it does show that they have a desire. They have been informed that if we allow that road to continue to deteriorate, which is what will happen, no matter how much maintenance we put into it, we just can't keep it in pristine condition. It will continue to deteriorate and at the time that we are required to reconstruct it, their assessments will be, plus inflation, 3 to 4 times what they are proposed as part of this project. And that would be the case also on Steller Court. If we do not do a project, we have basically condemned that road to go down that path. That is certainly an option. Steller Court is within, we have already awarded the contract for Steller Court but it is within the statutory limits for change orders. We could take it off of this project, but in doing that we basically condemn this road to continue to deteriorate. There's no way we'll come back into this neighborhood until Lake Lucy comes, or another large scale project that we can attach it to. The road is too small to do by itself cost effectively, and it will deteriorate and will require reconstruction, which will be much more intrusive to the neighborhood and will require us to build it from the ground up, even if we don't put in sanitary sewer. The question is if that's really where we want to go with this road? The only thing I would say about this project, different from any other, is that we do have if not unanimous contentions, nearly. I know I've received 5. 4, I'm sorry. I know I've received 4 and I may have received 5 because I didn't count on my way down, contentions on Steller Court, and so we are looking at a lot of contentions. But eventually we will have to do this street, and we'll be looking back and saying why didn't we rehabilitate it. This is why. Mayor Jansen: And we had a similar conversation at the original assessment hearing, and addressed the issue that if we don't do these particular roads now, again like you're saying, it's 3 times the assessment once you get to the point that it's deteriorated so this isn't a unique conversation, but I think what's missing is some of the background conversation that we had at that original public hearing where it was explained to us that even though we went out and took a look, and it looks acceptable in laymen's eyes, we're not seeing the potential for this thing to continue to deteriorate and it's at that point where an engineer's looking at it and saying it's time to do it now or it goes beyond, and ends up in that reconstruction phase so all of that conversation was rather extensive with the other property owners that were in on some of those other projects, but on Lake Lucy Road, I'm also recalling that we intentionally delayed it based upon the major development projects that are using that road for all of the construction traffic, and I think that was more our conversation as a council. Is if there's going to be construction traffic on that roadway, why do it now if we can delay it until after those projects are done? That development or construction traffic doesn't affect these cul-de-sacs, so that would not have been part of our original conversation, and that is why the off shoot roads are still moving forward and we're not part of that tabling. Teresa Burgess: This is not an exact science. I can't tell you that in 3 years this road, they're going to be in here screaming that this road needs to be done. I can't tell you that it will be 10 years. We might get 5 years. We might get 10 years. We might get next year. It's not an exact science. Roads deteriorate and once they start, they go fast. Steller Court was recently sealcoated, which sealcoat. You've heard me say it before council. Sealcoat, if you want to put it into a comparable is like painting your house. Rehabilitation is like putting on new siding and 29 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 doing a little repair around the windows, and reconstruction is bulldozing the house and starting over from scratch. And that's basically what we're proposing is, you know we painted the house a couple years ago. It's time for us to change a little siding. If we want to take the gamble on Steller Court based on the number of people that are saying that they don't support this project, I don't have a problem doing that. I look at it then saying, they've stepped forward and hopefully are now making an informed decision that they'd rather take the gamble and wait a few years. But when we do that, we're accepting that that road, we're not coming back here until we have another project to link it to. It's just not economically feasible to do a small cul-de-sac like this with 5 properties without linking it to a larger project like this one, or linking it to a Lake Lucy Road. So it's going to have to wait until we have an appropriate project to put it with. Mayor Jansen: So at this point if council so chose, we could move the Steller Court project to a time table similar to what will happen with the Lake Lucy Road project, as an option. Teresa Burgess: My recommendation to council is that, if you want to take it off of this project, that we do that and we throw it back into the mix with the pavement management program and when it comes up again is when it comes up again. That we not artificially dictate to the pavement management system when it should come back, but we look at it in that context of when it kicks it back out, we'll look at it. And if we're looking at sanitary sewer, that affects how we rate those streets. But that we not, that we allow the system to do what it's supposed to do and not try to artificially tell it how to. Councilman Peterson: Well if we do that, it will kick it out every year for the next umpteen years, right? Teresa Burgess: Correct, and we'll evaluate it every year for the next however many years and we'll look at it and say well it's our chance. Sanitary sewer's coming. Is there something we can feasibly connect it to as another project? Councilman Peterson: So by inference then you're saying that the Lake Lucy Road is coming up and we're evaluating that every year too? Teresa Burgess: Correct. We evaluate it every year from now on. We will do that until it comes up as we have to do the project. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Labatt: So if we defer it and let the road go to the point where it needs a bulldoze job, what's the cost project, ballpark? Teresa Burgess: I can't estimate inflation, but the assessment was originally assessed, was originally calculated at approximately $3,700. And reconstruction is 3 to 4 times more expensive than rehabilitation. So you're looking at 12. Councilman Peterson: But with sewer and water I think it was more the question. Teresa Burgess: Sewer and water is going to go on top of that. You know it depends on how many properties you can come in with. We've seen sewer and water assessments come in at $50,000 a parcel and we've seen them come in at under 2. It's hard to guess. It depends on so many things. How many people can you connect to that project? When you look at BC-7 and 8, we had so many parcels that were participating that we were able to drive those assessments 30 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 under $2,000 a piece. But then the Crestview Circle, we were looking at $15,000 a piece, so it's hard to guess. You know it depends what's come in here in the next few months in projects. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Is there anyone else who would like to comment on Steller Court? Thank you. Eric Rivkin: My name is Eric Rivkin. I'm at 1695 Steller Court and I appreciate the opportunity to come in for comments. You received my email. This was one of the ones that came in... the packet along with some pictures of some prairie restoration that was in bloom at the time. That is within an easement at Steller Court. We have all 5 landowners here on Steller Court represented. Three of these landowners have prairie restorations there. We all would have appreciated a true and legal notification of this project listed as quote, the Steller Court road improvement project. Not buried in the name of Lake Lucy Road improvement project, because that project was tabled and we assumed that the Steller Court and everything else.., was also tabled so there was no interest in coming in and protesting or giving comments in learning about this project on Steller Court. And so while we saw was a notice, perhaps back in December-January timeframe that may have said Lake Lucy Road. It raised some eyebrows. The project was tabled and then all we see is an assessment notice. So inbetween that time there's really no, you know due process. So I assume your role is to be nice to us and be human and just I concur with the recommendations that are being, going down the path here of tabling this or putting on a hold until it's combined appropriately with a larger project. It would seem to make more sense to dig up the entire road. I've been there since the inception. I think most of the landowners here have been here since Steller Court was ever put in. I was there when it was a deer path, and bought my lot there. I have pictures I could show you but it would be a moot point but Steller Court doesn't get any traffic. It's not a through street. It's got only 5 landowners on it. It's been in pretty much the same shape as it's been for 15 whole years. There's no drainage problem. There's no erosion problem. One of our landowners had contacted some road engineers and said that the only reason they really put in an improvement from tar curb to concrete curb is because if you had drainage problems. That's the large thrust of it. It's not aesthetics. It's not the consistency. Just because to be consistent, but there has to be a good reason for it. Because concrete curbs are more expensive than the curb we have now. But there's no problem. Okay. We don't have any parking problems. There's no surmountability issues. And the other reason that we have issue, we have, we would like sufficient notice in the future that this project be labeled Steller Court improvement project on all notification so that we're not, it's not buried somewhere, okay. You can spell it with an E or an A. It doesn't matter. We'll know what it is, okay. And that it be brought out explicitly as that name. And that it gives us, 3 out of the 5 landowners here have true prairie restorations. We need the springtime when it's wet, the ground, to be able to take little blue stem and all our flowers and we've spent thousands of dollars to restore this to prairie. It's a natural amenity to the city. People come and take pictures of it, okay it's so pretty. We've inspired lots of people to do that and it's a lot less, it's an inspiration to people who want to use less water and less drain on the water system of the city to put in prairies, okay. So we've got that in place. We need the springtime to be able to transplant things out of the 2 foot easement and they get ruined when you put in curb. So that's why we need ample notification. It's too late now to do that. If you're going to come in and build in July-August timeframe, you know these plants should have been out of there at least a month or two ago. So I thank you very much. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Teresa Burgess: If I could answer Madam Mayor. Mayor Jansen: Please. 31 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Teresa Burgess: I don't know which road engineers the gentleman spoke to or what they were speaking to. However, it is city standard to have concrete curb and gutter, and it does provide some additional benefit besides just drainage. The color contrast provides additional visual impact. The concrete protects the edge of the pavement, both from drainage issues as well as traffic, and yes this is a low flow area but it does have an impact when people pull off the street, and yes this one's in good shape but it's our standard. We do require it of all developers. It only seems fair that the city follow it's own guidelines they make developers follow and when we do projects that we should follow those same standards and so that is what we're trying to do here. Is meet our own standards. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. A question on the notifications that went out, and I thought I had a copy of those in that original packet. Weren't all of the street names given, or was it in fact lumped under Lake Lucy Road project? Teresa Burgess: All of the street names were individually listed on all public hearings. And they were listed in the notices in the paper, all of the street names were listed. We did have a lump project name of the 2002 MSA street improvements that we did refer to this project by, but in the public hearing notice we did list the individual project names. By law we are required to do that in the assessment hearing, but we also did it in the feasibility study to avoid that confusion. I don't have a copy of it with me. I do have all the staff reports but I don't have the public hearing. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Alright, thanks for clarifying that. I could see where that would have been confusing if it was listed just under one project name. Is there anyone else present then to discuss any of these projects that would like to step forward to the podium? A1 Finstad: Yeah, I'm A1 Finstad from 1701 Steller Court. I'm the fourth property owner up there and the fifth I think you'll hear from shortly. We've reviewed this. We live in the street. We're familiar with the street, although yes we are laymen but we also have common sense and I think a certain amount on instinct on certain things and this road being one of them. I think that if 100 percent of us decide thanks, but no thanks. We'll take a pass. We'll have to live with our decision if that road requires an extensive rebuilding at a later date at a more expensive cost, then I guess we'll have to bear that, so I'd like to... Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the council? Jerry Paulsen: Jerry Paulsen, 7305 Laredo Drive. General comment on road improvements in general, and maintenance I guess. I seem to recall something in the past at a meeting saying that state law requires the improvement assessment to be offset by an increased property value before this can be legally done. And it seems like it becomes rather subjective as to how much you charge a certain owner versus another owner, and in the long run it would be beneficial to assess the whole city on these type of projects because I use his road perhaps, and maybe he uses my road and trucks here and there, you can't really control it so just a general suggestion whether you can aim it that direction. Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Appreciate that Jerry. In fact that was one of our conversations around when we were discussing how our practice should go, and it would raise our tax levy on the city so tremendously that it would have a significant impact to try to do that. But we certainly weighed that as one of the alternatives as we were trying to address that, but thanks for mentioning that. Anyone else who would like to address the council on these projects? Seeing no one, I'll close the public hearing and bring this back to council. Council, any questions for staff at this time? 32 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Boyle: I don't have any questions. It's been pretty well beat around I think. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Ayotte: I would like to make a comment. Mayor Jansen: We can move to comments then. Councilman Ayotte. Councilman Ayotte: I'm uncomfortable with the consistent concern I've heard with respect to public notice. Not necessarily associated with what we do with respect to legality and making sure we dot the I's and cross the T's, but nonetheless I'm hearing from folks here tonight, just not on Steller but in other points that public notice may be an issue and I have, I'm voicing a concern about that and I'm not exactly sure what to go forward is, but that's an issue. Point number two. I believe very strongly in life cycle and the management program that Teresa has. And there will be an increase. If this council does not go forward with this, people on Steller will see a significant increase so I'm not exactly sure how my vote's going to go, but I hope folks understand that. It will be steep. So make sure your wishes may come true and you will not get an assessment tonight but you're going to get a fat bill down the road. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Ayotte: So just understand that. Mayor Jansen: Any other comments council? Councilman Ayotte: No ma'am. Mayor Jansen: Councilman Boyle. Councilman Boyle: There's several factors that come out. First of all you have 5 residents, 5 homeowners that say no thank you. They all 5 realize that the next assessment could be 3 to 4 times larger, and they still say no thank you. Very little traffic on the road. How long it's going to last, they're willing to take the gamble. If they're willing, I'm willing. That's where I'm at. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Peterson. Councilman Peterson: See I have probably a little different perspective on that. I don't know if I'm willing to gamble with 60 percent of the cost of that. It's the other citizens money we're gambling with and not just their's. We're playing with not only their money but the rest of Chanhassen. Another alternative I think that based upon the comments on Lake Lucy that we had, that we decided to delay that for many reasons, but most of which was we're going to put sanitary sewer and water in there, I'd be motivated to allow Steller Court to follow the same path. That we would delay that at the same time that Lake Lucy puts in sewer and water, then we put sewer and water in there. That seems to be fiscally product to do from a city perspective, but I don't know if I've heard the citizens say that they want sewer and water. I think at one point in time I think I heard some say they did, some say they didn't. So then where I'm leaning is I would say, let's maybe table this decision and let staff, allow them to make it but I would say that if the majority of the residents agree that it won't be touched until sewer and water comes in, then to allow that to happen. Otherwise I'd have a difficult time approving it tonight just on the basis that nobody wants it. I don't think that's a sound decision based upon our pavement management program that we've kind of signed up for. So it's a different twist to it. 33 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: And I would echo Councilman Peterson's comments and also I guess where I was going is on the Lake Lucy Road project is it also makes sense from what I'm hearing that for this project to be fiscally feasible it needs to be attached to a larger project and I'm distinctly remembering council tabling that project to have it delayed until after that development is in place. So I wasn't anticipating that the Lake Lucy Road project was going to go back into the pot and end up having to bubble up to the top. I'm assuming it will just forever keep bubbling up to the top and it will be a top priority each year. I'm just suggesting that. Teresa Burgess: Right. As it comes up every year, we evaluate those top priorities and the Lake Lucy, we look at it and say well, we're not doing that one because we still have development going on in that area so it drops off the list. What will happen with this one is it will bubble up to the top and we'll say, well we're not doing Lake Lucy and there's nothing else to attach it to. It will drop off the list until we have something to attach it to. But the system will continue to bring it up as a potential project. We then put in some common sense on top of it. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Councilman Labatt, any comments? Councilman Labatt: I'm fine with Craig's comments and his position. The only concern I would have is if in the meantime this thing were to go downhill and we'd have to replace the road and do a bulldoze, that I think they should be assessed 100 percent. As long as we're here to say, you know we'll do it now for $2,600 bucks. If they want to gamble and roll the dice, and in 8 years and Lake Lucy isn't on the radar screen and this road's failed, I'm not willing to spend 60 percent of people that live over in Lake Susan Hills' money on their road because they didn't want to do it now. So if we can make that point, but you know, hopefully all the stars will line up and Lake Lucy will come down when Steller Court needs to be done, for their sake but. Councilman Peterson: Roger, is that doable even? To assess somebody 100 percent based upon some caveats. Roger Knutson: First as far as a future assessment, some period down the road not yet determined, the City Council that sits at that time will have to make that decision. You can give them advice in your minutes. Councilman Labatt: Make a note in the file then. Teresa Burgess: That is why we have a practice and not a policy is that the council has the freedom to make that decision as they see appropriate...this project comes back and the feasibility study we'll certainly take it into account and discuss it with the council that's sitting at that time. Councilman Peterson: Teresa if you could make a prognostication on your experience, is that road likely to fail before Lake Lucy is, based upon the knowledge you have today, is that road likely to fail prior to Lake Lucy being redone? Teresa Burgess: No. It will probably go about the same time as Lake Lucy. They receive the same type of maintenance. It receives less traffic. So it will probably hold up. Will it be up to what we'd like to see it? No. But it will certainly hold out. Councilman Peterson: You're still going to do pothole filling and the normal routine maintenance. 34 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Teresa Burgess: We'll do pothole filling. We'll do crack sealing. However we have changed our policy on crack sealing. Not crack sealing, sealcoating. We no longer sealcoat cul-de-sacs which Steller Court is a cul-de-sac. So it will no longer receive sealcoats. It received it's last one. It will still receive potholing and crack sealing and other maintenance as our street crews feel it appropriate. Councilman Boyle: But Teresa the sealcoating, when I went up on Steller Court, it appeared to me it just went for a portion, not the entire cul-de-sac. Teresa Burgess: Correct. Councilman Boyle: Is that typical? Teresa Burgess: We quit doing the bulbs and now we have said we will not be doing the cul-de- sac period. It's just not providing us enough benefit for the cost, and it also causes problems when we come back and try and do these types of projects because people can't see how many times we've patched that road and it looks nice and black and uniform. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any other comments council? Otherwise I'll call for a motion. Councilman Labatt: No, I've got none. Mayor Jansen: If I could have a motion please. Councilman Boyle: I would make a motion that we exclude Steller Court from this project. Roger Knutson: And adopt the balance of the assessments? Mayor Jansen: So you're moving to approve the assessment rolls without excluding, with the exclusion of Steller Court. You've got the recommendation. Councilman Boyle: And what's the implications of that? Councilman Peterson: You have to put a caveat onto what you want to do with Steller Court. Teresa Burgess: IfI could. This evening all we need from you is adoption of the assessment roll, and if you simple exclude Steller Court, then we will come back with a change order to take it off of the construction project as directed by council. And we've already received that direction. Councilman Peterson: I'd like to take care of the discussion and a decision tonight if we can, as to what this council plans to do with Steller Court. There's no reason to have all these people come back again to figure out where our heads are next week. Teresa Burgess: No. The change order will be put on consent. From what I'm hearing from council, you're directing us to postpone that project until Lake Lucy, am I incorrect? Councilman Peterson: Well you've got a couple that have said that. I don't know where. Teresa Burgess: I'm sorry if I'm assuming that. 35 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Ayotte: There's still a question of fixing Steller Court and Lake Lucy project. Mayor Jansen: Okay tell you what. How about if we have the motion cover the balance of the issue and then we'll discuss Steller Court and do a separate motion on Steller Court if that's acceptable. Okay. Councilman Peterson: I second the motion. Mayor Jansen: We also need the motion, should I make it a friendly amendment? We need to call a supplemental public hearing for the lot split from the American Legion Post. Do you accept that friendly amendment to your motion? Councilman Boyle: Yes. Roger Knutson: Mayor, just so I am clear on the motion. The motion is to adopt the assessment roll as presented by staff, deleting the properties on Steller Court and two, calling a supplemental assessment for the property that was split off that was earlier discussed. Councilman Boyle: I think you're right on. Mayor Jansen: Correct. And we have a second to that motion. Resolution #2002-63: Councilman Boyle moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to adopt the assessment roll for City Project #01-08, deleting Steller Court, and calling a supplemental public hearing for the American Legion/Park Nicollet lot split. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Jansen: So then we need a separate discussion around how we would direct staff to handle the Steller Court project. Councilman Peterson: I've already given my thoughts so, whether we augment that with Steve. Councilman Labatt: I'm fine with it Craig. I mean obviously I can't control council 15 years from now but, I hope I'm not sitting up here then. So I'm fine with Craig's position. Mayor Jansen: If you'd like to make a motion. Councilman Peterson: I'd make a motion that we put a caveat onto Steller Court that we tie that directly to the Lake Lucy Road project when, and if that happens. Sewer and water will be added to Steller Court at the same time that it would be added to Lake Lucy Road. Now what I also offered was that staff should work with the residents of Steller Court to ensure that that is the direction that they want to go. Mayor Jansen: Okay. And ifI could have a second to the motion please. Councilman Boyle: Second. Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Boyle seconded to direct staff to tie Steller Court to the Lake Lucy Road sewer and water improvement project in the future. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. 36 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 The City Council took a brief recess at this point in the meeting. PUBLIC HEARING: ASSESSMENT HEARING AND AWARD OF BIDS FOR 2002 RESIDENTIAL STREET IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 01-10. Public Present: Name Address Bruce Trippet 1895 Partridge Circle Teresa Burgess: I have more handouts. This is what happens when these public hearings... public notices. This again is a contention that was received after the packet was sent out to council. The official copies of all these are in the engineering department, if anybody wants to see them. If they are or are not contained in the council packet does not make them legal. It's just for the council's information. The legal copy is the copy that's received by the city clerk, which is Todd Gerhardt, and I collected those on his behalf and filed them and I will respond to all of those people so anyone that did pick up a packet and didn't see your's, if it's not in there, that's okay as long as I received it and I have responded to everyone I received emails. This evening on this parcel, on this project we are requesting the council first of all to hold an assessment hearing, and then if they still deem this project appropriate to award bids for the construction project for 2002 Residential Street Improvement Project, and you'll all of the parcels listed out. Pintail Circle, Ringneck Drive, White Drove Drive, White Dove Circle, Wood Duck Circle, Wood Duck Lane, Steller Circle, which did cause a little confusion for us. Moline Circle, Pheasant Drive, Pheasant Circle, Partridge Circle, Teal Circle, Whitetail Ridge Court, Melody Hill Road and Lake Lucy Lane. The assessment roll is attached. There are no changes from what was sent out with the council packet. We did receive 3 bids for this project. They are all higher than the engineer's estimate of $272,395, but they are all looking at them because we did receive 3 bids. We do feel that they are appropriate and they are in keeping with the bids that we received for the MSA project and so we are still recommending that council approve the project as bid by Bituminous Roadway in the amount of $311,193.25 if the council still feels this project's appropriate at the end of the assessment hearing. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff at this time? Then I'll open this for the public hearing, if there's anyone present that would like to address. I'm just going to open it up on all of the projects. Any of these projects that are listed, please step forward to the podium. If you'd state your name and address for the record please. Bruce Trippet: Bruce Trippet at 1895 Partridge Circle. And because there's been different documents, I'm just kind of confused if the staff could perhaps clarify. For this street improvement project 01-10, is there a map that you could show us so we can see which streets are included? You rattled off a bunch of the streets but it sounds like a little bit different from the one document that I've got just lists them so I'm still kind of confused within this project what it all entails so if there's a map, perhaps you could show us so we can quickly see. And it might be the same question for other folks that are here so just clarifying what the project is that we're talking about. Teresa Burgess: I apologize, I did not grab the map and Matt will run up and grab one from the office. The document that you have, we actually held an open house where we had 2 projects in the same open house. Because quite often we have the staff outnumbers the public, we held both public hearings, both public open houses. One, in this council chambers. One in that end of the 37 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 room and one in this end of the room, and so the notice listed out all of the streets for the MSA improvement and for this project. It's both projects together and that's why there's more streets listed. Matt will bring down a copy of the plans and it does show what is included but what's included here is what we refer to as the Pheasant Hills neighborhood and so it's the streets that are listed. Mayor Jansen: Is there an extra copy of the staff report still available on this one Nann? Number 5. Maybe we could share that. That has all of the streets listed that were just called off. Bruce Trippet: And then I like many of the other laymen here, think that my road looks fine but if the city believes that it should be improved, okay. I'll go with that, but my question's on the process. Some of the documentation I've seen says that there's a defined process as far as assessments. The 40 percent to the neighborhoods, the 60 percent remaining city funds. So my question is really two fold. One, am I to assume, I've got an assessment that says the amount that they're looking at assessing myself and Partridge Circle, $1,706.99. Say $1,700. Is that the same amount that's being assessed across all the neighborhoods? I mean I don't know what they're getting so my question is, are we being fair? So are we assessing the same amount across everybody that's in this project? Teresa Burgess: If you look in the packet that Nann just handed you, it includes the entire assessment roll. It also includes the assessment practice as you page through it, and all of the assessments on this, in this project, it was determined that the parcels are of relatively similar value and they were all assessed the same amount across the board. All parcels were assessed $1,706.99. I wish I would have caught it sooner and we would have rounded that off to a nice even number, but I'd already sent the notices. It's one of those where it gets automated and unfortunately we didn't round those numbers to nice even numbers. And then the final point is the 40/60. Could the staff or council address where we came up with 40 versus 30 versus 50. Again, I'm a little bit nervous, I mean this is impacting my neighborhood so I'm concerned, but I would assume that we've done this before so have we always used the 40/60 rule when we did any other neighborhood in Chanhassen? When I see that it hasn't been perhaps defined I'm wondering, I mean is this a set policy and so when we assess other neighborhoods next year, the year after, is this, are we being fair across all the citizens? Mayor Jansen: That is why we established a practice, and that was our concern is that we be fair, and we did an extensive evaluation of how to be fair at the beginning of this year before we entered into the assessment hearings on the project, and that's where we've done some adjustments to the roads and the road widths where some people are living on collector roads that are being traveled by more vehicles than say just a neighborhood road. So there was a great deal of analysis put into it and we did compare ourselves to other cities and what their practices are and found this practice to be one that we would be able to financially have feasible in the city of Chanhassen as far as being able to protect the quality of our roadways, and not put an even more significant burden on each of the property owners. So there was a great deal of study around it. Bruce Trippet: Okay, so the 40/60 is pretty much locked in as we move ahead? That's kind of a set policy? Mayor Jansen: That is the practice and you'll always hear that councils can always change those, but at this point that is what we have in place and what we'll move forward as far as any recommendations coming forward from staff. 38 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Bruce Trippet: Okay, and then just one final question. I believe the Partridge Circle, Pheasant Hill Addition, that's a relatively new addition. 15-20 years old. So are we to expect, ifI stay here this long, this sort of assessment every 20 years? Is that basically how often these roads need to be repaired? Teresa Burgess: If you do this type of project you can do them every 20 to 25 years and assuming that nothing happens to cause sub-base failure, you can do that indefinitely to maintain the life of the road and the health of the road. If you don't, you do a rehabilitation project approximately every 30 years. 25 to 30 years. Sometimes you get more, and I've seen streets that are 50 years old that look great. I've seen streets that are 10 years old that really need to be rehabilitated. So it does depend on the weather conditions, when it was placed. The sub-soils but typically 20 to 25 years is when you're going to see this type of project. Bruce Trippet: Okay, and then just one final thing. I mean I got an assessment letter but is this number going to change? I mean I hear we're putting up bids and they might be a little bit higher. Teresa Burgess: No, the bids are in. The council will decide tonight if the assessment is appropriate. Once the council makes their decision, that number is locked. It will go to the county at that number and that will be it. I can't change it after that and the council, the only thing the council can do would be to retract the assessment and I don't even know how we'd do that but I know we can. Mayor Jansen: So it's a set number. Bruce Trippet: ... another official notice on what the final number is. Teresa Burgess: I will send out a notice following the council action tonight to everyone that's on the assessment roll, plus anyone that was on the feasibility assessment roll that was not on this assessment roll, telling them what their final assessment is so that they know. Bruce Trippet: Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Thank you. Is there anyone else here this evening that would like to address one of the projects included in this roadway project? Teresa Burgess: Madam Mayor, while we're waiting. Just to clarify, our previous assessment practice was 100 percent to anybody that's wondering at home what we used to do before we settled on 40. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you for adding that. Councilman Peterson: It depends on what year you're speaking to but that's true. Teresa Burgess: Which street, what year and how eloquently they spoke to that sitting council. Mayor Jansen: Alright, so with that I will close the public hearing and bring this back to council. Council, comments? Otherwise I'll call for a motion. Councilman Peterson: Motion to approve. 39 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Labatt: Second. Resolution #2002-64: Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the final assessment roll for the 2002 Residential Street Improvement Project No. 01-10. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Teresa Burgess: Madam Mayor, I also need a motion for award of bids. Councilman Peterson: I thought that's what that was. Teresa Burgess: Didn't you just adopt the assessment roll? Councilman Peterson: Yeah. Teresa Burgess: You only did the one motion. Councilman Peterson: First motion was, I moved to approve the final assessment roll. I'll make a second motion, move to award contract to Bituminous Roadways in the amount of $311,193.25. Councilman Labatt: Second. Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to award the contract for 2002 Residential Street Improvement Project No. 01-10 to Bituminous Roadways in the amount of $311,193,25. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. REQUEST FOR A 7 FOOT SIDE YARD VARIANCE FOR EXPANSION OF A GARAGE ADDITION, 3920 LESLEE CURVE, PAUL &LIBBY SCHEELE, KNIGHT CONSTRUCTION. Bob Generous: Thank you Madam Mayor, council members. I'll be brief. The applicant is appealing a denial of their variance application to the Planning Commission. They want to expand their garage forward. Unfortunately the house doesn't meet setback now. The expansion doesn't meet setback. The first time they came in they showed the plan on the table. It was tabled by the Planning Commission. They said look at some alternatives. They came back a second time with some revisions to the plan that shifted the garage over. They also looked at alternate locations on the site but they weren't happy with that. Their revisions actually reduce the variance by a half a foot. The Planning Commission again voted to deny it but it was on a 3- 2-1 vote. 3 for it, 2 against and 1 abstaining. They appealed their denial to the City Council. Staff is recommending that you affirm their denial of the variance with the expansion and with that I'd be happy to answer any questions. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff council? Councilman Boyle: I have no questions. Mayor Jansen: Okay. If the applicant is present this evening and would like to address the council, please step forward and state your name and address for the record please. Paul Scheele: I'm Paul Scheele, 3920 Leslee Curve. Property owner requesting for this appeal. Appreciate the importance of your work and thank you for your time Madam Mayor and council members. We're here on the urging of several of the planning committee members. They said 40 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 please, seek an appeal to this so I'm here. Brief history on the property. It was designed by Les Anderson in 1957. It's in the far comer of the zoning map if you will. Northwest comer. It was conceived in 1957. Built near Lake Minnewashta. Pleasant Acres is the name of it. He originally designed it after living in Minneapolis because he wanted 20 to 30 feet between each home and it's property line. I spoke with the widow of Mr. Anderson and she said that there was a mistake in putting our building. It was staked improperly. They don't know if it was a surveyor or who, but they discovered that in fact they had put it too close to the property line. Unfortunately after it was already built. Now the intent that Mr. Anderson had for the community, which was actually established far before the current regulations of a 10 foot minimum setback from the side, is still maintained in the spirit that it was originally intended because what we're asking for is a 7 foot variance, but in fact there is 46 feet between our property and the adjacent property. If you have read the minutes you know that all of the neighbors support this project. They came to speak to it. We're moving basically straight out from the existing garage, as you've seen in the plans. The city planners took time to come out and look and in the minutes you'll see that they spoke to the aesthetics of it. They supported the importance of it from the need of the maintenance of the current structure. The update of the property is a good update. And in fact we were encouraged to seek an appeal on the variance for the original plan that you see here, even though we did make adjustments and came back to them. Several of them said we really do like the original plan better in terms of the aesthetics that were there. If I may show one picture. Mayor Jansen: Sure. Paul Scheele: This is a picture of our property on the right. Brad Vonruden's property on the left, who came to speak in favor of this project. It shows that moving straight out on the property on the right for the addition on the garage would still keep 46 feet between us, the next property. We have made some adjustments on the roof line and so on to try to minimize the existing minimum impact. So we appreciate that you will consider this request and grant this appeal. Thank you. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. Any questions for the applicant council? Okay. Councilman Labatt: I have one. In staff's report here, and I'll read it to you word for word. Though not discussed as part of the hearing, the Scheele's could purchase property from the neighbor to the east to bring the house into conformance with the zoning ordinance eliminating the need for a variance. Have you considered that? Paul Scheele: I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question. Councilman Labatt: I'll read it again. Though not discussed as part of the hearing, the Scheele's could purchase property from the neighbor to the east to bring the house into conformance with the zoning ordinance eliminating the need for a variance. Have you considered that option? Paul Scheele: I've considered it. We haven't presented it to city planners or the council. Councilman Labatt: Can I ask why? Paul Scheele: We want to seek, for simplicity sake, moving the property straight out. No additional costs. We're talking about resurveying. We're talking about purchase, land purchase. And the movement of any existing properties that they have. They have a shed and a number of 41 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 other things. I don't really know how that process works but would we have to come back to you for something like that? Mayor Jansen: Actually that would just be a private purchase between landowners, correct Bob? Bob Generous: We would just stamp off on any deeds. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Does that answer your question Steve? Councilman Labatt: Yes. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Any other questions? Okay, thank you very much. The public hearing for this was held at the Planning Commission so this is not a public hearing. We of course have the minutes from both meetings that we've been able to review so I will bring this back to council and council, if you have comments at this time or any questions for staff. Don't everybody jump in. Then I'll call for a motion. Councilman Ayotte: Well as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to go with the homeowner. I think we should allow him to build. That's my motion. Roger Knutson: You move to grant the variance? Councilman Ayotte: Yeah. Mayor Jansen: Okay. Around that motion, do we have a second? Councilman Boyle: I will second. Mayor Jansen: And then I'm going to call for comments on the motion. Discussion of the motion. Councilman Boyle: Bob, if the property is going forward, and I know it's probably in there, how many feet is the garage going to be extended forward? 147 I just don't remember. I thought maybe you remembered. Councilman Peterson: How far is the garage going forward? Mayor Jansen: 14. Councilman Boyle: 14 additional feet forward. And that would put it how close to the street? Paul Scheele: Quite a ways. It's about, we're still. Mayor Jansen: 50. Paul Scheele: 15 feet ofjust the minimum line, so we're about 35 feet in. Bob Generous: Off of Leslee Curve. They're 50 feet back with the expansion. Councilman Boyle: When the Planning Commission voted 3 against, or 3 against the variance, what was their major objection to this variance? 42 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: k doesn't meethardship. Bob Generous: Yes. Mayor Jansen: Same as the staff recommendation. There are other options on the property as far as, and this was. Bob Generous: Complying with ordinance. Councilman Boyle: Okay, that's what I was wondering. Todd Gerhardt: Bob, it's not the two additions that they're requesting the variance on. It's because the house is basically non-conforming to the current zoning on the setbacks for the side yard, so they can't put an addition onto the house because it's non-conforming to our current standards. Does that make sense to you? Mayor Jansen: It increases the non-conformity. Councilman Labatt: But Mr. Scheele wasn't behind the non-conformity. He purchased a non- conforming house, correct? Todd Gerhardt: Correct. Mayor Jansen: The way it was built. Councilman Labatt: Right. Right. Councilman Peterson: Based on the circumstances I think it's reasonable to, we're going to have a better property. The neighbors aren't pissed off, quote unquote. I think we should vote in favor. Mayor Jansen: Okay. I certainly support any of the renovations and remodeling that we can do that update our established neighborhoods. This doesn't seem like an extreme circumstance. As far as the Planning Commission guidelines that they needed to follow, I can appreciate the way that they did vote and stood by the ordinances and our requirements that there truly be a hardship proven. If I was sitting on that commission I'd be basically voting probably the same way that they did, and say there were probably other options and alternatives that possibly could be explored. But at this point I'm looking at it being a family that's wanting to stay in Chanhassen and a home that will be improved by this, what seems like a minor variance though it is a non- conforming situation so I'm not going to object. So we have a motion and a second. Councilman Ayotte moved, Councilman Boyle seconded that the City Council approves Variance #2002-4 for 3920 Leslee Curve. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Councilman Boyle: I think it's important to comment that the Planning Commission did their job appropriately. 43 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Mayor Jansen: Thank you. And thank you to the residents. I know you came in on two meetings with the project and we appreciate your having shown some flexibility to bring in some alternatives for them at that point so thank you. REQUEST FOR A SETBACK VARIANCE FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A GARAGE ON A NON-CONFORMING LOT OF RECORD, 3628 HICKORY ROAD, STEPHEN GUNTHER. Bob Generous: This one's actually opposite. The Planning Commission voted to approve this but it was on a 4 to 2 vote. To approve variances they need 75 percent affirmative, and so they were at 66 percent and so it comes forward to you for a final determination. The applicant has been working with staff to reduce the amount of impact on setbacks. Originally they started out with a 13 foot setback from Hickory Road and now they're at 17 feet. They've reduced the size of the house. They're actually lessening the non-conformity on this site and so staff is recommending approval of the option 2 variance with the 17 foot setback from Hickory, 28 foot setback from Red Cedar Point and a 5 foot side yard setback. The side yard setback is necessary to preserve an existing oak tree that's on site. With that I'd be happy to answer any questions. Mayor Jansen: Okay, thank you. So Bob, the way that you have the recommendation worded would be our approval of your option 2, correct? Bob Generous: Correct. Mayor Jansen: Okay, great. Any questions for staff? Okay. I can open this up if the applicant is here for any comments, though we have had the minutes to review from the Planning Commission. If there's something new that you care to add or anything to the staff recommendation. I don't think we need a great deal of encouragement here. Steve Gunther: Maybe I'll just sit down. Mayor Jansen: I didn't mean to discourage you but. Councilman Peterson: The standing up is what got me. Motion to approve. Councilman Labatt: Second. Mayor Jansen: And I think from staff's comments, I mean this does improve the setback from the two roads and it does move it out of the sight distance triangle so as they are saying, it does lessen the non-conformity so all those in favor say aye. Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve Variance #2002-5 for 3628 Hickory Road for a 17 foot setback from Hickory Road, 28 foot setback from Red Cedar Point and a 5 foot side yard setback. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Jansen: So thank you. I appreciate your having made some adjustments to your plan when you were working with the staff on this and reducing the size and working with us to maintain that mature tree on your lot so thank you. Great, thank you. In fact Bob, didn't the adjustments on the plan happen after the Planning Commission? As far as the size. After the first one? Okay. Thanks. 44 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: COUNCIL/COMMISSION LIAISON UPDATE. Councilman Labatt: The only thing I want to add is our hats off to the entire Park and Rec staff and commission for one heck of a 4th of July celebration here in town. It was fabulous. Well attended and it was a great job too. Mayor Jansen: Great, thanks for mentioning that. Todd Gerhardt: I'll pass that on. Mayor Jansen: Anything else council members? I don't think there were a tremendous number of meetings between our last one and this one. Councilman Peterson: No, you already brought up the issue with the 101/Pioneer Trail. The only other thing that kind of tags along to that, Southwest Metro, I read it in the paper, is eliminating the Dial-a-Ride service in the area, which is substantial. They thought it could have been substantial but the number of people that came to the public hearing to discuss that was zero so that was a good thing. It means that Metro Mobility and other services mitigated the issue in and of itself, but it is a big change. And one of the big issues that's left is that Pioneer Trail/101 area because they were planning on picking up a couple of the people that did Dial-a-Ride on that route on Pioneer Trail but they can't do that because of the traffic so further reinforces the need for us to creatively find a way to get a stop light there. Mayor Jansen: Yes, we're working on a joint effort with the other cities and Southwest Metro Transit and the county to see if we can't forward the issue with MnDot of having a light placed at the comer of Pioneer Trail and 101. Teresa Burgess: And just for the council's information, I do have a meeting with MnDot to discuss a light at that intersection and it is scheduled within the next 5 years. They want to talk about should they move it up or not. Councilman Peterson: When's your meeting? Teresa Burgess: I don't have my calendar. It's within the next 3 weeks. Councilman Peterson: Is it with Len? He's got one on the 18th. Teresa Burgess: Leslie Vermillion was the person that called me to set it up. I don't who else is attending. Mayor Jansen: Okay, good. That's terrific. And Southwest Metro Transit of course as they were eliminating the Dial-a-Ride worked very hard to put in place fixed route service and they did put a tremendous effort behind the public hearings and input and trying to coordinate that so I'm glad to hear that the public hearing process proved that hopefully they did their job very well. I(H). APPROVAL OF CHARGE STATEMENT FOR PROPERTY MAINTENANCE & RENTAL HOUSING LICENSING. Mayor Jansen: Under the administration presentations we tabled, or moved, agenda item l(h) which was the property maintenance rental licensing to see if we need to do some additional word smithing to this. Councilman Peterson, were there specifics in here that needed some... 45 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Peterson: Well I'll give my, and as I shared earlier. My big concern is it seems, as I read this, I read it as a fait d'acomplit that we're moving ahead with the code as it stands today, and my recollection, albeit maybe less than it should be, but I thought we were going to have another work session to discuss some more of the plan, spend more time on it and review the ordinance in more detail. So I find this kind of premature to that happening. This says we're going to do it and we're going to hire somebody and implement it by November 1 when we haven't even had this council vote on whether or not we're doing to do it or not. So it just seems, this seems premature. Mayor Jansen: So maybe we change the term implement, because what we're doing is we're refining it. We're, because it also has to come through the communication which is listed at the bottom, you know we're working in the community so maybe the goal isn't the implementation but it's the refinement, establishment of. Councilman Labatt: How about develop and propose property maintenance code... Mayor Jansen: Is that good? Councilman Peterson: Yeah. Councilman Labatt: Develop and propose to City Council? Councilman Peterson: Again I think as Todd and I talked today, these charge statements are really relatively new to us, and I think that they're a good idea under the right circumstances and I think this just goes a little bit too far in the assumption area. Mayor Jansen: That's where I think if we're giving clear direction through the charge statement to staff, then we're all on the same page as this moves forward, so I do appreciate your mentioning and bring this up. I think the results desired, again the advertise and hire might be premature. Councilman Labatt: You can probably eliminate that bullet. Councilman Peterson: Well all of it can cascade past that if we all agree that that's, if we approve it and what we approve, then all those bullets below cascade below. I'm not concerned about that, and I don't want to word smith to death, I just want to at least go on record by saying that we as a council haven't approved this yet. Councilman Boyle: So what you're saying, you in essence are requesting another work session on this, right? Councilman Peterson: Well I thought I already did that. Mayor Jansen: And we will be but we're also going to be taking the communication before we do that because we want more public input before we start going and doing any more analysis of it, so under the communication, they've got the work in the community to educate and explain. Communicate with the Chamber. It's got all the communication in here. By November, and it's saying that by November 1st under the time line, staff will develop a job description and process to implement the rental license and property maintenance, so at the time we've addressed any of the public input and done any of the revisions, they would then be prepared with the process as to how to move it forward. 46 City Council Meeting - July 8, 2002 Councilman Ayotte: Why not simply say.., approval of the charge statement subsequent to the approval of the property maintenance rental licensing by council? So just put a contingent to our approval of licensing and we can go forward. Mayor Jansen: Well I'm gathering we're all fine with the change that we just made to the goal. Councilman Peterson: We're word smithing, let's go home. Councilman Labatt: Add a couple words and we're out of here. Mayor Jansen: Okay. So we're done. Recommendation. IfI could have a motion please. Councilman Labatt: Move approval. Mayor Jansen: And a second? Councilman Peterson: Second. Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to approve the Charge Statement got Property Maintenance and Rental Housing Licensing as amended by council. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS. Mayor Jansen: Todd, anything else under administrative presentations? Todd Gerhardt: Library moves ahead. Footings are about 70 percent complete. You will see change orders on for your next City Council meeting. Everything else is going great. No problems. Mayor Jansen: Okay, terrific. IfI could have a motion to adjourn. Councilman Ayotte moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 9:45 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 47