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1i. Minutes
ii. i CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING JUNE 10, 1991 ' Mayor Chmiel called the meeting to order at 7:35 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. ' COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Chmiel, Councilman Mason, Councilman Workman, Councilman Wing and Councilwoman Dimler STAFF PRESENT: Don Ashworth, Roger Knutson, Todd Gerhardt, Charles Folch, Paul Krauss, Jo Ann Olsen, Scott Harr and Todd Hoffman APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman Mason seconded to ' approve the agenda with the following amendments: Councilman Workman wanted to add an item 3.75, clarification to the Minutes of the Kurver's Point Addition approval; Councilwoman Dimler wanted to discuss under Council Presentations ' storage space for School District #112; Councilman Mason wanted to discuss the Board of Equalization and Review meeting; and Councilman Wing wanted to discuss the DNR Tree Project . All voted in favor of the agenda as amended and the motion carried. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Mason moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations: b. Approve Beer and Wine License Application, Happy Garden II Restaurant , Seven Forty-One Crossing. c. Approve One Day Temporary Beer License, Chanhassen Fire Department , June 15, 1991. ' d. Conditional Use Permit for the Construction of a Storage Shed to be Located within the 75 feet Shoreland Setback, 102 Sandy Hook Road, Peter Moscatelli. e. Approval of Bills. g. Zoning Ordinance Amendment to Clarify Zoning Administrator as Planning Director, Final Reading. h. Resolution #91-54: Formalize 1991 Budget Reductions. ' All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. A. SET SPECIAL MEETING DATE, JOINT CITY COUNCIL/PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION MEETING, MONDAY, JUNE 24, 1991 AT 6:00 P.M.. Councilman Wing: June 24th is a joint meeting with Public Safety Commission proposed and also there's a good possibility that would be a public hearing for Minnewashta Parkway. I'll be out of town that particular Monday and I realize that my being here isn't going to necessarily change anything. However,, if 1 1 1 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 11 there was any interest in delaying those to the next meeting, I would be pleased to do that if you would like my attendance. If attendance isn't necessary then. . . Mayor Chmiel: I think we can. I see any real, is there any real rush with that? Don Ashworth: Well, it would actually work out better. On the 24th I also have the auditors would like to come in and if Councilman Wing wouldn't mind missing that , I would like to take and switch and then put the auditors on the 24th and the Public Safety item for the first meeting in July. ' Councilman Wing: That would be ideal. Don, how do you feel about moving the public hearing to the first meeting in July? ' Don Ashworth: Bill just said it wouldn't hurt anything. Councilman Wing: If there's any inconvenience, it 's not a major issue to me. ' Don Ashworth: We've sent out notices but we've got lists. I'm assuming that it isn't that difficult. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Would you like to make that as a motion? Councilman Wing: I would move that the, assuming that we're going to set the 11 24th for the public hearing, that the public hearing and the joint City Council/ Public Safety Commission meeting be moved to I believe July 7th. First meeting. Is that correct? Is that the right date I have? Don Ashworth: I'm not sure. I don't have a calendar. Councilman Wing: Scott , does that meet with the Commission? Is that alright? Scott Harr: That 's fine. ' Councilman Mason: I'll second that. Mayor Chmiel: Yes, it's July 8th. ' Councilman Wing moved, Councilman Mason seconded to set the special meeting date for the Joint City Council/Public Safety Commission meeting for Monday, July 8, 1991 at 6:00 p.m.. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. F. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Councilwoman Dimler: Item (f). The Board of Review and Equalization Minutes. On page 10, the 14th line from the bottom. It doesn't make any sense. It says, he was not able to be here tonight but he asked me if I would leave this pause. What I said was, plead his cause. I know it's technical but I also wanted to bring this up because I thought somewhere in the Minutes and I couldn't find it. Might have been when the tape was changed. I thought that we made it rather clear that we wanted to stay within the legal limits and to do whatever was legal but to stay out of the illegal realm. Does anybody else recall that? 2 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman Wing: I remember I brought up 2% only because that's an arbitrary number. I knew nothing about , that was just a. . .statement and then we went to 1% but then the question was brought up. Can we do anything? But I remember at least between you and I, a considerable discussion about not exceeding the legal limits. I don't know where that fit into the discussion. Councilwoman Dimler: I don't either and I'm thinking maybe it was when the tape was changed. Maybe it didn't get recorded. Mayor Chmiel: Yeah. I don't recall exactly the proper term but as you remembered, I had some questions as to how this would affect with the State. That was my concern and that 's why I voted against that particular proposal. • Councilwoman Dimler: Yes. But my feeling was that we made it real clear to stay within the legal limits so I was really surprised to see the article in the paper. Mayor Chmiel: My position was, I wasn't against giving lower taxes. We've been doing that for the past 3 years and we've been doing it very well. Councilwoman Dimler: So I don't know what to do about this because obviously they put the Minutes out right? It isn't our staff that does it? Don Ashworth: No. This particular set was completed by ourselves. And I I agree, it was positively the intent of the Council to stay within the limits. Since we don't have a specific line item, I would recommend that in approving the Minutes, that you instruct staff to add a footnote or clarification section ' restating that it was the City Council's intent to stay within the overall 1% limitation. Councilman Wing: Councilwoman Dimler did say specificially is our legal limit ' 1%. That was a direct question. Then I'll go with that. And then the next statement , whatever our legal limit is which really clarifies I think ,our position I felt . That's page 18. Councilwoman Dimler: Apparently they didn't interpret it that way though. Don Ashworth: To re-emphasize that point, you may want to have staff put a clarification right below Councilman Wing's comment. Note, this was intended to insure that the City stayed within the 1%. Whatever actions would be necessary to keep us within the 1% were in fact adhered to. Something of that effect. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. Mayor Chmiel: You're right. That 's what it does say. Councilwoman Dimler: But they didn't interpret it that way so I was just trying to get feedback to see, I thought I was real strong about that. Don Ashworth: As far as I am aware, number one. That item -was not on the Commissioner's agenda. Staff has intended to ttend that meeting. We did . prepare a letter that was sent to the Chairman;, Earl Janan. The letter was never read. Solely excerpts from the Minutes themselves and those solely by the 11 3 City 'Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I Chairman. No one else had those Minutes so even Commissioner Klingelhutz, who had stopped in afterwards, was a little bewildered because he had nothing to follow through that discussion. I do plan on attending the meeting which is the 17th. Monday. And I have placed the City as a proposed speaker. 1 Councilman Workman: Would this be an opportunity? I guess was infuriated by the newspaper articles, which I am on a regular basis now. And is this not a time for us to start looking at hiring our own. Getting back to Ursula's comments about didn't we say go the legal limit? I think it's written all over here. Didn't Orlin do that to us? Who did that to us? I mean isn't it time to hire our own and can we do that and should we do that? 1 Mayor Chmiel: That 's something that I brought up some time ago. Potentially to look at it and I think there's a lot more to it than what we're paying to the County. But that 's something that we can review and come up with a total dollar cost and make that determination after that. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay, if there's no further discussion I guess I would move the Minutes with the suggested footnote by staff as Mr. Ashworth has indicated. 1 Mayor Chmiel: Is there a second to that motion? Councilman Workman: Second. Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman Workman seconded to approve the following Minutes: 1 Board of Equalization and Review Minutes dated May 20, 1991 as amended to include an intent statement to read as follows: Note, this was intended to insure that the City stayed within the 1%. Whatever actions would be necessary to keep the City within the 1% were in fact adhered to. 1 City Council Minutes dated May 20, 1991 Planning Commission Minutes dated May 15, 1991 Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated May 21, 1991. Senior Commission Minutes dated May 17, 1991 All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None. AWARD OF SIDS: 1991 SEWER TELEVISING CONTRACT, PROJECT 90-10. Charles Folch: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. In a continuing effort to 1 reduce the City's overall infiltration inflow volume into our sanitary sewer system and correspondingly reduce our annual Metro Waste charges, another sewer televising program has been prepared. This year's program has concentrated on ' low lying' areas adjacent to lakes and wetlands where potential inflow is highest. Three quotes were received with the low from Pipe Service Corporation at 19.4 cents per linear foot for a total projec:. cost of $5,853.95. Pipe Services Corporation has performed satisfactorly on previous work within the 1 1 4 i City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I/ city. Therefore it is recommended that the 1991 sewer televising program be awarded to Pipe Services Corporation in the amount of $5,853.95. Mayor Chmiel : Charles, do you remember what our costs were for the last time we went through that process? Charles Folch: Last year it was 19.8 cents so this year it 's actually .4 of a cents lower. Mayor Chmiel : I thought it was a little lower but I didn't know how much. Good. 1 Any discussion? Councilwoman Dimler: I move approval. . ' • Councilman Workman: Second. • Resolution #91-55: Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman Workman seconded to award the bid for the 1991 Sewer Televising Contract, Project .No. 90-10 to Pipe Services Corporation in the amount of $5,853.95. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. WEST 79TH STREET IMPROVEMENTS EAST OF TH 101, PROJECT 91-8. Charles Folch: As I discussed in the report , two bids were received for this I project . . The low bid submitted by Midwest Asphalt Corporation is approximately 2 lower than the revised engineer's estimate. Following the review of the bids and a reference check on the contractor, the project engineer, Scott Harri of Van Doren-Hazard-Stallings has recommended that an award be awarded to Midwest Asphalt Corporation. As you are aware, this improvement project is necessitated by the Valvoline Rapid Oil development and overall plat of the Gateway 1st Addition. The City to date has received a signed development contract . However, a letter of credit and some needed easement documents are still outstanding. In an effort to insure the City's interest and be consistent with development policies, I would recommend tabling this item to the June 24th City Council meeting to allow the developer more time to fulfill these commitments. Mayor Chmiel: Any discussion? There's a suggestion that we table this to the 1 June 24th meeting. Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to table awarding the bids for the West 79th Street Improvement Project 91-8 to the June 24, 1991 City Council meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT ALLOCATIONS, YEARS XVI AND XVII. ' Paul Krauss: At your last meeting you reviewed proposal by staff to reallocate some Block Grant funding. It involved two requests. One was a swap of 1 $3,000.00, which is basically to help Hennepin County out in their accounting system. It also helps us out a little bit too. Sojourn Senior Day Care would be able to get the $3,000.00 we allocated to them immediately instead of waiting until this year's funding arrives in July or August. It 's just an accounting decision basically and it really doesn't affect our ability to fund anything that you wanted to. And we need approval from you to juggle those funds around. 5 I City, Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 The second was an issue concerning a feasibility study that had been proposed. Two feasibility studies. One for a senior center. Another for senior housing. There were some concerns raised by the Council that we seem to be, I guess funding a series of studies rather than actually doing things with the money and there was some concern about that there was also information out there that we ' should get a hold of that might respond to these concerns. I've done a couple things. We did get a hold of a copy of the Metro Council's Senior Housing Report and there's a summary of it in your packet . I guess I'd have to say briefly that while it 's interesting data, it doesn't give us a whole lot to work with in a local situation. It's a regional study. The data they use is 10 years old in terms of census information. It concludes that there's needs in the metro area and southwestern area for senior housing. In fact I just read an article in the Real Estate Journal that the vacancy rate in senior housing has been going down from 12: to 9% recently in this area, but it 's not real conclusive. I guess in summary, I share the Council's concern about doing studies but the study that gave us the Senior Commission was a very inexpensive, generalized product that was not specifically tailored to housing or senior center. It was just do we have seniors and what are their issues? It was based on a mail survey and provided some real good interesting data but I dare say it 's not conclusive enough for me to be responsible in coming before you and asking that the City appropriate large amounts of funds or the HRA do that to build these things because I don't know that the real questions have been ' answered. After having reviewed that , the Senior Commission made a recommendation to you to do these two studies out of some Block Grant Allocation that we've had reserved for that sort of use. Basically because the questions we need to have answered is, (a) are these things feasible? Is there actually a demand for them? If so, what is the demand? Then (b), if we're going to go ahead with these sorts of programs and it 's a long term goal to develop these because everybody realizes you have to build a coalition and get the support and ' figure out the financing. But if we're going to go ahead with them for example with the housing, where should it be located to be attractive? What's an appropriate rent structure? How many rooms are people looking for? Do they ' need to park 1 or 2 cars for the parking be underground or attached or surface parking okay? With the senior center we want to know what programs we need. What sort of management associations we need. How do we actually run this thing? You can almost have enough information to go to an architect and say give me some preliminary drawings about what this might look like and what it might cost . I remain convinced that we need these documents to conclusively know where we're going to go on those two issues. Again, I share the concern ' that I'd much rather be doing something more useful with this. I guess in defense of it I point out that we funded this year, out of the last two years block grant , we managed to fund everything that 's been requested of us. We have ' full funding for South Shore Senior Center. Sojourn Day Care is a new facility for us. We're doing some things with and we're doing of course the handicapped accessible park equipment and a couple of other projects with it. We've been in contact with the Chanhassen Seniors group, the ones who play cards over at the ' school. They've asked, in a nebulous sort of way, for funding but we need to work with them over time to figure out what exactly they want to do that we can work with them. That we can use block grant money for. Of course this block ' grant money comes with strings and it's a very limited amount of activities that you can fund. So we would still recommend that we go ahead with those studies. I think it 's going to provide some useful data. One of the suggestions I had though is, there's been a concern and again it 's one I share that if we put a 6 • City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 dollar figure out there, the consultants know the dollar figure and you tailor your work product exactly to it and spend every penny you have in your account . It kind of eliminates the competition. What we'd be willing to do certainly is tc just have you act tonight on that transfer of $3,000.00 and if you would, direct us to go issue request for proposals for those studies without a dollar figure attached. Then we can get some feedback from you and we can see where they are and maybe we can economize a little bit on it and free up some funding for other items. We'd be happy to do it that way too. Mayor Chmiel: Good. I think what you're saying is what we basically agree ' with. With the RFP's and rather than throwing out a dollar figure at them and absorbing all those dollars. I think we have to look specifically at;what some of those needs are and discussing that also with the Senior Commission, and I've been reading those Minutes as well. To determine how best to utilize those dollars Just like you mentioned about those who were playing cards over at the school. There too, find out what those needs are. What are they specifically looking for because it 's hard to just throw out a dollar here and a dollar there. So I think if we do do that and make that recommendation of the reallocation of the Years XVI and XVII block grant funds to transfer that $3,000.00 from the Year XVII funds to the Year XVI for the Sojourn Senior Day Care Center and I think that 's what you're basically looking for at this time. And also then to make that request for proposal as you've indicated. Councilman Wing: I'll second that . Mayor Chmiel : Any other discussion? Councilwoman Dimler: Yes. That was exactly my intent and I guess it didn't come right out in the Minutes either but I had said that I did not object to haying a study done. I objected to the $26,000.00 being spent for a study and I suggested $10,000.00 but I pulled that out of the air. But whatever and I like the idea of taking bids for and then we chose the lowest bid of qualified people of course and then the rest of the money could go to programming and that 's what I wanted to find out if we could do that. Paul Krauss: We could sure give it a shot. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. That is legal? That money doesn't have to be spent for the study then? Paul Krauss: Oh no. Not at all. It 's dedicated in a fund that 's unnamed senior programming. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. That was our concern last time. That we wouldn't , was it one of these where you have to spend it on this or you'd lose it? Paul Krauss: You have to spend it by December 31st or get another contract before December 31st . Councilwoman Dimler: Okay, but it didn't say you had to spend it specifically. ' Paul Krauss: No. 7 City, Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilwoman Dimler: Senior something. Paul Krauss: An eligible senior program. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay great . See that was our question. Mayor Chmiel : We have a motion on the floor, any other discussion? ' Resolution #91-56: Mayor Chmiel moved, Councilman Wing seconded to approve the reallocation of Years XVI and XVII Block Grant Funds to transfer $3,000.00 from Year XVII funds to Year XVI for the Sojourn Senior Day Care Center, $3,000.00 to Year XVII and $23,112.00 of Year XVI funds to undertake senior ' programming. The City Council also directs staff to send out Requests for Proposals to complete senior housing and senior center feasibility studies for the City. These RFPs are not to contain any city estimates of cost or ' availability of funds. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. KURVER'S POINT ADDITION. Mayor Chmiel: Next item is 3.75, Kurver's Addition. Tom with your discussion as you brought up, would you like to further that? ' Councilman Workman: I don't know if I should attempt to explain it or maybe Jo Ann and Paul should. I'll give it a quick shot . We had some Minutes and I guess we can all take blame. It does get a little confusing in the Minutes. ' The Minutes kind of seem to come out a little bit different than the Kurver's remembered and we had a lot of discussion on the cul-de-sac or not the cul-de-sac and then when it got down to some fine tuning with the road, and who should be paying for the road improvements, etc. that 's where it seemed to have some problems. In a letter to Mr. Harri of Van Doren-Hazard-Stallings from I believe Jo Ann. Jo Ann. The new item number 1 said, the applicant shall receive a new access permit for the existing access to TH 101 from MnDot and shall provide and pay for any and all improvements. Any and all being emphasized by me. Required by the City for the existing access to Kurver's point . There's another sentence there. What we talked about , well the Kurver's are having a problem getting any kind of bonding due to the fact that it says any and all because in effect the State or the City could say whatever it takes and whatever we want, you're going to put that intersection on TH 101 and there's some problems with that. We talked about possibly just saying the ' applicant shall receive a new access permit for the existing access to TH 101 from MnDot period. And/or pulling it out. You know maybe just pull that out and work with it later but then we aren't sure how that's all tied in. Paul can maybe do some explaining. Because it 's kind of, they know they need to get some things done. We all know that MnDot staff and the Kurver's got to meet and talk about what 's required in relationship to State Statutes. What would be required because that 's kind of fuzzy. And everybody's getting back different ideas from MnDot what's suppose to happen and by leaving it open that way, they cannot proceed because they're going to be basically saying we'll pay for whatever and we don't know whatever is yet. So I don't know how we would modify it or if we can modify this tonight. Mayor Chmiel : I think we can. I 8 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman Workman: By saying there's all sorts of questions about intent in the Minutes and everything else. My intent was to kind of, was not to leave it open and net to, I guess to turn it around and say okay. Staff and MnDot , find ' out what we need to do and really it 's between the applicant and MnDot and that 's. Mayor Chmiel: Paul. 1 Paul Krauss: Well, if I could clarify it a little bit . We understand how the language, the any and all language can be a problem for a lender. That 's pretty open ended and we don't have a problem changing that around. You're going to get a chance to review this and whatever is worked out under the final plat so you will have ultimate authority to approve what you like. This came up earlier this evening and I've been thinking about it a little bit since then. I don't have a problem with the intent 1' guess of what 's being proposed. I mean certainly we can change that language about the any and all. There is one question or one concern I have with leaving it solely in the province of MnDot . If I can touch on that very briefly and then you can do what you're going to do. One of the things that we talked about at the meeting is the problem that we've had over the years with MnDot basically not really caring about what happens to TH 101. Or really not setting a standard that 's consistent with what we'd like to see there to accommodate future needs. You talk to different people at MnDot at different times, you'll get different answers. I mean we've talked to - some people who back up what we're saying and Scott Harri has talked to some people whd've backed up what he's saying. It 's very tough to pin MnDot down on requiring anything of an improvement to TH 101. I mean their premise since the 1930's is they were going to dump it on somebody so they haven't spent a whole lot of effort improving it . We want to go ahead and have our meeting with MnDot , We'll certainly schedule that as soon as possible and hopefully that will be productive and that will be the end of it . Honestly, if MnDot though comes back and says everything's just husky dorey. There's- really no issue at all I'd want that demonstrated to our satisfaction because right now I honestly don't believe it . If we think that there are some requirements there or some improvements that can really improve safety there, we'd like to come back to you with the final plat and say well we disagreed with MnDot on that but here's what they said and you can decide for yourselves what you think is really appropriate. I don't want to color your thinking about MnDot at all. It 's just that we've had a tough time with them on this highway and based upon that I'm a little cautious. Councilman Workman: I'd like' to quickly interject and I don't see the Kurvers ' here and maybe that 's good. This intersection compared to all the other intersections of TH 101. We're going to, MnDot's going to spend some money to do Choctaw and Sandy Hook. Right turn lanes. Wish they could do Cheyenne. ' Okay, they're paying for that with our help. Now here comes Kurvers Point and they're kind of being told now you have to redo this whole intersection here. Okay, now if you go back up Pleasant View Road, Choctaw, Sandy Hook, Cheyenne and then Kurvers, now the Kurvers, and granted MnDot doesn't want to have TH 101. We know that . But now the Kurvers are being told you've got to redo this whole intersection when Herb wasn't told to do Chan Estates or whatever. Or how much I don't know. Further complicating that is Valley View Road, which makes the intersection much more heavy than all the rest of those intersections I just mentioned. That isn't the Kurvers problem but it makes that intersection 9 , City. Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 unique . Now should those 50 homes in there be responsible for all the traffic there and north and south? That was kind of their question and I'm sure they would take 15 minutes to explain that . So that 's why they're concerned about why they have to now, perhaps based on past conditions that said that second access, you're going to have to take that hill down, which I'm sure they had ' some confusion about why they had to take the hill down too there as far as cost . So the intersection is kind of different.. How much are they, even though they've in the past when the First Addition went in, they did dedicate land ' there for the intersection and now they're being asked again to upgrade and everything else and they want to know if they have this many homes, does that mean they've got to upgrade the whole intersection or not . And that's where the confusion comes. ' Mayor Chmiel: I guess I don't see that cost that's born by them for that 'particular intersection. I think that x number more cars, vehicles coming in and out of there is not going to make that much of a difference as far as the entrance onto TH 101 and Paul's right . MnDot has not real concern what's happening with TH 101. They'd like to get rid of it . Push it off on the counties or the cities as they've done in Hennepin County through Plymouth and ' Wayzata and areas as such. Maybe if we had discussions with MnDot, whoever we have a discussion with, I might make a suggestion that upon finalization of that , for you to send a letter back to them confirming your discussion with them and the interpretation therefrom and hopefully that they would, if a response is not provided within a 5 day period, that that 's the way it stands. I think maybe we cab eliminate some of those given concerns. Or at least hopefully we ' can. Okay Don. • Don Ashworth: I was going to mention. Councilman Workman's absolutely correct . Some of the older subdivisions in that area did not have to pay. Colonial Grove, etc. . The newer ones, say within the last 5 to 10 years, I believe all have paid. Peter Pflaum paid off of Pleasant View. Fox Hollow paid and I know that the Colonial, South Lotus Lake, those were both widened and those were ' charged to all the lots within that subdivision. Councilman Workman: Don my point was that the Kurvers already did dedicate and ' pay for and probably now they're upgrading and they're trying to figure out with how much of an upgrade, how much more responsibility do they have to have for this specific intersection. It doesn't fit. It doesn't even weigh because they've already dedicated what they claimed was $56,000.00 in property for the ' intersection. And keep in mind Eden Prairie's on the other side with Valley View Road but I don't know the history of all the. ' Don Ashworth: I had talked with Mel as well and I thought we had agreement about a week ago to go through the process of having his engineer meet with our engineer and the State and try to determine what are we talking about . Are we talking about $50.00, $5,000.00 or $50,000.00. At that point in time we can come back and say okay, it 's not reasonable that you would have to pay costs on the Eden Prairie side but if they're saying, if the existing turn is not really adequate, then maybe Mel should. You know until we really know what we've totally got , I'm hesitant to say jump on one band wagon or another. Mayor Chmiel: Let me ask you a quick question in reference to what you're making with each of those new developments that went in. That was an upfront 10 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 cost number one right? Don Ashworth: Very similar to what we're talking about here. 11 Mayer Ch ie : ror the expansion of the particular project as well? Don Ashworth: They were required to pay the additional cost . If I remember ccrrectly, the only improvements that were done on any one of those were on the Chanhassen side. I know of no improvement that was done on the Eden Prairie side. But in each of those instances they did put in a deacceleration lane and an acceleration lane. So again, if you go to South Lotus Lake boat access area, that 's a fairly long acceleration/deacceleration on both of those accesses. Mayor Chmiel: Alright . Any other discussion? Tom? • Councilman Workman: No. Are we going to, can we make the change or can't we Roger? Should we? Roger Knutson: You can. The decision whether you should is obviously up to you. Mayor Chmiel : Maybe what we should do Tom is to. Councilman Workman: My only question is this. If we change this or water this down or move this and they're allowed to go ahead with the project, then do we lose all rights? I know staff is worried about that . Then we lose all 'rights to have them approve even an iota of the intersection which God forbid if we lose. . .to keep people under our thumb. Mayor Chmiel: I think we have a solution to it . ' Roger- Knutson: Perhaps if you modified it to the extent that it's saying when costs are known, that information is to be brought back to the Council to make a decision. Then you have all the facts and you can decide if it 's appropriate. Councilman Workman: Okay. But we'll know all the costs but then we don't know what percentage is Kurvers or the State or other. That 's the open end. Don Ashworth: But you could make that decision. If you make a decision that no one else paid on the Eden Prairie side, that would be back to you. ' Mayor Chmiel: I think if we had their engineer, our engineer and MnDot, that determination can be made. , Councilman Workman: Okay, but if we make the sentence, the applicant shall receive a new access permit for the existing access to TH 101 from MnDot, then the applicant and MnDot are making a decision which they should and they can fight over the cost . Does the State have leverage? Mayor Chmiel: Well I would think, sure the State has leverage in their determination as to whether or not a safety issue is there. Don't you think? 11 ' City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Don Ashworth: n Agai it gets back to a point Paul brought out. They put all the Again 9 g ' driveways right onto TH 101 across whatever, what are they duplexes in there? Mayor Chmiel: Yes. ' Don Ashworth: Those never should have gone in. I mean it should have been one common access. I guess I'd like to again see the suggested improvements and the cost associated with those come back to you and if you feel that it's unreasonable that M-1 and Frank should bear x amount of it or y amount of it , you could make that determination but until we know what those costs are and what the scope of the improvements that are being suggested are, I think it's hard to make. Councilman Workman: I guess I'm just not sure that it 's our job to decide on • that State Highway, but maybe it is. ' Mayor Chmiel: I think from a standpoint that there is involvement back to the City and the City has to pick up those costs, I wouldn't be of course for that . ' Councilman Workman: It 's not our problem. It's not our road. Don Ashworth: It probably will be. Mayor Chmiel: At some time. Only by legislation. Councilman Workman: You know what I'm saying? All I'm saying is on May 6th we approved this for them. There's been some confusion and I'll take partial credit for that because I don't think I clarified everything at the end on what ' we wanted to do. It 's been, now it 's the 10th of June. They are unable to do anything until we get this thing going and I'm trying to make it a little easier for them to get accomplished what they're trying to do ultimately. 11 Paul Krauss: If I can make a suggestion? You know Mel seemed to, there are two issues here with him. One was the any and all improvements language which is causing them money with their lender. That you can either eliminate. Just ' strike it or put in they shall pay their fair share of improvements that are required. Councilman Workman: As determined by MnDot? ' Paul Krauss: Well, see I'm a little concerned with that. ' Councilman Mason: I don't know why we're always throwing MnDot in this. If we can work it out with 3, let 's just go with that and be done with it . Paul Krauss: I think we can take care of their short term need to work with their financer and then work out the details and come back to you and the Council can decide what's needed over there. It may well also be real appropriate for us to bring in Jean Deitz from Eden Prairie. I mean this is ' more than half their problem and see if we can work out something with them as. well. I ' 12 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman Wing: Did Mr. Ashworth say that there was a meeting planned or going to be between the engineers of all the parties and might this be resolved at t het point? Den cahwor'. h: I hope it to be and their engineer told me at the end of last weaL that they were prepared to meet with the City. He didn't give me a date t hough. I don't know. Dc you know? Charles Folch: No, I hadn't heard a date either but he was going to coordinate the meeting anon then get back to us. Councilman Wing: I agree with Mr. Workman's concerns and I thought we left them kind of hanging in a nebulous area but might this meeting resolve Tom's concerns and the problem we're talking about? Don Ashorth: I would hope so. I mean I sincerely believe that last Wednesday ' or Thursday when Mel had called and we started coordinating with the State and what not , that we were almost done with the issue at that point so I was kind of surprised this evening. Councilman Wing: Would you consider tabling this pending the staff report directly on this issue? Councilman Workman: Well, according to Paul we can strike it . If we can strike it with the condition that the details be worked out by the engineers because you know what happens when you try to get a meeting with MnDot and everybody ' else. It will be the end of June. I don't think it 's fair. Mayor Chmiel : sure. I think that would be the resolving portion of having all three sitting down and working it out . And then once that determination is made, bring it back to Council. Councilman Workman: So I guess the motion would be to change number 1 of the , new conditions. The applicant shall receive a new access permit for the existing access to TH 101 from MnDot . The applicant shall work with his own engineer, MnDot, City of Eden Prairie and City of Chanhassen to decide. ' Paul Krauss: What, if any improvements are going to required for the intersection. Councilman Workman: And what costs should be attributed to the applicant . Paul Krauss: Right . Recommended cost sharing. Mayor Chmiel: That sounds reasonable. Any other discussion? Is there a second? I Councilwoman Dimler: Second. 1 13 1 ' Oft Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 i Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to clarify the motion ' made on May 6, 1991 for Kurvers Point Addition to change condition 1 to read: 1. The applicant shall receive a new access permit far the existing access to TH 101 from MnDot. The applicant shall work with his own engineer, MnDot, ' City of Eden Prairie and City of Chanhassen to decide what, if any improvements are going to required for the intersection and what costs should be attributed to the applicant. ' All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. IACCEPT FEASIBILITY STUDY TO UPGRADE MINNEWASHTA PARKWAY AND CALL FOR PUBLIC HEARING, PROJECT 90-15. ' Public Present: Name Address ' Bill Engelhardt Engelhardt and Associates, Project Engineer Dave Headla 6870 Minnewashta Parkway ' Court MacFarlane 3800 Leslee Curve Greg Datillo 7201 Juniper Avenue JeAnr Hallgren 6860 Minnewashta Parkway ' Charles Folch: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. As I'm sure you are aware, this proposed improvement project is a rather sizeable one with many details and elements associated. A great deal of data and information related to existing ' site conditions, State Aid standards, traffic studies, soil report and resident input has been collected, discerned and incorporated into this feasibility study. The project engineer, Bill Engelhardt in cooperation with City staff has formulated a project that addresses the relevant concerns of both the City and ' affected property owners yet is economically feasible. The total project cost is estimated to be approximately 2.1 million dollars funded by a combination of State Aid Funds, General Obligation Bonds, Trunk Watermain Funds and special assessments. The proposed unit assessment rate is approximately $1,250.00. I would therefore recommend that the feasibility report for improvements to Minnewashta Parkway Project 90-15 be accepted. In my report I had originally ' recommended calling for a public hearing for the June 24th meeting. However, with previous discussions earlier tonight it appears that the meeting has been postponed until July 8th. However I should point out that I will be out of town for that July 8th meeting. Councilman Wing: Why didn't you speak up? ' Charles Folch: I didn't hear it until it was all done. At any rate, Bill whenever the meeting is decided to be scheduled will give a formal presentation of the feasibility report at that public hearing. Whatever date you shall choose to decide on. However, he is present tonight to answer any specific ' questions on the report that you may have. Mayor Chmiel: Are there any questions from Council? Let me just back up a real quick. I see the Kurvers have just walked in. We've come up with a conclusion 14 Cit;' Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 on what we had looked at and we've discussed your position already and we'll be glad to talk to you about it after we get done here this evening. Okay, we'll move on. Bill , do you want to just go over this just a little bit more? I know thet from what we previously looked at , I'd like you to discuss the road width from what it was previously to what it is considered now. To what the a•_.seesments were previously and to what they are now and a few of the other incidentals that are there. • Bill Encelhardt : Your honor, as part of the feasibility study we undertook a little bit different direction in putting the study together. We included an executive summary up front which lays out all of the issues that were discussed at the two homeowner or neighborhood meetings that we had. Very good attendance at those meetings and a lot of good input. It was really a good process to go through for this particular project . A major consideration that we have that came out of the homeowners meeting is that the new roadway width would be reduced from 36 feet , which was originally proposed, down to 32. We did go out e,nd remeasure the street out there and on the north end of the Minnewashta Parkway we're looking at an existing 28 foot mat. Down by the TM 5 intersection for abort 1 ,000 feet it 's 22 so it does vary from 22 to 28. The majority is 28. What this means is that there will be 6 inches of additional bituminous from ' what YOU see right now plus the curb and gutter. So the roadway width has been substantially reduced from what was originally proposed and this has been worked out with Dot that they would accept the 32 foot roadway. The walkway alignment . Mayor Chmiel: The existing roadway presently as it stands is 28 now? Bill Engelhardt : 28 and 22. The first 1,000 feet from TH 5 north is 22 feet wide and then from that point on it widens out and goes 28 all the way up to TH 7. It varies in and out of there but the majority of it is 28 right now. The walkway alignment , some of the concerns that the neighborhood had was they didn't like the cross over. We had proposed a cross over in the project. In the final design we had proposed that that would be on one side. We'd stay on one side. The perferrable side would be the east side at this time but that would have to be looked at very closely during final design. Additional storm drainage problems were identified from the neighborhoods up there and those would be incorporated in the final plans if the project went ahead. There were a number of problems up there that were corrected and the neighborhood brought forth additional problems that we incorporated into the feasibility study. The assessment rate was reduced from $2,340.00 down to $1,250.00 per unit and that was reduced based on using General Obligation Bonds for past policy projects where 50; of the storm sewer has been paid for by the City. Anything that was paid for with General Obligation Bonds in the past, we've put that into the General Obligation part of the project and we are able to bring the assessments down. One reason for that also for bringing the assessments down is that we're trying to compare previous State Aid projects to this State Aid Project and there wasn't an equity in there. As an example, Bluff Creek had large lots. They paid about $2,200.00 and we were trying to make a comparison but the comparison just didn't fit right after we looked at it because people in Minnewashta Parkway have smaller lots and that was one reason for bringing the assessment down also. We reduced the raw land :rea assessment unit calculations from 3 units per acre down to 1.8 units per acre . This was looking at all of the properties up in the area. Taking into account the wetlands. Taking that 15 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 out of any assessment area. Only the useable, buildable land would be assessed at the 1.8 and because of the wetlands and the nature of the area, they have to ' have larger lots up there. You just aren't able to get the 3 units. The 1.8, we would be able to fit 1.8 units per acre on developable land. That also takes out right-of-way. If you're going to build a road, if" you had let 's say a 5 ' acre tract you also subtract out the right-of-way. You still could get 1.8 acres or 1.8 units per acre and if you look at that , it's about 22,000 square foot lots. That 's a pretty good sized lot . The City of Victoria, Charles and I met with Victoria. Attended one of their Council meetings and went ' through the whole program with them. They were receptive and passed a resolution to work with the City of Chanhassen to do a land swap as part of the annexation process. They really didn't have a problem with it They were not interested in paying for any part of the road costs and they realized that they didn't have the funds, the State Aid funds to pay for the road cost and if we can work something out with them to swap land, they would be agreeable to that . ' As I mentioned earlier, the utilization of General Obligation Bonds. We added that into the project to help finance it and that being consistent with all past policies where certain portions of the project had previously been paid for. Other projects had previously been paid for with General Obligation Bonds. Total project costs was reduced by about $100,000.00 through the process. Still a significant project. We did reduce the amount of tree removal. Due to the reduced width of the roadway, we will be able to save more trees than what we originally planned. I think in the bidding process though we would still try to maintain a high level of replanting so the parkway ends up as a parkway when we _ get all done. Several comments focused on placing a 3 inch bituminous overlay on the existing roadway. We've estimated the cost of that at $120,000.00. The problem with an overlay, it does not solve the problems that this roadway has. Drainage problems. It wouldn't solve the drainage problems. It would create more drainage problems probably. The subgrade conditions. It wouldn't solve ' that . We'd still have the settling and we'd still have the soft soils down there. We'd still have alignment problems. We'd still have sight distance problems so in our opinion, we felt that an overlay was not appropriate for this particular piece of roadway. The summary of the costs, we're still looking at using $944,000.00 worth of State Aid. The special assessments went down to $665,000.00. We'd have $477,000.00 worth of General Obligation Bonds and trunk funds of approximately $26,000.00 which would make up the 2.1 million project. With that I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have on it. Mayor Chmiel : Before we even get into the questions, maybe there are some of ' the residents that are here from Minnewashta who might like to come up and have some discussion. If you do, please come forward and state your name and your address. I want to mention too in looking at the packet, I had provided several letters that I have received in opposition to the proposal and I'm sure that many of you have also received those copies but I had thought they would be placed into the packet and they weren't in here this time. Don Ashworth: It was staff's intent that if the Council would call for the public hearing, that we would include all of the correspondence at that point in time. Councilman Wing: Mr. Mayor, can I just ask a c:estion prior to that? Not . discussion point . By the tone of the phone calls and the letters I've been receiving have been rather consistent so I felt that there's most likely been 16 C_' Council Mooting - dune 10, 1991 s O^ eithsr calling or there's been a letter circulated because the information on has been consistently in error. I have that letter that 's going out to the Minnewashta Parkway residents here. I would just ask you directly as Mayor of ' thi- Cit/, do you slip things in? Do you steamroller projects? Do you fail to listen to the residents or ignore them in cases like this? Mayor Chmiel : I did see that particular letter and it irritated me some. I I have to say that because I don't think this Council has been so open as they have been in any particular project that we've had within this city. Including cur Comprehensive Plan. We had as many as 14 public meetings making sure that everyone understood it . I feel rather hurt just seeing that indication, pointed at tai_ Council. And whoever has had that letter, I would personally like to sit dorm with them and have them point those things out to me. What we have beer hiding or whatever. The intent is never that here. If yo.0 want to see this Council work open, they have been. We've been very open and we listen to the people. We're not just here to throw a project in and say go. If it 's good for ti-c_ City, we have to do it because of the specific reasons and I think one thing that I feel basically about this proposal is the safety issues contained on that road. I've sat out there. I've driven it . I've looked at it . I've watched people walk on there with their families, their grandchildren, their children, their grandparents. Whoever. And speeds are a little high on that road. Safety is an issue with me. I feel strongly about that issue. But whoever devised that particular letter, I would really like to sit down and dl_cu_c that with them. Councilman Wing: Thank you. I did not feel you operated in that manner. Mayer Chmiel : I never will. Is there anyone wishing to come up and discuss Dave Headla: My name is Dave Headla. I think you all know me. I'm the fellow you sort you two letters in one month. I come from the remote western part of Chanheeren called Minnewashta Parkway. Out there we do feel a little frustrated. We're not sure that your, or even a good portion of your attention is pointed at us. . .you have a lot more people here too. But I was glad to see you mention safety. That 's the main thing I'd like to bring up tonight. In the feasibility study, at no time did I hear you mention safety. The criteria why you chose the road, the trail. I'm very concerned about safety. We're of the understanding you're strongly considering the trail on the east side of the road. All the way from like King's Point up to TH 7. Is that true? Last night I stood out on my driveway and I was watching cars come by and I looked to the left and I looked to the right . My line of sight is roughly 40 yards each way. I'm right on the curve and at 40 yards, that's 120 feet. Now if a car was going 30 mph, and not many of them do 30 mph, that equals to 45 feet per second. Now if my 5 year old grandson is down there, another year he's going to be 6 or 6 1/2. If he was going to cross that road that equates to, he has about 3 seconds to make a decision to cross that road and get across there before a car comes. Now 3 seconds for a 7 year old is lousy and now you want to widen the road. Maybe it should be wider. My big point is I do not think that for safety reasons that trail should be on the east side of the road. The vast majority of the population is on the west side of the road. Why in the world do you want to risk all those young people's lives going across there? I don't think you've got a right criteria to make a decision. I'm asking you to go back and revisit ' 17 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 1 . your design criteria and safety. Now if one kid gets picked off, we haven't gained one thing for everything we've put in here. Then you gave me a little bit of understanding on that overlay and I don't know. I've really got to think about thc' . You've got some really good reasons for that . I would prefer an cvcrlay but You 've got your design reasons too. But the other one, I didn't hear the trail discussed and what are you going to, what kind of trail is it now that you're planning on? ' Mayor Chmiel: Would you like to address that Bill? Bill Engelhardt : Sure. We looked at both types of trails. Both bituminous and concrete and the decision was made to present in the feasibility study to the City Council for their consideration a concrete trail. Based on cost between the concrete and the bituminous being very comparable. Because on the bituminous trail you can't just lay down a 2 inch or 3 inch bituminous mat onto ' clay surface you have to build a base for it . So by the time you build a base and then you put the bituminous on, you get very close to being comparable to the cost of concrete. The other consideration we looked at to recommend to the ' Council concrete was a maintenance item. We felt that with concrete we would have less maintenance. It would be more durable and longer lasting. Now if, I know there had been some comments that bituminous would be desirable, both from a walking standpoint and running standpoint . That 's certainly a Council ' decision and if you direct us to incorporate a bituminous trail in the plans, we certainly .would do that . We aren't to that point yet in preparing the final plans. So that can still be done. That issue is still up. Those are the ' reasons I presented concrete and is certainly a Council decision which way to go. Mayor Chmiel : Do you have any ideas as to cost difference between cubic yard of concrete as opposed to bituminous? Bill Engelhardt : You're looking for the sidewalk about $1.75 a square foot. Bituminous is about $1.55-$1.65. It depends on what the bids and what the oil prices will be. Councilman Workman: What 's the lifespan? Bill Engelhardt : Well bituminous, what you'll find in bituminous is that you're ' going to have to go through and probably 4 or 5 years down the road do some sealcoating and that type of thing to keep the trail up to par. There's pros and cons for both of them. Concrete will crack so we're going to have some cracking out there and we're going to have some settling. Bituminous is 11 flexible so flexibility is nice sometimes when you're looking at the trail. What you could do, it's nice to have a specific item in your bidding so you can get a specific cost on it but what you could do in this particular case is bid an alternate. You could bid concrete or bituminous as your base and then have an alternate bid for either one of them and then when it came to the time to award the bid, whichever one had the best cost. If there was a substantial difference between the concrete and bituminous where we could make up our cost for maintenance, then we should do bituminous. And that's possible to do in both and see which one comes in at the best cost . ' 18 City Council Mr ' ing - June 10, 1991 Dave Headla: I would prefer you make your decision on being user friendly. We use it . I've been on concrete and I've been on asphalt and concrete just beats you up something terrible. I don't care if you're walking or running. Biking it isn't so critical but concrete is really tough on the body. Bill Engelhardt : Yeah, I have no problem really from an engineering standpoint whether you use the concrete or bituminous. Again we based our decision on the long term maintenance of it . Dave Headla: And on the width of the trail, the rationale at one time was that you want it wide enough so you can put a vehicle on there to plow the snow. Are you still along that philosophy? Bill Engelhardt : The standard in Chanhassen is to go with a 6 foot trail and the reason for that is if you put in a 5 foot trail you wind up, when you take your plows or whatever you use to maintain your sidewalks with Bobcats, they have about a 6 foot bucket on them and you always rip the sides up and you're constantly going back and repairing the sod. So we try to stick with a 6 foot trail. That gives them just that little bit of flexibility in there so if they're not quite on center line, that they don't tear it up during the winter time. If we go to bituminous, then we need to do either a 6 foot trail or an 8 foot trail . The reason for that is your pavers that they use to put down the bituminous are 6 and 8 and if you start to deviate, the cost is going to go way up. Dave Headla: 6 foot , I think that sounds very realistic. I'd like to see that. ' Then another one, I'm right on Minnewashta Parkway. Now we've been out there over 30 years. We were part of Chanhassen Township before we ever associated with the Council here. We had a road down to the lake and we've driven down there for over 30 years. I'm not as young as these two Todd's here who can go up and down stairways but if you put that retaining wall in there, that takes our driving priviledge down to the lake away, as with many other people. Now what you're really doing is saying that we don't care about you older people. You're going to have to go and take the steps. How do you respond to that? Bill Engelhardt: I guess I respond is that's not the intent at all. We're planning on building a retaining wall. There's no question about that but I think in the homeowners meetings we also indicated at both meetings that people that have properties and have access, that we have to maintain those. We have to slope those walls to make sure that you can get down there. Dave Headla: Drive down there? Bill Engelhardt : If you have a driveway, there isn't going to be a problem with the retaining wall. There are some very steep areas in there where people are building steps now. That's going to be the problem area. The driveways, I don't see that as being a problem from an engineering standpoint. We do have a problem trying to step them down where they have the walkways. It's very steep in there. If you can drive there right now, we can build something that you can still drive off of. Dave Headla: Well, being pretty confident . 19 ' , City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 11 Bill Engelhardt : I'm very confident . You've got to give me a little bit . ' Dave Headla: Well you know you're an engineer and being an engineer I'm always a little leery. Okay, thank you for listening. ' Councilman Wing: What about the trail on the west side? Mayor Chmiel: Yeah. That hadn't been addressed. ' Bill Engelhardt : We looked at both sides of the road and originally the reason we shifted it back and forth is that we were trying to pick up the majority of the property owners and ifyou look at the north end of the project where we made the shift . We were shifting it over to the Stratford Woods side which is on the west side and then after that big subdivision came in, as it would come in on the east side south of Stratford Woods. The majority of the land on the east ' side is vacant or is wetlands so we felt that more of the property owners were on the east side of the trail. That's why we made the shift . Now if we can maintain it and pull it over to the east side all the way along, we are going to lose a majority of the property owners having direct access up in the Stratford ' Wood area. But we felt from the comments of the neighborhood where they did not want any crossovers whatsoever, that we would sacrifice that end and pull that to the east side. Dave Headla: Pierce, ourselves and Wenzel's next door, we all preferred to have the trail on the west side. Yeah, it 's c;ing to cut into what we have there but ' for safety we really think that 's the way to go. Bill Engelhardt : The trail is going to be within an existing right-of-way. ' Dave Headla: Right . But we'll have a bank there and like Wenzel's said. It really cuts into that bank. They realize that and they said they still would prefer it that way. Bill Engelhardt: Well we can look at that. This has been coming out in the homeowners. One group wants it on one side and one groups wants it on the other ' side. The best thing I can tell you is that we'll use our best engineering judgment on it and design the plans, if the Council goes ahead with it, and we will have one more meeting before the plans go out for bid for you to review it and we can address some of those concerns at that time. But at some point in ' time we've got to make a decision. Either it 's all going to be on one side or we're going to make a crossover. ' Dave Headla: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that's the way. What I'm concerned about is the criteria used to make your decision and you know our property is going to be developed. There's I don't know how many acres are going to be developed within 10 years or so. There's going to be small kids ' there and they're going to be going across the road if the trail's across the road. That 's quite significant. The other thing I didn't quite understand is you're trying to save trees. From Kings Road up to Pleasant Acres, if you put ' the trail on the west side, 5 major trees would = ome out. If you put it on the east side, I counted over 20 that were going to :;e destroyed and some of them are oaks on our property and then to the north. 20 Cit./ Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Bill Engelhardt : We can certainly look at that again. Dave Headla: If you'd come out , I'd like to do a tree count with you. ' Bill Engelhardt : I'd be more than happy. Dave Headla: Okay, thank you. ' Mayor Chmiel : One other question comes to my mind Bill. Because of the concern of the area, had we looked at all seeing if there's a potential area for a stop sign? Bill Engelhardt : To answer your question directly, no. We did not look for a stop sign. We certainly can do that . If we're using the stop sign to control speed, it 's not recommended. Mayor Chmiel: I'm looking at it from a safety aspect . Bill Engelhardt : From a safety aspect we would have to, I think that you need to the roads coming onto the collector street which we are doing already. But ' to try to put a stop sign in the middle of that roadway, I don't think there's a real good spot for it and if you do that , you're going to run the risk of creating a bigger safety issue than not having the stop sign because people will tend not to use the stop sign. A pedestrian will be counting on the stop sign. You know -that the car's going to stop but the traffic is going to get used to not stopping. They're going to roll through it and then you've got more potential for problems. Mayor Chmiel: What you're saying basically is a stop sign wouldn't be suggested? Other kinds of signs, Caution, Children within the Area ' Bill Engelhardt : Those signs would be part of the project. We would sign this as a State Aid road and put the appropriate signs and the curve signs. Right now there's, I don't even know if there's a speed limit sign out there. You need to sign that appropriately. Put in the curves and all that and the sharp curve and whatever but those signs have to be placed. Mayor Chmiel: Okay, thank you. Yes sir. Court MacFarlane: My name is Court MacFarlane. I live at 3800 Leslee Curve which is part of the Pleasant Acres development . It sounds like an echo chamber. Some of the concerns that Dave Headla was talking about are the same ones that I was going to talk about. He addressed them and I'd just like to expand on them a little bit . One is certainly the slope along there that runs along the road. The right-of-way, I don't know how wide it is. Charles Folch: 66 feet. Court MacFarlane: 66 feet . The current alignment of the roadway, does it runs in the center of the right-of-way? Bill Engelhardt : It 's very close to the center. 1 21 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 1 Court MacFarlane: Okay. So there's an awful lot of it that still goes toward the lake then? Bill Engelhardt : That 's right . ' Court MacFarlane: The slope that's along there contains an awful lot of very mature trees. A lot of oak trees and I have .a real concern for that because if they start to rip into that and then have to build a retaining wall, they're going to be disturbing the roots of a lot of, not just the trees that they're going to be taking out to construct the roadway but they're also going to disturb the roots of the mature oaks that are along there. And in most cases when you do that or you compact the soil on top of them, you're going to kill ' those trees. It might not happen right away but they're going to die off in a year or two and that 's a real concern. If you look at Minnewashta Parkway right • now, it really is a parkway. When you look at the trees that are on both sides ' of the road. I don't know how you're going to align 6 foot trail and 32 foot roadway with space inbetween the two I assume and come up with anything that would save many of the trees that are along there. That is a real concern I have. Now from the standpoint of safety, to expand on that part of it as ' well, stop signs may not be feasible yet when you improve a roadway like what you've got right now, you're creating another channel for traffic to go from TH 5 to TH 7 or vice versa. Right now Rolling Acres Road and TH 41 are the only ' two main crossing points jetween those two highways as you're coming in from either Victoria or St . Boni. I think people would have the tendency to look for the one that 's probably best aligned. If you look at the three of them, ' Minnewashta Parkway is actually more of a direct access from TH 5 to TH. 7. Rolling Acres runs, if you come off of TH 5 onto it , you're actually further west when you get up to TH 7. And you've got a 30 mph speed limit there, I don't know how you're going to slow the traffic down unless you have some type ' of controls. Either stop signs. I don't know what else you can do. But if we don't have any controls on it , I can see that becoming the speedway and safety problems becoming even worst . tMayor Chmiel: Hopefully what we're looking at right now is through some education within the City. Making people aware as to what the speeds they're driving. There's a new radar kind of, well it's probably about 3 feet wide and ' maybe 4 feet high. This is something, well let me just back up a bit. I have a lot of concerns, not only on Minnewashta Parkway but also on our downtown 78th Street . I've been looking into a couple different things that can provide 1 information to the general public regarding their speeds. I'm not one to say put police out there and start writing tickets. I don't think it's the way to go but if I can have this digital kind of miles per hour and it indicates just 1 setting right on the center median or off to the side or on top of a police car, it will read out exactly what speed you're going. Court MacFarlane: Can you see it? Mayor Chmiel: You bet . You can see it from a distance. I happened to have seen it myself. I was in a 30 mph zone and I was going exactly 32 mph and it's a great reminder because now I'm becoming more aware as to what speeds I'm going in specific areas. I 22 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I Court MacFarlane: I think the people that live in the area are aware of the speed limits and I think they're more aware of them because they do see the children and people out on the roadway. The people I'm concerned with are the people that don't live in the area that are just using it as a transit to get from one place to another and they find this to be a very convenient , very quick way to get between TH 5 and TH 7. , Mayor Chmiel: Maybe we may have to do some type of enforcement there but 9 out of 10 times you'll find if you do put enforcement, you're going to be giving tickets to people in that specific area. We've lowered speeds on one of the streets in town because it 's windy. Pleasant View and 25 mph and I followed a couple cars and watched where they went and they were going more than 25 mph and believe me they're right from the same area. It really is a state of mind that they're in. Where you're going. Whether you're in a hurry or what the situation is because you just automatically have that lead foot start moving onto that peddle. It 's hopefully through some kind of education that we can provide to the people within the City. We can't save them all. In fact I'm going to sitting down with MnDot here within about another 3 weeks and discussing speeds within our city. I don't know whether we can do anything but if we've lowered it to 25, people will go 30 a,yway. If you have it at 30 and they're going 35. It's really hard to stop them from doing it. Court MacFarlane: I had a couple of other comments to make. I was at the second of the two public hearings that were held, public meetings and there were probably- 200 people in attendance I think from the area. I think the general tenor of those meetings was not , it may have been characterised as being positive. To me it sounded like it was pretty negative overall for the project . I think the concerns, the major concerns were certainly one of cost for people in the area and not understanding why it was that they would be faced with an assessment to upgrade a parkway that they didn't feel was really necessary. The second thing was that there was comments made at the time- the study was done that , and I live in the Pleasant Acres area. That there's access to TH 7 in the back area, back part of our development which talk that that might be closed off at some time in the future. That affects me particularly because then all the traffic would come right down my driveway down to Minnewashta Parkway and the number of homes in there is not lessening. As you know there's another development in there. There's Shorewood Oaks and there must be another 30-35 lots in there that are now starting to be built . Can anyone enlighten me on if anything's going to happen to that access to TH 7? Mayor Chmiel: Bill can. Bill Engelhardt : I can't give you a specific answer of whether it is or it isn't. I think what I did indicate at the homeowners meeting that the potential would be there and the policy of MnDot when they're upgrading TH 7 and it's part of their corridor study they did in 1987, they look at closing accesses along the highway. Now whether they will close it or not, they would have a public hearing and you would have input on it and be able to tell them yes or no. Or at least voice your opinion. General policy is to close them. At this point there's no plan in closing them. - 1 Court MacFarlane: Because there's a church in there. Not just the homes in the area so the traffic in there would also be a lot heavier I think over time. 23 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 But there are definitely concerns with cost I know to the area residents. Even though they're talking about it 's been lowered now from $2,300.00 down to somewhere around $1,200.00. The feeling is still that that 's a lot of money to pay for a road improvement . I can tell you from the standpoint at least from the people in Pleasant Acres, they don't use the parkway that much because we do have a circular route in our own neighborhood so I don't think we'd look that favorably upon it . Those are basically my -concerns and some of the ones from our area. I think there are others but . . .probably address those in the letter. Mayor Chmiel: Thahk you. Anyone else? Greg Datillo: I'm Greg Datillo. I live on 7201 Juniper Avenue. I apologize ' for the unwarranted accusations that a few of my neighbors have made toward you the Mayor and the rest of you. I've seen the same letter and you being the Mayor, no one has ever had so much interest in our area. No other mayor. So I just want to let you know that there are some of us, and I'm going to say the majority of us that are very happy with what the City has been doing in trying to keep us happy. I mean first of all with the large road that we narrowed it down. The assessment . What did you do? Cut it in half. Okay. Now here, some ' of the things I just want to see if it 's fact or rumor is, the speed zone will be 45 mph or more. ' Bill Engelhardt : 30 mph. ` Greg Datillo: 30 mph? People will stop using TH 41 and use our residential road instead. Bill Engelhardt : I seriously doubt it because TH 41 is a direct access. I don't see it happening. ' Mayor Chmiel: And that being a 55 mph zone as well. ' Greg Datillo: The width of the road will double. Bill Engelhardt : It 's being reduced from a proposed 36 foot width to a 32 foot width. The existing roadway is 28 feet. Greg Datillo: The cost is inflated and the City will be making money. ' Bill Engelhardt : I don't think so. Greg Datillo: It 's approximately 30% is what we're paying so the City is paying ' and the State's paying approximately 70%. The assessment with the numbers you gave. And then the cost of the project. 3 million is 2.1 million? Bill Engelhardt : Right. Greg Datillo: And then it 's another ecological disaster and that. ' Bill Engelhardt : I didn't touch on the storm sewer. I think we are doing some good things with the storm sewer up there. Right now a majority of the storm sewer is being directed directly to Lake Minnewashta. The plan that we proposed ' in there is that we use settling basins prior to going to Lake St . Joe and 24 I City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 taking. . .to polish or clean it before you release it to Lake Minnewashta. So we ma; be, and I shouldn't even use the word sacrifice but we're going to take it to Lake St . Joe. Hopefully to preserve Minnewashta in a high quality. Lake St . Joe will also be preserved though by using a settling basin and taking the silts and debris out before we get it there. , Greg Dat'iilo: Thank you. Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. Anyone else? I JoAnn Hallgren: I'm JoAnn Hallgren and I live at 6860 Minnewashta Parkway and I did write everybody a letter but it wasn't the bad one. After I wrote it and I received a call from two of the Council people and I thank you. I guess I should have written a letter to the Planning Ctimmission. I had things a little backwards. But one of my concerns is that , I wonder about the units. Everybody is being assessed per unit . I have nearly 12 acres and there are a number of people that are going to be assessed per unit . I was just wondering how many units did the engineer come up with totally and ballparking my figures, I've come up with maybe 400 acres or so owned by maybe 20 people. This is just ballparking because I don't know it all. It seems like we will be paying far more than our fair share of the improvements to the road and that 's one concern for me personally. 1 Bill Engelhardt : In your case Ms. Hallgren, you're classified as Green Acres. And as a Green Acre classification, we cannot collect an assessment . We can levy it and defer it so your assessment will be deferred until such time as your property is developed. The way we've calculated the units was to take developed property. We subtracted out wetlands, we subtracted out 15% of the raw land after the wetlands were taken out to accommodate roadways and the balance of that would be what you could expect to develop as residential property and we arrived at 1.8 units per acre. So in other words, you could build 2 houses per acre after taking out the wetlands and the roadways. In your particular 12 acres, we felt that you at some point in time could have 17 possible units. And again, your property is in Green Acres. That assessment will be deferred until such time as you see fit to develop the property. JoAnn Hallgren: Deferred or not , is that going to add that much value to my property when I .sell it? I don't feel that, so I pay for 17 units at, I would pay $5,000.00. Am I going to get that out of my land when I sell it? No. Just because the parkway is improved. Bill Engelhardt : I can't address that. JoAnn Hallgren: Well, that 's one of my concerns and I wish the Council would look at it . You didn't tell me how many units in all. Bill Engelhardt : 532. JoAnn Hallgren: And that's the total that's going to be split for the total cost right? Bill Engelhardt : That's correct . 25 1 I City' Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I JoAnn Haligrer : Thank you. Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. Is there anyone else? As you were aware, we had some discussions previously about deferring a public hearing on this because it was indicated it would be at our next Council meeting. It won't be until July 7th if we so choose to proceed with this and make that request . Councilwoman Dimler: July 8th. Mayor Chmiel: To have the engineering firm continue with this. So what I'm going to do now, with everyone hopefully saying what they liked to have said. ' I'll throw it open to Council for discussion. Richard? Councilman Wing: Would you describe public hearing and a citizen's right at that point? What is a public hearing mean Don? Could you define that? Mayor Chmiel: Well a public hearing means that at that particular time it would either be a go or a no go. ' Councilman Wing: Based on our decision at that time? Mayor Chmiel: That 's correct . And I guess what we're looking at presently is whether to proceed with the feasibility study on it. To accept it and put it up for public hearing. Okay, I'll open it up from this end at this particular time. Ursula? ' Councilwoman Dimler: I guess from the first report that I saw to this one, I like the improvements that have been made. I like the fact the concerns of the citizens have been taken into account for the most part. I'm really pleased with that . And I really would like to take the concerns of more citizens. If they have something to say, I want to see them come to this public hearing. I know many of them will and I hope they're honest with us and I know that this Council has always taken the concerns of the citizens into consideration and plan to do that in the future. ' Councilman Wing: The key issue and the reason we're even discussing this tonight is safety and that issue was brought up by the neighborhood and residents of that community. This didn't just come out of thin air so if there ' is a safety issue and if they area concerned about children and the incompatibility of the vehicle traffic versus the recreational traffic, then I think the City Council has to look at that seriously. And being very knowledgeable of that area and certainly protective of that area and certainly ' thinking back to the township days when we had our own little world up there, I guess that doesn't exist anymore. I guess I'm not going to support putting in that trail with a subsurface road that at some point is going to have to be ' redone. I'd hate to be sitting on this Council the day they decide they have to do that road after just having spent $70,000.00-$80,000.00 putting in the trail so if there's a safety issue necessitating the trail, in my mind it's going to include a road. On the other hand, I'm certainly open to the fact that Minnewashta Parkway is not inpassable at this point and it 's not emergency. I have no trouble out there other than when traffic- comes I step into the mud to get away from the cars but you do that in Japan too. It seems to be the way of life. So access on the east or west , I think it 's a good point. The two issues I 26 I City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 11 have been brought up. Increased speed and increased traffic. I don't think either one of those have been shown or justified. I'm not convinced that the road is going to be widened to the point where it 's going to increase traffic. Nor am I sure that with the curb system that it 's going to not in fact actually decrease Beds: because you're not going to have this paved road going off into these nebulous shoulders. You're either on the road or you're going to hit the curb so I'm not so sure it 's actually not going to decrease speed. if anything. Or control it a little bit better. So those arguments have not held a lot of water for me because there's no justification either way. The trees, I think they're very important and this city is certainly leading the State in tree preservation and if it can be saved, it will be saved. If anybody wants to look at that map over there, we'll discuss that later tonight but what did they call us? An hour ahead of the rest of the State but it means the rest of it is years behind or however but at any rate. And the storm water and the pollution issue I think is significant . I think there's a lot to be said. That 's going to cost money to do that but it 's certainly, I'm going to hear what the community says but I hope the community has an open mind like I'm trying to have here and I think wr, can't convert the assessment into the next year or 2 or 3. I think we have to force ourselves to look into the next 10-15-20 years which is really going to be what this is going to serve and that 's the difficult position as a Council and to say I hate to bill you. Yet on the other hand, we have responsibility and I'm certainly going to be looking to you for leadership. Councilman Workman: Well $1,250.00 if that's. . .an awful lot of money. It 's a most unfriendly decision that a Council can make. We're going to ding you for $1,250.00 and no matter how you look at it , that 's taking away from something else we could spend it on. I think Frontier Trail's a good example of a road. I think I used to drive on it faster than I do now. It seems narrower and the only difference is my car doesn't get wrecked because of the bumps and the junk. Don't everybody drive down Frontier Trail touring it tonight but it really is a beautiful road now and they're paying for it and it's really tough to weigh all that out . I think we're really lucky to have Bill Engelhardt working on this. Nobody is more sensitive about the water and our concerns and the community's concerns and the trees and everything else. I feel total confidence in that and so we're lucky to have you Bill. Maybe because you have that son now. . . It 's nice to know somebody's out there working on our behalf very honestly. Two and a half years ago before I was elected, when I was elected, I got so many requests from people like Dave's request . Why aren't you paying attention to us? Get us some trail. Get us a park. Get us this road. People said fix this road to me. The only thing we could say and we were proud to say was, we're going to get it . What little we knew about State Aid 2 1/2 years ago, we know an awful lot now and as soon as we can get that State Aid out there, we're going to do it . Bluff Creek was cracking and we knew we had to save State Aid to get it done. Now here we are and I expected 2 1/2 years ago that maybe people would have a change of heart because it gets back to the $1,250.00. I'm confident it 's going to be a good road and I'm confident it 's going to protect the lake and it 's going to take care of an awful lot of problems out there. Agreeing with Richard's comments about the trail and maybe even the overlay. I couldn't see overlaying this thing. When we're all on the Council 10 years from now and we've got to remake that decision, we'll be called fools because we're on the Council that long. But it 's just a difficult, aifficult decision because I don't live out there but we have to, as Councilmembers, look at the whole thing and say, why do we want this? Is it worth enough for us to have each of these I 27 1 I City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 residents pay $1 250.00 and it 's very tough to say Y , y g o y it but given all the options, it 's a good investment and I know there's a lot of people that don't agree with that . Mayor Chmiel : Thank you. Mike? Councilman Mason: A whole lot 's been said and I think it 's been pretty well said. I think the safety issue for the trail is paramount and the oak trees. ' The east side, west side thing I think is definitely something to look at . Having kids of my own, the less they have to cross the road to walk out onto the trail I think the better. I'm concerned with what Mr. Headla was saying about the oak trees too. If we can look at a way of, and I'm sorry, the other ' gentleman too about impacting the roots, that 's paramount . But I think I like what the community's saying about it . It 's always a concern but I think like pretty much everyone else is saying, that road's going fast and at some point ' we're going to have to do something about it. Mayor Chmiel: Thank you. I guess I go back to thinking 15 years, 16 years ago ' when I moved here. We wound up with an assessment on our house. I had my own septic system and at the particular time we had to connect to city sewer. By the time we got our road in, our sewer, our water, our storm sewer, if I'm not too far off, I think my total assessment was $10,000.00. Believe it or not I believe I'm going to pay if off this year. Last payment. And I understand the costs. $1,250.00 is a lot of money. When I looked at the $10,000.00 I said that 's a heck of a lot of money. The thing that I'm looking at of course too. We can put this over a period of time. 6 years. Just a quick calculations, $1,250.00 plus interest , $200.00 some dollars per year. That's one thing I'm looking at . If we go with the trail it stands at that particular dollar. If it isn't , then of course that lowers the total project cost but I still think that , and I'm not one for having trails within residential areas except in this one, as many of the ones I've pointed out that I felt should have some type of a trail for the safety aspect . I have, as I said before, if I said 8 times that I ' sat out there at different times and driven it and looked at watched, I don't think I'd be exaggerating at all because I do have some concerns. Not only with Minnewashta Parkway. We have the same thing with TH 101. We have it with Powers Boulevard. We have it with most of your major areas that do carry traffic and there is some traffic that is carried from TH 7 to TH 5 and from TH 5 to TH 7. There's no question and that's going to be there but I don't think it's going to increase it anymore. More specifically if people want to use TH 41, they're not going to go onto Minnewashta Parkway and drive at a lower speed when they can go 55 mph. And they drive at 55 mph on Minnewashta Parkway but I'd like to know that license number and we'll make sure we send them a letter making them aware their speeds are a little high. But the overall project I think has some acceptability to it but I too am willing to sit back and listen to the people from the area to prove their respective points as to what they feel should or should not be done. So with that I'll drop the issue and I'll call the question. Councilman Workman: I would move to accept the feasibility study for the upgrade to Minnewashta Parkway and call the public hearing for July 8th. Councilman Mason: Second. • 1 i 28 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Mayor Chmiel: It 's been moved and seconded that we accept the feasibility study with the proposed public hearing for July 8th. Discussion? Councilman Mason: Is now the time to talk about the alternate bid for bituminous or concrete or is that . . .? Mayor Chmiel: I think that still can be discussed at the public hearing meeting. I'd like to get more input from the people and I'd like to know the difference really in cost. Maintenance and upkeep on concrete is much less than bituminous and I'm looking at it purely from a cost effective way. Councilman Mason: Because what David said is true. Being an ex-runner, bituminous is. • 1 Mayor Chmiel: Yes, a lot easier. Councilman Mason: Gentler. Mayor Chmiel: Yes, a gentler nation. Thank you Mr. Bush. I Resolution #91-57: Councilman Workman moved, Councilman Mason seconded to accept the feasibility study for the improvements to Minnewashta Parkway, Project No. 90-15 and that a public hearing be called for July 8, 1991. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. • REVIEW OF THE DOWNTOWN TRAFFIC STUDY AND CONSIDER SIGNALIZATION OF THE GREAT PLAINS BOULEVARD AND WEST 78TH STREET INTERSECTION, STRGAR-ROSCOE-FAUSCH. Paul Krauss: As you're aware, this is an outgrowth of a study that the HRA first illicited. It started last year to get a handle on downtown traffic issues. It was initially started when Target was still proposing downtown. We realized that there were a lot of issues going unanswered. I think over time the complaints that we've had about being unable to turn onto 78th Street bear that out . That things are getting tougher and this study figured prominently in our ability to resolve it. We have Denny Eiler here tonight from SRF who managed this study. He gave a presentation to the HRA several weeks ago and generally the conclusions were that we ought to start looking at some signalization, particularly for a first one at Great Plains Blvd. and 78th Street . The HRA was receptive to the study. For those on the City Council who do not share joint membership with the HRA, we thought we'd like to give you a brief overview of that and hopefully get your support or your direction to go back to the HRA and have them get to work on undertaking some of the work that's been proposed. With that I'll give you Denny Eiler. • Denny Eller: Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. I'm going to briefly go through the report . This has been presented once before and also the update presented to the HRA and we'll hit some of the high spots. To refresh everybody's memory, including mine. This is a map of the study area that we did some traffic forecasting on based on the land use, we got from the City and Fred Hoisington. We had made some traffic counts out there earlier on in the study. These are the daily volumes. Some Of the high points are approaching slightly over 12,000 vehicles a day. Two way on 78th Street east of Great Plains and in , 29 ' • City' Council Meeting - June 10' 1991 the 11,000 to 10,000 range as you head west . As a result of a previous Council presentation, there was a request to take a look at Frontier Trail. We came back. We did a traffic count for Frontier Trail. These are the a.m. turning movement counts. There were 30 vehicles turning left out of there in the morninc. There was a question, concern about gaps and I could add that daily voluc� of 12`000 cars a day, there probably is a gap problem. We did do a stop �� sign analysis. I'll also show you the evening volume which show 32 cars were turning and making the right turn into the ~c'ghborhood' We did the stop sign analysis at 78th and Frontier Trail and th: 'arrant level of service is O. Level of service at the stop sign is defined as a lack of reserve capacity. Now D for most highway designs is the minimum acceptable level. We did go and calculate the number of gaps that are being used by the existing traffic and it 's 22% of the gaps are being used in the morning and 12% in the evening but it is approaching a prpblem' We also noted some other problems. 78th and Great Plains. The westbound left turn is theoretically over capacity. Somebody once said, well nothing can ever be over capacity. What it is is actual traffic is exceeding laboratory capacity. That 's what it 's problem is there but that does indicate that there's a problem. One of the other charges that we had in the update of the study was to conduct an origin destination study using a license plate technique and I don't know if you saw the Minutes. I wanted to comment a -- word in there. There was a word poor but I don't know if that was a misrecording or whatever. We said it was a poor technique to use. I don't know what I really said that night but this is actually a very good technique to use ~~ to check license plates. We did this by, we had to wait until spring weather and the light allowed us to pick up the peak evening rush hour. We do this by taking the license plate. Recording those into a tape recorder. We pick date, locations as you can see around the area and we check, record all the numbers. We put them into a computer and we do a match. We're looking for license plates that showed up in consecutive 5 minute periods within the same or consecutive 5 I minutso periodu' Wc did find that there'o onme tripo that were made in and out of the area within that time and I'll show you some of those which indicates that while they technically showed up as a match as a thru trip because they took such little time to go through. You look at the routes and you can see that they really were not thru trips. Starting with the west , now we found that we had 278 vehicles approaching from Powers. 56% of those vehicles wound up in downtown and additionally there's 9% that came in and went back out. So apparently they made a trip that took them less than 10 minutes to complete. In the eye of the beholder that would be considered another local trip. Looking at Great Plains coming from the south, again 52% of the traffic remained in downtown longer than 10 minutes and another 18% made their trip in and out of there within 10 minutes. They may have gone to the gas station or picked up a quart of milk. Incidentally, we can see that 17% of the traffic that came from the south did go up TH 101' Back to that previous one. There we had only 3% passing from Powers all the way through to Dakota on the east end of town. But this is in the evening and that wouldn't be expected to be a large number. Looking at TH 101 north, we have approximately 300 cars there. Another 66% wound up in downtown with 6% returning back to the north in addition to 1% that came in and went out Dakota Avenue. Here we found we had 16% of the traffic went from TH 101 north to TH 101 south and another 21% that proceeded on through. Now it 's very possible that some of those stopped off too. We're not ' certain if they had brief stops or not . And then coming from TH S on the west end of town, we had 82% of the traffic wound up in downtown and only 9% presumably passed on through and again we had some return moves. We took a look 30 City Council Mr_ ,ing - June 10, 1991 at this with respect to what the proposed improvements on realigning TH 101 on thc east end of town would accomplish and these are the movements that were 11 affected or would be affected by the proposed improvement would be presumably attracted on this new link down to use what you would call the downtown by-pass of TH 5. The net result is around 210, excuse me. 250 vehicles out of about 405-425 I believe that we identified that could be diverted. Let 's say attracted from downtown. Well that 's a pretty significant number but in view of some of the forecast work we did for 2010 and this is the p.m. peak hour for 2010 and it does resume that TH 101 has been straightened out . 200 some vehicles, when you see that we're approaching volumes of around 800 westbound vehicles on 78th Street . While it 's a beneficial move to do TH 101, it 's not going to be a panacea. It 's not going to solve all your problems. It will buy you some time. We took a look at the forecast volumes and since our last presentation we had a chance to check some of these numbers against some other studies and I don't have them on a graphic but we're particularly concerned with the Eastern Carver County Study and they did a unconstrained and a constrained . . .and we're showing 27,400. Now a 2 lane road arguably cannot carry that kind of volume. TH 5 in Eden Prairie I believe approached that just west of 78th Street before the 4 lane improvements. Between Mitchell and 78th Street I believe. It reached 25,000 to 30,000. Now if TH 101 remained as it is, obviously that can't happen but there would certainly be pressure for those type of trips, particularly with the improvements to Town Line Road and other development in the area. Now the Eastern Carver County study forecasts 16,000 for that linkag,e which is about maxed out for 2 lane road and that was in their unconstrained. We looked at the balance in here and they had a little bit more traffic forecast out to Powers so their model reached a different point of equalibrium in here but the significant thing about Eastern Carver County study was it really under recorded the traffic in the downtown area. They were showing volumes that are below existing. The unconstrained had 5,700 on 78th Street between Kerber and Market . Today it 's 10,000 and we're forecasting 21,000 at full development . But in fairness to that study, they do not look at the kind of the microscale of the downtown area which looked at development on a parcel by parcel basis. As Paul mentioned earlier, what the study also looked at , we looked at the question of Frontier Trail. We looked at the question of 4 lanes at 78th and we looked at the other 3 intersections or 4 intersections along 78th that you see here and the one definitive answer we came out with is that currently the intersection of 78th and Great Plains meets signal warrants. We also wrestled with the issue of 4 way stops. The discussion concerned what effect 4 way stops would have on other intersections. While they certainly may solve a problem at a specific intersection, it tends to destroy any platoons that maybe a traffic signal would produce or natural traffic flows there. Like a ramp meter on a freeway. They just spit out a car once very so often. While they work at one intersection, they cause problems down stream and we certainly wouldn't recommend a 4 way stop at 78th and Great Plains. It's'a T intersection for one thing and the volumes are really high there. The other 3 intersections there are advantages to going with a 4 way stop but one of them, during one part of the day and another during another part of the day and I really can't make a strong recommendation as to one or the other. Market Blvd. obviously would be a focal point when development comes and that will obviously need traffic signals. But between now and then, I would be relunctant to put in a 4 way stop. I haven't actually sat out here and driven this thing day in and day out every morning. I think that's probably when most of your problems are is getting out of the neighborhoods in the morning. Get onto 78th Street. So I would just , 31 , , City ,Ceunci 1 Meeting - June 10, 1991 caution YOU. I understand you're in a position here that I'm not faced with. I don't operate the road out here. I sympathize with you on that and I guess we'd ' be willinc to work further with you if you're really serious about picking one of tho_e intersections. We did look at some of the other volumes and also the intersection of 78th and TH 101 with the realignment also meets signal warrants but a_ result of, or in order to encourage traffic to by-pass downtown Chanhassen I would take a wait and see attitude on that . Make sure the conduit • . . .designed and monitor that intersection because a lot of the traffic is going ' to be turning right to go in there and by not having a signal you can discourage the left turn out of there to some degree and maybe keep it out on TH 5. So I would go slow on that one. Putting the signal at Great Plains would probably give you some. . . We did look at the forecasts, and this graph shows how some of ' the intersections will grow. Giving today's volumes at each of the intersection is graphed. I believe this is right here with Great Plains and • 78th today so we're in the area where a signal is warranted. By 2010 we'd be up in this area. For example Frontier Trail today is down here and by 2002, based on what we know the development to be, that would be a candidate for signalization too. Just to show you what the growth of the downtown area could mean if it happens on this time frame. The night we were out here before the HRA, there were some development questions that were raised that kind of cast clouds on the whole development scene right now and I guess we're seeing that throughout the whole metropolitan area. That things are slowing down. So we ' tried to put the improvements up against , rather than a time scale, also a time scale arc a point of development and what this says is, today at 78th and Great Plains currently meets warrants but again meeting signal warrants doesn't mean that you have to put a signal in. That 's just a guideline and the term warranted really is kind of unfortunate. It means a signal is a justifiable type of traffic control device but not necessarily a mandatory traffic control device. One of the warrants by the way for an all way stop is if you meet • signa:l warrants you can. . .interim basis. 78th and TH 101 as I mentioned would technically meet the warrants today as the roadway is realigned and opened for traffic. 70t , and Market , 78th and Laredo would meet signal warrants with the ' 170,000 I believe that is proposed for the shopping center and that would be presumably by 1993. Again, when a building is open the clientele isn't always right there day one. It takes some time to establish customers or for all the ' rest cf the property to be rented out . But that's kind of where we are right now with the schedule we were given. Other development would come on line in 1996 and 2002 and. . . kind of going fast but many of you have heard this before and I just wanted to hit the high spots. I'll respond to questions. ' Mayor Chmiel: Appreciate that . Same question I came up with before in regard to TH 101 and Great Plains. It 's up in the graph right now where it shows that ' it would warrant a signal. Once that traffic is off of our downtown area with TH 101 coming in through town, where would that put that on that particular volume warrant? Denny Eiler: We estimated about 200 vehicle drop. Now I'd have to come back and look at what approach is but it would move it down in this direction but it would still keep it above the line. If it were all on the heavier approach, it would just move it over this way so on this street we move it down here but it's probably some combination to put it right about ir' there. Now that's out of - potential 400 cars that could be diverted. We think the 200 is probably realistic due to the fact of the short stop offs that we detected a certain 32 I City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 percentage of those may actually be higher. So out of 200. . . Even with 400 you're still probably be. . . ' Mayor Chmiel : Did we look at those cars turning off onto 79th Street for the cm t either Amoco or Holiday or some of the other businesses along re,�:lr"..�„�� at ei..h�. Am 79thT r;, lot of that traffic flow, rather than going back out onto TH 101, it 's eacicr to go 79th until you come to Market Boulevard and then turn in Market Blvd. back onto 78th. Was any of that looked at with all of those vehicles going in but not out? ' Denny Eiler : They're going up and using this connection roughly and then up, is that what you're saying? Mayor Chmiel : Yes. What I'm saying is they're coming off of either TH 5 and TH 101, going in for servicing of either gasoline or as you mentioned picking up a quart of milk. When they do that , rather than coming back out onto Great , Plains, that intersection is probably not the best because it turns coming off of TH 5 west and then going north on TH 101 or coming directly across so that intersection is not the easiest one to make access. So following along 79th Street until you come to Market Blvd. and then turning north on Market Blvd. to get back over to 78th Street . I guess I see some of that traffic flow taking place. I've been watching some of that rather closely and it seems like total numbers seem to be shifting some because of the accessibility of Market Blvd. and coming back around. Denny Eller: I'm not sure exactly where our counter was positioned there that particular afternoon but they were supposed to be just north of TH 5 and whether they were north of the Amoco driveway or south of it , I couldn't tell you that for certain without talking to them. If they were north, they would have gotten that volume. If they were south and there was a stop off involved, that wouldn't have shown up. I don't know if that would be that big a volume. It may be included in here. I doubt that it would be more than 25 to 40 vehicles I mean just based on what we saw with this count here over the course of an hour. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Per hour . I'd say that 's probably ballpark. , Denny Eller: I think what you're getting at is if we have signal here we'll have an increase in people trying to avoid the signal. . . .Well one of the things we mentioned before was because of the turn lane lengths and storage requirements or storage capabilities at that intersection we would try to run the signal with the snappiest timing as possible to minimize delays. Somewhat at the expense of stops so while it may not be that much more benefits than a 4 way stop in that sense. You want to operate a minimum delay mode so that you're not just sitting there with particular movements burning green with nobody using them. So to keep the cycling fairly snappy and then you don't run out of ' storage in your left turn lane. The one particular concern of storage is the westbound left turn because ultimately they'll back up and pinch off the westbound right. So by keeping the cycling down, it's a small intersection. Even if you have. . .you can keep it fairly brisk. And that may- prevent people from wanting to divert because they think they're going to lose time. 33 1 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Mayor Chmiel : I guess we don't want to try to divert people from downtown because that 's part of the business climate there. Not shy those people away from that particular area as well. Denny Eiler: Yeah, it 's a fine art . I mean we want to make it inviting but you ' want to keep some of the thru traffic out of there as a part of making it inviting so it 's a waiting. ' Mayor Chmiel : I drive that particular area every day of the week, to and from and there's some traffic sitting there from time to time and I think I've probably sat there the longest about 2 1/2 minutes in order to get onto 78th Street . I've tried different roads within there and to me that 's not being ' overly cumbersome or overly time consuming as far as I'm concerned. I suppose sometimes someone may sit there a few more minutes or it seems like it's longer • than what it actually is. Denny Eller: Yeah, there's another time scale. ' Mayor Chmiel Right . But , Tom? Councilman Workman: Thanks for your comments. Yeah, I'll ring the bell again. I think what we 're doing is, and it 's all probably related to item number 4. ' What we're doing is we're.,' it appears as though we are kind of straining the traffic but we're not really making it flow better which has me worried as a business Person downtown because I want it to be inviting as you say Don and I want it to be healthy and flowing but not restrained. When people feel restrained, then they head out . Number 4. Maybe we don't need to widened that segment but we do need to do something in making it flow better. When you get the second half of the Ridgeview building, the Medical Arts Building. You get ingress and egress there and they're going to come out and they're going to only be able to go west . Just like when you come out of Ahn Lee or Town Square onto West 7Cth Street . You can only go west. Or if you come out of Merlyn's at a ' certain place you've got to go you know whatever. If we get a light at Great Plains, maybe we can open those up and maybe we don't need to widened it but we do need to put the curb cuts in. I don't know. If everybody's heading west and ' they're actually going over to Eden Prairie up TH 101 which isn't too far away, that 's a pain. That 's not helping traffic because they don't want to go towards Chaska. A signal on Great Plains Blvd. . You always talk about it in conjunction with realigning TH 101 but if I come down TH 101, I've said this l before. If I come down TH 101 and I come to a light, I'm going to take a right and go into town. When I get to that light in town, I'm going to take another right and go home. Nothing's changed for me. I'll continue to do that so I ' don't know how that all works unless we have no right on red because nothing's really changed. Know what I mean?_ Point number 1, a recommendation that each development within the CBD undertake a traffic impact study. Now that seems a ' little open to me because I'm not quite sure what size the development and I would say that maybe the City should undertake an economic impact study as to how the changes in their traffic patterns affect the businesses. Maybe it should be turned around. Far flung maybe but you know what I mean? Mayor Chmiel: Denny, did you want to respond to that? Denny Eiler : No, that 's okay. That's why presumably you ran for Council. ' 34 cif/ Council Meeting _ June 10, 1991 Councilman Workman: No, because I wasn't a downtown businessman when I ran for office. Business-Iran where they have worse traffic in Chaska. ' Denny Eller: We've been doing some work with the City of Minneapolis and we f• ti ln_d t �, rIC�� . ,Y represents their downtown. They're all. . .pO11t1C1dnS and nobs works _n downtown. Councilman Workman: I'm trying to turn it around. Wait a minute you know, and we've had some big drawn out legal battles about traffic in this city so I'm ' going to be careful. Denny Nice : Well they're certainly an order of magnitude. If somebody. . . char land use. . .but we're talking about the vacant property. Councilman Workman: Probably the major ones, yeah. We might have a Tom Workman Towers down here or something. The two intersections at Great Plains Blvd. and Laredo are dangerous and I tell you they're getting more and more so every day. Because it 's getting cut throat out there and we're impatient Germans. I don't know. ' Councilman Wing: Is it difficult turning? Number of cars? Sight lines? Difficult turning? Narrow? ' Councilman Workman: Sight lines. We've got sight line problems I think. We've • got , like I said. When you come out of the Post Office at Laredo and you want to go left , it 's a tough one to think about really close. Now we've got ' increased traffic from the hotel and they don't know. I always go through that intersection thinking these hotel people don't know what they're supposed to do. Am I going to stop or am I not? I just about do and then they gesture. I don't know that we can direct the HRA Paul. Can we direct the HRA to do something? Paul Krauss: I don't believe so but I'd defer that to the City Manager. ' Councilman Workman: Because we should direct the HRA. Politely ask probably. Don Ashworth: Well, they're going to be, it will be the HRA dollars that will , accomplish the work in the downtown and I guess one of the concerns has been to insure that the work effort is something that the Council wants done. I think the HRA is sensitive to that point at this time. They want you to say yeah, we want you to do this. Councilman Workman: What I want , and I know when we redid the downtown and we say, well we haven't got a downtown the business community maybe doesn't like it and everything else but the downtown community's input was asked for and gotten and this is what they wanted and so live with it. I would propose that we ask the Chamber to either at this meeting or the July meeting. We have time I think, to officially take their July meeting and review this document somehow. I don't know how we can get them all copies but or whoever would want a copy. I've had some extra copies. I've given them to some of the business people in town. I don't think there's any of them here tonight. But to give it that one valve you know. Mayor Chmiel: One. One business person here. ' 35 City ,Council Meeting -- June 10, 1991 Councilman Workman: Oh! He's a business person. And I think that would help to relieve again whatever problems the downtown might have with whatever. They've got a different logic than we do. Or you do. Councilman Mason: Can I quote you on that? 11 Councilman Workman: Yeah. It doesn't mean it 's a bad one. So I said everything that I said before for emphasis. ' Mayor Chmiel: Yeah, I agree with that . To get at least some input from the business community and I think that's a good idea. Councilman Workman: Does my right turn, two right turns coming down TH 101 make sense to people? Denny Eller: Yeah. I guess if the trip is that unspecific. Where's the person heading in the first place? I guess that's the question you have to ask. Councilman Workman: Well we're saying all this traffic's going to go on TH 5 from TH 101. I'm saying there's a lot that wouldn't think of it. Paul Krauss: You were a local trip right now. The way you come through and that would continue. Councilman Workman: . . .TH 101 isn't loaded with people that don't know where they're going. Paul Krauss: Yeah, but I think there's a real question as to whether or not somebody going to Powers Blvd. should transit through downtown or whether they ' should swing around on TH 5. They will if there's enough to stop them. Councilman Workman: What 's going to be there? That 's what I'm saying. ' Paul Krauss: Well initially one signal. Ultimately a couple more but more importantly, the downtown will be packed with businesses growing and if you're coming into downtown, it 's because you're doing something there. Not because you're looking to shortcut through it. Councilman Workman: If we have 5 signals. If we have 6 signals from TH 101 to ' Great Plains to Laredo to Market to Kerber to Powers. Maybe it's 7. Sounded like B. That 's going to be interesting. ' Councilman Wing: I love it . Councilman Workman: That 's going to be real interesting. Especially that one from Laredo to Market. I'll tell you, I don't know how they could get closer. Councilman Wing: I am just glad that I live in Excelsior. ' Mayor Chmiel: Excuse me? How did you get on this Council? Councilman Wing: I'll explain that. 36 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman Workman: So I'm just saying. It 's going to look like all this succession of lights. It 's going to be frightening down there. But maybe needed but . ' Denny Eiler: Well you'd have the traffic. Councilman Workman: Presumably. ' Denny Eiler: This type of discussion is taking place, I don't know if you followed the mall at Inver Grove. The Discount Mall, whatever it is. Where one set of traffic numbers says all these improvements are needed. That 's by the City's traffic engineer consultant and then the traffic engineer consultant working for the developer says well, we don't really need to make all these improvements but then if you believe him then his business isn't going to make a go of it so. The Mega Mall is the same way. The marketing people are saying we're going to bring all these people in. Their traffic engineers are down playing it saying we don't want to spend all that money on the roads. If you need the signals out there, it 's because you've got the traffic. You're just approaching those threshholds now. And I would like to back up and say that the question of 4 way stops. If Laredo had a little bit better connection to Kerber ' to pick up that morning residential traffic coming down Kerber, there'd be no question that 'd be the place to put it. But then you're going to run into a problem when you do eventually have a signal on Market . You may have to come back and pull that out then so that 's the reason why I was a little bit reluctant to go on record recommending a 4 way stop. They sometimes cause some problems. But yeah, if you've got the traffic, that's going to come first . Mayor Chmiel: I guess you're right . Okay. Anyone else for some more discussions on it? Councilman Workman: I'd be willing to go again. Councilman Wing: I. . .to not . I realize it's getting late. Does anybody want to? Councilwoman Dimler: Well I just wanted to, I only got this study today so I didn't have a chance to really go through it. Did anyone else not get it? Was I the only one? Mayor Chmiel: I got mine a couple days ago. Councilwoman Dimler: Oh, I'm being picked on. But anyway. Mayor Chmiel: It was delivered a little late. It was delivered on Saturday. ' Councilwoman Dimler: Well mine was delivered today so I can't really comment on what 's in the study except what I've just heard here but I wanted to ask you, ' did I hear you correctly? One of our concerns was that a lot of trips were being made to avoid TH 5 from Excelsior coming through to get on TH 5. Are you saying that that 's not true? I heard you say that a lot of the trips were local. People going for milk or whatever. Did I hear that correctly? 37 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 II Denny Eiler: I guess I'd have to ask what specific trip. Are you talking about Ia morning trip down Powers going through town? Councilwoman Dimler: Or are you talking throughout the day? II Denny Eiler : Well we did the evening peak hour and I guess the closest thing to . that maybe would be the return of this movement here. We checked coming off of Dakota. We only found that there were 32 vehicles out of 330. Councilwoman Dimler: That came into downtown? IIDenny Eiler: That came through downtown and out Powers. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. So really we were over estimating that maybe? I Denny Eiler: Oh, I don't know if you were over estimating. It's a sensitive issue. I mean any additional vehicles in town that don't belong there, that 's what TH 5 and Powers Blvd. are for. I think one thing that's maybe overlooked IIabout the question of TH 101 and 78th is the fact that the existing intersection is actually discouraging traffic from continuing ahead on TH 101. Councilmember talked about right turns. Now it's a left and then across the tracks and back il again where it 's going to be a much better shot . So that really hasn't entered the equation. Councilwoman Dimler: Okay. I was a little confused about what you were saying I there. Also, I guess in number 4 here on my report was a great concern to me about on not widening. I don't know if we need to correct the problems by widening but I definitely see the flow as totally being interrupted. I agree I with Tom that when I come out of the pharmacy I've got to go east to go west. If I go through the parking lot, I'm standing there at that intersection for a long time and taking my life into my hands to cross. It's a horrible mess and if we're looking at increasing traffic, it's going to get worse. Curb cuts for IIsure if we aren't going to widen. If that's even safe. I don't know. Denny Eiler: Are you talking about B now? IICouncilwoman Dimler: Yeah. IIMayor Chmiel: Not to sort of cut anybody off here but I think we've got to keep this thing rolling. I think a suggestion that Tom had. We should bring it to the Chamber of Commerce. Have them take a look see at it and then move it from there. Give some study to this. IICouncilman Workman: What I can do is talk with Pat. I can maybe show her the study and maybe some of the Paul's recommendations so maybe we can get a clean Icopy and then they can, if they want and I can get a feel if they want to, the Board can decide that and they can make copies of whatever they'd like. IMayor Chmiel: And I think prior to submitting it to HRA for their recommendation to accept the report, I'd like to see us do this part first. Councilwoman Dimler: Yeah, I'm not ready to accept the report . II II 38 II City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman Wing: Is there a chance of including the downtown residents that use this street? I just so totally disagree with number 4. Mayor Chmiel: Well, I think if we give the business community, the business community would probably have more of an input than bringing additional residential people in. So with that , would you like to make that as a motion? Councilman Workman: Well I don't know. Do we need a motion on this? Mayor Chmiel: Yeah, I think we do. ' Councilman Workman: Make a motion to direct me to. Mayor Chmiel: We direct you to talk to Pat and give this to the business community. Councilman Workman: To get further input and review from the Chanhassen Chamber ' business community in regards to the Central Business District Traffic Study. Councilwoman Dimler: Second. Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to direct Councilman Workman to provide copies of the Central Business District Traffic Study to the Chanhassen Chamber of Commerce for their review and comments. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Mayor Chmiel: May I suggest, don't throw away that one. Retain it . Hold onto , it . It 's something that we should keep. CITY CODE AMENDMENT PROHIBITING GLASS RECEPTACLES IN CITY PARKS, FIRST READING. ' Todd Hoffman: Looking at the time of the subject, it may be timely in that Lake Ann is just finishing up. There may be one or two glass bottles being dropped as we speak. Councilman Wing: Excuse me but maybe you should look at the street on the south side of City Hall. Todd Hoffman: As well. Councilman Wing: Excuse me Todd. Go ahead. Todd Hoffman: This amendment has come about due to the number of comments being made in regards to broken glass in parks. We've heard that from residents. We've heard that from Councilmembers. Park and Recreation Commission members and including staff. As such, the attached ordinance amendment drafted by the City Attorney and reviewed by staff is recommended for adoption by the City Council. As noted, if approved and upon it's second reading, appropriate measures will be taken to publicize the newly adopted park rule. That would include the education of our CSO's and our Sheriff's deputies to patrolling the ' park as such. Very straight forward. The ame;dment I believe is one sentence: I'll answer any questions or defer them to Roger. Other than that, adoption is recommended. ' 39 City' Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I Mayor Chmiel : Okay. Just a quick thing that I brought up and I had discussions also with Todd. Gerhardt that is. And this is basically, and I'm surprised that a father sitting here with twins just recently. Roger Knutson: I just thought of that . Baby bottles? Mayor Chmiel: Yep. Roger Knutson: Put them in plastic. Mayor Chmiel: But they have been glass. Roger Knutson: They go in plastic too. Mayor Chmiel : They can buy them in glass as well but they do have them and they're the ounce and a half or two ounce. Roger Knutson: I've got about 30 of them on my counter. I know about them. Mayor Chmiel: I was just thinking of that and I wrote it down here. I don't know whether there's an exception to the rule. ' Roger Knutson: Speaking with some authority, seriously, you could put an exception. Those glass bottles are so thick. I mean you can practically drop them from 6 feet , or I have, and they don't break. But rather than saying certain glass is okay and certain glass is not okay, when you go into the park, I mean the plastic baby bottles work just fine too. ' Councilman Mason: You can get a bunch of them for pretty cheap. Roger Knutson: Yeah, they're real cheap. ' Councilman Wing: But it 's going to be part of this enforcement? Educationally? Todd Hoffman: Correct. Educationally. Mayor Chmiel: Do we post this throughout the park? I Todd Hoffman: Yeah, we'll post it as noted. The Commission is working on a comprehensive sign for all city park locations. That would be included in that. With some assistance from our. . .put it in the paper and then publicizing it. Councilman Workman: It 's really the beer drinkers versus the. . .children's toes which usually get cut and it 's pretty tough to argue this one. Even with baby bottles. ' Councilman Mason: We use glass. ' Councilman Workman: So do we. Councilman Wing: Not any more. Not after tonigh. . I 40 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Roger Knutson: I'd also point out there's certain discretion in enforcement . Mayor- Chmiel: Right and I agree with that . Any further discussion? Everybody's getting a little punchy and it 's getting past that bewitching hour. Can we have a motion? Councilman Workman: I move approval. , Councilman Wing: Second. Mayor Chmiel: Move approval of an ordinance amending Chapter 14 of the Chanhassen City Code concerning Rules in City Parks. Councilman Workman: Can we make this first and second? Can we change the rules . here quickly? Mayor Chmiel: I think we can. , Councilman Workman: I would move to. Mayor Chmiel: Have this as first and second reading? Councilman Wing: How do we waive? Don Ashworth: 4/5 vote is needed. Mayor Chmiel: Can I get a call for a motion on this to have this for first and second? We have a motion on the floor, do we have a second? Councilwoman Dimler: I'll second that . ' Councilman Workman: Can we have some discussion? Mayor Chmiel: Any additional discussion? If hearing none, I'll call for the ' question. Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to waive the Rules for ' Council Procedures to vote on the first and second reading of the ordinance amendment. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Councilman Workman: I move approval of the City Code amendment prohibiting glass receptacles in city parks, first and second reading. Councilwoman Dimler: Second. ' Councilman Workman moved, Councilwoman Dimler seconded to approve the first and second reading of an ordinance amending Chapter 14 of the City Code concerning ' rules in city parks to prohibit glass receptacles. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. 1 41 , City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT CONCERNING PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS FOR RESIDENTIAL DISTRICTS, FIRST READING. Mayor Chmiel: I hope everyone had an opportunity to go through these. It appears as though what they're commending with these modifications seem to be ' very consistent to what we should have. Any discussion? Paul Krauss: Can I just make one change? Mayor Chmiel: No. Paul Krauss : I feel like saying' approve it , you'll like it . The motion was ' printed 180 degrees from what it should say. It 's a motion to amend the PUD ordinance. It excludes the residential district. So the Planning Commission • recommended everything except that section of the ordinance that deals with the ' single family district . Mayor Chmiel: Right. Okay. Any discussion? Councilman Workman: I move approval. Councilman Wing: Second. ' Councilman Workman moved, Councilman Wing seconded to approve the first reading of an amendment to Article VIII of the Zoning Ordinance except for the section dealing with Single Family Residential District. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously_ ' DISCUSSION OF ACCESSORY STRUCTURE ORDINANCE. Jo Ann Olsen: This one is just to kind of get the Council's reaction to some fo the problems we've been having with the new ordinance with the increased setbacks for the different size of accessory structures and then also we're finding that the 1,000 square foot max size of the structure in the RSF and R-4 districts limits swimming pools and tennis courts too which we didn't even really take into consideration. So we just wanted to bring it up to your attention that we are having some problems with enforcement. Not necessarily enforcing but with trying to explain it to people and trying to get them to understand why we're doing it . We wanted to, I brought up the subject of the sand box and I don't know, was that you? Mayor Chmiel: Yeah, that one threw me a little bit . ' Jo Ann Olsen: Are you the sand box people? No? Well, in discussing that setback with the people with the larger sand box, we told them that we would bring it up for their benefit to come to the Council. Obviously, I did talk to the wife and they did meet the setback now that it is required. They reduced it below 400 square feet and they've met the 10 foot setback. And that's really an unusual case. I don't know how often we'll have that but I don't know. I guess ' we just wanted to see if you felt that the way it is now we should keep it that way. Did you think that this is now what you really meant? The swimming pools and the tennis courts. 42 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I Mayor Chmiel : How many times do we go out and check sand boxes? Paul Krauss: Never but they actually called us. i Mayor Chmiel : That 's great if somebody is conscientious about that.. Paul Krauss: We don't often have somebody building a sand box bigger than a 2 car garage. Mayor Chmiel: Right . Councilman Mason: Does this need to be looked into? Mayor Chmiel: Any discussions from Council? Any feelings? Jo Ann Olsen: Otherwise we'll keep it the way it is? ' Mayor Chmiel: I think we should probably keep it the way it is. Paul Krauss: That 's fine with us and that was the answer we're looking for. ' Whatever jut a definitive answer. What this does do, and we should understand that is there are situations where pools in particular won't be able to fit into a backyard. Arguably if you try to cram a pool into a real small space, you're going to be impacting neighbors on 3 sides so you might want to prohibit it anyway. Effectively this requires a setback and I know we had one individual talk to myself and to Councilman Wing and this would preclude him from having a pool in his backyard but that 's I guess the way it is. Jo Ann Olsen: He had no backyard. Mayor Chmiel: Too, you have to look at who's adjacent to that• Whether it 's Qoino to cause any problems. Noise. Pool parties. Whatever. Special consideration should be given. 1 Jo Ann Olsen: Would you consider the exemption to the 1,000 square foot though for size for tennis courts and swimming pools. I mean a tennis court couldn't meet that . Not that we get a whole lot of tennis courts. Councilman Wing: Before you think about that , I suggest you go out to Minnewashta Heights and look at the former, the home that had the tennis court . Somehow the City has allowed them to put on a swimming pool and a tennis court and destroy a neighborhood. I mean how that ever occurred I'll never know and then they get divorced and move a week later and that 's still the worse eye sore in this city. The most disruptive thing to a neighborhood I've ever seen. Before you even consider that, go look at that tennis court. It filled up the entire yard and this City approved it. It was not conducive to the neighborhood. Paul. Krauss: There was nothing, I mean under previous ordinances not too long ago, that kind of thing was permissible. It's since been regulated. Jo Ann Olsen: Okay, we'll just keep it the way it is. 43 , I City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Councilman sling: That will preclude the request for the swimming pool. It situp: v woule_ never , ever even get a variance. Paul Krauss: Well they always could ask for a variance. but they have to demonstrate a hardship. And that 's difficult to do for a swimming pool. Mayor Chmiel: Not unless they have a child that must . Paul Krause: Well if it 's a health concern, possibly. Mayor Chmiel: Any other discussions? ' Councilman Workman: So we're doing nothing? • Mayor Chmiel: Well I think we're going to leave everything just as is so ' there's no reason to have a motion on this particular proposal. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Councilwoman Dimler: I just wanted to ask briefly. District #112 has a garage sale in the fall every year and I had the Chairperson of that particular committee call me and ask. The other cities are providing some space for storage for people to drop off items all summer. Asking if Chanhassen would have a space available. Do we have any space available? Can anybody think of anyplace where we could drop these items all summer and then they would take ' them away for their fall garage sale? I told her I didn't think so but I would ask. I couldn't think of anything myself. Don Ashworth: I can check with Jerry and see if there's some way we might be able to accommodate something in public works. Mayor Chmiel: What about the buildings we have over by Pauly's? ' Councilman Workman: The space behind the library? Don Ashworth: The Old Village Hall. That 's being used on a regular basis. Mayor Chmiel: That 's right . Don Ashworth: The only thing I'm thinking of is I think that during the winter months we have more items stored than during the summer months so like the new storage facility we built. There may be a potential. Todd Gerhardt : How much space are they looking for? ' Councilwoman Dimler: You know I don't really know. I know at St. Hubert's we always filled up the old garage and that seemed to be plenty. ' Todd Gerhardt : How long do they need the space? . Councilwoman Dimler: Well, it would be collecti*g during the summer and I think' the garage sale would be in October. ' 44 1 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Todd Gerhardt : Is there a couple of. . .Bloomberg has space available. . .pot pourri or whatever they had in there is moved out . Those are potential spaces too. C miei : Can you check into that? ' Councilwoman (limier: Yeah, would you please check into that? Mayor Chmiel: And then get back to Ursula. Very good. Okay, Mike? Board of Equalization and Review. Councilman Mason: My concerns were answered for the most part . The discussion with the Minutes. I was concerned at the time and I know Don, both you and . I expressed concern about the ramifications of that action. With what 's been said, I guess I feel a little better about it . Reading what I saw in the Villager and one of the other South Shore papers, it seemed like it was a pretty futile effort . Well, because certainly as it turns out , a lot of people may end up having to do a lot of extra work and we accomplished nothing except getting a little bit of print . But I'm hearing some other stuff coming out now so. Mayor Chmiel: Okay. Very good. Richard? DNR. Councilman Wing: I just want to tag onto Mike's comments. I realize where 1 these younger guys are losing their attention span at this hour. I honestly felt that Mr. Schafer proved himself to be quite inaccurate. In many cases very wrong and unfair and excessive and I thought some of his comments were inappropriate. I was left from this process saying that if the system is that bad, he's making the system worse and I am very disappointed in the number of mistakes he made. That if the people hadn't come in and confronted the .situation, would have been assessed at an excessive rate. That he would have gene ahead next year and made even more excessive and those are falsified preperty values and that concerns me deeply. And I have no doubts I'm going to be at that podium next year. No question about it . Mayor Chmiel: Me too. Councilman Wing: And I'm going to be very vocal and I'm going to fight it. I know enough to be there to complain and I feel confident that the Council will hear my plea but I have to know that I have the right to be here. - A lot of people didn't so 60% of the people that complained were in error, that's just the tip of the ice berg. So this article offended me and the entire process offended me. Mayor Chmiel : Very good. DNR. Councilman Wing: I'm not sure how I want to relate to that Don other than to say maybe you can best cover it . The DNR is doing a pilot project with the City reforestation. Trying to preserve what we have left of our forest. However, this particular project being very complex, very intense, also ties into the Rotary. Present Rotary program of trying to plant trees in this city. The HRA and their landscaping and planting for the city. My personal interest in reforestation. The City Landscaping Ordinance that's being looked at. New developments. And just to sideline that a little. I think our Recycling 45 1 ' City Council Mee 5ng - June 10, 1991 Committee fills a real need and they do it on a very effective manner so I'm not looking for any action of any kind tonight other than I would like to later in the summer come to the Commission or come to the Council on the agenda with the name Shade Tier Committee as a suggestion and with some justification for ' regucet to form that committee because I think they could help staff tie all these loose ends together such as recycling has done and make some headway on thin . `hat 's a little less piecemeal and I'll leave it at that . I just would like the Council to be aware of where the name Shade Tree Committee, it does ' function in other c'ties . Has been very successful and I would like to formally present it to the Council later in the summer when things have settled down a little bit . Mayor Chmiel: I guess I wanted to just piggy back on that . Richard and I were . there when the ONR made the presentation and I also wanted to just touch on the letter that we did receive from Tim Erhart and someone by the name of T. Workman regarding the Chanhassen Council where they had successfully completed planting of approximately 2,000 deciduous and conifer trees at Lake Susan on berms and adjacent to Powers Blvd. , Kerber Blvd. , TH 101, the intersection of Pioneer ' Trail. I think we could probably try to tie this in with them as well as any other club that we so desire to also take this particular position because I think reforestation is an excellent way to go. Shade trees do provide a great ' deal of assisting in utili7ationfof energy. Summer they provide that shade to cool the house down and in the winter they drop their leaves to let the sun come back into the house and warm it back up. So I think there's a lot of worth while things we can do with this proposed project . Anyone else? Councilman Workman: Only that I was involved with that a little bit and Tim Erhart was truly the motion behind all that and Tim and I have talked an awful lot about trees and reforestation and everything else. These kind of projects are very labor intensive I found out . Having a Shade Tree Committee does not produce that labor. You still have to go to the Cub Scouts or the Rotary Club or somebody else. I don't know that having another city committee will accomplish anything different . Tim Erhart and I-have tried to work with City Hall. It 's definitely got some kinks and some things wrong with it and we're going to have to work on that . There's no doubt about it. As well as the ' weather. I don't know what another commission would get accomplished. We're kind of asking for some help from the City to spray around the trees some of the weeds so the trees have a lot better chance. That 's very labor intensive. ' That 's going to take somebody at City Hall a long time to do and accomplish and where are the trees and everything else. I guess I'm not sure Richard, and I know what the motive is. I'm not sure if that committee can do better. Councilman Wing: I'll be very detailed, and you may be right . Mayor Chmiel: I think we have one going. To get another commission going, I'm not sure if the need is there as long as we can get direction from those people. Councilman Workman: Usually we have to pay somebody. . .but I'd like to work with ' the Rotary and Richard's idea because it 's definitely an important topic and that 's why Tim has really put a lot of energy into it and I'd like to make sure that he knows where this thing's going. 46 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 Mayor Chmiel: Yep. I think we can work that through staff for direction from staff. Okay, next item. ' ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATION: CONSULTANT SELECTION PROCESS AND FUNDING ISSUES, SURFACE WATER MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, PLANNING DIRECTOR. Mayor Chmiel: Paul, hit it lightly. I think we all know what it 's all about . Paul Krauss: A couple quick things. Charles and I have gone through the • initial responses. The 16 responses to do our combined wetlands/water quality water management work. We've dwindled it down to 5 and I've asked them to prepare final proposals and then be available for intereviews a week from this Thursday in the morning. We need some warm bodies from the Council and from the Planning Commission to sit in on the review panel with us. We'd really like to have a cross section of opinions from the Council and Planning Commission. We want this to be more than a staff decision. It 's real important that that be the case because these are people that are going to be working with us for a long time and this work is really going to have a major impact on our water quality and wetlands for the next 10 years. So what I'm going to do is have my secretary give everybody a call tomorrow and confirm who can be there. It certainly is going to blow your morning and we'll give you lunch and you should be done by early afternoon. Mayor Chmiel: Don't call me, I'll be there. Councilman Wing: You've got a secretary? As of when? • ' Paul Krauss: We share. There's one last thing too. Councilman Wing: What 's that date Paul? It Paul Krauss: It 's a week from Thursday. Councilwoman Dimler: The 20th. I'm going to be there so you don't have to call 11 me. Councilman Wing: I will be there. Paul Krauss: There is one last thing you need to know on the budget for the thing. We're not asking that you change the budget or anything on it yet but things aren't working out quite as we'd like and we wanted you to know about it. We originally came in with the proposal for 1.7 million over 5 years. That was cut to the 60% figure which made it closer to 1.1 million or something like that . 1.2 and that was fine. We were pretty convinced we could get the work going and get things going and comeback to you when actually things were paying dividends and we had some desire to get into other programs. What we've found is that there was apparently a fairly heafty over projection in what the revenues would be. Mayor Chmiel: That was by the consultant? Paul Krauss: Yes. By SCH. It's just that they assumed that we had more properties or they were generating more revenues. We don't know. They trying ' 47 City Council Meeting - June 10, 1991 I to figure that out but after getting knocked back 60% by the Council and now we find out we're losing another 20% or 30% because of an over estimation by the consultant as to what we get so we're really cutting it fairly thin at this point . Again, we're not asking you to change it . We just want you to know about it and as things develop, we'll need to talk further. Mayor Chmiel: We're not changing it Paul. It really is a goof on where our consultant came from and that 's, if they had stayed consistent with where they were, we would have :ieen in fine shape but there is a bit of a problem. I don't expect to see us make a change in that at this particular time. ' Paul Krauss: No, we're not asking that . Mayor Chmiel: See how that works. Okay, any other discussions? If hearing ' none, I'll take a motion for adjournment . Councilwoman Dimler: I just want to make one comment on the Eagan study. I liked it and I do think we need to educate our citizens. I think that's a key point . Councilman Mason: Oh, quick comment on then. Mayor Chmiel: Saturday? Councilman Mason: Well yeah. Mayor Chmiel: Sorry, it 's not on the agenda. No, go ahead. ' Councilman Mason: No, I wasn't even going to comment on that . The quarterly newsletter. I've had a number of people come up and say that's a great thing. ' Mayor Chmiel : Yes. I agree. I agree. Councilwoman Dimler moved, Councilman Mason seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 10:20 p.m. . Submitted by Don Ashworth ' City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim i ' 48 CHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION I REGULAR MEETINd JUNE 5 , 1991 Chairman Emmings called the meeting to order at 7: 40 p .m . . MEMBERS PRESENT: Steve Emmings , Brian Batzli , Joan Ahrens , Ladd Conrad , Tim Erhart and Jeff Farmakes MEMBERS ABSENT: Annette Ellson I STAFF PRESENT: Paul Krauss , Planning Director ; Jo Ann Olsen , Senior Planner ; and Sharmin Al-Jaff % Planner I IPUBLIC HEARING: PRELIMINARY PLAT AND LOT AREA VARIANCE FOR PROPERTY LOCATED IN CARVER BEACH IZONED RSF, RESIDENTIAL SINGLE FAMILY AND LOCATED AT 6724 LOTUS TRAIL, ROGER AND DARLENE BYRNE . Sharmin Al-Jaff presented the staff report on this item . The applicants were present . Chairman Emmings called the public hearing to order . Emmings: The applicants are here . Do you have anything you wish to add at Ithis time? Any reaction to the conditions that have been imposed? Roger Byrne: Yeah . I 'm Roger Byrne . First I 'd like to say that your ' staff is great . They did a great job . I mean I was impressed for all the work they do for what , it seemed like a pretty simple thing to me . In looking through it , most the stuff I agree with . A couple of things I don 't on the proposal there . The access road I guess is the main thing . II There 's a driveway there now that 's used by the house next door , or on the other side of the paper road there and I don 't know , it just says in there that they want it paved . I 've got a problem with the paving there I guess . Well first of all they want a 20 foot road and there 's a fire hydrant there and where the road is now on the easement , the driveway , the existing driveway , gravel driveway on the easement , between the fire hydrant and the hill , there 's only probably about 15 feet there . That 's the driveway now . So if we were to pave it to a 20 foot width , we 'd have to cut 4 or 5 feet back into the hill on one side and the other side it 'd be right , it 'd have to be paved right up to the fire hydrant to get a 20 foot road . Or I driveway through there . And then as far as the paving goes , well it 's kind of steep . It 's kind of steep grade right off the road right there anyway and one of the reasons I was given they never paved that below this trail I down there was because they said in the winter time it never , which is true , it 'd never get much sun down there and it don 't burn off and it gets awful slippery down there . And to come down and make the corner and get up a paved driveway if it 's slippery , it 's tough with the gravel now . But it just doesn 't seem to make sense to me to have to pave it there . I realize the ordinance says if two families use the same driveway then the ordinance says it 's got to be paved for the common area of the driveway but I don 't II know . I guess I 'd like to see some kind of variance there . Or maybe have it tied to , if the road is ever paved , then it should have to be paved instead of just because two people are using it you know . Something more that will make more sense because I don 't think they 'll ever pave the road r Planning Commission Meeting Tune 5 , 1991 - Page 2 II because it 's just going to make it tough in the winter . It 's tough enough Inow with the gravel . Emmings: When you 're talking about the road , you 're talking about Lotus II Trail? Roger Byrne: Lotus Trail , right . 1 Emmings : And that 's what 's not paved now? Roger Byrne : Right . Lotus Trail isn 't paved and neither is the existing Idriveway that 's there . Emmings : Alright . Now can you tell me , maybe where she 's colored the Ireddish color mark there , that 's the common driveway? Roger Byrne: Right . IEmmings : And then that' Will serve what 's marked on here as Parcel A? Roger Byrne : Right . That will serve Parcel A . IEmmings : And it also serves the property to the south? IRoger Byrne : Right , to the south of that . Emmings : And will those be the only two properties coming off that driveway? IRoger Byrne: Right . That 's the only two . Well the one to the south already , it already serves them . They live there . They have a garage up I there and it serves them . It also serves that parcel A there already for the fact that I have a little parking lot over there . I park , we park so I do use it now anyway . IEmmings: Okay . But those will be the only two properties served by that? Roger Byrne : Them would be the only two properties served by that Idriveway , yes . Emmings: And Parcel B you come off , right off of Lotus Trail? Roger Byrne: Right . Parcel B is down about where you see it starting there . It just kind of cuts in at an angle and goes up into Parcel B there . That 's gravel too but that 's flat down there . It 's just that when I you come off of Lotus Trail onto the , where she marked that little red thing there , it 's kind of steep and gravel makes more sense than pavement . Besides that , pavement costs money and we 're trying to keep the costs down . I With just two families using that , I don 't know . To me it doesn 't seem to make too much sense . Other than that , the rest of the report I guess , they come up with some good stuff . You know about having engineers look at the 1 site and develop it . Figure out the plans and stuff like that . I guess Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 3 that 's a good idea . Something I never thought of before . It 's always good to have I guess . I 'm not sure When I 'm going to , you know build in there . I 'm just trying to get this straighten out now . Kids are grown up and the house is too big and we want something smaller and we figure that 's the place . We like it down there . So sell the other one and build up in there . Don 't want to move too far . That way we won 't have to rent a big truck . I just carry things over . That 's the plan right now. Anyway I guess that 's all , that was my only real concern is the driveway pavement business . Emmings : Alright , thank you . Darlene Byrne : Darlene Byrne . I 've talked to my neighbor Betsy Dishler and she would like to see the driveway stay graveled because it would blend in more with the road and blend in with the area there . Emmings : This is the neighbor to the south who uses it? Darlene Byrne: Yes . She wanted to come tonight but she had another , 1 meeting so she just wanted me to say that for her . Emmings: Okay . This is a public hearing . Is there anybody else who wants II to make any comments on this? Batzli moved, Erhart seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Emmings : Ladd? Conrad: Just a couple quick comments for staff . I 'm interested in criteria for granting variances . One of the criteria is you 're not preventing somebody from a reasonable use of the property and a statement in here said reasonable use includes the use made by a majority of comparable property within 500 feet . Is that true? Krauss: Yeah . It is . ' Conrad: So that 's reasonable use? Krauss: And that 's a new definition for variances . That 's something that the ordinance was adapted to include last year . What it does is it allows us to recognize the uniqueness of areas such as Carver Beach and not have I to throw the book at them and say we don 't care that this area was platted in 1920 and that everybody else lives on a 20 ,000 square foot lot . You 're going to come in on a 15 ,000 square foot lot . So it allows us to assess basically is there a neighborhood standard that deviates from the rest of the city . And if there is , as long as we don 't decrease the standard in any way , it would be acceptable and this fits that bill . Emmings: We talked about it under the rubric of neighborhood standards and II I remember particularly thinking about it on setbacks where we had places that had 30 foot setbacks . We thought it didn 't make sense to make ' I , , Planning Commission Meeting ' June 5 , 1991 - Page 4 I somebody new come in and set it back 50 or some other larger number if in that area they were all 30 . That 's they one I remember . Conrad: I kind of like that but I can 't play it in other scenarios to see IIhow . In this case it fits in the neighborhood and I like that . But there 's something that 's sort of uncomfortable about that same thing . I think it 's good for this particular area . Recommendation for paving . Tell me about that . Why? That doesn 't seem like it 's in character with 'the area . The frontage road . ' Krauss: Well a couple things . First of all Mr . Byrne is correct . We were I out there tonight and we walked around on the driveway with him and concluded that the full 20 foot wide common driveway that 's required by the ordinance for a shared driveway is inappropriate . That it doesn 't fit in I between the fire plug and the trees and it would wind up coming too close to the existing garage . It 's kind of a goofy situation . That garage serving the southern home looks to be located only about 10 feet off of I what is actually the right-of-way . The undeveloped right-of-way . Now so we 've agreed with Roger that something less than 20 feet really needs to be considered there because there 's no desire to cause any damage to the trees , and they have pretty significant trees over there . Now the reason I that was in the ordinance though , and that 's on the private drive ordinance that if you access a lot by private driveway . The reason that 's in there is because we 've obligated to provide fire and police protection and we I wanted to insure ourselves that at the very least we have the ability to move equipment in and out in some reasonable way if we are going to allow homes to access off of private driveways . Many communities , ourselves I included up until a year or two ago , said no . We just will not allow those kind of subdivisions to exist period . So there 's flexibility that was given and the exchange for that flexibility is the cost of paving the driveway . One of the other things that entered into our conversations here I is the extreme grade on the site and the fact that it runs right down into the lake . It 's true the street is not paved and I can 't you that we have it in our plans to do paving on there , although I 've got to believe at some I point in time it 's going to become necessary to do so . For a couple of reasons . The City does not maintain very many dirt streets anymore . It becomes more and more difficult to have equipment just to maintain a few stretches of dirt street . More importantly , everything that runs down that I street , there 's some significant grading problems and drainage problems in Carver Beach , run straight into Lotus Lake . And you know the evidence that we have is that Lotus Lake has some growing problems with water quality . I And you become more concerned as you introduce more channelization and hard surface that 's going to increase the flow ripping down the driveway , straight across the street and into the lake . There 's already a little bit I of erosion there and when we sat down with our engineering folks and said , what do you really think should be done here they said , really the -right way to stabilize this is to come up with a paved driveway that with a good culvert design , you know there 's a ditch section in the street there . A I good culvert designed in there and possibly you may even need a curb or something to direct water down at the very bottom . Rolled bituminous curb . Something that doesn 't cost very much but does the job . To really make a safe and more efficient situation . I can 't tell you that that 's not I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 5 inconsistent with that neighborhood because it is . The neighborhood is a little tough to deal with in all kinds of aspects . We have two driveways coming out basically overlapping each other and I can 't figure out where the street ends and the driveways begin . That 's the way it is . Anyway , so that 's the long and short of it . ' Conrad: It 's kind of inconsistent with the neighborhood yet it has a function? Erhart: I 'm assuming all the other neighbors have gravel driveways? Krauss : It 's really a matter of personal preference . I don 't know who does or not . We didn 't take a survey but the City does not at this time have an ordinance that mandates the paving of driveways . Emmings: The paved portion is only the portion that 's used in common to the two properties so how long would that paved portion be from Lotus Trail? Krauss: Well if it goes up to the , I think it 's a 3 car garage that 's there , I suppose if you went to the back bay of that it would be . . . Emmings: 40 feet? Conrad: Boy , that 's a tough one . That 's just really , the ordinance is II there for a good reason . There 's some rationale in terms of runoff and the lake does need help . It absolutely is in incredible shape . Poor shape . Erhart : In your honest opinion right? Conrad: All you 've got to do is go down there and look . And all you 've got to do is set your disk reading and you ' ll see how bad it is . I think II the variance , I 'm in favor of this . I think it makes sense . It fits into the neighborhood and the standards set in the neighborhood . My only concern is the staff requirement of the paving and right now I probably would vote for it . Emmings: Okay . Tim? Erhart : Well I agree with Ladd . It all looks pretty reasonable and pretty II simple although I would say that it 's unreasonable to expect anybody to pave their driveway if the street 's not paved . It seems to me that could be justified just by the variance , reading of the variance . It 's consistent with the other neighbors . I would suspect there are probably few driveways that are paved . In any effect , I guess it would seem to me the first step would be get the street paved before we start requiring paved driveways . That 's the only thing I 've got . Conrad: Can I jump in? If the street is paved , then there 's nothing to force the owner to go back and pave it . So there could be . Batzli : Why can 't we require them to pave it when the street 's paved? I , Planning Commission Meeting June S , 1991 - Page 6 Conrad : Right . IIErhart : Is there any ordinance that requires that? I Krauss : No we don 't and from time to time I 've talked to the engineering department about the validity of a driveway ordinance . A lot of communities do have those . It 's not something we pursued actively and if I we did , I 'm not sure how it would become retroactive . Now when you pave a street , theoretically you can pave a little bit of an apron going up in there . I Emmings : What if you just made it a condition of approval that they would pave it when the street was paved , which I think is what you were saying? IKrauss: I suppose that 's possible . Emmings : Would there be a way for that to be caught at that time? IChmiel : Not very easily . Conrad : Just call your memory Paul . IKrauss : I 'm afraid so . You know we keep talking about having a GIS computer based land parcel identification system where all this stuff can I be fed in . When somebody comes in for a building permit , you punch a couple of buttons and out come all the conditions that have always been applied to that piece of ground . We 're not there yet . IAhrens : Next week? Krauss : I was hoping . IEmmings : Alright . Joan? I Ahrens: Well , I have the same concerns as Tim about the driveway . I would like to see this approved if at all possible with a condition of approval that the driveway is paved at the time the street is paved . But again , I don 't see why , if the City 's going to go in and pave a road , they can see a I driveway that goes into the road is not paved , why at that time can 't somebody bring that up as an issue then? I would image before a road is paved the engineers go out there and look at the area and see that there Iare certain unpaved driveways that will be going into that . Krauss : They do but it 's not normally in a public works program or budget to make improvements on private property . Ahrens: What if the City didn 't pay for i't though? I Batzli : Other communities have offered to pave the adjoining gravel at their expense but it 's cheaper because all the equipment 's out there for example . I 1 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 7 Ahrens: They could just assess the cost to the homeowner . That 's the way I 'd like to see it done . Otherwise , I don 't see any problem at all with , I I go along with the staff recommendation on this . Emmings: Okay . Jeff? Farmakes: I went by and looked at the property . I agree with everything that 's been said here . I guess I 'd like to add that I think the reasons that you 're asking for a variance are all the correct reasons . Unlike previous cases that we had in here earlier which met none of the criteria , I think you 've met it all . The reasons to ask for a variance and I think that 's important to say that because I was against the earlier variance just for that reason . Not that it was 1 foot less or 1 ,000 feet less , I think it met the reason for variances and you have . I would agree that when the street is paved , your access road should be paved also but as it I is now , I think you should be given the option of leaving it as it is . As a dirt road . I have no further comments . Batzli : I agree with a majority of the comments already made . Is there some way that they can do something with the gravel driveway to help the erosion? • Krauss : We can ask our engineering department . I know at the very least they want to make sure that there 's an appropriately sized culvert for the ditch underneath there . One of the problems we have with where that street runs and as we get into the water quality program , what you 'd like to do is there 's a tremendous flowage coming over that hill and there 's really little or no room to impound it and let sedimentation occur before the water is discharged out into the lake . I don 't know what the answer 's going to be over there . I 'm not sure that there 's going to be a good one but in a more limited aspect Brian , yes . Our engineering department should be given authority to approve the driveway curb cut . Designed to their specification , paved or not . Batzli : I guess I 'd recommend that we amend that sentence in paragraph 5 that reads , the common section of the driveway shall be paved when the , what 's that road again? Emmings: Lotus Trail? ' Batzli : Lakeshore Drive? Is that what it 's called there? Conrad : Lotus Trail . ' Batzli : Lotus Trail . Emmings : Isn 't it Lotus Trail? Batzli : Lotus Trail is paved . And I think that way we end up getting rid I of the width of 20 feet as well . But I would like staff to ask our engineering department to look into how we can minimize erosion in the meantime . ' 1 1 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 8 Emmings: Okay , I have a question on 6( c ) . You 've got a driveway easerent. I in favor of Parcel A and the adjoining lot to the south . Now , that easement will be on the , there will be a vacation of Willow and then half of Willow will be going to the property to the south and half to the Iproperty to the Byrne 's right to be added to Parcel A? Krauss : That 's the presumption . It 's I guess a County Court has to administer that but yeah . IEmmings: Okay , and I guess Ladd 's concerned about your conditioning this approval on easements for that driveway that they ' ll be driving on both I halves of that but I 'm wondering , can you impose this easement on somebody who isn 't here as an applicant? I Krauss: Well keep in mind we 're imposing the easement on what 's now our property . We 're going to release our interest in it in exchange for that consideration we want to make sure that that easement is filed . I Emmings : But you 've got- to get an easement from them., or are we going to put the easement there first? I Krause : No . We have the ability to put a permanent easement over it before we release our right-of-way easements . We 're basically maintaining . We can do it either of two ways . Either , and I think both owners are cooperative in this regard . Either they can establish the easement when I they 've established title to the vacated right-of-way or we can pre-file an easement that we won 't release . We 'll release the right-of-way easement but maintain the appropriate driveway easement which we would then involve • the city in the chain of title but we 'd allow the two owners to use it . Emmings : Okay . The way it is here , you 're requesting the whole thing from I them and they can 't give it . I guess that 's what bothers me . But it 's here as a condition of approval but we don 't have the people to the south here and they don 't have title so it may be , it would seem to me the way to do it would be to impose the easement and then do the vacation . IKrauss: We can do it that way . IEmmings : Or if you can . I don 't even know that you can . Krauss: Yeah , and we do all the filing now in-house so we can have Roger Idevelop those easements and just take the whole package down to the County . Emmings: Okay . Otherwise I agree with all the other comments that have been made here . Has anybody got anything further or is there a motion? IErhart: I 'll move that the Planning Commission recommend to the City Council to approve Subdivision Request #91--4 with all the conditions as I stated with the exception of item 5 in which the second sentence will he revised to read , the common section of the driveway and remaining section serving Parcel A shall be paved to minimize erosion and maintain drainage at the time Lotus Trail is paved . And to add a sentence that staff to Planning Commission Meetin g June 5 , 1991 - Page 9 provide recommendations to the applicant on ways to minimize erosion . Did you need any change regarding your issue there Steve or is that just left? Emmings: No , I just wanted to bring that up and make sure that . Batzli : Second . ' Erhart moved, Batzli seconded that the Planning Commission recommend approval of Subdivision Request #91-4 lot combination/replat with a 1 ,450 square foot lot area variance on Parcel A and 3,674 square foot lot area variance on Parcel B , subject to the following conditions: 1 . The applicant shall reflect all of the typical drainage and utility ' easements on Parcel A ( Lots 1164-1169 and Lots 1178-1179 ) and on Parcel B ( Lots 1170-1177 ) . 2 . Park and trail dedication fees will be required in lieu of land dedication . Fees will be paid when a building permit is requested for Parcel A . ' 3 . The applicant shall supply grading and drainage and tree preservation plans along with the building permit for review and approval by the City Engineer . 4 . A structural engineer design the foundation for the future home on Parcel A ( Lots 1164-1169 and Lots 1178-1179 ) due to the nature of this lot . Soils information must be provided . 5 . A common curb cut shall be utilized to serve Parcel A and the home located to the south that is currently served by a gravel driveway located in the right-of-way . When a home is built on Parcel A , the common section of the driveway and remaining section serving Parcel A shall be paved to minimize erosion and maintain drainage at the time Lotus Trail is paved. Staff is directed to provide recommendations to the applicant on ways to minimize erosion. 6 . Provide the following easements : a . Standard drainage and utility easements . b . A 20 foot wide drainage and utility easement in the former Willow Road right-of-way . c . A common driveway easement in favor of Parcel A and adjoining lot to the south over common sections of the driveway . d . A 15 foot temporary access easement over former right-of-way to serve 3 lots located west of Parcel A . Easement may be vacated if lots are acquired by the applicant and combined with Parcel A . All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. I , Planning Commission Meeting ' June E , 1991 - Page 10 IPUBLIC HEARING: ZONING AND SUBDIVISION ORDINANCE AMENDMENT TO AMEND SECTIONS REGARDING LANDSCAPING AND TREE PRESERVATION REQUIREMENTS . IPublic Present: Name Address . IRichard Wing 3481 Shore Drive IEmmings: Jo Ann , is there anything you prepared to present? Olsen : I was just going to kind of go through or take comments . I can go through what we changed if you want me to do that . Emmings : Okay , that was indicated pretty clearly . Is there anybody that I wants a staff report on this? Alright . Okay , then let 's just get right into it then . Ladd? Conrad : I don 't have . IEmmings: Oh , excuse me . This is a public hearing and maybe , we haven 't closed the public hearing and I know Dick , you wanted to address this Ididn 't you? Maybe now would be a good time . I 'm sorry . Richard Wing : I 'm Richard Wing of 3481 Shore Drive , Minnewashta Heights . I I attended a seminar with staff some months ago and they discussed , well one of the panels at the end of this , if you recall , we had some developers . One was a developer , it was a panel and the panel members were a group that did strip malls , a Vice President from a large merchandise I store , chain in the Twin Cities area and the other one was a developer of single residential homes which had done work in Chanhassen in the past . And as this debate got on and they were talking about ordinances and I landscaping and so on , the seminar had to do with parking lots and how they 've got to change and just to pave over with impervious surface isn 't doing the job anymore . But at any rate , one of the questions I I specifically asked was would this developer , who kept bragging about his quality of homes in the development he was putting in , he was talking about how they were taking soybeans and cornfields and turning them into these wonderful housing projects , and I sort of said well good for you.. Their I entryways were landscaped rather elaborately , .primarily for advertising purposes and then we went beyond that and there was nothing . I said would you ever put in or ever put back . It used to be a hardwood forest , would I you ever put anything back if it wasn 't required? He said , well you mean beyond the 1 FHA obligated tree? And he said no . I said , well how would we ever encourage that . He said well the City Ordinance would have to require it . I said that 's fine with me and that 's when I brought this up I to Paul specifically so my comments I wanted to make on the landscape ordinance is extremely narrow and I ' ll apologize for that . I mean this is much broader and much more complex but on page 12 , under Section 18-61 . IRequired landscaping for residential subdivisions . We now require 1 tree Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 11 1 and as I pounded the pavement if you will , during election time and went II through the subdivisions that had been cornfields and soybean fields , they were terribly stark and no landscaping except the 1 tree that was required and that 's a little 2 1/2 inch tree sitting there . I just felt we could do more . I felt that the new people coming into Chanhassen for a real minimal II impact on their pocketbook could contribute a little bit more and the developer could be pushed to maybe to contribute a little bit more so I specifically requested that our 1 tree upped to 3 and the City Council was fairly receptive . You know we tossed numbers back and forth and I would have liked 6 but that 's impractical so 3 was somewhat picked arbitrarily . But I would request your support on and what I 'm asking for just as a resident of the community , and I 'm addressing you just as a resident , is that we go with the 3 trees . But I 'd like to see rather than just the 3 trees listed , I 'd like to see specifically 2 deciduous trees which is kind of my goal . Paul has some good comments about why we want to put in the I pine trees and in my discussions with him I don 't disagree with that but I would specifically request this Section A( 1 ) to require 2 deciduous trees and to prevent a developer from coming and just buying green ash or an approved tree or they 're also very cheap and he could come in and just blanket a neighborhood with green ash . I would like to require 3 trees but specifically 2 be deciduous and out of that , I 'd like one to stick with our namesake of the City of Chanhassen , the maple leaf , or the maple tree and • the emblem behind you again is the maple leaf so I don 't think it 's asking too much that one of the deciduous trees be required to be maple . The other thing I 'm concerned about was , my initial thoughts were that we try to create more of a boulevard effect and that 2 of these trees be in the front yard . I think this is somewhat of a difficult question . I don 't know if I would even put that because many people want tight control of I their landscaping as they buy these homes . But if I was to have my choice I would require 2 of the trees be placed in the front yard and then 1 in the back yard , if it 's even practical to determine a placement . So I would like to bring up at a future time the appointment of a shade tree committee . Other communities do have this and one in particular has been quite successful to the point where they 're now even getting money from the City Council to go out and buy trees to specifically place trees in certain I areas in the city but that 's a little bit ahead of the game at his point so my only comments tonight were , I 'd just like your consideration and support on A( 1 ) . I 'd like to see the 3 trees maintained and I 'd like to see a II minimum of 2 deciduous and I think the locations of those trees are worthy of some discussion . Batzli : Why do you want 2 deciduous as opposed to coniferous? Richard Wing : I guess I 'm looking for a shaded appearance . Paul 's comments about the trees 6-7 months out of the year are bare and these pine trees , or the coniferous trees if you will . That 's the only word I can remember , provide more body throughout the year and I 'm not opposed to that but the effect I 'm looking for is the hardwood forest . The Bluff Creek corridor if you will or the city boulevards in Minneapolis where at one II time were heavily elms and now they 're pretty much putting back maples . I guess I look at yards that have a variety of trees and I find the yards with the shade trees to have more aesthetics personally and that 's what I Planning Commission Meeting IIJune S , 19?1 - Page 12 would be supporting here . I think that for the summer shade and for what li .I 'm tr' ing to accomplish for the clean air and the environment , the deciduous trees are maybe a little more the goal I 'm after . r guess I 'm • trying to replace the hardwood forest and the reforestation of the hardwood IIforest more than I am the pine trees but that 's certainly a reasonable position Paul is taking and I 'd be happy with anything we got . 1 Batzli : When you 're talking about establishing the boulevard , are you suggesting that you put these in the right-of-way of the road there are is going to be back off the street 20 feet? I Richard Wing : I think the trees are going to be part of a person 's purchase . They 're going to be on their personal property and another Councilman pointed out , he would want total control of where they would go I and the ordinance allows that . It gives them a year with certificates to purchase what trees they want and put them where they want . I guess if I h .d a choice , I would have the ordinance state that 2 of the trees would II be in the front portion of the house . However you want to define that . Whether it started in the middle of house front or from the corners of the house out . The DNR has recommendations for planting trees to best suit the - house in winter and summer in terms of the shade and their use and I think IIthey favor th•= western side and the southwest corner if I remember that article . But I 'm not real knowledgeable on that so I don 't , that 's just my own personal opinion . I 'd like to see more trees in the front yard to IIcreate a little bit more of a shaded boulevard effect . Emmings: Thanks Dick . There are no other members of the public here . Is there a motion to close the public hearing? IErhart moved, Batzli seconded to close the public hearing . All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. IIErhart : Okay , well why don 't we just start with the subject that Dick was on . The last time I remember , I somewhat agreed with Dick and felt that 11 the trees that we 're going to require should be , I felt , boulevard trees . Emmings: When you say boulevard , what do you mean? I Erhart : I mean deciduous trees with the intent at maturity they will hang over the street and provide essentially both a scenic and the shade for the public area of the subdivision which is the street and sidewalk , if there 's Ia sidewalk . On the flip side of that is I have a hard time going in and essentially requiring a developer to go in and do what I consider the personal landscaping of a lot which is putting in the evergreens and the I stuff in the back yard and then bushes around the house . I mean that 's something that 's left up to the individual homeowner . Those are not public areas of the lot . That 's an individual so' I agree and I would even suggest to carry it one step further saying that all the trees that are required , Iand if 3 's the right number , that 's fine . They all be deciduous and that they should be somehow defined to be planted somewhere along in the vicinity of the street so that they 're planted for the intended purpose of 1 boulevard trees . So I 'd go one step further . The other thing is I agree II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 13 I entirely that no more than one tree should be a green ash . A green ash , while it 's a very durable tree , it 's not on the highest quality tree . It greens up late and loses it 's leaves early and doesn 't have much color . I think requiring 1 tree to be a maple makes sense . I suggest that maybe what we ought to do is , if we want to pursue this is to provide a list of approved trees and put some control on what they should be . One of the notes I had here , somewhere in my notes here is that we only require deciduous tree to meet a 15 foot ultimate height . To me a 15 foot ultimate height is not a tree . That 's a bush or a shurb and so , I mean they could put in Canadian Red Cherry in there which is a tree . . .more than 15 feet,. That 's not a boulevard tree so there 's something wrong here I think . Krauss : I think we may have deleted that section . I Erhart : Let 's see I 've got it marked . ' Olsen : That 's one of those landscaping standards . On page 10? Erhart: Page 9 . Last sentence . Deciduous trees shall be species having II an average mature crown spread of greater than . Oh , that 's a crown spread . Okay , I misread that . I misread that . I take that back . So anyway , going back to- that one , again it 's like Dick states . It 's kind of d personal thing . That 's what I see and it 's like when you put trees in the back yard , it 's getting into someone 's own personal taste for landscaping . I like the 3 trees . I have a question in that paragraph though . Are we a little inconsistent when we say , if you put in these 3 trees they have to be 2 1/2 inch caliper yet to use an existing tree it has to be 6 inch caliper . That doesn 't seem right . To qualify not to have to put in a new tree , your existing tree has to be 6 inch caliper . That doesn 't seem right to me . It seems to me if there 's a 2 1/2 inch tree that meets the ordinance that 's existing , then that ought to qualify as one of the trees . Olsen : I think the reason we 're doing that is to be consistent because throughout the ordinance we 're saying that anything that large with a 6 inch caliper can 't , would be considered clear cutting and you need to I replace it if you do have to cut it down . I think we 're just trying to be . Krauss : It trips the tree preservation requirements over that width . Richard Wing: It may not be transplantable either . A 2 1/2 inch tree can II be transplanted easily and grows fast . A 6 inch would take a tandem truck . Erhart: I understand that . I 'm saying , let 's say you have a 6 inch tree that 's on the boulevard . Let 's say a 3 inch tree is on a boulevard at just exactly where you would plant one of these 2 1/2 inch trees anyway . Why wouldn 't that qualify as one of those trees? To me it just doesn 't seem fair . If it 's an existing tree that 's got . . . Krauss : I think there 's also a concern though . There 's a lot of trees that don 't ever grow more than 3 or 4 inches that are kind of junk . Erhart : Oh , okay . Alright , let 's say that it 's a 3 inch tree . I I , ' Planning Commission Meeting iJune 5 , 1991 - Page 14 Krauss : If you want to go with your approved list . IErhart : I 've got a lot of things so don't try to answer all of them here . One of them , that word there in that paragraph 1 on that same page it says . IEmmings: What page? I Erhart : We 're on page 12 . Section 18-61 in the subdivision ordinance . Just for editing there . Where it says 6 inches , is that supposed to be and or as it 's stated in the following page? Just look at that Jo Ann . 1 Olsen : Where are you at now? Erhart : Paragraph 1 . It would be that twelfth line down where you use I and . Olsen : 6 inches and 4 feet above the ground? IIErhart : Because on the ifollowing page you use the word or I think . KrausE : 6 inches as measured 4 feet above the ground . IErhart : Well , anyway . Details . The last sentence on that paragraph says a waiver ahall be applied for each existing tree against each required tree 1 on , I guess that 's okay . I guess now as I read that , that 's clear . Let 's see . As long as we 're on the subdivision ordinance . I talked to you today about this on the phone Paul and that is , utility companies coming in and I I thought your word today was perfect . Using Agent Orange to essentially clear cut for their power lines . I had my personal experiences with that and it 's very upsetting and I know we as a City have had one experience out on Minnewashta out there . I ' ll tell you , I read this and it tells me that I they can 't come in and do that . The problem is , I don 't think they would agree to that . I guess I 'd like to get the other commissioners feelings about this . I think we ought to , you know this is not New Germany and I something out next to a cornfield where there 's box elders growing up into their lines . I mean the trees that they Agent Orange mine . I planted those trees . Those were ash and sugar maple and a variety of trees and they came along with their big guns and trucks and boom . They were gone , Iand they weren 't underneath the power line either . Ahrens : Who did that? IErhart : Minnesota Valley Power . Minnesota Valley Electric . And of course I called the guy and he pulls out his easement and says hey man , I 've got I 40 feet and I can do anything I want to . Don 't bug me . Those trees weren 't bothering his lines . I was doing some reforestation and I guess , you know I understand . They have a right , we have to maintain the lines but what they did was nonsense . The lines were 50 feet up in the air and Ithe trees were 3 feet high and they 're 20 feet off to the side . And again , I read this and it appears to me that they have to come in and get a , per the text , a permit to do this or they have to do something . Do you II read it that way? 1 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 15 ' Krauss: Well , I 'd like to interpret it that way . It 's been my experience over the years that highway companies , railroads and the University of Minnesota are not part of this earth . They 're kind of forces onto themselves and managed differently . We can ask Roger if there 's something we can do with that but when you get into a State approved franchise agreements that give them certain authorities , usually they 're beyond our control . However , we do make them get permit approval to construct buildings and sub-stations and those kinds of things . Emmings: But a guy who has an easement on. my property doesn 't have rights in excess of what I have on my own property and I wouldn 't be allowed to do this under this ordinance would I? Krauss: Yeah . There 's nothing in our tree preservation section , as I read it , that precludes a homeowner from chopping down a tree . ' Emmings: No . And I 'd be against it if there were . We 're talking here maybe about clear cutting though and we do have restrictions against that don 't we? Krauss: All I can say is . Emmings : This is worst than clear cutting . Krauss: Theoretically we do . I believe Jo Ann was once involved in a II situation where a homeowner near , I think it was Lake Riley did clear cut . After the fact clear cutting of property and we did pursue that . Olsen: And we had them plant other trees . Revegetate as I recall . ' Erhart : Well you know , I read this and it says no clear cutting in wooded areas shall be permitted except as approved in the subdivision , planned unit development or site plan application . Item ( e ) it says tree removal shall not be permitted under subdivision , planned unit' development or site plan review shall not be allowed without the approval of a tree removal plan by the City Council . I mean that covers it . Emmings: You know Joan , you do real estate stuff and a landowner can 't I grant , grants an easement to the power company to maintain their lines but he can 't give them more rights than he himself has can he? A grantor of an easement? Ahrens: No , but most of the time the easements allow power companies to do I whatever they want to that land that 's within the confines of the easement to enable them to carry on whatever business they 're entitled to do on that II easement . Whether it means clear cutting trees or whatever . They can generally , the easement allows them to do that . Emmings: But if the landowner couldn 't do it and he 's the grantor of the easement , can the person holding the easement still do it? Conrad: The landowner can do it . ' ' 1 I Planning Commission Meeting IJune 5 , 1991 - Page 16 I Emmings : Well maybe . Erhart : What I 'm driving at . IEmmings: And maybe not . _Conrad : Why not? Because this is not covering what an individual can do . IEmmings : Well I don 't know . - Olsen : We do have a tree removal section that goes for everything . In I fact this was taken starting at I think ( b ) on down is actually the tree removal section which is back at the start . On page 5 so we do have a general tree removal section . IEmmings: It says over here , no clear cutting of woodland areas shall be permitted except as approved in a subdivision , planned unit development or Isite plan application . That 's pretty broad . Batzli : Yeah but this is for a , isn 't this a subdivision section? I Olsen: On page 5 we have the general tree removal regulations . We put the same thing under subdivision and under the zoning ordinance . We 've got the subdivision ordinance and the zoning ordinance . IEmmings: We 're kind of stepping on your toes here a little bit here Tim but does that apply to me on my lot or does this only apply to a developer Iin a subdivision? Olsen: The general tree removal , I apply that . We apply that throughout the city with everyone . IKrauss : We do but I wouldn 't want to stand here and tell you that conclusively that we prevent clear cutting on lots . Homeowners don 't know I the requirements . We don 't know that they 're out there cutting . There 's no obligation that they come ask . Ahrens: Plus public utilities , they 're . They 're quasi-governmental units . I The City of Chanhassen doesn 't have to go in and ask for a grading permit every time they move dirt around . I Krauss : And power companies I believe also have the right of eminent domain and they didn 't buy these easements necessarily . They took them . IAhrens : That 's right . Conrad: Okay , I 'm really confused . IAhrens : I wouldn 't want to take that court I ' ll tell you . Erhart: This easement was purchased . I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 17 ' Conrad: Page 2 , this landscape . Tree removal . It says this Article does not apply to single family detached residences . Krauss: You 've got to separate the two . There are two ordinances in this packet . One is the site plan review ordinance , which you 're looking at on I page 2 and that does not affect single family homes by ordinance . Site plan review doesn 't . The one that does affect single family homes is the one at the end which goes into the subdivision section . Conrad: But that 's the one . Krauss: That is new subdivisions that are subject to that requirement . ' That 's a good point . Emmings: Except they do cross reference each other because down here it says , under ( e ) on the bottom of page 13 it says tree removal plans shall include the content requirements dictated in Section 20-1177 so some of the provisions are the same . They do reference each other but they 're not . Conrad: But I guess I find no security in that fact . I guess the problem that Tim is bringing up , I see no security in thinking that the power company . I think it 'd be foolish to think that the power company wouldn 't I come in and that we have any kind of control over it . Erhart: I 've got an idea . Here 's my idea . My idea is to take and write the power companies a letter saying that it 's our intent to regulate clear cutting and spraying , clear cutting either by ax or by chainsaw or by spraying . Here 's a copy of a new ordinance that we 're discussing right now in a public hearing that will cover that ordinance and what we 're trying to do is not prevent you from clear cutting where required but to require you to apply for a permit just like everybody else . And we invite you to respond to this . Let 's get the thing aired because I 'd like to hear their , I I guess I 'd like to hear where their views are . Now maybe there 's some compromise we can come to that we can all be happy and get what we want . I hope you 're buying into what I 'd like to see but I 'd like to see them come II in and if they want to do clear cutting in whatever form they use , they get a permit just like everybody else . The place to start is just to communicate that intent and draw them in . Now it might be surprising the outcome but I don 't think we 're going to accomplish anything just by putting out the ordinance without getting them involved in the process . Emmings: Maybe even the step before that we 've got to check with Roger and II see if we 've got any leverage to bring these people , somehow I think do you ultimately want to go a step beyond that and have them make sure that they 're not just going out and killing everything in a certain swath but doing this with some kind of a reasonable approach to meet their ends? Erhart : I want make sure that there 's a reasonable approach . If we can do I trimming . If we can accomplish as much with trimming and surely sometimes you 're going to have to do some clear cutting . I 'm sure there 's times it 's appropriate to spray . Right now it 's not reasonable . I think we all hope we all . . . And I think just the fact that they would know that we 're ' Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 16 Iwatching and we 're interested . Right today , I don 't think , and like Minnesota Valley Electric . They 're in New Prague and LeSuere I think it . is . They 're in the frame of mind that this is just like LeSuere and you expect to drive along the country road and spray box elders from your I truck . That 's just the way it 's done and I just think we 've got to communicate that 's not the way you do it in Chanhassen . I ( There was a tape change at this point . ) Ahrens : Yes they do . They live right across the street from me . They cut a huge area of trees down . It was quite a large area . They cut some I really nice trees down because they thought they might put some kind of pipe in the road but they changed their minds so all these trees were cut down and they just walked away from it . This happened last summer . IErhart : Big trees? I Ahrens : Well yeah . Big , mature , beautiful trees . Birch ano —ne and all sorts of real nice trees . I would have gone across the street and saved them . Put them in my yard . The City did that . It was on the , what 's the property that Lundgren Brothers wants to develop on? They have a big sign Iout in front that says the Ponderosa . Krauss : Ortenblat . Ahrens : Ortenblat property . ' Krauss: I don 't know . We 're not pure in this . We 've found our guys out on backhoes and we 've gone out and stopped them . You try and communicate some level of sensitivity to them . I don 't know this particular issue on this one but I wouldn 't be surprised . IEmmings: Sensitivity and chainsaws don 't usually go together . I Conrad : One real good example is what we talk about on the southeast corner of Minnewashta and the power company went down . I know when Tim Foster ,was in here and they just took a , I couldn 't believe the path that they carved . It was just incredible . IEmmings : Was it 40 feet or 50 feet? IConrad: It was mammouth . It 's just hard to believe . Krauss: It was so large it made a road where there never used to be one . I And it led us to believe that you could now run a road down the hill to Crimson Bay . Conrad : But anyway , I still don 't understand why Tim you feel that there 's Iany glimmer of , this is in the back 18--61 . This is a subdivision ordinance . This is a subdivision amendment ordinance . It has nothing to do with what somebody does on your property . I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 19 Erhart: If it isn 't , then I suggest that we change it or have another ordinance so we can mail them . Olsen: I was going to say , this tree preservation section , both the one that 's in the subdivision and the one that 's under the general requirements , we are going to be changing . I had a note to that in here but that 's out . But we 're working with the DNR Forestry Department . I don 't know if you saw that memo . We 're getting the mosaic this Friday and II they 're getting , they 've mapped all the trees in the City and they 're working with us as a pilot project . As part of that we 're going to be ' amending our ordinance . Our tree preservation ordinance working with them with reforestation . With what the City is . With what they 've lost and what we need to do but as a part of that we can , we 're going to be drafting a whole new section . This whole new section and then as part of that we can look at doing existing lots and single family lots and existing commercial lots and things like that . Erhart : You agree with Ladd that this doesn 't , this would not be applied against existing subdivisions? Emmings : Yes you agree or? Olsen: I agree it doesn 't . e ' Erhart : Well then would , alright let 's go this way . Would you agree it 's II time to bring the power companies into this discussion and let our intentions known so we get a productive? Ahrens : I think we should ask Roger . ' Emmings: Number one we ask Roger and number two , maybe that 's part of a separate ordinance in addition to what we 've got in front of us . ' Krauss: As Jo Ann points out , there 's been a lot of ground work . Jo Ann 's been spending a lot of time with the DNR . I think you 're aware that we 're II a special project for them . They 're using us as an experiment in forestry . We felt we were clearly under pressure to get better landscaping standards up and running now . Much the same reason as we did the PUD ordinance last time but in discussing this Jo Ann and I didn 't know , I mean we clearly had not clapped out a new and improved tree preservation section so rather than kind of slapping something together , we said let 's just roll over what we have now and as Jo Ann said , there was a note that was dropped out of here I that said we will be proposing significant modifications to you I would guess within the next few , up to 6 months from now . Olsen : Yeah . ' Krauss: It 's an experimental program . It 's a little tough to know how it 's going to develop but they are presenting us with the base mapping I information on Friday and they do have somebody who 's going to work with Jo Ann on developing a new ordinance . I , Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 -- Page 20 Emmings: Well I guess I had proposed that we concentrate on what 's here . I I think it 's an important issue that we should check with Roger and see if we do have , what we need to get a handle on this and maybe propose , let him propose or you could draft an ordinance or another part of our landscape I ordinance that world address how utility companies maintain their right-of--way for their easements for their power lines . Okay . I Erhart : I 've got some more here . On paragraph 4 there on page 13 . Under ( d )( 4 ) . I guess I 'd say , during the tree removal process , trees shall be trimmed and if required , removed as to prevent blocking of public rights- of-way and interferring with overhead utility lines . Let 's try to make it I as restrictive as possible . Then on item 5 again , removal of diseased and damaged trees . I don 't know . A guy goes up and puts one hachet in the tree and says , oh . It 's damaged . Cuts it off . Maybe we ought to change Ithe wording a little bit to make it a little bit , the intention is if it can 't be saved or something like that . That one is small . I think number 4 , I 'd like to see that changed if nobody has any objection . Let 's start in the beginning of the .. I bet you all thought you were going to get out of I here at 8 : 30 . In the landscaping ordinance . Let 's go to page number 6 . Dealing with fences and walls . Again , in general I pesonally think that the- walls we have in town , wood walls we have in town suck . IBatzli : Tell us how you really feel . • Erhart : Every one of them that I can think of is falling down . It 's uglier than if it wouldn 't be there at all , I would venture to say in some cases and I really have to question whether we really encourage wooden fences . If we are , boy get this thing nailed down more than this . Because I two of the things that strike me . One is that something that 's going to keep them from leaning over after 5 years or faster . Being swayed all over the place and the second thing is that I think if someone 's going to use I walls or fences for buffers , that we ought to require intermittent landscaping on the public side of those walls . An example would be like 35 going downtown where every 100 feet you 've got a planting of some I evergreens and things to break up this wall . I think a wall 's ugly . I really do . Wooden walls particularly after a few years gets really ugly . And reinforcements and to require additional landscaping adjacent to the wall , I think ought to be required if that 's going to be used as a screen . IKrauss : I don 't think we have a problem with it being masonary . That 's pretty much , I mean when we say architecturally harmonious , that 's I typically what . If we 're talking about screen structures like Market Square where they wanted to have the outdoor storage for Lawn and Sports . I mean we made them do a masonary wall that was identical to the rear wall of Ithe building . Erhart : Let me pin this down . . . I 'm talking about enclosures for parking areas like in the industrial park down there . IKrauss: The dock place . I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 21 Erhart : The dock place . The one up here between the cement factory and the Hanus building . That would -meet the ordinance . ' Olsen: We can add that if they use retaining walls or fences that they have to be screened . I mean landscaped . Erhart: Some kind of landscaping . Batzli : For example the lumber company that put up the wooden fence . Olsen: We required them to screen , landscape . Batzli : It would have to be landscaped around . Krauss: In fact that 's an example of a fairly well maintained wooden fence but it 's probably the exception to the rule . Erhart : As long as that owner 's there and profitable it will be maintained . I have a question on page 8 , paragraph 5 where we say the treed areas within parking lots will be landscaped with shurbs or ground cover . Does ground cover include rocks or what is ground cover in this ordinance? ' Olsen: No . It has to be , I wouldn 't consider ground cover rocks . Krauss : We could define it . ' Erhart : A car lot parking lot is rocks . Krauss : No , I think we mean things like English Ivy and Ground Vetch and that kind of stuff . Olsen : We ' ll see if that 's defined though . ' Erhart: I don 't know , you may want to look at design . The other thing on page 9 . I think we discussed this the last time but item 1 . Walls should be constructed of natural stone , brick or artificial materials . Krauss : I thought we had gotten at that . So what we 've done is , on the landscaping materials , we have refined what you were getting at on page 7 to state that it must be masonary . Oh , I 'm sorry . Olsen: No , fences must be wood . ' Krauss : We need to define what 's a wall and what 's a fence . A screen wall . Olsen: And then add that they always have to be landscaped . Erhart : Okay , then on page 9 there . Did we set the last time this artificial materials in paragraph 1 there it says walls shall be 1 I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 -- Page 22 constructed of natural stone , brick , artificial materials . Does that leave Ianybod,, hanging at all or is it just me? Batzli : Where were you? I 'm sorry . Page 9 , paragraph 1 under . IConrad : What is , yeah what 's artificial? ' Olsen: It 's somthing that 's always been there . Conrad : It 's not biodegradeable . IOlsen: Plastic? Conrad : Like plastic? IKrauss: Actually you hesitate to say that but now there 's companies that are processing recycled plastic into some pretty nice , heavy duty fencing . Screen fencing that 's supposed to be much more durable than wood . IErhart : Artificial materials designed for the purpose of use in a wall or a fence maybe? IOlsen: Maybe we shouldn 't be so specific and just say it has to be consistent with the building material like we did the . . . Batzli : That 's already in here isn 't it? Olsen : It 's in the front . IBatzli : It 's in the same section . Well , it 's just one section down . Ahrens : Well if they come in with something outrageous , can 't you deny that anyway? IKrauss: Well you do have a little bit of discretion . This is a site plan view . We do not attempt nor do we think we should be terribly , completely explicit in a site plan review . There is an art to doing these things and you want to encourage some creativity on their part and some flexibility to Ireview it on yours . Emmings: Why don 't we just say walls shall be constructed of natural I stone , brick or other appropriate materials and if it turns out that some artificial material is appropriate for some particular project , we can approve it . IErhart : That 's all I have . Emmings : That wasn 't too bad . Ladd? IConrad: I agree with a lot of Tim 's comments relating to fences and walls . The landscaping to break up fences and those . I really believe that a lot of things that we 've required can make it look ugly , uglier than what we 're I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 -- Page 23 trying to cover up . I 'm not convinced that a fence and a wall is a solution . I think there 's some real natural ways to solve some of our less attractive commercial enterprises . I guess I don 't have a solution to that . In fact , I thought about it . Should we force people . I couldn 't come up with a different solution than what 's recommended in the staff report so I 'm going to go right beyond that , other than the fact that on long type of walls or fences , I think we need the landscaping to break that up . On page 8 . Where did those standards come from? They kind of make sense but did we pull those from? Olsen : The old one . Conrad: And that means we believe that they 're right? Olsen : They 've been working really well . We usually get pretty good looking parking lots from that . Conrad: Okay . So that came from here . I ' ll leave that . On page 9 under landscaping materials under Section 20-1183 , paragraph 1 . It said wood strips . Have we seen wood strips that are attractive? Ahrens : I think they 're uglier than chainlink . ' Olsen : We 've talked about that before . They 're real ugly . Conrad: So basically what we 've done is screen something that 's ugly with I something that 's uglier . I have a problem with that . Now somebody could tell me that there are attractive wood strips and fencing but I 'm just , II again I 'm not convinced that yeah , I guess I 'd like to see that out unless . Krauss : You know where the problem comes about is that when you have somebody like Redmond when they were looking to build their new facility . They have a compound of active area that includes , I don 't know , 15-20 acres . Now on their plans , and they have security concerns . On their plans , which never went anywhere but what we got them to do was to use 1 wrought iron fencing along the street boulevard but internally they wanted to go with chainlink for cost and for security you know because you can put the little pokey things up on the chainlink and they didn 't particularly want to do a wood fence that you could just rip apart or climb over . Olsen : It was inside and it was screened . Krauss: Yeah , it was a concealed location . Olsen: Maybe just say perimeter fences? Conrad: So when you say interior , their interior fences , we 're not on the side yard? Krauss: It wasn 't on a public right-of-way . It was an internal area if I recall . 1 I Planning Commission Meeting IJune 5 , 1991 -- Page 24 IIEmmings : Internal meaning? Krauss: Somewhere within their site . II Erhart : That 's a good question . Are we going to require landscaping of fences between property lines? I guess . . .thinking of the ones along public right-of-ways . IIConrad: Yeah , that 's what I 'm thinking . I Krauss : Well , let 's look at one where I don 't think it was done which is the little shopping center right over here . The wall that was built back there which has been a real contentious item for a lot of homeowners . I don 't believe we landscaped behind it or the developer landscaped behind it . Olsen: Yeah we did . IKrauss : As a result of , because there was a lot of concern about that . Olsen : We added a lot . IKrauss: That 's a fence that 's in close proximity . It 's a screen fence in very clos to a single family home . IErhart : And they were existing when they came in with that . . .so we could require that . . .for special reasons . 1 Krauss: Well even if they weren 't existing . I think there 's always the presumption that if you 're the applicant who 's proposing a higher intensity use , you have an obligation to screen existing or propose lower intensity IIuses on the facility . It 's the cost of doing development in the city . Emmings: Now what are you going to do? We 're talking about chainlink II fence has to be covered with plant materials so you 're talking about like growing ivy on it or something like that? Some vine? Krauss : Or putting a row of coniferous trees in front of it . IEmmings: Well but anybody who wants to put it up , some people are going to want to put it up on their property line . IKrauss: This doesn 't affect homeowners . I Emmings : No . But won 't there be businesses that want to put it up on the property line? I Krauss : Yeah , probably . Emmings: You can 't put it up on the property line and screen the outside of it . You can 't plant your trees on somebody else 's property . I II 11 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 25 II Batzli : You could do vines . I Krauss : And keep in mind , while a fence can go on next to a property line , there 's still required setbacks for parking and buildings and everything else so there invariably is a green strip there and if their concern is I security , they can always move that fence back within that setback area . Put their landscaping on the outside and not really lose anything in the process . II Emmings: Okay . ° Olsen: Should we say that chainlink fences are only allowed if for I security reasons? I mean do we want to just make that an exception? Krauss : I don 't think we just want to say for security reasons because II that puts it in the context of do you really want this for security or is there another reason? To define the motives of who 's ever proposing it . Emmings : And they ' ll just say it 's for security . Does anybody have I problems with chainlink fences? Ahrens : I don 't think they 're so bad . I mean there are black ones now I that are kind of nice . Emmings: Prince has them around his property and around this out up here . II Erhart : Again , if it 's on a public right--of-way it should be landscaped I think really well . II Conrad: But let 's talk about separating two businesses . Do we care if there 's a chainlink fence between two businesses? Don 't you? Erhart : If you 're talking about two commercial type , retail? II Conrad: Two commercial . Industrial/commercial . II Emmings: You 're talking about down in the industrial park? Conrad: Right . II Krauss: Don 't we have a chainlink fence around our maintenance building? Olsen: Probably . II Batzli : Yeah , there is one down there . II Conrad : And it 's a good rationale for security reasons to do that . They 're ugly . Batzli : Chainlink around that substation I think . Down south . With a lot II of pointy things on top I think . II II 1 . . Planning Commission Meeting 1 June 5 , 1991 - Page 26 I Ahrens : I don 't think they 're always ugly . Conrad: They can be nice . IAhrens : I think t 'le one around Prince 's place looks fine . Batzli : Oh , I think that one sticks out . iAhrens : You do? Batzli : It 's such a narrow enclosure around that building . I always 1 thought it just looked like trying to keep the vandle hordes out or , something . I Erhart : It 's not normal to put a chainlink fence around your commercial building . However , if you want to I guess is there any problem in requiring then you have to break it up with some landscaping? If that 's II the exception , then I guess it would seem to me reasonable to require breaking it up . Conrad: Do you want , does it make sense to force the chainlink to be a I colored? Are you comfortable with the galvanized chainlink? I don 't want to pursue this too far . I don 't have answers on this . I really don 't . IAhrens : It looks better than tilting wooden fences . Conrad : Absolutely . IIErhart : Particularly if they 're broken up with landscaping . Batzli : The one I think actually is the one around Eden Prairie 's High ISchool with all of the vines on it . That doesn 't look bad . Olsen : Do you want to take out the wood strips and just keep only if Icovered with plant. material? Conrad : Yeah . IEmmings: Or otherwise landscaped . Conrad : Yeah , let 's justify my last 15 minutes of conversation by . . . IBatzli : So you wouldn 't allow something like the lumber yard where they put the wood fence on the outside of the chainlink? Conrad: Yeah , that 's interesting . Olsen : We required that . IBatzli : They had to cover the chainlink . They wanted the security of the chainlink so we made them put the other fence around it . II II Planning Commission Meeting II June 5 , 1991 - Page 27 Olsen : It had to be totally screened . Ahrens: Then a brick wall on the outside . 1 Emmings : Coniferous trees and then deciduous trees . II Batzli : So you wouldn 't allow that? I don 't know . Conrad : Wouldn 't allow the . I Batzli : Wouldn 't allow a situation where you put fence on the outside of the chainlink? I Emmings: It says here they can have fences . Batzli : No , but you wouldn 't allow them screening the chainlink fence with II a wood fence because here it says you have to have plant material right? Or otherwise landscaped . IIOlsen: But we 're adding , even the wood fence would have to be landscaped . Krauss : See Building Components has a storage yard there that 's visible II from TH 5 if they didn 't build that wall so the purpose is a little bit different . Olsen: That was part of the CUP . I Emmings : What would make them landscape a wood fence? Olsen : I thought that we were going to add that in this section . In that II other section where it talked about fencing , it 's not just a fence but it also has to have some landscaping . II Emmings : Okay , so that will apply to walls . It will apply to fences , both wood and chainlink . Krauss: I think the place to do that is in 20-1182 on page 9 . 1 Olsen : That 's where we are . II Krauss: Okay . I 'm behind the 8 ball on this . I thought I had some new information . Olsen: We would also put it I think on that page 6 . II Emmings : Where on 6 Jo Ann? I Olsen: On 1 at the bottom there and then at the top of page 7 where it 's talking about screening . I think both spots . II Batzli : These are the same . II 1 II Planning Commission Meeting IIJune. 5 , 1991 - Page 28 1 Olsen: Well we 'll figure it out . Maybe we 'll just break it out completely and make it clearer or something . We ' rl look at it . II Batzli : I guess I would have just in Section 20-1182 , or 20-1183 I guess in ( a )( 1 ) . Even if you just refer back to that previous section so it all ties together . I 'd hate , otherwise it 's just going to get long if we keep on saying the same thing over and over . IIOlsen: And Steve , when you said or other , you said plant material or other? IEmmings: I just said or otherwise landscaped . IOlsen : Otherwise landscaped . So do we need to explain what that means? Emmings: I don 't know . I like to leave things kind of c n . I Olsen : We have to argue what it means . Like well I don 't know what it means . You 're talking about broken up? Or otherwise screened with landscaping? Like that? IIEmmings: Well , you say it anyway you want to . Erhart : I think staff has to kind of come up with a recommendation . Do you need to get specific or can you leave it general? Conrad : We 're not coming up with absolutes here . IKrauss: The difference here from what we had before is , you 've established a criteria that they have to meet . Before we had to do that first and then I tell them what we thought was acceptable and we weren 't backed up by an ordinance that said you must do something . I think we 've got a big leg up on it now because it does say that . I Emmings : I agree . While we 're right there . In ( a )( 3 ) where it says plants . It 's at the end of that sentence . It says artificial plants are prohibited and shall meet the following requirements . So I think you 've Igot to put a comma after the word prohibited . Olsen : Where are you? 1 Emmings: On 20-1183 , page 9 , ( a )( 3 ) . You need a comma after the word prohibited real bad . Do you find it? IOlsen: Yeah I see it but just a comma? Batzli : After the word prohibited so you don 't require the artificial I plants to be deciduous trees . It 's a picky thing that only Steve would catch . I Krauss: If you put a period after prohibited and say a new sentence , plant material shall meet the following requirements . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 -- Page 29 I Olsen : And artificial? Emmings : Then really you should have a semi-colon after plants , before artificial if you really want to do it . I can 't help it . You can 't separate two sentences by a comma . I Olsen : I was doing an and not a comma . Can 't you do that? Conrad: Jo Ann , all I 'm trying to do is get some quality , I 'm trying to build some quality into this . If that 's in an intent statement or if that 's in some words in here , I think that 's better than some of the absolutes because I can 't come up with the right ones . Okay , moving on . Still my turn . Page 12 , under Subdivision Ordinance . I guess I do agree with the 3 trees . I do like , and I 'm trying to think if we 're being naive on this one but I do like the one maple and I do like the 2 deciduous . I I like 2 deciduous , 1 coniferous tree . One of the deciduous of which being a maple . I agree with Tim 's comment on page 13 under ( 4 ) . Page 13 . We don 't have a maintenance section . So in other words , in a subdivision you can come in , plant it and we don 't have , we haven 't said anything about replacing and I would think we would treat the subdivision just like we would the other districts . Why wouldn 't we talk about replacement? And again , I don 't know what we can require in terms of replacement . I Olsen: We 've got maintenance in the other section but I don 't know if that 's supplying , we don 't have it referring to this one . Krauss : It becomes real difficult in subdivisions . There 's nobody out there , there 's no single unified property owner or controlling party to go after . You wind up having to go after individual homeowners saying your maple tree died . You owe us a new one . Or even you know we 're now requiring buffering , landscaping and to some extent boulevard plantings in a subdivision . We 're requiring the developer install that at the outset but if a tree dies 5 years from now , who do we go after to replace it? Batzli : I , as a new homeowner . Well , new in a subdivision of this city , required that the developer give the first purchaser of the property a certain year guarantee on the trees . Let the homeowner have the ammunition to go after them because most homeowners will . If it dies , they 're the ones who are going to want to replace it . Krauss: Well yeah , that 's true . Ahrens : I bet most of them do that . I Batzli : Well you know you go back to the developer and they say , tough luck . It died . Sue me . I Krauss: Well see we do require that they guarantee that the tree , I mean they 've giving us a warranty for a year . We don 't give them their money back until the stuff 's survived the first full growing season . Ahrens : That 's already in here? I 1 Planning Commission Meeting IJune 5 , 1991 - Page 30 IKrauss : That 's what we do with the landscaping . Batzli : In a subdivision . IOlsen: That 's under the general . That 's under the other Articles . Batzli : That 's not residential subdivision . Olsen: That 's like saying we should have referred it . II Krauss : Yeah , let 's add in because it works real well for us . Fundamentally that 's what we 've done anyway . Ahrens : I think 1 year is the maximum . IEmmings: But this is reai ? y critical . This is all the more reason to require more deciduous trees and fewer coniferous because those trees have I to move into winter , especially when they 're young they 're sensitive to the sun . When they get older they 're not . Evergreens . And they have to go into winter well watered and unless , you know a lot of first time homeowners may or may not know that . It takes a lot , they 're a lot fussier I than deciduous trees . Conrad : I buy what Dick said in terms of the appearance . The larger I appearance . I do like coniferous trees . We are without leaves on our trees for 7 months a year . Anyway , so I like the mix and I guess in this case I think that the two deciduous is the right proportion but I like the I mix . We need the greenery or anything to break up the scenery in the wintertime . So I like that . My last comment was something I said last time and more than likely I 'm still concerned about major highways . The subdivision ordinance might play , might feed into let 's say you 're backing I up to TH 101 or to TH 41 with a subdivision . Do we want to require on our major highways or arterials to have any kind of increased plantings? IEmmings : A buffer zone . We 've been calling it a buffer zone . Conrad : Yeah . IKrauss: It 's 18-61( 4 ) . • Conrad : Okay . IBatzli : But this is only in the , isn 't this one in a residential ' subdivision one? Olsen: Yes . Emmings: How deep is it Paul? Is there any extra depth there? Can you I still have a minimum size lot right up to that street? That collector or arterial? Olsen: It says that they can be , the steps can be increased . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 31 ' Emmings : Because if you 're going to do more landscaping you need more depth don 't you? I mean it just seems to me . That 's what you 're talking about . Krauss: Yeah . Later on in there we say that the lot depths and areas may be increased by 25% over district standards . Emmings: alright . I like it . ' - Krauss: In looking at the development along Audubon Road and over the comp planning process really hit home that , and that 's clearly an area II where this needed to be done and wasn 't and there 's going to be hell to pay as soon as we have the industrial project across the street being proposed . Emmings : Well we 're going to wind up imposing it on them right? ' Krauss: Yes . With the buffer requirements . And by the way , that 's one of the sites that Ryan Development is working on right now . Conrad: I•'m done . Emmings : Okay . Brian? , Batzli : I 'm confused about the solution to Ladd 's problem so I might as well start out with that since we 're right there . It was my understanding II that there were two sections to this . One applies to industrial/office and one applies to detached single family . Is that true or not true? Krauss: One is lodged in the site plan review section which only applies , to non-single family development . The other is in the subdivision code . Batzli : So is the subdivision stuff applicable to everything else? Site plan review process? Krauss : No . ' Batzli : Then why are we doing it that way? Krauss : Well you have to do it that way . ' Batzli : But we have things in one section . Like for example the buffer along the major arterials/collectors whatever . That 's only in the ' subdivision , not in the site plan review . Is that right? Krauss: Well yes but , the reason why it 's in the Subdivision Code first of all , it applies to single family development which only has to jump through II that hoop . In that case you 're trying to screen residences from the freeway . • Batzli : I thought we were trying to make it nice and pretty to drive through too? I I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 -- Page 32 IKrauss : Well , it would accomplish both those purposes . Batzli : But only on like every other lot as you go through the City because you 're not going to be covering the things that are just site Iplans? Emmings: See if you go with Ladd 's notion that as you drive down TH 5 as I an e'cample . That it ought to be attractive and that 's going to be accomplished by open space and landscaping , he 's asking are we going to be able to apply . You know here we 've got residential and we know we can get I a little more space with this section . What about on the commercial and industrial properties? Krauss: Okay , it 's treated a little differently but on 20-1182 on page 9 I where we talk about foundation and aesthetic plans . Under (c ) . Well first of all we require that the site , not only that you landscape parking lots and screen trash enclosures but that you have landscaping around building I perimeters , break up building walls and ultimately screen fences . And that all undeveloped areas of the site be landscaped . And then ( c ) where undeveloped or open areas of the site located adjacent to public right-of- way , then we go back to that standard that we 've always had that you have I to put in at least 1 tree for every 40 feet of frontage . Emmings : But why isn 't this , I think what and I 'm sorry to butt in but . IEatzli : No . Please . You 're doing a good job . I Emmin?s : I think what he 's saying , if our standard for residential applies to collectors and arterials , why doesn 't our st.an:_ j here? Why isn 't it in the same language so it 's clear that we want to make sure that our roads look nice and we have buffering between them . I Ahrens : Particularly if they 're across the street from a residential area which could happen . IKrauss : Well , I guess the problem is you 're talking about two different classes of use generally . Now this could cover multi-family housing as I well but you are often talking about uses that want the visibility from the highway . If you 're talking about industrial park or a Target or whatever else , they 're not looking to be screened or buffered . I mean we 're going to try to get them to do that to some extent but they 're looking for that Ivisibility . You don 't want to shut off that view . Emmings : Well , we don 't give them a lot of visibility . If you look at the Iindustrial park here from TH 5 , except for one little building I can think about , they 're not depending on any visibility from TH 5 . II Krauss : That 's true but you look at the 35 acres in front of McGlynn 's . McGlynn 's is charging a premium for that and it 's considered to a premiere site because it 's on an intersection on TH 5 and it 's for a company that 's going to want to be prominent and want the visibility that is going to pay Ifor it . Planning Commission Meeting , June 5 , 1991 - Page 33 Batzli : I guess it depends on what we 're trying to do here . Are we trying II to make the commercial people happy or are we trying to , I thought Ladd 's idea was we 're trying to make the highway look nice . And now if you want II to encourage the people to clutter and high visibility , then we go to what you 're saying . We 're saying fine . We 'll give you high visibility . We 're going to let you have 494 strip . Krauss: No , I don 't think so . I think what we 're saying is two different things . Batzli : But we 're going to have 1 tree every 40 feet . You 're going to have them high visibility . Krauss: Well , first of all that 's a minimum . Secondly , if they have a parking lot there they trip a whole different section of the ordinance which requires screening of the parking lot . If they have a building there , there are sections that require landscaping around the building . If II they are across the street or adjacent to lower intensity uses , they trip the buffer standards that are in the comp plan that are now in ordinance here . I mean we 're getting at this with a 4 or 5 prong approach . It 's not II just the 1 tree per 40 feet at all . In fact that 1 tree per 40 feet is just the infill . If you don 't have a parking lot , you don 't have a building and you don 't have some other kind of area there , you 're going to II have to do this on top of everything else . Erhart : This is almost like an outlot situation . Unused area that will be ' used sometime later on . Krauss: If you look at the DataSery site , we have a large lawn area there . Well under this regulation , that large lawn area would have scattered aesthetic plantings throughout and it would have boulevard trees . Erhart : Are you saying Paul that 40 feet is the ideal location for spacing ' for a mature boulevard tree? Is that 40? Krauss : Well , it 'd probably be more around 30 foot center . II Erhart: That 's the solution . What 's the width of this . From Dick to that wall there is about what , 30 feet? Batzli : 35 . Krauss: Yeah , the 30 foot centers is where the crowns for a mature tree tend to come together . Batzli : I don 't know . I always thought the 40 feet was a little bit lengthy but only because when we see it , we tend to see people . They go with the minimum they can put in and they put in trees that are minimum size . Krauss: True . , ' Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 ~ Page 34 • IBatzli : And in 25 years it may look great but until that time , it looks like you 've got dinky little trees 40 feet apart . ' Krauss : Well we 'd be happy to decrease that down to 30 or 25 or whatever you wish . I don 't think we should overlook the fact though that the major change here is that the old landscaping ordinance only required , it didn 't require anything except 1 tree for every 40 feet . Emmings: And 1 tree per lot in the subdivision and that was it . IBatzli : Okay . Well , anyway . IKrauss : So should we look at knocking this down to 25 or 30 feet? Batzli : I would like to see that . IEmmings : The point is here I guess , it says that the minimum is 40 feet . Now if people come in and that 's all they want to do , are we going to let them do that? IKrauss: Well you have some flexibility . If there 's nothing there behind there that they 're obligated to do more landscaping , you 're probably in a ' tough spot . But they also now have a minimum they have to spend and they have to demonstrate that they 're spending it and if they fulfill their other requirements and still have funding left over , you can force them to ' do whatever you want them to do . Emmings: Okay . I Conrad : Brian , do you have a vision for arterial and collector streets in terms of what they should look like? ' Batzli : I don 't know . I look at the TH 101 south of TH 5 that I originally envisioned and it would have been nice to have kind of more of a boulevard approach . I don 't know . Sumac . Maples . Who knows but it would be nice to do something like that and if we only require the I residential subdivisions to do it , you 're going to have a hodge podge of this stuff down the street and everywhere else you ' ll have the 40 foot trees and parking lot stuff in front of it . And maybe that 's what we want . IMaybe it 's better to break it up . Conrad: If you look at the TH 5 corridor , that will be , the landscaping ' requirements on that could be interesting . I think as you talk to Peter Olin out at the Arboretum , there could be some fun things to do on that particular entryway . I guess variety is kind of neat too so I kind of hesitate when I said before I like the 2 deciduous and the 1 being a maple . I I think there are a lot of , you can have some flowering trees that .are rather neat . I think we should be thinking in essence that there is a doorway to the Arboretum and we could set it if we wanted to and the ' Arboretum could help if we didn 't have to pay a consultant to help us out with that . But again , I think the TH 5 section might be taken care of as we look at that or TH 41 but I think I just want to challenge us all to I I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 35 st art thin ki ng . There can be so me neat a lternati v es on major collector and arterial streets . But I 've got to have kind of a master plan otherwise whether it 's industrial or residential , it 's just going to be a little bit of this and a little hit of that unless Paul and Jo Ann can . Krauss: Well there 's another element that 's coming into the mix when you 're talking about something like TH 5 . For those of you who are going to be able to come along on Saturday , I think you 'll get a feel for some of that . The HRA has , we 've got plans that have been approved by the HRA and City Council to do a design element plan along TH 5 as it 's rebuilt . It includes landscaping . . It includes special pavement treatments . It includes monumentation at the entrances to downtown . The whole key to , I think special lighting . The whole idea of the thing is to let people know I who are traveling through on TH 5 that they 've just come into a different community and one that cares about itself and what it looks like . MnDot is kind of tough to work . They have a lot of , very limited flexibility within their right-of-way but we 've acquired land outside their right-of-way to do these things and we have every intent of working , probably with the same individual as TH 5 's expanded out to TH 41 to do a similar design effort . I In fact that individual is going to be on the bus on Saturday and can give an idea . Emmings: Who 's that? ' Krauss : Barry Warner from Barton Aschman . He 'll give you an idea about what 's already been approved and will be developed over the coming year and I hopefully what directions we might be able to go in in the future . So the TH 5 streetscape is an element onto itself and it 's beyond something that individual developers can or should exert control over . Now what we 're I going to want to do is build upon that and make sure that landscaping plans are complimentary to that as they border that area . Emmings: Well it will be nice . If we have something like a successful I vision and plan for TH 5 and then we can always point to that as something we want to emmulate in other parts of the city so that would be nice to see . Conrad: It 's tough to , you know we 're babbling here . Emmings: I 'm not . ' Conrad: You are too . You 're saying nice things Steve . You 're saying it would be nice but if there 's that vision and maybe you 're right . Maybe the I vision comes out of what we learn on TH 5 . I don 't know what it is . Like Brian said , I thought our connection to TH 212 and the entryway to • Chanhassen , I thought that was our chance for a grand entryway but budget and a lot of things sort of interrupted that . What are you doing? Do you II want to talk? Erhart : When you 're done . I 'd just kind of encourage you to get done . Conrad: Okay , I 'm encouraged . IPlanning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 36 1 Erhart . Let 's just offer a proposal to change it to 30 feet . At some point these things do cost money but I think 40 feet is from that wall to I that wall . That seems to be a long ways and then add a sentence that says , alternative , well staff can make up something that invites alternatives to this if it meets the intent which allows us . IEmmings : We should always have language like that . Let somebody come up with a better idea and let 's be open to it when it comes and let 's also be able to say no . IBatzli : Yeah , good idea . Section 20-1177 on page 3 . We 're going to require that the plans are drawn by a Registered Landscape Architect or I other ' professional acceptable to the City . I don 't know . I read that and I wondered why you were requiring that and I started thinking of goofy situations like what sort of professional . IKrauss : Whatever we like . Batzli : Yeah . IKrauss : The purpose is , we 've seen too many plans that are drawn up by people who are not landscape designers and frankly it doesn 't cost a whole I heck of a lot more to employ the proper professional doing it . But you 'll have engineers who decide that I 've designed the pipes in the street , hitting it with a tree stamp a couple times is now easy . Or architects do it . They think they have a better sense of design but really they 're Itrying to make their building stand out and their priorities are a little different . This is not a professional landscape architect employment act but it 's a desire to get appropriate professionals doing what they should Ibe doing . Olsen: It 's allowed to let like landscaping contractors to do the plans Itoo like people from Halle or something . Batzli : I guess I would agree with this as long as it is limited to , well see I think this gets back to my original problem of what does , which I section applies to what type of development . I think that this should apply to most commercial developments . Not the ma and pa subdivision but the larger subdivisions . There 's a lot of different questions about who Ishould this really apply to and it 's clear that this should apply to the major subdivisions but I don 't know that it does . I Olsen : I did have something in there where it was like referring to the commercial inside plans and then I also had something like if it was 3 lots or less you don 't but if it 's a larger subdivision it does have to be a professional . IBatzli : Where is that? - I Olsen: I had something in there like that . It broke it down to where the bigger ones had to have it and the smaller ones . I Planning Commission Meeting ' June 5 , 1991 - Page 37 Krauss : We can go back to that . I think we lost it when we got away from more detailed landscaping requirements . Olsen: Well we got away from it with this dealing with residential too and I then when we took out the residential . Batzli : That 's my biggest problem with the current organization of it . I I like a lot of what 's in there but I 'm confused as to which applies to what . Which sections apply to residential . Which apply to in general and there are some good provisions in each and should they apply to both . I think we I have to resolve those issues . Most of comments are picky things because I - take after Steve . Buffer yards- on page 4 . It 's the new paragraph 4 . You reference it here . 4( c ) . Due to a change of use of existing site , the required buffer yard is larger than can be provided . What kind of buffer yard would that be? I thought we defined buffer yard in the comprehensive plan as . Krauss: We did and this is that language but . Olsen : That one is again , I think what we did was took out a Section that I detailed those buffer yards but we forgot to take out this reference to those . Batzli : I didn 't know what that meant . ' Olsen: So we should maybe just take that one out . Batzli : But if we jump ahead to page 7 momentarily-, to paragraph ( b )( 3 ) where we talk about additional buffer yard requirements are established by the City Comprehensive Plan as listed in individual district standards . I Are we going to do that? Are these really the buffer , buffer yards that we established? Krauss : That 's already done . If you look up the individual district standards , it 's in there . Batzli : Okay . So in a buffer yard for example the one that 's , can 't think I of the name of it . Krauss: Around Timberwood . Batzli : I was thinking of the one adjacent to Bluff Creek with the power substation . There 's a buffer yard just north of that little development there . Sunrise Court . Krauss : Sunridge Court . Batzli : So in somewhere there 's a standard that tells them what they have 1 to do in the buffer yard that 's going to go over the pipeline? Olsen: That 's going to be on the Comp Plan . It 's on the Land Use Plan map . 1 1 IIPlanning Commission Meeting June 5, , 1991 - Page 38 . Krauss : Right . And it 's on each individual district . ' Batzli : It is? Olsen : Well the buffer , the perimeter buffer yards are aren 't they? Like on William 's Pipeline , I don 't think . I Batzli : I 'm talking about the special buffer yards that we created . IKrauss : Delineated in the Comp Plan , yeah . Batzli : Yeah . IKrauss: That was written into the ordinance a couple months , or around Christmas actually . IBatzli : I didn 't remember that . Did you remember that? Emmings: Of course . IBatzli : So what it 'd say? Emmings: I 'm the Chairman and you 're out of order . IKrauss : It hasn 't been codified yet . It 's a xerox insert into the thing and I actually had to have the original pulled out so I could find it Iagain . Batzli : Is it good stuff? Does it accomplish what we want to do what Iwe ' re doing in here? I don 't remember it all . Emmings: I don 't either . Do you think it would be useful if , obviously this thing is going to have to be come back again . Does everybody agree? IBatzli : Yeah . I Emmings: And when it comes back , we should probably , it should either come back with everything else out of the ordinance that applies to landscaping . All the buffer yard material and everything else so we 've got eveything in I a package that we can look at it all and see how it fits together . Or if that 's too big a job , then at least give us reference to those other places so we can find them easily . I Krauss : Well in fact that reminds me . The first memo that we gave you , it 's attached to the back where we tried to compile all the regulations pertaining to landscaping from all over the ordinance . IEmmings : Okay but I guess maybe Paul what 's got to be done is it 's all got to be pulled together and you 've got to be satisfied that it all fits I together . And there may be changes to those other ones that will be necessary as a result of what we 've talked about tonight . But I think we 've got to have it all pulled together in one packet so we know what I Planning Commission Meeting I June 5 , 1991 - Page 39 we 're looking at because it 's real confusing right now I think . At lesat it 's confusing for the other people . Batzli : Not for the Chairperson . Conrad : For the record he was pointing at Tim . Krauss: Here 's the insert right here . It 's Ordinance No . 136 amending 20-695 , blah , blah , blah and all the others regarding parking setbacks and buffer yards . It was the same time we gave the flexibility for Redmond to decrease the . Batzli : I don 't recall what we did in the buffer yard . In any event , okay . Moving back to page 6 . 20-1179 , paragraph ( a ) , the last sentence . The minimum landscape value required may be flexible if tree preservation is applied to existing vegetation on the site . I guess I didn 't like it because of the way it was worded . I think we 're trying to encourage tree preservation and it looked like it was saying well , you can do this if you do that . The intent seemed muddled up there . That tree preservation is encouraged and I don 't know . I don 't know if anybody else had a problem with that but it looked to me like we were stating it negatively when it should somehow be more positive . Anyway . Conrad: But the intent I assume was that existing vegetation could satisfy I some of the financial requirements? Batzli : Right . Emmings: But I think you could say it this way . You could say tree preservation is encouraged and can result in a reduction of the amount that you 're required to spend so it encourages preservation . That 's the idea . Batzli : In Section 20-1182 on page 9 , paragraph ( a ) . The very last , tail I end phrase , the building on accessory signage . Is it or accessory? Olsen : Yeah , or accessory . Batzli : I had a question about how far back in that paragraph ( c ) then where the overstory boulevard trees planted . Are they planted in the public right-of-way and how far back are they planted? I Krauss: They 're never planted in the public right-of-way . Batzli : Why do they do that in Minneapolis then? They have these I beautiful arching trees over the roads and we can 't do it? Krauss: They also have sidewalks and curbs that burst out . I don 't have a II great answer for it . Unfortunately modern suburbs seem to be designed by the guy who drives the snowplow more often than not . They cause you problems from the standpoint of utility maintenance . They cause you problems from the standpoint of installing things like cable TV lines . They cause you problems in that they bust up the pavement and they look I I II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 40 il awful pretty . I guess there 's a trade-off but this is much the same way that MnDot doesn 't allow us to do anything in their right-of-way for safety and maintenance reasons , or very little in their right-of-way . Our public 11 works people and engineering staff balk at the planting of large trees that in what they believe to be their right-of-way . IIErhart : What is it , a 32 foot wide street typically with a 50 foot right-of-way? Krauss : 60 foot . IIErhart : Now we 're asking for 60 . II Krauss : Which tends to , we just sent to Sharmin to a conference where , and they rightfully say we have absurdly wide streets and rights-of--way . I mean it 's designed so the guy that 's turning the snowplow around can do a I360 with one hand . Well , do you really want to design your city to that? Erhart : We 've got absurdly wide streets? II Krauss : Well we have wide streets . I don 't want to classify them as absurdly wide . I 've seen wider in some communities but you 've got to recognize that there 's positive standpoints from doing that . From Imaintenance and design . The down side is you have awful large dead zones . Batzli : Large dead zones? IIErhart : awful large asphalted areas . Krauss : Well either they 're asphalt or they 're just going to have sod I because you don 't allow anything else . There are some bushes . Now in our typical residential neighborhood you have the , is it 28 or 32 do we use in there? 28 I think for the paved area on a street and the right-of-way is Iindistinguishable from somebody 's front yard . Erhart : Why did we go to 60 feet? IIOlsen: To be consistent . Batzli : We just did that a couple years ago too . IIOlsen: No , we just did it in December . IEmmings : Consistent with what? Olsen: They needed it for the , to contain the sidewalks that we 're now requiring and for the utilities and we were finding that we were having the II roads and utilities and the sidewalks on the private land . Having .to get additional easements . It all comes down to the size of the street . The asphalt part of it . Because of the size of the street we need that II right-of-way . I 11 Planning Commission Meeting I June 5 , 1991 - Page 41 Erhart : Isn 't it possible , getting back to this , isn 't it possible to say II okay the trees can not be planted within 10 feet of the curb instead of trying to define it in terms of public right-of-way which you don 't know where it starts and stops . Why don 't we , can you find a number? Krauss: Keep in mind that these are new lots and they 've all got staked corners on them . They should know exactly where the right-of--way starts II and stops . Erhart : Well yeah I know but if you 've got a 60 foot right-of-way and I you 've got a 28 foot wide street , that 's 12 feet on either side . Ahrens: I think a lot of them don 't though . Where their lot ends and the right-of-way begins and they 're different within a subdivision . II Erhart : Here we 're talking about the developer . Krauss : It 's not uniform . II Ahrens: So you have , along some streets you may have , well like along Lake II Lucy . You have a 10 foot utility and a 20 foot or 15 foot walkway easement or whatever that is . Emmings : Trail? I Ahrens : Trail easement . 15 or 20 . Huge . You could never put boulevard trees in They 'd be sitting in the center of people 's yards . II Batzli : That 's my point . It doesn 't seem to me they 're boulevard trees when you end up putting them 20 feet off the boulevard . They 're really not II boulevard trees . Krauss: But they 're not , I mean typically they 're going to be , you know if you put them right on the edge , they 're 10 or 12 feet back and a tree crown II will extend well beyond that when it matures out . Ahrens : And the utility lines all run along there too and get cut off II anyway . Krauss: All utilities are below grade now . We require that in all II subdivisions . The only thing that are above grade are major distribution lines . Batzli : Okay , keep moving here . In 20-1183 , paragraph ( a )( 2 ) . Last I sentence . Last phrase . Is that any screening requirement? I didn 't understand that . Emmings : I can 't find where you 're at . II Batzli : Page 9 . 20-1183 ( a )( 2 ) . Earth worm section , yeah . Sorry , I stole your thunder there . The required opacity , opacity . However you say 11 II II IIPl. nni'ng Commission Meeting June S , 1991 - Page 42 ' that . The section that 's gone now . Is that needed for anything? Did that go someplace? I didn 't see it . Olsen : It 's gone . . IBatzli : It 's totally gone . Did we need it for anything? Krauss : Well you 've established where you want screening . You said physically thou shall do it in these areas . In these instances . The II required opacity was an unenforcable standard . It was a criteria that was open to different determinations by anybody who 's doing it and asked you to think forward 10 years from now and see what percentage of the view would II be obscured and there 's really no hard and fast criteria that you can uniformily apply for that that makes sense . So I think what we 're going to be resorting to is sort of a more touching feeling way of demonstrating this . We 're going to go tell the designer the nearest home is over here . I You show us what the view 's going to be like from that home . Do a perspective . I Batzli : But isn 't this going to be more subjective? At least before you could have told the registered landscape architect , this is what you 're shooting for . Now you 're just kind of giving him touchy feely saying Iscreen it . Krauss : No , it 's no more subjective than the other one was in that it 's not couched behind a pseudo scientific standard that was meaningless . I II think instead of doing that it says we want to accomplish this goal . Demonstrate how you 're going to do it . U Batzli : I don 't know . Maybe we need more intent then of what the screening is supposed to do . I mean I think you 've got a good intent section already and the new landscaping standards section . I don 't know . II I 'm an engineer . I like the pseudo scientific stuff . I like the two deciduous trees . I think if one 's maple that 's great . I think that if you have a waiver however , you should still require 1 in all instance . That 's just me . I just look at the dying forest and I say put at least 1 new tree I in . And I say that because my folks have 60 year old elms and oaks and maples and they 're all going to fall to the ground and they haven 't planted a new tree and it 's going to look like a cornfield in about 3 years 1 probably . So I would say you can do it on a 1 to 1 basis but you still have to put 1 in . I like the fact that you 're going to have to seed or sod immediately . And my last question is , I think we need to say something in I here about landscaping non-buildable outlets and subdivisions . We have to do something to take care of that somehow . I happen to live in a subdivision where the entry lot was landscaped kind of and then left by the developer . There 's no association . The City doesn 't own the land . The IIdevelopment doesn 't own the land . Nobody owns the land . Krauss : Are you in Pheasant Homes? IIBatzli : Fox Hollow . And we have to get something in here about that . Whether it 's in another section where you require an association that owns 11 II Planning Commission Meeting I June 5 , 1991 - Page 43 the property and they have to take care of it , or in this section if you 're II going to build an outlot that 's not buildable or leave an outlot , you 've got to take care of it . You know something that they take care of these things . ,Emmings: Well somebody owns it . It can 't be not owned . Batzli : Well that 's the point though . The person who owns it doesn 't care . They 're not part of the development . They 're not part of anything - so who takes care of these things? I Krauss: Well if an outlot was truly created with no specific purpose , usually deeding it to the City or maintaining it for drainage . Batzli : It sits basically for drainage at this point but the City doesn 't own it . Krauss: See the City took , in Pheasant Hill we were supposed to take possession of I think 7 outlets and because we didn 't have our attorney doing the filing of the subdivision , the guy never gave it to us . Then we 1 found out they were going tax forfeit 6 and 7 years later and they hadn 't been maintained at all . If we take title to them , we maintain them but they still should be landscaped so they don 't just be kind of a weedy sump because our guys don 't go out there to mow these things . We don 't have the II manpower to do that so it should be some sort of a self maintaining type of landscaping around that . Batzli : It 's part of the subdivision process where we have to fix it but there are instances in the city where you end up kind of screwy like these two situations . Fox Hollow and the other one . It can be an eye sore . I happen to live in a neighborhood where a group of people banded together and a couple times a year they go down there and clean it up a little bit but they 're spending a lot of money on this guy 's property who I don 't even know who the heck he is . In any event? I Olsen : Was it bought recently? Batzli : No . Rottlund doesn 't own it . Not the developer . I don 't know who owns it . Ladd owns it? In any event , that 's it . Those are my comments . Emmings : Jeff? Farmakes: Well most of the comments that I had have already been touched upon I 'm sure . Ahrens: 10 or 12 times . Farmakes: I still am not totally , although I think 3 trees are fine , I 'm still not convinced that there 's any carved in stone reason for why it 's 3 and not 4 and not 5 or as Councilman Wing said , 6 but he thought that would II be too much . I wish there was a better guide as to what it is attainable Planning Commission Meeting June S , 1991 - Pac ~ 44 II or what we should be asking for rather than 3 's 3 more than we g ask for now . Perhaps maybe some of these design people that are going to be here this I weekend , maybe Arboretum people or something . But is there some expectation of what this is going to be with the sizes that we have here and the amount of trees that we 're requiring as to what we 're going to have II 5 years from now 10 years from now or how long it 's going to take before those trees become a real viable forested area . I 'm kind of getting the impression that what we 're doing is upping what we 've got or condensing the II distance of the plantings or upping the figure with , I wish we had some idea in mind of what we were going to have in the end result . Or how long it was going to take to get those areas reforested . Coupling that with the DNR report of what we 've got now and what our intent was or plan was . What Iwe were going to wind up with in the year 2000 or 2010 . Batzli : It 's interesting . That 's an excellent point but if you go to I Edina to places where they developed in the 60 's , you can still go to neighborhoods and tell the new from the old neighborhoods . I Farmakes : You bet . We. used to live there and the Harriet Manor Addition down by the river which is right over by Xerxes which borders Minneapolis and that was developed in '48 . If you go through there , there 's just a tremendous diversity in the forestated areas . These are mature trees now I and every year has 4 or 5 different types of trees . There is no smattering of elms or of maples or whatever . There 's just really a diversity in that urban forest . It really is quite beautiful and quite thick . I mean it 's II certainly , I don 't know . What 's '48? It isn 't that long ago . 30 years . But that brings me to another point that we were talking about . If we require that 30% of all the trees that were planted are a particular genus II of trees , and I 'm not against that . I can understand your reasoning behind it . I would like to get maybe some professional input as to whether that 's a wise idea because 70 years ago I 'm sure there was a commission in Minneapolis that thought that elms were a good tree to plant and a majority I of the plantings in Minneapolis were a particular tree . And it didn 't turn out to be too wise years down the line and I 'm not sure if 30% is over planting of one tree or not . I can see where we require a certain type of I quality of tree but I 'm not sure it 's a good idea to get one particular type of tree for that high of a requirement . That 's it . Ahrens : As Dick Wing 's recommendation , I like 3 trees . Any number we come II up with would be arbitrary to me . 6 , 7 , 8 would be great but developers aren 't going to do that . They 're just not . Especially when we 're requiring them to , which I think is a good idea , to seed or sod all of the II lots . I mean a lot of developers won 't do that because it 's expensive . They ' ll give you a sod allowance . IIKrauss : By the way that 's an existing requirement . That 's not a new one . Batzli : Since when? II Krauss : I don 't want to tell you how long . I mean it 's been on the books for years . We only started enforcing it a year and a half ago . II II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 45 1 Batzli : Was it on there in '86? Krauss : Oh yeah . r Emmings : Is this getting personal? Batzli : Yeah . Ahrens : Yeah , I live in a subdivision right now that . Batzli : I spent a lot of money sodding my' yard , twice . Ahrens: It 's 2 years old . Not even 2 years old I don 't think . , Krauss: Undoubtedly the developers built that cost into the cost of the house but we went through a process where people were complaining about , this a couple of years ago . We knew this was on the books and that it hadn 't been enforced and it really becamea nightmare because it was in the subdivision code but we couldn 't after the fact enforce it because it wasn 't written into the development contracts which were recorded with the property and in several instances where it was written against the development contract , the engineering department I think unknowingly , who administered those contracts , really only cared about getting the streets and utilities built and as soon as they were done , they cancelled out responsibility for the contracts and voided them so we had absolutely no teeth to go after these people . We 've since revamped our procedures so that everything we 've approved in the last year is permanently written into the development contract . We only give partial releases when we keep getting calls from attorneys who want to have clear title passed along . You know we only release those elements that have been taken care of and some of these requirements are permanent . Sharrnin administers a program where when somebody comes in for a building permit , we give them a handout that says , this is what your obligations are . Sign off on this so you understand . I can't answer for what happened before but that 's what they 're doing now . Ahrens: I can tell you what happened before . It wasn 't done . Absolutely 1 not done . Batzli : They sodded the right-of-way basically is what they did . , Ahrens : As a matter of fact they came in our subdivision and said , you have , I don 't know . It was a minimal amount of sod and they said you have II to use this first in the right-of-way . I said forget it . We wouldn 't let them do it . We wanted to put it in our yard and let the right-of-way . Krauss : That 's because the developer was trying to get out of our requirement when we accept a public street they have to landscape . They have to sod the right-of-way . Ahrens: Yeah , but we have whole areas of our yard . The yard is an acre and a half . We had most of it unsodded and unseeded and a lot of the other IIPlanning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1 991 - Page 46 II lots in the subdivision have areas that are still just weeds . II Krauss : Well it 's not only a visual problem . It 's also a water quality issue . 1 Ahrens : Yeah and all these lots drain into a wetland in the summer . Olsen : It never said that the whole lot had to be sodded . IIKrauss : It said all disturbed areas had to be sodded or seeded . Batzli : My whole lot was disturbed . Our whole development drains into I Lotus . That 's why the water quality is so poor . A lot of the lots in our development were disturbed for years and they drained right down into the swampy end there . IAhrens : And our lots drain into Christmas Lake and it 's one of the problms they 're having there . IIKrauss : Again , we can 't address those past but we did correct it so . Ahrens : Well , at any rate . I think that I 'd hate to see a requirement I that 2 of the trees have to deciduous because I think every lot is different and I think even though some lots that are maybe more exposed than other lots should have the right to have coniferous trees . It may be I more appropriate for that lot . I think the idea of having the maple tree is great but I agree . Who .knows if a maple tree worm will get us in 10 , years . All the maple trees will be gone . I think as long as they 're decent type of trees , I don 't care what they are . Is there such a thing as Imaple tree worm? Batzli : I don 't know . IAhrens : I don 't have anything else . Everything else has been brought up and hashed and rehased . IEmmings: I don 't know if I 've got maybe what I want to say . Oh! First on page 6 . Below $1 ,000 ,000 .00 is 2% . I Krauss: I know . I was just looking at that . The middle one doesn 't work . If you look at the formula , it doesn 't track well . You 've got , in the second one you 've got 20% . Between a million and 2 million you 've got I $20 ,000 .00 plus 1% of the project value in excess of 1 million dollars . Batzli : It should be $10 ,000 .00 shouldn 't it? IEmmings : No . Krauss: Then does the math work when you get up to 30? You 've got ' $30 ,000 .00 in the next one plus .75% of project value in excess of 3 million dollars but the range is only 2 to 3 million dollars . II II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 47 Emmings: It should be in excess of 2 million . That wasn 't my point but it needs to be changed . Below a million at 2% and what is the value , what value is it 2% of? What 's the million dollars? It 's building construction II and site preparation and site improvements , all of that? So at what point do you determine the requirement for the lot? Krauss : The way I 've administered this in the past is you give them a worksheet with the site plan review packet . It breaks out these items and asks them . I Emmings: What they 're planning on spending? Krauss : Right . , Emmings: You use their numbers? Krauss : Well , yeah . Unless they typically , well I 'm not going to say ' typically lie . I mean I only caught somebody lying in a major way once . They were so obvious about it and it was a 10 story office building that you can get it very easily . Typically the people who are doing these plans are fairly responsible on this . They are again registered professionals and if they bold face lie , you can report them to their society and to the State Commissioner of whatever . Emmings: And it 's something you can check against , you can check up on them . ' Krauss: We do . You take a Bachman 's catalog and you see , in terms of landscape value . When you get , there are some ballpark figures for construction per square foot . Emmings : Okay . And then my only other question was , where does the 2% come from and what is that going to mean in terms of , is there anything ' like a typical? I was trying to figure out what it meant . Krauss: It 's hard for me to answer that except that this ordinance , that section , I probably shouldn 't admit it but it goes back to something that BRW developed about 15 years ago and it was written into a series of ordinances that BRW staff people did for various communities . I worked with this same standard in Oakdale and from Minnetonka and I can 't tell you II why but I know it works . Emmings: Okay . That 's what I wanted to hear I guess . That there 's some experience with it that will tell you that it will put enough money into landscape materials to make the kind of impact we want to see . Krauss : Keep in mind it 's a minimal too . You set standards . You set criteria that people have to adhere to . If they have to spend more than that to achieve it , that 's just the way it is . ' Emmings : And then Jeff 's comment on the trees made me wonder , let 's see . Am I getting mixed up between , yeah I am . No I 'm not I guess . The 3 trees I ' Planr it . Commission si.on Meeting June 5 , 1 9?1 - Page 48 II would be required on , for example q _ample our minimum 15 ,000 square foot lot . And ^� we see a lot of subdivisions where they ' ll be 15 ,000 square foot lots and I the same subdivision will have a lot in it that 's 35 ,000 or 40 ,000 square feet . Is it the same requirement there? Would it make any sense to require 1 tree per 5 ,000 square feet of lot? IAhrens : Maybe some people don 't want that many trees in their yards . IEmmings: Yeah , that 's right . Krauss: I think Jeff raised some real valid comments about , is this just an incremental approach , particularly with the single family and the answer- ' is yes it is . You asked is there a vision as to what this is going to achieve in a single family neighborhood? No . There isn 't . It 's a fairly blunt approach . It tries to get around too much of , I mean we can envision I all we want but in this case visioning means imposing the City 's will on an individual 's decision about their property . And even I , I have a tough time doing that with single family homeowners . I :n 't have any problem at all doing it to anybody who 's developing commerci property or retail IIpropert;' or multi-family or anything like that . I view that in a totally different. context . If you 're going to refine that any further , we 're going to have to be more explicit as to you 've got to have , we want flowering I shurbs over here and we want something else over there and I 'm very relunctant to do that . I think what this is going to get at with kind of a meat ax approach is the Joe Miller type of cornfield development . It I serves a purpose because the value 's there in the housing but its pretty ugly . You go back to . . .town 40 or 50 years after and it starts to look nice because people sort of did this thing over the last 40 or 50 years . What we 're trying to do is make sure that the Joe Miller 's of the future do I this up front . That there be some modicum of development in there . And Brian in your development , people have paid enough for homes that they 're going to do this on their own by and large . This is a small percentage of I what 's going to ultimately be there . I don 't know that that 's the case in the Joe Miller development . I Batzli : But there are lots , there are homes in my neighborhood where they haven 't done anything more to it than what was done which means they have one boulevard tree . Some of the people did that because they don 't want to go out and buy $100 .00 trees and I think , now this gets back to if they had II purchased the home and they had had the option of putting the trees in their mortgage over 30 years , they would have done it . No question about. it . They just don 't want to go out and spend $150 .00 on a good sized tree . I And some of them just , they have homes for other reasons . It 's just kind of a tax shelter and they 're living there for a couple of years and they don 't want to do anything to the yard . There are those kinds of people too II but I think it would have improved the neighborhood had there been higher minimums in the number of trees . Emmings: I guess for myself I ' ll say that I think that there should be 3 I trees . I 'm comfortable going to that as the next step . I think it will be an improvement however arbitrary . I think that 2 should be deciduous and they should be in the front yard but I don 't case where . You know I II II Planning Commission Meeting June 5, , 1991 - Page 49 wouldn 't care , I don 't care that they 're not moved to the front on the boulevard or whatever . I don 't care where they are . And that 's all and I think we have to have this come back . Dick? Richard Wing : Just a quick comment as I 've listened and you use the word trees . In the ordinance it specifies several types . Shade trees , ornamental trees , coniferous trees and . . .and when we 're talking about trees for , I 'm losing my train of thought here . When we talk about this 18-61 , the residential lots , we 're specifically talking about shade trees and they 're the elms , the ash , the lindens , maples and so forth . They 're the . towering broad trees . Those are listed specifically but if we just say tree , that may be able to be interpretted as ornamental tree also . Emmings: I think what I hear is , I think we 're talking about shade trees . Richard Wing : Right but I mean I think it needs to be specific . ' Emmings : Well I think we 're going to get even more specific than that . I think what I 've heard up here is that we want to have , maybe have some II lists and it may be a situation where you tell them , you 're going to have 2 deciduous shade trees and we want you to pick one out of Column A and •one out of Column B . Column A maybe we put a lot of common trees . Maybe the ashes and maybe even maples and other things . I don 't know but in the other one maybe put some other trees like hackberry and kinds of trees that II people don 't commonly plant to try and encourage some diversity in what we have . I don 't know but there are things you could do like that too I suppose . Erhart : Have one column as the real high value . You could just say one of them has to be either a sugar maple or a red oak . That 's the highest value tree . That way it avoids the thing of having every third tree a sugar maple . It means you ' ll get some will be red oak and some will be sugar maples but require one to be of the real high value and the other ones in Column 8 . I think that 's a good idea . Krauss : Well that 's maybe a question we can raise with Alan Olson. You 're looking for specimen trees? Emmings: Yeah , that 's right . In the front yard . Go ahead Dick . Richard Wing : Any time tree is mentioned , I think we have to specify in this case we 'll call them shade . In other sections it was the boulevard . I think we 're still talking shade trees . . .fences , ornamental trees would be II alright . I just think we need to . . .specify what level of tree we 're talking about . Emmings: Okay . Do we have to do anything formal on this? We 'll just , table it or continue the public hearing? Okay , do we have a motion to table this and continue the public hearing? Batzli : So moved . I think we already closed it . Should we reopen it? I II • Pla nlri g Commission Meeting June E , 19°1 Page SO Kraus_: : You can just continue action on the item . IOlsen : It will be back . Emmings : But will it be back as a public hearing? IIOlsen : We don 't have to . IKrauss : Not unless you want to re-open it as such . Conrad : It was published this time and nobody came . IEmmings : Alright . So do we have a motion or what? Batzli : We moved to table . IConrad : Second . II Batzli moved, Conrad seconded to table action on Zoning and Subdivision Ordinance Amendment to amend sections regarding landscaping and tree preservation requirements . All voted in favor and the motion carried . IIAPPROVAL OF MINUTES Chairman Emmings noted the Minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated May 15 , 1991 as presented . IICITY COUNCIL UPDATE: Emmings: Next is a long report from the Planning Director . Let 's assume II that everybody read it . Is there something in here Paul on item 2 . There 's something that could potentially go to here on June 12th . II Krauss : Yes , in fact there was a handout that was on your desk tonight . We are to the point where we are going to , we short listed the number of consultants we want to use , or consider for the water quality program . IEmmings: That 's the next item . That 's item 3 . Go ahead . Krauss : Okay , I see Peter Olin . I 'll. get to that too . Anyway , we 're II looking to , we 've agreed to a procedure with the Mayor and the Council where we 're going to try to set up a review committee comprised of some of you and some of the City Council . It 's not clear how many . At this point I I 'm going to say whoever wants to come . We realize it 's a morning that somebody has to give up but this is a pretty important decision . Not only is this going to cost a lot of money , but more importantly it 's going to have a major bearing on water quality and environmental protection issues II for a good long time in the community and we 'd like to get the best cross section of opinion on who 's the best candidate to work with us . We think of the 5 firms that we selected , short listed , they can all do the job but 1 the question is , is there a good fit with the expectations are for this work product . Is there a good working relationship that you see . It 's an interview . I 1 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 51 Emmings: Do people know if they 've got the time or interest or ability to attend? I know I 've got a conflict . I checked my calendar . Batzli : I won 't be in town . Ahrens: I have no idea . , Conrad: Annette said she might be able to . Farmakes : This the 12th you 're talking about? Emmings: No , we 're talking about June 20th on this . But I guess if you can make it call Paul and let him know . It would be nice if we could get some of our members there . Farmakes : I might be able to make it . , Krauss: If you can give me a call Jeff and let me know because we 're also going to order coffee and donuts and a box lunch . ' Ahrens: What kind of lunch? Krauss : What sounds good to you Joan? I mean there 's variables . , Emmings: Now going back to item 2 . June 12th and our friend Mr . Olin and I the Arboretum . Krauss: I don 't know how best to get into this . I think you 're aware that Peter obviously made presentations to you and the City Council in the Comp Plan . As I recall , there were a lot of people who weren 't very receptive to what he was saying . He was rather presumptuous in the way he came across . I think were lectured on the fact that the Arboretum is a pearl II and we have an obligation to maintain it 's setting or something along those lines . He really knocked the City very unfairly I believe in terms of our environmental initiatives and our sensitivity to these things . And then II all it took was , I mean Joan asked some very critical questions of him and somebody shouted from the audience how much do you pay a year in property taxes and that was about it . Well apparently Peter has felt disinfranchised by the whole thing and has since had gotten into arguments II with Chaska and Victoria who were looking to construct some roadways close to but not adjacent to the Arboretum which apparently he doesn 't like either and he 's concerned about encroachment . I mean I can understand his position to that degree . Well , Peter 's response to that , and most recently it was Victoria and Chaska that got him going . But Peter 's response to that was to set a meeting date in May to discuss local land use planning that was conspicuous by the fact that he neglected to invite any local land II use planners . I found out about it through the Metro Council who got an invite and then Dick contacted me because he had heard about it . I think in large part because of Dick and our conversations with him , Peter rethought the advisability of going ahead tactically with a meeting like that and rescheduled it for this date inviting myself , Chaska and Victoria . And the same ground which he invited the last time which was State 1 II Planning Commission Meeting IIJune 5 , 1991 - Page 52 I Legislators and the DNR and the PCA and some individuals . Dick 's one of them and I think he 's expanded it a little bit . It 's still conspicuous by the fact that Peter , who everybody that dealt with him , and I haven 't dealt with him that much but feels that he lectures to you . He doesn 't talk in II these situations . But that we were not invited to participate in the development of the program . We were invited to hear what he 's got to say I guess . I think we 're beyond reproach . I really do . Clearly we can I continue to do more but in preparation for our bus tour on Saturday I did up a list of things that we 've done in the last couple years . We being yourselves , the City Council and the HRA , that really have a bearing on I TH 5 and I was going to present this to Peter . Peter by the way is doing things like his memo inviting people to the meeting shows that we intend to put a major shopping center on the southeast corner of TH 5 and 41 and that we 've already basically permitted the Fleet Farm to go in north of there . I So it 's a rather inflammatory thing and you 'll see the maps which are obviously wrong and I think Peter knows they 're wrong . He also 'id things like , he wanted to find out apparently how the City permits de : pment so I he called my secretary to get copies of ordinances which are thy&. ordinances that he requested when I think the appropriate form would be to sit down with any of the 3 of us and say if I were proposing a development., what would I be obligated to do . He 's obviously trying to create , I think IIobviously . I could be wrong but create a scenario where he 's going to hit these people up with an image of some horrendous university avenue type deal and claim that this is what 's allowed in the city of Chanhassen . IEmmings: This guy 's a real master at creating , well you know . The saddness is that we probably agree with a lot of what he 's got to say but II the way he says it makes you want to not listen to him . After I listen to him I want to put up a big flourescent sign on the corner of TH 5 and 41 that says Arboretum with an arrow pointing that way . Just to spite the guy because of his attitude and approach . It 's just too bad . IKrauss: Well I think first of all , for a TH 5 corridor and then for this meeting , I thought it was real good for us to sit back and say , what did we I accomplish in the last few years and when you see it listed out in this paper which you couldn 't have read yet because it was given to you tonight , there is no way that one could conclude that what could have happened 2 I years ago is what we would allow to have happen today . There 's just so muchfthat 's changed and so much that is changing . Even if we did nothing more from this point out it would be dramatically different types of development than previously had been the case . And I did that as a I sounding board too because we 're starting this TH 5 corridor study which is one of the other things . I think you 've been called and some of you are able to come along on that . And hopefully a lot of good things are going I to come out of this . It 's really a launching pad for further work _on the corridor taking the things , the initiatives that we 've already got and refining them and getting some more focused planning efforts done . But I we 've done a lot already and we 're not reinventing the wheel . We have a real good base to work on and that 's what this is to get across . I 'm also meeting with Victoria and Chaska Monday I guess before the meeting on Wednesday to strategize a little bit with them because I guess I 'm IIconceited enough to think that we do a better job than either one of those II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 53 ' two communities but I 'm sure they have a lot of good things to say about. II themselves too . So I suppose anybody 's invited to be there . If you haven 't been directly invited , let me know and I 'll phone in a reservation for you . Farmakes: Is the format of the meeting , are there going to be questions and answers afterwards? Krauss: I don 't know . I Farmakes : Or is this just strictly a presentation of his? Krauss: My guess is that this will be reminiscent of you being in college . Farmakes: I understand . Emmings: Going to be at the knee of the master . Conrad : So Peter has called the meeting and he 's invited us , or City ' representatives as well as who else? Krauss : State legislators , the PCA , the DNR , the Metro Council . Public Radio . Dick and I were interviewed by Public Radio in the last couple days . So it remains to be seen what he 's up to . I just have a very strong feeling I know what .it is . Now originally when this thing came up , I saw this as direct interference with the Comp Plan . You start getting paranoid about these things because the date of his first meeting was the date of our committee hearing I think at the Metro Council and it turned II out it was Chaska and Victoria that tripped this off and not us , which was a relief to find out . Farmakes: Can I ask a quick question here? This is the individual , I missed the earlier public hearing where he was here . This is the individual who you had lunch with I believe and you asked if they had any ideas or input on landscaping or improvements here in the cities and they quoted you his rate? Krauss: Oh yes that 's true . That happened to somebody . Erhart : Dave Headla and myself and Barb Dacy . Essentially , well it was clear that they 're , somewhat that they were to help or he was willing to help . , Farmakes: As a voluntary? Erhart: There was going to be a charge . There is a rate for doing it . IT II wasn 't clear who was going to do that . Farmakes: I mean potentially they could be a valuable resource for what we 're trying to do here on this other stuff . It 's a shame that that 's the kind of environment or attitude that 's going on . I 1 , , Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 54 Krauss : Well in fact , on this bus tour on Saturday , primarily because of I Dick and Dick 's wife who 's taking some courses at the U , we 've gotten in. touch with a fellow named Bill Moresch who runs the University's Urban Design Center . Now as an other University employee , he 's kind of a II compatriot of the folks at the Arboretum and knows them fairly well _ I think Bill Moresch has said a couple times that he thinks that Olin really blew it in terms of how to handle these things but we 're using Moresch as II urban design expertise as kind of a critic in residence or something like that who 's going to ride along on the bus and try to put some things in perspective and work with us . I think he 's pretty excited about doing that and maybe that will help to convey back to Olin that we 're not the ogres IIhe 's protraying us to be . I don 't know . He 's going to be there by the way . II Emmings : He doesn 't think we 're ogres , he thinks we 're stupid is my impression . IIFarmakes: He 's going to be the Krauss: As I understand it , I thought Moresch told me that he 's going to be one of the speakers at this thing next week . But again , we were not ' asked to participate . We were asked to be there . Ahrens : Is Olin going to be on the bus tour? IKrauss : No . IFarmakes : No , you were talking about the meeting on the 12th . Krauss : Right . And there was frankly an intent and this was something that Steve and I have discussed arid . . . When we 're talking about how to I proceed with the TH 5 corridor and who should be directly and who should be indirectly involved , there was some sediment that Olin represents an interest group , much the same as Mary Harrington did . Hopefully Peter 's Imore rationale , well . Ahrens : Their tactics are similar . I Krauss: But if you have a single purpose group , you want to be very cautious about where they 're interacting . Clearly they have a right to interact but should they be able to direct the process from the outset and I I think we 've always taken the tact that you and the City Council represent the best opinion , or an unbiased , best attempt at getting an unbiased opinion to develop these things and then throw it open for public II criticism , comment and revision . We made a decision not to Olin on the bus frankly . Same as we decided not to have John Shardlow on the bus . Why is he any less significant . He 's controllinc, 160 acres . IIAhrens : Is Lundgren Homes going to be on the bus? Krauss : No . II II Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 55 ' Emmings: I want to move on to number 4 . You 're going to update us on the status of . Krauss: Oh yeah . I called over there . I guess there 's two things in there . Bonnie Featherstone gave me the staff report on the rural areas issues that we commented on back in , I don 't know Tim . When was that? You II went down to that meeting in Chaska . It was probably October or September - or something like that . And I got back to Bonnie and gave her some written II comments which I 've attached here but we had requested contract revisions - to the Lake Ann Interceptor Agreement . I called one of their attorneys over at the Metro Council today . Finally got a hold of, him and apparently it 's proceeding through the bureaucracy . There 's no real problems that they 've found . They reviewed it in house and decided the Metro Council staff didn 't have a problem with it . Then they bumped it over to Metropolitan Waste Control Commission and that took a couple months and they had no concerns about it . Now they 've got to get it on a Council agenda because it 's a contract language change and it sounds like it will be done in 30 to 45 days . 1 Emmings: -Okay , we know who 's hands it 's in and we can check on the status? Krauss : Now I know , yeah and I 've asked to be informed as to when it 's going to go up to the Council . Emmings : On these potential development things you have here . I had a II question on the Ches Mar Farms . Did they burn down that house as part of this attempt to get this cleaned up and maybe , is that all part of that same effort? And does it include that property that 's in the Naegele Trust ' there? You know that other piece . Olsen: At Ginger Gross? Emmings: Well yeah . The Gross property got cut off from that . It 's got II the finger that goes down to Lake Minnewashta . Olsen: It does include that . Emmings: It does include that? Olsen: Yes . Krauss: That 's the one that Gary Kirt 's going to build on? , Emmings : Who 's this developer? Olsen: Just a realtor who 's buying the property for myself . ' Emmings : Who is it? Olsen: Swaggert . Emmings : So he 's combining those two pieces? , 1 II , , Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 56 I Olsen : He 's combining them all and then splitting them into four lots . Single family lots . Emmings: Oh so it 's going to be not very intensive . I Olsen : He 's getting rid of the apartments and all that . I Krauss : It 's still a little clunks because it doesn 't adhere to the rural area standards which is why we 're perpetuating the PUD but it 's a significant improvement . IEmmings : Well anything will be an improvement I 'm sure . Ahrens: What 's the Lundgren Brothers development? North of the Ortenblat Iproperty . zuss : Well , we haven 't seen it . Well we 've seen a very preliminary II aft of it . Right now- they 're trying to figure out how to run utilities into there because the sewer line in Lake Lucy Road is up too high to serve the .area . But they 're looking at , it 's kind of tough to comment because Iwe 've only seen , Jo Ann and I 've seen that back of the envelope . Ahrens : I mean how many houses? IKrauss : I think it was something like 26 or 29 . Emmings : Which one now? Olsen: South of where Joan lives . Emmings : I don 't know where Joan lives . I Krauss : Do you remember Ersbo 's subdivision was . You got to see it twice and nothing happened . IEmmings: That was on Lake Lucy Road? IKrauss : Yeah . They 're actually including that Olsen: And the wetland to the west . I Emmings: Oh good because I didn 't like the way that turned out . Any other questions for Paul on his report? I Conrad: Just a quick question and it related to two meetings ago when the City Council decided not to have a second access for Kurvers Point . Not a fire access . What was the rationale? IKrauss : That 's a tough one to answer . Olsen : Essentially that it was never going to be necessary . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 57 Krauss : That the lack of perception of the immediancy of demand kind of was outweighed by the intensity of the people who didn 't want to have it happen . Emmings; Make sure you get that word for word in the Minutes because I 'm going to put that over my desk . I don 't think he said anything but I liked it . Erhart : My comment is , I think I support your analysis on that Cadillac dealer . If it 's done nicely , it 's good if not better than some other large scale commercial . I Krauss: I hope so . We haven 't seen where the rubber meets the road yet on this one . We 're a little concerned with some of the calls we 're getting from their architect but I mean clearly that 's the intent and we 're in the driver seat on that one . You 're under absolutely no obligation to lift a finger to help these guys and unless they tow the line , forget it . Emmings : On our ongoing issue list , under Comprehensive Plan issues . We ' ll remove number one and change the numbering there for next time? Krauss : I guess we could . Emmings: I know that 's going to feel good to me not to see that on there . Under other items , I 'm just wondering if number 10 ought to come off there . Let 's get stuff off of here . Krauss: Well what we 've done Steve is yeah , that will come off the next time . This was a change in status from the last time where it hadn 't gotten there yet . Emmings: But then there 's a number of them that look to be like they ' wouldn 't be , they wouldn 't take a lot of time and we could maybe be cranking one or two of them for our next meeting . There may be , I don 't know how to priortize them but I just checked like number 2 and number 6 on II the first page . Are those things that are going to take a lot of your time or staff time to get together? They may not be the highest priority but if they don 't take a lot of time , maybe we can get them done . ' Krauss : You 're right . They 're probably not incredibly tough to do . What takes time is sitting down and figuring out all the properties that are involved and notifying everybody and assuring them that it doesn 't change anything on their property . That kind of thing . We can get on top of that . I don 't know . It won 't be for the next meeting . It will be shortly because we have notification requirements and we have to develop a mailing list . Olsen: We can bring it up for discussion . Krauss : I don 't know , we 've been given the go ahead from the Planning Commission to do both . I I . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 19Q1 - Page 58 I Emmings: And then that PUD ordinance we were going to do some residential standards there and I 'd like to get that done . I don 't know if there 's other items here that people would like , can spot that might be easy to get off our list . It 'd be nice if we could be crossing off one or two of these at every meeting . And maybe you can try and do that . And then there are things like the sign ordinance that the City Council 's indicated they want attention paid to . Now I think it came up with the building over at I downtown and I think people are still very concerned about it but I don 't know how , I mean that is going to take a lot of time I assume . Krauss : Yeah , to do it right . It not only takes a lot of time to lay out ' the ordinance but really you 've got to be very sensitive to working with the business community and even folks like Ladd who have some expertise in their job and what signage needs to be . I know Naegele 's always willing to Istick people on those committees for obvious reasons . Farmakes : But important I think , particular_ , then you 're talking about ITH 5 and all these other things we 're doing . Emmings: Well we 've got a couple choices here . We can wait for you to come back with something or we 've got people , I know Jeff has expressed I interest in that before and I don 't know if we want to make . Farmakes : It 's certainly not a short term project I wouldn 't think . There 11 are just so many things it encompasses that you 're going to need a lot of input . I Krauss : I 've got to be honest with you . I mean we want to do work for you that 's of a high enough quality that it really represents a good effort . We 've gotten to the point where , even though development 's down , I think we 're quite busy . We 've all got new committees and commissions that we 're I supporting . Responsibilities not only to you but to Senior Commission , Recycling Commission . To Comp Sewer and Water Studies . To Surface Water Programs . To Southwest Metro and we are frankly stretched pretty thin so I the signage is something that really warrants an effort where there 's going to be a working group on this that meets on a regular basis and is going to need material prepared for those meetings and I 'm honestly real scared t about taking on those kind of responsibilities before we know that we can do justice to it . Emmings: Maybe you ought to communicate that to the City Council since I they 've specifically indicated that they want us to get working on it . Maybe you talk to them about it . I don 't know what else to tell you . I think there are , I know there are a lot of issues on that list that I interest me more than the sign ordinance . And I know that Jeff has a lot of interest in the sign ordinance . It may be that we want to have `a sub works on a sign ordinance and maybe Jeff could undertake that with Ianybody else that wants to participate . Batzli : Is that a motion? I Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 59 Emmings: No . Just a suggestion . Maybe there 's somebody on the City II Council too since they 're promoting it who would also be interested in it . Krauss : No question and then I think we have to go out to the Chamber of ' Commerce and whoever else . Get a cross section of opinion to work on that . Emmings : Well , again those people ought to be having input but shouldn 't be on the committee as far as I 'm concerned , but that 's just my own bias . II Those people have , I 'd rather have it be people who are on the Council and the Commission . Farmakes: You 're talking about not having the Chamber of Commerce , represented? Emmings: Right . I think they should be at the meeting . I think they should have input but I don 't think they should be putting a stamp of approval on the final product . Farmakes : I don 't know if I agree with that . Emmings : Well I 'm sure there will be a lot of people who don 't . Krauss : There 's also something to be said for having somebody like a Nordquist Sign representative or something who can actually tell you technically what can and can 't be done . I remember the most recent issue over here was it going to be 36 inches high or 24 inches high and we 're being told that the sign companies said you physically can 't put a neon tube in anything that 's under 24 inches . Yeah , I know we said that but I don 't know if it 's true or not . Farmakes: I checked on that and it is true . Emmings: It is true? Farmakes: It has to be a certain distance away from it or it will melt the II letter . There has to be a certain amount of cooling in the back of it . We 're talking about a backlit sign here . Emmings : Now wait . You sound like you 're talking about two different ' things . Farmakes: You 're talking about the backlit on the letters . I 'm talking ' about that comment that was made in the notes that they had to be a certain height to get them to a certain width . Emmings: And that 's true? Farmakes: Yeah , you 're talking about neon now? ' Emmings : Yeah . Krauss: Well it 's a neon tube inside the opaque plastic face . ' I . . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1981 - Page 60 Farmakes : I was, talking about the character letter . As I understood it Iwas not a nenn tube . . Emmings: Well , you 've got to have the technical expertise but I don 't know I that they 've got to be sitting on the body that decides the shape of the ordinance . IAhrens: I absolutely agree with that . Emmings : You need them there to tell you what you can and can 't do . That technical support staff as far as I 'm concerned but I don 't care how it 's I done . Get the ball up and get rolling . I don 't know how we 're going to get the ball rolling on that . I Farmakes : If it could conveyed correctly and if you could bring in business , ther are advantages to having limitation of signage in some businesses in kind of competitive sense . Larger franchisees , larger I companies mak difficult for small store owners to compete in some instances . There are examples that we have right here in town . The S and A over on TH 7 and TH 41 and the difference just across the street from the • pylons and more of those so we have a few examples of other business I people . It 'd be interesting to know whether or not that S & A for instance has experienced problems with not being able to be seen . It doesn 't seem to be . There are plenty of cars there . 11 Krauss : Well there 's a couple of things in terms of our ability to staff up things that are going to be happening over the summer which I think are going to be real critical to what happened . We 're getting the surface I water utility program hopefully off the ground by July and August and we ' ll be able to get a handle on what does this mean . We 're trying to minimize the cost associated with hiring a consultant by undertaking some of the I responsibilities ourselves . Well , I 'm not sure exactly what that miens yet and until we have a firm program clapped out , I won 't know . We have this TH 5 corridor group . I fully expect this to spiral into something that I requires some regular meetings . We haven 't asked the Council for formal approval of it yet but we are looking to the possibility of bringing on somebody part time and we 're going to see if we can work something out with that so that would help a lot . So all I can say at this point is I ' ll Ikeep you posted . BLUFF PROTECTION ORDINANCE . IEmmings: The Bluff Protection Ordinance that we got , this confused me a little bit . Now we 've got another draft here dated May 30 from Roger in I our packet but I thought , and again it 's all that language about hills and stuff again . I 'm not clear why we have this because we decided we were going to map out . . I Olsen= Yeah . We also wanted to have the definition so if anyone questions it , we can tell them this meets the definition of a bluff . I 1 Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1991 - Page 61 Emmings : I thought we were going to define the bluff area , I thought we II decided to define the area that the bluff protection ordinance applied to by putting it on a map . Erhart : Section 20-1406 on the back page . , Olsen: We do . We have the official map and the definition of what a bluff ' is but it 's not a bluff if it 's not on the map . ' Emmings: So we 're going to have all this language in here about it can be a hill? It 's all in there . A bluff means a topographic feature such as a II hill , cliff or embankment having the following characteristics . Olsen : Yeah but those other characteristics it 's not . Batzli : It only applies to the bluff impact . . . Emmings: Okay . That makes sense . 1 Erhart : See that was one of my concerns . It wasn 't clear that if there 's a flat area in the zone , they could still build on it . We 're .not II preventing building in the bluff area . We 're only preventing building on slopes within the bluff area . Olsen: Well , using that definition of the bluff , if you have a flat area , II that 's not part of the bluff . It might be on the map but it 's not the bluff so that 's where you need those definitions . Krauss : So if we have a flat area at the top , that should be outside of the bluff district . If we have a bench that 's midway down a steep bluff area , . that 's considered within the bluff because it 's from the top to the bottom . Olsen: Well if it 's a certain level , then it doesn 't meet that definition . Erhart : If it 's big enough , it might not be . Olsen: Then it doesn 't meet that definition of a bluff . Then you just have two bluffs . Also , I think it 's getting late enough that we don 't need II to get into . This will be a public hearing at the next meeting but we do have , remember I told you the definition of the ©NR where if you have the steep slope and then it 's just level . That 's still part of the bluff and then you take your setback from that distance . So they have changed that now so it 's , the bluff is like this and then stops here . That 's the top even if it 's gradual like a little hill there . This is the top . So I 'll II that new language in here . So then you don 't end up with 100 foot setback from where the bluff really is . I can pass this down if you want to read it . Batzli : In Section 1 of the definition of bluff , number 2 . 25 feet or more above the toe of the slope . Is toe of the slope ever defined? 1 I . . Planning Commission Meeting June 5 , 1c)"1 - Page 62 IOlsen : I think that 's supposed to be toe of the bluff . Krauss : Toe of the bluff is defined . Batzli : Toe of the bluff is defined but that said toe of the slope and I just , maybe that 's why I was confused . Should that be toe of the bluff? I Olsen : Yeah , I think it 's supposed to be toe of the bluff . But I 'll double check that one . IEmmings : I 'm done . Is anybody else done? Conrad moved, Batzli seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried . The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 p.m . . ISubmitted by Paul Krauss Planning Director IPrepared by Nann Opheim I I I I I I I I I I