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CC Minutes 1999 09 13CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING SEPTEMBER 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Mancino, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Engel, Councilwoman Jansen and Councilman Senn STAFF PRESENT: Scott Botcher, Roger Knutson, Todd Gerhardt, Anita Benson, Kate Aanenson, Bruce DeJong, and Brian Grogan APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the agenda as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mayor Mancino: First of all I'd like to welcome the American History and Government Class from Minnetonka High School. Are you all here? Councilman Senn: If they are, they've aged dramatically. Mayor Mancino: Here we come. Anyone else here tonight from the American History and Government Class from the Minnetonka High School? We'd better send everybody an e-mail. I also have a resolution about Pollution Prevention Week, September 20th to the 26th and I'd like to read that resolution. Whereas, the people of Chanhassen take great pride in Chanhassen's natural beauty and support a clean and safe environment, and number 2. Whereas, Pollution Prevention is the most environmentally sound method of protecting our natural resources; and Whereas, Pollution Prevention can increase industrial and resource efficiency, saving participating organizations time and money, and also create a more sustainable economy; and Whereas, Pollution prevention measures can improve environmental conditions and the health and safety of workers in the work place while increasing commercial competitiveness; and Whereas, through increased use of pollution prevention, Chanhassen can meet the challenge of having ecologically healthy communities and a vigorous business environment for it's citizens; and Whereas, Pollution Prevention Week will be observed by other communities and other organizations throughout the nation and this recognition is an opportunity for government to work together with business, industry, environmental groups, community organizations and citizens for a prosperous and sustainable future. Therefore, Be It Resolved, that Chanhassen does proclaim September 20th through the 26th, 1999 to be Pollution Prevention Week in Chanhassen and encourages all citizens to join in this observance. Actually to tell you a little bit about the September 20 to the 26 as Pollution Prevention Week, the theme for this annual national league celebrated event is, Together We Can Prevent Pollution. If Not You, Who? And they have special daily topics during the week so I encourage all of you to observe this and do we need to pass this as a resolution? May I please have a motion to pass and a second this resolution. Roger Knutson: It's a proclamation. Scott Botcher: A proclamation I don't think have to. Mayor Mancino: We'll just leave it as a proclamation, thank you. City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations: a. Resolution #99-72: Approve Plans & Specifications; Authorize Advertising for Bids - Temporary Traffic Signal at TH 41 & 82nd Street West - Project No. 97-1B-3. c. Resolution #99-73: Set Assessment Hearing Date for Capital Improvement Project Nos. 98-15 & 98-16. d. Resolution #99-74: Approve Change Order No. 2 to Coulter Boulevard West of Century Boulevard - Project No. 97-1D. e. Teich Addition, David Teich: 1) Final Plat Approval 2) Approve Development Contract for Land Use Review File No. 99-17. i. Chanhassen Lakes Business Park 8th Addition, Eden Trace Corporation: 1) Final Plat Approval 2) Approve Construction Plans & Specifications and Development Contract for Project No. 99-14. m. Approval of Minutes: - City Council Work Session Minutes dated August 23, 1999 - City Council Minutes dated August 23, 1999 Receive Commission Minutes: - Planning Commission Minutes dated August 19, 1999 - Park & Recreation Commission Minutes dated July 27, 1999 n. Approval of Bills. o. Resolution #99-75: Approve Resolution Designating Authorized Signers on City Bank Accounts. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. B. APPROVE PLANS & SPECIFICATIONS; AUTHORIZE ADVERTISING FOR BIDS - UTILITY SYSTEM {Y2K) PROJECT Councilman Senn: l(b) I pulled. I'm still not comfortable with that. If the rest of you are we can go ahead and vote on it and I won't waste any more time on it tonight but I'm just not happy with that item yet. Mayor Mancino: Okay. You're not happy with going out and at least getting bids? Councilman Senn: No I'm not. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Then may I have a motion? City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Labatt: Motion to approve. Mayor Mancino: Second to that motion? Councilman Engel: Second. Resolution #99-76: Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the plans and specifications and authorize advertising for bids for Utility System Upgrade. All voted in favor, except Councilman Senn and Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. F. APPROVE REVISED DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT FOR SOUTHWEST TECH CENTER - PROJECT 99-17. Councilman Senn: I wanted to amend l(f). On page SP-4, item H. I would like to delete the proposed changed language from the word or on, basically the last sentence. And on page GC-5, item C, delete the request, or I'm sorry, item D. Delete the word reasonable. Mayor Mancino: Is that, excuse me, in both C and D? Councilman Senn: Yes. Mayor Mancino: Is there any other discussion on that? Councilman Senn: No. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to that motion? I'll second that. Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve the Revised Development Contract for Southwest Tech Center, Project 99-17 as amended. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. G. REQUEST FOR EXTENDED WORK HOURS - SOUTHWEST TECH CENTER~ PROJECT 99-17. Councilman Senn: I asked this item to be pulled. The recommendation is to extend working hours and I would like to make a motion that we do not extend working. Well, that doesn't really require a motion then I guess. Scott Botcher: Move to deny the request. Councilman Senn: Move to deny the request? And I will move to deny the request then. I don't think working hours should be extended in an area abutting residential neighborhood. Granted it's Eden Prairie, not Chanhassen but I think we should somewhat maintain the same standard and the proposed extended uses I think will impact the neighborhood negatively and consequently I don't feel that those hours should be expanded. City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Okay I understand. Now we have extended them you know in Chanhassen. I guess they haven't been, I'm not sure if they've been adjacent to a neighborhood. The only one that I was halfway looking at was Saturday till 6:00 instead of 5:00. Giving them one extra hour on Saturday. Councilman Senn: I guess that wouldn't bother me. I was mainly looking at the extension during the weekdays to 10:00 p.m. which I thought was really negative. So yeah I would go to approve the 9:00 to 6:00 on Saturday but to deny the request for extended hours on Monday through Friday. Mayor Mancino: But that means Monday through Friday it stays at 7:00 to 6:00. Councilman Senn: Correct. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Any other discussion from council members? Do you feel comfortable with that? Councilwoman Jansen: I'm sorry, did you just say that Saturday was also 7:00 a.m.? Councilman Senn: No, 9:00. Mayor Mancino: 9:00 to 6:00 so we would extend Saturday one more hour. Originally 9:00 to 5:00. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. And Monday through Friday is the 7:00 a.m. to 6:00, okay. I got you. I do like that change. Mayor Mancino: Okay, any other discussion? Oh okay, would you like to come. Councilman Senn: Can I get a second to the motion first though please. Mayor Mancino: First let's get a second to the motion. Councilwoman Jansen: I'll second. Mayor Mancino: Yes, come forward. Greg Vass: My name is Greg Vass. I'm representing Welsh Construction Company and CSM Corporation. I'm the project manager for Welsh Construction. The request for extended hours on the Monday through Friday was specifically and limited to refueling and light maintenance of some of the earth moving equipment. On the plan we had proposed to keep everything to the northern third of the property to keep it as far away from the adjacent residency to Eden Prairie. There's been some question and concern about what constitutes light maintenance and refueling. If you've seen the site, we have a number of large earth moving equipment, pieces of equipment out there. D8 dozers, P6's. Some large backhoes. Off road trucks. These are very expensive pieces of equipment. They have a regular maintenance schedule, i.e. oil changes, fuel filters, greasing, things like that, and the fueling operations as well, we'd like to do them during the evening as much so we can keep the pieces of equipment moving during the day and staying productive. In the event that we're unable to do that, it's going to prolong the actual earth work operation on the site so we felt as trying to be sensitive to the neighbors, the more work we could get done during the working hours to keep the equipment moving, the less disruptive it would be. For instance if we couldn't do it, we might extend the operations by a week and a half to two weeks worth of earth moving equipment time so the objective of the request was from the 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. hour was specifically just for City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 refueling operations and light routine maintenance on the equipment. If something substantial happened to the equipment short of a breakdown in the middle of the field that we couldn't move the equipment, it would be taken off site to be repaired. So I don't know if that changes your perspective on it or not but we are getting into the tough time of the year for earth moving. We want to try to stay ahead of the weather and that's obviously a selfish request on our part but if we have to take time out of the day to refuel these pieces of equipment and perform this maintenance it will prolong and extend the actual time that we're going to be on site with that earth moving equipment. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention. If you could take that into consideration we'd appreciate it. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Councilman Labatt: Are you going to have auxiliary lighting? Greg Vass: Generally no. Truck... Excavating is our earth work and utility contracting firm and they have a service vehicle that comes out. It has the necessary lighting right there on the truck and we've already talked to them and instructed them, if we're granted approval here tonight, to make sure that the lights from that truck are shooting over to CSM's other industrial property. The other side of East Lake Drive so they wouldn't be shining on the residents. They've got a couple of spot lights that sit on the back of the truck if they need them. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. What about to 8:00 or something when kids go to bed? Councilman Senn: Well I really like leaving the hours where the hours are because extending the work hours I think leaves a lot of ambiguity to what can be done. If we are specifically talking about refueling, then let's say refueling with no starting of engines and no moving of equipment and no overhead lights. Okay which basically contains a light problem. Contains a noise problem. I remember we did this once before and part of that maintenance started to be moving things around. Loading them on and off trucks. Caused all kinds of trouble and problems with the neighborhood and I think we just, that's why we have the hours. And so if we're simply going to honor the request on the face of what the request is, then let's just okay refueling outside of those hours and okay maintenance on the vehicles so long as it requires no starting of engines or movement of equipment. And thirdly, no lights that are overhead. Mayor Mancino: Okay, and you would feel comfortable going till 10:00 or just doing a two hour, till 8:00. Councilman Senn: I think under those conditions I'd be comfortable going to 10:00. I don't care. Mayor Mancino: Okay, any other discussion? Councilwoman Jansen: I guess I'm curious because I'm still thinking that we're going to have engine noise, if the truck is going from vehicle to vehicle, even though it's. Councilman Senn: Well the truck itself won't provide any noise. I don't think it's going to disturb the neighbors. It's the equipment itself that does. You start up one of those earth movers and. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, so we're talking a regular sized truck, not a. Councilman Senn: Wait, I'm saying no starting of engines on any of the equipment. City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Is this like a Snap-On Tool Truck? Greg Vass: It's an industrial grade refueling vehicle. It's a high trailer with attachments. From a logistics standpoint, we are probably proposing to be at a minimum about 800 feet away from the residents property line. Probably closer to 1,000 feet away from their homes and there is a substantial berm that separates on the property line and we're willing to accept those conditions, although it only gets us about not quite halfway to where we'd like to be. And I don't view it as being an ongoing situation. As a practical matter, fueling trucks, or at least with Bellaire, they want to cycle every day based on where their equipment is located and we have a lot of the equipment out here so this is going to be a priority job. But as you guys are all familiar with, Highway 5 can be a little owly once in a while. We can't necessarily always predict how traffic may affect the timing of that vehicle. Councilman Labatt: Does your light maintenance entail starting up the engines on the heavy equipment? Greg Vass: It on occasion could. I'm not probably the right guy to address the specific technicalities of what would need to be done, and I don't know what needs to be done when you change the oil in one of those vehicles. If you physically have to start the engine to cycle the oil through it or not. If it would be started it would be for a very short period of time. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Any other questions for Greg at this time? Councilman Senn: I would like to restate my motion then as amended would be to allow extended work hours on Saturday from 9:00 to 6:00. To not approve extended work hours Monday through Friday, but to allow as part of the permit the refueling of vehicles so long as no engines on the equipment are started and no overhead lights are used and no movement of equipment other than the service vehicle. Mayor Mancino: All the way till 10:00. Councilman Senn: All the way till 10:00. Well I don't care. I mean if somebody's uncomfortable with that, I'm willing to. Councilwoman Jansen: Would you accept a friendly amendment to 8:00 instead of 10:007 Councilman Senn: Sure, more than happy to. Mayor Mancino: Would you also accept a friendly amendment that if we get residents from the adjacent properties that call, that we will rescind the extended hours? Councilman Senn: Yes. Because some of you I don't even think were here when this originally came through but this neighborhood was very concerned about this sort of thing when it did come through for approval in the first place and I think we pretty much promised them we'd make sure it doesn't happen so I think this is part of that. Councilman Engel: A question before we move the amended amendment. How long does it take to refuel all those vehicles? Greg Vass: It depends on what day and what vehicles are all in need of fuel. I mean it's probably a couple hour procedure if they have to fuel all of them. Now it's a due course, like I said, the equipment gets, the City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 refueling truck and maintenance truck gets cycled around so there's a reasonable chance it could hit the site sometime during the day in kind of a morning start-up and then hit it again at the end to top them off. Quite honestly I'd like to offer up a comment. I've been out on the site and I was the individual that presented when Welsh had this project on the board about a year and a half ago. The amount of noise that's going to be created is far less than the amount from a semi trailer that currently come up and down East Lake Drive basically at will, 24 hours a day so you know I'd like to still try to meet halfway and say the 8:00 timeframe would be acceptable but I would like the opportunity for a periodic start-up of the engine if it's necessary. And I would concede that we would not be moving any of the equipment and that would get involved with back-up signals, OSHA required safety warnings and so forth. But if we had to occasionally fire up a dozer here to check a fitting or change a filter, we'd certainly like permission to do that. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Greg Vass: Thank you. Councilman Senn: Motion on the floor. Mayor Mancino: Motion on the floor. Are there any amendments? Councilman Labatt: Would you accept a friendly... Councilman Senn: I don't know how you govern that and meet what we promised would happen out there. That's the problem. And quite frankly we've never allowed this to happen anyplace else. Especially abutting a residential neighborhood. Councilman Labatt: I can understand their predicament. As you put oil into a thing and how do you know if it's all circulating and all that. Councilman Senn: Well do it during normal work hours. Councilman Engel: Keep your insurance current. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen: Second as amended. Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve for the Southwest Tech Center, Project 99-17, to allow extended work hours on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00p.m.. To not approve extended work hours Monday through Friday, but to allow as part of the permit the refueling of vehicles so long as no engines on the equipment are started and no overhead lights are used and no movement of equipment other than the service vehicle until 8:00 p.m. as long as there are no complaints from the abutting residential area. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. J. VILLAGES ON THE PONDS 6TM ADDITION, AUSMAR AND GROUP THREE PROPERTIES: FINAL PLAT APPROVAL; APPROVE CONSTRUCTION PLANS & SPECIFICATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT FOR PROJECT NO. 99-19. City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: l(J)(2). Mayor Mancino: Which is a new l(J)(2). A modified. Councilman Senn: And basically l(J)(2) as modified because we had a modified version in our packet which is as I understand it, was also sent to the applicant so they're aware of that. But there's one condition that wasn't in that modification. A question that came up in the work session about not deleting the median in the entry of the project, which we'd like to see stay there that was part of the original plan. Mayor Mancino: When 101 is realigned. Councilman Senn: Correct. Mayor Mancino: So that wouldn't take place until the new alignment of 101. Councilman Senn: New alignment of 101 would occur. Whenever that is. Mayor Mancino: Whenever that is so that would just be an added condition DD. Okay. Is there a second to the motion? Councilwoman Jansen: I actually had a couple of questions that I had raised in the work session and we did touch upon them as far as the request, or staff's recommendation on the changes to the original wetland alteration permit. And I guess just to follow up on that conversation so everyone is aware as far as the neighborhood. One of the issues that we had raised in the site plan review was the amount of buffer that was being impacted by expanding the NURP pond on this location. Mayor Mancino: In that southern area. Councilwoman Jansen: In that southern area. The recommendation as it's been explained to us in the work session is that that buffer amount went from 15 feet from the edge of the lake to 37 feet from the edge of the lake. So that has been expanded with this final plat. The only part that I am still uncomfortable with is that within the original final plat authorized for the Villages on the Ponds there was definitely identified the need to not impact Area A. This is doing that. It would seem that we should be able to go back to that original plat and explore the alternatives, because though we are trying, we're impacting that area on the pretense that we are avoiding impacting tree coverage on the northern segment of the site. And as this came through the Villages review, priority was given to really protecting that buffer for lake water quality around the creek and next to Lake Susan. So I think as a water quality issue, to again try to remain out of that Area A is significant to the water quality on this site and I know that be expanding that NURP pond on this location we're trying to accomplish that same thing. It just seems like from reading this we are giving priority to protecting the tree canopy on the northern side, and I don't know that we have fully discussed that since it's just ended up within this proposal. That was one of my issues. And not to drag this out but going back to that 30,000 foot point of view as we went through the site plan review, our approval of that predicated on the understanding that the City was achieving the affordable housing goals. Now we're currently sitting here tonight giving final plat approval and there's a little bit ofunsureness as it's been brought back to us several times to try to eliminate the affordable housing. It would appear that we may not have the affordable provided for, so shouldn't we be tightening up the requirements? The Mayor made the statement when we went through the last round of conversations on this that the density on this site was City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 increased from medium to high to achieve the affordable housing. So now we have high density on a site where we're not getting the return on the affordable. That was one point that we had changed. The second point, as we went through the whole landscaping and tree preservation part of the site plan, it's not meeting the requirements for the Villages on the Ponds, landscape and tree preservation. And we can address that very easily tonight by just changing on l(J)(1), page 9. Condition 2. As it reads we're modifying it such that it reads the development shall comply with a landscape plan #99-9 submitted and approved as a part of the site plan for the apartments. Should that development not be constructed, the landscaping shall comply with the Villages on the Ponds development design standards. I would like to see us nix the first part of that statement and go back to the landscaping shall comply with the Villlages on the Ponds development design standards, as well as city ordinance requirements for site landscaping. All required tree replacement units for reforestation must occur on site. Right now they're not. So right now as we had approved the site plan, it was with the consideration that we would have the city need met on the affordable and until that's established we're giving some concessions here that I don't know that we would have done that necessarily with that change to the site plan. So one piece of that site plan is changing and we're not reviewing the rest of it and that's where I'm coming back to the density change. The landscaping change. And then reviewing what we're doing around the NURP pond condition. Mayor Mancino: Any other discussion? Councilwoman Jansen: Roger's raising his hand. Mayor Mancino: Can't change from the site plan we've approved. Go ahead. Roger Knutson: Paragraph V is rewritten. I believe addresses the affordable housing. Councilman Engel: What page? Roger Knutson: SP-5, paragraph V. Councilman Senn: In the number two doc. In fact that actually firmed it up. Mayor Mancino: SP-5, number V. 20% of the housing units shall meet the criteria established for affordability by the Metropolitan Council. The developer may not obtain a building permit or commence construction until the developer provides the city adequate guarantees that the affordable housing requirements will be met. So the affordability is still there. Councilwoman Jansen: So we don't go forward with the site plan without the affordability. Therefore the other conditions are still met. The Villages standards. This condition shall be modified as follows. Mayor Mancino: Speak to that please. It's meeting the site plan review that we've all approved. 99-9. There is nothing new. What is new to this final plat is that you have taken the concerns, let me know if there's something different. You have taken the concerns of the Planning Commission and the City Council during site plan review and made sure that there was a good buffer between the NURP pond and Lake Susan. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: They've increased it from 15 feet to 37 feet. Okay. City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Kate Aanenson: They... relocation of the pond. If there was another way to move that. That was eliminated. Discussed taking the sewer and water down the slope towards the lake. It's going back under 101. There were several points that you asked us to examine which we did discuss in the plat. Not the development contract. Some of those have been modified. When this gets recorded there is a list of conditions so we address for you specifically which conditions were there, and how they've been modified or dropped off or met, whatever. If it's still something that needs to be followed through. From final plat to today what's been done is all of the nuts and bolts so far as design detail. Storm water calculations, street design. That's what has been done since final plat so when this gets recorded, some of those issues that were in place have been addressed so they're no longer applicable. So things do change. I mean it happens with every site plan. There's modifications. Sizing of ponds may fluctuate and it's a decision we have to make as we go through every project. Is there going to be tweaking? Yes, there will be. Councilman Senn: I think there's some confusion here, if I could jump in because I don't think that's Linda's question relating to the pond. The point that she's raising is over the issue of tree preservation and the amount of landscape materials as required under Villages on the Pond. And both of those were issues that we dealt with. Mayor Mancino: During the site plan review. Councilman Senn: During the site plan review, which are supposed to be incorporated into this and what Linda's I think saying is they are not... Mayor Mancino: Yes they are. Roger Knutson: Paragraph 9(a). SP-3, paragraph 9(a). Mayor Mancino: Other special conditions. The development shall comply with the landscape plan 99-9 submitted and approved as part of the site plan for the apartments, which was done on June 28th, right? Should that development not be constructed, the landscaping shall comply with the Villages on the Ponds development design standards as well as city ordinance requirements for site landscaping. Security for landscaping will be incorporated as part of the site plan review process. I'm assuming, if you were present here on June 28th, that at that time the landscaping plan was approved by this Council on 99-9, correct? Councilwoman Jansen: But the question that was raised at that point was we didn't have the total compliment of the entire Villages project and we still don't have that as requested in the last work session on Villages, is to see that anything that is not occurring on this site is supposed to be balanced then into the rest of the Villages. And right within this paragraph it's basically stating that this is not up to the landscape design standards for the Village on the Ponds. We haven't seen what, and yes we have the impervious surface amounts but this is below the compliment for tree replacement and reforestation on this site. It was stated in that meeting that there probably would not be enough room, because of the size of this development, to provide for that. Kate Aanenson: That's right and that's why we did, we preserved all the trees on the slope on, they bought the 2 acres and that was part of the reason for doing the PUD. Mayor Mancino: But Linda all this consideration was brought up again during the reconsideration that Steve brought up and we discussed it. 10 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilwoman Jansen: And it's not asking it to be reconsidered, but we have not gotten as requested in the work session after that meeting the balance of where is this reforestation. That if it's not occurring on this site, where is it occurring because there's some major shifts and again I've got the map. We're nixing all of this reforestation that we're supposed to be getting on this site. On the west side it's required to have 35% canopy. 2.7 acres. By the time we nix the canopy that was taken out in-between the buildings, and what's happening around the NURP pond and it's not being replaced on this site, what we had asked for was to then see where those units are now being shifted over to the east side. The east side is required to have 7.7 acres of canopy. As it was shown on the site plan that was in the Villages on the Ponds and I think again this is from like the EAW, was showing that 3.12 acres would remain. But then they had the tree replacement units. That's where we were going to be receiving, I thought, a grid as requested on the actual landscaping to show the total project. If we can't place those units. Mayor Mancino: Let me ask Kate. Kate, have you obviously gone through and where is that, the reforestation taking place from the area that we're deleting? Kate Aanenson: We gave on impervious surface. We gave on our wetlands. I misunderstood on the trees. We're way over on trees on the other side. We can prepare that. Mayor Mancino: You can show us that. Councilwoman Jansen: If we're way over on trees on the other side it doesn't show up here and I guess that's where we were going to get an update. Kate Aanenson: Okay, that's fine. The tennis courts aren't going in. The soccer field is not going in. Mayor Mancino: Okay, so you can give us an update. You feel very comfortable that it's being met on the east side of the development? Okay. Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: Would it be a fair statement to say that. Mayor Mancino: Why don't we put it as a condition. Councilman Senn: ...what Councilwoman Jansen is raising, okay. There were a number of things that we did on this but kind of a caveat we threw on at the end, which I'm not sure relates to these agreements. But the caveat we threw on all this at the end, that anything we relaxed effectively in relationship. Mayor Mancino: Was transferred. Councilman Senn: Was transferred to the other and we made that very clear. But again that's not part of this agreement that goes into the language. I mean that basically just goes as a policy matter as to how we're going to view the rest of the Villages on the Ponds. Councilwoman Jansen: So if I'm following. Mayor Mancino: But obviously Linda wants to quantify it and see that. 11 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilwoman Jansen: Well and I'd also like, just for the developer on the other side to be aware that as we required on the affordable, if this doesn't happen on this side, it needs to happen on the east side. So if we're below forestation and we haven't anticipated it over to the east side, the developer needs to be aware it might affect those sites. Kate Aanenson: Correct, and that's the point I was going to make. There are things that are onerous on this developer, the Shelard Group, and there's things that are onerous on the underlying PUD, which is AUSMAR and those are the things that we need to make sure that we're putting the right, the balancing of the landscaping over on and how they trade that as far as they're negotiating different deals needs to go with AUSMAR. There are certain things that's obligated with this developer, site plan agreement and those we need to make sure we're keeping clear. What you're talking about is some of that's going with the underlying developer. Helping shift around and the wetland banking. Mayor Mancino: So it's kind of been an operating principle that we're all saying the same thing. Kate Aanenson: ... can't transfer to the Shelard Group, unless they've worked that out and said we're going to take on the responsibility. Mayor Mancino: Understand it. Councilman Senn: It's not appropriate in this agreement but it is appropriate. Mayor Mancino: For us to go over it and just to see it. Councilman Senn: ... and also for us to restate it maybe as it relates to just where we go from here. Kate Aanenson: And that the staff can be making sure that as each development comes in, that they're aware of what, if there's something else, any issue that needs to be addressed. You can't wait until the lat project, and we manage several PUD's and it's the same situation. Impervious surface or landscaping. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. It just seem, in agreement, absolutely. This seems significant enough that if it's going to affect a site plan on the other side, then if we can do this rather quickly in order to reflect that so that we're properly communicating the same way that we did if we were to have eliminated that condition 3 on this side. Mayor Mancino: We don't let them off the hook. Can I have a motion please? Councilman Senn: Okay I would move approval of Village on the Ponds 6th Addition, AUSMAR Group Three Properties final plat approval and also approve construction plans and specifications and development contract for Project 99-19 as modified and to add the condition DD relating to the median isle. Mayor Mancino: That's it. Councilman Senn: ...just say and to restate, or and to ask staff to simply restate and remind the underlying developers that we are not relaxing any of the overall standards as it relates to Villages on the Ponds. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to the motion? 12 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Labatt: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the final plat, construction plans and specifications and Development Contract for Project No. 99-19, Villages on the Ponds 6th Addition as modified to include condition DD stating that the median island at the entrance to the project be built in conjunction with the upgrade of Highway 101. All voted in favor, except Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 4 to 1. L. APPROVAL OF PURCHASE OF NETWORK SERVERS AND DESKTOP COMPUTERS. Councilman Senn: I asked that 1(1) be pulled. I think from the session before everybody, or I believe everybody on the council now understands that these funds would be coming out of what we previously referred to as the contingency fund. And my second reason for pulling it is to make a motion for approval however with the deletion of one of the three laptops. Not as far as allocating the funds but as actually purchasing them. The concept was is that that was to be purchased as an additional one, a back-up one in case one of the two went but with the changing technology I think we ought to set the funds aside. Not purchase it and every 60, 90 days this stuff is changing and we'll probably get more bang for our buck by purchasing it when one of the others break down rather than doing it now. So with that change I would like I say, move approval. Mayor Mancino: And again, just so everyone understands that that's under PC replacements, revision 2 and with the PC replacement RNB. Instead of the quantity of 3, there would just be a quantity of 2, but still set the money aside so that if we do have a computer that goes down we can buy a new one at the time with new internals. Faster and better, new gadgets. Okay, may I have a motion then. Councilman Senn: That was a motion. Mayor Mancino: Oh! May I have a second, thank you. Councilman Labatt: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the purchase of the computer equipment using funds from the General Fund No. 116-4703, amending PC Replacements - Revision 2, PC Replacement - RNB, changing the quantity to 2 but set aside the money to purchase a third computer at the time a replacement is needed. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Mayor Mancino: I think that's it for the consent agenda. I would like to welcome right now the American History and Government Class from Minnetonka High School. If you guys could please rise, we'd like to see you. If you could stand up. Nice to have you here and watching our City Council meeting. Enjoy it very much. Thank you. VISITOR PRESENTATION: SCHOOL DISTRICT 112 REFERENDUM, BEV STOFERAHN, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS. Mayor Mancino: We're honored tonight to have Bev Stofferahn is the Superintendent of Schools for District 112. Thank you so much for coming tonight. 13 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Bev Stofferahn: Thank you for allowing me a few moments to be with you. As Superintendent of District 112 and a resident of this community it is indeed my pleasure to share some information with you tonight as city leaders about our upcoming referendum and with your permission I'd like to approach the overhead and use that mic over there. Mayor Mancino: Anyone else who's here tonight, if you have any questions about the referendum, please ask when Bev is done so. Bev Stofferahn: I also have with me tonight Mr. Mike Miles who's a parent in our district who would like to just say a comments when I'm finished. District 112 we believe is growing to greatness. Our goal is to be the very best school district that we can be. We have great students. We have supportive communities that we serve and we have very high expectations for achievement of ourselves as well as of our students. I'm happy to tell you that our very number one goal is to increase student achievement and we're working on that and meeting success in doing that. Success indicators this past year as a trend, over the last number of years, that our test scores are improving and that we have very high parent satisfaction ratings as determined in an independent survey. Our challenge however is to continue to focus on the increasing student achievement and quality programs, at the same time we are facing very rapid enrollment growth. The same kinds of issues that you've been addressing tonight certainly face us in the school district. We are growing very rapidly. We are growing by approximately one classroom full of students per month. Now granted they don't come in neat little packages. Whereas in April you don't get a group of 5th graders and in March you get 30 new 4th graders. They come all over the place. But overall that's the trends that we have been facing and dealing with. We are the third fastest growing school district in the metropolitan area, and one of the very leaders in this state. We are only out paced, very slightly, by Lakeville and by Farmington. Another way to show that to you is to have you take a look at a graph that shows our student population growth since 1991 over here on the far left, at which time we had 4,005 student in our school district. Less than 10 years later this fall we have exceeded this one by another 300. We have now, we opened our doors in September 2nd to 6,836 students. In less than 10 years. It was interesting when we were looking back at some of this information and I just pulled out some old statistics. For anyone who could possibly remember the 1950's, we had 489 students K-12 in District 112. Now we have almost every class much larger than that. With that kind of growth our buildings are over capacity. We have more students than we have room for, particularly in the buildings that reside around here. Namely Bluff Creek, Chanhassen Elementary as well as both of our middle schools. All four of those buildings are right now beyond capacity. We have implemented some, what we would call band aid solutions. On a short term basis we are housing some of last year's kindergarten students, this year's first graders, mainly from Bluff Creek as well as from Chan Elementary at the ECC, the Early Childhood Center and giving them their first grade quality education in that building. Meanwhile the district offices are in the process of trying to find time to pack boxes. We are vacating our spaces and we will convert our offices to classroom space to house more of those students on a short term basis. We have already moved our food service department out of Chaska Middle School West and we are adding six additional classrooms at Chaska Middle School East. With all of that we are still well beyond our capacity. Our short term options are making the most of our available space but we're simply, to put it succinctly, out of space. Meanwhile our growth is projected to continue. Since our last building opened in 1996, that's the current high school, we have brought in more than 800 additional students into the district. The Met Council, I'm sure this is no surprise to any of you, projects that the population within District 112 is going to double by 2020. That's an awful lot of students yet to come. Mayor Mancino: Chanhassen isn't helping in any of this are we? I mean we're not adding. 14 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Bev Stofferahn: No. Not at all. We looked at a graph of enrollment. Here is a graph showing our projected student population growth based upon the demographic study that we had done by folks from the Humphrey Institute this past year, and you can see this is where we are right now. At 6,836, within 5 years from this fall we will be just shy of 8,000. And we are now already over capacity. So the answer is not to do nothing. The Board has taken action to allow the voters to go to the polls on November 2nd to vote their feelings on a bond referendum. The components of that referendum were made up of, from recommendations that came forward from a very large task force of parents, of citizens as well as staff. Who studied an awful lot of data and took very seriously their charge to come up with a recommendation to the Board of Education about what to do long term. They completed their work this spring and the board has accepted and has endorsed their recommendations so we're now ready to come to the citizens and discuss what's included in the bond issue. First of all we need a new elementary school. We would open a school in 2001, if voters approve this this fall. The building would house 625 students in grades 1 through 5 so it'd be very comparable in size to both Chanhassen Elementary and Bluff Creek Elementary. The cost of that is a little over 10 ½ million and another halfa million set aside for a site. We have not got land right now for future buildings. Also bringing to the voters a component which would give us a new middle school. The building would house 700 students in grades 6 through 9. It would be expanded in that it would have core space. Gyms, commons areas, lockers, cafeteria large enough, so on for 900, but we would build it to house 700 students right now. Opening in the fall of 2002. The price on that is $17,290,000 and site acquisition jumps quite a bit here because you need so much more land when you're dealing with secondary schools than with elementary. The question has come up about why not add on to our current middle schools. We looked long and hard at that and I think that was probably the first response of many of our task force members to do that, but the more we looked at it and the more we thought that that's not only impractical, it just isn't feasible at all. By the fall of 2003 we believe that we are going to have about 3,000 students in grades 6 through 9. For those of you that have had a couple of young adolescents in your house overnight you know that that's what sometimes can be quite a challenge, much less 3,000 of them on the same campus. That's larger than most Minnesota towns. It's not a good solution academically. It's certainly not a good solution socially. These young people need smaller schools. Research clearly shows, in which they can connect with learning, with adults in a meaningful way and certainly with each other. The other added problem that we would have by adding onto the current campus is that we would reduce our acreage by 7 acres under state, we would now fall under state minimum guide lines. The problem with adding, another problem with adding onto the current middle schools is that it's not just classrooms we need to add on. We're so desperately short, particularly at East, with core spaces. Gyms, cafeterias, music areas, kitchens, and so on and those are very, very expensive areas to build. So for all of these reasons the task force is recommending, and the board is too, that a new middle school be erected. We would involve the parents of the students to be housed in those buildings about decisions about the boundaries and the distribution because we would basically have four grade levels, 6, 7, 8 and 9 in three buildings. We haven't addressed specifically who would go where in terms of boundaries or what grades, but we will involve parents and citizens in that discussion when the referendum passes. Another component in the referendum is land for future sites. Beyond the two that we're proposing in this issue. The board would like to be able to buy tomorrow's school sites at today's prices, and have asked that we set aside $3 million for that. That is they believe just being good stewards of the district's resources. In addition there is a proposal for items that we would call repair and betterment. The district owns and operates more than 1 million square feet of space at this point. That is a lot of space to maintain and our current resources are insufficient to care for those existing sites. There is not a school district in this state I believe who could, in all good faith, stand in front of anyone and say they get enough funding from the state to maintain their facilities. We have been very inadequately funded, particularly in terms of capital funding each year and we are forced to make terrible choices between things like text books and 15 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 roofs and copiers and computers. And those are some pretty grueling meetings when you get into those discussions because the budget is so small. So the board is asking for $7 million to address the highest priority needs in each and every one of our existing sites. This will take us part way towards fulfilling that goal. And the last component is technology infrastructure. We have and we need to continue to build the support network for our students so that they can learn in the most efficient and effective ways possible. One of the keys to that is a fiber optic cable that would connect our schools to voice, video and data in supportive learning so that the transmission that they can receive and to give can be supportive of what they are learning in the classrooms. Right now for example in virtually a brand new high school we have to limit the number of students who can do research on the internet at any one time because the whole system will crash. This would allow us equity among the schools. It would allow us to get the channels in which we can send enough voice, video and data not to have the systems crash and the price tag for that is about $1 ½ million. As you well know, it's not enough to erect buildings. You have to also figure out how you're going to operate them and for that reason on the ballot also will be an operating levy referendum. We are capped by state law in terms of the maximum amount that we can ask for and this would help put us near that capacity. We're asking for permission to raise $112.43 per pupil unit, that's on current pupil units as they rise, that amount lessens and as the tax base changes and expands, that amount lessens but that's what it is right now, to help us operate the buildings in terms of the core staff. Things like media centers and staff, nurses, food service workers, principals and so on. Pay the utilities as well as the maintenance so that we don't have to allocate, reallocate all of that out of existing funds and take more away from our students. Certainly a prime consideration to all of us is what does this cost. The average homeowner in this district 112 owns $175,000 home. And on the bond issue it would cost, at current prices again, $18.50 a month or $222.00 a year. And on the levy portion for the operating would be $6.50 a month or $78.00 a year for a total of $25.00 a month, less than a dollar a day, or $300.00 a year. This is based again on the average home in this school district. For those homes that are not in the average category, but ranked higher or lower here's a breakdown of some of the other costs, and I know we all scan and see where does ours fall in there right now. One of the good news pieces is that this district's projected net tax capacity is on the rise. So as folks like you take action to allow this community to grow and your counterparts in our other communities that we serve do the same, and more residents come in and own property and more commercial and industrial is put in, this tax base expands and consequently the price tag for each and every one of us begins to diminish. And I just missed my last one in here. I was going to show you what's happened to the school taxes which I thought would be interesting to show. All of a sudden that transparency seems to have slipped away. Here we go. While the tax base rises, the school tax, history. Again on that same average home is greatly coming down. In 1996 school taxes were just slightly under $2,000 so of a taxpayer's bill, almost $2,000 of it was school taxes. In 1999 it is at $1,332. Now that is even different and updated from the graph that we sent out and put into your packets. That one that you have does not include the homestead tax. This one does. This came straight from the county auditor last week. So the good news scenario here is that this price continues to fall. Mayor Mancino: And Bev that's because the state has picked up a little bit more of the school? Bev Stofferahn: A little bit but most of this is because of the expansion of the property tax base. The state has done not much shifting of the funding at all. So we're asking our residents to become informed. To pay attention to the newsletters that they will see. To visit our web site at www.districtl2.org. To take a look at school flyers. See if you can get your hands on them. Just a few children, and certainly the newspaper coverage. In summary again we believe that we're growing to greatness and we need your help as residents of this community to continue to provide the quality education to the children that we serve. If you have any questions I can certainly try and address them. Otherwise I'd like to turn it over to Mark for, or I'm sorry, Mike Miles for a statement. 16 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions from council members? No, go ahead Mike. I may after Mike is done, just ask if there's anyone in the audience that has any questions. Mike Miles: Hi. My name is Mike Miles. I'm with the citizens campaign for District 112 referendum. I'm also a resident, I've been a resident of District 112 for 12 years and have two daughters in Bluff Creek Elementary School. It's a great school I'll tell you that. I would like to first of all thank you all for letting me speak this evening. Secondly, I would like to state the obvious and asking you for support for this referendum to build a new school, new elementary and middle school. The question follows, why should people support this measure? People of the community with children fully understand why. While the schools have made great strides in academic achievement in the past few years, these gains are now being seriously threatened by over crowding. Our school district is growing so fast... 4 to 5 students per classroom, increasing the number of students in the middle school to 3,000 pupils. The effect of jamming 3,000 adolescent and pre-adolescent children into one school will be hazardous not only academically but also emotionally. These times in our children's lives are possibly the most vulnerable ones, when it is a time when they are most influenced by their peers. While not wanting to raise the specter of places like Columbine, I sincerely believe that to increase stress upon our children during this time through over crowding may result in consequences not as dramatic but just as tragic. For people who do not have children in school, people have asked me why should I care? I would like to point out that the one primary reason people move to a community is for the quality of the school district. It has been shown that in districts where the school referendums fail, housing values fall. Many people complain these days things are getting worse and worse. You can make a difference to stop this process. You've heard the slogan, think globally. Act locally. This is a perfect chance to do that. The communities and nations that will succeed tomorrow are those who can produce a well educated work force. The best and most lasting legacy you can leave is a well educated community. Just as the school board supported your imitative for parks in Chanhassen, it's now your chance to support the board, oh sorry. Just as the school board supported your imitative for parks in Chanhassen, as the board would support whatever was best for the children, the parents of the referendum now ask for the same courtesy. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Thank you Mike. Anyone here tonight want to come up and ask a question about the referendum? Any questions that you have on it. What it means to you or. Scott Botcher: Bev, I assume you're having many public meetings elsewhere that will be advertised that constituents could attend. Bev Stofferahn: Yes, we are meeting with every school's parent group this fall as they come in. If that is applicable we would invite folks to join in to those conversations. We will also, we'll talk to anybody who will listen to us so if there's a group around who would like a presentation, all they need to do is call our offices and we'll also hold some information nights open to the general public so we're trying to get the word out, yes. Mayor Mancino: And voting is Tuesday, November 2nd? Bev Stofferahn: That's correct. Mayor Mancino: And where do the Chanhassen voters go? The District 112, where do they go to vote? Bev Stofferahn: Bluff Creek. Over at the Rec Center. 17 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Okay, Bluff Creek Elementary School at the Rec Center. In the Rec Center. Good, wonderful. Thank you. We just have a question. Audience: I was wondering about tax increment financing. What happens to the school? Do you get money from that? These apartments, there's going to be 222 apartments go in and they get tax increment financing... Bev Stofferahn: Generally on tax increment financing the schools do not get the benefit of that until such time as the TIF agreement has expired and the tax, the businesses begin to take on the tax burden. Audience: ... apartments, that's going to mean some more children coming in. Bev Stofferahn: Yes it is. Apartments tend to yield more children. Mayor Mancino: Okay, a couple things on tax increment financing, and Todd would you correct me if I'm wrong please. The state pays the school district all the money that is owed to the school district in a tax increment financing district, correct? All the money that is made up in a tax increment financing district that would normally go to the school is appropriated to the schools and the state? Todd Gerhardt: That's my understanding of it. Bev, wouldn't you agree that when a tax increment district is created the school district is not a total net loser. Bev Stofferahn: That's correct, right. Mayor Mancino: It's a wash. You do get your money from the state. Todd Gerhardt: About 10%. Bev Stofferahn: But the advantage, you know even though we don't recognize maybe 100% of the taxes that we might, if that business or whatever came in under some other accord than a TIF, the other side of that is that they may not get there without the TIF. So eventually. Kate Aanenson: To answer one of the questions. As far as apartments, the number of children. That is a misnomer. If you look in the city of Chanhassen, the highest percentage of children is in our traditional subdivisions. We'd be happy to share that data with you but apartments do not generate the number of children that single family homes do. Bev Stofferahn: It depends on the kind of apartment. High rent apartments, you're absolutely right. They do not. Kate Aanenson: ... in the city of Chanhassen so we'd be happy to share that data. Bev Stofferahn: ... more children and single family is still the best all around. Mayor Mancino: Yes, where we produce children is our single family subdivisions. Not so much of our apartments in this particular city. 18 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Bev Stofferahn: Given the kind of apartments, that's very true. Councilman Engel: What is our current pupil cost at now for 99-2000? In 112. Mayor Mancino: Total? As far as the what the state allots for pupil plus referendums that have been? Councilman Engel: What are we spending a student in district 112 in 99-2000? Bev Stofferahn: If we include everything including debt service and everything else, it's slightly over $6,000 a year. Mayor Mancino: Per student. Councilman Engel: Because I remember last time we came for a referendum it was something like $6,700 and I just want to make sure, is that going up or down? Are we able to drive that down through growth? Bev Stofferahn: Some of it gets driven down through growth. Some of it gets offset in other ways. We've been flat funded by the State of Minnesota in our general fund for the last 8 years so that number hasn't risen as much as it should have and could have. There's so many factors that enter into that. It's too simplistic to say one thing causes it to go up or down. Councilman Engel: We have very heavy capital financing to build these new schools as a component of that, I'm aware of that. I'm just wondering if it's making any progress from the last time. We had a referendum in 90, well two referendums ago. I can't remember what the dollars were last time. I just want to know if it's going up or down. Bev Stofferahn: Yeah I think, you know without going back and pulling those numbers out and looking at them, I'd say it's relatively the same as it was a couple of years, the last time of a bond issue. Mayor Mancino: Do we have another question, do you want to come on up. Okay. Audience: ... Bev Stofferahn: The high school currently houses about 1,347 students. It is built for capacity right now of 1,500. It has a footprint for 2,000. In other words core spaces there in terms of commons areas, gymnasiums and so on to house 2,000. It does have a capacity to add another house or another wing on the high school. This proposal would not do that. As close as we can come in our projections right now is that by the fall of 2003-2004, the high school will be over capacity by approximately 145 students. That is a number that we can live with for short term if we need to. It's more important and more critical right now to alleviate the crunch in the elementary and the middle schools, but it's a good sign, or a good indication that this growth is not stopping. That we project it to continue and that the board certainly will be back in the future for more schools. Your welcome. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilwoman Jansen: Mayor Mancino, I'm curious on the last referendum. Do city councils take positions on referendums as far as support or is it an individual position? 19 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: We've usually, this council has done, individuals can take positions. Certainly even for our park and rec referendum the city council doesn't take a position. It's usually a grass roots task force position to go out there and garner support. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, very good. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Any other? Okay, going forward. Thank you very much. Yes. Scott Botcher: No, I was just going to clarify so I understand. Mr. Miles was it, are you making a request that we consider a formal action of support? I don't want to blow you off but if we do, then we need to deal, put it on the agenda for the next time I think. Mike Miles: I would be very happy... Scott Botcher: You both sort of touched on it and you know. I don't know what their policy is. Mike Miles: Other councils do that. Mayor Mancino: Sure. What we have done before is the last referendum we received our resolution from the school district and we did a little bit of revising and passed a resolution. Okay, so you're certainly welcome to give one to Scott and we'll put it on the agenda. Thank you. And then other council members spoke more individually about the resolution, etc. I think a lot of that had to do with having two school districts in Chanhassen, etc so thank you. Thanks Scott for clarifying that. REQUEST FOR A 3.2 MALT LIQUOR LICENSE FOR RSS GOLF~ 825 FLYING CLOUD DRIYE~ JEFF HELSTROM. Mayor Mancino: And actually Kate, do you want to do all this in one or do you want to take it? I think we should take it A and B. Kate Aanenson: I'd be happy to cover A but it's not my item. I can try to cover it. I don't know if Todd or Roger would like to cover it but. Mayor Mancino: Who would like to cover it? Councilman Engel: Roger, do you want to take a shot at it? Mayor Mancino: Would anyone in the audience like to cover it? Roger Knutson: Just to refresh your memories. Was it about a month ago you amended an interim use permit to allow as a land use sale of 3.2 malt liquor at this location. That's the land use piece of it. It's been taken care of. There's another piece and that piece is amending your liquor license to allow the sale of liquor in this type of establishment. Malt liquor. Right now your ordinance does not allow that. So to move forward to allow them to have the same of 3.2 malt liquor, you'd have to amend your liquor ordinance and that's what's in front of you. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you very much. 2O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: We currently have the same situation at Bluff Creek Golf Course. Is that through some type of exception to the ordinance or what? Roger Knutson: I don't know the history of that. Councilman Senn: I assume it must be. Roger Knutson: It's been going on for longer than anyone's memory on city staff, and whether they were somehow grandfathered in or whether it was missed or what happened, I can't answer that question. Councilman Senn: But we grant that every year. Roger Knutson: Yes you do. Councilman Senn: Okay, so it is an exception that already exists for same type of facility then? Roger Knutson: It's been done. Councilman Senn: Okay. Mayor Mancino: And because it's been granted every year, nobody really knows why at this point. Councilman Engel: Other than they're not opposed to it. Mayor Mancino: Exactly. Thank you Roger. Any other questions for Roger? Councilwoman Jansen: Well and I guess along that line of questioning, it's not as though it's been called out and discussed that we are definitely going to be approving a liquor license for Bluff Creek Golf Course. It seemed to be news as that was brought up with this, correct? It's just been, has it just been a joint or a group approval of just all liquor licenses or has it even been discussed? Roger Knutson: I don't recall any discussion. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Mayor Mancino: All the liquor licenses come at the same time as a group and we look them all over and. Councilman Senn: No one ever pulled it out. Mayor Mancino: No one ever pulled it out. Roger Knutson: When the current ordinance was adopted, whenever that was. Mayor Mancino: We just assumed they met ordinance. Roger Knutson: I can't answer that, I don't know. 21 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: It wasn't grandfathered in. It was basically Don Ashworth was the one who I believe spoke to it when the ordinance was originally changed and that was left as an exception to the ordinance. And it was just clearly left as an exception at the time because it was a seasonally you know operated business and that sort of thing. Mayor Mancino: So you're that old that you remember back then? Okay. Okay... In just a second, is the applicant here and would you like to address the council on this and then we'll open it for a public hearing. It is a public hearing. Do you have anything to say Jeff? Or if you don't, that's fine. Then I'd like to open this for a public hearing. Anyone wishing to address the council on this request. It is a public hearing. Okay, seeing none we'll close the public hearing and come back to discussion on council's part. Councilman Labatt, any? Councilman Labatt: I'm not opposed to a liquor license. I just wonder.., underlying issue with Bluff Creek and.., correct both problems by changing the ordinance... Councilman Engel: I'm fine with that as well. Let's just go ahead and amend it and include golf driving ranges and courses as legal uses. Or legally permitted. Mayor Mancino: Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: Well I guess two points is that as Roger was discussing and we touched upon a little bit earlier is that if we're in the midst of revising the ordinance totally, then to just slip this revision in the interim, it seems like it should be part of the full revision to the ordinance versus it's own amendment. I however would not support allowing the 3.2 liquor in this particular establishment because I think it sends the wrong message. It's a short term use facility that caters more to individuals. You compare that to a Bluff Creek golf course where you're talking about several hours of activity. What does it take to do a round of golf, 4 hours? Typically groups of four. So you have more time being spent on the activity. It's more of a social activity versus a quick go in, hit a few balls, grab a beer and boom, you're on the road. So I have a little, I have a real problem with this conceptually and I do not compare it to a Bluff Creek golf course. I would certainly like to see us address our ordinance to bring that establishment into conformity, and I think that's pretty standard with most golf courses. But we don't have a facility here with RSS that is, well it's a short period activity. It's not a social activity. The food is pre-packaged so we're not having food consumed at the same time we're providing for the alcoholic beverage. It just seems like it sends the wrong message. They're boom, in to hit a few balls, grab a beer and they're out on the road. Well, maybe they need to be meeting at an establishment where more time is going to be spent if it's going to be more that social issue. So I would like to see us table this. Address the full ordinance and I would only be in support of approving it for a full golf course establishment. Not just the driving range. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: No questions. Mayor Mancino: Okay. I'll just give my comments and that is that I would like to wait and I'd like to do it in the next month so that Jeff has a time frame that we're looking at and do it, we're about I think 80 to 85% done with the revision of our liquor ordinance and we've been worked on it and I don't know, March and April. We've seen it through two revisions and I'd just like to finalize it and get it done in the next month and include golf driving ranges. I have some concerns, not in this particular site but I know in other, another golf driving range that the, a lot of times during the summer it's kids that are there that operate it so 22 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 I would be very uncomfortable with, well they couldn't legally have a minor selling the 3.2 but I'd like to bring that up in the discussion as we talk about the whole ordinance. So I don't philosophically have a problem against the 3.2 in golf driving ranges but I'd like to talk a little bit about that within the context of the whole ordinance. So, and again I would like, if we do go that route, make sure that we put a time commitment on it that we will honor and get the ordinance finalized. Those are my comments. Is there a motion? Scott Botcher: Will you guys have Dram Shop? Will you have Dram Shop insurance as part of the sale of this alcohol? JeffHelstrom: I'm not sure. We'll have all the insurances that we need... Scott Botcher: That's just something else as we get there. We may want to make sure that we copy that. Councilman Senn: I would move approval of this amendment to the ordinance to allow 3.2 malt liquor licenses at golf courses and golf driving ranges, except for with permanent plumbing facilities. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second? Councilman Engel: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the first reading of an amendment to City Code Section 10-55(b) to allow golf courses golf driving ranges with permanent plumbing facilities as an eligible license location. All voted in favor, except Mayor Mancino and Councilwoman Jansen, who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. Mayor Mancino: Does it need 4/5 or just ~? Roger Knutson: Just simple majority. Scott Botcher: So that was the motion to change the ordinance though, right? Do have to vote to approve the license? Roger Knutson: If you're going to approve it. Councilman Senn: Okay, I'll make a move to approve the license for RSS Golf. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second? Councilman Engel: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the on-sale intoxicating 3.2 malt liquor license contingent upon receipt of the $280 license fee and the liquor liability insurance certificate. The licensed premises would include the clubhouse and outdoor brick patio, driving range, par 3 course, and putting course. No beer would be allowed to be consumed in the parking lot area. All voted in favor, except Mayor Mancino and Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. 23 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 REQUEST TO AMEND CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT 98-8 TO ADD A SECOND TIER TO THE GOLF DRIVING RANGE LOCATED AT THE INTERSECTION OF HIGHWAY 212 AND HIGHWAY 101,825 FLYING CLOUD DRIVE, RSS GOLF. Kate Aanenson: Back in August of this year you did approve two requests of the applicant. The third request was tabled. You approved a variance and a code amendment to allow for the lighting and you also allowed for the amendment for the liquor which you just addressed tonight. The third request which Mr. Helstrom waited on based on some design concerns was the additional bunkers .... driving range. They are painted, they are metal, painted brown. What the applicant would like to do is put a second story on the bunkers as shown in the site plan. There was code issues. This is where.., a platform. Put in the staff report, the building official and the fire marshal have some concerns. One safety issue, when you're driving off to walk towards the end and how would we address that. This is a unique type of building construction which we haven't seen in the past. The applicant and his architect have worked to try to resolve some code issues and again that was part of the reason why this was tabled. The staff's concern still is that this is in the flood plain portion of the building. We believe intensification of that in the flood plain is not good planning and the Planning Commission concurred with that and voted 4 to 1 to recommend denial of the site plan. The applicant has made some improvements to the site plan design itself and that was one of the other issues that the Planning Commission had. Specifically on the stairwell, putting cedar on that and providing some additional landscaping. And it's a taller building. While it is set to the east of the site and there are trees landscaping it, it sits down lower. It's still again intensification of the site. It will be taller than the house, which is 24 feet, and the height of this will be approximately 28 feet as far as a visual barrier. The staff is recommending denial of the request. Should you decide to approve it, staff has provided conditions of approval and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff at this time? Councilwoman Jansen: I have two if I could. In the July 13th report to the Planning Commission, you had noted that there were three conditions of the original approval that still remained outstanding to be met. Where do we stand now as of today having brought those up back in July, as far as addressing those. Kate Aanenson: The building code issues have been addressed. Mr. Helstrom did provide us with the soils report and that has been reviewed and the third component he is working on and that was the non- conformity of the sign. He has applied and that is going to the Planning Commission on Wednesday so he's in the process of resolving those. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, great. And then my second question as we discussed this being an interim use, and potentially then moving on to a more permanent site. Where or are there locations within Chanhassen that would allow for this establishment, without having to change the zoning or provide for variances. Kate Aanenson: In the A2 district a golf course, driving range is a permitted, a golf course is a permitted use in the A2. And this is an interim use so anyplace it's A2, which is a lot of the southern area of the city. Pretty much southern area of the city, right. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, so there are alternatives to pursuing expanding this location where it's not a permanent use? Okay. That's what I was curious about, thank you. 24 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: Isn't this location A2 also? Kate Aanenson: Yes, it is. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions for staff? Applicant, would you like to address the council on this? JeffHelstrom: As you can see from the plan what I've done since the Planning Commission meeting is I've tried to make it look more rustic and more like the area that... I think by adding the cedar shake shingles to the stairway and eventually replacing the shingles on the house with cedar and then doing a cedar lap siding on those stairways, I think it's going to look better than it does now. Plus it gives us the room to be able to use the facility and have more kids in there and more people being able to use the facility without waiting. We had a big problem in the winter with people having to wait in the house to hit balls so I just think with what I've done to the plans by adding a second tier, it looks a lot better than it even does now. And I've also added some trees along this left side. The trees that are there now are a lot bigger than I really had to put in. I actually had those spaded in there. Those are 20-25 foot tall trees and eventually those trees will cover that whole side so I still aesthetically I've done everything I can to really make it look nice and it will look better than it does now if the second tier is approved. Mayor Mancino: Jeff, the perspective that's drawn here, the rendering, can't be right can it in that what you're adding is going to be taller than the house and it really doesn't show it be taller. It shows this. JeffHelstrom: Yeah, we're leaving 3 or 4 feet taller than the top now. But this really isn't drawn to scale SO. Mayor Mancino: It looks better this way. I understand why people don't draw things to scale. It just looks great, but it's not what it's going to look like. That's what we keep adding to ask architects... Yeah, you have to be a mile away to see it like this but anyway. Okay. Jeff Helstrom: There's been a question or two about the visual block from adding the second tier and if you've been down to the site and looked at it, you really can't, with the bunkers there or not, you really can't see anything over there anyway because the bunkers are elevated 6 feet and then they're 12 feet higher so you can't see over them anyway. So adding another tier really doesn't affect the, doesn't make it more of a block I should say. And in terms of intensification of the site, I mean I can assure the council that I'm going to be fully insured so I mean I do have flood insurance so if it were to happen, I'd replace two tiers just like I would one. But there is really none of this area that's in the flood plain anymore because I elevated it so much to install the net system. I brought the elevation of this up about 5 or 6 feet so, and most of it was out of the flood plain before. I know Kate's got a map of that. The comer over here was the only piece that was in the 100 year flood plain and that's been elevated out of the flood plain. And it is a concrete foundation so you know, I'm not real concerned about that part of it. Councilman Engel: Have you thought about using wood instead of siding around all the outside? JeffHelstrom: Well, I already have the metal siding on the lower part and that was a pretty significant expense to put that on and that was the original approval was, it didn't specify material. It was the color. So I really, I don't have the money to. Councilman Engel: Reside the whole thing? 25 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 JeffHelstrom: To redo the whole thing. That's why I did everything I could at this point to work with what I have and to make it look better. And I just really feel that it's going to look a lot better with the second tier than it does with one tier. And it really makes sense. Mayor Mancino: Thanks Jeff. Councilman Labatt: Jeff, what's on the west side of the building here? ... put your mowers down there. Jeff Helstrom: Yeah. Councilman Labatt: Is there anything to prevent you from adding more pines there to screen that side of the building? JeffHelstrom: There is a big pine there now. It's just not shown because it would have blocked the view of what that end looked like. Councilman Labatt: Point to where it is right now. JeffHelstrom: Right there. So I have no objection to. Councilman Labatt: Add a couple more pines. Jeff Helstrom: Some of the trees may be out in this area toward the parking lot to get a little bit more of a visual block from 212. That's not a problem. I speced in putting some additional trees in here so. Councilman Engel: Are you saying there's no road or access route or utility buildings in the way of the west side to break up that west wall? You could put more pines in there like you've got on the east side? JeffHelstrom: I can put them back here a little bit. I can't put them right up next to the building. Because that's already a paver patio there and then this will come out far enough that there just wouldn't be any room to put on here but I could put it a little farther back and I've got some berming back in here so it would really have the same effect from 212. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions for Jeff? Councilman Labatt: What's the roof of the current dugout right now? Jeff Helstrom: It's just a rock.., barrier than rock on top. Mayor Mancino: Flat roof. JeffHelstrom: Yeah, flat roof. Councilman Labatt: And that will be using the same, if the second level is approved it would be rock and tar material. Jeff Helstrom: On the top tier, correct. Other than the roof of the.., cedar shake and that will be slanted. 26 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Labatt: And then the lights that we approved a while ago, would you in essence move them to the second level? Jeff Helstrom: Yeah. Scott Botcher: Do we have any lighting diagrams showing with lights on the second level? Kate Aanenson: No I do not. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Councilman Senn: I'm assuming right now we have an approved lighting plan, right? Based on the other lighting. Right, so I mean wouldn't a new lighting plan have to be filed or whatever? Scott Botcher: It should be. Councilwoman Jansen: Good question. Jeff Helstrom: Same wattage of lights. They're just hooked up to the top. Mayor Mancino: Well that can in a condition of approval. That there needs to be a lighting plan to accompany this. Okay, any other questions? Okay, thanks Jeff. Jeff Helstrom: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Kate a couple of questions, and then we'll open it for a public hearing. As far as the flood plain. None of the building at this point is in the flood plain at all? Kate Aanenson: I disagree with Mr. Helstrom. If you recall, this was a very complex issue. It did require a wetland alteration permit. It did require a conditional use for altering the flood plain. I'm not sure that we said it was going to be 6 to 5 feet higher. But a majority of it is in the flood plain. He has shifted it somewhat. If he has filled it that high, I'd be curious to have him reshoot it because that was an issue. We have the old FEMA maps going back to 19, late 70's so they are old .... flood plain. Now he did raise those. Mayor Mancino: And you're just saying that you did, according to what we passed and okayed, there was going to be some raising but maybe not to the level that it has been raised? Kate Aanenson: Correct. And if it's outside the flood plain I guess that'd be easy enough for him to verify. I think he'd want that for his own edification and insurance. Councilman Senn: This may have all changed since I had it but it used to be the only time you could get flood plain insurance, or flood insurance is when you are in the flood plain. You cannot get flood insurance when you are outside of the flood plain. That used to be the rule because it was federal flood plain insurance and the only way you were eligible for that was to be in the flood plain. Kate Aanenson: Based on his survey, his engineer, a majority of the property is in the flood plain. 27 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: So it is in the flood plain. Has to be if he has flood plain insurance. Roger Knutson: He just admitted part of it's in the flood plain so that would get him. Councilman Senn: That would get the insurance. Roger Knutson: The insurance kicks in. Mayor Mancino: No, but Jeff also said that the building is not in the flood plain. He said it is no longer in the flood plain. Jeff, can you come up and clarify that. Councilman Senn: ... property were in the flood plain, then he's eligible for flood plain insurance under the old, or the rules I have to live by. Mayor Mancino: Jeff. JeffHelstrom: Maybe I was misunderstood. The elevation of the dugout where we hit from is higher than the flood plain. The actual foundation part of it, the block would still be in the flood plain. The elevation, because, when I say raised, it's on a foundation and if you go out there and see the block foundation is higher so if we got a flood, a 100 year flood or 200 year flood, you'd probably see water a couple feel below... Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Engel: Does that mean you'd still be open during a flood? Mayor Mancino: We all know where to come when it floods .... okay, my other question for Kate is that, is there any other place that we have this intensity of building and have metal siding? I know that the only other. Kate Aanenson: Paws, Claws and Hooves. Mayor Mancino: And that was. Kate Aanenson: And the reason we made that decision was based on the intensity with the horses and. Mayor Mancino: Cleaning out of stalls I remember that there was. Kate Aanenson: Maintenance that we felt that that was a compromise. Mayor Mancino: I know it was just on that one part. Kate Aanenson: Just on the horse barn itself. The other building is wood. The dog kennels. Mayor Mancino: Okay. And this is 270 feet long by 28 feet tall. Okay. Thank you. Public hearing. Anyone wishing to address the council on this. 28 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Engel: ...which I'm curious about. Are you extending the width in any way? Okay. It's already that wide? Alright. Mayor Mancino: Anyone wishing to address, this is a public hearing. Open to a public hearing. Seeing none, we'll bring it back to Council. Okay, comments from council members. Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: No other questions. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: Oh you know I have comments on this project or I'd surprise everybody. And I just two from addressing what was just said here by the applicant as far as suggesting that it doesn't make it a visual block, and that was one of the concerns that was raised by the Planning Commission. I could agree with that if what you're trying to see is the field where people are driving their balls to. So if you're trying to see the ground then yes, I can see where maybe this isn't a visual block but this is considered a scenic area. So I think what the Planning Commission was suggesting as far as it being this massive visual block and I think it was referred to as the same dimensions as a football field. Is that how long a football field is? Mayor Mancino: 300 feet. Councilwoman Jansen: You are presenting a very large barrier in a scenic area. So I guess I take a little exception to saying that it's not a visual block and I would support the Planning Commission's view of that and we keep coming back to building in a flood plain. Supposedly being acceptable if the person who builds in the flood plain has flood insurance. Well correct me if I'm wrong, whoever is familiar with flood insurance. Roger, I don't know if you can enlighten me here, but doesn't flood insurance provide for reconstruction of the establishment that has now washed down the river? And then isn't it federal, is it federal or is it state funds? Federal funds, which is taxpayer money, that then comes in to pick that establishment up out of the flood plain that's now washed down. Is my understanding correct? Roger Knutson: Yes. Councilwoman Jansen: So though we would like to say this is okay, because the applicant has flood insurance, therefore go ahead, when Kate's suggesting that we practice good judgment in not building in a flood plain, she's suggesting, as I read your comments, that as a city council and as a city planner we need to look more long term. Not beyond what is the applicant going to do but what is the impact of that building washing down the Minnesota River valley and then needing to take taxpayer dollars so we are ultimately affected by this. We shouldn't be reaching some sort of comfort level based on whether or not Jeff is insured, which is a really good idea. But it doesn't alleviate the situation that Kate's trying to address. Those two things said from his point, the overall encompassing issues with this application is trying to achieve, as I understand what staff is suggesting, is achieving a reasonable use of the property. Staff has stated that they're comfortable that we have provided for a reasonable use of the property. If we do start making land use decisions based on necessitating the business and trying to provide for their expansion on this property, we're intermixing private concerns and city government concerns. If the business is going to expand, they know what the parameters were, we're changing our land use for a business decision if we do it based upon the reasons we've been given. We're addressing whether or not we're going to follow the land use plans and goals of our comp plan and the Bluff Creek watershed natural resource plan, which was just adopted into the comp plan. So brand new guidelines and goals and we 29 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 would be going against those. And then we're also addressing whether or not we're meeting the goals and objectives of our partnerships with the DNR and the Fish and Wildlife, so this goes beyond just the aesthetics of what we're doing on this property, although I'm sure other members are going to address those issues so I'm not going to address them myself. My key points. One, is that the request violates the guidelines that are established for this area in the comp plan and the Bluff Creek Watershed Natural Resource Plan. We don't have compelling reasons to address the community need that would then justify our making those land use changes, or the conditional use permit changes which ironically echoed what is coming up later on our agenda and it seems to me we've got two items before us. We have another conditional use permit that's coming before us where on the similarity with this is that this request has specific restrictions in place that we're being asked to change. It would be similar to our agenda item for the Family of Christ rezoning that if an office were to come in and buy that church, knowing what the height and the use restrictions are, 6 months later then deciding to come in and ask for an expansion on the site. I don't think we would be granting that sort of a variance from a conditional use permit. I think we need to look at this more seriously than ah, it's a golf complex. Ah, it's in a swamp. It's a significant resource. To that point number two, anytime we do look at a variance request we take it very seriously when the neighbors come in and have issues with the impact that that variance is going to have on their properties. We listen, even if it's just one neighbor. In fact historically we've listened, if it's a neighbor that the variance isn't even affecting, but they're in that neighborhood. It affects their quality of life and we're ignoring two significant neighbors to this property, the DNR and the Fish and Wildlife have continually sent the city letters asking us to restrict the use on this property. And if we allow for the expansion of this building, we ignore the request of those two significant organizations. But staff is trying to work in partnership with to achieve the goals of our Bluff Creek watershed plan which ultimate could encompass grant requests. Why would organizations that are neighbors to a property where we're ignoring them simply asking us to use the restrictions that are in place, why would they ever enter into a financial arrangement with the City to help us support our goals? I just see it as counter productive. Three I already mentioned. The staff advising us to practice good judgment. That we've already built in this area and expansion isn't exercising good judgment. We are affected by the cost of cleaning up after the floods. That is taxpayer money. We are polluting the watersheds when we allow for that, and in fact encourage it. And point number four, with the continued success of the business we're only going to see further intensification requests. It's inevitable. They've only been open a short period of time. We're already hearing about how much they've already invested, even beyond what had been considered initially. We're going to hear that again. That now the City maybe is causing a hardship. And instead all we have to do is hold to the guidelines. Hold to what's being recommended to us by the professionals, being staff, DNR, Fish and Wildlife. We may not understand the reasons why but the professionals are telling us that there's good reason to not intensify. We're not here to make a business decision. I said it before, if we were here to make a business decision, it's a no brainer. You want these guys to succeed. This was a terrific endeavor but this property was selected as a test location knowing that there were restrictions on it being an interim use. We can then move to a permanent location. And I just, I hate to see the City Council break with city policies and guidelines in order to provide for the best interest of a business versus the entire community. That's all. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Kate, clarification. This is an interim use. Is also Paws, Claws, and Hooves an interim use? Kate Aanenson: I believe we amended that. It's in the BF district which is a different zoning district and that district had limited uses. Most of them being conditional. I believe we amended that district to make that a conditional use because we felt based on the activity there, that seemed like a reasonable use of the property. We amended the BF district to make that a conditional. 3O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: So that's really not an interim use. Kate Aanenson: No, it's more permanent in nature. We didn't have a timeframe on it but we did make it a conditional use in the district. Mayor Mancino: So the whole philosophy again behind this being an interim use is on the side of 212 and the wildlife refuge? Kate Aanenson: Yes. Mayor Mancino: Okay. I mean I know that was stated earlier, I just wanted to. Councilman Engel. Councilman Engel: I'll try and keep it to short. To address the flood issue and Councilwoman Jansen brings up a good point. If it there is a flood, the destructible material washes down into the flood plain. The massive majority of this structure is raised out of the 100 year flood plain. It's sitting on a concrete base. Now washing that concrete down that river with any flood we've had here. That's the first thing I look at when I look at what could be damaged from the flood. The second is from the macro view. If you've lived here long enough and driven by that place and looked at the prior uses of that property, I don't think you can honestly say it's not infinitely more attractive the way it stands now. It simply looks better. So he's done a good job with the property. I think he's the best steward the property's had. And none of the discussions we had last year, or whenever it was we approved this thing. These things run together. I know we used the vehicle of interim or temporary as a use permit. That wasn't the spirit of when he sunk the money into this project. We all realized there was really no viable use for that property other than things like this. And we just used that as a vehicle to go through it. No one was saying well we'll put it here and you just pull everything up and move the nets and move the bunkers and move the buildings to another use. That wasn't what we were talking about. When the discussions were taking place, that was just the method we were going to use to allow them to give a run at this thing and see if it would go. It wasn't. Mayor Mancino: I'm not sure all of us agree with that but I'll. Councilman Engel: I would say it's...pick up stakes and move shop to another piece of ground. Maybe I interpret things wrong. I personally think it'd be a foolish move for anybody to build it with that intention but. And if you put more trees on the west side, I don't have any problem with it. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Labatt. Councilman Labatt: I don't view it as a major intensification of the project. I mean if you're saying the footprint of the building was different...adding 14 feet upward. It is a very attractive... I don't have a problem.., moving the lights to the second level. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Well I'll give my two cents worth in here. It was always passed as an interim use. We were up front about that. We had conditions of approval as an interim use. There's no and's, if's or but's about that. That's the way we went ahead and we passed it. I did not in the base of my thinking at the time when we had discussions about it, said that it would be a permanent use. We had, I think it was the MUSA line, when the MUSA line gets down there as a date for that. And again we were very, very upfront about it. And part of an interim use is that you don't want to see, go through years and years of 31 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 adding to it and intensifying the use. I mean that's why you have an interim use and that's what we talked about at the time. Whether there were other agendas or other motives going on, I'm not sure but I also know that if it is, the council is thinking about this not being an interim use but a permanent use, that's a whole other discussion. And it also is a whole other discussion about materials. There is no other place in our city where we allow this sort of materials to be used to you know, intensify or to add on to something. We just don't allow metal siding anywhere. And if you go to a wildlife areas, especially you go hiking, cross country skiing, lodges and everything are done so that they kind of fit in and have a natural siding to them. They're not metal siding. In fact I don't think we've allowed, except for Paws and Claws, allowed any metal in this city for years and years and years. So if the discussion needs to be looked at again that it is not an interim use but a permanent use, that's a whole other discussion we need to have as a council. It's a whole other discussion on what can be done there. What sort of materials can be used because it will, that greatly changes things. And we haven't had that discussion. For the basis of my decision and our decision last year at the council, we did not talk to those points. Of it being anything but an interim use. And there have been so many requests for changes on this, it concerns me that it came in knowing it was an interim use and then has progressively asking for more and more to make it a permanent use. And we did not accept that when we said yes a year ago. That was not the basis of our consideration. Again, if we want to bring it up for a basis of consideration, then we should do that and look at it the right way and decide if it's right or not, and then really take a look at it. But at this point, no. I'm not in any mood to go ahead and allow an interim use to expand. Expand materials that we would never allow any other place. To have a sign that's bigger than, I mean it just becomes a special little area and I think we need to look at it differently as a council. And if we need to look at it as a permanent use there, then let's do that. But let's send it back to the Planning Commission. Get their suggestions and come back to us. Councilman Engel: I have a question for Kate. What year is the MUSA line scheduled to be extended across the road south of 2127 Kate Aanenson: It's intended to go down to 212 in the year 2015. Councilman Engel: To 212. I believe that is a significant omission. It is not scheduled to ever have it brought in the MUSA line, is it? Kate Aanenson: Right. It was the staff's opinion though that you have a flood plain. A reasonable use of the flood plain was a driving range, never to have bunkers. That was the staff's original position not to have a permanent structure in the flood plain. It's not good planning. That was our original position. Councilman Engel: But that property by definition is not scheduled to ever be brought into the MUSA line. Kate Aanenson: Right, it's agricultural, as it was before and that's the majority of this area is agricultural. It's been farmed and that's what a majority of it is. It's been farmed. Councilman Engel: That's what I remember from before. Kate Aanenson: Or it's in a wildlife sanctuary. Majority of it's in the sanctuary. Councilman Senn: But there was a house... 32 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Kate Aanenson: It was our goal to try to acquire it. There's some farms on some homesteads as you go further to the east. But it's a goal to try, if you look at the comprehensive plan of the RAGU National Wildlife is to acquire that property. Councilman Senn: Including the motel down there? The mini storage down? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Those are all non-conforming uses that will eventually go away, correct. Mayor Mancino: So that's a whole other discussion if we're talking about a permanent. I mean that's what we've done interim. Councilman Senn: But I mean the other thing I was trying to get back to is I mean that's always been treated as a special area going way back to the approval of the mini storage down there... Paws and Claws. Everything else down along 212 has. Kate Aanenson: That's on the other side of 212. Everything in the flood plain, nothing new has been built in the flood plain prior to probably the 70's. This is the only new building that's been put in place, except for a home at 1 unit per 10 acres which is reasonable use of the property. Mayor Mancino: Before there was just fields. Farmstead there. There was no other building or etc, yeah. Councilwoman Jansen: Well and Mayor, speaking to where Kate was going and the mention that as far as it was stated that there were no other considerations given for this property, and Kate if you could speak to your having tried to approach this as part of a parks and open space and have it be purchased. Kate Aanenson: Right, that was one of the properties that was looked at too as part of the parks and open space referendum that was on. And then also working with DNR as part of the creek. The natural, the seminary creek that runs through the property that DNR was trying to acquire and still is working to acquire. Councilwoman Jansen: And then one other thing was mentioned that raises a question for me is the concrete base and the suggestion that it won't wash down the river. What's the difference between the concrete base on these bunkers and home foundations that are affected when they're in flood plains, is it different? Is it deeper? Is it. Scott Botcher: If you drive up and down the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. Concrete floats really well in a flood. Concrete's easy to float...just like a water ski. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, so it's wrong to assume... Isn't that incorrect to assume that because it's on a concrete base it ~sn t going anywhere. Am I wrong? Mayor Mancino: I don't know the technical answer to that. Councilman Senn: One clarification. If you do have federal flood plain insurance, you pay very dearly for it and it's... Mayor Mancino: I would think so. 33 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: ... believe me, I had to pay it and it's very expensive and the people that are covered by taxpayer dollars are those who don't... Councilman Engel: Do not obtain it. Scott Botcher: This has been my experience. My experience is that FEMA has some say as to whether or not you increase elevation within a flood plain, the less you mitigate, increased levels of water elsewhere within that flood plain. Isn't that correct? Kate Aanenson: Yes. It did require on the original application, the conditional use for alterations in the flood plain. Scott Botcher: We're sort of making a mockery of interim use permit with this thing and it's, you know I don't disagree with what Mark said. Is it a much better use than that thing ever probably had on it? Yeah, absent of just being trees, I would agree with that. It's ultimate highest and best use is probably part of the wildlife sanctuary. But it's not an interim use by any standards or definition that our book says. I just don't think that there's any inclination on anybody's part to make this anything less than a permanent structure down there. And if that's the extent... Mayor Mancino: Then let's address it from a permanent use and the materials and everything else and what we expect from it. We always just kind of did it half heartedly and kind of said, ah we'll allow this and that and the applicant is coming back and wanting to intensify, intensify so let's deal with it on the level that they're asking to play at and that's the permanent use. So with that, I'll make a motion and I will move that the City Council deny the request for a site plan amendment to create a second story driving range at RSS Golf. And I would also suggest that we do, if the applicant would like us to consider it as a permanent use, to come back and do that and let's go through the philosophical conversations about making it a permanent use down there and what the expectations would be if we are so inclined to. But anyway, it would be denial of the addition. Is there a second to the motion? Councilwoman Jansen: I would second that and also to add to what you just said as far as reviewing it as a permanent. What you said earlier was getting it back to the Planning Commission because if we are going to do this, it is a different building materials conversation if this is permanent. Mayor Mancino: To make it a level playing field for all of our businesses here in Chanhassen. Mayor Mancino moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to deny the request to amend the Conditional Use Permit #98-8 to add a second tier to the golf driving range for RSS Golf. Mayor Mancino and Councilwoman Jansen voted in favor; Councilman Senn, Councilman Engel, and Councilman Labatt voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 2 to 3. Mayor Mancino: Okay the motion doesn't carry. Is there another motion? Councilman Engel: I make a motion, I would approve the request for site plan amendment to create a second story driving range, RS S Golf per staff's conditions contained in the report with an additional one, number 9. At least three evergreen trees of at least 25 feet in height to screen the northwest side of the building from 212. 34 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: Would you add the resubmitted of the lighting analysis to make sure it conforms with code? Councilman Engel: That as well. Number 10. Scott Botcher: Code does say you will need Dram Shop by the way. Councilwoman Jansen: Would you accept a friendly amendment for the applicant to work with staff on an alternative siding from the metal? Councilman Engel: Won't require him but I would encourage it. Mayor Mancino: Okay, got a second? Councilman Engel moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the amendment to the Conditional Use Permit #98-8 to add a second tier to the Golf Driving Range for RSS Golf subject to the following conditions: 1. The bunkers shall be designed and built consistent with the revised site plan dated September 8, 1999. 2. An elevator shall be provided for access to the second flood because the occupant load is over thirty. 3. The building with the addition of a second floor is now required to be protected with a fire sprinkler system throughout. 4. The on-site sewage treatment system must be evaluated by a licensed designer to determine if it is large enough to handle the additional volume. This must be determined prior to issuance of a building permit. 5. Some type of guardrail system will have to be provided for the second floor driving stalls. 6. The applicant and/or their representative shall meet with the Inspections Division to discuss plan review and permit procedures. 7. The building is required to be protected with a fire sprinkler system throughout. 8. Additional plans will be reviewed when submitted, i.e. parking lot, fire lanes, etc. 9. At least three evergreen trees of at least 25 feet in height be planted to screen the northwest side of the building from 212. 10. The applicant shall resubmit the lighting analysis to make sure it conforms with code. All voted in favor, except Mayor Mancino and Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. 35 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 RECONSIDER THE TRANSFER AND ASSIGNMENT OF THE CABLE TELEVISION FRANCHISE TO MEDIACOM~ LLC. Scott Botcher: I think it was about two weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago. I don't remember when, adopted a resolution approving a transfer and assignment of the cable television franchise to MediaCom from Triax. In doing so you made an amendment to the resolution. Triax to date has not been willing to execute the agreement pursuant to your amendment so Mr. Finch from Triax is here. Brian Grogan, counsel for the city in this transaction is also available to give a brief presentation and answer any questions you have. Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much. Brian Grogan: Mayor, members of the Council. Would you like me to address you from the podium or is this okay here? Mayor Mancino: Oh that's fine. Brian Grogan: Again my name's Brian Grogan. I'm an attorney at Moss and Barnett representing the City solely on this issue of cable television matters. Pursuant to staff's introduction, we had a few issues that Triax and/or the proposed transferee, MediaCom found to be unacceptable relating to the resolution that was adopted by the Council. Among those were concerns about specifying when the franchise actually mandates a system upgrade. You may recall we had a provision that said 18 months from the date the franchise was affected, they would have to complete a system upgrade in your city. That should have worked fine except the company didn't accept it within the 30 days that they were supposed to have about 8-9 months ago when we adopted this original franchise. So therefore there was a question mark as to when the upgrade would actually be completed here in Chanhassen and since that was one of the biggest issues that we had at the time we negotiated the franchise, we wanted to clarify in the resolution. Instead of putting in the resolution what Triax and MediaCom have requested is if they could write a second or a side letter clarifying that they agree with us that the effective date for completion of system construction will be January 7th of 2000. We have that letter, I believe it's enclosed with your packet from MediaCom indicating that they agree that that is the deadline for the system construction. I'm satisfied that that's adequate. That we have clarification of that franchise issue, but again it's an important date because if they fail to meet the construction upgrade, we then would of course want to proceed with any kind of enforcement actions that the council might deem appropriate. I didn't want there to be a question mark about when the actual date of completion was. So we've handled that through a side letter. I think the side letter's fairly straight forward and to the point. Again, Scott I believe it is enclosed in your packet. The second issue was the question of an 84 cent pass through that was attributable to public educational and governmental access. In the original franchise the council required 84 cents be dedicated to support local PEG programming. The question was when did that fee get implemented and when it was implemented, did subscribers receive the benefit of PEG support that was already built into the rate base? By our calculations we assumed that 54 cents of a customer's bill last year went to support public access programming. With this new franchise we increased that to 84 cents so there should have only been a 30 cent change in a subscriber's bill. The issue was complicated by the fact that the change for the PEG access went into affect at the same time they did a rate increase and as we talked about in your work session, subscribers had of course a great deal of confusion about a new line item fee, an increase in their bill and whether this was a straight, brand new fee that the city imposed or something other. What in fact occurred is that the fee increased by 30 cents, not by the full 84 cents. Staff has gone through this issue many times with Triax. We've exchanged letters and correspondence. The fact of the matter is, while they 36 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 combined it with a rate increase, we're satisfied that at this point they have properly allocated that the 84 cents onto the subscriber bill. There may have been a one month period, as best we can tell, when it was not properly calculated but that was likely offset if we did a thorough analysis of the rate regulation, by the fact that they didn't fully increase the basic and expanded fee to the maximum level they were allowed to. So what you have here is you have a maximum rate that they were able to regulate to. They didn't bring it up that far. They brought it, they kept it down to offset this PEG access fee on the other side. Bottom line is, we could go through and spend a lot of time and effort and give you a chart and verify that. I have been provided the forms by Triax. I'm comfortable at this time though stating to you that even though we probably were a month off because of the way they handled this, that in the end we're not going to find that subscribers have over paid as a result of this issue, and I believe that's the conclusion of staff as well. I know it's a convoluted explanation but it concerns the rate regulations of the FCC. That was issue number two that you brought up. Issue number three was concern about MediaCom's financing and their ability to actually close on this transaction and any impact that might have on subscriber rates. We did provide you at your last meeting with a report regarding the financial qualifications of MediaCom and I think the best way I can answer some of the questions that Scott has raised, because I was not here at the last meeting, but the concern was can these guys actually obtain the financing that they're indicating in the report? If they don't, the transaction will not close. The resolution that you're adopting conditions your approval on them successfully completing the transaction as they stipulated to you in their information that they submitted. So two things happen. Either they get the financing. They close on the transaction. Your approval is effective. They fail to get the financing. They don't close on the transaction. Triax remains your cable operator and the resolution is null and void. So as it relates particularly to that financing question, either it will happen or it won't depending upon whether they can get that bank syndicate to finance it. Whether that has an impact on subscriber rates is frankly largely irrelevant because of the rate regulation scheme the FCC has in place. They've taken away all of your authority virtually to regulate cable television rates. So this operator, or Triax or any other operator can raise rates virtually at will. There's nothing we can do to prevent that. We can hope though that the marketplace, including satellite providers and satellite dish providers and other competitors will keep them at a marketplace rate that's competitive. But there's nothing we can do in our resolution or in our franchise to dictate that otherwise. I believe those were the major issues that the council had raised at the last meeting, but I'd be happy to answer any questions if I can. Mayor Mancino: Thank you Brian. One of the questions I have on the upgrade, what is the status of the upgrade in Chanhassen right now? Brian Grogan: Mayor, I would refer you to a representative of Triax to give you that update. Mayor Mancino: Thank you Rick. If you could introduce yourself. Rick Finch: Thank you. My name's Rick Finch. I'm the General Manager for Triax Metropolitan Area Cable Systems. The status of the upgrade is right now we're proceeding. We've got a three phase approach that's going on. There are three main, what they call optical transmission nodes that the city of Chanhassen will be served by and it's happening in a phased approach so that the northern, approximately the northern tier of Chanhassen will occur first and the timing of that, if you'll allow me to grab my time chart here. Mayor Mancino: Sure, thank you. 37 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Rick Finch: The timing of the actual completion, and when I mean completion that is full implementation of the cut over of the system is scheduled for this section to be in mid to late November. The second, what they call OTN, which is the primarily the southern parts of Chanhassen is scheduled to be completed the later part of November, first part of December. And then the third, which is the smallest of the three areas, which is the western parts of Chanhassen are scheduled to be done by mid-December. Obviously there's going to be a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then. There's already been a lot of work done and we have secured all of the necessary equipment, contractors, and all the design and permits are being issued as we speak so we feel fairly confident that we'll be able to meet that deadline, provided we don't run into any unforeseen circumstances. But at this point we feel good about being done on time. Mayor Mancino: So you have all your subcontractors in place and they're out and they've started the northern tier? Rick Finch: Yes, they will be. Mayor Mancino: Actually physically have they started the northern tier? Rick Finch: Physical opening of the ground hasn't started yet, no. But all of the necessary permitting has been, I think as of last week, was submitted for the first section. And really once that gets approved, which we don't see any issues with at this point, it goes relatively quick. A lot of it is involved in the planning and preparation side of this type of a project but once that starts going, it goes relatively quick. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Brian, what sort of clause do we have in our agreement with Triax that if they don't meet the January 7th date, what happens? Brian Grogan: We have two different penalties that could potentially kick in. One is a penalty from the bond that they posted. They post actually a bond and a security fund under our franchise. And there is a liquidated damages clause, which I know you've discussed at other times during your meeting tonight. Unfortunately I don't know the figure off the top of my head but I want to say it's in the range of $500 per day for failure to complete the system upgrade. In cities that I've worked with in the past, the council has never been so concerned with the city collecting the money as trying to find a way to get the subscribers a benefit. Mayor Mancino: Done. Brian Grogan: Yeah, for the service that they're not getting. And that's a question we could perhaps pursue depending upon the amount of damages that may incur. Also there's a provision in the document, since it is considered a material violation and as such it could be grounds for some type of revocation or termination proceeding, if you deem that to be a material breach, which again we've stated very clearly and I think Triax understands that there isn't a more material provision that you had in your franchise other than the fact that you wanted the system rebuilt. Mayor Mancino: In the other cities where, that also use Triax that you represent, has Triax upgraded the transmission, the optical transmission nodes. Has that all taken place and I know that they went to some of the western communities first like Waconia. Has that been done? And is it on time and Wayzata and. Brian Grogan: It's my understanding Waconia is in fact done. Waconia, Mound and Chanhassen, the three cities I represent are all essentially on the same 18 month schedule so all their expiration would all be 38 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 approximately January of this year to have the upgrade completed. Wayzata was earlier. Wayzata had a 12 month time frame that hit last January actually. They were by year end. The schedule was not met. It was about 6 weeks late and an accommodation was made by Triax to subscribers in that community for being somewhat tardy. Maybe Mr. Finch could address that but that's my understanding. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Rick Finch: Wayzata was about 45 days late and we did issue a credit to the subscribers in a direct proportion to what the fines the city had as it related to the franchise for being behind schedule. And we issued direct credit to the subscribers. Waconia is done and Mound is underway and we anticipate Mound and Chanhassen both to be done. I really, I know that it's a big issue. We all know that the upgrade is the issue. All of your problems over the years have stemmed from the age of your cable system and the growth of this area. It has just stretched it to the limits. So it is a major priority for us to get this upgrade done and get it done on time. So hopefully you won't have to concern yourself with those issues but we have got a major focus on making sure it gets done. Brian Grogan: One thing Mayor, just to emphasize that there is a force majeure clause in the contract which deals with acts of God. Mayor Mancino: Say that again, a what? Brian Grogan: Force majeure. Councilman Senn: That means if the ground freezes you can't hold them to it. Brian Grogan: ...that's a concern obviously. Whenever you have a clause like that that's drafted that that says ifa tornado hits, ifa flood hits, their performance is excused. It's our position, I think it's one that's fairly common sense, it does snow in Minnesota in November and December. Last year was an anomaly. We can't all be out playing golf at Thanksgiving. Mayor Mancino: Now you can. And a flood can take you away and you can still be playing golf. Brian Grogan: ... at any rate, I just wanted to emphasize for the council that I know that the weather will be an issue if this franchise, or if the upgrade doesn't get complete. Your position obviously is going to be one that when you get into the late fall in Minnesota there's a chance that snow's going to fly. That's not necessarily an unforeseen or uncontrollable event. We all assume that's going to happen and certainly Roger is well aware of that and is, enforce those provisions all the time but just to let you know that that's in there and not through this company but another company's, I've seen them try to use that for an excuse. Again, not Triax and I just emphasize to you that you might keep that thought in mind as you go forward. Put them on notice that you don't think that's appropriate. Rick Finch: If I might add, all of our underground, the major underground construction we're trying to have done by the end of October. That's our goal. Middle to end of October. So that we don't run into the freeze problem. All the rest of the work can occur beyond that without having major construction of dealing with frozen ground. Mayor Mancino: And when you deal with frozen ground, do you do it like the well service who came to my house and put in charcoal and lit the charcoal and waited until the ground unfroze to pull the well up. I 39 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 can just see Chanhassen lines. Anyway, one other question then I know you have. Let me just ask this last one. Our concern about the financial viability also had to do with after this acquisition takes place, will there be funds enough to put in the new optical transmission nodes in Chanhassen? I mean from looking at the financial information that we received in our packet, it hardly looked as if they would be able to after the acquisition has taken place. Brian Grogan: The bottom line position on that is they have a contractual obligation to do it. Whether they have the funds or not, I know that's not the answer you're looking for but if they breach that contract then they have to deal with the ramifications of the breach which could be termination. The franchise is valued at this point at, in excess of $2,000, $2,200 per subscriber so that's a fairly significant asset that they can't afford to lose the franchise on. But part of MediaCom's plan is to have in excess of $250 million available for capital improvements and they are undertaking an aggressive renewal schedule in many communities around the upper Midwest that are Triax properties, planning to upgrade all of them within two years and then put on the advance services and drive a new revenue stream through data and other services that they want to provide. So it would be surprising to me that they're not going to build the Cadillac and then try to drive it as aggressively as they can. Rick Finch: If I may add just.., part of the purchase agreement also pertains to Triax fulfilling their capitalized expenditure plan for this year, which Chanhassen is a part of. So it's really, really it's almost a Triax is funding it. We've been paying for all of the work. We bought all the supplies. So it really isn't so much a MediaCom issue per se, even though the timing of it is, you're really about, well if we close November 1st, about 60 days or SO that we're owned by MediaCom as it relates to the due date of the construction. Scott Botcher: The other side is Nancy just and then I'll be quiet because I know Mark wanted to go with that. This industry is going an intense consolidation and Brian and I talked about it. These deals are just thin. I mean we talked about it and that was the best word we could, it's not just Triax and MediaCom. You look at AT&T's deal. I know Brian educated me on that. These are just thin deals and you know it's very possible they're going to do all this and some of this stuff and as we talked about as staff in two years they'll be out there chanting IPO, IPO, IPO and that's just what the market is doing and so that's not a good or bad I guess, depending on your position but I don't think we can be naive about what's going on in the marketplace. Brian Grogan: Just to echo that point. These systems were acquired for about $2,200 per subscriber, ballpark. The properties over on the other side of St. Paul, they're Media One properties, are nearly $5,000 per subscriber so you can view that a number of different ways but the fact is the market is certainly value these very aggressively. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Councilman Senn, you had some questions. Councilman Senn: Yeah, Brian what's the bond amount that we have? Brian Grogan: You have a $100,000 construction bond and then you I believe have a $20,000 security fund is my recollection. Councilman Senn: Okay, and under the current agreement basically there is $500 per day in liquidated damages? 4O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Brian Grogan: Correct, but you would be drawing that most likely from the security fund which there is a requirement that any money that's withdrawn, there's a requirement the company replenish that to bring it back to the 20 so arguably it's set up to be a bottomless pit of money. Councilman Senn: And under the approval of this transfer, can we alter those conditions? Brian Grogan: To modify the bond? The contract, the question before you is the qualifications of the transferee. It's not an invitation from a legal standpoint to reconstruct that contract so while there may be an opportunity to negotiate changes, if you were ever challenged on that and had to sit before a judge, there isn't any legal basis to say we can force the modification of a contract simply because they're trying to approve a new transferee. That would not be a very defensible position for us to be in. Councilman Senn: Why has it taken, in your mind, 6 to 7 months now to finally have the answer to this 84 cent question after we've expended a fair amount of time, effort and fees to you to get that figured out? Why has it taken 6 to 7 months to get an answer out of Triax? It's not that the question has not been asked in countless letters, correspondence and everything else. On many times starting back in February. Brian Grogan: My response to that is we've had different people giving different answers from Triax. We've had, we have Triax legal counsel. We have Triax local and we have Triax corporate. We also have a company that in the midst of that was being transferred to MediaCom and because of the issues that were presented to them there was not able to perhaps dedicate the time and energy to answer that question adequately. By the time we finally sifted this out, as we suspected there always was an issue there. The answer was different than we understood though. We had bills, just like the bill that you presented this evening in the workshop, that said very clearly month number one, no fee. Month number two, new 84 cent fee and that's the evidence we always pursued. It wasn't until recently that we were given the explanation of the fact that the rate increase and the line item fee all occurred at the same time and that we were artificially held below the maximum permitted regulated rate. So why it took 7 months to get there, the only answers I have are the ones I just provided. Councilman Senn: That's it for questions. Mayor Mancino: Thank you Rick. Any other questions from council members? Scott Botcher: Just one other question, and we had talked about this Rick internally and this is an issue that I've had an interest in. And I want to make sure my understanding is correct. That Triax has been kind enough to assist us with this and that is the provision of, I may not know the technical term but the capability to lead a wire, whatever you want to call it, to have that PEG access or the services here in City Hall that would allow us the opportunity to broadcast these meetings live to our constituents so they could get real time know what's going on. Brian didn't mention that. Is that still part of the game? Rick Finch: Yeah it is. I know you mentioned it to me. I think what had happened is at the time when the franchise was renewed they contemplated the continuation of the Mound-Chanhassen joint local access studio. By the time it came around to March of this year, and the City ultimately assumed command and control of that, the studio there in Mound lost their lease because they were demolishing the building. So your staff had to go through a series of discussions about what do we want to do with our local access. And it was early enough in the design phase of this upgrade that we can incorporate the ability to have live cable casting capabilities and/or taped delay cable casting capabilities from this location here in Chanhassen that would only broadcast your council meetings and Planning Commission meetings just 41 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 exclusively to the City of Chanhassen residents. And so we are incorporated into the design and we're proceeding with that. Mayor Mancino: Is that part of this agreement? Brian Grogan: It is. On your resolution under 2(d) on page 2 is the requirement that stipulates exactly what Scott just mentioned. Rick Finch: Yeah I think the franchise contemplated, but I don't think it clarified it enough so I think... appropriate to do it here. Scott Botcher: Because I think that's important that our constituents know what's going on. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. This isn't a public hearing but is there anyone here tonight that has any questions on this transfer? A lot of times we get fairly active people on the Triax subject so. Okay, so hearing one let's pull this back into council. Any discussion? Any questions on this? Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: It appears to me that we're adequately protected on the 18 month time line but I think there's two things that we need to deal with and I think one is that we need to deal with the force majeres clause and make sure it's negated so that isn't the excuse. Mayor Mancino: I'm sorry, the what clause? Councilman Senn: Force majeure clause. More or less weather related. And secondly I also think that we ought to condition this transfer on Triax paying our legal fees going back to February since they've been so nice to let us expend and not give us the answer to our question we finally got tonight. I think that's only fair that the taxpayers have to pay for that kind of incompetence. Councilman Engel: How much is that? Councilman Senn: Don't know if Brian can tell us that. Brian Grogan: I can answer that two ways.., fees that you incurred to pursue the 84 cents issue which is what Councilman Senn is requesting. I do not have an agreement in place for that reimbursement. I unfortunately didn't anticipate that question either so I don't have for you an estimate of those fees. I could certainly get one for you first thing tomorrow morning but I don't have that available now. Councilman Senn: Okay, I think it's immaterial. They ought to pay it. Whatever the amount. Mayor Mancino: Any other comments from council members? Okay. Councilman Senn: If not I can make a motion to approve the transfer and assignment of the cable television franchise to MediaCom LLC with the following two conditions. One, that the force majeure clause be removed from the existing contract as it relates to weather as a related excuse to be done by January 7th. And secondly that Triax, under that transfer be responsible for paying all legal fees incurred by the City associated with the past seven months over the 84 cent question. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second? 42 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Labatt: Second. Brian Grogan: Mayor, sorry to interrupt. If I could just ask a question of clarification on it. Is the motion to eliminate the, we call it a force majeure clause but essentially it's an Act of God. It's an excuse if an unforeseen event comes up and prevents them. Is the maker of the motion intending that the clause be eliminated in it's entirety or simply to put them on notice that you will not accept an excuse of frozen ground or snowy weather in Minnesota as an excuse for non-performance? Mayor Mancino: Can you clarify that Councilman Senn? Councilman Senn: Only as it relates to the completion of the system upgrade. Brian Grogan: With respect to the weather, the Minnesota weather and the frozen ground? Councilman Senn: But I mean I'm not looking to keep them under that forever but as it relates to this year after year after year promise for system upgrade. It just relates to the upgrade. So effectively you know, once the upgrade is completed, you know I mean I'm assuming they want that in the contract and I think they should have it in the contract as it relates to a normal business. Mayor Mancino: So again it would be taking it out, removing it as it relates to the upgrade done by January 7th? Brian Grogan: Okay, what I expect is we'll have to obviously visit with Triax and MediaCom attorneys. If I'm the attorney on the other side of the table obviously my first question is I'm going to try to protect my client's rights as it relates to those issues, especially MediaCom's going to want that because they're the transferee. They're acquiring this system. Which I will certainly do. I'm just, it's entirely possible I may end up back here with one or more attorneys trying to have them plea their case back to you about that issue because I just, I anticipate, and maybe Roger could support that. On any issue if you pull that clause out, you're likely going to get a reaction from opposing counsel. Roger Knutson: I wouldn't say it's likely. Mayor Mancino: But let's get down to common sense. I mean what you're really saying is you don't want to hear excuses and I think the excuses have to do with the frozen ground and snow. Councilman Senn: No, it's broader than that. I want the responsibility to lie where it should. I expect that to be an issue with MediaCom and it's not MediaCom's problem. They should seek an indemnify from Triax. It's Triax's problem. That's who problem it has always been. So in my mind I'm trying to peg both things clearly back to Triax at this point before they transfer out of this franchise. One is our legal cost. Two is this escape, okay? Roger Knutson: What if we had a Memorandum of Understanding with them, and I'm not saying they'll agree to it, that says force majeure shall not, for completion of the system shall not include snow and frozen ground. I mean if we have tornadoes or riots or acts of war, whatever, other things. It concerns, as I understand it, am I right? Councilman Senn: Between now and? 43 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Well act of God. Councilman Senn: Basically between now and January 7th, what else is there? Roger Knutson: Well Mark, dealing with a bunch of lawyers they have to worry about everything. But if you have a Memorandum of Understanding for snow and frost. Mayor Mancino: That's pretty common sense, okay. Yes. Brian Grogan: I just wanted clarification, thank you. Mayor Mancino: Thank you for asking. Resolution #99-77: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the transfer and assignment of the cable television franchise to MediaCom LLC with the following two conditions: 1. A Memorandum of Understanding be executed to state that Triax cannot use the excuse of snow and frozen ground for completion of the system upgrade by January 7, 2000. 2. Triax, under that transfer be responsible for paying all legal fees incurred by the City associated with the past seven months over the 84 cent question. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. The Council took a short break at this point in the meeting. REQUEST FOR AN AMENDMENT TO THE HIDDEN VALLEY PUD TO ALLOW CHURCH FACILITIES, ASSISTED LIVING FACILITIES OR OFFICES AS PERMITTED USES, AND TO INCORPORATE SPECIFIC DESIGN PARAMETERS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF LOT 1, BLOCK 7, HIDDEN VALLEY; LOCATED SOUTH OF LAKE DRIVE EAST AND EAST OF HIDDEN COURT, 275 LAKE DRIVE EAST, SECOND AND FINAL READING; FAMILY OF CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH. Public Present: Name Address Alan Gebauer Chris Anderson Lisa Pederson Kim Weispfennig David & Lynn Jossi Roderick Franks David Joshua Nelson Phyllis Kielblock Dan Lorinser Tu Kaufman 2080 Boulder Road, Chanhassen 16886 Hanover Lane, Eden Prairie 5940 Mill Street, Shorewood 6920 Chaparral Lane, Chanhassen 250 Hidden Lane, Chanhassen 8694 Mary Jane Circle, Chanhassen 566 Kassel Lane, Chaska 7262 Vista Court, Eden Prairie 8020 Erie Avenue, Chanhassen 300 Hidden Lane, Chanhassen 44 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Pat & Dick Hamblin Gordy Nagel Greg Gmiterko John Curtis Vernelle Clayton 340 Sinnen Circle, Chanhassen 514 Del Rio Drive, Chanhassen 8121 Hidden Court, Chanhassen 410 Santa Fe Circle, Chanhassen 422 Santa Fe Circle, Chanhassen Mayor Mancino: I'm assuming that it's a request for not only office but also medium density residential. This is the final hearing and it requires 4/5 of the council vote tonight to make it an amendment change to the comprehensive plan, correct? Kate Aanenson: Thank you, I was going to reiterate that. Mayor Mancino: Staff report please. Kate Aanenson: Just again to frame up what you've already started. This is the second reading. It does take 4/5 vote. There's a land use amendment also included in this comprehensive plan change. What the staff has done, based on the meetings to date, including the most recently the work session, is try to develop a zoning ordinance. Develop definitions and provide alternative land uses within that district. The district that we are proposing is a PUD, and that PUD would allow the only permitted use would be the church as it sits today. Anything beyond that change or expansion would require a condition use of the current church. The other condition that we're recommending is a health service as defined in the packet that we gave you. And then institutional and then office and then medium density. The discussion came back as far as the medium density, not to take six dwelling units per acre. It was higher at one time and that was reduced. We've also included in the PUD the setbacks and parking standards. Also impervious, building materials and there was some changes recommended on that. That was that vinyl siding only be a secondary material. The other one was the loading and parking and that that be 100% screened. Also that lighting be residential in character. That was a change from the last draft that you saw. Again we have included definitions. Those would be incorporated into the city code. With that I do have drawings. I'm going to let the architect go through those. There was some concern about exactly what the impervious, how much, what the footprints would be. They're included in your packet but I think for the edification of the audience, I'll let the architects go through that and show you exactly the footprints and what those implications as far as impervious surface. I do have a table. It was included in your packet too so maybe I'll let the architect go through that and explain the different footprints proposed. Again while we've given all three options, that doesn't mean you can't within that make changes eliminating, adding to, any of that that's here tonight so that's all I had. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff? I just have one. When you say institutional, you just mean church? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: There's no other institutional that would be allowable there? Okay. Kate Aanenson: Well, the way we put it is an establishment of non-profit or have a public purpose the way it's set in. 45 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Well that's my question because we have only talked about it being church. We haven't really talked about it being other non-profit or public purpose because then you know you open it up to museum, all sorts of things. Okay. So again we may want to change that wording. Kate Aanenson: That's a good point. IfI can just expand. I guess we were looking at some of the other non profits that, Girl Scout headquarters or something, Boy Scout but you're right. It is pretty open. Open ended as it's written. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Just wanted to ask that one so we know what we're talking. Okay, applicant's architect is here. Kate Aanenson: Jim's, something Jim's going to say. Jim Selerud: I'll begin with a few remarks here. Mayor and council members. Glad to be here again with you this evening. I'm Jim Selerud representing Family of Christ. Nate Castens, Josh Nelson, our pastors are here as well as many of our plan members and we represent also many who aren't here with us this evening. Here's a prayer frequently spoken in our congregation, including this past Sunday service. Oh Lord God who has called us your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown, give us faith to go out with good courage not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. That sounds a little humorous as well as it's also serious. We've been traveling this journey together with you a long ways and we think you've come to know who we are in part in this process, but you still don't know us from the inside out. None of you council members regularly shop in our business or eat at our establishment or are provided with our services, but you still come to know us a lot better than you did a while ago. This reminds you that we as a congregation are a little different from those who usually come before you in two aspects. We don't advocate from a personal perspective or a private profit or for protection. Private protection. Secondly, the important difference is that Family of Christ may be here 1,000 years from now. Now that expectation isn't shared by many but certainly you as a government, other churches share that and schools. Maybe a few folks who are in liquid nitrogen as well. Now neither of these attributes gives us greater wisdom or discernment of the best final development for this site, but it certainly does set up along side of you as crafts persons and caretakers of the public good and providers of public service. And we'll continue on this relationship with you, even when we have long concluded this rezoning. It means that though we will eventually physically leave this site, the site remains part of our mutual care and service in the community. Though we have been in almost unanimous support of previous staff positions, and they with us, we ask for a couple departures tonight as we sort through these last details for approval. We particularly request the return to the ordinance and original staff position of 30 feet residence to residence side setbacks. The change that was requested by a councilmember in August. The change to the 50 feet was requested by a councilmember in August. In a minute you'll hear from Ron Erickson of KKE who has helped us visually tell this story. It's critical that you understand that each item of cost that's added for us or diminishing of our sale price translates directly into less service and less building space at our new site. Going from eight single story housing units, as you'll see laid out here, to two story units means that one whole community meeting room will be removed from our new plan. This is very important to us, and you and we think to the community. Please weigh these issues in your balance as you make your final decision. Your getting to know us over this time has provided you a little bit of a window into who we are and we wish you to join with us, but please continue to support our mutual efforts in this community. Thanks. Ron. Tell our story here. 46 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Ron Erickson: I will. I'll do the best I can. Mayor, members of the council. And I know you've looked at these plans a number of time so I'm just going to go through this real quickly, but what I want to do is look at the three plans and just talk a little bit about why these uses. And I think one of the things you're going to see, just from a, and you know just from a good planning standpoint that the uses we're proposing on this site are really good uses from a planning standpoint. They're uses, and the church has really wanted to have a minimum, or actually improve the impact from this 1988 plan on the community and if you look at just the way the housing is situated. The office buildings across the street. All of these uses make nice transitional uses in a planning sense. This is the plan that was, if we can get this up a little larger. We're going to work together as a team here on this. Okay. This is the plan that was zoned in 1988 and right now, as you recall, it's this piece is the piece that's currently built. So that plan called for the addition of a sanctuary at this part of the site, which would be a larger building, and additional parking that would go around both parts of the site. The parking on that plan would be 30 feet here and 30 feet here. With the building setback back at 50 feet. And we've tried to, in working with this and we're looking at these other plans, is to say you know what would be, what would work just as well or better with the neighborhood. This is a plan that the seniors housing, and you can see one of the things we've tried to do on this plan was number one, it increases the green area to the south. And I think importantly it also eliminates the visual of parking. I mean all the parking in this plan is put, so you don't have the lights in the winter time or 4:00 or 5:00 at night you don't have the lights coming in and shining around and that kind of thing, and those are hard things to screen. So we think there's some advantages to this. And all of these buildings would be very residential in character. I mean they're the same height, the two stories are residential type buildings. They'll be the same height as the surrounding houses. They'll have similar roof pitches and it will just be a nice quality development. And the third plan that we've looked at is a plan that would have, that would convert the existing church to offices. Would add an additional office building that's a comer up near Highway 5 and across the street from the office building across the street and these would be one story buildings. Very low profile, but I think another thing that it does it takes the parking that was on the first plan. The one that you saw in 1988, and moves it from 30 feet, moves it back to 50 feet so it gives, it pulls the parking back and cuts the parking down and allows an opportunity for more green space. If you look at the southern part of the site, what this does, it has, these would be one story residential buildings, and what we're proposing in lieu of the 50 feet for a setback, I think from a planning standpoint we think there'd be an advantage to 30 feet. And really it probably won't affect the, I haven't done the plan of 50 feet but it probably won't affect the number of units, but what it allows us to do is to do these. And these would be duplex buildings. Allows us to do one story units so we would propose that we do 30 feet and one story and then this 30 feet is the same 30 feet that was on that first plan in 1988 but that was parking. So you would again all the parking would be internal. You would have a nice views around the perimeter and this would all be one story buildings. So they'd actually be less in height than the buildings surrounding. One of the things I wanted to show you, this is a photograph. Well, I don't know how large we can get this but, I'm going to pass this around so you can look at it but this is a photograph taken this week. This is the building that the house that's next door, and you notice, there are no windows in that side of the house. There's a small window that's behind this tree, but this shows you the landscaping that's there and we're planning on adding to that landscaping. I mean there's a tremendous buffer that is already there. I'd like to pass this around. And I've got other photographs here if you want to you can have but there is, this is a photograph, well it doesn't work any better so. I cut some sections through these, well first of all I want to demonstrate just some differences between these plans. The original plan, the 1988 plan had 54% of the site in hard surface area. The assisted living plan that we're showing has 32% so that has significantly more green space on the site. We think that that, adding that to this is an improvement. Mayor Mancino: Are you talking about the 25,000 square foot or the 50,000 square foot? 47 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Ron Erickson: The 50,000. Councilman Labatt: What were your first numbers again? Mayor Mancino: 54 impervious surface. Ron Erickson: Was the 1988 plan. That's this plan right here and you can just look at those. Maybe ifI could get all three of these plans up. The original plan had 54%, and you can see because of the parking and again on these other two plans, you know we've tried to develop a plan that would be a win/win. Where there'd be more landscaping and the parking so I really think that this parking's being under estimated. I mean in terms of the traffic coming in and out, lights and those kinds of things. As opposed to just looking at the, in this case the quietness of a one story house that isn't much different in scale to units, than the buildings next door which are two story. And I've got some sections I can show you. Anyway, this plan is 54% of the site is impervious. This plan is 32%. And this plan is roughly a little over 41%. So the point is that these plans both have significantly more green space, which means more opportunity to do berming. More opportunity to do landscaping and kind of break it up. Another factor would be to look at these sites just in terms of the number of parking spaces on each one of these sites. This site with the church has 153 parking spaces. The parking spaces relate to traffic. It relates again to the idea of the lights and that kind of thing. This plan has 40 parking spaces so it has almost a little over a fourth as much. And this plan has 75 parking spaces. I also want to show you that the parking on both of these plans is very much concealed. Here, even though there is some up against the residential, it's back 20 feet further than what exists today so that is an improvement there. The other thing I want to mention is this access to Hidden Court. This plan doesn't have an access to Hidden Court. This plan has an access for 8 residential units. This has an access for 60 parking spaces, so again we think this is something that could be an improvement to the neighborhood. And then in terms of the residential setbacks, and what I did was I, instead of saying parking setbacks and building setbacks, I'm more interested in just what the green space because I think parking and buildings both have their issues. And so I've combined those, but on the original plan, if you look on this side there's a setback of 30 feet to this is the plan that was shown in 1988. 30 feet to the parking and 30 feet to the residential to the east. And on this plan, that would be 135 feet and 50 feet. And on this plan it would be 30 feet here but again it would be to one story buildings. 30 feet here to one story buildings and if you're looking at that photograph I handed, I'm showing you around that was taken this week, you can kind of see what the background of that, and of course we would do more landscaping in this area. The church wants to be a good neighbor. And the other thing to consider here is on this plan, the 1988 plan is that this sanctuary is a bigger building. I mean by it's nature. It's not a one story, maybe one story but it's going to be a higher building probably. And here is a section. This is a section through the center of the site which you've seen and it's the same on all of the plans because the center piece of the building stays the same, and almost anyplace you cut a section from the homes to this site, I think these two plans, the additional plans we're asking to be part of the conditional use are improvements over the plan you saw in 1988. And this is a section, looking from the, I'll put this plan up but it's looking right through here. From the existing church back to the house that you have these photographs on. Again, it's a house here that has one small window there and I think it was planned for this but on the first plan with the church it shows the house. This is a scale of the house that's next door to the property line. There'd be 30 feet. There's the parking lot. And then there's the sanctuary that's shown so this is roughly how that section would look. The second plan with the office and the residential shows the church up here staying at one story. Very residential. This is the existing residential. And then we would have these one story duplexes with again very nice, and again with the parking all to the inside and we'd create some additional landscaping and berming there. And then the third option with the assisted living shows the setbacks, again with more green space and more opportunity to create landscaping. So we 48 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 think the two additional options that were put in the conditional use are really better in that they increase the green area on the site. They hide the parking. They reduce the parking, and just have a nicer, will have a nicer feel for, in terms in tie into the surrounding neighborhood. And that's it. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Any questions for Ron at this point? Councilman Labatt: I've got one. You talk about 50 foot setback or the 30 foot. If you went to a 50 foot, would it force you to go two stories with the townhomes? Ron Erickson: Yeah, and probably two stories but it'd be the same. I mean I don't want to say that that's not a, I think this is a better, more sensitive plan to have the smaller, two story buildings. I mean one story and spread them out but we'd probably go two story and maybe cluster them in units of 3 instead of 2 instead of just having duplexes. Councilman Labatt: And then, I missed the impervious first percentage for the medium density housing. Ron Erickson: 41.6 was our calculations and then we just did these. I hope somebody else has done them that we're not, I'm sure we're really close to the percentages. Councilman Labatt: Okay. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Okay, thank you. This is not a public hearing tonight. We've had plenty of those so we'll bring it back to staff and have some discussion from, I'm sorry, bring it back to council and staff and have some discussion on this. Couple questions Kate. Under health service. The except relatives. Can you speak a little bit to that where it says, I am on the development standards and under health service, number 1 is 100% of residents shall be 55 years or older and then in parens, except relatives. I think we had that discussion during the work session. Kate Aanenson: If someone wanted to move in there, that a spouse that was younger than 55. Councilman Engel: Remember we went through that before. I think the easier way to make that stipulation read would just be the criteria for assisted living facility has been changed to require one resident per unit to be 55 years or older and then leave it. Because that lets everything go. As long as they're seniors. Whereas if you get into relative, you're going to start to cross some boundaries there that may be difficult. Do you know what I'm getting at? Mayor Mancino: We're all looking at you Roger. Roger Knutson: ... I'll be more specific about it. You get into issues of sexual preference. Councilman Engel: You get into a lot of that. Roger Knutson: ... Martial status issues. Councilman Engel: Yep. Let's just not even. Mayor Mancino: So your suggestion is what? 49 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Engel: If it read this way it would accomplish what you want to accomplish with the least amount of words and there's effectively no way I think, we're getting what we want which is senior people and we're not going to put any oh code or standards on them beyond that they've got to be old. The criteria. Mayor Mancino: Now wait, we have to reconsider the... Councilman Engel: All kidding aside, the criteria for assisted living facility has been changed to require one resident per unit to be 55 years or older and if you just leave it at that, it accomplishes what we want without getting us into any other trouble. Scott Botcher: What if a couple brings their kids? Councilman Engel: That's fine. As long as they're 55. Scott Botcher: Yeah, as long as everyone knows that. Councilman Engel: Right, but generally... Councilman Senn: Only one resident per room is what you're talking about? Councilman Engel: Per unit. That way you can't have the facility be the benchmark, the units that are used. You know what I mean? Councilwoman Jansen: That was the guideline that we were handed in the work session by the gentleman, I don't see him here tonight, that works with the assisted living facility. Councilman Engel: Steve Norness. Councilwoman Jansen: Thank you. Pretty much the same wording. Councilman Engel: Yes it is. Mayor Mancino: So you don't think there should be a minimum age? Councilman Engel: 55 is it. Mayor Mancino: No, for the other ones. Councilman Engel: What if that person's 55 and they only have one child and that child happens to be 30. Councilwoman Jansen: Can we say adult? Mayor Mancino: No. That's okay. Never mind. Never mind. I don't think, okay. I understand. Councilman Engel: It gets progressively complicated. No matter which one you give me, I can give you. Roger Knutson: A 95 year old person who has. 5O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: A 20 year old wife. Okay. Okay, one other question for you Kate. I see here, just help with this. That under development site coverage and building heights. Page 2. Again, we had the PUD standards for hard surface coverage of 65%. Well obviously everything that we have seen, and what we would be based any changes on, the largest impervious surface is 54% which is the original 1988 plan. So we could change that to be 55% impervious surface, okay. Because I want there to be a match-up because I can tell you from experience that I've had on the Planning Commission and Council, 65%, well that means that maybe they did want it to be 65% of impervious surface. Let's make that building a little bigger so. Let's bring it back. Any other questions before we give comments? Councilwoman Jansen: Well along the same lines as what you were just asking Mayor. I'm curious. We're putting parameters on a conditional use. We're being presented concept plans, correct? So though we're looking at these conceptual layouts and to get warm and fuzzy about this and accept it, it could have nothing to do with what we are finally presented by an actual applicant, other than if it meets the written conditions. It wouldn't necessarily have to meet these pictures. Kate Aanenson: Yes it's a conditional use and you've laid out the standards. You can also attach additional conditions to mitigate any impact. Mayor Mancino: So could we as evidence in here, not only have the written word but also include the renderings of the conceptual site plans and say hey, this is where we're going. We're not open for a lot of deviation. This is it. This is what we like. This is what we based a lot of our decision on. Kate Aanenson: I'll let Roger answer that but I'd say first. Mayor Mancino: Because we want to be upfront about. Kate Aanenson: We're trying to assure everybody what it's going to look like. Having said that, when something comes in. Mayor Mancino: They can always bring anything. Kate Aanenson: Right, they may ask for something, but it may be something that's even better that we hadn't anticipated. I think we want to leave the door open to it but this is the benchmark we're expecting. Councilman Engel: This would be ground zero, you start from here. Kate Aanenson: Yes. Roger Knutson: A way you could do that is rather than saying it has to be those pictures, because it's problematic but it'd be unlikely that each time a developer wants to bring the project.., you could go on record. As examples. Not as part of the ordinance but as examples the council finds these plans to meet these criteria. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Roger Knutson: ... a picture to look at. 51 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Does that answer your question? Councilwoman Jansen: Sure. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Any other questions? Scott Botcher: I have one and Roger brought it up. Under institutional... Kate Aanenson: We already talked about that. We want to leave it as a church as defined. Councilman Senn: Church use only. Kate Aanenson: Church use only as defined in the definition. We caught that, yep .... and that's in the definition section. Roger Knutson: Any expansion of the church. Scott Botcher: So then the establishments that are non-profit or have a public purpose, would that sentence come out? Kate Aanenson: Yes. Because actually what we did under church uses, we said there can be some ancillary. If the church is running a Girl Scout troop, that's fine. That sort of thing. Mayor Mancino: Let's have some discussion on these uses. Let's also talk about the uses, and going back to just conceptually the, why we would make a comprehensive plan amendment change in changing the zoning, why it would benefit the entire community and just not give special treatment here? And what that has to do with the conditions that we've kind of reviewed so far. Councilman Senn, you want to start? Councilman Senn: No. Mayor Mancino: This is a hard one. Councilman Senn: No it's not a hard one. I'm going to say it's the hardest one in seven years. I guess I can sit here and say that because I've never in seven years had an item before us asking us to basically reguide and rezone property without a specific plan. And I hope the church understands that that is a major accommodation from the City. We have never done that in seven years that I know of. Mayor Mancino: Well, Villages was to some degree. Councilman Senn: They had a specific plan. And you know the, this has been, I mean it's been a real difficult decision, especially more and more as time went on and on and more and more information became available because you know there is no right answer. I mean there's no right answer for the neighborhood and there's no right answer for the church because you're never going to get the two opposing viewpoints together. Pure and simple. So the situation we get forced into is we're Solomon. Now we get to divide the baby however we want. Mayor Mancino: Just to remind you, you ran for this position. 52 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: I certainly don't have all the answers but I kept finding myself coming back to kind of what are my fundamental precepts and terms of how do you split that baby. You know I want to try to accommodate the church in relationship to providing them some options so they can proceed with their new facility. And by the way which, you know I really look at, and from a pure ideal of sitting in this position. That's not our job, okay. And the second part of it is looking at it on the fundamental precip of one of our jobs is to protect the neighborhoods and the abutting land uses and changes that occur effectively that differ from foundations that people made decisions on as to where they buy and whatever, do business or whatever. And in my mind, like I say, that just became very, very difficult and I'll tell you what. I've never, like I say in seven years had such a tough one because every time I went down the road I kept running into some kind of a brick wall, one way or the other. And so essentially all I could do is kind of try to find something that I could view that way. And what I found in my mind to be that rational benchmark in relationship to meeting the church's desires and the neighborhood's desires, pure and simply and I tried to start explaining this I think last meeting and I hadn't really even thought it through enough to explain it but you deal with effectively the intensification and density of the site as it relates to the surrounding area. And what I tried to do is put myself in a position that if I'm an abutting homeowner, okay. Yes, I made a decision to be there once based on the neighborhood and what surrounds it, i.e. a church and I probably assumed that's the way it was always going to be. And if it can't always be that way, what's the next best thing? Well in my mind the next best thing would be whatever is as unobtrusive as possible and doesn't exceed what I thought would be there as far as a church goes. Mayor Mancino: So not intensifying the use. Councilman Senn: Not intensifying the use. So I just kind of ended up kind of getting down to a numbers game. And I went through each one of these uses and kind of said okay, well now if I'm going to kind of set that as my benchmark and stuff, you know where do I take it and go with from there? And I took the plan of the multi-use, the residential and the office one and looked at that and said okay, yeah. We have essentially eight units of housing there and figured each units of housing, roughly it's about 1,200 square feet per unit or so. And came up with 9,600 square feet and I took 15,000 square feet of office space and voila. Ah, 24,600 square feet. Sounds the same intensification of the site that a church would expand to it's maximum which is 25,000 square feet. Okay. Then I took the assisted living. Mayor Mancino: Oh, so your benchmark was the original. Councilman Senn: My benchmark was the original church use. Well not even really the original church expansion plan because I think that only played out to about 19,000-20,000 square feet. So from what I figured out from that, I mean really the church had the ability to expand on the site to about 25,000 square feet you know if they would have wanted to do that. Then I took the assisted living as another option and said okay, well how do you structure that that way? Well, with re-use of the existing church and whatever you build on it, I guess I just kind of dropped any thoughts of how many units or whatever and just simply said hey, there should be a 25,000 square foot cap on it. Then I looked at a third option which goes back to some previous zoning effectively on the site which was medium density multi-family and looking at medium density multi-family at roughly six units per acre essentially translated into about 21 units. And again taking those 21 units at about 1,200 square feet, I think came out to about 20, just over 25,000 square feet. Now I said okay, we've got the church that can expand up to 25,000 square feet. We've got the option of a multi use with office and residential. About 25,000 square feet. We have assisted living option at about 25,000 square feet. And we have...medium density residential of about 25,000 square feet. At the point I kind of got to that was the first time I ever started to feel comfortable about this thing at all. And just said geez, you know this is kind of a fair answer to the neighborhood. Kind of a fair answer to the church. And 53 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 I'm going to go back to again the fundamental questions that we were asked, or problems that were posed to us in the first place and that is providing options. We've now provided four options for this property. And from a neighbor's standpoint we have not offered any option which intensifies based on this property. And not granted there's a lot of other details you can look at this in terms of okay well, will each of those uses, you know how much comings and goings or traffic could they bring to the site. You know every one of them is different and the times of day are different for example. The offices would be pretty much daytime. It'd be dead in the evenings and weekends and you know the houses are a different thing and the assisted living's a different thing. Has visitors and all that so I mean you can crank all those things into the equation all you want and you can kind of beat your head against the window and you're never going to get to you know, to really feeling comfortable with any of those answers. So then I kind of took it all and kind of plugged it back where we looked back into where we were in terms of our conditions of development and you know to me it just kind of started to fit and it kind of fit you know real easy. The only condition that I found myself wanting to put on it, especially since this was a negotiated thing in a PUD, is I want to assure that that housing, under whatever circumstances housing occurs on there other than assisted living, that it would be owner occupied. Because if I were a neighbor living there and was told they're rental units coming in, which I never... Basically it didn't take a whole lot of change to what we have drafted basically in front of us. Under health services it's basically your maximum of 25,000 square feet of, instead of a maximum of 60 units. The rest of it all seemed to pretty well fit, and you had mentioned earlier Mayor, but I had the same note basically back under like coverage, basically just cross out the 65 and 55 and just let that be the governing standard because effectively that was what was there before. And under the proposed again expansion. Of the church use. And you know I don't know, I know all of us have elements of this we like and we dislike and we've had a lot of discussion on it now. And one of the realities, you always have to put your thought process in, especially in a decision like this is what's going to get 4/5 vote. And that became real problematic too, given discussions. Now people may have changed their minds from past discussions but it seems to me in looking at this and looking at this as an option, at least from what I heard is probably about the only chance we have of passing this. But I guess that's where I ended up. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. So again, I just, I want to be clear. So again you have options that we were asked to look at. You came up with the four options. Try and do it in order of what's on our attachment. One, and I know I'm repeating what Mark said but I want to make sure we're all clear here. That on health service, assisted living facility. Number one to read 100 percent of the residents shall be 55 years or older. Or one resident per unit has to be 55 years or older. And that the maximum of the footprint is 25,000 square feet? Councilman Senn: Yes. Mayor Mancino: Building footprint. That... under institutional, that church. Councilman Senn: Church use only. Mayor Mancino: Church use only and that any physical expansion of that church use not to exceed 25,000 square feet. Under office, and again would it need to be office with housing? So it has to be that combination again as in staff report. And your fine with those uses of office and residential. You would also support just a six unit per acre residential use for the site too? Councilman Senn: First to clarify just on the office. With the office one I would support eight units period. Okay. That's assuming an average of about 1,200 square feet per unit, okay. And then...as the 54 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 medium density housing option, which is a separate and fourth option, I would support 21 units which would be again at an average of 1,200 square feet for a total of 25,000 square feet. Mayor Mancino: And the only thing I'm saying, then you wouldn't have the adaptive re-use? Councilman Senn: We would not have the adaptive re-use under that option, but I'm assuming that's not something we've governed by. And the only other caveat is that any housing would be owner occupied. Mayor Mancino: The intent statement says the purpose of this zone, we would have to change that, is that it's use. Okay. Councilman Labatt: I just had a question for Mark. So under office, like under C in office. Must be developed in conjunction with medium density residential. You wanted that to also say.., owner occupied? Councilman Senn: You could even scratch medium density residential. You can say 15,000 square feet of office combined with eight residential units of approximately 1,200 square feet be owner occupied, yes. That's the way. Councilman Labatt: So whoever, housing is stated in conjunction with office, will always be owner occupied? Councilman Senn: Right. Mayor Mancino: One last thing on that. What we were presented with showed the visual, showed a two separate office buildings. In the written it only says 15,000 square feet of office space. It doesn't say if they're two buildings. Councilman Senn: Well my personal preference in that option would be that we attach that plan. Mayor Mancino: So that it be two buildings? Okay, because that's again not in the written word. The density here is construction with eight units. Eight units of one floor residential housing... Again, buildings of 15,000 square feet developed in conjunction with eight units of one floor residential plus owner occupied. Thank you. Linda. Roger Knutson: Mayor, could I just clarify one thing for my own mind? Are we saying that the total footprint of the buildings, both the existing and the conditional, the total footprint of buildings will be 25,000 square feet and no more, is that correct? Councilman Senn: Well I mean there's a little give or take in there Roger. I mean approximately 25,000 square feet. The figures I used came out somewhere in most cases between 24,000 and 26,000 square feet I believe. Roger Knutson: My concern is a combination of uses, so for example if you wanted 15,000 square feet of assisted living, not the 25,000 max you would allow. Now I want to have some office, I can go to 15,000 by this. Other standards might prevent that. I don't think that's what you want. Councilman Senn: Or separate options. 55 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Roger Knutson: You have a choice. Councilman Senn: Right. Mayor Mancino: You can't combine them all. Councilman Senn: You can't combine anything beyond those four items. Roger Knutson: Then I think that should be stated in here as well. Councilman Senn: Okay. I wasn't clear. Roger Knutson: If you choose a health service, that's the only choice you have. You can expand the church. If you choose to expand the church, you can't do anything else. This is what we want to make a clear statement of. Councilman Senn: That would be my suggestion, yeah. Mayor Mancino: I have to process this. I mean you know. As I have said before when we do meet all publicly so a lot of times these are the first times we've heard things from other council members so be patient with us. Councilwoman Jansen: I feel better hearing Councilman Senn say that this is one of the, is the most difficult in the last seven years. Then I don't feel so badly that it's taken me so long to process this in 9 months. I guess first, and a lot has been said in the in-between meetings, in the meetings and maybe I fail sometimes to really identify that I am trying very hard to identify with both sides of an issue. Anytime anything comes before us as a council, I think we work extremely hard to get everyone's issues and concerns on the table. And I have had occasion now over the past couple weeks to hear it not intentionally slighting me but the statement has been made that I have sided with the neighbors. And I truly have made an effort to look at this for the issues and the concerns that have been brought before us. I don't personally know any of the neighbors. I probably know more members of the church, if you wanted to get down to it personally. But that's not what this is about. It's not a personal decision. I can certainly on a personal level relate to the needs and the concerns of the church and it's members. I think it's fabulous that these expansion plans are needed. That the move is necessary. I find that exciting. And yes, those needs are compelling. I have to check those personal feelings at the door which gets a little burdensome sometimes. I wish I could just bring them in here and sit here and voice my personal opinions. It'd be a heck of a lot easier, but as a government official we get presented the guidelines that we have to use and should use with every application and I keep coming back to we're not just protecting the rights of the applicant. We have to look at the rights of the community, of the neighbors, and that's why the guidelines are in place. It's so that we can be fair and we can be just and hopefully we're not showing personal bias. And are we being flexible? I mean that has been another question that's been posed now that we've been considering this as a council since May 10th. At the May 10th meeting the recommendation that came to us from the Planning Commission was to deny the request. They had their reasons. They were justifiable. We could have just accepted them right then. We chose to explore with staff the assisted living. Now we took that maybe just a step farther than the Planning Commission and that's no critique of how they judge the assisted living part of this but maybe as individuals and council people we had heard more from the senior community on the need for the senior assisted living facilities. So that's where this thing turned into more of this five months of continued review so I mean I hope that flexibility has been identified and both with the church 56 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 and with the neighbors. I mean everybody has participated in this project and thank you so much because everyone has put a lot of effort into it and every little bit of communication, one way or the other has been listened to and hopefully applied to this and I hope that the way that I address this comes across that way. But I'll go back to where Councilman Senn suggested that the fundamental question that we're trying to answer is providing options. And I continue to go back yet another step from there and what has been presented to us ultimately is whether or not we can justify an amendment to the PUD and comprehensive plan. And I've restated these once because I have to keep bringing myself back to them to make sure, and I hold myself as you've heard me say on other issues, to following policy and following our guidelines. It's the only way I can be fair. It says to make these amendments we must show that the parcel has not been given special treatment. That's point one. Two. The changes are for the benefit of the entire community. And three, the action complies with the comprehensive plan. If the action doesn't meet the three criteria, it can be deemed a spot zoning. Not that anyone's threatening to sue us, which means that the lot or parcel has been rezoned to benefit an owner or a use incompatible with surrounding land uses and does not further the comp plan. So that's pretty weighty. We've got to look at that, and I keep coming back to that as we keep going through these options. As it was presented back in May, assisted living has.., pressing need in this community. We received a petition with 200 signatures on it when the senior residents in this community heard that we were considering rezoning this for assisted living. They saw it as an ideal spot. Now as government officials it's not as if our land use plans have designated an assisted living location. Now I'm not a senior assisted living guru. I don't know if this is the right site. I don't know if it's going to work, but I do know that I can certainly get on the band wagon for making this an assisted senior, I have to keep saying that. Senior assisted living facility. It's a compelling need. The neighborhood has actively participated in helping us try to get our arms around what the guidelines are that we would need to put on that kind of a use. To me it's staggering. The amount of conditions that are out there that we haven't even scratched the surface of what this facility could come in asking to be, do or look like. And I come back to Councilman Senn's desire to limit the square footage to 25,000 square feet. Does that work? Is that a feasible senior assisted living facility? I guess we have heard from advisors to the church that 50,000 square feet is the only way to make this feasible. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if we can do the 25,000 square feet and the only way that I would feel comfortable knowing that we're putting conditions on the senior assisted living to make it happen, would be to have a formal feasibility study done for this site so that then we would have the outside recommendation, unless somebody else has another way to come up with whether 25,000 square feet is feasible. I would have to go with the 50,000 square feet or somehow reword the condition that we have to be providing for a feasible assisted living facility. I'm having trouble with revising that guideline to hold that size down to that magnitude. I really would like to make that happen. It's too important of an issue to the community for us to limit it to where it may not be able to be built. Then I come back to having to re-evaluate the office and the medium density. For one, going to Councilman Senn's new suggestion that we rezone this for medium density and not have the adaptive re-use, I'm not comfortable with that. Staff's whole approach to this whole rezoning has been that we do an adaptive re-use of the building and I guess I'm kind of engrained in that and that's what went before the Planning Commission and in doing this change, I just don't think it's been given all of the considerations and conditions that staff and the Planning Commission had to consider. So I'm not comfortable with that. As far as the parameters that we're putting on the office and the medium density, I have to go back to the May l0th meeting. And in that meeting we were all trying to address whether or not it was a compelling, we had a compelling reason to put an office on this site. We're not landlocked in this city for office development sites. They're out there. There's, we just had a comprehensive plan review. If we had a compelling reason, that would have been addressed. I think everyone knew at the time and I wasn't involved, that this issue was going on with the church. So if it could have been, it probably would have been as a separate whole policy decision on rezoning this property. And as I've continued to question why I'm so skeptical about granting this rezoning, I keep coming back to a simple statement that I've said a 57 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 lot and that's that actions speak louder than words. And given the repeat actions that are made by the majority of this council, that we consistently grant variance requests and you've been here at enough meetings to know I'm not making this stuff up. We constantly grant variances to conditional use permits, comp plan guidelines, zoning codes, interim use permits, you can go on. Bring a request. We'll consider it. I've heard us called the Yes Council, and that's what I am reacting to and I'll apologize to the church for having to keep that in mind but I don't have the confidence to vote for a rezoning that's contingent upon conditions that our actions virtually make meaningless every night that we vote. We're forever just throwing it out the window. Until we take the guidelines that have been put into place more seriously when these issues come before us and we did it again tonight. We don't follow the policies. We'd rather change the policies. We think we can change the policies just by voting the way that we do, and I can't do that. So ironically simply by our considering doing this rezoning without it meeting the initial litmus test, we're doing it with this one. We needed to come up with that compelling reason. We tried to push that aside and go ahead and say that you know we can just put conditions on this to hold it to where we can control it. Well, we don't do that. By our actions we don't hold developments to the conditions that we put on them. So I will apologize to the applicant if maybe I had more confidence that what we are presented we would hold to our guidelines, then maybe I would feel more comfortable with entertaining it further. I don't know. I don't know because I can't make it past, as the Planning Commission couldn't, the compelling reasons on the office. The one little bit of encouragement that I have from a memo that was included in one of our earlier packets, which is noted here from the church. Summary points regarding Family of Christ sale transaction, regarding sale of existing facility and construction of the new church. Point number 7. To satisfy the investor group and Lutheran Brotherhood, if only assisted living were available, the assisted living user at a minimum would have to proceed through site plan approval prior to any closing between Lutheran Brotherhood and Family of Christ. This results in two undesirable affects. A, the church's construction is delayed for one whole school year, and B, one of the benefits of the rezoning application by the church is that the church is in control of it's destiny. Under the above scenario it's destiny is in the hands of the quality and timing of the application by a third party and that benefit would be lost. I apply that same comment B to the position the City puts itself in by granting a rezoning without a firm application before us. So I think the church can relate to our hesitancies about approving something we don't have a firm plan in front of us for. We give up the control of the destiny on this property, though we say we've put conditions on there to control it. So I am in favor of the rezoning for the senior assisted living only. And conversation on how we decide what the square footage would be. Mayor Mancino: Does that mean you want to see a site plan, a real site plan prior to giving that rezoning of assisted living? Because you've kind of. Councilwoman Jansen: Or a feasibility study. I mean at least a feasibility study. I'm assuming would. Councilman Senn: ... feasibility study. Councilwoman Jansen: Like libraries, are there not. Mayor Mancino: Well we were paying for that as a City has the feasibility. Councilman Senn: The City paid for a feasibility study for. Councilwoman Jansen: We suggested even within our strategic plan that there's a necessity to do a feasibility study for the City on senior housing options and assisted living was one of them. It would just simply be calling for it now versus waiting until 2000 and we all know that the money's there to. 58 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Senn: But I want to understand something then. What you're saying is no matter what the size is required to be feasible, you support senior assisted living on that site? Councilwoman Jansen: I would like to know if 25,000, if you're going to limit it to 25,000, is it feasible? Councilman Senn: That's not our job to determine feasibility, nor success of any business. Councilwoman Jansen: And that's where I come back to I think that this is an important enough community need that if it's 50,000 square feet and it can be built compatible with this neighborhood, but what does a feasibility study tell us. Is it 25? Why rezone it, why even rezone it for senior assisted living if25,000 square feet isn't going to work? Mayor Mancino: Well also Linda the needs assessment was thought about is more of a municipal facility, or having some relationship with the city. Not as a private venture. So the feasibility would need to come from private business, if that's what you want to require. Part of it. Thanks. Mr. Engel. Councilman Engel: Is Councilwoman Jansen done? Mayor Mancino: Are you all done? Councilwoman Jansen: Oh yeah. Councilman Engel: Okay. Well I think Mark pretty much hit the nail on the head when we started this and I ain't Solomon either but this is a no winner. There's no doubt about it. Whatever comes out of this, there's no way the council wins on this one. Can't come out without half the group being mad at you. There have been a couple that way in the last three years. Not many. This will be one of them, and as somebody who's been on this council for the last three years and has voted for this avalanche of variances, yeah I've voted for a lot of them. I can tell you what most of them are for. They're for decks. Patios. For a home on a goofy piece of property. Doesn't quite fit. We've got oddball properties like that all over the city. They're too near a creek or a lake or a pond or a road or a ditch or a tree or an anthill farm or something, I don't know. Whatever, take your pick. And everybody should remember that when it's your turn to come in for your deck, or whatever it is you want. If you didn't need to take variances, you would need a council to look at it so yeah we do them. I've voted for a lot of them. No apologies. I didn't use the 25,000 square feet as my guiding statistic on this because nobody has yet demonstrated to me where that number came from empirically. From what I've understood so far from all the discussions is that the church when it was originally built was asked what do you think you'll expand to. Had no idea. Picked a number. I don't know, 25,000 feet. That seems to be where that number came from. If you go by the acreage of the site and the code in the city, it's 65% impervious, and you do the math based on the plans we've been shown tonight, that site would actually support a 100,000 square foot facility and stay within the 65% impervious. So I think 50,000 square feet is not too bad and a really compelling use. Senior assisted living. So it's not in my opinion an over intense use. A 100,000 square feet meets the plan but I think that's a little intense given where it is today. 50,000 square feet's half that, and is at half the impervious coverage. Using the same ratio of parking spaces to resident units. The office residential I've got a question Kate. If you look at developments, new developments like a golf course. And lots are sold for say $100,000 and you can put restrictions on the buildings. Homes essentially to be built there. But they have to be at least 2, 3 times, 2 ½, 3, 4 times the land value. Thereby insuring a market value of the 59 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 property, which is at or above existing homeowners. Thereby protecting their investment. Can we do that feasibly in this site? Kate Aanenson: No. Councilman Engel: Has anybody thought about that? Kate Aanenson: The only thing we require is the square footage minimum. We don't require rental versus owner occupied. If somebody rents their house out, we have no control over that. It's all over the city. Buy townhouses and rent them out. I don't know how we would control that. I could ask Roger but we've never done that. Councilman Engel: Valuations. Kate Aanenson: No, rental. Whether you can say it has to be owner occupied. I don't know constitutionally if you could do something like that. Councilman Engel: Specifically the question I'm asking about, can you target values? Do you know what I'm getting at? Kate Aanenson: No. Roger Knutson: You can have, technically do that. Councilman Engel: By requiring size? Roger Knutson: By size and exterior finishes and things like that and location, you can figure it out. No one's going to spend $100,000 on a lot and put up a $ 25,000 house. Councilman Engel: Right, and I'm just, I'm looking at this because when I've looked at potential building sites you see restrictions like that and it just occurs to me we could, to protect the homeowners there, make it so that any existing homeowner's structure that would be put next to them would not negatively impact their home but would pull them upward by putting requirements in place that would require you to build a certain structure that would be of a value that they would find attractive. Mayor Mancino: Too complex for us. Councilman Engel: I don't know.., don't give it up yet. Councilman Senn: Have single family period. Councilman Engel: I don't know, I'm throwing it out there because nobody's talked about it yet but yet I've seen it when I've gone to look at other building sites. Kate Aanenson: You can do it and a developer may do it but the City certainly can't do it. Councilman Engel: That's why I asked. 6O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Kate Aanenson: I mean this same issue came up on the beachlots when we were restricting the number of boats you can put on a beachlot. Every one of those associations came in and said you're devaluing my property. Every one of them. Councilman Engel: The office residential has I think a bit more risk attached to it. You've got to put some real restrictions in there, I think, as much as you can legally. That would guarantee, and that rental thing would really be a problem with me. If I was a neighbor as well. But if it was an owner occupied unit and I knew it was of a certain value like I've seen them across from my development, they're nice townhomes. They're more expensive the homes on the other side of the street, the single families. But they've got a certain amount of square footage that drives them there. So if you could do something like that I'd be comfortable with the homes there. Would be a plus. Short of that I don't know how you can guarantee that with homes. Even if they're owner occupied. Just my thought on that. I don't have anything more to add. Mayor Mancino: Trying to listen to everybody and kind of pull us together in certain ways and that's not going to be the easiest tonight. Okay, Councilman Labatt. Councilman Labatt: Well I just want to try to clarify something here on the assisted living and the 25,000. Now if I remember right, the 25,000 in the footprint. Mayor Mancino: I think that Councilman Senn, and please correct me if I'm wrong, where he had that number.., church that showed the expansion. Councilman Labatt: Right. Mayor Mancino: ... Councilman Labatt: Okay, so in that rendering, one of these drawings we had, shows the 25,000 fits here. And then this spot up here to the north is. Mayor Mancino: That makes the 50,000. Councilman Senn: Steve, that's.., comfortable to look at because that's just simply looking at a kind of like a floor plan. In my mind where I was having trouble, again putting myself back on an abutting property was, you know given whatever choices, do I want to look out at a few thousand square foot, you know two story building on this site when what I've been used to is a, you know basically a 7,000 or whatever it is now or whatever square foot building on this site, which I knew someday could expand to 25,000 square feet. Mayor Mancino: This is the 50,000. Councilman Labatt: Here we go. Okay. Mayor Mancino: And this, with the wing make it... Councilman Labatt: Right... Secondly, thanks to Councilman Senn for putting the square footage into perspective .... been a long, agonizing time. A lot of times have to put in... an item by staff and council and neighbors and in looking at it, is it a win/win? No. Is it a lose/lose? No. I think it's a good middle 61 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 ground in what staff has come up with here. Number one it sets forth the conditions on what we're going to allow there as a city. What use. What mitigates the least impact to the adjoining neighbors on both... I like the fact that they've come in now with medium density housing which is single story. And I think that ... nice option. It will maintain a nice buffer between the Northcott Building and the homes on Hidden Lane. We do maintain control by having a conditional use permit attached to it so I'm in favor of all three. The only question is, by limiting it to 25,000 are we just making it a non... If we're going to zone it, let's do it right and allow for two stories of housing. In looking at the rendering...the landscaping, they've pretty much created a barrier... Mayor Mancino: I'll take a few minutes here and then we'll have to try and pull this together. A couple thoughts also to say, this isn't the longest process that I've worked on a project. I can tell you they've gone a lot longer. A year or two in the making so yes, this has been five months and everything and it is. It's an incredibly kind of hard project for us because we do sincerely want to make it win/win/win. And when I say win/win/win I mean for the community, for the neighborhood and for the church. There's no question. It's tough. My heart and my head have to come together and make those decisions. It's not one or the other. It really does have to come together. I've been not trying to force it. Just letting that process happen and this one hasn't quite jelled for me yet, to be very, very honest. And I think part of it is because as Councilman Senn says, we don't do this very often. We want to see a site plan for a rezoning. It's hard. It would be hard for all of you, whether your neighbors or in the church to sit here and make that decision without seeing a site plan. And again that's why it's been so hard. A couple things. Do we make comprehensive plan changes? Absolutely. Not all the time. Not willy nilly. But a comprehensive plan is a living, breathing document. There are times when it needs to be changed because we can't predict, I mean we don't know the what if's. The market changes. People needs change in the community. And although we have a comprehensive plan that guides us, it is a guide and we do try and stick to it. But there are those times when things have changed and we need to make a change in the comprehensive plan. And I have said earlier in this that it takes a lot for me, having been on the Planning Commission and chairing it for four years, to make that change. That when businesses, when churches, when residents move in and they look and see if the zoning of the adjacent property next to them, that's what they make their decision on. So when I think about making a change, it's kind of like it has to be, win/win/win. Because we're all in this together. I will just go over some, I don't want to take too much longer because we're going to have to try and pull this together, but listening to everyone, assisted living, and I think even the Planning Commission, although the Planning Commission did not vote for rezoning of the property. When I was at the meeting they were open to looking at an assisted living rezoning, but they did want to see a site plan. They just thought it was too nebulous. Too out there. There weren't any hard facts, but they were interested in assisted living. And that I would support. As far as the office/housing combination. I am still not convinced of that. I have had that problem from the very beginning. The reason that I have that concern is that from a pure planning standpoint, if you had given me this property from the beginning and said okay, Planning Commissioner what should go there? I would not have, very honestly, I would never have designated part of it as office. That Lake Drive East to me is the buffer, the commercial, the neighborhood commercial is on the north side facing Highway 5 and is the buffer. So I again cannot support office next to the residential. That's a very big dividing line for me for the office. If this were, you know property that again nobody had lived in that we were doing some creative rezoning and it were open farm fields, I might look at it a little differently. But we do have an established neighborhood abutting it. Expansion of the church site. Absolutely. We need to take the cloud off of that and allow for the original plan and the expansion of the church site to be a permitted use. The other use that I have thought about is that again from a planning perspective making a transition between the single family and the commercial on the other side. I mean I think the church is the greatest use. I think it's the most harmonious and obviously has worked well. The only other use that I would look at is a multi-family. Some sort of duplexes, six units 62 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 per acre. Because I do think that that is a good transition. It keeps it residential. It just allows for a little more density in that area .... I tend to think, and obviously you can rationalize a lot of things, but all those uses that I feel comfortable with, the assisted living, I think the community, I know the community has a need for. Multi-family I think is a good transition and we are always looking at opportunities for life cycle housing and multi-family does fill that, and of course I feel very comfortable with the expansion of the church, which we have their original plan and which we supported in 1988 and I would still continue to support. So that being it. Scott Botcher: Is it my turn? Mayor Mancino: Yes. Scott Botcher: I've been very patient. That's hard for me. Just a couple things. I'm going to try to wrap up even quicker than that. I'm going to skip all the detail stuff that most of you guys all went through. As a plan goes, I don't have a problem with the proposed restrictions as they are in front of you. I think they're workable, but I'm going to come back to the very first thing I said, and I told somebody today. Nancy or Linda. It was a lady. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Thank you very much. Now was it a senior lady or a little younger lady? We're going to make you really look bad. Scott Botcher: ... Basically, and I think I told Jim this. I have a great deal of difficulty, Mark said this earlier, trying to approve a, trying to do a site plan for somebody. That's simply not our job. And so I'm going to say two things. One, if you choose to go down this road, I think and Kate's worked very hard and if her daughter's still here she should be very nice to you. Because she's worked very hard on this and it's been, while you guys think it's tough, try to be these people trying to do a site plan for somebody that doesn't exist yet. But I told Jim and Randy early on I just, I have a fundamental problem with that. I don't think it's our role to do site plans for people. We're not the private sector. I know Mark has said this many times, we're not the private sector and like the feasibility study, that's primarily why I don't think we can do a good feasibility study nor should we do one. I don't think that's necessarily our role. If somebody wants to build one, that's great. They can provide us with one. Part of the reason we're struggling up here so badly is that the target is not fixed. We don't know what we're shooting at except for some dirt out there. That's all we're shooting at. I said this before and I'll say it again, I mean I've been in churches that build on sites and they had to sell their property contingent upon the buyer receiving site plan approval from the governing body. That's life in the big city. I mean that's how it is. And I mean I know how it is when you have your, when you get Lutherans begging for money, they're relentless. And you want to give them. I am one. They're relentless at asking for money because they, you know, you want to see the church built. And it's a great asset. It's a tremendous asset. But I'm not sure that's our job. It's not our job to put together this whole package and come up with the site plan and just have it all sitting there for a developer to come and buy. That's about what we're doing here. And I'm not sure that's in our best interest, nor in our citizens best interest. Now that doesn't mean that the exercise maybe hasn't been productive. And you know five months isn't a terribly long time. It feels like it. It's not. But I have two quick questions for Jim or Randy. Lutheran Brotherhood is the agent doing the bridge financing, and I assume that's still the case. But they're in line to do that. Okay. I understand, and this is purely hearsay. That there's a party already in line behind Lutheran Brotherhood to buy it from them. Is that accurate? Jim Selerud: ... structure, Lutheran Brotherhood. 63 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: And I understood that. I guess early on in the summer it was my understanding that there was not this third party in existence. I guess if there is a third party, they should probably come in and make a site plan. You know if there's a developer out there, and that's great. Then why would a third party buy the property? That's what I'm saying. Then they need to come in and make a site plan submittal to the city. Jim Selerud: ... Scott Botcher: But this isn't a site plan approval. Jim Selerud: ... Kate Aanenson: Herein lies my dilemma. Scott Botcher: I know this has been your dilemma. Kate Aanenson: You want to do a site plan instead of giving it uses. We're trying to combine and that's what we're getting hung up with. Scott Botcher: I know, and I just. Kate Aanenson: Because we have institutional zoning throughout the city that has several different options, you know, and we're trying to get those too so we have to say. Scott Botcher: So there is, and I know it's unexecuted but there is a third party developer out there. So why don't they, why are we doing this? I mean why don't they come in and make a contingent offer to purchase, if you've got them. Line them up and bring them in. It doesn't seem like the market has a lack of interest in the property. Or maybe I should be speaking to the council. My recommendation is then maybe, and I'm tom. Kate and I have gone round and round on this and seriously, she's worked very hard on this and I don't have a problem with what's there and you guys have all said very good things. I just fundamentally question then why we're doing this, for whatever it's worth. And I'm done. Because Senn was leaving at 10:00. Those are just my thoughts... Mayor Mancino: Well, council let's go back to that discussion. Waiting for a site plan, developer to bring in a site plan for us to approve and look at it that way. Councilwoman Jansen: So what would we need to do tonight to send this through the system for a site plan review? We've voiced our opinions. Mayor Mancino: We wait for an applicant to come in. We wouldn't do anything. Scott Botcher: The request before you is to rezone it. I mean I think. Councilwoman Jansen: So that would have to be denied? So tonight we'd have to deny and then it would go back through site plan and that's when rezone would? Mayor Mancino: We'd have to get a formal application. 64 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Roger Knutson: There are lots of possibilities. One, first you're up against a time deadline so you're going to have to act tonight unless you get an extension. Otherwise you could theoretically table this action, with their approval. I'm not suggesting you want to do that. And say alright, now go find your developer and find out which one of these alternatives you want to build and then process a site plan and then we'll come back to you with a real live deal. Or you could say, we're going to close this chapter. Go find your real live deal. Have a contingent purchase or however you want to deal with it, and then start the process when you have a real live deal. Councilman Engel: Seems to me you get the same result either way. Mayor Mancino: Well I think it's easier, yeah. Yeah. Close the deal and then go. Discussions around. Councilman Labatt: Or if you want to go back and put ourselves at Square One with... Scott Botcher: You don't have a submittal. Councilman Labatt: ... request for rezoning. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, but you have a request for a rezoning. Options for rezoning.., site plan approval. Yes, there is a question for rezoning but it's probably going to be one out of four of these that lets us hone in on that.., rezoning and feel comfortable with that. And obviously we've spoken to that tonight generally so I think that gives some.., if you look at our zoning, usually you have different uses. This one didn't because of the PUD. Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: Excuse me. In essence if, and I concur with what Scott having mentioned that it's, you know it's not our place to do the feasibility study but in my trying to come to grips with whether we're approving something. If we're approving a rezoning for a facility that can't be built to the guidelines. If we've now expressed, and everyone's expressed an interest in the senior assisted living. If we deny the rezoning tonight, it virtually puts it back to someone coming in and showing that this site is feasible for a senior assisted living facility, because they'd be presenting a site plan and going. Scott Botcher: They wouldn't come in unless they did. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Mayor Mancino: They have to do their own market study and make sure that, and that's not for us to do. Okay. Councilwoman Jansen: I'm good with that. Mayor Mancino: So where do you want to go with this? Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: Where do I want to go with it? Mayor Mancino: How do we pull everybody together and let's make a good. Councilman Senn: ...like my answer. 65 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilwoman Jansen: I would move that we deny the rezoning request. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second? Is there a discussion? Councilman Engel: Well I'm not Solomon but I can count to four and there ain't four vote sup here by my tally for rezoning so I don't know where we're going to be here. This could go all night. Councilwoman Jansen: Well I guess in what was just suggested, if there's an option out there that's going to come forward on this site, and move this through the process the way a traditional project moves through the process. I've already voiced my opinion on what I support and don't support on this but let's get back to doing this standard. We've certainly given all of our guidelines and parameters and maybe once, okay. let me say this. What if an office medium density comes before us and it's wonderful. I've got something solid in front of me. I might change my mind. Mayor Mancino: Well there also may be some other options that we haven't thought of that aren't up here. Councilwoman Jansen: So I mean it's not to discourage. It may sound discouraging to say deny, but it's not trying to discourage that this happen. It's to put it back through the way it's supposed to go through as to what would happen next anyway. Councilman Engel: Let me pose a theoretical question. We don't seem to be making any progress. Adhering to our present course, if we put this thing back to ground zero and say okay gang, not making it. Come back with a real plan. Does that help the whole process move forward? Mayor Mancino: Well it does .... have control. Councilman Engel: I know you guys may not think so but the problem is, you've got to get by four out of five up here. So I know it may be hard for you to hear, but sometimes the medicine that doesn't taste good really is what's going to cure the problem. The problem is you're not going anywhere right now. I mean nothing's happening. I'm reading between the lines up here but I don't think anything's going to happen. So what about it? Councilman Senn: I don't know about that. Has anybody made a motion to try to pass an assisted living option? No. Councilman Engel: Take a step. Councilman Senn: I heard four people over there say you supported assisted living option. Mayor Mancino: I heard five people supporting assisted living option, with one saying there needed to be a feasibility with the 25,000 square feet. Councilman Senn: ... four as a benchmark in terms of what you have to have. If that's, you know after you spend this much time and effort and everything else on something, I mean you hate to go back to ground zero and spend the time all over again. Councilman Engel: Okay, want me to take a run at one? In general. 66 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilwoman Jansen: But it's the thought of, we keep saying that we're going back to ground zero. We've got a lot, staff has done one heck of a lot of work here that's going to be applied to whatever comes before us. It's not ground zero. Councilman Engel: It's not ground zero, I agree. I agree. Councilwoman Jansen: Here it is. Here it is. We've all spoken to it and it's basically doing what I'm hearing. Councilman Senn: I'll bet your opinion but don't lecture me. Councilwoman Jansen: Well excuse me, I'm not trying to lecture so I apologize if you took it that way. Councilman Engel: Let me try and do this thing, based on what we've got here. I would move to amend the zoning to allow church or senior assisted living per staff report. And I'll it that simple. Councilman Senn: Okay, now define what that is. Councilman Engel: No. Councilwoman Jansen: Roger has his hand up. Roger Knutson: This is quick and dirty. Quick anyway. Councilman Engel: I love that right now. Roger Knutson: So what we're doing is we're taking this document as presented. We're leaving, we're dropping off the office and multi-family. And we're redefining the over 55 in accordance with your discussion of one person per unit. Councilman Engel: Correct. One person per unit. Roger Knutson: And that would be the document. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Councilman Senn: So up to 60 units? Councilman Engel: Per staff's report. Kate Aanenson: That's in the report isn't it? Roger Knutson: Now the only thing I don't know, is there any of this other stuff that needs to be changed? Mayor Mancino: Well the other things that need to be changed is, let me just go over it from Mark's point of view. And Mark you can say yes or no. Under health services you would keep it 100% of residents 55, or no. One resident per unit must be 55 years or older. Two, maximum of 60 units. Is that correct? Maximum of 60 units. Institutional would be church use only. And any physical expansion of existing 67 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 church not to exceed 25,000 square feet. Would delete all the information under office. You would delete all the information under residential. You would keep the setbacks. The setbacks would obviously stay but not apply to medium density residential because there wouldn't be any. And the development site coverage and building heights, you would keep that the same. And building materials and design you would keep the same, correct? Okay. We have a motion on the floor. Is there a, yes. Roger Knutson: Excuse me. On the access, you'd eliminate medium density residential and office. Mayor Mancino: So it would just show assisted living facility. Okay, is there a second to the motion? Councilman Labatt: I'll second it. Councilwoman Jansen: Can I ask a question, just to clarify. I apologize. So there's no 25,000 square foot minimum? Okay. Mayor Mancino: This says maximum of 60 units. Councilman Engel moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the second and final reading for the rezoning for Hidden Valley PUD to PUD-I mixed use to include church and senior assisted living and approve the development standards for Lot 1, Block 7, Hidden Valley amended in the staff report to change item 1 under Health Services to read that each unit shall have at least one person 55 years or older and deleting items relating to office and medium density residential uses. Councilman Engel and Councilman Labatt voted in favor. The rest of the Council voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 2 to 3. Mayor Mancino: Is there another motion? Councilman Engel: My flight leaves at 7:00. I think I might have another path through the wilderness here. We're reduced to that. I would propose we move to table. What do you think? Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to the motion? Kate Aanenson: We're at the time frame limit. Councilman Senn: We can do that if they agree to it. Councilman Engel: It's up to them really. Roger Knutson: How long do you want to table it for? Councilman Engel: 30 days. Councilwoman Jansen: What are we going to accomplish? Mayor Mancino: Just a minute. And what do you want to have accomplished in those 30 days that we table? 68 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Engel: Good question. I didn't say I had every tree charted out. I said I had a path. I think you're going to need a chainsaw and a wrecking crew on this one. Mayor Mancino: I'm going to make the motion that we do not approve the land use change and that we ask the applicant to have their developer come in with a site plan review that we can look at and make that decision then if we want to rezone. But we do not do the rezoning. Roger Knutson: And rezoning. You're moving to deny the rezoning and the comp plan change. Mayor Mancino: Yes. And that we have a site plan come in that we can review and have it go through Planning Commission and through City Council. I don't see us going anywhere else. Councilman Engel: I think you may be right. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to the motion? Councilwoman Jansen: So, I'm sorry. You're suggesting that this would come back in with a site plan, right? Did I miss? Okay. Mayor Mancino: Come back in with a site plan. Councilwoman Jansen: I'll second. Councilman Engel: I believe I've heard this one before. Mayor Mancino: I know. I don't see us getting any closer. We're not going to get 4/5. Mayor Mancino moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to deny the rezoning and deny the comprehensive land use plan amendment/t99-1 and ask the developer to submit a site plan application to go through the process. Mayor Mancino and Councilwoman Jansen voted in favor. The rest of the Council voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 2 to 3. Councilman Engel: You got an idea down there Mark? Councilman Senn: Fresh out. Councilman Engel: Roger? Legally. Roger Knutson: The easiest thing is we all go home now and it will take care of itself. Councilman Senn: Well then they get approved. Roger Knutson: Yes. I didn't say it was the best thing. Councilman Senn: I'm just pointing that out to people so they know. Roger Knutson: You either act tonight or it's approved. You can act to deny it or you can act to approve it. Or you can do nothing and it's approved. 69 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Engel: In other words if we don't come to a decision. Mayor Mancino: We're going to be here until we come to a decision. Councilman Engel: So if we want to have any compassion, I'm going to use the word that gets thrown around. Maybe the wrong word, for the neighbors, it's got to go in the motion and get voted on tonight? Roger Knutson: You have to dispose of it tonight unless you get, unless they agree to give you an extension. Mayor Mancino: Which they have, they have said that they would give us a 30 day extension. To table it. Councilman Labatt: What are we going to accomplish? Mayor Mancino: Well who knows. If people's mind changes or you know, etc. I've got to tell you, I think it's important. I think it's very, very hard for us, don't get me wrong but it's also important what we do and that we get a good majority that feel comfortable with where we're going...to have it go through when none of us feel comfortable is just, I mean I'd like to see a site plan that we all feel comfortable with. You know and if we get one in that we're not quite, how can we tweak it and make it work. How can we work with both the church and the neighbors and I mean that's what we do a lot. That's what we spend a lot of time doing. I mean that's what we did on Walnut Grove. That's what we're going to do with other PUD's that come in. They never come in, a site plan never comes in completely right at first. We work together to make it right for everyone. I think this is what it's going to take. Councilman Engel: Okay, let me take another stab at this because based on what, the calls I've gotten from the neighbors, there ain't a great path through the woods but there is one. Doing nothing is not the one you want. I can almost assure, I can guarantee you that. So I'm going to make that motion again. Based on the assisted living proposal and the renderings we were shown tonight in the staff report, showing 32% impervious coverage, I would rezoning to senior assisted living per staff report. And I would welcome an amendment if you so disagree. Councilwoman Jansen: Well can I ask a question? Councilman Engel: Please do. Councilwoman Jansen: I think where we're getting hung up is trying to do the rezoning obviously before the site plan. Is there a way to word this so that tonight we're not just carte blanche doing a rezoning to senior assisted living but we're saying based on these parameters, given the site plan coming through the system on these parameters, that's what we're approving. Councilman Engel: I believe that's what I said. I'm trying to keep other words out of there but that's what I'm saying. Mayor Mancino: It still has to come through site plan. Roger Knutson: And a conditional use. 7O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: And conditional use so more conditions can still be put on it. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, so we're not granting a rezoning to this tonight? Mayor Mancino: Yes. Councilman Engel: We are, but you've got to understand if we do nothing, we're not only granging the zoning for senior assisted living, we're giving everything in that plus legally. No other choice. Scott Botcher: Assuming that, I mean except for what Jim said at the beginning, most of what's in Kate's proposal is acceptable. As communicated anyway was acceptable to the church. I may be naive but I have to believe that it's acceptable to the church because it's acceptable to the ultimate user. Why don't we just have the ultimate come in and make the proposal. Mayor Mancino: A site plan. Scott Botcher: I mean the church isn't going to do this unless they know it's acceptable to somebody. They obviously have some understanding as to what may be acceptable in the marketplace. Mayor Mancino: That would be true. Scott Botcher: ... people out there potentially to take this from Lutheran Brotherhood. I'm just raising the question. Big picture. Mayor Mancino: So that again would be waiting until site plan comes in, because obviously these uses are ones that. Scott Botcher: And if you wanted to table for 30, I mean you talked about doing that and Jim said fine. I don't know where they are but get the party in here. Do a site plan. Mayor Mancino: Table it for site plan review? Scott Botcher: No. I mean you guys are right, this is just messy all the way around at this point. And it's very tough. It's terribly tough. I mean I don't want to go home and be vilified by, get kicked out of the ELCA or something but. Councilman Engel: Too late. Scott Botcher: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, there goes my pledge. But I think, but I've got to ask the question. You guys are working so hard but.., is it your job to do the site plan? I'm done now. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Oh wait, what was your motion? Councilman Senn: I have a question. Do you think the neighborhood embraces the assisted living facility? ... 50,000 square feet. Councilman Engel: I know they don't embrace everything but it's the plan that if they're given their druthers, the only one I've not gotten total dissatisfaction with. Like I said, I'm trying to find a path 71 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 through the woods here. I know what it isn't. I know it's not nothing. It's no action on this council's part. I know that isn't it. That's like pulling the pin and throwing the grenade and saying good luck. Mayor Mancino: Is there a second to Mark's motion? Okay, I'll take a stab at a motion. I move that we rezone the property to number one, institutional, which is church use only. And any physical expansion of the existing church not to exceed 25,000 square feet. And number two, health service. Assisted living facility subject to the following criteria. One resident per unit must be 55 years or older. That's it. There's no office. There's no residential. Setbacks remain the same. The development site coverage and building heights. Number one, the PUD standards for hard surface coverage is 55%. Under building materials and design, number 4 says it's not or appropriate landscaping but and appropriate landscaping. And that you delete medium density and office. And when the site plan comes in, this is my thinking, and Roger I'll get to you on this. When the site plan comes in, when we actually see a real site plan, we can look at that and make the determination at that time on square footage. Councilman Labatt: Meets the criteria? Mayor Mancino: That meets the criteria... Councilman Senn: Essentially what happens is once you rezone the property, then you have to allow them to re-use it. You have to allow a reasonable use of the property under that zoning. Mayor Mancino: Well exactly but under your conditions imposable on permits, you have controlling the number of area, both heights and location. Hold on. Hold on. Roger Knutson: You could further restrict it greater than the impervious surface and setback requirements if you can come up with specific reasons why it's appropriate for this site. Because it would be a conditional use. For example, now I'm just making something up. It will generate too much traffic for the local street capacity. If it's that X square feet. You know things like that you could restrict it's square footage. But just, you couldn't, it wouldn't be a legislative decision at that point. It would be quasi judicial. Or something like that. It'd have to be very concrete. Councilman Engel: It's my belief Mayor that that motion puts the neighbors at greater risk than my motion does. Am I right or wrong? Roger Knutson: It allows the developer to do more. Mayor Mancino: Well it leaves it open and flexible to some degree. I mean you could say with a range between 25,000 and 50 square feet I suppose. Roger Knutson: Or you could say not to exceed. Mayor Mancino: Not to exceed 50,000 square feet. And does that give us the right at the time, the legislative right at the time, unencumbered, to limit it? Roger Knutson: No. Because 50,000 square feet is the outside and then you have to have reasons why you'd want to ratchet it down from that point. Scott Botcher: I think legally you're in a defensive position. 72 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Mayor Mancino: Yeah, got it. Councilman Labatt: So can we, I'll take a stab at it. In a third motion here. Mayor Mancino: I think this is the fifth. Councilman Labatt: Fifth? I move that we ask the applicant to table 30 days and come back... Councilwoman Jansen: They're coming back here, not to the Planning Commission. Kate Aanenson: Okay, this is where I'm having a little bit of problems because you're putting site plan. We're not doing a site plan tonight. We're just trying to set up the framework so it comes back through the process through a public hearing. What we're trying to say tonight is if it did come in, these are some of the framework issues. Mayor Mancino: I understand that but he's trying to. Kate Aanenson: Well now you're tying site plan back into the rezoning. So and get an opinion from Roger but that's what you're trying to do there. I think you need to back out of the whole thing and come back through. Because you're trying to web the two together. Councilman Senn: What I'm hearing is we cannot come up with a rezoning scenario that we can get four people to agree on. So if that's the case let's just put it down and let's go on. Roger Knutson: Motion to deny only requires three votes to pass. Councilman Engel: Motion what? Roger Knutson: Motion to deny takes three votes. Councilman Engel: I don't think that's what he's asking. Roger Knutson: Turn it down? Councilman Senn: Well we had three votes before in a motion to deny. Roger Knutson: Did you? I didn't. Scott Botcher: You only had two. Kate Aanenson: No. Councilwoman Jansen: We were two. Mayor Mancino: We had two. Councilman Senn: I thought there was a second. 73 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Kate Aanenson: No. 2 to 3. Councilwoman Jansen: I'll make a motion to deny the rezoning. Roger Knutson: And the comp plan. Councilwoman Jansen: And the comprehensive plan revision. Mayor Mancino: I'll second that. Councilwoman Jansen moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to deny the rezoning for Hidden Valley PUD and to deny the comprehensive land use plan amendment #99-1. All voted in favor, except Councilman Engel and Councilman Labatt who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. RESOLUTION ADOPTING A PRELIMINARY BUDGET AND PRELIMINARY TAX LEVY; AUTHORIZE CERTIFICATION TO CARVER AND HENNEPIN COUNTIES. Scott Botcher: The Finance Director is here to make his incredibly brief presentation. Councilwoman Jansen: No. Bruce DeJong: Hi. I've had three caffeine beverages tonight just to keep me awake to this point. Councilman Engel: I've had eight since 4:00. Bruce DeJong: I hope it works for you guys. I think this is pretty straight forward, and I just hope you'll go ahead and approve this. I will give you two things and that is, I've been trying to dig through the debt service stuff, which is the really the largest portion of the increase. And what I have found is somewhat confusing because I can't tie out directly what special assessments are to be paid from the TIF district. I just haven't had time to wrap my arms around that. Actually I went through and filled out something that the State Department of Revenue requires us to fill out. I was working on that today, Form 280. And it made it a little bit clearer but I still want to go back and tie out exactly, but it looks to me like if we follow the same logic as we did last year, there are two debt service levies that we do not have to completely levy and that would save us approximately $243,000 off the tax levy. Scott Botcher: Here's essentially, and if I screw up, since I've now been excommunicated... Bruce DeJong: Dive in. Scott Botcher: ... Here's essentially the deal. There's two parts that we haven't yet tied back clearly because we haven't. Where it looks like last year's levy was, well the Park and Rec levy, Park and Rec referendum levy last year appears to have been too high. Correct? Bruce DeJong: Correct. Councilman Senn: I was just going to say, why don't you quit skating around it and say that the levy last year was substantially higher than the council legally approved it to be. 74 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: I don't know what you legally approved. Councilman Senn: It's right in the minutes what we approved. Bruce DeJong: I don't have a clue because I haven't gone back to the minutes. All I've gone back to is what the. Mayor Mancino: Well I've got a copy of what we approved. Scott Botcher: But then the second issue is, the whole issue with the special assessment debt and what TIF revenues pay portions of special assessment debt and one of the issues that we need to consider as we go down the road for other special assessment type projects is we need to maintain a sensitivity and it's another one of the things piled on Bruce's lap to do some sort of analysis as to what we can accept. I mean it's easy when you do special assessment sales and the city will buy out 20% of that project. Well we've been sort of doing that in our 36 capital project funds and they've been adding up. And there's a substantial financial commitment there now on behalf of the city that we just sort of need to watch a little bit. What was the second levy that, the 200 and some thousand. Bruce DeJong: The second levy was the two GO refundings of 1994. Scott Botcher: That last year you applied the proceeds from that issue to servicing the special assessment debt and the debt service, which is okay. What Bruce is saying is that he hasn't positively, 100% tied it back. You guys didn't know that? Is that correct Bruce? So Bruce is saying there's a possibility of reducing the levy by the $200,000 and is it also a possibility of reducing it by the difference in the park referendum? Bruce DeJong: Yes. It's possible to reduce this approximately $475,000, which would be a grand total of $5,543,592 which is less than your levy last year. Or I mean it's less on an absolute dollar terms. It would be you know 99% or 98% of the levy for this year. Scott Botcher: The bottom line is I guess this is a CYA recommendation until we tie it back. Bruce DeJong: I think this is a reasonable recommendation until I can you know do a good job with the debt service study and make sure that I've got everything tied out and come back to you but a 5.8% increase for the Truth in Taxation I think is probably less than what you've done last year. This is not going up to the maximum by any stretch of the imagination. Mayor Mancino: We've always done to the max. Councilman Labatt: Mark, what was the last... Councilman Engel: I think it was four something. Mayor Mancino: No, at this time in the budget process last year we enacted the max. Councilman Engel: That's right. 75 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Councilman Labatt: Which was? Mayor Mancino: I can't even remember but it was the max allowable. Councilman Labatt: 147 20? Mayor Mancino: I want to say it was, well for the entire levy it probably was but I can't remember, but anyway it was, we always took the max that the legislature allowed. I don't think anything else had been done. Councilman Engel: ... established practice of the council that we just take the .... Mayor Mancino: Yes we did last year. At this point we did .... so pegging this at 5.8% and saying we're going to try and come underneath that is. Scott Botcher: And we've identified close to half million dollars that we think we may be able to lop off just once we're 100% sure that we can tie it all back. The other thing that's out there, and I'm not going to belabor it but I'll talk to Nancy about it. The Southwest Metro Transit people are asking for 11% increase. Whatever input those of you, I don't know who else is on the board over there. Mayor Mancino: I am. Scott Botcher: You and somebody else I thought though. That's something that maybe needs some review. Councilman Senn: Citizen member. Councilman Labatt: It used to be Randy Herman. Mayor Mancino: That was passed, as far as I can tell, that was passed at the June 28th meeting. 2000 Transit Service Levy Adoption was on the agenda for the June 28th meeting. It was l(m). Scott Botcher: As a maximum though. As a max. Councilman Senn: Plus we were told at that time we would have a chance to impact the time that we adopted our own levy what that would be. Scott Botcher: And you.., studying their budget. Councilman Senn: Yeah, just because you did it in June does not mean that you know equal that in this levy. Mayor Mancino: But we have to tell them that. Councilman Senn: Southwest Transit has increased, it's up every year for the last several years. Or ever since we went to the, where they opt out. 76 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: Is it appropriate to ask them to come and make a budget presentation? Mayor Mancino: Sure. I think they've done that before and we can have them before they make the... I want to say, I'm just, well I can't remember. I was going to say, I don't think they've gone higher than what we've gone as a city but I can't remember. Mark you were on the commission. You probably remember that more than I would. Councilman Senn: As far as what? Mayor Mancino: As far as their levy, Southwest Metro levy not being any higher in percentage increase than the city would levy increase. Councilman Senn: That was the, how would you say, that was the general operating policy that was established by Southwest at that time. That they wouldn't exceed the City's levies and stuff but they would always at the initial one do out the max and the reason they gave they'd do out the max initially was if they didn't do the max, Met Council would step in and take whatever the difference between the max and the actual was. Councilwoman Jansen: Can I ask a question? Hopefully a short one. For a change. If what we're trying to accomplish tonight is just simply pass something that ultimately, if I understand this correctly, we don't have to hold ourselves to but we can't go over as far as the levy. We've got all these moving targets that are out there right now where we're still trying to figure out what went where and who went which direction. Mayor Mancino: Let's make it easy. Councilman Senn: It's not quite that simple. Councilwoman Jansen: Well we're trying. Councilman Senn: It's also the basis on which everything is mailed out to every citizen in our city saying here's what your city council is doing and this is what they are adopting for a levy. Councilwoman Jansen: And if properly reported that what we are doing, if we had a discussion about simply leaving our options open as we're evaluating what all of our positions are and we're not even close yet. We have time to evaluate from now until the final hearing, correct in December. Bruce DeJong: That is correct. Councilwoman Jansen: So if we approve this number we think we're comfortable with and we eliminate the option of being able to go over that, aren't we just taking a little bit of a risk, and I trust obviously that you've gone through the numbers. You're comfortable with it. I'm trying to figure out why we wouldn't just exercise the option. I realize you know there's a philosophical difference on advertising that you're going to the maximum. But if we're doing that in order to properly analyze where we are currently and we're giving ourselves the time to do that to where we're comfortable with our debt numbers. Comfortable with where our fund balances are going to be used. I mean I don't know that we've gone through to that great detail to where we can say okay, we're not going to need to go above that. We don't want to go above the 5.8 but what if need arises and we've given up the option? 77 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: I guess what we tried to do, and because this was the council's direction in June, was to not publish the max. Personally I would rather not publish the max. Personally I wish that the budget was nice and clean and we could pull it all tight together and say here it is. We're obviously, we've been whittling down and whittling down and best as we can and my guess is probably within a week we can come back to you and say hey, guess what. We can lop that off there but we can't do that right now. The flip side of it is, is that Mark's right in the fact that the constituents will hit us up and good god, you know what is this max thing. I guess the risk abatement is the fact that as we went through our fund balances the other day, you have very adequate fund balances above the required reserve mandate in the fiscal policy and so I guess I would tend to lend more toward not doing the max because you have a pretty good comfort level on everything but these two items. And if we were risk takers, and we've talked about this for the last couple days. If we wanted to be more risky we'd say ah, we have the right. Let's do it but we want to make sure you tie it down. There's nothing to gain by doing that at this point and there's a lot more to lose. So that's why we made the recommendation that we did. Mayor Mancino: Which is the 5.78% levy. Scott Botcher: Correct. Mayor Mancino: I'd like to move that we go ahead and approve the levy at 5.78% over last year, and I'll give my rationale to say that I think the general fund net levy at 3.5% higher is fine for max for the general levy and I'm assuming that as you do the research on the rest of the debt service that we may be able to bring that 5.8% down. Bruce DeJong: Yes. I'm fairly positive that we'll be able to bring that down. That's the part that really scares me because it's not easy to tie out based on the information that's available right now. And I don't want to, I'll tell you, boy this is really going to sound terrible when the transcript comes out but, I'll tell you that part of our meeting with the auditors next week is going to be related to the fund balances in each individual debt service fund and they have some concerns about that that they've expressed in their management letter. And so I don't want to handicap or limit us in any way because I don't know which funds are probably going to be below and which funds are just fine, and I have to list on this form for the Department of Revenue each individual bond issue and how much we're levying so I'm being very careful with that. That we've kept sufficient amount in each one of those that we will be able to meet our obligations. Mayor Mancino: I have a motion to accept staffs suggestion of the proposed levy certification. Is there a second? Councilman Labatt: Second. Bruce DeJong: I do want to mention one more thing. Nothing has been included in the budget related to any increase in the county contract for police services. If you want to maintain flexibility for that I would recommend increasing the general fund levy above where you're at. Right now we are at status quo in the budget and that's where we are here. Scott Botcher: Unless, except for the fact again, and this was my own position on it. As I said, the annual increase that you could potentially be looking at for the county contract is not so extreme that the fund balance probably wouldn't cover it. My own opinion. But just so, Bruce is right. If you decide, and it's 78 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 not only the county contract. Any expenditures. You want to buy each of you those expensive.., laptops. No, that's not in there. And anything that you don't offset by reducing expenditures elsewhere, which very well may do. Needs to be made up by alternative revenue sources or fund balances. But as far as meeting the county contract if you chose to do that with the increase expenditure, you're fine. Councilwoman Jansen: And we're also looking at using, this is from my questioning you guys on Friday. Thank you very much. We're also using the fund balances to address any capital expenditures including the equipment 950 request that we pulled out, correct? Scott Botcher: Some of the capital expenditures are listed in the respective funds and will pay for either levy, enterprise funds revenue streams or fund balances. A number of the capital items that were in 950 as well as the issues that are in the capital plan anyway, in all probability, unless you want to do something different, will be paid for through a debt issue. Longer capital issues make some sense. That's what we had talked about. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Not fund balances, okay. Scott Botcher: Again it's, you know we're just trying, utilizing the two of those as tools, you can do that but you know you guys had stuff just spread out that you didn't know. And you couldn't have known. Mayor Mancino: There's a motion and there's a second. Resolution #99-78: Mayor Mancino moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve a resolution setting the proposed Property Tax Levy Certification at 5.78% higher than the final levy certified to Carver County in 1998. All voted in favor, except Councilwoman Jansen who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 4 to 1. Councilman Senn: I'm going to say yes with comment, which is my right. Mayor Mancino: Absolutely. Councilman Senn: And my comment is that I will vote yes on this to move it along but under no circumstances will I support this kind of a levy increase when it comes down to it. Mayor Mancino: Okay, that's fine. Linda, did you vote? Councilwoman Jansen: Nay. Mayor Mancino: So we have four yes's and one nay. On the revised property tax division, Department of Revenue for payable 2000 TIF Aid reductions. We get a reduction of HACA for right around $280,000 because of TIF, correct? Am I reading that right Bruce? Bruce DeJong: It's actually a reduction of $302,000. What they did to us was they took our local performance aid, which was never a deduction on any of these forms and the legislature eliminated local performance aid. Rolled it into the local government aid formula and took it away from us. Had they not done that they would have reduced our HACA by another $20,460. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. 79 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: SCHOOL DISTRICT 112 YOUTH COMMISSION~ CITY MANAGER. Mayor Mancino: The District 112 Youth Commission. Any questions on this? Everybody feel just comfortable going ahead? Councilman Senn: Other than the fact that you totally confused me. Mayor Mancino: What? Councilman Senn: Because in the past we always appointed one adult and one student to this. Mayor Mancino: We already have a student. Councilman Senn: Continuing you mean? Mayor Mancino: Yes, that has one more year. Scott Botcher: The terms are opposite of each other. Councilman Senn: Oh, so it's a multi year term now? Scott Botcher: No, it's just one but, no you're right. Yeah, two year. Councilman Senn: Because it never was before. That's why I'm confused. Scott Botcher: They're a year apart. Mayor Mancino: And we got an e-mail from Scott telling us who the Youth Commission person is. And I can't remember her name at this point. RECOMMENDATION FROM SHERIFF BUD OLSON~ CITY MANAGER. Scott Botcher: I just want to seek some input from you all on how you want to proceed with this. If you think this should come back to, go back to Law Enforcement Task Force. If it should go to Council and you guys should really start chewing on it and give it some closure. I know you have one member I think of the task force who moved to Sacramento or something. And you've got a lady, drawing a blank who it is. Who's on it. If you still wanted to have her input on this, I think that would be easy enough to accomplish. I just want to make sure that I've got it pushing along and Todd primarily has it pushing along in the direction you want it to go. Mayor Mancino: And it's part of our budget. Any suggestions? Councilman Senn: City Council work session. Mayor Mancino: And invite Greg and Colleen? 8O City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Scott Botcher: And how about Bud? Mayor Mancino: And Bud. Bud make a presentation. Councilman Engel: Good idea. Scott Botcher: I'll do it. Mayor Mancino: Go forward on that. Councilman Labatt: What date would you put that on? Scott Botcher: I have no idea. Councilman Labatt: It won't be next week? Councilman Senn: I would like to request a City Council only executive session. Mayor Mancino: Right now? Councilman Senn: Right now. Councilman Engel: Alright, second. Roger Knutson: State the purpose. Councilman Senn: The purpose is to discuss a litigation matter. Mayor Mancino: Is that enough Roger? Roger Knutson: Can you specify what it is? Councilman Senn: Do I have to? Roger Knutson: Preferable. Councilman Senn: I would prefer not to. Councilman Engel: Should Roger stay? Mayor Mancino: Okay, the City Council will go into Executive Session. Roger Knutson: I have to stay. Mayor Mancino adjourned the City Council meeting at 11:40 p.m. and convened into an Executive Session. 81 City Council Meeting - September 13, 1999 Submitted by Scott Botcher City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 82