CC 2014 06 23
CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
JUNE 23, 2014
Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to
the Flag.
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mayor Furlong, Councilwoman Ernst, Councilwoman Tjornhom,
and Councilman McDonald
COUNCIL MEMBERS ABSENT:
Councilman Laufenburger
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Gerhardt, Laurie Hokkanen, Paul Oehme, Kate Aanenson, and Todd Hoffman
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Larry A. Koch 471 Bighorn Drive
Laurie Susla 7008 Dakota Avenue
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Mayor Furlong: Thank you and welcome to everybody here in the council chambers as well as those
watching at home. We’re glad that you joined us on this nice summer evening. We’ll start now with,
request or first of all ask if there are any changes or modifications being requested of the agenda.
Otherwise without objection proceed with the agenda as published. I’d like to start with an invitation to
our City’s annual Fourth of July celebration. It’s amazing how fast this is coming up for nonetheless in
th
about 10 days or so, next week is the 4 of July and this is the City of Chanhassen’s largest community
st
event each year. This will actually be the 31 Annual Fourth of July Celebration in Chanhassen. The
ndrdth
celebration is actually a 3 day event now beginning on July 2, 3 and 4. Presented by the City of
Chanhassen and our sponsors for a community event and other organizations are heavily involved.
nd
Wednesday, July 2 is Family Night at the carnival from 3:00 p.m. til 10:00 p.m. at City Center Park.
rd
Activities begin at 4:30 on July 3 with the Southwest Metro Chamber of Commerce Business Expo.
Chanhassen Rotary Taste of Chanhassen. Carnival rides and games. Three on three basketball
tournament. Music by Ragtown and the ever popular street dance beginning at 7:00 p.m. with Casablanca
th
Orchestra again this year leading us in the fun. Friday, July 4 itself the events start early with adult
fishing at Lake Ann at 7:00 a.m. and many other events throughout the day at City Center Park. There’ll
be live music by American Bootleg. Games and carnival rides. The Chanhassen Rotary Taste of
Chanhassen will continue. They’ll have their classic car show and the parade sponsored by the
th
Chanhassen Rotary Club begins at 2:30 down West 78. Fireworks display over Lake Ann at 10:00 p.m.
that evening. It’s a great event. I hope everybody can come and join us with your family and friends.
It’s a great reason to stay in town for the holiday so looking forward to seeing as many of our friends and
thnd
neighbors as we can at the July 4 events beginning on Wednesday, July 2. Let’s move on now to the
next item on our agenda.
CONSENT AGENDA:Councilman McDonald moved, Councilwoman Ernst seconded that the
City Council approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s
recommendations:
1. Approval of City Council Minutes dated June 9, 2014
2. Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated June 17, 2014
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
3. Receive Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated May 28, 2014
4. Approval of Temporary On-Sale Liquor License, Eden Prairie Lions Club Fundraising Event,
July 16, 2014, Halla Greens Golf Course, 495 Pioneer Trail
5. 9111 Audubon Road: Approval of Interim Use Permit for Approximately 40,000 Cubic Yards of
Fill, Applicant: Mathiowetz Construction Co./Owner: Gayle Degler
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
Laurie Susla: Hi, my name is Laurie Susla. I live at 7008 Dakota Avenue in Chan and I am the President
of the Lotus Lake Conservation Alliance. I’m here tonight to talk with you all a little bit about the buffers
and stormwater, the new rules and regulations that are being put in by the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek
Watershed District. Our group sent you an email about a month ago running through the list of our
concerns, again primarily stormwater management and the buffers. As well as the very onerous nature of
actually applying for one of these permits where if you were putting in a garage with space underneath for
a basement would probably run in the vicinity of $20,000 we believe so it’s, the rules are complicated.
They are onerous. They are by far the most stringent of any watershed in the metro district we believe in
the state but we haven’t had time to analyze every watershed in the state but we are asking, as we did in
the email, that you all please get in touch with the watershed in an official manner express concern about
these rules. I just brought for your review, Terry Jeffery did an excellent job of going through the
concerns on this and I’m just going to, I don’t know if you can even read this but I just thought instead of
using my words I would use his official words here. He said just in his general comments, when looking
at the proposed rules for buffers, floodplain management, stormwater management and bank stabilization,
it is undeniable that these rules will result in significant additional encumbrances on the limited
developable land, excuse me. Developable land within Chanhassen and the other communities that lie
within the district boundaries. So there’s little land to develop and this is going to prevent quite a bit of
that. In many cases these rules go well beyond regulatory mechanisms which have been implemented by
the other 3 watershed organizations with jurisdiction in Chan and the MPCA. One of Terry’s big
concerns is that the other watersheds that have rule in Chanhassen, the rules from the Riley-Purg
watershed are going significantly beyond what the other watersheds are. Then regarding buffers. The
implications of the encumbrances being imposed on privately and publicly held land by the proposed
buffer rule is dramatic and not without potential for significant hardship to people and government
agencies. The proposed buffer rules by far exceed any buffer requirements implemented by other
watershed management organizations in the metropolitan area. Chanhassen cannot support these buffers
and strongly requests that the RPBCWD align the buffer requirements for closely with the other cities and
WML’s in the area. And then he goes on again with the stormwater just to say how many properties,
three-quarters of the properties in Chan will be affected by the stormwater rules. They are very, very
difficult to achieve. The levels that are requested, that are required by the rules are levels that cities,
counties, watersheds theirselves have trouble achieving with their engineering and taxpayer dollars at
their hands. As I said the homeowners in private property owners is extremely onerous. One of the
things that we have been asking since the beginning of this, of the rules process was for the watershed to
provide us with some actual data that why this is important, particularly with the buffers. There are no
lakeshore buffers in any other metro area at all so when you are saying to somebody we’re going to take
part of your property and require you to do a certain thing with it, it’s important we believe to show the
data on why it’s important for the water and what we’ve learned in looking at this, which is straight from
the watershed 10 year plan, is that you can see on this chart the top one. 63%, the phosphorus that goes
into the lake. 63% is from internal loading which is things like dying weeds, carp, turtles, birds, that type
2
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
of thing. 15% comes from the atmosphere. 23% from stormwater. So if you take that 23% from
stormwater on the top and you can look where is that coming from? 57% is treated going into the lake.
18% is rain that falls directly into the lake. Another 18 is untreated runoff from neighborhoods around
the lake and 6% is from lakeshore runoff. What this means it that one percent of the water, the
stormwater that’s going into Lotus, and I’m just using Lotus as an example because that’s our lake. One
percent of the phosphorus is coming from lakeshore. This orange part here so what we’re doing is, or
what the watershed is attempting to do is highly regulate one percent of the phosphorus load is going into
these lakes and we just feel that that probably is not the best way to achieve any type of success as far as
water quality goes. In the information that we sent you last month there was information about a survey
that we did with realtors that showed that implementing buffers on lakeshore property would reduce their
value by 10 to 20 percent which is what 92% of the responding realtors believed and right now we are
seeing a real life example of that. I don’t know if any of you know Lorna Turnowski but she’s been a
long time Chanhassen resident. She’s recently moved to a retirement home and her family is trying to sell
her property in order to help pay for medical bills and the property is priced approximately $100,000
under market value. They have yet to get an offer. Nobody is interested in purchasing because of the
new rules. The rules that will go into effect. So we’re asking that you please consider writing an official
letter to the watershed asking them to re-visit these rules. Make them fair for property owners. Thank
you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. And as you know Ms. Susla and I know you’re active on both the TAC and
the CAC with the watershed.
Laurie Susla: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: And I understand you were at a meeting just last Friday when they first came out with
their new proposal and that was distributed I think this afternoon, was it not? And there’s.
Laurie Susla: Right. The final draft was just released today.
Mayor Furlong: Right. It was just released today so I know you mentioned Terry and we know he does a
great job.
Laurie Susla: Absolutely.
Mayor Furlong: In pointing out our side but he’ll take a look at that. There’s a TAC meeting tomorrow I
think with the watershed if I’m not mistaken and so we’ve been active in this and will continue to be
active.
Laurie Susla: And we are well aware of that and very appreciative of that.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Laurie Susla: So thank you.
Mayor Furlong: You’re welcome.
Larry Koch: My name’s Larry Koch. I live at 471 Bighorn Drive. I also live on Lotus Lake but I’m here
in support of basically Mr. Jeffery’s comments on the rules and again repeat what Laurie said is to ask the
council to formally ask the managers of the watershed district to review the rules, especially in light of
Mr. Jeffery’s comments which I think everybody agrees with and are undisputable. And I just have a
letter for the record from my wife and I simply asking you to make that communications to the watershed
3
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
district. I think it’s very important for them to hear from the cities that are impacted by this, and I think in
particular it’s already mentioned in Chanhassen now we have, we’re going to end up having several sets
of different rules. Different watershed because the City’s covered by different watersheds and in my case,
I’m going to be competing if I want to sell my home with houses and homes that are in other watersheds
that don’t have these restrictions and I think it’s just natural that there’s going to be some impact on the
value of my property. If there’s impact on the value of my property, that’s less revenue for our city and I
think our city, especially over the past few years needs all the revenue that it can get to do the job. To do
the job that it needs to do. You guys have done a tremendous job I think budgeting and making
everything work and I don’t think we need to have less revenues available because of I would say
artificially decreased values. The big thing about these particular buffer rules is that they do not take into
account existing property situations. I’ve lived on, in my home now for over 22 years. The development
I live in was developed 22 years ago when the DNR had a 75 foot setback. The, under the proposed rules
if they’re adopted, I have basically 75 feet between my house and the shore. If these rules are adopted
and I do any of the things that they mentioned, which the big issue there, it’s very unclear to me and I
happen to be a lawyer as to exactly what you have to do and when to trigger these rules. But if they’re
triggered I have to put in a minimum of 30 feet. Now I believe they’re trying to adjust it down to 20 feet
but that means that I lose one half of my yard. I have to put it into a natural area, okay. I can’t use it. I
can’t mow it. I can’t groom it. I can’t do anything with it so I lose half of my yard and I’m sure all of
you can imagine if you’re going to a place and you look and it says well, if you do certain things here
you’re going to lose half of your yard and a buyer looks at another place, maybe on Minnewashta or
whatever where you don’t have those restrictions, the choice is easy. You take the one where you’re not
going to have the restrictions so that’s our, my main complaint is that the rules, you’re not grandfathered
in existing situations. Existing homes and it doesn’t even grandfather in the City’s projects. The City’s
projects are not grandfathered in and so if you do a certain extent of work on an existing interchange it
can trigger having to do more work for the stormwater resources and so I think it’s an unreasonable
burden to impose not only on the homeowners but particularly the City and cause the City then to have to
try to figure out a way to meet these new rules for existing interchanges where you’re really doing only
minimal changes to the intersection. Same thing with the homeowner so I’d appreciate your active work
on behalf of, excuse me. In sending communications to the managers asking them to revisit particularly
existing projects. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Yes, Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: I have a question for Mr. Gerhardt. Could you explain this process because I
read the emails and I’ve looked at all of this. Do we have any kind of review or any kind of say with the
water district as to these rules or they just implement them and put them in place.
Todd Gerhardt: I think every community within the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek has commented on their
rule changes and that’s the extent of our authority is to give them a list of recommendation or to comment
on the rules. A number of residents have commented. Businesses have commented so.
Mayor Furlong: Associations.
Todd Gerhardt: Associations have commented so, but they’re their own entity and most of them or all of
them are appointed by either Carver County or Hennepin County.
Councilman McDonald: Okay, thank you.
4
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Patrick Gunnell: Hi. My name is Patrick Gunnell and I live on 7332 Frontier Trail in Chanhassen and I
am another association that’s going to comment. So this is the Sunrise Hills neighborhood association
beachlot and here we have our dock here and our beach and then we have our patio here with the tables
and the grills and then this is just open area and then we’ve got a little hood in here for a boat. The rules
that are being implemented or suggested will completely reduce this beach, this neighborhood association
beach. The neighborhood association that I’m the Vice President of that I’m representing here. The
Sunrise Hills neighborhood association, I think it’s been around for about 50 years. That’s what I hear
and this beach has been around for about that entire time. It is 55 houses. Most of them, probably 95% of
them are not lakefront homes. My house is not a lakefront home. This is, you know it’s everybody
knows where Frontier and Laredo is, just down the street and it is vastly used. We are using it all the
time. My wife and two kids are out there every Friday. The neighborhood kids. There’s 12, 15, 20 kids
out there you know Friday, Saturdays on this beach and the rules that come around to create buffers will
reduce this beach down to nothing. To unusable. We’ll have to remove the patio that’s there now. I
don’t know what the cost is going to be honestly. We don’t have, we’re a neighborhood association that
just charges enough just to maintain. We don’t have any reserves. We kind of go, you know we’re in the
black every year but it’s like a flat every year and so to, whatever changes that have, that come by that we
have to implement will probably put us greatly in the red to not be breaking the rules. It will also you
know change a beach that’s been around there, a neighborhood lot that’s been around for 50 years and
that’s going to be, and I’m the one that reports it to my neighborhood association. We’re going to have a
meeting in a couple weeks and I’m the one that’s kind of been keeping up on the watershed stuff so it will
be very detrimental to our neighborhood association beachlot. And I would like for you guys to, for
these, it would be nice if these watershed rules were in line with the other watersheds that were close and
not so drastic. We’ve asked the watershed to consider this a public beach because it’s owned by 55
houses and not just by one house, and I don’t think that’s going to be implemented but I just wanted to let
you guys know how this is going to impact you know your standard neighborhood association beachlot in
the city of Chanhassen so thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Anyone else that would like to address this under visitor presentations this
evening? Okay, thank you everyone for your comments. We’ll move on with the next items on our
agenda.
LAW ENFORCEMENT/FIRE DEPARTMENT UPDATE.
Mayor Furlong: Good evening Lieutenant.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Good evening Mr. Mayor, council. I’ve a quick update for you tonight. The first slide,
Vanna. If you looked at the monthly report I saw something that jumped out at me and it was on theft
related calls for service and if you look at the 2013 May, we got 3 calls for service and in 2014 we had 26
calls for service so that peaked my interest and I did some investigation into it and we’re not having a rash
of theft related calls for service. What happened is, an employee was caught at a business taking items
and returning them for the money May, 2012 through May, 2014. There was 18 separate incidents we
had to do 18 calls for service so that’s the difference there between that. I guess he had some bills to pay
and finally got caught so. And the next slide here, Mr. Mayor mentioned this at the beginning.
Todd Gerhardt: You don’t need a receipt.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Pardon me?
Todd Gerhardt: You don’t need a receipt.
5
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
th
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Well I don’t know, I don’t know the details but. The Mayor mentioned this and the 4
of July is next week and I am almost certain that the sheriff’s office is going to receive some calls for
illegal fireworks complaints so I thought to minimize the complaints I thought we’d define what illegal
fireworks are for the folks watching at home, and nobody in the audience I guess. But they’re any
firework that explodes or shoots in the air and that’s kind of a basic explanation of it but if you have any
of those, those are illegal and you’ll probably receive a visit from us if you shoot those off and we will
respond. We’ll take your fireworks and we’ll issue a citation if we believe that’s appropriate. Some of
these are misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors. It depends on what type of fireworks you have and the
amount of fireworks you have so. Next. We want all of the citizens and our visitors to have a fun and
th
safe celebration on the 4. You can see that the stat there, 200 people on average go to the emergency
th
room every day with firework related injuries in the month around the 4 of July so it happens. And then
just a few safety tips to follow for the folks so you don’t have to visit the emergency room. Keep your
kids away from the fireworks. Keep a bucket of water or garden hose handy in case you start a fire.
Make sure the fireworks are legal please and light fireworks one at a time and then get away from them.
Don’t go down there and blow on them or don’t look over them, are they going. Just get away from them
please. So I’m asking everybody who’s watching at home, be respectful of your neighbors. Let’s use the
th
legal fireworks. Be safe. Let’s have an injury free 4 of July please. Thank you. Any questions of me?
Mayor Furlong: So all the fun ones are illegal is what you’re saying?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: All the ones from Wisconsin and South Dakota are illegal.
Mayor Furlong: So source of origin or place of origin is the definition. Thank you for clarifying the
anomaly in the calls for service. I appreciate that.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Absolutely.
Mayor Furlong: And in that regard, when you can dig in there and see one thing that jumps out very
quickly. Are there any trends, positive or negative that you’re seeing right now in calls for service or?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: One thing in reviewing last month’s report, May’s report I, a small concern for me is
we’re seeing an uptick in identity theft.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: So we’re going to have to do some education on identity theft and I’ll work with Beth
to put some information out but that’s difficult so we’re going to keep an eye on that.
th
Mayor Furlong: Okay. I’m going to jump ahead a little bit too. Next week’s the 4 of July which still
amazes me. It’s coming up quick but that means we’re about 4 weeks away from National Night Out in
early August, correct?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Right.
Mayor Furlong: So if neighborhoods are, have had a party in the past, want to do it again or maybe
interested in hosting a party this year, how should they go about doing that?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Contact Crime Prevention Specialist, Beth Hoiseth. She coordinates all those. If they
have any special requests or anything. I know the fire department’s going to be out there with fire trucks.
We’re going to have the taser demonstration again. We’re going to bring out the DWI goggles so.
6
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Mayor Furlong: Who are you demonstrating on this year?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Well I was hoping you’d volunteer Mr. Mayor but.
Mayor Furlong: We’ll look into that. We’ll look into that. Happy to help any way I can.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: I think we’d get a big response.
Mayor Furlong: But it’s not too early to organize your party I guess.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Absolutely not, no.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, very good. Thank you. Any other questions for the Lieutenant? Thank you.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Very good, thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Chief Johnson is here with the Chanhassen Fire Department. Good evening Chief.
Chief Don Johnson: Good evening Mayor and council. Chief Johnson with Chanhassen Fire. For my
updates, happy to report that we do have 44 fire fighters on and we did hold interviews and did offer 4
conditional offers this past week to 4 new fire fighters so we hope to be introducing those to you very
th
soon. They’re going to start on July 7 with our Black Hat ceremony and where we graduate the 4
current folks that we have on probation. Our calls for service this year, we’re sitting at about 269 calls
which is about 53 a month. If we sit on that pace we’ll be well over 600 calls for service this month.
Looking through the reports I don’t have any anomalies that stood out like the Lieutenants so things are
just kind of across the board. We’re busy. I want to say these last 2 days with the storm surge we were at
about 15 calls in 2 days so we’ve been out there and been very busy. Our staff time is still up a little bit.
I looked at some of these events. We do have 197 event hours. Our duty crew hours are sitting at about
654 and we have 164 hours of stand-by. Storm stand-by that we’ve tracked so far so, and that accounts
for the 1,016 hours. Training, we’re still playing catch up. We had cancelled a couple of medical
trainings so we did do CPR and AED training through Hennepin Tech. We also did have our mandatory
live burn training at the Edina Tower in this past month. And then of significance this past week we did
participate with the Southwest Metro Joint Ops Training Group with active shooter training. We had well
over 30 fire fighters that went over to Eden Prairie and participated with that. It’s an unfortunate event
that we have to train for but it does give us some preparation if and when that were ever to happen for us.
Hopefully not. The Fire Marshal, fire prevention, we did do 9 fire truck rides for schools which has been
an ongoing process for the fire department for well over 10 years. It’s a good benefit for the schools and
it does well for our fire prevention. We did have one significant fire to report on in the Horseshoe Curve
area. There was fire damage was limited to a portion of that wrap around deck and did some extensive
damage to the electrical service on the outside of the house that required the State Electrical Contractor to
come out and put that house back into service. Eden Prairie did do the fire investigation for us and it was
determined that there was, the cause was related to discarded smoking materials so if there’s anything to
be learned, well be careful what we do with our cigarettes, especially with mulch around our landscaping.
Those tend to lay in that mulch or could lay in that mulch for some time before they turn into something.
I’d like to add from the sheriff’s, with the aerial fireworks. A significant problem with those landing on
roofs and landing in mulch and landing in wooded areas so always be cognizant. Again those are illegal.
We look at those pretty hard but we can end up with a lot of people having issues with their roofs in those
aerial devices landing on the roofs. As you said mayor, we’re preparing for several responsibilities for
th
our 4 of July with the parade, the medical tent, the kiddie parade. We’ve also got several other calls for
service already to try to help out with where we can in those festivities for the city.
7
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for Chief Johnson? Thank you.
Chief Don Johnson: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Appreciate all you’re doing and all the department’s doing as well. Move on now to our
items of business this evening.
CONSIDER VACATION OF TRAIL EASEMENT, STEVEN LEHTO, 8591 TIGUA LANE.
Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor, City Council members. So this is an easement. Trail easement that was
dedicated in 1980 with the plat in the Tigua area. The easement in question is again off of Tigua which is
th
just east of 86 Street and south of Marsh Lake. The easement vacation proposed is shown here. Again
the easement was dedicated in 1980 when the area was platted. There is a sanitary sewer line that runs
underneath it and that’s not being proposed to be vacated at this time. The new easement was dedicated
last year with the new Rice Marsh Lake trail. The new easement has been recorded at the County and the
reason for the relocation, the property owner requested that we try to save some trees and get the trail a
little farther away from his house so we accommodated that and that has been recorded so. The City does
not have any need for this trail easement. We are still keeping the drainage utility easement under the
sanitary sewer so that’s not going to change but we just request that the trail easement be vacated at this
time. And with that if council has any questions, I’d be more than happy to try to answer them.
Otherwise I’d request that a public hearing be opened at this time.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for staff? The, one question and this relates to the trunk
utility easement and you said it’s not on there. Given that the resolution specifically speaks to the trail
easement, is that clear enough that we are not vacating the other one of the, any avoidance of confusion?
Paul Oehme: Correct. I believe it does. If we were going to vacate an easement at the county level to
record that it would have to specifically state that easement that would be recorded so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. That sounds fine. Any questions other than that? If not we’ll open up
the public hearing and invite any interested party to come forward. To address the council on this matter.
Seeing no one, without objection we’ll close the public hearing and bring it back to council for discussion
and action. Any thoughts or discussion? Just want to say thank you to the. I’m sorry, Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: That seems pretty straight forward.
Mayor Furlong: It does and I appreciate the property owner working with the City in terms of the
relocation of the trail. That’s a great trail out there and enjoyed by many people so, to accommodate them
by releasing this for the pedestrian portion I think is certainly something that makes sense. If there’s no
other discussion, would somebody like to make a motion? Councilwoman Tjornhom?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Sure, I’ll make a motion.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Mayor I’d like to make a motion that the City Council adopts a resolution
approving the vacation of a perpetual pedestrian easement at 8591 Tigua Lane described in the attached
legal description.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second?
8
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Councilman McDonald: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Motion’s been made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none we’ll
proceed with the vote.
Resolution #2014-45: Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the
City Council approve the vacation of a perpetual pedestrian easement at 8591 Tigua Lane
described in the attached legal description. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously
with a vote of 4 to 0.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS.
Mayor Furlong: One thing I will say is that there is a ribbon cutting for the new river crossing, the 101
river crossing which obviously is needed unfortunately because of the weather that we had last week. It’s
too clear but that is tomorrow at noon I believe. In addition to Carver and Scott County representatives
and representatives from Shakopee and our city as well, the Governor will be there as part of that so if we
can all get there. I heard County 61 is closed so you have to I guess come from the north or from the
west, one of the two to get there but it’s nice to see this moving forward finally. I mean this has been a
long time in our plans as a city to see this river crossing approved and to see it happening as it’s
happening with all the other improvements that are going on is clearly something I know that the council
supports but it’s nice to see it moving forward so. Anybody that’s interested in coming to that ground
breaking tomorrow is welcome to join us. It’s open to the public.
Todd Gerhardt: And use Bluff Creek Drive to get there.
Mayor Furlong: Bluff Creek Drive is the preferred route?
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: Or come through Chaska on County Road 61 but Flying Cloud Drive and 101 will be
shut down.
Mayor Furlong: Can you get down from Pioneer Trail down 101 yet or is that open? Is 101 south of
Pioneer Trail?
Paul Oehme: Yes. For that intersection of Pioneer Trail and 101 is open.
Todd Gerhardt: Just the eastbound traffic. Can a westbound Pioneer make the left?
Paul Oehme: Yep. You just can’t, 101 south, or north of Pioneer Trail is still closed so you still can’t
make that motion right now.
Todd Gerhardt: Oh okay.
Mayor Furlong: Get there however you can but everyone’s welcomed to be there. No other council
presentations? Administrative presentations. Mr. Gerhardt.
9
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council, what I’d like to do is kind of give you an update from our last Thursday
rain event. It was pretty significant. We put a map together to kind of show some of the troubled spots
that we had throughout the community. You know I’d say a majority of them were clogged outlets.
What clogged them, a variety of different debris. Mostly twigs, leaves, some larger sticks, logs that
clogged the outlets. So I’m going to start over here off of Pipewood Curve. Pipewood Curve basically on
the north side of the road is the natural drainage for Lake Minnewashta and ultimately goes into Lake
Minnetonka and there’s about a half dozen homes on that side of the road that installed culverts to allow
the water to flow underneath their driveways and at 6590 Pipewood Curve we had a culvert that couldn’t
handle the amount of water and had to close their driveway and also put some sand bags close to their
house because it was inching closer and closer to the home but they also couldn’t access their home. Had
to park at the end of the driveway on the south side of their driveway. Could be kind of a future
stormwater project to look at. Sizing those culverts to handle the 100 year rain event. I think some of us
think they just showed up or were a part of the development and weren’t properly engineered. We also
had water in the basement at 6370 Murray Hill Road. That wasn’t caused by any of our stormwater ponds
or drainage. I just highlighted that as a problem area. Another one in this location here we had a
retaining wall at Lake Lucy and Highover that collapsed. It’s a boulder wall. We’re working with the
association and property owner to discuss the next steps in re-establishing that wall. To the south, this is
where we had a rain event back in the early 2000’s where we had flooding that got close to people’s
basements and we were just monitoring the levels of that pond and emergency overflow worked properly.
As we go north, again in this area the kind of the yellow circle, that’s Lake Lucy Lane. We had flooding
where we had to close the road there. It was re-opened this past Saturday and you can drive on it now but
we did have standing water on the road up until Saturday. Part of the natural drainage in the Curry Farm
neighborhood, Knob Hill neighborhood and across Powers, there is a creek that naturally drains into
Christmas Lake. There’s also a sanitary sewer line that runs adjacent to that creek. That line did get
exposed. It held it’s position but we need to get in there and establish a grade back over top of that
sanitary sewer line so that it can’t get damaged into the future.
Mayor Furlong: Is there risk of it failing at all at this point or has it been stabilized?
Paul Oehme: We don’t think so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Paul Oehme: It’s, back in 2005 we had a bigger blow out than what happened this year so.
Mayor Furlong: And it held?
Paul Oehme: And it held, yeah. We did stabilize that. It’s just progressively working it’s way down so
it’s just a little area.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you.
Todd Gerhardt: Again on the Frontier Trail area we have a stormwater pond that due to the amount of
rain hopped over the berm and the roadway and naturally flowed into Lotus Lake. Not sure if we had
debris that caused that.
Paul Oehme: It was just high water.
10
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Todd Gerhardt: High water. So we’ll double check the capacity of that. Seeing if there’s any other
options to try to hold more of the water upstream. We also had a surcharge again on Kerber. The
improvements that we made along Kerber Boulevard, if you remember that kind of flow out by Bighorn
and worked really well we felt and it did what it did. What it was supposed to do and but just due to the
amount of rain in such a short period of time it did flow over top of Kerber and we had to have some
traffic control and we had quite a few issues going on in town so we even had to ask Greg Sticha to come
out and help direct traffic so that’s how low we had to go to find people to direct traffic. I can say that
because he’s not here.
Mayor Furlong: And the fact that the meeting’s being recorded he’ll never know you said that.
th
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah. Another situation that we had was down off of Market and West 79 Street in
front of Walgreen’s. We had flooding that was up above the curb there and that took a little longer than
Kerber and some of other areas to drain out. About 4 hours for that water to recede and we did traffic
control both at, in front of Cub’s first entrance on the other side of the railroad tracks and then just on the
other side of Walgreen’s. We also had some wash out’s on part of our trail on Rice Marsh. A culvert got
blocked and then it found it’s least path of resistance and made a new path underneath Mr. Hoffman’s
trail and crews got out there on Friday and filled it in and secured the trail from being a hazard to the
public. Moving down into kind of the Lake Riley Boulevard area. We have a stormwater pond that sits
right at the intersection of Lyman and Lake Riley Boulevard. That pond had debris in there that caused it
to flood and come across Lake Riley Boulevard near the home of 9005 Lake Riley Boulevard. We did get
a little bit of water in the basement there. We’ll probably have to reconfigure our emergency overflow to
blend in with some of the improvements that the homeowner has made. And we did have some standing
water on Lyman just to the east of Lyman and Lake Riley Boulevard but that receded fairly quickly after
the rain stopped. And then also in the Chanhassen Hills neighborhood we had some blockage on a storm
sewer outlet there which we had to bring in sand bags to help a homeowner where the water was getting
close to their rear entrance of their house.
Mayor Furlong: Is that an area that we’re going to look at in terms of the emergency overflow? We’re
going to take a look at what happened there?
Todd Gerhardt: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: And evaluate alternatives.
Paul Oehme: Yep, there’s several areas in town that we’re going to be re-evaluating. See if there’s any
opportunities or improvements that are necessary.
Mayor Furlong: So all of these areas that we’re talking about we’ll at least consider.
Paul Oehme: Yeah the ones that have storm sewer pipe related issues and inlet’s capacities and
emergency overflows, all those we definitely want to take a look at.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Todd Gerhardt: It also gives us the opportunity to know where these are in the community so we can
direct people when you have a rain event like that, that we’re probably going to have flooding on Kerber.
We’re probably going to have Market flooded. Lake Lucy Lane so we can send people there directly
instead of waiting for calls.
Mayor Furlong: Sure.
11
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Todd Gerhardt: Because we did have one car that tried to go through the Kerber low area and stalled out
in the middle of the pond. We also had some high water down off of Pioneer just west of 101. We
brought some sand bags down to that gentleman. Very appreciative and we’re going to work with the
County on some of the tiling in that area and the culvert and make sure that we have a proper screen on
those and then also make sure the tile’s working. And then we had some sloughing. That’s where 6 to 8
inches of soil, topsoil washes down the hill off of Deerbrook and then we had some that landed on the
Hennepin County regional trail and so that has been cleaned up. Still working on how to clean up the
bluff erosion on the property to the west of the property that sloughed onto the trail. And then the last one
that occurred, State Highway 101 was closed down on Saturday due to high water and so, and Paul solved
that issue and we’ll start construction tomorrow.
Mayor Furlong: That was quick. That was a quick solution. How long do they think 101’s going to be
closed? Have they given any?
Paul Oehme: They have not indicated to me how long it’s going to be closed. It really is in this, these
events it seems like it’s weather dependent. If we get more rain it’s going to be, the soil is just super
saturated and all, any rain that happens now and into the future is just going to run off so it’s all weather
dependent right now. It’s going to be at least a week and a half. That’s my understanding. That’s the
earliest.
Mayor Furlong: Week and a half at the earliest. Thank you.
Todd Gerhardt: So hopefully you got the updates. Laurie, Karen and Kate worked on those and got those
out. Tried to include pictures to show you kind of what was happening in the community. Paul and his
crew did a fabulous job. I mean there’s some real potential of some of these filling up basements and
were able to divert the water before that occurred. Also Kevin in the utility department, some of our lift
stations were almost at capacity. Luckily we had our back up generators and were able to use the Vac
truck to keep those levels below the scary point and so we didn’t have any raw sewage backing up into
anybody’s home so that was a good thing. That’s all I have for the update. Any questions?
Mayor Furlong: Questions or comments? First of all thank you for everybody that responded so quickly
to get out there and help with traffic and respond to the challenges. One question that I noticed down on
the south end of Bandimere Park near the new 101. There’s a temporary white pipe there that I think was
put in place to cover some problems that occurred before and that obviously washed out around it. Is that
something that is going to, is there a long term solution associated with that, that we’re thinking about or
what’s going on? Or is that still because the project is under construction?
Paul Oehme: It’s a little bit of both. There’s a pipe that needs to be extended into Bandimere Park to
capture some of the flows that come off the park so that’s, we’re trying to get after that maybe in the next
2 weeks right now so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Is that the natural drainage?
Paul Oehme: It is.
Mayor Furlong: For a portion of the park.
Paul Oehme: It is, right. Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Any risk of that wall being eroded away at this point?
12
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Paul Oehme: Well it is eroding right now so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, so yes.
Paul Oehme: They just need to get the pipe in and re-grade that area and fix the trail and we should be
fine.
Mayor Furlong: And that’s part of the project that’s being done?
Paul Oehme: That’s part of the project.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: But the wall itself is structurally sound.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, the wall hasn’t been compromised so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, yep. The area around the wall is starting to erode.
Paul Oehme: Exactly.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: And establishing turf there, you know that was something they seeded last fall and never
really got established before the rains came this spring so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. In terms of cost for some of these, are any of them, are we going to be filing
claims with our insurance to seek some reimbursement for the costs?
Todd Gerhardt: We will be working with Carver County as trying to make an application for the entire
county for expenses incurred as part of the flooding.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: We’re a part of that. Whatever’s not covered there we’ll try to submit a claim through
our insurance. I think from the extent of the block wall up off of Highover is probably one of the, the
most expensive. We also have some electronic panels in a couple of our lift stations. Other than that
some minor things that we’ll probably handle internally.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Okay, thank you. Alright. Okay, anything else? Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt
or his staff on any other item? No? Okay.
CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION.
None.
Mayor Furlong: We will be continuing our work session in the Fountain Conference room for the
unfinished items from earlier this evening. With that if there’s nothing else to come before the council
this evening, is there a motion to adjourn?
13
Chanhassen City Council – June 23, 2014
Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted
in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. The City Council meeting was
adjourned at 7:55 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
14