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CC 2016 09 26 CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING SEPTEMBER 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Laufenburger, Councilman McDonald, Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilwoman Ryan, and Councilman Campion STAFF PRESENT: Paul Oehme, Kate Aanenson, Todd Hoffman, Greg Sticha, Roger Knutson and Kevin Crooks PUBLIC PRESENT: Mark Wagner 6945 Lake Harrison Circle Robert & Linda Kline 2175 Lake Harrison Road Paul & Marsha Theis 6520 White Dove Circle David Erickson 7095 Northwood Court Suresh Krishna 6965 Lake Harrison Circle Todd Allard 7168 Fawn Hill Luther Hippe 6940 Lake Harrison John Lorence 2195 Lake Harrison Road David Senner 6829 Briarwood Court Susan Hartwig 6829 Briarwood Court Cheryl Ayotte 6213 Cascade Pass Holly & Joy Loberg 6915 Lake Harrison Circle Anne & Mike Ryan 6835 Lake Harrison Circle Shelly Christa 7377 Moccasin Trail Dan & Pam Flood 2185 Lake Harrison Road Ken & Samantha Dow 6860 Lake Harrison Circle Christina & Brad Farrell 6950 Lake Harrison Circle Jon & Catherine Fox 6885 Lake Harrison Circle Karen, Alexandra, & Amelia Wagner 6945 Lake Harrison Circle Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you and welcome to this council meeting. Those of you that are in the chamber as well as those of you that may be watching on live stream via the Chanhassen website/agenda at home or wherever you might be with your device and also those watching on Mediacom cable channel at home. Just for the record I would make note that all members of the council are present this evening and also City Manager Gerhardt and Assistant City Manager Petersen are not with us this evening. They’re actually at an International City Manager’s Association meeting where Mr. Gerhardt is receiving a 30 year participation award so we congratulate him on that. First item on the agenda tonight is to review the agenda. Council Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 members are there any modifications to the agenda? I have one minor procedural adjustment to the agenda but I will discuss that under public hearings so there being no modifications we’ll proceed. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. CONSENT AGENDA:Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Campion seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations: 1. Approve City Council Minutes dated September 12, 2016 2. Receive Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated August 23, 2016 3. Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated September 6, 2016 4. Approve Fireworks Display Permit for Chanhassen High School Storm Chaser Booster Club All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS. None. FIRE DEPARTMENT/LAW ENFORCEMENT UPDATE. Mayor Laufenburger: Did you guys draw straws to see who goes first? Chief Johnson, fire department. Welcome Chief. Chief Don Johnson: Good evening Mayor and council. This is the fire department report for the month of August, 2016. Staffing’s at 41 of 45 fire fighters. Since our last meeting I was able to actually start an additional fire fighter to add to our crew of 5 so we did have a sixth fire fighter th start on September 7. He was originally in the hiring process and thought he was going to have a chance of address and that didn’t go through so we benefitted from that. Our entire group of 6 th started the Southwest Academy September 7 and we hope that they’ll be ready and set to go probably around March. Fully trained and out the door so. Fire department calls in the month of August. We responded to 54 calls which is right on par for our average for the year. 8 of those calls were during scheduled duty crews bringing the total duty crew calls up to 69 for the year. We did have one building fire. A homeowner on Lake Lucy Road experienced a small fire in their basement. Quick acting youth actually put the fire out with a fire extinguisher before we got there so lucky for all involved. We had 28 EMS calls with 5 of those being motor vehicle accidents with injuries and one assist to the Carver County Sheriff’s office for a missing person. Training since we’ve last met, we’ve trained in hazardous material spills and spill procedures. Officers meetings, EMS training and we actually had 10 of our crew that are working over at the 2 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Ryder Cup this next week here had to go to training last Monday night over in Chaska. Some of th our activities, I’m very proud of the Family of Christ Church volunteers on September 12, or th I’m sorry. September 10 we had a station one rejuvenation of all landscaping in preparation for th our October 9 memorial dedication. We had 15 volunteers from Family of Christ Church. Beniek’s Landscaping helped out plus several fire fighters so we completely renovated the landscaping in preparation for that. We couldn’t have done that without their help so it was the God’s Hands, God’s Work Our Hands program run by the church so we really appreciated that. th We had September 12 all of our fire fighters went through a very comprehensive medical screening which is required annually for pre-cancer respiratory and hearing and all of our OSHA related needs. I’m happy to report that we’ve had nobody called back for any further medical intervention. At the same time we’ve also had all of our SCBA breathing equipment tested and certified which rounds out our entire year of OSHA and compliance for the fire department with th the trucks and all of our equipment. September 16 we took delivery of the brand new quick attack pumper. I hope to have that for you to view maybe next council work shop. We did. Mayor Laufenburger: You’ll bring it into the building? Chief Don Johnson: Yes. No, we took delivery of the truck. It is over at the station but there’s some things that still need to be worked out with the vendor. We still have to train the crews on how to use it and it still has to be set up to pump at fires so hopefully I’ll have that out here for you to view the next go around. We’ve been very busy planning for Fire Prevention Week th which is coming up so I do have a couple of public announcements. As stated our October 9 we have a public dedication of our fire fighter memorial. We’ll have several speakers and refreshments after. A very nice ceremony set up so anybody is welcomed to come to that. We’ve invited some VIP’s and hopefully mayor and council you’ve received your invites for th that. I believe Mayor you’ll be giving an address as well as October 9 starts Fire Prevention thth Week so the 10 through the 15 we’ll be doing all of our school visits as we normally do with stnd all the elementary schools coming to the fire station. I believe we’re doing 1 and 2 grade this th year and October 16 from 1:00 to 4:00 is the actual annual fire department open house so the public is welcomed and encouraged. Food, fun. Fire truck rides. All kinds of things going on for the fire department in October so that is my report for August. I can stand for questions. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you Chief. Any questions council? Just one, you spoke of th the October 9 memorial date. Can you give a time for that please? Chief Don Johnson: The ceremony will start at 1:00. It’s expected to last about an hour. Mayor Laufenburger: And is the public invited to that? Chief Don Johnson: The public is invited to that. Mayor Laufenburger: And that’s right over here at the fire station? 3 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Chief Don Johnson: Station one, 7610 Laredo. Mayor Laufenburger: Right across from the Post Office, next to Chanhassen Elementary. Chief Don Johnson: Correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Perfect, alright. Thank you Chief very much. Chief Don Johnson: Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Welcome Lieutenant Kittelson, nice to see you. Lt. Eric Kittelson: Nice to see you too. Good evening Mr. Mayor, council members. I have the August law enforcement update for you this evening and along those lines speaking to our record supervisor today, NIBRS. Mayor Laufenburger: The new reporting. Lt. Eric Kittelson: We’re capturing the requested data for October so anticipate having a more traditional crime report beginning in November so in November I’ll be reporting our first NIBRS report for our October crime stats so be good to get that back online and we’ll work our way through learning that system as we become accustomed to the previous system. The pedestrian safety project was a huge success and as I promised Mr. Knutson and his staff, this was going to be primarily an educational effort so we completed 9 details at 9 different intersections. A total number of vehicles through the crosswalks was 734. Of those 734 we observed 35 violations. We stopped 29 of those drivers. We issued 24 warnings and cited only 5 people so again this was primarily an educational effort and I’m happy to say that the last 3 details that we did we had 100 percent compliance so people were definitely noticing that we were out there. We also followed that up with social media posts as well so I would say that that was a huge success and we’ll look to build on that as we move forward in the spring. The Towards Zero Death impaired thth driving education and enforcement was August 19 through September 5. We joined 300 agencies from around the state and increased education enforcement of DUI. We had 14 arrests county wide. 5 of those 14 arrests occurred in Chanhassen with the highest blood alcohol content of .30 which is almost 4 times the legal limit and we will begin enhanced education thth enforcement of the primary seat belt laws as well as child seat October 9 through October 25. thnd We have a little thing coming to town called the Ryder Cup September 27 to October 2 so I just wanted to speak briefly. Mayor Laufenburger: Coming? They’re here. Lt. Eric Kittelson: They’re here but it will be official tomorrow. Mayor Laufenburger: Right. 4 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Lt. Eric Kittelson: Just a couple things for our local Chanhassen residents. You can go to swtransit.org\\rydercup for any information on the transit and what will be going on at those various locations. There also is a handy little thing, the Ryder Cup has an app which I’ve downloaded for just myself just to get, because sometimes that information’s even better than what you get officially so they do a great job so if anyone has any questions on how that might impact them I suggest downloading that. And deputies have attended training and received additional equipment to assist in working the event and will be assisting Chaska Police nd Department every day through October 2 with assignments at the venue and around the venue. I think for our local residents, my guess is they will mostly notice a difference in traffic and in the evening. The gate hours are 7:30 to 6:30 Tuesday through Thursday and 6:30 to 7:00 on Friday and Saturday and at 7:30 on Sunday and the shuttles begin a half hour before the gate times open and end a half hour after gates close so I think the very early morning and late evening rush hour is probably where you’re going to notice the biggest difference but this is as much as we plan this is new to all of us so it’s a little bit bigger than the PGA events that we’ve had previous to this so we shall see but we are well prepared to handle anything that might come up. Personnel update. Sergeant Moline will attend the Towards Zero Death statewide conference in October as the grant coordinator. That’s a mandatory attendance for him. Sergeant Bruenig will begin a 3 week leadership course at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. That’s the International Association of Chiefs of Police leadership model based on the dispersed leadership and it’s also modeled after the United States Military Academy West Point. As you know when I was presented to you last April of 2015 we talked about some of my qualifications and succession training is a part of the mission of the sheriff’s office and so Sergeant Bruenig is our day shift sergeant and administrative sergeant that is kind of my right hand assistant. These are some of the things that we look to get him involved in as we prepare the next person to step forward and be a leader in the department and whether that be in Chanhassen or elsewhere it’s part of his preparation. Back to the pedestrian safety issues for just a moment. We’ve talked about this once before but I think it bears repeating. We did complete our details where we went out and tried to increase education and awareness and did some enforcement but just a reminder that September and October are the most deadly times for pedestrians and cyclists. We’re losing a lot of light but it’s still fairly warm out with the exception of this morning and that causes September and October to be the deadliest months for pedestrian and cyclists and the hours that are most dangerous are between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. so again very warm weather. Losing light quickly so I just wanted to make sure that there’s increased awareness on everyone’s part that we continue to keep an eye out for each other when we’re out there trying to enjoy the roads so that concludes my report and I’ll stand for questions. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Any questions or comments from council? Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you Mayor. Lieutenant just to keep on the track of the pedestrian safety project. I know your goal was to look at you know from the perspective of drivers that were going through the crosswalks but did you find in any situations where we could improve signage or markings from the street perspective at any of those locations? 5 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Lt. Eric Kittelson: That’s something that Mr. Oehme and I have discussed at a couple of the intersections. Mostly the intersections we targeted were the intersections that were well marked. Had good signage and good painted crosswalks. We did that intentionally as we eased into this. There was, did you want to speak about Powers and Lake Lucy was one that we looked at that we definitely are working with the County obviously on what that looks like and I did share those numbers with them as far as traffic counts and number of cars and average speeds and those things and that’s something that I think Paul and I will continue to look at as we move forward definitely one of the intersections that has been brought to our attention as a concerned intersection for the public. It’s very wide and there’s higher speeds there so it’s something we’ll look at. Councilwoman Ryan: Okay, thank you. Lt. Eric Kittelson: You bet. Mayor Laufenburger: Any other questions or comment? Councilman McDonald: Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Laufenburger: Councilman McDonald. Councilman McDonald: Lieutenant Kittelson, you mentioned about the Ryder Cup but could you go into some more detail? I know that you know Southwest Transit is trying to set things up as far as shuttles and everything to the transit and there were certain rules that are being put in place to try to protect some of the private parking lots. Can you just kind of give us an outline as to what the rules are going to be concerning all of that? Lt. Eric Kittelson: Yes. First and foremost on the bottom of a ticket that you have for entrance to the Ryder Cup it should have what means of transportation you should use to get there and the downtown station, which is no longer being used as a shuttle, their plan was to, that they were going to work with the business owners around them to provide signage for them to place in their lots to just, especially in that area where there’s no clear lines as far as, in some of those locations as to what is public and what is private. Those businesses were going to work directly with Southwest Transit in putting up signage and having people out there to kind of direct people in the mornings as far as which areas are in fact public and which are private and so that’s primarily how they were assisting was by providing business owners with signage to place in there that just says No Ryder Cup parking and then it’s up to each individual business owner if there’s a violation of that to then you know handle that appropriately. Councilman McDonald: Okay so at the Southwest station in downtown Chanhassen, because that’s no longer going to be a pick up point, the big problem that we thought we were all going to have is kind of gone away but the station out at 101 is still going to be a pick up. Well it’s going 6 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 to be a shuttle location and there are residences out in that area and there’s also some businesses across the street with a larger parking lot. Do you foresee any problems? Will you be patrolling any of those areas or you know should a business owner call you direct if they have problems? Lt. Eric Kittelson: Yep absolutely. The best thing to do is just when in doubt or if you have any questions just call 911. That is our number. You’ve heard me mention that many times before. Don’t worry about a non-emergency number. Our number is 911 for emergencies and for information and for otherwise and just call us. That’s why we’re there and we’ll figure it out together and primarily obviously if they’re blocking a fire hydrant or a driveway you know we’re going to handle that immediately and if it’s a little more of a question as to you know whether or not this is Ryder Cup you know patrol or not parked in say one of the food, commercial food lots near that, we’ll have to kind of look and see what that looks like. It’s hard to say because ultimately each private business is responsible for removing vehicles that aren’t allowed on their lots. It’s not something that we can do as law enforcement so but we’ll definitely help them work through that problem and point them in the right direction. Councilman McDonald: Okay, well good luck and thank you for being a good partner in all of this. I know it’s been very difficult. There’s a lot of entities involved. There’s a lot of big plans going on and some of which we don’t even know about but yeah, we’ll all just breathe a sigh of relief. Lt. Eric Kittelson: I can guarantee you this, we will be here 24 hours a day and we will help in any way we can with any problem. That’s the only guarantee I can give you and then we’ll see what that looks like come Sunday. Councilman McDonald: Okay, thank you. Lt. Eric Kittelson: Alright, thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Kittelson. Just to clarify, obviously security for the Ryder Cup is key to not only the people who are attending but in the area. The PGA of America in cooperation with Southwest Transit has made available to residents in the service area, which is Eden Prairie, Chaska, Chanhassen and Carver, those residents that were recorded as ticket purchasers for the Ryder Cup received a green hang tag. That green hang tag gives you permission to park at either one of the Southwest Transit facilities in those 3 cities. Chanhassen, Chaska, Carver. Not Eden Prairie. And if those, if the spaces that are designated for those green hang tags are filled then you can go to Chanhassen High School and if space is available you can park there. And in every case the shuttle from that Southwest Transit location to the PGA entrance at Chaska, that’s a $5 round trip fee. Of course if you choose not to pay that $5 round trip fee you can go to Canterbury Park and you can park free and visit Ryder Cup. Again that’s for ticket holders only. Ticket holders and then also volunteers so if you have any questions about that go to swtransit.org and there’s specific information about that. Thank you Mr. Kittelson. 7 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 WEST WATER TREATMENT PLANT: ND A. APPROVE PRELIMINARY AND FINAL PLAT FOR LAKE HARRISON 2 ADDITION; AND SITE PLAN FOR A 16,950 SQUARE FOOT WATER TREATMENT FACILITY. B. APPROVE BID DOCUMENTS AND AUTHORIZE ADVERTISING FOR BIDS. C.PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER VACATION OF DRAINAGE AND UTILITY EASEMENTS TO OUTLOT A AND LOT 1, BLOCK 4, LAKE HARRISON. Mayor Laufenburger: This item, west water treatment plant is actually 3 items and let me tell you how we will be addressing this. Item (a) and item (c) are linked together in that item (a) is a proposal for a new plat or a final plat for the property designated for the west water treatment plant and item (c) is vacating the current drainage and utility easements. Those two are linked together so we will address those two first. We’ll move then to council action on that and then if the action is to move forward with items (a) and (c), then we will consider item (b) which is approve the bid documents and authorize advertising for bids okay. So let’s begin with a staff report. Oh by the way what I will do, I made some notes here I want to share with you folks. So this is the sequence we will follow. First of all I will ask for a staff report on items (a) and (c) and then that will be followed by questions from council to staff or the consultant. And then just a reminder that the council has seen all correspondence on this item. We have the verbatim minutes from the Planning Commission meeting and the public hearing that was conducted earlier this month. We also have, the council has had the opportunity to review all materials in st the public record including most recently a September 21 letter from Mr. Mueller which was, there was some question as to whether or not the council has reviewed that. And then at the appropriate time I will invite comments from visitors who would like to speak. Emphasis should be on presenting information that is new information and not part of something that we’ve already seen. The council, if you choose to speak you will address your comments directly to the council. The council will listen respectfully. Don’t expect questions or answers to your comments at that time, though they may occur. And then after the public comment is concluded I will bring it back to the council for further questions to staff. Possible motion and further discussion. And lastly I would just ask that you respect one another, city staff and council just as you have during this entire process so I look forward to a very meaningful presentation. Let’s begin with a staff report. Mr. Oehme, are you starting this? Paul Oehme: Actually Ms. Aanenson is. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Kate Aanenson: Thank you Mayor, members of the City Council. As you indicated Mayor there’s a couple action items besides the subdivision. There’s a site plan review. The vacation of utility easement and then ultimately potentially approve bid documents. The subject site is located at 2070 Lake Harrison Road and just a little bit of history on that. This plat was recorded 8 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 th in July 12 of 2005. At that time there was, the City acquired Lot 1, Block 4, the subject site to be used for a future water treatment plant and that’s why we’re here today. In addition a raw water main was extended through the development from the well fields to the north and to the west in anticipation of this water treatment plant. The site is zoned RSF and public utilities are a th permitted use in that zoning district. At the Planning Commission meeting on September 6 they did review this proposal. The commission voted 4-0 to recommend approval of the subdivision and the site plan subject to the conditions of the staff report. Again the vacation doesn’t go to Planning Commission. That goes straight for a public hearing here tonight. So the Planning Commission did recommend approval and they did have just a couple of general comments and that was that the available technology, including other potential systems. Incorporate one that might provide good health, high quality, safe services and that this is the best alternative available and not just the easy choice. So the subdivision itself, again as I stated this was an outlot again with the intended purpose of creating the site for a water treatment plant. So the site is 4.13 acres and it’s being replatted in order to accommodate the building itself and then also some additional park property and a wetland so it will be outlots for the wetland and the park facility. To rezone the site and the site plan itself, so it will be an extension of a street on the top and the end of the cul-de-sac and then there’ll be a trail coming down and the building orientation coming off of Lake Harrison. The building itself is 16,950 and it will have back wash tanks on the northeast side of the building, again a future neighborhood park being proposed so this would be the back wash tanks. As I stated access will be off of Lake Harrison Road with a driveway to access the site and then access again would be on this side of the building. Talked about the 2 wetlands on the site. Although there appears like there’s no impact to those the site must still accommodate buffer setbacks which will be accommodated. It does exceed all the requirements of the RSF district. The minimum lot sizes and the like so it is compliant with the zoning district requirements. The architecture of itself, time was spent looking at the size. Portion placement so it does have a pitched roof design. We have the building materials here. It’s a heavy, primarily a reddish brown veneer with tan stone and the height of the peak is 21 feet. Again that’s 35 feet is permitted in the RSF zoning district. While the architecture itself looking at transparency of trying to put windows in to give a more residential look. And here are the elevations of the building itself. Again it meets all the requirements of the district. One of the comments from, regarding landscaping is that there are more evergreens on the site and it was felt that that was better screening as opposed to some of the understory shrubs so it exceeds that requirement and the fact that it was felt that the evergreens. In addition trees were saved to try to locate the building to provide a better buffer on the site. So again in your staff report is the compliance table of the zoning district and this site plan does meet the standards of the district. Again the landscaping plan. So with that I’ll turn it over to the City Engineer to go through the technical part of the water treatment plant itself. Paul Oehme: Thanks Ms. Aanenson, good evening Mayor, City Council members. Mayor Laufenburger: Is your mic on? Is your microphone on? 9 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Paul Oehme: It is. Thank you so I just wanted to point out that the playground facility improvements are not part of this project. That will be handled by the parks department as the project is completed and anticipation of that park opening up in 2018 sometime. Mayor Laufenburger: But your plans include the assumption that there will be a park there. Paul Oehme: Correct. We’re planning to grade out the park area. Put in the trails. Put in the cul-de-sac. Put in the landscaping but not the actual play structures. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Paul Oehme: With that just wanted to talk briefly about the purpose and need for the project. As you know we have had numerous complaints about the water in the west part of the city. This project is proposed to remove the iron and manganese and also the ammonia. The natural occurring ammonia that is in our west well field. That is the source of the rusty water calls that we have. The filtration of the plant would be similar to what we have on the east side of town. We currently have a filtration plant that services our east well field. This west water treatment plant would also, would filter the wells on the west side of town. The east plant was built in 2006. Iron manganese again is the source of the complaints that we have, between 20 and 30 complaints are documented annually and we alleviate the rusty water we ask that property owners let their water run and then we also, the utility department also comes out and flushes hydrants in those areas to try to clean out the lines but this is only a temporary measure. I just wanted to step back. With me tonight is Kevin Crooks, the City Utility Superintendent and also Greg Johnson with WSB. So the design again is to remove the iron manganese and also the ammonia. Naturally occurring ammonia. The plant is not a softening plant. Most plants in the metro area are not softening plants. It’s more of an aesthetic thing that residents have different levels of taste for how much they want their water softened. They still can have softeners in their houses to soften the water to their liking. The plant is designed, proposed for 8.64 million gallons. Capacity that’s almost the exact same size of operational plant as the east water treatment plant and the process again is similar to the east plant but includes a detention tank. Underground detention tank that I’ll get to later. And that is requested to help the efficiency of the plant operate a little bit better and get a little bit more better water quality. The plant will pump both to the low zone and the high zone. The different pressure zones within our city based upon the elevation of the topography of the area so this gives the city a lot of flexibility and Mr. Crooks’ group a lot of flexibility. We can actually would be able to shut the east plant down and have the west plant the city if the east plant needs some maintenance and vice versa as well so it has a lot of, takes a lot of risk out of the city and gives the plant operators a lot of flexibility in how to best treat and provide potable water for the community. The project is also designed to, for the full capacity of the city so right now we’re about 24,000. Population we’re going to be going up to about 35,000 in 2040 projected so this plan is designed for that future growth within our city so we won’t have to add on treatment plants down the future or have additional plants built within the community. This will be the last plant that would be proposed to be built. Just want to talk about the site selection. Ms. Aanenson had talked about the purchase of the site with 10 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 the Lake Harrison development back in 2005. Since that time the City has, we have studied the purchase of that site prior to the purchase so staff did write a cost benefit analysis and report identifying several sites within the area that potentially would be suitable for a treatment plant. However this site was chosen based upon it’s location. It’s cost effectiveness for the community and it’s operational flexibility as well. When the site was purchased the council at that time did put the water treatment plant at this location in the 2008 Comprehensive Master Plan so that was studied back in 2008 too and approved by the council at that time. There’s been a lot of questions too about water treatment plants in residential areas. Staff did a quick look at other communities within the metro area here and I kind of listed just a brief summary of some of the plants that are in residential areas in other communities. They include Savage, Plymouth, Minnetonka, Bloomington, Eagan, Coon Rapids, Chaska, Victoria, Edina, and Maple Grove and there’s a myriad of other plants that are out there that are in residential areas that fit well into the neighborhoods. Treatment plants do make good neighbors. I just wanted to stress that. First thing is obviously safety. These plants are safe. They generate little traffic. They are not noisy. They have little external lighting, especially this, the plant that we’re looking at and they do not generate any odors as well. Just wanted to briefly show you, the council some of our neighbors treatment plants. Here’s Chaska’s treatment plant is shown right here at the corner of Victoria Drive and Engler Boulevard. Residential houses to the west and to the south and then also to the east and so very close proximity to this plant. The highlighted reds, shaded reds are just basically the market values of those properties so. This picture shows the City of Victoria’s th treatment plant off of Highway 5 and 80 Street. Again the red shaded areas are valuations of households so the darker the red the more expensive the houses are. Mayor Laufenburger: Could you go back one? Paul Oehme: Sure. Mayor Laufenburger: What else is on, is that the site of the fire department there too? Paul Oehme: It is a joint use facility, right. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Paul Oehme: City of Savage again off of Highway 13 and McColl Drive. Basically this treatment plant backs up to residential neighbors and cul-de-sacs as well and just showing you again the valuations of those houses per the County’s assessment information that we pulled off the website. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Paul, can you go back to Victoria again. That looks like that water treatment facility is just a flat roof, industrial looking building is that correct? Paul Oehme: That’s correct. 11 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Councilwoman Tjornhom: And is that what Chaska has too? I mean what was the last slide you showed us? Chaska. Paul Oehme: This is Chaska’s. I think they have more of. Kevin Crooks: Chaska’s got a similar design I would say in concurrence with the east water treatment plant that we currently have. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Kevin Crooks: They did their best to work themselves into the surrounding community but not to the length that we’re proposing to do here. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, thank you. Paul Oehme: So those are the 3 neighbors that we’ve looked at. I could bring up more but for interest of time I’d like to move on. So the City did hire an appraisal firm to complete a report comparing residential property values next to water treatment plants to those farther away to determine if there’s any discernable difference and that information is in your packet and that’s, I think it’s exhibit number 3. The conclusion and I think they looked at 5 different plants that are in the report but they also looked at 4 other ones that weren’t in the report because there is no data or houses that were sold in close proximity to plants. But in conclusion that report determined that there was no noticeable different between property values that are right next to treatment plants versus ones that are farther away so if there’s any questions regarding that. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Oehme why did you do that report? Paul Oehme: Well we did receive some comments from property owners regarding that specific question so, and staff did not have the answer to that so we decided to take the initiative and hire an appraisal firm to find out what the answer is so. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Looking at the plans that the City has prepared for this water treatment facility in the neighborhood that’s proposed to be in, can you tell me the extra cost or maybe Kate can that we are proposing to spend on this facility versus putting in a regular water treatment plant? Façade. Paul Oehme: Sure so what our original design called for a similar I would say, somewhat similar exterior to our east water treatment plant so that has brick veneer and then also stone so we wanted to use natural materials and good durable materials for the west plant as well. Going through the neighborhood meetings and dialogue that we had with the community it was you know one thing that we did hear most at those neighborhood meetings was the concern that try to 12 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 blend it into the neighborhood as best as we can so we tried to do that. We built, we have the design of the treatment plant built into the hillside as much as we can to try to screen it. To try to hide it as much as we can. We also, one of the big outcomes of the whole process was to look at building, adding a sloped roof to the facility so we did add that and propose to add that, that sloped roof in and use some very durable shingles. The cost difference between what you know we originally had envisioned versus what it is today I think it’s probably a couple hundred thousand dollars more. When you take off the flat roof and the flat membrane roof versus the truss system and the pitched roof I think it’s probably $150,000 to probably $200,000 more but the exterior, the finishes on the building are pretty much the same. We did add spanrow glass which is maybe I don’t know $10,000, $20,000 more at the most so, so we did try to address some of the property owners concerns with aesthetics with those treatments. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And does that include the landscaping, extra landscaping or the additional landscaping? Paul Oehme: You know going into this we knew that we were going to want, we wanted to plant more trees than are out there. The property right now is pretty bare to begin with. We did know that there was going to be a park going to be constructed in the future so we wanted to add more trees to try to blend it into other parks in the community as well. Have more of a natural setting than it is today so I don’t think we added any more trees than we had originally budgeted for in the project. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Oehme, I know I’ve asked you this again but if you could just clarify it. I know in some of the other photos you showed the entrance to the neighborhood as coming off of a highway. It’s a little bit different approach to a neighborhood versus what is proposed at Lake Harrison you know with the monument entrance. Is there, and what did you discover? I know I had asked about a potential entrance off of Galpin to kind of. Paul Oehme: Sure. Yep. Councilwoman Ryan: I’m trying to, you know so it’s not the same entrance because I know with the monument there and that turning radius and having trucks go down that street versus coming off of Galpin. Paul Oehme: Right so we did talk about that extensively during the preliminary design phase of the project. We didn’t want to come off of Manchester Road to the north because of the topography. We know we were going to build a treatment plant into the hillside and where we wanted to have the deliveries taking place, we knew that was on the south side of the facility just because of the way the treatment process works going down so going off of Galpin was not an 13 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 option we didn’t think because of just the topography we’d have to build a huge retaining wall along the pond area and cost wise it really didn’t make sense. Going to the east off of Galpin we have a big wetland complex there and actually there was more, actually the wetlands there are a mitigation of some of the impacts that took place with the Lake Harrison development so those wetlands we knew we can’t touch and we know there’s bad soils over there too so, and also Galpin Boulevard is a county road and the spacing requirements for driveways or access points would not be met by the county standards. Councilwoman Ryan: And even with the anticipated potential road widening of Galpin at some point? I think that was projected maybe 2018, would that turning radius change at all? Paul Oehme: No. No there’s a right hand turn lane into Lake Harrison Drive going southbound off of Galpin and we don’t want to put a driveway right in a turn lane there. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: You have more slides? Paul Oehme: I have a bunch more slides. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay just related, a bunch more? Just related to the cost. So let me just clarify, so the things that you did Mr. Oehme to the design working in conjunction with WSB, Greg nice to have you here tonight. Greg Johnson: Yep, good evening. Mayor Laufenburger: You modified the roof. You adjusted the landscaping slightly but you, is that right? Paul Oehme: We did. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Paul Oehme: And we also saved trees too. Mayor Laufenburger: Was that a request of the neighborhood? Paul Oehme: That was a request of the neighborhood to try to save as many of the on site trees as we could. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. What about the, there were other requests they made. You mentioned the glass or the word I’m going to use in the next time I get Scrabble is fenestration is 14 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 that right? So that fenestration, that’s a word that’s used to described making something look more residential or look more like a house is that? Paul Oehme: Yeah adding windows and doors, that type of thing. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. But the windows are not functional windows because you don’t want people looking in there right? Paul Oehme: Yes. Well most of the windows that you see on those renderings are not real windows. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. But it’s to help it look like it’s a window. Paul Oehme: It helps it look more residential. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So you said your estimation is between $150,000-$200,000 is what you’re doing. Is that, Greg is that a question for you? Greg Johnson: I would say that yeah, good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the council. I would say that’s a fair estimate, yep. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Okay well let’s move onto the rest of those slides. Paul Oehme: So I’ll hand it over to Greg at this time to talk about some of the more internal components to the project. Greg Johnson: Sure. I’m just going to talk about the treatment process and this first slide here shows the chemicals that are going to be used at the plant and the first one is fluoride and that’s required by Minnesota Statutes. That’s for dental care. We have sodium pomegranate. That’s a an oxidant for manganese so manganese is the black colored stuff you see in your water and we have orthophosphate which is used for copper corrosion control so that’s mainly the plumbing systems in your house so you don’t get copper in your water. We have a polymer settling aid and that’s to settle out iron and manganese to make the back wash process more efficient. And then we’ve got chlorine and chlorine is actually serving 3 purposes on this project so that the first purpose is to oxide iron. It’s actually a very effective and inexpensive chemical to be using to treat iron and it’s also used as a disinfectant so once we put chlorine into the water it actually leaves a residual in the distribution system. It’s something you can actually measure out in the system. Unlike any other disinfectant you can measure chlorine so you know that it’s actually working for you. And another important thing that we’re using it for is to treat ammonia so. Mayor Laufenburger: Why ammonia? Do you put ammonia in the water? 15 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Johnson: The west well fields contain natural ammonia that’s in the water and just like some of the wells on the east well field as well and the issue with ammonia is that if you don’t treat it and it goes into the system it has the potential to nitrify so you can actually create nitrite and nitrate and when it reaches that state those are actually maximum contaminants or contaminants at a maximum contaminant level and so now you’re going from treating a secondary contaminant to a primary contaminant that actually impacts your health. So it serves 3 purposes and it’s a very effective chemical for doing that. Mayor Laufenburger: Back up just a bit. How many of, what of those chemicals remain in the water after the water is completely treated? Greg Johnson: Just free chlorine. Mayor Laufenburger: That’s all. Greg Johnson: Free chlorine and fluoride and orthophosphate, yep. Mayor Laufenburger: Oh the orthophosphate, that’s what you have in the water to keep the copper tubing in homes. Greg Johnson: Yeah what the orthophosphate does it builds up a real thin layer on the inside of your plumbing systems so it prevents, if you have that slightly corrosive water it prevents that water from coming into contact with your copper so it actually extends the life of your copper and keeps that out of your water. Your drinking water. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Councilman Campion. Councilman Campion: Mr. Mayor, one quick question on the chemicals. Which of these chemicals are being used today without the presence of the treatment facility? Greg Johnson: Each, good question. Each of these chemicals are being used today at the east water plant. Paul Oehme: The west side. Councilman Campion: On the west side. Greg Johnson: Oh yeah, I’m sorry the question is which ones will be used? Councilman Campion: Today as is… Greg Johnson: Yeah the current design includes each of these chemicals that are on this list. 16 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: The current design of the east water plant. Greg Johnson: It includes all these chemicals. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay think about the west wells that don’t have a treatment plant… Greg Johnson: Oh I’m sorry…yeah so currently we’re not, the west wells are not being treated for iron and manganese and so currently you’re just feeding chlorine and fluoride and I think yeah polyphosphates. That would be polyphosphates so correct. Councilman Campion: Okay so the top and bottom ones. Greg Johnson: So really there’s basically no iron or manganese removal that’s occurring at this time. Councilman Campion: Okay. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, continue. Greg Johnson: So to verify the treatment process we did what’s called a water treatment pilot study and the method that we piloted it’s called Green Central filtration and it’s actually a very common treatment process that’s probably used in a majority of all systems across probably the Midwest that treat for iron and manganese and so it’s a cost effective system and it’s the same process that’s being used at the east water plant and where that comes into play is that we’re trying to provide a consistent water quality so we want the water leaving the east plant to be similar to the water quality at the west plant because that water’s going to blend in the system and the most consistent we make those 2 plants the most consistent water quality we’ll achieve. There’s other treatment systems such as reverse osmosis, Nano filtration, ultrafiltration that are used in water plants. These systems are typically used in desalination plants. Surface water treatment plants where they’re dealing with different types of contaminants and the important thing about this, these systems is that they, reverse osmosis for example has a certain amount of reject water that comes off it so it’s typically 10 to 20 percent of the water that comes into the system gets rejected to the sanitary sewer system so that water would go directly to Met Council for example and then you have to offset that loss with additional ground water wells. One thing it does require a bigger building footprint because you typically still have to remove iron and manganese upstream of these processes so next slide please. So back in April one of the first things that we did was, we conducted this chlorine system analysis and we looked at sodium hypochlorite, chlorine gas, and on site generated sodium hypochlorite. Other disinfectants that we evaluated but we didn’t review are ultraviolet ozone chloramine and chlorine dioxide and we did, we received some questions on ozone and at the request of the Planning Commission we did look at some different technologies and the one thing about ozone it’s not actually a new technology. It’s been around for over 100 years and looking at what it would take, we actually 17 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 got some costs from some vendors and we would have to expand the building to accommodate ozone. Mayor Laufenburger: Make it bigger? Greg Johnson: Make it bigger and because ozone is not an approved disinfection method. Mayor Laufenburger: For the State of Minnesota? Greg Johnson: The State of Minnesota. It does not leave a residual in the distribution system so if you feed ozone you still have to feed chlorine as well so basically you’d have 2 treatment systems. Mayor Laufenburger: Remind us again why is that residual chlorine important? Greg Johnson: Because you want, with chlorine you want to have a way to actually measure a residual in the system to actually verify that the disinfectant exists. Ozone for example has a half life of about 15 minutes so after you inject it it’s gone within 15 to probably 20 minutes. Chlorine once you put it in the system it can leave a residual for up to days and so you can actually measure and verify that it’s actually there. So we looked at the cost and to expand the building it was approximately about $3 million dollars minimum to put ozone. But probably the most important thing about ozone is that ozone by itself does not treat ammonia. Unlike chlorine that you can treat ammonia with that, ozone does not treat ammonia so that’s another key thing. There’s only one, or take a step back here. Ozone’s predominantly used on surface water systems and the reason surface water systems, they have organic matter in the water where if they add chlorine it forms disinfection byproducts. I apologize for getting technical here but that’s why you don’t see it in ground water because ground water doesn’t have the same organic levels and the only treatment plant in Minnesota that uses ozone that also treats ground water is the Moorhead water plant and the reason they do that is because they also treat surface water so they actually blend the 2 waters and that’s why they use that chemical. Mayor Laufenburger: And that’s the only one in Minnesota? Greg Johnson: That’s the only one in Minnesota correct. Councilwoman Ryan: Can I ask a quick question? Mayor Laufenburger: Sure can. Especially if it’s related to this. Councilwoman Ryan: Yes and specifically with the systems that were not evaluated, without going, your depth of knowledge I know is vast, can you give a high level of understanding what those other systems are? The other 3 that were not evaluated. 18 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Johnson: Sure so like ultraviolet for example? Councilwoman Ryan: Yes. Greg Johnson: UV again is used predominantly for surface water systems for the most part and again the disadvantage of UV, it’s a high maintenance cost. There’s actually these bulb systems that have to be replaced on a periodic basis. It takes high energy use and again it doesn’t leave a residual like chlorine so because of that UV is not an approved disinfection method by itself. Chloramine is a system that some surface systems use but in the case of chloramine you’re not fully oxidizing ammonia in the system so the concern of the Health Department is if you’re using chloramines there’s still potential for nitrates to form in the system so that’s a disadvantage of chloramine. Chlorine dioxide is just a chemical that just isn’t commonly used anymore and it’s more expensive. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you. Paul Oehme: So staff did complete the report for chlorine analysis back in April 26 of this year and that’s in your staff report too, attachment 4 so is there any questions with that report before we move on? Mayor Laufenburger: That was the report from WSB correct? Paul Oehme: Correct. Yeah it was kind of, it looked at again the 3. The sodium hypochlorite, the chlorine gas and the on site sodium generation and we looked at safety issues regarding each of those systems. We looked at availability. We looked at cost and then we looked at different applications too and life cycle costs. Mayor Laufenburger: So council specifically do you have any questions related to that 14 page report from WSB? Councilwoman Ryan do you? Councilwoman Ryan: If you give me a second to look through my notes here. Mayor Laufenburger: While you’re looking may I ask a question? Mr. Oehme or Mr. Johnson, how do you make sure that the chlorine level in the water that leaves the water treatment plant isn’t too high? Paul Oehme: Maybe that’s a question for Kevin Crooks. Mayor Laufenburger: Oh Mr. Crooks. Kevin Crooks: Mr. Mayor, we have an online process analyzer and what that does is it, every 60 seconds it analyzes the effluent water, the water leaving the treatment plant for it’s chlorine level 19 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 and then to back that up we also take a lab sample every day to make sure that machine is reading correctly. Mayor Laufenburger: The lab sample is that required by the State or not? Do you have to send water to the State for inspection? Kevin Crooks: We do yeah. We do. There’s annually there’s a big, there’s a slew of constituents that we test for as well as bacteria and that’s 35 samples a month so there’s a long list of contaminants that are, that we’re constantly guarding for but going back to chlorine there’s again an online process analyzer that tests constantly as well as fluoride too and those are monitored closely and then excuse me. The machine itself is again checked against another machine to test for it’s accuracy to make sure what it’s telling us is correct. Mayor Laufenburger: How long have we been putting chlorine in the water in Chanhassen? Kevin Crooks: Since the dawn of the first well. That’d be Well 1 back in, yeah. At least since ’72. I said ’73 but at least ’72. I have some paperwork that says 1972 on it and it’s chlorinated but it’s really the only way to have a residual as Greg said and a residual is required by the Minnesota Department of Health at a level of .2 to .5 parts per million in the distant points in the distribution system so that doesn’t mean just outside the well or the treatment plant. Mayor Laufenburger: All the way. Kevin Crooks: In the far reaches exactly. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Councilwoman Ryan, did that give you enough time? Councilwoman Ryan: It did, thank you. Well done. I know safety has been a big concern and in the report it talked about some of the storage requirements for chlorine gas and it mentions the risk management plan and Mr. Oehme I know you put a piece of that into the response from the consortium but if you could just explain a little bit further about you know what the plan is if there was a leak. Some of the, I’ve learned so much but you know the different techniques used for scrubbing and just your general plan for safety. Paul Oehme: Great question. We have slides on that actually. Councilwoman Ryan: Oh, well there you go. Paul Oehme: We could maybe… Councilwoman Ryan: Yes of course. Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment. Mr. Campion did you? 20 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Councilman Campion: I had a follow up question. Maybe this is answered in the slides later. In terms of the chlorine that’s already stored at the well houses in the west field, how is that storage maintained? Is it brought in by truck on a periodic basis? Kevin Crooks: Correct it’s, in much the same way as the west plant. It’s a gas. It’s in 150 pound cylinders. The cylinders are smaller so as a result we have more of them and they’re in kind of a series inside the well house. It’s older technology and I’m glad you brought that up councilmember because the west water treatment plant has a lot of upgrades and safety measures that the existing wells currently don’t have. The technology of course has gotten a lot better since these well houses were built and they’ll have chlorine detectors which will immediately notify us in the event of a leak. We don’t have that now. They’re going have automatic shut off valves that we don’t have now so it’s definitely an upgrade in security and safety as far as the chlorine goes but to answer your question yeah it’s delivered by truck. The cylinders are smaller. They’re kind of man handled into the well and the empties are taken away by the chemical vendor. Councilman Campion: But the frequency of their replenishment is that, will that be, is it similar now as it will be with the? Mayor Laufenburger: Daily, weekly, monthly? Kevin Crooks: Well of course it’s seasonal and this year’s been an easy year obviously with all the rain. We’re just kind of like farmers. We’re heavily dependent on the weather so we’re talking Wells 3, 9, 7 and 8 which are on the west side. 7 and 8 are the prime movers because they’re the best quality. We’re talking probably 8 to anywhere between 8 and 17 times a year. You know it’s again very seasonal. In summer it could be as much as twice, 3 times a month. Not this year and in winter it’s very infrequent as the flow from those wells goes down. You know 66 percent in winter so. Councilman Campion: So would you expect that if the west treatment plant is put in there the frequency of replenishing or at least similar number of times that’s it replenished but it’s going to one facility instead of you know spread out to those 4 well houses. Kevin Crooks: That’s exactly right. We’re consolidating the chemicals to one site and a safer site but the frequency of the chemical delivery will go way down like almost 80 percent. We’ll take in a large amount in a larger cylinder and there’ll be less handling per se of chemicals. Deliveries will be far less with a new facility. Councilman Campion: Okay. Mayor Laufenburger: And just Mr. Crooks, what will happen to the chlorine injection systems at the wells? Are they just going to be dismantled or are they going to be left in place as a back up? 21 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Kevin Crooks: No they’ll be dismantled. It’s just, it’s easier not to have them. The equipment, none of my equipment likes to sit so just leaving it in place isn’t really a true redundancy. Mayor Laufenburger: So you’ll remove them. Kevin Crooks: Correct, they’ll be disassembled and then removed. Mayor Laufenburger: We’re invading your timeframe Mr. Oehme. You want to continue? There are kids that want to go to sleep. Some of them are already by the way. Greg Johnson: Sure I’ll just continue on here. So for the chlorine system analysis, that’s a report that we were referencing earlier. The report determined that when stored with the methods that we’re using, chlorine gas is a safe chemical to use and the data that we looked at looked specifically just at water waste water plants which you need to be kind of careful because nationwide water waste water plants use only about 5 percent of the total chlorine and it’s actually industry and pharmaceutical that use the vast majority of chlorine so it’s important when you look at data to look at data that’s focused specifically on water and waste water treatment facilities. And so we actually found it based on our data to be safer than other chlorine methods such as sodium hypochlorite. There was actually more spills. And we found it have the lowest 20 year present worth life cycle cost and again because we’re feeding chlorine to treat ammonia the life cycle costs come into play. Currently the western wells use chlorine as a disinfectant like we were saying earlier and they’ve been used since 1973. The City has not experienced any safety problems at those wells and city utility staff members are familiar using chlorine gas and they’re trained for emergency responses. Chemical deliveries can be scheduled any time of the day and I think at one of the neighborhood meetings that we had someone expressed the concern about this site being located near a bus stop and the, we can get around that by scheduling the deliveries after kids are picked up from school to get around that so. Just some examples of chlorine use. Again the vast majority of water systems in Minnesota use chlorine and chlorine gas and significant quantities of chlorine gas are safely stored and used at Minneapolis Water for example. They actually bring chlorine in on big tankers and their plant’s actually located in close proximity to residents. Chlorine gas is the most effective way to protect water against pathogens again because it leaves that residual in the system. We know it’s always there working. Some more slides. It’s a proven technology. It’s less than half the cost of liquid chlorine and it has the longest chemical life and with the liquid systems you can only store so many days of sodium hypochlorite on site because after about 30 days it loses it’s potency so that’s another disadvantage of liquid chlorine. There’s other operational issues such as off gassing with liquid chlorine and next slide please. So what Kevin was mentioning earlier is that this plant is going to have, which is approved by the Uniform Fire Code are emergency shut off valves that mount on each of the cylinders and these came out probably I’m guessing like 15 to 20 years and since the time this has really increased the safety of chlorine gas. Basically if there’s a chlorine leak inside the plant these valves will shut instantly. Talking to the 22 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 manufacturer Robo Control they have over 5,000 installations with this valve and there’s not a single case where this valve has failed. That’s just an incredible statistic. Mayor Laufenburger: How long did you say? How many years? Greg Johnson: 15 to 20 years. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Greg Johnson: Guessing yeah. I think that’s about right. Some other safety precautions that inside the plant the chlorine gas is not a pressurized system. It actually works under a vacuum so if a line were to rupture or get cut or break, the vacuum would be lost instantly and no chlorine would leak into the plant. There’s going to be multiple chlorine gas sensors located through the plant that can measure down to well less than 1 part per million. And if a leak was sensed by the gas sensors these valves would shut off. The ventilation system would shut down and there’d be no gas vented to the atmosphere. And again most importantly staff is trained to address a leak if one were to occur but we are confident that a leak will not occur. Paul Oehme: So Councilwoman Ryan do you have any more questions regarding the safety? Kevin Crooks is going to address some, if there were to be some leak we are trained in how to manage those type of leaks and to address them even before fire department would arrive. Councilwoman Ryan: You’re going to talk about those right now? Kevin Crooks: Yeah we’ll just cover the RMP quickly. Councilwoman Ryan: Sure yes, please. Kevin Crooks: The RMP is the EPA mandated risk management plan and it covers everything from the training of employees to the type of equipment that’s used to the type of maintenance schedules of the equipment that we have on hand and all that needs to be approved from the EPA and that’s required before we receive the first chemicals so I’ll basically begin drafting that about 5 months before start up should council move forward with the west plant so that’s the schedule for the RMP. Councilwoman Ryan: And so someone from the State comes out or? Kevin Crooks: That’s actually federal. Councilwoman Ryan: Oh federal, okay. Kevin Crooks: Yep. 23 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Are you about to conclude your discussion on chlorine or not? Paul Oehme: Yep we’d like to move on… Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, any other questions on chlorine? Councilwoman Ryan: Not at this time no. Mayor Laufenburger: Just one Mr. Oehme. Is anybody else using chlorine in Chanhassen? Any manufacturing facilities, Kevin do you know? Kevin Crooks: I know that the school was. Minnetonka Middle School had a chlorine cylinders and after their remodel they may have moved to some kind of dry pellet because. Mayor Laufenburger: Is that for a pool? Kevin Crooks: For their pool. Mayor Laufenburger: Oh alright. Kevin Crooks: Manufacturing, again Lifetime might be another one for their pool as well. I don’t know of a manufacturer currently using chlorine. Mayor Laufenburger: General Mills, big plant? Kevin Crooks: I don’t think they use chlorine. Mayor Laufenburger: So if somebody did use substantial amount of chlorine they would be required to make, file that risk management plan? Kevin Crooks: That’s absolutely correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Kevin Crooks: Even if they’re using 150 pound cylinders they would have to still fill out the RMP. However it wouldn’t have to be re-evaluated every 3 years. You would only have to do it once. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so there’s a threshold of usage that requires the re-application or the updating of the RMP, is that correct? Kevin Crooks: Correct Mr. Mayor. Although the threshold is based on your amount of storage on hand rather than just usage. 24 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: And so will Chanhassen based on it’s storage, will it be required to update that RMP on an annual basis do you know? Kevin Crooks: It’s not annual. It’s every 3 years we’ll be looking at it. Mayor Laufenburger: Every 3 years. Kevin Crooks: Yes we will. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright good. Okay let’s move on Mr. Oehme. Greg Johnson: So just one more slide for. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Johnson go ahead. Greg Johnson: I have to preside for myself here and I just want to talk a little bit about plant security and security is something we take very seriously when we design a water plant and for security it’s up to the agency’s discretion as far as what’s required and the plant is going to have an advanced security system consisting of exterior video cameras on all sides of the building. Window sensors and door contact switches that monitor the plant 24 hours a day so if there is an intrusion it’s going to go through the alarm system and the police department will be notified. Operation staff. As far as homeland security we’ve had discussions with, there is a person, an engineer at Minnesota Department of Health that is their representative for homeland security and his name is John Grothe and so talking with Mr. Grothe, what he came back to us with is that he said the regional homeland security protective supervisor and the chemical facility anti- terrorism program supervisor informed the Minnesota Department of Health security coordinator that there is no regulatory language or directive originating from homeland security which requires the provision of security fencing around the plant. That’s kind of a long sentence there. But we did check into that and a fence is not a requirement around the site and actually the opinion from the contact person at the Health Department is that, his opinion on fences is that if a person is determined a fence is not going to stop someone. They’re either going to go through it or around the fence. Mayor Laufenburger: Well the same could be true of a wall couldn’t it? Greg Johnson: Correct, yeah. Mayor Laufenburger: Hence the intrusion technique. Paul Oehme: One item to add too about the building itself. There’s only going to be 2 doors that will actually have swipe cards that you can actually enter into the plant so most of the doors around the plant are just for exit only. There’s only like I said there’s only going to be 2 doors 25 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 you can actually enter into the plant so that adds another level of security to the facility. And one thing we forgot to add here too is there are going to be motion sensors within the plant so for whatever reason somebody gets into the plant, those triggers would be alarmed to the police department for investigation. Mayor Laufenburger: You referenced, Mr. McDonald. Councilman McDonald: What kind of security does the east plant have? Kevin Crooks: I’m cringing a little bit because we’re getting into a little bit of means and methods here publicly but. Mayor Laufenburger: That’s a good comment Mr. Crooks. Kevin Crooks: Everything. We have everything. Councilman McDonald: Has there ever been an intrusion into the east plant? Kevin Crooks: No absolutely not. Councilman McDonald: Has there ever been an attempt that you’re aware of? Kevin Crooks: There has not been. Councilman McDonald: Okay thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Crooks there’s reference to a city’s supervisor control and data acquisition system. Who monitors that? Kevin Crooks: All of utilities monitors that. Someone monitors that from the utility department 24 hours, 7 days a week. Mayor Laufenburger: There’s a person. Kevin Crooks: A human being yep. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Alright, any other questions on this? Okay Mr. Oehme. Paul Oehme: So we talked about the EPA risk management plan a little bit so I can skip over that. If there’s no other questions about the building interior itself I’d like to move on to talk about some of the other topics that were brought up along with the neighborhood meetings and some of those concerns so one of the things that we looked at was the traffic. How much traffic would be generated by this plant. We’re projecting there’d be maybe, there’s going to be one 26 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 operator running the plant during regular business hours. The plant will run autonomously after hours and on weekends so with deliveries and Mr. Crooks had indicated there would probably be between 2 and 4 trips per day from the plant. And if you look at what a residential, single family residential house generates there, the International Trip Generation Manual estimates out to 10 trips per day is generated by one single family property so this plant is going to be generating less traffic than a regular residential household would. Noise and odors. Like I indicated again very little noise would be coming from the plant. The only noise generating, significant noise generating equipment would be the on site generator. This generator would be sized to run the plant if the power were to be interrupted in the area and it would be run at least once a month just for checks. Making sure that the generator’s running as it should be. There would be a muffler system that would be included with this generator as the east plant does have, it’s a pretty massive muffler system and the manufacturer states that the muffler gets the noise levels down to about 75 decibels so looking at what other levels of just for context what other levels of noise that generates, that’s like a vacuum cleaner from 10 foot away or a toilet flushing so pretty minimal. We’re not expecting to have the generator heard by any of the neighbors in the area and like we indicated the plant does not give off any odors. Exterior lighting is proposed to be minimal. We’re going to have some down lit LED lights at some of the, at the openings of windows or some of the doors. Just some wall pack units just for accenting. This will help with some security system. This will add to the security system of the plant as well. The utilities, like Ms. Aanenson had indicated most of the raw water mains for the west wells are already stubbed to this facility. The wells along Galpin and along Lake Lucy Road will be extended to the plant. That’s this blue line here if you can see it. And then also from the wells along Galpin so there’d be little over about a mile of raw water main that would be brought to the site and then there’s some distribution main that will also be brought or extended to the water mains that are in the area so the beauty of this location is that the low zone water main is right at the intersection of Galpin and Lake Harrison Road so there’s very little extension of utilities that would be needed to connect to the low zone. The high zone pipe would be connected from Lake Lucy Road all the way down to I think it’s Longacres Road. Councilwoman Ryan: Paul? Paul Oehme: Yes. Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Oehme. Could you explain, instead of asking this later, can you explain the difference or the importance of high and low zones and what that actually means please? Paul Oehme: Sure. So if we would just have a blanket pressure zone for the entire city, the areas in the higher elevation locations of the city would have very little pressure in the system and the areas in the lower areas, say south of say Highway 5 or Highway 212, they would have a lot more pressure just because of the elevation changes so we try to keep the pressure in the system to around 80 pounds per square inch so in order to do that we have to zone off different parts of 27 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 the city to allow for pressures to become static. Static in those areas so that’s why we have those different pressure tiered zones within the community. Councilwoman Ryan: And is that how you choose different locations is the proximity to high and low zones or? Paul Oehme: Well in this case it’s, we know the water in the high zone is not treated so we want to definitely have a treatment plant in that location and then in order to supplement some of the low zone water we wanted the plant in close proximity to that distribution main so that’s the reason why this site is in particular very advantageous for us because it has, would have less pipe extension needs to be, to hook up to our existing distribution mains. Councilwoman Ryan: Okay thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Campion. Councilman Campion: Just to feed off of that. There were comments that you know for the site selection that this treatment facility needed to be in that high zone north of 5 and you know south th of 5 or south of 78. Is it that it’s just not an option or if it were moved to the, that southern low zone area that it would just be exponentially more costly? Paul Oehme: It would be more exponentially costly to move it to any other location than this one. We had planned for the utilities to be brought. We actually put in some of the utilities to be brought to this location in anticipation for this plant being built. To move it to any other location we’re going to be extending you know 24 inch pipe along Galpin or wherever. That’s very expensive pipe and there’s more risk in terms of operations because there’s more pipe in the ground. You might have, there’s more potential for that pipe to break or somebody to hit it, those type of things so we did look at you know revisited the 2005 land purchase study that the City completed. We looked at a property along Highway, just north of Highway 5 along Galpin th and 78 Street and just to bring it down to that location which was I don’t know, three quarters of a mile away, that was a little over $2 million dollars just to bring it to that location. Now if were to move it farther to the south, say south of Highway 5 to maybe a business park area, your costs are going to be going up exponentially from there. Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Laufenburger: Councilman McDonald. Councilman McDonald: In 2005 when this decision was made, how much of this infrastructure was in place? Paul Oehme: In 2005 none of the infrastructure was in place. At that time the Lake Harrison development was not built at that time. The council did not approve the plat or any of the 28 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 development so at that time none of the extensions, water main extensions were stubbed to this facility. The distribution mains along Galpin were there before 2005 but none of the planned infrastructure for a treatment plant was there prior to 2005. Councilman McDonald: So then since 2005 all prior councils have in one way or another approved part of the infrastructure development and placement and cost so there’s always been a plan that this was going to become the west water treatment plant? Paul Oehme: Right yeah. I mean in 2008 when the master Comprehensive Plan was approved by the City Council this site was approved for that west water treatment plant so that council approved, you know re-established that this is the preferred location for that west plant. Councilman McDonald: Okay thank you. No more questions. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Oehme this relates to Councilwoman Ryan’s question. You talk about the high zone and the low zone and maybe this is a question for Mr. Crooks. How many accounts or homes are served by the east water treatment plant? Or first of all how many homes do we have in Chanhassen? Ms. Aanenson you know that answer. How many? Kate Aanenson: Probably close to about 10,000. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so 10,000. Some of them are served by their own wells right? Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So Mr. Crooks how many are served by the east water treatment plant? Kevin Crooks: Everyone except for, well we don’t have a map but of the high zone. Mayor Laufenburger: I’m looking for a number is what I’m looking for. Kevin Crooks: Yeah and that’s a great question Mr. Mayor and I don’t have it unfortunately but it’s just using generalities yeah I’m going to say three-quarters. Mayor Laufenburger: So 75 percent. Kevin Crooks: Yeah I think that’s pretty accurate. Mayor Laufenburger: So 75 percent of 10,000 or something less than 10,000. So your estimate the high usage is going to be probably in the neighborhood of 2,000. 2,000 homes primarily plus Mr. Oehme you said that the west water treatment plant when it’s completed it will actually mingle water into the east treatment plant houses too is that correct? 29 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Kevin Crooks: Yes that’s correct, yeah. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Kevin Crooks: It will, to give you an idea of the numbers. An average day let’s say for the east water treatment plant will be about 4 million gallons while in the high zone the zone currently be covered, not covered currently is about a million so and then as the city grows of course and we develop further the load will be picked up again by the future, by the west water treatment plant is going to pick up that extra capacity as the city goes forward. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Mr. Oehme back to you. Paul Oehme: Thank you. So storm water improvements in conjunction with this project. The site is, has some very tight clay soils so it’s very hard to infiltrate water and treat that water. It’s also a lot of topography of the site so we are limited to some, a few best management practices to treat the water and to treat the water and to store it on site before it leaves the area so one of the techniques that we talked with the watershed district about and has been approved is to re-use the runoff from the site and, which is all going to be directed to the pond on the west side of the plant and re-use that for irrigation so the lighter kind of lime area shown here and along the boulevard, along Lake Harrison Road, that’s all proposed to be irrigated with the water, the runoff water that would eventually come into the pond on the west side of the plant so that’s a BMP that the watershed district has approved. And also the runoff from the cul-de-sac up on Manchester Drive is also going to be directed down to the storm water pond. So in summary the conclusion that staff has come up with is the water plant is, are commonly built in residential areas. Ran off a bunch of communities that have water treatment plants within a residential areas. The plant will be located and has been approved since 2005 and is part of the 2008 comprehensive master plan for water. Water plants again they make good neighbors. They are prevalent within residential areas in the metro area. They’re safe. They do not impact property values. They generate little traffic. They’re not noisy. They are little, this plant will have little exterior lighting. There’s not going to be any parking lot lighting or any additional lighting besides what’s on the plant or the building itself. They do not generate any noise and they do not, they’re not going to be impacting the environment and the plan itself does not impact any of the wetlands adjacent to the project. We’re not going to have to mitigate any of the wetlands. The design includes a robust security system that we touched on. The water filtration is, that we’re proposing with the green is the most cost effective technology for removing the iron manganese and addressing the ammonia issues that we have in the west wells. Just touching on the chlorine gas, it is safe. We’ve used chlorine gas in our west wells since 1973 when Well number 3 was drilled along Galpin Boulevard so it’s been there all this time. The City has not had any safety issues with using gas within the community. It is the most common used form of chlorine system for water treatment plants in the metro area and nationally. It’s the cost effective system for disinfection of the water and chlorine is required by Minnesota Department of Health for disinfection and for that residual that we had talked about. Making sure that we have the 30 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 chlorine in the system for disinfection and pathogen treatment. So with that, that’s the end of our presentation. If there’s additional questions by the City Council be more than happy to try to answer them for you. Mayor Laufenburger: So just to clarify Mr. Oehme we have now from your standpoint completed the staff report of (a), approve the preliminary and final plat and site plan for a water treatment facility. Paul Oehme: That’s correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Ms. Aanenson are you prepared to speak to the vacating of the drainage. Kate Aanenson: The City Engineer will. Mayor Laufenburger: Oh, Mr. Oehme. Paul Oehme: Sure. So let me try to find. Mayor Laufenburger: Before you do that, are there any other questions related to the site plan and the water treatment plant? Okay I do have just a couple. Do you have the materials that it’s going to be built out. Can you show us that? You made mention to that. Kate Aanenson: Set them right on there, yep. Mayor Laufenburger: Nann’s going to slide that out a little bit. Kate Aanenson: Oops upside down. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so these are natural colors. Kate Aanenson: Yep there’s two choices. Mayor Laufenburger: Consistent with other city buildings as well. Kate Aanenson: Correct and that’s some of the color schemes that we had talked with property owners and neighbors about using that. It’s kind of that prairie building flavor that we’re trying to address used in this project. Mayor Laufenburger: Regarding iron and manganese, Mr. Johnson maybe this is for you. Does the presence of iron and manganese in the water, in what we call the high zone or that area that’s not getting filtered water, does that affect water softener performance do you know? 31 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Johnson: It can. Mayor Laufenburger: How would it do that? Greg Johnson: The residents side of a softener actually has an affinity towards iron and manganese particles so I think you should get more efficient. Mayor Laufenburger: Without iron and manganese? Greg Johnson: Without iron and manganese correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Paul Oehme: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Laufenburger: Yes. Paul Oehme: If I could talk about that specific item too. So if the project were to move forward we’re going to do a mass mailing and notification to the property owners about potentially reducing the level of your softeners especially, in particular in the high zone area just because there could be some adverse effects with the softeners working a little bit harder than they need to. Mayor Laufenburger: So what you’re saying is the water softeners generally have a, there’s a setting as to how much, what the mineral content of the water is. Mr. Crooks can you explain that? Kevin Crooks: Correct Mr. Mayor. It’s the grains per gallon setting. Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah. Kevin Crooks: And typically people in the high zone have to have it artificially high because as Greg said softeners, water softeners weren’t made for iron removal but that’s what they have to do so they set the pounds, either the pounds of salt. Pounds per regeneration or grains per gallon up higher. Mayor Laufenburger: So people will use less salt, does that make sense? Kevin Crooks: That’s correct yeah. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Savings for them. Let’s see one last question. Mr. Oehme you didn’t speak to this but in 2005 when the west water treatment plant was essentially plans 32 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 were put in place, there was a preliminary visual depiction of what that water treatment plant would look like. It was on the website. It was, did you also have something at the site? Paul Oehme: We did. We had a board with a rendering of the plant as preliminary drawings had indicated. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So the final design that you’ve now come up with in cooperation with WSB, how would you compare the size of the final building with the depiction of the preliminary building? Paul Oehme: So back in 2005 the City did have I would say multiple preliminary designs drawn up for different scenarios so. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay but there was one that was placed on the website is that correct? Paul Oehme: Yeah well there was, I think there was more than one. There was one depicting more of a park setting but the ones that we looked at were preliminary kind of set into the hillside like the plant we are looking at. That particular building is, the preliminary drawings I think it’s about 30 feet shorter than what we’re actually proposing. Mayor Laufenburger: So we’re 30 feet longer… Paul Oehme: …and but the width is about the same. I think the parking lot back then in 2005, the parking lot is shown a little bit bigger but we did show berms. We did show landscaping I think so it’s, it was a preliminary design. Mayor Laufenburger: But it was clearly identified on the, it said preliminary design right? Paul Oehme: Yeah I believe it did. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay alright. Okay let’s move to vacation. Paul Oehme: Sure. So this item is a request to vacate drainage and utility easements for the west water treatment plant site, Lot 1, Block 4, Outlot A of Lake Harrison development. So this is the plat that’s shown, that’s currently out there today. There’s a drainage and utility easement shown in yellow along the outlot and then also along the perimeter along Lot 1 as well. The purpose of the vacation for the easement is to include the park area in the new lot. There’s going to be, there’s proposed to be a picnic shelter in the new park so typically structures would have to be a lot setting instead of an outlot. The realignment, the final alignment of the building would fit better with the vacation and realignment of the property lines as a, versus what the lot shows today. And then also the underground back wash tank from a preliminary design was on the west side of the plant. Now it’s shifted to the east side but it does cross the property line between the outlot and the lot for, or where the plant is supposed to go so in order to, typically 33 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 we don’t like structures crossing property lines so that’s the reason for the adjustment of the property lines. The plat and then in order to do that we need to vacate the existing easements because we just can’t replat it without vacating the easements. So this is the proposed plat here. This blue. This is the new lot. It would be dedicated drainage utility easements around the perimeter of the new lot and then also over the new outlots as well A and B and shown in yellow. So with that if there’s any questions for the vacation I’d be more than happy to try to answer them. Mayor Laufenburger: Council members any questions regarding the vacation of the easements? Paul Oehme: Mr. Mayor, with this item there is a public hearing that is being requested. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, very well. Okay Ms. Aanenson is there anything you need to add on item number c? Kate Aanenson: No. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Alright so we have completed staff report and council questions nd related to items (a) and (c) which is the preliminary and final plat of Lake Harrison 2 Addition. The site plan for a 16,950 square foot water treatment facility. And the vacation of the drainage and utility easements on Outlot A, Lot 1, Block 4, Lake Harrison. At this time I’m going to open a public hearing specifically related to the vacation of the outlots. However I recognize that there are many people here in the council chambers this evening and I would ask that if, we will take a couple of public comments related to the water treatment plant so let’s, let me just offer this. If you would like to make a comment to the City Council you’re welcome to do so. Step up to the podium and what I’ll do is I would ask that you state your name, your address and whether you’re speaking in favor of or in opposition to (a) or (c), okay. Who would like to be first? Robert Kline: I would Mr. Mayor. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, please state your name and address. Robert Kline: My name is Robert Kline and I live at 2175 Lake Harrison Road. Mayor Laufenburger: And are you speaking in favor of the items (a) or (c) or in opposition? Robert Kline: I am speaking not in favor of either one. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so that would be in opposition. Robert Kline: I am in opposition to both. 34 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, go ahead Mr. Kline. Robert Kline: First of all good evening Mr. Mayor and fellow council members. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to present comments from the public at this time. I’ve been involved in this community for 30 years and I hope to continue my involvement for another 30 years. I’m speaking tonight as a vested resident, president of a homeowners association and a member of a 400 plus household consortium as well as an architect. I would like to share with the City Council members 2 significant issues of concern that continue to remain even to this very moment for over 1,000 residents regarding this proposed west water facility and site. Because of these 2 major issues we firmly believe that further due diligence and study are required to determine if this proposed project, proposed site and proposed filtration technology system should move forward at this time. Before I discuss these 2 issues of concern I just want to tell you something. As an architect or as an engineer for that matter we are required as licensed professionals to take into consideration the health, safety and welfare of the public for every project we design. The proposed west water facility as currently designed and located has 2 major issues that cause serious concern regarding the health, safety and welfare of the public. The first major issue of serious concern is the proposed site location. Careful consideration and thoughtful design would place this type of facility in a commercial area. Not in the middle of a 100 percent residential area. Because of the potential safety and security issues associated with this type of facility homeowners health, safety and welfare would be better protected in a commercial area. Earlier this evening the City referenced 10 other communities that have water treatment plants in residential areas. As I studied those and you look at them closely every single one of those facilities are all on the very edge at most of residential areas and are adjacent to large commercial zones. They are never in the middle of a 100 percent residential area. In fact as I studied this a little bit more I found it very interesting that there was only one city that located it’s water treatment plant completely in a commercial zone. The absolute best location from a health, safety and welfare standpoint. That city was Chanhassen and it was the current east water treatment plant. The City got the location right for the east water treatment plant and now over 1,000 residents encourage you to get the location correct for the west water treatment plant. As a problem solver. Mayor Laufenburger: You have about 2 minutes Mr. Kline. Robert Kline: As a problem solver I can think of 4, probably more potential alternative sites for the west water facility and I would just like to put a drawing up here that I did a quick sketch that just shows these 4 potential sites. As alternatives. They’re labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4. Number 1 I find interesting because it’s where the City already owns some property. They have a maintenance facility sitting there. It’s large enough. You could take that building down. Put the west water treatment plant there. 2 is land available by Southwest Transit and they own it. The City has a good relationship with them I’m assuming. You could build it there. 3 and 4, similar sites. Since it sounds like I’m going to be limited on time tonight I’m going to move ahead to the second and probably the most important major issue of concern and that’s the proposed filtration technology. The use of chlorine gas in this facility could have serious health, safety 35 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 and welfare outcomes for the public. Again because of the safety and welfare. I’m sorry, again because of the safety and security issues associated with this type of facility homeowners health, safety and welfare would be better protected if chlorine gas was not used in the filtration process. The filtration process is what I’m talking about. Not disinfectant. In fact everyone would be better protected from a health, safety and welfare standpoint if chlorine gas was not used in the filtration process. Think about that for a second. Everyone. That’s residents. Plant workers. Other citizens. Business people. Visitors to our city. Park goers and children. They all would be better off without chlorine gas. I’m left to conclude only one thing when you look at the health, safety and welfare of the public. Wherever this facility is built it should not use chlorine st gas filtration technology. But the great news is there are some 21 century technologies that are available and they don’t use chlorine gas and some of those are going to be highlighted by Mark Wagner so I’m not going to talk about them right now but they are available. They are real. They’re viable. You know and I just want to say one thing, I appreciate all the talk that we just had and the discussion on chlorine gas. I think it was extremely important for everybody here to see what’s involved when you use chlorine gas. And the simple answer is, it all can be avoided if you don’t use it. And you don’t have to use it in the filtration process so I just would like to make that point. Mayor Laufenburger: You want to bring this to a conclusion Mr. Kline? Robert Kline: Yeah I will. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you. Robert Kline: I think, I do want to acknowledge that I think some great progress has been made on the aesthetics and the size of the facility. I mean I think that’s really important. I’ve worked pretty closely with Paul Oehme and I think some great progress has been made but I think what you cannot lose sight of, and this speaks directly to the health, safety and welfare of the public and that is you can make a building look as good as you want but it’s how it functions. It’s how it affects the health, safety and welfare of the public that’s the most important thing so I just don’t want to lose sight of that. So in closing as an architect as I mentioned, as a vest community member I take an approach where I truly want the best for people. People are my clients. I love people. When it comes to the health, safety and welfare of the public I just believe you should never, ever put anyone in jeopardy and I’m just asking you on behalf and I reassure you there’s thousands of residents that are concerned about this. I’m asking you Mr. Mayor and council members that we are trusting you and encouraging you to make a decision that places this st proposed facility in the correct location like the east plant and use 21 century technologies that don’t use chlorine gas so I thank you for your time tonight and I will answer any questions if you want to ask me any of those. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Kline. Any questions of Mr. Kline? Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Kline has spoken in opposition to this. Is there anyone that would like to speak 36 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 in support of the west water treatment plant? Just a moment please. Just a moment. Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’m sorry. I appreciate that we’re going to have people speak in favor or against the water treatment plant but I also would like to hear their opinion of if they really think the water needs to be treated. If there is a problem with the water and if there really needs to be something done to be beneficial to the whole community. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. State your name and address please. Mark Wagner: Yes my name is Mark Wagner. My address is 6945 Lake Harrison Circle in Chanhassen where I reside with my wife and 2 daughters. I’ve been a resident of the city of Chanhassen for the last 26 years. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Wagner are you speaking in favor of or in opposition to? Mark Wagner: I’m speaking in opposition to both items (a) and (c). Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Mark Wagner: I’d like to highlight the critical issues regarding safety and security which still need to be addressed before this council makes a decision to move forward with the west water treatment plant at it’s currently proposed site. Jag Reddy is a Vice President of Water Technologies at Pentair Corporation. A global water technology company. Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment Mr. Wagner you made reference to something on the platform there. Do you want Nann to show that? Can you show that? Mark Wagner: That would be great. I would like to have that because there are several slides that we’re putting up there. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Mark Wagner: Mr. Reddy is one of the homeowners in the 400 plus HOA consortium most directly impacted by this proposed plan. Mr. Reddy has offered the City his professional services pro bono to assist in creating and implementing the best possible plant for the city of Chanhassen. There is no need to rush the building of this plant, which until very recently was not slated for completion until 2023. We have been told that the primary purpose in building this $20 million dollar plant is to remove the manganese and iron in the city water. The City has indicated it received 20 to 30 telephone calls per year complaining about the color of the city water. We are not dealing with a water safety issue because the water is safe for all of Chanhassen to use and consume. Instead it is an issue of aesthetics. There are multiple ways to remove manganese and iron from water and I refer this council and the guests in this room to the 37 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 April 26, 2016 report from Greg Johnson, the project manager at WSB. And Mr. Johnson’s letter is found as Attachment 4 in agenda item G-1(a) entitled Chlorine System Analysis letter from WSB. Based on this letter it is very clear the City’s request was for WSB to look only at the use of chlorine to remove manganese and iron. WSB did not look at the availability of many other options because that was not the City’s directive. There are better options to treat st manganese and iron than chlorine particularly in terms of safety. 21 century technology and the options it provides must be studied by the City before moving forward with any treatment plant regardless of where the plant is ultimately located. As noted on the slide the best treatment options include oxidation with aeration and oxidation with ozone both of which have proven success in terms of environmental friendliness, total cost of operation and safety. To the contrary the use of chlorine is the least environmentally friendly and the most importantly it is the least safe as you can see by the attached slide. The use of better technology to treat city water does not require a bigger sized plant. The chemical free ozone injection shown in this st slide, in the lower right hand corner is an excellent alternative and uses 21 century technology. Based on information shared by the City and WSB regarding the proposed plant there will be semi trucks entering a residential neighborhood at a location where multiple buses from various school districts pick up and drop off our children. These trucks will be delivering at least 6 one ton tanks of chlorine gas the size of which are represented by the yellow tanks in the center of this slide. WSB has indicated there will be at least 2 such deliveries of chlorine gas tanks per month. We think it reasonable to expect that the company delivering those 6 large tanks will have more than 6 chlorine tanks on the truck so it’s efficient in it’s delivery process to other locations. The reality of using chlorine gas is that it is dangerous. It is very dangerous and this danger is real. A chlorine gas leak occurred very close to home in Coon Rapids in 2012 and resulted in injury to 3 employees and evacuation of the local community. Imagine if that were to happen in the middle of residential homes in Chanhassen where more than 1,000 residents live. The City has proposed a city playground directly adjacent to this proposed plant. Does the City really want our children to play in an area surrounding a plant using chlorine gas when this can st all be avoided by simply using 21 century technology. While the Minnesota Department of Health might not mandate specific security methods other cities have gone well beyond the minimum requirements to protect it’s citizens. What is the City of Chanhassen going to do? These photographs represent the reality of what other cities are doing to protect their water treatment plants. Many of us have seen this level of security imposed by one of our neighboring cities at the Eden Prairie treatment plant on Mitchell Road near Highway 5. It is significant to note that Eden Prairie officials felt it important to secure this plant in this way to protect the safety of it’s residents despite the fact the Eden Prairie plant does not even use chlorine gas and that plant is located in an industrial park. Not among residential homes. Mr. Oehme referred earlier to other communities with treatment plants but nothing was noted as to whether those treatment plants use a dangerous chemical like chlorine gas. Why would the City of Chanhassen want to take changes with the health, safety and welfare of more than 1,000 residents by placing this commercial plant in the middle of 400 plus homes? In other words why would it put unlike things together? Why would the City use technology which is outdated where there are other technologies which are better and readily available? This City can avoid these problems st completely by putting this plant in another location and using 21 century technology. And at 38 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 the September 6, 2016 meeting the Chanhassen Planning Commission requested the City consider available technology including other potential systems and it implored the City to use the best alternative available, not just the easy choice. And as I mentioned earlier Jag Reddy of Pentair Corporation is an expert in this area. Mr. Reddy could not attend this evening’s meeting as he’s out of town on business but Mr. Reddy prepared by brief summary he wanted to share with the City and I conclude my comments with Mr. Reddy’s message. Mr. Oehme if you’d be kind enough to play that message. Mayor Laufenburger: Are we prepared to play that message Mr. Oehme? Paul Oehme: Yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Did you have anything else Mr. Wagner besides this? Mark Wagner: No. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Thank you. Jag Reddy: Hello. My name is Jag Reddy. I’m a resident of 6925 Lake Harrison Circle in Chanhassen. I come before the City Council today to raise my concerns regarding safety and security of the upcoming… Mayor Laufenburger: Can you stop that Mr. Oehme? Mark Wagner: Can that be turned up any louder? Paul Oehme: That’s as high as it goes. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay but I just want to make sure it’s visually showing because it stopped showing there for a second. Paul Oehme: That’s as much volume as we can get. Jag Reddy: I have prepared some information for the council on safety and security of water treatment plants. There are multiple methods… Mayor Laufenburger: Let’s pause just for a second until we get the visual. Okay go, proceed. Jag Reddy: Water oxidation with ozone is one of the best methods because of it’s safety record and total cost of operation. There are many new technologies to treat water including ozone with chemical free injection which is better than chlorine. Do we really want hazmat trucks with chlorine cylinders driving through a residential neighborhoods? That does not make any sense. Chlorine has really poor record on accidents including 612 accidents over the last 15 years. 39 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 There are many accidents continue to happen across the country including in Coon Rapids in 2012. The Department of Homeland Security and EPA in addition to MDH require water supplies to be properly protected including intrusion prevention. Page 25 of the 10 state standard used by MDH also requires these standards to be followed. I’m amazed that City of Chanhassen has not conducted a threat assessment and has not looked at potential threats in areas that could happen in the city. Cities such as Anoka and Eden Prairie have done much more to go above and beyond MDH requirements. Why not Chanhassen? Take a look at additional security requirements at other water treatment plants including Eden Prairie. Chanhassen must earn the right to be one of the best places to live in the country. We have to earn that. Let’s best technology for our water treatment plant. Let’s make sure there’s no chlorine gas being trucked around in residential neighborhoods. Let’s secure our water supply. Let’s not take any chances. Let’s plan for the future with a master plan and let’s make the best decision not just an easy one. We need visionary leadership for the future. Thank you for your time. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Wagner. Mark Wagner: Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: As a result of Mr. Wagner’s presentation, any questions of council to staff or to Mr. Wagner? I just have one Mr. Oehme. Are you familiar with the presentation that Mr. Wagner gave and Mr. Reddy gave as well? Paul Oehme: I am. Mayor Laufenburger: And are you familiar with the locations that were cited as accidents? Paul Oehme: We are. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Can you, do you have any information about Coon Rapids? Paul Oehme: We do. So we made a phone call up to Coon Rapids and talked to their utility superintendent. I also talked to their retired public works director as well so if you want to. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Johnson what did you learn? Greg Johnson: Yes so talking to Coon Rapids, the leak that occurred was due to a faulty valve and the quantity that leaker was less than 2 pounds and it was neutralized instantly. It never left the plant. There was no city evacuation. Mayor Laufenburger: Anybody injured? Greg Johnson: No, no one was injured and we asked the question if they had the emergency shut off valves. 40 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: In place. Greg Johnson: In place, they did not. Mayor Laufenburger: These are the emergency shut off valves that you plan to put in place in the west water treatment plant? Greg Johnson: That’s correct yes. We also talked with the staff at the Minnesota Department of Health that have worked there for over 30 years. Mayor Laufenburger: At the Minnesota Department of Health? Greg Johnson: The Minnesota Department of Health and the staff there, the Coon Rapids leak was the only facility in the metro area that they can recall with a chlorine leak, yeah and this is a person that’s worked there for 30 years. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay and this person that you talked with at Coon Rapids is somebody that was there during the time of this leak? Greg Johnson: This person was not. This person actually worked in Fridley but he was informed of this leak from other staff. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so this is, you consider that to be reliable information? Paul Oehme: We also backed it up with the retired public works director who also had that same information. That no one was injured. The chlorine never left the plant and it was contained in the facility itself. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright thank you very much. Now is there anybody that would like to speak in support of the west water treatment plant? Please step to the podium. State your name and address. Paul Theis: Good everyone, I’m Paul Theis. 6520 White Dove Circle and I’ve lived in Chanhassen for 24 years. I think one of the council members asked if there are others besides us that have water quality issues. I’ve talked to a couple of the neighbors and at one point someone at the City represented well we don’t really get much for complaints. I related the story to a couple neighbors and they indicated well they haven’t talked to me. Another one said well they haven’t talked to me. I said well do you want to come? One of them who had some health issues did come to a workshop and there was no public input at that but you know as his wife I had talked to and she indicated they had problems. A neighbor across the circle has had problems. You know quite frankly I think people that live in the high side where we do think it’s kind of the silent majority of our area that there’s problems. Now I read the report issued by 41 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 WSB dated April 26, 2016. I think it was very thoughtfully and thoroughly prepared. I listened to the comments tonight from the consulting engineer. The City’s engineer and I think the chief operator of the plants. I think they were all persuasive. I think the technology is safe. I think we’ve got unfortunately a case of NIMBY. You know I’ve lived in Chan for 24 years. That sign outside of what is now Harrison Lakes development has been up for since 2005. 11 years. I think the site selection process was, started in as early as 2003. We’re not rushing into this. I don’t think the City, the engineer, consulting engineer and the staff could be accused of rushing into anything. I think on the contrary I think this probably all would have been accomplished had the so called great recession of 2008-2009 not have happened. Currently we’re in a low interest rate environment. Now the municipal bond market is somewhat different than the general market but I think this is an advantageous time to go ahead and finance this. You know in effect people on the high side have been subsidizing the treatment plant on the east side. The so called east side for years since this acquisition through user rates, hook up charges and so forth. In the meantime we sit idly by having water quality issues. We think we deserve the same protection that other people do in other parts of this community. We’re asking for no more. Some people are asking for a different technology. I’m convinced that this technology is safe, effective and economically viable and something the City should go forward with. So you know we could rehash a lot of this but I think the City needs to move forward. I think the questions that we’ve posed in terms of the safety and security and so forth have been answered. You know if Eden Prairie has got a fence around their plant and it is determined later that we should put a fence around our plant, so be it. It can be an add on later. It’s not a big deal but I think you know a lot of the technology’s improved. The vacuum thing with the automatic shut offs and such it’s, you know we’ve got chlorine that’s apparently being used at the wells now. I think we can in effect some of that diminishes the risk. I think it’s been proven, at least if you believe Mr. Johnson’s report, I think to be a safe methodology for treating the water so I would urge the council to go forward on this. Let’s get this project done. I think we’re not rushing into anything. I think to the contrary I’d like to see the project go forward. We thank you for your time and hopefully support and vote on this project. Thank you very much. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Theis. Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. McDonald, did you have a question of Mr. Theis? Councilman McDonald: I do not have a question of Mr. Theis but what I do have is a question that came up about the perspective new locations. Everything I’ve seen to this point and that Mr. Oehme has addressed has been down across from where the daycare center’s at. That’s $2 million dollars. We’re now looking at someplace over by Lake Ann. I’d like to know what is the increment cost of going there because you’re making quite a move to move everything there. There’s got to be a lot of increases as far as the infrastructure of getting piping there. Not looking at the sites themselves, that’s a different issue but estimate. Can you give me an 42 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 estimate of what’s the increment cost of moving everything over there to you know the Lake Ann area? Greg Johnson: Looking at the map I guess I wasn’t able to get a good handle on the distance but that’s basically what it boils down is the distance and the cost to get utilities back, I mean to that location and when I saw utilities you’ve got the raw water lines from the wells. You’ve got the treated water lines. You also have the sanitary sewer lines. And then there’s probably fiber optic lines you have to get out there for the plant control system so it’s hard to give an estimate just based on that information right there but it’s something that we could estimate if we needed to. Councilman McDonald: Well it’s $2 million to move it roughly half a mile to the west is where. Mayor Laufenburger: South. South of the current plant. Councilman McDonald: South of the current plant but west of the proposed locations. It’s about a half a mile, maybe three-quarters but to go there at that point you come down the road. Now if we go over to Lake Ann you’re not going to be coming down a road or else you’re going to be going under Highway 5. What would be involved? I’m trying to get a feeling for what’s the complexity of trying to move it there. Greg Johnson: You could look at it in terms of it being proportional to the distance. So if it’s double the distance it’d probably be double the cost. If you’re going under highways or roads they’re going to have different requirements for jacking casing pipe underneath and anytime you jack casing pipe that’s very expensive. Councilman McDonald: Okay, thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Theis. Any other comment? Paul Theis: Just water’s in our rivers, streams and lakes are important. I think coming out of our tap is more important. Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Before I close the public hearing is there anybody else that would like to speak at this time? Barbara Hegenes: Yes I would. Mayor Laufenburger: I would just remind you that, I’m happy to have you speak ma’am. You’ll give your name and address but there was a public hearing specifically related to this at the Planning Commission so state your name and address. Barbara Hegenes: Yes I was there. At that Planning Commission meeting. 43 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: So state your name and address. Barbara Hegenes: Barbara Hegenes, 6845 Lake Harrison Circle and I am in opposition. I am a new resident to Chanhassen and when I purchased here which was just in April of this year I was excited to be in this city for many reasons. What I did not know coming into the neighborhood in April I quickly learned about this proposed development. I have some questions that maybe everybody else in this room knows but if the east well field was built in 2006 in the area that that it’s in now, which is my understanding commercial zone, why was at that time or whenever this in 2008 when this plan was revised, why wasn’t a commercial zoned area looked for instead of a residential area? That’s one question I have. And the other question that I have is if the residential property value report is based on no leakage occurring so it didn’t affect the property values, what consideration has been made if a chlorine gas leak were to occur, how is that going to affect the residents? Not only financially but if a leak occurs and like luckily for these cities, if you said Coon Rapids hasn’t had a drastic result from their leak but what happens when a leak occurs and after the fact? You know our kids are playing in the playground next door and the chlorine gas, it’s too late. The leak is out and let’s hope that all the valves hold but what if they don’t? You have 400 homes with children in them to be considered here and if it was in a commercial zone we wouldn’t have that concern. So to me. Mayor Laufenburger: Do you think, Ms. Hegenes do you think the people who have businesses in that commercial zone would they be concerned? Barbara Hegenes: Yes but why was it put there? Like if it’s not safe in the business zone why was it put there in the first place? Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah I think that you’ve heard comments from some people that the plant operating where it is very safe. Has been safe. We’ve had no incidences. Mr. Crooks have we had any incidences? Kevin Crooks: Not at all no. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Barbara Hegenes: And is that in a residential zone? Mayor Laufenburger: The way the plant was designed was to be safe and it’s in a commercial zone but it’s safe which means that all of the businesses that are around there are also safe because it’s designed safely. Barbara Hegenes: But that’s in a commercial zone. Mayor Laufenburger: That’s correct. 44 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Barbara Hegenes: Which is not what we’re talking about here. This is in a residential zone is that right? Mayor Laufenburger: That’s correct but we’re also talking about, Ms. Hegenes we’re talking about securing a plant in much the same if not even better than the current plant that resides in a geographically appropriate place for the east wells and a commercial zone. Barbara Hegenes: Well. Mayor Laufenburger: Did you have any other questions or comments? Barbara Hegenes: Yes I would like to know what in the last 3 to 5 years what specific considerations and other locations were studied and researched for this. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Did you have any other questions Ms. Hegenes? Barbara Hegenes: No. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you very much. We’ll answer that question. Thank you. Mr. Oehme, you’ve spoken to and there’s been a report related to why this site was selected in 2005, is that correct? Paul Oehme: That’s correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Were you with the City at that time? Paul Oehme: I was. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Can you talk a little bit about what was the criteria that were established both the site of the east plant as well as the site of the west plant. Can you talk about that? Paul Oehme: Yeah sure, I’ll start with the east plant. Mayor Laufenburger: Please do. Paul Oehme: The east well field had our worst iron manganese issues at that time so the council at that time directed staff to look at treatment of the east well field first and those are some of our older wells and again they had some of the worst iron and manganese problems. The site selection for the east plant was based upon availability pure and simple so the whole east side of the city is basically 100 percent built out so with residential and commercial, except for this small little pocket of property that the City owned along Highway 5 and that’s basically the 45 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 criteria we used, that was the only available site for that plant so that’s the one we went with. That site is very small. It’s actually smaller than the site that we’re looking at for the west water treatment plant so that’s what the City directed the staff to look at and that’s the plant that we have built. Moving onto the west side of town the site selection there was a little bit more available. Mayor Laufenburger: Why, why was it more available? Paul Oehme: Well just because there’s land that’s available that wasn’t developed as intensely as the east side of town here so we, staff did look at 5, I believe 5 sites along Galpin that made cost. Made financial sense to look at because again we want to look at placing a plant close to the high zone area. Close to the low zone along Galpin Boulevard where we can put water, push water to where it is needed. We also looked at land availability in that study. Several of those properties were not for sale at that time. Others were maybe a little too small. Maybe some had some wetland issues. Some soil issues that we looked at so basically based upon that study the site at Lake Harrison was the site selected for that west plant so there’s a bunch of different criteria’s that we evaluated. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. And Mr. Oehme one of the sites that was reviewed most recently th was a site at 78 and Galpin which is now occupied or it’s being built out. Can you talk a little bit about that site. Why was that site reconsidered? Paul Oehme: So that was reconsidered by the request of some of the residents to re-evaluate that site specifically. We did, we did complete a cost analysis on that site. There is I think 2 ½ acres still available that’s not being developed at this time next to the daycare center. However the property owner’s not in a selling situation right now. Mayor Laufenburger: So wait a second, you used a term. You said it’s available but it’s not for sale. Paul Oehme: Yeah. Okay so it’s, the size is available. The size is large enough to fit a plant on but the property owner that when we contacted him he is not in the market to sell the property to the City. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so it’s not available. Paul Oehme: It’s not available correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright. Okay. Thank you Mr. Oehme. I’m going to allow another one if you’d like. 46 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Todd Allard: Sorry I just have one additional I guess consideration to add Mr. Mayor. My name is Todd Allard. I live at 7168 Fawn Hill Road. Just up the street from where the proposed plant is going to be built. Mayor Laufenburger: Up the street, can you say directionally? Todd Allard: We are south so right off of Galpin and Fawn Hill, or Longacres Drive. So we’ve talked about safety and I’m not going to rehash any of those issues. Mine is I guess more of just a math equation so if we look at the value of the land that this plant sits on, knowing that it could be resold, it’s about $930,000, is that about right? Paul Oehme: That’s, I’m sorry that’s the estimated value of the property at the intersection. Mayor Laufenburger: By the assessor? th Paul Oehme: By Galpin and 78 Street I think that’s. Mayor Laufenburger: Who makes that valuation? Paul Oehme: I think we looked at the sale value of what the daycare bought that property for. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Todd Allard: And then the value of the enhancements that you’ve made to the building to make it aesthetically pleasing to the neighborhood was about what, $200,000? $300,000. Something in that range. Paul Oehme: Roughly. Mayor Laufenburger: I would ask that you address your questions to us okay. Todd Allard: Sorry. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you. Todd Allard: And then the overall work that had to be done to the land itself because of the poor quality of the soil I think was about a half million. So we’re looking at about a million six, a million seven of cost related to and/or savings from potentially relocating this plant to land that the City already owns at Lake Ann where they wouldn’t have to enhance the building because it’s in a non-residential area so the cost savings to re-route that over to that location to put it on a piece of land that the City already owns could effective solve the problem and the additional cost to move it is covered by the savings that we would have from either selling the land and/or not having to make enhancements to the soil or the building so just a consideration. And then I just 47 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 had one other question because it was mentioned earlier that the east water treatment plant covers 75 percent of Chanhassen. Mayor Laufenburger: Just a second. I think that was an estimate from Mr. Crooks is that right? Kevin Crooks: Yeah that’s correct. It’s an estimate but I think it’s a fair one. Todd Allard: I just want to clarify that we’re spending $20 million dollars on a plant that’s going to treat 25 percent or the remaining 25 percent of our water for 20 calls a year that we get on the poor quality of water. Do we really want to make that investment in light of that math? So thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Anything else? Todd Allard: That’s it. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Allard, okay. I think we could probably go on here for quite a while. I’m interested in hearing new information so. Please, state your name and address. John Lorence: John Lorence, 2195 Lake Harrison Road. I’m in commercial real estate so. Mayor Laufenburger: Could you just step in front of the microphone. John Lorence: I’m in commercial real estate so I deal with a lot of projects of this nature. Not to say I’ve ever dealt with a water treatment facility. I’ve looked at a lot of property in and around 5 and Galpin and Arboretum for clients, there’s a lot of available property out there so when someone says that they’re not willing to sell a piece of land there’s a reason for that. Because they don’t want to locate it next to a child care center just like people don’t want it relocated next to a bunch of residential neighborhoods. I don’t know how they went about assessing the viability of the site. If they used a professional or was it the City, did the City run the process? I guess that’s a question. The second would be a lot of things have changed in the last 10 to 15 years from a cost standpoint. I don’t know I mean has anything be value engineered? You talk about we’re kind of cavalierly throwing around $2 million dollars here and there but has anyone done their due diligence? Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah I don’t think it’s a cavalier. If you’re talking about the cost of moving the plant that’s not cavalier at all. That’s been clearly assessed by city staff in cooperation with the consultant. John Lorence: But I’m talking about the cost differential from building what was previously put there to the new site so you’re talking about creating a more residential feel. $150,000 to 48 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 $200,000 creating from the first plan to this plan. It seems like a very low number based on my estimation and I do this for a living. Mayor Laufenburger: So you’re thinking that the original plant design in 2005, the delta between that and the plant that’s now. John Lorence: I think going from $150,000 to $200,000 is a very low number. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, well let me just verify that. Did you have any other comment Mr. Lorence? John Lorence: I don’t, thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you. Could you just answer that question again Mr. Oehme? What was the basis for $200,000 difference based on the input from the neighbors? Or $150,000 to $200,000. Paul Oehme: Yeah so the difference mainly is in the roof structure so previously we had a membrane flat roof proposed and if you eliminate the flat roof. Put in trusses and there’s no additional structural needs for the truss roof is my understanding because the concrete roof is all planked. And then adding on the shingles you know what WSB just told us is roughly around $200,000 for that change. From the flat roof membrane to the sloped roof with the shingles. Mayor Laufenburger: And landscaping and anything else? Paul Oehme: Yeah very similar to what was originally proposed back in April. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright would you just answer this question. Do you support a roof that has the slant to it as opposed to a flat membrane, do you support that? Paul Oehme: It really doesn’t matter either way if it’s sloped or flat. We’re going to get, well actually the sloped roof they’re telling us is a little bit longer life expectancy than. Mayor Laufenburger: So there is some advantage… Paul Oehme: There might yeah. From a life cycle perspective there might be a little bit so that number for the sloped roof might actually come down a little bit. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, and one other question. You gave an estimate of just over $2 th million dollars. If the spot at Galpin and 78 were available and if it could be moved, where did you get that number? 49 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Paul Oehme: So we did an analysis about what it would to extend raw water main basically from where it is today down to the new proposed site and then also what the additional cost would be to extend the transmission mains to the high zone pipes. Connect the high zone into the low zone pipes so we looked at that. We also did talk to the builder, RJM. Is it RJM? Mayor Laufenburger: On Creative Learning? Paul Oehme: Yeah Creative Learning site and they have some significant soil issues on that site. They actually had to do some pilings and some soil corrections out there for that facility and that’s why that facility’s a little bit delayed right now but so based upon what they had indicated to us, we assumed that the same level of soil correction and stability would have to take place on that 2.5 acre site if the plant would be moved down there so that’s how we came up with those numbers. And then again Todd Gerhardt had come up with the valuation for the property itself and I believe he had actually talked to the property owner who purchased this site for the daycare center. I think he just more or less used those numbers. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright thank you. I think we have somebody who would like to speak to us. Please state your name and address. Karen Wagner: My name is Karen Wagner and I live at 6945 Lake Harrison Circle and I wanted to address the question that Ms. Tjornhom brought up earlier about the level of concern that the residents feel about the water and from my perspective, a stay at home mom, I’m home a lot. The concern is very small. I have seen it discolored. Maybe the last time might have been a year ago and if it is slightly discolored it dissipates in less than half an hour. It has never interrupted our lives. We have clear drinking water. It’s never stopped me from doing a load of laundry at a certain time. It’s very, very insignificant. But if this plant is placed where we’re discussing it will be right across the road. We will look at it every day and my children will play in our yard right next to it. And to tag onto what Mr. Theis said, I’m asking for the same level of protection as other parts of Chanhassen where kids can play without the threat of a chlorine leak. Where I don’t have to even be concerned at all about the safety of my family living next door to such a plant. My husband and I moved our family from the south side of 5 to the north side of 5 in 2012. At that time we did, we saw the sign before we purchased our lot. We checked out the website and what I remember is that it was portrayed quite differently than the way it’s panning out with, we felt at that time that it visually, aesthetically from what was portrayed wouldn’t be a problem for us. It was featuring the park is what I remember and the build date was further out so we moved forward with our home purchase on the north side of 5 at that time. So and nowhere on the website did it mention a chlorine plant. Had we known that we would have stayed probably in our home south of 5. Thank you for listening. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Ms. Wagner. Dave Erickson: Hi my name is Dave Erickson. I live at 7095 Northwood Court. Mr. Mayor, council thank you very much. I’m standing up to reply specifically to the councilwoman’s 50 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 earlier request of anyone seeing the problem or else other opinions on the severity of the problem. And my view I have seen the discolored water. I have seen you know copper in my house that looks probably like it shouldn’t that in a more pure water situation probably wouldn’t be that way. I love the proposed benefits of the plan but if I look at the risk reward of that neighborhood, of that site it doesn’t add up for me. If I had you know a rodent problem I wouldn’t bring in a cobra. I have a lot of reservations about that site for the reasons listed so I would encourage the City to pursue the plan but at a separate site in my opinion. I also would like to add onto the list of potential savings from looking at a different site that the previous speaker brought up. Anything related to the park that was built in or planning for the future park would also add to that total of you know of a cost that would come off that bottom line so I agree with that line of thinking of all the things you can take off. Take off of the plan if it’s not to blend into a neighborhood. To not to build a park. I can tell you as a parent my kids would have to be behaving pretty poorly for me to tell them to go play at the chlorine plant so I’d like to thank the mayor and the City Council for this and all the planning and the questions that you have answered but that’s the answer to your question. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Erickson. State your name and address please. Marsha Theis: My name is Marsha Theis. We live at 6520 White Dove Circle. In answer to your question Bethany, yes we do need water treatment. I’ve shown this picture. You’ve seen it. Lots of people have seen it. Maybe there are other people here that haven’t seen it. That’s about 3 inches of water in a wash basin in my bathroom. I have white marble countertops that are now orange. I’ve talked to Paul Oehme on several occasions flushing out the hydrants because of the location of where we are does not help. I have, we have water softeners, all kinds of stuff. There are weeks at a time when I don’t wash because I won’t wash in that water. And so yes it does need to change. I think it’s a matter of equal protection. Other people in the city have water that is treated. I think we deserve that also. The other thing I’d like to say is that I think that the use of chlorine, if people bought land or a house in Lake Harrison they certainly saw the sign that there was going to be a water treatment plant built there. 98 percent of all water treatment plants in the United States use chlorine. What did they think we were going to use? I don’t know that they did their homework very well. And the question of safety, I think that yes. That water treatment plant that we have in a commercial zone is on Highway 5. Thousands of cars, I don’t know how many thousands but whenever I’m on Highway 5 it’s pretty busy. Thousands of cars drive by that water treatment plant every day. I think if there was even the remotest danger that there would be a leak the State of Minnesota would have closed it down. There’s no way they would have allowed the public to be so endangered. I think it is a safe system. I’ve done my homework. I also looked at the Coon Rapids accident that Mark Wagner alluded to earlier. Quoting the newspaper they said the leak was miniscule unquote and they did not have the safety valves that we are going to have so we have an additional measure of protection. Move forward. This is not a rush to judgment. You’ve had the sign up since 2005. Thank you. 51 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Ms. Theis. Ladies and gentlemen I’m going to allow one speaker and you may consider me rude on this but I think that the information that we’ve been looking for has been exposed so state your name and address please. Elise Lorence: I’m Elise Lorence, 2195 Lake Harrison Road. I just have a question or just maybe a thought that I haven’t heard anybody say today. Mayor Laufenburger: Sure, direct it right here. Elise Lorence: Considering that there’s a large piece of land on the other side of Galpin owned by Prince. Mayor Laufenburger: His estate. Elise Lorence: I’m wondering you know now that we know what’s going to happen with that land in the next, you know we’re thinking this plant was going to open in 2021 and a lot of changed since 2004. Whenever, 2006. What’s going to happen when we start to develop that land? Are we already going to put these pipes in that no one wants to pay for now? Are they going to have to go in if there’s home there? So are these inevitably going to go in anyway and maybe this location on 5 or the 4 potential locations are a better location considering what could happen in the future. Obviously nobody really knows but maybe we could wait and see what happens with this plot of land if we’re going to have to do all this work anyway. I just, I don’t know if anybody’s thought of that or. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Ms. Lorence. In fact we are aware of land that’s coming available as a result of that but we can only speculate when the outcome of that land will be known. It’s obviously in the courts at this time and so though that land is zoned, Ms. Aanenson the land directly, Prince’s property or the estate of property that belongs to Prince’s estate. I think it’s like 150 acres or something. How is that land zoned? Kate Aanenson: Low density residential. The same as the property we’re talking about tonight. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so it’d be similar. Similar. Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Laufenburger: And Mr. Oehme with the infrastructure that we have in place today in anticipation of the west water treatment plant would that infrastructure likely serve the water usage in that land area? Paul Oehme: It would. Mayor Laufenburger: It would, okay. And we know that it has the capacity to do that? 52 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Paul Oehme: We do. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Thank you. Alright with that I’m going to close the public hearing on the items (a) and (c) and I’m going to bring it back to council. First of all are there any questions of council, the council has of staff? Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan I’ll start with you. You got my attention first. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you Mayor. Just some follow up questions from some of the comments from the residents. One that really jumped out at me is why did city staff direct the question to only look into oxidation with chlorine and not other alternatives. Paul Oehme: I can answer that one. So the other options as Greg had indicated are very expensive. Ozone and some of the other ones that were looked at, or that are out there are you know exonerably more expensive. There is a reason why ozone is not used by municipal water providers in the state of Minnesota. Ozone, there’s only one provider. Only one agency that uses ozone in the whole state. Mayor Laufenburger: Is that Moorhead? Paul Oehme: Yeah that was Moorhead right. Mayor Laufenburger: And they use both ground water and surface water? Paul Oehme: Right exactly and they use ozone for a different reason than just for chlorination or for treatment. Ozone again as Greg had indicated does not address our ammonia issue at all. The other options are more expensive and to my knowledge those options that we had listed are not even used in the state of Minnesota. Councilwoman Ryan: Are there other options other than the 4 that were listed? I mean if the st question is that there is a lot of 21 you know technology, what are those other options and have we explored them to the point not only just you know is it used in the state or is it something that we would do but have we done any sort of cost analysis with it? Paul Oehme: We have and that was the memo that WSB put together for looking at all the chlorine options. I don’t know Greg can talk about what other options are available and the cost and you know how big the plant would be but the 3 options that the City looked at are the most prevalent in the state of Minnesota and what other communities have used. For example Shoreview is just building a gravity filtration plant to address their iron and manganese issues too. They’re using chlorine gas. Minnetrista, there’s 2 plants that are being built right now. One 53 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 over by Game Farm Road which is by Westonka High School and there’s a middle school right there. Residential to the south. They’re using gas. There’s another plant Minnetrista is building as well along Kings Road just north of Highway 7. That’s a new development. That plant is going to be using chlorine gas. The other option that most, or other cities have used is a sodium hypochlorite. That’s the basically the other major use of chlorine in the state of Minnesota. Those are basically the 2 options that most communities use and that are most cost effective. Councilwoman Ryan: Okay, thank you. And then I know we’ve gone round and round for this in terms of the site location and just a couple questions. It jumped out at me when you said that the reason why we chose the one for the east side was based on availability. And then when it came to the proposal for the west water treatment plant and you looked at a couple places and it was potentially availability. I went back and I was reading through some of the old Minutes of the council meetings when it was approved and I know it was, you know the land owner at that time didn’t have the vision for having the west water treatment plant but that was the agreement that he came to with the City. Is it you know, was it availability? Was there any consideration at th that time anywhere along 78 Street and are those 4 sites that were proposed, I think it was Mr. Kline that did it. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Kline. Councilwoman Ryan: That proposed it, are those viable options? Is that something that we should consider looking at? Not necessarily going with but doing the due diligence and taking a look at it when it comes to safety. Doing a cost analysis and just exploring other options in addressing this site location. Paul Oehme: Sure, so I mean it’s at obviously the council’s discretion where, if you want to direct staff to look at different sites. I just want to make sure that you understand that those sites that he had looked at, you know there’s property available just to the west of there that’s going to be residential so eventually if the plant would be built by Lake Ann there’s residential property right around there in the future as well so if it’s a safety issue, if it’s a distance from residential property, we’re not going to be that much different than what we’re talking about today with our site on Galpin. Councilwoman Ryan: But not at all of the 4 sites that were. Kate Aanenson: Yeah well can I just comment on that? Two of them are on Prince’s property across the street and I don’t think they’re interested in selling any of that at this time so that would. Mayor Laufenburger: I think. Kate Aanenson: 3 and 4. 54 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: 3 and 4. Is 3 Prince and 4 is the? Kate Aanenson: Well it’s the Love for Charities which is Prince family so. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Again that falls in the same category of who knows how long before that will be available. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Correct and I don’t. Mayor Laufenburger: What about the sites 1 and 2? Kate Aanenson: So the other sites, one was the City’s public works adjacent to Lake Ann and then you’re adjacent to Mr. Gorra’s property. And the other property Southwest Transit is also adjacent to Mr. Gorra’s property which is also, some of that is guided medium and some of that is guided high density so. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Further questions. Councilwoman Ryan: I mean I understand the I guess the quick answer on why we might not consider them right now but in the back of my mind there are, I know we don’t know what Prince’s estate’s going to do or Gorra, you know that piece of property is going to do but my question is, is it worth exploring and that’s is what’s brought into my mind with those different sites so just. Todd Hoffman: There’s one that has an existing public works building on it. The reason that was sited in Lake Ann Park is because the primary use of that building is to maintain Lake Ann Park so if you want to consider that site you need to tear down that building. Remove it. Rebuild it. Buy another piece of land somewhere and then you take away that advantage of having that building in Lake Ann Park so at least from my viewpoint. Mayor Laufenburger: How many visitors to Lake Ann Park every year Mr. Hoffman, any idea? Todd Hoffman: Thousands. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay thank you. Councilwoman Ryan: But it also could be built, a facility could be built where a portion of that would be of service to Lake Ann. I mean part of the facility could still be used for servicing Lake Ann while the other part is the water treatment plant so it could go both ways. Mayor Laufenburger: Any other questions of staff at this time? Mr. McDonald, yes sir. 55 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Councilman McDonald: Yes I wanted to just clarify one thing that Mr. Oehme, we talk about the east water plant being in a commercial zone. How far is that from the residences that are on th West 78 Street? Paul Oehme: Just a wild guess maybe 500 feet. 600, something like that. Councilman McDonald: And again in all the time it’s been there there’s never been an incident with that plan where those residents were put in any kind of jeopardy or harm. Paul Oehme: There has never been an incident. Councilman McDonald: So we had in fact really placed a plant in proximity to a residential neighborhood. Paul Oehme: There is a neighborhood to the north of this plant. The east plant. Councilman McDonald: About 500 feet away just across the railroad tracks. The other I’ve got about the new sites that came up over by Lake Ann. Is that even in the high zone? Paul Oehme: No it’s not. That’s the low zone so the problem with that site is you have to bring the water down from the wells along Galpin and then you’d have to push it back up to Galpin to feed the high zone. Councilman McDonald: Okay, thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Any other questions of staff? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I just have one question. Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Another issue that was raised was security and the fact that some water treatment plants have fences around them and when the east water treatment plant was built right along Highway 5. A very public area that’s seen by all, was that ever a concern or has there ever been an issue with security with that plant? Or facility. Kevin Crooks: Again no we haven’t had a security issues there. It’s very pronounced security profile. In other words when you walk by it you know you’re being watched. There’s 7 cameras just on the exterior alone and I’m not going to talk about anything on the interior but we haven’t even so much as had any tagging. I mean I jokingly say and it’s actually true, people walk across the street because they don’t want to walk by the thing. It just kind of gives them, it’s a bunker essentially. As we discussed before there’s only one entrance into this plant. There’s exterior doors but they don’t have handles on them. You can certainly, you could blow a hole 56 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 into it but you’re setting off a number of alarms in doing so and you’ll soon meet the our finest. It’s happened. If we even enter the plant the wrong way and our staff has done that, the sheriff meets them in short order so again there just hasn’t been any security issues to speak of with our east facility thus far. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Campion. Councilman Campion: One question. What would be the impact of performing additional site analysis? You know the cost of these other sites. Say Lake Ann which sounds like the most viable. What would be the impact of performing that analysis? I don’t know if it would delay us 3 months. 6 months. What would be the delay impact? Paul Oehme: Sure so I mean city staff has always tried to hit the fall bidding date. We’ve been talking to contractors, 4 to 5 of them over the last 2 years basically about this plant coming up and we’ve talked to them about hey you know we know Shoreview’s building a plant. We know Minnetrista’s building a plant. We know other plants are coming down the road too. This window that we’re trying to hit we felt that it would give a best bidding environment for the City to take bids on because we don’t know of any, not aware of any other large scale projects, water treatment type of facilities that are going to be built here in the metro area that specifically these contractors would be able to bid on so we just had penciled in this timeframe, October. September-October-November as a window to bid it out just from a pure standpoint of we think we’ll get the best bids if we bid it out at this time. Greg Johnson: Just to kind of expand on that. There are a number of projects around the state that are actually on hold right now because of the hold up with the State bonding bill because a lot of that money is appropriated towards the public facilities authority so right now contractors are hungry looking for work so it’s a competitive environment right now. Paul Oehme: That’s not to say they won’t be hungry in spring but we would anticipate there’s going to be, I know there’s going to be other plants going to be bidding out in the spring so we’re going to be competing against those plants for contractors and for bids. Mayor Laufenburger: Is Mr. Sticha still here? Did he leave? We also have an attractive financial market at this time. Are you able to speak to that Mr. Oehme? Paul Oehme: Very high level. There, I know well the City is AAA bonded rating. We have very good credit and if the finance director was here he would indicate that we are anticipating to be at a very optimal low interest rate when we. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay you can stop for just a moment. Yeah Mr. Sticha would you answer this question? Yeah please. How do we intend to finance this treatment plant if it goes through? 57 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Sticha: Municipal bonds. General obligation revenue bonds. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay and do you have any speculation on the interest rate that we might be able to achieve with that at this time? Greg Sticha: At this point in time with the historically low rates of municipal bonds, potentially even below 2 percent on 20 year bonds. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Greg Sticha: Be real close to 2 percent for sure with our AAA rating. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Is that in our favor? Greg Sticha: Yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Alright. Do we have funds to pay for this ourselves? Greg Sticha: Cash? Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah. Greg Sticha: No. Not 20 million dollars. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So this is a debt that we incur. Have we planned for that? Greg Sticha: Yes we have. We’ve done, we do an annual utility rate study as council knows. Mayor Laufenburger: Right. Greg Sticha: We plan with our connection and our operating fee increases each year and we’ve been planning for this treatment plant as well as our previous treatment plant on funding each of those with 50 percent connection costs and 50 percent operating costs so. Mayor Laufenburger: So the people, people who build new in the city that would be the connection costs and the people who use the water that would be the operating cost, is that correct? Greg Sticha: Yep, that’s correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Or the usage fees. 58 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Sticha: Yep. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Councilman Campion: Now just to, Mr. Mayor a follow up question of Mr. Sticha. Mayor Laufenburger: Sure. Councilman Campion: So if the fed were to raise rates in this, you know if we were to look at other options and say it was delayed til this spring, any estimate on what that impacts would be on the $20 million dollars? Greg Sticha: Let’s say a quarter of a percent could, just a quarter of a percent could have hundreds of thousands of dollars of impact. Unlikely that they would change by more than a quarter of a percent in that short timeframe considering the environment we’ve been in for the last 2 years but it’s possible if a quarter percent change could cost the City multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mayor Laufenburger: Any events between now and spring that could impact that? Greg Sticha: The election. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you Mr. Sticha. Any other questions? Councilman Campion: No. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Oehme could you just place that motion in front of us. This, we are dealing with points (a) and (c) and we’ve talked a lot and we’ve questioned a lot and if anybody is prepared to make a motion I would entertain that at this time. Anybody? Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: I’d actually like to make a motion that the City Council requests a delay on the project by 3 months to get further information on alternative site locations as well as more information on the filtration technology options. Mayor Laufenburger: So I think in a formal nature what you’re asking for is the motion be tabled, is that correct? Councilwoman Ryan: For 3 months. 59 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Councilwoman Ryan: With coming, and if I can explain why 3 months because to Councilwoman Tjornhom’s comment. Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment. Councilwoman Ryan: Okay. Mayor Laufenburger: I just need you to state your motion. Just state the motion. Councilwoman Ryan: To table it for 3 months. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, very well. Is there a second? Councilman Campion: Second. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay we have a motion and a second. Let’s open that for discussion. Anybody like to make comment on, the motion is to table this decision for 3 months. Anybody like to speak about this? Councilman McDonald: I’ll speak to it Mr. Mayor. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. McDonald. Councilman McDonald: You know this has been going on for a number of years and I guess where it all comes down to is we’ve asked all these questions. We’ve gathered all this information. I’ve read everything everybody’s given to me and I’ve even asked some questions outside of council. I do not see what adding 3 months is going to do except to delay the project and again potentially cost the City more money so I would not support that motion for those reasons. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Councilwoman Ryan did you want to speak further to why you, why the motion to table for 3 months? Councilwoman Ryan: Yes please, thank you Mayor. I think that by tabling it 3 months there have, there are other sites that we can look into and in reading all the material it comes back to that we re-evaluated sites that we looked at, that were looked at in 2005 and there haven’t been any, it hasn’t been explored sites that weren’t studied in 2005 and 4 potential sites were brought to us tonight. There could be others and I think that by looking at those and doing a cost analysis, 3 months is a pretty quick timeframe but one that I think that could be met and it doesn’t delay it indefinitely because I do believe that this treatment plant should move forward in this zone where I would like to have treated water not only for the aesthetics of it but because 60 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 we’ve been, as Mr. Theis said we’ve been subsidizing the east side of water treatment plant so I would just like those things looked into. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Anybody else have discussion points? Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I would just like to add to what Mr. McDonald said. I’m in agreement with him. If you go and talk to anybody on that side of town they’re going to tell you what Mr. Theis and his wife said. That there is an issue with the water and it’s time now to do something about it. This has been in the motion since 2005. It’s been in discussion now for at least 3 to 4 months, maybe even longer with neighborhood meetings. Meetings with staff. During that time if there needed to be or should have been more thought or looking for different locations that was the time to do it. I don’t feel that 3 months is going to really give us any more answers than we have today and I think that we just need to move forward with this tonight. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Anybody else, Mr. Campion? Councilman Campion: So I believe strongly that this water treatment facility is something that’s needed. Back in 2014 when I was campaigning and I saw this as a major issue and while knocking on doors I did get a lot of feedback that there was an issue with the rust colored water you know more people along Minnewashta and in that high zone. So I think we need to move forward. I do feel good that we’re expediting it from 2023 going online which was the, I think the previous plan so I think we’ve pulled it quite a bit but personally I mean I hadn’t heard the extensive discussion on the sites that were considered in 2005 and I think there are a couple of sites that we can look at and I don’t think that 3 months would be detrimental to the project. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Mr. Knutson I have a question for you. We are a 5 member council. Does my vote count in a decision like this? Roger Knutson: Mayor it does count yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: I would just like to make one more point in response to the question about that over the last 3 months was the time to bring forward those requests and I did attend some of those meetings and I did make those requests so not only myself but I know that a lot of members of the community, not just the consortium but members of the community had brought those forward so, and other sites were not looked at and that’s why this is being brought back up so I just wanted to address that. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, very well. I have a question of you Ms. Aanenson if you don’t mind. How many properties are there north of 5 and west of say Lake Ann. North of 5 and west of Lake Ann that are sized that would accommodate the west water treatment plant. Just I’m looking for your best guesstimate. 61 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Kate Aanenson: Well there is residential. Pretty much everything is residential. If you look at the intersection. Mayor Laufenburger: I don’t care what it’s zoned. I’m just looking for the size wise. How many properties? Any guess? Go along 41, anything on 41? Kate Aanenson: No you have to get over to Children’s Learning Adventure over there. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Kate Aanenson: And then going west, I think the other sites were identified so you’ve got. Mayor Laufenburger: What I’m wondering is, is there really only 4 sites that perhaps could be evaluated? Kate Aanenson: No there’s a lot of sites but the challenge is, we’ve looked at this internally. Mayor Laufenburger: Yep. Kate Aanenson: Is trying to find a willing seller because they don’t want to break up a piece of property where they’ve got 100 acres that are going out to bid on. Mayor Laufenburger: Right. Kate Aanenson: So. Mayor Laufenburger: So somebody doesn’t want to part off, what’s the acreage of the land? Paul Oehme: About 5 acres. Kate Aanenson: So then you go to condemnation which is the other alternative which is more complex. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Any further discussion? Okay the motion is to table this decision for 3 months. Councilwoman Ryan moved, Councilman Campion seconded that the City Council table nd the preliminary and final plat for Lake Harrison 2 Addition and site plan for 3 months to get further information on alternative site locations as well as more information on the filtration technology options. Councilwoman Ryan and Councilman Campion voted in favor. Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilman McDonald and Mayor Laufenburger voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 2 to 3. 62 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: That motion fails. Is there any other motion? Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor I’ll make the motion that the Chanhassen City Council nd approves the preliminary and final plat for Lake Harrison 2 Addition and site plan for a 16,950 square foot water treatment facility subject to the conditions of approval and adoption of the Findings of Fact. Also adopt a resolution approving the vacation of the dedicated drainage and utility easements which lie within Lot 1, Block 4 and Outlot A, Lake Harrison according to the nd recorded plat thereof, Carver County, Minnesota contingent upon filing Lake Harrison 2 Addition. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay we have a motion that incorporates both item (a) and (c). Is there a second? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Councilmember Tjornhom. Is there any discussion? Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor if I could. Mayor Laufenburger: Yes Mr. McDonald. Councilman McDonald: Again as I said before I have read all of this. This has not been a static decision as it’s been portrayed. It’s been very dynamic since 2005. Every council thereafter has had resolutions that came before it which led to the finalization of this plant so it’s not as though it was just created in 2005 and forgotten about until 2016 when it suddenly comes back up. I was in the last council before this one and we addressed the issue at that point. When we looked at the current water tower movement and the whole thing about where we were going to put water mains and everything in relation to this treatment plant so this has been an ongoing plan since 2005 and every council has addressed issues with it so to say that we’re new to this is not entirely true. The other thing in looking at all of this, and I do want to commend you for your presentation and the fact that you have brought up a number of points. As I said I’ve read every one of them. I have asked staff to look into them. Tonight the whole thing about Lake Ann is brand new but we have looked at other sites. I do not think Lake Ann buys us anything because it’s not even in the high zone and so now we’re really creating a problem. You’re just adding money to a problem that doesn’t need to be there. The concern about safety and your children, there are children already involved in this over at the east treatment plant. To this point no one has been harmed. There has not been any incidents or anything such as that at that plant so we have a long history of dealing with chlorine gas. It is not as though we’re brand new to this. It is not as though we’re novices. We can deal with it. If I didn’t think we could I’d definitely would not vote for this but we have come to the point where I think we’re capable of running this plant. The other thing we’ve talked about, about campaigning. I’ve been in 2 previous, well 3 previous campaigns and every time I go to Lake Minnewashta the first thing everybody wants to jump on 63 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 me about is why aren’t you doing something about the water? Why are we treated as though we’re outcasts and all you care about is taking our money so this has been an issue that has been a real sore spot to people on the west side of town. And I think that again I can find no reason to not follow the recommendation of staff only in the order to support what the people have told me they want. I understand that in your particular neighborhoods you don’t want a water treatment plant. I can understand that but the water treatment plant will be a good neighbor. This is not going to be something that is going to destroy your home values. We’re not going to poison anyone. We’re going to take great care to make sure that we build a quality product. I think that in looking at everything you have presented, again I’ve gotten answers from either staff or from investigating things on my own. You raise a lot of good issues and like I say I tip my hat to you for that and I thank you for that. I think what you have done is you’ve added to the process. You’ve made this whole thing much more transparent. I think you have put City Council feet to the fire in the fact that we have had to learn and understand this issue and part of that means we need to understand how a water treatment plant works and for that I think that everyone on this council has done their due diligence. We’ve asked questions. It’s not as though we just showed up and we’re shoved this and I’m not just voting for this because staff recommends it. Again there is a long history and that is what I’m looking at and that is why I would support this. If I thought there was anything here that would put anyone’s child in jeopardy I would not vote for it and it’s just right now I do not see any evidence that that is a possibility so that’s why I’m in favor of this motion and that’s why I would support it. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you Mr. McDonald. Anybody else wish to comment at this time? Mr. Campion. Councilman Campion: Yeah I don’t mean any disrespect towards staff or the other council members you know in voting against this. I think the water treatment facility is something that needs to go forward. I simply feel that looking at the cost analysis of moving it to another site would be worthwhile. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Anybody else? Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Mayor and council, I can’t support this motion and I too appreciate all the hard work that is done by staff and the consultants that have been involved in this process. The presentation tonight was very helpful in understanding the safety issues because that was a big concern of mine. However it still does remain a concern of mine and there have been issues where there have been problems, maybe only one in the state but there were examples given tonight that there are accidents and all it takes is one and I don’t want that to be the one that is in a residential area. 100 percent residential area which was pointed out again tonight and it just, it causes me concern for that reason. And I also have not heard of any of the other sites that have been explored since 2005. That was not ever brought up in any of the conversations that I have had so I was hoping to hear that tonight and I didn’t and for that reason I can’t support this motion. 64 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Thank you Councilmember Ryan. Anybody else? Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’ll just start by thanking staff and actually the people that came tonight to present to us. This is an issue that everyone really cares about. I think water is one of those things we all know we can’t live without and it’s critical that we have quality water for our residents and for our children and for our businesses and anybody else who’s here. The fact of the matter is, is no matter where you place a water treatment plant like this it’s going to be around people. If it’s in a commercial area it’s going to be around businesses where they have hundreds of employees that are parents of children. Or if it is in a neighborhood it’s around neighbors I guess. I feel confident in the criteria that staff had laid out when it came to the water treatment facility. How it would, how the chlorine will be delivered. How it will be dispensed. How it will be used. The safety precautions to if something did happen that were in place. I think that staff and the engineers that facilitated those plans did their due diligence. I think that in life nothing is necessarily 100 percent sure and I think though that we do know that having a water treatment facility for our residents, especially in the Lake Minnewashta area is beneficial. I actually was concerned about the fact that if you looked at the slides that Mr. Oehme had showed us earlier, I drive by the Savage plant every day and that looks like a water treatment facility plant if you look at it. If you look at the one in Chaska, Victoria, that really is an industrial looking plant and I think the City has gone above and beyond to make sure that this does fit in to an area that already was planned for it. Later on after we vote on this we’re going to be talking about our budget and we look at ways we can cut back and expenses that we don’t need and you know $200,000 in a budget for us is a big deal if that’s what we had to somehow find to make our budget work for this coming year and so I actually think that we are doing above what normal cities would do for their residents by making this treatment facility look residential and so I think that like Mr. McDonald said you will find that the water treatment facility will be a good neighbor and it will be beneficial for this community so I am in favor of it. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you. Any other comment? Before we take this vote I want to talk about a couple people. First of all Mr. Kline, Mr. Wagner and Mr. Miller, you were the first dialogue that I had back in June and I thank you for the manner in which you’ve conducted yourself. You are passionate about your views, as I would expect you to be and people support you and that’s worthwhile. I also want to thank the people who stood in front of that microphone. I know that that can be very intimidating. I thank you for taking time to do that. I want to echo something that you said Robert, Mr. Kline. You commented that the changes in the design have been valuable, and I think that’s a reflection of the dialogue that occurs when citizens care what happens in their community and this isn’t just, it’s not only in a water treatment plant but it occurs with dialogue about any of a number of things that come along. The plant has much more aesthetic presence now as a result of your dialogue. Your dialogue, all of your dialogue elevated the discussion around security. Yes your dialogue as Mr. McDonald pointed out, elevated the discussion around understanding what chemicals do to prepare water for our potable use in the community of Chanhassen. Yes, if a mistake is made on Highway 5, on 212, wherever it might be made because of misjudgment of somebody there’s a consequence 65 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 that’s very harmful and it can be harmful to us in the community of Chanhassen. That’s why we all must be vigilant and diligent about insuring that we take steps to live in an environment where, as Councilwoman Tjornhom said, not everything is predictable. Bad things can happen but we have to be vigilant and your dialogue in my view, your dialogue holds us as elected leaders and as city staff accountable to the performance of our duties. That’s what your dialogue does for us. This plant is planned to be in place since 2005. Yes it’s different. Yes those of you who bought homes in the area were anticipating that perhaps it wouldn’t be the size it was going to be. It wouldn’t have the same look. But the vision that was put in place over 10 years ago by the City Council that was present at that time and reaffirmed repeatedly as Mr. McDonald has said, is vision that looks to the future of our city. It doesn’t look only to the present of our city. One last comment. One of the hardest things that we experience here as your elected leaders when we face decisions that are visible and controversial, we know that we’re going to make some people happy and some people disappointed and unfortunately the disappointment seems to resonate and stick with people a little bit longer than I’d like it to be. I have some very good friends that are on both sides of this issue. I consider them to be good friends now and I want to consider them to be good friends in the future so I would ask that whatever outcome you see tonight, don’t judge your friendship with those people up here based on this decision that we are making in what we believe is the best interest of the community and I’ll leave that up to you. Resolution #2016-60: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the City Council approves the preliminary and final plat creating one lot and two nd outlots for Lake Harrison 2 Addition; and site plan for a 16,950 square foot water treatment facility subject to the following conditions and adoption of the Findings of Fact: SUBDIVISION Existing drainage and utility easements on these properties must be vacated prior to recording the final plat. SITE PLAN Building 1.The building is required to have an automatic fire extinguishing system. 2.Building plans must be prepared and signed by design professionals licensed in the State of Minnesota. 3.Retaining walls over four high must be designed by a professional engineer and a permit must be obtained prior to construction. 4.Detailed occupancy related requirements will be addressed when complete building plans are submitted. 5.The owner and or their representative shall meet with the Inspections Division as soon as possible to discuss plan review and permit procedures. 66 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Environmental Resources Specialist 1.All existing trees to be preserved shall have tree protection fencing installed at the driplines or a minimum of 15 feet from the trunk, prior to any grading. 2.Proposed landscaping will be field located. Engineering 1.The existing drainage and utility easements must be vacated prior to recording the final plat. 2.Curb and gutter are required around the parking area. 3.An ADA-compliant curb ramp must be installed from the parking area at the Manchester Drive cul-de-sac to the 8-foot wide trail. 4.The following comments must be incorporated into the final grading plan: a)The bottom of wall elevation of the northerly retaining wall is mislabeled (shown as 914.0’, appears to be 1014.0’), and b)The 984’ contour southwest of the parking area is mislabeled (shown as 884’). 5.The Metropolitan Council Environmental Services Sewer Access Charge (Metro SAC) must be paid with the building permit. 6.The West Water Treatment Plant is not subject to the City Sewer Access Charge and Water Access Charge (City SAC and WAC). 7.The applicant shall prepare a Surface Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) and submit to the city for approval prior to the issuance of any permits. 8.A stormwater management plan, including a hydraulic and hydrologic model, volume reduction methods, a water quality model (either P8 or MIDS Calculator), and Walker calculations demonstrating adequate capacity within the existing and proposed conveyance system shall be submitted and approved prior to issuance of any permits. 9.The applicant shall submit and receive all applicable permits from the Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed District prior to commencement of any work on the site. 10.The applicant shall submit and receive all applicable permits from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency prior to commencement of any work on the site. 11.The plans shall be modified to clearly demarcate the wetland boundary and the edge of buffer. 12.A vegetation management plan shall be prepared and submitted for review and approval prior to the issuance of a building permit. 13.The plan shall indicate placement of wetland buffer signs. All voted in favor, except Councilwoman Ryan and Councilman Campion who opposed. The motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. Resolution #2016-61 Councilman McDonald moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the City Council adopts a resolution approving the vacation of the dedicated Drainage and Utility Easements which lie within Lot 1, Block 4, and Outlot A, LAKE HARRISON, according to the recorded plat thereof, Carver County Minnesota, contingent upon filing nd Lake Harrison 2 Addition. All voted in favor, except Councilwoman Ryan and Councilman Campion who opposed. The motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. 67 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Let’s move to item (b). Mr. Oehme, is this your action? Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor. Mayor Laufenburger: This will be quick right? Paul Oehme: Yeah I don’t have a slide for that but this is to approve the plans and specs and authorize the advertising for the bids for this project. WSB has been working diligently to advance the project in the time scale that staff has given them. We have the plans and the specs th with us here tonight for authorization. The plan is to have the project bid out October 18 and th then have the council consider awarding a contract on October 24 and having the project being constructed in April. By April of 2018 so that’s the schedule that we’re under. Proposed for. I would ask that the council consider approving the bid documents and authorizing advertising for bid for the west water treatment plant project 16-04. 5. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, Mr. Oehme do you have a slide with a motion or do we just? Paul Oehme: There you go. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you. This information is clearly outlined in the packet. Any council members have any question of Mr. Oehme? Okay. Would anyone like to make that motion? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’ll make that motion. Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’d like to make a motion that the Chanhassen City Council approves bid documents and authorizing ad for bids for the west water treatment plant Project 16-05. Mayor Laufenburger: Is there a second? Councilman McDonald: I’ll second. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright. Is there any discussion on this motion? Just to restate we are essentially authorizing city staff to advertise for the building or bids for the building of a west water treatment plant in accordance with items (a) and (c) and then following the time table that Mr. Oehme has outlined. Resolution #2016-62: Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the City Council adopts a resolution approving bid documents and authorizing advertising for bids for the west water filtration plant, Project No. 16-05. All voted in favor, except for Councilwoman Ryan and Councilman Campion who opposed. The motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. 68 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you very much. We’re moving to our next item which is new business. Actually I would like to take just a 4 minute recess. (The City Council took a short recess at this point in the meeting.) APPROVE RESOLUTION CERTIFYING PRELIMINARY 2017 LEVY TO CARVER COUNTY AUDITOR. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Sticha this is certifying preliminary 2017 levy to the Carver County Auditor. You’re on. Greg Sticha: Good evening Mayor and council. Statutorial each local government that issues a levy to the county to then be paid for by property taxes has to submit such levy before September th 30 of upcoming year which is we’re getting pretty close so this evening we’ll be passing a preliminary levy for 2017. The City Council, for those listening at home has gone through numerous work sessions discussing the preliminary levy and the preliminary budget for 2017. A number of work sessions that went through the budget in detail. This evening’s presentation will be a culmination of those meetings and then setting a preliminary levy. As council is aware and the audience at home should be aware the preliminary levy is used for the Truth in Taxation statements that will be going out to our residents in November. It is a levy amount that can be at no higher than the amount set at a preliminary levy. It can be lower. A final levy can be set lower than the preliminary levy but it is a not to exceed number that you’ll be setting this evening. So with that I’ll get into my presentation. We’ll start with the budget calendar for the rest of the year. So this evening. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Sticha it’s not showing up on our screens. Could you make sure it is? Greg Sticha: There we go. Mayor Laufenburger: There we go. Thank you very kindly. Greg Sticha: This evening we’ll be setting the preliminary levy as I discussed just a minute ago. th We’ll be certifying that levy with Carver County by tomorrow morning. On October 10 we will be doing some review of our long term capital project planning, a 5 year capital th improvement plan project. On October 24 we’ll be having a work session to discuss utility rates with our financial advisors Ehlers and Associates. And then in November we will have a minimum of one work session to review the enterprise, special revenue funds and discuss any thth remaining budget and CIP utility rate items on November 28. On December 5 we will hold the Truth in Taxation or the public budget meeting. That meeting will be based on the statements that residents will be receiving here in about the second week of November. Then on th December 12 the City Council will set a final 2017 tax levy and budget. Adopt a 2017 through 2021 CIP and set our utility rates for 2017. So what are some of the budget assumptions that are part of this year’s budget process? The City had approximately $165,000 increase in levy dollars due to new construction as well as an elimination of TIF District #5 and #9. About $145,000 of that was actual new growth and about $20,000 of that was related to the decertification of TIF Districts #5 and #9 which the City Council did earlier this year. There is an increase in the 69 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 budget for the police contract of about $60,000 or roughly 3 ½ percent. There is a 19 percent increase in the budget for health care costs which amounts to about $90,000. Building permit revenue is the same as 2016. We have one small increase in service levels. The budget currently includes additional hours for the senior center. All other city service levels remain the same based on all the scenarios that will be presented to you this evening. Approximately a 4 percent increase in salaries for market adjustments, cost of living and merit pay were part of this budget as per the compensation study that was recently completed by Mr. Gerhardt. So as with previous years staff has presented 3 scenarios for council to consider for passing a preliminary levy. Scenario 1 would be a total levy of $10,840,121. A $210,000 increase in the levy as compared to the previous year or just shy of 2 percent. This scenario allows for the return of $49,500 of levy funding for the revolving assessment construction fund and I’ll get into that in just a moment. Potential budget impact of scenario 1 is all service levels would remain the same with one minor increase for the senior center programming which we just discussed a minute ago and the resident impact of issuing a levy under scenario 1 would be approximately a $7 to $9 increase in the city portion of their property tax bill based on the average home in the city of Chanhassen. As referenced an average home in Chanhassen is roughly $350,000 and for taxes payable in 2017, taxable market values increased on residential homes roughly a half a percent. So if your home increased in value more than a half a percent, under each of these scenarios you would likely see a tax increase. If your home decreased in value or was less than a half a percent under most of these scenarios you would see a decrease in the city portion of your property tax dollars. Scenario 2 is a levy of $10,795,121. An increase of $165,000 or exactly the amount of new growth we had for 2016. If you include the decertification of TIF #5 and #9 the potential budget impact here would be all service levels remain the same. Again with the small increase for the senior center programming. The result of this levy would be approximately the same property tax bill on the average home so if your home increased in value by roughly a half a percent and your home is valued around $350,000 your city portion of your property tax bill will not change as compared to the previous year. Scenario 3 would be a levy of $10,750,121. An increase of $120,000 or 1.13 percent as compared to the previous year. Under this scenario however we would also need to find either a reduction of expenditures or an increase of budgeted revenues of approximately $45,000 to fund scenario 3 so scenario 2 is based on the budget document that is part of the City Council packet and is also part of public record and scenario 3 would mean we would need to find $45,000 in order to get to that number. Potential budget impact on this would be, we would need, there would probably be some impact on service levels as finding $45,000 in the budget either in the form a reduced expenditure. Potentially an increased revenue might not have a service level impact but most certainly a reduced expenditure probably would have some type of service level impact. Levy based on scenario 3 would be about a $7 to $9 decrease on the average home in the city of Chanhassen. As with every year we try to mark ourselves against our comparable cities and to see how we’re doing on a number of key factors. One of them is budgeted expenditures and taking a look at how much we’re spending as compared to our other comparable cities. We take a look at this particular slide each year. As with previous years you’ll notice that the City’s increase from 2015 to 16 and this is the most current available data obviously. 2017 data is not available. The City’s budget increased roughly 3.2 percent total budgeted expenditures. The average of all our KFS cities was 4.4 percent and the numbers vary. The 3.2 percent is actually in terms of the total number of the 10 other cities on the lower end with a few outliers being Lino Lakes and Chaska on the high end and Lino Lakes on the low end. From a historical standpoint previous City Councils have been very cognizant of keeping 70 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 budgeted expenditures within a small modest amount of growth from year to year and have tended to avoid high fluctuations in either increasing or decreasing the levy or increasing expenditures. Last year and this year’s budget are consistent with that. Keeping up with growth as much as possible in terms of costs of living adjustments but not having wild fluctuations from year to year where one year you might have a double digit increase and then the next year you might follow it up with a small decrease or no increase. Tends to provide for better financial planning and as well as it’s a little more palatable for residents to know that their tax bill is going to be consistent from year to year. Taking a look at how we compare to our Carver County cities. Very well. The average from last year was 5 percent. We were 3.2. Carver had a significant decrease. The previous year they had a significant increase so we again compared very favorable. So taking a look at our per capita spending, we are the lowest in terms of per capita or population based spending. Of all of our comparable cities with the average being $549 and again us being the lowest. Comparing ourselves to our Carver County cities, again the lowest with the average being just shy of $500 per capita and us at $424. So how does our tax rates compare? In Carver County alone we are the lowest city tax rate in Carver County with the average being 56 and the City’s tax rate being 24.252. If you take a historical look at the City’s tax rate, going back about 9 years our tax rate was as high as almost 40. 38 or 39 and now we have the lowest tax rate in the county so previous councils have made an emphasis to try to keep an eye on our tax rate as we compare to others in order to keep the property tax bill affordable for our residents. So taking a look beyond just. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Sticha I think Mr. Campion has a question. Councilman Campion: …paying attention but also for those that are watching online, can you explain briefly how it’s possible that Hamburg could have a tax rate of 111 percent. Greg Sticha: Mostly because they have no commercial industrial base. Mayor Laufenburger: Wait, that’s not a percent. That’s. Greg Sticha: It’s a tax rate. Mayor Laufenburger: It’s a tax rate. Greg Sticha: Yeah so it’s not a percent of a dollar or anything. It’s the rate that they’re charging their residents for, if you were to take a look at an average city in Carver County. Now this is just the City tax rate so on top of these tax rates you’ll have a school district tax rate and a county tax rate and once you add all those up, even a residence in Chanhassen is probably over 100. A residence in Hamburg is probably significantly more than that. So this is a rate and not a percentage of your total bill. Mayor Laufenburger: Is this sometimes referred to as the mil rate? Greg Sticha: Yes. It previously was called the mil rate. Now it’s they just call it the tax rate for the county, city or local jurisdiction. So looking outside of just Carver County how do we compare to let’s say Hennepin County? Extremely well again. I could only find one city in 71 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Hennepin County that has a lower tax rate than the City of Chanhassen. It’s I guess the numbers speak for themselves. So taking a look at what we’ve seen so far in terms of the budget and if council did want to make some adjustments to what staff’s recommendation will be here in just a minute, staff identified these are probably the most 2 effective ways to do that if council decided to go that route. Number one, eliminate the additional senior center coordinator hours that we added to this year’s budget. Mr. Hoffman certainly during his budget presentation earlier this summer made a valid argument for adding those hours and council indicated that there was a need for them so we have left those in there at this point. The other item is we have discussed with council increasing our building permit valuation fee. This would generate about $37,000 in additional building permit fee. It is staff’s plan to go ahead and still discuss with council the increasing of the building permit valuation fee in December. However we have not budgeted for it and the reason we haven’t budgeted for it is because the amount of building permit revenue the last few years that were getting in excess of our budget amount has slowly started to get closer to the actual budget. And in year’s past as council is aware we’ve used that surplus to help fund our streets, our picnic park shelters and a number of other items so if we do make an increase in this fee staff is recommending that we don’t increase the actual budget. However that we do implement the fee and we’ll be discussing that again with council in December. That’s not an item that needs action this evening but we wanted to give council a couple of ideas if we did want to reduce the levy further than scenario 2 these would be probably our 2 most recommended options. Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Sticha, you’re highlighting these 2 options but certainly this is th September 26 and we establish the final budget on December. th Greg Sticha: 12. thth Mayor Laufenburger: 12 so between now and December 12 council in discussions could offer up other ways in which to potentially reduce the levy besides these, is that correct? Greg Sticha: Absolutely. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. So this is not limiting by any means. It’s just looking at 2 big chunks that could potentially. Greg Sticha: These would have very minimal impacts on current services and that’s why we suggested these. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright. Greg Sticha: So staff’s recommendation is to set a preliminary levy using scenario 2 of $10,759,121. This would allow us for flexibility and planning before we set a final levy in December. That levy would be roughly $165,000 increase as compared to the previous year or 1.56 percent I believe. A levy lower than that would mean we would need to make some decisions between now and setting a final levy that could potentially impact services but we have a number of options out there available to us. So before I move on from the rest of my presentation, earlier this evening I had kind of given City Council a what happened in this year’s 72 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 budget and how do we plan on funding this and this particular document I think illustrates very well exactly what the 2017 budget process encompasses. The boxes at the top are the budgeted expenditures in the general fund that changed significantly from the previous year and roughly the general fund budget increased by about $460,000. The items listed including the health care costs, the police service contract, some miscellaneous professional services contracts, compensation adjustments, and the additional senior center hours as well as the City Council compensation all total just about $460,000. So the question then became from a couple council members is well how are we paying for that and the box below breaks down how that $460,000 is being paid for and when we say that we’re paying for that, we’re paying for that without having an impact on the average home’s property taxes in the city of Chanhassen so living within our new growth. We made some minor adjustments to a couple of budgeted revenue items. We had a debt levy that was paid off this year. That is no longer a levy on the books for 2017 so we were using that levy to help fund the $460,000. The decertification of TIF #5 and #9 and then the new growth that we discussed earlier this evening. So this document kind of illustrates, here’s our increased expenditures and here’s how under scenario 2 we would plan on paying for those increased expenditures. That’s about the extent of my presentation. I can answer any questions about either the power point or any of the other many and long term financial planning documents that I’ve discussed over the last few weeks with City Council. I can go over any or all of them if they so chose. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright Mr. Sticha before we start throwing questions your way would you just present, put up on the screen the recommendation from staff on what you, okay. Okay so the recommendation is to establish the preliminary levy at a number that equals. I heard that. I’ll make sure we do. We have to establish a date for Truth in Taxation. Greg Sticha: We’ll use the recommendation in the packet rather than the one on my power point. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. So essentially what you’re saying is you’re recommending a preliminary levy that is higher than last year’s budget by $165,000 correct? Greg Sticha: That is correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Now there are other expenses but the way you’re paying for those other expenses is through other means as identified in this most recent spreadsheet right? Greg Sticha: That is correct. Mayor Laufenburger: Alright. Council members, any questions for Mr. Sticha? Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: Not a question, just a comment because it’s the one thing that jumped off the page for me when we have discussed this multiple times and again tonight is the 4 percent increase in salaries. When it comes back to on I think it’s this December meeting if you could just break down why, how you arrived at the 4 percent I think that would be helpful to understand the information that you have to make that suggestion of 4 percent. 73 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Greg Sticha: We most certainly will. th Mayor Laufenburger: You may even do it before December 12 right? Greg Sticha: Exactly. Councilwoman Ryan: Okay. Greg Sticha: We most certainly will do that for council. The 4 percent wasn’t, I just want to make clear for our audience at home. I know council knows this answer but I just want to make sure the audience at home knows, not every employee is getting 4 percent wage increases at the city. We had a pay compensation report done by an outside consultant. They compared our employees to other employees at similar cities in similar positions. They made a number of recommendations. Our city manager then took that report and went through previous work performance evaluations as well as longevity at the city and made adjustments to all city employees. The average ended up being roughly 4 percent or just over 4 percent. Some employees got significant less than that. Some got a little more than that so it is not as if every city employee got a 4 percent or is planning a budgeted 4 percent wage increase for 2017. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you. I just think that’s important to clarify. Greg Sticha: Yep. Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you. Mayor Laufenburger: Good question. Any other questions of Mr. Sticha? Just as reference then if there’s no further discussion I would entertain a motion to support the recommendation from staff. Or otherwise. Councilwoman Ryan: I’ll make a motion mayor. Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan. Councilwoman Ryan: I’d like to make a motion that the City Council approves the resolution adopting the preliminary levy of $10,795,121 for 2017 and establishing the Truth in Taxation th hearing date for 2016 as December 5 for taxes collectible in 2017. Mayor Laufenburger: Let’s digest that motion for just a second. Greg Sticha: I just want to check on one thing. I have a typo in one of my documents and I just want to get the right one. That is correct, 795. I think she said. Mayor Laufenburger: You read from the staff report? Councilman Campion: Yeah. 74 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 Mayor Laufenburger: She read from the staff report. Greg Sticha: Did she read 795? Councilman McDonald: Yes. Greg Sticha: Okay, then we’re good. Mayor Laufenburger: So we have a valid motion in accordance with requirements for tonight. Is there a second? Councilman Campion: Second. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Campion. Any further discussion? Resolution #2016-63: Councilwoman Ryan moved, Councilman Campion seconded that the City Council approves the resolution adopting the preliminary levy of $10,795,121 for th 2017 and establishing the Truth in Taxation hearing date for 2016 as December 5 for taxes collectible in 2017. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Sticha and thank you council. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS. None. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS. Mayor Laufenburger: I’m going to turn to Ms. Aanenson. Any administrative presentations you want to talk about? Kate Aanenson: Just a reminder that we do have a special meeting next Monday night so that will be 7:00 here. rd Mayor Laufenburger: 7:00, that’s October 3 and that special session has been advertised appropriately. Kate Aanenson: Yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Or notified appropriately. It’s been on our website, et cetera. Kate Aanenson: Correct. The Paisley Park Museum, yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah and that will be a follow up to a Planning Commission meeting held th on September 20 is that correct? Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. 75 Chanhassen City Council – September 26, 2016 rd Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so that’s October 3 and that is the only item on the council meeting that night, is that correct? Kate Aanenson: Yes. Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Any other administrative presentations? Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Ryan seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 10:45 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 76