CC VER 2019 08 26CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
AUGUST 26, 2019
Mayor Ryan called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened with the
Pledge to the Flag.
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Ryan, Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilman
McDonald, Councilman Campion, and Councilwoman Coleman
STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt, Jake Foster, Kate Aanenson, Jason Wedel, Todd Hoffman,
Greg Sticha, Jerry Ruegemer, and Roger Knutson
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Raymond Roob 8584 Chanhassen Hills Drive So.
Connie Schibilla Love INC
Brian and Jean Steckling 8040 Hidden Court
Larry Koch 471 Bighorn Drive
Linda Norderhaug 7603 Frontier Trail
Roger and Dorothy Downing 7200 Juniper Avenue
Joel Judy Nybeck 7404 Frontier Trail
Mack Titus 2747 Century Trail
Jay Schreur 8376 Suffolk Drive
Carla Thompson 8524 Mayfield Court
Ray Murray 6618 Brenden Court
Lucas Souza 8091 Hidden Court
Mark Page 10 Hill Street
JoAnn Syverson 489 Pleasant View Road
Donna Burt 6645 Horseshoe Curve
Steve Corkery 40 Twin Maple Lane
Mayor Ryan: Good evening. Today is August 26, 2019 and I call this Chanhassen City Council
meeting to order. Ladies and gentleman would you please stand and join me in the Pledge of
Allegiance. Again good evening everybody and welcome to our council meeting this evening.
To those of you that are watching at home or livestreaming from the Chanhassen website thank
you for joining us. We have a full chambers this evening. For the record we have all of our
council members present tonight so our first action is our agenda approval. Council members are
there any modifications to the agenda as printed? If not we will proceed with the publishes
agenda.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: TEEN VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION.
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Mayor Ryan: On behalf of the City Council, I think a lot of them are in the hall so let’s wait for
them to join us. Welcome everyone. Keep squeezing in if you can. I know it’s a packed house.
Don’t be shy. I know teenagers never get embarrassed. Come on in. Alright. On behalf of the
City Council and the Park and Recreation Commission I would like to recognize the 2019 teen
volunteers. These 13 to 16 year olds were selected to serve as volunteers for city sponsored
recreation programs from June through August. The programs consisted of the Old National
Bank Summer Concert Series, Senior Center activities, Lake Ann Adventure Camp, Exploring
Science Camp, the Penny Carnival, youth sports at the Rec Center and the Discovery Playground
program. The City would like to thank this year’s teen volunteers for their service. Together,
you won’t believe this but together they compiled over 479 hours of service to the City of
Chanhassen. I’m going to ad lib here real quickly. I just want to again acknowledge how
awesome it is that I know how busy all of your schedules are with sports and activities and
traveling and fun over the summer and the fact that you all took the time to volunteer on behalf
of the City of Chanhassen is something that we’re all very proud of and we think it is for lack of
a better word super cool so we hope that service becomes part of your life because once you get
a bug for it I promise it will stay with your forever so I’m going to come forward and when I call
your name please meet me up front and receive your certificate. And I will do my best to
pronounce your name. I grew up, my first name is Elise and I was called Elsie all my life so I
will do my best to get it right. Alright first up Alex Haider. Please come forward. Alright you
want to step to the side please. You can stay up here with us. Next Amelia Wennerstrom. Ben
Schubbe. I knew him when he was really little. Next up Brian Gilbertson. Bryce Lesinski.
Demitre Stampley Jr. Jack Liwienski. Josh Boevers. And last but not least Matthew Brands.
Jerry Ruegemer: Okay now everybody let’s get together please. Two lines.
Mayor Ryan: Congratulations you guys.
Todd Hoffman: Kate? Kate Yezzi.
Mayor Ryan: Thanks everybody. Appreciate your service. Where did all my stuff go? Sorry,
so many papers up here. Well next is our consent agenda. Alright sorry about the pause here.
Next up we have consent agenda.
CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Campion moved, Councilwoman Coleman seconded
to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s
recommendations:
1. Approve City Council Minutes dated August 12, 2019
2. Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated July 16, 2019
3. Approve 2020 Service Agreement for Joint Assessment with Carver County Assessor
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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4. Consider Site Plan Review for Life Time Fitness Parking Lot Addition
5. Glendale Homes: Approve Final Plat, Development Contract and Construction Plans
6. Resolution #2019-40: Approve Quote for Sanitary Sewer Televising (I/I)
7. Approve Contract for Repair of Floor Drains at Public Works Building
8. Approve Fireworks Display at St. Hubert Catholic Community, September 14, 2019
9. Approve Indemnification and Cooperation Agreement Regarding the Flying Cloud
Airport Joint Zoning Board and the Flying Cloud Airport Zoning Ordinance
10. Approve Driveway Easement for Control Concepts
11. Resolution #2019-41: Accept $2,500 Donation to Fire Department from CenterPoint
Energy
12. Resolution #2019-42: Accept Donation from Love INC for Donations to the Senior
Center Maple Room (Memory Café)
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS. HONOR 20 YEAR RETIREE FIREFIGHTER BARRY
STECKLING.
Mayor Ryan: We will begin with our scheduled visitor presentations and then if anybody wants
to come up afterwards I will welcome you at that time. So Chief I will turn it over to you as we
honor a 20 year retiree. Chief.
Chief Don Johnson: Thank you Mayor and Council. I also brought with me 40 some of your
very dedicated volunteer firefighters tonight to help us celebrate with that. Tonight we’re here to
celebrate retired firefighter Barry Steckling. If I can invite Barry and his family up to stand with
me tonight. Council as you know when a firefighter retires after 20 years, this is one of our
celebrations so tonight with Barry is his wife Anita and their daughter Holly and son Tim. First
off I need Holly and Tim we recognize that you also service.
Barry Steckling: Tom.
Chief Don Johnson: Sorry Tom. We recognize that you also served 20 years on the fire
department so the missed Monday nights. The family events and Barry taking off in the middle
of the night most of the time to come and help us, we also appreciate your service to the City and
the fire department as well so thank you for that. Barry I looked at your file to prepare for this
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evening and you know over 20 years there’s not a lot in there but in your defense we didn’t do a
lot of good record keeping back then. The one thing I did find was something a little, this was
Barry’s picture that they took. Now it was kind of like a mug shot but you could tell a little bit
that 20 years of fire fighting does kind of take a toll on a guy so. Thanks Barry. In all honesty
you said you’re not really good with dates so I did find some. The application for the
Chanhassen Fire Department was dated July 13th of 1998. Your start date was September of ’98
so it was a pretty quick process to get you on. I venture to say that Firefighter Steckling
probably still maintains the highest overall overnight percentage of any firefighter on this
department. Right up to the end we could always count on Barry showing up for the late calls.
Also in your file was an Attaboy Letter for finding a safe in the water while serving on the dive
team. It was a thank you letter for a crime that was investigated and the dive team was part of
finding some of the evidence in that case. Barry recounts being on the Chanhassen Fire
Department Dive Team for many years and transferring to the Carver Sheriff’s Dive Team when
Chan’s team came to an end. Barry was the Chan Dive Coordinator while on the Carver Fire
Team. Barry remembers helping with dive operations from the boat when the Carver Team
responded to the 35W bridge collapse in 2007. Barry retired earlier this year with 20 years of
service. As I’ve said many times 20 years as a paid on call volunteer firefighter is a significant
contribution to the city. Barry was very active his entire career and remained active until his
final Monday evening and attended training with us that night. From all of us on the fire
department thank you for Firefighter Steckling for 20 years of dedicated service to the citizens of
Chanhassen and the Chanhassen Fire Department.
Barry Steckling: Thank you.
Chief Don Johnson: This always comes with gifts so we have a few things to hand out. Anita
we did have a small gift for you so I’ll have Assistant Chief Smith bring that up. Thank you and
for recognition of your service and lending us to Barry many, many evenings. Part of what we
like to do is we hand out a helmet so Barry’s last helmet with the badge number that he wore, we
all took time to sign that again so it ends up being some decorations that Barry can be proud of
and thank you for your service Assistant John Smith will hand you that. And we’ve also
switched our badges over in the last few years so Barry will also receive his last badge with his
badge number on it to serve in remembrance of his 20 years of service and Assistant Chief Van
Aston has that. Finally I would ask that Relief President Matt Kutz come up and assist with the
next presentation.
Matt Kutz: This is for you Barry. On behalf of the Chanhassen Fire Relief Association, that’s
past and current members, we’d like to present you this axe for your dedication and service to the
citizens of Chanhassen. Appreciate all you do and we’re going to miss you.
Barry Steckling: Thank you.
Chief Don Johnson: Want me to hold anything? Turn it over to you this evening.
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Barry Steckling: Well I’d like to thank the Mayor, council and Chief, it’s been the most
rewarding thing I’ve ever done and really enjoyed it. Great group of people to work with and
loved every minute of it so thank you very much.
Mayor Ryan: Just on behalf of council and the community at large you look at your family and
you have served all the families of Chanhassen and we are truly appreciative and grateful for
your years of service. You know when you look at serving or volunteering for anything for 20
years that’s a considerable amount of time and the fact that you take into the demands and the
requirement and the pressure that comes along with being a firefighter and for your commitment
for 20 years it is truly remarkable so again on behalf of the families that you serve, everybody
here on City Council we want to wish you congratulations. We want to extend our appreciation
and thanks to your family for your commitment and service in supporting a firefighter who is
always out the door at a moment’s notice so thank you for your service. Enjoy your retirement
and appreciate what you’ve done for Chanhassen.
Barry Steckling: Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you.
Chief Don Johnson: Mayor if you could just give us a couple minutes I’ll get everybody out of
here. We have cake and refreshments.
Mayor Ryan: Enjoy. Thank you everybody. Appreciate all your service as well.
MARK PAGE CITIZEN ACTION REQUEST FORM.
Mayor Ryan: The next item on for our visitor presentation is a citizen action request form that
was submitted by Mark Page. Mark are you here to, there you are. Please come forward.
Mark Page: Thank you Madam Mayor. I’ve always wanted to say that. And council members.
So my name is Mark Page and I live at 10 Hill Street and I’m here to discuss the wake surfing
issue on Lotus Lake. I’m a riparian owner and reside on the south end of the lake. When the
LLCA and what I call the Big 3, and I do that with all respect. They’re Ms. Syverson, Mr. Coke
and.
Larry Koch: It’s Koch by the way.
Mark Page: Koch yep, I’ve always butchered that. Sorry Larry. And Ms. Burt. When they
brought this issue up they always said it was a big issue. They said it was a big issue and I was
contended how they came up with that number and I talked to the LLCA, Ms. Susla directly and
I said, she kept saying there’s many, many complaints and I said how many is many. Well we
didn’t keep records. Go figure. I think they could remember who it was but if we really go back
to the survey and try to quantify the sides of this argument we go back to the survey and there
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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were 95 respondents. 95 respondents on roughly 400 households. Roughly and check me if I’m
wrong, roughly about 150 riparian owners and 250 lake associations. 400. That’s already 95 out
of 400, that’s under 25 percent of the affected issues and as we keep forgetting this is a public
lake. That doesn’t take into account anybody off the lake. Now if we dig down even farther
there’s one particular question that said, first of all I’ve argued with their survey itself. It was
greatly skewed. Gallop or Harris would have a field day with this. It was written by people who
were on that side of the argument so I can’t prove that in any ways but that’s my gut check. But
let’s dig into the survey. One particular question, has wake surfing adversely affected your use
or enjoyment on the lake. Again arguing it’s going to skewed but we won’t go there anymore.
Never was 34 percent. That was 32 people. Occasionally 38 percent. That was 36. Often was
28 and that was 27 people. Okay. The other side of the argument has always used occasionally
with their numbers and they somehow get to a number of 72 percent. Well it actually isn’t. First
of all I wouldn’t say that occasionally should be in their number but then do they really count,
I’d say no. This does not even, again it doesn’t take into account any of the lake guests so 28
percent of 95 residents is roughly 30 percent. 27 out of 400 is less than 6.7 percent of the issue.
Councilman McDonald you said well how do I know that this is a silent majority. Well I would
argue it’s absolutely a vocal minority. It’s 3 people. In fact when I try and keep finding names
of other people on the opposite side of this argument we don’t know. We do know Mr. Coke.
Larry Koch: Koch.
Mark Page: Koch sorry. Larry. Mr. Koch. JoAnn and Ms. Burt. Okay. We don’t know
anybody else and I would contend if they don’t even come, if they don’t sign any petitions, if we
don’t know who they are this is a very, very narrow, narrow set of the people arguing against this
so very quickly, and for what it’s worth when we had the famed work session the media didn’t
get it. They didn’t know who all came. It was almost on the wake, on the sportsman side of the
argument. 60 people were on that. 5 were on the other side. That’s 8 percent. 8 percent. It was
flooded and after we were a little bit bamboozled by the lake association we gathered those 60
people within 48 hours notice. Within 48 hours of notice. I would argue it’s far greater and the
reason no one spoke is because you already made your decisions multiple times. You’ve
answered the same question Mr. Wedel 4 or 5 times. You said it’s going to happen next year,
sorry. Okay regarding the high water mark so you’ve kept, it’s been answered and answered and
at this point it almost seems like it’s badgering. But let me go really quickly, there are roughly,
in addition there’s roughly I said about 150 riparian owners. An informal survey shows there’s
about 20 to 25 owners who have not repaired their shoreline. 80 percent have done the riprap.
Most of it 3 to 1 that the DNR suggests. In fact I know most of you have gone on cruises to
witness some of this so then it goes to me about responsibility. Even if the argument that it’s
absolutely erosion because of the wake surf boats, that I don’t completely agree but let’s just for
the argument sake it is all the wake board boats. It doesn’t matter. Still comes down to
responsibility. This side of the argument is asking you 5 to fix their problems. They’re asking
you 5 to fix their problems. I don’t own a wake board boat. I wake surf for 42 seconds a year.
That’s the best I can do. But to me it’s about responsibility and it’s about, and it’s about limited
government interaction which this is a fairly conservative board, take it or leave it. So, and I’m
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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going to use one example. We get every single leaf that every single leaf that comes down to the
south shore blows into the south shore and we, and about 6 properties get it including city
property. Okay. We get every single leaf. We pay $1,000 a year in kids, unskilled labor to get
rid of those leaves. Okay. Now if I came to the City and said hey would you reimburse me the
$1,000? After you start, stop laughing under your breath you would say no Mr. Page, our staff
has checked this and it’s outside our purview. I wouldn’t ask anyway and I wouldn’t ask the
LLCA. They’d laugh at me too. It’s about personal responsibility. Does it blow? Yeah. It’s no
fun. It’s $1,000 bucks a year and we get it but that’s a cost of doing business. Living on this
lake is a cost, part of that is a cost of doing business. Fix your shore. Spend a couple bucks and
get it done. And finally we’ve become in my mind, and I’ve heard this from other people, we’ve
become whiney elitists on this lake. Okay. People say it. In fact someone stole the sign. My
gut check is someone off the lake stole it and said you whiney rich people. You’re not going to
tell me what to do on a public lake so we’re getting this, the main reason I’m here is an apology
to you 5 and it’s not everybody and the badgering and the harassment it really got to me when I
kept watching that especially, there was even so far as to accuse the mayor of bias. Like an open
secret for you people that don’t agree with you they know your integrity. That shouldn’t even be
close to be questioned. I’ll close that with an apology and that’s all I have.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Page. We don’t have any more scheduled visitor presentations but
certainly welcome anyone else to step forward.
Larry Koch: Mayor, council members. Thank you. My name’s Larry Koch. I live at 471
Bighorn Drive and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this evening. I came to speak
basically because I want to deliver a copy of the email that I sent to all of you regarding the
Mayor’s most recent visit to our property, which I appreciate very much. My wife appreciates it
very much. Again we appreciate basically the visit by Mr. Campion and Mr. McDonald and I
know that Ms. Coleman has offered to come to our property. We’re just trying to arrange a
mutually convenient time. We all have busy schedules and I appreciate that and I extend the
invitation to Ms. Tjornhom also to join us. I apologize for the mispronunciation. I didn’t mean
to get on Mr. Page about my number but he’s known me for a little while. About my name,
excuse me. He’s known me for a little while. As I mentioned to the mayor the problem that we
have now is that we have high water. Very high water compared to normal. We’re way over
what the average is right now and unfortunately we have a situation where these particular boats,
and it’s not necessarily the boats but the operation of these boats that create these incredibly
large wakes that end up crashing into the shore. Much larger, 2 ½ times larger than the wake
created by a normal boat cruising on Lotus Lake and that’s really the issue and these wake boats
are a recent phenomena. And so I’ve asked the mayor that we look into this issue to prevent the
damage. We have significant damage. The mayor, Mr. McDonald, Mr. Campion have all seen
that damage. The damage around the lake. We took Mr. McDonald around the lake and showed
him the various locations of the damage so they’re causing damage to this lake. Damage that
isn’t caused by Mother Nature. Mother Nature blows the leaves. I’m sorry and if this was a
cause, if these problems were caused by Mother Nature I would say you know maybe there’s
something to people being, you know having to take action to protect it but this is not the case of
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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Mother Nature. This is the case of people purposely operating boats that they know or should
know cause significant damage to our shoreline. And unfortunately Mother Nature gave us a
very small and narrow lake and that’s something that we are saddled with. But I tell you I take
offense at this blame the victim attitude that people have. This is no different than saying the
person who got killed on a highway because of a drunk driver shouldn’t have been on the
highway. That’s exactly what it is. You’re blaming the people who have been there for 30 or
more years okay because their shoreline is being damaged by other people purposely operating
boats to do that. This is not a fair comparison. And I’m pretty sure that on the agenda there’s at
least a discussion about putting together a process to talk about this issue and I don’t know the
process so that’s one of the reasons I’m talking right now. And unfortunately I’m not going to
be here on the day of the open house so I’d like you to consider to changing that to 2 days earlier
because I think it’s important to get everybody to participate and I think it’s a good process but I
don’t know that there’s a process necessary right now because we know that these lakeshore are
being damaged today. The elevation of Lotus Lake today I believe is 1 inch lower than the
ordinary high water mark. No excuse me, it’s 1 inch lower than 6 inches lower than the high
water mark but my point is this. At this point wake surf, wake by surf boats are going to go at
least 6 inches over the top of those, of our shoreline. That’s going onto my property okay, and
every other owner of lake around it and it’s eroding it. And so we need to take action to stop this
and as I said before especially in these narrow areas, and I do have my picture but you probably
remember. The narrow area in the middle of Lotus Lake and also at the north end. The north
end the narrowest part is only 300 feet and the studies, pure reviewed scientific studies have
shown okay that it takes a minimum of over 900 feet for the wakes created by these wake boats
to dissipate. In other words not cause the damage. These are pure reviewed scientific studies.
Indisputable. So I appreciate this process going through but I think today we should be, we
should be imposing an emergency ordinance like I’ve asked before to stop the wake surfing okay
in these narrow areas because those are the ones that are being damaged in particular. And my
last comment has to do with Mr. Page’s reference to the survey. Now I can look at survey
numbers and I can add like he did and I can make them look like well you know, nobody was,
you know the small number was in favor or had a problem. Well if you do the right math the
majority of the people who responded to the survey, for a majority had a problem in some degree
with the wakes caused by these wake boats. And so before you go you know take Mr. Page’s
remarks for face I’m happy to sit down as part of this process and we can do through the survey.
We can go through the scientific studies and we can talk about these point by point so that, at the
end of the day you make decisions based on science. Not conjecture. Not playing with numbers.
Actually looking at the science. Looking at the facts and making logical decisions so I
appreciate your time and again I don’t know the process when we get to talk about this, the
process of looking at this issue but again I would appreciate it if we could revise that so I could
be here. I’m going to be out of the country unfortunately and I can’t change those plans. So
again I thank you very much and I have a copy of the letter and stuff. Should I give it to
somebody now or later or?
Mayor Ryan: Give it to Mr. Wedel please.
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Larry Koch: Okay.
Mayor Ryan: But we did receive your email as well just so you know.
Larry Koch: I appreciate that thank you but I thought for the record I’d like to get these on the
record.
Mayor Ryan: Sure.
Larry Koch: Thank you very much for your time.
Mayor Ryan: Yeah thank you Mr. Koch.
Larry Koch: And again we’ll arrange for a time and we’re happy to have you out as well. And
I’m happy to have Mr. Page over and actually stand on my dock.
Mark Page: I’ve seen it.
Larry Koch: As the Mayor. Well you’ve never stood on my dock. So if you could come over
and stand on my dock I’ll be more than happy to show you where it’s at and the other people on
the lake that are suffering this.
Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you.
Larry Koch: Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Is there anybody else for a visitor presentations?
JoAnn Syverson: Hi, JoAnn Syverson, 489 Pleasant View Road. Member of the Big 3. What
we’ve been doing here is not fun. I’ve loved being on the LLCA board. I loved it. I loved
organizing the parties and getting to know everyone but when I saw the damage that wake
surfing was doing I just couldn’t sit back anymore. I had to come forward. It’s been a lot of
work. I worked for months on that deck that I presented and everything I said was backed up
with scientific evidence about the damage and the dangers of these boats. So I know that you
know I’ve been here a lot and I’m sorry, and I’m sorry to the Mayor too. I actually had
nightmares about you. I’m sorry if I did anything to you know embarrass you and I just want
you to know that whatever you think we’re doing it’s not fun and it’s a lot of work and we’re just
standing up for what we believe in and what we know is right. Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mrs. Syverson. Anybody else that would like to come forward.
Donna Burt: Good evening Donna Burt, 6645 Horseshoe Curve. I would like to respond to Mr.
Page’s remarks about personal responsibility. We are prepared and have no problem spending
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money in…this problem but the problem is not just my property. The problem is the lake and
the water quality and the natural inhabitants of the lake and the ecology around the lake. It is not
just about me and my home. We are more than fine to spend the money. We’ve already put
down deposits. Unfortunately there’s another issue that we need to get a permit from the
watershed so there’s very little we can do to protect ourselves. We may not be able to put riprap
in. They don’t approve it anymore since 2016. We have to be in a 3 to 1 ratio for it to even be
effective. We also already had riprap which has been compromised and destroyed by the wakes
so there’s a question of do you just go do the same thing and have it fall down again. It’s not
holding up to the high water and the wakes. Now there’s the issue of the sewer line that runs
across our property and a tree that’s about to fall in so this is going to be a problem for everyone
that lives on that lake when the raw sewage is in the lake. This is not just about our property. My
house. This is a lake wide issue. This is an issue for anyone that uses that lake. And the water
quality and the safety and health of the water. So I personally don’t even go in the water
anymore it’s so disgusting and I’ve heard a lot of people remark about that. That the water
quality is so poor they don’t even want to go in. So from the boat, do you see that or do you
have to stand on the shore and see it? You’ve all been invited out. We’ve only had Mr.
McDonald come out but it is, all you have to do is look at it and there are others. Not just 3. I
personally didn’t even participate in the survey. I didn’t even know there was an LLCA so I was
not part of the survey and I can only imagine there’s just as many people that also were not part
of it and a lot of people that would be concerned about what is happening to this lake. That’s all,
thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Ms. Burt.
Steve Corkery: Hello my name is Steve Corkery. I live at 40 Twin Maple Lane. I live as part of
an association that’s on Lotus Lake. I’ve been on and around Lotus Lake for probably the last 15
or 20 years. The water quality has never been great on Lotus Lake. That pre-dates wake surfing.
It pre-dates most water activities that people are doing now. I think if we need to look at the
water quality we have an issue with just the soil content of the lake but as well as the runoff
that’s going into the lake. That’s not on surf boats. I look at the lake on a busy day and I see a
lot of families out taking part in wake surfing or other lake activities. It’s a public lake. I see 3
people who are very passionate about this issue. The reality is they’re not interested in
compromise. I think both sides have you know, those who are in favor of wake surfing have
tried to say let’s work together. Let’s look at new signs, regulations. They’re not interested.
They’re out videotaping people on their dock. Children who are, you know families who are
going by on a surf boat and an individual’s out there videotaping them. That’s not okay to be
videotaping families or young kids out on their boats and I think, I don’t think they’re ever going
to be happy and I think they keep coming to the City Council and I look at we got a notice today,
or to come to the meeting to talk about the quality of our city streets. I don’t know about most
people but our’s looks like the surface of the moon. Those are the issues the City Council should
be working on. Dealing with streets, you know fire, police those type of services. This issue
affects a fraction of the city of Chanhassen residents and here we’re spending hours and hours
and people keep coming back to the City Council meeting. I’d ask you to say, part of it we all
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
11
have to be adults. We have to respect each other. If people are concerned about the lakes we
need to be cognizant and not be surfing close to other boats or up close to properties. Stay in the
middle of the lake but at some point we have to focus on big issues that affect the entire city like
roads. Like our public services and not get hung up on this issue that affects a really small
segment of the population. Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Anybody else like to come forward? Okay well I’m just going to
make a couple comments and then of course if council wants to make additional comments I as
always welcome those. You know I want to extend appreciation for the, you know the residents
that live on Lotus that have invited and had council members out to their house. We do
appreciate you taking the time to share your views and your concerns from your property so I
just want to acknowledge that. I know many of us have been able to do that. Second of all I
know Mrs. Koch you asked at the last meeting about a time line. We did put it in as a follow up
at the, as we do all of our visitor request forms as part of our correspondence discussion but I
don’t know if we have it available to, is it all ready? Now this is a time line specifically to
address what the high water, high water level should be established at. We talk a lot about
process and what’s that process. Well okay well there’s a process but what’s the time line? So
in, to be very clear this is a process and this is the time line that we are going to be following for
addressing the high water mark as it relates to Lotus Lake. We are starting, you know we’ve
started the process and you can obviously read how that, how we proceed through that. Mr.
Koch was this the public open house you were referencing?
Larry Koch: Yes.
Mayor Ryan: Yes okay.
Larry Koch: Yes it was.
Mayor Ryan: Okay. We’ll evaluate that. You know obviously I’m not going to make any
commitments to changing schedules because this is one that we had laid out for reasons. If Jason
wants to, or Mr. Wedel wants to address it he may. You know I don’t know how strict the time
line is or this is just generally speaking.
Jason Wedel: Mayor, members of the council. This was my first draft of putting a schedule
together so if council’s in favor of tweaking that date I think we can accommodate that if need
be.
Mayor Ryan: Okay. Well we’ll look at our, I appreciate you saying that. We’ll look at the you
know our schedule as it relates to our, the remainder of our year with meetings but we will keep
that in mind. So that’s one time line. The other thing that I would like to address is, or actually
ask a favor. I don’t know Mr. Wedel if you have been out but if somebody from the City could
go to Ms. Burt’s house to look at the tree and the raw sewage line I think we should have
somebody from the City go look at that. If it’s nearing collapse I’d like to get somebody from
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
12
the City to evaluate that please. And then last but not least you know as I’ve said and I
expressed this to some of the residents that I’ve been in touch with, you know we’re dealing with
a couple different issues here. The first one and the way this all came about was addressing the
high water mark and this is the time line and this is the process that we’re going to follow with
maybe some variation in dates but generally speaking this is the time line and process we’ll
follow for evaluating the high water elevation. But as you can tell from the different meetings
and discussions that we have that there’s a, you know a lot of other issues as it relates to this
specific issue. So whether it’s boats. Areas on the lake they can go. Height of, you know height
of the wave. The ecology of the lake. Buoys. Points. You know keeping distance from other
boats. There’s a multitude of issues that have been brought forward and we need to take the time
as a council and staff to evaluate all of those issues and so Mr. Gerhardt and I have been talking
about putting together this fall some sort of a round table or a community meeting where we host
it somewhere and the council at the Rec Center where it’s not a work session. It’s not a council
meeting but we have an opportunity to take collectively feedback from all the residents for all of
our lakes because as Mr. Corkery put out this is a big community. There are a lot of issues so
this isn’t just isolated to Lake Minnewashta but we have other lakes that we need to make sure
that we’re evaluating as a part of a bigger process or you know the ordinances around lakes so
Mr. Gerhardt is going to be working on that. I don’t have specific dates, times but I just want
you to know that that is the next step of this process so we are following the high water elevation
process as laid out and we are working on doing something in the fall to address the myriad of
issues as it affects all of our lakes in Chanhassen so we will be back in touch with you about that.
As it relates to where we’re at with the water of Lotus Lake today, Mr. Wedel sent council an
email that as of 1:30 today the elevation of Lotus Lake is 895.71 and the no wake elevation that
the City Council approved earlier this year is 896.3 so we’re still below that. So you know we
don’t as a city see the emergency in terms of the high water elevation but again I will withhold
any further comments if council sees differently but I just wanted to share the current lake level
that was last reported by Mr. Wedel. If council doesn’t have any additional comments then I just
ask that you understand that this is the process that we’re going through. Ms. Burt if you’re open
to having somebody from the City come out and look at your tree and your sewer then somebody
from the City will be in touch with you and we will move forward collectively with that
schedule. Council is there anything further? Okay. Thank you everyone for your feedback and
thoughts as part of visitor presentations.
FIRE DEPARTMENT/LAW ENFORCEMENT UPDATE.
Mayor Ryan: Next up we have the fire department and law enforcement update. Chief do you
want to go first since you have cake to get to.
Chief Don Johnson: Thank you Mayor and council. I’ll keep this brief so you can get on with
your evening. This is our update for this month of August. Staffing stayed with 43. We’ve got
2 of our newest folks that started the academy August 13th. They’ll be done the end of December
and fully firefighter trained. We had 102 calls in July which was significant for us. If you look
back over our history we don’t normally run that much. We did start our day only response late
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
13
in the month so you’ll see we had 3 chief only 10 day only and 36 duty crew calls and only 53 of
the 102 as all calls which starts to now ratchet down the load on folks that are just at home so it’s
starting to pay off and you’ll see a significant change when I give my report next month. Out of
those 102 calls we had 53 EMS with 8 motor vehicle accidents. One mutual aid response to
Chaska and 4 citizen complaints resulting in 2 unauthorized burning incidents. Very quickly we
had, we assisted with the Tour de Tonka. We had our annual fire department physicals and our
annual SCBA maintenance which just about ends most of our NFP required certifications and
compliance issues. We did visit 33 block parties as part of National Night Out and I assisted
with the Hopkins police officer funeral for Brooklyn Park as part of the Minnesota Chief’s
Association Assistance Group. We also had a kick off meeting and we’ll talk more about this as
we get closer but Lieutenant Pearce, myself met with Westwood Church, Carver County
Emergency Management and Ridgeview Ambulance to start the planning for a full functional
exercise that will happen in May of 2020 which will involve all of those disciplines and this as a
request from Westwood Church so I’ll be able to outline more of that and we’ll also be working
with City and emergency operation center for that drill. It’s a good opportunity for us to work
together on some things that are going on in the public so. With that I will just tell you that open
house has been scheduled for October 7th from 6:00 to 8:00 and Fire Marshal Nutter is well in
the planning phases for this year’s open house which will include the State Fire Marshal’s
initiative on close the bedroom door we’ll have some live burn activities that we’ll outline why
it’s important to keep your door closed at night. For that I can stand for questions.
Mayor Ryan: Council any questions? Chief could you, I was going to highlight it at the end of
the meeting but we approved a resolution as part of our consent agenda and I just, if you could, I
know you want to get going but I would really like you to take a couple minutes to acknowledge
the donation from CenterPoint Energy and then that we accepted earlier in the month and then
just say what it’s going towards if you could.
Chief Don Johnson: Alright Mayor. As a regular partner of the community the community
partnership grant through CenterPoint Energy offers a significant amount of money each year.
Since the program inception they’ve awarded $1.8 million dollars in donations and private
funding to 967 projects in the communities throughout CenterPoint Energy. They usually come
and deliver the check right to council but have since ended that so we did put that on the consent
agenda tonight. The Fire Department applied for and was granted $2,500. We’re using that, it’s
a matching grant so we’re using that towards the purchase of a new thermal imaging camera for
Engine 1 due in later this fall.
Mayor Ryan: And it was asked on Facebook what does a thermal imaging camera, how does it
benefit the community?
Chief Don Johnson: So from a community standpoint what it does is it benefits the firefighters
in the fire department in the most intense parts of a structure fire. If we don’t know if that fire, if
that residence is occupied we can quickly scan rooms because it differentiates temperature in the
room so rather than going, it sees through smoke. Rather than going around on our hands and
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
14
knees trying to find people we can actually scan rooms quickly with a thermal imaging camera.
The other opportunities instead of sometimes we have electrical issues in homes. We can
actually see in walls and find hot spots versus the old way of doing things of taking an axe and
opening up walls so I’d say from a community standpoint it’s a great benefit and a tool for us
that is going to overlay into what we, how we provide services to the community.
Mayor Ryan: Wonderful, thank you for the explanation so enjoy the retirement party.
Chief Don Johnson: Thank you. And on my behalf I appreciate the council taking the time to
honor our folks for that. I know it’s a busy night and we appreciate that and I know my people
appreciate it as well so thank you for taking time out of the schedule to have that ceremony for
us.
Mayor Ryan: Thanks Chief.
Chief Don Johnson: Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Lieutenant. Welcome.
Lt. Lance Pearce: He didn’t tell me there was cake.
Mayor Ryan: Go ahead.
Lt. Lance Pearce: Mayor, council, report for July. Total calls for service. We had 1,102 calls.
544 of those were non-criminal. We had a little over 500 were traffic related. Of the traffic
related ones we had 349 traffic stops resulting in 2 DUI arrests and 44 citations issued. And the
bulk of our calls for service last month were again non-criminal stuff and were dominated with
alarms, medicals and suspicious activity calls. Just a note, I had a brief conversation on Night to
Unite with the Mayor. Last month we only had one domestic assault arrest.
Mayor Ryan: Great, thank you.
Lt. Lance Pearce: Moving on with my report for the month. I want to thank council and
department heads for participation in Night to Unite. That was fun to see all the department
heads and all of my staff and most of the council members present so I appreciate the support
and participation. A couple of community relations upcoming events. The Sheriff’s Citizens
Academy for fall is starting September 19th. That’s advertised on the city website, the sheriff’s
office website and also social media for both. It’s 10 weeks. Every Thursday night again
starting on September 19th. We are taking applications so for residents of Chanhassen it’s highly
recommended. I invite any of the City Council members, city staff, we’ve got nothing but
positive feedback from others that have participated.
Mayor Ryan: Great, thanks Lieutenant.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
15
Lt. Lance Pearce: Any questions you can contact me since I’m coordinating it. In addition to
that I’ve developed a Coffee with a Cop program. We’re going to start that and see how that
takes off. It’s going to be October 2nd this year and we’ll be at Starbucks starting at 9:30 a.m. So
you’ll see more of that advertised on social media here in the next week or two.
Mayor Ryan: So it will just, somebody will be at Starbucks with an opportunity for anyone to
come and have a conversation.
Lt. Lance Pearce: Any questions. Comments. We’re available.
Mayor Ryan: Wonderful. Fantastic.
Lt. Lance Pearce: So and we’ll see but I think Sergeant Stahn will be there at Starbucks so with
that that’s my report. I stand for any questions.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Lieutenant. Council any questions? You weren’t at the obviously the
last meeting. I know you do your reports at the end of the month but we wanted to extend our
appreciation for the sheriff’s office for Night to Unite so appreciate you being out in the
community and talking to the residents. Had extended our appreciation to the Chief as well but
thank you and I enjoyed spending the evening and heard great things about how cool your car
was so.
Lt. Lance Pearce: Thank you. And they didn’t take it.
Mayor Ryan: Right, they tried.
Lt. Lance Pearce: Thank you very much.
Mayor Ryan: Alright, thank you Lieutenant.
PUBLIC FEEDBACK ON PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT FUNDING.
Mayor Ryan: Alright new business. Thank you everybody for being here tonight and your
patience as we work through our agenda with a number of different topics but tonight we are
here to take public feedback on the pavement management funding so tonight we are holding a
public comment session regarding a proposed funding scenario for our pavement management
fund. We are looking for your feedback as it relates to this topic. The council will not be voting
tonight nor will we as a council be discussing this topic. We are here to listen to you, the
residents as part of our decision making process. The council has been discussing pavement
management funding at our work sessions throughout this past year and as many of you recall it
was a topic considered last year as well. With staff we have reviewed a multitude of scenarios
and various options that could be considered when we look at addressing the needs of our
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
16
funding for our roads. Tonight you will hear from both our Director of Finance as well as our
Public Works Director on the history, the need and proposed funding scenario that council is
considering. Once the presentation is completed I will open up the meeting for public comment.
At that time I ask you to come forward. State your name and your address for the record and
then proceed with your comments. I do ask that you limit your time to around 5 minutes. This
truly is an opportunity for us as council and staff to hear from you. If you have specific
questions when you approach council I will ask the appropriate staff member to answer if they
are able. While all of this discussion is obviously recorded as all of our meetings are for public
record I have asked that staff compiles a list of questions asked tonight with a corresponding city
response so by the end of the week we are able to publish a Q and A document for the public to
reference following this listening session so if there’s any follow up or further questions that will
be part of the document. With that Mr. Sticha if you want to take it from here. Or Mr. Wedel,
I’m not sure who’s going first.
Greg Sticha: Yeah before Jason starts I just want to let the audience know there is copies of the
power point on the table over here so if you want to follow along with the hard copy you can.
There’s also a copy of the attachments on the table over here so you might want to grab a copy of
that.
Jason Wedel: Mayor, members of the council, members of the audience, thank you for being
here this evening. I will kick things off. I’m going to start with some of the information that was
discussed previously including last year’s presentation and this is a little bit of background on
how we rate our streets. Every year we rate one third of our total miles of our street and they are
ranked on a scale from 0 to 100. That’s what we call our Overall Condition Index and so the
table that’s on this first slide shows you how the average OCI has looked from 2010 to our
current year. It started off in the high 70’s. It’s gone down. It’s come up a little bit with some
projects but right now we’re averaging close to right around a 70. So what does a 70 mean? A
70 means we are in fair condition if you look on this table being in that 50 to 74 range. That
means a street in that condition would be due for what we call a mill and overlay where you mill
off the top 2 inches of pavement and repave it. If you’re at the high category starting at the top
in that 95 to 100 you’re in great shape. You don’t need to do anything. Going down the scale as
you get into the 85 to 94 range you’re looking at doing like a sealcoat or a chip seal. And then as
you get further down into the 70’s and 50’s that’s where we start looking at doing the mill and
overlays where you’re milling off the top surface and paving on a new surface. Once you get
below that the streets have degraded to a point where milling and overlaying is not an option
anymore. The streets have fallen apart too much and that’s when you start talking about a total
reconstruction of the street. So if you look at our total street system today as in 2019 we have 24
miles of streets that in that poor category. That’s 0 to 49. 27 miles that are in the fair, in that 50
to 75 ranking. 18 miles that are satisfactory and 46 miles that are good so our total miles of
street are 115 miles. So this map is just kind of a shot of the streets and where you see red those
are the streets that are in the worst condition. They are scattered throughout the city. They’re
not in any one specific area. They are spread throughout the entire city so part of what we do
when we put street improvement projects together every year is we try to keep our projects
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
17
clustered in one particular area and try to take care of a specific neighborhood all at once rather
than doing a block of street here and a block of street there. It’s not cost effective to have
contractors zig zagging all over town so we do try to target specific neighborhoods so their
rankings may vary a little bit but when we get into the capital improvement planning that’s what
we’re looking for. So this is really some new information that was not presented last year and
this is what we’ve been using as a basis to come up with a budget for what we should be doing
for our street replacement. This graph, the blue line shows you basically the history of our street
system. It starts in 1960 and goes to today and it’s showing you on those lines is how many
miles of street we were adding per year during those time periods. So if you look from 1960 to
1970 we were adding on average a half of mile of new street per year. Typically through new
development. And then as you get into the 70’s development, more development started
occurring in Chanhassen. We were adding streets at 2.7 miles per year. In the 80’s we were at
2.5 miles per year. In the 90’s was really the boom time. We were adding 3 ½ miles of streets
every single year. And then the recession came and in 2000 things slowed down and we were
adding a mile and a half per year. And then basically 2010 through today it’s been about a half a
mile per year. And I point that out because your average street will last about 50 years so if you
look at today’s date being 2019 and you go backwards 50 years how many miles of street were
we adding at that timeframe and that’s where that little red arrow is at the bottom of this graph
shows you we’re really at that transition point of going from 0.5 miles per year to 2.7 miles per
year. So the point in all this is if we’re not replacing streets that are in that timeframe at the same
rate they were being added we’re falling behind every year. So being that we’re in that transition
point of 0.5 to 2.7 we’ve used an average and just called it 1.6 miles per year because we’re right
kind of at that hinge point. So if you look at 1.6 miles per year and it costs on average one and a
half million dollars per mile to do our streets we need $2.4 million dollars per year to keep up
with our street system. So that’s for street reconstruction. Same exact concept is when we look
at our mill and overlays and again milling and overlaying is where you grind off that top inch or
two and then repave a new surface on top of it. Streets that are about 20-25 years old are about,
that’s when they’re due to get the mill and overlay. If you wait too much longer they’re going to
deteriorate beyond a point where you can do a mill and overlay so same exact exercise. Look at
when our streets were added. Go back 20 years and were are we at? Well again we’re at that red
arrow is at on this illustration, we’re right at actually our peak time in development. We’re at 3
½ miles of street per year so again if we’re not milling and overlaying 3 ½ miles of street per
year we’re falling behind. So the average cost to mill and overlay a street is $350,000 per mile
times 3 ½ miles so we should be spending on average $1.2 million per year on mill and overlays.
So if you combine our street reconstruction of $2.4 million per year plus our mill and overlay of
$1.2 million per year that gives us our total annual budget of $3.6 million dollars for streets.
And that ends my part of the presentation so if anyone has any questions on what I’ve said to
date or so far.
Mayor Ryan: Well just continue unless council has some specific questions for Jason. Okay.
Go ahead Mr. Sticha.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
18
Greg Sticha: Okay. I’m going to pick up on so how do we pay for this $3.6 million because
that’s the big question probably a lot of people have. First I kind of want to go over some of the
things that the City Council has kind of already discussed or established as part of this process,
and we’ve been talking about this now for 2 years so this City Council and previous City Council
has spent a lot of time and effort into researching this so I want to make sure that we’re clear on
the proposal, the potential proposal that’s in front of you so we clearly understand how it would
work if that proposal would go through. First of all the City Council has made it relatively clear
that they’re going to continue it’s current assessment practice. The practice of assessing 40
percent to the benefitting properties will continue and I think the council made that pretty clear to
us this past year and into this year so there really isn’t a big point of discussing well I had to pay
an assessment. Why don’t the new people have to pay an assessment based on what the City
Council has given us in direction going forward all people will pay this same amount for the
assessment. The additional funding that is needed here is for the City share so if you look at item
number one, the benefitting property owners are responsible for 40 percent while the City’s
responsible for 60 percent. And to this point in time the only revenue stream that’s been
established to pay for our 60 percent, so if you take 60 percent of $3.6 million obviously that’s
you know a couple million dollars and to this point in time the only dedicated revenue stream
that the City has put towards funding for roads is a levy of about $380,000. Far below of what is
needed for the City share only. Any franchise fee or levy will be issued only for local road
improvements. The council has been very clear to staff on that as well. They want the funding
that is raised from either a franchise fee or this property tax levy to go for the local road
improvements only. And the last bullet point I talk about is issuing a franchise fee I think we’ve
made clear in previous presentations but I want to do that again this evening, we clearly
understand that issuing a franchise fee has the exact same impact as a property tax. However the
one thing, or a couple of things about a franchise fee that allows the City Council to do is have a
little more flexibility in who pays what and what customers are charged. Whereas issuing a
property tax levy will result in residential properties picking up 83 percent of the tab. Period.
And that’s based on the City’s property tax market value across the entire city. 83 percent of all
taxable market value in the city is residential properties. So what is a franchise fee? And we did
discuss this last year but I’m going to take the time for those that weren’t able to attend one of
the meetings last year to kind of go over what is exactly a franchise fee and some of the
regulations behind it. The City, all cities have a statutory authority to have franchise agreements
which each of the utility companies, gas and electric for maintaining the city owned right-of-
way. It’s within state statute for the establishment of this franchise fee. Within those franchises,
franchise ordinances, within those agreements cities may charge the utility companies a fee for
the use of the right-of-way to be used for whatever purpose the City would deem necessary. To
this point in time the City of Chanhassen has not done so. A number of, all of local communities
in the Twin Cities have already implemented a franchise fee including all of our neighbors who
all have franchise fees. Each of them using it for different sources but by far the largest use for
franchise fees across the Twin Cities is for local roads. Per Statute 216B.36 the language for
inclusion on the utility bill is franchise fee. Under statute you are not allowed to call it anything
other than that on the utility bill unless we were to go through a legal process with the Public
Utilities Commission and that would prove to be costly and most likely ineffective. Under
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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216B.03 of the State Statute that the utility companies are not allowed to charge different rates
within billing classes. All residential customers, single family homes, townhouses and
apartments are required to be treated the same under this statute. You’re not allowed within the
franchise fee to charge a class within their billing structure differently than any other property
within that class. The agreement ordinance that we have begun work on with the utility
companies for a term of 20 years. Any future City Council could modify the franchise fee
ordinance. The franchise fee ordinance portion of this agreement. Just the same as any future
city council could modify any property tax levy. There’s really no difference in protecting the
levy or a franchise fee from future city councils making a change of course or direction. So we
looked at a number of scenarios over the past year but we put one together for this evening’s
presentation as something that the council might likely consider going forward to fund the $3.6
million that Mr. Wedel mentioned earlier. And part of this funding scenario is a franchise fee.
Under this scenario a $5 residential franchise fee per utility would be charged for residential
customers. There would be a sliding scale for commercial customers and I’ll show you the scale
here momentarily but this franchise fee would generate about $1.7 million per year in revenues
for local roads. This proposal also includes an increase in the 2021 levy. Not next year’s levy
but the year after next year of about $330,000 or 3 percent of the total levy that the City of
Chanhassen has. And in addition this scenario also includes the use of the library levy which
will no longer be needed to pay the debt of the library building starting in 2022. Using $260,000
of that debt levy coming off the books towards roads. That particular use would not have an
impact on property tax owners as it’s just a levy being replaced with a different levy so that
would not have an impact on your property tax statement. So why a franchise fee versus a
property tax? As I mentioned earlier a franchise fee offers the City Council a little more
flexibility in what property owners are charged. They are able to between different classes
charge different rates for the said franchise fees, in particular one of the goals of previous City
Councils was to attempt to adjust the total funding paid for less heavy on the residential portion
and more so on the commercial property owners. A franchise fee allows that to happen. If the
City Council were to issue solely a property tax for the entire amount to fund the $3.6 million, 83
cents of every dollar would be paid for by a home, apartment or townhouse in the city of
Chanhassen. Whereas by using a franchise fee that would shift the balance paid closer to about a
60/40 split between residential property owners and other commercial property owners. The
other thing a franchise fee allows for is the collection of a fee for those property owners that do
not pay property taxes. Non profits and other properties which are using the city streets under an
exempt property tax situation. They are not paying property taxes and a franchise fee would
allow to collect a revenue stream from those property owners. So based on the 1.73 that I
discussed two slides ago this is an example of a proposed franchise fee schedule. This mirrors
exactly what the City Council had considered in November of last year. The amounts per class
had not changed so the total revenue generated from this particular structure would be just over
$1.7 million dollars per year. And you can see which of the classes of the $1.7 how much they’d
be paying in each class. So taking a look at under this proposal what would be the total impact
to a property owner in the city of Chanhassen? My dollar numbers are a little off there on the far
right. I apologize for that. The franchise fee for all homes would be the same. $5 per utility per
month which is $10 a month in almost a majority of cases in the city of Chanhassen assuming
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
20
you have a gas and electric utility in your home. $120 a year. The additional property tax levy
increase of the $330,000 that I had mentioned three previous slides ago would cost the homes
listed on the far left the estimated amounts in the middle column. So a $200,000 home would
pay $13 on that $330,000 levy and a one million dollar home would pay $82 on that $330,000
levy. Total per year, numbers are on the right. Just obviously adding the left two columns. So
this is a very detailed spreadsheet that we’ve been tracking for, ever since the establishment of
our revolving assessment construction fund or pavement management construction fund and this
is the current scenario that it’s in. And as you can see at the bottom of 2021 the fund will be out
of money. There will no longer be any amount of funds to fund the city share of the
improvements. You would be able to fund a project in 2021 of $2.2 million and then no project
in 2022 and then by 2023 even, you couldn’t even afford the $2.2 million. So our current
estimates have this fund being out of available resources and it is for the city portion of this
equation. All of the repaid assessments are put back into this fund so as each property owner is
paying their assessment all of those funds plus any interest that is earned on them are going right
back into this fund which helps keep the fund alive even longer. So based on the scenario that I
previously presented and if you look at the top of 2021 achieving funding of $3.6 million, which
Mr. Wedel mentioned earlier this evening and with a 3 percent increase projected for increase in
construction costs starting in 2022 and years thereafter, under the funding scenario of the $5
dollar franchise fee, maintaining the current levy of the $380,000 that is already being put
towards roads plus the $330,000 levy increase in 2021 plus the $260,000 of levy that will
become available in 2022 from the library would keep this fund funded well beyond the next 10
years. Now one thing I’d like to point out at the very bottom of this spreadsheet, the fund
balances are not immense from year to year and typically in funding these large projects you
probably don’t want to have a fund balance much less than a half a million dollars too frequently
as for me to go to Jason and say you need to fund exactly $3.6 million in road projects in one
year is probably not likely. Some years he might try to fund $3.9. Other years it might be $3.4
but in general with the average being $3.6 the fund should maintain just enough reserves to
fluctuate the total cost of each project each year going forward. And that’s all I have in terms of
the financing portion of this equation. Again this was based on one scenario that the council had
asked staff to put together and we did for the City Council so I certainly would take any
questions on this particular scenario or about a franchise fee or any of the other slides that I just
finished presenting.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Sticha. Council I know we’ve seen this, talked through the
presentation and the numbers that Mr. Sticha had presented as well as the information Mr. Wedel
had presented but I, before I open it up to the public for comments are there any questions that
you would like to ask before opening up the public comments? No. Okay so again for, thank
you for the presentation. So those here in chambers again I just want to remind you of if you
could keep it to around 5 minutes and just step forward. State your name and your address for
the record and then you can make a comment on what you have seen tonight or if you have
questions as it relates to what was presented tonight, both Mr. Wedel and Mr. Sticha will do their
best to ask so if anybody would like to be first one up please go ahead.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
21
Mack Titus: Mack Titus, 2747 Century Trail. You’re talking just public roads or public and
private roads?
Greg Sticha: This is public roads only. Funding for public roads. City roads.
Mack Titus: And how many miles of each are there? Within Chanhassen.
Jason Wedel: We have 115 miles of public streets. I don’t have a listing of how many miles of
private streets. That would be something I would have to research.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Mack Titus: Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Titus.
Craig Mertz: Craig Mertz. I tried to…a Chanhassen resident in Chanhassen 46 years. I can
probably beat anybody in the room on that. I think that the engineering staff and the regular city
staff has done a wonderful job on coming up with a solution for a very difficult problem and I
urge the City to look at the City Engineer’s work as the best solution that is available to the City
on this and I urge approval of the proposed franchise fee.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Mertz. Hello sir.
Jay Schreur: Hi, my name is Jay Schreur. I live at 8376 Suffolk Drive in Chanhassen.
Mayor Ryan: Would you mind spelling your last name.
Jay Schreur: S-c-h-r-e-u-r.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you.
Jay Schreur: It’s like Elsie.
Mayor Ryan: You get it. See, did you see how quickly responded?
Jay Schreur: Right. I have a handout here I’d like to give to you guys and pass it around. You
can keep going around the room. I’ve been trying to, I kind of represent the 3 townhouse
neighborhoods on Powers Boulevard and I’ve been trying to kind of take the role of a peace
maker I guess on this here because there’s a lot of people that are concerned. A lot of people that
are unhappy and a lot of people that are downright angry about this and I think a couple of them,
of the points, one of them is what Greg brought up here earlier is that the franchise fee is for city
owned streets and myself and most all these people I think live on privates streets. Private
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
22
maintained streets so we maintain them through our association fees and they consider it a
double taxation. They’re also concerned that, or not concerned but they’re angry about calling
this a franchise fee because a franchise fee is for city owned streets so they would like to make
the proposal or have something for you guys to think about, either exempt us from it, which I
don’t know if you can or maintain the streets. One of the two. Make them city owned streets
and maintain the streets. On this handout you have there’s Minutes that the City Council brought
up last year so I took these and with the help of my staff, which is my wife, we went through
these so I think these are very accurate and it gives a good scenario of how the people really feel
about this franchise fee. What they would like and I know it’s impossible to do is to have the tax
and call it a tax and have it a franchise fee but you can’t do that. I understand that so but they
just want something that’s fair and equitable and treats all residents the same and not get double
taxed on private and city owned streets. That’s the big concern of them and I think, I think if you
can’t make them exempt and it talks about it here in the back part of it I think, and also they’re
not happy that it’s on your utility bills. They would much rather pay it annually or whatever but
that’s just the scenario. The feelings of the people. That’s all I’m giving to you is the feelings of
the people.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you.
Jay Schreur: And there’s probably, I guess there’s, I don’t know there’s 75, 100, probably 500
people living there, right in that little area there so I encourage you to read this. Think about it
and digest it a little bit before you do things.
Mayor Ryan: Great.
Jay Schreur: Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you for that presentation and we will, thank you for the handout as well.
We will do our best to address this as part of the Q and A as well.
Jay Schreur: Yes please.
Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you. Anybody else want to step forward?
Carla Thompson: I’m Carla Thompson, 8524 Mayfield Court, Mission Hills Townhomes. We
just paid for our streets and we just had them all redone and I’m suggesting that if the City wants
to charge us this franchise fee then they should take over our roads and we’ve been told that oh
our streets are so narrow. Well we don’t park on the sides of our streets at all so it isn’t any
narrower than any other street. We just feel like this is just, if you can’t prorate us and according
to this it sounds like the utilities can’t prorate.
Mayor Ryan: Correct.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
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Carla Thompson: According to a statue or whatever, from what I read, but some consideration.
Otherwise take over our roads. And that’s the way our other homeowners are feeling too so. I
am President of the Association so I’m here to represent them.
Mayor Ryan: Wonderful, thank you for coming tonight. We appreciate it. Hello sir.
Ray Murray: Hi Mayor and City Council. Ray Murray. I live at 6618 Brenden Court and it
looks likes according to the map that I…on the website and it looks like Brenden Court is one of
those that is poor condition and it is probably due to a lot of traffic, junior highers being dropped
off at the junior high school. Our cul-de-sac backs up to that. There’s a walkway from the cul-
de-sac to the school and I appreciate, first of all I want to thank the City. Last year when I made
the comments, about a week or two later the City put up no parking signs so I appreciate that but
the people are still driving through dropping the kids off so the bottom line of it is we are, of all
the roads that need repair and it’s not caused by the residents so I just want you to consider that
too. Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Appreciate it. Anybody else that would like to speak. Go ahead.
Lucas Souza: Hi.
Mayor Ryan: I could see the debate in your head.
Lucas Souza: Yeah I want to come here today. My name is Lucas Souza. I live in 8091 Hidden
Court, Chanhassen. 55317. By my accent you know probably, you can guess I am not born and
raised in Minnesota. I have been here living in Chanhassen for 7 years and I want to just express
my appreciation in how is a different vision for someone from outside of not being born and
raised in Minnesota and Chanhassen. Just see how things work and today my first session that I
come here to of the hearing section and because I was talking to my wife saying how does the
roads and streets are being repaved and everything. She said I don’t know so a few days later I
got the flyer at home and said see, that’s my answer. So I came here because that’s my answer
so I like to find out so I learn a lot today and I understand because I lived in Shakopee before and
the streets there were well maintained but it was an association and that’s was private owned
street so there’s a difference now I just learned and I cannot blame you. My street is not that
well maintained as it used to be in Shakopee. The one I was living and paying for. Coming from
a different background and when I see things as little kids as 12 years old and they’ll be
volunteering, that’s so inspiring because that’s how we raise citizens you know. That’s how we
know the community is going to work. How you volunteer your time. How you care about
others. That’s how you become a citizen. Even he was very inspiring beautiful to see kids this
evening here being honored. I was, it’s beautiful. Such as the firefighters. They volunteer their
time. They work hard and just call 911. They are there for you. Where I came from there is not
that thing such a thing. I was telling my wife simple things like library. …people don’t have
access to have a book. In some certain cultures there is a classmate I had in college here, she
came from an Africa country. She said there she’s not even allowed to read books. And here
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
24
she was amazed how you can have a book and share. Return. Get as many as you want. And
then I realize sometimes people take for granted things. They don’t appreciate what they have.
They don’t know that bye kids. They’ve got backpack and go to school. They are safe. They go
to school. Come back. It’s wonderful. It comes from our tax. We pay tax for that. It’s a well
being of community so sometimes we don’t know how things are built. How things are made.
How things work and then that comes from the tax we pay for. I know it’s sometimes hard for
us to pay $5 dollars. $10 dollars more but for a public street that you drive on or your neighbor
drive or your co-worker or your son-in-law, someone’s driving that road. If you think that
because my road’s only my road that’s being a little more narrow vision of the well being of the
city. Everything so all I just be my point of view. Appreciation of what I have here. What I
drive on. What I visit the books I read that you guys did before I came so thank you so much for
everything you guys have done. Thank you for all of you guys. Thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you. I appreciate it. That’s nice. Thank you very much. Anybody else
that would like to come forward still? Alright. You summarized things so nicely as what was
being said so thank you everybody for your comment. Oh sir.
Audience: No. To thank you.
Mayor Ryan: Here, here. So do we want to talk a little bit about schedule or timeline of this
discussion? Do we have one established?
Greg Sticha: We do.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Greg Sticha: So if the City Council wants to proceed with a franchise fee it would take about a
couple months to finalize the franchise ordinances and agreements that we’ve already kind of
negotiated with the utility companies last fall. We need to look at those one more time and make
sure that we’re not missing anything so we need a few weeks to finish up those agreements. We
would then need to publish notice to hold a public hearing on approving the franchise
ordinances. Again that’s for the agreements with the utility companies plus an ordinance for the
franchise fee so we’d probably be looking the soonest of holding a public hearing probably early
October, maybe the second meeting in October. Sometime in October most likely. And then at
that meeting you would hold a public hearing. You could approve the agreements that evening
or you could decide to approve the agreements at a following meeting.
Mayor Ryan: Okay perfect. If we do move forward with the October public hearing or whatever
time frame it is could we again make sure that we, as you I think all heard how many people got
the flyers in the mail or in the Villager and I think that’s so important to do so if we could do that
again I think that is well served. But thank you for the timeline, I appreciate that and I would
again like to extend my appreciation or on behalf of council our appreciation for not only those
that came to speak but those that are attending and just listening to understand the information
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
25
that is presented. I know it’s obviously a big decision for council that we have to make but to be
able to know that the residents are paying attention and listening and I know we’ll receive emails
from those that may be at home or watch this video later but getting the public comment and
feedback prior to ever making a vote is something that’s very important to our process so I just
want to extend our appreciation for your involvement as we work through this process. I just
want to acknowledge your participation this evening so thank you very much. Is there anything
further? Go ahead.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council members, I think Greg did a good job of summarizing if the
council wants to go ahead with, I’m not going to call it a franchise fee or franchise tax. And but
I think direction from the mayor and the rest of the council was to summarize the questions that
came before you tonight. That we would bring that back and make a presentation to you and
then give our thoughts on those questions and any legal support that we need to answer any of
those. Bring that back to you and then have a discussion amongst the council to give staff
direction after that. Not to give everybody the thought that we’re going to leave this room
tonight that it’s you know it’s automatically done.
Mayor Ryan: Correct.
Todd Gerhardt: You know I think the council was very clear to us that they want to discuss the
questions that were brought up. Address the questions that were brought up and then have an
open discussion amongst yourselves and give staff direction from there.
Mayor Ryan: And so that would take place at a work session in September.
Todd Gerhardt: Yes. And I think the direction tonight was to get these questions out on the
website and allow other people to add other questions to that list and then bring it back probably
second meeting in September for those additional questions that we might get but so the public
can see the questions that were brought up tonight.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect and Mr. Sticha is the link still available for people online to review the
presentation and make comments?
Greg Sticha: Yes and I’ll make sure that the, it’s also on the banner on the website. I’ll make
sure it had been staff include, keeps it up on the banner for the time being.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect so we’ll take the questions from tonight. If there are additional follow up
questions that people here may have or people at home or watching online, if they have those
please send them to either city staff or council. We’ll forward those on and make sure those are
a part of our Q and A list for discussion. Council anything further as it relates to this? Okay,
thank you. Thank you Mr. Gerhardt.
Todd Gerhardt: Yep.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
26
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION APPOINTMENTS.
Mayor Ryan: Mr. Gerhardt are you?
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council members. In January of every year the City Council develops
it’s goals, what we call our key financial strategies and as a part of those a majority of the City
Council wanted to see an Economic Development Commission established and so as a part of
that the council developed bylaws for the Economic Development Commission. Some marching
orders of what the commission’s goals and responsibilities would be and then we advertised for
those commissions in the last month and the last two meetings that we held at the work session
you interviewed candidates wanting to serve on the Economic Development Commission.
Before you tonight is to make a recommendation for a 5 member Economic Development
Commission. Two of those people serving 3 year terms and three of them serving 2 year terms
and staff would look to direction from the mayor and the council on who you’d like to see serve
on those different terms.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Gerhardt. There is a proposed motion in front of us if anybody
would like to make a motion.
Councilman Campion: I will make a motion.
Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion.
Councilman Campion: This was based on discussion at our work session earlier, I propose the
City Council appoints the following commissioners to the Economic Development Commission:
Steven Stamy and Anne Heinze for 3 year terms ending March 31, 2022; and Kathy Donovan,
James Sanford, and James Ebeling for 2 year terms ending March 31, 2021.
Mayor Ryan: We have a valid motion. Is there a second?
Councilwoman Coleman: Second it.
Mayor Ryan: With a valid motion and a second, all those in favor please signify by saying aye.
Councilman Campion moved, Councilwoman Coleman seconded to make the following
appointments to the Economic Development Commission: Steven Stamy and Anne Heinze
for 3 year terms ending March 31, 2022; and Kathy Donovan, James Sanford, and James
Ebeling for 2 year terms ending March 31, 2021. All voted in favor, except Councilman
McDonald and Councilwoman Tjornhom who opposed. The motion carried with a vote of
3 to 2.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS.
Chanhassen City Council – August 21, 2019
27
Mayor Ryan: Next do we have any commission presentations? I would just like to highlight real
quickly again, we didn’t pull it off the agenda but want to recognize the donation from Love Inc.
for donations to the senior center Maple Room which is going to be turned into a Memory Café.
They are going under getting new furniture. It’s going to be a place for seniors to gather. Have
meetings and just spend some time on comfortable furniture and so we really appreciate the
donations and the support from Love Inc. to make this space available for the seniors in our
community so I just want to acknowledge them and say thank you to that. Any administrative
presentations?
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, City Council members. Just to follow up on the Economic
Development Commission. We will send letters to those that were not appointed and we will
send letters to those congratulating them on being appointed and explain what their terms are and
they’ll come under the Mayor’s signature so everybody will be aware of your actions tonight.
And that’s all I have.
Mayor Ryan: Wonderful, thank you.
CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None.
Councilman Campion moved, Councilwoman Coleman 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 8:40 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim