CC VER 2020 02 10CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
FEBRUARY 10, 2020
Mayor Ryan called the meeting to order at 7:05 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: Jake Foster, Kate Aanenson, Charlie Howley, Todd Hoffman, Bob
Generous, and Roger Knutson
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Jessica Galatz Hennepin County
Mayor Ryan: Again good evening everybody and welcome to our council meeting. To those of
you that are watching at home or livestreaming on the Chanhassen website thank you for joining
us. 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 published agenda.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Mayor Ryan: First is public announcements. We had one add so I will read that. The City
Council and the Economic Development Commission would like to invite the public in
particular the local business community in Chanhassen to the first ever local business open house
with the Chanhassen and Chanhassen Economic Development Commission. The event will take
place on Wednesday, February 19th from 6:00 to 7:30 at the Chanhassen Recreation Center. The
Economic Development Commission will be looking for feedback from the local business
community on how the City can help make your business more successful. The Economic
Development Commission along with city staff will be available to answer any questions about
the topics such as planning and zoning, fees and taxes, and new infrastructure and new
businesses being constructed in the city. Please take this opportunity to give the City and the
Economic Development Commission your feedback or ask a question about owning a business
in our great community. We hope to see you there.
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 January 27, 2020
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2. Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated January 21, 2020
3. Approve a Request for an Interim Use Permit (IUP) for the Purpose of Repairing
Landslides along a portion of the Minnesota Bluffs LRT Regional Trail
4. Resolution #2020-08: Providing for the Sale of up to $7,000,000 General Obligation
Utility Revenue Bonds, Series 2020A for various City 2020 and 2021 Utility System
Improvements
5. Resolution #2020-09: Minnewashta Parkway – Approve Plans and Specifications;
Authorize Advertising for Bids
6. Well #4 Roof Repair
7. Highway 7 RPBCWD Maintenance Agreement
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS.
Mayor Ryan: We have one scheduled visitor presentation so I welcome you to come to the
podium. Welcome.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Mayor, council members. My name is Claire Bleser. I’m the Watershed
District Administrator for the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District. I have a little
presentation. It’s all about stormwater ponds, whether they’re friends or our foe. It’s a long
journey for well worthy of it. Point it to.
Charlie Howley: Point it at my head.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Well if I don’t turn it on that’s not going to work. There we go. For those of
you who are not familiar with this watershed district we are two counties, Carver and Hennepin
County. We’re about 50 square miles. We include parts of Chanhassen. Really basically the
northeast, well east part of Chanhassen but we include also parts of Bloomington, Eden Prairie,
Minnetonka, Deephaven and Shorewood as well as a few streets into Chaska. So this journey
actually includes quite a few cities. The city of Chanhassen as well as Minnetonka, Shorewood,
Bloomington, Eden Prairie and also the University of Minnesota. This journey started back in
2010 so staff from the city, all of our cities as well as State agencies back then were talking about
stormwater ponds as a means of how do we know they’re functioning like they’re suppose to be
functioning and how can we assess this in a quick easy matter. So when we started this journey
back in 2010 we were dealing with those questions like are they doing what they’re suppose to
be doing or are they not doing what they’re suppose to be doing so we started with 5 ponds and
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then we went all the way into 2013 where we had 98 ponds. Just in Chanhassen alone we
monitored 30 ponds and really this is the catalyst of how the University of Minnesota started to
be more interested. More synergy around these ponds led to actually quite a few research studies
happening right now as we speak from faculty members at the University of Minnesota. So you
know this is a great schematic that I actually borrowed from one of the professors at the U. So if
you think about a stormwater pond they vary in their use and designed to capture water that’s
coming from our streets. In there there’s basically the phosphorous and the sediment settle at the
bottom. It can retain water so it’s not flushing through the pipes into our waters and at the same
time clean the water before it’s discharged to lakes and wetlands and creeks, right. So they’re
capturing the water. Letting it settle and then you have cleaner water coming out. That’s the
whole premise of the stormwater pond. I’m sorry the schematic is a little bit small but I just
wanted to show you where all 30 ponds are located and one of the ponds that we’re going to look
at is, you’re not going to see it. It’s actually under Bluff Creek, yep right there. That triangle
and to the right of the cursor. Right there. This is actually a pond that we’re actually delving
deeper into it and the City of Chanhassen is partnering with the district and the University of
Minnesota to actually try out a treatment of it which I’ll discuss in a little bit but so right next to
Bluff Creek just west of Lake Susan is one of those ponds that we’re actually delving a little
deeper in figuring out this whole stormwater ponds. Whether they’re friends or foe. This is back
from 2013. That gives you some idea of yep, there’s BP, BC sorry. That famous pond. Those
dash marks that you see is normally the range that you would want to see the phosphorous levels
in the ponds and you can see that this one was skyrocket high. So what we saw in all those 98
ponds it seems like the ones that were bad were bad and the ones that were good were good so
trying to sort of solve this problem. It didn’t matter how old they were. It didn’t matter if some
were converted wetlands. It just seemed like some were really bad and some were good and so
this is when the University of Minnesota stepped in and said hey we’re really kind of interested
in what you guys have. Can we get your data? Can you share this data so we were able to do
that. And here’s our pond that we actually are delving deeper in. The red dots that you see on
your screen are actually core samples so the University of Minnesota went out and actually
pulled sediment cores to the bottom of the pond and actually did lab analysis to figure out if
basically phosphorous was being released into the water and it would be released in the water
when the oxygen level within the pond is to zero. So think about like fish kill right. When the
lake has no oxygen fish die. Same idea but on a pond. Not saying that there’s fish dying but it’s
sort of that spirit. When there’s no oxygen is there phosphorous being released back into the
water column? So those are the 4 cores that were done and then the orange dot is actually where
there was an automated station out there and then samples collected throughout the summer. 18
and 19. Here’s an example of the University of Minnesota actually coring through the ice
through one of those ponds and then going out in the field with our canoe and actually collecting
samples. Here’s one, it’s fun. Don’t go swimming in it. We did have one of our crews we’re
engaged with clean water and legacy grant and we’re actually doing some detail research also in
the city of Eden Prairie and this is the type of system you actually see in the field so it collects
everything and it’s self sufficient. It’s a solar panel that you see out there. And here we are with
more data but also possibly identifying a solution where we, for most of these stormwater ponds
what we’re seeing is it goes inoxyte meaning there’s no oxygen in the pond meaning the
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phosphorous is being released from the sediment which is not what the intention of the
stormwater ponds are. When they were designed they, the people who thought of the stormwater
pond thought of it as mixing right and when it mixes you have the oxygen going through. You
don’t have like zero oxygen at the bottom. Problem we’re seeing right now with quite a few of
these stormwater ponds is there’s zero oxygen at the bottom. Phosphorous is being released so
what we’re doing is we’re building up actually the phosphorous in the pond and then when
there’s a rain events flushing into our water bodies. So here we are now, last week, sorry this is
a schematic so red is bad and green is bad but the phosphorous is being released in the water and
then going into our lakes and creeks. Last week we coordinated with the City of Chanhassen and
we actually had iron filings delivered. They came all the way from Chicago so 3 of our cities are
pilots to testing out iron filings on the ponds as a means to mitigate the phosphorous from going
up into the water column. And so I think that’s coming up soon that the crews from the city will
be going out and onto the pond that’s located you know east of Buff Creek, west of Lake Susan.
They’ll be spreading it on top of the ice. There’s about 13-14 inches of ice right now on that
pond so we’ve been monitoring that and coordinating with the City. Just to give you a head’s up
we also have an info sheet and info box that’s located at those ponds and in there it actually
explains that as they put the iron on top of the snow the snow’s going to get a little red so it’s
totally normal but we do have information sheets out there so homeowners are not panicking and
saying what the heck are you guys doing. Now it’s red but our, when the snow, when the
warmer temperatures come the snow melts. The ice melts. Those iron filings are going to go
down to the lake bottom and hopefully stop basically the phosphorous from released back up into
the stormwater pond. They’ve actually done this in St. Cloud and here’s an example. Before the
treatment where they had phosphorous level high and after putting the iron filings. Now they did
that with a boat. We’re doing it more easier way which would be using like a little Bobcat and
where they’re spreading the iron across the ice in a thin layer. And with that as I said the City of
Chanhassen will be implementing that part. The University of Minnesota will be continuing
monitoring that pond and evaluating the ithicacity of the iron filings and hopefully have a good
solution moving forward in having all these ponds and hopefully being good ponds are our
friends rather than our foes so.
Charlie Howley: If I can add to the conversation.
Mayor Ryan: Yes please do.
Charlie Howley: Thanks Claire, nice job. We sent out a mailer this afternoon to residents
indicating that towards the end of this week our streets department is going to go to this pond and
kind of clear most of the snow off of the pond and then next week, the week of the 17th is when
we’re going to apply the iron filings and iron filings is just what you think of it. It’s shaved up
iron so it’s like the consistency of sand. Kind of brownish in color Totally safe for the
environment. Totally safe for kids or animals if they got into it but what we want to make sure
happens is that there’s an evenly distributed amount of iron over the ice and not like big pile here
and none over there because it’s important for the data and the monitoring to see what happens
so it’s going to be posted. You know do not disturb. Don’t go on the ice and play hockey, things
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like that. This pond did not have an active use. The other pond just north of it had a hockey rink
like built, one of the residents was using. This one did not so it shouldn’t be interfering with you
know wintertime operations of the neighborhood. The ice will melt. The iron settles to the
bottom and what happens is, is the phosphorous that does get released binds with the iron and it
holds it there and doesn’t let it go up. You saw those ponds were all green. That’s because algae
and duck week their food is the phosphorous and they just explode and all that nasty stuff you
know happens from not only the phosphorous coming up from the bottom but any phosphorous
that’s coming in from the upper load so what’s exciting about this is, if this shows to work
successfully and it’s fairly inexpensive. Our cost was about $3,000 to purchase the iron filings.
We bought them in bulk so we got a nice rate for them and then it’s just our staff time in
distributing on top of the pond and we’re going to do it for 3 years, right? And we’re going.
Dr. Claire Bleser: One application.
Charlie Howley: One application but we’re going to monitor for 3 years.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Exactly yep. So we’ll be monitoring this year as a follow up and I think I
believe next year as well so we’ll be continuing to monitor to make sure that everything looks
good and we’ll probably be back and give you a whole ton of results.
Charlie Howley: And so what’s exciting about this is this is another potential tool in our tool
box of stormwater management where I’m sure you’ve heard and you’ve seen the budgets about
dredging out a pond. How expensive it is and we did one like last year and it was $200,000 or
whatever it was. I don’t remember. I wasn’t involved but if we do this we may be able to not
have to dredge out these ponds as much because the dredging out the ponds is meant to provide
that depth for the settlement to act for this phosphorous to settle out but if these ponds are
releasing the phosphorous back up it’s not doing such a good job and we’re not doing it to solve
the algae on the individual ponds. That’s a benefit but what we’re, the main purpose is to protect
the downstream. The streams and the lakes, the creeks and the rivers because this is our
stormwater pond. That’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to treat stormwater so the fact
that they’re green is eh, you know it’s not great but it’s doing what it’s doing but we want to
protect the downstream stuff so if this proves to be good this is going to be a great cost effective
solution as we move forward so that’s why I’m really excited about this and the University of
Minnesota has got you know their PhD’s working on it and other cities. Not just our’s and so it’s
really exciting. But I want to make it very clear that this isn’t harmful in any way to
environment or people who were to end up to wander on the ice and kick it around. We don’t
want them to do that but it wouldn’t hurt them so.
Councilman Campion: One follow up question. So in a theory behind it so what we expect to
happen is that it will, again we’re not concerned about the algae and all that but it should
theoretically reduce that significantly?
Charlie Howley: Yes.
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Dr. Claire Bleser: Yeah.
Councilman Campion: And then if it were successful would you expect that you’d have to
continually you know add more iron every so many years?
Dr. Claire Bleser: Yeah the life span is a good question. And I’m not too sure of the length of
the life span but with any element like that eventually you’re going to cover it right with
whatever’s coming still from the street so yes, you would have to do a reapplication down the
road. I can come back and get more information unless Mr. Howley knows.
Charlie Howley: When we do, probably about 10 years ago is when I first heard about them.
You’ve heard of an iron enhanced sand filter. It’s a BMP that has been used next to ponds and
trenches and things like that and what it is it’s using these same iron filings and putting it into
sand and letting the water filter through it and the iron in the sand grabs the phosphorous and
locks it up. In those applications we’ve been told that it’s about a 20 year life span so in this
trench you could imagine 20 years later you come dig out that sand and put in new sand with
iron. In this application I don’t know. Is it 20 years? Is it less? Is it more? I guess that’s part of
the research.
Dr. Claire Bleser: It’s very innovative. I think St. Cloud is the first one that was done last spring
and I think Roseville is another one that’s looking at that as well so we’re on the forefront which
is pretty cool and want to actually see.
Councilman Campion: Very cool.
Mayor Ryan: Dr. Bleser first I want to say thank you for coming tonight and just to reiterate
how much we appreciate the partnership to have with the watershed. I wish we had more
opportunity to partner on projects. I know it’s something that’s very important to the City with
all of our lakes and so it’s important that we continue to find opportunities for us as a city to
partner with the watershed so thank you for this. Bringing forward this project and being here
tonight. A couple questions. When you talk about the clean water and the legacy grant, is that
something that you applied for or does the City ever apply for these grants to be able to do more
ponds or how, how does that work?
Dr. Claire Bleser: Yeah so both the City and the District have had clean water land and legacy
amendment funds. In the case of the ones for stormwater pond there a type of fund where it’s
like a clean water accelerated grant. It’s to really kind of help with identifying projects down the
pipe but there’s also grants that are specifically for projects identified so for example I know
we’re working on upper Riley Creek and that’s going to be a multi-year project but that would be
a great candidate for Clean Water Land and Legacy Grants and those are bigger chunks of
money. There’s, so we’ve applied but having partners is actually helpful for these grants and so
when the City applied for Bluff Creek ravine 2 we provided a letter of support and it just shows
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that we’re working together but also it strengthens because then there’s an additional partner so
yeah, for those funds there’s different types of buckets of money for it. We have actually one
which is for the wetland at 101 and Pioneer Trail where the City and then the district purchased a
total of 3 homes to restore the wetland. Approximately $100,000 came from Clean Water Land
and Legacy Amendment so that one as well as DNR funds and so this one’s actually been
working with the City, DNR and then additionally those grant money. So it depends on who’s
taking the lead but we normally discuss with the City and then make sure we’re all aligned and
one of the components is, is it in your 10 year plan? Is it in your Comprehensive Plan? So either
the Comprehensive Plan or your water resource management plan and then for us our 10 year
plan because that gets you even more, I’ll call them bonus points so, so those are elements where
you strategize and make sure that you have everyone together.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Yeah.
Mayor Ryan: And we actually were just talking about priorities for this year and looking at
stormwater ponds is one of the priorities and Mr. Howley’s going to bring it back, just a plan
because obviously there’s a lot of ponds and never enough money because the expense that
comes with dredging which was a very expensive project for the City last year so with the
application, when you put these iron filings over does it always have to be applied in the winter
time or is it something that you can do, and is it special iron filings or should we anticipate that
people are going to go out and try to throw iron filings on top of ponds so I just want to be fairly
specific on this.
Dr. Claire Bleser: So to buy them in bulk there’s only two places that we know of. One out of
Chicago and one in Minnesota and actually our’s come out from Chicago because it was cheaper.
Don’t ask me why it was cheaper. And so it’s really kind of specialized. The reason why we’re
doing it through winter is actually the ice thickness gives us a flat surface to work with versus
having a boat and then you know taking a bucket and bringing it to the boat and unloading it.
You’re basically chucking it off to the side so it’s actually more advantageous to do it through
winter months because you’re able to walk and you’re able to have a Bobcat for example. If you
had a really large pond and you had 15 inches of ice you could bring a pick up truck. We’re not
doing that but, and so it’s kind of, it’s easier to deal with and actually apply uniformly through
winter months.
Mayor Ryan: Are there any, I guess my concern is you know if people hear about this, we get a
lot of calls about green, you know green ponds in people’s back yards and if now there’s that
thought that it could be a simple solution like this, is this something that homeowners, you would
steer them away from doing on their own.
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Dr. Claire Bleser: I don’t believe they could just go to Menard’s and buy it. It’s really a
specialized, like I said there’s two entities so it’s not something easy and it’s also very heavy and
so I don’t.
Mayor Ryan: Okay. I just want to be careful because you know it’s an issue that we hear a lot
of with people having stormwater ponds in their back yards and with the green algae and is it
dangerous and so we get numerous requests every year to have their ponds reviewed and dredged
and so I just want to make sure that we’re covering all our bases in terms of this is, you know a
study a project to see the benefits of this.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Yep and that’s exactly it. It’s part of a research project where we’re
evaluating this method and so it’s, it has the innovation of it and where we’re monitoring it.
Mayor Ryan: And there’s no dangers associated with high levels of iron in water, anything
going downstream?
Dr. Claire Bleser: No.
Mayor Ryan: Okay perfect. Council any questions? Alright thank you again for being here
tonight and for the partnership. We appreciate it.
Dr. Claire Bleser: Yeah, thanks.
Mayor Ryan: Are there any other visitor presentations this evening? Alright.
ADOPTION OF 2040 COMPREHENSIVE PLAN.
Mayor Ryan: Ms. Aanenson.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you Mayor, members of the City Council. While we’re pretty pleased, a
big lift for pretty much for a couple of years. The final adoption of the Comprehensive Plan so
back on January 22nd the Met Council did recommend approval of the Comprehensive Plan and
that’s subject to your approval so it’s been a heavy lift for a lot of the people in our department
and then obviously there’s other departments and I’ll go through that in a minute. Bob and I are,
Mr. Generous and I are going to tag team on this. But I want to start too first the Comprehensive
Plan is our vision statement and Bob left this date off because was so long ago. If you recall we
had a kick off meeting actually on April 20, 2016. We were in the senior center and we had all
the commissions in there. It was kind of a collective brainstorming the strengths and weaknesses
of the community so that kind of went to really the kick off. And then we also had to make sure
our system statements, what they projected for housing, job creation and those sort of things,
household make up match with the Met Council so we talked about that at that meeting. And
then from that we used the Planning Commission really as the public hearing portion of all that
and all the public comment and again I’ll go through that in a little bit but Bob did a pretty good
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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job of putting all the dates that we had on there so with that what I’d like to do is I’m just going
to briefly go through each chapter and then just kind of give you an overview. There’s a lot
more detail in the staff report again but I just kind of want to give you just a brief overview so
this is online and we, we’ve had it online with the 2030 too so the introduction is the first chapter
and this is the goals and policies of all of it. So again this is our vision statement and when I do
the onboarding for the Planning Commission I also did this for the Economic Advisory
Commission also. This is really the collective visioning statement of the community so I always
advise people that want to know kind of the flavor of the community, this is it right here and then
all of the goals so again our mission statement being a community for life and then within that
how that, we’re kid friendly. We want to, we have great school districts. All those sort of things
and then just a development, economic competitive. We had our largest employers in there.
Attractions and retention, redevelopment projects and then all the goals and policies of all of the
different chapters are all in one place. It just makes it easier in that collective spot in number
one. You get a quick snapshot. Get a sense of what the community’s values are. Again the
housing goals are kind of the implementation so when we have a project that comes before we tie
it back to that so if there’s a question of why are we doing this. What reflects our
Comprehensive Plan. Again there’s always a misnomer between the Comprehensive Plan, that’s
the vision statement. The zoning ordinance is the tool to implement that. People ask can you
change the Comprehensive Plan? Yes you can. You can make amendments to a Comprehensive
Plan. There’s a process for that. The Met Council’s actually expedited that. We haven’t done
too many of those but it can be done. That’s something we hadn’t thought of or unique
circumstances that comes up then we would, and the council wanted to consider that we would
go through that process. We did do that with the 61 corridor study. You know when we hadn’t
anticipated the funding for the bridge coming over the Minnesota River and so we felt like we
really should look at that area. Whether or not we could in a cost effective way provide
municipal services so we undertook that study so, because that study really looked at the last part
of land use that maybe, under valued or under consideration. We looked at providing some
additional so we did that 5 years before we did this plan so really we did not recommend any
land use changes and I’ll go through in detail. We did make a couple little tweaks but again I
won’t spend too much more time on introduction but again that’s just really the collective values
of the City.
Bob Generous: Should point out none of the goals or policies were revised after the original
submittal to the Metropolitan Council so.
Kate Aanenson: So really with the minutia and how we presented it so yeah the goals and
policies did not change from when you originally viewed it. Again you did review it last, over a
year ago and recommended it go up to the Met Council we had this year in flux. A lot of head
scratching. So then the next chapter is land use and there’s a lot of again we didn’t change a lot
of the sections here but I think we got hung up in this, and a lot of just again the nuance of
zoning and Comprehensive Plan and I think the Met Council got really hung up on two of our
zoning districts. The Central Business District, which does allow housing because they like to
break it out and try to do projections. Obviously their most important thing is making sure they
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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have enough sewer capacity so they want to see what those numbers are. And then with Avienda
there was a challenge for that too because as you know they’re moving some of those numbers
around too so we had to try to give some range that we could all agree on and if you can believe
that, that took months of discussion. So we did finally come to consensus and we made some
assumptions in there for densities based on kind of what they have for current plans. That one
that you had approved in the Avienda project and the downtown area, we made some
assumptions based on potential. What could be some changes but really pretty minor so that
was.
Mayor Ryan: Ms. Aanenson.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Ryan: When you talk about kind of that negotiation piece between you and Met Council
and projections with numbers, particularly with housing, is it that they think there should be
more housing? Less housing? What is it the discussion point?
Kate Aanenson: No, no, no. That’s pretty much a local issue. I think the issue was how were
we, how could they get a…number.
Bob Generous: Yeah they needed to be able to quantify how we would be potentially meet all
these housing goals that they, that we have in here. Specifically for the multi family because
they base ability to provide affordable housing on your higher density land uses so if you show
potential capacity you’ve met their goals or targets.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Bob Generous: And so we had to show them how we came to those numbers. We said we have
sufficient land designated to meet those demands, or those numbers.
Mayor Ryan: So it’s a designation of land to meet the number, the?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah what their expectation with housing numbers yep and then also capacity
so. So with that the growth forecast again. You saw these way back, or the council at the time
did saw those numbers way back and they hadn’t changed a lot. I think one of our first areas of
discrepancy was Bob challenged them on the employment numbers for business. We anticipated
bigger and I’ll give Bob kudo’s on this. Bob is actually the one that put together the Met Council
plat study numbers and we’ve been pretty much spot on in our projections so let’s just say we
had a lot of confidence when we went in there. Or I did in Bob negotiating that so actually we
changed those numbers and.
Bob Generous: Well we kept our numbers. We convinced the Met Council to revise their
numbers to meet our housing, or our employment projections.
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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Kate Aanenson: So we felt good about that so, so that did change. Again we had to match the
designation they gave us as emerging suburban. Again we always tell this to people. Our
highest land use, the most acreage is low density residential. It always will be going into 2040.
That’s always our significant land use but within that you know the complimentary of the
different housing types that people want and then also the business or the regional commercial,
downtown commercial. Again those are some of those things that help support. Not all the
households support the buying power. It’s those people that are here during the day that also
support the buying power. So I think under land use that was kind of the biggest, there was some
other bullet points in there but I think as far as minutia we had, all these tables that are in here are
the requirement. You know what are you meeting for your average density? What is your
average floor area ratio? How many employees do you have per square foot? Those are all the
stuff that we keep track of and do comparisons with. So I think then from that the 2030 land use
plan becomes the 2040 land use plan and again the couple of changes that were on there. We
had some properties that were really undevelopable that were actually in our, in the City’s name.
They were remnant pieces so we took them out of low density and we put them into preserve
area so they don’t get developed or counted towards something and then there was one more I
missed.
Bob Generous: The 3 acres for the office, from residential on the Erhart parcel.
Kate Aanenson: And that came up with the discussions right at the end before we submitted it.
We added 3 more acres to that so those were the only changes under land use. And again it was
just agreeing on how we presented the numbers. So that was a lot of the discussion so I’ll skip
down to.
Mayor Ryan: Was that the 3 more acres that wasn’t part of the Bluff Creek.
Kate Aanenson: Correct, yeah.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: It may be.
Bob Generous: It’s a separate issue.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah that one is up for discussion. So again not all the city’s in urban services
so they kind of wanted to see how the development pattern works and all that. We put historic
preservation in this chapter also. So Chapter 3 is the housing chapter and on this one, I’m not
sure that there was a lot of discrepancy. That one really went into land use. Again we keep track
of the different acreages again. We send up at the end of the year how many subdivisions we
did. The density. Those are all part of reports that Bob puts together for the Met Council. We
also track how many units we do. This is all stuff that’s on the website that we’ll be presenting
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
12
actually at that open house. We’ll be showing resident or business owners how they can find
this information. A lot of people want to know sort of demographics when they’re making
decisions to locate here so we keep track of that. You can always see the anomaly if we do an
apartment building or something multi family that the building permits for the year are higher so
that’s the other thing we kind of project for budget purposes. How many building permits do we
think are going to happen and we also try to see if on the horizon if there’s some office or
industrial coming forward too.
Mayor Ryan: Ms. Aanenson?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Ryan: I’m going to try to articulate my question as clearly as I can. So with Met Council
they have in their, in their mind every community has to have X amount of certain kinds of
housing. Whether it’s affordable. Single family. You know the different criteria for housing.
Do we put forward what we’re planning and then they negotiate and say you need more of this or
more of that? Is that par of the negotiation too or who determines?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah we didn’t change any of our land uses.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: It’s explaining how our central business district allows for, we have the
capacity for that already. We also have that capacity in the Avienda projects so we didn’t make
any changes to that.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: We had to just demonstrate that how we aligned and that’s where the challenge
came in.
Bob Generous: Right.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Bob Generous: Putting it on a spreadsheet so they could understand it.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah because when we say the central business district allows for high density,
well what does that mean? So then we gave the example of Avienda and could another project
happen and then excuse me, in the downtown but Avienda we know there’s a couple apartment
buildings. Maybe a senior housing and we have other opportunities for high density residential.
We talked about down at the bottom of the wye. We provided some high density. Some senior
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
13
housing there. The Moon Valley site and then also right at the bottom of 101 and 61 we saw
some medium density there so we’ve got that capacity.
Mayor Ryan: Okay but it’s the City that determines that.
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Ryan: I guess the question is that, it’s not Met Council that’s saying you have to do this
or you have to do that and then that sets the standard for the City. The City has the authority, the
final say in terms of this is what we want in our community. It isn’t mandated by the Met
Council?
Kate Aanenson: Well I would say it this way. We didn’t make any changes from what we had
from 2030 going forward because in our goals we’ve always wanted to have a variety of housing
types.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: So within that, so we weren’t forced to make any changes on land use
choices… We haven’t really, really this is my third comp plan. I don’t think we’ve ever had
since I’ve been here had to do that. We’ve got the zoning. That’s a great question though.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Because I think sometimes people think those sort of things but no. So it’s just
that you had that opportunity to provide. There is land available.
Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you.
Kate Aanenson: You bet. So housing type again we’re, so this is something that we looked at if
you were going to do for the Livable Communities Act we do have a high rate of owner occupied
as opposed to renter so there’s different types on that so you can see the housing type and the
percentages so we’re at 88 percent in 2,000 owner occupied and then 83 percent. So you see
some of that change. We’ve talked about there’s a need for some affordable rental for seniors so
we know that and I’ll spend a little bit more time. This is information that we use when we’re
talking to developers kind of where those gaps to help them because somebody will come in and
say I want to do some more memory care. Well we’ve kind of hit that and so we’ve got a great
chart that we put here. We took from a couple different sources and we actually used it in the
last planning report that we did. Trying to find it as we scroll through here. Right here. It’s the
Chanhassen projected housing demand. So when we meet with developers and they’re looking
at doing something we say well between now and 2040 we have a demand for 6,560 houses. Is
that all going to come to fruition? Maybe not but within that we break it into 3 buckets.
Ownership, senior and rental. So under the senior bucket there’s adult owned which could be a
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14
condo. It could be a coop. Under adult rental, that’s just a straight up. It could be you know
seniors only which we just did over at Powers Ridge. That was a seniors only. Or service
enriched for example Riley Crossing or a memory care. Something like Beehive. So if you
look at that and we say between now and 2040 the marketplace thinks that there’s probably 300
available so we don’t want someone to come in and say I’m going to give you 500. It’s like well
you know this is how we see it. This is our plan. This is our guide that we think to make a
healthy rounded community with a diversity which we say is our goal you know, that we’re not
all heavily skewed one way or the other. So this was great work done. We kind of compiled two
different things. The Carver County CDA put together a study. Their’s was more projected on
affordable rental and then…with Maxfield actually did another study so we kind of put those two
studies together and those sources are cited in here too but, so this is what we look at when we
tell someone comes in and meets with us and say I want to do you know 3,000 rental.
Affordable rental. Well we don’t need that many between here and now so again this is our
vision statement so it helps a lot when we go to the Planning Commission and give them this
information and again that chart was in our last one looking at where we were for service
enriched and the Planning Commission asked some good questions about that too. Then we give
where we are with rental housing. Where we are with rents and how many rentals. Since this
was approved we’ve actually you know we’re looking at some other rental projects. This is prior
to the Venue. I believe before those numbers aren’t in here yet either. So we internally track it
so I think those are the main things. Yeah, oh the Venue we did put it in? So kind of showing
where the owner occupied is and the older part of the housing stock. So then we keep track of
again all the multi family so those are all listed in here too. There’s the Venue that’s in here too.
You can see that was the original. So again we started this when we submitted it over a year ago.
A lot of things have changed since then, Natural resources. Jill pretty much wrote most the part
of this. Again if you look at the goals and policies we know when we had our visioning study
that’s a lot of the reason why people like Chanhassen. They like all the wetlands which we just
talked about. We want to keep those healthy and also they like the trees so how do we protect
those natural resources. So again those are some of our goals and again when we talk about for
developers you know this is a good for them to look at too. What we value and the reflection,
the implementation too of these values is we have a tree ordinance. We have a wetland
ordinance. Those sort of things. So I’m going to skip down to parks and trails. The award
winning section on parks and trails for their outreach. Public outreach. Parks and trails so the
American Planning Association gave parks and trails that section of the comp plan an award for
their great outreach so again I think you’re pretty familiar with this. Just kind of like to, I mean
obviously the Park, additional land that was done with the subdivision The Park. It’s hard to say
the park the park but, so those are all on and again this is important data when we’re talking to
somebody and said we’ve identified this area as a park you know and so when you’re coming in
this is our expectation because when we do a subdivision the extraction is either we can take land
or we can take park fees so this is where we would go back to say is this somewhere that the
parks has made a decision that they want to preserve land. It’s in a lot more detail on park and
rec unless you had anything more on that. Skip through that and get to transportation. I’ll let
Bob talk about that one.
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
15
Bob Generous: And the only real changes we made in that were labeling the trail systems for the
regional trails is what they wanted us to show on our plans so that worked. Transportation is one
of the systems that we have in the community. The transportation plan talks about automobiles,
trains, pedestrian access to the community. It’s looking at our system, the system that’s in place.
The deficiencies that we have and it also creates a functional classification system for all our
roadways. The amount of traffic that they’re going to take and the… There wasn’t really a lot of
changes required for that. They wanted us to expand our description of Southwest Transit into
our community so we put that information into there but we didn’t say that we were going to
increase it. We said this is a system that was in place as of December of 2018. We had maps to
correspond with that. They wanted to know where the park and ride locations were so we put
that in there. Our transportation system, the one thing it does have is our traffic analysis zone. It
shows how the city will develop over time for each of the land uses within that smaller area for
housing, population and employment numbers. It ties back to the land use element by using
those land uses to determine how we develop in the future and what our assumptions are based
on density or intensity of uses. And the spreadsheets that I was able to put together for that
allowed me to go to the Met Council and talk to their demographer and show them how we were
coming up with our numbers and he agreed to make the changes to employment for 2020 they
added 400 employees, for 2030 500 employees and for 2040 600 employees so.
Kate Aanenson: I just want to compliment Bob because that’s a really heavy lift because the
County also uses those TAZ numbers so again we were pretty confident in those numbers but
that’s also the genesis of where we begin and it also ties into the land use so I think that was
really tying into the 2017. One of the first things that got done was really working on those
TAZ, traffic analysis zones. I just want to make one other that they wanted, the Met Council
wanted on transportation, and I know Jerry will appreciate this but they wanted us to put all the
bus routes on that. Well Southwest Transit is so fluid, we chose to put a hyperlink in there
because they’re always you know refining their model and I wouldn’t want someone to go there
and something be stagnant and you know next year it changes so we just put in a hyperlink and
you can go to Southwest Transit and find that so.
Bob Generous: And then also we reiterated what the Metropolitan Council is doing for light rail
transit. We mentioned automated vehicles and we will continue to evaluate that and see how that
impacts the city’s infrastructure system so. And how we tie our transportation system is tied into
the regional system but also to the county’s and our neighboring communities so.
Kate Aanenson: And I would just add one other thing too so we do mark deficiencies of whether
it’s an intersection or it’s a road and they’re rated, whether it’s a collector or minor collector and
so all those have impacts and when a subdivision comes in, you know if it’s a collector they
can’t have front facing lots so those are all the things that we use to evaluate that so again we tie
back to that. And then also you can determine a subdivision or development is premature if it is
lacking…so if the road is deficient or the like again we tie that back to those roads.
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16
Bob Generous: So that’s transportation. And then there’s one of the missing links that we have
shows up on the map that’s in the Fountain Conference Room. The Crimson Bay connection so.
Mayor Ryan: Oh sure, yep.
Bob Generous: So and that’s tied into the comp plan. It’s one of the items that.
Kate Aanenson: So here’s the map right here. The deficiencies s.
Mayor Ryan: That we saw in the Arboretum area study.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, yep.
Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Bob Generous: The next one Chapter 7 is Sewer. Another system that has a lot of glamour to it
but again it’s based on the development intensities that we have for the communities spread out
by the TAZ’s and so our consultant was able to calculate what our future volumes would be for
the use of our sewer system. We have to make sure that the Metropolitan Council has sufficient
capacity to accommodate the city of Chanhassen at total buildout and we show them through our
numbers that we can do that. The big thing they wanted us, we needed to get a bunch of maps to
them and unfortunately while we were doing this we had some changes in employment and so
that was part of our delay in getting the information back to them so.
Kate Aanenson: That was actually specifically we had intercommunity connections so we
actually service Settlers West. We have a couple in Shorewood and we needed to find those
exact agreements and so through some of the changes in engineering it took us a while to dig
deep to find those.
Bob Generous: Yeah and they wanted to know what the projected flows would be in each of
those sub areas in or out of the community and so.
Mayor Ryan: So there was a lot of working with our neighboring communities.
Kate Aanenson: Yes so we’re very familiar with each others sewage right now.
Bob Generous: So but our sewer plan is, the other big hold up on this is they wanted us to
expand on the discussion of infiltration and inflow in our sewer system so fortunately through
engineering was able to come up with a 3 page rewrite that explained what the City had done in
the past. What we were doing currently and what we were looking to do in the future including
the study that is coming to City Council.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah that was our last one that we’re studying.
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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Mayor Ryan: Okay.
Bob Generous: So sewer was good. Water. Another develop a system to accommodate all of
the future growth that you’re projecting with your land uses for fire service and actually to
provide water to the residents and businesses. The only hold up on this is we needed to have the
DNR approve our Water plan which we submitted in 2016. They finally approved it last June so
we were able to, it becomes an attachment to the Water Comprehensive Plan but this shows you
where all the main pipes would be. The capacities of the sizes of them and the amount of water
that will be used and how much pumping this would have to do if there are any additional
reservoirs that the City will need long term. All of this comes together with we develop a
preliminary capital budget that shows up in Chapter 10 which is the implementation.
Kate Aanenson: I just want to add one more thing. So the sewer and water are really important
too when you look at development issues because sometimes as you know, south of Lyman we
need another lift station on Mr. Erhart’s property and so we’ve also identified another well site
so that’s always a point of conversation too when we’re talking to people is to say well we’re not
servicing that area. These other things need to happen first so it’s good to have all that put
together.
Bob Generous: There’s not much more for Water. Chapter 9 is our local surface water
management plan. We just in 2018 when the City approved submittal of our comp plan to the
Metropolitan Council they also approved the local help surface water management plan. That’s
what this chapter is all about. It’s about preserving our water quality and our streams and our
wetlands and our lakes. And we even had this evening a good example of what we’re looking at
to improve water quality. Fortunately we didn’t need to make any additional changes to that.
And finally Chapter 10 is implementation and capital improvement. It talks about what
ordinances the city or what projects the city will have to take to implement it. The real big one is
some of the surface water management ordinances will have to be revised to be consistent with
all the watershed districts that we have in the community. There’s some wetland rules that have
to be revised to be consistent with the watershed districts and the DNR so that’s spelled out.
Again it goes through a list of things that the City will need to look at in the future. It doesn’t
commit us to any of them. It just provides a guideline on things that will be important in
implementing a vision that we have for the City of Chanhassen.
Kate Aanenson: So I would just add too so as far as the action items. So we have been
periodically bringing some of those to you so we have some of those already. I think there’s
going to be some heavy lifting on the water resources part of it and those have been identified so
once we do those we send those over to the Met Council to kind of get the check that you’re
doing what you said you were going to do and we’ve never had problems with that in the past.
We just kind of tell them what stage we’re on if we’re working on something like that. So if the
council doesn’t have any questions, we’re certainly happy to take those but then we would just
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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be looking for a motion and we would send them back a copy of the Comprehensive Plan but
we’d be happy to take any questions that you have.
Mayor Ryan: Council any questions?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: My only question is more of a comment.
Mayor Ryan: Yes.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: You guys have been working really hard on this.
Kate Aanenson: It’s our third one. It’s getting to be routine.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I know. I remember back in the day on the Planning Commission
when we were starting.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, yeah.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: With the second one I guess and you know this is such great
information and it tells such a great story about our community and who we are and I think it’s
going to be a really useful tool and reference moving forward when it comes to planning the next
steps for our future so thank you to all of staff for all your hard work and everything you did to
make this successful. And congratulations to the parks department for your award. We didn’t
have cake?
Todd Hoffman: Back then we did.
Mayor Ryan: Any other comments? I would like to reiterate or basically repeat exactly what
Councilwoman Tjornhom said. What an amazing job Ms. Aanenson, Mr. Generous, that you
did. Congratulations Mr. Hoffman on the award for the parks section of it but it is you know just
the fact for all of 2019 it was the back and forth and making the changes and just how you shared
with us that it’s not only just looking at what’s happening within our city. It’s those partnerships
and relationships and communication with neighboring cities and the county and going back and
negotiating with the Met Council and all those little changes take hours and hours of work and so
not only do we appreciate how hard you worked on it but really the attention to detail because
when developers or people interested in this community in whatever fashion they are interested
in Chanhassen to be able to have something so well outlined and detailed and really thoughtfully
planned is really fantastic so just very much appreciate your hard work on this. Job well done.
So you’re looking for a motion or is it a resolution?
Kate Aanenson: It’s a resolution.
Bob Generous: It’s attached to.
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
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Kate Aanenson: To the staff report.
Mayor Ryan: So the motion is to adopt the resolution approving the City of Chanhassen 2040
Comprehensive Plan. Would that be the motion?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah. The first attachment.
Mayor Ryan: Okay. So if there’s anybody that would like to make that motion.
Councilwoman Coleman: It’s just the one on the top of the?
Kate Aanenson: It’s the first attachment.
Councilman Campion: I’ll make the motion.
Mayor Ryan: Okay, Mr. Campion.
Councilman Campion: I move that the City Council approves the resolution adopting the City of
Chanhassen 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
Mayor Ryan: We have a valid motion. Is there a second?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second.
Mayor Ryan: With a valid motion and a second.
Resolution #2020-10: Councilman Campion moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded
that the City Council approves the resolution adopting the City of Chanhassen 2040
Comprehensive Plan. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of
5 to 0.
Mayor Ryan: That motion carries 5 to 0. If anyone should ever complain about a project that
300 page document is pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. Well done.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS.
Mayor Ryan: I would just like to again extend, and I know we talked about this briefly in our
work session before but the City Council had an opportunity to have a legislative breakfast last
Tuesday with our legislators and commissioners and just wanted to extend council’s appreciation
for you coming to the meeting to talk about our City’s legislative priorities for 2020 so we
appreciate in their busy schedule leading up to the start of the session tomorrow we appreciate
Chanhassen City Council – February 10, 2020
20
them attending that meeting and having a discussion around some of our priorities for this year
so appreciate having that taken care of.
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS. None.
CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None.
Councilwoman Coleman moved, Councilman McDonald 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 8:05 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim