Loading...
CC VER 2020 04 27CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING APRIL 27, 2020 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, Charlie Howley, George Bender, Greg Sticha, Roger Knutson, Richard Rice, Matt Kerr, and Kim Meuwissen Mayor Ryan: Again good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight for our second virtual council meeting due to COVID-19. I would again like to review the guidelines for this meeting. While this isn’t the first run at a virtual meeting this will be our first meeting with a public hearing. We actually have 3 of them this evening so I ask for everyone’s patience. As we work through the agenda I will be asking each council member for a verbal acknowledgement throughout the agenda item and then ask for a roll call vote if required before moving onto the next agenda item. I want to make sure that everybody is aware that no council member will be holding chats or discussions on the side through the Zoom application and all discussions will be made public. When we get to the public hearing portion of the agenda I will explain further guidelines. For the record we have all council members present tonight. I am here in the council chambers are our 4 council members are joining via Zoom. Our first action is our agenda approval. Council members are there any modifications to the agenda as printed? As I call your name please state aye or nay. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: Aye. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Aye. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: Aye. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: Aye. Mayor Ryan: And I don’t have any changes as well so we will proceed with the published agenda. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 2 PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: Mayor Ryan: Next we have a public announcement and it’s for Arbor Day. The City of Chanhassen has been celebrating Arbor Day each for 25 years. This year will be a little bit different yet it can be the same in spirit. We will not be gathering for Arbor Day this year but I invite all area residents to celebrate Arbor Day in Chanhassen at home. Plant a tree. Take a walk in the woods. Do a nature craft or donate to a restoration organization and take a moment to recognize how trees make our city a better place to live. In times of stress nature provides a respite from the worries and an opportunity to refresh our spirit so please celebrate Arbor Day in your own way safely at home. And so the proclamation is I, Elise Ryan, Mayor of the City of Chanhassen do hereby proclaim Saturday, May 2, 2020 as Arbor Day and the month of May, 2020 as Arbor Month in the City of Chanhassen. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilwoman Coleman moved, Councilman Campion seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations: 1. Approve City Council Minutes dated April 13, 2020 2. Resolution #2020-26: Proclaiming May 2nd as Arbor Day 3. Release of Settlement Agreement Pertaining to RPVCWD Parcel Swap for CSAH 101 Improvements 4. Award of Bids for Chanhassen City Hall Reception Area Remodeling Project 5. Award Low Quote, Power Hill Park and Lake Ann Park Beach Playground Border Concrete 6. 2020 Watercraft Inspection Agreement All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS. Mayor Ryan: Next we have visitor presentations. Visitor presentations are included with each of our regularly scheduled council meetings. Recognizing that a stay at home order you may not feel comfortable attending a meeting we have created an email address and the link is on our website to submit questions or comments and we did receive a few of them this week so I will read those visitor comments and direct them to the appropriate staff. We received, Mr. Knutson do I need to recognize their name of the visitor as part of the record? Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 3 Roger Knutson: Yes. Mayor Ryan: This one came from Jessica Helland and she was wondering if, what the plans are for the parks and lakes, if they will be open and will the beaches be open at Lake Ann Park this summer and so what is our overall plan for the parks and recs this coming summer. Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council. Right now we’re kind of in a holding pattern waiting for the Governor’s stay in place policy or order and he is to modify that or not reinstate it this coming Monday so we expect to hear something Thursday or Friday of this week. From that we will start making decisions and bring them back to your May 12th meeting so we’ll have a better understanding of where we stand on May 12th. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you Mr. Gerhardt. Our next question came from Kurt Fossey, F-o- s-s-e-y and the question was about there are some weed trees growing along a chainlink fence and will the City look into that? Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Yes. We will look into that and I made a note of that earlier and I believe it’s the 101 trail and that’s our responsibility. Mayor R yan: Yes 101 and just north of Cheyenne Trail. Todd Gerhardt: Right. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. Alright thank you Mr. Gerhardt. And Mr. Knutson this one is coming to you. This is from David Erickson at 7095 Northwood Court. He is concerned about the additional or the amount of litter from mailbox stuffers coming to our residents and wanted to know is, does the City have any ability to ban any type of advertising especially with, during COVID-19 and is concerned about some of the transmission of germs. Can the City do anything? Roger Knutson: Short answer is that the U.S. Postal Service takes care of what goes into the mailbox. Something has to be stamped to go into your mailbox. If it isn’t stamped it shouldn’t be put in there and if they have any complaints they should bring it to the postal services. Mayor Ryan: Okay. Todd Gerhardt: I think to add to it Roger they’re putting it in the newspaper boxes. Roger Knutson: Okay. Todd Gerhardt: And I think isn’t that a First Amendment type. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 4 Roger Knutson: Yeah they could put it there. Mayor Ryan: So like in the mailbox they’re stuffing the newspaper slots and can the City ban anybody, landscapers, anybody from doing that? Roger Knutson: No. Mayor Ryan: Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you Mr. Knutson. We also had a Citizen Action Request form from Mr. and Mrs. Halama at 670 Creekwood Drive and regarding a Release of a Relocation Study. Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Yes Mayor, council members. The Halama’s are one of the residential homes along 101 and Creekwood and we are working with an appraiser. He did initial report as of March 31st. Charlie Howley, our Public Works Director and I met with the real estate specialist and we wanted to get at lease 2 more additional comp’s for that study. That was completed last week and we received a copy of that relocation report today. Our Public Works Director Charlie Howley and myself had reviewed that. Sent it over to Carver County for their review and I expect to get that back before the end of the week and then she should be hearing from the attorney on the project and get a copy of that report. Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you Mr. Gerhardt. And the last one goes to Mr. Sticha. The question and I will get the name of this because it was part of a separate email. Are contingencies being made in case of loss of a revenue stream and is the City Council and staff analyzing wants versus needs? Greg Sticha: Thank you Mayor. The answer to that question is yes. Staff has been monitoring the performance of the City’s general fund for about 3 or 4 weeks since the arrival of COVID-19 and the State shutdown. We are constantly monitoring the City’s revenue streams as well as expenses. We are monitoring what revenue losses we might anticipate and also some expenses that might come in a little under budget because of canceling of certain events. As the next few weeks progress and more decisions are made by the City Council as to what programming going forward might be happening we’ll have a little clearer picture of any potential deficit the general fund might experience but at this point in time we are monitoring all of the revenues and expenses. If there is the need to make adjustments to the 2020 budget staff will be coming to City Council immediately with those recommendations in the upcoming months but to answer that question is yes. We are daily and weekly monitoring all of those revenues and expenses. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. Thank you Mr. Sticha. And I know we did receive one other Citizen Action Request form but that was actually for one of the street projects so we included that and that will be addressed during the public hearing portion of the street projects. Again I just want to thank those that submitted their questions. That link is on our website so over the course of the next 2 weeks if you have something specific that you would like to address at a council Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 5 meeting please feel free to submit those letters or emails that way or you can reach out to staff or council directly to answer some of those questions but we appreciate your engagement. PUBLIC HEARING: MINNEWASHTA PARKWAY REHABILITATION PROJECT NO. 20-02; AWARD CONTRACT AND APPROVE ASSESSMENT ROLL. Mayor Ryan: No old business so we will move to F, the public hearings. Tonight we have 3 public hearings for various road construction projects. Like I stated in the beginning while we’ve done a virtual meeting before, this is our first public hearing and we have 3 of them so I’d like to explain how we’re going to conduct these hearings. We have made a concerted effort to ensure that our residents can participate in this process. Tonight after the staff report and any council questions I will open the public hearing. We were planning on beginning by taking phone calls but hopefully you got our notification that fiber lines have been, a fiber line has been cut and so no phone calls are able to come into city hall but please instead continue to send emails. I am still getting those emails so I will make sure that those questions get addressed as part of the public hearing. And if the phone calls come, if our phone lines come back up we’ll obviously take those public hearings but I’m getting the not likely going to happen nod. Next after, well so we’ll actually start with those that are here in the chamber so please wait to come forward when you’re addressed and then after everyone has spoken I will read the questions that we have received via email. After all comments and questions have been addressed I will close the public hearing for that project. We ask that you pay close attention while we’re discussing this project because there are 3 separate ones and so we want to make sure that you’re coming forward at the appropriate time. We ask for your patience and flexibility as this is new to all of us and we do want to make sure that all of you have an opportunity to be heard this evening so we will begin with whoever’s in the chambers. If you want to come forward and then after that I will go through the list of emails per project. Before I turn it over to our finance director who will speak specifically about the finance component of these public hearings I do want to acknowledge that getting an assessment notice during these unprecedented times may have been daunting, frustrating, overwhelming, or concerning and in some cases I know a little confusing to some. I along with city staff and other council members have received numerous calls and emails expressing concern and some suggesting that you know we’re being insensitive by moving forward with projects during this time and I can assure you we are not being insensitive. Council recognizes the financial impact that this does have on our residents in general but specifically during such a stressful time. This is something that we do not take lightly and we have asked our finance director to explain some of the background information about the assessment process, franchise fees as well as review the different scenarios for council to consider when we’re evaluating these projects. I think and I hope that by understanding the process better the payment options, the challenges and financial impact to residents if we wait to do the projects you will understand that we, and we always have, take careful consideration with each decision that we make. We absolutely do appreciate hearing from all of you and after tonight if you still have further questions do not hesitate to reach out. With that and before we get into the staff presentation on our first public hearing I’ve asked our Finance Director Mr. Sticha to go through some of the financing. Mr. Sticha. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 6 Greg Sticha: Thank you Mayor. First I’d like to make some comments about the franchise fee and I think there’s still some confusion from some of the public at least on why the franchise fee was implemented and what purpose it serves. In October of 2019 the City Council implemented a $5 per utility franchise fee to pay for the City’s share of doing $3.6 million dollars per year in construction projects. Prior to that point in time the City had been doing just under $2 million a year in construction projects. Local street construction projects. The need was presented by the engineering department as to why the increase was needed for the share of all of our local roads so I’m not going to get into a lot of detail on that. Early on in the process, so the City Council spent 3 years reviewing all funding sources for consideration to increase the funding for our local roads to the $3.6 million that was ended up on. During that time the City Council had dozens of public meetings including two public listening sessions and two public hearings before instituting the franchise fee. Early in the process the City Council did give some consideration to the possibility of not, of eliminating the special assessment practice of assessing 40 percent of the street project to the benefiting property owners. It became evident very early in the process that that was not going to be an equitable system going forward so the City Council quickly removed that item from a possibility of discussion. Over the next 2 years the City Council reviewed the use of a franchise fee and levy to help pay for it’s share of the $3.6 million. By it’s share I mean the 60 percent of the $3.6 million. The remaining 40 percent of the annual $3.6 million would still be supported by the special assessment repayments. The $5 franchise fee is enough to cover the City’s share or their 60 percent of the $3.6 million plus the additional levy that the City Council instituted last year and is going to consider another small potential levy increase this year. All of that information was presented over the 2 years during the dozens of meetings, the two public listening sessions and the two public hearings we had over the past couple of years. A couple of other items of note financially there have been some comments made as to the City’s property tax levy and tax rate. While is always a concern of the City Council and staff we would like to note that the City of Chanhassen has the lowest tax rate in Carver County. It has among the lowest tax rates in all the Twin Cities being in the upper 2 percent in terms of having the lowest tax rate. In addition the City has the lowest per capita spending of all of Carver County and has the lowest per capita spending of all of it’s comparable KFS cities. In regards to this year’s proposed assessments. The first payment for this year assessments will not be due until May 15, 2021 as part of your 2021 property tax bill. In addition staff is recommending the delay of the interest free full payment deadline from October 1st this fall until November 23rd of this year. The latest date that we can still then get the assessments on the rolls for the 2021 property taxes. Delaying this will give all property owners the ability to pay the full assessment with no interest by nearly 2 months. In addition it would also give a delay in the deadline will give all residents an additional 2 months of interest free if they do decide to have the assessments assessed to their property in 2021. Over the last several months because of varying reasons. Interest rates have fallen by nearly 2 ¼ percent. If this project had been issued last year the special assessment interest rate would be over 2 percent higher than it is at today’s time. Keeping in mind the current assessment practice, and previous assessment practices as well is to calculate payment of assessments with simple interest. Not compounded interest. If the City Council wanted to delay all special assessment principal and Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 7 interest payments it is something they could consider. However that additional burden to the revolving assessment construction fund would require an additional funding source from a different fund to be transferred in to do so. Under that scenario the assessments would be delayed to the property taxes for 2022. Lastly I would like to point out to any resident that is still having some confusion about the assessment process, about the franchise fee, about the funding for our local streets or about the City’s general fund budget in general I would encourage them to email or call me directly. I would be happy to schedule a lengthy meeting to discuss any or all of those items at their convenience. Thank you Mayor. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Sticha. Alright next we will move onto the first public hearing and for Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project number 20-02. Mr. Howley I will let you begin with the staff report. Charlie Howley: Thank you Madam Mayor, council. I’ve got a power point here so hopefully that will show up on the computer for the public to see. There we go. We’re off and running. Okay. Why are we here? We’re here to approve the assessment roll for the project. Tonight is where residents have the option to formally contest the proposed assessment due to their perception of not receiving the added benefit of the improvement. To date we have not received any formal contests in writing so public if you still feel you want to contest in writing you need to submit an email to publiccomments@ci.Chanhassen.mn.us which is in the bullet point on the screen or you could come into the council chambers by the time tonight’s public hearing is closed to formally contest the assessment. The other main thing we’re here to do tonight is award the construction contract. So just a reminder of the proposed project area and scope is Minnewashta Parkway on the west side of the lake inbetween State Highway 5 and State Highway 7. It’s 1.5 miles of full depth pavement reclamation including trail rehabilitation. ADA pedestrian ramp improvements, watermain replacement, sanitary sewer replacement, sanitary force main replacement, storm sewer rehabilitation, stormwater pond improvements and retaining wall improvements. This is an MSA dedicated collector route and there’s a few requirements we need to live up to to make sure that we can receive the state aid funding which you’ll see later in the presentation is the lion share of the funding for this project. The roadway must be classified as a collector or arterial. This one is. It’s identified as a collector. The roadway must connect to another state aid or trunk highway facility. This road does connect to the north and south two trunk highways. A state aid program is intended to provide an integrated street system consistent with projected traffic demands. A state aid street system acts as relievers to MnDOT’s trunk highway network. Roadway must be designed to the state aid standards. Minimum 30 MPH design speed. Certain standards as far as typical section, lane width and clear zones. Horizontal and vertical alignments and pavement design meeting minimum 9 ton where our city standard local road is a 7 ton pavement design. And we cannot restrict vehicle use on a state aid roadway. Watermain rehabilitation. I don’t think we need to go into the weeds here being that the project is already bid out but we do have a mix of ductile iron pipe, cast iron pipe. We have had a lot of issues over the years with cast iron watermain and in this stretch of watermain we’ve also had some documented break history with the ductile iron pipe. So we’re Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 8 planning on using a pipe bursting method to reconstruct the watermains which is a trenchless technique that we don’t have to open cut the entire linear feet of the watermain. Todd Gerhardt: Charlie sorry to interrupt but going from the residential 7 ton to 9 ton I think was your slide and that is not being assessed back to the residential equivalent properties. They’re paying for the 7 ton… Charlie Howley: That is correct. We normalize it down to and only assess to the 7 ton design as if they were in any other neighborhood in the city. Todd Gerhardt: And you’ll get into that. Charlie Howley: We’ve got a little bit of that later. Todd Gerhardt: And then the watermain and sewer lines are also not a part of their assessment. Charlie Howley: That is correct. Those are completely funded by the City’s other funds. Sewer and water funds, yep. Todd Gerhardt: Sewer and water funds, yep. And then the trail portion is not being assessed back either. Charlie Howley: Correct. Todd Gerhardt: Okay. Charlie Howley: Sanitary sewer rehabilitation. We’re going to line 6 segments. We’re going to replace force main in and out of lift station 6 and 7 due to them being cast iron pipe and having documented break history and we are going to rehabilitate the sanitary manholes to reduce our I and I. Stormwater, we verified the capacity of the existing storm pipes is adequate. There are 69 stormsewer structures along the corridor. 35 casting and ring replacements. 14 manhole reconstructures and 20 structures totally replaced. We’re doing some work on the stormwater ponds. One of the ponds near Lake St. Joe has completely failed. We designed to eliminate and replace it with a sump structure and new piping. Two other ponds near Lake St. Joe have a sediment accumulation and we’re going to dredge these ponds and remove voluntary tree growth and do some miscellaneous grading. The Minnehaha Creek watershed district rules are not triggered due to the creation of less than 10,000 square feet of new impervious. Construction phasing. This is a big part of this project. There’s a lot of work to be done and too much work for one construction season. We want to lessen the impact to the residents and the users so building this in two construction seasons seemed like the best approach. The southern half of the project will be constructed this year which is 77 Street up to Kings Road which I believe is also where Roundhouse, is it called Roundhouse Park George? Yeah. The northern half of the project will be constructed in ’21 and that goes all the way up to Trunk Highway 7. And there Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 9 will be a temporary signal installed at the intersection with Trunk Highway 5 to allow traffic to get out onto Trunk Highway 5. As we all know that is nearly impossible to do. The hopes are that that temporary signal remains permanent after the construction based on a few other factors involved. Schedule moving forward is tonight we have the hearing for the assessments and the potential award of the construction contract. If that happens tonight the contractor has indicated that they want to move quickly and potentially a pre-con could get set for next week and start construction potentially the second week of May and the entire project would be complete by October of ’21. Here are the bid results. We had 5 bidders. The low bidder was Lametti and Sons, $3.7 million dollars which was below the estimate so we got good bids. Real good bids. Mayor Ryan: Do you recall what the. Charlie Howley: Estimate was? Mayor Ryan: That’s the word I was looking for. Charlie Howley: George? George Bender: I believe it was $4.2. Charlie Howley: We’re thinking $4.2. George Bender: Let me ask Chadd quick. Charlie Howley: Chadd are you on the phone at all that you can remember? Chadd Larson : Yes the engineer’s estimate was $4.2 million. Charlie Howley: There we go. I just got to the staff report and I see it now, thank you. Mayor Ryan: A voice out of, no. Thanks Chadd. Perfect. So the original estimate was what they would have gotten their letter on was $4.2 and now. Charlie Howley: Yep. Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you. Charlie Howley: And we’ll show that difference. Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you. Charlie Howley: So here’s the assessment calculation. Again as Manager Gerhardt mentioned is we’re basing the street improvement cost as a 7 ton design. We also therefore are reducing the Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 10 assessable frontage based on some non-single family residential properties. That amounted to be 61 percent of the total frontage would be assessed. We then take 40 percent of that amount which is the amount we assess per our assessment practice and then we divide that by the number of properties and so the current assessment for the roll is $4,080. That would be the same amount for all properties along the right-of-way regardless if they’re in Phase 1 or Phase 2 construction. The preliminary assessment amount which you were alluding to Mayor was $4,610 so $530 less. Here is the map showing the properties. Yellow single family. Orange would be kind of a homeowners association and then green is public and what’s unique about this project is there’s actually two properties within the city of Victoria and not in the city of Chanhassen. Those are the A and B there in the upper left. And then there’s the north half of the project. What I’m going to do is on this map learned this last week, was it this one? Laser pointer. Again the split between Phase 1 and Phase 2 is going to be right here so everything left of that would be Phase 1 and every right of that would be Phase 2. The proposed funding for the project, as you can see and stated earlier the MSA is funding the majority. Certainly for the roadway costs and then there’s a break out of the surface water, sewer and water funds and then the special assessments there at the bottom for the total project cost. A little bit of what we’ve heard over the last couple of weeks since the official notice was sent out is we’ve heard a lot about speed limits and we’ve heard a lot about the road being a collector and why should it be assessed. Why should the residents on a collector roadway be assessed if it serves you know a larger region. And our response to that, if you would like me to tackle that now or wait til actual questions arise. I can take a stab now if you’d like. Mayor Ryan: Sure if you’re ready to answer it. Charlie Howley: Okay. Concerning the speed limit. We pulled up some old data as far as what, we’ve had some speed studies done over the year and how speed limits are generally looked at is, there’s what’s called an 85th percentile speed. There’s always going to be people who speed so the 85th percentile speed on this came in to be somewhere between 33 and 35 miles per hour. So the City acknowledges that we do have a bit of a speeding problem. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anybody. We’ve heard that from the residents. We heard it at the open house and we’re still hearing it today so a couple of things. One is I think the sheriff’s department has always known that we need enforcement out there and I think that’s been ongoing. But what this project is doing, and it’s already in the project as part of the bid is we are putting two electronic speed signs. One on the north end as you’re traveling south and one on the south end as you’re traveling north that I’m sure you’ve seen them in other communities or around town where you’re driving and it’s a speed limit sign. Speed limit 30 mph and then it will start flashing at you. Blinking when you’re speeding and that usually catches people’s attention and they really slow down pretty quickly. At least I know I do. They’re proven to work pretty good so we already have that in the project to again take a proactive, a step towards trying to helping the speed control out there. Again we will remind the sheriff’s department of increased enforcement without question and that’s going to be an ongoing thing. So that’s kind of our response to the speed limit question. As noted earlier we really changing speed limits last year, the State legislature passed the ability for cities, local governments to address and change speed limits. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 11 Previously it had to be done at MnDOT level so it’s in our purview if we so choose to look at a reduction of speed limit but there is a process involved and you likely would do that on a citywide basis, not just on one street. And if you go through the process of doing a study to see if a reduction in speed limit is warranted you might at the end of the day still say it’s not warranted and stick with the 30 mph so I think maybe more to come on not only that corridor but the city in general. I received some other inquiries into speed limits across the city and I think that might be maybe a work session or something that the council might want to hear about sometime in the future. And then the MSA guidance about not having lower than a 30 mph. You might have to battle that fight too. The one thing we do not want to do is lose MSA designation on this route. Mayor Ryan: Understood. Charlie Howley: An interesting anecdote about whether this road should be seen as a collector or whether it should be a private, you know sleepy little residential street that nobody should use as a cut through from one trunk highway to another. One of the first emails or phone calls I received when I started here, and that was the first of the year was a lady who was representing the Excelsior Lake Minnetonka Historical Society said you know we are interested in putting up some signs in your city and on Minnewashta Parkway to recognize what was it called? Yellowstone Trail. Yellowstone Trail back in 1912 was, and the first interstate highway. It went from Boston to Seattle and when it came through the cities it came along 7 and came down Minnewashta Parkway and west on 5 and west on 212 so it’s been a collector since 1912 if not greater so I just thought that was an interesting historical anecdote to share with everybody. Concerning putting up those signs they still want to do it. They just need to provide us with the signs and we were going to accommodate that. Mayor Ryan: And it was called Yellowstone Trail. Charlie Howley: Yellowstone Trail and there’s a website called YellowstoneTrail.org. It’s got this cool map that goes all the way across the country so, anyways I thought that was interesting. Another note on that is in 1971 is what we can gather is when it was paved originally. It was known as County Road 15 so it was a county road back then. And it was paved. Had bituminous curb. It had a thicker street section than the roads around it. In 1971 it was totally reconstructed and brought up kind of to what you see today. Sidewalks. Put you know a much thicker street section, what have you and that is what we can gather is when it was turned back from the County to the City and became an MSA route because MSA dollars were used to do that 1971 reconstruction. So further evidence that this thing has always been kind of a collector roadway and not meant to be just a little residential street so just for the record. So those were about, those were the two biggest items we’ve heard to date so I’ll move on. Here is the proposed motion. There’s two of them remember. One is accepting the bids and award of the contract and the other is to adopt the resolution for the assessment roll. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 12 Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Howley. I will, before I open the public hearing I will go around with council and ask if you have any questions for staff. Councilman McDonald any questions? Councilman McDonald: Not at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Not at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: I had one quick question. A number of the emails and calls that we’ve received it talked about changing the process for which we notify residents about an assessment. Is there any discussion amongst staff of addressing those concerns? Mayor Ryan: Mr. Howley? Charlie Howley: Yeah thank you Mayor, council. We think that we can make a small improvement to the notification process. We think that once we have a project on our 5 year pavement management capital improvement plan which is a map that annually we’re going to update and look 5 years out and we plan on updating that map in the early fall time period. After we get our pavement evaluations done right around Labor Day and that’s a map that we would work with council on a work session. Once we have next year’s areas identified that’s an opportunity to where we can get something out to residents. Meaning that would be about 6 months ahead of when we’re in this process now going through feasibility. Designing the project. Getting bids and doing assessment rolls so any further ahead than 6 months may be a stretch because information changes. We could certainly strategize that and talk through with the council on maybe a better approach but right now it seems like we kind of wait until that initial public open house which is about 3 months ahead of the project so we can increase that maybe to 6 months and that would be our recommendation and something we could easily do. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. Anything further Councilwoman Coleman? With your questions. Councilwoman Coleman: Not for now thank you. Mayor Ryan: Okay Mr. Gerhardt. Todd Gerhardt: Just to add to Councilmember Coleman’s comments. Charlie is exactly right. We need to narrow our focus and it’s one of our key financial strategies to talk about future projects but we did have a neighborhood meeting on Minnewashta Parkway so it was an open house and people were invited to it. I want to say it was probably July-August of last summer. And then typically we have another open house similar to that where we talk about the assessments when we have some bids and fine tune the plans and specs and sit down and get into Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 13 the dirty details of those plans and specs but COVID-19 kind of eliminated that neighborhood meeting that we typically have and that’s where a lot of these questions get hammered out and really educate the public on the whole bid process that Charlie went through right now and, but not trying to blame COVID-19 for this. It’s already getting a hit pretty good today but because of that social distancing we didn’t do that and we tried to do it over the phone and have public contact with our staff and for the public to call in with any questions so. Typically it’s two public open houses that we have and this year we did not get that second open house in. So I just wanted to make that clarification. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Gerhardt. Anything further Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: Not at this time, thank you. Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you. Councilman Campion, any questions? Councilman Campion: No questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: I have one question and this is directed at Mr. Sticha and it pertains specifically tonight because you know we’re calling the approval of the actual assessment and I know the other two public hearings speak more to the call for you know to start with the specs but tonight we’re talking about the specifics around the assessments and I’m, I know I had asked you this earlier but you know what are the options because we’ve heard of people saying you know can you delay? Can you defer interest? What are some of those options and is it something that the city staff has looked into? Greg Sticha: Thank you Mayor. Yes staff has looked into a multitude of financing options for this year’s projects. Due to the amount of reserves within the revolving assessment construction fund we’re somewhat limited by being so flexible as to delay all of the assessments for this year’s projects in an entire year. That would drain all of the reserves and we’d be in a negative cash position. In order for council to consider that option, in other words delaying not only Minnewashta but the 20-05 project and Lake Lucy projects you would have to find a substantial cash transfer from another existing fund to make that happen. Still could be done. That transfer would probably have to be in the neighborhood of about $250,000. A couple of other options and one of which I spoke at the beginning of my presentation is we are delaying the interest free period related to this assessment from October 1st to November 23rd. So if you want to pay your assessment in full without it going to your property taxes in 2021 you now have until November 23rd rather than October 1st. In addition anybody that is having their property taxes assessed for this rather than pay it in full by November 23rd you’re receiving the same benefit of an additional 54 days of interest free payments. One last option that the City Council could consider would be to offer all the assessments this year for next year’s assessment payment at a zero percent interest rate. In other words negating or not charging an interest rate for the first year of the assessment in 2021. That cost is, if all payments were delayed. If all payers decided to not pay their assessments in full the cost to the City would be right around $100,000. While Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 14 some portion of this year’s assessments will most likely be paid in full the real impact to the City’s revolving assessment construction fund would be about $80,000. That $80,000 is something that the revolving assessment construction fund could manage without making an additional transfer. What that would involve would be an amendment to the resolution that’s in front of you this evening indicating that you would like to have a zero percent interest payment for the first year of the assessment and then at the stated rate of 5 ¼ for the years thereafter. On the Minnewashta assessment that would save about $236. On the other assessments. Mayor Ryan: For the year? For the first year. Greg Sticha: For the first year. On all of the other assessed projects the savings would vary between about $113 and to as much as $250 for the Kurvers Point rehab project. So each project is a little different as they have a different number of parcels and a different cost structure to each so the cost savings would be a little different for each of those projects but on Minnewashta Parkway if you decided to defer the zero percent interest for just the one year you would save the residents the $236.50. Deferring all of those projects, all 8 of them would like I said probably cost the revolving assessment construction fund in the ballpark between $80,000 and $100,000 which is something and I think the revolving assessment construction fund could absorb and still maintain a positive cash balance. Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you. Something to consider. Thank you Mr. Sticha. With no further questions I hereby open the public hearing. Please if you’re here for the Minnewashta project please come forward to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Kevin Zahler: I guess that’s me. Okay I’m Kevin Zahler. 6651 Minnewashta Parkway. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Kevin Zahler: So first of all thank you very much for allowing me to come here and talk to you especially under these conditions. I know you had to make special arrangements and I appreciate that. We also appreciate that you’re fixing the road. Minnewashta Parkway really needs repair and I’d suggest that it probably needs repair because of the industrial traffic that goes over it as well and you’re taking care of the infrastructure underneath and we appreciate that. So tonight’s more kind of about assessment and I’m not really here to talk assessment. I’m here for other reasons. However there’s some disconnect in your whole assessment program I think. Your documents say all benefiting properties and yet only the people on Minnewashta Parkway are being assessed and there’s a whole ton of people that have no way out of that neighborhood without going on Minnewashta Parkway so confused by that but not looking for an explanation tonight. I’m just stating that there seems to be a disconnect. There’s several HOA’s. One in particular has somewhere between 100 and 150 homes that have access to a half acre property on Minnewashta Parkway. That’s a big impact and that HOA’s are not charged anything and that is to me a disconnect as well but again I’ll say I’m not here about assessments. And then the increasing tonnage. Charlie clarified something tonight that was a surprise to me. Your Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 15 documents say you’re increasing to 10 tons that you’ve published on your, on the city website and Charlie just said it’s 9 tons. And in any case it’s an increase and so it’s inviting even more heavy trucks going down Minnewashta Parkway so why am I here? I’m here because it’s a residential neighborhood. Charlie talked about it and I don’t, sorry I don’t remember the date. 1901 Yellowstone Trail. 1971 something so we’re in a new normal. Highway 41 probable didn’t exist in 1901 or 1971. There are better ways to get from Highway 5 to Highway 7 than using our residential parkway. And so the reason I’m here is what I think, I personally would like to partner with the City to find a better way. I also was enlighten by Charlie’s dialogue. You know in the past a year ago you folks said no, no change on 30 miles an hour. Tonight I heard there is room for change on 30 miles an hour and that’s a big deal for us. There are a lot of people with houses very close to that street and Charlie admitted himself that the traffic is high speed. Higher than it should be. There’s no sheriff ticketing people. We haven’t seen one in years. So we need to do something about, for the safety of the people. One of my neighbors two doors down last winter was almost hit by a car that crashed into a snowbank. And there are other families on the, along Minnewashta Parkway that have told me that they fear for their children because of the speeds and they’re not sharp curves on Minnewashta Parkway but there are curves. Blind curves that can put people at risk. You folks, well all of us actually. We’re all part of Chanhassen but you have walk, running bike path. You have Roundhouse Park. You have the beach. You have the fishing pier. This is a residential neighborhood. It doesn’t need industrial traffic. In one day last summer I counted 30 multi-axle trucks go past my home within one hour. That’s not acceptable. Not for a residential neighborhood and we’re being assessed, again it’s not about assessment. I’m happy to pay the assessment if we can have a residential neighborhood. A true residential parkway neighborhood but we’re being assessed the same as any other street and nobody else has to put up with that kind of traffic. You also used the term arterial. That’s exactly what the City of Minneapolis and St. Paul used. They have arterial roads that are now 25 miles an hour so we know it’s possible and we’d just like to work together with you to, well ideally we’d like to have controlled access. That may be very difficult so what steps can we take to improve our lot in life and I’d like to work more closely with Charlie and George in accomplishing those things. Mayor Ryan: Wonderful, thank you sir. Kevin Zahler: Thank you. Mayor Ryan: Appreciate it. Thanks for coming tonight as well. My first question is going to be Mr. Knutson, is there some legal reason behind the word benefiting properties that you can explain? Is that used across the state? Is it a city term? Could you clarify for me please. Roger Knutson: It is a statutory term and a Constitutional term. Mayor Ryan: Okay. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 16 Roger Knutson: What it means is that the value of the property has gone up in value by the assessment. By the amount of the assessment or more. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. And then Mr. Howley can you explain or clarify the reference to the HOA and the half acre. I mean obviously somebody, the homeowners association owns that and they were not assessed? Can you explain that? Charlie Howley: Mayor, council. Can I go back to the benefiting properties? Mayor Ryan: Okay. Charlie Howley: My take away is the term is benefit, all benefiting properties will be assessed. And maybe we’re getting into the weeds of language there but maybe our assessment policy could be tweaked to just say all benefiting properties of the project shall be assessed so it’s not inferred that all benefiting properties are across the city. And just a little maybe something we can look at tweaking the language. Roger Knutson: I’ll just comment on that. Every street you have people who don’t live on that street use it. That’s universal. Or almost universal. Charlie Howley: So Mayor back to your question, on the assessment roll, and I might have to defer to Chadd or George here, the list of the 18 properties does not list the HOA properties as being assessed. Now I just want to verify that that’s a true statement. George Bender: The assessment map shows them being assessed. Charlie Howley: Okay. George Bender: And I’m not looking at the roll. Charlie Howley: So maybe the roll has an owner to it but the owner doesn’t say you know homeowners association of whatever so. Chadd can you verify quickly if you’re on the phone that these HOA properties that are on the map are on the list? Chadd Larson: Yeah I’m trying to verify that right now here. Charlie Howley: Okay sorry Chadd. The list I was looking at is just the 2020 so the Phase 1 assessment rolls. I’m not looking at the ’21 assessment rolls. So on the ’21 assessment rolls the HOA properties are on the list and they do get assessed. Mayor Ryan: And they do get assessed, okay. And then was it just an error in terms of 9 tons, 10 tons? Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 17 George Bender: Yes it’s been listed as both. It should have been listed at 9 ton the entire time. Mayor Ryan: And it just was a mistake that it was 10 tons? George Bender: It was listed at 10 tons sometimes that is correct. Mayor Ryan: But it is 9 tons? George Bender: Yep. Mayor Ryan: And what was it previously before we constructed, how was this road construction? George Bender: It’s always. Mayor Ryan: It’s always been 9 tons so we’re not going up in. George Bender: No. Mayor Ryan: It’s always been 9 tons, okay. And I think Mr. Howley to your point in acknowledging that you know the speed situation I would agree because this isn’t the, this isn’t the only project that we hear about speed. We’re moving right into the next one on Lake Lucy and that is also a major concern about speed and so I would make a recommendation that we have a work session on evaluating city wide speeds so. Charlie Howley: You bet. Mayor Ryan: So if we could get that on the docket that would be great. And I think that’s it for follow up for the public hearing. For those questions. Is there anyone else in the council chambers or senior center that is here for the Minnewashta public hearing? No. Okay. We did receive some emails so I’d like to read those. Acknowledge those. I think some of the questions may have been answered but I want to make sure that we get them on the record. I don’t have an address associated with this but this is from Judy and Rick Berglund. Again please incorporate a plan to reduce and slow traffic, increase safety and protect the new pavement. And so I think that has been asked and answered on some of the measures that we’re going to take. We have the flashing speed or speed limit signs and then we’ll take a look at the overall, the traffic study with that. The next question is from Matt and Pam Moran. M-o-r-a-n. And if you can again just address the, you know the difference between an arterial road and a collector road and just quantify the difference of that, that would be helpful please. Charlie Howley: Sure, happy to Mayor, council. Collector and arterial are traffic engineering terms and they mean things. An example of an arterial, there’s even principal arterial and minor arterials so like Trunk Highway 5 and 7 are principal arterials. Or even Powers Boulevard would Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 18 be considered a minor arterial so an arterial is the big road. The big 4 laners that have you know 50 miles an hour. Then there’d be some subtle you know nuance statutory requirements but I don’t want to get into that. A collector is a step down. A collector is kind of what it sounds like. It’s collecting traffic from local areas to get it out to the arterials and that’s exactly what Minnewashta is. It is not an arterial but it is a collector. Mayor Ryan: Okay. And then is there anything that we as a city knowing that it’s a collector road can do to limit who drives down that road? Charlie Howley: No. Mayor Ryan: And then the last question as part of this email, and this would go back to Greg and I know you addressed it earlier but if you could again acknowledge about the high taxes in our city and that the taxes continue to go up in the city. Greg Sticha: So I would point to a number of metrics that the City uses but the first thing to keep in mind when you’re looking at your property tax bill and in particular in the city of Chanhassen, roughly only 20 percent or 20 cents on the dollar actually goes to the city so your largest portion of your property tax bill is going to the school district and county. So that’s one thing to make sure that you have a complete understanding of. Secondly the City’s tax rate as it compares to all of it’s neighbors in like communities, etcetera is among the lowest in the entire Twin Cities. So I can assure the City’s property tax rate not only is the lowest within Carver County at just over 21 but it’s also the lowest among the entire Twin Cities. Similar communities like Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, some of our larger neighbors have property tax rates that are 1 ½ to 2 times higher than our’s so in terms of your property taxes on your city portion of your property tax bill I can assure you, you are paying among the lowest tax rates in all of the Twin Cities. That’s also evidenced by our per capita spending which is an item we share with the City Council every year when we go through the budget process. We have the lowest per capita spending in the county. We have the lowest per capita spending of all of our 10 comparable cities that are like in identity to us. So from that standpoint as well we compare very favorably if not at the top of the list in most occasions in terms of property taxes and spending. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Sticha. Todd Gerhardt: Greg do you have those slides from the budget that you can show some of the same. Greg Sticha: I have one that I can put up here and this is, compares property tax rates for the Twin Cities and let me just put it up on the stand and show you as a comparison. How we compared. These are 2019 tax rates so these are dated by a year but our tax rate changed very little this past year. Zoom in. Mayor Ryan: Nann can we do the overhead please? She’s working on it. There we go. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 19 Greg Sticha: You kind of want to zoom in on it a little bit. Mayor Ryan: Yep she’s working on it. I can read her mouth. She said zoom in. We’ve got a lot of zooming right? Zoom meeting. Zoom in. Perfect, thank you. Greg Sticha: So as you can see by this graph and this compares to all the major suburbs in the Twin Cities, the Chanhassen tax rate is 21.104. You take a look at Eden Prairie at 31.7. Minnetonka at 30, almost 35. St. Louis Park at 46. The City of Chanhassen’s tax rate compares extremely favorable across the entire Twin Cities communities. In addition the tax rate for Carver County, again the 21.104. The next closest city in terms of tax rate is Chaska and they’re at 27 so again in terms of property taxes the City of Chanhassen compares very favorably in terms of spending and property taxes. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you Mr. Sticha. And then this is from Peter Moe, 7161 Minnewashta Parkway and he stated that he lives on Minnewashta Parkway and supports the staff’s recommendation and approval of this project and assessment roll. And then Mr. Zahler we have your Citizen Action Request form as well and that one, did you, let’s see here. Similar concerns about safety and assessment practices so those are the same ones and that was Kevin Z- a-h-l-e-r at 6651 Minnewashta Parkway. And that is it for the emails that were submitted for this public hearing. If there is anybody else that is wanting to come forward, and I don’t see anyone else so therefore I will close the public hearing and turn it back to council if you have any further questions or comments I will again put out there Mr. Sticha’s comments in terms of offering a first year interest, interest free as part of the assessment. One year interest free. Greg Sticha: One year. Mayor Ryan: One year interest free for, and if we do it for this then it would be for all of the, all of the projects that we’re discussing tonight so I wanted to put that out there for thoughts or feedback and other questions from council. Councilman McDonald we’ll start with you. Councilman McDonald: Thank you Mayor. Yeah I’d like to explore this a little bit better as far as the interest free. This is kind of new. I understand and we could absorb this cost within the pavement management plan, is that correct Mr. Sticha? Greg Sticha: Yeah the anticipated loss of revenue of somewhere between $70,000 and $80,000 up to as much as $100,000 I think we can absorb within the pavement management fund. Councilman McDonald: So then in reality instead of giving the people til November of this year we’re actually giving them until is it November of the following year to pay off interest free? Greg Sticha: In theory yes. They would have to pay their principal payment with their property taxes next year but then at that point in time by November 23rd of 2021 if they wanted to pay off Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 20 the remaining portion, the remaining 7 years of their assessment without interest they could do so. But they would have to do it at that point in time. They could not wait until going into 2022. Councilman McDonald: Okay. And this would be just I would say one time deal with these particular projects that we have coming up this year. Is that your recommendation? Greg Sticha: Yes it would be in regards to the current financial situation that this and all communities are facing right now we would consider this a one time recommendation for one year’s worth of interest. Councilman McDonald: Okay. I have no questions about the project. I think that was explained pretty thoroughly so I have no further questions. I just wanted to explore the interest free aspect of this. Thank you. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Councilman McDonald and I would also like to clarify in my discussion before this meeting when Mr. Sticha and Mr. Gerhardt and I were talking about the interest free. We would want to make sure that we are very clear that this was, we would state it as COVID-19 because we know it can present some challenges going forward and so we just, you know this is in response to the challenging situation we are in today. So we would make sure that we specified the reason for the one year interest free, you know interest free payment so, I just wanted to clarify that mister, or Councilman McDonald. Councilwoman Tjornhom any thoughts or questions? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes. My first thought was to start by thanking staff for your presentations tonight. You know trying to keep us out of the weeds as much as you can and to kind of try to stick with the details of what’s really important and on our minds tonight which is not if this project needs to be done. It’s how it should be done and the concept of no interest for a year is new and I think it’s definitely something we should look at. Greg I was writing stuff down quickly as you were talking and did you say that the average, the Minnewashta project that we’re talking right now, what was the yearly savings a resident would see with this zero percent interest? Greg Sticha: For this one year they would receive roughly a $236.50 interest reduction. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay and so when I heard you describing all of this, I mean we’re talking that if you took all projects if it was going to be used for one project it would be for all of them. Is the cost is staying roughly between $80,000 to $100,000? Greg Sticha: Yes if we were to go ahead and charge interest for this first year for all the projects it’s to the tune of nearly $100,000. Keeping in mind that there will be some early payments. There always is so we wouldn’t have recognized that revenue either way so the number’s probably a little closer to $70,000 or $80,000 dollar hit to the pavement management fund by giving zero percent for this one year but that is correct. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 21 Councilwoman Tjornhom: And then how would we make up for that money moving forward with the pavement management fund? Greg Sticha: I don’t think there would be a need to necessarily change any plans within the pavement management fund. It would just be a use of reserves within the pavement management fund. The City Council knowing fair well there are not a significant amount of reserves in that fund and we would probably be barely getting by but I think it is something that the fund reasonably still sustain for one year and one year only. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Thank you and that’s part, I think part of my concern is digging into those reserves when we don’t necessarily understand or know when we might need those reserves moving forward for something else and you know what really is that timeline or the resources we have to come back and fill that fund up with the zero percent interest. While the savings is probably beneficial to the homeowner, I’m trying to weigh in my mind what’s beneficial for the City and for the residents as a whole and you know will this mean that at some point we have to come back to the residents and say alright we are now you know $100,000 behind in our pavement management program and we’re going to ask you to contribute in the form of a tax increase or whatever it may be so those are some of my thoughts about it. I want to be considerate with the crisis that we’re facing yet I still want to be cautious knowing that we just don’t have that crystal ball to know what next year looks like and if we once again could be in the same boat where people are still struggling and we have another assessment coming up and you know what does next year look like? Would we decide to do the same practice? That puts us you know now we’re $200,000 in the hole with our pavement management fund so maybe I don’t think I can clarify some of my thoughts or tell me if I’m on the right track or yeah. Mayor Ryan: Mr. Sticha. Greg Sticha: Yeah. I think the answer is you’re on the right track. The $80,000 to $100,000 the fund can absorb without us making any changes. Going forward for years past this one year, if you were to continue this practice in future year’s assessment rolls then we would have an issue and we would have to make some changes to accommodate that going forward but this one time zero percent interest for one year the fund could sustain that amount. But future years the answer is no. The fund probably cannot sustain that. Mayor Ryan: And could you clarify when you say absorb? Maybe that helps. Sorry cut you off councilwoman. Greg Sticha: Sure. That essentially means the use of reserves without delaying or changing any of our projections or scheduled projects. Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council, just one other area to keep in the back of your mind is, is how you’ve treated previous assessment projects too and you know we’ve seen people when we sillily Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 22 considered a rebate and you know we heard from people from 30 years ago that got assessed that wanted a rebate and so somebody can always find some type of hardship but not to the level of COVID-19 so I think you’re in a position to make an adjustment because of this and, but like most leaders you’ve got to stand strong with your conviction of making that change because of COVID-19 and so with that said I just wanted to make sure you fully understood both sides of the story. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom do you have further questions for Mr. Sticha or Mr. Gerhardt or Mr. Howley? Councilwoman Tjornhom: You know I’ll let them all listen to this one. When we call it the bids have come in but do you see anywhere that there’ll be any more future cost savings that maybe we haven’t seen yet with this project? Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, councilmembers. Charlie if you want to jump in. I do not see any cost savings on this project. We got the bids. The bids are based on unit prices in most case. Lineal pipe prices so I don’t think, you know usually you go out in the field and you find something. It’s usually a change order because it’s poor soils. It’s not because you go out there and you find oh my gosh this is all sand underneath here. If it was that case the road wouldn’t be breaking up so, so I don’t see any future cost savings. Charlie if you want to add anything. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Can I say something before Charlie adds something? Mayor Ryan: Go ahead. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes. I noticed in the bids when they came in there were, the top, the lower two were you know within the same kind of ballpark of each other but then the other 3 that came in seemed so much higher. Is there a reason for that Charlie that there was kind of such a wide spread of estimates that came with the bids that came in? Charlie Howley: Mayor, council, let me get to the bid amounts here. One reason for a potential explanation, and I don’t know that we talked a lot about this internally is the contractor Lametti and Sons, the low bidder is more of a utility contractor because of how much watermain work there is on this project. They’re not normally a roadway contractor so they would sub out the pavement so whereby some of the other, Northwest Asphalt and some of the other bidders they’re roadway guys so then they sub out the watermain work and so that delicate balance of the watermain scope versus the roadway scope, they can sharpen their pencils and if the other, the roadway guys were all using a different sub for the pipe bursting the watermain stuff and his bid was this, all they can do is up and down their pricing on their pavement and the curb and what not. Whereas by Lametti self performing the watermain work they can save a lot of money so I think George if you, yeah that the risk of that watermain work is quite high so that’s why having that utility contractor the low bidder is where we saw the savings. At least that’s my guess. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 23 And then to answer the question, yeah normally we’re not going to see a bunch of savings once the project’s there. Normally change orders come in and the price goes up. It’s just kind of how construction works unfortunately. Todd Gerhardt: You said it not me. Charlie Howley: Even if savings weren’t realized our City is making the assessment roll based on the bid price and it is what it is right. We don’t then do it at the end of the project and see where we came out but some cities do that. We don’t do that so even if there were some savings it doesn’t show up. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman? Councilwoman Tjornhom: That’s it for me now, thank you. Mayor Ryan: Next we’ll go to Councilwoman Coleman. Any thoughts, comments, questions? Councilwoman Coleman: Yeah just one. I just want to make sure I’m clear on this. So there’s no way to change the interest option later if we wanted to hold off for now and say because we don’t know where this tunnel is going to end. We think…end of this COVID tunnel and if we see an increasing number and how many projects will this end of up engulfing over time. Is there an option once people are back to work to then address the interest issue? Mayor Ryan: Mr. Sticha. Greg Sticha: I think I understand her question. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong Ms. Coleman, your question is so if we were to give zero percent for this first year to Minnewashta and if the economy improved and when we had the assessment hearings later this summer for the other projects we could reconsider doing that. Yes the council could reconsider doing that but from a consistency standpoint I think your best practice here would be to offer the same zero percent for one year for all projects this year and while market conditions and the overall health of the economy could change over the next couple months I think the safe route is to be consistent for all the 2020 projects. Minnewashta, Lake Lucy and the entire 20-05 project and across all 5 projects that is what the $80,000 to $100,000 is so when I mentioned that dollar amount that was not just for Minnewashta. Let me bring up a spreadsheet and this will show you the interest that we would be foregoing for one year for all 8 projects and you can take a look at how each, each of the projects are impacted. I’m going to ask her to zoom in again. Mayor Ryan: Nann could you zoom in again on the overhead please? There’s a lot going on. Thanks everybody for your patience with people on Zoom and a lot of moving parts. Thank you. Greg Sticha: But if you look at this spreadsheet you can see the total cost of all 8 projects is $100,000. The amount that we’d be foregoing on Minnewashta is $87.50 and it varies by project Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 24 size. Number of parcels. And then you simply take the interest earned on each assessment amount and relay it across the column to the total amount so when I’m talking about the $80,000 to $100,000 that I was talking about earlier, that would be assuming zero percent for all of these projects for one year. Not just Minnewashta. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Coleman does that answer your question? Councilwoman Coleman: Yeah and I appreciate the insight on that thank you. No further questions from me. Mayor Ryan: Great thank you. Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: One follow up question. This would be for Mr. Sticha. So in the first year no interest option, under that if any property owners decided within that first year or you know by the end of the first year to pay off their full assessment would they, would there be any I guess penalties for that? Greg Sticha: So I’m assuming your question is if they decided to have the 2021 assessment payment be principal only which is what this would essentially do and they decided to pay off the remaining portion of their assessment sometime in ’21 would there be any penalties to pay off the remaining 7 years. The answer is no as long as they paid it off by November of next year so if we do not receive that payment at the City by November of next year we cannot then remove it from the assessment rolls at Carver County and then it would be too late so if they wanted to completely pay no interest on this assessment at all they would have to pay the remaining 7 years paid off by November of next year, 2021. Councilman Campion: Okay. And so otherwise are we expecting residents that are electing to pay their assessment in full, would they ideally be paying by this November still or we would not expect any payments until. Greg Sticha: I imagine there will be some that will still pay it off in full this, by this fall. They either simply don’t want it to, want to deal with their escrow or for whatever reasons. They might have a pending sale on their property but I do anticipate that a small percentage of them will pay it in full by November 23rd of this year and that’s why I’m not anticipating a full $100,000 hit to the fund because of that because I think there will be some instances where people will pay it off regardless of what the City Council decides tonight and a portion of those assessments will be paid off by November 23rd of this year. Councilman Campion: Okay understood, thank you. Mayor Ryan: Anything further? Councilman Campion: Nothing further. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 25 Mayor Ryan: Mr. Sticha I have one question as it relates to the no interest and you say that the, the budget or payment management program would take a hit anywhere from let’s say $70,000 to $100,000 give or take. And that’s based on what we have budgeted that we’re going to spend correct? Or does that not impact, or does it only impact the reserves that we have in the fund at this time because we’re absorbing it. Greg Sticha: It would only impact the reserves because we would be absorbing it into, out of the reserves within the fund so it would not impact any future project. Mayor Ryan: But if you know right now we have $3.9 million budgeted, right? $3.7, somewhere in there right? Somewhere around there. Greg Sticha: All of the projects that we are discussing this evening, including the ones later this summer that are to be assessed, we could pay for all of those as well as $3.6 million in projects for next year. Mayor Ryan: Right, okay. Thank you. Todd Gerhardt: Yeah Greg showed the interest for each one of those 6 neighborhood projects, Lake Lucy and Minnewashta on that sheet and the interest lost as a part of each one of those. Mayor Ryan: Okay. So council before, because it would be part of the motion I think we need to bring it back and state if you’re in favor of offering for 2019, 2020 projects only a zero percent interest for the year because that would then change the proposed motion. So if we could go through and get everybody’s thought on that so we can move forward with any further questions or a motion. Councilman McDonald. Councilman McDonald: Thank you Mayor. You know I was leaning towards being in favor of doing this until Councilwoman Tjornhom brought up some interesting questions. This whole thing we’re doing it because of COVID-19 but yet what everybody tells us is that there’s going to be a rebound so this time next year we could be faced with a similar problem again and now what do we do? We would have no reserves to offer the same deal going forward. I’m a little concerned about that because I’m not sure this is just a one time thing and again while no one can look at a crystal ball to decide what’s going to happen I think it’s something that needs to be discussed and thought about. I think as all the council members have said this was something that was brand new to us. We had not discussed it previously or had a chance to really go through it so because of that I’m a little concerned about wanting to do it. I really want to do it but I’m concerned about the future because if we do it one year I know there’s going to be a lot of pressure we need to do it the next year and we won’t have the funds available. I’m just, I’m not sure where I want to go with this now. As I said before I thought it was a good idea and it would be very helpful but in the long run the City may be, it may not be so helpful you know for the City so I guess I’m still taking it under consideration as to which way I would want to go on Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 26 this but I do need some assurances that I think down the road how would we address a similar problem if we use up all our reserves this year. One thing I’ve learned from street projects if you begin to give special consideration in one year’s project people expect it in the previous years and they will expect it going forward so even if we vote on this somehow it needs to be worded as such that you know this was a one time deal. That it would not be considered in the future. I mean I would like some of those guarantees around it or else we’re going to be faced with this same thing every year because we have in the past, if you’re an elderly person and you’re on a fixed income people have come to us, that’s a big crisis to them. This year it just spreads out a little bit more than just the elderly or people on a fixed income but those kind of problems never go away. They’ll always be there so I want some assurances that if we’re going to do this it is clearly stated as being strictly a one time deal and as a matter of fact maybe it should even be a separate thing that the council votes on and then applies it to all the different projects. Instead of being part of each project maybe what it should be is a special assessment or a special consideration on the part of council for projects in this particular year. I’ll wait and listen to see what the rest of council’s ideas are but that’s kind of what I’m thinking of going forward. Thank you. Mayor Ryan: Thank you Councilman McDonald. Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I bringing up the points that I brought up earlier I think that this is a gesture to residents, letting then know that we do understand and we are aware of the hardship that they are facing not only with city assessments but just sometimes with life in general. But with the dollar amount that they’re saving or would not be spending on interest I’m concerned about the ramifications of our fund for the pavement management fund that we have and how we’re going to make that back and what is the impact if for some reason next year we’re, whoever’s on council is still talking or has to address this again and then they’re in even double the amount. $200,000 or more and where does the City find that? I worry sometimes about the City’s finance structure and the little pots of money that we do have to use in times like these but at some point those pots are going to be dried up and I want to make sure that we use that money in the best way possible to make the biggest impact for our city and our residents. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Thanks for your thoughts on that. Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: Thank you Madam Mayor. I definitely share the concerns that people are feeling about COVID -19 and the funding. Where we’re going to find money for special projects and assessments like this but I do share Councilman McDonald and Tjornhom’s concerns about the precedent that this is setting. In my previous comments I mentioned how we don’t know where this tunnel is going to end. When we’re going to be out of this. …this virus to know that we’re not going to be sitting here in a year from now and talking about the projects for that year in the exact same spot and then have to do this again and then we’ll be depleting all of our funds so at this point in time I feel that it’d be best for the city as a whole to not move forward with it. The interest free portion that is. However I would like to have a special working session to have a conversation as a council about efforts we can make to offer some sort Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 27 of assistance or help once we are able to meet in person again to kind of look back and see where the City’s needs with the COVID-19 are as a whole so those are my thoughts with this. Mayor Ryan: Great. Thank you councilwoman. Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: Yes I agree with many of the comments made by my fellow council members. I sincerely empathize with you know the…of those that are going through financial hardship because of COVID-19. Whether that be decreased pay or furlough or you know heaven forbid they lost a job. And so I was leaning towards the idea of the one year interest free but then as you know we’ve discussed it more I believe that the precedent that it would set you know could have some negative consequences down the road and we have seen it you know as we discussed possible structure changes over the last couple of years that anything we change with a given point in time isn’t fair to all those you know prior that had paid under a different structure so all that being said I’m now I think against the first year interest free. Mayor Ryan: Great, thank you Councilman Campion. And I share all of your sentiment. I know Councilman McDonald you had mentioned that you know it hadn’t been brought up in any of the material from staff or had really been presented and it was I’m sure a favorite of Mr. Sticha because it was an eleventh hour request on my behalf just to explore that option and part of the reason why I wanted or asked him to kind of explore that as an option as we consider all of, you know what this means to our residents was really to encourage this sort discussion amongst council. You know for residents one to see if the impact would be great enough to move forward with it with you know for our resident’s sake but not have it be a financial burden on the City but also I think it’s important for all of us to be acknowledging, which we have, the situation that our residents are in and as Mr. Gerhardt said and we all know when we went through the franchise fee conversation you know we implemented the franchise fee because of our fund balance and by you know providing a zero interest for a year then it puts us in a challenging predicament which we were hoping to get out of with the franchise fee and so I am concerned that that puts us in a challenging situation and again I think just setting precedent that we can fluctuate on what interest and how much interest and when we’re going to charge interest I think is a dangerous precedent to set so I appreciate Mr. Sticha you taking the time to explore that option so we as a council understand not only the zero interest for a year but delaying the projects for a year what that does to our fund balance and just have a better understanding of the impact to our residents but the overall impact to the City because it does affect all of us as we continue to move forward with road projects. I know not only for this project but the two projects that we’re going to be discussing next you haven’t had an opportunity to have public meetings but you know these are the conversations that you also have at your public meetings to understand the assessment process and practice which hopefully you’ll have an opportunity to have in the future but again I agree with the rest of council, or I guess Councilman McDonald you hadn’t finalized your thoughts on it but I do believe that the zero percent interest for a year is not the best option going forward so with that I welcome any further comments or motions as it pertains to the Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 28 Councilman Campion: I will make a motion. Mayor Ryan: Alright Councilman Campion. Councilman Campion: I move that the City Council adopts a resolution accepting the bids for the Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project No. 20-02 and awarding the contract to Lametti and Sons Inc. in the amount of $3,691,889 and the City Council adopts a resolution adopting the assessment roll for Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project No. 20-02. Mayor Ryan: Is there a second? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Todd Gerhardt: You can ask for questions. Mayor Ryan: Alright who, oh Bethany okay. Councilwoman Tjornhom with the second. I saw somebody raise their hand and alright go ahead Mr. Howley. Charlie Howley: Thank you Madam Mayor, councilors. The resolution concerning the assessment roll that was in the packet, paragraph number 2 had one typo in it so I want to make sure that’s noted in your motion just to make sure that it’s clear. And it’s, what would this be, the second sentence of paragraph 2 where it says this assessment will appear on the first property tax statement for 2020. That should be 2021. Councilman Campion: Alright so I acknowledge and would like to include that correction. Mayor Ryan: Is that valid Mr. Knutson? Roger Knutson: Yes. Mayor Ryan: Okay. Alright we have a valid motion and a second. Councilman Campion moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the City Council adopts Resolution #2020-27: accepting the bids for the Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project No. 20-02 and awarding the contract to Lametti and Sons Inc. in the amount of $3,691,889; and the City Council adopts Resolution #2020-28: adopting the assessment roll for Minnewashta Parkway Rehabilitation Project No. 20-02 with the correction made by the City Engineer/Public Works Director in paragraph 2 of the resolution. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Ryan: That motion carries 5-0. And Mr. Howley you’ll continue to work with the residents on some of the speed concerns and we will get in touch with the sheriff’s office to make sure that we have heighten oversight on that road please. Thank you. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 29 PUBLIC HEARING: LAKE LUCY REHABILITATION PROJECT – ORDER IMPROVEMENTS AND AUTHORIZE PREPARATION OF PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS. Charlie Howley: I think we’re just waiting for the people to come in if there are anybody. Mayor Ryan: Yes we’re just waiting to see, we have folks separated in the council chambers as well as the senior center so we just want to check to see if there’s anybody. Okay we are good to go. Alright Mr. Howley. Charlie Howley: Okay thank you. Another short presentation here to get things kicked off, there we go. Lake Lucy Road Rehabilitation Project. City Project 20-03. Again why are we here? We’re here to conduct a public hearing concerning the feasibility of the project. We then are here to order the public improvements to allow for the preparation of plans and specifications and to bid the project. What we are not considering tonight is approving the assessment amounts or authorizing the construction of these improvements. So Lake Lucy, last council meeting this was in the consent packet so we didn’t talk about the project in any depth at all and the last meeting was merely to accept the feasibility report. So now that we’re here for the public hearing and ordering the project just a little background for the public. It’s the highlighted yellow portion on the map is the roadway in question. About .7 miles of street and it’s inbetween Galpin and Trunk Highway 41. It involves a reclamation of the adjacent trail and does include ADA pedestrian curb ramp improvements. As is typical we do spot curb and gutter replacement. We do minor utility repairs including replacement of bolts on valves. We repair or replace deficient storm sewer manholes. And we replace existing storm and sanitary manholes that do not meet current standards to help with our I and I. And on this project after we did the analysis of the stormwater we need to add 3 additional storm structures to prevent localized flooding during a 10 year event with is our design event to keep the road clear. The rehabilitation summary is we did do a geotechnical report. What we did to analyze the best method of rehabilitation is we review the geotechnical report. We review the overall pavement condition index and we make engineering judgment to determine the appropriate rehabilitation technique. Based on those items on this project we recommend a full width 2 ½ inch mill and overlay with an additional Texas Underseal and what the Texas Underseal is, is it merely is we do a chip seal which is what you see on the top of a roadway every year. We do chip seal but we do that on the milled surface and then we pave on top of it. This is a newer idea. It’s been around for a few years and it’s been used by our neighboring neighbors to good applause so it’s a way to make a mill and overlay even better without going to the next step of a full depth reclaim. Mayor Ryan: Longer wear and tear? Is that the. George Bender: Hoping to get 2 to 3 extra years of delayed crack seal. Mayor Ryan: I know you love those guaranteeing questions. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 30 Charlie Howley: Again we did on the trail itself we did evaluate options. Whether we reconstruct it. We just do a quick overlay or we do the full depth reclaim on the trail itself and it made the most sense to do a reclaim on the trail. The trail cost as noted earlier and we’ll address later is not included in the assessment amount. Watermain rehabilitation. Again bolt replacements. There’s not any cast iron watermain in this area and we haven’t had any break history in this area so we don’t, we aren’t proactively going in and replacing any main line piping. Sanitary sewer. It was televised and analyzed. The existing piping is not in need of major repairs. We reviewed the manholes and again we generally will just do I and I improvements with the castings. Stormwater. As I mentioned earlier we do need to add 3 more structures to get some of the water off the roadway in a 10 year event. Other than that we addressed, we reviewed the existing structures and need to make improvements to the castings and rings as is typical when we do a road recon. Similar to Minnewashta this does not trigger any water quality or treatment requirements from the watershed district due to the not increasing our impervious. So estimated cost summary is in front of you. A total project is $722,500 and these are feasibility costs of course so they include some contingency factors and also include indirect costs for hiring the consultants and the like. Funding will be through utility funds, state aid funds and special assessments. The assessment summary. The map shows the properties that are in the assessment roll and what is there, 20 of them. The red one is actually our own parcel. I think that’s well house, is it number 10? George Bender: 7. Charlie Howley: 7. So that’s our property. It’s a collector so again we look at the front footage and we eliminated for example, I’m not going to use this little laser pointer again. That didn’t work laser pointer. Like this for example was taken out of the frontage to again as I’ve been using the term normalize the front footage for these properties and then of course being a collector road we normalized it to a standard local street width of 31 feet and of course the trail is not in the assessment so the map is in front of you and breaks down to a per unit assessment rate of $3,490 which is right in line with the average cost for an assessment on an elevated mill and overlay project. Our schedule. We did do an informational meeting back on January 28th. We accepted the feasibility report last meeting, the 13th. Tonight is where we’re considering ordering the project and holding the public hearing and then there on out lays the project schedule. We want to jump into design. We’re going to put pressure on the consultant to get it done as soon as possible so we can get it out to bid. Bidding climate is very good. We estimate opening bids in early June. Then moving forward in July with the assessment hearing and awarding the contract and then by the end of July hopefully starting construction and we’ll be done by fall. What we’ve heard on this project from the public over the last couple weeks has primarily been, I live on a busy road that serves the entire city. Why am I being assessed so very similar to what we heard on Minnewashta. And I will I think generally I explained the normalization factor but there is another piece of information that I thought was pretty interesting and give me one. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 31 Mayor Ryan: How far are we going back? Todd Gerhardt: I lived on the road when it was gravel. Charlie Howley: To further just justify the point of what I’m referring to as normalizing the assessments since that’s what we’ve heard I wanted to delve into that a little bigger and explain it a different. If we assess this per the cost that we’re estimating to build this road the assessments would be $8,420 per unit. Because of our normalization to just as if it were a local road that they live on it’s down to the $3,490 so almost 60 percent less just by the way we do the calculation so I wanted to bring that up. So our recommendation is from engineering and financial perspective the project is feasible, necessary and cost effective and we recommend that the City Council order the improvements and authorize preparation of plans and specs. And there’s the proposed motion when we get to that. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Mr. Howley could you before I turn it over to council questions could you go back on your slide when you talk about the public on your power point. Can you pull up your power point or does Nann pull up your power point? Charlie Howley: I have it here. Which? Mayor Ryan: On just the process. Charlie Howley: Oh the schedule. Mayor Ryan: Yes. Charlie Howley: Right here yep. Mayor Ryan: I just again I think it’s important since the project before it was actual final assessments. This is not, this is in preparation for your plans and specs and even though we’re holding a public hearing tonight once you get those final numbers in and like you said the assessment hearing, accept and award contract, that will be an opportunity for residents then to come back into another public hearing. I just want to make sure I got that. Charlie Howley: Yep Mayor that is correct and in the schedule we also have outside of the formal public hearing we have a public information meeting that we would like to do. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, right. Charlie Howley: That’s normal what we do. Mayor Ryan: Yes. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 32 Charlie Howley: We just didn’t get it done on Minnewashta so that would be in June as well. Mayor Ryan: Perfect thank you. Alright before I open the public hearing we’ll go through and ask council if you have any questions of staff at this time. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: No questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: So yes I have a question regarding the State Aid funds. I know that there is some question about state aid funds when it comes to roads because of the situation where people just aren’t driving as much so some of those revenues they’re expecting to come in aren’t coming in so does someone want to address that situation with us as far as what we know regarding what we can anticipate seeing from that fund? Mayor Ryan: Mr. Howley. Charlie Howley: You bet. Mayor, council. You probably don’t remember but our last council meeting consent agenda we had a resolution that we passed that was meant, we needed to do that to send to MnDOT to reserve our state aid funding for 2020. We did that. We got that to them and they responded. Not only did we reserve the amount of money we were requesting but we held our place in line so the state aid funds, you’re right are funded by gas tax and it gets filtered down. Normally what this, what MnDOT does is they have a green, yellow, red kind of order and the MSA funds have been green forever. Meaning it’s a solvent account. There’s tons of money there. They want people to use it. The day of the last council meeting I got an email from MnDOT lowering that to yellow meaning it’s guarded because of exactly what you’re asking. They have no idea what it’s going to look like you know with gas tax revenue so they‘re just playing their cards right and saying it’s elevated. It doesn’t mean it’s going away. But for 2020, because we submitted that resolution and the request to hold it we’re solid for 2020 and I have that in writing so this project would be withdrew on 2020. Next year’s state aid if we had one, you know who knows. But as of right now this project certainly is guarded, or sorry has the money to move forward and pay for it. Mayor Ryan: Okay thank you. Did that answer your question Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes it did thank you. Mayor Ryan: Anything further at this time? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Not at this time. Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you. Councilwoman Coleman? Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 33 Councilwoman Coleman: No questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: I have one Mr. Howley. Again I know we’re going to evaluate speed over across the city. Are there any plans in, or part of these plans are we going to ask for bids for those flashing speed signs or are we holding off until we do a full city assessment? Charlie Howley: Mayor, council. On this one during the public open house that was really the one comment we got was speed and we did a speed study as a result of that. Just internal so not a real engineered study but the data we saw during that time was that we don’t really have a speeding problem, meaning the 85th percentile didn’t rise to a level that we would say we’ve got a speeding problem. However because we got the input from the public I think as we go into design, meaning not as a work session about a citywide speed limit reduction. We certainly during design can entertain putting those flashing speed signs on this project, absolutely. If it makes sense to put it in here we’ll do that and include it in the bids. And you know there’s other traffic calming measures that can be incorporated that we could evaluate during design but I don’t think we need to wait til we do kind of a larger city wide speed work session. Mayor Ryan: Right. Charlie Howley: I think there’s things on this road that may be worthwhile and we’re certainly going to look at that if we move forward into design. Mayor Ryan: Okay p erfect because I would say that outside of the assessment practice the number two comment was the high rate of speeds on that road so that would be great if you could look into that. Alright with that I will open the public hearing. If you’re here for the Lake Lucy public hearing if you’d please step forward and state your name and address for the record. Okay, with nobody here. Nope I have to read the emails before I close it so I apologize about that. The first one was, let me get the name. Stephen Kerkvliet, S-t-e-p-h-e-n K-e-r-k-v-l-i-e-t and he lives at 2201 Lake Lucy Road. And his concern was, he believes that the City should be paying more for the cost associated with such roadwork. Does any, Mr. Howley or Mr. Sticha want to again talk about the 60/40 assessment practice? Charlie Howley: Well I would go back to the way we evaluated it and we normalized it to a local road as if they lived in any neighborhood in the city and I used the amount of money it would be costing him if we were charging them even 40 percent of the full cost. And we’re cutting it by 60 percent so we’re not charging these residents, these 20 lots for the entire cost. The City is picking up the remainder. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 34 Mayor R yan: Okay thank you. The next one was from Barbara and Marv Miller at 2340 Lake Lucy Road. Their questions were around the franchise fee for road improvements. The understanding was franchise fees were to eliminate the need for assessments and I know Mr. Sticha addressed that in your opening comments that the franchise fee covers the 60 percent that the City pays. The second question was benefiting property definition is inaccurate and I believe Mr. Knutson answer that previously that it’s, say it again. It’s in state statue, that’s the language. Roger Knutson: Yes that is the language in state statute. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. And I think that this has been a common comment and again something that I think we will address is just about the communication and we’re going to work to see if we can evaluate something in advance and just continue to improve our communication to residents because we obviously recognize the challenge of getting, getting those assessment bills so we’ll see, we’ll work on that. The next email is from Adam Lukens but I only have his work address so we don’t need to share that. He talked about the assessment practice which I think and benefiting which has been asked and answered. Benefiting again surround homes. Who is actually the real benefit and the new construction that’s going on. They’re also benefiting but as we’ve addressed before what benefiting actually means. And let’s see here. This one is from Bruce and Holly Olson at 2432 Lake Lucy Road. We again talking about the increased level of traffic and who’s paying for it. The funds that are used. The 60 percent/40 percent general and what’s, how we budget from a pavement management practice has been addressed. And you addressed that the trails are taken out of their assessment so they’re not paying for the road and this is kind of an aside but I heard this a couple times. If a snow plow damages property what does the City do? Like when you know with the grass or something on their property. Who should they contact? Todd Gerhardt: They should contact Charlie Howley and Charlie will get ahold of Charlie Burke and if we can find another Charlie we’ll give it to him but typically our practice is we highlight areas. It’s usually that first snowplow in the beginning of the year where the turf is still warm and we kind of roll it up and so we’ll come back and lay black soil down with seed and repair the area is our practice so if there is any sod damage we will fix that. And curb damage occasionally we’ll come back and fix that. And then of course potholes. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. And asking again about the connectivity of the road between 41 and Galpin and a collector road and it’s designation has been asked and answered. And again just the information just to clarify for everybody that’s watching. All of this information, the Minutes from this meeting. The, all of the information as it relates to the project is on our website. And updated. Go ahead Mr. Howley. Charlie Howley: Mayor, council I do have some documented phone logs on this one. Mayor Ryan: Okay. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 35 Charlie Howley: We had 1, 2, 3, 4 but two of them were also ones that you already mentioned. The email then called so I won’t, but two that you didn’t mention was a Suzanne Schaer, 2360 Lake Lucy. They don’t believe they fully agree with the City’s practice as written for assessments and should be spread out so again I think asked and answered. Franchise fee question and then requesting a speed limit reduction. Again asked and answered. And then the other one was a Matt Kramer, 2165 Lake Lucy Road. He supports the trail rehabilitation project but he does want to recommend a hard look at 25 miles per hour but he supports moving forward. Mayor Ryan: Alright. Charlie Howley: I wanted to get that one in. Mayor Ryan: Perfect thank you. Todd Gerhardt: His dad is an ex MnDOT engineer. Mayor Ryan: And those were all the emails that were submitted for public comment for the public hearing for Lake Lucy and I don’t see anyone else here so I will close the public hearing and return it to council if you have any further questions, comments or a motion. Councilman McDonald? Councilman McDonald: I have no further questions. If you’re willing to take a motion I’ll make a motion on this one. Mayor Ryan: I’ll come back to you Councilman McDonald. I want to go through and make sure no one has any questions. Councilman McDonald: Okay. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom, any questions? Councilwoman Tjornhom: No further questions. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Coleman. Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: No further questions. Mayor Ryan: My apologies. Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No further questions. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 36 Mayor Ryan: And I don’t have any questions either. Councilman McDonald if you’d like to make that motion. Councilman McDonald: Thank you Madam Mayor. I would make the motion that the City Council orders improvements and preparation of plans and specifications for the Lake Lucy Road Rehabilitation Project No. 20-03. Mayor Ryan: We have a valid motion. Is there a second? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Mayor Ryan: Councilwoman Tjornhom with the second. We have a valid motion and a second. Resolution #2020-29: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded that the City Council orders improvements and preparation of plans and specifications for the Lake Lucy Road Rehabilitation Project 20-03. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Ryan: That motion carries 5-0. Thank you everyone. PUBLIC HEARING: 2020 CITY PAVEMENT REHABILITATION PROJECT NO. 20- 05: ORDER IMPROVEMENTS AND AUTHORIZE PREPARATION OF PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS. Mayor Ryan: And our last public hearing for this evening is for the 2020 City Pavement Rehabilitation Project No. 20-05. Nobody here? Okay. Thank you for checking George. We will start with a staff report. Mr. Howley. Charlie Howley: Thank you Mayor, council. I’ll wait for it to come up on the screen. Alright 2020 street rehabilitation projects. City Project 20-05. I guess I’ll say right off the bat that where we are in the process for this project is exactly where we’re at for the one that we just talked about. The Lake Lucy project. So our actions for this evening are to conduct a public hearing concerning the feasibility of the project. We want to order the public improvements to allow for preparation of plans and specifications and to bid the project. What we are not considering tonight is approving the assessment amounts or authorizing construction of the improvements. The schedule to date, I threw this in here based on our comments about communication. The RFP was released on November 27th. We approved the agreement on January 13th. We mailed a public open house on January 28th. We conducted the public open house on February 11th and then last council meeting we accepted the feasibility report and called for the public hearing and we mailed out the public hearing notice on April 16th so tonight is the public hearing and ordering the project. The proposed project areas on this map highlighted in orange. It’s about 6.2 miles of pavement rehabilitation. Spot curb and gutter replacement. Public utility rehab similar to the other project and replacing water gate valve Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 37 bolts, I and I improvements, the sanitary sewer, storm sewer structure rehabilitation and adding in drain tiles in areas of concern. There are not any trail or ADA pedestrian ramp improvements necessary on this project. Something else worth noting is in an area, in some of the area in the Trappers Pass neighborhood in the northeast corner of the city we, was it last year or 2 years ago we went ahead and already did some spot curb and gutter work and some drain tile work. In 2017 so, almost 3 years ago now so that was in preparation of this project so we already invested what we normally do as part of this project ahead of time so we’re not recouping those costs and bringing them back into this thought that’s done and gone so. Here’s the area of Trappers Pass. As you can see it’s recommended as a full depth reclaim. It’s a large area of all these roads. Here’s the Marsh Drive area. Again yellow indicates full depth reclaim. Lake Lucy on the left. Full depth reclaim and Redwing area on the right so that’s just a mill and overlay. Kurvers Point on the left, full depth reclaim and Choctaw Circle on the right mill and overlay. Again the summary of what we did is we commissioned a geotechnical report to evaluate the existing pavement and the subsoil. We did pavement cores. We reviewed the recommendations. We reviewed the OCI’s and we used engineering judgment to make an informed decision regarding the rehabilitation technique. There’s 4 areas for full depth reclaim and 2 areas for mill and overlay. Again watermain rehabilitation bolts. We don’t have any main sections of pipe within these project areas that require replacement. Sanitary sewer was televised. Existing piping is in good repair so again we’re just limited to I and I work on the manholes and castings. And then stormwater, we did review you know some emergency overflow rates. We do need to do final survey to verify a few other things. We’ve reviewed the storm manholes and catch basins and again similar to the other two projects we don’t have any triggers for additional stormwater quality or rate control because we’re not adding the threshold of impervious surface. Here is the budget summary from the feasibility report. Here are the estimated cost summary broken up into roadway, storm, sanitary watermain and the indirect costs. Again only the roadway is the assessable portion. Here’s a summary on assessments. What we did is each of the 6 neighborhoods were looked at individually and based on their individual costs, rehabilitation, scope of work and the utility scope of work and we did the assessment rolls based on those neighborhoods and we didn’t do it as one large project over the 6 because that was the more equitable way to do it. So as you can see there each neighborhood has a different assessment amount with the two mill and overlay neighborhoods being the lowest and then the 4 full depth and reclaims as the highest. The final assessments of course will be based on actual bid pricing which again is expected in mid-June and we’re looking for good bids. Our recommendation is to order all 6 project areas subject to the use of alternative bidding scenarios and contract award scenarios to fit available budget. We’re trying to cram a lot of work with a limited budget and we want to make sure we can do it all but we want to bid it out maybe with alternatives is what I mean by bidding scenarios and contract award scenarios but the plan is to get a price for all 6. So the proposed schedule moving forward is tonight we’ve got the public hearing and ordering of the project. In late May we’ll come back and approve the plans and specifications and order ads for bids. Have a bid opening in June. Have a neighborhood meeting open house hopefully at the end of June ahead of the formal assessment hearing at a council in July. Start construction in late July and be finished in November so the same schedule as Lake Lucy that we just talked about. What we’ve heard on this project over the last couple weeks is, we’ve heard a lot. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 38 George has done an admirable job calling people. Responding to all emails. He deserves a lot of kudos in being patient with people. This one seemed to stir up a lot of public comment and I think the council has heard a lot too. But the 3 big take aways we’ve heard is that frankly just due to COVID-19 you know maybe consider not doing the project. The lack of notice. First time they’ve heard about it. And we have heard a number of people say do the project. The roads need it so again we’ve heard both sides. So here would be the proposed motion should you authorize moving ahead in ordering the project. Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you Mr. Howley. Before I open up the public hearing we’ll go through and ask council if you have any questions. Starting with Councilman McDonald, any questions? Councilman McDonald: Yes Madam Mayor. I’ve got a question. It may be more directed toward our legal counsel but since I live in the area at what point do I need to recuse myself or do I need to recuse myself? Roger Knutson: I think you can participate in this part of the program but I don’t think you should act on adopting the assessment roll. Councilman McDonald: Okay. Adopting the assessment roll wouldn’t take part until July by the schedule is that correct? Roger Knutson: That’s correct. Councilman McDonald: Okay. Then in any case I have no questions right now. Mayor Ryan: Thank you councilman. Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I have no questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: We’ve just got a different picture that’s why we’re giggling so part of the fun of Zoom meetings. Alright Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: No questions. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: I’m in a similar situation to Councilman McDonald relative to living in the project area but based on the legal recommendation I’m glad to hear that and no more questions at this time. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you. I have two questions and I guess this is applicable to all the projects and I don’t know if we specifically addressed this Mr. Howley but the, you know a lot Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 39 of the sentiment is don’t do the projects and so I think we should just talk about what happens if we don’t do these projects this year and what happens going forward and the impact. Charlie Howley: Well the internal term that we’ve been using is we’re damming up the river or the pipeline if you will. We have a lot of needs out there in the community. A lot of needs and that was evident as of the last 3 years and our decision of implementing a franchise fee because at the rate the City traditionally was putting money into pavement rehabilitation wasn’t, it was not sustainable at all so we needed more funding and you guys came through so now we lined up some projects and we’ve got them lined up to over the next number of years and if we delay these let’s say 6 neighborhoods or even 1 of them or 2 of them or 3 of them it just you know dams up the river and just creates budgetary issues in the future so you know the proverbial kicking the can down the road right. Mayor Ryan: Right. Charlie Howley: So I, our recommendation is we’ve got a great bidding climate so let’s make some hay and let’s knock out some needed pavement rehabilitation. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. And then my last one had to do with your schedule and are you still anticipating it be done, all of these projects to be done in November or is it just, you think it can carried. I know it’s weather dependent so that’s always a risk. I know George again loves those questions but there was just some wording on there but you still anticipate that it will be done in November. Charlie Howley: Yes. Mayor Ryan: Okay perfect. Alright with that I will open the public hearing. We don’t have anyone in the chambers so I will address, we got as Mr. Howley said we did received a number of emails and phone calls and Mr. Bender you are owed a lot of appreciation for your time and energy that went into all of these projects and correspondence with our residents so very much appreciate that. The time you take. I know it’s hours on the phone sometimes so I really want you to know how much we appreciate that but the ones that I will read tonight are the ones that were submitted as public comments. I know that there were some emails that were exchanged between either council as a whole or Mr. Howley or Mr. Bender and they responded but these were part of our public comments so first up is Deb Roberts at 86 Castle Ridge Court in Chanhassen. And wanted, and Mr. Sticha I just will ask you to repeat the timeline for this because she was requesting more time to prepare and pay and then obviously reduce the cost. We don’t know what those bids are quite yet so we’ll, or we don’t know them yet but if you could again just repeat the timeline of when, I think there’s some misunderstanding that when the project starts the payment is due so if you could just reiterate that please. Greg Sticha: Sure. With this project, all these project areas you will be able to pay the assessment in full without any interest until November 23rd of this year. If you decide to have Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 40 your assessment put on your property taxes for 2021 the first payment will be made as part of your property taxes May 15th of next year. That will include interest but it would only include interest from November 24th til the time of the assessment payment next year. Mayor Ryan: Okay perfect. Thank you Mr. Sticha. The next one was from Eric and Kathy Anderson at 6580 Troendle Circle and they support this being approved and assessed as proposed. So wanted to get that on the record. And this is Mike Carr, C-a-r-r and Nancy Claremont Carr and they are very much in favor of this rehabilitation and understand the cost will result in an assessment but the patching has been, the life of the road has been extended and it’s now time to replace. This is from Cord Brashear. B-r-a-s-h-e-a-r and just quickly discuss I know initially these people thought or some residents were under the impression that there’s only going to be 3 projects and now it’s all 6 projects and I know you asked for some bid alternatives just in case the numbers come in high but with the budget as it is we were able to make 6 projects work for this bidding season and then depending on what the numbers are will determine what the final projects are and residents will be notified in advance of the assessment hearing and they’ll be acknowledged at that time. This is from Paul and Tony Schoupp. S-c-h- o-u-p-p. There’s a list of questions. Does the City have an overall maintenance plan in place for the city streets? Yes we do. We’re going to go through it and kind of revamp it again next year and evaluate it in the fall. Is the franchise fee instituted specifically set aside for road maintenance or is it a slush fund for other projects? It is not a slush fund for other projects. It is specifically used for pavement management program. And did we even look at a higher franchise fee? Greg Sticha: I don’t believe we at any point looked at a higher franchise fee than $5. The $5 per residential, per utility is among the higher franchise fees within the Twin Cities. I know we looked at adding property tax revenue stream to that fund and I think the City Council is still going to consider doing that as part of this project but the $5 franchise fee I think was pretty close to the highest that we considered at one point in time. Mayor Ryan: Right I recall the same and that was because we, when we were looking at how many roads were coming due and what we needed to get done and the dollar amount associated with that, that was how we, because initially it was $3. We were looking at $3, $4, $5 I think when, 3 years ago when we started this. Todd Gerhardt: Yeah Mayor, council members. We did look at trying to do a higher commercial rate and Xcel kind of balked at that number and we had to sit down and discuss that they felt it was too burdensome onto the commercial properties so that was lowered to be more in line with our neighboring cities who also have franchise fees so we want to make sure we’re consistent with our neighbors. Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you. Alright I’m just going to read the question verbatim. Will newer neighborhoods reap a higher benefit from the franchise fee because in theory their roads Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 41 will be maintained on a more consistent basis? In other words will they be able to avoid being assessed in the future. Greg Sticha: I can answer the assessment question. The answer is the City Council was pretty clear last year that we are going to continue our assessment practice going forward of assessing 40 percent so unless a future City Council decides to come in and make that change, which I don‘t anticipate, the answer is yes we will continue to assess 40 percent. In terms of will the roads be better in total if we do more roads? I guess Charlie can answer that. Charlie Howley: Mayor, council. No. Just having a franchise fee does not mean your assessments will be lower in the future but I will say this, the way we build roads now versus the way we used to we’re building them better so in the future how we rehabilitate them will be less costly but every road eventually needs to be redone even if that’s 70 years in the future so there will be an assessment. Mayor Ryan: Perfect. And again the same question, how soon do we need to pay the assessment? I don’t think obviously you don’t have to answer that again but can we make sure yo ur kind of bullet point Word document that you had created, I think you shared it, can we get that on the website just so people are clear to understand just the overall you know details of actually paying this assessment. This is from Bill Manning. I don’t have an address. Oh and we talked about this Mr. Howley there is some concerns about some sewer on Hoppe Street and you’re going to connect with him later this week. Perfect. And I think this is the last one. This is from Angela Schlender, S-c-h-l-e-n-d-e-r. Wanted to, had the question about a grace period or interest free and the council has made their decision on that earlier. And this is the last one. Frank Zimmerman and he, I don’t know George did you respond to him already? George Bender: I believe that I did. Mayor Ryan: Okay. I think similar questions about how the City budgets the overall management of our pavement management program and just the assessment practice but it was a lengthy email so just want to make sure that we follow up with him. George Bender: I can follow up and answers the questions individually. Mayor Ryan: Okay perfect. Thank you. And that was it for the emails. I know again like I stated before there were a number of emails that came in directly to staff or council and those will be handled individually but I wanted to make sure the people that sent emails to the public, for public comment as part of the record that those were read and so with that I will close, if nobody else is here I will close the public hearing and return it to council for any further questions. We’ll start with questions. Alright Councilman McDonald any questions on the project? Councilman McDonald: I have no further questions. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 42 Mayor Ryan: Alright thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom? Councilwoman Tjornhom: No further questions. Mayor Ryan: Thank you. Councilwoman Coleman? Councilwoman Coleman: No further questions. Mayor Ryan: Councilman Campion? Councilman Campion: No further questions. Mayor Ryan: And I do not have any questions either so with no further questions would anybody like to make a motion? Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’ll make a motion if it can come on the screen. Mayor Ryan: Alright we need, there we go. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Thank you so much. I’d like to make a motion that the City Council approves, oh sorry. Orders improvements and preparation of plans and specifications for the 2020 City Pavement Rehabilitation Project No. 20-05. Mayor Ryan: Alright. Would anybody like to second? Councilwoman Coleman: I’ll second the motion. Mayor Ryan: Great, Councilwoman Coleman with the second. And I will now take the vote. Resolution #2020-30: Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Coleman seconded that the City Council orders improvements and preparation of plans and specifications for the 2020 City Pavement Rehabilitation Project No. 20-05. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. Mayor Ryan: Again I would like to thank the residents for all of your emails and feedback and just participation in part of the process. I know it’s a little bit different you know doing it this way. Maybe not having a neighborhood meeting yet and I know a lot of people aren’t comfortable coming into council chambers so really appreciate your willingness to send in emails. Again we apologize if you were planning on calling in that you were unable to because of the cut fiber line and so we didn’t have access to receive your phone calls but again as we continue to move forward we are all available if you do have any further questions regarding this process or any of these projects and we will do our best to answer those questions for you so Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 43 please stay involved and stay connected to us and we will do what we can to help get that answer so, and thank you again Mr. Howley and Mr. Bender for your time you know connecting with the residents. I know this has added onto your plate with not having people with the ability to come in or even just talking to them at those neighborhood meetings. I know a lot of these questions get addressed or asked and answered so I appreciate your time and energy and of course city staff thank you. IT for making this work for all of us and Kim for being helping me stay organized with all of the emails that are coming in so appreciate it. It’s definitely a team effort around here and I really appreciate it. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS. None. ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS. Mayor Ryan: Are there any comments on the Administrative Presentations? Yes, thank you for raising your hand. Go ahead. Charlie Howley: Thank you Mayor, council. Just one quick thing. As you know the CSAH 101 project is well underway. I’m sure many of you have driven by there but hot off the presses 2 weeks from today, May 11th is when the tentative closure of the 101 is going to happen so the detour will kick in and that’s been put out on social media. It’s on our website. It’s on the County’s website so we need a 2 week advance notice and I wanted to use this platform to also mention that so from 61 up to Creekwood will be closed starting in 2 weeks so follow the posted detour which is 61 to Audubon back to Pioneer. Mayor Ryan: Perfect thank you. And I know it got put out on our, all of our social media today too so that’s great. Any other administrative presentations? Todd Gerhardt: I’ve got one. I want to thank the Chanhassen Fire Department for volunteering to participate in the Governor’s mask collection request. He sent out a request last week that all residents who have access to masks or make masks please drop them off at all the fire stations in their communities and our firemen and people collected 700 to 800 masks and our volunteer coordinators, Mary Blazanin is working with St. Hubert’s to divide up the masks and distribute them to our senior housing facilities throughout the community so thank you to everybody that participated in that program. Mayor Ryan: Absolutely. That’s amazing. Todd Gerhardt: And that’s all I have. CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. None. Chanhassen City Council – April 27, 2020 44 Councilwoman Tjornhom 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 9:35 p.m. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim