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CC 2005 09 12 CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Furlong, Councilman Lundquist, Councilwoman Tjornhom, and Councilman Peterson COUNCIL MEMBERS ABSENT: Councilman Labatt STAFF PRESENT: Todd Gerhardt, Roger Knutson, Justin Miller, Paul Oehme, Todd Hoffman, Kate Aanenson, Lori Haak, Don Asleson, and Greg Sticha PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Mayor Furlong: Good evening everybody and thank you for coming. For those here this evening and those watching at home, we appreciate you joining us. There’s one item I’d like to modify the agenda this evening. Add item number 5 under new business and that’s a consideration from staff of a request regarding an emergency sewer repair in the Curry Farms drainageway. For those in attendance there are copies of the proposal at the table there. Help yourself. There are also agendas there if people are interested on when their item might be coming up. Are there any other proposed amendments or changes to tonight’s agenda? Seeing none the agenda will be approved and without objection as distributed, or as amended, excuse me. CONSENT AGENDA:Councilman Peterson moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations: a. Approval of Minutes: -City Council Work Session Minutes dated August 22, 2005 -City Council Verbatim & Summary Minutes dated August 22, 2005 Receive Commission Minutes: -Planning Commission Verbatim & Summary Minutes dated August 2, 2005 -Planning Commission Work Session Summary Minutes dated August 16, 2005 -Park and Recreation Commission Verbatim & Summary Minutes dated August 23, 2005 Resolution#2005-72: b. Approval of Purchase Agreement for West Water Treatment Plant Property (Lake Harrison Development) and Accept Donation of Land. Resolution#2005-73: c. Resolution Approving the Use of the Southwest Regional Light Rail Transit Route as a Snowmobile Trail. City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Resolution#2005-74: d. Approve Plans & Specifications; Authorize Advertising for Bids for the 2005 MUSA Improvements, Phase I, Project No. 04-05. Resolution#2005-75: e. Approve Consultant Contract for 2006 Street Improvement Project No. 06-01. Resolution#2005-76: g. Resolution Decertifying Gateway Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District #6. h. Approval of Cell Tower Lease Agreement with T-Mobile. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: Tom Meier: Good evening Mayor, members. I’m Tom Meier from 695 Pleasant View and I just wanted to reiterate on the McCord issue and David Sanford on the alteration permit. Mayor Furlong: Mr. Meier, if you’d like we can pick up your comments at that time on the agenda if that’d be okay. Tom Meier: That’d be great. Mayor Furlong: Do you mind waiting? That way we can take it in context. Tom Meier: Okay, thank you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to address the council this evening during visitor presentations? Seeing none then, we offer this opportunity at every meeting so people watching at home are welcome to come as well. TH TROY AND VIRGINIA KAKACEK, 380 WEST 86 STREET, PLANNING CASE 05- 18: HARD COVER VARIANCE REQUEST FOR A SINGLE FAMILY HOME. Kate Aanenson: Thank you. This item, located on Tigua Lane, just off of 101, appeared before the Planning Commission. There is some length of time inbetween. The applicants had requested additional time to work through some issues and then also the time it appeared before the Planning Commission and City Council based on length of some agendas, but this item did appear before the Planning Commission and they recommended 6-0 denial. That is why it’s in front of you tonight. Again subject site, this is a recently created subdivision of an existing large lot. The applicant did appear, apply for a building permit and this was the original survey. I have one that’s colored a little bit better but I just want to go through. This was the original survey that was submitted. I do believe you all received a letter from Mr. Martin, the attorney regarding some of the issues in the kind of time date issues. I do believe all of you were emailed that. There’s a lot of he said, she said and I’m not going to go into those. I’m just going to present the facts as the staff saw them and how we approached the permit. So it came in and the 2 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 porch and the driveway were recommended to be changed. It was our position it was over the 25%. Obviously there’s a different perspective on that and it was asked to be re-surveyed. And the revised survey included the reduction of the driveway to meet the ordinance which requires 24 feet at the street and the porch was removed. So the permit was issued, and this one is colored so it’s easier to see. Based on this survey right here which again, there was no porch or patio and the revised driveway. As now required as-built surveys are all required on all new, or after the home is constructed. Which when it was completed in March, so typically in March it may not have all the things done but the survey was completed later in the summer after the escrow was requested. At that time it was noted that this was what was shown on the survey. So the driveway, additional concrete and a patio so again we’re over the impervious percentage. So when it came in for the as-built survey it was noted that was a non-compliance. Sent the letter and that’s what started the variance process. So they have made some changes and those are noted in the staff report...the impervious surface. Specifically mulch face down the gravel portion here. They have concrete here but then gravel around to the back. And then they still have a concrete driveway in the back. Originally on the porch, the porch if it was raised above grade with grass underneath that wouldn’t count towards the impervious so they still have the ability to put a porch on that wouldn’t require a variance again because there’d be grass underneath. Again the goal is to provide an area for that water, it’s a capacity issue. But we’re still over 600 square feet and that’s where the Planning Commission struggled. It is onerous obviously to take out the patio and, which is the 500 square feet approximately, and then maybe another 170 feet of the driveway. So to get it to the 25%. So again there’s a lot of detail in the staff report on what the staff believes was the process, and certainly the applicant believes in their due diligence that they proceeded the right way. I’ll just rely on what we saw as the survey as submitted and the as-built’s. So again the Planning Commission did recommend 6-no denial. We have put conditions in the staff report. Findings and recommendations either way and I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for staff. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’m not sure if this is a question for you Kate or for Lori. These paver patios seem to always kick up trouble it seems like. People think they’re fine and now all of a sudden they find out, no. They can’t have it. Is there a paver that they can use that you would allow and not count against them for their hard surface coverage? Lori Haak: I’m not particularly familiar with this site, but at present there isn’t a paver that staff counts against that hard surface coverage so at this time no, there is not. Mayor Furlong: Other questions for staff. Councilman Lundquist: Kate do we have dates on those surveys or revised surveys somewhere that references in the permit which drawing was used to generate the permit? rd Kate Aanenson: Sure. The original survey is October 23 and then the revised ones that were th signed off were November 17. th Councilman Lundquist: Okay. And does it somewhere reference that, November 17? 3 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Kate Aanenson: There’s two places that we would sign on a permit. One would be on the survey and then one would actually be on the building permit itself. th Councilman Lundquist: So the signed survey is the 17 one? Kate Aanenson: Correct. The one that was approved that went around. And then also there’s also a routing form that goes around. And additional comments. There’s some changes that were made when the house, the original survey came in and it was slid, moved an arboretum is shown up on here. That was the only thing that was added. But there was some mulch when the building inspector that went out that it was noted that that porch was not approved so the building inspector went out and noted that there was an arboretum that was shown on the site plan that was not, or shown on the survey that was not noted so there’s some notes to that effect. thth That was all dated the 11. Excuse me the 7 of November. That the permit was issued, and th then again the final, the Certificate of Occupancy were given in March 25 of ’04 but again since it’s springtime, typically the as-builts and the concrete work doesn’t typically happen til later. Councilman Lundquist: Sure. Kate Aanenson: So when the inspector went out those things, probably not, because if they were under snow or were not in place, correct. Councilman Lundquist: Okay. Mayor Furlong: Ms. Aanenson, the survey that the permit was issued on, and then the as-built, and particular the size, the building itself. Size of house. The home and then the driveway. It looked like, if I saw that correctly that that really was, that the permit was issued on a driveway in place. No sidewalks from the driveway to the front of the house. Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: Did the actual driveway that was built a different size than the driveway that was on this plan? I mean it looks like it’s going different ways but was the driveway area larger built than what was in the plan for what the survey showed for the permit? Kate Aanenson: It’s probably a little bit wider. I think the engineering had it tapering on this side a little bit more so on this one it just cuts across here. Better to just calculate that. That triangle there so it may be a little bit larger there. I didn’t look at the original calculation. The survey’s in the staff report how big it is. Mayor Furlong: The staff report shows that the home and driveway together slightly exceed the 25 limit so that’s why I was wondering if the permit… Kate Aanenson: Right, I believe this driveway was a little bit narrower. The original survey one. 4 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: The one that the permit was issued on. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Right, it’s tapering back over here. They actually tapered it from the other side. You can see this is a straight line with a taper and then this cuts over. Mayor Furlong: So the question then is the width where it tapers and such but. Alright. Thank you. Any other questions for staff at this time? If not, is the applicant here? If they’d like to. Larry Martin: Good evening Mayor and Council members. My name is Larry Martin and I’m here on behalf of Ginger and Troy Kakacek. Ginger and Troy are my niece and nephew. Or niece and nephew in law and I’m here on their behalf this evening to kind of explain the history of this, although in the interest of time I did send out a letter. I don’t know if it got to everybody and if you had a chance to look at it. It had, I’ve got a long version. I’ve got a short version. I’ve got a just get right down to the point version and I saw some heads nodding so I’ll try to, limit to the short version. Mayor Furlong: I think that’s fine. We did have the advantage of the Planning Commission minutes as well so. Larry Martin: Great. Here’s the issue as I see it. As it boils down. I give you kind of a factual background of the problem or the genesis from Ginger and Troy’s perspective. And of course their concern is you know they tried, you know after they had tried to move forward on the landscaping, their viewpoint is well, they came to the City 3 times to ask about the permits for the pavers and the response was that there is no permits that are necessary for a patio within the city as part of a landscaping project. And that’s true. There is no permit that’s necessary to put in a patio. And I see that as kind of a procedural glitch within the city’s protocol for reviewing landscape applications or approvals. Staff has noted within their report that well, what you should have done is come in for a planning and zoning, or another kind of review. That doesn’t necessarily require a permit but it’s a kind of review process. But that didn’t get communicated to Ginger and Troy and so they moved forward and they made this mistake. Okay, well that’s one way of looking at it. Another way that I think is important for you to look at it, as the policy decision makers for the city is that things have been changing in terms of how you regulate this paver problem, and hard surface problem. I came in to take a look at the record, the building file this afternoon to kind of check to see you know how things were checked over time and the calculations for impervious material don’t actually show up in the file for the city until the as- built drawing was requested, and so if you take a look at the file and you take a look at the checklist, it never comes up you know any kind of warning that there is a hard surface issue or that you may run afoul of going over that hard surface issue until you get done building. And so I think that’s another procedural point that creates some confusion, some ambiguity. And I think it’s fair to say that it’s not Ginger and Troy’s fault. It’s not that contractor’s fault or that sub- contractor’s fault. It’s, and it’s my understanding that that procedural glitch has been corrected and now when those calculations are done, they’re done early in the process so there is no confusion. But here’s the significance of it and I think the Mayor kind of pointed that out in the earlier questioning that when you take a look at the, just the home and the driveway, and in this particular survey drawing, this is the one that was approved. They come very close to if not exceeding the hard surface requirement before they even get a sidewalk. You know arguably it 5 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 should have shown up there. Arguably somebody should have anticipated that a sidewalk was going to be needed also. Otherwise you’ll have just grass between the driveway and the stoop, but everybody puts a sidewalk in eventually. There should have been some sort of alert to that effect. But that question doesn’t even come up or did not at that time even come up within the city process, if you take a look at the permit approval checklist. There is a checklist marked there for drainage but there is no checklist for the 25% hard surface requirement. I think it’s fair to say that in the end there was some honest miscommunication that went there. You know I don’t want to say that it was staff’s fault, but I also don’t think it was Troy and Ginger’s fault, and so here’s kind of where the rubber hits the road. You know the point that I think that’s important for you is, and the question is, how harsh do you have to be in this setting? Staff has given you an alternative, two alternative resolutions to pass. One, opposed to the variance request and one in favor of it. In a situation where the landowner really isn’t at fault, and I don’t think that they are and I think it’s fair for you to conclude that they aren’t. You know there’s really no reason to be strict or harsh, especially in a situation like this where they’re actually going to suffer financial harm because of it, unless somebody else is hurt. The staff has listed out 6 variables for you to consider in a variance situation and you know probably the most important one is, is whether or not there’s going to be any harm to the neighborhood or any adjoining property owners if you decide to grant this variance. Staff has suggested a finding that well you know we could, it really could generate some harm but not for 600 square feet. You know that’s really not a fair finding. I don’t think Paul actually made that comment but he’s the one who has to be questioned and I suspect that somebody will probably ask him that question, is 600 square feet really the kind of hard surface that’s going to cause any damage to anyone of the neighbors if you had a significant rainfall event. When the Planning Commission looked at it they thought, and when they were measuring the order of magnitude they thought well 5% is a lot. I’d say well, you know we started out with a little over 6% variance. We took out the sidewalk. We took out the gravel. We took out some hard surface to bring it down below 5%. About, in fairness to Ginger and Troy and other property owners that might in this situation some day, I think 5% is the wrong way to take a look at it. 5% for a million square foot is a lot of land area. Now all of a sudden you’re talking about 50,000 an acre of hard surface, but 600 square feet is not a lot of area and it’s not going to do any damage to anyone. Another thing, you know things for you to balance I think that’s important as the policy deciders for the city is, you know whether or not anybody is really opposed to it and I don’t think anybody’s going to speak in opposition to this proposal tonight. And we do have neighbors that are in favor of it. Have commented and the letter from the neighbors is in the record and they’ve even mentioned that they’ve got a site that is far in excess of what they need and they’re under their 25% hard surface requirement and so there’s plenty of land that’s not under hard surface to absorb rainfall, so it kind of balances out within the neighborhood. That’s the key point that I wanted to make. There’s two alternatives before you. I think it’s fair to say that there’s no reason to be harsh. The other point that of course reason for strictness would be if the property owner were flagrantly violating, knowingly violating the ordinance of the hard surface requirement, and that’s not the case here either. There’s plenty of facts in the record for you to find alternate good facts and to adopt the resolution approving the variance and that’s what our request is. Be happy to address any other facts that are in the letter or any supplemental facts or answer any questions. Ginger and Troy and one of the reasons for the delay in asking for the continuance is they just had a new little baby that’s in the hallway too. She will not be commenting but. 6 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: She did already. Larry Martin: Yeah, that’s right. Thank you very much. Mayor Furlong: Any questions? For Mr. Martin. Councilman Lundquist: Mr. Martin, have your clients ever talked to any of the neighbors with the excess land about purchasing 700 or 2,800 square feet to bring them back under the amount? th Larry Martin: You know we looked at it. We sat down with staff before the July 19 meeting to explore that issue and to look at some surveys to see if we drew a straight line and tried to make a cut there, to make it work but there’s a pool structure, what do you call it? A pump. Filter kind of thing that’s in their back yard that’s, creates a problem in making a nice, clean cut. Nice, clean property line. We did talk to staff too about maybe a variance but. Not a variance, an easement. Transferring that kind of density but I don’t know if Kate ever heard about that suggestion but at least at a junior staff level that was considered to be inappropriate. However we’d certainly be willing to ask the adjoining property owners about the easement issue. I think asking them for a transfer of land that interferes with their existing improvements is a problem. Councilman Lundquist: Sure. Mayor Furlong: Other questions of Mr. Martin. In terms of, I asked a question of staff with regard to the two surveys and my question was, recognizing now that the house and driveway exceed the allowable limit, was the driveway built bigger than the original permit survey? Larry Martin: I think that it was. I saw a drawing in the permit file that kind of demonstrated the overlay a little bit bigger on one side and a little bit smaller on the other side. Is there a significant difference? I don’t think that’s true but I think there is a difference. It clearly, I mean when I looked at it what I did see was that there’s, even if the old driveway, the driveway, the house and the garage together prevented us from putting a sidewalk in. Mayor Furlong: So what was submitted with the permit would have met the requirement without any additional impervious surface addition? Larry Martin: That, I don’t know if that’s true. Mayor Furlong: Or at least not, there wouldn’t be enough to allow a sidewalk. Larry Martin: There definitely would not have been enough to allow a sidewalk. The other thing that I should have mentioned too is that with respect to the porch, that was pulled for financial reasons. We never received any information related to hard surface or requirements for pulling improvements because of hard surface requirements. Kate Aanenson: There wouldn’t be, no. As I indicated before, a porch because it’s raised up off the ground and if there’s grass underneath, it wouldn’t count towards the hard surface coverage. A deck wouldn’t. A porch would. 7 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Larry Martin: Actually I think our plans didn’t call for an elevated porch. It was actually we had some footing problems that they asked us to correct on the drawings so we at the time we anticipated a crawl space. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Any other questions at this time? Ms. Aanenson, you made some comments. Any comments that you have? Paul Oehme: No. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. There was, as I recall there was a public hearing at the Planning Commission. Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: So I know that we’ve received the Planning Commission minutes. If there’s somebody that, based upon some additional information or would like to provide public comment I’d certainly be willing to listen to that at this time too. If anybody’s interested. Okay, thank you. With that, are there any additional questions for staff or should we bring it back to council for discussion and see what it generates. Thoughts. Councilman Peterson: Related question I guess. Kate, can you give me some sense as to what other cities have as their impervious surface percentage. I mean this has come up more in the last couple years than it has in my 15 years of hanging around here and I don’t know whether we’re just pure luck of the draw that I’m getting faced with this recently or are we pretty much right on the, right on the average of being 25 or is that due to a DNR thing? Kate Aanenson: I’ll let Lori answer some of that but the first part, I don’t think we have a rash of these. I think we try really hard to communicate. I think obviously there’s a miscommunication and I would agree with Mr. Martin that while it may have been on our part, some of it may have been on their part. I won’t disagree with that but the proportionality of the impervious relates to lot size. Every city has a different lot size and so our 25% is what’s tied into our comp plan is what we managed to try to reduce the volume of water that’s coming off and try to capture it in some of the yards. I don’t think we have that many problems within. We really work hard to site the home. You know we talked about some of the bigger homes that we do but the ones that we recently approved, some of the larger homes that are going in, we looked at the bigger lot sizes and we know that anticipating 3 cars is standard now. 3 car garage. Some have gone to 2 car garage at 15,000 so we always work with the developer when they come in to try to figure out what their average square footage of home would be. Again this is pretty comparable. I think most of the ones that we’re looking at, that’d be 72. 73 maybe by 40 is a pretty comparable square footage so I don’t think that’s out of whack. It’s those other things that go on afterwards that we don’t always have control. They change the garage. They add a patio. That may not have been on the survey or those sort of things. Want to put a hot tub in. A fire pit. Those are kind of the specific issues that kind of come after the fact. Or once the builder is up. This builder has done other work in the city. I think that was some of the Planning Commission’s frustration. The communication. What did the builder know that maybe wasn’t 8 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 communicated to the homeowner so it’s kind of a two way thing and that happens a lot too. A lot of finger pointing. Who told, who got the information and who didn’t, you know I’m not going to dispute that. I think that goes all the way around again for a lot of people’s blame but again it’s related to lot size so. Plymouth has a different standard for their impervious, as they have a different lot size requirement, as with Eden Prairie and Minnetonka. Shakopee, they’re all different but I don’t think our’s is more restrictive than anybody else’s. Again it’s related to each zoning district has a different impervious requirement too. I don’t know if you want to add anything to that Lori. Lori Haak: I’m not particularly again familiar with the specific requirements of a municipality but generally it’s tied into velocities, water qualities and runoff volume so generally the research most, actually 25 is pretty high for water quality for urban streams. They recommend no more than about 15 to 20 in those sensitive areas so I think again I think we’re kind of right in the ballpark but I don’t have any specific examples that I can cite. Mayor Furlong: Other thoughts or discussion. Councilman Lundquist. Told me to pass. Councilman Lundquist: Well it’s an interesting dilemma. With all of the things going on, Kate I think you said the he said, she said going on. I’m encouraged that the applicants had taken some steps to correct a piece of that. I think that shows good faith. Good will and wanting to do the right thing. I mean clearly they didn’t invest $1,000 to do that maliciously or you know intentionally to go over that so, I don’t see any malice there. But then the other side is, you know generally speaking ignorance or not being aware of ordinances and statutes and things like that is not an excuse to not follow them so…going over the speed limit you get a ticket. So I guess I’m torn between what we do with this and you know it might only be 4.2. It might only be 600 square feet but the fact is where do you draw the line. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Is it 2%? 5%? 10%? What’s the number you have to draw it somewhere but I’m not a real big fan of, you know I’ve seen the house out there. There’s a lot of, you know a couple of new ones out in the area as well that will compliment. I’m not a big fan of asking people to tear up you know well done landscape here so I’m not exactly sure, if there’s another alternative as Mr. Martin will ask about the land acquisition and obviously that’s going to be several thousand dollars as well so that’s another investment, but not really sure that I’m in favor of having it tore up but I’m not sure I’m in favor of leaving it the way it is either so, how’s that? Mayor Furlong: Well you’ve defined the issues I think and…politician. Other thoughts. Councilman Peterson: Yeah I too feel similar in that the ultimately the responsibility for following the ordinances is the onus is on the homeowner. I think that unfortunately happened in a negative fashion this way just not understanding and not getting the right questions asked or the questions answered and certainly there is, ultimately you still have to go back to that they are responsible but, and again I agree with Councilman Lundquist. Is there another way to do this? If it was 1% you know I’d be more amenable to do it, right? And we’re talking about ranges now so, and I’d maybe pause, maybe push it back to the staff and/or let the applicant and staff work together to find another alternative other than yes or no. I’m open to not being firm at 25% but, and we’ve had other people in here that have asked for that kind of range and we said no. So I can’t in good conscience say alright, yes to this one because they’ve done similar kinds of 9 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 things. There’s been some confusion and there’s been some after the fact accomplishing tasks and putting in patios and we’ve asked them to tear it up so. But in most of those situations we’ve found somewhere inbetween. I don’t see that I’ve got that right now so whether or not we can create that tonight. It’s only 7:30 and we’ve got plenty of things, plenty of time to deal with what we’ve done tonight so I’d be well certainly willing to hear other alternatives. Mayor Furlong: Talk about creating a camel out of committee when you’re trying to run your race horse. Ms. Aanenson, a quick question for you. In our ordinance right now, we have what is considered impervious. Is there anything within our ordinance that would allow somebody to gain a credit by some other feature, and I don’t even know what that would be. To make the surface more pervious. Is there anything in our ordinance right now that allows that? There’s no credit calculation that goes into either, I mean we do I guess, we don’t count some things such as landscaping and maybe I’ll swing back to the attorney, since everybody’s pointing that way. Mr. Knutson. Roger Knutson: I apologize I have not seen this lot so I don’t know… In other communities when you want extra impervious surface, you do something to absorb more water, for example a rain garden. And I don’t know whether or not this makes sense in this location but if you were to have a rain garden here that would absorb more water than just normal industrial yard would, you offset the impervious surface. There are things like that. Mayor Furlong: From a concept standpoint, because I know we’ve talked about rain gardens and they might have limited affect here with our clay because even if you get down, you know what you’re saying is other cities look at it. Roger Knutson: Yeah, do an offset. Can you do anything to capture more water on the lot? Councilman Peterson: We did something similar with a lot on Lake Riley way back, and I can’t remember the address. Kate Aanenson: That was lakescape. Lori Haak: And actually that homeowner came back later in the process to request relief from that so actually that was something that was approved by council for a variance and then was repealed by City Council so I guess that’s maybe. I’m not sure how long ago it was, so I couldn’t say. Mayor Furlong: There’s the politician. The issue I think, the issue that we’re looking at here and one of the questions was where’s the harm? Where’s the foul? It’s 600 feet. I think the issue is as much we look at it as a council is putting ordinances in place. Asking residents to adhere to those with some sense of fairness and justice and you know the 600 feet doesn’t sound like that much but where then is our new line? Is our new line at 30? By default. Is our new line at 35 for the next person that comes in and says well you know, I’m just a little bit over and what I’m struggling here, I’m not, and Councilman Lundquist you raise a good point. I don’t think anybody up here likes the idea here that a decision against or to deny the variance request means they might have to take something out. What about our residents that do come in and 10 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 maybe build something less than what they wanted to because they’re adhering to the ordinance? You know with these after the fact variances they’re tough because you already see what’s there and yet as much as we can I think we have to look at these as if would we have approved this before the fact? Would we have approved this additional hard surface coverage before the fact if they came in asking for the variance and as much as possible put ourselves in that position. I mean as I look at this, you know I’ve asked about the driveway. It was kind of surprising when I read the report and even the, Mr. Martin’s letter that the house and the driveway already exceeded that. This is a standard lot in our city and I’ve always looked at this 25% relative to our standard lots as a way to measure that and so you know, I think from a compromise standpoint, but for changing the way we do something, and I don’t think we necessarily should do that without investigating the ramifications of that, whether that’s the ordinance or some other credit or something like that. You know the, if we hold them to the 25, as a council and deny the variance, they’re going to have to reduce some of the driveway and take everything out. I mean they’ve got some nice landscaping. The real issue is the sidewalk along the house to me and the patio. Because of that nice retaining wall that they have around the front and landscaping, that’s 12 feet and probably wouldn’t show up. Likewise with the driveway. Having somebody take 100 feet off their driveway. It bothers me that a plan submitted and the permit was issued on, and they expanded beyond that. That bothers me and to me I think that’s the fault of the builder ultimately and the contractor but again as a property owner that should have control over that process. I know that as you’re building houses, things change and there’s you know let’s move this here. Let’s move this there so, so I find it difficult based upon what other residents have done, both beforehand and Councilman Peterson, as you have said, even from an after the fact. Where’s the affect? We’ve said no. We can’t, there should be a hardship there to justify the variance. I don’t see it here. I think the, especially coming off the storm we had last week, storm water runoff is an issue that we have to look at and make sure we manage and this is what this is dealing with. It’s only 600 feet here. But what about the next one and the next one and next one. Those are the longer term ones that I’m concerned about by going forward. I’d like to see another alternative. Councilman Lundquist had a good one and that’s increasing the lot size somehow so that the current improvements reduces a percentage overall. Councilman Peterson: Well, and to Roger’s point. I mean I’m not adverse to that either because the 25%, it’s a bit squishy in that, I’ve got to set an example but we wouldn’t have allowed a structure, a paver, I mean a wood or a structure patio and now with current technology you put those not wood ones right up against each other. That forms an impervious surface just equal to a paver patio because they don’t separate those. They put them, they butt them right up against each other so water is going totally off versus even seeping into the pavers so I question whether or not we could even in good conscience say you can put a structure like that on there too. So I mean there’s, yeah I think there’s some things that we can do. Whether or not it will work, some kind of feature that’s going to be better. If we see the water is going, whether it’s the front of the lot or the back of the lot and put in some kind of water garden or whatever that would be that would act better than grass, then you’re gaining something. I don’t know. At the end of the day I just, and maybe I’m over reacting because we’ve had 2 or 3 of those in the last year but you know I think that we need to update this or at least look at it and talk about the ramifications of 25% and what are the different options that people can do. 11 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: Well and in response to that, if there are right now staff is interpreting our ordinance, where certain things are 100% impervious and other things are 100% pervious. Obviously the more black and white the ordinance is, the easier it is for residents to know what the rules are and the easier it is for staff to interpret those rules and to apply them because every day is different. So try to keep that but I think we’re reviewing our storm water management plan right now. I know I’m going to be interested in getting an update on that later this evening as we talk about it. Given the event of last week, and this may be a time to incorporate that in there as well. So I guess the question is, do we defer the decision on this until that discussion can be had or do we move forward tonight not knowing the length of time it will take to do that and to make some decision as to whether we want to make any changes there or not. And our ramifications if you change the hard surface coverage I assume in terms of our storm water management plan and the capacity and volume and such like that. And I’m assuming all that goes into the engineering studies and the equations for that. I see heads going up and down so let the minutes reflect that is correct. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Mr. Mayor. Mayor Furlong: Yes. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Being on Planning Commission this has come up a couple times in the years that I, not long but some of the years I was on the Planning Commission. My biggest beef with this is residents come in and say we asked what we were supposed to do. They said nothing and so you know we tried and we tried. And when they come in and they ask whoever is across the counter, you know do I need a permit for this patio and they said no. And then as an average citizen I wouldn’t then go onto know to ask well, how about hard surface coverage and how about this and that because I’m not thinking that way. I’m just thinking oh good, I can get the permit. But we still I don’t think have a sheet that we go oh look it. They want to do a deck or a patio here. Look at this. You know here are the check off’s you have to cover before you go ahead and do this. I guess that’s my biggest beef with this is that it is hard to know what you’re supposed to do if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. And if they did come in 3 times and tried to do the right thing and they went and thought they did the right thing, I guess I have a hard time telling them now to undo what they thought they had done right the first time. We don’t have one of those lists yet do we? Kate Aanenson: Yes we do, as a matter of fact. I’m not going to get into the he said, she said. What conversations… Councilwoman Tjornhom: Right, exactly. Kate Aanenson: I’m sympathetic to them. You know the first issue was the sidewalk not being to the driveway. That’s one thing I think, that’s one error that I think is very obvious that we missed. There should have been a driveway, a sidewalk connecting the front porch to the driveway. In my mind that was an error on our part not to because that’s always standard that we would check that. But as far as the conversations that were, you go to 3 different departments. Each department gives their information and sometimes you ask the question to get the answer you want too, so you know, and I’m not dismissing that sometimes people don’t probe further in 12 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 that specific division. If you went to building…no, they’d say talk to planning…We do have handouts. We now require all impervious to be shown on the original permit. That’s been done for a number of years so we have corrected those issues. We’re always going to have people asking for variances… Things happen you know. Councilman Lundquist: Mr. Mayor, I would move that we table this issue to give the applicant and staff a chance to consider other alternatives and I think they’ve got some opinions and thoughts about you know some kind of direction to what we might be looking for given the chance to do that before we make a hard and fast decision and bind them to something that there might be another alternative to. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Motion’s been made. Mr. Knutson. Roger Knutson: …know the time line issue. Mayor Furlong: That was going to be my question so. Kate Aanenson: They asked if they can get an extension. Mayor Furlong: We need an extension in writing from them. Kate Aanenson: They’re fine with that. Mayor Furlong: Can we get that tonight? Larry Martin: Yes. Mayor Furlong: Do you want to write something up? Do we need to get that? What is the timeframe here? Kate Aanenson: I believe it was…tomorrow. Mayor Furlong: Tomorrow, so we should get something now. Mr. Lundquist, if that’s okay. Councilman Lundquist: Absolutely. Mayor Furlong: Before we consider your motion. First, let me ask if there’s a second to Councilman Lundquist’s motion. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second. Mayor Furlong: It’s been seconded so we’re in discussing the motion now at this time. Is there any discussion on this motion? Actually a motion to table. We’ll hold off discussion. Councilman Peterson: We can talk about the table. 13 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Roger Knutson: I’m satisfied they’re going to sign it. Mayor Furlong: Very good. There you go. I like the parliamentary order. The motion’s been made to table. It’s been seconded to give staff and the applicant time to work out some alternatives, given the comments this evening. Councilman Lundquist moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to table Planning Case th #05-18, hard cover variance request for Troy and Virginia Kakacek at 380 West 86 Street in order to give staff and the applicant time to explore alternative solutions. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. MARIANNE MCCORD & DAVID SANFORD, 6440 FOX PATH, PLANNING CASE 05- 22, WETLAND ALTERATION PERMIT TO CONSTRUCT A WALKWAY AND DOCK. Public Present: Name Address David Sanford 6440 Fox Path Michael P. & Debbie Haydock 6460 Fox Path Mary Hoffman 6470 Fox Path Tom & Sue Huberty 6450 Fox Path Terry Vogt 732 Lake Point Charles Brown 1439 Tennessee, Minneapolis Tom Meier 695 Pleasant View Road Lori Haak: Thank you Mayor Furlong and council members. As the mayor indicated this is an application for the wetland alteration permit at 6440 Fox Path, which is Lot 9, Block 1, Fox Chase Subdivision. The applicant is for the construction of a dock through a wetland area to access Lotus Lake. You can see the subject property on the map. On the north side of the lake is Pleasant View Road. Just off the west side of, or the left side of the paper is Powers Boulevard so just to orient folks. Typically wetland alteration permits that we see here are straight forward. However as is quite common with a planned unit development such as this one, a conservation easement has been recorded on several of these properties. The conservation easement covers all of the land within the subdivision below 900 feet which is shown on one of our other attachments. There’s one, sorry. Okay, pull it down. The conservation easement, the 900 foot elevation is shown in green on this survey. And the ordinary high water mark for Lotus Lake which is 896. Actually this is the 896 contour. It’s not actually the ordinary high water mark, is shown in blue on that plan sheet there. As I indicated the conservation easement covers all the land below 900 feet and encumbers parts of Lot 7 through 19. And again the subject property is Lot 9, which is indicated in orange. The easement prohibits docks except on Lots 16 through 19 which are on the southern part or the bottom part of the plan. Lot 16 has a dock that’s shared by 7 properties. Lots 10 through 16, and that’s basically the lots south of the subject property and the next 6 lots. So there’s a shared dock that is used by 7 property owners, and then Lots 17, 18, and 19, which are the final 3 lots there, each have their own docks and if we can pull up the aerial photo I believe we can see why. The wetland, actually if you orient it so north is at the 14 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 top. Perfect, thank you. There is quite a bit of wetland, riparian to Lotus Lake in that area and as you go south towards the bottom of the screen, that wetland narrows up significantly so the folks in those last 3 lots were able to, actually the last 4 lots were able to put in a dock across very narrow bands of wetland. Even though the ordinary high water mark of Lotus Lake extends onto Lots 8 and 9, which would normally give those two lots riparian rights according to the DNR, staff researched this subdivision which was actually quite contentious, and if you’d like the city attorney can speak a little bit more to that. But the staff found that there were no docking provisions made for those 2 lots. That’s again Lots 8 and 9. Because the conservation easement nd is more restrictive than city code, it prevails. And following a public hearing on August 2 the Planning Commission recommended denial of the wetland alteration permit with a 5 to 1 vote. As staff has provided the council with an e-mail from Jamie Grivich and Chris Pelletier let’s just say. Apologize for the mispronunciation but those, it’s something that we had received in the interim between the Planning Commission and now and that does express support for the wetland alteration permit. Staff and the Planning Commission recommends the City Council nd adopt a motion to deny the wetland alteration permit as found on page 6 of the August 2 Planning Commission staff report. With that I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for staff. Ms. Haak, the question here is a wetland alteration permit but with, you mentioned the conservation easement across the property. Isn’t that the real question? Lori Haak: It is. Mayor Furlong: I mean the application is for a wetland alteration permit but the question is, are there, right now the conservation easement, if reading the staff report, if I read it correctly, indicates that that easement prevents any structures going through that area. Lori Haak: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Other questions for staff at this time? Okay. Is the applicant here? Good evening. David Sanford: Good evening. I’ve got some paper I’d like to share with you. Good evening Mayor, council. I’m David Sanford at 6440 Fox Path. I apologize, my wife’s not here. She has a family member that’s extremely ill and she’s out of state taking care of that. Just you know I think some of the confusion that was brought up on the last case and here as well, and I tried to just kind of bullet point a number of facts but we bought the house in 1998. So in our closing documentation we reviewed the title insurance. No mention of any conservatory easement. As you can see in there we paid for, a lot of money for a survey that they did not find this conservation easement. But I think, and Lori would probably agree, we have done a ton to lakescape our house. We’ve done, planted numerous trees. We don’t cover our driveway. We don’t change oil. I think it said we don’t change oil at all but we do change oil in our cars. It’s not on our driveway. We reduced our turf considerably. Put in hundreds and hundreds of bushes and I think anyone in our neighborhood would tell you the impact we’ve made to the environment. I’m sure Lori has because she’s been over to the house. We’ve been really 15 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 working this and the things I want to hit on is really fair, equitable and reasonable treatment. When you look at conservation, conservation’s not one lot. And that seems like we’re being penalized. We’re one lot that touches the lake. But our first meeting with Lori was really to discuss how do we lakescape our house. How do we make it more valuable. How do we work better in conservation. We were not looking to build a dock. We were asking about what other people rights were. We had people that built huge hulking docks that extended way out. Put on big covers that are eyesores on the lake and we said, is there any issues and what are they allowed to do to that. So we weren’t looking to necessarily build a dock. My wife asked a very broad question, can we build a dock and Lori’s answer was, well yeah you might be able to. And later very much encouraged us to pursue this issue. She did say that this end of the lake was fuzzy and I think there’s been other complaints over the years about some dock usage. Our original survey was a little bit off but I guess in reality we actually have 100 feet, not at high water mark but of open water. We have 100 feet of open water. In fact if you look at this, I think the second, one of the attachments on the third to last page. Every time we get e-mails about what’s going on the lake, we’re considered a lake front property. I got the most recent one about the no wake that came after the storm, so evidently the city considers me a lake front property. We discussed things like the lotus flowers and that’s kind of a, was a joke. It’s not a real provision but it was, I think something Lori said, it was kind of an urban myth. You know at the end of this I kind of, and Lori knows that I requested this in e-mail to her so she’s very aware that I’m asking really one of two things. Either approve our variance or refund the money because quite frankly I felt we were misled by the city completely. As we went through the process. We spent over $2,000 on a survey. In fact the survey, Lori came out and asked for additional points for the city. I don’t know that it benefited and I looked through the application. The high water marks are not required to put on application for a variance. Lori recommended one and came out and asked for additional points which showed Lot 8, next to our’s, which again was not a requirement for this process but we were told literally that we had a 99% chance of being able to build our dock during these discussions. Again we worked with the city. We were willing to model this in any way. We want a very simple dock. We’re not looking to change the environment very much at all. During this entire process we were delayed a couple times on meetings and we got four different bids from dock companies. We worked with the staff to say where would you like us to start our dock. They said why don’t you start at the end of a berm and then later when the staff report came out, that’s not a good place to start a dock, and that was kind of frustrating because we asked them. They said push it out, which is great for us. It would actually reduce our cost of our dock considerably if we did push it out. But we’re again more than willing to work any way possible to work there. We were asked to delay our meeting for the Planning Commission, and after all this process a week before, and this has taken 3 months, before the meeting is when the conservation easement issue came up. We went out. We went in the water. We checked the water depth with our neighbor’s boat. And so to tell you I’m frustrated, that’s absolutely true. I’m very frustrated by the process. I guess if we would have been told early on to check for easements or why can’t we build a dock, we never would have pursued the issue. We wouldn’t have spent over $2,500 to pursue an issue. We weren’t looking, our goal was not initially to build a dock. Our goal was to have a proper share of the lake and manage the conservation. Even if you look at the documentation that’s shown on the significant on Lot 9 that approved this easement, skipping the signatures and all the other lots. I don’t know who it was. We didn’t live in the neighborhood but it’s unclear. There’s no written names. Don’t know if it was given at the right time. You know we have 100 feet of open water that 16 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 we’re looking at. We’re the only lakefront property that doesn’t seem to have access to the lake in the whole place. I have attached, I put together a very small petition and I’ve signed a few neighbors…this weekend and asked them to sign to support us so I’ve got about I don’t know, 15 names or so on a petition. What I’m looking for is the council to do is to support the spirit of conservation, not just the letter of the law but the spirit. Mr. Meier’s had an opportunity to speak at the Planning Commission. He spoke eloquently about the deer and the turtles and other things in the conservation. His lot is turf completely down to the water. I saw him out there mowing today before the rain hit, okay. ...so I’m looking for one or two solutions from the City Council and the mayor tonight. Is either approve our variance and how that they’re reasonable work and what was happened, or refund our cost because we never planned to do this except with the encouragement, support and quite frankly close working with the staff in this entire process. And we are like I said, extremely frustrated through the entire process but we’re willing to work in any way possible with the city if they allow us to do that to build a dock that would maintain the environment and we are looking for an extremely simple dock. We’re not looking for any large, huge multiple dock that’s U shaped or anything like that and we’re more than willing to work in any way possible to support that. And I’ll open it up for questions. Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Questions for Mr. Sanford. No? Okay, thank you. Any follow up questions for staff at this time? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes, Lori just show me something on the map again. Lots 8 and 9, this is what we’re talking about right? Where the applicant is. Lori Haak: Yes, Lot 9. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And 8 has access to the lake? Lori Haak: 8 does not. 8 is the one to the north. So it’s this lot right here. Lot 10 through 19 have access. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So it’s just those 2 at the end that don’t have access. Lori Haak: Correct. David Sanford: Everybody has open water, they have high water mark but they don’t have any open water. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So why wouldn’t Lot 9 be just included with everybody else that’s sharing a dock? Do you know how that happened? How those 2 got excluded. Lori Haak: That’s a good question. There is probably 12 to 16 file inches of material on this particular. Councilwoman Tjornhom: You didn’t read every one of them Lori? 17 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Lori Haak: I actually came pretty close because I was curious about that because as I mentioned earlier the OHW does, or the 896 contour which is reasonably close to that 896.3 which is the OHW of Lotus Lake, does extend onto those 2 properties and when I found this document I was very puzzled as to why, if those 2 properties had riparian lots, why would they not have lake access, and nowhere in that 12 to 16, did it mention it at all and the fact that the conservation easement goes over that 900 foot contour, I believe speaks pretty clearly. And this was heavily negotiated and not even the developer at the time said anything in any of the minutes that I read or any of the letters, legal correspondence that went back and forth said anything about requesting dock access for either of those two properties. So Roger may have some additional things that he can say about that. He was actually involved in the process. Roger Knutson: I negotiated the settlement of this and a lawsuit followed...neighborhood association and how the City Council shouldn’t approve this and the forefront of the issues were dock rights. How many docks should be out on the lake and that was negotiated. How many docks there could be. Where they could be. Who would have access to them and we negotiated a settlement. They wanted to have...the neighbors wanted as few docks as possible. The developer wanted to have as many as possible and this is what came up. It’s called a compromise. So the conservation easement was…and it was the rules that were established back then. Councilman Peterson: So the negotiation was between the developer and the city? Roger Knutson: Yeah. Councilman Peterson: Okay. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And so do we have power as a council to change those? Roger Knutson: The conservation easement runs in your favor, but one thing to consider is it affects quite a few properties and if you’re going to release it from one property from it, you’d better think about what the other property owners are also restricted in their rights to use the lot the same. Councilman Peterson: To your point, some of those lots are sharing docks and they could each come back and say I want. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I want my own dock, yeah. Roger Knutson: And they all wanted their own dock. Todd Gerhardt: And probably still do. Mayor Furlong: Any other follow up questions for staff? I think that’s where we are. Councilman Peterson: Do we have a precedence on, you know it sounds as though there may, if my interpretation, may be, staff you know was working on a good set of assumptions of well 18 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 why not so staff would have been working with the sense saying, yeah let’s pursue it and then when we found out more information, you know the costs involved in that, have we ever reimbursed anybody for staff not being aware of something that was already in writing? Todd Gerhardt: Well the conservation easement didn’t show up on the survey and should have. You know some cases they do. Some cases they don’t but it was in the title work and there’s no way staff would have seen. You know we don’t have access to people’s title to verify that. And again trying to read through a 16 inch file to find out what the thought process was in that is complicated. Have we ever given back money associated with a variance that somebody felt th misled? A perfect example was the individual that we had come in out on West 78 Street next to St. Hubert’s. Councilman Lundquist: Outside of the porch. Todd Gerhardt: So have we done that in the past? Yes. And you know, the applicant seems to be a great steward of his property and protecting Lotus Lake and he should be commended for that. And Lori I think was working with him through this process and until the information came available that it was obvious that he couldn’t have a dock. So apologize for that but short of seeing that, not much we can do. Roger Knutson: Just briefly comment. One of the things to bear in mind is there’s an application process and a review process and you don’t always know the results going in. It’s when you filed your application that you start doing your due, you’re doing all your work and not until afterwards, even though you can look at it on the surface based on what you know, you could maybe you would comment, looks good. But it looks good until you know all the facts in this case. Until the conservation easement comes to light. If you’d known about that up front, the comment might have been different. Todd Gerhardt: Just like the last issue we dealt with, you know it’s like an onion as you peel it back you keep finding more and more layers through it and it’s, we’re here, staff’s here to enforce the codes and the ordinances and as much as we’d like to grant docks to everybody, it’s not in our power. Mayor Furlong: And we do this, I know that Mr. Meier came up in visitor presentations and I asked him to hold his comments until this time so Mr. Meier, if you’d like to come up and we’ll certainly provide the opportunity for other public comment after Mr. Meier’s is completed as well. Tom Meier: Thank you Mayor and council members. Staff. As I mentioned I live at 695 Pleasant View. Been there since 1999. Prior to that in 1989 I lived in Lot 6 Fox Path, and I was very familiar with the covenants at that time when I bought and built the house on the lot, about all these easements so I find it unusual that he claimed ignorance. The reason for that easement was, there’s no water back there. They pushed the boat dock out on Lot 16 to get it to deeper water, so if you come back to Lot 10, there is 2 inches of water there and that’s a normal depth. Maybe a high depth of 4 inches. Now after this recent 6 inch rain, the lake does go up 2 inches for every inch of rain. The lake went up 12 inches and stayed there for 3-4 days and now it is 19 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 draining back at about an inch a day. It will be right back down to 2 to 4 inches just because of that rainfall, but the norm back there is no water. So they pushed those docks out on Lot 16 to get them onto the water. Also, the environment needed to be protected and that conservation easement protects that part of the lake. There’s snapping turtles back there that are in excess of 100 years old and there’s a lot of breeding ground for the carp and for the northern pike as well amongst millions of other creatures. So it’s highly active. There’s family of deer that live down there and this is, his proposal would tear right through the middle of the conservation easement. I’m the guy with the eyesore dock that Mr. Sanford keeps referring to in his report. I put that dock in about 3 years ago and it cost me $15,000. I too have a $5,000 survey that I just recently did for the city so if there’s refunds being handed out, I’d like to get in line so, but I don’t expect th one though. Marianne McCord attended the November 16 of a Planning Commission and she said, what I would like to see is maybe a community dock that all these houses we have one dock that wouldn’t take up all our area that we’re using. Referring to my dock taking up all the area. More size and there’s grants, state grants for the department and they go ahead and I would like to see it maybe even be an example to the rest of the community how we can develop our lakes and how we can make it accessible to everybody in there. Now I have to apologize for the bad English but that’s the transcript of the hearing. They want a community dock as part of their motivation and of course there’s no access for the community. That petition that was passed around, I just heard about it. I don’t know who signed it. Don’t know what it says, but those people have no, the people that signed that have no access to this lot. So I don’t see where their signature has any bearing on a petition. I think you might as well go down to Chaska and get signatures. It’s just to me it’s meaningless. The big thing that Mr. Sanford doesn’t understand is he does not have 100 feet of lakeshore. He has 1 foot of lakeshore and if he had riparian rights, which are superceded by the conservation easement, he might have access to the lake but he has no riparian rights, and you must have riparian rights to get access. So I don’t know if the camera can catch this but we just went through an extensive survey. Mayor Furlong: I think our system’s down right now. Maybe you could hold it up. I’m not sure if it’s coming over or not. Tom Meier: Okay. Well, it’s going to be hard to do from this distance but what you do when you determine the direction of your dock is, you have to determine, there you go. The high water mark on your property. And being that we’re at the end of the lake where it turns, it gets pretty complicated. Mayor Furlong: And Mr. Meier, this is your property, not the subject property correct? Tom Meier: Correct. My property’s right here…and the Sanford’s property is right here. The high water mark runs approximately like this. The green was drawn in because we don’t have an actual survey. We’re guesstimating but it’s going to be close to this green line, and then the Sanford’s is running right here. So once you determine the high water mark, which you again have to have riparian rights, you go off a straight line. Straight line. Then you extend at a 90 degree angle. This is the pink here, 100 feet. And then that’s the area you get to set your dock if you’re on the lake. Well, the problem is Lot 8 does have riparian rights if Lot 9 has it. So you have to go back to Lot 8 and put his angles in which are here, and then you have to compromise between the two lines. This is Sanford line. This is the neighbor’s line. You then compromise, 20 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 you split the difference and this becomes the new line. So then the orientation of their dock would not be over here as it shows on the drawing, but it would be over here. From the end of my dock, instead of being, actually they were only 12 feet away instead of the 20 they’re showing because of my L out here. That they would have to move over to about 90 feet, and you get over 90 feet, you’re back in the wetlands. So if you start putting a dock in, you’re going to crash right into the lot, the dock on the last Lot 16. You’re not getting to open water. The other thing was, there’s no water in this area. Like I said, you can’t get a boat in there and I’ve already checked it out because of the problems I’m having on the other side for the developer’s, it’s cost, there’s only one company in the area and it costs $50,000 to get a dredger to the lake. Even if that’s providing you can get a DNR permit and they’re going to fight you tooth and nail. Because they don’t want dredging. That’s extremely disruptive. And there’s all kinds of rules too when you go down in the code. 15% of these weeds out here, they’re not weeds. They’re water lilies and they’re protected. These are indigenous to the area. They’re quite beautiful. They don’t want more than 15% of these weeds removed in any one geographic area so if you put a dock in, and by the way that would dock would head this direction. It’ll just crash back into shore because you have to keep a straight line distance. There’s just no way so you’d have to get a variance to give them a channel out to here and you’re going to have to remove a 20 foot swath out 400-500 feet. This dock by the way, from where they started goes out 440 feet. There’s no water. And then you have to dredge and they want to dredge into my channel here, which we share with the one neighbor. So they want to come through here and just dredge and again it’s $50,000. The dock alone to reach 450-60 feet is $60.00 at least a lineal foot. They also have to put, one of the requirements was a movable dock. A floating dock. Not a permanent dock so they’d have to remove 140-50 feet of dock every spring and fall. And I brought pictures. This is standing on the end of my dock. When you look back, it is solid water lilies. There is very, very little open water and again that water depth, I’ve got pictures I’ll show you. Here’s one where I’m shooting down into the water. It’s 2 to 4 inches is all we can get, and I’ll just pass this picture around. It’s hard to see on the reproduction. Looking out from the other direction, from the front of my dock, again the water lilies are very, very dense and you’d be tearing all this up. Now what I did want to show you was, it’s an enormous distance to go back and once you’re on the lake, you’re entitled to 4 feet of deep water, so theoretically if they had a straight shot out to the lake, they could put a 600 foot dock out there, plus the 440 feet to go back to the house. By the codes. This is in my dock. You can see there’s, little depth you have out there. The channel goes immediately left out to my opening. This is where they’re proposing, you can see mud there. This is where they’re going to be sitting at the end of their docks so they’re going to have to dredge the lake. When you dredge you have to haul the dirt out of there. You have to take it to a special dump where they re-process it. It takes about a year and they have to reclaim the soil and give it back to Mother Nature. Very, very expensive process. But, besides from all that, the Conservation District is clear about the conservation easement. It’s very clear the definition about what it is. You can’t touch it. You can’t build anything on it. You can’t even do a foot path through it by definition. The City is the holder of the right of the, but their obligation is to propose this conservation easement and nobody has a claim on that easement except the holder, and that’s the City so, and I’m sure the City Attorney could help us on some of that. I think that’s pretty much it. I hope you’ll take the staff and the Planning Commission’s recommendation. I’m sure there’s some other neighbors here that are most interested in the outcome here so, thank you. 21 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Meier. Any questions for Mr. Meier? At this time. Thank you sir. Tom Meier: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Is there anybody else that would like to provide public comment? Again we did have the Planning Commission minutes and so if there’s additional information you think is important in addition to what’s been presented there, we’d certainly be welcome to hear it. Okay, thank you. Mr. Sanford, I guess I do have a follow up question for you, if you’d allow me and that relates to the conservation easement. Goes back to your property, especially with the comments that you made about all the work that you’ve done. What’s the justification for us avoiding that or voiding that for your property? David Sanford: I think it is, you know as Mr. Meier just went through the dock, which is very large, I guess again the animals that go through his yard or the weeds, the lotus flowers that go through his dock area are as important as any other ones. I think it’s to be fair. You know and his comment about the riparian rights, our survey clearly shows we have riparian rights and shows 100 feet of open water. We’re more than willing to work with the city to put in the type of dock that we’re looking for is a very simple dock and we’ll work very closely with the staff to make it that way. It would not be anything close to 440 feet. In fact we’re looking at starting at a much later point… It’s to our benefit to make it shorter. I think if you look at the totality of what we’ve done in our yard, and what we’ve built up to there, adding a dock from when we first bought our home and what we’ve done, we would add to the conservation easement versus other folks that have turf and done other things to a yard that has reduced the wetland. So the net net is we’re trying to add versus reducing again, we felt I think…thoughts. And one final, the neighbor issue… Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Thank you. Any follow up questions at this point? Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Question for Lori Mr. Mayor. My comments about if this is allowed tonight then Lot 8 would also have the right to have a dock, is that right? Lori Haak: It appears that way. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So then where does that leave us, or where does that leave Lot 9? If we use his lines, like he drew. Lori Haak: Sorry this is the diagram I put together as I was trying to make sense of this issue and you’ll see it looks like as a whole. Again as Mr. Meier indicated, we don’t have an ordinary high water mark actually surveyed on that, in the Lot 8 property. We don’t really know where that is. So it’s difficult to say. What I can say is that again this line that comes out at a 90 degree angle from the assumed ordinary high water mark and Mr. Meier’s 90 degree angle do not overlap, so there would not be the same situation here. Or as it appears now it doesn’t overlap. So there wouldn’t be this shared lot line that basically splits the difference, so basically the yellow area is the setback. There’s actually a setback from that shared lot line, which is 10 feet. 22 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 So in the code that’s called the extended lot line, just in case you look it up later for fun. So it looks to me that, and I don’t recommend that because this definition will make your head hurt but there, this distance is maybe, I don’t have a scale but maybe 15 feet that you’d have to maybe sandwich a dock in there, and again staff’s concern with this, and actually I’ll back up just a little bit. Staff did take a look at what the Sanford-McCord dock could look like and basically they would just have to meet that setback of the 100 foot extended lot line. So they could angle a dock out like this and run it parallel to Mr. Meier’s dock, technically. However, looking at the aerial photo and having been out in this area in a boat, just as suggestive evidence, it’s just very difficult to find a way to get out of that, to work out. So adding one dock would be difficult. Adding 2 docks would be very difficult, if not impossible. And again there are the ecological ramifications of what happens on these lots that have shared docks. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other questions at this time for staff? No. If not, why don’t we bring it to council for discussion then. Gather people’s thoughts. Councilman Lundquist: I took the last one. Mayor Furlong: Councilman Peterson. Councilman Peterson: I think that this council, well not this council but councils before us have been down this path and negotiated in good faith to support what was then a contentious issue. We’re asking to re-open that for what is just a simple, reasonable request to open it. But it certainly isn’t compelling. There isn’t a compelling reason to re-open those discussions which is essentially what we’ve been asked to do, and I can just see it having a compounding, cascading effect of, you know if I was a person on the lots farther down that are sharing one, I’d be knocking on staff’s door. Why not? So painting that picture I certainly understand staff’s position and to allowing myself to support that based upon the facts I heard tonight. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom, thoughts. Councilwoman Tjornhom: …Councilman Lundquist I’m learning more and more that we have to respect, learn what’s happened in the past and this was a heavily contested development obviously years ago and negotiation was worked out and there was a deal struck and I think we have to respect that conservation easement. And I also think I’m going to take the City Attorney’s advice and I know, I’m not going to open Pandora’s Box and have 20 people here 2 months from now saying we want our dock. I just, I think it’s important that we respect…set in motion. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Councilman Lundquist. Councilman Lundquist: I would agree with the previous comments. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. My thoughts on this and challenging issues with regard to lake rights, dock rights and this has been an issue before and it will probably be an issue in the future. I guess what swayed me, and with regard to whether or not the property you know which is included in the conservation easement yet was not part of that shared dock component which the 23 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 neighbor right next to it on Lot 10 was, is that the owner of what’s identified here as the owner of Lot 9 on the time that that agreement was entered into, signed the agreement. And so whatever property rights that owner of Lot 9 before the current owners had it, felt they had or didn’t have, they were in agreement with regard to not being included in the shared dock and having the conservation easement over their property. All I can assume is that they fairly understood what they were signing and that they were represented in terms of what they were agreeing to. So for that reason as well I feel comfortable saying that at the time this conservation easement was put in place, the owners of this property knew what that meant and were in agreement with it. And so for that, that gives me a little more comfort here saying that while it was a negotiated agreement at the time, and I agree with Councilman Peterson, you know I didn’t hear any motivation to re-open it. Or that the conservation easement didn’t need to be there still. In fact I heard information that suggested that it should continue to be there so for that reason and for reasons that the owner at the time the easement was put in place agreed to those easements, I am not compelled to change it at this time as well so. Any other thoughts or comments? If not, is there a motion? Find what page that starts on if somebody has it in their packet. Roger Knutson: Mayor? Mayor Furlong: Yes, Mr. Knutson. Roger Knutson: If I’m just premature but if you’re going to go along with the Planning Commission’s recommendation, I suggest you adopt the findings as part of your motion, adopt the findings of the Planning Commission as the findings of the council and add one more finding just to make it clear. Item 9. Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the city. That’d be finding number 9 if that’s the direction we’re going. Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Roger Knutson: Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the City. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. I think the motion begins on page 6 of the staff report. Councilman Peterson: Mr. Mayor I’d offer the City Council adopt the following motion which would deny the Wetland Alteration Permit #05-22 for a boardwalk across the wetland at 6440 Fox Path based upon the findings of fact in the staff report with the addition of number 9 which was articulated a few minutes earlier. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman Lundquist: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on that motion? Hearing none we’ll proceed with the vote. 24 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Lundquist seconded that the City Council denies Wetland Alteration Permit #05-22 for a boardwalk across the wetland at 6440 Fox Path based upon the findings of fact in the staff report, amended to include item 9. Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the City. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. (The City Council took a short recess at this point.) PROPOSED 2006 BUDGET, APPROVAL/CERTIFICATION OF MAXIMUM PROPOSED LEVY TO THE CARVER COUNTY AUDITOR. Greg Sticha: Mayor, members of council. I have passed out a revised resolution and a copy of the proposed 2006 budget revenue, summary revenue and expenditure sheet. A couple of the numbers, or a number on that sheet ties to the actual resolution. The revised resolution and I just wanted to have you see where the numbers were flowing from. In particular item number 1, which talks about the total revenue expenditure for the general fund of $8.6 million. Moving nd forward onto the memo and discussion of the, approval of the preliminary levy, August 22 we came to you in a work session to discuss the proposed 2006 budget and staff has prepared a, what we considered a very reasonable budget for 2006. During that discussion council directed staff to come up with a proposal that had an effect on existing taxpayers of a 0% increase in their property tax bill. In order to do that we would have to use $285,000 in reserves to basically buy down the levy to get a 0% increase to those property owners. The total levy, if we were to use the $285,000 in reserves, would be $9,354,890 which would need to be levied to Carver County th on the 15. That amount is actually less than the amount we levied last year if we were to use those reserves. In addition in the report we have provided two spread sheets which we have gotten some additional information on. The bond tax levy spread sheet, which shows the tax levies for our bond payments for the years 2005 through 2025 was revised to include two facilities, or two bond payments. One which was previously in the old spread sheet. One for a public works facility which is currently proposed in the CIP. That has not been, has not come to you yet but will later this fall. Although public works facility improvement of $3 million and a fire station in 2010 of $4.5 million which includes a $3.5 million facility and $1 million dollars in equipment for that facility. The bond payments would then be as noted in 2009 through 2025 for $250,000 for the public works improvement and $370,000 for the fire station. To the right you will notice staff goals, and I think council’s goal is to attempt to keep the actual levy flat over the next number of years at $1,938,000 in levy for bond payments from now through 2025. In order to do that in years 2006 through 2009 we would have to use reserves noted 285 for the upcoming year and then 274 in 2007, 269 in 2008 and 560,000 in 2009. At that point in 2010, due to the elimination of some other bond payments there becomes some potential excess levy dollars available. That leads us to the next spread sheet which is the revolving assessment fund spread sheet, which our street construction project that Paul has put together for the next number of years. You’ll notice. Todd Gerhardt: If the council could go to the council packet item, is where Greg’s reading from. And it’s right now we’re on the page of the revolving assessment fund. It looks like that. Your numbers are on a spread sheet. 25 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Greg Sticha: So flowing from one spread to the other, the excess levy that becomes available in 2010, you’ll notice that in the revolving assessment fund spread sheet you will see that that $785,000 now has a basically an additional revenue source to fund those projects. And the numbers through 2011 and on to 2017, when that excess levy becomes available to pay for those projects. The actual project cost for 2007 through 2010 are what is currently proposed in the CIP. $1.1 million in 2007. $1.4 million in 2008. $1 million in 2009 and $1.9 million in 2010. The details of those projects Paul can probably talk in a little more detail about if you actually wanted to get into that at this point. The basis of this spread sheet is just to kind of show you where the revolving assessment fund is currently and where it will be in the future, assuming that we maintain a flat levy over the next number of years and the assumption that in the year 2011 through 2017 we fund $1 million in construction projects out of this fund per year. So those two spread sheets kind of give you some background on financially where we’re at for our bonding needs and what sources we would be using for some of those over the next years, including the public works facility improvement and fire station in 2010. At this point that’s all I have in my memorandum to discuss. If there’s any questions about any of the spread sheets or the preliminary levy. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for staff. Councilman Peterson: So by the tone of your voice I’m assuming you’re comfortable with those revised numbers. Greg Sticha: Which revised numbers are we talking about? Councilman Peterson: Zero. Going back to zero. Greg Sticha: The 0% increase? Yes. Based on the fact that we will actually be levying less next year but due to the fiscal disparities loss, what’s going to be, in order to maintain that 0% increase we will have to use reserves and based on my calculations it will be about $285,000. Todd Gerhardt: Mr. Mayor. Just one other point I think that Greg brought up during our work session was, is that we set up a catastrophic emergency fund and through the direction of the council we have kept more of our cash available. It may not have been in a designated fund but the revolving loan fund and general fund reserves are still out there if we should have to access that cash. So from that standpoint I think Greg and I feel very comfortable if a situation like that arises. Like last Sunday, or the Sunday before. Greg Sticha: Certainly and you’re not bound by any means to maintain the levy flat as we go along either. Mayor Furlong: Thank you for letting us know what our options are. Councilman Lundquist: And the $285,000 in reserves also assumes that we leave the budget where it’s at too. Every dollar reduction in budget with this also is a dollar reduction in reserves that we take out, correct? 26 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Greg Sticha: Right. That would come directly out of the general fund reserves. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other questions for staff? And just as far as the process here, we’ll be establishing a maximum levy, our preliminary levy this evening has to be to the Carver th County Auditor’s or approved prior to the 15 of this month, which is Thursday. Greg Sticha: That’s correct. This is setting the maximum levy. From this point we can go down but not up. Mayor Furlong: And during the next few months we’re going to be working together to review, as Councilman Lundquist said the assumptions in the current budget, or the proposed budget for next year and for the process, for residents here and watching at home, Truth in Taxation hearing, we establish that at the first Monday of December I believe. th Greg Sticha: December 5. th Mayor Furlong: The 5 of December so those statements will probably come out if history serves sometime late in November, which will reflect this preliminary levy as well as that from the County, the School District and any other taxing district. Is my understanding correct? Greg Sticha: That’s correct. Although we certainly would be looking for comment at the special work sessions when we go over the department budgets in detail or at any other point in time over the next couple months, if they’d like to come into my office and talk about the budget th details, they certainly can. They’re not limited to December 5. They have other options. Mayor Furlong: Excellent. Thank you for clarifying that. Any other questions for staff at this point? If not I’ll bring it back to council for discussion. Thoughts and comments. Councilman Peterson: Let’s move ahead. ‘ Mayor Furlong: Yeah I think moving ahead is clear. We had a good work session where we got into more of the details. More of the spread sheets and it’s, you know what we’re seeing here is now the third year from a budget process of putting together those Key Financial Strategies and developing long term plans in terms of capital investment as was said. Part of these plans look to looking ahead so that the decisions we make now, we know what those affects are down the road. We’re not putting future councils into compromised positions. And we’re doing it in such a way that we’re still investing in our streets and utilities. We’re still maintaining the services that our residents need and balancing it within our means. Within the taxes. This will be the third year in a row that taxes stayed the same or went down for the same house. Our tax rate as a city has been going down and yet we’re doing it in such a way, and I commend staff for their ability to continue find opportunities to, in some tough times with some line items going up pretty significantly, non controllable items. Insurance and health insurance, that they’re doing a great job that gives us this flexibility so appreciate all their efforts and the time the department heads have put in so far and I know we thanked them for the time they will continue to put in as we move forward. So I think this is good news and it’s nice to be at this point in September and 27 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 I would encourage the council to, as Councilman Peterson said, let’s move ahead and get this done. So is there a motion to approve? Councilman Lundquist: Motion to approve the preliminary levy as published. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there, as was distributed here. Councilman Lundquist: As distributed, yes. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman Peterson: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Resolution#2005-77: Councilman Lundquist moved, Councilman Peterson seconded to approve the preliminary tax levy for 2006 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. EMERGENCY SEWER REPAIR AT CURRY FARMS DRAINAGE WAY, PW116C. th Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor, City Council members. On September 4, as you well know, the city received very heavy rains and these rains flooded streets, back yards and ponds over the duration of this storm event over 6 inches of rain fell in most of the Chanhassen area. Flooding caused the Curry Farms drainage way to erode specifically and…to wash away a little bit. The Curry Farms drainage way is located on the sheet here, just north of Pleasant View Road and say just east of Powers Boulevard here. And that drainage way does drain a good portion of the Curry Farms development area west of Powers and then also a portion of Pleasant View Road as well. The storm water eventually drains into Christmas Lake as well. The issue that we have found is shown in this picture right here. This existing sanitary sewer that is currently under this drainage area that has actually bounced and has become elevated and dislodged a little bit, so we are proposing to relay that sanitary sewer at this time and try to re-stabilize the drainage ditch in this area. The drainage ditch was discussed for erosion control measures I think earlier this year but due to lack of easements at this time and final design with the property owner, I don’t think that project has moved forward. We’re looking at trying to do something at least right now with the sanitary sewer system so we don’t have the sewer pipe break or another rain event happens, we feel like this sewer line can be jeopardy. Staff has talked to one contractor and we did talk to a geotechnical and erosion control consultant as well. We visited with them on site, and we’re estimating approximately $35,000 right now to stabilize the ditch embankment and relay the sanitary sewer line at this time. Unfortunately we have not received a final cost from a contractor at this time but due to the fact that we would like to try to get this project going in the next week or so, we would like to request that the council approve expenditures of funds not to exceed $35,000 for this work. We do feel we can stay within that budget. Funding of the project, we’re just proposing to split it in half out of storm water utility fund and half out of the sewer utility fund so with that I stand for questions. 28 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: It’s nice to know where your money’s going isn’t it. Quick question with regards to the earlier project Mr. Oehme mentioned which is the storm water project. Have we made any more progress on trying to pursue that? I know you made some good efforts with watershed district in terms of cost sharing and homeowners. Is that project that we think we might be able to push forward at some point soon? Lori Haak: We are still hoping to be able to get that done because Christmas Lake is just an amazing resource and this problem, as shown by the pictures that Mr. Oehme has, is pretty severe. There’s severe erosion. Unfortunately half of the drainage way is on private property and currently the property is in a trust and you have a lot of questions from them as to what the project would look like and other things like that. I actually spoke with their attorney this afternoon who indicated that they were in support of this project, but they hadn’t really made any headway in their discussions of the other project. So I think that they may be reluctant to allow us to go onto that property for the other projects but I haven’t really heard any solid reasons at this point. Staff has tried to maintain an open line of communication but that really is our hold up at this point is that property provides the best access to this area because it is quite a steep ravine and if we were to come in from let’s say the Pleasant View Cove area, it would just be a lot of disruption to back yards and potentially removal of trees and things of that nature do. We’re working on it because we continue to feel that it’s a worthwhile project but we have met some resistance with that. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. This clearly seems like something that needs to be done and as appropriate given the request, I guess are there additional questions for staff or any discussion? Councilman Lundquist: Given that this is a, how should we say it, unforeseen expenditure, what’s your long term of, not that Paul didn’t ask you to spend your money, in addition to that then I’ll ask what are you not going to spend to make up for the difference then, or do we have thoughts on what we would put off or delay to make up the difference. Todd Gerhardt: Right now the storm water utility fund sits with a healthy reserve. What we would have to do, I mean not in, and we’ve got a bunch of projects we’ve got to get accomplished too. You would probably process a budget amendment to come back. At this point I can’t believe, I supposed we could look at pushing off some projects but whenever we have an opportunity to get a storm water project done, we’re going to try to move ahead with it. In this we would ask that roughly $17,000 would be reallocated out of that fund towards Paul’s project to re-establish the sewer line. Paul Oehme: And just to piggy back with Ms. Lori Haak’s project as well too. We are, we’re bringing in a substantial amount of rip rap too to try to stabilize that embankment. Mayor Furlong: Maybe that’s answer, I’m sorry go ahead. Councilman Lundquist: Yeah, my concern though is, as we saw in the correspondence packet, that the SWMP project, the SWMP plan update is going to go substantially over. We will be spending more money there. We’re spending more money here. All of a sudden this thing that 29 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Greg just talked about with the 2 ½ million dollar reserve isn’t 2 ½ million bucks anymore so. As we look at these things I guess I just want to make sure we’re keeping the attitude that it’s not necessarily an incremental $17,000 spend versus a what are we, you know we’ve got to at least take a look at what are we going to push off and what delay, instead of just… Mayor Furlong: I guess where are we on other storm water management projects or utility projects in terms of our CIP and our budget for those enterprise funds? Currently. Paul Oehme: Well for our, for example our, a project that comes to mind this year is our, our sanitary lift station rehab project. I mean I think we budgeted $30,000-$35,000 for that. We only used about 15 so that project we can, if we were to absorb this project on, so that’s one example. And there’s other projects that we have come in under budget this year already so I feel confident that the sanitary sewer portion can handle the expenditures. Mayor Furlong: And from Lori’s standpoint, I think you had money budgeted to reconstruct the creek bed in this area. I think that’s where Paul was coming from was to access that money to help establish. Probably won’t see 100% of the project completed because you have to go onto private property, so I think that’s where you were coming from on the 17,000. Paul Oehme: This project we’re staying within our utility easements. We’re not going out of that to address any of the erosion things within the rest of the channel here. Mayor Furlong: So we are making storm water management improvements to this? To this section within our current drainage and utility easement. Paul Oehme: That’s correct. Lori Haak: Stabilizing slope. Mayor Furlong: Councilman Lundquist, does that answer your question? Councilman Lundquist: Yep. Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Any other discussion or questions? For staff. If not is there a motion to adopt the staff’s recommendation? Councilman Peterson: So moved. Councilman Lundquist: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on that motion? Hearing none we’ll proceed with the vote. Resolution#2005-78: Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Lundquist seconded that the City Council approve an expenditure of funds not to exceed $35,000 for emergency 30 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 sewer repair and drainage way stabilization at the Curry Farms drainage way. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS: Mayor Furlong: Maybe what we do is piggy back off of the motion we just passed and the cause for that which was our storm last weekend and I guess I would ask Mr. Gerhardt maybe if you could the council an update on storm related events and progress we made during this last weekend. Todd Gerhardt: Sure. Well we’re continuing to resolve some of our drainage issues that came after 4 ½ inches of rain in less than an hour. We definitely know what ponds can handle a 4 ½ inch rain and which ones can’t. We saw the periodic flooding in some of our storm water ponds. Across the roads on Market Boulevard, Lake Lucy, Lake Lucy Lane. We saw some drainage issues that occurred in some of the newer developments. All I can say is that the newer developments, Yoberry, Lake Harrison, Pinehurst, I mean they were at their most vulnerable stage of development. Every inch of that property was exposed to the rains so there was, the erosion control held in most cases. However we did see some areas by Longacres where we saw substantial amount of water hit a 16 foot retaining wall and follow that retaining wall along it’s edges. A large amount of silt came down and clogged our catch basins in the Longacres neighborhood. That’s creating one home where it saw water go directly into it’s basement from the storm water pond and wetland that collected the rain water. We saw periodic flooding where sump pumps couldn’t keep up with the amount of rain that went through that neighborhood. We had two homes that had wet basements. I have to give a lot of credit to the developer who met with the neighborhood, individuals that were affected and is taking responsibility for those areas. At this point I haven’t received any claims from the Longacres or Woodridge developments. Where we are looking at claims is some of our storm water ponds off of Frontier that were at capacity and saw erosion of the beds of those. Right now we’re working through our insurance company on those and seeing if we have coverage or not. The emergency overflows in some of the areas behind Cub, our storm water pond there worked, went over the top of Market into the ponds to the south of Applebee’s, so none of those businesses were affected. Our storm sewer system worked the way it was supposed to. We are rebuilding some of our storm water ponds that we saw the walls deteriorate and erode. Streets have been cleaned. Sidewalks have been cleaned. Right now we’re still dealing with the individual residents. We did have some substantial erosion from another storm water outlet that was over by Power Hill Park, next to the Gola’s property. Is it Bluff Creek? That creek in there, is it called, it’s not Bluff Creek? It’s just a creek bed. I don’t think it has a name. They saw substantial erosion, silt that landed on their property. We’re working Gola’s in cleaning up that site and fixing the outlet on that, the storm water pond at the end of Power Hill Park. With that, that’s pretty much it. …the master list of priorities of high to low. Paul’s department is monitoring that and checking those off as he gets those projects accomplished. I can continue to send those out to you and keep you informed as we move ahead. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Any questions of Mr. Gerhardt? Councilman Peterson: Good response. 31 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Todd Gerhardt: And just so you know, this storm was isolated into the Chanhassen area. The mayor and I met with the school district 112 leaders on Friday and asked them how the storm occurred in Chaska and Victoria and Carver and they’re going, what storm? They had no calls at all so nobody experienced the amount of flooding and erosion that we did. Kind of different. Mayor Furlong: It was indeed different when you see Curry Farms Park under 3 feet of water. It’s not usual. Obviously the man made storm water system but nature’s own storm water management system, the creeks, the ponds, the lakes had trouble dealing with it as well so. To Councilman Peterson’s comment about good response. I think the staff did respond very well, and I’ve heard from a number of residents how pleased they were with the quick response and the return phone calls and the desire to help so I thank all of you for that as well. Todd Gerhardt: And one other item I should update you on. We had our special city council meeting. Did declare Lotus Lake as a no wake lake. Right now the lake levels are 6 inches above the high water mark. Down from the foot from last Tuesday, so we are continuing to monitor boat activity on the lake. Talk to Sergeant Olson. He’ll probably update you on our next meeting. The patrol hours that the sheriff’s office has given to the lake. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. We’re in council presentations. Comments or discussion. Councilman Peterson: Mr. Mayor, just talking to the Executive Director of Southwest Metro today and as you might expect, ridership is up significantly because of, you know our gas prices are a pretty substantial part of that. And we expect it to go further so our buses are nearing capacity and we’re going back to Met Council for expansion of that which is all good news because that means the cars are getting off the road. Mayor Furlong: Good. Thank you. Other presentations. As Mr. Gerhardt mentioned, he and I met at our regularly scheduled Eastern Carver County Leadership meeting which is consists of the mayors and city managers, city administration from the school district 112, so Chaska, Chanhassen, Victoria, Carver as well as county representatives and school district representatives. This was last Friday. One of the topics needless to say was concern about the hurricane and the affects of the Hurricane Katrina and looking at what we have in terms of emergency preparedness plans. Obviously we have one in place and it’s something that as a council we talked about it. It was the spring 2 years ago we talked through that at a work session over at the fire station, but it was everyone’s opinion that we review that, and not only review that individually as cities, which we will do, but also together with other cities and with the th county, across the county. We tentatively set January 14, which is a Saturday, for that meeting and it was, I recommended and others concurred that that should be expanded to council members as well, so if you can put it on your calendars, we’ll send out e-mails but it would be the City Council’s other representative cities not just within 112 but I know I will extend the invitation as well to other cities within Carver County. How do we, what are our plans that are in place now? What’s our roles as mayors and council members and the staff if an emergency situation happens. And to make sure that we respond as quickly and effectively as possible so th we’ll be talking about that together with others on January 14. Obviously it’s a date well out 32 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 there so that may change but at this point please plan on attending. Anything else for council presentations? ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: Todd Gerhardt: Just to add to some of the other agenda items from our leaders meeting. th November 4, the school district 112 leaders will be discussing AUAR updates. I believe Chaska, Carver, Victoria and Chanhassen have AUAR’s out there right now. We’ll have Jules Smith, our Met Council representative there. I believe Jules probably will be inviting some Met Council staff to come in and kind of update us on how we’re doing in our process. Any concerns that they may have. I’ve also invited Kate, our Community Development Director to attend. Also talk about some of Carver and Chaska are affected by some sewer treatment plant expansions and additional sewer lines so they want to get some feedback from Met Council on th those items. Another item that was brought up is that the high school enrollment this year in 10 th through 12 hit 1,900 so they will be starting to look at that secondary school, high school process and be meeting with probably leaders in the communities to talk about that potential as, as a potential referendum item on, not this coming fall but maybe the following fall. Councilman Lundquist: Why would they be looking at 10 through 12 enrollment for building thth another high school down the road? Shouldn’t they be looking at 4 through 6 grade or something? Todd Gerhardt: If the enrollment hit 1,900 was kind of the guide to start talking about, they’ll thth look at all the grades down the line but when the 10 through 12 hit 1,900 was the time to start looking at a secondary school. Councilman Lundquist: ...the state college system and saying you’d better be building more buildings… Mayor Furlong: As it was explained to me is that a few years ago when they went through their long term master facility plan, there was uncertainty as to what the student population would be and so they created a dual track and depending, when they started to approach 2,000 in the high school was what they earlier earmarked as the time that they would review which track it looks like they’re going to follow. Councilman Lundquist: …consider the grades before that. Mayor Furlong: Right, they’re looking, they’re going to be looking down. They’re going to be looking down at the current lower level grades. The elementary school and they’re also looking at is, as Mr. Gerhardt mentioned, the anticipated growth and development within the district as a way to evaluate from a demographic standpoint what their needs are for a facility. Todd Gerhardt: There’s a pretty good article, I think they’re following Lakeville’s guide in the Star Tribune. See if you can bring that up again but Lakeville I think started their second high school. And the signal, the signal delay on 101 and Pioneer, that was supposed to be operational 33 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 here last week. Now it looks as if it’s going to be the middle of September for that work to be completed. So, that was brought up at the meeting. And that’s all I had. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt? CORRESPONDENCE PACKET. Mayor Furlong: There was an item in there that dealt with our storm water management plan. We’ve been in the process since last year. Last fall I believe in terms of updating that plan. Can you tell us a little bit, or maybe summarize a little bit where we are on that and especially in light of the events of the storm last weekend. How that’s coming. Lori Haak: Certainly mayor and council members. As the mayor indicated the, there was a brief update in the correspondence section of the packet that discussed the update process of the Surface Water Management Plan up to this point. Generally we’re making really good progress with surveying structures. As Councilman Lundquist indicated earlier, we are anticipating some increases in the amount of expenditures for that survey, due to the fact that a number of the structures actually approximately 32% of the structures are in, either in right-of-way or on private property so when you’re looking at storm sewers for example in parking lots at Byerly’s, that was the one that was brought to our attention. The contractor actually had to go out, the consultant had to send their folks out at 4:00 in the morning to get those structures done so that the cars wouldn’t be parked over them so they’ve incurred some additional costs in that. And certainly there are some over runs that they weren’t anticipating and staff is keeping a close eye on that because we believe that they did, they were pretty aggressive in their bidding for that part of the contract and we brought that to their attention early in the process, so staff’s perspective at this point is that there wouldn’t be an adjustment in that, but that there are additional structures that have taken more time. So that brings you up to speed on that. The wetland inventory is proceeding well, as well. And all the wetlands we anticipate there are about, between 350 and 400 wetlands in the city of Chanhassen. We’ve only discovered 2 potential wetland violations in all of those basins that they’ve looked at so I’m very impressed by the citizens of Chanhassen staying away from those protected basins and actually the consultant noted it to me in an e-mail today so that’s just a great thing to commend our residents on is they understand that those things are protected and they need to be stayed away from for the most part. Certainly the modeling is proceeding and we will be looking at those models very closely, as you can imagine. One of the alternatives that we do have is running a more extreme event through our model as we proceed with this. Actually in speaking with Ron Leif at SEH, who is our consultant for this project and he indicated to me that they’re, when they were working on Burnsville’s storm water management plan several years ago, actually about the same time in the process Burnsville was hit with that extreme event of 8 to 9 inches of rain over a couple of hours so the City Council in that instance actually went back and indicated to staff and to the consultants that they would like to run a storm like that through the system just to see if they were huge problem areas, and certainly some of those have come to light as we’ve received complaints and issues, you know just flooding in certain places or storm water plan failures but you know certainly that’s one way one community has handled it. I don’t know that that’s merited at this time. That’s certainly the council’s decision but that is an alternative as well. 34 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Councilman Lundquist: Should be 100 years before we get another one right. Todd Gerhardt: Mayor I just want to make sure it’s clear that we did not order this rain. Not in the SEH contract and you will not see a change order for that. Mayor Furlong: If I could. Part of this process is to establish where we are in terms of the storm water management. Where did we need improvements and also to have that tool so when we continue to grow we can manage the growth and make sure that we have sufficient ponding, storm water management features in place, correct? Lori Haak: Absolutely. Mayor Furlong: So that’s all part of what’s being developed here. Lori Haak: Correct. Kate Aanenson: To prioritize flooding areas and problems. Mayor Furlong: Okay, so saying here are the critical ones. Here’s where we can, here’s where we need to focus our efforts most critically. Lori Haak: And certainly that will come with new development but also with existing development so for example we’ve looked at several neighborhoods where the storm water infrastructure either, and we’re not sure at this point, either was designed incorrectly or installed incorrectly, which is causing problems for some residents and so we definitely have hot spots that have come to light as a result of this that were kind of just bubbling below the surface prior to this. We were aware of most of them but certainly this has exacerbated the problem. And one of the things that we will be definitely looking at are some of our ordinances to potentially alter the way that we’re managing things if there’s something that has been a problem in the past. For example, making certain that our emergency overflows are adequately designed and outlet into a suitable location. Those sorts of things. We’ll just be ratcheting those down a little bit more. As we go along in the process. Mayor Furlong: Good. Thank you. Any questions for staff on that? Appreciate the update. Progress. Are we still on the same schedule that we had before? Lori Haak: Yes. Mayor Furlong: Okay. I know we do have a task force of residents that are working with that as well. Lori Haak: That’s correct. The first task force meeting was in August. The next one will be st September 21. And we, I guess we had a slight modification in the schedule in that we got the task force started just a little late so their final meeting, if necessary will be in January so that extends the time line by about a month, so it’s very, very close to the original time line. 35 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. Again thanks for the update. Is there anything else to come before the council this evening? Kate Aanenson: I just wanted to make a note on the public record that Lori did on her own take a wetland certification test and has passed it…so we want to congratulate her for taking the effort and that’s a good for us, being the LGU to have someone that’s qualified as a delineator so we congratulate her for that. Mayor Furlong: Thank you for saying that and congratulations. Lori Haak: Thank you. Todd Gerhardt: Just want to note our ground breaking for water treatment this coming Wednesday at 5:00 at the treatment site. Mayor Furlong: Very good. Thank you. If there’s nothing else to come before the council this evening, is there a motion to adjourn. Councilman Lundquist moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The City Council meeting was adjourned at 9:15 p.m.. Submitted by Todd Gerhardt City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 36