PRC 2011 07 26
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREATION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
JULY 26, 2011
Chairman Daniel called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Jeff Daniel, Steve Scharfenberg, Elise Ryan, Cole Kelly, Tom Kelly,
Peter Aldritt, and Brent Carron
MEMBERS ABSENT:
None.
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation
Superintendent; and John Stutzman, Recreation Supervisor
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Tom Devine 7640 South Shore Drive
Steve Jenks 7490 Chanhassen Road
Joe Shneider 1035 Holly Lane
Matt Arens 7644 South Shore Drive
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
Tom Kelly: I do have a change. I’d like to move commission member presentations to right
before new business. I’d like to talk about the, what we’ve learned from the disc golf course
prior to looking at the CIP since that’s included in the CIP.
Daniel: Okay.
Scharfenberg: Can we also include under new business the bike ride in August, since I think it
would occur before our next meeting.
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Hoffman: We had talked about the 20.
Scharfenberg: Yep.
Cole Kelly: The only other change I see is on page 12 of the Minutes.
Daniel: We’ll get that in a little bit here.
Cole Kelly: Still getting that? Okay.
Daniel: Yep. So we have visitor presentations for that though.
Hoffman: Somebody asked about one other item?
Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: That would be the discussion on the Dave Huffman Memorial Run. Do you want to do
it under new business or reports?
Hoffman: Reports.
Daniel: Okay. Okay, with the changes to adding the disc golf discussion prior to the new
business discussions, the bike ride in August under new business and then the reports with the
Dave Huffman Memorial Run cancellation. Are there any other changes? If not, let’s go ahead
and approve today’s agenda.
Tom Kelly moved, Scharfenberg seconded to approve the agenda with the following
changes: moving Commission Member Presentations prior to New Business to discuss disc
golf courses; discussion of the August bike tour under New Business; and discussion of the
Dave Huffman Memorial Run under Reports.All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Daniel: Public announcements, Todd? John?
Stutzman: A couple I’d like to add if I may.
Daniel: Sure.
Stutzman: The Penny Carnival is tomorrow out at the Chanhassen Rec Center at 2:00 and then
on Thursday, Tim Mahoney will be playing in the concert series at 7:00 on Thursday night in the
plaza.
Scharfenberg: Just so for the uninformed, what is the Penny Carnival?
Stutzman: The Penny Carnival is the annual summer tradition that we do each year. It’s out at
the Rec Center where we just bring out a bunch of the carnival style games that you saw on the
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4, if you guys were there. A lot of them made by our park maintenance staff. Just an
opportunity to bring a couple hundred kids together and give them an opportunity to have some
fun afternoon activities.
Tom Kelly: And they’re literally a penny? Each game’s a penny?
Stutzman: They range from 1 to 5 pennies but depending upon popularity of the game and how
many prizes you get.
Tom Kelly: Wow.
Stutzman: And we will have change available.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: Alright.
Hoffman: And for the uninformed, Tim Mahoney is straight back from The Voice.
Daniel: Yep. So good. A celebrity. Excellent. Any other public announcements Todd? Jerry?
Ruegemer: No. We’ll talk about the Huffman later.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
Daniel: I see that we do have guests today and Todd, do you want to for the, or the guests, if you
certainly have some questions or would like to comment or present today, please feel free. Step
up and please if you could please state your name and your address.
Tom Devine: Thank you. My name is Tom Devine. I live at 7640 South Shore Drive. I’m here
this evening to really talk about the issue that some of you maybe are already familiar with or the
aquatic invasive species that have now touched 3 of our lakes here for the efforts of trying to
stem the aquatic species from getting to the 3 of our lakes, and all of the lakes in Chanhassen to
become kind of a major attention point. There’s been a lot of media coverage. There’s been
articles, numerous articles that have taken place in the Chanhassen media and up to this point I
don’t think anybody’s come in to address any of you formally about the issues that we are all
now dealing with as it relates to that. But I’m here this evening really to speak on behalf of, or
with the permission of the Lotus Lake Clean Water Organization, the Christmas Lake
Homeowners Association, the Lake Minnewashta Lake Alliance and the Lotus Lake
Homeowners Association, and what we’d like to do is to address each of you as commissioners
and encourage you to formally support 3 things this evening that we’re talking about or thinking
about, asking your cooperation in. The first would be the direct cooperation of the Carver
County Sheriff’s Office to support evenly the enforcement of all park hours that are posted
throughout the parks according to the statutes here in the City of Chanhassen. The second thing
we’re asking is that you develop a written plan as soon as possible and adopt it to protect all of
Chanhassen’s lakes from invasive aquatic species. And the third thing that we’re asking this
evening is that, we’re asking your support in the efforts to encourage citizen volunteers to
continue to provide zebra mussel inspections on Minnewashta, Christmas and Lotus Lake, as
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they’ve been doing now since about May 15. Very quickly, just for those of you that don’t
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have the background, let me just share what has been transpiring up to this point. Since May 15
Lotus Lake, the Lotus Lake Clean Water Organization and the Lotus Lake Homeowners
Association spearheaded an effort and has gotten 73 people trained by the DNR to do aquatic
inspections of boats and trailers and there are 14 more that are on the waiting list that have now
had to wait because of the State shutdown and I’ve been told there was a few more than that now
that are waiting for the formal training that the DNR has to come out and actually conduct.
We’ve been trying to schedule that with them since the strike ended. This is the most inspection
training that’s been done on any lake in any part of Minnesota and the DNR has looked at our
efforts here in terms of the cooperation that they’ve provided and in terms of what’s been going
on as really a pilot or a modeling that is actually scalable to be used throughout Minnesota and a
number of other lakes, and it’s with great emphasize and great interest that the DNR has
participated actively and been there doing inspections and working with numerous volunteers
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
that have been participating in this in order to gain greater understanding of what really is
involved in the whole effort of trying to stop the spread of these aquatic species, and specifically
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zebra mussels. They have since, the organizations have since May 14 completed some 550 to
600 boat inspections on Lotus Lake there. On the public landing in your park there and
approximately 16%, based on the data that we’ve got, have had some type of at risk situation
within their boat or on their trailer that has brought you know attention to the inspectors in terms
of what’s going on. And when we look at that, that’s a relatively high inspection, or a relatively
high incident rate in terms of things that we’re concerned about relative to transporting onto the
lake because all it takes is one boat with one zebra mussel on it to infect a whole lake. And
finally up until this point there really has been very few incidences that have occurred. The
leadership that’s been involved within the DNR, Lotus Lake and all the various organizations.
We’ve had no real push back from anybody that’s been involved in this inspections up until this
last Friday and there was an incident that involved the intervention of the Carver County
sheriff’s office, but that is the first incident that we’ve had since the program started and I think
we dealt with it and we’ve dealt with the concerns surrounding it and I think all the appropriate
people have been told and it’s been documented and all the various things that need to happen.
This effort has been completely done without any taxpayer dollars up to this point, other than of
course the resources of what the DNR has in terms of the labor of their people attending but all
of this has been funded and directed and carried out on behalf of all the various organizations
and the plan is to continue in that same venue knowing the shortage of both city, county and state
resources, the efforts have all been designed to stretch the dollars and make the dollars go as far
as possible in terms of trying to do this. The concern obviously is started on those 3 lakes.
Those 3 lakes have very active homeowners associations and the Lotus Lake Clean Water
Organization has people beyond obviously the, beyond just the residents of those lakes but rather
they have much broader support of both those people that are, that use the lake with a regularly
frequency and our issue really has been focused around trying to educate and bring attention to
what the issues really are. What I’m here tonight to do is to present those 3 issues. Have you
give consideration to those issues at some future point here at one of your future meetings and to
roll forward and we think it’s of utmost importance that you as the commissioners of the parks
take serious action right now to make sure that nothing happens to our, probably one of our most
valuable resources here in the city which is our, I guess it’s 9 lakes that we’ve got that are within
the city of Chanhassen area and so we hope you take that charge seriously. We hope you look
carefully at the work that’s been completed on your behalf up to this point, and certainly would
welcome any questions that any of you may have at this point.
Daniel: Thank you Tom and thank you for taking the opportunity to talk to the commission
about this. One of the questions I’m certainly going to relay over to Todd is, within the park and
recreation charter that we’re responsible for, and obviously the parks do fall into this category,
and within the parks that boat landings primarily that really where there’s an issue would be
what? Lotus, Susan. I don’t know, we don’t do Christmas because that’s in Shorewood correct?
Hoffman: And Lake Ann.
Daniel: And Lake Ann. And that’s it, right? Minnewashta is a DNR controlled.
Hoffman: County.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: Or County, okay. Yeah because it’s in Minnewashta so.
Hoffman: Lake St. Joe is DNR.
Daniel: Okay. And Riley is Eden Prairie?
Hoffman: Eden Prairie.
Daniel: Okay. And so I mean from that standpoint we look at the 3 lakes. Lake Ann, Lake
Susan and Lotus, and they fall within our park system correct? I know Susan and, all three of
those do.
Hoffman: You’re looking at the boat access.
Daniel: Yeah, the boat access. I mean as far as what our responsibilities from a commission
standpoint, what discussions have you had with the various organizations here that have come up
and, just so we have some understanding about what, so we can understand what we can discuss
within what we’re responsible for.
Hoffman: I’ve been in attendance at a couple of meetings. The mayor was at one of those
meetings with Mr. Devine and others, Todd Gerhardt, City Manager. Terry Jeffery, our Water
Resources Coordinator and really the position of the City at this time is that we’re open to
allowing volunteer inspectors at any one of these sites. Lake Ann, Lake Susan or Lotus Lake.
The DNR has an established program for invasive aquatics. Unfortunately they were out for
what, most of a month or something. I checked the website today. It’s all back up and running
and so their inspectors were gone but the volunteers through this association were working at
least during that time once they got up and running. So it’s currently not in our program. It’s not
in our budget. It’s not in our realm to be conducting. We haven’t been directed by the City
Council to get involved with the zebra mussels invasive species control. The DNR has a
program. The volunteers are out there. All three of these landings are at public parks which are
owned and operated by the City of Chanhassen, and all three were developed with LAWCON
dollars. Federal and State dollars and so the City doesn’t have total control over what we can do
at those sites because we have some regulations that go along with the operation of those access
points. They have to be open at least 16 hours a day between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 10:00
p.m. They have to, you can’t charge. If you charge you have to charge at the same rate for non-
residents and residents so for example at Lake Minnewashta they have to charge, if you want to
go in and launch your boat, you have to charge a non-resident the same dollars as a resident.
And you can’t enforce anything at the landing that wouldn’t be consistent with a riparian water
user and so if you enforce any kind of a regulation at the landing, it also has to be enforceable
against any riparian property owner as well on the lake so, those are the regulations that come
along with those. I can provide those to the commission. In the70’s and 80’s the LAWCON
funds were generated and one of their primary reasons for those federal and state funds is to
provide public water access points in the state of Minnesota. But when cities developed these
access points, counties did, the DNR did, but they don’t come without stipulations and
regulations that we have to follow.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: And within the 3 points to Tom’s proposal, as far as Carver County enforcement of the
hours. That’s obviously I guess well within reason. A written plan to address aquatic species
issue here and then zebra inspection. What within those 3, I mean have there been other
discussions with the council on these items as well?
Hoffman: Not as of yet. Not at the council level. Staff level there has been.
Daniel: Okay.
Hoffman: And if the commission would like to be updated on those items, we’ll be glad to
provide you with an update. You can put that on a future agenda.
Daniel: Okay. Let’s start with some of the commission members. Steve.
Scharfenberg: Tom, with respect to the requests that you’re making tonight, you said
enforcement of the park hours. Is that an issue that you found that the hours aren’t being
enforced?
Tom Devine: Yeah, that’s why I’m here in part tonight because you know we’ve been told that
you know there’s a desire to enforce the park hours and primarily it focuses in and around the
boats that are launched prior to 6:00 when the park is actually physically open. We’ve
documented you know since May a number of incidences where boats are launched at 5:00-5:30,
well before the park hours and those boats, we don’t have the opportunity to inspect those boats.
And as we started really tracking those boats carefully, a lot of those are fishing boats. A lot of
those are boats that you know are boats that are potential carriers and in some instances where
we have started the inspections prior to 6:00 in the morning, we’ve found that the plugs are in the
boat. They’ve moved or transported water in the boat from one lake to another whatever, so our
issue really gets into a cost effectivecy issue of we can’t staff you know on an ongoing basis and
all we’re asking that you do is to enforce the park hours on what they are and what does that
involve? Well it involves a number of things. You can take, the Carver County sheriff’s office
can take action. They can ticket. They can tow. They can do whatever they want to do relative
to using the park at the, you know beyond the posted hours and so that issue has been kind of a
friction point. It’s been brought I think to everybody’s attention what it is but we’ve been told
those hours won’t be enforced and so that’s, that’s based on really historical precedent but the
question that comes back from all of us that have been involved in this effort is, who makes the
decisions here about when you do decide to enforce park hours? If kids show up at 2:00 in the
morning down at the boat landing and what to use the park, is that okay? Are we just going to let
that go by? I mean at what point do you decide what the statute, what statutes you’re going to
follow and which aren’t you going to follow and we happen to believe that particularly the risk
factors between the early launches of the type of craft that are going in, fishing boats specifically,
that’s reason enough to enforce the park hours because it’s an at risk situation. It’s been
suggested by some, City of Shorewood’s taken a more aggressive approach towards moving
towards a gated arrangement where the gate will be you know, would have set hours. It’d be
electronically controlled. You know computer controlled so you know you can get on and off
the lake during the park hours. There’s a lot of discussion that’s taken place that’s been some of
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the media attention. Our intention is not to, is not to block the lake or whatever, the usage of it.
All we’re looking for is voluntary compliance, education and the support of people to avoid the
situation of these aquatic invasive species this go around. It isn’t, you know milfoil, we missed
on but this go around we’re looking at zebra mussels and saying we want to be much more
aggressive in terms of what we’re going to do to try to prevent it from wrecking our lakes. And
the outcomes as most of you know is much more severe if you go to any of the websites of the
organizations, it’s extensive what they, what can happen and it’s well documented around the
country. There are other places. Lake Tahoe, somebody started really finding examples now of
where they are aggressively dealing with this to try to preserve their assets and, of the lakes and
avoid the, avoid the problems and it is significant. They’re sharp. They’re hard to walk on.
They’re, they get in water intakes. They go on your docks. They go you know, it’s a significant
issue and we here in Minnesota have much more at risk than a lot of other states obviously and
that’s why the DNR I think has taken a keen interest in a topic and particularly interest where
they haven’t had to be involved and spending their money and their resources where this has
happened solely at the driving of a large group of volunteers that has now come about to make
this happen. Long answer to a short question.
Scharfenberg: I appreciate the response. Then you said written plan, adopt. What did you have
in mind regarding that? What sort of written plan are you talking about?
Tom Devine: Specifically you know one of the problems that we encountered starting back this
last spring is you know, when you get into asking well who’s permission do we need? You
know we were told we have to go to the State. You know we go to the State. The State comes
back and says no. The City of Chanhassen has the responsibility of monitoring and dealing with
that specific landing. And we get into this push pull back and forth and so I think for clarity
sake, and this issue is, Lotus Lake you know happens to be the first one that really is confronted
and tried to set up an aggressive program to do the inspections. But if we look at this with the
rest of the lakes, they’re going to look to you people and ask you, well what is going to be your
stance relative to a park? Todd just mentioned you know, right now it really isn’t in the purview.
They’re not spending money. You’re not budgeting money per se to deal with this but I think
going forward you really need to look at this issue quite carefully and say do you want to protect
the resource going forward and how are you going to go about doing that and I think it starts
with having a basic policy. If it’s educational. If it’s going to be a policy that’s going to be to
research and bring back to you people ideas, suggestions, whatever. A coordinated effort with
the other bodies that are affected, whether it’s DNR, Carver County and yourselves. Something
needs to be brought up and I think that you people should all probably have some basis by which
you make decisions or some basis for formulating what action plans you want to see carried
forth, but right now I don’t think the City of Chanhassen has anything in written format that
really describes what they’re doing or how they’re going about the issues of trying to protect the
resources here of these lakes here and so that’s why we’re here tonight is to really bring this to
your attention and say it’s really a call to action that something needs to move forward in an
aggressive way because it’s upon us. Lake Minnetonka has zebra mussels. We know that a lot
of boats go from Lake Minnetonka into our lakes here in Chanhassen and time’s a wasting in
terms of getting going and developing some kind of a stance here formally. Like I mentioned,
Shorewood has taken a very aggressive action. They moved forward. They took action here this
last month. You know they’re interested in trying to do as much as they can as quickly as they
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
can and I pose the same challenge to you tonight is to move forward with a plan and get a good
idea of what it is you want to do.
Scharfenberg: Then the last item you said, I was jotting it down but I don’t think I, what was
your third item? Encourage the?
Tom Devine: The third thing was to encourage the continued support, your support. Your
blessing of continuing to see us continue to go forward with the, you know with the inspections
as such. Not that we feel it’s at risk or not that we’re not going to continue to do it, but certainly
having your support that you’re interested in this issue as commissioners. You’re interested in
what the volunteers are doing. You’re acknowledging the volunteers efforts you know
appropriate action to probably look at and take going forward here because I think people do
view the fact that you people you know as a, as public servants are interested in what’s going on
and certainly that acknowledgement is appreciated by the volunteers that are doing the work on
your behalf here in the city.
Scharfenberg: Now I’ve been out at Minnewashta this week and I’ve seen a bunch of yellow
signs on my way into the park. Are those your signs? Are those your people doing those
inspections?
Tom Devine: No, I can’t speak to the signs because I’m not sure which color, which signs are up
there.
Steve Jenks: I haven’t been over there recently but, I’m Steve Jenks by the way. A Chanhassen
residents. I’m one of the co-founders of the Lake Action Alliance which is basically it’s an
organization of all the homeowner associations, etc that Tom just talked about. The signage
that’s gone up is to direct boaters as to where to go through the DNR inspection process within
the park. The residents around Lake Minnewashta actually spent $10,000 and funded a DNR
contracted inspection process over there. We’ll talk, I can talk a little bit more. I intended to add
some comments of my own.
Tom Devine: Any more questions for me? I’ll let you do this part. Thank you very much. I
appreciate your time.
Daniel: Appreciate your time.
Steve Jenks: I won’t take a lot of your time I promise. The Lake Action Alliance was formed
because all of us that were looking in the spring, were looking at what needed to be done in order
to prevent zebra mussels from entering the Chanhassen lakes and as we did it, we looked at the
number of hours that needed to be staffed and the DNR had an hourly rate that they suggested we
would have to pay and when you looked at that it was somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000
per launch just to man an inspection person there during the operational hours of each of the
parks. And frankly we don’t have that kind of money individually, okay. So the homeowners
associations got together with their memberships. I’m a member of the Lotus Lake organizations
and they presented that they were going to do spot checks and that they wanted some
contributions from the folks that lived on the lake and that we hoped to slow down the progress
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
of zebra mussels. Frankly that’s not enough. You know that’s what we did with milfoil.
Education. Training. Hoping. Talking about it. Studying it and we have milfoil everywhere so
it’s, I’ve taken I guess a position that we needed to get more involved and do more. And so
interestingly Joe Shneider, who’s in the audience, is the President of Christmas Lake
Homeowners Association and Steve Gunther over at Lake Minnewashta, the preservation
organization over there. We all kind of found each other and had this similar idea that if we
worked together we could come up with a smaller government answer. We could all band
together. Save significant dollars. We’ll spend about a third of the money that we would spend
individually, and it wouldn’t cost a boater a fee to support it or a lakeshore owner an additional
fee to support it. It might be some volunteer time but that would be about it. So that was really
the genesis of what we were doing so what we’re after is 100% inspection of the boats that enter
the water. We want the opportunity to make sure, to look over the boat, the trailer and find the
obvious infested boat and frankly preserve the health of the lake. The next piece that comes up
and the reason we talk about the non-operating hours is, we can inspect for the open hours, for
the operational hours of the park, but what do we do for the non-operational hours? Nobody
should be there. Nobody should be in there anyway because they’re certainly not launching. It’s
a safety hazard issue. It’s a security issue. It’s a, you know and frankly it’s an enforcement
issue. Do we have park hours that we believe in or are they just kind of a suggestion? Because
they’re not a suggestion on the sign. The sign says those are the hours and yet we’re not
enforcing them. We would ask that you enforce those hours. And by doing so you’re going to
validate and add integrity to the inspection process. You’re going to say that you support what
we’re doing and with the financial challenges of trying to do it at each individual lake, we really
need a little bit of help with some of those other issues. Again if we do it in the, I mean nobody
likes the word gate but the reality is you have to close the entry on the non-operating hours to
ensure that it’s not used. So how are you, and if somebody knows a better way I’m all ears but I
actually have a quote and it’s for a gate that works in a similar process to what they’re going to
use at Christmas Lake. Our’s would be one gate instead of two and we’re working to fund that
ourselves and so it would be, we think we can come to the City and to the Watershed with the
idea that there wouldn’t be any cost other than an electrical hook-up. We would hope you would
help us with that and frankly we were going to work closely, as Christmas Lake is working
closely with the City of Shorewood, we would want to do the same thing here and work closely
with the right people within the City. Staff, council, mayor, councilmembers, whatever it is in
order to place the gate where you would want it to set it up so that it opened at 5:55 in the
morning or whatever we wanted to do to make sure it was right, and make sure it would close at
10:00 at night and then if a boater was still on the lake there’d be a way to trip it so that it would
open and you could leave the lake. We don’t want to trap people in overnight. That makes no
sense at all okay so, and there are other issues, there are little nuances that we would have to
address but that gives you a pretty good overview. The other one, in our conversations with the
City we hear that there are, we’re constantly challenged to find a better alternative. I know of no
other alternative that prevents zebra mussels from being introduced to the lake as cost effectively
and as effectively as the plan that we put out, and I’ve been involved in this since early April. At
this point I’ve probably put in somewhere between 30 and 40 hours a week on this. It’s a full
time job for me at the moment and so if there’s another alternative, and I’ve heard this for
months that the City is looking at all the other alternatives. Whenever we ask, I don’t know what
those alternatives are. I want to know what those are. If those are serious, if you’re really
looking at them and considering them, don’t surprise me with them. I want to know what they
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are. So I would ask that someone either publish those or you know, Mr. Hoffman can certainly
set by me. Has my email address. So anything we can do to work with you. We want to do that
but we’re anxious to move forward. The clock is ticking at 50 something degrees these mussels
reproduce and we’re under threat until late August with this at least. Probably even later than
that. Thank you very much for your time. Any questions?
Daniel: Yeah move on, Elise or Tom?
Ryan: I have a question in terms of the volunteers. What authority do they have if they find
zebra mussels?
Steve Jenks: Right. They’re volunteers and as volunteer inspectors they have different authority
than a DNR inspector.
Ryan: Okay.
Steve Jenks: And so if we found zebra mussels what we would do is inform the boater and we
would immediately engage a conservation officer. A DNR conservation officer and probably
law enforcement, depending upon the mood of the boater I suppose. We don’t want to confront
and have problems, but at the same time we don’t want to infest the lake. And we would ask
them to clean the boat so that a clean, dry and dry the boat so that we didn’t drain, clean and dry
the boat so we didn’t infest the lake.
Ryan: And if the DNR is involved, is there a fine or?
Steve Jenks: There potentially are fines. There aren’t fines that are out there that are scheduled
for fines and I’d be happy to share that with you but it’s really minor compared to other states
and lakes. At Lake Powell it’s jail time and a $5,000 fine. When you cross the border from
Idaho to Washington and Oregon to Washington, you have to have your boat inspected. If they
find zebra mussels they impound your boat for up to 30 days. We’re really nice. I think the
maximum fine is like $500-$600 so it’s, in Minnesota we’re pretty friendly about that. I don’t
think we’ve really, for the lake of 10,000 lakes I don’t think we take them as seriously as some
of our neighbors to the west.
Ryan: Thank you.
Tom Kelly: Todd earlier you had some something about 4:00 a.m. That the lakes had to be open
at 4:00 a.m. How does that, I’m confused on when you said 4:00 a.m. and then the sign says
6:00 a.m. How do you rectify that?
Hoffman: The access needs to be open 16 hours sometime between 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.
Tom Kelly: Okay, some time between, okay.
Daniel: The access has to be open.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: For the hours of 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. comply with…
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Daniel: So the question becomes whenever we control our own park hours which would be in
conflict to other laws then. I mean currently our park says it’s only open from 6:00 to 10:00,
correct?
Hoffman: Correct.
Daniel: Alright.
Tom Kelly: Also to some that there was maybe a night trip switch so the boat can get back in.
Steve Jenks: Yep. Well so they can get out.
Tom Kelly: Get out of the lake. What’s to prevent someone from, in the morning from tripping
that night switch so they could get in the lake? Does that switch go both ways or is there some
way to prohibit?
Steve Jenks: Yeah, for somebody would be on the lake side of the gate and you’re have to weigh
about 5,000 pounds to trip it probably.
Tom Kelly: Okay, so it’s actually sensed by the boat. It’s not someone with a hand.
Steve Jenks: I’m really, I’m having a little fun with it but yea that’s what it.
Tom Kelly: Okay. And in terms of the electronic hook-up, would a chain and lock and having a
city employee go there every day at 6:00 to unlock the gate and lock the gate, is that less cost
effective then an electronic hook-up for a gate or is it more cost effective?
Hoffman: We wouldn’t know at this time until we took a look at that. The gate, or the access, it
formerly had a gate that was opened and closed by Carver County. Some of the challenges with
that is they wouldn’t how up at 6:00 to open it and so then people would line up and try to get in
because.
Steve Jenks: The phone calls would be crazy.
Tom Kelly: Okay, gotch ya. Okay.
Hoffman: The deputies would get a call somewhere so they’d be out on a service call or a car
accident or a medical or some other incident. Or in the evening, and they wouldn’t get down
there at 10:00 and then sometimes when they got there, there would be a boat on the water so
they couldn’t close it so then they would come back.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Steve Jenks: We tried to think about some of those issues.
Tom Kelly: So electronically’s smarter, yeah.
Daniel: There was a gate house at Lake Ann and Lotus I know at one time.
Hoffman: Correct.
Daniel: Correct? And they were gated, correct? Both of them.
Hoffman: The parks, yep. The park at Lake Ann and then the access at Lotus Lake.
Daniel: Okay.
Tom Kelly: Another question, I was actually running with Steve this weekend and we talked
briefly about it but I was out of breath so I may not have covered everything.
Steve Jenks: Not Steve Jenks. Probably Steve Gunther.
Tom Kelly: Yeah, it was Steve Gunther.
Steve Jenks: Okay.
Tom Kelly: He just told me about secolyzing inspections at Lake Minnewashta and then having
something that would be good for 24 hours.
Steve Jenks: Correct.
Tom Kelly: Is that different than what you’re doing right now is that, are you looking for that 24
hour sticker when the boats are coming?
Steve Jenks: Right now I think, we would set, the gate that we would propose to put in would be
set up such that it would have a key pad that when you go over to Lake Minnewashta and you go
through the inspection station they give you a code. And so if you pass you get the code and so
then you can go over to Lotus Lake, enter the code in the key pad. Go down, launch your boat.
Go back through the gate. Park your vehicle and then when you leave the lake, again enter the
code to get down to get your boat and then again trip it when you leave so right now that’s how
we would propose that it should work. That’s how we were looking at it in terms of not having
to staff it with people because people cost money too.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Steve Jenks: You know we were looking for some, realistically we’re looking for some cost
effective, smaller government answers here so we don’t have to have a bunch of employees just
standing around at a gate checking numbers.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Tom Kelly: Okay, that helps out so initially I thought the electronic gate would only be closing
the gate between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. but it sounds like you want it to close the
gate at all times with the exception of people that have this code so they can get in.
Steve Jenks: I would separate the two plans at this point in that we’re still working through the
legality of being able to use the lake, or the gate during the operating hours but I guess part of
our thought is why put in a gate for the non-operating hours that we could, that we’d want to pull
out and put in a different gate later. Let’s put in the right gate to start with. If we can’t use it, we
wasted our money but it hasn’t cost you anything.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Steve Jenks: So, and what we would do is just, there’s a module for the timer, for making it so it
opens at 6:00 and closed at 10:00 or whatever the hours. If you change the hours, great. I’m just
using the hours that are posted today but in order to, it would be, it would mean that if we could
use the gate we would send our inspectors that are on site at Lotus Lake today as volunteers, in
some cases paid by our group. We would send them over to Lake Minnewashta to the park to
supplement the DNR personnel during heavy peak times.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Steve Jenks: And so we’re thinking about how we do that. Part of what we’re doing is we’re
monitoring the boat traffic at Chan, Lotus Lake so we can see the hours when most boats come
th
through. What the average load is on you know like the July 4 weekend. We had some pretty
good ideas about what it’s going to look like. That’s what we were after with that. There’s still
some questions about how we can and can’t use that gate during the operating hours of the lake.
And so as we’ve, we’ve talked to Todd. We would, and the mayor and some of the city council
at this point, we would love to have it so that we could use it during the operation hours but I
think there’s still some legal questions to be addressed with that.
Tom Kelly: And my last question more for Todd. Should the Environmental Commission be
engaged in this as well or is this, is this more of a park and rec issue?
Hoffman: Well it’s both. It’s an environmental issue obviously. The park is really involved
because it’s.
Tom Kelly: It’s our access point, okay. Okay, great. That’s all I had, thanks.
Steve Jenks: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Daniel: Anyone else? Peter.
Aldritt: So ultimately, the ultimate goal would be like to have a gate that’s operated during
operating hours and post hours, or would you have an inspector there full time too? Both or
either or?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Steve Jenks: I think most boaters would love to have us have an inspector there but it’s $30,000
a year so.
Aldritt: Yeah, that’s a lot of money.
Steve Jenks: That’s what I’m going to talk to you about now. But that the gate itself is no small
expense and what we’ve spent this year as homeowners to fund the inspection process is no
small thing. Yeah we’re willing to help. Willing to do certain things but we’re looking for a
little help from the city in terms of support for what we’re doing. Yeah we want to see this go
forward and then maybe some thought about where a gate would go and how we would do it.
Can we manage the non-operational hours? That’s really what we’re looking for today. For this
year.
Daniel: Brent.
Caron: Just a couple quick things. How many volunteers do you have currently trained?
Steve Jenks: 70 plus. That’s more than any other community than in the state of Minnesota.
Caron: And what’s the cost of that?
Steve Jenks: DNR when they learned of all the interest that we had, they have been willing to
come down for every single one of those. They don’t charge us to come out.
Caron: Okay, that’s it.
Steve Jenks: We bought some signs and things. Thank you very much.
Cole Kelly: So right now as far as we know there’s no zebra mussels on any of these lakes.
Steve Jenks: Correct. We’d like to keep it like that.
Cole Kelly: That part of I understand. So the process of inspections, let’s say you find a boat
that’s got some water in it. Now do you have a heavy duty spray gun that you spray these down
or how the inspection process work for cleaning out these boats?
Steve Jenks: Well we’ve asked, again there’s a DNR process. I’d love to tell you I’m totally up
to date and I’m the expert but generally speaking what we would, if they have standing water in
the boat, it’s illegal to transport it that way. You shouldn’t even do it in the first place with
anything. If the DNR finds you like this, you’ve got a problem. You’re going to pay fines. If
they find you with a boat plug in the boat, you’re going to pay a fine. You know if they find you
with an aquatic invasive species in that water that literally you can’t see it, it’s microscopic,
you’ve got a whole other problem so what we ask them to do is take that boat away from the
lake. Run it through a car wash. Dry it. Literally now the DNR guy at the, that’s the volunteers
okay.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Cole Kelly: Right.
Steve Jenks: If you’re talking to the DNR, the DNR’s telling you go away for 5 days. You’re
supposed to let it dry for 5 days so. What we’re trying to do is that’s part of the education
process with those ones. We don’t want to be the hammer. You know we want to be the helping
hand. We’re not really trying to, it’s not about penalties. It’s about keeping zebra mussels out of
the lakes.
Cole Kelly: Right, is there a process at the lakes where you can have a.
Steve Jenks: A cleaning station?
Cole Kelly: A cleaning station but obviously the water would have to be removed somewhere
else because you couldn’t obviously have it all there.
Steve Jenks: That’s part of the trick, yeah.
Cole Kelly: And I suppose that was part of the problem.
Steve Jenks: You can actually, there’s a lot of information on the web with all this stuff and I’m
sorry, Joe Shneider.
Joe Shneider: I’m Joe Shneider.
Steve Jenks: You want to address this?
Joe Shneider: Yeah. I’m the President of the Christmas Lake Homeowners Association and I’m
a Chanhassen resident so I would have been the 10% of Christmas Lake that is in Chanhassen.
The DNR is piloting some decontamination stations at this point in time and that’s the
phraseology they will use.
Cole Kelly: Okay.
Joe Shneider: Portable decontamination stations. Those are not operational yet and quite frankly
I think all of our perspectives are the same. You get a boat that doesn’t pass inspection. Get it
out. Right? We don’t really care how you clean it. Don’t clean it anywhere near the lake but
get it out because you are transferring potentially bad things into the lake so, so my personal
perspective is, I don’t care what they do. I don’t care if they get a spray gun. I don’t care if they
use bleach. Wherever, I don’t care how they do it. Just get it out because that’s danger, right?
And the DNR is trying to figure out what to do about decontamination but they don’t have a
program for it yet.
Cole Kelly: Now are you having problems with people when you tell them they have to go to a
car wash, what’s the response been so far and?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Joe Shneider: Well this isn’t in effect yet.
Cole Kelly: Oh that’s not, that’s a proposal.
Joe Shneider: This is a pilot project that we are trying to sell right now. It’s a work in process
right and so we have elements of it that have been blessed at various levels and we have elements
of it that are still waiting for the right kind of approval. This morning we were meeting with the
Carver County Commissioners in their working session following their Carver County meeting
and we got a tremendous vote of support for it. Such that they asked their County Attorney to
start working through what does it take to try to make this happen, and what we were asking for
was the right to expand the inspection facility at Lake Minnewashta Regional Park to include up
to 2 nearby lakes. That being Lotus and Christmas Lake which are part of our proposed pilot.
So this is not done yet but you know there are a lot of issues. I mean we’re sitting with the DNR
this morning at the meeting. We have questions of the DNR. We have questions of the legal
staff. Both the city, the county. The watershed district is, we’re in the Minnehaha Creek
Watershed District. Their executives were there this morning at the meeting as well. I mean we
have an incredible level of support for this program. There are gotch ya’s and Todd Hoffman
knows that as well. I mean there are gotch ya’s here. But what we are really asking for is
someone to step up and be leaders and not just let bad things happen when we know the right
ways to handle it and bureaucracy gets in the way and that was literally a statement that came out
of the Carver County Park Commission in a meeting we presented to them about 2 weeks ago.
They are absolutely convinced that if we have a good solid pilot answer and they think that
bureaucracy is going to get in the way of being able to do the right thing. That’s horrible. As I
sit here as a resident of Chanhassen, as I sit here as a homeowner on that lake, I think it’s insane.
It’s just insane so you know we are looking for leadership. We’ve had leadership from
Minnehaha Creek Watershed District that has provided funding and support. We have had
leadership from the City of Shorewood that has provided support and has authorized us to move
forward as far as we can move forward and is working with us to work with the DNR to solve
whatever legal issues or permissions we need so we’re looking for Chanhassen and the rest of the
groups associated with the pilots, so Carver County Park Commission, Carver County
Commissioners, the City of Chanhassen, we’re looking for you guys to show that same
leadership and take actions, and I can tell you this hasn’t been done before. I mean we are
breaking new ground. This legal ground hasn’t been looked at before so we’re looking for you
to get engaged. We’re looking for you to take action and be leaders with us as we do what we
believe are the right things. Now we say that and if we would have started this 6 months ago we
probably would have had a pilot operational yet this summer. We’re getting very close to the
point where we may not make the window for the summer, which is in my mind horrible but
we’re working it as hard as we can. What our message to the DNR is, is very simple. We
believe that this model, it’s going to, this pilot is going to find out some things that work and
some things that don’t work but we believe that is fundamentally a scalable cost effective model
that they can use for not only zebra mussels but other transported aquatic invasive species across
the state. Now it may get a little fluky when you get way up in the north country and you get a
lot of lakes and not very much control but clearly in the middle and the south of the state, this is
a very scalable model and we think it’s the best thing that we’ve seen even proposed. It models
something that’s done at Lake Tahoe. Centralize inspection facilities and a whole bunch of
landings. Now they charge for it. You can pay by the time. You can pay by the season. So
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
that’s how they fund it at Lake Tahoe but it’s, as Tom was saying there are other areas that are
very significantly much more aggressive than we are in the state. And it’s truly disappointing.
Scharfenberg: So just to follow up on your point with meeting with the Carver County
Commissioners today.
Joe Shneider: Yeah.
Scharfenberg: What did they at least empower you guys to do or empower your representatives
to do?
Joe Shneider: Well we were not in the meeting. We were in a working session after the meeting
so at that point in time they can’t make any motions. They can’t do anything. Their support
was, I would say as strong as we could have asked for. They understood the urgency. They
understood the intent. They heard an impassioned plea from the Executive Administrator of the
Watershed District, and they asked their attorney to work with dispatch and then get their, they
asked Marty Walsh, their head of the Carver County Parks something or other. Regional Parks.
They asked Marty to make sure this got on the agenda again at the Carver County Park
Commission meeting that’s coming up in early August. So they wanted action taken on this.
Scharfenberg: Have you talked to other nearby, I know you’ve talked to Shorewood’s obviously
doing something. Has anybody or is homeowners on Lake Riley, are they doing anything?
Joe Shneider: I would tell you I’m not aware.
Steve Jenks: I’ve talked with them a little bit. They’re in the early stages and they’re paying
attention to what we’re doing.
Joe Shneider: I mean we are clearly breaking ground. More lakes we bring into a pilot, the
harder it becomes so we’ve tried to keep it as small as we can. We’ve really tried to have
Chanhassen in it but we can’t get the traction yet that we would like to have. So right now if the
pilot were to get, if it were to get blessing from every place it needs with the DNR and looking at
Carver County Parks, etc, Lotus Lake would not be in it. It would just be Christmas and Lake
Minnewashta. And that’s disappointing.
Tom Kelly: Anybody know what the cost of the gate is at Christmas Lake?
Joe Shneider: Yeah Christmas Lake, because I placed the order. I do know what the cost of the
gate is. For the gate, shipping, installation it is about $18,500. Now that represents two gates
fully installed. It’s an entry gate with all the capabilities that Steve talked about. Key pads and
car codes and all that good stuff, and an exit gate that’s automatic. And the reason we need two
gates is the physical design of the landing is different than the physical design of the landing at
Lotus Lake. At South Lotus Lake Park. It’s just a different physical construct and one gate
doesn’t work at Christmas.
Tom Kelly: And does that include the electronics as well or is it just the gate?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Joe Shneider: Yeah.
Tom Kelly: That’s everything you need.
Joe Shneider: Yeah. That includes 100 key cards if we wanted to give them out and I don’t
want to give out 100 key cards.
Aldritt: And those gates will be in operation during operating hours too?
Joe Shneider: At Christmas Lake they would be exactly the same way that, right now they
would be operated exactly the same way Steve described for Lotus which is they would just
control operating hours. Open at 4:00. Closed at 10:00.
Audience: 6:00.
Joe Shneider: Well our’s are 4:00 to 10:00.
Daniel: So just open and close and that’s it right now.
Joe Shneider: That’s it but it will have all the electronics to do.
Daniel: To meet some of the future proposals that you’re looking to do which includes a
centralized inspection area.
Joe Shneider: Right.
Daniel: And with a similar plan to go.
Joe Shneider: What we didn’t choose, what options we didn’t choose were any of the
telecommunications options to have it communicate with a central facility so that the numbers
were automatically transferred and all that stuff. We’re taking the sneaking that approach on this
one because we were trying to do a pilot. Keep the costs down.
Aldritt: What allowed you to go so far with the City of Shorewood or why were they so, they
have extra funding or what was in there?
Joe Shneider: No, this isn’t costing the City of Shorewood anything, other than the electric
hook-up.
Aldritt: Okay. And they were just more open to ideas and able to kind of work in.
Joe Shneider: They are just, they are just that minded, that. They have that perspective that what
the DNR is doing is simply not enough. And that we brought them a viable option and I think
that’s really it.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Tom Kelly: To go back on something I think someone had said earlier. For Lotus, would you
need help for the cost of the gate or now I’m confused on that. I thought you said no, but now
what you may have said yes later on.
Joe Shneider: I’d be thrilled to have a white knight or somebody in the city that said yeah, we’d
fund half the gate because you know what, I’d say I’d do it right now. I have the money.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Joe Shneider: The reality is, I’m not waiting anymore. I’m soliciting funds and I’m after a way
to pay for it because I don’t want the City to have a way to say geez, money’s a problem Steve.
We can’t do it. If you guys are going to say no, I’m going to take that argument away from you.
That’s my objective so we want to pay for it.
Steve Jenks: If we set up our gate, it doesn’t cost the City a dime other than the electric hook-up.
Joe Shneider: Yep, and we hope to mirror that. Call me in a week. I think I have an answer.
Tom Devine: If I could just point out, you know the issue of the gate. We have not explored all
the options of paying for it. There’s the issue of doing donations. There were also issues that
you get into in terms of enforcement if the gate is damaged. Let’s say somebody maliciously
damages it. If they’re caught. If it’s public property, there’s a whole set of protocols. If it’s
private property, meaning it belongs to the association or something, different protocols. So all
of these issues you know all have to ironed out and as Joe mentioned, you know the issue here of
going forward really gets to be an issue of you know we’re breaking new ground. We’re trying
to do something that we think is in the best interest of all 23,000 residents of Chanhassen to
preserve the asset. And obviously as these issues unfold we don’t know what we don’t know
right now and the more people you talk to, the more unknowns you kind of start to uncover. But
the point is, is you’ve got to start somewhere and you’ve got to start to take at baby steps and the
idea of doing a pilot, as they were talking about here, you know it became clear to us 3 weeks or
a month ago that Christmas was going to, that Shorewood was going to get ahead of Chanhassen
in terms of being open to doing a pilot and trying to get something started. And so to that end we
are, you know part of my reason for being here, 23 year resident of Chanhassen is to get the ball
rolling in your court here and I do believe it falls within your purview, from what I do
understand to initiate an action. Direct staff. Direct here with the council. You get a process
going so the City of Chanhassen has a vision of what it is they want to do or not do. Maybe the
vision is to do nothing. We don’t think that obviously that’s the correct vision but the point is
you need to do something and you need to take action. You need to decide what your path is
going to be so whether it’s a gate just for controlling the hours. Whether we get into a common
area inspection for all Chanhassen lakes. That might be a possibility. We don’t know right now.
The whole thing is to get started on a process and to engage people into intelligent discussions
about what the options are, what the costs are and all the various possibilities. So I just you
know, we’re here tonight to really bring this to your attention to what information you’ve already
been provided on this. Media isn’t the best source, although it has been a very, very impactful
issue for the media and the media has drawn attention to Chanhassen and if any of you are asked,
part of what you need to be able to do is to talk intelligently about what it is you’re doing
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
because you people probably, any one of you could be the next step in the media inquiries in
terms of what’s going on and you want to be ready. You don’t want to be caught off guard in
terms of how you want to respond to these people publicly. Many of us as we’ve been going
through this process haven’t necessarily been ready for media attention, but because of the
efforts and because of the amount of outpouring that we’ve had, the amount of effort that’s gone
on and the reaction back from the DNR in terms of the number of people and the fact that they
believe that it’s scalable for you know all 14,000 lakes in Minnesota has obviously drawn much
more attention than we probably even wanted at this point because we had not been able to pilot
enough to really understand the up’s and down’s and the good and the bad of all the issues so
hopefully that’s what we’re driving you to do tonight is to say well we’d better get going and do
something here. We better understand what the issues are and work cooperatively with the
various units within the city and then obviously the partners within Carver County and within the
DNR and the State and so on, and the various associations have already picked up the slack and
have been running with it. I think it takes a concerted effort of all of us to make sure that we try
to put something onto a path so that it’s a positive outcome for everybody involved and it looks,
you know it looks favorably upon the city and it comes about in such a manner that it isn’t a
negative in terms of how it’s presented you know by the various media sources and what not. So
I share with you that. I don’t know if there’s any other questions. I don’t know if there’s
anybody else that wants to say anything but again I thank you for your time and we’re obviously
interested in feedback.
Daniel: Well again, I can’t thank you both Tom, Steve and Joe, your time to talk to us about,
talk to us passionately about this issue and certainly the concerns and as far as also the actions
that you guys want to take forward with the commission here. Todd, I guess the main concern I
have is this body, our commission meets once a month so any action that we do take would still
delay them another month. That’s why I’m curious and I’m sure the rest of the commission is
curious as to the council’s position and obviously I think Tom you mentioned you’ve had some
discussion. Possibly I think somebody had talked with the mayor about this and, because they
meet every other week don’t they?
Hoffman: The council meets, yeah they did not have a meeting this last night.
Daniel: Yeah, so I guess you know certainly that’s, we’re nothing more than a recommendation
body for, and acting on behalf of the city council and again our next meeting will be in August
and I think that you guys obviously want to take some action well before then. We would you
know, I think it’s important for us to certainly, we can talk amongst ourselves but any motion
that we would put forward certainly and feedback, that question won’t come back until August
so I guess any direction that we have, if there’s any concerns amongst the commission members
here is that it needs to go directly and expeditiously to the council to address it if there’s
something that’s going to get in action this year. Do you agree Todd? I mean it’s.
Hoffman: The council has not addressed this issue or had it on their agenda. Protocol calls that
if there’s a visitor presentation at a commission meeting, then if you want some action taken then
you direct staff to create some sort of a plan or a report for your next meeting. If you want to
call a second meeting in August, you can do that. Then we would report back. Notify the
affected property owners and interested parties and then talk about it at that time.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: Okay. So quick discussions here. Thoughts.
Ryan: Can we get, do you have the written plan for the pilot that we can all see? That you could
email it to all of us or.
Steve Jenks: I’ll get your email address.
Tom Devine: There was…an electronic version of the presentation that was given to the City of
Chanhassen last month and we’d be happy to forward that onto you, all of you if you want.
Ryan: Just to help move things along with the review process I think would be helpful.
Cole Kelly: Steve and/or Tom, what I’m gathering is what you’re really requesting tonight is
electronic hook-up and the okay to put in a fence, or a gate, excuse me.
Steve Jenks: I guess if I was going to ask for anything beyond that it would just be some sort of
acknowledgement and voicing support for what we’re trying to accomplish.
Cole Kelly: Okay.
Steve Jenks: Rather than, I guess when people come and ask me how we’re doing with the
various governmental bodies, I tell them Shorewood’s with us. I tell them Minnehaha Creek
Watershed District is with us. I tell them Riley-Purgatory’s still talking about studying it. I tell
them that I don’t know where Chanhassen, that we presented to Chan many times and we’ve
talked to them and we just keep getting questions but there’s no proactivity within the City of
Chan, and I’m sorry but that’s where it’s been since April. We haven’t, in my mind we’ve made
no actions, step, progress since April and that’s just not good enough. We need action steps.
Tom Devine: You know in terms of you know asking me if…I came here specifically tonight to
look for the enforcement. There’s things that you can do to start the enforcement tomorrow if
you want to direct the sheriff’s office to have a recommendation. They can manually without
any gates or anything start enforcing the hours. They can write tickets on cars that are there
before 6:00 or cars that are there after 10:00 and I notice like in the blotter section of the
Chanhassen Villager here just this last week there was 11:45 there was some incident with some
kids in the park. I mean you know they can deal with that. The sheriff’s office can deal with
that and you can deal with, you can deal with cars early or late on park hours immediately. That
requires no gate to do that. There’s a better way or maybe a more efficient way to do it with a
gate and whatever, but I’m not asking that tonight. I’m just saying you guys can start following
a procedure that’s, you know statute procedures that are in place. Follow your postings and just
decide you want to go ahead and do that now versus ignoring that and not doing anything about
it, and that would be helpful for us because then we don’t have to worry about trying to staff
people in non-park hours which is troublesome and you know burdensome for us. And then the
second thing is you know a plan. What is your plan? And I guess I’m suggesting to you guys
that you should talk amongst yourselves and decide between now, and I realize that you’ve got
protocols. You have an agenda. You know we come here at visitor presentations. You have to
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
come next month, or you know if it has to be talked about. You know between now and month
from now you guys should maybe talk amongst yourselves and decide do you want to have a
plan? Do you want to stand behind a document or whatever it is that you want to do? Be
supportive. Not supportive. You know whatever it may be and I think that really falls into your
hands and your staff’s hands to figure out what it is you want to do. Then the third thing was just
to be you know, to be supportive of what’s going on or at least to maybe acknowledge that in
some fashion and if you have to wait 30 days to do that, I think certainly it’s good politics to
acknowledge the efforts of a good many citizens of Chanhassen and what they’ve done on behalf
of the parks here in the city of Chanhassen to advance this whole situation and move it forward.
The other issues and all of what we’re talking about I think are specific. Very specific directed
issues that are going to have to be taken apart and sorted through and gone through. Obviously
I’d love to have you say yeah, we’re all going to vote a gate tonight but I don’t think that would
be prudent at this point with your lack of knowledge or your lack of understanding of really what
the cause effect you know of that decision might be. But those three simple things you can do
without a lot of belaboring here and certainly between now and next month you, there isn’t any
one of those three things that you could act on and that’s why I left the simplicity there so it
wouldn’t become burdensome to any of you.
Aldritt: I have a question for Todd I think. For the electrical hook-up, would have come out of
the park fund or how would that be paid for?
Hoffman: I don’t know at this point.
Scharfenberg: Todd just a question with respect to Tom’s comment about just enforcement of
the park hours. Can you elaborate on what the sheriff’s office does in terms of enforcement of
park hours at this time?
Hoffman: Sure. I’d be glad to. You know that’s a complex but a simple issue. There are
dozens if not hundreds of city ordinances or regulations that are on the books that aren’t enforced
on a daily basis in our community so it really becomes a selective enforcement situation so we
have 34 parks in our community. At 10:00 at night we can’t expect that Carver County sheriff’s
officer is going to drive through each one of those parks and find out if anyone is there or not.
Now selectively you can instruct, and in this case it would be the City Council or the City
Manager, to send a Carver County deputy to Lotus Lake at 5:00 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. I’m sure you
could do that but current protocol would not call for that. If there’s a disturbance in a park
before 6:00 a.m., if there’s a disturbance in a park after 10:00 p.m. that is called in, officers are
going to respond to that and they’re going to enforce the situation based on that you’re in that
park before hours or after hours. But to have the expectation that all the policies, all the
ordinances on the books are going to be enforced unilaterally is just not a realistic expectation in
our community.
Scharfenberg: Currently if someone’s in the park or they’re going in early, is anything done
about that?
Hoffman: If there’s some kind of a call. Currently, I don’t know, you’d have to check the
records to see if there are any. Currently they’re probably not doing a whole lot unless there’s
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some kind of disturbance. We have people that fish at all of our landings before 6:00 a.m. We
have people that swim for triathlon training at all of our park accesses before 6:00 a.m. so there’s
a lot of things going on in our parks, especially in the summer. It gets light at 5:00-5:30 and
there’s people out recreating so again it would have to be a selective enforcement to go down
and say okay because of the zebra mussel issue, because of the inspection issue, we don’t want
people here before the 6:00 a.m. opening so again that would be a policy issue that the council
would have to address.
Steve Jenks: Can I make one more comment? The comment about the enforcement and the
difficulty in terms of, that the sheriff’s department can’t be there to open the gate or to close it
and enforcement being spotty. It’s selective or, well it’s less than 100% in terms of a particular
process. That’s one of the things the gate would allow you to implement. It would be on a timer
and it would just happen automatically so one of the things, and I know you just heard that we’re
not asking you for a gate. I’m going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind to send a recommendation
that the City be prepared to implement the gate if one is provided at no cost to the City. And my
thought, I’m the guy doing the funding. I’m going to tell you. I want to donate the gate to the
City. It’ll be the City’s gate. I would like you to run the electrical and manage it the way you
see fit. We’re partners in this. You know I don’t want to own the gate on city property. That
sounds like a complication I don’t need to introduce, okay. I’m a Chan resident. I own the gate
anyway so, I want to work together with you on that so if you can help us with that, that helps us
with timing and maybe that’s something that you can consider. Thank you.
Daniel: Thank you Steve. Other discussion. It certainly is an interesting proposal that you guys
have put together. I think when it comes to the enforcement of the hours, I’m certainly interested
in hearing if any other commission member wants to make a proposal to, whether it be city
manager or council for you know enforcement, whether it be a short period of time during the
summer hours. Whatever maybe early fall. Whatever the boating period of time. We can
certainly have that discussion. Again a suggestion and follow through would be two different
issues. With regards to support, especially from the commission, I don’t know if myself
personally I agree that the efforts of trying to do again minimize. I like the key word and I think
all of us in this area here appreciate that is minimizing government and certainly having an
association that’s willing to donate capital equipment. If the City’s willing to provide certain, as
you call electrical hook-up’s to support that. But once it’s on city property we’ve got other
issues such as maintenance and all that other stuff that’s another thing that Todd acknowledged
to take into consideration. Whether it be a park bench or a gate, all of them fall in the same area
so I hope everyone understands that. And we’d love to take a lot of freebies but then there’s the
responsibility of the equipment afterwards. I agree that certainly a gate is a sensible solution to
what you guys are trying to accomplish. I’d be interested to hear how the community feels from
a centralized inspection standpoint right now. That one is curious and I realize other states,
Tahoe or I don’t know whoever may be doing something similar, but there’s a high level of
expectation on access to our lakes and I guess trying to retrain everyone to think a little bit
differently and that does take time. That will never happen overnight so that one I’d be curious
to see what happens, but I think again as far as the sensible solution on maintaining park hours,
the question I do have Todd is would this be a access, boat access gate or would it be a park
gate?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: In the current proposal I think it would be a boat access gate but Commissioner
Daniel or Chair Daniel what I would suggest tonight is you focus on is giving direction to staff
on what we would like to understand more. So if you want to, which of these items, the three
items that they’ve proposed, I can certainly provide you with a report on those. Do you want to
meet in 2 weeks? Do you want to meet in a month on this issue? The whole issue of whether a
gate can legally even be installed has not been answered.
Daniel: Yep.
Hoffman: The State Attorney General will probably be involved in this at some time. There are
thousands of public water accesses across the state of Minnesota. Currently by the regulations
that we’ve signed as far as a LAWCON, there’s federal and state funding here. It says you
cannot implore any restriction of the public access that a riparian owner would not have to go
through as well. And so currently under our agreement with the DNR, for state and federal
funding, we can’t put in a gate and insist that somebody go to Lake Minnewashta for inspection
because a riparian boat owner doesn’t have to do that when they access the lake and so there’s
issues of, and then there’s also the issue of well what are you going to do at Lake Susan? What
are you going to do at Lake Ann?
Daniel: Correct.
Hoffman: You know you’re a body that represents the entire community, city. The entire
community so lots of questions. There’s no doubt that as a city we appreciate what the
volunteers are doing out there in the interim basis but it’s a fairly large and complex issue, not
only in our community but I think across the state. The DNR just got back to work. They’re not
answering my phone calls. I’m not sure where they’re coming down on this issue but at some
point, and this whole issue of public access is not unique to the state of Minnesota. There have
been many case studies across the nation on, and typically it’s the state attorney general that
intervenes on the public water access issue and I don’t doubt that that’s where this one will end
up as well in the state of Minnesota.
Daniel: Okay.
Tom Kelly: You say there are no gate in the state of Minnesota that prohibit people from
entering the gate at a public landing outside of…
Hoffman: A park hour gate. So like Lake Minnewashta Regional Park there’s a get there for the
park and so you open the gate in the morning to access but at a public landing I’m not aware of a
gate in the state of Minnesota.
Tom Kelly: And Christmas Lake isn’t public? That’s not a public landing?
Joe Shneider: Christmas Lake is a public landing. I believe that the structure’s the same as in
Chanhassen and the city attorney for Christmas Lake has determined that they can in fact put a
gate in to deal with the operating hours. Alright. So separate, in my mind I separate the gate
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
into multiple uses. One is operating hours, and that appears to be clean. It does not seem to be
an issue, at least from the City of Shorewood’s legal perspective about that.
Hoffman: I agree with that.
Joe Shneider: So you could install a gate today, if the gate were here and you had an electrical
hook-up, to open up whatever your park hour time and close at your park hour time. That could
be done today. Using it as the pilot project is trying to ask for a shared inspection, a required
inspection. That brings in the questions that Todd just raised here.
Daniel: Okay. Those are the questions that I have as well.
Joe Shneider: Yeah. If you separate those two you can do the open/close park hour gate today.
Daniel: Okay. Well.
Joe Shneider: One more thing.
Daniel: Yep.
Joe Shneider: Our agreement is going to be documented with the City of Shorewood that the
homeowners association is going to cover the annual maintenance fees for the gate. So we are
not putting that burden on the City.
Daniel: Okay, good.
Joe Shneider: We haven’t done the agreement yet but that’s the new tech.
Daniel: So as a motion going forward is to direct the city staff, what do we have?
Carron: I like some ideas and there’s some things that obviously I’m not going to be able to go
along with tonight as of right now without getting some more information regarding the gates
and that sort of thing, but as far as what Tom was saying on his three plans as far as park hours,
you know watching it. Written plan to protect our lakes and then as far as some support as far as
volunteers and inspections and that sort of aspect. I know baby steps is not probably the best
word to say because I know we don’t have the time but I think from my standpoint tonight I
can’t say yeah, let’s go ahead with a gate but on the aspect of supporting the idea, I agree with
that. I agree with supporting the idea. I think we should get the ball rolling and have some
future discussions on that as soon as we can.
Tom Kelly: I’m actually in favor of having city staff work with the Lotus Lake association to
explore the installation of a gate to enforce the current park hours. Let the lawyers figure out
further uses of that gate but get that infrastructure in there and enforce the current park hours that
are posted and it’s people at much higher levels than us that will determine if that gate can go
down at the gate.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. Elise.
Ryan: I agree.
Daniel: Okay. Steve.
Scharfenberg: Yeah, I totally support the actions that the districts are doing and would
encourage staff to continue to work with them to come up with a plan with respect to this
particular issue.
Daniel: Can we also address, I mean if they’re going to be discussing with the homeowners
associations, we have to start to take a look at both Lake Ann and Lake Susan, which are two
things we also need to take, you know take into consideration. I just want to focus on this one
issue. What they’ve brought to us only.
Scharfenberg: Well obviously those other two lakes have to be discussed. I mean I think it’s, it
would be imprudent of us to take steps with respect to one lake and not talk about the other lakes
as well and then you know how are you going to pay for that and you know I think those are all
issues that need to be worked out and discussed and staff can certainly work with that best. You
know work best with those other associations to talk to them about that.
Daniel: Okay.
Cole Kelly: Yeah I’m in agreement. The lake I go to has zebra mussels so it’s our lake
associations we’re having different discussions than these lake associations are having and so I
don’t think you want to get to the point where you’re having those discussions down in
Chanhassen and so I would favor a gate and I would favor what these associations are doing so I
think we should work up something and figure out what we can and cannot do.
Daniel: So would this be under the governance of, or at least, not the governance but the body of
the lake action alliance, is that the best way to describe who the city is going to be working with?
Or is it the individual homeowners associations?
Tom Devine: There’s various groups that are doing this and I guess what I would encourage the
participation of these other groups to all move forward together in concert and this is not an
exclusion of Ann, Riley, Susan or anybody else.
Daniel: Sure.
Tom Devine: We just happen to have gotten started and it was enough of a chore just to get
ourselves organized and get our people on board. Get our people trained but I would certainly
encourage you know any of the other associations. I really don’t know the level of activity that
the other associations currently have right now within the city of Chanhassen. I’m not familiar
with how active those associations really are but this would give cause for them to really look at
things if you guys move this all ahead.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: Okay.
Steve Jenks: I’ve had some communication with the folks at Riley and Lake Susan and they’re
watching what we’re doing but they are light years behind where we’re at in terms of discussions
among their members.
Daniel: And Lake Ann only has 3 property owners so.
Steve Jenks: Right.
Ryan: And what’s the thought on doing something in 2 weeks? Meeting again in 2 weeks to
regroup on this specifically.
Daniel: I’m certainly open to it.
Cole Kelly: I’d be happy to pass along my thoughts but I’ll be on vacation in 2 weeks.
Daniel: Peter.
Aldritt: I can do that. I’d be curious to see what staff comes up with and see how…it is to meet
in 2 weeks.
Carron: I think it’s a good idea every 2 weeks.
Tom Kelly: He just likes being here.
Daniel: Steve.
Hoffman: 20 years ago we met every 2 weeks.
Daniel: Is that okay, 2 weeks as well?
Scharfenberg: I won’t be here so.
Daniel: Okay, but there’s probably enough to have a quorum and discuss.
Hoffman: ..take a hand.
Daniel: One, two. I will.
Ryan: I would be here.
Tom Kelly: I’m not sure. I’m not sure.
Daniel: So we at least got 4 of us that can commit. I guess as far as the motion then, why don’t
we, it needs to be along the lines of directing staff to continue discussions with the various
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
homeowner associations including the Lake Action Alliance to discuss the implementation of a
gate at Lotus, South Lotus Lake Park, as well as evaluation of costs for a gate at both Lake Ann
at the access point and Lake Susan to address only park hours only. And that we will report, the
staff will report back to the commission in 2 weeks, which would be August. Who’s got a
th
calendar? August 9. Is there any other changes?
Tom Kelly: Can you repeat that motion?
Daniel: That the city staff would continue discussions with the various homeowner associations
and Lake Action Alliance to discuss implementation of a gate at South Lotus Lake Park, at the
access point to operate during, to work during park hours only. And then also they need to
evaluate a cost implementation of a gate at both Lake Susan and Lake Ann, again at the access
points and that they will report back to the commission with those discussions and costs of stuff
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within 2 weeks on August 9. The commission will meet again. Would that be fair?
Tom Kelly: Right.
Ryan: And then what about the piece of having inspections, a centralized inspection?
Daniel: I think let’s get more educated on that. They can talk about that. I think let’s just focus
on the gate right now during operating hours. That’s the deal but it’s a very good point. And I
think then also as far as support, I think we can let the homeowner associations as well as the
Lake Action Alliance know that there’s support from the commission, Park and Rec Commission
on your attempts to move forward with something like this. And then as far as what Carver
County enforcement hours, Todd again let’s throw that under jurisdiction as far as reporting back
to us in 2 weeks as far as what could be done and what we’re able to direct the administrator or
council can suggest to the council as a plan, and then as far as a written plan, I think we’ll wait
until we get something from Steve, you had something is that correct? Okay. It’s a long motion.
Very long but certainly if everyone’s in agreement why don’t we vote on it.
Tom Kelly: If I can make an amendment to that motion. I would like to make sure that there’s
no dependencies between Lake Ann and Lake Susan and Lotus Lake. I would not want to slow
up any gate installation process at Lotus Lake because we’re not sure what we want to do at Lake
Susan and Lake Ann.
Daniel: Correct. Okay.
Cole Kelly: Can I ask a question before we finish off here and it’s for Tom or Steve. When
you’re talking about enforcement in the early mornings, are we seeing more problems on
Saturdays or Sundays or is it all through the week or?
Tom Devine: I personally have monitored a number of Saturdays and Sundays. I haven’t really
kept track of what goes on on the other days of the week although I know that it does happen
throughout the week. It’s not just unique to Saturdays and Sundays but it’s not unusual to have 4
or 5 boats on before 6:00 in the morning because it gets to be a little bit of a thing amongst those
boaters to see who can get there first because there is a limitation of 10 parking spots there.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Cole Kelly: Got it, okay. I’m not going to change anything then, okay. Thank you.
Daniel: Alright, let’s go ahead and make a motion.
Tom Kelly: You made the motion.
Daniel: I made a motion so let’s move second.
Tom Kelly: I’ll second.
Daniel moved, Tom Kelly seconded that the city continue discussions with the various
homeowner associations and Lake Action Alliance to discuss implementation of a gate at
the South Lotus Lake Park access point to operate during park hours only, evaluate costs
associated with gates at boat access points on Lake Susan and Lake Ann, but not connect
the implementation of a gate at Lotus Lake with the other two lakes, and a report on
enforcement of park hours by the Carver County sheriff’s office be brought back at a
special Park and Recreation Commission meeting on August 9, 2011. All voted in favor
and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
Hoffman: Chair Daniels, just in closing to, a lot of discussion tonight has been about the support
that the City and I just wanted to be fair, the mayor has been in on these meetings and so has
administration and I think it’s difficult, I know there’s two levels of support there that we’re
looking at. We have always supported the volunteer inspections. We worked with them to
secure signs and install additional signage at the landing, but it’s typical to support something
that you’re bound by not being able to do by written contracts or by law and so until those things
are understood I think there’s two levels of support that need to be recognized.
Daniel: Well I think we’ve got a third level of finance and what costs are associated with that
and certainly the budget conscious community that Chanhassen is, you know that falls into the
categories as well so I understand Todd and certainly thank you for that point. That’s why I
think there needs to be more education on our end. Again because we also act within the laws
that we’re able to work within so, without really fully knowing what we can do, but I think as far
as just, as far as just having continued discussions with the homeowners association, the
alliances, I think that’s certainly something that we want to see and I think if it can be done more
expeditiously as far as implementation of a gate, if it’s going to work. Do a park hours gate. I
mean I know we’ve done it. I’ve seen the gate house. I know it’s not unprecedented in Chan but
Lake Ann and Lake, or Lake Lotus when the public access first opened and that was I think
primarily Todd, correct me for the milfoil issue at first, correct?
Hoffman: It was for park hours. It was not included in the park master plan initially but then
they added it.
Daniel: But they were staffed there to identify milfoil at the time at one point within it’s.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: Yeah. The original intent was to restrict the number of parking so once the number of
parking stalls were filled with boats then they were instructed to close the gate and that’s not
lawful either so we were directed by the DNR to stop that.
Daniel: Okay.
Hoffman: And then later the gate was used for just kind of park hours and eventually it was
eliminated.
Daniel: And again, and I agree with them. I appreciate the homeowners coming to our meeting
and passionately discussing this issue. It’s certainly serious enough. I mean you know these
lakes are very important to our community and you know regardless if you’re a homeowner or if
you’re a recreational user of the beach or something, especially at Lake Ann. I mean that’s our
prized lake to be honest with you in this community just because it’s, you know because it’s so
widely used so I guess I certainly want to take it serious. We do take it seriously. We appreciate
you taking the time to discuss this with us tonight and as I stated before you do have the support
of the Park and Recreation Commission so.
Tom Devine: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time and your…
Daniel: No, that’s alright.
Steve Jenks: If you were thinking about doing something else tonight.
Daniel: Well it was funny I made that statement. I said oh, we’ve only got 2 items on. This will
go real quick. We can hold…
Hoffman: And before our guest presenters leave, the answers we have for these questions today
are answered but there’ll be, anything else that we don’t have the answer for, we’re not going to
have in 2 weeks and so we’re not going to have the answer, can we install a gate during the day.
We’re not going to have that answered in 2 weeks.
Tom Kelly: Right, yep.
Hoffman: We’re making inquiries with the State of Minnesota, but those answers are not going
to come.
Daniel: But I assume now our guests will be meeting once there’s another council meeting that
you guys will be going to the next council meeting I’m assuming?
Steve Jenks: We’re actually engaging with the council members individually and with the intent
of getting on the agenda as soon as possible.
Daniel: Okay.
Steve Jenks: Right now it’s not on the next agenda.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: But it’s still available under visitor presentation I assume, right Todd?
Hoffman: Yes.
Daniel: Yep, so you still under a public forum can discuss it so, okay. Great, thank you
gentlemen.
Steve Jenks: Thank you.
Tom Devine: Thank you very much.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Daniel: Alright, we are going to, and Cole I know you have some changes to the approval of the
last minutes. I think based off the circles you’re just looking to clarify of the amount that’s
discussed, is that correct?
Cole Kelly: In Todd’s and my conversation on page 12, and I think there’s like what 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6 different areas. We knew we were talking about $647,000. This is page 12 Todd. We kept
saying 647 and so that’s the number that showed up but we knew what we meant but I think we
should have it correct because.
Hoffman: Corrected.
Daniel: To reference $647,000.
Cole Kelly: Correct.
Hoffman: Some future Park Commission is going to think that’s probably what we were talking
about. 647 bucks. Gosh, they were really concerned about that.
Daniel: So with those changes that are added to the, on page 12 to properly reference the dollar
amount discussed, why don’t we go ahead and make, approve the minutes please.
Carron: So moved.
Tom Kelly: Second.
Carron moved, Tom Kelly seconded to approve the verbatim and summary minutes of the
Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated June 28, 2011, as amended by
Commissioner Cole Kelly on page 12 to change all references of 647 to $647,000. All voted
in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
DISC GOLF COURSE DISCUSSION.
Daniel: Alright let’s go onto new business. We’re actually going to make it item number 1,
which will be disc golf course and I understand there’s a couple.
Tom Kelly: Yeah.
Hoffman: I like this. Our first ever commission member.
Tom Kelly: Well I actually did the bike route last year.
Hoffman: Did you do the bike ride?
Tom Kelly: The bike ride that we didn’t go on because it rained.
Hoffman: I like it. So second.
Tom Kelly: Second. A couple weeks ago, I’m going to say 3 weeks ago Cole, Lisa and I met
with a couple guys who have...about disc golf than any of us in this room will ever know. These
guys have been… There’s a handicap system in disc golf that’s similar to handicap system in
golf. One of the guys there designed that handicap system. One of the guys there designed
a…course including the course at Hyland Hills so I appreciate what those two young gentlemen
did last year to help us design, help us think about using Bandimere as a disc, potential area for
disc golf but these guys really, I had no, I don’t know what Lisa and Cole thought but I really
thought they knew what they were talking about.
Cole Kelly: Oh most definitely.
Tom Kelly: So to kind of go through, so a quick overview. There’s about over 3,000 disc golf
courses in the U.S. This is a combination of stuff I found on Wikipedia so you know it’s
right…but disc golf has experienced 50% year over year growth. The growth rate in golf right
now is stagnant. In fact some could say it’s even decreased by 12% but 87% of the courses in
the U.S. are free. Minnesota I believe the answers Yahoo.com, Minnesota is the number one
state for disc golf courses. I believe the two gentlemen verified that fact when they were out
here. I did find that there are 143 disc golf courses in the state of Minnesota. A definition of
disc golf course here is a little loose. There are 2 or 3 baskets at Chaska Elementary School.
That is counted as a disc golf course according to the surveys that I saw Chaska Elementary
School on there but there are about 40 disc golf courses within 30 minutes of the Twin Cities so
it’s a pretty, I wouldn’t say saturated but there’s a lot of players in this area. Again this kind of
shows you the 50% growth of disc golf courses in the country and you can kind of see it’s a nice
pattern that’s increasing every year to slightly over 53,000 in 2009. There’s probably more right
now. In terms of how the 3 disc golf courses in the area here, all 3 sponsored by Three Rivers
Golf District and actually all 3 are pay for play. Again the pass there is $3.00. There’s a course
at Hyland so the picture on the left most is the course at Hyland. I played that course. It is a
tough course. A lot of things they’re asking on the ski hill but you can see you’ve got great view
of Bloomington. That’s a typical disc course, disc golf course basket, if you want to remember
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
what the basket looked like. That’s a good example of a disc course basket. The second one is
at Bryant. Bryant used to be about a 12 hole golf course and it was free. They’ve recently
updated it to 18 holes. They’ve done great stuff with the fairways and now it’s pay for play. I
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believe that’s hole 1 at Bryant. The 17 hole at Bryant Lake, I believe 2 years ago made the
front page of the Variety section because it is probably one of the most challenging holes in the
state. You’re actually standing on top of a cliff and you, and the basket is past a parking lot way
over in a field on the other side. I think I found 3 or 4 discs just that, most people can’t even
make it across but it’s a pretty cool hole. Third course I haven’t played at is Elm Creek but
there’s a picture of Elm Creek and a pretty nice in the presentation as well. Pretty nice balance.
But Three Rivers has 3 very nice golf courses. The difference here is all pay for play but $3.00
really is a, it’s a great way to spend a couple of hours. The proposed course at Bandimere would
be free because it is a 9 hole golf course and when we talked with the two gentlemen, their
suggestion was to start around here and just use this area here for the golf course. There’s
elevation here. There’s a pond there that one of the gentleman was very, very excited about as a
nice challenging hole. We would utilize Bandimere Heights for at least one hole and maybe put
a hole here and just kind of have some holes around here so the holes would be in this area of the
park. We would set the holes up such that most right hander’s I believe will, I think the disc
goes off to the right. The holes would be set such that right hander’s, it would be very difficult
for this to land on the baseball field because most of your disc players are right handed. One of
the, either Cole or Elise asked about the path. You know are you concerned about having a hole,
have a fairway essentially go across a path, hitting a pedestrian…they’re smaller and they’re
much harder than the typical round little disc that people kind of associate with Frisbee’s. Their
answer to that was they didn’t see an issue with having a fairway cross the park. Their only issue
would be at the… They wouldn’t want a fairway to go such that someone couldn’t see someone
walking across the path before they teed off. Before they threw their next shot but they were,
initially they came out. They showed the aerial view and they said you know we need about 10
acres to build 9 holes. They didn’t think it was possible but when they actually saw the layout
that we have, which is less than 10 acres, they thought they could put a pretty good intermediate
length 9 hole golf course in that area.
Ryan: And the only thing that’s different from when we walked it the first time, we looped all
the way around and this time you would just go out and come back the same way.
Tom Kelly: Yep. Costs. We had thrown the number around, $20,000 for a few years because
we didn’t really know really how much it would cost. They’re costing actually significantly less
than that. The course design, they charge $400 I think a day and they thought they could bang
out a course in a day, day and a half. That would actually include them actually coming here and
presenting the course to us so they thought they could get a pretty good design on 2 days of
work. The baskets, these are, this is high end price right now for installation and everything. I
went as high as I could. They felt, they said something between $300 to $500. $450 for 9
baskets. Their recommendation for tee boxes would be, just to use wooden boards for the first
year just to make sure that everything is lined up right and make sure you have the fairways and
tee boxes where you want them before you actually go to the expense of putting the cement pads
in so their recommendations were to do wooden tee boards for the first year. I had no idea what,
we talked about zero…25 bucks in. I do not know how much one of these wooden boards would
cost. A year two expense then would be actually to put the cement pads in for the tee boxes and
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that would run about $200 per hole. So all in all we came up with a cost of less than $7,000. A
bit less than we thought initially so I think Cole, Elise and I were pretty excited about what we
heard so the next steps we would ask is to, well if we go through the CIP tonight, approve maybe
a $10,000 line item for disc golf. Replace the $20,000 in 2012 and then present it to the City
Council to get their buy in on the proposal. And I apologize for the Target bull’s-eye logo. He
never sent me a template so I used one of mine.
Hoffman: Karen said she did so there must be a mix up.
Tom Kelly: Oh okay.
Hoffman: Yeah she said she did the day that I.
Tom Kelly: Asked her for it.
Daniel: Tom, great presentation.
Tom Kelly: Oh thanks.
Daniel: Very informative. I mean first thing obviously that sticks out to us is the cost savings. I
mean that initially what we were looking at to what is realistic. I mean for what we’re looking at
to implement something like this and really put the city on the disc golf map per se, you know it
was funny I was listening to KFAN last week and one of the hosts sat in and literally had a
discussion, maybe it was 2 weeks ago, half the day was talked about disc golf and how popular
it was and it was one of their more popular segments so it goes to show there’s certainly interest
in. To have an intermediate course in the city, and as long as it’s not intrusive on other aspects
of what we’re looking at, I think it’s great so.
Tom Kelly: I’d invite Cole and Elise to mention, because it was all three of us at that. I don’t
want to dominate the conversation so.
Daniel: Cole, anything else you want to add since you were there?
Cole Kelly: Well I really enjoyed the presentation by Lyle Jensen and Chuck Kennedy and two
gentlemen who really know what they’re talking about and they’re you know Chuck is employed
by some disc golf group anyway so that’s his life. But the younger people, it happens to be very
popular with. My son this past week for 6 days was down at the University of Wisconsin for a
cross country running camp and they had a big disc golf tournament with all the runners so you
know it’s become a very popular thing for the young group and I think would be another added
amenity to the city of Chanhassen. Another draw to the city for people to come in with their
kids.
Scharfenberg: Did you guys talk to them about the potential of the expansion at Bandimere with
those holes and that and that coming into play you know changing the course somehow?
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Hoffman: Pretty disjointed. I would compliment the, there’s other features. The hockey rink
and the parking lot, there’s a lot of plans for over there.
Daniel: It seems to be already filled I guess is the best way to describe it.
Scharfenberg: I didn’t know if they could, you know you could put 2 holes over there and then
walk and come, so I didn’t know if that was part of your discussion.
Hoffman We did talk about it.
Cole Kelly: Steve yeah, we talked about it and they, they’re not big on having a big disjointed
area where people have to do a long walk. They said that doesn’t work as well as having
everything flow nicely together so they were more into, when they first got out to Bandimere
they looked at it and they go oh this isn’t even big enough for a 9 hole. And then as we walked
the course.
Hoffman: Bandimere Heights neighborhood park really makes the difference.
Cole Kelly: Exactly and then they looked at it again. Oh yeah, we can do a 9 hole course here.
Hoffman: You couldn’t see that big bowl of property from across where you’re standing. Once
you get into it, you have more opportunity there.
Carron: So the overall general feel is pretty excited like it’d be a pretty decent course?
Tom Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.
Cole Kelly: They said it’d be a very nice course. Yeah, they were both very excited about it and
they were.
Tom Kelly: They liked the pond being there as a hazard. They said we could actually make
money by getting someone in scuba gear and scooping up discs.
Hoffman: $800 bucks. If those guys will design that course for $800, that’s worth $8,000.
These guys, they know their game.
Daniel: You hit it right on the head. I mean I’ve got, I go to Bryant Lake once a week and that
hole number 17.
Tom Kelly: Yeah.
Daniel: Right by my car, I’ve found twice so far backing out. When you think about it I use that
for a half hour for a walk. Two discs. One time twice. Just backing out and I pull in and
obviously they weren’t there.
Cole Kelly: You sure you want that in print?
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Scharfenberg: So my only concern with the timeline on this thing would be that potentially not
putting it in the 2012 CIP. Putting it in, because I don’t know, I think ultimately we need to go
to the City to get buy in before you put it in the CIP. That’s my personal preference is that we do
our presentation. You bring those guys in and get on the agenda to come in with them but you’re
not going to be able to do that maybe until September-October, sometime this fall and do that
with them and put it on the CIP then for 2013 and get their buy in on it because obviously they
weren’t. And in the meantime I don’t know if we can take the $800 and get that design done and
use that as part of the presentation. Say here, we did it. Here’s the design. Here’s what it looks
like. Get the buy in and then get them bought in for 2013.
Ryan: But it’s in right now for 20 right?
Hoffman: It is for 2012, and you can take it out and put it in 2013. If the council supports you
and they say build it in 2012, they can authorize the expenditure of $10,000. It just depends on
how you want to present it to the council.
Tom Kelly: Wasn’t the big opponent to it now becoming a proponent to it? Denny.
Ryan: No, he was a proponent of it.
Tom Kelly: From day one? Okay. I thought he was.
Ryan: No, Denny was for it.
Daniel: I think the only.
Ryan: I don’t think there was any, they just didn’t know enough.
Scharfenberg: They didn’t know enough and we had never presented it. I don’t think they
thought we had thought it through. What the cost was going to be. I think we need to go in with
a clean presentation. You know what you’ve done Tom is great. Use that. Get the design done.
Bring it into them and show it to them and say look it, we can do it for this cost and you know
and have those guys come in and do the presentation. I think that’s what they want to see.
Carron: Tom, what are the size of these concrete pads at the tee off box?
Tom Kelly: What I have seen before is.
Daniel: 4 by 8?
Tom Kelly: I’m not good with numbers. It would be here. I would say about the size of this
maybe to about here is kind of how. These designs, they kind of go up. They need a little
momentum.
Hoffman: 4 by 8.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: 4 by 8. 4 by 8.
Carron: I think the only suggestion I would say was up that $10,000 a little bit for some more
cost of concrete. I think the $1,800 is a little shy. 200 bucks per pad. Yeah I’d rather go in a
little high and save rather than ask for more money later.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Scharfenberg: I’m assuming this is all staff would do this. Yeah, pour the concrete and do all
that for us.
Hoffman: We would coordinate the installation. We may not do it ourselves but it could be just
as cheap to have a contractor come in but we would coordinate the project.
Daniel: Let’s do that. I don’t know necessarily if we need to move it out. Well you’re right. I
mean the 2013 the council may be excited and they’ll just say let’s move it up to 2012. I just
think that…
Hoffman: A lot of projects in your CIP are $200,000. You never made an official presentation
to City Council.
Daniel: You could just keep it Steve. I think we make the presentation anyways from looking at
it in 2012. Reduce the amount. Acknowledge that we’ve reduced our amount. You know it
went from 20 down to 10 based on you know who we met with and keep it in 2012 and they can
make a decision on signing off on it. When are they going to sign off on CIP?
Hoffman: In December.
Daniel: So it’d be December so we’ve got time to...
Hoffman: They’ll see it in September for the first time and then they’ll authorize it in December.
Daniel: My only concern is that if any council member see 2013 then that’s what they’re going
to be locked on and if we can have an opportunity to get it in sooner, let’s do it.
Hoffman: And that’s your next discussion.
Tom Kelly: …the $800 proactively?
Hoffman: Sure.
Tom Kelly: Smart way to spend the money.
Hoffman: Well if you show them the plan.
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Daniel: So how do we go about that Todd? I mean authorizing.
Hoffman: I call them up.
Daniel: Perfect.
Hoffman: I have the authorization to spend $800.
Daniel: Okay, great. Now we can move on.
APPROVE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 2012 THROUGH 2016 PARK AND TRAIL
ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CIP)
PROJECTS.
Daniel: Cole, you had a little cheat sheet that you created?
Cole Kelly: I created a little cheat sheet and I was hoping to do it earlier than I did. So it’s an
unaudited and unreviewed cheat sheet. Basically I took the money that’s expected to be in the
coffers at the end of 2012. I plugged in revenues of $200,000 for each year which makes 2012
that we’re over by $70,000. I should have reduced that to 130. Then I took out what looks to be
in the CIP right now for each year. 2012, 13 through 16 and it gave, and at the far right side
gives us the year end fund balance, and again this is unaudited and unchecked but it’s something
I put together just as my personal cheat sheet and I wanted to pass out one to everybody to look
over. And I asked Todd and Todd couldn’t give me the answer before the meeting started
because we were talking at the last meeting about the $500,000 investment in Bandimere and
we’re going to go down to a half million dollars so my question was the $647,000 coming back
in, is that the reason why we don’t go below a million with the possible expenditures we’re
looking at? And so again this is more of a guide because it hasn’t been reviewed by anybody at
this time but this is kind of my cheat sheet I’m going with.
Hoffman: We’ll have the finance director review it and we’ll send that out and let me know.
I’m thinking it’s right on but we’ll.
Daniel: I think it’s, well if anything it’s just a guideline. It helps us kind of put things in
perspective.
Hoffman: Glenn would be happy.
Daniel: Oh, Glenn would love this. So.
Hoffman: I’ve got a quick presentation Chair Daniels on each of the items on the CIP. You’ve
basically made this recommendation at your last meeting. If you want to go through these items
so you can understand them a little bit better and then make a recommendation to the council.
Daniel: I guess the question I have, I’m jumping in here. Rice Marsh, Rice Lake Marsh trail
loop is 10 grand?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: Planning. Engineering and planning.
Daniel: Oh, okay. I was going to say then I’m signing off on that.
Scharfenberg: That was added though.
Hoffman: That was added, correct.
Daniel: Okay.
Hoffman: There was a couple of changes I noted on the front. Eden Prairie, it’s all in the
presentation if you want to get to the point.
Daniel: Yeah, please.
Hoffman: So we’re talking about park and trail acquisition development CIP 2012 to 2016.
These are the projects that occur annually and almost automatically. Picnic tables and benches.
We just include $10,000 to purchase new picnic tables for expansion of our park system.
Purchase park benches and then we purchase memorial park benches for resale out of this and we
sell 2 to 3 of those a year, and those are $1,000 a piece. We purchase them and there’s a picture
of a memorial bench there and some of the picnic tables that went in the Hilltop shelter. Trees,
this was at 10. Raised to 25 and now the commission put it back down to 15 and these are to
purchase trees for spring and fall tree planting. To fund special tree projects. Tree replacements
due to vandalism and then we’re accelerating, beginning to accelerate our tree plantings to
mitigate against the future loss of ash trees in the ash borer. The ash borer has now moved into
Shoreview and so it’s moving north which is good but eventually it will come south. 2012, this
number would go down to 10. Construction of a disc golf course at Bandimere. Rec Center
fitness equipment. We’re in our last year of $10,000 so that’s $50,000 over 5 years to purchase
new fitness equipment. It’s really maintained the level of enthusiasm and excitement over at that
fitness room in our rec center so that’s been a good investment. That $50,000 is the first new
money since the opening of the facility in 1995. 2012, $110,000 capital replacement fund for
skate park replacement and asphalt surfacing. Original equipment three phases and then mill and
overlay the existing asphalt surfaces in the skate park and the hockey rink. That surface, they
hate it and so that’s the number one complaint currently I think in our city is that surface is not
pleasant to skate on for the inline skaters. I think it’s having an effect on the amount of use that
we’re seeing up there. It’s just a surface that is not pleasant to skate on at the present time. And
then it would be replacing most of the equipment. I think we would keep two pieces and wrap
that into the replacement of the other. Keep the two newest pieces but right now this stuff is
rotting away. We can no longer, we’ve gone from inch and a half to 2 ½ to 3 ½ inch screws to
try to gain some traction on putting down new skate light and so the stud numbers behind this,
these equipment has rotted away and it’s really at some point we’re just going to have to start
taking pieces away so it’s a due for a renovation. Herman Field, this is one that you met with the
group. Construct a 50 by 50 half court basketball. Just look at that picture today. I found it after
this presentation was filed. I would included that you were out with the neighborhood talking
about, trying to get some teenagers into that park and some adult play into that park with a half
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
court basketball. This is in 2012 as well, the pedestrian underpass. This is a matching fund for
the underpass so it’s the million dollar grant, transportation enhancement grant. This one has
already been awarded and the $80,000 is coming out of the park fund is matching funds to make
that underpass a reality. We’ll talk about it in another item but Victoria’s starting to extend this
trail to the west with an application and then it would come through the Arboretum and back out
to the east to Lifetime Fitness. The Highway 41 trail extension and the Highover stairway. This
number’s been moved down. It’s still we don’t know where it is. You have the design for the
stairway but they have not created a cost estimate, a firm cost estimate for this and so we put it
down in the $160,000. We don’t believe it’s going to be the $250,000 and so this is a stair step
design for the trail easements out at the Highover to connect to the Highway 41 trail and then the
underpass into the regional park. And then it also includes that extension. The County project
stops at the middle school driveway and then our extension would take it up to Chaska Road. A
little north of there and then put in the crosswalk. And this allocation may not have to be tapped
if that grant for that pedestrian crossing is successful. If that’s successful and that takes over.
Ryan: And was this different than what we took out for the, was it $90,000 that we took out for
the stairway or?
Hoffman: That was the conversation at your last meeting. Yeah, do you want to take this out?
Do you want to include it in? It’s staff’s recommendation that you include it.
Ryan: Okay.
Hoffman: It’s been a part of the plan for quite some time. The council has been very supportive
of making these neighborhood connections and so it’d be staff’s recommendation that you
include the stairway in your recommendation to the council, but again that’s up to the
commission.
Ryan: Okay.
Hoffman: That’s a map showing Highway 41 and the connection. Something more regionally.
There’s about a mile trail inside the regional park that goes down to the beach. A mile trail on
Highway 41. The underpass and then the neighborhood connection point. $500,000. This is a
new item. Bandimere Community Park expansion. It’s for the lot that would be the property,
the 2.5 acres underneath the hockey rink. The ponding there or the ice rink area. The expansion
of the parking. And again, this is one of those leverage opportunities so you’re talking about a 6
and a half or a 7 million dollar road project and that’s causing a lot of things to happen in this
corridor. Trails. Underpasses. Road improvements. New park entrance and is it a good idea to
leverage that half a million dollars in park funds to make this acquisition possible? Staff believes
firmly that it is. We don’t want to put this family in the position of having their front lot taken
by a road project and not having the back, not having the ability to help them out with the
purchase of the back property for the expansion. That’s been in the park master plan, our
planning process for quite some time and I think we’re in a good position to make that
acquisition. Currently the status of that, Mr. Nettesheim called the other day. Is that the road
project is over budget and staff is meeting with the State. Well you can’t meet with the State
when they’re closed down so they’ll have to reinitiate those meetings over how to eliminate
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
some costs on the road project to make sure that it continues to move forward and that the
underpass goes in and the trailways are built and then that front parcel, if you recall these two
parcels are 2.5 acres each. There’s the front one where the tennis court is and the back one
where the hockey rink is. 2.5 acres each with a house on each property. The front one’s valued
in the 240 to 250 range. The back one’s valued over 400, 420,000. That includes the two homes
on the properties. The front parcel and the front house and 2 ½ acres would be acquired by the
road project and then the back one would have to be acquired by the park fund.
Daniel: And would the $500,000 get us the parking lot and hockey rink?
Hoffman: The $500,000 is currently set for acquisition of the property, closing, relocation, all
those type of costs. It doesn’t address the expansion of those properties but the road project
builds a new access driveway into the property.
Tom Kelly: Does 5,000 include destruction?
Hoffman: Yes. And then this is the one that we talked about at the beginning of the
conversation. This is a map of what Eden Prairie is currently doing. That’s just about right to
the border where they’re bringing the trail so they’re bringing it around from their Rice Marsh
Lake Park and then wrapping that blue line to the bridge underpass on Highway 212 and so they
are building a dead end trail, which is very close to where Chanhassen’s trail will come in so we
knew when Eden Prairie started building west or Chanhassen started building east that we should
go at the same time so we start to make this loop a reality. What we’re asking the commission to
do is invest some dollars for taking a look at the design of our side of it, and so our side comes
through Parcels 1 and 2 and starts, it starts way up in the top by the corner of the yellow. Goes
down through the trail. We go down through the back of those large lots. Through numbers 1
and 2 which are owned by the State of Minnesota. We’re currently talking about whether we
should acquire the property 1 from the State of Minnesota. Either way they’ll either sell them to
us or they’ll give us an easement for that trail through there. The front property is much more
economical than the back. Number 1 is more economical than 2. So we at least need to get
some idea on how much this is going to cost. It’s 3,500 feet. How many creek crossings do we
have? And once completed this will complete the 3 mile loop around Rice Marsh Lake for both
residents of Chanhassen and residents of Eden Prairie. If you go back.
Daniel: Well that officially complete it?
Hoffman: Yep, yep. Once we plan for the $10,000 that would complete it to that point. You
would be able to go around Rice Marsh but currently you couldn’t get down underneath
Highway 212 past the golf course to Lyman. When Bearpath was built the development contract
said you shall build this trail but the developer went bankrupt so they never enforced all the
documents in the development contract so that trail is not there, so they’re still not quite sure
how they’re going to get that section built. But this first phase will get you all the way around
Rice Marsh. The second phase is what Eden Prairie needs to build will get you down out of the
line.
Tom Kelly: Will Eden Prairie fill in that 50 yard space that is currently dirt?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: They will when we get there.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Scharfenberg: You mean so the existing Rice Marsh, I mean I went through there the other day
and I can where they’re excavating and doing that to go off that trail but they’re also going to
extend like Tom said, the trail to connect all the way with our trail?
Hoffman: It would stop, they’re going to stop it short but once we build to our property line then
they would build back. It’s a couple hundred feet. More than that, yeah. So they would build
back.
Daniel: So they’ve got to, I mean do they have to go through that, are they going to go basically
on that same area right now? They have to kind of, because that’s private property isn’t it?
Hoffman: It’s all either, it’s State of Minnesota property and I’m not sure what it is in Eden
Prairie.
Ruegemer: I think you guys are talking about more on the north side.
Daniel: The north side, yeah.
Ruegemer: Of Rice Marsh where it’s private property is.
Hoffman: Oh that last little piece, right. That’s up to them. I don’t know what they’re going to
do there.
Scharfenberg: So that’s still not going to be.
Hoffman: Unresolved. Eden Prairie.
Tom Kelly: Oh but can you go back to the other slide? So the park that, so you don’t, you
wouldn’t go that far? You don’t need to go that far to go around Rice Marsh Lake? You don’t
need to hit that little dirt area?
Hoffman: On the north side? That little dirt area? Yeah you do.
Tom Kelly: There’s a dirt trail.
Hoffman: Right there, yep.
Tom Kelly: Is it here?
Daniel: To the left. Little left. Right there.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: Right there, yep.
Daniel: That’s it.
Tom Kelly: So this is still going to be dirt?
Daniel: No that’s actually paved. If you go to the left of that property, right there. Yep. Go
around. Right around, right there. That’s where it stops.
Tom Kelly: Okay. Stops there. Dirt and then it gets paved from there.
Daniel: Correct.
Tom Kelly: Okay, okay.
Daniel: That’s the little piece that’s still unresolved.
Tom Kelly: Right.
Daniel: But I guess the dotted line then Todd, that’s Eden Prairie’s responsibility?
Hoffman: They’re building it right now.
Daniel: Okay, and they’re going to go all the way under, they put in the bridge and so
everything.
Hoffman: Bridge is there.
Daniel: Okay.
Hoffman: Bridge is there with the 212 project, yeah. Yeah, if you drive behind and look north
you’ll see that construction going on right now.
Daniel: Okay. And then we need to connect it from the end of the purple line.
Hoffman: We need to connect it, currently it stops behind the home right here.
Daniel: Oh, I see. So we’ve got to go through.
Hoffman: So we’ve got to connect through here.
Daniel: Gotch ya.
Hoffman: Cut around and then cross. And then when you get to this point, it is still a little short.
It’s right about there and that’s the Chanhassen/Eden Prairie line and then they’ll have to go this
piece back to come up to this trail segment.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Daniel: Oh, okay. I was looking at it from going into Bearpath there but I see that. Okay, that
clears things up.
Hoffman: And these easements are a sewer line. You could walk this today. We mow this all
the way down. I just had a conversation with this property owner. They have the log home and
they would like you to delay the project as long as you can. The trail’s going to go between their
house and the lake and you can walk that sewer line easement right now. This easement has
been in place, probably the oldest trail easement in the city. Since the mid 1960’s and so
somebody had a vision that that possibility would be here someday and we’re standing here 40-
50 years later finally making that happen hopefully.
Daniel: Wow, okay.
Hoffman: Yeah so, without that easement this trail couldn’t be constructed.
Daniel: What do you think the cost once that trail is designed? I mean you’re talking about
3,500 feet.
Hoffman: Yeah typically it’s 100 bucks or less so $350,000.
Daniel: Oh.
Hoffman: Something like that. Is that right? Not 3.5 million…
Daniel: Okay.
Cole Kelly: Just go like this Todd.
Hoffman: And 2013, Pioneer Pass neighborhood park development. A lot of excitement
building around this park. There’s many homes being constructed. About every other
homeowner calls to inquire about the park or perspective new homeowner and so they’re
interested in seeing things happen. I think 2013.
Daniel: That 350 is for the park.
Hoffman: Phase I development.
Daniel: Development strictly.
Hoffman: As far as we can get, yep.
Daniel: So we can get trees, playground, sliding hill, everything graded. All set. Ready to go
path.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: Yeah. If we bid this out that wouldn’t get us hardly anywhere but we’ll act as the
general contractor, the City will, and we’ll farm out each one of these different projects. We’ll
work with the neighborhood to design and build the playground. That creates a lot of
enthusiasm, excitement over the park and then do everything else in-house that we can and have
the folks come in plant trees. So that’s the plan for Pioneer Pass. There’s one item that’s in
2012 and 2014, it’s tennis courts. These are both in the capital replacement plan. It’s rebuild 2
courts at the Rec Center and patch and resurface the remaining courts. We have cracks in tennis
courts all the time. Last year the frost heave was very excessive due to the saturation of the sub-
surface material prior going into winter. The Rec Center you’ll see they’re doing some soil
borings on the two south rinks and this week or next week so that’s what this is talking about.
We’ll have some firm numbers, especially in the re-build that the Council is interested in taking
a look at. This is one of the items out of your capital plan that made their strategic visioning plan
and so they want to see this again. They want to see hard numbers on what these costs are to
repair and rebuild these tennis courts. 2014 we move over to Riley Ridge. It’s just on Lyman
Boulevard and construct Phase I of that neighborhood park. If you drive by, we drove by. They
were starting construction and they’ve got the park site rough graded. It’s ready to be built. Just
the homes are ready to be built. That’s $250,000 at the site will, not 25. 2015 Bluff Creek Drive
gap trail and this is $75,000. That’s for matching funds to the application. The application is
complete. It’s not ready to be sent in because the State hasn’t called for it yet so this is the
application for the $304,000 in transportation enhancement funding. Once the State tells us how
they want these sent in and by when, we’ll send it in. The other one is the Highway 5 and that’s
for the $1,230,000. So that’s the matching amount, 75. And this is the trail plan or the trail
schematic for that Bluff Creek connection. And the pedestrian trail at Arboretum, this is
matching funds again so 275 to match up against the million and so the total project is
$1,233,000 to construct that underpass that is shown there right at Lifetime Fitness and then
construct the trailway into the Arboretum. This project was profiled in the Star Tribune Sunday
edition a week ago, if you saw it in the Metro section. Talking about building that particular
project. Lifetime is onboard. Hopefully funding consideration will be high. It’s at least the first
time we know where you combine private, Lifetime Fitness, kind of a non profit, the Arboretum,
the County, the State, City of Victoria, City of Chaska, and City of Chanhassen all signed onto
the project as supporters of the project. State of Minnesota really likes to see that. These
transportation enhancement projects go to the TAC board which is a board of engineers.
Technical committee. They make a recommendation to the TAB board. Bethany Tjornhom sits
on that. Councilwoman Tjornhom sits on that TAB board for the Met Council. So does County
Commissioner Maluchnik. Randy Maluchnik and then it goes eventually to the Met Council for
their final authorization if those grant dollars come forward.
Scharfenberg: Todd, just to comment on the article. It seemed to me as I read that article that
the Arboretum was a little kind of on the fence as to what they were being charged.
Hoffman: They’re getting cold feet a little bit.
Scharfenberg: Yeah, and how that all was going to play out because from the conversations
you’ve had with us it’s oh yeah, we want the people here and they can ride for free and then it’s
kind of, it sounds like they backed off that a little bit or they’re not quite sure how that’s all
going to play out yet. Is that a fair?
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
Hoffman: That’s a fair analysis of what’s going on. I’ve not talked to Peter or the new director
Ed Schneider since that article has come out. They’re on record saying free access to walkers
but now they’re hedging that a little bit. Well that was our current policy and with this new trail
we don’t want 500 people coming to the Arboretum by bike or walking on a weekend basis but
there’s still a lot to figure out how you would manage that. Are you biking through or are you
stopping and so there’s a lot of.
Daniel: Well they’re looking at it from the wrong sampling. They look at it from revenue
opportunities for what they…
Hoffman: …I think it’s just fear of the unknown currently and everything will turn out just fine.
And we’re getting down to the last project. Chan Nature Preserve, final phase and this is that
trail that, this is not the piece. This is the piece that currently was built and then the top lot is the
piece that would have to be built once that lot develops so this is the last, what you’re seeing now
is the last phase that was built about 4 years ago and the final phase wraps around to the north.
Daniel: By the way I want to say I had a co-worker in town 2 weeks ago. Stayed at the Holiday
Inn Express and.
Hoffman: Took that trail?
Daniel: And he walked around that trail every morning and every night.
Hoffman: Loved it.
Daniel: Loved it. He thought it was fantastic. He just walked the...all the way down to, what is
it? West Lake Road.
Hoffman: Yeah.
Daniel: And came back and he thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Hoffman: So as I said in my cover letter there’s a couple of minor modifications to the amount
for the transportation enhancement grants and then the addition to the $10,000 for the Rice
Marsh Lake loop planning. Other than that it’s the recommendation that you made in July. June.
Cole Kelly: June, yeah.
Hoffman: I know. Summer’s going fast but not that fast. So with that it’s staff’s
recommendation that the commission recommend the City Council approve this capital plan as
presented.
Tom Kelly: My only change to that would be to change the disc golf course from $20,000 to
$10,000. It’s written as $20,000.
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Hoffman: Duly noted.
Daniel: Okay.
Cole Kelly: And I’m wondering you know last meeting we decided to cut back, we were
worried about the CIP fund. That’s part of the reason we cut back to $15,000 on the trees
because we felt we were going to be down at about a half million dollars with this big purchase
at Bandimere and looking at the new numbers, you know it doesn’t appear we’re going to go
below a million. Or we’re going to be close to it and I’m wondering if we should reinstate the
trees to the $25,000 level. Any thoughts from the City?
Hoffman: Well from staff, there’s a good reason to be out there trying to get ahead of it. It’s
always a, it’s a guessing game on when it’s going to hit and when it’s going to have it’s dramatic
effect and so one thing I will say, once it gets here tree dollars are going to go up. There’s no
question so if we’re ahead of it then they’re not going to have to go up as much or as for long to
get back to where because about you know 40% of our trees in our groomed areas or a little bit
less are ash and so we’re going to have to replace those trees. It’s a little bit less than that,
depending on where you go but it’s a significant amount of ash trees. And so we’re planting
along side of them. At Lake Ann we cut down every other ash in the ballfields. Where you have
a big line of them you just have to cut down every other where you can have areas where you can
have a stand of 3 ash trees over here and you have areas along side. You just move along side to
plant new trees. Wait til those come of the ash borer, cut them down and you haven’t lost. You
still have your tree shade for the picnic area in the park. So it’s just a question of who can guess
how fast the borers are going to fly to Chanhassen.
Daniel: My suggestion is we keep it as is for 2012 and then we can revisit the higher amount
next year and go up to $25,000 again.
Hoffman: City Council’s also looking at a comprehensive tree analysis. All departments plant
trees and the council wants to know how much and when and so they’ll be taking a look at all the
different allocations.
Scharfenberg: So it sounds like maybe we keep it where it is and see what that analysis comes
up with.
Hoffman: Sure. We can still plant a good amount of trees. Just $10,000 less but we’re still, the
parks are still benefitting from the Arbor Day trees so that’s one of the most significant tree
plantings of the year so we’re going to be moving that around and so then we’re also doing a fall
tree planting primarily in our park areas so, but we do get requests. We get citizen requests for
trees in existing parks and we also know that a good portion of our tree stock out there right now
is currently damaged. It’s dead standing there and so if we went down and actively cut all those
down, you couldn’t touch that with $15,000. You’d have to keep adding. In fact we brought the
Bandimere plan together that’s no longer in the CIP and that was in that $60,000 range. $30,000
for 2 years so. It’s hard to estimate but any given tree, less than half the trees that we plant are
going to reach maturity because of disease, stress, other things in our community so just one of
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those things we can keep at and I think we do fairly well. Shade areas are very enjoyable to be
under in the summer. Non-shaded areas are not.
Cole Kelly: I think maybe Jeff with the expenditures we’re having this year we should leave this
year at $15,000. Put in $25,000 for the years going forward and then they can be revisited if we
have more expenses than what we’re showing at this point.
Daniel: Okay.
Cole Kelly: Would you be amenable to that?
Daniel: Steve?
Scharfenberg: Sure.
Daniel: Elise, Tom?
Tom Kelly: Yep.
Daniel: Brent?
Carron: Now or later.
Daniel: That sounds good. Let’s make that changes then. Okay. With the changes for changing
the amount what, to $25,000 for 13 through 16. 2013 through 16 for tree replacement and then
Tom, reducing the disc golf CIP amount from 20 down to 10. Why don’t we go ahead and move
forward with staff’s proposal.
Hoffman: Essentially your recommendation.
Daniel: It’s our recommendation. We’re going to recommend staff’s proposal so please
somebody.
Cole Kelly: I’ll make the motion with the changes mentioned by Jeff that we move forward and
approve the funding sources to be presented to the City Council.
Carron: Second.
Cole Kelly moved, Carron seconded that the Park and Recreation Commission
recommends that the City Council approve the 2012-2016 Park and Trail Acquisition and
Development Capital Improvement Program CIP totaling $3,185,000 with the following
changes: reducing disc golf course construction to $10,000 in 2012; increasing tree
replacement to $25,000 annually for 2013-2016. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
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RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS: 2011 FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION
EVALUATION.
Stutzman: Thank you Chair Daniels and members of the commission. I will try to sum up a lot
of events very briefly here but I’m mostly looking for your feedback this evening. It was a
fantastic turnout. Probably one of the best in my tenure here with the city. Estimated
somewhere between 65 and 85,000 people took place in some activities over the weekend and so
really, really a spectacular sight throughout everything of the weekend. Couple new things just
to highlight that we talked about and a lot of things so far is family night carnival, bingo. Having
the vendor game and ride out there provides something for the teenagers. Some additional
activity for them as well as working with the fire department and getting a first aid station.
Thankfully was not utilized very much this year so a couple new additions this year that were all
very well received. Staff was very excited but for the most part as I said what I would like to do
at this time is hear what the commission has heard from the public as well as your thoughts and
staff has at this time has received a lot of very positive feedback that the event went very well
and we’re pleased and anxious to hear what you guys have to say as well.
Daniel: Okay, great. Cole.
Cole Kelly: I was out of town.
Daniel: Brent.
Carron: Likewise.
Daniel: Peter I know you were.
Aldritt: Yeah I was, but I did have family that attended it and they had nothing but good reports.
My aunt and uncle have kids in the 3 to 6 age range and they said they enjoyed it. It was
probably the best year that they thought over the past 3 years that they’ve attended before.
Daniel: Steve.
Scharfenberg: A really great event. It’s always hard to say how can you top it but you guys
have done it again and just kudos to everything that everyone was staffed. I think for the most
part everything went out without a hitch with the exception of maybe the baseball game. But
other than that.
Ryan: What happened?
Scharfenberg: New Ulm didn’t show up.
Daniel: Oh really. Wow.
Scharfenberg: So I mean but.
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Stutzman: But it sounded like the Red Birds did a very commendable job to accommodate those
that showed up.
Scharfenberg: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Stutzman: They did an inner squad scrimmage.
Daniel: Okay.
Scharfenberg: So just a wonderful event and everything that I’ve heard has been just totally
positive so, good job. Excellent job I should say.
Ryan: I thought it was exciting that you guys got the, a lot of PR involved with it. It was fun to
see on KARE 11 news highlighting the parade and just all the excitement around it so
congratulations on a great event.
Daniel: Was that certainly something that the City coactively?
Hoffman: The Legion did just about all that.
Stutzman: The Legion poured in most of that and basically kept…
Daniel: With the news. That’s great. I mean regardless it’s.
Stutzman: It was fantastic.
Daniel: Yep, I mean we even watched it that night when we were out.
Hoffman: Yeah it was focused on all around the junior legion and having the kids of the service
people in the parade and so the most widely televised special event ever in the community of
Chanhassen. It was 4, 9 and 11 I think at least and then CBS national I guess picked up on it.
Daniel: Tom, any comments?
Tom Kelly: I thought it was a great event. Just a couple things. It’s time to get a new prize
board because I think you have all the squares and underneath are old numbers from old things
so you pull off the, it just, it may be time to I don’t know maybe invest in a new white board. I
know the outside graphics are nice but it might be time just because the permanent marker is
unfortunately permanent. Another thing is I did get a couple, I don’t want to call them
complaints but there were a couple people that weren’t really, the tables were set up. The tables
were scrunched together in the main tent and there was no way to walk down the center of the
tent. I think you do that probably to accommodate more tables but a limited movement within
the tent just around the perimeter and people were, a couple people were complaining that it was
difficult to get to the place that they wanted to get to if it was in the middle so I don’t know if
you want to look at that next year or not.
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Stutzman: One thing we are looking into is looking at a larger tent.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Stutzman: That is one thing, we are evaluating if it’s possible. There are some there. There is
one available in the Midwest that I have spoken to a vendor about. The biggest issue at this point
is do we have the space to accommodate that larger tent.
Tom Kelly: Okay.
Stutzman: In to address your question as far as space, one thing I specifically saw this year. I
know we at staff worked hard to leave some extra walkways to help prevent that night. I noticed
in my walking around the event is you leave open space, it gets filled very, very quickly.
Regardless of what you do so we will continue to look at the walkways certainly. What we can
do to make them big tent accessible but it is definitely a challenge.
Tom Kelly: Right.
Hoffman: We had a large walkway down the eastern edge but it was filled with people and just
trying to move that crowd is a challenge.
Tom Kelly: Nature hates a vacuum and I guess Chanhassen residents do also. One of the things
I know and maybe this is just the cost of doing business. I think I brought this up before but I
think we lost $2,200 in t-shirts this year. I know it sounds like people that volunteer really
appreciate the t-shirts but I don’t know if staff wants to relook at that expense again.
Hoffman: I think the right way to look at that is you’re making money. You’re making money
in those sponsors and having the sponsors get that t-shirt is a part of the reason they’re sending
us 25 grant.
Tom Kelly: Okay then I’ll.
Stutzman: And they really, I mean they call me and say when are we getting them.
Tom Kelly: Scratch that from the record then.
Hoffman: Part of the reason, as part of the expense is they build within their business for their
organization is they send us a check. They get shirts to hand out to their employees and.
Tom Kelly: Yep, okay.
Hoffman: And some of them are participating in the parade and they wear them there or up here
at the Taste of Chanhassen, they wear them there.
Tom Kelly: Okay. I just thought it was a fantastic event. It was great.
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Ruegemer: …Byerly’s staff members had them on?
Stutzman: Yes. This was something, Byerly’s has called me the past couple years because they
don’t get enough to provide for their whole staff. They’ve called me the last 2 years to purchase
additional ones. I always thought it was for the staff that worked the event but I went into the
store to grab some ice real quickly for something the day of and every staff member in the store
is wearing our t-shirts.
Tom Kelly: I didn’t realize it was, you were just shipping them to the people that were actually
giving us all those prizes so that makes.
Hoffman: You’d like to try to make money right out of the bank on them and cover those
sponsor shirts. That just isn’t happening. It’s also part of the long term branding of the event.
People see these shirts year after year after year.
Tom Kelly: Okay. Cost of doing business. Excellent, excellent event.
Daniel: Okay, great John and certainly Jerry and the whole staff, the park staff as well as
everyone else, thank you for putting together another fantastic, quite frankly most people would
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say the best 4 of July celebration in the state so what more can you ask. So thank you.
Hoffman: Thank you, the commissioners and then special thanks to John and Jerry and all the
rest of the staff. Everybody in the community works on it so it’s very difficult to get all the, you
know the fire department and the Rotary and all the volunteer groups and so, I mean our
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community is just so enthused to get involved in the 4 of July and we just, John does a great job
and Jerry acting as liaisons to those groups to try to make it the best possible so. I think it is
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probably the biggest in the metro on the 4 of July. I don’t think there’s, if you find a larger one.
DAVE HUFFMAN MEMORIAL RUN.
Daniel: Great. Next item, Dave Huffman. There was obviously a news article in the Villager
last week, cancellation of the Dave Huffman. I was just curious whether an explanation or not.
As I think you said it Jerry, just the competition amongst other 5K’s.
Ruegemer: Yeah that certainly was a big factor that you know the race committee met probably
in the last 2 or 3 weeks and that has really been kind of there in the forefront for a number of
years now. Just you know kind of numbers have been kind of stagnant or at the same levels you
know when we started 11 years ago with the race. 5K was a relatively new event. Relatively
new event. Through that course of time the market really has been saturated with you know
these type of events you know versus, you look on race…com, there’s multiple, multiple races
every weekend so, there’s a lot to pick from. Other ones that are certainly unique, you know the
J.S. Page Run and you get beer afterwards and we don’t offer beer but there are certainly things
that are unique to other type of runs with that. You know average life space is 3 to 5 years. We
went 11. It was a great event, great event for a number of years. You know I think we’re just
kind of losing the identity. A lot of people that, you know some that ran the race weren’t even
alive when Dave Huffman played football or for that matter lived in Chanhassen so, so it’s kind
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of one of those, kind of all those factors kind of factored into the final decision with that. It’s
just kind of news to share with the commission tonight. You know there certainly is talk about
another race in town as kind of an extension of the Southwest Chamber…committee as part of
the business community. Student scholarships. They’re looking to possibly do an event into
probably next year now. At this point they’re trying to identify a location…a route so that is
being, certainly being discussed at this point so. You know I think this event obviously is going
by the wayside but there will be certainly will be future events the way it looks at this point.
Cole Kelly: Jerry, quick question. Now that run was what Labor Day usually?
Ruegemer: It was the weekend after. The second Saturday in September.
Cole Kelly: The weekend after. Because you know if another group is looking to do a run in the
future, you know all the cross country runners are told over the summer to run 2 or 3 5K’s or
10K’s. Once practice starts in the middle of August they are barred from running any of those
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races so you throw all the high school runners out of the mix if you do it after the 15 of August
roughly. So if they’re looking to do it, these kids are looking for races before that. So that’s
something to keep in mind.
Hoffman: Do you want to briefly explain the non-profit? There was a group that was formed.
They have control over the race and how that works.
Ruegemer: Yeah. Right when the race committee first was kind of envisioned a 5013C was
established with a board of directors and the whole certificate of good standing with all that stuff.
There’s articles of incorporation. All these type of things so that currently exists today. The race
committee’s finalizing kind of what to do with those articles of incorporation. If they’ve been
dissolved. We’re just kind of letting it go inactive at this point. We’re kind of in the process of
kind of getting that figured out at this point. There is a fund balance of about $1,200 to $1,400
approximately in the race kind of budget right now so that money will be allocated to local
organizations. Whether it’s going to be the boy scouts or the Storm booster club or whoever
that’s going to be at this point, that will be decided here in the near future.
Daniel: Okay, great. Thanks Jerry. Are there any questions? Alright. Great, if not let’s try to
cut it before 10:30 here.
Ryan: Steve brought up the bike tour.
Daniel: Oh, that’s right Steve. I apologize.
COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS:
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Scharfenberg: Oh just kind of a question. Are we still going to do that on the 20?
Hoffman: Staff was planning on it and it was, we’ll schedule it before the, what time does the
open house start? 11:00.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
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Stutzman: That’s actually the 27.
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Hoffman: Oh. How’d we get the 20?
Stutzman: I guess that was the date of the open house.
Hoffman: Is that the day we want?
Scharfenberg: Sure. I mean I think that’s what we talked about is doing it that day so.
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Hoffman: So the 27. And do a bike tour. Invite all the commissions, the council. Set a route
that starts and finishes at the Rec Center and then go to the Rec Center sports open house.
Daniel: Yep.
Hoffman: Anybody want to work on the route?
Tom Kelly: I can work on the route.
Hoffman: Okay.
Tom Kelly: What’s the mileage? 30-35?
Hoffman: Probably.
Tom Kelly: Oh, okay.
Scharfenberg: So can you incorporate at least the new Bluff Creek trails as part of the route?
Tom Kelly: Yep. So 25-30 miles is good? Okay. A shorter and a farther route.
Hoffman: A drop off route.
Scharfenberg: And then just one other question. Miracles for Mitch, is that?
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Hoffman: That’s the 20 of August.
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Scharfenberg: The 20, okay.
Hoffman: And feel free as commissioners to sign up directly with them as volunteers if you
choose to. There’s a lot of community volunteers. The Rotary has been engaged this year to be
the bike ride, sort of the bike ride folks and there’s lots of other organizations so contact them
directly to volunteer.
Daniel: Okay. Thank you Steve.
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Park and Recreation Commission - July 26, 2011
COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS.
None.
ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET.
None.
Cole Kelly moved, Tom Kelly seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the
motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0. The Park and Recreation Commission
meeting was adjourned.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman
Park and Rec Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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