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CC Minutes 9-12-05 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Resolution#2005-74: d. Approve Plans & Specifications; Authorize Advertising for Bids for the 2005 MUSA Improvements, Phase I, Project No. 04-05. Resolution#2005-75: e. Approve Consultant Contract for 2006 Street Improvement Project No. 06-01. Resolution#2005-76: g. Resolution Decertifying Gateway Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District #6. h. Approval of Cell Tower Lease Agreement with T-Mobile. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: Tom Meier: Good evening Mayor, members. I’m Tom Meier from 695 Pleasant View and I just wanted to reiterate on the McCord issue and David Sanford on the alteration permit. Mayor Furlong: Mr. Meier, if you’d like we can pick up your comments at that time on the agenda if that’d be okay. Tom Meier: That’d be great. Mayor Furlong: Do you mind waiting? That way we can take it in context. Tom Meier: Okay, thank you. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to address the council this evening during visitor presentations? Seeing none then, we offer this opportunity at every meeting so people watching at home are welcome to come as well. TH TROY AND VIRGINIA KAKACEK, 380 WEST 86 STREET, PLANNING CASE 05- 18: HARD COVER VARIANCE REQUEST FOR A SINGLE FAMILY HOME. Kate Aanenson: Thank you. This item, located on Tigua Lane, just off of 101, appeared before the Planning Commission. There is some length of time inbetween. The applicants had requested additional time to work through some issues and then also the time it appeared before the Planning Commission and City Council based on length of some agendas, but this item did appear before the Planning Commission and they recommended 6-0 denial. That is why it’s in front of you tonight. Again subject site, this is a recently created subdivision of an existing large lot. The applicant did appear, apply for a building permit and this was the original survey. I have one that’s colored a little bit better but I just want to go through. This was the original survey that was submitted. I do believe you all received a letter from Mr. Martin, the attorney regarding some of the issues in the kind of time date issues. I do believe all of you were emailed that. There’s a lot of he said, she said and I’m not going to go into those. I’m just going to present the facts as the staff saw them and how we approached the permit. So it came in and the 2 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Roger Knutson: I’m satisfied they’re going to sign it. Mayor Furlong: Very good. There you go. I like the parliamentary order. The motion’s been made to table. It’s been seconded to give staff and the applicant time to work out some alternatives, given the comments this evening. Councilman Lundquist moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to table Planning Case th #05-18, hard cover variance request for Troy and Virginia Kakacek at 380 West 86 Street in order to give staff and the applicant time to explore alternative solutions. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. MARIANNE MCCORD & DAVID SANFORD, 6440 FOX PATH, PLANNING CASE 05- 22, WETLAND ALTERATION PERMIT TO CONSTRUCT A WALKWAY AND DOCK. Public Present: Name Address David Sanford 6440 Fox Path Michael P. & Debbie Haydock 6460 Fox Path Mary Hoffman 6470 Fox Path Tom & Sue Huberty 6450 Fox Path Terry Vogt 732 Lake Point Charles Brown 1439 Tennessee, Minneapolis Tom Meier 695 Pleasant View Road Lori Haak: Thank you Mayor Furlong and council members. As the mayor indicated this is an application for the wetland alteration permit at 6440 Fox Path, which is Lot 9, Block 1, Fox Chase Subdivision. The applicant is for the construction of a dock through a wetland area to access Lotus Lake. You can see the subject property on the map. On the north side of the lake is Pleasant View Road. Just off the west side of, or the left side of the paper is Powers Boulevard so just to orient folks. Typically wetland alteration permits that we see here are straight forward. However as is quite common with a planned unit development such as this one, a conservation easement has been recorded on several of these properties. The conservation easement covers all of the land within the subdivision below 900 feet which is shown on one of our other attachments. There’s one, sorry. Okay, pull it down. The conservation easement, the 900 foot elevation is shown in green on this survey. And the ordinary high water mark for Lotus Lake which is 896. Actually this is the 896 contour. It’s not actually the ordinary high water mark, is shown in blue on that plan sheet there. As I indicated the conservation easement covers all the land below 900 feet and encumbers parts of Lot 7 through 19. And again the subject property is Lot 9, which is indicated in orange. The easement prohibits docks except on Lots 16 through 19 which are on the southern part or the bottom part of the plan. Lot 16 has a dock that’s shared by 7 properties. Lots 10 through 16, and that’s basically the lots south of the subject property and the next 6 lots. So there’s a shared dock that is used by 7 property owners, and then Lots 17, 18, and 19, which are the final 3 lots there, each have their own docks and if we can pull up the aerial photo I believe we can see why. The wetland, actually if you orient it so north is at the 14 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 top. Perfect, thank you. There is quite a bit of wetland, riparian to Lotus Lake in that area and as you go south towards the bottom of the screen, that wetland narrows up significantly so the folks in those last 3 lots were able to, actually the last 4 lots were able to put in a dock across very narrow bands of wetland. Even though the ordinary high water mark of Lotus Lake extends onto Lots 8 and 9, which would normally give those two lots riparian rights according to the DNR, staff researched this subdivision which was actually quite contentious, and if you’d like the city attorney can speak a little bit more to that. But the staff found that there were no docking provisions made for those 2 lots. That’s again Lots 8 and 9. Because the conservation easement nd is more restrictive than city code, it prevails. And following a public hearing on August 2 the Planning Commission recommended denial of the wetland alteration permit with a 5 to 1 vote. As staff has provided the council with an e-mail from Jamie Grivich and Chris Pelletier let’s just say. Apologize for the mispronunciation but those, it’s something that we had received in the interim between the Planning Commission and now and that does express support for the wetland alteration permit. Staff and the Planning Commission recommends the City Council nd adopt a motion to deny the wetland alteration permit as found on page 6 of the August 2 Planning Commission staff report. With that I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for staff. Ms. Haak, the question here is a wetland alteration permit but with, you mentioned the conservation easement across the property. Isn’t that the real question? Lori Haak: It is. Mayor Furlong: I mean the application is for a wetland alteration permit but the question is, are there, right now the conservation easement, if reading the staff report, if I read it correctly, indicates that that easement prevents any structures going through that area. Lori Haak: That’s correct. Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. Other questions for staff at this time? Okay. Is the applicant here? Good evening. David Sanford: Good evening. I’ve got some paper I’d like to share with you. Good evening Mayor, council. I’m David Sanford at 6440 Fox Path. I apologize, my wife’s not here. She has a family member that’s extremely ill and she’s out of state taking care of that. Just you know I think some of the confusion that was brought up on the last case and here as well, and I tried to just kind of bullet point a number of facts but we bought the house in 1998. So in our closing documentation we reviewed the title insurance. No mention of any conservatory easement. As you can see in there we paid for, a lot of money for a survey that they did not find this conservation easement. But I think, and Lori would probably agree, we have done a ton to lakescape our house. We’ve done, planted numerous trees. We don’t cover our driveway. We don’t change oil. I think it said we don’t change oil at all but we do change oil in our cars. It’s not on our driveway. We reduced our turf considerably. Put in hundreds and hundreds of bushes and I think anyone in our neighborhood would tell you the impact we’ve made to the environment. I’m sure Lori has because she’s been over to the house. We’ve been really 15 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 working this and the things I want to hit on is really fair, equitable and reasonable treatment. When you look at conservation, conservation’s not one lot. And that seems like we’re being penalized. We’re one lot that touches the lake. But our first meeting with Lori was really to discuss how do we lakescape our house. How do we make it more valuable. How do we work better in conservation. We were not looking to build a dock. We were asking about what other people rights were. We had people that built huge hulking docks that extended way out. Put on big covers that are eyesores on the lake and we said, is there any issues and what are they allowed to do to that. So we weren’t looking to necessarily build a dock. My wife asked a very broad question, can we build a dock and Lori’s answer was, well yeah you might be able to. And later very much encouraged us to pursue this issue. She did say that this end of the lake was fuzzy and I think there’s been other complaints over the years about some dock usage. Our original survey was a little bit off but I guess in reality we actually have 100 feet, not at high water mark but of open water. We have 100 feet of open water. In fact if you look at this, I think the second, one of the attachments on the third to last page. Every time we get e-mails about what’s going on the lake, we’re considered a lake front property. I got the most recent one about the no wake that came after the storm, so evidently the city considers me a lake front property. We discussed things like the lotus flowers and that’s kind of a, was a joke. It’s not a real provision but it was, I think something Lori said, it was kind of an urban myth. You know at the end of this I kind of, and Lori knows that I requested this in e-mail to her so she’s very aware that I’m asking really one of two things. Either approve our variance or refund the money because quite frankly I felt we were misled by the city completely. As we went through the process. We spent over $2,000 on a survey. In fact the survey, Lori came out and asked for additional points for the city. I don’t know that it benefited and I looked through the application. The high water marks are not required to put on application for a variance. Lori recommended one and came out and asked for additional points which showed Lot 8, next to our’s, which again was not a requirement for this process but we were told literally that we had a 99% chance of being able to build our dock during these discussions. Again we worked with the city. We were willing to model this in any way. We want a very simple dock. We’re not looking to change the environment very much at all. During this entire process we were delayed a couple times on meetings and we got four different bids from dock companies. We worked with the staff to say where would you like us to start our dock. They said why don’t you start at the end of a berm and then later when the staff report came out, that’s not a good place to start a dock, and that was kind of frustrating because we asked them. They said push it out, which is great for us. It would actually reduce our cost of our dock considerably if we did push it out. But we’re again more than willing to work any way possible to work there. We were asked to delay our meeting for the Planning Commission, and after all this process a week before, and this has taken 3 months, before the meeting is when the conservation easement issue came up. We went out. We went in the water. We checked the water depth with our neighbor’s boat. And so to tell you I’m frustrated, that’s absolutely true. I’m very frustrated by the process. I guess if we would have been told early on to check for easements or why can’t we build a dock, we never would have pursued the issue. We wouldn’t have spent over $2,500 to pursue an issue. We weren’t looking, our goal was not initially to build a dock. Our goal was to have a proper share of the lake and manage the conservation. Even if you look at the documentation that’s shown on the significant on Lot 9 that approved this easement, skipping the signatures and all the other lots. I don’t know who it was. We didn’t live in the neighborhood but it’s unclear. There’s no written names. Don’t know if it was given at the right time. You know we have 100 feet of open water that 16 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 we’re looking at. We’re the only lakefront property that doesn’t seem to have access to the lake in the whole place. I have attached, I put together a very small petition and I’ve signed a few neighbors…this weekend and asked them to sign to support us so I’ve got about I don’t know, 15 names or so on a petition. What I’m looking for is the council to do is to support the spirit of conservation, not just the letter of the law but the spirit. Mr. Meier’s had an opportunity to speak at the Planning Commission. He spoke eloquently about the deer and the turtles and other things in the conservation. His lot is turf completely down to the water. I saw him out there mowing today before the rain hit, okay. ...so I’m looking for one or two solutions from the City Council and the mayor tonight. Is either approve our variance and how that they’re reasonable work and what was happened, or refund our cost because we never planned to do this except with the encouragement, support and quite frankly close working with the staff in this entire process. And we are like I said, extremely frustrated through the entire process but we’re willing to work in any way possible with the city if they allow us to do that to build a dock that would maintain the environment and we are looking for an extremely simple dock. We’re not looking for any large, huge multiple dock that’s U shaped or anything like that and we’re more than willing to work in any way possible to support that. And I’ll open it up for questions. Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Questions for Mr. Sanford. No? Okay, thank you. Any follow up questions for staff at this time? Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes, Lori just show me something on the map again. Lots 8 and 9, this is what we’re talking about right? Where the applicant is. Lori Haak: Yes, Lot 9. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And 8 has access to the lake? Lori Haak: 8 does not. 8 is the one to the north. So it’s this lot right here. Lot 10 through 19 have access. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So it’s just those 2 at the end that don’t have access. Lori Haak: Correct. David Sanford: Everybody has open water, they have high water mark but they don’t have any open water. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So why wouldn’t Lot 9 be just included with everybody else that’s sharing a dock? Do you know how that happened? How those 2 got excluded. Lori Haak: That’s a good question. There is probably 12 to 16 file inches of material on this particular. Councilwoman Tjornhom: You didn’t read every one of them Lori? 17 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Lori Haak: I actually came pretty close because I was curious about that because as I mentioned earlier the OHW does, or the 896 contour which is reasonably close to that 896.3 which is the OHW of Lotus Lake, does extend onto those 2 properties and when I found this document I was very puzzled as to why, if those 2 properties had riparian lots, why would they not have lake access, and nowhere in that 12 to 16, did it mention it at all and the fact that the conservation easement goes over that 900 foot contour, I believe speaks pretty clearly. And this was heavily negotiated and not even the developer at the time said anything in any of the minutes that I read or any of the letters, legal correspondence that went back and forth said anything about requesting dock access for either of those two properties. So Roger may have some additional things that he can say about that. He was actually involved in the process. Roger Knutson: I negotiated the settlement of this and a lawsuit followed...neighborhood association and how the City Council shouldn’t approve this and the forefront of the issues were dock rights. How many docks should be out on the lake and that was negotiated. How many docks there could be. Where they could be. Who would have access to them and we negotiated a settlement. They wanted to have...the neighbors wanted as few docks as possible. The developer wanted to have as many as possible and this is what came up. It’s called a compromise. So the conservation easement was…and it was the rules that were established back then. Councilman Peterson: So the negotiation was between the developer and the city? Roger Knutson: Yeah. Councilman Peterson: Okay. Councilwoman Tjornhom: And so do we have power as a council to change those? Roger Knutson: The conservation easement runs in your favor, but one thing to consider is it affects quite a few properties and if you’re going to release it from one property from it, you’d better think about what the other property owners are also restricted in their rights to use the lot the same. Councilman Peterson: To your point, some of those lots are sharing docks and they could each come back and say I want. Councilwoman Tjornhom: I want my own dock, yeah. Roger Knutson: And they all wanted their own dock. Todd Gerhardt: And probably still do. Mayor Furlong: Any other follow up questions for staff? I think that’s where we are. Councilman Peterson: Do we have a precedence on, you know it sounds as though there may, if my interpretation, may be, staff you know was working on a good set of assumptions of well 18 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 why not so staff would have been working with the sense saying, yeah let’s pursue it and then when we found out more information, you know the costs involved in that, have we ever reimbursed anybody for staff not being aware of something that was already in writing? Todd Gerhardt: Well the conservation easement didn’t show up on the survey and should have. You know some cases they do. Some cases they don’t but it was in the title work and there’s no way staff would have seen. You know we don’t have access to people’s title to verify that. And again trying to read through a 16 inch file to find out what the thought process was in that is complicated. Have we ever given back money associated with a variance that somebody felt th misled? A perfect example was the individual that we had come in out on West 78 Street next to St. Hubert’s. Councilman Lundquist: Outside of the porch. Todd Gerhardt: So have we done that in the past? Yes. And you know, the applicant seems to be a great steward of his property and protecting Lotus Lake and he should be commended for that. And Lori I think was working with him through this process and until the information came available that it was obvious that he couldn’t have a dock. So apologize for that but short of seeing that, not much we can do. Roger Knutson: Just briefly comment. One of the things to bear in mind is there’s an application process and a review process and you don’t always know the results going in. It’s when you filed your application that you start doing your due, you’re doing all your work and not until afterwards, even though you can look at it on the surface based on what you know, you could maybe you would comment, looks good. But it looks good until you know all the facts in this case. Until the conservation easement comes to light. If you’d known about that up front, the comment might have been different. Todd Gerhardt: Just like the last issue we dealt with, you know it’s like an onion as you peel it back you keep finding more and more layers through it and it’s, we’re here, staff’s here to enforce the codes and the ordinances and as much as we’d like to grant docks to everybody, it’s not in our power. Mayor Furlong: And we do this, I know that Mr. Meier came up in visitor presentations and I asked him to hold his comments until this time so Mr. Meier, if you’d like to come up and we’ll certainly provide the opportunity for other public comment after Mr. Meier’s is completed as well. Tom Meier: Thank you Mayor and council members. Staff. As I mentioned I live at 695 Pleasant View. Been there since 1999. Prior to that in 1989 I lived in Lot 6 Fox Path, and I was very familiar with the covenants at that time when I bought and built the house on the lot, about all these easements so I find it unusual that he claimed ignorance. The reason for that easement was, there’s no water back there. They pushed the boat dock out on Lot 16 to get it to deeper water, so if you come back to Lot 10, there is 2 inches of water there and that’s a normal depth. Maybe a high depth of 4 inches. Now after this recent 6 inch rain, the lake does go up 2 inches for every inch of rain. The lake went up 12 inches and stayed there for 3-4 days and now it is 19 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 draining back at about an inch a day. It will be right back down to 2 to 4 inches just because of that rainfall, but the norm back there is no water. So they pushed those docks out on Lot 16 to get them onto the water. Also, the environment needed to be protected and that conservation easement protects that part of the lake. There’s snapping turtles back there that are in excess of 100 years old and there’s a lot of breeding ground for the carp and for the northern pike as well amongst millions of other creatures. So it’s highly active. There’s family of deer that live down there and this is, his proposal would tear right through the middle of the conservation easement. I’m the guy with the eyesore dock that Mr. Sanford keeps referring to in his report. I put that dock in about 3 years ago and it cost me $15,000. I too have a $5,000 survey that I just recently did for the city so if there’s refunds being handed out, I’d like to get in line so, but I don’t expect th one though. Marianne McCord attended the November 16 of a Planning Commission and she said, what I would like to see is maybe a community dock that all these houses we have one dock that wouldn’t take up all our area that we’re using. Referring to my dock taking up all the area. More size and there’s grants, state grants for the department and they go ahead and I would like to see it maybe even be an example to the rest of the community how we can develop our lakes and how we can make it accessible to everybody in there. Now I have to apologize for the bad English but that’s the transcript of the hearing. They want a community dock as part of their motivation and of course there’s no access for the community. That petition that was passed around, I just heard about it. I don’t know who signed it. Don’t know what it says, but those people have no, the people that signed that have no access to this lot. So I don’t see where their signature has any bearing on a petition. I think you might as well go down to Chaska and get signatures. It’s just to me it’s meaningless. The big thing that Mr. Sanford doesn’t understand is he does not have 100 feet of lakeshore. He has 1 foot of lakeshore and if he had riparian rights, which are superceded by the conservation easement, he might have access to the lake but he has no riparian rights, and you must have riparian rights to get access. So I don’t know if the camera can catch this but we just went through an extensive survey. Mayor Furlong: I think our system’s down right now. Maybe you could hold it up. I’m not sure if it’s coming over or not. Tom Meier: Okay. Well, it’s going to be hard to do from this distance but what you do when you determine the direction of your dock is, you have to determine, there you go. The high water mark on your property. And being that we’re at the end of the lake where it turns, it gets pretty complicated. Mayor Furlong: And Mr. Meier, this is your property, not the subject property correct? Tom Meier: Correct. My property’s right here…and the Sanford’s property is right here. The high water mark runs approximately like this. The green was drawn in because we don’t have an actual survey. We’re guesstimating but it’s going to be close to this green line, and then the Sanford’s is running right here. So once you determine the high water mark, which you again have to have riparian rights, you go off a straight line. Straight line. Then you extend at a 90 degree angle. This is the pink here, 100 feet. And then that’s the area you get to set your dock if you’re on the lake. Well, the problem is Lot 8 does have riparian rights if Lot 9 has it. So you have to go back to Lot 8 and put his angles in which are here, and then you have to compromise between the two lines. This is Sanford line. This is the neighbor’s line. You then compromise, 20 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 you split the difference and this becomes the new line. So then the orientation of their dock would not be over here as it shows on the drawing, but it would be over here. From the end of my dock, instead of being, actually they were only 12 feet away instead of the 20 they’re showing because of my L out here. That they would have to move over to about 90 feet, and you get over 90 feet, you’re back in the wetlands. So if you start putting a dock in, you’re going to crash right into the lot, the dock on the last Lot 16. You’re not getting to open water. The other thing was, there’s no water in this area. Like I said, you can’t get a boat in there and I’ve already checked it out because of the problems I’m having on the other side for the developer’s, it’s cost, there’s only one company in the area and it costs $50,000 to get a dredger to the lake. Even if that’s providing you can get a DNR permit and they’re going to fight you tooth and nail. Because they don’t want dredging. That’s extremely disruptive. And there’s all kinds of rules too when you go down in the code. 15% of these weeds out here, they’re not weeds. They’re water lilies and they’re protected. These are indigenous to the area. They’re quite beautiful. They don’t want more than 15% of these weeds removed in any one geographic area so if you put a dock in, and by the way that would dock would head this direction. It’ll just crash back into shore because you have to keep a straight line distance. There’s just no way so you’d have to get a variance to give them a channel out to here and you’re going to have to remove a 20 foot swath out 400-500 feet. This dock by the way, from where they started goes out 440 feet. There’s no water. And then you have to dredge and they want to dredge into my channel here, which we share with the one neighbor. So they want to come through here and just dredge and again it’s $50,000. The dock alone to reach 450-60 feet is $60.00 at least a lineal foot. They also have to put, one of the requirements was a movable dock. A floating dock. Not a permanent dock so they’d have to remove 140-50 feet of dock every spring and fall. And I brought pictures. This is standing on the end of my dock. When you look back, it is solid water lilies. There is very, very little open water and again that water depth, I’ve got pictures I’ll show you. Here’s one where I’m shooting down into the water. It’s 2 to 4 inches is all we can get, and I’ll just pass this picture around. It’s hard to see on the reproduction. Looking out from the other direction, from the front of my dock, again the water lilies are very, very dense and you’d be tearing all this up. Now what I did want to show you was, it’s an enormous distance to go back and once you’re on the lake, you’re entitled to 4 feet of deep water, so theoretically if they had a straight shot out to the lake, they could put a 600 foot dock out there, plus the 440 feet to go back to the house. By the codes. This is in my dock. You can see there’s, little depth you have out there. The channel goes immediately left out to my opening. This is where they’re proposing, you can see mud there. This is where they’re going to be sitting at the end of their docks so they’re going to have to dredge the lake. When you dredge you have to haul the dirt out of there. You have to take it to a special dump where they re-process it. It takes about a year and they have to reclaim the soil and give it back to Mother Nature. Very, very expensive process. But, besides from all that, the Conservation District is clear about the conservation easement. It’s very clear the definition about what it is. You can’t touch it. You can’t build anything on it. You can’t even do a foot path through it by definition. The City is the holder of the right of the, but their obligation is to propose this conservation easement and nobody has a claim on that easement except the holder, and that’s the City so, and I’m sure the City Attorney could help us on some of that. I think that’s pretty much it. I hope you’ll take the staff and the Planning Commission’s recommendation. I’m sure there’s some other neighbors here that are most interested in the outcome here so, thank you. 21 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Meier. Any questions for Mr. Meier? At this time. Thank you sir. Tom Meier: Thank you. Mayor Furlong: Is there anybody else that would like to provide public comment? Again we did have the Planning Commission minutes and so if there’s additional information you think is important in addition to what’s been presented there, we’d certainly be welcome to hear it. Okay, thank you. Mr. Sanford, I guess I do have a follow up question for you, if you’d allow me and that relates to the conservation easement. Goes back to your property, especially with the comments that you made about all the work that you’ve done. What’s the justification for us avoiding that or voiding that for your property? David Sanford: I think it is, you know as Mr. Meier just went through the dock, which is very large, I guess again the animals that go through his yard or the weeds, the lotus flowers that go through his dock area are as important as any other ones. I think it’s to be fair. You know and his comment about the riparian rights, our survey clearly shows we have riparian rights and shows 100 feet of open water. We’re more than willing to work with the city to put in the type of dock that we’re looking for is a very simple dock and we’ll work very closely with the staff to make it that way. It would not be anything close to 440 feet. In fact we’re looking at starting at a much later point… It’s to our benefit to make it shorter. I think if you look at the totality of what we’ve done in our yard, and what we’ve built up to there, adding a dock from when we first bought our home and what we’ve done, we would add to the conservation easement versus other folks that have turf and done other things to a yard that has reduced the wetland. So the net net is we’re trying to add versus reducing again, we felt I think…thoughts. And one final, the neighbor issue… Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Thank you. Any follow up questions at this point? Councilwoman Tjornhom. Councilwoman Tjornhom: Question for Lori Mr. Mayor. My comments about if this is allowed tonight then Lot 8 would also have the right to have a dock, is that right? Lori Haak: It appears that way. Councilwoman Tjornhom: So then where does that leave us, or where does that leave Lot 9? If we use his lines, like he drew. Lori Haak: Sorry this is the diagram I put together as I was trying to make sense of this issue and you’ll see it looks like as a whole. Again as Mr. Meier indicated, we don’t have an ordinary high water mark actually surveyed on that, in the Lot 8 property. We don’t really know where that is. So it’s difficult to say. What I can say is that again this line that comes out at a 90 degree angle from the assumed ordinary high water mark and Mr. Meier’s 90 degree angle do not overlap, so there would not be the same situation here. Or as it appears now it doesn’t overlap. So there wouldn’t be this shared lot line that basically splits the difference, so basically the yellow area is the setback. There’s actually a setback from that shared lot line, which is 10 feet. 22 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 So in the code that’s called the extended lot line, just in case you look it up later for fun. So it looks to me that, and I don’t recommend that because this definition will make your head hurt but there, this distance is maybe, I don’t have a scale but maybe 15 feet that you’d have to maybe sandwich a dock in there, and again staff’s concern with this, and actually I’ll back up just a little bit. Staff did take a look at what the Sanford-McCord dock could look like and basically they would just have to meet that setback of the 100 foot extended lot line. So they could angle a dock out like this and run it parallel to Mr. Meier’s dock, technically. However, looking at the aerial photo and having been out in this area in a boat, just as suggestive evidence, it’s just very difficult to find a way to get out of that, to work out. So adding one dock would be difficult. Adding 2 docks would be very difficult, if not impossible. And again there are the ecological ramifications of what happens on these lots that have shared docks. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other questions at this time for staff? No. If not, why don’t we bring it to council for discussion then. Gather people’s thoughts. Councilman Lundquist: I took the last one. Mayor Furlong: Councilman Peterson. Councilman Peterson: I think that this council, well not this council but councils before us have been down this path and negotiated in good faith to support what was then a contentious issue. We’re asking to re-open that for what is just a simple, reasonable request to open it. But it certainly isn’t compelling. There isn’t a compelling reason to re-open those discussions which is essentially what we’ve been asked to do, and I can just see it having a compounding, cascading effect of, you know if I was a person on the lots farther down that are sharing one, I’d be knocking on staff’s door. Why not? So painting that picture I certainly understand staff’s position and to allowing myself to support that based upon the facts I heard tonight. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom, thoughts. Councilwoman Tjornhom: …Councilman Lundquist I’m learning more and more that we have to respect, learn what’s happened in the past and this was a heavily contested development obviously years ago and negotiation was worked out and there was a deal struck and I think we have to respect that conservation easement. And I also think I’m going to take the City Attorney’s advice and I know, I’m not going to open Pandora’s Box and have 20 people here 2 months from now saying we want our dock. I just, I think it’s important that we respect…set in motion. Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Councilman Lundquist. Councilman Lundquist: I would agree with the previous comments. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. My thoughts on this and challenging issues with regard to lake rights, dock rights and this has been an issue before and it will probably be an issue in the future. I guess what swayed me, and with regard to whether or not the property you know which is included in the conservation easement yet was not part of that shared dock component which the 23 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 neighbor right next to it on Lot 10 was, is that the owner of what’s identified here as the owner of Lot 9 on the time that that agreement was entered into, signed the agreement. And so whatever property rights that owner of Lot 9 before the current owners had it, felt they had or didn’t have, they were in agreement with regard to not being included in the shared dock and having the conservation easement over their property. All I can assume is that they fairly understood what they were signing and that they were represented in terms of what they were agreeing to. So for that reason as well I feel comfortable saying that at the time this conservation easement was put in place, the owners of this property knew what that meant and were in agreement with it. And so for that, that gives me a little more comfort here saying that while it was a negotiated agreement at the time, and I agree with Councilman Peterson, you know I didn’t hear any motivation to re-open it. Or that the conservation easement didn’t need to be there still. In fact I heard information that suggested that it should continue to be there so for that reason and for reasons that the owner at the time the easement was put in place agreed to those easements, I am not compelled to change it at this time as well so. Any other thoughts or comments? If not, is there a motion? Find what page that starts on if somebody has it in their packet. Roger Knutson: Mayor? Mayor Furlong: Yes, Mr. Knutson. Roger Knutson: If I’m just premature but if you’re going to go along with the Planning Commission’s recommendation, I suggest you adopt the findings as part of your motion, adopt the findings of the Planning Commission as the findings of the council and add one more finding just to make it clear. Item 9. Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the city. That’d be finding number 9 if that’s the direction we’re going. Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Roger Knutson: Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the City. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. I think the motion begins on page 6 of the staff report. Councilman Peterson: Mr. Mayor I’d offer the City Council adopt the following motion which would deny the Wetland Alteration Permit #05-22 for a boardwalk across the wetland at 6440 Fox Path based upon the findings of fact in the staff report with the addition of number 9 which was articulated a few minutes earlier. Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second? Councilman Lundquist: Second. Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on that motion? Hearing none we’ll proceed with the vote. 24 City Council Meeting – September 12, 2005 Councilman Peterson moved, Councilman Lundquist seconded that the City Council denies Wetland Alteration Permit #05-22 for a boardwalk across the wetland at 6440 Fox Path based upon the findings of fact in the staff report, amended to include item 9. Approval of the permit is prohibited by the conservation easement granted to the City. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0. (The City Council took a short recess at this point.) PROPOSED 2006 BUDGET, APPROVAL/CERTIFICATION OF MAXIMUM PROPOSED LEVY TO THE CARVER COUNTY AUDITOR. Greg Sticha: Mayor, members of council. I have passed out a revised resolution and a copy of the proposed 2006 budget revenue, summary revenue and expenditure sheet. A couple of the numbers, or a number on that sheet ties to the actual resolution. The revised resolution and I just wanted to have you see where the numbers were flowing from. In particular item number 1, which talks about the total revenue expenditure for the general fund of $8.6 million. Moving nd forward onto the memo and discussion of the, approval of the preliminary levy, August 22 we came to you in a work session to discuss the proposed 2006 budget and staff has prepared a, what we considered a very reasonable budget for 2006. During that discussion council directed staff to come up with a proposal that had an effect on existing taxpayers of a 0% increase in their property tax bill. In order to do that we would have to use $285,000 in reserves to basically buy down the levy to get a 0% increase to those property owners. The total levy, if we were to use the $285,000 in reserves, would be $9,354,890 which would need to be levied to Carver County th on the 15. That amount is actually less than the amount we levied last year if we were to use those reserves. In addition in the report we have provided two spread sheets which we have gotten some additional information on. The bond tax levy spread sheet, which shows the tax levies for our bond payments for the years 2005 through 2025 was revised to include two facilities, or two bond payments. One which was previously in the old spread sheet. One for a public works facility which is currently proposed in the CIP. That has not been, has not come to you yet but will later this fall. Although public works facility improvement of $3 million and a fire station in 2010 of $4.5 million which includes a $3.5 million facility and $1 million dollars in equipment for that facility. The bond payments would then be as noted in 2009 through 2025 for $250,000 for the public works improvement and $370,000 for the fire station. To the right you will notice staff goals, and I think council’s goal is to attempt to keep the actual levy flat over the next number of years at $1,938,000 in levy for bond payments from now through 2025. In order to do that in years 2006 through 2009 we would have to use reserves noted 285 for the upcoming year and then 274 in 2007, 269 in 2008 and 560,000 in 2009. At that point in 2010, due to the elimination of some other bond payments there becomes some potential excess levy dollars available. That leads us to the next spread sheet which is the revolving assessment fund spread sheet, which our street construction project that Paul has put together for the next number of years. You’ll notice. Todd Gerhardt: If the council could go to the council packet item, is where Greg’s reading from. And it’s right now we’re on the page of the revolving assessment fund. It looks like that. Your numbers are on a spread sheet. 25