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Current Events
- If you or people in your area want to meet and discuss current/future topics related to the city, reach out to me to set up a time to visit. (email, phone call, or in person)
- As you're driving on the river road by Stephens' park, you'll notice construction on the south side of the road. That's the new central water system treatment facility in progress.
- Many of you are familiar with the phrase "rural look and feel" or "rural character." Dayton residents have said this is important to them and I agree. It's even in our mission statement. We've had a couple work sessions on the topic and I believe it'll result in a list of ideas we will be prioritizing for the future. If you have ideas, please let me know.
Work Session
This work session was requested by staff to, once again, look at full time fire fighters in spite of the fact that the council has repeatedly said no to full-time fire fighters.
There are multiple issues here...
- Budget impacts. The claim is it’ll save us money. Except, the 2025 budget, which we approved last year with 2 full time fire fighters, was supposed to save money over the status quo. Earlier this year this council decided NOT to hire the full-time fire fighters (status quo). We have actual costs now and staff is predicting we’ll save over $140k over the predicted costs. Given we’re talking about roughly $350k overall, that’s a significant error in what was predicted in order to justify the full-time fire fighters.
- Call volume. We are one of only 2 (I’m aware of) cities in the area that has the FD respond to all calls rather than higher priority calls. I believe Rogers is the other one, but I suspect that’s changing soon. In addition, we don’t have a subset of out fire fighters on call... they’re ALL on call ALL the time. What that means is many of the calls are cancelled in route or they get there but never have patient contact. I.e. when their pager goes off at 3AM or they’re doing something with the family, they have to ask themselves “is it worth it?” and our call response reflects this in that we have the lowest call response in the area.
- We’ve asked staff to look at reducing call volume to only high priority calls (which in other cities is a reduction of about 50%) and implementing more of a real call schedule like any other employer does. Those 2 options were entirely missing from this discussion, and I suspect it’s simply because staff doesn’t like those options.
So, in a work session where we could have discussed the overall budget, we did virtually nothing other than re-emphasize to staff what we are looking for.
Item K (CenterPoint Presentation)
CenterPoint granted the city $2,500 for safety equipment.
Item L (Three Rivers Park District (TRPD) Property Purchase)
Three Rivers Park District has a goal to buy up all of the properties along the northern boundary of our city along the river. Needless to say, the council isn’t too excited about that. That will not only result in a significant revenue loss to the city long term, it will also result in a loss of more affordable houses and loss of opportunity for residents to enjoy a house on the river. On the flip side, it’s difficult to tell a property owner that they’re not going to be allowed to sell their property to the government.
Earlier this year we had a discussion with TRPD and told them we wanted a much clearer understanding of what they were doing before we approved any more sales, with the exception of the 2 properties they were currently talking with. This was one of those properties. The sale was approved 4-1.
Item N (Bernens IUP)
This was to approve a permit for a fairly large event center / winery. It’s going to be a premier facility overlooking the bluff on the old Hilmar property. The packet has a drawing of what it’ll likely look like and it gorgeous.
There was quite a bit of discussion around the entrance distance from the river road (the entrance will be on Lawndale), and the amount of parking but for the most part the concept was well received. The permit wording was discussed since an Interim Use Permit (IUP) is all that is allowed. I’m not a fan of IUPs because they allow the city to revoke the permit without cause when the time frame is up or the property changes hands. So there was discussion on how to make that work here and it’s likely the city will make a change to the ordinance to allow a Condition Use Permit (CUP) which doesn’t have those flaws. The permit was approved 5-0.
Item O (Signal light plan approval)
This was to approve the plans and go out for bids on the signal lights at the intersection on the north side of the interchange. It was approved 5-0.
Item P (Comprehensive Plan Amendment)
A while back the city approved a new Ag zoning that would allow large lots to be created on Ag property that was not scheduled for sewer for many years. Those properties would still be guided for sewer, meaning sewered developments could be created when sewer arrived there. We have 2 large tracts of land where the owners want to make use of this, one of which has a majority of land that can never be sewered.
The Metropolitan Council didn’t like it. Keep in mind that their goal is to pack in as many houses as they have the power to mandate into our city. Their answer... it wasn’t in compliance with our Comprehensive Plan and we would need to amend our plan. Yet, when we asked by email, by letter, and in person, WHERE it wasn’t in compliance, they didn’t have an answer. Since I got on council I have asked anybody I could, why we can’t have large Ag lots and I have never gotten answer other than “the met council won’t let you.”
But because they have a large stick (unlimited lawyers) our attorney wanted to fold right away. We also have a planning director that doesn’t like it. Fighting the met council and staff is a big uphill battle. The met council has told staff that if we amend our plan and make a small change to the large lot zoning, they’ll approve it.
Here’s the thing... the amendment doesn’t change ANYTHING in our current comp plan. It does create a new chapter that they will start requiring for the next comp plan update for 2030. Let that sink in. The amendment doesn’t change a single thing in the current plan, yet their claim is this new zoning isn’t in compliance with our current plan. Government.
Assuming they keep their word, our new zoning (Ag3) should help open up some areas for large lots again. I swallowed hard and voted for it. It passed 5-0.
Feel free to contact me with your questions or opinions.