This was one of those rare and pleasant meetings where there wasn't much on the agenda 😉
Item J (Change Order #1 for wellhouse)
This ended up being pulled out as there were questions as to why "cold weather" allows a contract performance problem. A few of us remembered giving this company extra incentive (money) to compress the schedule and they missed their date. This will likely get discussed at a later meeting.
Item K (Concept review for Development at 16501 Territorial)
This is actually a second concept review on this development. The first was last year around September or so. This development would occur on a triangle of land at the south corner of 81 and Territorial. That intersection has always been troublesome and the bulk of the discussion was on how to help with it. The new concept plan pulls that intersection more to the SE and greatly improves the angle between the roads.
It also helps with our Met Council mandated density average. As I've stated many times when I campaigned, I want more diversity with between developments and having higher density (in this case, townhomes) around the outskirts of our city helps with that.
Item L (SW Dayton Feasibility Study)
This was moved to a future meeting.
Item M (Hiring of an associate planner)
With the increased commercial development we're seeing a need to increase the development staffing. This item originally sought to hire a new graduate, but a couple members thought waiting for the results of the fee study would be a good idea. The problem is the resources are needed fairly soon and the study results won't be in until sometime around August or September. So the decision was to hire a temporary employee. I look at is as a try-before-you-buy kinda thing and so it was a good compromise.
Keep in mind that when city hall spends money, it comes from either taxes or development fees. In this case it will be 100% funded by fees and NOT taxes.
The other thing that came out of this was the Activities Director position was switched to full time which WILL come from taxes, but it isn't expected to be very significant.
Item Q (Closed session)
All I can say about this is it was a discussion on a pending case against the city regarding some of the assessments done under the previous council.