View the meeting (click to open)
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.
Item E (Hennepin County Commissioner Kevin Anderson)
Periodically, the commissioner will give us an update on Hennepin County activities. The only thing they have planned in the near future is a refresh on the Brockton pavement for 2027. I did ask him about the Rush Creek / Fernbrook intersection. Our staff is talking to the county about it but as is typical... they don't seem to be overly interested. We'll see.
Item F (Care Resource Connections)
This group focusses on helping residents that have repeat calls for emergency service. The overall takeaway was that they believe they help reduce our call volume by around 30%.
Item G (Three Rivers Park District)
TRPD typically comes in and discusses topics more broadly, but in this case their focus was on what they're doing along the river road. For a few years now members of the council have noticed they're buying up a lot of properties along the river. While they don't have the power to condemn, i.e. the seller has to be willing, it's still a little concerning to a few of us that those properties are being taken off the tax rolls permanently. Their claim is they're doing it just for a trail. The problem is they don't seem to have any plans for what they are doing. We have asked them to provide some clarity on what they're doing.
Item H (Three Rivers Park District Land Acquisition)
See the previous item. When TRPD wants to purchase property in the city, the city has to approve the sale. This did pass (5-0) but as I mentioned in the above item, we requested a meeting with them to get a better understanding of what their plans are.
Item I (DCM Farms)
This was another concept review of the project north of 113th. Previous versions of this haven't been received well due to the density of the project, and the extremely high number of 40 foot wide lots. This version reduced that significantly along with a better alignment of one of the internal roads. I got the impression 4 of us (including me) were more accepting of what we were looking at.
Item J (Parkway Neighborhood)
This project is a combination of medium and high density homes (townhomes and apartments) on the southeast corner of the Dayton Parkway Interchange (south of the freeway). In order to get any commercial in the area, homes need to be brought in first. Developers have made a few attempts at getting a project going there but for many reasons they've failed. This one seems much more promising, but getting the road going to it has been a problem. One option is to reduce the developer's property taxes and fees and have them build it, or have the city build it. Those are the options being analyzed.
Item K (Conditional Use Permit)
A property owner in an ag district wants to add an accessory building to his property, but he has less than 1 acre and is already over the limit for impervious surfaces. This building would not put him over the limit if he was zoned residential. A conditional use permit would allow it so it was approved 5-0.
Item L (Elsie Stephens Master Plan)
This was to approve a contract to update the plan for the park. That plan is in need of updating since quite a bit has been done to that park since the plan was last done. The contract was awarded to MSA for $58k mainly due to their previous work with the city on the water trail.
Item M (Park Improvement Plan Bid)
This was to approve going out for bids on a combination of park plans including Elsie Stephens Phase 3, Ione Gardens upgrades, and Area 21 Park. The Area 21 park is located near Brayburn Trails and is a fairly large park. What we were looking at was a design and estimates on prices. The bulk of the discussion was what a couple of us thought was prices for items that seemed significantly expensive. Back when this was discussed last fall residents also felt some of the items were chewing up money that could be better spent elsewhere. We did approve it to go out for bids but I expect when those bids come back this will come up again.
Item N (Amending Parking Regulations)
For a number of reasons a couple of us on council asked staff and the planning commission to look at our parking ordinance. Like the sign ordinance and the fence ordinance, there are significant differences in how people look at these things and in both of those instances, we ended up with many pages of mush. The Planning commission looked at this ordinance and, after quite a bit of discussion, decided not to do anything with it. We spent close to an hour on it and also ended up doing nothing with it, only because there didn't seem to be a majority that had he same ideas. I suspect it'll come up again.
Item O (Sign Ordinance)
As I said... so many opinions. This was to try to fix the fiasco regarding signs in the road right of way. Back early last year, in order to correct the massive number of builder / realtor signs at the intersections every weekend, there was a proposal to ban all signs. Unfortunately, this included Susy's graduation sign, the neighborhood garage sale sign, the fire department's open house sign, Event signs, etc. My opinion was we were throwing out the baby with the bathwater and was the only vote against it. It didn't take long before the residents made it clear they weren't happy with the solution. No kidding. On top of that, the developers / realtors quickly learned that if they put the signs out Friday night, they don't get collected by the city. So the effect was pretty much the opposite of what was intended. Late last year the council put a halt to enforcing it. After a lot of discussion, the result was to basically undo what was done last year.
Item P (Goals)
At this point it was very late and nobody had the ambition to do the goal setting so it was tabled.
Feel free to contact me with your opinions or questions.