Regarding the election.
For those of you that supported me, thank you!
For those of you that didn't support me, thank you! (unless you wrote in Donald Duck). Julie and I have some differences, but the city would have been in good hands had she won.
Feel free to contact me with opinions on where you think the direction of the city should or should not be going. The council is just 5 members and the other 9500 residents are going to have ideas that will benefit the direction of our community. Please continue to make your voice heard!
If you notice any of my signs still out, please let me know.
Regarding employee turnover.
Cities are seeing more and more churning of employees. We lost our city administrator/planner 7 months ago (better opportunity in Lakeville), our deputy clerk a few months back (promotion in Rogers), Assistant Planner a month ago (better opportunity), and now we're losing our planner to Rogers. Rogers has had a significant amount of openings lately. If you know anybody in the development planning field that might be looking, let me know.
Planning Commission opening.
Our planning commission now has an opening. If you know anybody that might be interested, let them know.
And one last thing...
With my last post I mentioned problems within our fire department. Those are being worked on, but as time goes on I'm seeing plenty of blame all around. Change is always frustrating for everyone involved, but one way or another we have to move forward.
View the meeting (click to open)
Item J (Schany Concept Plan)
This development is approximately 50 acres on both sides of the western end of Dayton Parkway.
Typically, developments come before the council 3 times; Concept (simply to give our impression on a plan), Preliminary (where we agree what the plan should look like), and final (where we agree everything meets the preliminary plan).
While this was a concept plan, it had very little in it. The developer felt the need to present it because they were about to embark on a lot of regulatory activity due to the extreme amount of wetlands in the area. A lot of that would have been wasted effort if their preliminary assumptions were incorrect (specifically about the road access to Dayton Parkway). I was present during the planning commission's discussions on this where they put a lot of energy (and time) into the interior lots / roads, but the primary purpose was to get the access correct and the council saw no issues.
I did mention that, given the amount of wetlands surrounding the property, our typically buffering (intended to hide the fact that there's a business there) should be minimized in order to maximize the amount of activity the buildable lots can produce.
Item M (RTL Preliminary Plat)
This is a 44 acre industrial development located just north of 81 between the trailer court and West French Lake Road.
This project was messy for planning and for the council. It was originally presented to the city early in 2020. Due to the intended use, this development has been adjusted over and over to minimize the impact to surrounding properties and wetlands on the property. I believe we ended up with a pretty good result given where it started. The bulk of the adjustments involved moving and rotating the buildings to provide more isolation from West French Lake Road and the trailer court.
Item L (Connexus CUP)
This will be a new power distribution facility on the north side of 117th about 1/2 mile west of Fernbrook. The bulk of the discussion was on the screening and dealing with any future costs for upgrades to the road.
Item M (I-94 MDOT funding)
MNDOT has a funding mechanism called Corridors of Commerce that allows communities to give direction on major projects that they want to push. Of the two, we opted for improvements on I-94 between Albertville and Monticello. The other option was a project within Maple Grove.
Item N (DDA Administration Study)
This basically got tabled due to the authors absence.