City Council - public_hearing

I should have everything going. Thank you. He started building it.

This meeting of the Eau Claire City Council will come to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States

All right. Thank you, City Clerk, and welcome everybody to the Monday, August 10th meeting of the Eau Claire City Council. We are going to have a number of public hearings tonight, and then we'll have a public comment period after that. And just so folks know how it works, we will... have a presentation on each of the agenda items from staff or from council members. And then council members will have a chance to ask questions and then we'll open up for public comment. There are sign up sheets in the back of the room along with the agendas so you can get a lay of the land for the meeting. The s

All right, thank you, Director White. Council Member Mboga.

Thank you, Council President. Director White, if you look at section 13, title 17.2, 12, 24, it says that The percentage of, what is that? The percentage would be 1,250%. Is that a typing error or? What is that? Can you guys help me out? You said section 13. You see, we have section nine right now on the screen, but here we go to section 13.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Amboga. Council Member Werthmann.

Thank you, Council President. Director White, my question is about this parking lot landscaping requirement. Can you remind me how much land it was determined was needed for, was it on a percentage basis or was it something else? Because I'm almost inclined if it's on a percentage basis to maybe look at reducing the percentage requested. It's interesting you bring up this parking lot too because this is in my neighborhood and you can see on here the boulevards where tree and grass would normally be are completely paved over. It's very weird. But you can't park there. So it actually is a very i

Can I follow up? You have another question? No, yeah, I appreciate that. It's just a matter of, I should have gone and looked at the full LDO for this discussion, but I assume what it is is it's probably a percentage or something. And so, yeah, I think I'm just curious to see. I'm probably going to support doing an exemption for smaller lots, but I am curious how that generally works.

Thank you, President Grygert. Director White, my question is more broad in nature, not something specific that you just presented. I'm just wondering, I noticed in the packet that the LDL is new, and you just referenced that it started on October 1st, I believe. And I'm wondering, is the Title 17 LDL the same as the Century Code?

The provision says that if it says the parking lot with 50 stalls or fewer, is that right?

So how do you guys come to the five-year limitations?

Then the last one is about number eight, the trails and development paying for the trails. It says here the developer may instead have to make payment towards construction, but part of the supervision agreement, either the city can devalue or waive that requirement. So my question is, how would this amount of trail payment be calculated, and where would the money automatically be spent?

Okay, thank you, Council Member Mboga. Any other questions from the council? Council Member Werthmann.

Thank you. Director White, this is back to the dwelling three and four unit amendment. So as I'm reading this, this is an amendment that makes the ability to put three and four unit structures into neighborhoods, it makes it a lot more restrictive than the current LDO talks about. Am I understanding that right? Because if I remember, as it is written right now, anywhere on the block, if it includes a three or four unit, you could put another three or four unit or on a collector.

So this is a pretty restrictive, uh, amendment. And I just wonder how it was arrived at to go in that direction. And if you felt, This was more in keeping with the council and the ZPAC discussions around this item? How are you seeing that change?

All right. Thank you. Council Member Mbogo.

Thank you. The last one. The last one is talking about accessory commercials. So my question is, what type of business qualify as accessory commercial units? And could this create noise, traffic, and parking issues to nearby residents?

All right. Looks like those are the only questions we have. Thank you, Director White. We can now open this item up for public hearing. Did anyone happen to sign up to speak during this agenda item? All right. Thank you. So it looks like we didn't have anyone sign up for this item, but would anyone in attendance like to speak to agenda item number one on the land development ordinance? OK. Oh, actually, we do have someone. If you could just please state your name and address.

Thank you. All right, anyone else like to speak to this agenda item? All right, thank you. We'll move on to item number two, and that is under the category of public discussions. Public discussion on an ordinance amending chapter 8.32 entitled Management of Waste and Recyclables of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Eau Claire to create a comprehensive organics management and composting program. And we have two council members that have been working on this. And happy to give you time to present. And if there's any staff that would like to share anything, that would be welcome to Council Me

Thank you, Council President. First, I want to just thank our city legal, our city staff helping to work through this process, and our sustainability advisory committee that held at least four, maybe five, publicly noticed meetings where community members, haulers, and many more had a chance to weigh in. We also did a special meeting about compost that was organized by our city manager, Dave Solberg, bringing a bunch of different folks together. So this compost ordinance, management of waste and recyclables, Essentially what this does is it helps to codify different ways that community members

Thank you, Council Member Werthmann. Council Member Miller?

Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Council Member Werthmann. I just want to give credit. I'm a seconder on this motion, but Council Member Werthmann did the vast majority of the work on this one. I just kind of helped him hone it and bounce some ideas off and refine it here. Just something to add that he didn't quite touch on. Some people, so the Tier 1, the at-home composting, It does define it more, but still as of now, no permit or registration is required for that one. You should still have to follow any sort of nuisance. It can attract nuisance like insects or rodents, but as of now

Thank you, Council Member Miller. And thanks to Council Member Werthmann as well for bringing this forward. We'll go to the questions from Council. And first we have Council Member Mboga.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Council Whitman and Council Miller. I'll be supporting this one, but for my information, the people who sent me, I have a few questions. One is what material would the resident be allowed to put in their compost bin?

Thank you, Council President. Council Member Maboga. In the ordinance, under definitions in the first chapter, there is a title X, compostable materials, and it specifically lists the items that can go in there, such as yard waste, compostables, fruit scraps, and other acceptable materials. It defines fruit scraps and then free details such as fruit, vegetables, green meats, et cetera. I'm not going to read the whole thing here, but there is a definitions chapter of this ordinance which states exactly what you can put in there.

THANK YOU THEN THE LAST ONE SO HOW WOULD BE CONTAMINATION BE CONTROLLED

But we do have strong definitions on what can be composted and things that cannot be composted, like for instance, food scraps cannot contain slaughterhouse weight, animal carcasses, fats, and stuff like that. And as long as you're following the guideline, composting is a well understood process and there's really not problems. If any sort of problems do occur in which it becomes odorous or attracts vermin, that would then fall under a nuisance and the community services will be contacted It's one had a complaint with a neighbor that had a compost that was being a nuisance they can contact com

Thank you. Council Member Werthmann, do you want to answer that?

Yeah. If I could add to that, Council Member Mboga, that through tiers two, you would have to register your compost with the city. Tier three, you'd have to not only register, but have an inspection. And tier four is DNR regulated. So there are a number of different ways that check-in would happen to make sure that you're following the ordinance. But then, as a lot of things, things are complaint basis as well. We're setting up the parameters as best we can to encourage that people follow it.

Thank you. Council Member Reed. Thank you, Council President. My question for the mover is just, since you said that the broader way study is coming, can you just help me clarify, what are we deciding tonight, and then what are we purposefully putting off to decide later once we get that study? Council Member Wood.

So the conversation tonight for public hearing and what we will vote on tomorrow is just setting up these four tiers of potential composting that people can engage in. um adding to it that special hauler and on top of it the potential of a city brush site including compost what we won't be talking about and which is not included in this ordinance is conversations around do we want compost service to be a part of the hauler experience that people in our community have do we want that to be an option or not we're not bringing that forward that part of the ordinance we felt was best left for a fu

All right, thank you. Council Member Orth.

Thank you, Council President. I was appointed to the Seven Mile Landfill and we had our first meeting that I was at a couple weeks ago. And as the landfill manager was giving his report, one of the things that he talked about was fires and that was part of his report. And I see that in section three it talks about public health and safety issues and it specifies fire. And I think if I understood from the meeting, because I asked about that, and it seemed like it was the methane gas from compostables that were creating these fires. Am I remembering that correctly? And maybe you don't know the a

Yeah, I don't know. Something we can look into.

Thank you, Council Member Orth. Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. So, as I understand, and to address some concerns from my constituents, this ordinance is really granting residents something new that we can do rather than telling them it's something additional that they can't do, which I think is great. I just wanna address the concern about enforcement. It sounds like it would be based on other residents reporting violations, given the nature of this, the potential environmental concerns, which I don't think are significant at all. Can you address anything more about enforcement of this new and kind of complex ordinance if we

So just a clarification, are you talking about like tier ones that are going to be individuals? Are you talking about tiers two through four or all of them?

All of them, really, because I do imagine enforcement would be different based on tier.

Because tiers two through four will be easier for us because there's going to be registration and our licensing and our commercial operations. So the biggest, I wouldn't say the word challenge, but the biggest opportunity for having concerns from neighbors will be one in the neighborhoods at the... at the personal ones, but actually that doesn't change from how we are now. Because the purpose of this ordinance also, because right now you can have your own personal compost, or you can have a hauler do it. And there's no tiers two through four, and there's no community. So this actually doesn't

Thank you for the move. Would this one cost the resident some money?

No. But the one that would cost something is Tier 3, this larger scale, 10 cubic to 50 cubic. where they would likely be, because there's gonna be inspection, that would probably cost something. There would probably be a nominal fee on the registration for tier two as well, so like your community garden or your church, but we've talked about how we don't want it to be something that is prohibitive. If it's 20 bucks or 30 bucks, something that is reasonable to be able to notice. If you do it in your backyard, there's no cost there.

Thank you. Any other questions from council or any questions for staff or clarifications? OK. Well, we'll move to the, OK, so we actually have some folks that have signed up to speak during public discussion. So we'll start with those, and then if anyone else decides they would like to speak, I can invite others. Travis, would you like to come and speak, please?

Yeah, we can certainly get back to you with answers, but typically we're not really allowed to speak.

Yeah, and if you stick around afterwards, we can speak with you or we'll be further discussing it tomorrow as well. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, anyone from the gallery would like to speak to agenda item number two on management of waste and recyclables?

That's the one we were just discussing on composting.

Appreciate you coming up. Anyone else from the audience would like to speak to this agenda item? OK, thank you. Well, we'll close that item and move on to agenda item number three. This is a public discussion on resolutions granting excess land of parcels, 2 2 1 0 4 0 3 6 7 Park Ridge drive. Uh, and then another parcel number 2 2 1 0 9 1 3 5 4. And that's at 2 20 27 vine court. And then parcel number 2 1 1 6 0 4 7 7 on Lawrence street. and part of parcel number 21160368 at East Riverview Drive. And we have a presentation from coordinator Billy Hufford on this item. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Let's see. So I just actually had a question right away just about a little bit more detail about waterways and parks and the history of discussions at that level. Waterways, Parks, and Urban Forestry Commission, I believe, discussed this in March. Do you think you could talk about what that discussion was like?

OK, so Riverview was not discussed. I mean, you weren't there.

you so we'll open up to other council members before I dominate so we'll go to council member Otto first thank you council president first off I was at that meeting and

yeah we did discuss all of those not just the cameron street park but if i recall we didn't pass it but i could be wrong yeah i think you guys tabled them for more information right yeah thank you um my question is about the parcel near rod and gun park is there a reason that wouldn't be brought to waterways

Go to council member Brewster next. Thank you. Council president. I was just wondering if you could speak a little on, uh, the wellfield properties as to, um, why the order of operations has to be this before the conservation easement. I mean, I would think that once this was surveyed, we could just do a conservation easement explicitly excluding those properties, and then once that's in place, then do the properties.

Thank you, Council President. Courtney Hubbard, thank you for the presentation. I'm following up Councilmember Brewster's comments. So the areas at least indicated here with these blue boxes, they seem to follow existing property lines. On the southern portion going up, you see exactly where the lines theoretically would go. And then on the north side, you see exactly where the lines would go. So it seems like just declaring conservation outside of that one, we already have latitude, longitude, whatever GIS information we need to do. So I'm curious why we still just can't make a conservation a

But I guess my thought of this is that I would not be comfortable at all moving forward with this one without having conservation in place first. So I think for me, they'd have to go in that order to even happen. So that's my opinion. Any other may have their difference. So that's my thought process behind my questions here.

OK, thank you. OK, thank you. Council Member Orth.

Thank you, Council President. I am wondering about, I realize that the excess property declaration is like the first step and then if it goes a different, unless it goes a different way, but that first step and then you come back to Council to find out what the development parameters would be. My question is, is there a limited timeframe between the time that we declare something excess property and before it needs to go to the next step?

Thank you. I wanted to ask a clarification on something that you mentioned. I just didn't, I don't know if I didn't hear you correctly, but you brought up white pine, and then you brought up hunting, and then you brought up treaty rights, but I know what treaty rights are, but I don't know how it connects with, one, I know how it connects with hunting, but the white pine, is this all one related thing about treaty rights for white pine access and hunting for indigenous communities?

What is it? it's it's from back in the 1800s an agreement to allow um native americans to be able to hunt on public land i understand thank you so that's the name of that that specific treaty and you're saying that that your opinion is that by it doesn't impact i mean there's obviously less places to exercise treaty rights but Your opinion was that when looking at it, it doesn't have a significant impact on those treaty rights.

Oh, that's really interesting because I know in some places, treaty rights come first, even whether...

That all makes sense. Thank you. Council Member Otto.

Thank you, Council President. I know last March, I think some of the confusion with Cameron Street Park is that some of the land wasn't, I guess, technically parkland, but people were using it as a park. And I know the old Wells area is used for recreational trails. I'm wondering, and I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but just to be sure, people aren't using any of these parcels for recreational purposes, are they? Like there are no trails, there are no...

Just to clarify, too, I believe there is an access point from Riverview Drive on the north end for the city and for public access. So that parcel there currently has an access point that is used both for utility purposes but also for recreation. And presumably, that access would be maintained even if we sold the land. Is that correct? There would still be a north entrance.

OK. Councilmember Miller? Thank you, Council President. According to Hefford, looking at the lots, none of them are, because they're not being used for anything right now, that they are very wooded. So then the question comes up, I don't know how well they've been checked over. Would there be any possible complication with our tree preservation ordinances? They don't seem, I can't tell just from the street views, you know, if they have any valuable trees worth saving. Has that been ascertained at this point, if any of them would have trees that would be kind of under the protections from that

Any other questions from the council? I just have one kind of clarifying question about the timeline. Since there was a recommendation from plan commission to have these two um parcels like go in front of waterways parks and urban forestry commission that would presumably be able to happen in at the end of august here and then this could come back as soon as the first meeting in september um or you know yes first meeting september because they'd go back to plan commission their first meeting so i'll say also go back to plan commission okay okay um

So I guess for tomorrow's meeting, it'd be good to have that whole timeline figured out as an option. OK, definitely want to open this up to the public. Appreciate everybody's patience. We have two people that have signed up, and then I'll open it up to folks that maybe didn't get a chance to sign up or decided to speak. So first on our list for the public discussion is Mary McManus.

Thank you so much. All right. Next on my list is John Dunn. Thanks for joining us.

Please wrap up your comments. Thank you so much.

Council Member Werthmann, do you have a question?

I'm curious about the map that you brought. Just if it's possible to see.

Yeah, maybe we could get copies of it or something in email.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Maps and history, good.

No, I think that's it. Thank you so much.

Let's see, do we have anyone else who'd like to speak to this agenda item on excess land? So I exhausted the list of people that signed up. All right. So we're going to close agenda item number three. And that's the last of our public discussions. But we do have a public comment period. And this is for items that were not already covered on the agenda. Um, it could be items that are on the agenda tomorrow that are, that were not covered tonight, or it could be other topics that you want to bring up. Um, uh, this, this time is for those living, going to school or own property or replace a busin

Thank you. All right, next on our list is Flo Sheridan. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Next on my list is Denise Noll.

Thank you. Next on my list is Diana Hanson. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much. Next on my list is Liz Spencer.

Thank you. All right, next I have Jackie Christner. OK. Jackie. Yeah, I didn't quite see her, so thank you for that. And then I have Travis as well. OK. Go ahead and cancel. Like to pass? OK. Yeah, I'll pass. Anyone else from the gallery would like to speak during our public comment period? Just have up to three minutes per person. OK. Well, thanks, everybody, for coming tonight. And if there is no objection from council, this meeting is adjourned.

Yep. Absolutely nice to meet you. Absolutely glad we could get a pass to work for you. We're slowly picking up. I'm sorry?