Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This meeting to order at 630 p.m. The April snow not April 2nd June 4th. I'm looking at the April 2nd meeting minutes June 4th of 26 for North st. Paul Planning Commission Let us do roll call

Chair Blease?

Here.

Vice Chair Weiss?

Here.

Commissioner Alvarez is absent. Commissioner Mueck? Here. Commissioner Marcaccini?

Here.

Commissioner Saro?

Here.

And absent today is City Council Liaison Nordby. Present is Community Development Director Roberts and Planning Commission Secretary Cherney.

Excellent. Thank you. We have an agenda before us. I don't think it's too complicated. Can I have a motion to approve, adopt the agenda? So moved. A motion from Commissioner Saro, a second?

I'll second.

Second. Commissioner Wise, all in favor say aye. Aye. We are good with the agenda. Meeting minutes of April 2nd. Now, as I understand Robert's rules, and not really studying this, but my wife does Robert's rules on a regular basis, the motion comes and then there's discussion, in which case we should have a motion to approve the meeting minutes of April 2nd. and then ask for discussion if there's anything to be done with it. So a motion to approve meeting minutes from April 2nd.

So moved.

So moved from, that was, okay, I thought it was you. Commissioner Marcaccini, a second?

Second.

Second from Commissioner Saro. All in favor say aye. Is there discussion? Anything to change? Question?

No. I THINK I SAW IT.

LOOKS GOOD. YEAH, WE HAD SOME COMPLICATION THERE, IF I RECALL, BECAUSE OF THE SOME OF THE DISCUSSION THAT WENT BACK AND FORTH, BUT I THINK IT WAS PROPERLY RECORDED.

MM-HMM.

I THINK IT WAS A GOOD SUMMARY. OKAY. SO THERE BEING NO FURTHER DISCUSSION, ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. WE HAVE APPROVED THE MEETING MINUTES. NEW PROCESS. Done. Okay, the meeting is now open to the public for addressing any items that are not on the agenda. Anyone here that has anything that's not on the agenda? No, looks like not. So let's move forward and get to public hearings. Can we have staff present variance requests for 2130 Cowhernd Place East?

Can you see the presentation?

I don't know, that's a really nice image. I don't think that's 2130 Cowhernd Place, though. Yeah. I frequently wonder where they find images on screensavers, and I want them. Technical difficulties for those who are not witnessing it.

Bring out the seven-year-old. Yeah.

Some random computer is being presented.

It's on the one screen there.

Oh, now it's on the other.

Hey, thank you. Thank you.

No, it is.

There we go.

Now we have it on three screens.

All right. Thank you for your patience with that. Thank you. Tonight, the first of two public hearings that the Planning Commission is going to hold today will be considering a variance request application for the property at 2130 Cowron Place East. Starting with some background, the applicants are Tom Griffith, who is the owner of the property, and Jacob Forst, who is an applicant representative as well. The location is 2130 Cowron Place East. For additional context, the lot size is 41,936 square feet or 0.96 acres. The variance request is a 252 square foot variance request for maximum size for accessory structure. The project description, as mentioned, is for an accessory structure, a detached garage. That would be 40 feet by 30 feet, with a total of 1,200 square feet. The applicant proposes to demolish the existing attached garage and detached garage prior to the construction of the proposed detached garage. And yes, on that slide you see in the red the demo and the beige yellow would be where the new garage would be located. The certificate of survey as well is located in the packet for you. Going to code requirements, the lot is located in the R1 single family residential zoning district. The zoning ordinance states that the total square feet of an accessory building shall not exceed 10% of the lot area, and in no case shall it exceed 1,000 square feet of gross floor area. The sum of all square footage for attached garages and detached garages shall not equal or exceed the finished livable floor area of the footprint or ground floor of the principal structure to which it is an accessory. Back to the proposed conditions, the applicant proposes the demolition of 913 aggregate square feet of existing garages, both attached and detached, in order to build a new 1,200 square foot detached garage. Additional context, the ground floor area of the home is 948 square feet as noted on the survey. Therefore, the variance sought is 252 square feet above what is allowed by the zoning ordinance. On this slide here, we have the applicant statement as provided in the application for the variance request. I would like to point out the final key part of the statement. The applicant indicates that the variance is necessary due to special conditions that are particular to the property given the size of the property and in which it is used for. Now getting into the variance review criteria, I'm just going to walk through each one of these for you. Staff find that the proposed use of the accessory structure as storage space for vehicles, lawn equipment, and one recreational vehicle would be in harmony with the purposes of the zoning ordinance. The proposal, staff believe, is unlikely to have any adverse effect on the health, safety, or general welfare of the city. In addition, the property would be used in a reasonable manner. Staff also do not believe that the variance, if granted, would alter the essential character of the locality. This would of course be contingent on the applicant building the accessory structure with a design that is consistent with the primary building. The applicant also states that the variance is necessary due to special conditions that are particular to the property. In particular they gave the special condition as the size of the property Although staff do agree that the size of the property is uniquely large for its zoning district and the adjacent properties Stuff find that the size of the property does not prohibit compliance with the zoning ordinance for this case if the applicant for example were to construct a detached garage and that is at or under 948 square feet, they would still be able to install two additional accessory structures, neither of which exceed 200 square feet. This avenue would also provide a way to have even more square footage of storage space than originally requested. public hearing notice. The public hearing notice was published in the Minnesota Star Tribune on May 25th of this year. Notice was also mailed to all property owners within 350 feet of the subject site. Prior to tonight, staff received no public comments. This leads to the staff recommendation Per the city code and Minnesota state statutes, the project must meet all of the criteria in order for the city to grant a requested variance. Staff finds that the project meets many of the criteria. However, the application does not establish that there are practical difficulties in complying with the zoning ordinance. Although the size of the lot is large for its zoning district, the size does not prohibit compliance with the ordinance. And as mentioned prior, a hypothetical is that the applicant could construct a maximum of 948 square feet of a detached garage. and up to two additional accessory structures that are 200 square feet or less that would provide roughly 1,348 square feet of storage space versus the 1,200 square feet requested. Because of this, staff are obligated to recommend that the Planning Commission make a motion to recommend to City Council approval of the attached resolution in the packet denying a variance application for the property at 2130 Cowan Place East. And at this time, we can open it up for questions from the Planning Commission, and if the applicant representatives would like to add or present anything else, they are also welcome to do so.

Okay, it's a pretty quiet group I'm still looking at things but Well with that Yeah, we could definitely that if the applicant has something to further to share That's fine, otherwise we open the public hearing Okay In that case will open the public hearing at 645 and if there is someone from the public that wants to speak or if you're all representing the applicant and you don't have anything further yeah you want to share something Okay. Not if there, yeah, if there's not any official. Yeah, I think that's appropriate. And we'll close the public hearing in that case at 646. Well, considering that variances are pretty specifically addressed from a statutory standpoint, there's not a whole lot of question I don't think about where we go with this. If there's not any questions, then I would seek a motion to prepare the resolution with the finding effect consistent with the denial of the variance as stated by staff, unless there's something further.

I just had one question for you. Could you just comment on what they were talking about as what would actually be allowable, the smaller detached garage and then the two separate 200 square foot? Could you just comment on why that wouldn't be feasible for what you're looking for? Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's the only question I had.

So anyone want to make the motion as presented, as recommended by staff?

I'll make the motion.

Motion from Commissioner Wise. Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Second from Commissioner Sorrow. Sorrow. No further discussion, I'm assuming.

What is the motion?

Motion is staff to prepare a resolution with finding a fact consistent with the denial of the variance request. Using the words specifically stated in the agenda, in the packet. So it would go before council following our recommendation. That being the case, if there's no further discussion.

I guess I am just curious as staff have you looked at all the different options to see if there is some other way of being able to do this? I'm not talking about necessarily a variance, but like is there, you know, considering the size of the lot and that type of thing, could it be divided and allowed this kind of thing to happen?

There definitely would be the opportunity for the lot to be divided, but city code does not allow an accessory structure to be the only thing.

True. Okay. Thank you.

Well, that being the case, I guess I would ask for a vote. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All right, that's unanimous.

And again, this will go to the City Council probably on June 16th. They'll make the final decision. This is a recommendation.

Okay. We have another public hearing for the zoning ordinance text amendment on accessory dwelling units. This was discussed two months ago, correct?

That's when this started, yeah.

Yeah.

As the commissioner recalls, as the chair reminded us, At the Planning Commission meeting on April 2nd of this year, we had the commissioner review the first request for a conditional use permit for an accessory dwelling unit. In fact, it was the property right next to the one we just were looking at, the large attached garage. And they also wanted to have an oversized ADU compared to what the code would allow, all enclosed in their existing attached garage. And we, the commission, spent some good time working on that at that meeting, and the council did as well. In the end, the plan commission directed staff to look at the ADU regulations and the zoning arts and provide recommendations for potential changes to update them to be maybe more accommodating to what's currently happening. So what's proposed for you this evening is an ordinance amendment that clarifies the definition of accessory dwelling unit, amends the maximum size of an attached accessory dwelling unit to 40% of the floor area of the dwelling unit, and the maximum size when it's in a detached accessory dwelling of 1,000 square feet. Also added some other language clarifying utility connections and the ownership.

Was 1,000 square feet what we had talked about? I couldn't remember that number, and I didn't have a chance to look back at meeting minutes.

The 1,000 gets into when it's a detached. And I'll show you that in a second here, Patrick. So the first screen here... There's words underlined and deleted, but clarified that ADU has to meet the requirements of the state building code, that it could be an existing or newly constructed home or in addition to a home, but that the ADU has to be fully separated from the principal dwelling by means of a wall or a floor and have a separate entrance. And although we do, I'm recommending they could have a door between the units if they wish, doesn't have to be. Clarified that an ADU also can be a freestanding structure on the same property. as a principal dwelling or be located within or attached to a detached garage. And that's where the thousand square feet comes in because that's our, right now, the maximum size of a detached garage. And added a phrase there that North St. Paul does not consider campers, recreational vehicles, trailers, or other temporary structures to be ADUs. And then in section two here in the middle, I'm proposing to change the maximum size to 40% of the floor area of the home. I reviewed several different ordinances from other cities in the area. Some went 1,000 square feet, 900 square feet like we had. Others gave it a little more flexibility with the percentage. And I thought that will work better in North St. Paul. And that will work very well for the applicant that we heard in April. And so the larger the home, then the larger, up to 40% of the floor area. Could be in an accessory dwelling unit. Clarified in E below there that, again, they can be up to 1,000 square feet in a detached building because that's the maximum size we allow for a detached building. Not sure why it was 900 square feet, but that was really not very consistent. And then adding... and J on this slide to the existing ordinance that the adu must be connected to municipal sanitary sewer and water and that those Connections must be run through the principal dwelling unless otherwise approved by the public works director I don't foresee a case where we'd want a second set of utility services running on the same lot for an adu and And that also that owners may not sell accessory dwelling units separately or independently from the principal dwelling or create a separate tax parcel. It all stays as one property. Some might make a crazy idea and try to do a lot split or something. After the fact? Right. Which most lots wouldn't be large enough to do that anyways. So it's kind of a built-in suspender coverage there. So those are the main changes that we're proposing in the ordinance. And I'll take questions.

Would Point J here, it may just be recency that I'm talking about this, but I'm curious If the impetus for that is because the sanitary, like the sewer and water would be tied into the main structure, you wouldn't want to split it into a separate parcel? That is part of it, yes, for sure.

But let's say you had a 10,000 square foot lot. You wouldn't want the main house on 8,000 square feet or 7,000 square feet and somebody tried to create a 3,000 square foot lot for the ADU. It's all going to stay as one large property.

It feels like it would be an issue for small lots, but if someone had a large lot and built an ADU on it and wanted to split them, if they met the zoning requirements.

But then they're back to the utility services.

And then what they would need to do is seek a division of the lot prior to construction of what would be a second residence, essentially.

Right. Or, yeah. Yeah.

You subdivide the lot prior to the construction. Yeah. And then it would be separate utilities, et cetera, et cetera, to the alternative, to the second lot. Right? I mean, if I'm understanding that correctly.

That would remove some flexibility from folks who inherited a lot with an ADU and... didn't want it. And by inherited, I mean like... They bought it. They may have bought it. Not that they physically or traditionally inherited the lot, but that... Yeah. I'm trying to think of potential problems that Point J solves that we couldn't solve just through saying it would have to meet zoning code in order to subdivide it.

And it would anyways. Because there's other parts of the subdivision code that get into minimum lot sizes and processes for dividing a property and that kind of thing. I think my thought with that, it's more when we do a handout or do information on ADUs, we have all these rules in one place and if people ask, if they ever think, well, in the future I might want to split this off, then they should know up front that no, it's not allowed.

They would, yeah, and then I would ask the question, let's say, for instance, you had an ADU.

You built it.

It was a separate dwelling, separate building, separate structure, whatever. it was served by the utilities of the existing primary structure and somebody, like you say, acquired it and said, boy, I'd really like to subdivide this and sell off that second structure. They probably, would it be possible to do that if they, divided the utilities and Said okay, we'll modify the utilities. We'll serve this structure separately as part of our subdivision Yes, if all the other if all the other requirements are met and then be lot size Etc etc setbacks lot coverage setbacks all the rest.

I just don't don't want someone coming in here Requesting a variance to subdivide their lot and us saying Well, you did get the property this way, so you... Yeah.

Well, I mean, you do make a choice when you acquire a piece of property, you know? You choose it, right? So you can't buy a piece of property and say, oh, man, you guys are hindering me. Well, you bought it that way, you know? So I guess I was trying to figure out, are there alternatives? And you can... hypothetical anything, and you know that if you write this a certain way, there will be somebody that will come up with some other idea.

You're the pro-canon. I'm curious why we would put in J. What problem does that solve?

Members of the Commission, I don't know that it solves a problem.

I view it more as a notification. Keep it in mind, you're probably not gonna be, well, you won't be able to do this. Correct. I just worry that it would You know, disadvantage folks who would be able to do it unnecessarily.

Well, if the other requirements are met such that, you know, it's a common sewer and water, that kind of a thing, then it's a rational addition to say then you can't sell that unit separately. Yeah. you know, that piece of property separately. So it makes sense. Like I said, you could probably come up with some kind of hypothetical that would be somebody wants to do something different, in which case they're gonna have to explore their alternatives.

You know. And if it's a large enough lot, and the ADU is large enough and everything else works, they can apply for a lot division, minor subdivision, as part of that process to see if we say, well, assuming everything else is okay, it'll be okay contingent on you now changing the sewer and water lines. You add in new ones, create a separate, with this new separate lot, a new billing address, the whole thing, but then it's no longer an ADU. It's not an accessory dwelling unit. That's supposed to be subordinate.

Right, so then it changes it from an ADU to just a separate property with a primary structure. As long as that. As long as all the conditions are met.

Because we have minimum house size of 600 or 700 square feet. If it's a 300 square foot ADU, then that wouldn't meet that.

I mean, it seems logical.

Yeah, I've been convinced.

The way you presented it. Yes, we could come up with some variables.

You said, well, we write ordinances all the time, and then two years from now, well, we didn't think of that.

Well, and I think we've spoken about this before, that if... If the city has not typically seen repeated variance requests and things like that, then your ordinance is pretty good. If people keep coming before us and saying, hey, we need a variance for this and it's the same thing three times a year, then you start looking at it and saying, okay, what should we change?

Correct.

I just had one question about, what is it, D2, where I think the 40% of the floor area makes a lot of sense, and I like that. And I'm just sort of thinking here, there may be an issue why this doesn't work, but if we would say with a maximum size of 40% of the floor area of the principal dwelling, or 900 square feet, whichever is more is that in because I'm just thinking like if you know if somebody has a house that They could have had a 900 square foot adu, but now because of this because their house is smaller. They're actually limited now to Less than that. I don't know. I don't know if it's really a problem, but it's just I Guess I mean you know my house probably would fit into this where I

But wouldn't it be more likely in a case like that they'd be worried about meeting the minimum of 300 square feet if it's that small of a house?

Not if it was a detached ADU, like VITA.

Right, then that can be up to 1,000 square feet with the proposed ordinance. That's true. Oh, you're right. And E right below there. Yeah, this is for the...

Great. Okay, yeah. Okay, sorry. I wasn't seeing the differentiation between the two. So, yeah, I guess that does make sense.

And for the inquisitive minds, I checked the 40% with the applicant that we had on Holloway, and that would make theirs work. Okay. I made sure to... Yes. Yes.

Make it large enough. We're not writing code that's specific, of course. No.

So... Are we being clear? So we've got the detached accessory dwelling unit, free-standing structure, blah, blah, blah, 300 square feet, maximum size of 1,000. So that specifically calls out on E, specifically call out to E, the detached. But when we're talking about the 40%, where do we...

That's in D, which is above it.

Yeah, in the other page there.

Attached. There it is. Okay. It's on the other page.

Okay.

Understood.

Yeah, I like that solution. I think that's pretty clean and works well.

So we haven't come up with anything to change with regard to what's proposed the way it sounds. So, um,

If someone is ready to make a motion to bring that one question, as I'm thinking through this, uh, would this open a door to somebody buying something like a church building or, or an old school or something, and then dividing it into auxiliary dwelling units, technically.

only one that would become a multiple family apartment okay all right yeah because this specifically says no more than one no more than okay i'm sorry i missed that yeah yeah uh i'm curious about you know and maybe saving us a hassle later point e Why would we set a hard limit at 1,000 square feet instead of a percentage of the square footage of the main structure or a percentage of the lot, like tie it to the lot size somehow?

The thought with that is, I'm sure when it was written, just like the garage application we just had, if he had the 1,000 square foot garage, which he could build, and then wanted to put a second floor on it and make that the ADU, that could be up to 1,000 square feet. Why they had it at 900 when the code said you could have 1,000 square foot detached garage, I don't know. So that 1,000 is consistent with the limits of a detached accessory building.

So you're saying it's a bigger conversation because it's about secondary structures, not just ADUs? Yeah.

Yeah. It can get complicated. It really can. And I think about properties that I see, I walk past or whatever. We have one right across the street from where we live that was in fact built as a garage with an ADU above. And You know, it perfectly makes sense. I don't know exactly if they had to run through any kind of hoop jumping to make that happen. And there are a couple of other properties that I think of that have multiple structures on them. There are large lots. There's space. It's just, like I say, you can make the rules and then somebody's gonna figure out some way that they wanna do it differently. And we can't necessarily anticipate that, unfortunately.

But on E, my thought with that is if you have a 1,000-square-foot garage right now, detached, you want to convert part of it or put on a second floor into an ADU, right now the code says you can only do 900 square feet.

yeah the walls don't line up though it's just yeah yeah kind of this is a common kind of adjustment pardon my yeah so it's just to make that consistent was the thought okay um i was thinking about the fact that oh officially we have to do a public hearing so we'll open the public hearing at 7 10 and 23 seconds and since there's no public here We'll wait and see if somebody rushes in. Yes. And with that, let's close the public hearing at 7-11. Since there's no public to speak. And I think we've had our discussion. I would entertain a motion to recommend to counsel to approve this ordinance change as presented.

Also moved.

Moved from Commissioner Muehlke. Second?

I'll second.

Second from Commissioner Wise. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. We're done. Chris, do you need any kind of record that We had the public hearing beyond the meeting minutes. You don't need anything written in that regard. Your clerk education didn't just bring up something new.

Well, the one thing we did find out is that the minutes are supposed to be signed.

Yeah, and they are. You'll get that afterwards. Okay. And I'm trying to smile more for my wife. She never watches. No, she never watches. Are you kidding? She's got important things to do. No, she saw a picture of me, and I was kind of doing one of these sort of things with my computer, and she said, wait a minute. All right. We're off to comprehensive plan update.

Really? Commissioners have been around since I've been around. We've been talking about the planned update. A little background for those who haven't been on the commission as well, like Pete and Vito. The city has a comprehensive plan. We have one that was adopted almost 10 years ago, and the Met Council says any jurisdiction in the Twin Cities seven-county area, you have to audit. amend that and update it every 10 years. We are just starting that update process now. It has to be completed by October or September of 2028, which sounds like a long time away, but it really isn't. So with some of the meetings, the recent meetings on and off, we've had some discussion about what is a comprehensive plan? What does it do? I am not going to bore you with all that. There's a lot of good reading there. But really what I wanted to focus on tonight, and I'm going to do a little curveball on you, is in the current plan, I'm going to get there, In Chapter 2, I included that in the printed packet materials and in your packet. The current comprehensive plan outlines the vision and goals and decisions for the city. Kind of the basis of what are we going to do and why are we going to do it and where do we want the city to go? And that was, again, 10 years ago. So my question to the commission, and I've include these in the packet is really, first of all, are these statements that are in the current plan still relevant? And if they are, great, we're not gonna reinvent them. If they need some reinventing or tweaking, we'll tackle that as we go through the process. This becomes the basis of further decisions. So the current vision is, North St. Paul is your favorite small town. We promote community stewardship through an involved and informed citizenry. We preserve neighborhood value with diverse and maintained housing and active neighbors. The city engages in creative placemaking that fosters an environment of economic and employment opportunity. North St. Paul builds systems that connect people to places and promote active lifestyles. A lot of Visionary statements there in one big vision statements kind of a mouthful So I'll stop with that is to all those Or parts of those all sound relevant now for the next ten years as We start developing the comprehensive plan update That's question one

When I read this, I wasn't sure what creative placemaking meant.

Architects, they could tell you all about it. You want to try that, Andrew?

Well, it's the fancy way, I think, of saying that... you are trying to create interesting spaces that are of the context of the city, and you're not just replicating the same thing over and over and over again, like the same style of house 10 times in a row or something like that.

It could also mean certain parks, certain open spaces, places to gather. I think in North St. Paul, probably the most relevant one is downtown and Seventh Avenue. Oh, that's been redone. The idea is, I think, if it's creative and interesting enough, it'll draw people in either to visit or a place to gather, either formally or informally.

Right.

So, yeah, it's a little bit of word salad, but... That's our existing one, and that was what I'm sure the commission and all the various commissions and the council ultimately adopted.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think to me that sentence is the one sentence that I think we should keep something in there to that effect, but all the other sentences are pretty... clear with words that are... What am I trying to say? Creative is a sort of ambiguous word, right? I mean, it could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And I think all the other parts of the vision statement don't have ambiguous words in it. It's pretty clear. So I guess, yeah, if... Generally, I think it all still makes sense, but maybe just finding another way to word that statement about the creative placemaking I think Was my only thought on the vision statement Yeah, nobody's gonna I mean it could mean different thing to every one of us here right so I

I think the sentence North St. Paul is your favorite small town is presumptive and I find that charming. I like it. That's the first time I've heard presumptive and charming. Usually those are opposites.

And again, this is just to kick off the discussion. We're not making final decisions tonight. It's just to get the brains thinking.

Remind me, when were the community cafes done? Have they been done recently? No.

This was 10 years ago.

Okay. I was going to say, because it looked like some of the things that they're talking about we've kind of done, but I know it's not always branded properly for people to understand what's happened either.

And I think what we've talked about several months ago when we first brought this to light that we need to be working on this, we talked about whether that was a fairly comprehensive effort. We had consultants involved, et cetera, et cetera. And we talked about do we need to go through that much effort this time? And I think the general consensus was we probably don't need to.

And that leads me right to my next question. See?

I knew there was a transition that was happening there.

One of the things that typically is done in almost every comprehensive plan update is community engagement. How do you get the neighbors, the residents, the business owners to give comments, to give their input into a comprehensive plan? Well, some hear that and their eyes glaze over and they go, what the heck?

Yeah, they don't want to read this thing.

No, it's blah, blah, blah. So they did the cafe things the last time around. I wasn't here, but I read up on them. Before we go down that road further, the good news is the Met Council and their infinite wisdom for many of the jurisdictions in the Twin Cities area, are offering grants to help pay for the costs of consultants. And North St. Paul is eligible for $40,000. The bad news is my early estimate for obtaining our comprehensive plan is $110,000. So there still would be a $70,000 cost if we use a consultant. And I really think we need to. Because I don't know that, if I had nothing else to do and I just had to do this, I could do it.

That's kind of where I was going with it, yeah.

Do it in its fair time?

No.

So, and with the consultant, it would probably be WSB because they do all our engineering. And so they know half of the... ComPlan includes sewer water, storm water. They know all those things anyway. Why would we bring in another consultant? But they have planners too, and they do comprehensive languages plans and like this. That's where I got the cost of it. Because they're prepared one for another one of their local cities. They, as part of their proposal to that city, I was just reading through it in the last couple days, had at least two sessions of community engagement. So I was talking to Ava today about that. How might we best do that? And so timeline, I'm thinking, Because of the budget and the grant, if it all falls in place, we would engage WSB to start on this in the beginning of 2027 when the new budget kicks in. Take us through October or September of 28 when I'm sure we can get it done. And there are incentives to make sure it gets done early because... You may not get all your grant money if you don't do it on time.

Yeah.

And I would get in trouble, I think, if we didn't successfully do that. But in that proposal, they had two sessions for community engagement. One, they proposed it would be a pop-up, and this was at a park in this other city. And talking to Ava about it, I think if the timing worked out, if we could do a pop-up at a car show. Yeah. that would be a place where you get a lot of people, you can put eyes on it. Now, maybe they don't care, but that would be a thing. Maybe we do an open house pop-up kind of thing in May at, say, Casey Lake Park. So we're spread out, we're spread out both on time, because the car shows won't start till June, and if we start this process in January, You want the pop-ups and the community engagement sooner than later so you can get the feedback and start building off that. So those are a couple ideas I just kicked around today. So A, for the commission, this is my sidebar, the detour. Do you think the community engagement will be important even though there was a lot done the last time? And secondly, do you like those ideas for how to do it?

I would recommend that we possibly push them for three community engagements, see if we can get them to do that. But at least two community engagements and an online engagement to allow people to give them like a month online to submit ideas and that type of thing. We could send out notices and like the utility bills or something like that to let them know about that. I do like the idea of something that either like Casey Lake or Housie Park, but I suppose Casey Lake, you get that side of town.

Well, and you also have a nice interior space, so if your weather isn't cooperative.

And then something at the car show or else the parade. The only thing I would think about the car show is we would get a lot more people from out of the area, but on the other hand, that could also be a selling point because if we ask them to identify whether they were North St. Paul residents or people from outside the area, we might be able to use that to kind of see how do people who don't live in North St. Paul view the community and that could help us give some structure as to ideas for encouraging people to come to North St. Paul other than the car show. So I definitely like those ideas.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think three might be a good idea.

I think the community engagement is important at the very least to present that we are making the effort as a community.

But the other thing, too, is that this community engagement dates back 10 years now. And given all of the things that have changed, politics, internet, all the various malarkey that's gone on in the last 10 years, people's opinions and thoughts and desires are probably going to have changed to some degree. There's a baseline out there that doesn't change. You know, we're looking for more than just that common baseline.

Is the council looking at this as far as their budget planning?

Just put it in. I had to propose my budget, and it was due tomorrow, and I included money in it. Now, Dan, the finance director, thinks he'll find the money for it. He understands it. I haven't had to sit down with the city manager yet on it. because this is all coming together this week because of the budget and then the information I was able to gather about

So in concept, our consultant, with regard to the community engagement, our consultant would work to, they'd probably look at the previous, look at that and say, okay, how do we modify the questions we ask people?

And they do community engagement all around?

They do it all the time, yeah.

Yes, and I would hope we would, as a staff at least, be part of giving input of what kind of questions or what kind of information we're trying to glean from the community engagement.

Well, and I'm interested in I think about things like some of the more recent developments in the downtown and some of the negative comments that were made when those developments were proposed. And I'd be really interested to hear, what do people think now? They're there, they've been there for a while. What do you think? I'd be interested in that kind of opinion too. Not just the future looking, but hey, here's what we've been doing, how do we feel about this?

How did we do?

Yeah.

The only other thing I would suggest, and I do understand, and I think WSB would do a great job. But I would also suggest that there be some consideration to just having WSB provide the technical stuff and going to an outside consultant agency that specializes in community engagement. It might be that WSB's cost would be more expensive because they have to devote more expensive people to community engagement than an outside community engagement specialist would be. I don't know that that's the case, and I see a lot of good sense in using WSB for everything, but I just think it might be worth checking out. If nothing else, it might give WSB a reason to hold their cost line down a little bit.

What I've been doing is asking people what would make North St. Paul a better city. I know a lot of people at church that live in North St. Paul. in the Sentinel apartments, there's 80 some other people there, and I know some people who work in North St. Paul, so I've had a broad experience. What I found very interesting is there's a lot of ideas, suggestions, complaints. Half of them have to do with kids riding too fast on the sidewalk, and half of them will be valuable in the sense that we need more retail. And I think it would be necessary to have somebody, a consultant, to weed out and control the discussions.

Yeah. It's interesting how over the years there have been comments all over the place. I hear things about, you know, we should have more restaurants. We should have a nice coffee shop. This, that, the other thing. And people look to the city to DO THAT SOMEHOW. WELL, WE DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER WHAT SOMEBODY CHOOSES TO DO FOR OPENING A BUSINESS. SO WE CAN ENCOURAGE IT IN SOME WAYS, BUT WE CAN'T, I MEAN, UNLESS THE CITY SAYS WE AS A CITY ARE GOING TO OPEN A COFFEE SHOP. we kind of wait for the right entity to come along, you know? You have to have, yeah, so it's creating the incentives. And I think there have been some really nice moves in that regard. And there is a nice coffee shop downtown. And there's a bakery. And there's a couple of nice restaurants.

I went by there the other day, and they were closed up at 1230.

No, they close pretty early. They run out of product.

Because I was going to order my birthday cake.

No, you have to go in the morning.

Sometimes they're closed on Mondays or Tuesdays too.

I think that might be true.

That's good. I'm glad they're still there.

But there are those kinds of things. The coffee shop's beautiful. I've been there quite a few times. It's not my usual stop, but Yeah, get some candy and some tea or something like that.

And Ken, I don't know whether it would be of any help, but I'd be happy to volunteer some ideas about how we can reach out to the public. When I was working with the Council of Governments at Texas A&M, we did a transportation outreach, and we involved the local churches, public school systems we sent out flyers with the kids and we had about eight or ten different directions that we were going including going on like morning TV shows going on the Spanish radio stations that type of thing to reach out to people to let them know what we were doing and I'd be glad to brainstorm or even help with some of the activities if it you know if it would be of a help to you

It has to get marketed to get involvement.

And we have Ava, too, who would be a big part of that.

Yeah. Yep. Yes. Absolutely.

So back to the vision. So that was sidebar, but thank you for all that. The vision, mostly good. The engaging and placemaking is... Yeah. It'll need some tweaking probably. Okay. And within the comp plan, I'll try to go through these. Not too fast. There are several, excuse me, goals. And I think I said one of the means we've talked about is maybe in the report. I think most all these goals are still relevant. There could be others that could be added. I'm not saying that, but if you read these, I'm going to not read them all, but I didn't see any of the goals on... these pages 11, 12, and 13 that said, oh, boy, we're not going to do that anymore. Well, no. Well, here, goal, community engagement. We want to have stewardship through an involved and informed citizenry. Well, this whole process hopefully will show that. And Ava's been with the city now two years as a communications coordinator, and that alone, having a person dedicated to that.

That's huge. Yeah, that's been very good. A step towards that.

accomplishing that goal. Residential character and neighborhoods, again, there's no, we're not breaking any new ground on any of these, but they are still good and relevant. Again, not saying you couldn't find more. Well, here's number three in the middle, engage in creative placemaking.

I wonder about that first one, progressive image for redevelopment. I'm not sure what that means.

What is a progressive image?

I would work on that phraseology. Okay.

These days, progressive can be a dirty word.

Well, depending on who you're talking to, yeah. There are connotations there that probably weren't as prominent 10 years ago.

Would that be forward thinking?

Probably, yeah.

Now, downtown, the bottom there, A lot of that has happened through Seventh Avenue project and then all the building and reconstruction. So that's.

I think we've met some of the goals. Yes. Yeah. At least we're meeting, we're coming closer to meeting some of the goals. It started 10 years ago.

Transportation, there's really not much we can do with that.

I'd still like to see further efforts to connect to the Gateway Trail. I think there's opportunities there that we still don't take advantage of.

Urban design, we have some design standards, especially for the downtown, which again, we have our downtown design manual that we sometimes use. So that's an ongoing thing. I don't know how the heck we do the bottom one frankly. How do you make the highway 36 corridor anymore I? Enhanced. Yeah. It's tough.

It's enhanced as it's going to get until they build the interchange. Yeah. Yes. In which case then we'll have people up in arms because they're taking out Dairy Queen, I'm sure. Yeah.

Although he might by then be tired of having his parking lot run into by street.

Yeah. That's a whole separate problem. Right. Rollovers in the Dairy Queen parking lot.

So, writing a note. What else we got? Enhance and expand the parks, trails, and open space system.

I think we've been doing well on that.

I don't know if they can be expanded, but we certainly can enhance them. I don't know that C's going to be buying more park property.

I think the Park and Rec Commission does a very fine job, personally.

I do think that it wouldn't have hurt us to promote them a little bit more, just because I was, as I said several months ago, I was shocked when they gave us the entire park plan and I realized how many parks we have here in the area that I didn't even know about.

Yeah, isn't that crazy? You stay in your own little bubble.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, we want to protect and enhance the lakes, the woods, and wildlife and all that. I don't think anybody's against that. I struggle with the last one, though. Become more resilient to climate change through climate change mitigation and adaptation. How does a city enhance that, promote that? Maybe as, I don't even know. With the state and say building codes, buildings are probably more resilient to climate change and adaptation, but cars are still gonna drive. We don't control the rainfall. and storm you know storm water runoff then that gets in the point above that for water quality yes we we have a tree planting giveaway every spring give away 50 trees to help those are little things they're baby steps i don't know if we're more resilient to climate change or just trying to Maybe do our small part as a city to lessen it? That would be something to ponder. Compared to what's happening in the seven-county area, what North St. Paul does seems like a drop in the bucket. But if every city does better things...

Right. Sometimes it's the small steps.

I think maybe we could use the term sustainable maybe a little bit more than...

climate, you know, take climate change out and just, because it's... Sustainability is more broad.

And actionable for individuals. There is nothing we can do to control the climate. Right, right.

I don't know whether we could do it. Well, I don't know whether we could get the interest in it, but I'm just thinking, you know, we might go to, like, University of Minnesota One of the grad schools or the undergrad schools and say, you know, we've got, we're looking for ideas. Why don't you make this a class project? You know, what can your class think of that could help a small community in Minnesota that can be replicated elsewhere?

Be more, be more climate and sustainable minded.

Now, like I say, I don't know whether we could get the attention of the school or not, but then again, we've got a lot of colleges in the area.

Then again, I think about years ago when we did the Green Streets study and put a plan together, and it's been quite invisible since then.

Is that what doing rain gardens and those kind of things?

There's been some action taken. I have a separate story that I won't go into.

So that's our discussion. That's what I have for discussion tonight. So I appreciate the feedback and community engagement. That sounds like positive and I got a few ideas on the vision and goals and The good news is if we turn this over, and I hope to a consultant, we can start off with some of these points and hit the ground running. Yeah. Because we've done some of the basic lake work at this point.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Is there any other comments before we...

The only thing, and I don't think WSB would do this, but just as long as we don't get a consultant in that wants to give us a stock plan. Because as I've said before, as one of the people that reviews those city plans for MnDOT, There are a number of smaller cities out there that send the exact same plan in, and they just substitute the name of the town. And it's like the third time you're reading it, it's like, I've seen this before. The fifth time you're reading it, you know.

I'm pretty confident they'll definitely tailor it. And what I'm putting, I'm starting to write the proposal to send to them of what we're looking for is... I will have final editing authority. Good. Wow. To make sure it's, you know, after all, everybody's input and everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And what we've had before definitely is much better than what I've seen a number of communities submit. So, you know.

I think WSB did the last one, didn't they?

I don't recall. That's the frustrating thing for me. My copy. jumps into chapter one. There's no acknowledgements, there's no written, there's no even table of contents. It's just chapter one.

So if I went to look for it online, that's what I'd find?

Wow.

That's crazy. Here, let me pull it up for you.

I believe you. Don't disbelieve me.

It's frankly kind of irritating because who the heck does that and then

Yeah, there's no title page.

So here's... We probably just took each chapter as a PDF.

Well, here's the cover. And we go right into chapter one.

Intro and planning history.

So usually there's an acknowledgement, thank you to the City Council, the Planning Commission, the Parks Commission, the staff who worked on this, and it would say prepared by. Yeah, right. I got nothing.

Well, you could ask them if they did it, and then you can reprimand them.

The staff I've talked to there or emailed with seem to think they did.

You did double check the very last page just to make sure. Well, I did. Yeah. Okay. That's funny.

That's funny.

I mean, our planner was from WSB for a long time, right? Yeah. They were a consultant. There were several.

There was Aaron and Brandy.

Yeah.

But anyway. Okay. So that's what I had on that. Thank you all. Okay.

Yeah. Thank you. And I wanted to say thank you for the back page with the information about the holiday unit since I requested that myself. Yeah. And I really do appreciate the city staff taking the time to do that. It is interesting to me.

We'll have to have that for the comp plan update anyway.

Yeah.

Good thing to do.

That's all I have on that, Mr. Chair. And if you want, we can move on to reports. Reports. Pete, you have anything?

I don't.

I do not.

I have nothing at this point. Andrew? No reports from me.

The only thing I will share with you, just because, and I can't put it on the screen, but I would if I could. But what, if you, I don't know if you recall, but at the last meeting we talked about cleanup day and the various cleanup things. My impression is the city garage sale was really good. Certainly it was great at our house, but that's a whole separate story.

Did you get rid of stuff?

We had one thing we were selling. Oh? Legos. Oh. Had a really good day.

Wow.

Yeah, we have cleaned out our house of Legos. Well There are certain things we saved we there are certain sets that our kids said do not sell that you know There were a couple of them. I wasn't gonna sell and they went Somebody was very happy to get them but on cleanup day one of the things my wife And I love to do is we go out in Silver Lake in the canoe and we clean up and

Oh, this is the park's cleanup day.

And that's a view of our canoe after.

I saw a picture somewhat like that when I wasn't in a canoe.

We've had more successful, like bigger collections of garbage.

Yeah.

And that was only, we did not even the whole coast, the whole shoreline of Silver Lake Park.

Wow.

But yeah, the stuff you find, one year, couple years ago, we found a mattress over on the Joy Park side. And it took, I think it took, I think it took the DNR like a year to get it out of there. It's out in the water, you know?

That would have been very heavy. Yes.

Yeah, we stuck a stake in there so they would be able to find it, a flag. Said, here's where it is. Anyway. Killed it. It's a nice opportunity to get out there and see neighbors, which we did. We got to see some neighbors along the shoreline and people fishing and stuff like that. Yeah. And the wildlife was great this year. Turtles.

I remember right, it was a very nice day.

It was. The turtles were everywhere. Red-winged blackbird nests, we probably saw a dozen nests. And they were not real happy about us getting too close, as you know, red-winged blackbirds will do. Anyway, just it's encouraging to get out there and just do something that helps the community in general. I thought I would share that.

Vito, did you have anything? You look like the gears are turning.

I've got nothing going on up here.

I've got three things I'll mention for the benefit of the commission. So on May 9th, it's Saturday morning, we had the cleanup day where you can bring your stuff to Public Works. If you remember this year, we made some changes.

Mm-hmm.

Before that, it had become a cluster and it was too crowded. So we were charging for vehicles and trailers based on size. And we limited the size of the vehicles. You couldn't rent a 24-foot U-Haul box truck in Philadelphia. So you got a pickup or a van and one single axle trailer. So a year ago, I think the count was from 8 to 1 or 7.30. No, it was supposed to go 8 to 11. I think they started at 7.30. Got done about one a year ago. They had over 312 vehicles. Just a complete madhouse. This year, with the new rules and charging, I think we ended up with 74 vehicles. Wow. People love their free, free, free. Yeah. And I was out there, and as best I could hear or was reported, we only had one person complain about having to pay. This is me, and then they left.

Honestly, that's a great out of 75. Yeah.

Well, and we didn't go there this year because we frankly didn't have a lot. It's a nice feature.

So from the city's perspective, that was a success, right? So related to that, just on Tuesday night, the city council approved a new five-year contract with Tennis Sanitation to continue the solid waste hauling. We'd gone through an RFP process, had seven proposals, reviewed them, compared prices, services, had two very solid ones we brought tennis in and another hauler and in the end tennis had the best numbers we've had good luck with them we didn't there was no reason no good reason to change the prices weren't that weren't better at all but one thing we requested from those two haulers was to have the haulers really sharpen their pencils, so to speak, and propose something better for the bulky waste pickup at the curb. antennas came in and said we'll provide six You can have six large items picked up in a year and two appliances picked up a year From your home and don't charge Wow now you still have the availability to call in if you get too much stuff and or you need a dumpster and we have to now work out the logistics of how that's gonna be tracked and who's gonna do that. The city still has to pay the tipping fee, the dumping fee at Newport. And we're hoping with that change, there will even be less demand on the cleanup day in the spring. Maybe we don't have to have one. And now with the Environmental Center in Roseville and even Woodbury and Forest Lake, there are places to take your electronics for free. Sometimes they even have mattress days there where you can get mattresses and that kind of thing. That was another thing. We didn't take mattresses this year at Clean Up Davis.

Yeah, I mean, mattresses, tires. There are certain things, electronics, there are certain things that are hard to unload easily without paying for it. And people, like you said, they like free.

So we'll be getting out, that new contract starts September 1st. I'm not sure if the new bulky waste availability will start then or start the calendar year into January 1, but we'll be getting more information out. So that was very, very successful. We're glad that, I think staff was kind of relieved that we got tennis again so we don't have to train in a new hauler. That's what they do, and they do a very good job for the residents. Lastly, the car shows. I don't know if you've been tracking the ongoing stories of the car shows. A little bit. So the history cruisers came to the city last fall even, or maybe right the first year and said, we can't do every Friday anymore. It's just too much. We're getting too old. We don't have enough help. It's a lot of work. So we just want to do every other Friday. And the city and the businesses were a little bit dismayed by that because it's a big draw. And so Brian did some work and found another group, the Invisible Wounds Project. out of Forest Lake, they do car shows. And so they're going to take over the other Fridays, starting this Friday.

Okay.

So there will be car shows every Friday through the summer. The Invisible Wounds said they will allow some different model cars, some of the newer ones. I think the History Cruisers were 1964 and older or something.

75 and older, I think. But whatever.

I don't know how Invisible Wounds is going to. Yeah. But so if you have a, say a really cool 2024 Corvette, you could probably show it there if you wanted, that kind of thing. They do have some expenses because, and while they have some expenses and then they'd help, The Invisible Wounds Project helps veterans and even police officers and those kind of people.

Are they a 501c3? Yeah, I thought so.

And I'm sure the donations are to help pay, because there's expenses with the city, not a lot, but police time, some of the cleanup costs, port-a-potty rental, some of those things. Mm-hmm. So that's probably why they're asking for the donations. So the good news is there'll be car shows. It'll be a little different, but hopefully it brings some new energy to the downtown.

I did see something from someone representing History Cruisers saying that they were upset about the city sharing their...

There are lists with them. They said proprietary list. Yes. It wasn't proprietary. It was a list of vendors that they provided the city. Invisible Wounds wanted that to see if those vendors wanted to work other Fridays. It's public information, and we shared the list.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's all I have for real.

All I have for reports, thank you.

Okay, thanks again.

Oh, I lied, I got one more. One more. We are, in my department, in fact, next week, Wednesday, interviewing five people to be an intern for three to six months. So we'll have some additional help, and we may have them do some of the preliminary research for the comp plan update.

Good, excellent.

Get them exposed to local government, zoning, parks, kind of throw them in wherever. Yeah, that's great.

How many are you hoping to get? One, just one. Just one, okay.

We had about 30 applicants, narrowed it down to a five-day interview. So probably the next meeting or one of the meetings, we'll bring them to the Planning Commission and see what kind of fun we have here.

Yeah, that'd be delightful.

Who does the cleanup and work around the plants down on 7th Avenue?

The city hires one or two landscape, not landscape architects, but forestry people for the summer.

There was a bunch of younger folks out there working last week.

That's a temporary summer help for the Public Works Department.

So they're not working for the city?

No, they are. They're hired on temporary for the summer for three, four months. All right. And part of their duties are to clean.

And it overlooks 7th Avenue, and there's about six guys and one girl out there, and she was out working all of them.

Yep. All right. Well, with that, how about a motion to adjourn? Who wants to do that? So moved.

Mr. Marcaccini has so moved. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second from Commissioner Mewick. All in favor say aye. Aye. We adjourn at 7.55.