Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutCCWKSPMIN_05.05.21CITY OF FALCON HEIGHTS City Council Workshop City Hall 2077 West Larpenteur Avenue MINUTES May 5, 2021 6:30 P.M. NOTE: THIS MEETING WAS HELD BY WEB CONFERENCE A. CALL TO ORDER: 6:33PM B. ROLL CALL: ANDREWS X_ GUSTAFSON_X_ LEEHY X_ MIAZGA X WEHYEE X STAFF PRESENT: THONGVANH X WALTER X C. PRESENTATIONS: D. POLICY ITEMS: 1. Speed Limit Evaluation Report City Engineer Friehamme_r In the packet is the Speed Limit Evaluation Report, which I will go through with you tonight. We are recommending changing the speed limit to 20mph on most streets in Falcon Heights. We would recommend 25mph on collector roads, with the exception of Roselawn. About 83% of streets in the City would be reduced to 20. Roselawn is a former Ramsey County road but is now City road with shared jurisdiction with the City of Roseville. For Hamline and Hoyt, St. Paul's report is recommending 25mph. If Falcon Heights adopts this, it would be signed. Roselawn would have to be done the same way. Council Member Weh ee Would we then have to retroactively update the ordinance to update the speed limit on Roselawn? City Engineer Freihammer My recommendation is to adopt an ordinance similar to how Minneapolis and St. Paul have, which is to delegate authority to the City Engineer to assign the speed limits. If in the future the Council recommends a change, I would draft a memo and we would discuss it but it would happen much more quickly. It also allows the Engineer to ensure that speed limits are applied in a way that is consistent with traffic standards based on data. 11Page Mayor Gustafson Would Hoyt to the west of Cleveland also need to be a shared jurisdiction with St. Paul? City Engineer Freihammer Yes. St. Paul is recommending 20 mph and we would recommend the same. Council Member Miaaa I'm wondering if any of my colleagues would be willing to lower the speed limit on Roselawn to 25 mph. Council Member Weyhee Would you recommend traffic calming effects on Roselawn? City Engineer Freihammer The road could definitely use some traffic calming. One of the issues is that the roads are in good condition so the opportunity for a cost-effective reconstruction may not come up for many years. Just dropping the speed limit to 25 may not be effective, because about half of drivers are currently driving faster than the posted speed limit of 30 mph. The other thing is enforcement, if you don t enforce it people area t going to obey the posted speed limit. Council Member Miaza I don't agree with the reasoning that we shouldn't post the lower speed because we assume people will drive fast regardless. We should post the lower speed and hope that it has a deterrent effect, and worry about more enforcement details when we have our new law enforcement agency. Council Member Wehyee I still am unclear what the process will look like in terms of the Council's responsibilities. Administrator Thon anh The City has to adopt an ordinance that creates a process of changing the speed limit. The ordinance that St. Paul and Minneapolis adopted authorizes the Engineer to make these changes. If in the future a change is needed, it doesn't have to come back to the council, it would be done with an engineering report and would go into effect. We'll provide some communication to the public and we will need to host a public hearing because it's an ordinance change. For now, staff will work with the City Attorney to draft the ordinance and post for the public hearing. Council Member Andrews Thank you for your work on this. I think this change will calm some of the people in the Northome area. 2. Idaho/Iowa Alleyway Petition City Engineer Freihammer We received a petition from around 52% of property owners on the block, so we are required to respond to this issue. The drainage behind two or three of the properties in the alley is very 2 1 P a g e poor and below the level of we would consider acceptable drainage in the alley. We did a survey of the area, there are improvements that could be made. The condition of the alley is fair to poor. The residents pay for 90% of the costs, generally because the alley is only serving the adjacent residents. Our estimate to repair the alley would be $20-30,000 for that one block. If the Council would like to include this repair in the pavement management project, we would just need to do a change order. We would need to complete a feasibility report, but this could be completed this year if the Council wishes. We are aware of a couple other alleys needing repair, but if the Council decided that was a priority, it may be better to wait. Otherwise, it would still be cost effective to do just 1 alley. Administrator Thongeanh I think it's prudent to do this one this year. Holding off on the improvements would mean this waits until 2024. City Engineer Freihammer The PMP is scheduled to begin May 17. This project should only lengthen the overall project by a couple of days. We would need to approve a change order and hold a public hearing. We could have a change order ready to approve at the June 9 meeting. We would prepare the actual assessment amounts for that meeting, this will be based on lot frontage. It would be roughly $1200 each assuming they all had equal frontage. 3. American Rescue Plan Funding Update Administrator Thongyanh The webinar was postponed. I wanted to provide an update to Council on this but there is no additional information they were able to share at this time. Hopefully I will have more information at the next workshop. 4. Amber Union Update Administrator Thongvanh We're continuing to move forward, there are a lot of complexities with the funding. The developer will be providing us a new portion of the property in exchange for a piece of land that is currently owned by the city and used as an emergency vehicle turnaround. If we vacate the City -owned piece, Buhl investors has said they would provide up to $20,000 to install conduit wiring for an EV charging station. In their documents, the developer wants more greenspace because it's currently a concrete jungle. 5. Community Park Building Update Administrator Thongyanh Staff and Public Works visited three parks facilities in Roseville. The packet includes some photos of the facilities. The cost for the Lexington and Autumn Grove buildings ranged from 800-900K, and they included a conference room area, an office for staff, and a warming house. 3 1 P a g e Cedarholm Golf Course was much larger. I'd look at having something like the smaller buildings, but having maybe 2 additional meeting rooms that people could rent out for use. The University is in discussion with me, and I'm looking at a new agreement that is similar to what was done when the first building was constructed. That building at that time cost about $300,000. The agreement would include a stipulation that if the University decided to terminate the agreement early, they would have to pay the remainder of unpaid building costs so we could use that to pay our debt service. I'm hoping to pay for at least half of the project with existing funds so that our levy funds won't be so high. We can either do lowest bid or best value bidding. The bigger building, the golf course, I believe they did best value. Using best value allows you to promote local contractors, but lowest bid allows you to convey to the public that you are keeping costs low. Council Member Mia! a Would you say that state bonding is off the table? Administrator Thongvanh I'm guessing we'll be done with the construction at that point but there might be other improvements that we request funding for in the future. E. INFORMATION/ ANNOUNCEMENTS: Administrator Thou anh I'm working on the process of liquidating the fire equipment. I'll be selling one of the trucks to Century College for $17,500, the value was estimated at $15-20K. I'll be hopefully receiving a proposal from St. Paul for our other two trucks, we can discuss if they're acceptable. Statute allows us to sell to another jurisdiction without a lot of other red tape. Otherwise, we'll have to go the other route. I'll bring that to the council hopefully in the next couple of weeks. We're starting to get the community garden up and running. I'll be working with Ashleigh on a policy for liquidating equipment via a non-profit agency. Hopefully we'll bring it back at the end of the month. F. ADJOURNMENT:8:06PM Randall C. stafsont, Mayor Dated this th day f May, 2021 Sack Thongvanh, ministrator 4 1 P a g e