01-08-2025 Workshop Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Housing The City of Little Canada supports state-local partnerships that provide policies and resources to address local housing needs, while preserving local authority over zoning and land use decisions. We encourage lawmakers to focus on policies tailored to each community’s needs. (Source – League of Minnesota Cities 2025 Legislative Priorities) Local Decision Making The City of Little Canada opposes legislation that erodes or eliminates local decision-making authority for cities to make the decisions that best suit their individual communities. (Source – League of Minnesota Cities 2025 Legislative Priorities) Local Government Aid (LGA) The City of Little Canada supports increasing LGA to reduce pressure on the property tax and equalize property tax bases. We also support indexing LGA to inflation so that aid to cities keeps pace with rising costs. (Source – League of Minnesota Cities 2025 Legislative Priorities) Public Safety Training and Resources The City of Little Canada supports allocated ongoing state funding to local governments for public safety purposes such as embedded social workers, mental health response, training, innovation, and more. The city supports tools and incentives such as scholarships and/or reimbursements for local law enforcement agencies to use and help with recruitment and retention barriers. Source – Metro Cities 2025 Legislative Policies) Transportation Funding The City of Little Canada supports dedicating more resources to all components of the transportation system and calls for funding and tools to help cities meet growing transportation needs. (Source – League of Minnesota Cities 2025 Legislative Priorities) Update on Little Canada Road/Country Drive Improvement Project As you heard from City Engineer Eric Seaburg at our last City Council meeting in December, Bolton & Menk engineers are currently working on Level 1 designs for the proposed roundabout at Little Canada Road and Country Drive. The Level 1 designs will be completed by the end of January, and comments from MnDOT are anticipated by February 12. If no additional changes are needed, the design work and final approvals are expected by mid-March. The City of Little Canada has secured $7 million in grant funding to date for this project from multiple sources including MnDOT and the Metropolitan Council. Staff believes that most of the available local and regional grant opportunities have been exhausted, but will continue to search for additional funding opportunities for the remaining costs. The City has also been working on a proposed pedestrian bridge project over I-35E. Unfortunately, we recently learned that our grant application for the Planning/Design work for the pedestrian bridge was unsuccessful. The cost for this grant application was 100% reimbursed by MnDOT, so it was worth the effort to submit and may help us in future applications. We are still waiting to hear back on the recent Reconnecting Communities grant application that was submitted in September.