02-27-2012 Council Special Work Session Minutes

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CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL WORK SESSION February 27, 2012 APPROVED 1 CITY OF LINO LAKES 2 MINUTES 3 4 DATE : February 27, 2012 5 TIME STARTED : 7:00 p.m. 6 TIME ENDED : 8:20 p.m. 7 MEMBERS PRESENT : Council Member Stoesz, O'Donnell, 8 Rafferty,Roeser and Mayor Reinert 9 MEMBERS ABSENT : None 10 11 12 Staff members present: City Administrator Jeff Karlson; Community Development 13 Director Michael Grochala; City Engineer Jason Wedel; City Clerk Julie Bartell 14 15 Possible Charter Amendment—Community Development Director Grochala reported. 16 He noted that the council discussed at the last special session on February 13 the different 17 elements of the citizen's task force proposal to amend Chapter 8 of the City Charter. 18 There was a review of what the process would look like under that language. The council 19 also brought up the idea of a cap and staff did have a discussion on that concept with 20 bond counsel, Steve Bubul, and financial advisor, Springsted. The council also asked 21 questions about how many miles of city roads are in a deficient situation at the current 22 time. 23 24 Community Development Director Grochala reviewed how the task force proposal would 25 work for the improvement process including when the actual improvements are decided 26 upon. Under the task force amendment, a hearing on the improvements is required. 27 Property owners can object at that meeting and, if at least fifty percent of those property 28 owners object, another hearing is scheduled 45 days out. If there is not that level of 29 objection,the council could take action to order the improvement at that same meeting 30 and would decide at that point what would be included in the project. The scope of the 31 improvement is always left to the council with public input. The feasibility study would 32 be done based on all possible improvements but if there is an element that the council 33 wants removed based on public testimony, for instance,the council could spell it out 34 differently. The second public hearing could be the opportunity to review the actual 35 improvements. The task force proposal also contains a provision allowing affected 36 property owners to petition against a project and stop the improvements (within a 30 day 37 period after action—a notice to residents having been required within five days of action). 38 The council and staff acknowledged that there will be situations where improvements like 39 water/sewer wouldn't make sense. Also a process like"stubbing"would allow future 40 hook ups as an option. The mayor acknowledged that it's important for property owners 41 to have choice rather than having all improvements imposed upon them. Mr. Grochala 42 added that staff is bringing forward the concept of adding in a reverse referendum, 43 allowing voters to petition for a referendum and the idea was discussed by the council. 44 45 1