04-22-13 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION April 1, 2013 DRAFT 2 Council Member Roeser confirmed his concern about limiting futu re business 45 development. To him, competition is good and helps the residents also. This seems to be 46 a subject that comes up whenever a new license is proposed. He does see that there is a 47 district in the city where there are several licenses but trying to fix that by adding 48 limitations could backfire . Council Member Rafferty concurred tha t limitations could 49 close important avenues. 50 51 Mayor Reinert had spoken with a n off -sale l icense holder who suggests this ordinance 52 could be in place and if new busine sses are interested, they could buy out current 53 licensees. The mayor said he sees the a rea of I35E as particularly ripe for development 54 and perhaps that area could be exempted from the new regulations. He added t hat the 55 liquor industry is d ifferent to hi m because it is highly regulated by the state. 56 57 Council Member Roeser asked about the possibility of a moratorium on licenses until the 58 council sees the need for additional licenses. Council Member Rafferty i s concerned that 59 a moratorium is too much of a moving target ; he hears the argument for regulations but 60 doesn’t want to close the door on development . Council Member Stoesz recognizes th at 61 a restriction would make current licenses more valuable. 62 63 Sergei Nazaranka of Eagle Liquors explained that a store with other options, such as G -64 Will, just wants the traffic attracted by the liquor store for their other g oods. T hey can 65 price the alcohol products way down because they have other items. He believes that 66 h aving regulations is not out of the ordi nary; neighboring cities have enacted them. Also 67 he doesn’t believe that a large development would be stopped by regulations; they can 68 work their way around them. 69 70 Adam LaMere, Lakes Liquor, told the council that there is obviously a problem and that 71 do ing something is better than doing nothing. He doesn’t feel it is fair for the council to 72 do nothing when there are business owners who have invested in this city. 73 74 Mayor Reinert said he’d like staff to carve out a discussion for the council about where an 75 exemption area would make sense. 76 77 Barbara Bor, resident and Environmental Board Member, noted that the eastside of the 78 city includes an AUAR district that is supposed to be reviewed regularly. She’d like that 79 to be part of the discussion if the coun cil is discussing development of the I35E area. 80 81 5. Update on Peltier Lake Heron Rookery – Environmental Coordinator Asleson 82 introduced community volunteers on the rookery project – Wayne LeBlanc, Barbara Bor, 83 Terry Averbeck. Other volunteers were not present but were noted. Historically, it was 84 discovered in 1999 that the heron rookery was failing; a task force was established. There 85 were several hypotheses on why the rookery was failing and actions were taken to 86 mitigate many of those things. Sinc e 2006 when there was essenti ally no nesting and 87 with flashings added to nesting trees, the nesting has been increasing. At this point , the 88 efforts seem to be working well. Mr. LeBlanc added that winter nesting counting is done 89