09/08/2008 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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/2/x4. Rea a-►>,a, c c ttuivto `1J'Jzoo� I'm Laura Carlson, I've lived at 585 Ash Street in Lino Lakes since August of 1989. About two years ago I received an invitation to attend a Lino Lakes visioning session that resulted in my involvement in the 2030 comprehensive plan. The assignment of the first team that I was on, the Traffic Management group, was to envision what we wanted our roads to be like in the year 2030. Of course we envisioned our streets to be well maintained with new connecting streets in place to manage our increasing population and needs. It was then that I discovered what it meant to be a "charter city ". Although I had been a resident of Lino Lakes for 18 years I never knew what the sign meant as I entered the city. I was sure it was a good thing but now I am no longer certain. Section 8 of the Lino Lakes charter was written to protect the citizens at a point in time over 20 years ago but I feel now that it does not serve the long term good of our community. The Charter provision was meant to protect owners of larger parcels from being charged for roads and from being forced into water and sewer charges that they did not want in order for land beyond them to benefit from the access and services. According to those involved at the time of the charter creation it was never intended that the charter would impact the city's ability to cost effectively finance the reconstruction of existing streets and other needed infrastructure. While there are still pockets in the community where this issue exists and these property owners (like me!) need special consideration the impact on the full community of Lino Lakes needs to take priority. Through a series of meetings with the city planners and lawyers it became apparent to our traffic focus group that it would be unlikely for the roads to be in good shape in 2030 with our current charter provisions. Although a pavement management plan had been compiled that outlined the best and most cost effective strategy for road management the city would not be allowed to follow the management plan without consistently passing continual referendums on the election ballots when roads needed reconstruction. There had already been several efforts to pass a referendum on just one street in the recent past, the worst street in Minnesota according to records, and it just can't get passed. How could we count on consistent passage through the years of all the referendums that would be needed to rebuild streets as they were needed. After all, even a street properly constructed and maintained will not last forever. And streets built on the substructure beneath Lino Lakes have challenges beyond average. Within charter provisions the city could decide to finance the street without special assessments but this is not the most cost effective method of financing and thankfully the city has not yet resorted to it. I fear they may have to if the charter is not changed. The result would be that 100 % of the cost of projects would be paid for by the full community instead of having the benefiting property owners pay their share. This would be limited to either the 20% statute limit or the amount the project increased their property value. After completing my work with the Traffic Management group some of us stayed with the project and with additional volunteers we formed a Special Task force that studied the charter issue as it is impacting the citizens of Lino Lakes. With this specific focus and access to the city planners and lawyers over several months we came up with what we felt was a fair amendment proposal to section 8 of the city charter. In our amendment proposal we retained the voice and vote of the affected community but removed the question from the citywide referendum. Many in our group were in favor of moving straight to the method used by basically all other communities in Minnesota, State Statute 429. The more