February 7, 2006 CCP - Laserfiche WebLink

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The draft plan states that today 7% of the Lake Elmo Park Reserve is developed for compatible recreational activity; and proposes to increase that "developed" percentage to 9%. In this regard, three issues of concern have been identified by the Lake Elmo City Council: Maintaining the "Reserve" status of the park by evaluating the 90/20 standard to assure it has been appropriately applied. While the physical footprint of proposed additional park development may be an insignificant percentage of the park area, the resulting impact of that development may "compromise" the "sense of nature" to a far more significant degree. Proposed park expansion plans, in the context of resulting impacts, may not be consistent intended purpose and may in fact negatively impact the intended purpose of the park as defined by the Regional Park System Plan. The Lake Elmo Park Reserve is part of, and contained within the boundaries of the City of Lake Elmo. No other political subdivision shares a border with the Park. The City of Lake Elmo performs primary service delivery in terms of roads and public safety fire/rescue response. In fact, the annual calls to the Park Reserve for service from the Lake Elmo Fire/Rescue are significant and are paid for solely by the tax payers of Lake Elmo. Therefore, expanding the facilities will have service demand increase which will mean more cost to the City. Discussions with Park Reserve staff earlier this year resulted in a non recognition of the issue. At the meeting with the City Council on January 31", specific improvements proposed by the draft plan were discussed in the context of the positive and negative implications. The draft plan proposed improvement items discussed are summarized as follows: Lighted Cross Country Ski Trails — The City Council is not in favor of lighted trails in the park as it would contradict the purpose of the park "the nature mission". It was found that the impact of the lighted trails (regardless of lighting style) would compromise the "sense of nature" to a far greater degree that the immediate footprint of the lighting feature. Underpass/tunnel — A trail underpass at State Highway 5, connecting the Park Reserve to the Lake Elmo trail system and Gateway Trail was accepted by City Council as a good improvement for public safety reasons. Bituminous trail expansion — specifically around Eagle Lake, was rejected by the City Council as an unnecessary expansion that would contradict the mission to maintain the natural experience of the park. Maintaining the trail as unpaved was believed a better plan. Milfoil issue in lake — was an area that City Council believed needed more proactive plans to monitor, prevent and remove.