Agenda Packets - 1998/12/28 - Laserfiche WebLink

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December 12, 1998 Jim Ericson Mounds View City Hall 2401 Highway 10 Mounds View, MN 55112 Dear Jim, I have a previously scheduled meeting on December 16th, but I wanted to add my thoughts to the discussion regarding the ordinance requiring a maximum of one curb cut per residential property. Setting aside the specifics of the case which brought this ordinance to a point of reconsideration, I am in favor of removing this requirement from the city's books. A fairly large percentage of corner lots presently have two curb cuts and most have maintained those two access points for several decades without comment or incident. Seeing that the vast majority of the residential areas in our city are fully developed, and have been for many years, I do not foresee a large 'run' on city hall to get the Ok to put in a 2nd driveway. Due to required setbacks and other city codes, most residential lots would not even be able to add a second curb cut. Thus, this matter in great degree is only dealing with corner lots or lots with large front footages. I would further make the assumption that basically the only people who would consider a 2nd curb cut are those property owners who already have a second one presently and simply wish to maintain those points of entry to their property. I believe the larger question that lurks behind this debate is whether or not a simple repaving of an existing driveway should be considered reconstruction for code enforcement purposes. I maintain that repaving a driveway without any major changes to its scope or function should be viewed as a normal maintenance issue and not a true reconstruction. I view driveways much as I view roofs. They have a functional life span and then they must be replaced. When a roof is replaced the city (and state) requires minimum standards for materials used on the project: but the city doesn't get into whether or not the homeowner needs to change the slope of his roof to meet new building codes. In that same spirit I believe it is time for the city to put driveway repaving into the category of normal property maintenance and focus more on making sure the repaving process and the materials used are top rate. If we fail to address this larger issue of maintenance vs. reconstruction there will be, in my opinion, three basic things that people will do when their properties are facing more restrictive codes: One group will simply opt not to repave their driveway after viewing the laborious process one must undertake in order to get a variance for something they presently have on hand. There is and will continue to be somewhat of a chilling effect on people wishing to upgrade their aging driveways if red tape is what awaits them when they repave things.