Agenda Packets - 2005/08/22 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mounds View City Council July 11, 2005 Regular Meeting Page 22 Mayor Marty stated that he did not want the billboards to support the golf course noting that it 1 was either the billboards or tax the citizens. 2 3 Mr. Jahnke stated that maybe the City should get rid of the golf course and use the billboards as a 4 revenue source for the City. 5 6 Mayor Marty stated that this is a good point noting that the City has six billboards that they are 7 getting $250,000 a year, with a 4-percent inflation factor. He noted that the City is only getting 8 $15,000 per billboard for the first ten years and $25,000 per billboard for the second ten years, 9 which is only a pittance of the contract the City currently has. 10 11 Council Member Thomas noted to Mr. Jahnke that she does not want to cut him off adding that 12 this is not the item the Council is currently discussing. She asked the Council to get back to the 13 agenda item they are supposed to be discussing. 14 15 City Administrator Ulrich noted that there are several typos that should be corrected. 16 17 Mayor Marty stated that he spoke with John Diedrich regarding a letter written by Vernon, a 18 summary by RLK. He stated that it did address the traffic concerns in the City noting that it 19 touched on the issues saying that the traffic would travel to the more main arterials. He stated 20 that letters from MnDOT, also included in this report, state that the general growth for this area is 21 more than what the freeway system can handle even if funding is obtained to reconstruct the 22 interchange, the intersections map operates poorly if the freeway is congested. He noted that as 23 he said to Mr. Diedrich if the freeways are congested people find other ways to go. He noted that 24 during morning and afternoon rush hours the City does get traffic through the area. He stated 25 that it was pointed out that a lot of this is a reverse-commute adding that it was also pointed out 26 how many of the Medtronic employees live in the surrounding areas. He stated that they are 27 talking about 2000 up to 6000 employees once it is built out and no matter how you look at it, it 28 will increase the traffic on our streets. 29 30 Council Member Gunn stated that if you look at the reports the majority of the congestion is not 31 from our area and it will not be that significant from having Medtronic there. She explained that 32 it is from the growth that is happening in Blaine, Ham Lake, Andover and Lino Lakes. She 33 stated that Blaine has a lot of new homes going in and now they have the TCAAP area to 34 consider, which would add more congestion on 35W than Medtronic. She stated that they would 35 not have all 6000 employees driving through the Mounds View area adding that the people who 36 do that do it now. She expressed concerns stating that sometimes it is made to look a lot worse 37 than what it going to be. She stated that you can’t say that 6000 employees are going to be 38 driving up and down the local roads, it is not going to happen. 39 40 Council Member Thomas agreed that the City already has a traffic problem and will continue to 41 have traffic problems noting that she would like to get as many of the cars into Mounds View as 42 they can because many of these cars would stop at local businesses. She stated that the City is 43 already aware of the traffic issues and must be addressed, but this is a separate problem. 44 45