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City Council Regular Meeting Minutes January 26, 2021 Page 7 NE, as wells as many residents of the Kensington at 2601 Kenzie Terrace. She noted in the 1 packet are multiple letters from concerned residents and a petition signed by more than 70 2 residents of the Kensington, identifying concerns not addressed by the Planning Commission. 3 She really values the work of the staff and of the Planning Commission and the Council that 4 contribute their time to ensure that St. Anthony is a place where people want to live. As 5 concerned citizen, as committed residents here they do feel like it is their responsibility to point 6 out the concerns that have arisen with this. She noted the residents do not have any animosity 7 towards Tom, personally, and really do appreciate that he has been a good neighbor with his car 8 business. However, a car wash is not consistent with St. Anthony Code. It is not an appropriate 9 use of the land he owns. The residents would be willing to engage with him around planning for 10 an alternate business and would have engaged earlier if he had reached out prior to submitting 11 the application. The residents feel that the Planning Commission has not fulfilled their statutory 12 responsibility relative to the Conditional Use Permit for this commercially zoned property that is 13 adjacent to single family and multiple family homes. She explained during the December 15th 14 Planning Commission meeting when asked who burden it was to provide hard evidence of 15 detrimental effect Mr. Grittman incorrectly stated the burden would be on the people making the 16 claim of detrimental value. In fact, as noted in the letter from Tim Keane, Attorney at Law, 17 Minnesota case law shows that the burden is actually on the applicant to prove, based on facts 18 and the record that the use will conform. There has been no such request from the Planning 19 Commission to that applicant. Even though the Planning Commission recommended approval of 20 the CUP, during the December 15th Commission discussion, Commissioner Socha stated she had 21 a hard seeing how it would not be detrimental to some point on neighboring property values and 22 the neighbors agree. In the absence of Planning Commission or applicant action St. Anthony 23 residents did solicit expert opinion so this is not fear of the unknown, this is actually the residents 24 solicited expert opinions, and while these were provided to the Planning Commission before the 25 January 19th meeting, they were not considered. Real Estate agents are considered as experts 26 relative to property value and in the Council packet there are two letters from independent real 27 estate agents, Kathy Daniels, and Ella Ritzman, noting significant negative impact on property 28 values on adjacent single family and multi-family homes. There is also a letter from Steve 29 Platisha, who is professional engineer and noise expert. Based on the decibel levels provided to 30 Tom and in response to a neighbor’s question during the December Commission meeting, the 31 noise expert states that a vacuum at a car wash dryer noise at this level occurred for more than 32 six minutes an hour, the levels would exceed State Noise Pollution Standards. She stated 33 nowhere in the application nor at the planner’s analysis were specific decibel levels requested, 34 described nor analyzed. 35 36 Ms. Zarhbock stated the City Planner and Planning Commission also neglected to consider or 37 assess the impact of air pollution from idling cars and offered no mitigation from this detrimental 38 impact. The car wash plan as seen allows for two lanes of cars idling resulting in sixteen cars 39 waiting their turn in the car wash. These are directly adjacent to the alley which is directly 40 adjacent to backyards as well as the patios and balconies of the Kenzington. This Conditional 41 Use Permit approval is not consistent with St. Anthony’s sustainability plan and it is committed 42 to a reduction of cars idling through the young lungs at work initiative developed due to 43 documented pollution and ill effects of idling cars. The Planning Commission also neglected to 44 consider the impact of noise pollution from car radios while cars wait their turn in the car wash 45 and offered no mitigation to this detrimental impact. She stated in summary, they respectfully 46 7