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February 15, 2022 Page 3 For Comprehensive Plan amendments, the process is more complex. The Planning Commission holds the public hearing, and the City Council then is asked to approve the amendment for the purposes of notifying adjoining or affected jurisdictions (neighboring cities, watershed districts, school districts, affected state agencies, etc.). The jurisdictions have up to 6 months to comment on the proposed amendment. Once those comments are received, the City decides how to respond to the comments, and then sends the proposed amendment (with the comments and responses) to the Metropolitan Council for review and comment. The Met Council is responsible for reviewing the document for its consistency with regional plans adopted by the Council. The Met Council will review the proposed impacts on several factors, including population projections, road and traffic considerations, impacts on regional parks, housing (and affordable housing impact), and sanitary sewer impacts – among others. This process parallels the original adoption of the 2040 plan, which was prepared under the requirements of the Met Council as well. For the 2040 plan to be approved, the City was required to show how its future land use plan provided adequate land areas for the population and housing projections made by Met Council, along with the City’s required allocation of affordable housing units, also assigned by Met Council. At the time the Comprehensive Plan was being prepared, there were no specific redevelopment plans for the subject property. The property owner had removed most of the buildings in the manufactured home park, but for a few retained homes and a few common/maintenance buildings. The City adopted its new land use plan with newly revised density allowances (between20 and 40 units per acre) while at the time, the property owner was preparing the site for redevelopment. Planning staff is unaware of any specific redevelopment plans provided to the city in the form of development or zoning applications or site plan requests during this period, and no formal applications were made. After a series of back-and-forth negotiations with Met Council staff, the Met Council formally approved the Comprehensive Plan in April of 2020 – although the formal submissions were occurring during previous 12 months. Also during this period, the property owner began redevelopment of the property as a manufactured home park. The City considered the manufactured home park a continuing “grandfathered” use since there had been some buildings retained during the period that the park appeared to be mostly closed. The only formal land use application made during this period was for the subdivision removing the westerly 4+ acres from the bulk of the property, which is currently under development of a senior housing project. Current Amendment Application. As noted, the applicant is seeking a revision to the Land Use Plan, redesignating the land from High- to Low-Density Residential. To pursue this amendment, the City will need to revise more than the map, since the map is directly tied to many of the numbers used elsewhere in the plan for sewer, traffic, and most notably, housing. Because the Comprehensive Plan was approved with a fixed requirement for new housing units, and a component of affordable units, the land use guidance for this site afforded the opportunity to assign several of those unit allocations. The Met Council staff’s approval