And I'm Back! Council Meeting 8/12/15

Last night the City Council met yet again for a meeting and discussed a wide variety of topics that I feel are of pretty great significance!

Before I get too carried away I wanted to let you all know that I will be getting the last two meeting summaries out in the next few days. I fell behind in my summaries due to summer busyness. I hope you understand (I know some of you do!)!

All right: The meeting was called to order right at 6:30pm, every Councilor was in attendance.


For the public comment period two community members came forward to speak.

The first, Tod Sylvester spoke in favor of allowing vacation rentals to operate in the R-1 Residential Zone and cited a number of perceived inconsistencies between the actions of the city and its own policies. He mentioned that if vacation rentals were not to be allowed in the residential zone that other commercial entities should not be allowed as well, identifying the Bowen Studio as an example. He went on to say that there are three ways to change these policies, by public request, by Council request, or by Planning Commission request.

The second, David Beckwith, spoke concerning allowing vacation rentals in the R-1 Residential Zone as well. He stated that it is the Planning Commission and City Council's responsibility to serve the people of Grand Marais and he feels that may not be happening. He sees conflicts of interest and favoritism in the decisions made by the Council and Commission and feels that the Commission, on which he serves, did not succeed in its latest charge from the City Council to help find ways for those residents out of compliance with the R-1 zoning ordinance to get back into compliance. He cited the example of the EDA's business park as an example of when the Council has changed zoning for a specific reason and questioned whether the Bowen Studio has the appropriate permits/permissions to operate as it does.

*After Mr. Beckwith, no other community members spoke.

We moved directly into the consent agenda, the standard business of each meeting, with the addition of a temporary beer permit for North House Folk School to sell beer on its premises for 4 days during its annual Unplugged Festival. Because there was no change in the application or situation from previous years and everything has been in compliance, this was added to the consent agenda and passed unanimously.

Next the Planning Commission update was up.  There were two items: 1. Ravenwood Final Plat approval and 2. Further discussion on the Vacation Rentals in Residential zone.

1. Ravenwood Final Plat-- This request harkens back a few years to a proposed development on the west side of Grand Marais (on top of the hill) for 6 lots to be developed.  Since these lots are within the city limits, but are not going to be connected to city sewer and water, the lots needed to be larger than 1.5 acres, which they are. The plat included the renaming of an already existing, but undeveloped road to Ravenwood Road. Allegedly the existing road was platted about 90 years ago, but was never developed. Seeing no inconsistencies and having all of the paperwork in good order, the Council approved the final plat unanimously.

2. Vacation Rentals in the Residential Zone-- The conversation continues... Councilor Kennedy explained that at the last Planning Commission meeting City Administrator Roth provided the Commission with numerous (roughly 30) potential actions that the Commission could take to rectify the current situation. They varied from adopting a licensing procedure for vacation rentals to limiting the number per block to having a community approval process for all vacation rentals, etc. These suggestions each had very specific precedents and consequences, which were valuable to see. Despite significant disagreement on the Planning Commission the Commission voted to not change the current zoning ordinance until there has been more time for public comment and research.

The Council asked many questions of Councilor Kennedy and sought to learn more about the history of the R-1 Residential Zone, which was originally created in 1971 and which has been updated several times. It appeared in this conversation that there was indeed some inconsistencies in the R-1 zoning description and what is currently happening in the zone. There are some grandfathered activities, there are a few ordinance approved activities, exceptions, etc. After hearing all of this, the Council came to the conclusion that although the R-1 zone has been operating for over 40 years and has successfully created our neighborhoods, it is likely time to revisit it and see if we can do some overhaul work on it. This work could go several ways and there will be many items of consideration.

Some of these items are:
What does the community feel about specific activities other than residential in the residential zone?
What is the desired "feel" of the residential zone we are looking for?
What are the current conditional uses?
What are the historic conditional uses?
Why were they changed?
What activities are currently happening in the R-1 zone?
What are the exceptions/grandfatherings/special ordinance uses?
Why are they allowed/are they still appropriate?

*The Council is looking deeply into this so that we can make sure that our residents feel comfortable living in Grand Marais and so that we can make sure that our already limited housing stock does not become more stressed. This doesn't necessarily mean that there will not be any conditional uses in the R-1 Zone, but we need to turn the ordinance over and make sure that we are consistent in the application of those conditional uses so the residential zone remains a residential zone.

The Council is scheduling a work session to focus on the R-1 Zone along with the Planning Commission. Our hope is that the joint work session will get us to a point of agreement on the nature of the residential zone compared to conditional uses and to see what remains consistent.

**I would like to know what YOU think about this. What are your feelings about activities other than residential activities in the R-1 zone? We are looking for feedback beyond vacation rentals.


After coming to an agreement to hold the work session in order to dig in deeper to the R-1 situation, the Council had to approve the second reading of the ordinance to allow limited residential activities in the far western lots in the EDA business park. There was no objections to the ordinance and thus it passed unanimously. It was said that there have already been inquiries into those lots, so hopefully we will see some more activity in the EDA business park!


Next came a conversation about renovating the City's website. I have had numerous conversations with residents and visitors alike that have stated the City's website is hard to use and navigate, and it lacks a lot of information that should be there.  These complaints have not been overwhelming, but I do get the sense that more people would access the information on the website if it was more user friendly.  Well, the process has begun. The City's Financial Director, Kim Dunsmoor, prepared a few bids from the current host and designer of our website, govoffice, for a renovation. It looked like a full renovation would cost around $5,000, with a basic home page overhaul being something in the neighborhood of $400. Questions were asked as to whether we could entertain another designer and the answer was, of course we can. So the Council was sent home with some homework. Look at other city websites, create a list of items that you like or feel we should have, and come back to share those. When we get an idea of the usability we are looking for, we can specifically request from local designers and govoffice to see how much that would cost.  This is not a high priority item, however we would like to see this happen in the next year to increase traffic and usability to our website.


The next, and very important piece of our meeting was renewing our contract with MMUA (Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association) for providing our safety oversight as a city. We have had a very strong relationship with MMUA for many years and have been very satisfied with the services they provide. What do they provide? They provide us with safety oversight so that we don't get fined by OSHA and so our municipal operations remain safe.  The amount of the contract is $14,200, which may seem like a lot of money, but when you look at the fact that we NEED to meet the OSHA standards and the only other options we would have to get this level of assistance with the OSHA criteria would be to either train one of our current employees to know everything there is to know about this topic on top of their current position or to hire a new person, $14,200 seems like a very good deal. For perspective, OSHA fines START at $5,000 and can go up to over $500,000 in the case of a death of an employee... Needless to say, this is a cheap insurance policy to make sure we are in compliance...


As one of the last items for the night we set a date to meet with department heads to discuss budget expectations as well as the Council's direction for potential budget instructions.  I will be writing more of a description of the City's budget process as an editorial for the paper, so stay tuned for that.  Right now the Council is digging in to how we can plan for the future projects that have been identified and keep the levy as low as we can.  That is not going to be an easy process, but I will be describing the process as best I can in the paper.


For Council Reports:

Councilor Moody reported on an exciting trip the EDA took to Duluth to meet with the organization called One Roof.  This organization works to renovate/build homes for workforce/affordable housing and has a proven track record for their model.  The EDA is excited about a potential partnership or some sort of assistance to get a similar model in the works in Grand Marais. Overall it sounded pretty positive!

Councilor Mills reported that it was a busy park board meeting with conversations taking place about vehicle noise, pets (and stray animals), concerns about how park revenues are distributed to the City (currently the park board sets a budget and the revenues for the park go straight to the City, and thus any profits go to the general fund to assist in keeping property taxes down), and Councilor Mills asked if there was/is a memorial policy for people donating memorials.  He also inquired about the Art Policy Committee that was being started by then Councilor Sivertson. There hasn't been much activity on either front.

Councilor Kennedy said that all of his updates were already made in the meeting, so he didn't have anything further to share.

I had a short list of things that I brought up. First off, I had a meeting with Erin Murphy, who is the majority leader of the MN House of Representatives. I spoke with her about some of the issues facing Grand Marais and the projects that the City would like to move forward with and sought her help in finding funding sources/solutions. It was a very helpful meeting in my understanding of the overall structure of how things are accomplished on the state level...

I also went to a meeting with local AEOA representative Anita Jeziah and a number of community members to discuss the possibility of putting together a Community Connect program.  This program is a venue for local service providers and other community groups to reach out to residents of an area and make a meaningful connection.  It was decided at this meeting that a relationship would be pursued with Ruby's Pantry because the venue already exists and would be an ideal compliment of that program.  More to come.

I attended a meeting at ISD 166 concerning the ground level conversations about building a cooperative ECFE/Special Ed/possible daycare/possible other services building at or near the school's campus.  This meeting was very early stage, there have been no decisions made concerning this, it is basically still exploratory. There were two state legislators there who were providing information concerning if facilities like this have been built before and where the money came from for them.

I have also heard from more residents that 5th Ave W and Hwy 61 is getting really bad for pedestrians and we will make sure that the flags get out there as soon as possible to help people cross.

I think that is about it! Whew!

As always, let me know if you have any questions or comments!