Joint Meeting: Planning Commission and City Council

On Wednesday October 21st the Grand Marais City Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission met to discuss what stance the City is going to take on the Vacation Rental question.

This meeting was opened at 6:00pm with a summary of the action that had been taken in the past. I have summarized here for your information:

-The City Council asked the P&Z Commission to look into whether Vacation Rentals were an allowable use in the Residential (R1 & R2) zones.  It was found that there is no language in the ordinance that would allow for such activity

-In response, the P&Z decided, via a split vote, on June 3rd to reaffirm the language in the zoning ordinance that there are not to be lodging properties (short-term stay) in the residential zones. The conversation covered what the purpose of the residential zones was. The ordinance labels these zones as "permanent residence" and explains its purpose as:

"The R-1 Permanent Residence District is intended to provide a healthy, safe and attractive residential environment, protect property values and the environment and provide a mix of residential options, both seasonal and year around." Section 19.04

-The Council, on June 10th, accepted the P&Z's recommendation that there were not to be Vacation Rentals in the residential zone. Letters were written to known residents in violation of the ordinance.

-At the P&Z meeting on July 1st, members of the public operating Vacation Rentals in the Residential zone attended the meeting and discussed the situation. The P&Z asked the City Administrator to compile a list of options for rules that could potentially allow Vacation Rentals without negatively effecting the Residential zone.

-At the July 8th City Council meeting these members of the public attended the meeting and spoke in both public comment and when the agenda item came up. The Council listened and chose to wait to hear the options compiled for the next P&Z meeting.

-On August 5th the P&Z got together again to discuss the options. A list of nearly 40 options was presented to the Commission and there was a great deal of conversation, at times heated, about the path forward. In the end, the P&Z decided in another split vote to continue with the ordinance as written, not being convinced that the options presented would be either legal or sufficient.

-The August 12th Council meeting recapped the conversations and conclusions of the P&Z and added additional comments from the Council. It was concluded that there needed to be more time to hear public sentiment about the issue and that this should be discussed at a later date in a joint meeting of the P&Z and the Council.

-On September 2nd the P&Z met and reviewed the ordinance for potential confusing areas. They reached loggerheads without Council direction and chose to defer action until the joint meeting.

**So here we are everyone! That is quite a conversation and a journey.  At the meeting on the 21st the agenda was to create a final decision on Vacation Rentals in the residential zone as well as give direction to the P&Z for their process of reviewing the ordinance... but much more than that happened.

After the intro, there was some discussion about each person's thoughts regarding the situation. Several members expressed concern that the allowance of Vacation Rentals in the residential zone would open Grand Marais up to the same problems that are happening in many other heavy tourism locations: homes are being bought up at startling rates and being converted to rentals instead of residences. The number quoted from Administrator Roth concerning how many times a year he gets a call asking if someone can operate a lodging business in the residential zone was about 20. That number added to the concern.

Additional conversation was had about the existence of other commercial activities in the residential zone, which brought up the conversation about past ordinance and policy work affirming grandfathering of certain activities and locations. Seeing that there was really nothing to be said about the activities already allowed in the residential zone via ordinance and conditional use, the conversation shifted to ask if a vacation rental could be considered a conditional use.

This was a troublesome idea in that there was no clear answer. The ordinance simply states that "Home Occupations" are allowed... Since there is currently no definition of "Vacation Rental" or "Rental by Owner" in the ordinance, nor any formal definition speaking against it, it was concluded that this may be a possibility. This would have to pass the conditional use permit process, which requires a public hearing, which would be the place for community members to object to a specific use. The stipulation here would be that the person who owns the property would have to live there and that the business would have to be clearly auxiliary and secondary to the primary use as a permanent residence.  There was no clear decision made concerning this at this meeting, but direction was given to the P&Z to look into this.

The conversation covered the same ground several times in slightly different ways with hypothetical situations being introduced and examples from other areas being used. There was also conversation about the City's upcoming Comprehensive Planning efforts in 2016 and how that would be an ideal time to do a full overhaul of the zoning ordinance. In the meantime, however, the consensus was that we shouldn't do significant changes to the ordinance without having significant public comment and process.

In the end the Council made a motion to uphold the ordinance as written and empowered Administrator Roth to create a few draft scenarios for informing and encouraging those in violation of the ordinance to get back into compliance. This motion also empowered the P&Z to address the terminology shortfalls of the zoning ordinance and work on updating the language in confusing parts of the ordinance in correlation with the Council's decision that Vacation Rentals are not to be allowed in the residential zone.

As in any decision, it is very important to consider all sides and weigh the pros and cons. There are definite pros and cons on both side of this issue and that is not something to take lightly. Any decision that impacts residents of the City should be thoroughly thought out and carefully made. I believe that the Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council did a pretty good job of doing this, even if the result was not exactly what everyone would have wanted.

*Thank you to everyone who contacted me with opinions on this matter. I took all of them seriously and brought it all to the table for discussion. I received over 30 comments on this matter and appreciate your involvement!

As always, if you would like to discuss this further, please let me know and I will find some time to sit down with you.

City Council Meeting 10-9-15

Well it happened again!

With fall upon us and winter just around the corner, I have gotten behind in my chores around the house and thus have gotten behind in my blogging as well.

Here is the summary of what happened at our last meeting of the City Council on Wednesday night.

We called the meeting to order right at 6:30pm with the opening of the public forum. No one came forward to speak, so the forum was closed and we moved on to the Consent Agenda.

The Consent Agenda included the usual three items, bills, minutes of the previous meeting, and the agenda for this meeting. See no fault in them, the motion was made and passed to approve the Consent Agenda!

We then had a conversation with Maren Webb of Moving Matters Cook County, who explained that Moving Matters was likely to receive another 2 years of funding for its program and was looking for ways that it could assist the City in helping to improve health and wellness within it.  The Council explained that we would like to begin work on our Comprehensive Plan next year and thus would welcome assistance in putting together a process of public meetings so that community members could discuss potential changes and be a part of the broader conversation.  Ms. Webb expressed agreement that this would be something Moving Matters could do.

There was also conversation about the relationship between the City and outside organizations.  It was clear that the Council wanted Moving Matters to know that they would be assisting the City in achieving its planning goals and not the other way around. Thus, the relationship between the City and Moving Matters would be written along these lines: The City will work to create a Comprehensive Plan that will be able to inform and direct community decisions based on the principles and priorities expressed by the community. Moving Matters will help facilitate that conversation.  This seemed agreeable to both parties so we thanked Ms. Webb for her time, nodded approval, and moved on.

The next conversation revolved around the Indigenous People's Day Proclamation declared on October 5th. Administrator Roth prepared the proclamation in Resolution form with the assistance of Councilor Moody for the Council to consider. The vote was called and it passed unanimously.

Next, Fire Chief Silence sent us a request to hire another volunteer fire fighter for our department. It appears that due to some retirements from the department, we are currently hovering around 20 for membership when we would like to be around 22-25. The Council approved this request and would be excited to hear from Chief Silence again with another hire request!
*For explanation, the Grand Marais Volunteer Fire Department is a fully trained, equipped fire department. Our fire-fighters are more "on-call" than volunteer as they get compensation for their active time for certain events and they get a retirement plan as per MN state law.

We then moved on to staff and Council reports:

Council Moody reported on the EDA meeting where they moved closer to creating a work-force housing project here in Grand Marais. This project would be a small-scale pilot project and would inform future directions to take. There was a lot of excitement around this project. Also, the EDA is looking to hire a director after several years of operating without one. The details of this position will be forthcoming.
In addition, there is an EDA Board seat vacancy for a County rep that they are looking to fill.  If you know anyone, or are anyone, who would like to contribute to the EDA's work in our area, please contact Councilor Moody or any of the other members of the EDA.
Tuesday, October 27th the EDA will be making its case before the County Board for funding for the 2016 year.
The Golf Course (Superior National) reported that rounds were up and thus revenue were up. Hurray for good weather!


Councilor Benson had done some research on different liquor store design firms and potential places we could go to get more information about what we should have at our liquor store (i.e. square footage, layout, product, etc).

I sat in on a Grand Marais Area Tourism Association meeting where a lot happened:
-There are plans to do a downtown "Christmas Village" from Thanksgiving weekend to January 1. This will include specially set up Christmas lights and decorations, a store front display contest, and much more.
-There have been more conversations between Visit Cook County and the snowmobile club looking at how they can work together to produce the annual snowmobile map for the area trails. The snowmobile club prints thousands of these maps and collects advertising revenue from it, so it is something that they would like to keep their hands on.
-There were some complaints about the downtown alleys being loud and cluttered with illegally parked vehicles as well as trash being disposed of in places where it shouldn't be. I told them that I would speak with the Sheriff about what we can do about that.

Councilor Mills had a Northwoods Food Project meeting where they discussed the Green Dollars Survey that was done earlier this year. It turns out that the results seem skewed because of the expense of maple syrup production and commercial fishing, which produce a LOT of local food, but not to the end that the survey was looking for.
-He also reported on the park board meeting where they discussed and approved rate raises for the rec park itself. This was met with consternation from the campers and is a continuing conversation.

Councilor Kennedy went to the Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails meeting where they discussed the importance of "Regional Parks." Regional parks are those parks that have a significant regional impact. He was wondering if it would be appropriate to seek designation for the rec park as a regional park so that it would open it up for Legacy funds, which could fund a renovation of a significant part of the park. There was no conversation about that, but encouragement for him to do some research.
-He also went to the Moving Matters meeting where they talked about how important food is to our community and how that impacts many other parts of life. Very true.

After that we wrapped up the meeting and started making plans for our next meeting, a joint planning and zoning commission meeting on Wednesday October 21 to discuss Vacation rentals. More to come on that one!

As always, let me know if you have any comments or questions. I will do my best to answer them!

The New City Garage Conversation-- Explained

In the past week I have been receiving many phone calls (as well as other Councilors) and have read the letters to the editor in the paper concerning the City's plan to purchase the "Tomteboda" property also known at 1800 W Hwy 61 for the construction of the City's new garages. I wanted to take this moment to apologize for not writing about the conversations the City has had earlier and to explain the thinking that caused the decision we made.


Why rebuilt the garages in the first place?

There are two answers to this:
1.) The garages are inadequate for the City's Streets/PUC/Park Departments to use. They are very old, very inefficient, and in a location that causes problems for Rec. Park users both in noise and safety concerns. It has been on the City's "to do" list for many years to rebuild these garages in another location to free up the space on the Shore.
2.) The MN DNR is working with/for the City to get around $2 million in bonding money for a project to renovate the boat launch in the Rec. Park, create additional parking, create a nature trail, create safe pedestrian pathways, etc. A summary of this project can be found here:
http://www.grandmaraisrecreationarea.com/grand-marais/documents/GrandMaraisParkside82715.pdf
The City's part of this plan is to get the garages out of there so that the work can be done.
*This project has not been funded yet, the City is choosing to move on the confidence that it will and the fall back fact that the garages need to be rebuilt because of location/condition concerns.
*If this project gets funded, the DNR, not the City, will hold the bonds, so the City will be making no payments on the project, we will simply be maintaining it.


What locations have been considered?

Several locations have been considered over the past 10+ years for this project. Other Councils have identified this as a need and have taken steps to work on it.

There was a brief conversation several years ago between the City, County, MN DOT about reconstructing a joint garage location between all of these organizations. This conversation quickly showed that the different entities probably couldn't share a facility due to rules and regulations as well as the fact that the joint space would be larger than any existing parcel of land available near the City... So that one was scrapped by past Councils.

One location that was identified was the County Garage located near the school bus garages. This would meet our needs and is already set up for the uses we would need... problem is that it is currently in use by the County and will be for the foreseeable future, so it really isn't an option.

The second conversation about location aimed at the EDA Business Park. Past Councils identified a location for the garage structure, created design drawings, and got building estimates put together. The proposed garage facility in the EDA Business Park was estimated to cost the City $3-4 million. When the current Council heard these numbers we were put back a bit at the number and took a closer look. The numbers accounted for the expense in a number of ways:

Reasons for High Expense:
1.) Purchase of the Business Park lots. The Cook County/Grand Marais EDA owns the Business Park and thus a purchase would have to be arranged for the City to possess and build on land in the Business Park.

2.) Based on the size of the garage facility (10,000 sq. ft. of garage space and 15,000 sq. ft of flat cold storage space as well as driveways, set-backs, etc) the City would have to purchase 4-5 Business Park lots, which are currently listed for sale for $50,000 or $45,000. Immediately we have a nearly $200,000-$250,000 price tag building up. Could the City get a deal on the lots? Probably, but remember that the City and the County have bonding on the Business Park. Bonding that is to be paid off from the proceeds of the sale of Business Park lots...

3.) Developing 4-5 Business Park lots for one project is significantly more expensive than developing 1 lot for a project. To create a 25,000 sq. ft site disturbance in the form of flat area in the Business Park (which isn't that flat) would require nearly $1 million in landscaping (filling, grading, wetland mitigation, etc). If a business wanted to develop one lot for their own purposes, the cost would be significantly lower and easier to manage. This was a big consideration for the Council. We would rather see small businesses in the business park paying taxes and contributing to the economy in lots that are more accessible to them than to have the City take up 1/7th of the Business Park if there is a better/cheaper option.

4.) Building Size: the design for the Business Park included two structures, one for heated storage of vehicles/equipment, and one for cold storage. Ideally these two structures could be combined for construction savings, but in the Business Park design there wasn't a large enough location for a combined structure, so two buildings would be built on a terraced location.


**After looking at these things, the Council decided to look at other options; to see if there were any other locations that could potentially fit our needs for less money.  The comment was made about the Tomteboda property and the investigation began.


Tomteboda Conversation:

When we began the conversation we discovered that the North Shore Federal Credit Union owned the property and was very interested in selling it. The City Council did some quick estimates about building on that site and came back with the following:
1.) Most of the necessary utilities are already in place and serviceable.
2.) The location is flat and easily accessed.
3.) The location has no wetland mitigation problems.
4.) The location is large enough to easily accommodate the needs of the City Departments.
5.) The location is available with a motivated seller.

We then began the conversation about how much would we be willing to pay for the property, as it was being offered for a sum that the Council was not willing to pay. The conversation went back and forth and the asking price that we offered was agreed upon. I cannot go into detail about the conversation because that would be in violation of the closed meeting rule, which is in place to protect the negotiating ability of public entities...

We submitted this offer and then had a Phase 1 study done on the land to find out if there were any unforeseen hazards that would disqualify this property from consideration. The Phase 1 study showed no direct contamination, but potential for soil contamination from migrating contaminations from neighboring properties and potential contamination from a buried fuel tank. These were taken into consideration, but did not disqualify the property from consideration as the potential cleanup costs would be trivial compared to the landscaping bill at the other location.

**So that is how we got to our conclusion. I hope that this has answered some of your questions.  I would like to also directly answer some questions that I have received directly for your consideration:


1.) Why take Hwy 61 property off of the tax roll for a City Garage?

Wherever the City moves the garage, which has been identified as a necessity, there will be a tax shift. The Council saw that we could lessen the tax impact by leaving the commercial rate property in the Business Park, thus freeing up the sale of those lots to pay back the bonding on the property instead of attempting to buy those lots for less than market value, thus short-changing the bonding agreement.

2.) How will this impact the appearance of Grand Marais as you roll into town?

Concerns have been shared about the presence of an industrial garage building not being what they want to see as you roll into town. Understandable. The City Council has not yet developed a site plan, but preliminary conversations have led to an emphasis on maintaining curb appeal either by locating the garage structures toward the back of the property, or the possibility of the City re-selling a commercial lot on the highway if there is adequate space.

3.) What about lodging properties?

This is a hard question to answer. I honestly don't have an answer. I do know, however, that the lodging property that is currently operating at the top of the hill struggles to get business and that something needs to happen up there to change that. What is that change? I don't know, but I hope that a reinvestment by the City up there can make some difference. The Tomteboda property itself is realistically beyond its tenure as a lodging property and future developments of that property were unlikely. I admit that I cannot see the future, so I understand if some of your disagree with this assessment.

4.) What about neighboring property owners and noise?

This is also a hard question to answer. I have not talked with neighboring property owners to the property in question and would not like to put words into their mouths. I would encourage any of those owners to contact me if they have any concerns about this.
*As a property owner near the Hwy 61 corridor, I feel that the noise that comes off of the highway itself will be much more significant than any noise produced by the garage facility, but again, I cannot say this for certain.
*Removing the garage facility from the Rec. Park will remove one of the complaints that is often brought up to the Rec. Park staff from seasonal users. I believe that to be a good thing.


**In closing, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on this matter. Any expenditure by the City is a big deal and something that needs to be thoroughly considered. I hope that this blog post will help you to understand that the Council DID and WILL consider these decisions at length and felt that we were making a decision that would best serve the community by being the most cost effective, and would have the most positive long term impact.

Indigenous Peoples' Day Grand Marais

I returned yesterday to my beloved town after spending about 2 weeks on a working vacation out in North Dakota. As beautiful as it is, there is truly NO PLACE LIKE HOME!

As I tried to settle in, I read some of the news of the past few weeks and reflected on all of the commentary I have heard concerning Indigenous Peoples Day and the honoring of those people who came before us and first inhabited this area, laying down a foundational culture that we still rely on today.

With that said, and with my limited ability to impact this situation, I would like to make the following proclamation:

PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, the City of Grand Marais recognizes that the Indigenous Peoples of the lands that would later become known as the Americas have occupied these lands since time immemorial; and

WHEREAS, the City of Grand Marais recognizes that Grand Marais is built upon and shares the homelands and villages of the Indigenous Peoples of this region, without whose knowledge, labor, technology, science, philosophy, arts, and deep cultural contribution the building of the City and the City’s character would not have been possible; and

WHEREAS, the City of Grand Marais has a responsibility to oppose the systemic racism and misunderstanding towards Indigenous People in the United States, which perpetuates poverty and income inequality, and erodes access to health, education, and social stability; and

WHEREAS, Indigenous Peoples’ Day was first proposed in 1977 by a delegation of Native Nations to the United Nations sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that I, Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, Mayor of the City of Grand Marais, do hereby proclaim the following:

Section 1. The Indigenous Peoples’ Day shall be an opportunity to celebrate the thriving cultures and positive values of the Indigenous Peoples of our region.

Section 2. The Cook County Public Schools and other educational institutions are encouraged to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Section 3. The businesses, organizations, and public institutions are encouraged to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Section 4. Indigenous Peoples’ Day shall be used to reflect upon the ongoing struggles of Indigenous People, and to celebrate the thriving culture and value that Indigenous nations add to our city.

Section 5. The second Monday in October shall be declared as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the City of Grand Marais.

SIGNED IN THE CITY OF GRAND MARAIS, MINNESOTA, THIS 5TH DAY OF OCTOBER, 2015.

Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux

Mayor