City Council Meeting 2/10/16

The City Council met on the 10th in the midst of a community debate concerning development to discuss a great number of things in addition to that. I have tried to summarize the comments made by the 30+ people in attendance at the meeting, but will not be able to catch them all... for this I apologize, but I have tried to summarize as best I can.

The meeting was called to order at 6:30 with all of the Councilors present except for Councilor Benson who was out of town for her knee surgery (get well soon Tracy!).

The public forum was then opened and many community members spoke. Several voiced their support for an incoming Dollar General store to the community saying that we should be welcoming new business and growth to our community under the right of free enterprise in our country. They stated that this store would sell low-cost items that would be a boon for the low-income residents of our community who struggle to purchase the goods they need on their income in our community. In response to other comments concerning the aesthetics of such a new development, they also pointed out that the top of the hill (what I call "Uptown" Grand Marais) isn't anything special to look at right now and it needs a lot of revitalization. These folks also made reference to the fact that there are already dozens of corporate entities doing business in Grand Marais, so excluding another doesn't seem fair and may not be legal. Another comment was stating that other communities that thrive on tourism dollars have allowed these stores into their cities and haven't become hollow shells because of it. This would bring in new jobs, availability of goods, more property taxes, and could jumpstart development in Uptown Grand Marais.

*This is a summary of the comments given, not the particular comments of any particular guest to the meeting.

The other side of the issue also spoke and commented on how our fragile economy up here wouldn't be able to support the corporate presence of Dollar General and there would be business casualties. One person commented that Dollar General expects its stores to produce $1.5 million in gross sales a year or else it is closed (I have not verified this claim), which could then take a local business out and leave a hole in our area. Others disagreed with the aesthetics of the buildings, others spoke that we don't need to be sending any more of our area's money to corporate headquarters in Tennessee.

With that the comments on the Dollar General/commercial development situation were closed.

We also had Jeremy Kershaw of Heck of the North Productions say hello to the Council and invite the Council to consider paticipate in his upcoming race "Le Grand Du Nord," which will be happening on May 28th. He hopes to draw between 100 and 300 hearty bikers to ride the endless gravel of the Superior National Forest in a 50 and 100 mile route.

After these comments the public comment period was closed and we moved on to the consent agenda.

The Consent Agenda was composed of the typical 3 items, but included one extra, which was the request from the Hospital to receive payment for the first part of the IRRRB grant monies that were awarded to benefit the expansion project. This is our responsibility as the fiscal agent of the grant and was found to be in good order with the expectations of the grant, so it was included in the Consent Agenda because it is our requirement to approve it. The Consent Agenda was approved unanimously.

After that we had Maren Webb and Kristen DeArruda-Wharton update the Council on the Safe Routes to School efforts over the past year and remind the City of the three items that we committed to do in support of their efforts. The City has been executing those things or moving toward more full implementation, so that looked pretty good! Ms. Webb reported that the Safe Routes to School group has been successfully working with many groups in the community including the County government, the School Board, the City Council, Law Enforcement, and Public Health and Human Services. They have organized the annual Bike Rodeo and Walking School Bus program (which many of the City Councilors have participated in!) among many other efforts to create a safe, walkable environment for students coming to and leaving the school building. Councilor Kennedy reported that progress is noticeable and well defined and he appreciated those facts as well as all of the unseen work that the Safe Routes Committee has done. With those closing comments, Ms. Webb asked for a motion from the Council of support for the program (no funding, just continuing participation). This motion was made and passed unanimously.

The next thing on the agenda was a licensing logistics issue regarding the American Legion's Liquor License. Since the Legion is a "club," meaning that it limits the people who can be members and thus take advantage of their services, they have had a "club" license for many years. Since the Legion itself is turning over management of the bar and grill part of the business to a newly formed management company for financial reasons, this club license doesn't technically apply any more. Thus, the new management company is applying for a full liquor license to meet their needs. This was passed unanimously and the Council wishes them much success in this new model!

Following that, George Wilkes and Staci Droulliard of the Cook County Local Energy Project came before the Council for their annual update. They presented a summary of the 2015 activity they achieved:
-Solar Electric Toolbox which is available at the library and City Hall
-Solar Thermal monitoring and summary materials
-REEP (Residential Energy Efficiency Program) Summary
-PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) Program which provides up front financing for energy efficiency projects on private property
-39 Contractors and residents participated in the annual building workshop
-They worked with the company that did the City's building performance assessment to create plans for increased efficiency.
-They worked with the County on their Land Use Plan
-They worked with North House to develop skill shares for energy efficiency and renewable energy
**Their 2016 work plan is equally ambitious. You can find all of this information on the CCLEP website.
In conclusion of their presentation, they made a request of the Council for the same funding in the 2016 year as they received in the 2015 year, $2000. This money helps CCLEP offer its resources to City residents and put together the programs that many City residents benefit from passively or actively. The Council made and passed this motion unanimously.

The next item on the agenda was the Green Dollar Survey, which was tabled for the next meeting due to time concerns and that the materials were not completely prepared for the presentation.


Next we got to the bulk of the meeting. Followup to the Special Meeting called for 2-8-16.
To summarize, the Special Meeting on Monday, February 8th was called because of overwhelming community concern regarding the potential development of a "small box" corporate store within the City limits in the Commercial Industrial zone. At this meeting, which was attended by over 70 people, all but 2 present spoke against the store speaking of its impact on our area. Since that Monday myself and many City Councilors have been approached many times by people on both sides of the issue and have had some time to consider the City's options. At the Monday night meeting, the vast majority of those that spoke encouraged the Council to enact a development moratorium on commercial development in the City in order to prevent this business from coming in until the community has a chance to think about it and weigh in. No action was taken at that meeting, but much conversation was had.

On Wednesday, Feb 10th, though, the Council revisited the topic and were looking to take some action or decide that there was no action to be taken. The conversation started with me giving a brief recap of the meeting and the perspectives that were shared and then it was suggested that the Council take a look at what a moratorium would look like. Administrator Roth provided a sample "Interim Ordinance" which is the term used for an ordinance that is supposed to be effective in the "interim" of a specific action. In short that means that the City can only pass a moratorium if there is some outstanding reason WHY. You can't just do it for the heck of it, you need a reason. Our reason was simply for us to be able to go through our Comprehensive Planning process and thus see if such a business is in the vision of our community for the future. Our lawyer, who was listening on the phone, advised that we need to make the reason more specific than that, because the action you want to stop has to be directly impacting your ability to follow out the action that you want to take and Comprehensive Planning can be done with development happening.

Councilor Moody also brought up that the EDA was very concerned that a moratorium would limit or dissuade other projects that have been in the works and encouraged the Council to find a way, if there is to be a moratorium, that other projects will not be hindered.

In response to that, and because I was uncomfortable with the way the interim ordinance language was written, I suggested that we trim down the moratorium to only include the Commercial Industrial Zone, excluding all other City Zones from the moratorium. Councilor Kennedy agreed with this idea and explained that the C/I Zone's section of the ordinance is pretty outdated and needs some serious attention if we are going to be attracting any kind of new development to that zone. If that is our purpose: to rework the C/I Zone language so that it more effectively assists in directing developing in that zone, then that is exactly the reason that you would enact a moratorium on development. Our lawyer agreed with that and shared that he thought it was a pretty clear and clean way of putting it. It was also added by someone on the Council that reworking the C/I Zone language is clearly a part of the Comprehensive Plan and thus we are staying true to our intent in taking an action such as passing a moratorium.

**This was the first time that any of the Councilors have ever had to do something like this and thus it was a pretty slow process with a lot of questions being asked and a lot of "what-ifs." I know that I was uncomfortable approaching this topic because of all of the comments that I had received over the past week concerning the potential development and I was and still am torn on the issue. On one hand I believe that a large corporate business would have a hard time making it up here and would hurt our established businesses, many of whom operate at a loss in the winter to keep serving our community. On the other hand, there are people in our community who are hurting and this could really help them. We CAN'T forget these people. BOTTOM LINE.

I was encouraged throughout the conversation that the Councilors were talking about the moratorium not in the sense that it would stop any particular development, but that it would give us time to give due diligence to the process that we identified last year as being so important. This gives me hope that we can find a solution to the shortcomings of our community from within our community or at least being sensitive to the true nature of our community.

In the end, the Council authorized work to be done as a study of the C/I Zone language and thus enacted a temporary moratorium on commercial construction in that zone over 5,000 square feet. The Council decided on 5000 square feet based on the actual reported square footage of many of the other stores in our community (Johnson's Foods, Holiday, Super America, Buck's, IGA, Coop).

This action gives the City up to one year to complete this study. If we complete the zoning ordinance reworking in June and the community feels good about it, the Council will remove the moratorium and things will all be running under the new ordinance.

We weren't done yet after that though!
Jim Boyd from the Chamber of Commerce approached the Council looking for a partnership in continuing to employ Judy Erickson, who has worked with the Chamber for the past few years to organize and accomplish its initiatives on the Statewide level with the legislature. Mr. Boyd presented a summary of the activities that Ms. Erickson has performed on the City's behalf while with the Chamber and mentioned that with the projects that the City has on the docket (Boat Launch, Public Works, City Hall?) Ms. Erickson's services would be very useful in building relationships and tapping the City into potential funding sources. With that said he requested that the Council authorize Ms. Erickson to perform up to $6,000 worth of work on behalf of the City to assist in these objectives. After many questions about how all of this works and whether or not it is the City's place to be paying for this work when the Chamber is the entity that brought Ms. Erickson in, the value of the offering was realized and a motion was made and passed to authorize that spending.

In "Other Business" Administrator Roth and I presented to the Council an invitation from the IRRRB to apply for infrastructure funds to assist with our Public Works Facility. The representative of the IRRRB suggested that we apply for roughly $100,000 for our project, but the Council, knowing the complication and expense of installing new infrastructure in our area, decided that we should apply for the amount necessary to complete the infrastructure work, which we estimated would be somewhere around $250,000. The Council voted to authorize Mr. Roth to apply for the assistance in that amount.

Also in "Other Business" Councilor Moody made a request of the Council to develop a pilot project for winter fat tire biking trails on the Old Ski Hill Property, simply as an exploratory project. No impact to the wooded area is expected or allowed. The Council agreed to allow this pilot project to move forward.

We then moved on to Council and Staff Reports:

Councilor Moody reported on his beginning work with the ARDC and the connection that has provided him to USFS Recreational Access and Development. He will have more to report in future meetings. In addition, the EDA has received the first draft of the Assisted Living Study results and he will be reporting those to the City at an upcoming meeting.

I reported on my conversations with certain art leaders in our community regarding the founding of an Arts Commission in order to oversee and develop policies for public art and the role of art in our community. It sounds like a good idea to get an Art Commission started and then to engage that group in the Comprehensive Planning process so that they can have solid feedback and guidance from the community to develop these policies. The Council seemed pleased, but didn't take any action.

Councilor Mills reported that he has heard complaints from residents about the snow removal, how it is really hard to get around town in a few places because people are plowed in and just leave their cars in the snow banks.

Councilor Kennedy reported that the P&Z Commission has been working on the lodging language in the zoning ordinance and will bring that revised language to the Council on March 2nd. He has also been attending the County's meetings on Vacation Rentals By Owner and knows that they are starting to prepare their language as well.

I think that was it. It was a long one, but a very important one. As always, if you have any comments or questions, please let me know!