Council Meeting 3-10-16

Last night the Grand Marais City Council met at its usual time to get through a pretty long agenda of items. Here is your update on what happened!


The meeting was called to order at 6:31 (I know, we started a little late) with all of the Councilors present.


As is our pattern, we then opened up the Public Forum and although there were a few folks in attendance no one elected to speak in the forum so I closed it and moved right along.


The Consent Agenda came next, and it was populated with 5 items: the three usual suspects (Approve the Agenda, Approve the Previous Meeting Minutes, and Approve the Bills to be Paid), and 2 new requests.

One of those requests came from the Curling Club who was seeking a renewal of their license to sell and serve beer at Curling Club events. Since this has been in place for many years and there has never been a complaint or a violation of liquor laws we put this on the Consent Agenda.

The other was an application from WTIP to be able to hire/solicit vendors for their RadioWaves Music Festival this fall. This item drew a little conversation from Councilor Kennedy as he was interested in knowing how this application differed from the application made by Visit Cook County that began a conversation about how the City could streamline the process and direct organizations in how they solicit. The answer was simply "no" that the application is the application for an organization to have the right to take care of all of their own vendors. With this taken care of, the vendors don't need to pursue a permit from the City because the organization putting on the event has the permit already. That organization then assumes liability for the activities and vendors that are taking part in their event.

The Consent Agenda passed unanimously.


Quickly following that approval it was time for the Council's annual update from North House Folk School. Executive Director Greg Wright came before the Council and reported that things are looking very good for North House. North House is now a $1.3 million organization and is continuously looking for opportunities to continue its growth. Councilor Benson asked a question concerning how much economic impact North House has on Grand Marais and Mr. Wright alluded to a study done for the School's 10 year anniversary that showed for every $1 of tuition there was an economic impact of $12 on the local economy. Since North House receives about $600,000 in tuition each year, we are talking about an estimated impact on the local economy of over $7 million.

Greg also informed the Council that North House is very happy to have recently expanded its campus across Hwy 61 in a move that will produce 1.5 classroom spaces, quality administration space, a new school store space, and more potential to expand into the future. This acquisition wasn't exactly in the School's plan, but as he put it, "When the farm next door comes up for sale, you buy it." There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new building this coming June at the Wooden Boat Show. Mr. Wright also went on to explain that North House is nearing its 20th birthday and thus is in the second half of its 25 year lease with the City. He spoke about the importance of the relationship that North House has with the City and is interested in taking that conversation further to create an agreement to secure the future of North House in Grand Marais. The Council thanked him for his information and looks forward to continuing to work with North House in the future!


The very next item brought David Demmer, from Cook County Planning and Zoning, to go over the recently completed Cook County Comprehensive Trails Plan. This Trail Plan is the culmination of 9 months of work at the County level that included dozens of people and every user group that uses or has interest in or maintains trails in our County. Mr. Demmer was very clear that NOW IS THE TIME to submit public comment for the Plan, so please, please take a look at the plan (which I linked right above) and submit any comments you have to their consultant cmoore@ardc.org.

Highlights of the plan could be summarized as:
1. A big thank you to user groups for showing up and contributing! A lot of the user groups expressed that they are satisfied with their trail systems, but always struggle to maintain them.
2. Kudos to the Commissioners and County Staff. They knocked on a lot of doors and did a lot of foot work!
3. There will probably be some policy changes due to this plan. The County is looking at the possibility of forming a Parks and Trails Department to address the needs identified in the Plan. This would likely be staffed through redistribution of current employees until it matured into a full fledged department.
4. The County should do an Economic Impact Study on the trails in our County. Just like North House had the information saying that $1 of tuition = $12 in the local economy, we need to know how much one mile of trail contributes and/or which trails are more valuable than others.
5. The County should work with the various user groups to help them make themselves more robust and thus better able to maintain the resources they use. This won't cost hardly anything and would provide a needed resource for the user groups.
6. The County and the City should work on some collaborative projects in the future, creating Grand Marais as a County Trail-Hub.

*The Council was grateful for Mr. Demmer's presentation and will be reviewing and commenting on the Plan in the upcoming week. PUBLIC COMMENT ENDS ON MARCH 18TH, SO PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS NOW!


Next Councilor Kennedy presented the product of the Council's request to the Planning and Zoning Commission to update and revise the language of the Zoning Ordinance. To refresh you: The Council, after the conversations about Vacation Rental By Owner properties in the residential zone, voted to uphold the existing zoning ordinance language and enforce it by addressing known violations. When that was happening, the Council was shocked to see the clunky and hard to understand language that was in the Ordinance itself.

The Council then instructed the Planning Commission to update the language and not change the meaning of the Ordinance.

They did just that and I think it is a laudable job that they showed us. By simplifying all possible short term stay options to 2 categories ("lodging" for under 10 units, "hotel" for over 10 units) and eliminating some antiquated terms in deference to a verbal explanation of them ("Boarding Houses" was removed, and replaced with "housing longer than 30 days for 3-8 unrelated persons").  The Council asked some questions regarding the various changes, but I viewed it as a relaxation of the Ordinance while still upholding the restrictions that we have been told by the public are important to preserve the nature and purpose of each zone.

**There is a lot of work left to do here and we will be again taking up these conversations in the coming months as part of our Comprehensive Plan. If you have any ideas, please formalize them and contribute them when the time comes.

*The Amendment to the Zoning Ordinance passed its first reading unanimously. It will return at our next meeting for further consideration and approval.


After that, David Demmer and Councilor Kennedy teamed up to make a request to the Council to consider applying for Regionally Significant Status for 2 properties that fall under the City's pervu.

One of these properties is the Grand Marais Recreation Park, or as we know it, The Campground. This property would be regionally significant because of its financial importance to our area, its history as one of the longest operated facilities on the North Shore, and the sheer number of people that use it every year.

The other property is an interesting new idea, the Sawtooth Bluff Area. This is the City-owned land that was the old ski hill as well as the County-owned land that is technically inside of the City limits. Councilor Kennedy referred to the Old Ski Hill Study performed about 15 years ago that summarized a great number of potential uses for that property, the leading option being preservation as a recreation opportunity. If this property, which includes roughly 200 acres of City land and roughly 400 acres of County land, gets designated as Regionally Significant, that would open up the possibility of the City applying for statewide Legacy and Greater MN Parks and Trails grant money that could fund the complete buildout of a system of multi-use and specific use trails on that land that would highlight the unique nature of that area and encourage residents and visitors to enjoy it. This is obviously a very young idea and there is a great deal of work that needs to be done on it, but it was an exciting idea none-the-less!  The Council agreed that the City should apply for Regionally Significant Status for both properties.


Following all of that the Council revisited its standing Agenda item, the Community Visioning Discussion.

We spoke for some time about the Comprehensive Plans that we had viewed as part of our "homework" from our last work session and there were a lot of good things brought up:

-Councilor Mills said that he was not impressed with the "fluff" in a lot of plans he read.

-I agreed with him and referred to the Comp. Plan for the City of Medina, which I found to be concise, useful, and clear, in opposition to some of the other plans that were vague, confusing, and hard to interpret. It was clear that the Council will be looking for a style of plan that is very to the point and easy to understand, without a lot of confusing language.

-Budgets for Comp. Plans we looked at varied from $6,500 to $85,000. Now, the $85,000 was the City of Grand Rapids, but even for a larger city that is a lot of money. We compared this to our Downtown Visioning Process, which was completed in 2007 and resulted in updated downtown zoning and policies, which cost us $40,000. Since we know that we can apply for, and will likely get, $20,000 from IRRRB for the process, and have been offered up to $10,000 in assistance from Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Council floated an example of a roughly $60,000 Comp. Plan, which is pretty much meaningless until we tackle the next thing:

-What is the scope of the Comp. Plan? We can spend money to have a consultant do ANYTHING. Obviously the more they do, the more expensive it becomes. The more that we can manage to do in town or in-house means that the project will be less expensive. This includes identifying groups of people that have input to give and then going to get that information from them! We can do a lot of this from within our community, but there are a bunch of things that we probably need to hire someone to do because it is beyond our ability. Those things are, but are not limited to:
1. Data Computation-- Ok, we gather all of this information from people, how do we use it?
2. Program Design-- HOW are we going to get all of this information? WHAT information do we need?
3. Volunteer Training-- If we are going to do this in-house, how do we make sure the people doing the work know what they are supposed to be doing?
4. Final Product Compilation and Presentation-- Take a look at Grand Rapids' Comp. Plan, specifically the appendixes and its organization. That is pretty complex.
5. Policy suggestions-- The people that do these plans see a lot of situations. They have been around innovative solutions and things that have flopped on their faces. Having these people analyze our information and point out potential actions that we can take or even draft ordinances that we can vette and approve or use for a starting place.

Consider these things as the standing list that we would like to hire out. All of the rest of it, from collecting information to organizing meetings will be done at low cost locally.

The Council decided to have another worksession Monday the 14th at noon to continue the conversation and prepare some information that we can then use to create a Request for Proposal from firms that could provide these services for us.


After that we moved on to a last minute addition to the Agenda. Administrator Roth presented the Council with a request from a City property owner to donate 2 lots of land on the far west end of 2nd St. to the City. The owners of the land decided that they would not be using the land and its development would be very expensive, so they decided to make an offer to the City. The Council asked many questions about implications of this and were a bit startled and uncomfortable about it, but after hearing that the property produced only $104 of tax money each year and was directly next to City land, the Council voted to accept the offer and take ownership of the land.


Moving on to Council and Staff Reports:
Councilor Moody had an EDA meeting, but will report on that at next meeting

Councilor Mills had a Park Board meeting where they discussed the Regionally Significant Status applications and mentioned that in February reservations at the Rec. Park are up 45% over last year. He also reported that the response to the rate changes down at the Park has been pretty quiet... something that the Park Board is happy about.

Councilor Kennedy reported that the Public Utilities Commission is looking at passing a Resolution to support a "Carbon Fee and Dividend" program for utility providers. This creates an incentive for utilities to pursue renewable energy or cleaner energy production as carbon emissions would be charged a fee. This fee would then go directly back to the customers of that utility as compensation for the carbon created. This would be merely a statement sent on to higher legislative bodies to show support for such an effort.

I tried to keep my report short: I have had a number of conversations with some representatives of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources to explore and continue researching the City's options concerning the Municipal Parking Lot.  The consensus that I have received from them is that there is nothing that we can do to determine the extent of the problem until the groundwater is thawed. We have, however, gotten some very good suggestions for actions to take when the groundwater melts, such as measuring the static level of the drainage pond to see what the infiltration rate is. If the infiltration rate is really, really fast, the solution will be much harder to implement than if the drainage pond has a slower infiltration rate (which we think it does)...
I also had a number of conversations with representatives of the Clean Energy Resource Team to help wrap up a few of the City's GreenStep initiatives so that we can move to a Step 2 City like Ely and Virginia already have.
I researched the Minnesota Mayor's Conference in April as well and asked the Council if I could attend it because the conversations that they are having this year have to do with economic development in MN Cities. I believe that it will be very useful to get some resources and ideas to help inform our conversations on how to best enable development in Grand Marais.

With that we adjourned the meeting and will reconvene at our worksession on Monday.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.