City Council Meeting January 11, 2017

It always seems like right after the New Year I start too many new projects and then I tend to get behind in everything! Maybe I should make a resolution to start one new project at a time so I can get the blog posts out there in a more timely manner!

At any rate, thank you for being patient, here is the meeting summary!

The Council met for the first meeting of the year on the 11th, everyone was present so we moved on to the public forum.

Denny Fitzpatrick spoke to the Council urging the Council to do what is possible to acknowledge and prevent Climate Change either through the Carbon Fee and Dividend program or other programs that the City could consider.

After Denny spoke, no one else chose to speak, so the public forum was closed.

We then moved on to the Consent Agenda, which contained the usual three items (Approval of previous meeting's minutes, current meeting agenda, and city bills). There was no conversation about the Consent Agenda and the motion to approve was unanimous.

We then moved right along to the report of the Planning Commission who had three items for the Council to consider:

1. A resolution for 2 apartments to be made into 3 apartments at 21 W 2nd St. The Planning Commission went through the request and found that it was in correlation with the ordinance and voted unanimously to approve the request. The Council followed suit with a few questions, but seeing that it was in line with the ordinance and didn't change the nature of the area, approved the request.

2. The second item was a request for a variance for a sub-standard lot on 8th Ave W for construction. The proposed structure that would be built on this property would meet or exceed all of the set-backs and other stipulations of the zoning ordinance; the variance was asked for because the lot is 15 feet short of the minimum width requirement and thus 2,320 sq. ft. short of the minimum 10,000 sq. ft. lot minimum. The Planning Commission found that the construction plan was in line with the nature of the zone and that the lot would be undevelopable without the variance and thus requested approval of the variance unanimously. The Council heard the conversation and was glad to have the opportunity to open up another "in-fill" lot to development and voted unanimously as well.

3. The last item on the Planning Commission report was a request from the Planning Commission to adopt the temporary moratorium on commercial construction over 5000 sq. ft. in the C/I Zone as permanent only until the City has had time to complete its Comprehensive Planning process, which will give us the appropriate information to make an informed decision regarding the future of development in the City. This comes following the report from our previous meeting stating that the Council has three options to respond to this: a.) let the moratorium expire and not adopt any new language b.) draft new language now to capture the desires of the community c.) adopt the interim ordinance (moratorium) as permanent until we have collected the information necessary to properly rewrite the ordinance.
It was made clear by the Planning Commission and the Council that removing the protection given by the moratorium without having a full understanding of the needs/desires of the community would be dangerous, so option a.) was removed. The Planning Commission then reflected that there simply wasn't enough time to draft, proof, and have two readings of a new ordinance before the moratorium ran out, so they looked to option c.).
This option was not a very popular option, but it did seem to be the best option available to the Council to make sure that the community visioning process could be completed without compromise. I stated that I will make sure that the adoption of the moratorium is temporary and will get down to work to draft a C/I zone ordinance that is effective in revitalizing that area of town and making it more valuable to City residents and others.
In the end the Council agreed with the Planning Commission and had the first reading of the ordinance to adopt the interim ordinance (moratorium) as permanent.

Following that discussion, George Wilkes of the Public Utilities Commission came forward and made a presentation about a proposed program called the "Carbon Fee and Dividend" program.
This program is a concept developed as a cost-neutral way to create incentive for energy companies to do research for and develop renewable energy. It is a little complicated, but I will try my best to explain it. I added a little image below to help explain it as well:
1. When fossil fuel energy is extracted, there is a fee put on that activity. So when we suck oil or natural gas out of the earth, the company going the work is assessed a fee based on the amount that is extracted.
2. That money is collected and then issued to consumers as a dividend based on the amount of electricity they use (which is mostly calculated by family size and composition).
3. Energy prices go up to compensate for the fee, which is off-set for consumers by the dividends they are given.
4. This creates incentive for the energy companies to invest in renewable energy options because it puts the cost of renewable energy closer to on par with fossil fuel energy.
5. The fee continues to rise year to year, which continues the incentive for pursuing renewable energy at very little expense to the consumer.

**This plan does raise the expense of energy it should be explained. It will not however, raise the expense of energy beyond what it should be or beyond what it would be if the world was using only renewable sources of energy.

The PUC signed on last year to promote this solution to carbon mitigation and Mr. Wilkes was returning to the Council to see if the Council would sign on as well. Last year when this was brought up to the Council we stated that we would like to hear what our electricity producer, Southern MN Municipal Power Agency (SMMPA), has to say about it. SMMPA did not take a formal stance on it, but it was made clear that SMMPA is composed of its member cities, so Grand Marais is SMMPA and thus a statement by one of the cities in the agency speaks for the whole agency.

The Council thanked Mr. Wilkes for his thoughtful presentation and then voted to support the Carbon Fee and Dividend program and promote it for adoption through the state and federal governments.


Following that conversation we moved on to appointments to boards and representative groups.

The City had several openings on City Boards:
2 on the Library Board
1 on the Park Board
1 on the Planning Commission

There was one person who asked to be re-appointed to the Park Board, so the Council re-appointed Barb Backlund to her seat. Thank you for your service Barb!

We are looking for City residents for the other boards however! If you are interested, please contact me or inquire at City Hall for an application. It is a short application and the work is very rewarding!

Library Board applications can be found at the Library Service Desk as well.

The Councilors voted to retain their same assignments to the various committees and boards as well. I have included that list below:

Moving right along the Council designated the Cook County News Herald as the City's official newspaper and voted to continue to work with the following list of banks for City deposits:

Grand Marais State Bank

North Shore Federal Credit Union

Security State Bank

LMC / 4M Fund (investments and reserves)

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (investments and reserves)

Those were all of the items on the agenda so we moved on to Council reports!

Councilor Mills reported that the Park Board is going to be "tweaking" the Park Master Plan to make it more applicable for the application for Greater MN Parks and Trails Legacy monies. It doesn't sound like there is a lot that needs to be changed, but it will need to include some updated information about projects that have already been completed and capture any changes in direction that the Park has taken since the plan was originally written.

Councilor Kennedy reported that Spectrum Health has been in contact with the EDA concerning developing Assisted Living in Grand Marais and would like to come and look at some properties for potential development. The City has offered several plots of land for consideration.

Councilor Benson reported that the North Shore Management Board cancelled their latest meeting due to weather and lack of participation, but that she is going to be starting to push them more and more to allow for participation over the phone. She also stated that she wants to be a part of the conversation about collaborative projects between the City and North House to celebrate 20 years of partnership. 

She also asked for an update on the Comprehensive Planning process, which I gave shortly thereafter. 

(She also brought jelly beans to the meeting, which I ate a lot of during the meeting...)

My report was pretty brief, but focused on updates on the Comp Plan process/Community Visioning. We are getting close to the end of the first stage of the process where we gather information regarding what the values of our community are. We have gotten roughly 900 surveys turned in and have done over a dozen other activities around town to engage people. Some of the information that we learned was a little troubling: 38% of respondents were NOT from Cook County. We have the ability to filter out those responses, but it is OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE that we hear from community members!

Also we did not have many younger respondents, so... please fill out the form!

www.grandmaraisvisioning.com

**I proposed that the City consider appointing a Greenstep Coordinator to work on helping the community continue to develop efficiency, carbon minimization, and renewable energy work... So that's something to consider!

**I also reported that there has been talk about getting Grand Marais reviewed as a potential Blue Zone, which is a place in the world where people live longer than the average. There was some conversation that Grand Marais may be one of these places, so there is interest in reviewing that. The Council seemed to think that was a good idea, so I will move forward with that.

That was about it! As always, if you have any questions, please let me know!