Evening, and welcome to the City of Falcon Heights regular meeting of the city council on Wednesday, 02/12/2025. We'll call this meeting to order at 07:00PM. Roll call. Gustafson. Here. Leahy. Meyer. Here. Milke. Here. Wattenberg. Here. Linehan. Here. Lynch. Hannah. Lynch. Okay, any changes to tonight's agenda? Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Okay, so moved by Wattenberg. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries.
Four, oh, we have an agenda. Presentation tonight. We don't have one. Okay. Sorry. Get enough humor. Next, approval of minutes from the January Council meeting minutes. Lee, he's here. Okay. All are present. 701. The, any changes to the January minutes? Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes from January 22? So moved. So moved by Mayer. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye. All those opposed same sign. Motion carries five-zero. Our January 22 meetings are approved. Public hearings, don't have one. Consent agenda tonight consists of six items. The first does the general disbursements through '5 '60 thousand '6 hundred and '50 '4 point '2 zero dollars with payroll through January 26 of $26,277.56 wire payments through '26 '17 thousand and '70 '8 point '7 zero dollars payroll,
dollars 15,785.46 and the BP Fleet Cards payment of $1,293.24 We have approval of city licenses as outlined in the packet. Item three, approval of Resolution 2509, accepting the resignation of Scott Wilson from the Planning Commission. Number four, approval of release of request for proposals for the Falcon Heights City Hall solar panels. Five, approval of Resolution 2510, accepting the resignation of Mike Bradbury from the Parks and Recreation Commission.
And number six, approval of Resolution 20 five-eleven, approving the Community Park Site Plan. Do I hear a motion to, pass the consent agenda? So moved. So moved by Leahy. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries five-zero. Tonight we have one, policy item, which is a consideration of variance request at 1375 Larbinter Avenue West. For this, we'll, turn us over to, our community development coordinator, Hannah Lynch.
Thank you. Alright. Thank you, mayor and council members. So like the mayor stated, we're gonna be looking at a variance request tonight. To begin with though, we, we haven't had a variance in quite a while in FICA and Hype, so I want to do a quick overview of oh, my gosh. There we go. Start with a brief training on authority and and zoning decisions and then looking specifically at variances. So when you're regulating land use, you have three levels of authority. If you are adopting or amending a zoning ordinance, so you're writing it, that's your legislative authority.
You have a lot of discretion in that. Essentially, you have been voted for as the city council members, and you are gonna be writing an ordinance. If you're applying the zoning ordinance, it's a quasi judicial decision. So that is where variances come into play. You have less discretion here. Essentially, if the facts show that the applicant meets the relevant legal standards, they are likely entitled to the approval. And then finally, administrating or administering a zoning ordinance that's administrative. Generally, that doesn't come to you all at at all. Really no discretion involved in that.
That's kind of plan review, building permits, that sort of thing. And then, legal Minnesota cities have this pyramid of discretion that's helpful to remember when you're thinking about these decisions. So when we're looking at variances, a variance is a departure from the zoning ordinance. Typically, they are dimensional. So we're talking about setbacks, height limits. It could be parking requirements, different things like that. Use variances are not allowed at all. So if somebody is in a residential lot and they would like to put a business there, that would not apply for a variance.
It would be a zoning change. And then in order to decide if a variance should be granted, there are different standards you have to look at. So the first is if enforcement of the zoning ordinance will cause the land over practical difficulties, and that is subject to a three factor test, which we'll look at in just a moment. They also have to be in harmony with the general purposes and intent of the zoning ordinance. They have to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. And so those first three bullet points, those are all statutory requirements. The next two, are essentially about the health and safety of adjacent properties,
in the public. And then the requested variance is the minimum action required to eliminate the practical difficulties. And those two are added by the city, and they're added by most cities. So goodness. My thing keeps skipping. Practical difficulties. So like I said, it requires a three factor test. The first factor you have to look at is reasonableness. So is the request reasonable? The landowner would like to use the property in a particular reasonable way, but cannot do so under the rules of the ordinance. So if this had to do with setbacks, and they needed to build a garage in the setback,
is it reasonable to request that, or could the building be placed somewhere else? The second practical difficulty you have to consider is uniqueness. So this is saying that landowner's problem is due to circumstances unique to the property, and it and it has not been caused by the landowner. So is there anything physically unique about the property? Was it is is it different from surrounding properties? Is it different from properties throughout the city? That sort of thing. So, generally, we're looking at physical characteristics of the property. And economic considerations alone cannot create the practical difficulty.
And then the third thing you have to look at is the essential character. So the variance will not alter the essential character of the locality. So we're looking at, is it out of scale? Is it out of place? If it's about a height setback or a height variance, if you build a 10 story building here, is it gonna be out of harmony because all of the other buildings are one story? And then like I mentioned earlier, it has to be in harmony with the zoning ordinance consistent with the comprehensive plan, looking at health and safety, and then it being the minimum action required to eliminate those practical difficulties.
And you can attach conditions to variances. So if it's something that, you know, we think we could grant this variance, but to mitigate the impact to neighbors, if it was a setback variance, you could say, we'll we'll grant you this variance, but you need to put up some bushes or something to, you know, block it from neighbors. So a few things that don't count in variances, and sometimes this gets a little confusing for, neighbors in in particular. So economic factors, economic conditions do not create practical difficulties. So if a landowner said, well, I've already started this project,
and I've put $20,000 into it, that does not entitle them to a variance. Neighborhood opinion does not count in variances. Just because residents might be unhappy about a variance does not that's not a legitimate basis to deny a variance. If they bring facts showing that, you know, if they put up this building within the setback, it's gonna somehow harm my health and safety or it's not in harmony, it has to be opposed to one of those practical difficulties. So in general, though,
just if you're sometimes neighbors will bring together a petition or something unless there are facts attached to that, it doesn't count in variances. And then past practices of the city. They can be instructive, but they cannot replace the need for analysis of all three of the practical difficulties for each and every variance request. So every variance is different. Every property is different, and they all need to be looked at separately. So this request in particular, moving on. So John Radamecke is the homeowner of 1375 Larpenter. He contacted city hall about constructing a new three stall garage to replace the existing
three stall garage on the property. The orientation of the new garage will require the driveway to move to the west side of the property. And doing so with this project, the new construction will actually reduce the current impervious surface coverage on the lot, but it is still going to be over by 760 square feet. Usually, this sort of thing would be an administrative decision. If somebody came to me and said, we are within the setbacks, our current garage is within the setbacks, but we need to rebuild a garage, or put up a new one.
If they are rebuilding in the same footprint, the same exact size, they can put it back in the exact same place. Since we're shifting things around here, it requires a variance. It's not going back in the same exact place, and we're looking at the impervious surface. So here is a look at the plan. So as I mentioned, it's going to be over by 760 square feet. So he is currently zoned r one. He would be allowed to have 3,320 square feet of impervious surface on this lot. Currently, the property has 4,200
square feet of impervious surface on the lot. Proposed, it would get down to 4,080 square feet. Another couple of factors for this, currently, the existing garage is, not not complying with setback requirements on the rear or the side. Also, the existing driveway is not compliant with the side setback either. So right now, we have four nonconformities on the lot. This project would bring it back to one nonconformity, and it would be less of a nonconformity than it currently is. And that is what I just mentioned. In the new driveway,
we did adjust the plan a little bit, and it will meet the side set by five feet. So it's fixing everything except for this one impervious surface thing. So what do we look at? As I mentioned, we have this three factor test and then the other questions. The planning commission did discuss this variance application at our last meeting. Ultimately, they voted five to one to recommend approval to you all, and we did have one abstain because they are a direct neighbor of the applicant. Felt like it was fair to do that. I'm just gonna go through kind of the the planning commission thought it was very
important that I go through each of these questions and tell you their mindset behind them. And, ultimately, you will also have to answer these questions. I did in the packet, put in, a drafted approval that kind of answers these questions depending based off of what the planning commission said. If you have different feelings, opinions, ideas behind it, if you don't approve it, I would have to edit that if it is gonna still be approved. If you choose to not approve it, I would recommend tabling to the next meeting, so that we can redraft,
you know, a a nonapproval statement. So to go through these, and I apologize for this might take a little bit to go through all of them. I mean, I do have these reasons in your the answers in your packet as well. So the first one is, is the project reasonable? All all commissioners except for one believe that it was a reasonable project. One of our commissioners pointed out that under the rules of the zoning ordinance, the garage could be built back in the same location or designs for the new one can be tweaked to meet the zoning ordinance requirements. This is accurate according to the rules of the zoning ordinance.
It can be built back in the same place. It also can be built if you're gonna change the design. You can rebuild it, and it can still be two feet off of the side property line. That's a weird part of code that's in there. But it would if you're changing the design, it would still have to meet that five foot setback on the rear, and then we're not dealing with the impervious surface at all. Very important to note, this request is specific to the impervious surface. So while the placement of the garage does affect that,
Ultimately, moving the garage isn't what we're looking at. We're looking at the impervious surface. We did have one commissioner ask if a permeable surface would be allowed in order to meet this requirement. Permeable services are not permitted by city code. It is something that the planning commission and the environment commission would like to look at because it could help in a situation like this. Are there circumstances unique to the property? Again, all except for one believed that this was a unique set of circumstances. One commissioner, the one who disagreed, thought that the property is not the only one around it like this or within
Falcon Heights that is this way. The other commissioners did note that the property is unique from a lot of the properties in Falcon Heights because it's on Larpenter. There is no on street parking on Larpenter. It does not have an alley behind it, and it is a long narrow lot. So you do have to have a long driveway regardless of of where you're putting the garage. And, again, he purchased the property with a three stall garage, and it already was so out of conformity with the zoning ordinance that, you know, you're kinda having to do a lot to come up to it.
Will the variance maintain the essential character of the locality? All commissioners agree that, no, this would not change the character of Falcon Heights. Is it in harmony with the purposes and intent of the zoning ordinance? Essentially, commissioners were in agreement. The one who ultimately voted to not approve this, stated It's mostly in, in harmony with the zoning ordinance. It's a step in the right direction, but not fully. The zoning ordinance does say as one of the purposes and intents of the ordinance that we strive to bring nonconforming properties into compliance with the zoning ordinance.
So this meets that. You know, we're not fully bringing it into into compliance, but we are getting it closer. Is the variance consistent with the comprehensive plan? Same thing. The one who had disagreed stated it's a step in the right direction but could go further. The comprehensive plan, as I'm sure you all know, has a lot of environmental, language in it. One of those is about stormwater. Reducing the impervious surface while we're still over is helping with, stormwater. The granting of the variance does not impair inadequate supply of light and air, increase the congestion of public streets or increase the danger of fire and danger of
public safety? All commissioners agreed that it does not do that. And is the requested variance the minimum action required to eliminate the practical difficulties? Difficulties? This seemed to be the difficult question for planning commissioners, led to a lot of discussion. Commissioners started looking at widths of the driveway here. Could the driveway be made narrower to have less impervious surface? Essentially, a normal, driveway is between nine and twelve feet. Reducing the driveway size according to one commissioner. He believed that it would get it within 50 square feet.
Our applicant is proposing a wider driveway in order to help with snow removal, getting cars back there if they have friends or family coming over since they can't park on the street on a Larpenter and they don't have an alley in the back. Also, they've had difficulty in the past with service trucks getting in and hitting branches and that sort of thing. So just making it a little bit wider. It was also noted that most of the commissioners believe that shrinking the size of the garage and the driveway wouldn't do enough to reduce that impervious surface to meet
requirements. Just because of the length of the driveway, how it has to be, has to go pretty far back, we they did not think that it would get down to the size that you would need for impervious surface. So, now it will be up to you all to look at this. I'm happy to answer any questions. We do have the applicant here if you have any questions for him, and we will need to go through these questions and, come to a decision on it. Okay. Council members, go ahead. I'll just kind of direct it. Do you have,
you have questions? Yeah. I do. Okay. Yes. Jim? Council member Wattenberg, please. Sure. So, basically mine have to deal with number seven, whether this is sort of the the minimum or or what could be done. So, could you I mean, the main thing that I'm also looking at is is the width of the driveway. 12 feet's a pretty wide driveway. And I'd like to know that it's necessary in this case, especially given that, I mean, yeah, there's, there's a reduction in permeable surface, which is, is good. There's amazingly still a reduction in permeable surface after basically increasing the size of the garage
by I'm looking at 60% from what's currently there. Is that correct? We're going from a 30 by 20 to a 34 by 26. So your question is is the size of the garage going up? No. I I know. I I got I got that. I'm just sorry. I'm just pontificating a little bit. But, basically, I wanna get to I mean, big garage, great, fine. Fits nicely along the lines of the house. I'm really curious about whether 12 foot driveway is needed and why you were asking for a 12 foot rather than say 10 foot driveway. The reason for a 12 foot driveway, basically is, as long as I'm going to update everything,
I'd like to modernize it a little bit, not make it look outlandish. I don't, I'm not asking for a 24 foot, you know, a three car wide driveway, but, as was mentioned, if I have, a dinner party, if I have friends over, it's difficult to park people there, they have to park down the street around the corner. If I have a 12 foot driveway, at least they can park halfway on the driveway and some can still get in and out. So that's part of it. Right. Another factor is one moment. You could still do that with a 10 foot driveway though. Could you still have, I could still have all the width. I could get down to a 10 foot driveway, which is one foot more than what a half.
Hannah, do you have to have a picture, of the, the crumbled fence? Yeah. Is that something you can show? So the nine foot driveway that I currently have has been driven over twice by my snowplowing company. So nine feet is not a lot of width for service trucks. So that's where I would It's between the house and the fence, right? Yes. Whereas your new driveway would not be to have probably five feet of clearance on one side and if it were 10 feet, it'd have maybe another five feet of clearance on the other side. There, that so Yeah.
I went by your house. It's been ashed a number of times now. Yeah. Yep. And it's, it's just for $19.37, that was a fine width, but it's not nineteen thirty seven. And so that's why I But But you're talking about the state I'm just driving for a Outside of the width of the driveway. But you're like I'm saying, you're probably not gonna have that problem if you've got a five foot clearance on either side of where your asphalt ends. Right? That may be true. Yeah. Right. Okay. I also did a little looking at driveways and said, you know, if you have, RVs or something like that,
that's kind of the reason why one would build a 12 foot wide driveway. You have RVs? I do not. Okay. Alright. So that's basically what I was looking at is this is this would making it more compliant be an impediment to the homeowner in this case, an impediment to your usage. And I'm not hearing that it would be unless you have further comments on it. I don't at this time. Okay. Thanks. That's mostly it. Okay. And the the the increase, in size of garage and stuff, that's, I mean, that's usability. Right? That that,
you know, having a bigger garage does help quite a lot with a lot of things. I mean, if you wanna put three cars in it, you actually can. I don't know if there's any way you could probably reliably put three cars in a 20 by 30 that would be super duper tight. Not with a modern size car. No. I mean, it's not nineteen thirty seven. Yes. It was It's not really a three car garage right now. I mean, I have what was nominally a two car garage with which is okay with a Honda Fit and a Chevy prison, but Right. I saw a red pickup truck there. That's you're not putting that in 30 by 20. Right. Yeah. I realized, you know, we're talking about,
the the variance, not the garage design. But right it they're kind of But they're tiny, of course. Because the garage being larger also increases in Right. The garage could be, more shallow, which would save on square footage. But then I think it would look strange not fitting the Inside the house. I This Yeah. The size of the rest of that house. I think your garage design is great. Yeah. Yeah. And then the garage gives you added added space above to expand livable space in the house as well. I don't know the finished square footage that it will add because everything is hinging
on this variance. If this variance isn't approved, and this isn't in any way meant to sound threatening, This is my process is if there's no variance, there's no point in me paying someone to come up with a design. That's it. So I don't know what the finished square footage will be, but yes, there will be some additional square footage added to the house. To the main house to add add space for that to give you more usable space as part of the project which makes sense. That's what I would like. Everyone would like more space,
more bathrooms, more bedrooms and so forth. Yeah. So I think it increases the resale value. Great. I did have a few questions. Okay. In regards to the width, is it possible that on the it would be the west side, if part of that was gravel or landscaping? Because then it would still allow you turnaround time or turnaround space for your guests when I'm assuming that's what you mean by having enough width because you can have cars pull in and then cars leave as they need to.
Correct. Have you considered having some type of shoulder? Shoulder? Gravel or Yeah. Shoulder? Type of shoulder? No. I I hadn't considered that. I thought I would just start with this and see where this went. Because then maybe that could bring it down to 10 or 11. You know, just something to consider in that regards. My other question is with the West Side, how close is it to, your neighbor to your West? I know I I received a call a couple months ago from a resident that
when a new development, a new house came in next to them, the place where they built their garage caused a lot more runoff into their house because of how it was set up. So we wouldn't want to, you know, create another problem for your neighbor Of course. Runoff. So what's the space maybe you could speak to that? Or Yeah. So the side of the, new driveway would be five feet from the property line. Does that still give an enough space so there's not water runoff?
I probably can't comment on that, but it meets the setbacks that are required. Okay. So because I know in the situation where I did receive a call from a resident, it it there was no variance. It met the setbacks, but there was still runoff into that property because instead of it being just grassy, now it's just running into that area. So that's, you know, something to consider. No matter what the design is or the width of making sure that the slant is such that it's not going to create issues for your neighbor.
Right. Because we want you to have good communication and good neighbors in the process of it. So those are the couple questions that I have at this point. Do you think you'd go forward if we did suggest, the 10 foot with a shoulder, so then it increases, decreases? I still would move forward with the plans, yes. So that shoulder idea would would help you out to do it that way? I would talk to my builder for more information. This is not my my, bailiwick. Okay. I'd I'd look for That's why you have a builder. Yeah. Exactly. To find out what works best.
Yeah. Maybe it's gravel, maybe it's the pavers that have the hole in the middle. Sure. I don't know. It sounds like code doesn't really allow for a lot of options right now. So I I don't know what that would look like, but I'm willing to work something out. So for code, it can't be the driveway itself. Can't be the impermeable surface for some reason, but you could do it as I know people do it for patio. So if you were going to have a shoulder, you could do it that way. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. So you could do gravel or something like that. But the driveway itself has to be asphalt.
Yeah. I mean, it could still just be grass except for the small number of times that, you know, two vehicles actually need to pass each other on the driveway. Yeah. So pavers could work in that situation, Hannah? On the side, yes. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Just wanted to put that out there. Also, if if I may answer your question, you were wondering about the, further to the west or above this. The neighbor to the west has a driveway before it even gets to their house. Okay. I tried to look at Ariel and I can't tell. So yours would be against their driveway.
Correct. It'd be driveway to driveway. So that makes a good match in that regard. Correct, so runoff I don't I'm not an environmental engineer but it's my firm belief that runoff would not be a problem. So I'll work with the builder to make sure that it does not slope towards the west. If anything, it has a valley. Yeah. Great. And it's south facing. Well, most of it. And you wanna make sure that it does slope towards your house. Yeah. Make certain that you do keep it, you know, so it doesn't slope to your house, it goes away from your house.
Right. Valley. Yeah. That's what I was envisioning, so. Yeah. Over it was one of those. And, I I don't know if this is appropriate or not to add it in, but, I would consider a rain garden. I'd work with other things like that. I don't think there's any provision for that right now, but that's maybe something the planning commission could consider. Yeah. So like I mentioned, you can put conditions on the variance. I did, just in case this came up, look up rain gardens and how much they offset impervious surface. I did find that a rain garden, can offset essentially three times the size of it of impervious surface.
So that could potentially help. So John is your first name. Right? Right. Sorry I didn't retain your last name reading through the documents. But It's a challenge. So if you, put in a rain guard, it'd be somewhere else and then that would still allow for them to have the 12 foot driveway. Depending on what you all decided. I don't know that we would have a rain guard or he would be able to do a rain garden that would be large enough to offset 760 square feet of impervious surface, but could help offset it a little bit. So,
you know, maybe putting a shoulder in, rain guard in that combination could get you in line with that. And I do like the overall idea of where you're moving the garage to and, you know, coming more in line with code. So Right. My overall goal is, we didn't really talk about it, but the existing garage is in very poor condition. Sure. The slab is broken. It's failing. It's got a you can't really see from here, but the the spine of the garage is is, way back. Mhmm. Yeah. It's it has to go. So I could rebuild it in the same location,
but that doesn't really accomplish anything for impervious square footage, and it doesn't add to my finished square footage which I'd like to do. So I'm hoping that this plan brings all of these components together as best I could arrange. I can see the definite benefit of the plan. Larpenters is a busy street, you're gonna have a nice backyard for the way from the traffic noise. Yeah. But I I like the idea of narrowing the driveway and adding a shoulder or something so it's closer to our our ordinances. I have a narrow driveway myself,
so I understand what you're dealing with every time we have, workers over. It's like, okay. Move the truck to the front so the workers can get in and things like that. So Yeah, plumbers show up with their extra tall trucks and they look at my power lines and they look at the, you know, how close the fence is to the house. Yep. Yep. Mhmm. Yeah. And then if if, you know, if we have another snowy winter, hopefully, you know, extra width is always helpful there too. It is. A friend of mine ran over some of my Christmas lights recently. Oh. So there's that.
But, yeah, I mean, if you're comfortable with, you know, reducing it down to down to 10, of just, rough mental math that's adding another two sixty square feet of permeable as opposed to impervious surface. So that that'd be good. It's a good good idea. Okay. I'll reduce it to 10. And I'm going to say that the good thing that Hannah brought before the environment commission, we didn't know that we could put in impervious driveways.
I mean, we had explored that and didn't know that it was against code. So we didn't do it. But it's like, oh, oh. Because we were looking at Yep. As as well. Yeah. It seems odd. You'd go out of your way to write that into the code. Yeah. Yeah. So all of us are having an on that. Yeah. Yeah. We looked into, like you said, that grid line that you lay down and then you put the rocks in there. Yeah. Mhmm. Put that for Yep. A parking pad. So it's a question procedure here then. Do we how how do we go about formalizing the the 10 foot to that?
Sure. What is the So we have to build a record depending on your decision. Like I mentioned, I have a drafted resolution. If you agree with essentially the conclusions of law in here that it there are practical difficulties based off the three factor test, then what we can do is I can edit this slightly to reduce the allowable limit that I have. So under fax number six, the plan would reduce the existing or impervious surface coverage by a 20, but would still be over the allowable limit by 760. I can change that according to the new plan with the 10 foot driveway.
And then, yeah, anywhere that there's that square footage in there, I would just change it. And then just depending on you would need to make sure that you agree with the other findings in this. And if you have anything different to add, I could change that. Or if you're going to be not approving it, I would need to redraft all of it. Okay. So to clarify, if we bring if they bring it to 10 Mhmm. Are is a variance needed? Yes. A variance would still be needed. Still be needed.
It would just be less of a variance. Okay. So we can basically make a conditional approval? Yes. Okay. So we could do a conditional approval that the driveway goes to 10 foot And the and then that would be the only condition that we would need to add to this. And then it would change however these Yeah. The calculations turn out to be, you know. Right. So it would probably help if I had an updated site plan from you with that 10 foot, and then I can basically base this resolution off of the plan,
and just edit the bottom. So, like, six and seven of the fax session section of the resolution, I need to edit that, to base it off of the new plan. And then would we need to vote on it again when the new plan is? No. I think you could vote on it. Conditional. Yeah. A conditional approval, of the variance with the condition that it goes to a 10 foot wide driveway. And then I'll update it, and we'll get a signature from the mayor when it's updated. Okay. Great. That'd make it a lot easier and then you're not in limbo for two weeks
more. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Planners and builders and architects. Yeah. He's oh my. He's curious. Yeah. He wants to get moving. Yep. I really wanna commit. One more thing I will note, and this is more of just for the record. The curb cut on Larpenter because Larpenter is a county road. Mhmm. That curb cut will have to be closed up according to Ramsey County, and you'll just have to follow all the conditions at Ramsey County. On the old driveway if we're talking about? Closed? Yep. On on the old driveway. Yes. For the old driveway. And so they'll set their own requirements for that. But yes, I know you need our stuff first before you can go forward with them.
So Correct. And I'll I'll work with them. Yeah. Yeah. Can pending approval. Sure. How does that feel for you? That feels good. That'll work. It's it's not quite what I wanted, but I can make it work. I can I can live with it? Okay. Can can that curb cut, could we work something out there so that the curb could be wider? You know, because if all of a sudden then the county's gonna say, well, you only have a 10 foot instead of a 12 foot driveway here, then the, you know, it's gonna kind of pinch down to where maybe the The approach.
In the approach, the first, our conditional is that that in the right of way, it's a 12 foot driveway, And after the city city county right of way, it's a 10 foot driveway. So I believe that Yeah. So in order. I I believe what's probably gonna happen is it's gonna connect to this curb cut here to the west. And so it would kind of Those are already flared. Yeah. It would kind of Sure. Take care of itself at that point. And then our plan would be once it gets up here,
it's the 10 foot with the five foot setback. Well, I see. Because, the neighbor's driveway is on the east edge of the property. So it's probably just gonna Gonna cut it away. Down and then connect here. Connect the two. Mhmm. Most likely. Yeah. And all of them have been flared anyway. Yeah. Because otherwise, you'd have this one two foot, little boulevard space that would be a nightmare to take care of. Yeah. That would be. Yeah. And if I may, yes. Having that flare driveway makes a huge difference when cars are coming up on you at 40 miles an hour and you're you've been tapping your brake lights and you
got your signal on and you still gotta duck in really fast. Yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. Well, your driveway is 15 miles an hour. Yeah. Come in. And, I can imagine. Shows a truck right there too. So But that, you know, that part of our variance would be that we'd be willing to go that 12 foot at the Apron or whatever. You know, at the apron. Mhmm. And then as it comes down so that then the apron allows for more safety. Yeah. Because a wider apron, would be beneficial. It lets you turn the vehicle into the driveway.
Yes. Yep. You don't have to stop and then try to make a Do a wide turn. Turn. Make a shallow angle. Yeah. I think I would I think I would wanna talk to Ramsey County First before I Right. Wrote that in just to make sure that that meets their guidelines since that is their right of way. They might have something on the size of the apron. Obviously, it's larger than the drive itself, and that that's all up and down. You know, it's never a Sure. Street turn in there. Yeah. Every one of those houses on that side. Yeah. So I believe that that is driveway off of Off of Larpenter.
Larpenter. So do they have aprons? I mean, when they're looking, was it? Yeah. Because I I know that when we were looking at, the laundromat property, the the county was saying that we could not put a, we'd have to eliminate the curb cut on Larbinter. Yeah. Interesting. You know, so that, you know, so they could be kind of Well, he has to have a curb cut there regardless. Yeah. That it has to be a balance there's another option. In initial conversations, it wouldn't be a problem with them to move it. They just needed to wait on us.
Correct. I've already sent the application in and it was, you know, the $50, to do it. They're waiting on me to get us your approval. Mhmm. And then for me to tell them how wide the cut should be. Okay. Okay. Nice. Does the neighbor to the west, have you talked to them about potentially sharing that apron space? No. Because I didn't know what it would look like yet. So Gotcha. I I plan to talk to all the neighbors, but, until this step is complete, I really don't have anything solid to discuss. Yep. Gotcha. Hey. Would Hamlin Dental let you have a guest park there on their after hours?
That is a really good idea, actually. It's a nice dentist. She's Yeah. It is. She's very nice. Ask her. Hey. Got a little problem on her. Yep. Just Don't still stay for parking. Alright. Glad to put that in there. Okay. Sounds like Yep. Comfortable with the plan? Mhmm. I think so. Okay. Yep. Thank you so much. It would be a motion to approve resolution twenty five twelve with the condition of making the driveway 10 feet wide, and then I will edit and get to the mayor for some future. Okay. And then it's also If you wanna add the We need to both.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so we've got the motion, made by Leahy here Because she's moving it. 02/2012, approving a variance at 13 Center for an increase in impervious surface coverage with the condition that the driveway move to 10 foot beyond the right of way. Twenty five twelve? Is it twenty five twelve? Or what is our Yeah, twenty five twelve. Does that sound accurate? Yes. Okay. Alright. Further discussion? All those in favor of,
adopting Resolution 20 five-twelve, approving the variance with the condition of, the driveway width. Signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries five-zero. John, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for being helping us work through all of this to make it work for everybody. I appreciate that. And you know, to make it work for you, if you're comfortable with it, that's the real key too. You have a nice garage and a nice backyard too. Yep. And and I am comfortable with it.
Thank you very much. Okay. Good. I'll be in touch with everything. Wonderful. Okay. Thank you, Development Director Lynch, for, guiding us through this process. One of the things that the legislature did back in 'ten, 'eleven, sometime around in there, was to make it more difficult to pass variances. So we want to this one does meet all of that and well done for figuring out a way to make that work. Thanks for bringing the, the other three portions of,
that were out of compliance with current code into compliance as part of that. That's really nice. It's gonna be a nice property. Taco Tuesday. You'll be, it'll make a nice home for you. That's the object. Okay. So, next, anything more in the policy? No. Okay. Information and announcements. Our council member. Sure. Yeah. Thank you, for supporting, issuing a statement of our support for our immigrant population and U of M students. And I wanna thank our yesterday was election day, so
thankful for the people who volunteered and everyone who came out to vote on a strange day for election. And happy that we will now have a county board member representing us. So, yeah. Excited for Garrison. And, otherwise, the last week, the climate action plan team met to work on goal setting. So there was a lot of buzz energy around that. And then this week, the environment commission met and, that commission with Hannah and Olive's Olivia supporters. Olivia. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna Go from here. No big announcements. Just a, you know, expression of gratitude for, Chair Wilson on the Planning Commission. Yeah, it was a lot of fun working with him. He runs a really, really tight meeting and just, you know, ran through the agenda and, but also, you know, giving everybody opportunities to speak. And so his leadership will be missed, but, also, you know, good to give other people opportunities. But, hopefully, we we still see him around another commission or maybe maybe he'll be back in
a in a few years, to serve a, you know, a non consecutive term. But, yeah, just appreciate his work. Cool. Council Member Leahy. No updates from me. There is no Community Engagement Commission meeting this month because of Presidents' Day on Monday. Council Member Wasserberg. All right. Well, I'd just like to first off thank my friend and neighbor Mike Bradbury for his long service on the Parks Commission. It's been a real pleasure working with him, especially as in being the chair of that commission. We've appointed voted in our last meeting for a, new chair and officers,
so there'll be good continuity. We do still need now two, slots for a full, a full commission. So any of our wonderful residents out there who may be interested in contributing to their their city through work on the parks commission, there's a lot going on. We're doing a lot with the parks these, these couple of years and continuing on. So, it's a great group to work with. So I encourage people to, to apply and try and jump in. That said, in the the meeting, the, parks commission did, speak a lot about, our goals and priorities and sort of almost the mission for what the parks commission is.
And I think there was a lot of really great discussion, rather than just, you know, approving what was what had been there in previous years, they went through it and really wordsmithing a lot of that was, was driven by, by Mike Bradbury as well too to kind of open up the conversation. And I think they got to some much more succinct and accurate versions of what the commission is there for and what it wants to do. So kudos to to all of them. It's a great group. And last thing is the Ramsey County legal local governments has a legislative priorities meeting, tomorrow, which I'm gonna go jump in.
I'm excited to learn what all those legislative priorities are and discuss things with some of our legislators. So looking forward to that. That's all I have. Thank you. Yep. I'll be there as well. I don't know if anybody else is. So we won't discuss city city business, but we will discuss, what's there. It's good to see that the legislature is, in session now and so that there's something to be done. And, we'll have a little discussion on that, where our priorities are as a, as a council initially. And so we'll represent those,
at that. At the sustainability fair, we've got the new, plastics recycling. Yeah. I dropped off my bag of, bags. Yeah. I didn't have to go to Walmart. Thank you very much. Yay. Didn't have to run the risk of dying in that parking lot. Well, because of the way that it's figured, you know, you always think you're gonna, you're lucky to not have an accident. Anyway, so so that's cool. And we've got the, look, I suppose sometime within the next three weeks for the printed newsletter to come out.
So that'll, that'll be there. We'll do that. You'll see more plans. The, for people that are interested, I'd suggest looking at the consent agenda and the way that the park is going to have a shelter, restrooms, concession area, new playground inclusive to, to help everybody out in the, you know, kind of a low key splash pad, but, one that'll give us versatility, you know, a lot of, green space. And it's a nice plan. And, everybody's put a lot of effort into that in this last year when we got
more budget waste. Thank you to the community for doing that. Stay tuned for what's going on. Our newsletter has everything that you want to know in there. The, that's kind of, where it's at. The rink has continued to be flooded and, it's skateable and it's, really nice. So thank you, Public Works, for that quick, yeah. The snow emergency is still going on in in Saint Paul. And, we finished it off, Saturday afternoon before they declared theirs. So, thank you, Public Works, for, for making it happen.
So, on that, I'll turn it over to, Administrator Linehan who's got all of the details what's going on in city. Yeah. Thank you, mayor and council. So, just a couple of stuff. So Monday, we're gonna be closed for president's day. So we will reopen on Tuesday. As the mayor just mentioned, public works, they did the snow event on Saturday. They did two full community cleanups. They went out about 6AM, did the first cleanup. More snow fell throughout the day, went out in the afternoon, got everything done. It went really well. Continuing to go well too with Lauderdale. You know, I know we kind of took on that contract,
continuing to be able to provide surfaces to them is a nice thing. And so it works out really well for us to be able to get through everything. Took about two hours per snow event is kind of our average for that size of snow. So we're able to get through things real, real well, real clean. So it's been great having the extra plow trucks is helpful. So we're set up really well to take on these snow events. And just a reminder too that our, snow, whenever two inches fall is when it starts. So we're a little different than Saint Paul in that. We don't declare the emergency. The nature does itself. So most people have been pretty good about compliance.
It hasn't been too much of a problem. The only other thing I'll mention too, just people will see our speed trailers back up and running on Larpenter. Yeah. It's going 30 miles per hour in 20. Right. Try try number three. Yeah. That'll bring our averages down. So if you can go go slow. So just the the history on that, I know the council's confident. We purchased this in 2023. We got great use out of it for a bit. We're able to study. It does two things. One, it does, education. Right? So as you're driving, you're kind of reminded of your speed. You know what the limits are. It kinda can teach people. That spot, we really wanted to teach people because that used to be 40 or 40.
40. Yep. Now down to 35. So that's great to kind of educate drivers about that. Unfortunately, the last day of the study last year, somebody took a baseball bat to or some other blunt instrument to the, solar panel and the mainframe of the computer. We weren't able to get any of that data. No. And so we put it out again once it took a long time through insurance. To get it repaired, get all the parts. We got it out. It wasn't recording data right. It wasn't getting every vehicle, so they brought it back and we're able to get it up running, testing, so it's working now.
So we have it out there again. It won't be a full two weeks because it's been there quite a bit, but we're gonna try to be able to pull that data. We wanna get at least the weekend, hopefully, take that data and kind of extrapolate it. Maybe in the future, we'll bring it back for summer or other traffic. I don't know if it can handle the state fair. Then after that, we do have requests from other neighbors too. And so we don't have an official form for that. We kind of take, inquiries into engineering, administration. If you hear others too, you know, we wanna kinda move this around the city, let every neighborhood experience it. I have a list already kind of a various request we've gotten. Put Crawford on there. I had a Crawford,
Orona. Yeah. The next spot for it's Orona, South of Larpenter, kind of by the California, a little further south. Sure. Some complaints there. That's been that person's been waiting for a while for that. But we wanna be able to kinda deploy this. It's our tool. We can kinda get out in the neighborhoods and really get through. So hopefully, we'll have this up and running and, back to, getting the whole city. So that's pretty much what I have. Cool. Great, Hannah? Nope. That's what we got here. The, well I'll open up community forum. Jen, if you want to come up and talk about community forum items that weren't on
the agenda and things, you're welcome to. So just a reminder that it is an opportunity for people to come and talk to the council and make us aware of the issues and things like that. So with, without further ado, I want to thank everybody for coming out on a nice chilly evening, getting ready for the cold snap ahead, and, doing that and checking out our new chairs. Well, thank you, city staff. I'd be open for a motion to adjourn. So moved. So moved by Wiesenburgh and Milke. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye. All those opposed same same motion carries five-zero. And on that we are adjourned at 07:56.