All right. Good evening. This is the City of Northfield City Council meeting for Tuesday, 04/21/2026. It's 06:44 p. M. I'm calling the meeting to order and requesting a roll call, please. Mayor Zweifel? Here. Councilor Donlin? Councilor Holmes? Here. Councilor Ness? Here. Councilor Peterson White? Here. Councilor Soukup? Here. Councilor Beamer? Here. Thank you. Our first item of business is our open public comment time. This time is intended to receive public comment on matters of city business and topics under the jurisdiction of the council.
Ideally, this time is for items not on the agenda. Individuals who would like to have questions answered may write their question on the back of their comment card and an appropriate person will follow-up with them at another time. If the topic relates to an item later in the agenda, individuals may speak if this if that time is if this time is their preference. However, we will be unable to accommodate them later on the same agenda item. And as I mentioned before, if you want to fill out a comment card, the hospital is item 15, skateboard is item 16, and the Carlton CUP is item 17.
So individuals who have preregistered may take one opportunity to address the council for up to two minutes. After all individuals on the sign up sheet have spoken, other individuals may speak if time permits. Is there anyone who would like to address the city council during the open public comment period? Excellent. Welcome. My name is Asiel. My name is Asiel, and I'm a fourth grader. And I'm a skater here at Northfields, and I'm here to talk in favor of the skate park face too.
I use the park as much as I can if my mom will let me, and I try to skateboard every single day. And please keep the kids like me in mind to make powerful decisions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Would anyone else like to address the council during the open public comment period? Okay. Seeing no one else, we will move on to the approval of the agenda, noting that tonight's agenda includes two supplemental memos.
Councilor Ness? I'd like to move the agenda as amended. Thank you. Is there a second? Councillor Beamer. I'll second. Is there any discussion of the agenda? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. The agenda passes. Next up, we have a couple of presentations tonight, and we're going to start with the Mayor's Youth Council, What I Love About Northfield poster contest. I believe we have some members from the Mayor's Youth Council, there they are, to present this tonight. Guys, I was not locked in for the trip. Okay. Great. Hello. I'm Nicholas Livingston. I am a cochair of Mayor's Youth Council,
and I have the privilege of being a part of the poster conflict contest about what we love at at Norfield. Elizabeth McCormick will soon introduce herself and tell you the story behind the poster contest. However, I will be handing out these wonderful certificates for these wonderful kids. If your kids wants to take a photo with the parents' permission, they can stay up here. But if not, just return to your seat with your gift card. Thank you so much. Alright. Hi, everyone. My name is Elizabeth McCormick. Like Nick said, I'm the early youth engagement subcommittee chair. We just started this subcommittee this past year after the poster contest this poster contest
that we did last year. Engaging with these young people really inspired us to place more of a focus on kids in grades k through eight, which the mayor's youth council hasn't done in the past. We've been really excited about this, and so this was sort of our main event this year that we were looking forward to. And so I how this is gonna work is I'm gonna call the names of a student. You can come up here. You'll get a chance to get your certificate, And then at the end, we're gonna have a big photo with all of the counselors. Alright. And then first name.
Alright. Fifth place in the fourth and fifth grade category, Nico Juggies. I hope I pronounced it right. Congrats. That's right. Next, fourth in the fourth place in the fourth or fifth category is Sasha Markovsky. Third place in the fourth through fifth category is Shay Vrias. Alright. Second place in the fourth and fifth grade category is Lydia Orser. Of course. And first place in the fourth and fifth grade category is Kalyn Dienst. Congrats. Alright. Moving on to second and third grade. For third place in second and third grade, we have Deliana Shoop.
Thank you. You're welcome. Second place in the second and third category, we have Avery Nacy. And then first place in the second and third grade category, we have Cohen Brand. That's not Cohen. And then first place in the k through one category, we have Britta Mattson. Alright. Now if we could have all of our winners who would like to come up, we can take a quick photo. Yeah. I am. I'm just gonna give the arts and culture one. Next up is our presentation of the Arts Annual Report. There we go. Well, good evening, mayor and members of council. Thank you for the opportunity to share our annual report on the percent for the
arts. Joining me tonight is Michael Johnson, executive director of the Northwell Arts Guild. And, this is the first time we'll be presenting this, and the guild's new role is our local arts agency, which they're serving on an annual basis to help us, carry out our public art goals, and to help us spend the 8% funds. Since we no longer have the ACC to work with, we're now working with the arts guild in that capacity. So that our first project, last year was restoring the, sculpture that is in the fountain in Bridge Square.
We brought in professional conservators last April to bring the Schjeldahl anniversary fountain back to back to life a bit. It needed quite a bit more than a cleaning after forty years. So and I attached the conservatory report to this item only because I thought folks might find it interesting. It's just for information. And they will return annually in the spring to do some regular maintenance on it, hopefully, to keep from having to do as much conservation work as they did, which is a much more expensive treatment when you have to remove a lot of the lime and other things that tend to build up on it,
and get the original patina and add the wax to it. It was adding wax to bronze keeps it from getting that built up into the, into the bronze itself. So they also cleaned and removed some graffiti from harvest, which is the other Ray Jacobson sculpture on the Riverwalk. And so before you is, the Loon Liquor, mural that was done in September. So this was done by a Wyoming based artist, Dan Toro. And the goal was to really celebrate the local milling history as you can see. It's a really dynamic piece, really dimensional, really vibrant colors. You can see it off of 5th Street. It's in the alleyway.
It's actually very visible when you look, from the Just Foods coop. So, yeah, this was done in September, and it was done over the course of about a month. So super excited to have that added to our portfolio. The second mural that was done as a part of that, also completed in September was, this one was by Natasha May Platt, and she's based out of South Dakota. Here, this is located right behind the Guild Building as well as, on the lower level of this pedestrian bridge. So I will mention here, this is a really important spot just in terms of there was a lot of graffiti at this location. And so as we know,
murals do a great job of deterring that. And because of the site specificity of this location, we wanted to make sure that we're incorporating nature and animals and just really embracing the riverfront. Next up. I think this might be actually the most fun that I've had working on one of these projects as Rocky is delightful to work with. But we, we commissioned Rocky Casillas to adorn the fencing around the Archer House site to improve the street scape before winter walk. And, hopefully, it will last long enough until there is a building there. This mural features 100 actually, more than 100 books by Northfield authors.
And it it has it it has actually been really popular. I get a lot of comments on this one, and I get to look at it from my office. So maybe why it's my favorite. And the the big mural of the year is gonna be the ice arena mural. So this is likely gonna be completed in July, and this has been, a work in progress by local artist, actually, Michael Swearey. You may have seen some posters about this in terms of, just being able to recycle some of the materials. So this is gonna be, like, 1,200 square feet. It's gonna be massive, and we're super, super excited about it. As you can see, it's really kind of celebrating the local,
winter scape, the river. You can see, different skaters and just really embracing that, part of our culture. And, yeah. We're gonna be actually having some workshops starting on May 2. So I think we'll have four of those where the artist is actually gonna be working with the community to actually create some pieces. So really excited to have some photos of that. We're actually gonna be doing a video of this project as well just to show folks, how the project came together. And yeah. And these are some images of actually Michael's studio. So as you can see, these are skaters, the scale of which is hard to tell, but it's,
like, probably six feet. So, again, just very, very excited for this. And this is where the workshops are gonna be held in May and June. So if you're signed up, I think Mary Zweifel is actually one of the people signed up for the workshop, so she'll be able to be a part of that. And we're still accepting donations. So if you have any, like, recycled materials, broken plates, glass tiles, you can drop those off at the Guild. So my extra bathroom tile ended up in this, which I'm really excited about So it's really cool tile, but it's mud. So we're moving on to the less colorful slide,
but a financial breakdown. 2025 was probably one of our bigger years just in terms of both projects completed and expenditures. And I I credit the projects completed to working with the art skills. They've really helped us actually move some things through it because it's a little more challenging for me in my role as library director to balance both of, all of this. And so they have been hugely helpful, especially in those downtown murals, which turned out really beautifully in working with the artists on that. And then we have some anticipated anticipated projects that we'll be wrapping up.
As we mentioned, the ice arena mosaic will be completed in, the summer, late summer. And we're looking to do some downtown placemaking, hopefully getting the young sculptors project going again. That has been on hiatus for a little while while we try to find a more stable funding source for that. And, it seems like a good fit for the percent for the arts program. It's biannual biannual program. So how can I help at the high school will be working with an artist who comes into the school as an extracurricular activity and facilitates the sculpture workshops with
students? And then that sculpture will live outside the library for a couple of years, and then we rotate that out. So it gives us the chance to do some temporary sculpture and empower young sculptors to take part in that. And I think with that, we're ready to take questions. Questions from the council? Pretty close. Excellent job presenting. There were no questions. Wow. It does. It's beautiful. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Next up is our quarterly police report with Chief Schreper. I drew the really short straw tonight because I have to follow the arts only to follow that followed kids,
so here I am. So, I'll try and make this quick. Most of you aren't here to see me. I know that, so I'll blast through this pretty quick here. Just quarterly report for first quarter twenty twenty six. So I'll go over calls for service, group a crimes, group b crimes, noteworthy events in the police department. So, as you'll see here, group a crimes are excuse me. First calls for service for 2026 so far, you'll see that we continue the downward trend. We're about an 8.6% decrease from last year quarter one, so 536 fewer calls. And then,
from quarter last 2025, we're 3.7. So a general downward trend there continues over the last two years. Group a crimes, this is what group a crimes are. So it's typically your more severe crimes. We're faring very well here. Our group a crimes are down 31% from twenty twenty five quarter one. 55.5% of that is in fraud alone, and then 46% decrease in combined thefts for from last year as well. And then from last quarter twenty twenty five, so quarter quarter four twenty twenty five were 24% decrease in that in group a
crimes. Group B crimes typically are lower level crimes. There we see a slight increase, so 20% increase from last year and then 24% increase from quarter four. So a lot of this seems to be right now some child custody things that we're getting a lot of calls on, and then lower level crimes that part of this is also just more enforcement. It could be traffic related, so you'll see an increase here as well. So it's a good trend to go down in group a crimes and and not necessarily a bad thing to go up a little bit in group b crimes. Some notable events.
So a cub scout donation in January. Here pictured here, sergeant Cohen, officers Eschenbach, and Clovey accepting the heroes and helpers donation from the local cub scouts. They donate to the fire department, EMS, and also the police department. In the photo you're showing here, you'll see they came from the the, fire department, so they had to put their police officer stickers on their fire hat. So if you see the fire department, make note of that. And we thank them. So, DARE graduation. We had another Oster go through DARE graduation in February, which is a two week class. So here, Oster Eschenbach completed the two work two week DARE school.
That that'll make four DARE officers for us in Northfield. So it does have some expense for us as a a police department and as a city, but it's a very beneficial project that we do with multiple schools in town. So we have great success with the DARE program and just building the most relationships. And DARE is not just about drugs anymore. It's about violence and bullying and things like that as well. So a great program, and it's happy to have four officers doing that now. This was a first for us, so fifty North hosted, the first ever conversation cops coffee, they called it, or coffee with a cop.
You'll see other communities did. So we had, myself, the deputy chief, some sergeants, and an officer there that met with many in at fifty North. Unfortunately, it was the day after our last big snowstorm, so we had less of a turnout. But still a really good conversation with them, and we're looking forward to do more of them. A couple thank yous that that I like to post and including the administrator's update. The biggest one is I say on the left, this follows a lot of the ice stuff that we dealt with. And no matter your stance on how ice played out, a lot of things that came up for the police department here was our training
on de escalation. If you see the the letter on the left, it's a little hard to read here, but one of the comments that was made there is that the police department was masters of de escalation. So it's great to hear from the the community and the public of things like that because there was so much pressure after all the ice stuff and and seeing the training that we have to go through required part of deescalation, and it's noted here. So great feedback there. What's on the horizon for us? New badges. Part of the new badge thing, the legislature adopted, the new state seal in May 2024. So part of that was our current badges.
The the one I'm wearing tonight still has the retired state seal on it that we have to replace and update. In 2025, we wore a hundred and fiftieth anniversary badge, what was the throwback the star, which is shown on the picture here. But then now moving forward, we just received the samples on on this upcoming badge. As you see, it recognizes the community and and many, features of the community within the badge. So, versus the generic one that we're wearing today, and and it doesn't have the seal on on a lot of historic things instead. And this is covered under a current budget, so I'm not here to ask for any increase of funding or anything like that
and no council action on it. So all covered under current. Another exciting program, this is just starting up now, is creation of the CERT team, which is community engagement and recruitment team. This was actually brought to me by some of the officers that wanted to start this program, and we just came up with the the acronym, for it. So it's mainly focusing on use and youth engagement and mentorship, similar to our Big Brothers, Big Sisters program is what we're intending to do with this, but then also just that community engagement, the business engagement,
the partnerships with the businesses, safety and initiatives, and then of crew recruitments of importance as well here because numbers are coming up a little bit, but still not where we wanna see them. So creation of this team will happen here in the next couple weeks and hopefully be out in full force come the summer. So that's all I have unless there's questions. Thank you. Are there questions from the council? All right. Thank you very much. Now we move on to our consent agenda. You'll see that come up on the screen. These are a list of items that the council will pass in one motion. So I am looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda.
Councillor Sohkup? I'll move the consent agenda. Is there a second? Councillor Ness. Second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? We have a consent. Next is reports from the mayor and council members. Councillor Ness, we'll start with you tonight. Thank you. I had well, CVB had a meeting this noon, and we talked about the governor's pheasant hunting opener, which is October this year. The governor will be here, but more importantly, there will be a lot of press,
and it's a time to make Northfield shine. So the CBB is trying to put all that together. Also had a knappers meeting last Thursday and got the annual audit back results back, and it was very clean. So we're happy with that. And I also attended the planning commission meeting last Tuesday, because there was two items of interest, the Carlton Parking and Harvest Hills. We're both on that agenda. So, glad we could attend that,
but that's all I got. Thanks. Thank you very much. Counselor Peterson White. Thank you. I think since I last reported, I attended a hospital board meeting, the main meet of which we will hear about shortly. And I last week, there was a Northfield Transportation Advisory Committee meeting that mainly consisted of a presentation and conversation with Hiawatha Land Transit about the technicalities of their relationship with MnDOT, how they determine routes, how they adjust routes. It was highly educational and generated a lot of, interesting ideas about how to grow transit use and availability in Northfield.
It was great. Thank you. Councilor Soukup. I think the only thing I have to report is, that I went to the mayor's youth council brunch last Sunday, the Sunday recently. And it was amazing, and I love that group. And, I hope they keep doing it annually. Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Thank you. We had a, beyond the yellow ribbon committee meeting, last week. Big discussions there are for the, planning of our Memorial Day picnic, after the Memorial Day ceremony down at Veterans Park.
And I also attended the mayor's youth council brunch, and that was awesome. Anybody that hasn't done that, I highly recommend you do that. I had a great time, great kids, and it was a lot of fun. Thank you. Counselor Holmes? Yeah. Thank you. Since we last met, the only thing that I have attended was the planning commission meeting, which was chock full of a lot of things. So, first was a public hearing and the CUP approval for Bear Wellness, which is a retail cannabis
business, and it passed. So it's our number two the the number two approved CUP business in town, which meets our maximum and minimum. It's going to be it is going to be located behind McDonald's on Professional Drive there. That is Professional Drive. Right? I think that's right. Okay. And then we had the public hearing and the CUP, and, CUP for the preliminary plat for Harvest Hills second edition that passed. We will be talking about that again, at the May at our first May meeting.
Additionally, then the Carlton, item, that had been tabled or had been postponed from the the March meeting was discussed, and that also passed. We will be discussing that tonight, as well as an additional item on the agenda that had come up from the the discussion around the Carlton project, but is also really related to a lot of the things we've talked about in terms of, things that have come from Saint Olaf as well as things that were raised with the Harvest Hills work in terms of looking at safety traffic.
How do we solve this and look at things from a policy standpoint? So the recommendation, the discussion was about recommend making recommendations to council to be able to look at some of these things in some of these neighborhoods where we know that there are issues or there are likely to be issues in the future. Thank you. I attended the mayor's youth council and agree that it is a wonderful event, and we have exceptional youth on our mayor's youth council. One of the things that they talked about quite a bit was transportation, so we should probably get the Northfield Transportation Advisory Committee together with some youth representatives.
So thank you for those reports. Next up is our regular agenda. So we will kick off our regular agenda with considering a resolution approving a purchase agreement for the acquisition of a medical clinic, a taxable subordinate hospital revenue note Series 2026 in connection with the financing with financing such acquisition and amended and restated indenture of trust and related documents. Are you ready, Xander? Administrator Abbott. Great. Thank you,
mayors Weifel. Thank you, members of council. It is a mouthful, and I am really excited to be here with you guys today. This has been a journey, and I appreciate many people in this room's support along the way as we've really looked at this opportunity and analyzed it thoroughly to make sure that it is the right thing for Northfield, the right thing for everyone who lives in this city and needs to access health care. So I'm excited today to bring you some culminating remarks. Today, you have a resolution in front of you that would be, that we put forward for your consideration to authorize Northfield Hospital and Clinics to purchase
the property at 1400 Jefferson Road. I'm really honored that our Northfield Hospital and Clinics Board of Trustees, just met last week and unanimously approved this resolution. I've been working with the Board of Trustees for the past four months to do some comprehensive due diligence and analysis of this opportunity. And I will, really compliment my board for asking tough questions, demanding analysis from the staff, and making sure that we are doing the right thing for the organization. Many of my board members, our board members are here tonight.
I know Councilor Pearson White is here. Thank you. Michael Hemisteth, Jamie Reister, Fred Rogers, are all here to support us today and we have a great other group of board members as well. Today I wanted to provide a few summary remarks and then open it up for questions. I'll start by putting the context around Northfield Hospital and Clinic. And we're here because City Council has the reserve power to approve the purchase of facilities in town that are connected to healthcare. So we bring that here to you for your reserve power. We really appreciate the opportunity to be a City owned hospital,
have a tight connection with Council, and be able to work hand in hand with the organization and the city. So as I've shared with you over the past five months, Northfield Hospital and Clinics announced a public letter of intent to purchase the Allina Health Clinic here in town, last December. Over the past, four months of due diligence under the direction of our board of trustees, we have looked under every stone to ensure that this is the right financial, clinical, as well as public interest for the hospital in our city. We had our first re meeting to review the due diligence in February.
And at this meeting, the administration presented our recommendations, answered questions, and received input from board members. We also used this time to receive input from individuals across Northfield. We held, dozens of meetings and met with many stakeholders to understand how this would impact those who receive care at the Alliant Clinic in town and how we as a hospital and clinic system can make it as positive as possible. We then had a second review with our Board of Trustees in March where we again provided additional information to understand what our due diligence was finding. And that all culminated in an April 13 special session where we did receive that
unanimous support from our Board of Directors to recommend to counsel that we proceed with approving the purchase agreement of the building at 1400 Jefferson Road. When I was here last month to meet with you guys, I shared some details. I wanted to go through some of those again today just to keep you updated on what's happening and then open it up for any questions. So one of the important elements of this deal is acknowledging the amazing health care team that currently practices at the Allianz Clinic in town. It is a great group of physicians and nurses and providers and front office staff who who provide amazing care to our community and have done that for decades.
Northfield Hospital and Clinics feels incredibly proud of this opportunity to welcome those team members to Northfield Hospital and Clinics so they can continue providing great care to our community. The deal that we put together with Allina Health allows Northfield Hospital and Clinics to purchase the building and the land and equipment for a total value of $6,000,000 We broke that out into a $2,000,000 purchase price and then $3,500,000 paid out over five years with 4% interest. These are terms that we were able to come to agreement with Allina on to make sure that it's a fair market value and also one that makes sense for
Northfield as well as for our hospital system. It's important to note that Northfield Hospital and Clinics is city owned, but not city funded. So we rely completely on our own revenues to make sure that we can pay for this fund. So this will have no impact on taxpayers. There's no incremental tax. There's no burden on the tax base. This deal will benefit HealthCare Northfield by strengthening the financial position of Northfield Hospital and Clinics and allowing us to continue to keep health care local. It will have a positive financial return, which will allow us to return to a positive operating margin in the coming years. When Northfield Hospital and Clinics opens the new clinic at 1400 Jefferson Road,
this will unite healthcare across Northfield. Currently, Northfield has an Illina Clinic in town and we also have Northfield Hospital and Clinics primary care. These two disparate systems have created inefficiencies over the many decades. And so this opportunity to come together and align the practices and how we provide care and treat our patients, both in the hospital setting as well in the clinic setting, is going to be allowing us to expand access and ensure that locally owned healthcare in Northfield is sustainable for the next decade and more. Our Northfield Hospital and Clinic Finance Committee has met multiple times to review this.
I'm really fortunate to have an incredibly talented and intelligent and experienced finance committee who helped us go through some significant due diligence. We also engaged an outside professional services firm Clifton Larsen Allen or CLA to come and validate our financial projections associated with this purchase of 1400 Jefferson Road. These internal and external analyses combine to make us feel confident that this deal is the right move for Northfield Hospital and Clinics. Amongst other things, it has a favorable two and a half year payback period and puts us on the path to return to profitability so that we can continue investing in our facility
as well as our people. As part of this transaction, as I've shared in the past, Allina will receive a twelve year right of first refusal for the purchase of Northfield Hospital and Clinics. If the City of Northfield ever decides to sell Northfield Hospital and Clinics, that would trigger this opportunity for Allina. We've worked hard with Allina to understand exactly the nuances of this and one of the important things to note is that there's a carve out. If Northfield Hospital and Clinics if the City ever decided to spin it off into an independent five zero one(three) non profit, that would not trigger the right and Northfield Hospital and Clinic would remain independent in that environment.
It's important to share that Northfield Hospital and Clinics, City Council, or the City Of Northfield has no intentions to join a health system. We are firmly committed to being an independent. We think that's the best way to serve our city and to serve our region. And we have plans to remain independent into the long term future. Another important thing to acknowledge is that just last month, Allina announced that they are planning on joining Sutter Health. Sutter Health is a non profit health system based out of California. So this is news that the Board of Trustees, my administrative team took very seriously to make sure we understood how this would or
would not impact the deal. After analyzing Sutter and understanding the strength of that nonprofit healthcare system, we feel very positive about this opportunity. The right of first refusal for full transparency would survive. And so when if Allina joins Sutter Health, then Sutter Health and Allina would hold that right of first refusal for Northfield Hospital and Clinics. Sutter Health is a really strong healthcare organization, significantly larger than Allina and really rooted in their non profit healthcare system. They provide exceptional quality of care and they've committed to making significant investments in healthcare in Minnesota.
So as Northfield Hospital and Clinics thinks about this deal being positive for us because we will improve and expand the community based care we provide right here in Northfield in our region, Allina's opportunity to join Sutter allows them to continue to strengthen their opportunity to be a tertiary care specialty service health system that serves a multi state region for high end tertiary care. That's good for Northfield because as we continue to strengthen our partnership with Allina, we want the best tertiary partner that we can have for our patients to receive healthcare. As I mentioned earlier, this deal will have no tax revenue impact.
Healthcare clinics are taxed at the normal property rate and Northfield Hospital and Clinic will take over responsibility for those taxes of the 1400 Jefferson Road Building. The Northfield Hospital and Clinic's operations team is working hard to make this transition a success. We currently are planning on opening the new Northfield Hospital and Clinic Jefferson Road Clinic in September 2026. This will be a great opportunity for these amazing staff members that align the clinic the doctors, the physicians, the nurse practitioners, the PAs who practice there to continue serving our community under the Northfield Hospital and
Clinic name at the same site providing the same great care. With that I will open it up for questions to see how I can help address any questions you might have. Thank you very much. Councillor Ness. Thank you. I know you said that your board and CLA did financial projections and history. Are those numbers public? Or is that still guarded information until the transaction is final? Our our actual internal analysis continues to be protected and, private at this time. We do come here, as you know,
on an annual basis with our audit. And so we are actually just closing our audit from last year, and we'll bring that to this group in the coming months. One of the nice things about our audit firm is that they acknowledge and they were actually involved with doing some of the due diligence. And so in their audit, they acknowledge that in the next twelve months, Northfield Hospital and Clinic anticipates taking on the Alignin Clinic. And so you'll see a glimpse of that this year, but then more importantly next year, you'll see that come in our audited financials as well. K. Thank you. Other questions from counsel? I think we're good. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I'm looking for a motion.
Councilor Peterson White. Should I read the whole thing? No. You can just give the number if you'd like. I already oh, yeah. You're oh, yes. Alright. Do we need We'll check. Open public comment. I don't have any cards, but Yeah. Any is there anyone who'd like to make any open public comment on this item? I don't have anything. Okay. Pausing. Seeing no one, councilor Peterson White, would you like to kick off a motion? I'll move resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four five. Thank you. Is there a second? Councilor Beamer. I will second.
Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. Well, I I wanna thank Zander for a fantastic presentation. All the all the members of the Northfield, hospital and clinics board have worked incredibly hard, to move this forward as have the amazing staff, at the hospital. It's, it's a really exciting thing for Northfield. I think it's, gonna be really positive for, as Xander noted, people who need health care, which is everyone. And, and for the for our community owned hospital. In the long run, it's gonna be, really excellent for the stability and long term success of that institution,
which is really a very important community asset and a very important public asset. So, I'm just delighted to see this moving forward and, very grateful to all the people who worked really hard to get it this far. Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Thank you. I too would like to thank, Zander and the Northfield Hospital board, everybody for putting this together. As I think I stated to, Zander early on, I think it's a really good idea to have our health care all wrapped up in one. And especially at a time where you're starting to see a lot of the the,
rural clinics and stuff closed down, it's it's really kind of a huge thing to have to have Northfield Hospital and clinics being so solid and and getting their footing firmly into Northfield. So thank you all. Councilor Ness. Thank you. I too wanna thank the Zander and the board for this the decisions made. Health care is kind of in a state of flux, and it's nice to hear that your board and your inside financial person and CLA
have all given you green lights because, you know, there's a lot of insurance companies and hospitals that are going under. And putting this whole thing together has taken one big effort. So, thank you. Thank you. Councilor Soakup. Yeah. I'll just echo the thanks to the board and, to mister Abbott. I'm really excited for this. I think when I joined council, it was really post COVID and things, the reports were rough. You know? It seemed like I mean,
for everyone, not just Northfield Hospital. Make that clear. But, this, I think, is really good news. And, like counselor, Beamer mentioned, just reading about how many rural hospitals and clinics are closing. I think the fact that we have this opportunity is, really unique, and so I, credit all of you who've done this hard work. This is not an issue area I know really hardly anything about, so I just wanna say thanks for how accessible you all have been and how you've been, proactively getting out into the community and,
you know, helping, helping answer people's legitimate fears and concerns about big changes in our community. So thank you. You. Counselor Holmes. I couldn't be the only one not to speak, so I will but I won't belabor anything. I'll just echo the thanks to, administrator Abbott and the board, for all the work that's gone into this. It's a long time coming and I think that it's a really valuable and as an asset for our community. I especially think, you know, you were getting curveballs thrown in the last minute there. So being able to be responsive is is really important.
I think just a sign of of this being the right thing, and I'll echo councilor Sokup's comments there in terms of helping manage the change for people, who are seeking care here in Northfield, but also the the caregivers here in Northfield who want to be a part of the community and, be able to serve the community in that way. So finding as as many opportunities as we can to keep great staff and great people around, I I appreciate that. Thank you. I will add my gratitude to the comments tonight and thank Administrator Abbott,
the hospital board and the Northfield Hospital and Clinic staff. I appreciate the opportunity to lean into rural health care. And to that end, I thank Allina for bringing this partnership to us to consider. So, with that, all those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Those opposed? Congratulations. The motion carries. Next up is a skateboard park, which is not related to hospital at all. Only to hospital patients. Going in a different direction. This is so exciting. Welcome to discuss the preliminary design and update of Phase two of the Northfield Skateboard Park.
Mayor, members of council, Dave Bennett. Glad to be here. Public works director, city engineer. And I have Tyler Westman here with Northside Boards and Mark Leski with, Wizard Skate Park. So just wanna give a little bit of background on the project. We're really just getting getting started, update on really high level preliminary concepts that we're beginning to develop to just to kinda kinda level set where we're at moving into this next phase of the skate park expansion. So I'll just do a little bit of the background, and then, I'll hand it off to Tyler,
and we'll kinda go back and forth here on this presentation. So, really, I think after really, a youth led initiative back in, you know, 2010 to 2013, many years to get through, finally, the the initial phase of the skate park was constructed in Memorial Park in 2015. There always was a plan, all the way back in 2015 for a future phase that that was identified back then. So, you know, fast forward ten years, it's been. There was a a funding opportunity through the Minnesota City of Skate grant that was through the legislature.
The city was awarded those funds, $500,000 to expand the skateboard park. So the initial skate park is roughly 4,500 square feet. So this this the goal is to really be about doubling the size of it, is where we we think, and we'll be going through some of the the cost estimating and due diligence just to to truth those numbers to make sure that that's the size we can get to with the funds that we have available through the grant. So we did approve, the grant agreement with, d. They're the, the state agency that's,
administering the grant. So that was in February. So we we did get approval, waited for them to sign in. So kinda in that time, we we kinda have been working with Mark on the side, just waiting to give him the green light, once we hear back from the state. So I'll let, Tyler kinda introduce, Mark. Sure. Thank you, David. Hi, everyone. So, yeah, what David was saying, as far as where we're at and, like, getting the chance to work with Mark, Mark is, our designer, for our skate park, and, he's been doing this for thirty plus years.
He's a Minnesota native, which we're really excited about because we want somebody that understands Northfield and understands the history behind the park that we have there. If there's anybody that can take the park that is currently there and mold it into something beautiful and not I don't wanna say usable. That's not the right word, but, like, just something great and fantastic. Like, Mark is the person to do that. So we're super happy and blessed to have him as our designer. So, a little background for him on some of the parks he's done. He's built a lot of private parks and public public parks,
and he's really recognized nationwide for what he does. Some of the notable parks, and I know you guys won't know these aren't necessarily, but, like, Blood Bowl, Hiawatha, Cuckoo's Nest, Kanwaka, Duluth was a a major city, one that he had done recently. But some of those skate parks mentioned before are, like, known throughout The US and the industry, and, like, they're pretty special places. And Mark was heavily involved with design on that. So, yeah, it's just awesome to have a guy like this in Minnesota to help us out.
He's also worked construction. So Peter Park, Elliot, Shakopee. There's a lot more, Mark, maybe. I mean, just hundreds of parks that he's worked on. So and what we also love, obviously, is that he's a lifelong skater. Skated over 500 parks across The United States, understands the nuances of transitions, how a park flows, what really needs to be there to make a great park. So that is Mark Leskie, known as the wizard for a reason. So It's not a self appointed mechanic. Yeah. Just a few goals. I think I think,
probably the highlight is, like, all skill levels. So I think that's one of the things I think that we've heard is really making sure when the park is built, we're really thinking about broadening the age and the skills and the type of features so that it can be more accessible to more more users. Potentially can bring, you know, a destination tourism, bring people from outside the community to use it, and really create a a really a safe recreational activity for the youth and and adults in the community that that still skate. In terms of timeline here, so the the blue arrow.
So we're really we're we're early in the process. So I think the the project, can can move probably more aggressively, but it so we're we're really are going out for bid in August to potentially have construction in this fall. I think we will have a check-in later this summer before we get into the bidding to really check with the the builders that build the skate parks to see if there is schedule availability to actually move into construction this fall. We we I I think we're initially setting it up where it's a a fall
twenty six that can lead into 2027. But if we're hearing from the contractors that they their availability for construction in the fall time, we may just kinda wait a bit later in the fall and just know it'd be a spring twenty twenty seven construction. So we're we're meeting with user groups. So, Tyler will share a little bit of the the last user group meeting. It was held at the Northside Board Shop here in in town. We do have a a community meeting scheduled for May 6, so we do wanna get get input from the community, on the the next phase of the skateboard park.
So, really, from council, we're just looking for any preliminary input if they have anything you want us keep in mind as we move forward into this design. Then, really, we would be coming back in May later in May for council, really, to if we get to the a final concept, so once we, arrive at the input from the community and the users of what we think the concept is, from there, we'll go into the final design. So from that, we'll get the final plans prepared. We'll get the project ready to go to go for bid. So tentatively, we're planning planning on bringing plans back in July this summer.
So that's the schedule, right now. A couple of the images, this is a view looking north. So the it's hard to if you can see the pointer. So this is the existing skate park right here, and then we have the bowl right here. So the kinda kinda the part around the perimeter. This is all conceptual of a layout of the of the potential expansion of the skateboard park. I'll let Mark and Tyler talk about all the features in there because I don't know all the lingo of the of all the features.
This is another view looking Northeast, and then we've kinda have it dropped into the aerial. So you can I think as this gets developed, we'll see? We're not anticipating getting into the trails. It could just based on grading. I don't I don't know if we'll have to slightly adjust any of the trails. Certainly, that that'd be a cost, but that'd be something that we're gonna to look at when we when we move into the final design. So I'll I'll let them share comments from the initial meeting and then anything on the high level conceptual design. Yeah. Yeah. So last Tuesday,
we had a open door community meeting at our store, Northside Boards. It was we did our best to communicate to the city and and posted on our social media as we went around and gave flower flyers to, neighbors that are near the skate park if they wanted to join. The youth union of youth in that group showed up, and we I talked to Kelly there, and and she got a group of people to come over. So we're doing what we can do, what I know to do as far as, like, spreading the word and getting people involved. So but I would like to get feedback from y'all on what more we can
do to get people involved. And, to these meetings, we did have a great showing, in my opinion. There's about 26 people that were there and all different age ranges. I think the youngest was, like, 10. Oldest was, I don't know, like, 50, 55. Maybe you. So but it was a really good meeting, and a lot of people had really great feedback and discussion. And our original designer, Charlie, was at that meeting and talked about Phase 1 and and what had all happened with that design. And it was really nice to have him there as well because he had a
lot of great feedback about what actually happened at that Phase 1 park. So all in all, like, really happy with that first meeting and and what's going on with it. We did receive we passed out these little renderings to people. Hey. You guys can have one if you want. But so we have these in our shop, and we passed these out at the meeting so people could take them, draw their designs on them. Ideas, make notes, bring them home, bring them back. So we did receive a few of these back, along with, obviously, a lot of comments during the meeting that Mark took note of.
And since that meeting, he's been making adjustments and really continuing to hone in the design. And I'll let Mark talk a little bit more about his vision. But what we're seeing right here is kinda just, like, the footprint. I don't want people to get too caught up on what you're seeing as far as, like, features and things like that. We needed to first kinda get a design and decide, like, how it's gonna work with the space that we have there. So, this is sort of what we're thinking as far as creating flow throughout the park. And, as far as,
like, everything else, I don't know if you wanna know. I'm feeling good. Alright. I'm doing alright. Go ahead. I'm not I'm not much for the, talking part of it, more of the hands on and the the design part. But it's really just kind of a if you wanna come to the mic instead. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just trying to find a circular type design for this rather than a linear type design for it, which a lot of parks are kind of focused on. I I think Apple Valley is kinda similar. It's a real linear, but it's it's been better on my opinion. I lived out in the West Coast for about ten years,
and the the West Coast parks have a lot of circular type skate parks. It's kind of easy to weave in and out through people rather than colliding with them. I can't really I'm trying to put anything that is not of the area into this park. So there's a variety from, say, Rosemont to Farmington. And there's a new one going in Winona as well, but I'm trying to make something that's completely unique from the rest of the park so that there is a different one here. Could you talk a little bit about how you're blending the phase one with phase
two? Yeah. I was gonna say that's kinda one of the tough part because the phase one is very linear, like he was saying. And so, like, to incorporate a a flow to this park has really been a That's true. It's been a battle for but it's not something you haven't done before. But, yeah, if you wanna just talk about Sure. That a little bit more. Sure. Never done anything like this before. You're doing great. Thank you. So the second phase that was provided, I think, a couple years ago, I'm not quite sure exactly when that lands, but I've tried to kind of land within the same footprint that that second phase
was gonna take, but then also try to, like, join this, on the South end more rather than, like, at any kind of an angle, but it's more of a kind of a flow through the park. I can't really I can't really give you a whole lot other than that. Like, to start going into skateboarding terms, it's probably just gonna fall short. But there's just a lot of variety I'm trying to create in the space, and I'm working through it on the daily even. I think as far as the footprint and the size, Mark, what are you kind of initial where we think and we're falling at as far
as square footage expansion? I think seven to 8,000. Seven to 8,000 addition to what we have now. So the 500,000 is gonna go a long way. It's gonna get us more than what we originally were planning for. So we're pretty excited about that. Yeah. Any questions? Questions from the council? Councilor Holmes. I have a couple, but I can wait if there's others. Just my assumption is and it looks like that would be available, but just like how this space is used now, there's a lot of kids on scooters and bikes. Like, scooters and bikes, this is also factoring in them as potential users,
not just skateboards? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. Definitely. Okay. Cool. I I guess I have well, I have one question, and then I have you wanted suggestions too, so I have that. But I'll I'll ask the question. So you have the the user group, and I think, good job in getting engagement. I think you're you're running into what the challenge that we have with every project we have is how do we get good engagement. So way to get out there and get creative and and bring people in. In the absence of having a parks board, is there is there another group or that where you need advising from?
Because I know this is coming to us. And no offense. I mean, I guess I can just speak to us to me, but I don't think I'm the best person to to weigh in the final plans of things. So I just wanna make sure that that you have the advising or you have groups and and or you have what you need in terms of design. I mean, I think we ultimately will be responsible for the final plan, but I think you also want experts to have that to give you that information too. Experts as far as, like In use and right? Like, I mean, I well, maybe some of us.
I I will likely never skate in in this. Right? I mean, but I'll take my kids. But so, so I I don't necessarily wanna be the final approver on things without, like, you know, that there's other people. And so typically, you would go to the parks board. We don't have the parks board now. So I'm just wondering, like, is there a, do you have advisors or the people that you need within the community? And this could be a question for you, but also for mister Bennett in terms of getting getting those things so that when the plans come to us, we don't have to we're not making a lot of changes. I mean, I'll answer as far as my experience so far with the city.
And I don't know if this answers your question, but it's been great working with David and Andrew. And it's I believe I feel like I've had everything I need as far as, like, communications and what they've gotten us. I think Mark agrees, and there obviously is gonna be a whole bunch of with Mark and professionals, and and we are constantly having conversation with this coalition of skaters and and scooter riders and people that are on wheels, rollerbladers, skate, like, roller skaters.
So as far as, like, the support, the ideas, like, design on what we're gonna need, I feel like we have it. Yeah. For sure. I think it's been really good. Mayor Mershus, I think it's there's probably a two part component. I think we have I think, like, getting the user groups and, like, the people that are and the kids and the and really getting strong input from them that really helps shape the the design and how it should function. And I think we have we have more of our formal broader community input, so we wanna make sure we hear from the neighborhood around the park.
We're taking their information. And and I'm I I'm thinking more about making sure we've got the right family amenities. So, like, the mom that's there with her young kids has a picnic table to sit at. There might be some shade. There's some other types of things that really complement the park to make it really functional. So I think those are some of the things that that I'm thinking about. I think things that'll come up with the community is, if the park is not lit currently, can it be lit? If it is lit, does it just follow our standard park hours to to 10PM,
or does it is it on a a reduced type hour? So those will be some of the things that we work through. The pool is open to 8PM. Through the summer, it's still light. So it's gonna be more like the the shoulder seasons where it's the spring and it's the fall where the lighting and and we'll be, probably hearing input, and we'll be asking questions with the community about that. But those are some things. It could still move forward, and some of that lighting stuff could be be figured out in terms of timeline. But I think, with this type of expansion, it's pretty common that at a lot of skate parks that they they are lit,
for those, for users to be able to access them in the not in the summer, in the fall, in the spring. So I think we will have enough input from the community, from the user groups, and we can bring that back to council for, for recommendation from you guys or more input too. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I'll just add this is a community driven, project. So Tyler came to us, what, in last year, 2005, with an opportunity to go after this funding from the state. And so we started working from there and bringing people in, getting the letters in,
requesting the funds, pulling people in along the way. And so this is a very community driven project. So appreciate all the work that Tyler has put in so far. Councillor Ness? Thank you. I just want to thank the group that put this all together because when I was growing up, our idea of a skateboard was the old roller skates that clamped onto your shoes. We'd take them apart, bolt them onto a piece of plywood, and metal wheels on a sidewalk wasn't the safest thing in the world. But the emergency room in the hospital was right across the street,
so you could either walk or get dragged over there. And, it happened quite often, but I know safety is a key issue to you on equipment, you know, elbow pads, knee pads, helmets, all that good stuff, and it it makes a lot of sense. Firsthand experience on the other. Alright. Thank you. We have one of those boards in our shop hanging on the wall if you want to try it again. Yes. Come on in. All right. Other questions or comments? Councillor Holmes? Here's my comment. I wasn't here when phase one happened and I've only heard the lore of what
happened around it and where there were maybe missteps. So I guess the in terms of the ask for recommendations, I just I mean, I know there are people sitting up here and around in the on staff that can that can speak to things more. But I I guess my hope would be that there's we can take any of the lessons learned from that experience and it sounds like hopefully, you know, with the engagement that you're already doing, we're bringing that in and, but that we can whatever we've learned whatever we learned from phase one that we can make better for this process so that it becomes something that people feel.
And it sounds like, you know, we got the wizard, so, maybe that's like maybe that isn't in and of itself something that that helps make this happen too. But but I guess my my comment is just on, what we what we can learn from that and and do better this time around so that it can be successful right from the get go. And I think, to comment on that, I think, yeah, I'm really trying to learn from the history and make sure that we're going in a kind of a different direction. As far as, like, Mark's design and being able to talk to actual builders and,
like, being in more control from the users and stuff like that, I think and, really, I don't know if I'm seeing it right here, but I feel like we're on a path where we're not gonna run into the same things as we did in phase one. So I feel, yeah, I feel really good about it, and hopefully, David does too and city members and everything. So Councilor Peterson White. I was gonna try to resist going down memory lane, but since, I've been prompted to do so by counselor Holmes, I, came on the council in 2012 when the youth movement in town around getting a
skateboard park had been going on for a while. And, it's actually really moving to me to be seeing this happening in this way, driven by people who are experts in how to make a great skate park. And, you know, back in 2012, like the the youth were were the experts that we had and they their advocacy, their persistence, their tenaciousness, their absolute commitment to to knowing that this is something our community needed and that they deserve to have was one of the most inspiring things I think I've seen actually in my time in public service.
And, and it was I I think part of the the difficulty of that was that we didn't yet have a skate park. And so many, many of the public conversations, I, you know, I I will just honestly say, like, I think the first public meeting I went to was like a neighborhood meeting about, the not yet built not yet even sited Skateboard Park is the first public meeting where I cried. It was not the last, but it was the first. And, it was emotional for two reasons. One was that the youth were so incredibly inspiring and committed
and so organized. And they just they were the grassroots, and it was so powerful to witness. And there was so much prejudice about skateboarding, about whether this is something we even can consider having in a public park, about whether we should build parks for teenagers. Like, there was a lot. There was a lot on it, I will say. And not all of it was beautiful and inspiring. A lot of it was, really unfortunate, I will be honest and say. And it was emotional for that reason.
We have come a really long way. We now have a skateboard park. I think that we could all do we all of us who participated in that could could talk about, what could have gone differently and better. But the fact that I got done it all was absolutely incredible, and it's really thrilling to me now to see that the way this phase two is coming forward is driven by the people who are the users and know the users. And I I mean, I remember in 2012 also a a colleague of mister Westman's, a old, old friend of mine,
Christian, who works at the skate shop, was like, you gotta get this guy Leski. And we've got him. Yeah. So I feel, I mean, I think that you when phase one happened, it was we were doing the best we could with, you know, in a city that had never had a skateboard park before. Right? And where there was actually a lot of conflict about whether that was even a thing that we should have. Now we know it's a thing we we should have. We know it's a thing that our youth deserve,
that our youth will use, that is a beautiful pastime that is welcoming to so many different users in this location. And so I think we can kind of it's it's evolved now. And it is clear to me that we have the right people involved to make sure that this is gonna be a fantastic addition that's gonna be really thoughtful and really focused on on the user groups, who are there. So thank you for indulging my narrative. It's really I'm just thrilled, guys. It's great. Can't wait to see the next steps. Thank you.
I'll just say we're so excited, to have you both here, Tyler and Mark. We definitely feel we're in the right hands with this going forward. Couldn't be more excited to have you, both working on the project. And I also want to say, about the city aspect of it. Like, Mr. Bennett mentioned the lighting, the seating, the that sort of thing, I want to make sure that as much care that is going into the design and construction of this new expanded skateboard park that we're the city is also putting in as much care into the siting of the lighting,
the amenities. There's water there now. I hope the water is actually connected now. I think that's a thing. It's connected will be connected for the season. Benches, think about age friendly. What would age you know, I like to go watch people skateboard. Sometimes I walk my dog and we sit there and watch, people skateboard. So thinking about, the things around the skateboard park that make it enjoyable for the skaters, friends, families to come with them and enjoy that ride alongside. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, no.
Yeah. This is just update. No vote. Excellent. Okay. Next up is Resolution twenty twenty six-forty six. And for this one, we're going to give you another change in facilitators tonight. You're gonna have three, different facilitation styles to observe tonight. I am going to step aside and recuse myself from this vote as, I have a relationship with Carleton College as an employee. So I will turn, this agenda item over to our mayor pro tem, Chad Beamer, to facilitate. Yes. Counselor Peterson White. I'm wondering if we might take a very short break.
Oh, yes. Is that possible while we're moving? Yes. That's possible. While we switch, seats and I, check out, we'll be right back. You've all you've been very patient, everyone. Thank you. We're just going to take a quick five minute break. Alright. We are back. We are getting ready to discuss item number 17 on the agenda, resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four six, consideration of a conditional use permit for Carleton College to make transportation facility improvements within the perimeter transition area north of 1st Street East.
We will have a presentation by Matthias Huey. If you wanna go for it, go ahead. Thank you. And should I address you as mayor? Is that mayor Pro Tem? It's mayor Pro Tem. Excellent. Thank you, mayor Pro Tem. This is the conditional use permit. So quick overview of the timeline. February 24, neighborhood meeting was held that's required. Here, that was held by the applicant. On March 4, a public hearing notice was published in the Northfield News. March 6, a mailing was sent to properties within 350 feet. On March 19, the public hearing was held at the planning commission,
and the planning commission at that point voted to postpone, their decision, with a request for some additional information. April 16, the planning commission, made their recommendation. And then here we are tonight, April 21. City council reviews and makes the final decision on the CUP. And CUP is conditional use permit, just to clarify. So the location of the project and brief description here, the applicant is proposing to close the section of College Street North, which is north of 1st Street East. That's highlighted in that blue box there on the left side of that image.
That is privately owned. The city vacated that sometime sometime back. It is now owned by Carleton College. And, as part of that closure, they will currently, the Hiawatha land transit buses service the the campus, along that section of College Street. There's a bus stop at one of the, buildings along there. That will is proposed to be relocated, and then there are 24, approximately 24, parking spaces, general parking that will also be lost and, are proposed to be relocated in part as well.
That relocation is to the box on what is the right side of your screen, to the east. The and that's northwest of the corner of 1st Street East and Nevada Street North. Just to ground this, for everyone looking at the map, you can see Division Street over there on the left. That is the that is the intersection of Division Street and 2nd Street East or Highway 19. So the 2nd Street Bridge there heads west over the river. What is, the KYMN Studios commonly referred to, but that is a, you know, a Carlton building there on the corner.
The former Archer House site is just south of there. And then here at the bottom of the screen, you can see the White Center and next to that Central Park. And just to kinda ground everybody in where we are where we are in the city. So, specifically, the area in blue here or highlighted in blue is is the proposed relocation of the parking spaces and bus stop. This is that exist there's an existing parking lot of approximately 88, spaces here, and the applicant is proposing to expand that, to I,
by about 12 spaces or on yeah. About 12. I think it's 80 it's 82 spaces here. They're expanding it to about 96. So, you know, 12 to 14 additional spaces. They are gonna lose several spaces as they they as they lose some for ADA accessible spaces. They'll have more access aisles, more ADA parking stalls. And then, for the access, they'll lose some of these additional spaces as well. That's why there's not a full replacement of the 24 spaces. And I will show a quick overview of the project. So this is the proposal. Again, you saw it was on the north side of the parking lot.
On on the opposite side of the existing parking lot, the bus stop is on the north side of that so that the buses can pull off, and the door will be up against the the boarding area. They are proposing, a couple of shelters, some bike parking. You'll see that relocated parking there, separated from the existing parking lot, by a a swale, or some landscaping. And, there is a garbage enclosure proposed as well to accommodate some existing, garbage receptacles that are currently located outside of these dorm buildings.
James Hall, specifically has several, bright yellow, garbage bins located outside and on the screen. So those will be relocated over here. And then, it will also provide a centralized collection area for, some additional office type building garbage, around the, the ball what is known as the bald spot. And so the conditional use permit process, so it's a type four review. Planning commission makes a recommendation, and then city council makes the decision. The purpose is to address special requirements or characteristics of the use,
and city council may impose conditions necessary to make the use compatible with other uses in the same vicinity. There are 14 criteria included in this process. One is required to be met, and then there are an additional 13 that are to be considered, when making the decision. If the criteria are satisfied, then the applicant is entitled to the to the permit. So it's also important to note that this is not a site plan review. That happens concurrently or subsequently,
depending on the on the timeline of any specific project. That is a staff review and it's a technical thing that's where, you know, everybody from planning and public works and fire, police, etcetera handle things like, grading, lighting, compliance with other provisions of the city code, etcetera. And so that is a that is a distinct process. And that is where, like I said, we make sure that there's compliance with the land development code. So the conditional use permit criteria, as I mentioned, there's 14. The findings, reflect the after the first planning commission meeting,
the the planning commission requested that findings be revised to reflect the minimal nature of the impacts and general application of best practices and principles in in the assessment of the findings or of the criteria. The the first criteria, the required one, is whether or not the use is allowed as a conditional use. And so that's the first and and required finding. This is allowed as a conditional use. And then, the findings reflect that this satisfies the remaining 13 criteria.
Those primarily pertain to, consistency with the land development code intent, and the comprehensive plan, compatibility between the districts. We have this college development zone is immediately adjacent to the low density residential zone, to the south. That impacts are minimal and highly localized. Traffic calming is present at impacted intersections, and two conditions have been recommended in response to neighborhood concerns to help bolster that, you know, satisfaction of those criteria. And I do wanna make a special note on minimal because this word does come
up, especially in relation to impacts and and what exactly that means. So taken in the context of the existing conditions, that is how much traffic is already on-site, how many traffic how much traffic is on these streets and the types of that traffic, and taken in condition in in consideration of the wider neighborhood. So what kind of geographic area are we talking, and then what city streets are designed to handle, from a from a traffic, capacity standpoint and what other city streets are handling. So there's, several layers of context there. And the the determination that it's minimal is a reflection of the the quantity of
the expected increases in the vehicles, the relatively low number, that is expected, and the and the quality of that impact that's anticipated, in relation to those things. So it's not intended to minimize any any concerns. So the planning commission did recommend approval on a five two vote, with two conditions. The, first was that enhanced screening be installed on the south side of that parking lot because in the wintertime, some of that vegetative screening, which is often a a technique that the land development code uses to mitigate the
transition between two different types of uses or two different zoning districts, In the wintertime, because those shrubs lose all their leaves, they're not as effective. And so the condition is is intended to bolster that screening in the wintertime. And then, there was a a citizen note that, the existing lighting is too bright in the parking lot. And in consultation with the applicant and review of previous approvals, it was determined that, the light fixtures that were installed had a small lens installed on the bottom of
them, which scatters light a little bit more. They would not be compliant with our current dark sky lighting ordinance. And and so, the, the condition there is that those existing lenses in this area will be removed and that the new lighting that would be installed as part of this also not have those lenses. And that should direct light downward rather than outward a little bit better. So, the, the first motion at planning commission was made by a a commissioner did move to recommend denial of the of the project or of the CUP. But a majority of the commission felt that the applicant had satisfied the CUP criteria,
and that vote failed on a two five vote. And then we went to the subsequent motion to recommend approval. There was an additional and separate motion. This is a separate item on the agenda and did wanna call this out, just to highlight that the neighborhood did share a lot of concerns about traffic safety in this area, specifically with pedestrians and bicyclists and a high volume of students moving around and through the area. And the planning commission really wanted to call attention to that and and and share
with city council and and recommend that the city formally review the traffic in the area, especially looking at also the on street parking utilization because it's understood that there are some nuisance parking behaviors, and review that, with a with the college with Carleton College and the neighborhood and, where appropriate, develop some, you know, or implement mitigation strategies to to kind of reflect those concerns shared by the neighborhood. So, so neighbor concerns, you you will note there there was a lot of,
public comment received regarding this. So, the primary concerns from residents or or neighbors was, safety concerns due to increased traffic. So more traffic will reduce safety. Student drivers are of a particular concern. Bus traffic would reduce safety on neighborhood streets. Garbage trucks and other large vehicles will be unsafe on neighborhood streets. On street parking reduces the safety of neighborhood streets. That was kind of the general theme towards safety. There was a common theme that there was inadequate traffic study for this,
for this project. Generally, I will note that there didn't seem to be much, or any, any concern with the closing of College Street, and it seemed anecdotally at least that, most of the residents understood that College Street had a very high volume of pedestrian and bicycle traffic on it. So much so that some it was sometimes noted that crossing that street was sometimes difficult at night or, you know, a little bit frightening because of the, you know, potential lack of lighting or the the number of pedestrians there. So,
and then there was a, you know, a complaint that there was no clear number for the number of buses or additional vehicles, garbage, deliveries, or other large vehicles that would be in this site. The another primary concern, neighborhood character and quality of life. So this one, primarily bus traffic, garbage trucks. Large bus traffic will reduce the quality of life for the neighborhood and don't belong on residential streets. Off street parking is an eyesore. Also, we heard that on street parking is a problem. So, trash should be located elsewhere. This was something we heard and,
that the lighting the existing lighting was too bright, and any additional lighting would also be too bright. So, and then a final common theme was that alternative locations were preferred by the neighborhoods specifically because they had less impact on the adjacent neighborhoods. So just to address a couple of misconceptions and misinformation that came up through this process, we wanted to highlight that there despite that new garbage enclosure, that, that spot is serviced three times a week by garbage trucks, once each for compost, recycling,
and and, trash, and that frequency of service will not increase. So there's no increase in garbage truck traffic to this location. This location is not intended for deliveries, so there should be no increase in delivery truck traffic. There are other sites on campus where deliveries are made. College Street will still be accessible to campus vehicles and fire safety, etcetera. So security vehicles, you know, facilities vehicles, will be using some of the will be using College Street, you know, as they need to. And then a lot of those buildings like,
Burton, Sales, Leighton Hall, etcetera, on the far sort of western end of campus or western end of that bald spot, they are all still accessible from Union Street. And so a lot of that access will that was potentially on college before will shift, just to the other side of the building on Union Street. And then, so just a couple misconceptions about the process. The availability of alternatives is not a criteria of the CUP. And so, you know, in a world of infinite possibilities, it is certainly possible to identify a better solution, but that isn't grounds we are considering the application in front of us.
So, applicant engagement with the neighborhood is not a criterion. There is a requirement that they hold that public meeting and and they have satisfied that. But the extent, there's no assessment of the extent of their engagement with the public as the through the process, that would be grounds for, you know, denial. And then the CUP is is focused, like I said, on the existing pro proposal. And I will note no neighborhood is a is a broad term. And in this case, our focus is on the transition from that low density residential into the college and
how do we manage that. So now to bring this back to the neighborhood concerns, with that emphasis on the on the concerns about safety and quality of life, we do have a criterion that relates to that. That criterion is criterion d, and the condition is that the conditional use will not be hazardous or reasonably disturbing to existing or future uses. And so staff set out to assess whether or not there were grounds here to to make a finding, against the applicant. Many of the other criteria kinda overlap with this.
When we talk about neighborhood character, quality of life, there's a lot of kinda overlap in those things. But, so, then this was primarily where city or planning commission had asked for more information. So how would we make this determination? City staff looked at the existing conditions versus the proposed conditions. We, in collaboration with the the chief of police, accessed crash date data for the last ten years, checked if there was a record of complaints, specifically those complaints. We were we were looking if there were complaints about, city buses on residential streets.
So if on other streets where the city buses are running, where did we have neighbors complaining about them being disruptive? And then traffic counts, were provided. The applicant was not required to provide any traffic counts, but did provide traffic counts in this case. And, we compared those across the city to other residential streets. And then we also look, is there any comparable locations in town and what are those conditions like, and then whether or not there were potential solutions that we might implement that would help kind of ameliorate some of those safety concerns. And taking all of those into consideration,
the conclusion was that any impact was was minimal. There was no indication that these streets were more dangerous than other streets in town, especially residential streets. There was no indication that buses are an especially dangerous, type of vehicle, in any way. And, and the traffic counts indicate that these streets are seeing a traffic volume that's in line and often in in certain cases less than other residential streets in town. And that, you know, the proposed shifting of traffic is likely to be a relatively minor amount of traffic. So when we talk about the buses,
which seem to be of a particular concern for the residents, the the most buses was just under 20 buses a day. Hiawatha land runs from 6AM to 6PM, their blue line route, once an hour, and then Monday through and that's Monday through Friday. And then Monday through Saturday, they're running the express route, and that's every forty five minutes from, I believe, 3PM to 10PM. So, that's just shy of 20 buses. The additional 12 parking spaces here represents a a net reduction in off street parking
North Of 1st Street. So there's a loss of about 12 parking spaces total in all of that area. Currently, there's about a 188 off street parking spaces accessed off of 1st Street. So that that number of 12, that reduction is, you know, compared to the 188 existing is considered minor. And, and that was sort of some of the existing conditions that we, you know, considered. So the traffic counts as I noted, there are currently about 3,200 pedestrians and bikes crossing at College Street and this pedestrian crossing here.
That's the the topmost dot on your on your map there. And, that's also seeing about 300 vehicles. And this these traffic counts were taken from 6AM to 7PM, so thirteen hours on a on a Tuesday, generally, should be considered about typical. Down on College Street and First, you have the highest vehicle count. That's 900 vehicles there. You have the second highest pedestrian and bicycles. That's 1,600. Most of those are are going north south across there. It was noted in the traffic memo. As we move, to the east,
you have 700 at Winona and 1st Vehicles and 900 pedestrians and bikes. And then down at Nevada and, and 1st, you have about 600 you have 665 vehicles per day or vehicles within that time period and then, 400 pedestrians and bikes there. So that that those numbers are decreasing as you get further away from there. And then comparatively, residential other residential streets in in town commonly serve 1,000 vehicles a day, and some go as high as 2,000. So when we say this is in line with what other residential streets see,
that's sort of the basis for that. And then, this is local traffic, so this is important to know. It's not it's not through traffic. These are faculty and staff and students accessing school and and work and and home, on off of these streets. And then, of course, residents as well. And then so a note on traffic safety solutions. What would we do in the event that we were looking to improve the safety overall here? So we'd consider installing, traffic control, intersection control. That would be things like stop signs. And you'll note here in the yellow line on this image is the,
proposed alteration of the Hiawatha land transit route for the blue line. And it will and so, you know, at the at the three newly affected intersections where the the bus would run that it hadn't previously been running, All three of those do have stop controls in two directions, and the bus would stop at, actually all of those. And the only time they wouldn't be stopping is making that left turn movement into the parking area. But that is a a yield turn movement, so we can expect that that would be a pretty slow movement.
And we would also be looking at installing traffic calming, things like bump outs. Those red circles, those larger light red circles there at the corner of Winona And 1st And Nevada And 1st, those are intersections where bump outs have already been stalled and have been installed, and they are on all four corners there. That tightening up of that intersection slows vehicles down, and also keeps cars from parking too close to that intersection. We might install sidewalks and bike lanes. If we have high volumes of pedestrians and cyclists, that would make sense to get them out and away from the cars. Nevada Street,
there's a light blue line. It's kinda tough to see there, but there is a bike lane, installed on Nevada Street. There's also one on College. And then, 2nd Street, which is the sort of bottom most line running horizontally there, there's also, bike lanes installed there. And then, you know, we might also consider reducing speed limits. And citywide, my understanding is that that that process is ongoing, and, there are state requirements for how that gets done. So these are some of the mitigations that might be employed,
and they are the point here is that they have been employed or or are currently in the process. And then, so, you know, conclusions on traffic safety. Yes. There will be a slight increase, especially in specifically in bus traffic on those blocks that were indicated in that yellow line. Those that increase is is not unreasonably disruptive. There was no indication that the current city buses are disruptive, and it doesn't create a measurable safety impact. There's, again, no indication that city buses are or not city buses, but Hiawatha land transit buses are are any more dangerous than any other type of
vehicle. And and there's already traffic control and calming present and multimodal facilities, present there as well. We did hear some additional concerns at the April planning commission meeting. Specifically, there was a question about how could this not impact, traffic within a quarter mile. That, it seemed particularly related to criterion j, which is a question specifically about levels of service, not necessarily more traffic. And so level of service is an engineering term, but it deals with the delay at an intersection. How long does it take a car to get through that intersection?
When we look at this and the existing conditions and what's being proposed, nothing that the applicant is proposing will generate new traffic in the neighborhood. So all of these people coming to work and school and home are are still coming to work and school and home via the same routes. It's just that some of them used to park over here, and now some of them may park over here. And then those riding the bus would get on the bus over one location, and and now they're getting on the bus at a different location two blocks to the east. So that's not a new creation of traffic like building a dorm building and adding
more students would be or adding an athletic facility or something like that that would actually increase and and be a driver of more traffic. And then traffic counts show a range of 150 to 90 through per hour. So when we're looking at level of service and we're thinking about the total increase in traffic, we're talking about you know, a very reasonable amount in comparison to that. So, there was also a concern that there was inadequate parking, and there is criterion n, you know,
in the conditional use permit, process for us to consider this. We heard two things from the public, that larger off street parking facilities are not desirable, and specifically in this location. However, you know, we also heard that on street parking is a problem. And so there's this sort of balance and and trade off here of managing those two expectations where, you know, where do we put off street parking, where do we put on street parking, where is, you know, where is the where are things problematic within that? And then, and then nuisance parking behaviors, were also cited, and and those are an issue to address through enforcement,
not through a conditional use permit because that's an individual behavior issue rather than a, sort of something we can have, you know, a systemic solution for. And then a final concern was, you know, neighborhood compatibility, neighborhood transition zone. So we're shifting from a residential district into a college district. The land development code usually addresses us through things like buffers. So this parking lot, the existing parking lot is set 50 feet back from the existing right of way, which is a larger buffer than we often require for, you know,
say, a parking lot in the C 1 District next to a residential use. Or even if we had, like, a large school parking lot, that buffer would not be required to be, you know, 50 feet wide. So, there's a large buffer present. We are proposing that more landscaping be installed to enhance that buffer. There's no buildings proposed. So often with compatibility, we get concerns about, you know, building height and mass being too large, and and that's not being proposed as part of this. The the lighting is too bright, and that has been that is addressed typically through a site plan review.
We do have a dark sky ordinance, and any lighting is required to be dark sky compliant. There is a condition recommended, that would, you know, reinforce that. And then parking is unsightly or inadequately screened. The additional parking and the bus stop are both on the opposite side of the existing parking from the neighborhood. And, and we did draft that, as I mentioned, an additional condition to enhance that screening. So and what have we heard from, like, since the planning commission meeting? There's a general consensus that the timing, and and maybe this process is being rushed,
just specifically because last Thursday was the planning commission meeting. The planning commission had originally delayed in March to get more information, and and staff is confident that the information acquired up to this point in the assessment is is adequate and meets the, you know, meets what what would be a reasonable expectation for for getting all that information. The availability of a of a parking study. So the full study has been available as as of Friday, February 17. A parking I will note that a a parking study is required for a site
plan review, but not for the conditional use permit. And the relevant facts included in that, parking study were included in the original March 19 planning commission packet. They were included by the app on the applicant's boards that they presented at the neighborhood meeting, which and shows that according to their 2001 parking study, Saint, Carlton College currently has an oversupply of off street parking of about a 165 spaces, if I'm recalling. And then, there you you may hear again that there is some some sort of need for
a delay in this process. Approving the conditional use permit doesn't, doesn't require the applicant to start their process. And, and the site plan review for this is is is ongoing, so that hasn't been wrapped up yet. And so the applicant, you know, could take their time in implementing or work, you know, work with the neighborhood, etcetera, to, you know, continue on their on their path. So, staff's recommendation. Staff does recommend the conditional approval of the conditional use permit, with those two conditions as drafted,
for Carleton College, and that's consistent with the planning commission's recommendations and findings. And then here's a view of the existing parking lot from 1st And Nevada Street East. I know and I understand the applicant does have some have a presentation as well. So, Eric, if you'd like to. How do I yeah. Lynette, do you switch it? Excellent. Thank you. Good evening. That's me. Yep. And it's working. Thank you. I'm Eric Hornestad. I'm vice president and treasurer at Carleton College. Thank you for your time and attention to this. I also live in Northfield, and I'm at 713 in Carter Drive, not far from the other development which you are are talking about.
I just want to just provide a little background and thank you to City staff for the work so far. Some of what I'm going to talk about is redundant and I'll try to move quickly through it because I know this has been a long meeting. But I just want to acknowledge that we've been working on this project for quite a while. We identified it about fifteen years ago actually as something we wanted to do and it takes quite a while for us to work through these mechanical pieces. But we did some formal planning around it and most recently in three of those studies that were listed around how we circulate around campus, how we think about the long term use of our facilities, and that reinforce the need for this project,
with, with, as we've done this planning with the with the campus community. Whoops. I went went too far. There we go. Okay. So what what are we trying to accomplish, with the project itself? We're we're working to reduce these, vehicular and pedestrian conflicts, through the work. And so many of those are on College Street right now as we don't have a public right away and as we're using that for both unloading and unloading. And to do so then, by removing the street north of of College, we will be, enhancing the the heart of the inner campus. Obviously, in order to do so, since we're using College Street for these transportation pickups,
relocating that to a suitable location, and then obviously, maintaining emergency vehicle access and minimizing impacts on parking as we repair the road that is there. So what what is changing in in this process? Again, closure of College is north of 1st, the removal of the turnaround that exists now in front of Sales Hill, the relocation of the bus stop to what we're calling Lot C2, which is really at 1st in Nevada, essentially two blocks east from where it exists right now, rerouting, the service and deliveries further west. So this is an extension of Union. We call it the Burton Service Drive,
and I'll talk more about that in a moment. Adding the screen enclosure, for, for trash and compost and recycling, and then reconfiguring some parking. So that's what's changing. What's not changing, as staff has noted, is the volume of shuttles or bus services. There are no plan changes, and the volumes that we've shared with materials for planning commission are the ones that we anticipate. Similar for volume of sanitation services, it's on an existing stop on an existing route. Obviously maintaining emergency access is important for us, and and I'll talk a little bit more about parking on a subsequent slide.
So in terms Of, engagement and input, I think I want to acknowledge something that came up, late in the planning commission meeting around around the campus wide engagement. And so as as I've noted as we've been working on this, we've had lots of input, from from our campus constituents, and we've, this includes general information and community input sessions on campus that we held in February, but also some really long term work that that includes, faculty, staff, and student groups and committees, including the the advisory committee that's listed here and the college council, where we get feedback about these moves and these changes and their level of support,
the kind of questions that they have for for them. So we've we've vetted this with a lot of these groups and and, and I think important just to note that the the college governance process is complicated. There are lots of stops for us along the way, and we've been working at this, as I say, for some time. Other engagement and input with our neighborhood, as noted, holding the public meeting on February 24. We also met on two separate occasions with small groups of neighbors, most of which I believe are here tonight, to to have some discussion and understand where we were in the process and to try to fill in some of the information that that they felt was missing.
And so you've obviously seen lots of public comments, since and during those conversations. And there continues to be ongoing communication, as folks ask questions and make requests that we're trying to respond to as best we can. I would say feedback has informed the project, in in several ways, and I'll talk a little bit about about those. So in in our, in our listening and through the the the various channels that we have heard, the concerns sort of bucketed in in these areas around traffic and parking, which you've heard about, the location specifically of the bus stop, lighting and waste collection concerns,
and then obviously the the concerns around safety, and then also a desire for more data and information. And so that was, we heard we heard more than that, but those are the sort of the summary level, ideas. And and so I just thought it would be helpful to to talk through how we responded. So relative to routing, after the the neighborhood meeting, we met with Highway Patrol and Transit to see if we could, reroute those, transit buses to keep them as close to the campus perimeter as possible and minimize, movement in the neighborhood. Again, in our work with them, some of that is possible and some of it is not. It is it is, it is,
our stop, but it is really their route. Professional drivers and obviously this this, group knows, how how busy those folks are. And so, we have made some adjustments and I think those reroutes are noted in the materials. We also confirmed the volume, as I mentioned, and included that in material so folks can understand what we were really talking about and just let people know that we were not planning on changes to that. We also provided some more details on the bus stop site location and as noted, though this is not a part of the conditional use permit process where this lands,
it's obviously it's a concern to to many and our neighbors especially. And so through some additional written details, and and, a bit in some in person discussions, I have tried to provide some more context about how we got here. And and I I think the most clear, description of that would be on in your first agenda packet in the 440 page range. So if you wanted to see more about about the why, because we thought that was important. Again, we we do value our relationship with the community and our relationship with our neighbors, and we wanna be sensitive to those to those needs while we try to move this project in a way that is successful,
and forward. We also confirmed, again, the the the questions around sanitation. There were I think there was some misinformation we were trying to correct, as an existing stop on an existing route, not not not additional truck traffic into the neighborhood. Also serviced by DICK Sanitation, which is the same contractor that services, the the community. Relative to lighting, again, we are we we will make sure that these fixtures are dark sky compliant. And this particular lens that that was discussed by city staff, we will make sure we incorporate into this site so that we're trying to protect the neighborhood from undue lighting concerns.
And then we commissioned the traffic data after the first, public, the planning commission meeting to make sure we had a baseline for data that's now on public record. I think it's been it's been helpful to see the volumes, and we thought it would be important just to have it there. And so, though it was not required, we wanted to make sure that that's known and we'll have that as a benchmark for future use as well. In terms of impact, again, at a summary level, traffic is essentially redistributed. It's not increased. We do not plan change changes in transit volume. I think also, a question that that comes up often is what happens to this to the traffic
that's on College Street right now? And and and, again, because of some of the improvements that we've made to the Burton Service Drive, all those deliveries can head west and not east. So there are still there's still an occasional, delivery that comes there not quite knowing where they should be, and that road will no longer exist. And we will we will route them to, the the Union Service Drive because it was built for that. It's built for for trailer and dock access. There's there are other, parts of the traffic that happened on College Street that will just be dropped off in different areas. We will create a curb cut at first in College for drop offs for folks
who who might have driven to Sales Hill, for example. And so we we anticipate that to be used. And for ADA ADA access, continuing along Line 19 and entering through the Layton Drive, will provide two different paths that are ADA compliant to move people into Central Campus who may need that. There will be some traffic that goes east, of course, and we'll continue to see parking. But there will also be some that disappear. And one small example of that as I was on that street a couple of days ago was seeing the Northfield, the Transportation School pull up,
make a change in drivers and continue, right? That will happen somewhere else in the community and not on that street. So it's a mixture about where it goes. Relative to parking, in terms of impact, as city staff noted, we'll lose net about 10 spaces, in in this, in this project. And what we have said is that we will reclaim those from existing campus spots. We believe we've we have existing spots that enough for service vehicles and others that are reserved for other purposes that we will release for public use for for campus use so that that net really becomes a zero in terms of loss.
And then though it's not connected to the project specifically or to the conditional use permit, I think for context, just, wanted to to acknowledge, we added 26 spots up by the recreation center last year, and that provides more more parking if you factor, this project in. We're essentially moving more cars off the street and and hopefully in that area, in an area that is not adjacent to the neighborhood. Lastly, I I wanna just to to address briefly the the, the concerns around parking and safety and and and concerns. And and I just wanna say as on behalf of the college, we share those concerns.
And and the planning commission talked about some sort of a process that the city might employ that would help address these issues. And I just want to signal that our staff is ready to work on this and that we share the concerns in the neighborhood And whether those measures end up being, lighting or traffic calming or speed limit reductions or overnight parking restrictions, whatever that might be, we are, we are ready to help with that work. We we, we've, we're committed to the to the very same goals. And I think just wanted to acknowledge that while I had the mic. Lastly, just want to just want to close and say,
you know, we've worked on this for a long time. We've worked through our governance and we've we've worked hard to incorporate the neighborhood feedback that we can within this project. We believe the impacts are manageable and they're consistent with city planning goals and with the requirements of the Conditional Use Permit. And so we appreciate your consideration and are requesting approval tonight. I'm happy to answer questions now or later. There we go. Thank you for the presentation. I guess, counsel questions. Councilor Ness? Thank you. I know it was mentioned that there's a 165 parking spots on campus in excess.
Why is 1st Street always you can't find a spot from College Street to Maple Street? Be I partly, it's because it's a it's a public street, and we have, for example, students now, who are not permitted, on campus. We don't we don't issue we restrict the number of student permits we provide, and they recognize that it's no longer winter, and they can park, overnight on the street now in the spring. And they have brought their cars back for spring term for example and it's a public street and we we don't have the ability to enforce that.
So we have we have students who, who are using public streets to park who can't park in our lots because we haven't granted them the permit. So, I mean, I think some of that we we could potentially address through different types of enforcement. I think long ago, we had a different enforcement strategy that we've moved away from, in in our work with police that would that was, providing more restrictions on how long they could be on 1st Street. I think it was a two hour time limit, for a period of time. And so that that that definitely made a difference there. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White? I have a related follow-up question.
Thank you for the lead in, Brad. One thing, I've heard I imagine my colleagues have also heard here from, many neighborhood residents in the converse in the in their communications about this, is that when parking issues have arisen in the neighborhood, that they have contacted campus security instead of contacting the Northfield Police Department. And this makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the city to really have an accurate sense of what the parking issues in the neighborhood might be. I'm curious whether that is,
and and I think that I mean, people are perceiving this as sort of a being a good neighbor by calling campus instead of the Northfield PD. And I find that to be a really confusing way to frame it personally as a big fan of the Northfield Police Department. I think they do an amazing job and they're actually the people responsible for parking enforcement in the city. So, I'm puzzled by that framing, but I am curious whether that whether there is whether the college has an official or unofficial approach, policy, set of expectations around this related to all the student parking.
And I wanna and and I, counselor Sokup and I are having a meeting next week on the other side of town about similar issues. So it's I this isn't a unique problem to this particular neighborhood. Since we have two colleges, we have almost a great AB test to figure out, like, what's happening. But, I'm curious whether the college kind of has messaging about this. Is there or an approach or relationship with security or Correct. Yeah. Thank you. What's the attitude? Our our security team,
has I what I would describe as a very good and healthy relationship with police, department. And and, we do receive those calls on occasion, not very often. And we're sort of we're so we don't have a procedural statement to provide, that we provide to the public, but we do say that some of these issues are not, streets that we can control. So we do try to redirect, but we also try to listen in case there's something that we can address that isn't about in the public right of way or or something that is within our our scope. There are issues that happen around parking on campus lots as well, and so deciphering which is which.
But we also would would, you know, we again, we wanna be a good partner in understanding what these issues are, but these are not solutions that we can provide, on our own. And so that it's that tension that that team lives within. And I think, you know, regular and ongoing communications with police are part of our operation. And I think, you know, this is the kind of thing that moves back and forth as we do planning and work together. Thank you. Councilor, I guess, follow-up. Thank you. If the council decided that several blocks from Campus South were resident parking only,
park resident parking permit needed, whatever you we decide, would that be an excess burden to faculty that park in on 1st Street or 2nd Street or 3rd Street? If it's just students, they could park in the 165 extra spaces. Mhmm. And they would learn that quick if if they were to get a $50 ticket for parking in a resident area. I mean, I I I, I think the answer would depend upon the person you're talking to.
And I think most likely it would be perceived as yes. And and and I'll just add the caveat there that, you know, this is a small community, but we like to drive right to where we're going. And I understand that. I like that too. But, you know, one of the things in in the parking study that we did, you know, we we have sufficient parking, but we don't have it exactly where everyone would prefer it to be. And so there's a distinction between the two that we're, you know, that we that we work on and and and talk about and it isn't is sort of imperfection. We We might have a student we have a we have a spot available, but it's not, you know, it's it's a ten minute walk from where you would like to go next.
And so that that does make that complicated. So I think the burden would be, would be would vary depending upon, you know, who who you're talking to. From an institutional perspective, I think it would be a challenge for us to manage that successfully. But as I say, I mean, we we are open to ideas and solution, you know, with with, with the city. Thank you. Councilor Holmes. Yeah. I do have a question. But before that, I would like to make a motion that we extend the meeting until our we close our business. Do I have a second? Second. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thanks. The question I do have,
though, is not related to parking. So if someone had a follow-up to parking, then okay. Just to and I believe I know the answer to this question, but just I think it's important. And it could be for staff and or it might even be for someone who's on the Transportation Committee. Carlton is not required to have a bus stop on campus. Is this correct? Is there anything in our, memo of understanding with Hiawatha Land that there needs to be a bus stop on campus? Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, I don't think there's anything that requires it to be specifically on campus.
I think being very near or adjacent to there is gonna be very important in terms of the leadership. It does drive some of the funding and needs that, that this that state funding provides to Hiawatha land so that they can actually service and run those routes. So it is important that Carleton does that it does have a stop there because it does drive funding at the state level to Hiawatha land. Yeah. Okay. I just the question was presumably if they didn't, we would still have that because it is a community wide service.
It's not a Carleton service. It's something. But that we would need a stop near the campus since that's where the number of riders from this area are. And so it would be somewhere in the neighborhood likely if Carleton didn't have a stop on campus. Correct. Okay. Councilor Peterson White? May I follow-up? You're It's sort I mean, it's a this is gonna sound like a rhetorical question, but I truly don't know the answer. So that makes it not a rhetorical question. I'm wondering if staff I don't know if we still have someone from Hiawatha Land here. I know we did. Or maybe Carlton can address, the contribution the colleges make to funding for Hiawatha Land
as a part of the student ridership. We do and I can follow-up with details about what that is. I know that we subsidized the red line greater because that's an express that is particularly, helpful we think to the students who are trying to get to and from areas quicker. But I'm happy to provide that in subsequent. I just thought it might be a useful piece of the puzzle in terms of not only where is the stop, but who's riding and who's paying. Thanks. I could Mayor, from our meeting last week with Hiawatha Land, they indicated that the the routes are state funded and Hiawatha is or,
I mean, the state funding is providing Hiawatha Land and Carlton is covering a lot of the costs for the the fees that also are generated as revenue, and they're covering their student costs as a portion of that. There may be some other funding to that. Could be there potentially too, but that's what Hiawatha land indicated at last week's transportation committee meeting. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor Soeke. Sorry. This is about parking again, going back to parking. Does Carleton, when a student does obtain a permit, do require or advise students that if they have a permit,
they should be parking on campus and not in the neighborhoods? Yes. Thank you. And we assign them to specific, student lots, which is a change we just made in the last twelve or eighteen months or so, really to help guide that so that we can say specifically which lots, rather than just anywhere that is an improved campus lot. Any other questions? Councilor Peterson White? Another, another thing that I heard in more than one, communication from a resident was that, at the neighborhood meeting that was hosted by Carlton,
that Carlton presented a different plan than it is in the CUP. I I don't think I read that wrong in these couple of emails that I got. And I'm wondering if you can address that. You're looking like that It was not it was not not doesn't align with your sense of reality. It's been the it's been it's been the same plan with with the with the modifications that we've talked about that we've made since receiving, neighborhood input. I I'm sorry. I don't know. I just I thought it was worth asking about. Maybe staff has a comment as well. Would you pull up my laptop over on the on the screen?
Just so everyone can see it. So this this image here, was included in the original conditional use permit application. My understanding is that this these were labeled the the community meeting boards, and so this was the this was the image shown at the community meeting as far as what was planned for this location. So just to be crystal clear, the plan we are reviewing today is identical to the plan that was presented at the neighborhood meeting. Great. Thank you. You're nodding. Yes. Yes. I just for folks who are listening and not watching, I wanna note that you're responding in the affirmative in a nonverbal way.
Yes. Okay. Counselor Holmes? Might I add something that might provide context? I don't know. I don't I don't know what I mean, I received that same communication, so I don't know what they are speaking to. But I will say that what is presented in the plan is the same. What has changed has been programming on the street, which is separate from the plan. So Hiawatha Land originally at the community meeting there was a different route discussed. Feedback came. There was discussion and that adjusted.
So what we see not here, but on the later slide in terms of how the route changed, that was different. But that is not something that is part of the condition of the CU that is not a condition that we're to discuss, right? That's not a criteria. Great. And just to thank you very much. And just for staff to have the opportunity to be really clear, the Hiawatha Land route is not related to this conditional use permit. And Hiawatha Land may make has a completely separate process for making any route changes that's overseen by MnDOT, not the Northfield City Council.
Correct? Yeah. That's that's correct. My understanding is that some minor deviations are probably allowed without. And and to be clear, as it operates now, Hiawatha Land can drive down any street in town because they do accept deviations on their routes. They just have to have advance notice, and then there's an additional, I believe, 50¢ fee. So if someone were to want to get dropped off at this parking lot by Hollow Hiawatha Land, they would simply pay an additional 50¢ and let them know in advance, and then that bus would be able to drop them off there. And we have no restrictions on that.
And and, yes, Hiawatha Land does make their own determinations about which routes to run based on a variety of considerations. And I I did have a conversation with somebody from Hiawatha Land, the the director of their transit services who, you know, shared with me some of the other considerations that have gone into it. Currently, they head, east from Family Fare down 6th Street, so into that residential neighborhood before turning left and going north on Winona to access campus. Part of that reason or part of the rationale for doing that, going through the neighborhood as opposed to maybe back down Washington Street,
which might seem like an obvious choice, is that on Washington Street, the grade between the sidewalk and the street, ends up changing, significantly. So the farther north you get, especially down by the library, which is a common destination, the sidewalk is several feet higher than the street, which makes the dropping off of passengers there, an unsafe and untenable situation. So they actually choose to go into the neighborhood, in part, so that they have a safe place to drop passengers off because that street is level, and they can do that safely.
So Any other questions? K. I have one. I'm not sure. Attorney Hood might be the guy to answer this. Probably so I'll kinda direct it to you since you've been sitting here all night. So I'm assuming you have reviewed the entire permit from start to finish, the entire process and everything staff has given giving given you, in regards to the permit application. And I'm assuming having done so and the fact that it's before us for action, not everything has checked out on that permit
application? Mayor Pro Tem and council, so I don't get into great detail in looking at most of this as a staff driven process. But in the last couple of days, I have looked at the issues that have been brought up. I've had multiple conversations with staff about it. And the way that this is being presented to you is in proper legal form, and they have gone through and made findings on each of the criteria. And that's really what we're talking about here. And so as mister Huey indicated earlier, the the the role of the council here is to look at this in the
context of what is being proposed and whether it meets the criteria as they are presented in the city code and make findings on that. And if quite simply, if they meet the criteria, then you are required to approve the permit. And if you decide that it doesn't meet the criteria, then you need to develop findings, expressly stating why it does not meet one or more of those criteria. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor Peterson White? I'm going to take the opportunity to ask attorney Hood a question, too because he's been sitting here all night.
And, This is exciting. So, I think you're probably right. Chris, I've never seen crystal ball. Not once. So two, kind of categories of questioning of the process have come up in a lot of communications that I've received and in a lot of public comments and even discussion at the planning commission, that I think kinda go together. And, they have led me to want to ask our attorney to clarify for our benefit and for the public's benefit exactly what a conditional use permit is for.
And you you have just clarified what our legal obligation is. And but I I wanna tell you these two kind of categories of things. Like, one one complaint that I have heard or concern, I guess, is maybe a more neutral word. A concern that I've heard is that, staff have not critiqued the application, that they have not approached this as, in the sense of attempting to find problems with it or challenging it. Now I don't agree with that assessment actually, but I I also think it's not how I would describe mister Huey's job.
I, the other concern that I've heard is that, including at the planning commission, is that, the applicant is only considering their own best interest in this application. And, I've considered many, many, many conditional use permits in my years of doing this. Before that, I was on the county planning commission. Before that, I was on the county board. And virtually all conditional use permits are brought by businesses or by individuals who wanna operate a business out of their home or something like that. Right? It's this is a somewhat unique situation where we have a very large institution in
the community that's not exactly a private business bringing the application. And I think this question really comes out of that. But I'm wondering if you could and a and a different set of expectations of this applicant, basically, because of their different role in the community, which I think is legitimate. Right? I think that a large institution like Carleton does have a very different role in the community than a small private business operating out of somebody's garage. But, I'm hoping this is really long winded question. Thank you for your patience, mister chair. But I'm wondering if you could, address these questions of,
what it whose best interest like, why the conditional use permit is, by nature, on behalf of the applicant. And how is the council to address that? And what is staff's responsibility and council's responsibility to, sort of attempt to find issue with it versus to approve it? Thank you. Mayor and council, could you repeat the question? Just fundamentally, a conditional use permit is basically so you have zoning categories, and you have permitted uses. So most uses are permitted.
This is not permitted. It's conditional, meaning that there are criteria that council applies, that staff reviews, and they develop findings. So staff's role is to is to review applications, but it is primarily the applicant's responsibility to bring forward information to basically prove that they are meeting that those criteria. And then staff then works to develop findings based on on what they've what they've been provided. So staff does a good faith effort to try to do that.
And, the applicant also has rights in this process as a private property owner. Even though they are an institution, they are a private property owner. And so they get to use their property the way that the zoning allows them to use their property. And in this particular case, they have to seek a conditional use permit for this particular use. But, again, it gets to what are the criteria, and the council's role, staff's role is to then, in a quasi judicial setting, look at those criteria and then make a determination based on the criteria.
So, I mean, fundamentally, that's what the the each of the the participants' role in this process is. So did that cover? Yes, absolutely. Exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you. Thank you. Any other counsel questions? With that being said, we will move on to the public comment section. The public will have an opportunity to address the council on the regular on this agenda item, for up to two minutes. I do have a list of of, of people who have asked to speak.
I do ask if you are in there and you haven't filled out one of these and you wish to speak that you fill one of these out and hand it to the city clerk so that that can get handed over to me. With that being said, the first one I have here is Alicia Thomas. Is that is that what? Oh, Alice Alice Thomas. Thank you. Alice Thomas. Oops. Is it on? Oh, okay. 418 College Street. I want to address two areas that are underlying the stumbling blocks in this CUP
review that warrant the request for the sixty day postponement. First, an incomplete planning procedure, and this, answers to your question, about that. The LDC is very clear and reads, quote, development near the edges of campus will utilize a wider process of dialogue and input to facilitate compatibility between the campus and adjoining districts. The actual process? The original plan was a well known among the neighbors. It was it was on the West Side.
It was completely in this, college development zone, and the neighbors knew it would not affect the neighborhood. Then in February, they were invited to a neighborhood meeting where they're supposed to were surprised to learn that the proposed location had been changed, moved to the West Side the East Side near the neighborhood. At the meeting, Carlton provided maps with Post it notes for their comments. Two days later, the CUP was filed with a copy of the neighborhood's comments.
The this procedure falls far short of complying with the process for a CUP in the PTA's subzone of used quote, of using a wider dialogue and input from the neighbors. The second area of concern is the interpretation of the application of the criteria. Staff reports appear to interpret the first criterion to be both necessary and sufficient. It is necessary. I'm going to say that the project needs more time for more comprehensive
collaborative plan to meet the criteria with the prescribed wide dialogue and input from neighbors. Thank you. Sorry. Melissa Hager. My name is Melissa Hager, and I reside with my husband, Paul, at 110 Maple Street. I've attended the past two planning commission meetings, and I've written letters to the planning commission, president Byerley, and the city council to express concerns about the negative impacts of Carleton's transit center and garbage hub project. At this point, it's clear that we neighbors and the Carlton staff see things differently. In Carlton's CUP application, Carlton staff state that the impacts of this change will only minimally affect the neighborhood
despite the fact that at least 25 to 30 large transit vehicles per day will rumble through our streets. Carlton staff also assert the proposed changes will create a more harmonious campus environment, but completely ignore how they will disrupt neighbors' safety and tranquility. Amazingly, Carleton staff claim there will be no increases in traffic, noise, smoke, fumes, glare, or odors in our neighborhood stemming from the relocated transit center and garbage hub. How can this even be possible? I believe our neighborhood is special, historic, and worth protecting. Even on this point, Carleton staff seem to disagree.
Otherwise, why would they move a busy traffic magnet from its rightful location on streets they completely control into our midst where it will degrade life for residents of all ages? And there is disagreement on an even more important point, whether this move will negatively affect the neighborhood's relationship with the college permanently. By their actions, Carleton staff show they're not thinking about this. But we neighbors are disappointed by the college now, and trust has already been broken. So here's where we're at. What has typically been a good relationship is now threatened.
How can we fix it? Can the city council help us move forward? We need dialogue, and Carlton is not open to it. They held one community meeting and solicited input, but then ignored that input and filed the CUP application immediately. I believe the council can help fix this dispute by denying the CUP until Carlton is willing to meet with neighbors again and engage in real dialogue. Thank you. Thank you. Leona? Openshaw. Openshaw. Thank you. Hi. I'm Leona Openshaw. I live at 516 3rd Street East.
I would like to draw your attention to one critical issue in this process that has thus far been overlooked Because Carleton CUP will affect routes and thus travel time of all city buses, we must consider the impacts on all potential city bus riders, not just Carleton's immediate neighbors. Moving the campus bus stop east as proposed forces all future bus routes to travel further, hit more stop signs, and take longer, adding significant time to any bus route and to the journeys of all bus riders. This has a clear impact well beyond the college's immediate neighbors and beyond the scope of the current CUP.
In the past, when city council considered campus bus stops at both colleges, it requested multiple possible stops be considered so the pros and cons could be properly examined. Studies were conducted to determine how much additional time would be added to proposed routes. When the city last amended the bus route in 2011 before contracting with Hiawatha Land, the city's engineering department summarized MnDOT guidelines for the city council. This report noted that MnDOT's stance is that the public should select the routes. In addition, significant changes to the transit system required a thirty day public comment period.
In this instance, a decision affecting the transit system is being improperly forced into a narrower narrower CUP. Embedding this discussion inside inside Carlton CUP, whose public meeting was only announced to nearby residents, merges two processes that need to be addressed separately to serve the larger community's needs. Thank you for your time and attention to this. Thank you. Richard Knorr? Hello. I'm Richard Doer. I live at 101 Winona Street as I have lived for fifty eight years. I'm a former Carrollton professor,
and a long time supporter of the College. And I've been through a number of these minor then minor disagreements between the College and the neighborhood. And the one in particular that I think maybe is somewhere in the packet of mid year as you have dates from back in 2006 where the new dormitory, two pair of dormitories on 1st Street were placed. And that was a situation in which the college had not consulted with neighbors beforehand and the neighbors
reacted against the proposal. And there was a coming together after that due, I think, to the refusal of the college, the council to grant the application at that time. And out of that revitalizing of relationships between the neighbors and the college came the present situation with the two relatively new dormitories on 1st Street just just north of between Maple and Nevada. The problem in this particular situation is that we have had zero advanced connection with
the college as these plans were made and and progressed. The neighbors somebody was talking about the sudden switch that people heard about. The sudden switch was not after the CUP proposal was presented. It was before. The neighbors all thought that the new transit station was going to be farther west somewhere, completely on Carlton property and not threatening anything in the neighborhood. And when we came to this so called neighborhood meeting, we were faced with nothing but a new plan
and no sense that our reaction was being taken into account anywhere in the procedure. Thank you. Thank you. Kate, is it floor Flori? Thank you. Kate Flori, 601st Street East. Thank you for reading through the mountains of letters from the last two planning commission meetings and for this city council meeting from neighbors. Also, kudos to the skate park for doing such great community outreach. Regarding Carleton College's CUP application, I gotta take those off, I respectfully request, one, a sixty day extension on this proposal,
better yet, two, denial of the CUP based on unmet criteria, and three, clarification, just wondering who is representing the neighbors. For more than a decade, to speak to this last point, Carlson's plans for the transit hub located near the Alumni Guesthouse. Only in the past few months did this change without notice to neighbors. That is what people are referring to, as Rich mentioned. A 60 then that at that meeting, a sixty day extension is something that the city council is able to do. Neighbors have not had adequate time to review conflicting information or organize a response.
For example, a small example, statements at the March 19 planning commission meeting indicated garbage collection would be limited to the dorms and the bus stop. That's it. It was clearly stated. While the agenda packet for tonight's meeting describes the garbage collection area as servicing all buildings around the bald spot, these inconsistencies matter. These are the types of specific elements that directly affect the character of a neighborhood. We want to work with Carleton. Many of us are faculty, staff, alumni, or parents. And across the board, we adore the college. However, meaningful engagement has not occurred. Isn't that a requirement of the perimeter transition area?
To correct the record, also, there was mention of two neighborhood meetings that I asked for. The college has not asked for any meeting. Sorry. A rushed timeline to meet summer construction goals should not outweigh the need for transparency, accuracy, and community collaboration. I hope you will deny the CUP as this proposal does not meet key CUP criteria, specifically criteria c and f. Through a multistep process to close down College Street, the college is essentially closing an entrance to campus and moving all its least desirable traffic to the neighborhood. We are becoming a back alleyway. At the same time,
this is the only spot on the whole perimeter of campus that is so deeply embedded in the neighborhood. As many have stated, our essential character of the area will be changed. Criteria c and the benefits do not outweigh the effect of the surrounding community. Criteria f Thank you. We are wondering who is standing up for us. Thank you. Thank you. Susanna Schmerack? Hi. I'm Susanna Schmerack. I live at 114 Maple Street. I wish to call attention to several misrepresentations in tonight's packet related to the CUP that informed the decision made by the Planning Commission. Unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims greatly overstate the benefits of this proposal and downplay the impacts
on the neighboring community. First, staff's report mentions only buses that circulate within Northfield and not the many additional buses taking students to activities and field trips or regular service to the Twin Cities and airports. So it significantly undercounts the actual number of vehicles on neighborhood streets. City may staff maintains the new location will not technically bring bring new traffic, but they omit the fact that where traffic will be redirected materially differs from its current route. Buses currently pass college owned property without on street parking, young children, or active driveways.
The proposed location shifts traffic onto streets crowded with parked cars and populated by families with children. The change in route thus brings new nuisance and hazard to residential streets far less suitable to bus traffic. Additionally, the proposal is not consistent with the comp plan. While comments in the packet claim that new location advances comp plan goals by encouraging ridership, elsewhere, staff has noted gains in ridership are likely to be, quote, minimal. During the planning commission discussion last week, an urban transit professional noted that the CUP actually goes against industry best practices by
moving the stop away from the area with the most pedestrian traffic to that with the least. Therefore, claiming the CUP advances the aims of the comprehensive plan is inaccurate. While environmental benefits have been exaggerated, negative impacts on the surrounding community have been ignored or downplayed. A key criterion in the evaluation of the CUP is, quote, the conditional use will not be reasonably disturbing to existing or future neighboring uses. Noise and exhaust from large college bound vehicles already reduce quality of life in the neighborhood. The additional traffic resulting from the relocation of Carleton's transit hub indisputably increases these disturbances.
A traffic impact analysis and noise impact assessment are needed before assumptions about disturbances can be legitimately evaluated. I ask you to delay deciding about this proposal so you can base your decision on fact rather than incorrect and unsubstantiated assumptions. Thank you very much for your thoughtful service to this community. Thank you. Okay. I'm having a hard time reading this one. Is it Constance? Constance? Constance? Thank you. Hi. My name is Constance. And I live right on the corner of 1st Street And Nevada right in front of the proposed traffic hub. I'm also faculty member.
I'm actually an anthropologist, so I thought I might be able to give you like a little bit of a visual. You know, as a social scientist, I have a really hard time understanding the kind of, you know, sampling method and the kind of data that's being given. And, you know, and we've also gone out with, like, about the same, period of time and gotten a completely different picture. So I really think that we need to kind of lay the CUP to get initial data and to really consider what are the kind of ways in which Carlton and the neighborhood can actually talk to each other because they have not been open. The way that those community sort of info sessions have been managed have been really,
really sparse. Any of us who work in community development or in the trip c e of the college, the community and civic engagement section of the college would be embarrassed to have been used those type of techniques. They were as slim as possible. Just to give you a small, you know, example, we've started to now go and complain. I mean, I have, on a monthly basis, students that park blocking my driveway, and I have to drive backwards. I can't see. I often have students coming back and forth. So now we've actually started calling, you know, law enforcement.
And just yesterday, somebody was blocking my my driveway. I called the police officer. The police officer made the decision to call the tow truck. This took place in a period of two hours that they were trying to contact for the student, all this. He was, like, very nice. Like, do you need to go out? The tow truck, came in, and it was the tow truck couldn't take out the car. It simply couldn't maneuver because there's cars on both sides of the street. We have provided pictures for you to see just how much there is traffic. And if you include bicycles, which includes students and some of the 32 children that live in those two to
six immediate blocks, it just doesn't make sense. So I really implore you to delay the CUP till there's actually actual community engagement. We should think and do the Northfield Way, which is excellence in creativity, and the Carlton way, which is excellence in creativity, and not just go to these lower standards because those assessments stopped at the end of the college and did not ask us for any of our insights. I appreciate your your, time with us and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. This last one, has a highlighted note on here only if mister Hood does not object.
Amy Gurnan. Hi. Are we ready? Hi. My name is Amy Gernon. I'm here in kind of dual roles. I'm a resident. I live at second Winona, but I also represent a small group of neighbors. So I wanna talk quickly. First of all, to go to, council member, Peterson White's issue about why it's a puzzle. So since Thursday, neighbors have been calling when there's traffic violations. They call the police. The police say, you know, we hate to ticket students. Why don't you call the college? So then the college will then say, not our problem. It's a city problem.
So we're in this cycle. So to rely on data on one way, that is why you're hearing it, is that that. So to talk about the what happened, I thought it was wild to hear about the skating. I know there was a huge history. I've watched the documentary. But this is a good analogy for me, the juxtaposition of what the skate park is doing now versus what is happening in this issue. It would be like for ten years or I might be exaggerating, but they were talking about doing the transit hub in one area. So the skate park was talking about doing the skate park and making it bigger.
And right before they filed the CUP, they filed the CUP for on the other side of the pool. And the neighbors freak out because for ten years, they've been engaging. I also think it's interesting that they both talk to the skate park talk to users and neighbors. The I agree with mister Hood that the LD the land development code is what it is. If you meet the criteria, we'll debate put if in bold. You have to vote for it with a twist. You do not have to vote tonight. Under the law, you have sixty days. You don't have to ask Carlton's permission to wait.
We have lots of different ways, but my time is getting short, to tell you how these little facts that you might I think the staff would say are de minimis, and they might be. I might concede this. I've talked a lot to mister Hood. But why the hurry? You represent all of us, not just pleasing Carlton's construction schedule. This is a quasi judicial matter that you need a clear record to make factual findings. And if you don't have a factual a clear factual record, I don't wanna get in a fight with mister Hood about whether an innocent, interpretation with all good intentions to a data request wasn't filed properly.
Sixty days gives you guys a clear record, saves the city time, and protects the citizens. I call it a zen third way. Talk to mister Hood about it. I really hope you consider the sixty days. Thank you. Are there any other people from the public that wish to comment? Alright. With that being said, I would entertain a motion. Councilor Holmes. Yeah. I move resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four six. The second. Second. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. Alright. Discussions. Thank you.
Councilor Holmes. Thank you very much. As a neighbor, I can appreciate the change that this is having in the neighborhood and that the where the frustrations, the concerns, where those where those things are coming from from my own neighbors. I live three blocks from this location. As someone who really geeks out on change management and is gonna go get a PhD studying that, like, I can really, appreciate the impacts and I brought this up even at the Planning Commission and I will unfortunately for me,
but fortunately for you, I will not give you my lecture and my class that I teach on change management, but I think that there are some very interesting things that come to play here. And as a counselor, those things aren't what's being asked of me to look at tonight. What's being asked to look that I'm and my colleagues up here are being asked to look at is Is the proposed project permitted in this area? It's not: Is this the best option? Is there another better option in a different area of campus? That's not for us to question. It's not about how popular this item is with the public or not.
That's not one of our criteria. And it's not a rating of approval on how Carlton has engaged with the public. It's simply: Does this application satisfy the conditions for your CUP for this land? The PC, the planning commission, has recommended with a five to two vote. And while there was reluctance in that vote, its recommendation was looking at that question on the table. Now I know none of us take our job lightly. And we come into these processes, these discussions very seriously and having done a lot of work.
I sit as the liaison on the planning commission, so I have attended both planning commissions meetings. I've read all of the emails, everything that's been in the packet, the supplemental memos. I even reread cover to cover the comp plan and the land Well, I didn't read cover to cover the land development code, but I read the most important components here. And I even went on a bus ride today. I took the blue route. I caught the bus in Carlton because I wanted to see and understand what, even though that isn't necessarily a primary component of the CUP, I think it's it's something that's very related and,
and connected to the work that we're talking about. I do absolutely trust our professionals on staff and that the data that they've shared with us. And I believe I don't feel this has been rushed. I've been involved with it and I know I've been bringing it up to council since the since our mid February, early February meetings about the meeting that, the meeting that Carlton was hosting and then all the subsequent meetings at the planning commission. So I don't feel rushed. I feel like I have the information that help and I trust
That we have to help us make this decision. And I think there's some important things to address that have come up tonight and have come up through the planning commission meetings, particularly that topic of the benefit for the community, and that Carleton might be just acting in their in their own interest. Well, potentially. But again, that's not necessarily what we are addressing here, or what what was what is asked of us in terms terms of a condition. But I feel transit is an important service. And what is being provided through Hiawatha Land is a service to the entire community.
Now granted, most of the riders in this area come from Carleton and that so that makes sense that there is a stop on campus or near campus, but this is the only stop the only stop in my ward, in Ward 1. And it is barely in Ward 1, right? Like it's in the most Northeast corner. Now granted there are a ton of riders. That's where a preponderance of riders are, but how fortunate for that ward that they don't need public transit as much,
right? So the buses don't travel on that many streets in our historic neighborhood as many call it, and it is, but because of a lot of privilege. And so I think it's important as we look at how that important service to the community and how things and what we do to advance our goals in the planning commission sorry not the planning, but the comprehensive plan that transit will likely expand and that there will be buses that travel through our neighborhoods and so I think that that is,
I just think that that's an important service to the to the larger community, and bringing it while it's only a few blocks. I think being able to have access for the community in Ward 1 to be able to have a reasonable walk or reasonable access to bus service is important. The question of advancing the comp plan I agree. I think it's probably neutral, right? That there's not this isn't necessarily going to, in and of itself, create more transit riders. However, I do think that we are looking at and that the project looks at a
more pedestrian friendly opportunities with the closing of College Street. The garbage enclosure, the wall and the improvements that were recommended by the, by the Planning Commission helped protect that edge, which I think is important and is something that is brought up in the in the comprehensive plan. And I think about just the safety and consistency and how we look at that and what matter what that matters in terms how that matters in terms of our community. I think another question is, you know,
the question at planning commission was, How does approving this advance the comprehensive plan? My question is, How does denying it advance the comprehensive plan? And I don't think I have a good answer to that. I think there's a lot of subjectivity on the conditions and that's been brought up tonight. Some things are black and white and we don't we don't the condition isn't on did they exceed our expectations? Did they go above and beyond? The question of did they reach out? Did Carleton reach out and host a public meeting? It's a yes or no question.
We might wish they had done more. We might not like how they did it, but that's not what's asked of us. I think the gray area gets into the what is reasonably disturbing to the neighborhood. And I believe that an impermanent structure that supports our community service and it's not even just a community service it's a region wide service is, to me, not getting to the point of reasonably disturbing or creating a reasonably unreasonable hazard to
our community. There's no data that we've been presented and that I don't believe we would find any additional data if we went out and created more reports that would show us that this is unsafe. Like I said, I rode the blue line today. And what I will note is in terms of looking at the safety and I actually talked with the bus driver like, What do you what do you notice? Shout out to Ken. He was awesome. But like what do you notice in terms of safety? And we talked about this we were over we were over in Ward 4 at
the time or Ward 3 at the time. So it wasn't even in relation to the college campus, but it came up in terms of on both college campuses the safety issue is pedestrian conflict. That he notices that there are times when walking on campus students might walk out in front, of a bus or that they aren't they don't necessarily look at the crosswalks. And I think in particular, there are there are issues at St. Olaf but, in particular, here on college, because it isn't necessarily a neighborhood street where there's a lot of traffic going back and forth,
students might not treat it like a street as much. But these buses are coming through and they are engaging. They'll just walk out in front of a bus. So I think that it's important to recognize that in closing the street to that pedestrian traffic, we we are helping foster some safety because as much as people might want us to focus on property owners, the students on campus are just as much of a responsibility for us and our duty of care as council members.
So it's not a matter of do you own a property and do you pay property taxes, but are you a resident of Northfield? So when I come when I look at safety issues, I have to factor in where we're gonna have those conflicts and and what is important. And I think it's I am not minimizing the impacts that residents will feel with this change. I don't feel like there is any compelling evidence for me to be able to deny it. Now what I will say is that I do see opportunity, and I brought this up at the planning commission,
when we talked about this as a separate item from the CUP but addressing the traffic and the parking issues. And other colleagues have mentioned that tonight in terms of what are we looking at in other areas. The nuisance parking is separate from there's a relation but it's separate from this item. Regardless of if we approve or deny, there's still going to be that nuisance parking. That is not that's not just suddenly new or suddenly going away. So I think that I'm committed to working on addressing that and finding ways to
help make the the edge and the what the neighbors are experiencing there in around campus, to be to improve the parking, to improve traffic flow, etc. I would hope for improved relations between Carleton and the neighborhood, but that's not for us to solve. I mean, I think that's just a hope that we can have but that's not something that the council can drive. And I think also an important thing is as we look at the zoning code and the updates that will be made to that is to get really to get
more definitive about what does the transition area look like and hopefully provide more, better and specific guidance in what we're looking for in the future. But with what we have now and the information that we have, my inclination is to, approve this request. Here we go. Okay. Councilor Peterson White. Thank you. I I agree with everything councilor Holmes said. I'll try not to repeat anything too much. But, I really I hear a lot of sadness and suffering from the neighborhood about this.
I think there's there's clearly, damage to a lot of relationships between the college and neighbors. And, I can really understand that being a really painful thing. It's not the first time that flaws in institutional communication, perceived or real, have resulted in rifts in our community, and it will not be the last time either. I'm sure. And I I I absolute as a as an alumna and of Carleton, a fan of Carleton, a resident of what most people in Northfield would describe as the same neighborhood. It's I live about
six blocks from here. But, and I think most Northfield residents who don't live in this little pocket of the East Side would describe that as the same neighborhood, essentially. But, I I can understand how the college's decisions can affect us and how we have certain expectations of how they're gonna handle communications. I think that, I but what I'm hearing from a lot of folks tonight is that the hope is that we here will somehow repair that, and that is not our role at all. And I hope folks will really sit with that, including folks from the institutions involved.
It is not our role to repair those relationships, and no one has been able to tell me how a sixty day delay would do that, except maybe I I honestly don't know. It's totally unclear to me how a sixty day delay would repair that in any way. I think that, I really hope that I I know a lot of people are gonna be disappointed in what I'm saying and in my position on this tonight. And I hope that at a minimum, you can hear that, we have a very specific role in the consideration of a conditional use permit. And most of the things that have been asked,
questioned, and are being brought to us tonight and over the last week are outside of the limits of what we do with a conditional use permit. It's been suggested tonight that maybe we should compare this to the skateboard park. The skateboard park is a publicly funded project on a public piece of land. This conditional use permit is an application by a private organization to do something that is stated as being allowed with conditions in our code on their private property.
It's completely different from a skateboard park. And our, parameters of what we may consider in our legal obligation to the applicant is, does not include helping to repair relationships, and it doesn't include evaluating things that are outside of the material in the application. I do hear I and I and I I think that, so so I think that's that's one of the sort of big issues and objections that I hear is people are unhappy with how Carlton handled this, and I can understand that. But I do think that they met the requirements of our law.
Our local I think they have met our local requirements. I will ask staff again after I complete my comments a specific question about that. But as I understand it, they have met the requirements. I think there's another category of issue that is being raised with this that basically hinges on the concept that having buses in your neighborhood is in and of itself a nuisance. And I'm not saying that's what everybody here is here to talk about, but that has been identified as a nuisance. And I can understand being alarmed by that if you believe,
as a few people here tonight said, that they think this is not the number of vehicle trips that staff have stated, but a much larger number. I'm not sure where that gap is coming from, but I think our staff are expert and have done what needs to be done here to quantify the vehicle trips that will be involved here. And, you know, as a person who lives I live within four blocks of four bus stops, and I do not find that to be a nuisance. I find it to be really convenient, actually, because my kids can ride the bus to Target. It's great. And
the I I also have a question about the garbage because we're hearing really two really different things here about the garbage. I can understand that if residents believe that the story about exactly how much garbage this is and how many garbage trucks it is is not accurate in the CUP application, then that's definitely an issue that we should get to the bottom of. But I don't have any reason to believe that right now other than comments here. So we'll I will ask staff about that as well. But I think I I need to be really clear that I I kind of set aside the concept that having buses drive on the public street in front of
your house is somehow damaging to your quality of life. It may be a change from what you're used to and there are other neighborhoods in Northfield that have cul de sacs that are not built for through traffic. This is not one of them. This is a neighborhood that is built on a grid that is adjacent to an institution that houses thousands of people. And, that means that there is a level of an urban quality of life on the streets, and that is an appropriate use of our public right of way, in my opinion. So I kinda set that aside. I think that I really and and I want folks to understand that we we have to have specific findings
in in order to deny this or even to delay it, in my opinion, as a council, anyway, we would need to have specific findings that there are problems with this application, and I have not heard that. I think that what the applicant wants to do on their private property is within the bounds of what this conditional use permit, this particular type of conditional use permit is designed for. And I think it will actually increase pedestrian safety by removing this large area of conflict in front of Sales and Willis. And I I also,
like counselor Holmes, strongly believe that they're we need to have a larger conversation about, what our code and our comp plan and our expectations are say about how the two campuses approach parking. Because right now, we have a lot of rules about what can happen in these transitional zones. And as, commissioner Buckheit, I think, very wisely raised in the planning commission discussion, she said, you know, we don't want the campuses to have their back to the neighborhood. Nobody living in the neighborhood wants to have a perimeter of parking lots. That's true on the East Side,
and it's true on the West Side. Nobody in any neighborhood wants to have a perimeter of parking lots. But if that's not what we want, then and and we recognize the reality that, as we're seeing at Saint Olaf, students are simply not going to utilize the parking that is, like, a mile and a half away from where they need to be. And we need to come up with a more practical solution. I don't have all the answers to that. I don't know what it is, but, that burden cannot be placed on this one conditional use permit. That's a bigger issue for the council and the planning commission to address.
As I said earlier, counselor Soukup and I are both of us represent the neighborhood by Saint Olaf, and we'll be exploit there have some they have some really significant parking issues over there as well. I am very concerned to hear that people are getting the runaround from campus security and the Northfield Police Department about who should be dealing with this. That's obviously a major flaw in whatever system we have and is really concerning to me. That's not that doesn't add up to good parking enforcement, obviously. Right? I'm concerned that we have such significant parking issues that a a car can't even
be towed when it's blocking somebody's driveway. That's a real issue to me. Those things need to be addressed. They are not a part of this conditional use permit application, though. And I know it's hard to sit there and trust us that we need to take those issues up separately and address them, but that is what we need to do. We can't burden Carlton with that whole big planning issue on this one conditional use permit. So, at least I don't believe that we can. I think those are all my main comments. I have a couple things that I would like to clarify with staff, if I may. Would you rather let other people comment first? Or it's a couple of relatively quick questions,
I think. I just heard things at the podium that I wanna Maybe we'll hit the quick questions and if you guys are okay with that. We'll just hit the couple of quick questions. Okay. I'm there. So we heard two things that I would like staff to address. One is, one resident noted that she expects to see 25 to 30 large transit vehicles per day passing her house. Now I wanna note also that even if that at the even if 30 is the number, which I don't think it is, but even if 30 were the number, that would still be a very small fraction of the vehicle trips that are already
happening in this neighborhood. But that's not at all what staff said the number of vehicle trips would be. And I think there's some problem perhaps skepticism that I'm hearing about, whether this is mostly Hiawatha Land? Is it Hiawatha Land and Northfield lines? Is it Hiawatha and Northfield lines? And then a whole bunch of other activity buses? How many buses are really are we really talking about? And again, I wanna I wanna clarify that I think buses should drive on city streets. That's what the streets are for, and buses usually mean fewer cars. But I I do think that people deserve to know the reality of what they
should expect. So the Hiawatha land is the one that we have a really concrete number for because it's regularly scheduled, and that was less than 20. I had seventeen and nineteen written down in my notes, and I'd have to go back and figure out which of those was correct, but the difference of two, I mean, even if we assume 19. So, the college also indicated, you know, that we we discussed with the applicant after the first planning commission meeting, after we got the public comment. Okay. We're hearing that there's gonna be a lot more buses here, that there's gonna be more activity. What can you can you help us understand?
And they said, yeah. Well, we do intend that the brake buses would use this as well. And so the college uses the uses the, a larger coach bus at break to get students up to the Minneapolis Airport, Minneapolis Saint Paul Airport. Mhmm. The applicant told us that was fourteen days out of the year. I didn't get a specific number on buses because that number of days, even if they're running a handful of buses to accommodate, you know, several 100 students on any given day, that would be, again, in the entire scheme of how much traffic is here,
a very small number of buses and therefore considered a very small impact. There's, there was also a concern. It was raised early that the the college would be using this for athletic buses and events like that, And and the applicant did clarify that those buses and and potentially other buses would be using the the rec center if that was a better drop off. And in the case of athletics, it is the better drop off location. And so that was their intent. They would continue to use that location, and there was no intent to direct, that those buses to this location.
It's understood that there may be some more incidental buses, campus tours, or things of that nature, maybe some academic, you know, summer programming type of things. But, again, it's not a regularly scheduled every hour, or even everyday type of activity. And so we don't have a full solid count on what that would be, on a daily basis or even an average throughout the year. It's generally understood that it it would be, again, minimal impact. So Okay. Thank you. And I want to say that an adjacent concern that I've heard from folks is
about buses idling in the neighborhood. I agree that it sucks to have vehicles idling in your neighborhood. Northfield currently doesn't have an ordinance against idling vehicles, but many municipalities do. And that is something that could be separately addressed. And as someone who lives Kitty Corner from family Fair, where there are a lot of idling semi trucks, I would be all about moving that forward, if anybody is interested in that. But it's it's a separate policy issue Mhmm. From the actual number of buses, in my opinion. I think the other thing I heard is this discrepancy between, like, is it just the garbage for
I wanna say memo, but nobody calls it that anymore. It's James now. Is it just the garbage for James Hall or James And Cassette, or is it, as was noted, all of the garbage for all the buildings around the Bald Spot, which is, like, half a campus? So I did ask the applicant for clarification on this as well, just due to concerns that were raised by the citizens. The existing service services the dorms there, and as noted, there are currently onscreened garbage cans there. The applicant indicated to me that currently, there are several office type buildings around the Bald Spot that do not have loading
dock access. So many of the many of the buildings on the West Side are accessed by a loading dock off a union. There is also additional parking farther east on Maple. There's a parking lot, or farther east on 1st Street, the corner of 1st And Maple. There's an entrance into campus, and there's access to some additional loading docks down there that garbage is collected out specifically, like food garbage, food waste, etcetera. Those will remain, and specifically those office type buildings around the bald spot,
which generate a very small amount of garbage, would be, then depositing their collection in the in this trash enclosure in a dumpster that would be installed there. The frequency of pickup would not change because it's expected that that amount of garbage generated would be very minimal and accommodated by the current pickup schedule. And to be clear, that's stated in the conditional use permit application, and, therefore, the applicant is accountable for that to remain true. Am I right? Yeah. That was a that was a point of clarification Yeah.
That we said, what is your intent? And they said, this is our intent then. Yes. Thank you very much. Hey. Paul Sarnas. Thank you. I kind of agree with everything that's been said. Thank you for cutting mine short. But as Mr. Huey has said, the applicant complied with the LDC and all the parts of that. Attorney Hood said he couldn't find anything wrong with their application, and should we should be granting it. The vice president and treasurer of Saint Olaf hit me right square between the eyes
when I said, why can't they get cars off of 1st Street? Well, that's a city street. Until we restrict parking on that street, students are gonna park there. It's kinda, you know, Lincoln Street by Saint Olaf has no parking on the Saint Olaf side. The campus side of that street from Greenvale to 2nd Street, there's limited parking on the other side of the street. So the students have gone to 1st Street and 2nd Street and Lincoln Lane, and those are full. So somehow,
I would like to see at least and it was talked about in the same old parking lot one. Put a resident permit parking of some sort, you know, and that could be a nightmare. We'd have to ask the chief of police if that is manageable, but that's the only way we're gonna get parking off of 1st Street. Because students will park as close as possible because they don't wanna walk, like you said, more than ten minutes to get to where they're going. So, and again, there's nothing legally
against putting this or granting this COP. Thank you. Councilor Soaker. Yeah. I'll keep my comments pretty brief because I've, I don't wanna echo things that have already been said. I think I want to just say that, I really hear the frustration with the process and the engagement with, Carlton. I live in the neighborhood of right off the hill in the Saint Olaf neighborhood where we have, really intense parking issues that have bubbled up over the last few years because of
the way the college has changed. And so I really hear your and relate to the frustration of the nonengagement with the process of change, and also echo my colleagues in saying that, unfortunately, what we're doing here tonight is not to mediate that conflict and is not to get in the way of the CUP that's in front of us. I think the the thing that I'll really add is related to that,
specifically the parking issues because I think, you know, this is related to a bus stop, but what I hear over and over, in the in the emails and in the public comments about planning commission meeting, that I listened to. And tonight is really around congestion and the the a feeling that there's an inability to move around the space that you live comfortably, safely. And that's a really real thing that,
unfortunately, then when you engage with a very rigid and cold process like this, it just makes it more frustrating because there's the solution to what you're feeling in your neighborhood and outside of your home, which is a very intimate and personal feeling, cannot be addressed by this process. And so I I think my point in the these comments is to say that, I'm actively working on the parking situation in my own neighborhood. And I I would encourage you to reach out to any one of us,
but I I would love to talk with you about your ideas for proactive solutions to kind of, you know, allow students to exist exist in the adjacent neighborhoods to the colleges, but also, more safely and and productively and proactively address some of the real concerns as people who actually, live on the street there. So, and thank you for engaging, but I will be voting in favor of this CUP tonight. Thank you. Any other quick comments? No? Alright. I just thank you everybody for the great discussion.
Thank you to all the residents that came and spoke this evening and the mass amount of emails that we received in regards to this, is greatly appreciated. Please know that when I look at this, I'm I I understand what you're saying with your emails. I'm hearing you. But what we're being asked to do is to is to approve whether this meets the requirements, and and it obviously does. So with that being said,
I will ask for a vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Did we wanna ask the mayor back in? She's been watching, and I just texted her at her request as well. So I think we can pause. If somebody would like to be ready to make a motion, I'll probably be passing on my report today. Oh. Not not yet. Let's wait for them here. Well, we'll let the mayor close the meeting out. Welcome back, Mayor. And thank you for running that agenda item, Mayor Pro Tem. I appreciate it.
So next up in our agenda is the administrator's report. He's passing. He's passing. One super quick item. We are we are we do have a, we are scheduled. As I reported the prior meeting, we we got out of the tax committee in the senate related to the local sales tax option. We did I did get a good news, that we are scheduled Thursday morning on the house side, which will keep us active on both the house and the senate if we get out of committee. I'm optimistic on that.
So I'll be, attending that and working on adjusting schedules, for that. But due to the length of the meeting, I'll just pass on the rest. Thank you very much. Councilor Ness? Move to adjourn. Thank you. Councilor Beamer? Second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you. We are adjourned. Thank you all for the extra time you put in this evening.