Burnsville City Council — Transcript
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Comprehensive Plan Kickoff (Burnsville 2050)
Development Application Notification Ordinance Update
General Election Results Canvas Scheduling
Experience Burnsville Executive Director Hire
Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) Board Report
Dakota 911 Joint Powers Board Report
Metro Cities Transportation and General Government Committee & I35 Solutions Report
Municipal Legislative Commission (MLC) Report
Votes (2)
Comprehensive Plan Kickoff (Burnsville 2050)
The council discussed the scope, objectives, and timeline for the Burnsville 2050 Comprehensive Plan, a 2-year project required by state law. Key elements included meeting Met Council requirements, integrating with a community visioning project, addressing new climate and transportation policies, and updating land use to potentially permit more diverse housing types. The roles of the City Council (policy direction) and Planning Commission (steering committee) were defined. Extensive community engagement, including youth and small businesses, was emphasized.
Development Application Notification Ordinance Update
Staff presented a proposal to update development notification distances, moving from a standard 350-foot radius to a two-tier system: 500 feet for quasi-judicial applications and 1,200 feet for legislative applications. A key modification includes extending notification boundaries to the nearest public street to avoid cutting off mid-block properties. The rationale is to ensure more thorough public engagement and defensible notification practices. The council members expressed general approval for the updated policy.
Notable Quotes (6)
The plan will establish Burnsville's long-term framework for housing, infrastructure, land use, transportation, community development while meeting the state and metropolitan requirements. That's our goal of this project.
I don't think that Burnsville is going to have any problem complying with any of this because we go above and beyond regularly.
So there's four ways that we have proposed to do this. Um one Lauren and I work on comprehensive plans outside of this 10-year cycle here in the Twin Cities. We work on comprehensive plans um uh in other states and usually there we do a visioning process within the comprehensive plan and one of our one of our most important pieces of that approach is making sure that when people are giving us their visioning ideas they're informed about what's happening on the ground.
I'm a very big advocate of neighborhood meetings. I actually like attending them for the most part. Um, I think it's a good way they improve projects and that's why it's important to notify people and have people attend the meetings because I've seen many projects be improved by neighborhood input.
So both the Besser project was an ordinance amendment and the old highway 34 project was also a comp plan amendment. So both of those projects under this scenario would have the 1200 foot mailing area as depicted on here.
Love it. That works. Yeah. It just took 15 years, but yes, thumbs up. This is like the third time I brought this up and this is the best proposal of all of them.
Ordinances & Resolutions (21)
General term for the city's long-term planning document.
Previous comprehensive plan for Woodbury.
Previous comprehensive plan for Burnsville.
Current comprehensive plan update being kicked off.
Requires cities in the 7-county metropolitan area to update comprehensive plans every 10 years.
Requirements set by the Met Council that Burnsville's comprehensive plan must meet.
Information provided to council members for meetings.
Regional transportation plan with new policy changes affecting comprehensive plans.
Met Council study available to cities to address e-commerce and last-mile distribution issues.
Met Council plan elevating pedestrian safety, with crash scores for roads.
Existing Burnsville plan that will contribute strategies to the climate section of the comp plan.
Existing Burnsville plan (since 1998, updated 2018) that will contribute strategies to the climate section of the comp plan.
State law amended in 2023 requiring cities to consider climate mitigation and adaptation in comprehensive planning.
Document from Met Council identifying goals and requirements, e.g., for affordable housing.
City ordinance governing land use and development, subject to updates for notification distances.
City ordinance governing land division, subject to updates for notification distances.
Most visited page on the city's website, used for public notification of development applications.
Agenda item type where the drafted notification ordinance update is expected to appear.
Document prepared by Stantech outlining the community engagement strategy for the comprehensive plan.
Internal city communication, where Greg's report on MLC was included.
Request for Proposal, used for hiring new lobbying services for Metro Cities and MLC.