kind of follow marie's lead here how do you want to do this do we want to have um what i just like you to do is um uh dustin and justin will need to um call the meeting to order is just about to start all right well then on the uh the commission planning commission side we'll call um our september 1 meeting to order at what time is it 707 and justin i guess we'll have concurrent meetings yep we we have our three members from parks here too so absolutely we're welcome to get started with this joint session right um let's just move right into approval of the agenda is there any any addition to the agenda or um we need to do a roll call yeah we should all right um so forgive me if i screw up any names but uh we'll just go right into a roll call you know i'll stick to the um the planning and then justin can uh take care of the um parks we'll just kind of share it like that so just to a roll call i'm chair matty is here uh commissioner gorham here all right commissioner eggenberger here commissioner galts no commissioner galt tonight right commissioner riedel here all right four out of five and um we'll move on to parks all right uh chairman gold here uh commissioner hershner am i saying that right yeah yeah sorry i don't have any uh writing in front of me we're less formal in the parks then that is galvan you here i'm here okay that's what we have for the parks today all right thank you and uh council liaisons as uh as debbie or excuse me councilman recycle here i am all right and then um councilmember johnson you're here i am present all right so we are eight out of ten plus both council members all right let's move on to uh approval of the agenda is uh any any additions or corrections tonight's agenda do i hear a motion to approve the agenda i move that we approve the agenda i'll second it all right uh i like that some planning some questions okay so move my commissioner riedel seconded by commissioner mangold um we'll just move right into a vote all those oh shoot we gotta go roll call all right um you should do the roll call yep all right uh so we'll just start right with the chair matty uh we'll move in into vote chair maddie votes i um commissioner gorham hi commissioner edenberger hi commissioner riedel hi i'll just go right on through commissioner mangold aye mr man golda commissioner herner hi commissioner galvin hi all right the motion passes uh eight zero unanimously all right and moving right into what we kind of relaxed about this tonight our fire lane discussion and i think i'm guessing murray you've got a presentation for us yes it's just a very short presentation um um so as you know we have been tasked with taking a look at the fire lanes to make sure that they are fulfilling the needs of the community for public access uh to the lake and um so we have now all toured all 10 of the fire lanes we've had them surveyed so we know exactly where they are um so what we're to discuss tonight is how well does each fire lane serve the public are the users that are are the uses that are currently allowed appropriate in each of the fire lanes and are there other uses that are currently not permitted that could be approved uh based on the characteristics of the fire lanes and are there improvements that should be completed to allow the site to serve as public lake access more effectively and in the staff report it's i've broken down the fire lanes by the type of classification we have three classifications um the majority of our fire lanes are in uh the type of fire lane that only allows the most passive uses but we do have one fire lane that allows snowmobile access to the lake swimming and parking and that is um the fire lane um that is it's fire lane six which is crescent beach and then uh we have one fire lane that would allow a community dock subject to six specific conditions that are listed in the regulations and those are attached and that is fire lane five uh that's the one at the extension of eureka road i did receive two letters and i did send that out to all of the commissioners and that was after the packet was published so with that i think we can just start through with our discussions so uh with fire lane one whoops i have one question before we start marie if we decide to close a fire lane what happens to it close the fire lane yes uh that would uh depend entirely on if you'd want them to be like barriers if you'd want zero maintenance so that they just grow natural vegetation or if you direct us to explore how we could um uh vacate or somehow uh remove the fire lanes which if it's vacated does it become part of the property of the adjoining property or how does that work it depends on how we acquired the land originally so it would go back to the adjacent properties that were planted with the dedication of land might not be split evenly between the two adjacent properties it may not be um if it was a we have a couple that are planted so that is entirely a different beast and we have one that's in a an easement and there are utilities in place there so that one would be trickier to to um remove from the city um as a fire lane all right well do we want to just take these on one one through ten in order i think so or should we have a higher level discussion individually would also be helpful okay so the first fire lane is on enchanted island and it is the extension of enchanted point it is um it runs down past the last house on the end of the road and the adjacent neighbor is the upper lake minnetonka yacht club to the north so um that one has um generally good topography um in terms of accent lake it is um it's easy to get out it would be easy to get out onto the um to the shore there are a few landscaping boulders and such in in the way and one thing i would note is the property line let's see if i can get my pointer up here the property line right in this location was not clearly established on the original plat so that is something we would want to work with the upper lake minnetonka yacht club to firmly establish that particular property line i'm guessing the shoreline may have looked a little bit different when the plot was recorded and i forget if it's 1890 or 1900 maureen this is this is matt i a quick question how because i know in particular with this one what is the current process because the city i know is is technically responsible for maintaining the fire lanes uh you know and cleaning them up correct me if i'm wrong on any of that what what if anything do we do currently with that um there isn't much that the city has been tasked to do it's not on a moment they're not on mowing schedules um and if i if uh tree falls or something like that and the property owner asks us to remove it that's about the extent of what we have done and so this is kind of a probably our most challenging right now that the neighbor seems to have commandeered a good portion of this uh public property and i think isn't there somebody storing like a boat lift or something if i recall correctly oh there was um and that was part of the correspondence that i had sent out earlier we had asked the property owner to remove their transportable private property and cut off their um irrigation system at the property line and they have done that and then we are waiting for more direction from you before we um before we um have them do any more work okay so let's just let's open it up to commissioners again yeah uh how did uh how is it that uh all the riffraff was put in on the pro on the uh along the shoreline without the city uh being made aware of it or any kind of permit pulled i understand from the letter from the yacht club that they just went ahead and did it what did we communicate to them when it was discovered that that was something that they needed to remove or anything of that nature um we have not gone any further with it at this point until we know the outcome of our discussions here and sorry to interrupt we just want to make the record show that commissioner gold is now at the meeting yeah sorry i had technical difficulties getting on welcome a minor point i was there this afternoon and it seemed to me that the boat lift was still on the fire lane is that correct marie is this the same boat lift that we were discussing or i i think it was out there last week i didn't see it but um i can certainly take another i i don't know that it's necessarily a concern i'm just wondering if that was the boat lift that we were discussing it seemed that uh it was um it was there and uh the one that i we had sent the notice out was removed so if there's another one out there that would have a separate option it's perhaps very close to the boundary yeah i saw those as well there were two there and i couldn't tell looking at this ariel they may have been on the yacht club property but they were very close to the boundary line all right so we've we've received substantial correspondence from the yacht club on how they they wish to you know take care of that property um have we heard what have we heard from um looks like 45 95 the house that's kind of commandeered a good chunk of public property i think at this point um they have um they sent in the the letter that i emailed over and the the email correspondence um but at this point they have complied with what we asked them to do and um they're waiting a decision to find out if more would be required of them and that would be based on the outcome of these meetings that we're holding the biggest issue for me with this fire lane is the remoteness if the city is going to convert it into access and maintain it how much is it going to get used um um well in talking with the um upper the minitonki yacht club um actually they have quite a few people that launched kayaks through there so um if we put a a parking space or two in um on that fire lane it could be um it could be a more popular place to to launch kayaks and things and canoes okay as as i look at this plat just about everybody on that island has their own shore anyway i'm trying to figure out who would be benefiting if we did try to open it up and make it more welcoming for um recreation just a few and i don't know how um what the circumstances are of each property but as i have said the yacht club is already allowing some people in the public to launch from their property so that activity could certainly shift to the fire lane so so there is demand for kind of private just you know small vessel um yeah it does sound like it okay how do you play that pardon how do you know that um well at this point i can only um tell you what we've been told by the um uh by the board of directors at the upper lake minnetonka yeah club i understand also from their letter that they are willing to maintain the property yes and can anyone hear me here hello okay we can hear someone who was that just tell us your name before you start talking and then we can i'm sorry i've been i've been trying to help with this my name is scott brown i live here in the neighborhood i think i maybe finally hit the right button yep we can hear you now scott you're an islander oh wonderful man may i speak to this i i'm a former commodore of the yacht club and i'm the only person who lives on the east side of the road it's my house the yacht club then the fire lane and then this property excuse me property you were talking about uh yeah you're welcome to speak we're we're kind of just playing this loose tonight so uh what do you have to add thank you um there uh i was the commodore for a few years i'm going to say 18 years ago and 20 years ago the fire lane at that time was abandoned swamp for all parties for the yacht club for the city and for the neighbor who lived on the end who has moved away by the way he does not live there anymore while i was commodore we cleaned up a lot of the lakeshore we pulled out a lot of the stuff that was referenced in the current yacht club letter it was not associated with the fire lane it was primarily the yacht club's junk if i could say so we hauled it all away the yacht club is allowing people to launch across their property and that is in violation of the conditional use permit and no one there is no parking on this street we are on the end of the end of the island in fact when we call 9-1-1 we sometimes don't even get a response that i think should be taken into consideration there is i can't imagine a concept that says there's demand for lake access out here we are just a remote small street but at best in reading the notice that they could put storage for kayaks and canoes the yacht club can't even do that i can't imagine the city being allowed to do such a thing and the the last question i haven't and i don't mean seem to be uh rude about this but i read about cross-country skiing i'm an avid cross-country skier i ski all over the midwest all winter and i can't fathom somebody using a lake access to get onto the lake to cross country ski and i it was it put on there just to make it sound good or for what purpose i i can't i can't understand it that is a listed use for the this classification of fire lane it's in the zoning ordinance i i thank you for that i still don't understand it but yeah that was written before most of us started volunteering so that's what it is the real concern we have is the real concern is we have we are so isolated out here we have very little um uh protection from being just considered the end of the street and you know what happens at the end of the street it's just it's not a good place to have a public access um good evening everybody uh uh can i speak for a moment this is yes just tell you tell us your name and uh this is mike and seget rosenberg we're the owners of of the adjacent property at 4595 and i just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to speak as well hello scott is our neighbor nice to see you um we uh i just want to clarify a couple things um one we we didn't uh commandeer the property we purchased this property in 2003 uh the grass the side the sprinkler system the landscape the landscaping all was in the fire lane at that time when we purchased it so that was done prior to our ownership we've just maintained that property since 2003 we've mowed the grass and fertilized the lawn and the riprap that was there was mostly existing we did extend a small portion of it and uh that was just a few you know i don't know maybe 10 or 15 feet at the most and that was where there was water coming in during flooding and that water was eroding the shoreline and causing problems so with their the rip rap is not really i mean that's their boulders that you can carry by hand it's not anything major you know it's just we put basically some stones around that area to prevent further erosion further flooding and it's worked and it's worked and uh so i just uh wanted to clarify that um we've always uh respected that property as as fire lane we're not trying to misrepresent anything is that being fire landing we fully want to cooperate with the city as we have done the the lift that is on the property currently is not our lift i my assumption was that belongs to the yacht club it's it's adjacent to the yacht club property but it is on the fire lane and it's not our lift i don't know who that belongs to but yeah i can speak to the boat lift the the the city i toured it with the mayor when we had the flooding uh several years back and the flooding in our area was caused because the yacht club dredged the land and their contractor cut a swath to the lake he literally lowered the shoreline and the whole neighborhood flooded when the lake went up well i went i went over and built a dam to stop the water yeah the city came out with the mayor and i pointed to the mayor point out to the mayor along with two other representatives that the yacht club was illegally storing their boat lifts they are not allowed to store boat lifts year-round they are allowed to use them in the summer and pull them out for the winter and put them back in the summer well they have collected boat lifts and they are the ones who have put them into the fire lane and i can see them i'm looking through the woods right now they're sitting right there thank you for clarifying that scott you bet and and thank you michael we we're not trying to point fingers at any wrongdoing we're just trying to figure out how to how to clean this oh i appreciate that and we're also with uh scott as far as you know the residential feel of the neighborhood the quiet feel the neighborhood i mean everybody comes over there just says you know it's just so peaceful and serene it's just a quiet neighborhood and you know we also looked at that you know where they're talking about storage of of personal watercrafts and i mean we all know jet skis may be fun but they make a lot of noise and to store to all of a sudden make that area into storage for personal watercraft jet skis wave runners i mean it'll totally change that residential neighborhood into this basically expanding the the commercial use of that land into something that you know was an enchanted island to something that could be not as enchanted so that's well i mean the way the ordinance is written i think marie is going to cut so there's no no powered power oh it says we're talking kayaks and canoes right maureen well maybe a paddleboard but nothing nothing like kajatski all right thank you and there's there's like you can help me with that there is zero parking yeah absolutely there's no place we're not allowed to park on the street because the street is so narrow and we're like that we couldn't get a fire truck no well it's not if i'm not that's why there's no parking i just want to say one other thing that uh you know maybe the one of the better side effects of covet is we've actually used the property uh much more this year than we have in recent past for several years and we do have the property for sale but we may actually decide to keep it and just move out there permanently yeah i think i guess my question would be uh to the current commodore if there are people launching canoes and kayaks and presumably paddle boards from the yacht club are those the residents uh you know that do not have direct lakeshore that have the road in front of them uh on the west side of the island because i agree i can't imagine that people are driving out there the conditional use the conditional use permit says that no one is to be there unless they are a member or accompanied with the member and it is a major point of contention because it's violated literally every day so my question though is uh the people that are launching uh are those the same people that would launch from the fire lane if the fire lane was re you know cleaned up uh to provide that access i think it's fictitious i i i don't i can't speak if somebody is using the place to launch a kayak it would be illegal and it shouldn't be happening or not illegal on the fire lane no but it's the the point made by the commodore was that there was they had given permission to people to do so um like to know who they are because i don't think they exist there is a member uh of the yacht club that lives on the west side of the street that does have a paddle board but they have a boat there and they because they are a member are allowed to use the facility and thus um place their paddle board in the water they have in their conditional use permit they are allowed to launch a um how would you describe it a boat that is carried no trailer this is interesting but if the cop doesn't allow launching they can just go to the next property over and the fire lane which does allow it technically i have a question for the browns and the neighbors at the 45.95 you know granted um there's you know some use with kayaks etc at the yacht club but to your knowledge have you had any um has anybody used the fire line for launching any of this or is this kind of a mute issue that it's not being used that way and it hasn't been used that way i can tell you since 2003 since the time we've been there no one has come down and want to use that property yeah and i wouldn't think i don't think where would they park that's exactly i mean if they they've been launching at the even at the at the club where do they park when they launched exactly i would think there's a there's a chance if somebody walked down the fire lane they may have sunk in so deep that they're still there you can't walk through the fire lane but we're kind of just chiming on a perspective of what we would think in the park system so if this was a public use and we're talking about it in the same context we talk about parks we think about you know what we put in the park and whether or not we have the capacity for parking and traffic flow for that if we don't have enough traffic flow we're limited by how many ball fields or playgrounds we have the same might be that realistic in this if there isn't parking it's not able to be public access in the way that a city would put its stamp on it and i don't think there's a way to create parking in this location for us that would be a viable option so it's kind of a i agree you know no go no-go situation if there isn't a parking solution i don't know how to turn it into a healthy option for public use there based on how we're using criteria for our other park system and to that point i think that that's probably a commonality of all of the fire lanes right i mean this is one where the people that live in some proximity uh to the far lane are using it uh on a regular basis um so yes overall uh that's that's true from the parking perspective but you know for those uh people that do live close enough to walk to it they are using them the ones that you can use of which there's only one but i'm familiar with using fire lanes i i race ice boats and i we use a fire lane on the lower lake side but the difference between that fire lane and this fire lane is the other fire lane is a blacktop curbed road this is a technically a dirt road with no parking allowed for a half a mile or whatever the length of the road is so this this is my car my question might be um if the boat club is allowing some access if the city were to work with the boat club to change whatever their permit is and in the in the process require them to allow the launching of those personal craft do we need the fire lane well the upper lake minnetonka yeah club is private property not public property so just because one membership board would allow some public access through there doesn't mean that any future boards would now they if you are interested in adding a use like a storage rack or something like that for canoe in the area then i think we could look at how we add some uh parking in that area frankly there looks like there is some very good ground in that area it's not all marsh and that is something that we could look at this is um this is matt galvin personally i i think this one like a lot of them i i honestly don't get don't see why any why people would use them um you know and i don't think that there's you know don't want to put the onus on the city to have to kind of maintain them or the onus on the residents to have to maintain them as in some cases it it has come to uh but they're so for me the question is for for many of these if we were to no longer designate them as fire lanes what we would do with them um you know and i don't know if where how the residents feel about if we were to take the yacht club up on leasing this land or or not or you know what the alternative is but i would put me in the camp of i think that this is my recommendation is this like a lot of them i i don't think people are actually going to use um you know for the purposes that are currently listed marie are we only doing a discussion or are you looking for a motion or what's no i'm looking for informal direction that that i would bring back in front of you in uh other forms so it may be ordinance changes or um uh other generations well i i agree with matt that we should look at options of closing the fire lane in this in fire lane number one and i would just say this is mike rosenberg again i would just say that we would surely be interested in you know if there's any kind of lease or purchase of that property i mean our our border with the fire lane is actually much longer than that of the yacht club and so it really impacts our border more significantly and so i i just would like to have a fair opportunity to partake in any such decision would be fair at this point for us to say that we've have an understanding of fire lane one and we should move on to the next one that should kind of work through this and see what similarities or differences we have as we go through these trying to get some criteria going for because i don't necessarily want to lump them all in one big group here right this one is different from the others uh for sure that's what i'm saying as marine stated there is at least the potential here for some development but i'm tending i guess and echoing what everybody else has said driving out there this afternoon it took me 45 minutes to get there it's this if we were to develop it as a park um it has the potential it's limited and constrained but it would see absolutely minimal use um and so i'm echoing what everybody else said my tendency would be that because of its remoteness and uh you know the potential that it would see very little use uh i i would tend uh not to argue that the city should develop resources and develop this as a uh as a park or an access point so just just to play devil's advocate here there is room for a couple of parking spots a place to store a couple of kayaks is it the consensus of us that there just wouldn't be any demand and it'd be a waste of the city's resources to to do that that's my opinion on it doesn't it i wouldn't mind interjecting here this is neck arm um part of my concern i guess is a perception uh and some of it is the making too many assumptions on how it's being used now versus how it might be used in the future um just because you know you don't necessarily need to have a car there's plenty of people on the west side who are along enchanted lane i'm not sure everyone has equal uh lakefront access i guess my the issue here for me is equity and the perception of turning over public property for private use to wealthier shore shore land owners in in you know while restricting lake lake access to people who are more inland and for me i'd rather keep most of them as is uh rather than to you know turn some of this property over and like lake access is pretty precious in my mind i'm i'm kind of with you there um commissioner gourmet i'd almost rather we sent our maintenance crew there you know a couple of times a month to keep it clean then talk about conveying it to different property owners and disallowing the public use of the space i just want to look back and have some people say in 2020 people weren't really using it so we you know we gave the people next door to right to it it's not hurting us so bad we're not getting we're not going bankrupt maintaining it yeah this might my concern is the property owners on the island who don't have lake access and if this goes away you know where where do they go we've now taken them from uh from the island to have to go off the island someplace else to try to get into the lake and that's a concern let's say they shouldn't have to drive to mountain to go enjoy the lake that's a good point i think that's a that's a fair thought but uh two thoughts is that there is um the shady island bridge area where it has i would call it five times better access to the water than this fire lane you're talking about and the second point is it has not ever been used to my knowledge in the 25 years i've lived in this house you physically could not walk across the property to the water so this issue we're not taking anything away from people but scott if i could push back against that why not i walked out there today um it does seem that um you know in what sense is it not walkable it's it's now walkable because the yacht club went out with chainsaws and cut it last winter and even though they've cut down those trees the boat lifts are still there and i have i've never seen somebody walk through that property to the water that's the point i'm trying to make i respect your point i think you made a good point but if we want to talk about a factual situation it is not used as of now well it's so interesting i think that ron because when i was out there last uh on i believe it was saturday i drove to look at all of these and when i was uh leaving the property there was a family who walked up from behind me who had been fishing or looked like they've been fishing from the shoreline at the end of the road so i think you know it is getting some limited use by people i've i've i'm amazed to hear that where would they have parked their car i have no idea there was four or five people and they were walking with fishing poles that that wasn't us was it it would have been us we did go fishing i think i think uh you know like i would concur with scott i would have never seen anybody come down there or ask questions about going through their or anything so i that's be very unusual in our experience and there's a dead end i was surprised given this distance out there and there's plenty of other places you could stop and fish and also there's a dead dead end sign at the at the entrance of the of the driveway so there's a it's the sheer the enchantment yeah there's a so not many people other than people who live there and then the members of the yacht club even really i mean let me ask a question uh because we've been talking about access and uh you know for the people that live on enchanted lane as opposed to out on the point but we've got the j.e myers memorial park uh just to the west uh with that i can't tell whether that's i'm looking at a google area also but with that not better serve the community as a lake access i don't have a lot of information on that one because it is not within the city of shorewood the city is not okay within either island and has noted that as a deficiency in our comprehensive plan this is dub cycle i've got um two things i want to comment on and um one i think we should watch the tone of i'm talking about wealthy lake owners um and turning this into an elitist conversation you know a lot of people along these um fire lanes have lived in their home for a long time they don't have wads of cash you know falling out of their pockets so i think we got to be careful about using or referring to that because that's not accurate um and then secondly i mean the discussion tonight is really um to look at the current use and it shouldn't be just about expanding the use but a lot of these fire lanes are inaccessible they have not been maintained by the city there's no budget for the city to maintain these or turn these into anything you know above and beyond what they're you know being used for now so i think we should be talking about what's the current use is it um reasonable to maintain that today are these things that we should be considering either abandoning because it just doesn't have utility it's not feasible to do it it would be way too expensive or do you need to change um you know maybe the classification so it shouldn't be just about expanding the use it really should be looking at it at its entirety and then really going back to the purpose of the fire lanes in the first place which was to fight fires and we have not used a fire lane in a hundred years to fight a fire so i mean that was the utility of it that wasn't designed to create access for people um that you know uh to use the lake especially in some of these um areas where um it'd be very difficult to do that so i'm gonna speak up and you know just kind of guide our conversation or at least give some context into it on to you know what other people on the phone might be thinking an interesting point to that is our home was one of three properties affected when michael coutine moved a dry hydrant when he built his home and we were wondering why they were doing that and the city told us we don't worry about it we've abandoned the dry hydrants we use the fire lanes and um debbie your comment is amazing to me um to hear that we don't use them those either anymore um i'm mystified but i respect where you guys are going and i think you're on the great the right track it doesn't get used it's abandoned property is the way i would best describe excuse me in 1985 and 86 the fire lanes were studied exclu exhaustively they had a multi-year study on them and their their uses and at that time it was determined that there was no practical use of them for firefighting purposes and the only use for these fire lanes was for public lake access so they have been used exclusively at since that point only for lake access on on paper but not in reality at least this that piece of land right there it's correct and the whole reason we're having this conversation is that the city is basically sitting on 10 parcels of abandoned land what is the best use for it that's kind of where we're trying to conclude um and i would just add to that i think and i think to um councilwoman cycles point i think the ones that we are going to maintain then we need to the city is responsible for them under the code and the city needs to take responsibility for maintaining them um i personally don't like the idea of we've we've you know had these 10 and then essentially it ends up being you know placed on the property owners adjacent to it to maintain them uh and then we're you know so i think we need to give people certainty about whether they're going to be access points or not and then take responsibility if if they are um regarding the maintenance of it and i know that that is a burden on resources and and and staff time that i'm you know very cognizant of um but i think that that's important part of the conversation all right so we're we're about 50 minutes into this um and this is the first one but we're i think we're talking largely on a higher level that of all of them how do we want to give direction or recommendations to the council do we want to keep on fire lane one or should we just kind of start checking through these we kind of got an idea that yes we have abandoned them as the city but there is potential for recreational use um should we stay on number one or should we keep moving forward we need to get some comparison because again i think we're talking very broad and i think we want to kind of think about them well they may not end up as all individuals on the list we're kind of looking at one that is a lot of different moving parts to it on that one right so maybe get some context by looking at the others yeah let's let's just try ticking through these and kind of see what we get a feel for i know fire lane one is just a it's a big it's a big fire lane compared to the rest i don't think we're going to resolve this tonight but we we've got an idea is there consensus that actually you know i'm not going to ask for consensus because we haven't come up to any consensus as far as conversations concerned for virulent one i would just ask is there any other general public comments on this one before we move on to two that's that's a good point anybody else here in the meeting that would like to um make a comment on firelane 1. please use the raise hand function and i'll like and i'll unmute you and the raised hand function is under the chat button if you're not a zoomer i think it might be under participants oh yeah yeah probably clearly i'm not literally you're not a pro at this i'm more of a microsoft uh teams person myself there's a blue hand so participants and then the blue hand in the left corner yep i'm scrolling the list and i don't see a raised hand at this point all right well someone can raise their hand and talk again let's move on to fire lane so i'm ready to have any over view of fireline 2 or um firelink is that the end of um shady island road down here you can see it it comes down to a point and we do have a lift station down um near the shoreline uh and one parking space for a uh at least for the maintenance vehicles although i didn't see a sign that restricted it only for that use a quick comment i did notice that there appear to be uh irrigation piping from the adjacent lot running across the fire lane there um yes the the shady island one and there seemed to be wire put in place to deter geese running right across it as well that that was put there since last saturday because on saturday i drove down to that lift station and turned around and there wasn't anything obstructing my passage i don't think i'm mistaken i drove well i could be mistaken about um where the fire lane was located but i drove right to the bottom there was the lift station and then the actual fire lane kind of veered slightly off to the left of that down to the water um and i it just looked like the adjacent property had uh put wire to the turret geese and there was the uh a an above ground sprinkler iron running but perhaps i'm mistaken let's let's not dwell on this point i'm sure gold if you didn't see it or if marie if you had not observed that i i did see the the goose barrier but i also saw that in one and i saw it on several others as well so that's just a small like invisible a little bit heavier than fishing line or something down on the near the shore that would block or keep the geese from coming out so you may not have seen it if you didn't walk all the way down to right to the shore the only reason why it's significant potentially is uh that does for public access if anybody was to want to use this for launching a a kayak they might say well it's not the place to launch it right there given this obstruction to step over it kind of thing and and that's kind of to be expected with i mean we we haven't been maintaining these properties so of course the neighbors will you know keep the geese off of their their property that's completely reasonable i agree um with this one though as again no parking except for you know the utility parking spot but it's a beautiful little little piece of the lake right there i uh i don't know if there's anyone around if the neighbors are at this meeting or not if anybody if there's demand for kayaks to drop there i'm looking at the plat most people have shoreline there on that island everybody on shady island has shoreline i talked to a resident earlier today who lives sort of further up the hill there and the feedback he gave was people are able to share that um you know if if someone did want to drop a kayak they're all pretty cordial they haven't had any issues and it but that you know the sort of the status quo works for everyone that's there okay remember when i drove there it was awkward you know i had to park way back in the middle of the island and walk down because that road is so narrow well i think one of the things about this one is uh we we need the public access to get to that lift station correct so whether it's termed a fire lane or whatever i mean it's somebody's gonna need access is is that shorewood uh is is that a shorewood lift station or is that a met council it's a short view it is short okay that kind of sets the tone for that i mean we can pretty much check this one off as we got to keep this maintained by the city shorewood then right right i feel like this one is make sense right it's a it's not a piece of land that can be used in any other way than what it is right now it's such a narrow little piece and uh you know where the other one was a point that there's a lot of benefit and two we already are using this as a completely utility and how it's being operated i mean would it be a bad thing to just put a sign that says what what's allowed just you know non-motorized vessels and reclassify it as a service road i guess that's a question of if we're going to have a smaller group that is classified with actual signage you know so so right now aren't these both in the same class currently right yeah one and two so i'm going to create a new class you know but i i would say that this is great perspective between these two and maybe we just move on the three and i i i'm open to discussion on that i just don't have a strong opinion one way or another if we're going to end up with more than three different classifications on this and where we end up as a final uh you know direction for the for the discussion to move forward i think we want to really get through the group of these and understand how they're similar and how they're not to kind of then look at it again in that broader sense that we're talking about with one that's a good point let's keep just checking through these um before we move to the next one is there anyone who wants to raise their hand that wants to speak specifically to fire lane two um well we'll just move on if somebody does want to raise their hand um we'll we'll hear about it we'll go back to two but with that we'll just move right into fire lane three then okay and this is this is the one we got the most correspondence about fire lane three and i ran into a couple people today when i because i i stopped by today on my way back home just to take a look at it because i didn't looking at this fire lane uh and based on where the stake was which apparently was pulled by the neighbor to the west uh based on conversation i had with two other neighbors about 6 30 tonight you know that you know i there was no way that uh that this has a 25 foot clear space from where the stake was which when i looked at it was just west of the telephone pole that's on the corner there is if that is in fact 25 feet from where the stake was to the west there's significant encroachment on this fire spirally and it is getting a lot of use and the uh i've got two other neighbors who who spent a lot of time telling me how how this is how much they use this and do not want to see it changed so i think the one the thing with this one is it is technically a class one in in what the how it's classified and marie correct me if i'm wrong at any of this but what we're hearing from a lot of residents is that they use it as a class two where they use it for snow for snowmobiles and um you know eight four-wheelers um so i think there's sort of that question of um you know clarifying how this should be used from a should it be you know change to class 2 or how do we create certainty because i think the biggest problem i saw on this one is you know we need to create certainty for everyone because you're there seems to be some conflicts that are happening um you know because we're leaving it to you know the lack of clarity and for residents to essentially enforce it um you know themselves um so and then that's a good point uh again we haven't done any signage our law says he can't have motorized vehicles on this but it sounds like i mean we we put up barriers last year um but the the neighbor let's see 26 260 i mean they bought their house being told that there were no motorized vehicles allowed on that fire lane and then uh you know they we haven't enforced it until last year and but we've got a lot of neighbors inland who want to use it for their noisy snow machines like what i'm not sure what the right path is for this i also want to know the parking on this one is drastically different than what we're talking about on the island correct me if i'm wrong i don't know this is just how it's used or how it's actually marked is birch no parking only on one side like lakeside that road you're not supposed to park but you can park on the south side of the road yes that's accurate okay so again just comparing this to the first two we have public parking available from a basic criteria of you know what's allowed and not allowed in that neighborhood yeah but that's a really dangerous corner too it's a very strong i understand i'm not saying that they should park on the corner but it's not a mile and a half or whatever we were saying on the island to where it's safe to publicly park right now somewhere along that strip or a block and a half back is significantly closer walk to use than we have on the island of what's being on there right now in fact the people that i was talking to uh today uh one lives on eureka they were out walking their dog in the room and the reason the uh conversa initiated a conversation was because she was walking with her daughter and said hey let's walk down to the lake through the lane uh so i asked i asked her i said do you use this a lot and the answer was yes that they do use it a lot and another neighbor who lives three houses away uh also uh joined the conversation uh basically supporting its continued use and allowing uh snowmobile and atv access but with some limitation on ours they do recognize the the late night noise concerns uh and we're suggesting that uh you know if something like that was allowed i'm i'm trying to find it was the names of the people but um you know i think this is uh this is one that we're getting a lot of support to maintain it um as i think i think that that's a a good point about that i think there clearly needs to be better or some signage around this one no matter what the council ultimately decides on it um i think there also should be some clarity about you know the hours of use um because that apparently seems to be a problem i i the other thing is i think there should be access at least somewhere um you know whether it's here or you know i know there's the fire lane you know six for people to use snowmobiles to get on the lake i do personally have hesitancy about you know if a property owner bought this with it being zoned for one thing and then to sort of change the rules of the road later you know i get that people might be using it a certain way um i have some personal concerns about that it just seems like uh you know i just have some concerns about that aspect of it can we say something about this so sure just let us know who you are and where you live so this is jillian blamquist we live at 5425 so we live just a little bit south of the fire lane and the one thing that i wanted to bring up that relates even to the first and second fire lanes is the presumption that people are driving from far away places or from other neighborhoods and parking their cars to use the fire lane access i think that's kind of a misnomer or a misunderstanding of the use because the people in the neighborhood are walking from their houses sometimes for you know we walk in the neighborhood i run in the neighborhood for miles people walk their dogs all the way from smithtown up to the fire lane to take their dogs you know out onto the lake in the summer and the winter um this back with the with the snowmobiles we have lived here for seven years and there were snowmobiles going up and down grant lorenz road all winter long up until this last winter so it's not people coming from other places and parking so the idea that there needs to be parking for the fire lanes to be useful i think is a misunderstanding of what's being already done i i can't imagine someone driving to our neighborhood to use the fire lane that would never happen so there doesn't need to be parking so that that's my one point and the other point is that this has always been used for snowmobiles so yes i understand that the homeowner bought the house and didn't realize that was the case and if you look technically in the coats that that's not supposed to be a use but i have i have talked to neighbors that live over on oak ridge circle who've lived there 30 years and they say there there's been snowmobiles going down that that short that fire lane for 30 years you know so i totally agree that um if there's some signage that limits the use if the problem is that people are using or accessing the lake way too late at night and it's causing you know noise issues limit that for sure but this is something that's been going on in this neighborhood for years and years and years up until this one homeowner moved in and i i totally understand their concern but if the current fire lane is continued to be used first for um snowmobiles people are still going to need to be coming from down grant lorenz around that street up a perch bluff they're still going to be going right in front of that homeowner's house so the noise issue i don't understand if it's in the front of their home or the side of their home there's still going to be a noise issue so i think that that can be solved with signage with limitations on the on the times that are allowed perhaps there could even be limitations on only on a weekend i mean there's got to be some way to have a compromise for this particular fire lane billion i think that was very well said i'm the neighbor on the south side of birch bluff and actually met councilman tonight and you know what i was told when i purchased my house and researched the class 1 class 2 and the fact that it had been used for 30 plus years for four-wheelers and stone beals i understand and i agree more than anyone quiet noi you know quiet hours limiting noise effects that kind of thing but those barriers last year limited pulling my two-year-old niece on a sled and me walking with my dog in my snow shoes so it is it is a little bit of you know a conundrum there and i think we need a little bit of clarity on that um because again those barriers eliminated and especially with the elimination of a 25-foot fire lane it is not and for those of us who do not have fire hydrants nearby it is a little bit terrifying to not have access to the lake we should be clear that these are never used for fighting fires speaker could you please identify yourself that the laugh could the last speaker please identify themselves sarah she's asking for you i did sorry sarah fisher johnson 26165 birch bluff road you don't know marie takes good notes they'll be better after after what happened before what does the fire lane compare to the first two like investigated uh when when sarah and i and the other uh neighbor from eureka who still can't find her name i have it but uh we were standing under a pole that looks like it's i'm looking at the aerial a recent google aerial as well as uh what you've shown furry uh it appears that the the property at 26310 has installed permanent uh permanent fixtures in the fire lane right-of-way including uh sell a video of surveillance cameras pole mounted video surveillance camera cameras and and permanent snow fence uh tubes and i was concerned the reason i stopped by at all was because when i saw the uh survey marker on saturday i i thought i was looking at a 10-foot fire lane and then when i got the recent uh most recent uh paperwork and saw was 25 feet that's why i went back and checked but those survey stakes have been pulled obviously to obfuscate the nature of that fire line but i'd like to i'd like to have it re-surveyed and know whether or not we need to be talking to the resident to remove their permanent fixtures hello and landscaping on the property hello um mr mark vanguard would like to speak yes just let us know your address and uh go ahead can you hear me yes okay i'm mark vanguard i live at uh i'm the house on that corner 26260 birch bluff and um i did remove the stakes the stakes the hard stakes are still in the ground we had some storms and some winds and a couple of them fell down so i just pulled the remaining that were standing and maybe i shouldn't have done that but the the uh marker stakes are still in the ground with pink ribbons on them so we can easily identify where those were uh they weren't there at 6 30 this evening no right i i pulled them up probably four or five days ago they were there on saturday the one on the corner was there on saturday okay so what's today so yeah within that period of time so anyway i i'm the one that pulled them i knowing that the stakes were still on the ground if we needed to come back and show where they were they were easily identifiable um so my bad i wasn't trying to cause any harm that way yeah i wasn't concerned about your side by the way i appreciate the fact that you've been maintaining it i mean it's pretty obvious you've been doing the mowing down into the fire league um so you appreciate that um our biggest issue with this whole thing has been not that we we want to alter or change the rules of the game we just kind of want the rules that we were told when we purchased the home to be in play and that you know the use of the fire lane for pedestrian use and kayaking and canoeing and paddle boarding and fishing and people bringing their dogs and all that stuff that's all perfectly fine we have no difficulties with that we enjoy the people that come through they're very pleasant most of the time the only issue we have is is the winter time usage with motorized vehicles i i don't know that i i agree with the people who say that well this is the way it's always been done well is it okay that you've been breaking the law for 30 years i'm not trying to point fingers but just because you've done it doesn't mean that it's all right or it's okay you know it does have a negative impact on us and how we look at using our home and our property when snowmobiles and atvs and fish houses and eight and four-wheel drives and things like that that have all traips through there because it is flat enough and wide enough for that to happen you know it happens at all hours of the night and those lights come flashing up people rev their engines snowmobilers come through they group up at the bottom of the lake decide what they're going to do and then they they go oh my gosh we're down on an open lake and they all buzz out of here as hard as they could be because they're on flat surface and nothing to hold them back and it happens all day and and all night and you know we purchased the home knowing that it was going to be a pedestrian use and we didn't think of sound problems or privacy problems when we design the home so all of our bedrooms are on that end of the fire lane or at that end of the property right next to the fire lane and you know those snowmobiles aren't quiet so people who think oh well maybe it's not a big deal or windows are closed or it's winter time so not a lot of people are out those things are loud and especially when they come through in large groups so it does impact us and people who come out there you know i i i it's all hours of the day and night especially on the weekends now i don't have necessarily a problem with limited use of it i've told maria marie darling that you know if there was a way to control it you know have a nine to nine rule or daylight hours rule or weekends rule or something like that i wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it as long as it's enforceable but if it's not enforceable and you can't deal with the people who abuse the rule then it becomes a hardship on us again and then we have to deal with it or we can't deal with it it happens so fast that people come through so fast how are you ever going to capture and stop it so and in terms of last year with with the with the um the barriers that went up you know it did really cut down the amount of traffic for snowmobiles um and i don't really think it was too much of a hindrance i can see it be a little bit of a hindrance for people on foot going around them because the terrain isn't quite level but the people who come up off the lake or down onto the lake have to go around those stanchions or those barricades to get down to the lake and they get there and instead of you know going down to crescent beach or whatever they just kind of cut the corner around the telephone pole and around the the cable that supports that light pole and get back on the fire lane which then they're trans trespassing on my property to do it and then when people come up off the lake they get up there they find out that the stanchions are there and they can't get through well now it's too late they're kind of committed how are they going to turn around and go back now they might as well go through and so they just cut the corner and go around it and go anyway so to me it's an enforcement issue if you choose one way or the other how are you going to manage it how are you going to enforce it if you choose to re leave it a pedestrian which i prefer um then you have to put something that's going to stop the abuse of that and if you're going to make it a controlled use for motorized vehicles what are you going to employ to do it and if you can't do something that's effective then i don't think you should do be allowed at all that's that's my take on it thank you mark um while we're opening up is there anyone else who would like to um kind of address the commissions on this fire lane so i think we're gonna do the note on this one very quickly there's no question that this one's getting used compared to the first two and we're looking at how we're grouping these hi this is dave griffi you can hear me yeah we can hear you dave all right hey i live in the area i'm at not that close i'm probably a mile away from this uh fire atlanta on smithtown way by freeman park uh but i was just gonna call at one point that i've been thinking about as we've been having this discussion is i'm relatively new to the area i've been here about two years um i do run quite a bit so i've run i've ran by this fire line that in question like i don't know more times than i want to count um but i've actually never realized it was a public access point and there you know i don't believe there's any signage down there one day i actually started walking down it was kind of curious turned around because it felt like i was encroaching on someone else's property and just didn't feel like the you know an appropriate thing for me to be doing so now that i realize their fire lines i don't think i'm ever going to go visit this one in particular but it's just an interesting point i wanted to bring up like i don't even know if a lot of people realize these can be used as public use or maybe i'm just poorly informed and uh and just getting educated here so i just thought that might be a little bit food for thought yeah thank you dave yeah we the lack of signage um and enforcement has kind of well it's gotten us to where we're at right now kind of uh yeah david none of these are marked um for you know to indicate they even are what they are this is actually the only one other than the one that's paved on on shady island that you would even know have any clue that is elaine because all the ones over on lake william are totally overgrown mature trees uh and the other one down on birch bluff is the same way can i say something about the lack of signage too sure um i agree that all of these probably should be marked in some way unless they're going to be you know abandoned and given to a private property owner but um i think that would go to the question of enforcement is if there's something if i mean these are people in this neighborhood are not going to be willingly breaking the law we're all live law abiding citizens and if we had a sign there that said this is what you're allowed to do these are the hours you're allowed to do it in i feel that people would follow those rules i mean there may be of course there's always going to be people that break rules no matter what you do even if you put a great big barrier in front of this particular fire lane people are going to drive around it you're not going to stop that there's always going to be people rule breakers but i feel like the majority of people if there were signs would follow the rules and that would really help with any kind of issue that you're considering occurring that would relate to enforcement issues or you know rule breaking issues people would i think any kind of signage is going to be a benefit to everybody so that everyone can know what are we allowed to do and what are we not allowed to do and i agree that we all like to play by the rules we just know what they are first should we move on to the next lane or what do the commissioners think this is gretchen could i just make one more comment sure gretchen hi my name is gretchen thompson i'm at 26295 oakridge circle so i'm right on the corner of um grant laurent and oak ridge just south of the picture there of that 26350 um at any rate i've been in the neighborhood for about 14 years now and when i first moved in there was actually remnants of that fire lane having um been at least partially paved um and over the years it got eroded away and it did seem like over the years it's gotten kind of filled in and narrower as the years have gone on but certainly you know since i've been here um it has been used as a public access for snowmobiles and atvs i go down there quite a bit with my dog as well i don't own a snowmobile but most of my neighbors do um who have been in this neighborhood for 30 years or so and you know they take their snowmobiles down there as well and so certainly noise um i get the noise too because they come right down uh grant lorenz here to access uh that road um and not an issue for i'm not bothered by it at all and i like to see um everyone getting to have public enjoyment of the lake which i think is kind of what has become known as and i totally appreciate the point about just because it's always been done right usually that's not always logic that change needs to happen but i think here um you know the change would be more in favor of um some clearer signage and understanding what the rules are and and the hours um because we'll still have noise from snowmobilers going down the roads and to me that's just part of winter in in minnesota and part of getting out and enjoying um all the seasons that we have here but i just want to say also maybe maybe it's just common law but it's my understanding if you allow into an individual to use a path across your property for a number of years without disputing it they now have the right to do that and if we haven't been preventing people from my thinking on this is we live in a city called shorewood which has no public access to the largest recreation lake in the twin cities i think that's disgraceful and we need we it's i think it's incumbent upon the city to provide full recreational access to lake minnetonka whenever and wherever we can uh you know we the uh birch bluff uh the beach uh you know half of it i didn't even you know the western half of that which is the shorewood access is a drainage ditch uh i don't know how much of the beach is in shorewood it's not marked uh there's nothing that indicates that uh i can't access the lake from the far eastern edge which is tonka bay which it turns out you're you can't uh but you know i think as you know from uh just from uh the perspective of of living in this in this city that we need to be protecting access to lake minnetonka for all of our residents not just those that happen to be living on the shore thank you gretchen is there anyone else that wanted to um yeah um just a couple of those um first of all i don't believe it's the city that ever paved that road i think it was probably an adjoining on property that um and i think there was some rock down there at one point but that's not something that shorewood did and just another point before mr vanguard um built his home that home was only um occupied during the summer so you didn't really hear a lot of complaints because there wasn't somebody there so um you know just the nature of the house changing and people living there full-time has changed it so um i think those are a couple of key points um i would ask mr bongard uh if you knew that that access was being used for snowmobile uh traffic in the wintertime would you have not purchased the home uh can you hear me yeah yes we we absolutely would not have purchased the home and we most certainly wouldn't have designed a home where our bedrooms are on the fire lane for sure the material uh the material factor in your enjoyment of the property uh that was only checked by the how how was it checked uh in terms of what you said the original property we we were told by our realtor that that was a fire lane so we spoke to the seller's realtor and the owner about the use of the fire lane they told us that it's very quiet nobody ever uses it it's not been a problem but we should check with the city so i my real estate agent said mark you should go talk to the city so i physically went to the city and i went to the front desk two gentlemen from the city i can't remember their names came out to talk to me about it and said yes that is a pedestrian only fire lane and that if there is any abuses or any transgressions let us know in the city will promptly deal with it and so we said okay i said my understanding is is the homeowner that's selling it said it's very quiet and they said we think it's quiet but we can't really tell you that that's true and i said okay and so we then after that discussion went into a purchase agreement okay thank you all right is there anyone else who'd like to speak directly to this fire lane raise your hand or just start talking i see jennifer labadie's hand is up um maddie chairman gold i just want us um my name is jennifer labbe i live at 5510 howard's point road i'm also a member of shorewood city council and as in that role i received over a dozen phone calls last year when the barriers went up and i just want to say mr bongard was not the only resident who was in um complaining about the noise of the snowmobiles so i just want to say that this this is not because of mr bongard he's not the only resident and it's because of the wording in our in our ordinance and that's why we're we're dealing with this tonight um but this was a i received over a dozen phone calls both pro and against blocking fire lane number three so i just wanted to say that for the record of i received more calls with that fire lane than all the other fire lanes put together thank you chairman last question thank you council member that was michael is that uh yep go ahead uh marty davis 26 310 has he ever complained about any noises i don't know if we need to get into the specifics or 26 245 have they complained about any noises well let's just let's keep it more general have we received more complaints about noise i mean just curious either way you gotta go the customer you just mentioned that she had received numerous uh concerns over the noise uh no no have you have you seen more more um if those questions are directed to me the property owner at 26310 marty davis did not contact me with a noise complaint um and which was the other property two six two four five right south of me um they did not either i believe um that is the property let me see here i'm trying to i'm just you got a dozen perfect jennifer yeah i they did not either i just pulled up the property on the hennepin county tax register and i'm recognizing the name of the property owner they also specifically did not contact me but um i did receive comments both pro and con and that that was just the point i was trying to get across to the chairman thank you councilmember um has anyone else would like to speak um specifically to fire lane three i just had one more point to make this is jillian blanchard go ahead just about the the noise issue is that cutting i want to make sure it's clear cutting off access to that fire lane to snowmobiles is not going to stop the snowmobile noise from happening the snowmobiles are still going to come down grant lawrence road and they're still going to go right up birch bluff road all the way up to crescent beach and you know right in front of all those homes i don't know which homes were complaining about noise but it doesn't end the no if the issue is noise cutting off that fire land of snowmobile access does not solve that problem at all there's still going to be snowmobiles riding right through our neighborhood up our road and right at birchbluff to get to the access that's available right now so i just want to make sure that that's that doesn't solve the problem if the noise for the problem that does not solve the problem we can shut down crescent pages i think there is a difference though of snowmobiles riding up and down the road and congregating in the fire lane i think that would be different mark bongart again hi mark hi um i just want you to understand that most people who now know that the fire lane is not designed for motorcycles atvs or whatever it is motorized vehicles once you open it up the activity level is bound to increase as the word gets out and the word passes along it gets greater message gets out to the greater community that that's going to become a higher and higher uh usage rate and there is a cumulative effect for someone like me when when that happens so just keep that in mind um did you clarify for um you know i guess people listening are motorized um snowmobiles and atvs does our ordinance allow them on city streets um you know i um don't have the city code with me today and i think that there is a significant limitation on uh the um use of public streets for snowmobiles that's correct but if i recall it if you're on your way to uh an access it's allowed and if there's a huge blizzard and cars can't travel they're also allowed but um yeah but the idea is that if you can get to an access to the lake then you're allowed to ride on the streets that's the reading i lasted hey this is commissioner just a thought it might help with some of that noise you know we have you know no wake zones in the summer what about a slow speed zone would until your x x amount of distance off the shore to help get that sound out onto the lake maybe director darling can comment on this but i don't think we have any authority of once you're on the lake that's not us right that's correct so we can regulate the fire lane but as soon as they're on water that's a lake minnetonka conservation district among others so um i don't know if we need to make a conclusion about this fire lane tonight we've heard a lot of a lot of input should we just try to get through the other ones and then maybe have a conversation about where you want to move to forward what do commissioners think i think we've got three fire lanes and we've got three different categories so far yeah i completely agree i i i i think that we should keep moving forward with the different ones and kind of regroup at the end okay let's just uh do that um if somebody wants to speak to a previous fire lane go ahead and raise your hand otherwise we'll move right on to fire lane four uh chairman he has to do this in front of me the city code that pertains the snowmobiles and um you're correct the the actual wording is no person shall operate a snowmobile upon the roadway of any street or highway except for the purpose of direct travel from the person's home to the closest destination where snowmobiling is permitted by the shortest route possible so in other words they're allowed to go from their home to the access point or the fire lane but they have to take the most direct route so to stay within the law that's an interesting point you have to go to crescent beach directly there that's the only allowance for snowmobiles per the code right now and you have to live uh you have to live in shorewood and you have to choose the the shortest route to get there so that's how the code is stated currently okay thank you commissioner riedel sure maddie um my i guess big question for this one is um how shorewood would do enforcement if they were to restrict it by times or uh by days um director darling do you have any thoughts on that stuff that we've done in the past in the city anything anything that works similarly to put an hourly limit yeah how do we how do we enforce this if that's what we're thinking about um is the parks example um so if people are in the parks after the parks hours the police would enforce that i would also think that it would be possible to enforce uh a general uh atv and snowmobiles on the street to limited hours which would be the most effective way to enforce it rather than trying to keep it right at the access point it has been tricky enforcing on fire lanes because they have to the police have to witness someone um using the fire lane so um they would almost have to park next to them to watch right but they can make could they maybe open and close a gate of some kind do we do anything like that uh the only place where we have gated access is on the west side of christmas lake at the boat launch and that git has been a whole list of problems to be clear on rights and who can and can't and when with it so uh i'm not saying we can't explore a gate but it opens up its whole another world of how that's used and what it's used for of possibilities well it also sounds like that just uh the problem with people going around the barriers and onto the bond guards property i think like like mr barngard said i think if it's way up high you still have people who get to there and don't know where to go so you'd almost want it at the at the lake point but regardless i'm just i'm just wondering i don't want to get it too into specifics here we'll keep that keep that fat although yeah the gate they'll just drive around it uh keep that thought let's move on to fire lane four here looks like this is an interesting one i i talked to some of the neighbors when i was out there and i don't know where you have anything else to add or excuse me director darling to have anything to add about this or just this is what it is um yeah nothing beyond what's in the in the staff report if i remember this was a fairly accessible location do we have any idea if anyone uses this one or not i mean it's it's wider open but you're basically walking you know through to what feels like you're walking through two people's yard i mean where i you know i almost feel a little uncomfortable walking out into it i had that same it was very uncomfortable to walk there but until the neighbors joined me it it's basically private property at this point and it's not it's not a good launch area so i don't know why anybody would go through there anyway oh that's it's uh it's fully treat so just trying to get to the lakeshore without walking on the neighbor's property would be tough yeah this is of the ones we've gone through till now this is the most kind of inaccessible um least use fire lane we've talked about yet at least in my opinion um what other commissioners think i agree with that i don't see any reason for this one to exist that situation yeah there's creative hello this shouldn't exist hello my name is can can people hear me my name is tell us your name i love it jess boyce and i live uh 26100 burst bluff road so it's the property on the west side of that um but we've been there for about five years um i in my time were there i i don't recall anybody using that um i'm not there all day every day all week every week but i have not seen anybody use it during my time there okay thank you for that anything else you'd like to add um it's always nice to get the neighbor here what yeah i'm i'm happy if there's any questions i just i said if there's you know i know i know i've been discussed about um use by other other people and i just said i haven't seen it in um coming off of the other conversation if snowbills i don't know how they get down there but yeah i'll be against after that area i just got rocks and trees and um and nothing like everything that's there has been there since i purchased the house okay yep then again just per the code right now it'll be non-motorized launching craft and walking to the water but it sounds like nobody does that anyway hello here we got someone else let us know who you are and where you're from this is kathy vanguard mark vanguard's wife oh hey i just wanted to say that um you know that fire lane which is just a few um houses down and it does look like you're walking between two people's yard and feels pretty probably pretty invasive but it's basically the same um elevation to the lake and as as our as the previous one the reason people don't use it is because they have no idea that that exists and that's the difference is that somebody has turned our fire lane into a road and the path has been well worn to the lake and that's why ours is used like a road and theirs is used like their yard that's that's an interesting point you know it feels private because they've taken it over and you don't ex you don't feel like you can enter it but that's partially the city's fault for not keeping it and you know that's just that's just kind of the story of that plot but maybe i mean i think we just take some take some money to overhaul what that looks like but maybe that's a reason to keep it around and alleviate some of the traffic down grant lorenz i'm just just a thought i i'm just saying that that is not an inaccessible thing it's practically at lake level and i don't want to push our traffic off on somebody else's piece of property but i've mentioned this at a city council before and if you're serious about creating access public access to the lake you're going to have to purchase a home on the lake which you could have done at crescent beach purchase that home and turn it into public access that's the only way you're going to make suitable access public access and you know you should look for an opportunity to buy up one of these properties if they become available one along birch bluff or or whatever there's still a few properties that are you know fairly reasonable but if you could get a hold of a property you could sell off the remaining um fire lanes and purchase your your home or at least you know use some of your tax money they these houses do come up for sale and there are still some that are you know small enough and more price efficient yeah to get public access that trying to turn these fire lanes into something they're not is is crazy but that's that's just what i'm saying is that that fire lane is no different than our fire lane except for ours is a well-worn path to the lake and theirs is practically unknown to people that's it all right thank you anyone else want to speak to fire lane four can i ask a question on this concept of lake access is it in our long-term comp plan that we wanted to have public access i i don't it's not mentioned in any of the parks long-term planning is it anywhere else for the city i don't know if marie you know if this has come up on that yeah i think that there has been some discussion of it i don't know if it made it as far as the policies stage i could certainly look i know when we did a survey just a couple of years back it was one of the primary causes that we got as people wanted more lake access sure but from a park standpoint we're using the comprehensive plan as a guiding to where we're putting our investments in in the long term and what we're trying to work towards right hello is this something we should be setting money aside for for whatever the right spot is you know whether it's one of these or not that's the question i'm asking right because we're not we're not sending aside money we're not planning to in five years set aside money for anything like this at least from the park's end of things our general attitude right now is that we're not looking for more park land that we're trying to improve the facilities we have so would we be talking about this is adding more parkland that's against our strategy currently that we're moving forward in the next 10 years and again i'm not saying that we have to stick to that plan i'm just telling you what we've been looking at in the long term right now you know this is an interesting twist on that conversation right so i think that this one is more similar to one and two and how it's being used or not used right now but it's demand and the fact that there are people in the neighborhood who would use it is much more like three right when comparing these to each other if that's a fair assessment of just trying to put these into categories that could really sit in either one determine dustin you raise a great point uh because there has been property and then and so does mrs bongard there has been property that has become available on the lake uh in shorewood for very reasonable prices and the city didn't jump on them yeah i'm you know at the property in howard's point road that uh with acreage that sold for uh under a million dollars with with uh lakeshore access and the you know that would have been ideal for the city to to purchase yeah i don't think this needs a whole this is already 25 feet wide it's a nice site if you clear it i don't think we're talking about a new park i either i'm just trying to concept level if that's something that both commissions would like to see in short i i think it's something that we build towards that could be part of the fire lane discussion or completely separate i just want to make sure we don't get caught up in what the fire line is versus what our long-term goal is for shorewood right well i think one of the but you know i think the marie the comment that you made that back uh that the number one uh or i don't know was number one but what was very high on the list uh for residents of shorewood was to have lake access and we're talking about lake access here uh so you know the idea that we might abandon uh any lake access instead of improving it so and and letting people know that hey you already have lake access you may not have been aware of uh you sort of flies in the face of that german i do think it's a go ahead i just pulled up the comp plan and there is actually language in the plan the comp plan that does uh suggest that the city should seek to expand its lakeshore access so great i was asking that question i didn't know it for fact i'm being constructed here i'm surprised at this too the language is it basically speaks to the fire lanes and then it states that the city should cooperate with the dnr and the lmcd to provide small scattered facilities compatible with nearby land uses for lake access so it's very toned language but it kind of suggests that it is the goal of shorewood to to maintain access to the lake i hear that as a strong argument to keep them as at least what they are is what i'm hearing out of that from a long-term strategy and not to lose ground on it i do think i i don't know who it was raise the the point a good point though is what what what does it cost what would it cost to maintain these and justin you were sort of hitting on this in a way that is adequate versus do we need to look at investing in a you know essentially a property or a you know that became a park with lake access and looking at sort of the cost benefit of that i i don't know um you know but they do become you know whichever route you go it is going to become a maintenance item if we want to provide a little bit more certainty around uh how these areas can be used or or enforce how they're supposed to be used uh whatever direction council ultimately goes yeah i think it would depend on the level of maintenance that you'd direct us to do or the council would direct us to do if it's just clearing brush or underbelly people could walk to the lake that's one level of investment the other level in investment is if you'd wanted to park like status that would be a whole different level of maintenance and costs memory too i think that maybe the discussion around the comp plan because to me that seems like it's a little um i think access to the lake is intended not just for shorewood but the lake area we don't look at shorewood i mean there's nothing that really makes a lot of sense about how shorewood's structured right and we're mostly residential and it's been that way but we look to the greater lake area for access at multiple points throughout the lake so in my time with council and i've been here over 10 years i've never had a discussion about creating more access for people it's about the area and having access and protecting lake minnetonka as an asset to the community that expands beyond just shorewood so i just wanted to share my thought on that all right thank you um i'm going to keep trying to push us to get through these fire lanes um we're getting kind of a broader discussion especially with this one which is underutilized but why don't we move on to fire lane five um and just kind of keep moving forward and hopefully we have some kind of broad discussions at the end does that sound good with commissioners nope okay number to me number five is like number four except there's a very steep slope to the water so that to the lake access here is not good so you have to do we have a liability issue with that if we were to actually do more with this that would be my biggest concern exactly to your point with the steepness of it um not any more than any other park or playground feature yeah i think our two-story metal sled over on the east side is more reliability than this yeah that's funny although i think this would make a great sledding hill does anyone else agree we could maybe make a tow rope well the other thing about this lot is this is a sailable lot on lake minnetonka with 66 feet of frontage it's i mean it's are a lot of lots that have been built on lake minnetonka that aren't that wide and so you know if they if the city was to choose to no longer use it uh you know it could certainly be sold off um this is dedicated right-of-way so we would not be able to sell it we would only be able to vacate it what do you mean dedicated what's the difference are you saying all the others are dedicated right away as well um most of them yes we could not sell them we could only vacate them which would mean essentially giving them back to the properties where they originally they were originally planted from in some cases that would mean splitting them down the middle between the two adjacent property owners in some the whole fire lane would go to one of the other property owners and that's that's how the land would be disposed of there are very few here that could be sold okay that's interesting not to prolong the discussion here but this one does feel completely different from the others given its width in principle there could be a small trail and a bench and this could be a very small park with park access right um compared to the others which you know at 25 feet this one at 66 feet could serve that in other words this could be a very small park added to our park system i don't know what others think so why would you do that and not consider the the fire lane down the street um that's going between two people's homes this is the same thing you know you're going between on two people's property and literally something that's not usable or accessible by lake it would cost a fortune to put steers in or do anything to uh update that at this parcel i agreed but i i i'm i'm putting this out for discussion but it's wider than it's quite a bit i mean it it's is going to say that this is large enough to actually do something with yeah 25 feet between the other two homes is really not it is this one definitely though has not been maintained i mean i i i you you have no idea that that's even there i mean you've got all the brush there that's in front of it that it that you know um you know that blocks it from even existing i'm not i don't know how much it costs to go through and clean this up even if you want to do a park a little mini park um but i i do agree it's to me it's right in the middle of two properties and um i i don't know that you gain a whole lot in terms of adding to the park system um for given the size of the space when we already have a lot of maintenance you know backlog and um you know in cost for um the parks as is as justin said the plane right now is not looking to really add new parks um i know you're talking about more of a you know a bench or something smaller but i fully agree but there doesn't seem to be much incentive to vacate this uh property as um as there would be when it's you know just a very narrow strip that's barely usable but i agree with all the points the steepness here um and you know it is wide enough to do something with but it's not wide enough to create a city park it doesn't have that feel to it so agreed with all those point perhaps we can just move on sounds like a good point anyone else want to speak to um fireline5 i am trying to my head and my perspective this feels much more like the ones on the island again i don't know if that's fair or not i'm just telling you how i'm grouping them in their you know potential use and actual use right now hello i have a lot of trouble here you got a little echo going on is that john this is uh this is john russell and i'm sitting with jim russell who's the property owner on three or four we couldn't we couldn't figure out isp if they one of their microphones i think they both have their sound on if that's one of them they won't echo yeah anyway there were some comments made that uh we'd like to address or maybe you'll have my dad yeah excuse me we had a lot of a lot of troubles um i'm sorry i'm late on this uh number four but um number one i want to claim seniority because i've been uh on that property uh i was 19 year old years old when my dad bought it in 1950. so i i outrank you guys in in that way anyway but um yeah well we've we've watched it all those years and uh uh i i don't see people using it there was a lady that said that nobody knows it's there but um uh i don't think that's true i think all my neighbors do know it's there and um you know we've talked about it um and at times in the past people have walked down and we've we've chatted and so forth so i know the neighbors know it's there um so i i don't think it's it's a fact that it's just a hidden a hidden public asset but uh as far as the public use of it there's no parking really on uh birch bluff roadwood and um the uh contrary to uh what what one lady said about the access to the water it really is fairly abrupt i don't i've never used uh grant lorenz but apparently that's uh an easy uh access into the water whereas uh this number four uh is not so i guess those are my comments but i i don't think it would inconvenience much of anybody if it were vacated but um because i don't the use is exceedingly occasional if anybody does use it and of course i i'm not there all the time so i wouldn't i can't say for a fact that it's never used but i can say for a fact that it its use is very very occasional okay just to be clear we're talking about fire lane four the more narrow one not at the end of eureka okay four two six zero eight zero okay yeah there's parking on only one side of the street on birch bluff road plus it's a skinny road so there's really no public parking all right well thank you um i guess we'll move forward where we got four done five i think we've seen all the comments on we want to go down to six crescent beach hey chairman maddie um i don't know if you want for the previous fire lane i know that um mrs mary kay pilly had submitted um a document to both greg lerode and to um uh murray darling about planning commission meetings from like 1972 that reviewed some of the um fire lanes and specific to that one that actually make a made a recommendation at that time to vacate it so a lot of this discussion we're having tonight has been talked about it's just never been acted on so um i just call that to um your attention i think that that was shared with council and the um both parks and planning commissioners mr um paul king is on the line uh or mrs pilley is on the line this is paul king can you hear me yeah we can hear you go ahead hi i'm paul ryan i'm at 25620 birch bluff road we're next to the eastman here uh we're neighbors of mary kate billies and i just wanted to say that our family has been shorewood residents and lived at this address and next to this easement for 75 years and as mary capelli showed in that document they've been talking about this i believe the paperwork she had from the shorewood city council meeting was back in 1972 when they talked about finding some kind of a resolution to the fire lane here and and we would certainly be happy to have a resolution to it that's all i really have to say thanks for your time yeah thank you now let's let's i'm curious if we're just doing the same thing we did 40 years ago um well it kind of is it seems like it's just been a a constant talk about and analyze it look at it and then nothing ever seems to to to end it or or you know finalize it in any way yeah and we'll go to director darling do you have records of what happened in the 70s i do in 1972 the request to vacate the fire lane was denied by the city council and in 1985 and 86 there was some talk again about getting rid of them but uh instead they were kept the uses that were permitted were outlined and then um it was kind of thought that there wouldn't be a whole lot of maintenance if any that would occur on those fire lanes they've kind of been left to their own devices until since then uh we do have a hand raised from mr mike uh melnachuk i hope i'm saying that correctly yeah hi uh can you hear me yeah we're gonna just barely hear you speak up okay um yeah sure mike malnuck i purchased um 25 360 birch bluff road in may of 2019 so we're the property that runs right alongside of it on the other side of crescent beach um you know as a former firefighter i guess i agree with whoever talked about the study that it's not uh these things aren't usable as fire lanes i'd certainly agree with fire line number six it's not uh there's no way to be used for fighting fires a couple of points i'll talk about our driveway cuts across or over the fire lane uh ditch so you know travel in the ditch would be virtually impossible by walking kayaks mobile cross country skier whatever there's plenty of year-round access through crescent beach and it's you know quite frankly that's where a lot of the snowmobiles go there's a there's an ice road access there during the winter people bring their ice houses out and so on um you know and and it's basically just a ditch that drains into into the lake uh i think for those of you who have visited or seen fireline number six you'll agree that you know its current state it's impossible for public use access to the lake uh it's full of overgrown uh trees variety of shrubs and weeds many dead trees several large vines are overtaking large healthy trees it's being overrun by buckthorn there's power lines running long birch bluff so as these trees die off i mean they just become a risk of cutting the power for local residents there until the uh you know fire can be restored you know and um i guess access to you know to the lake is really through crescent beach uh you know so i i really i don't see any uh use whatsoever for this this fire lane um you know so i'm in favor of the city abandoning it and you know as far as our enjoyment of our property is certainly diminished because of the unmaintained nature of that fire lane i've called the city at least once to remove dead tree i'll probably call it again this week there's about another dozen dead trees that need to be removed so it's going to be expensive perhaps for the city to maintain it if the city wants to abandon it and it's determined that it's part of my property uh and we can remove the easement too uh i'd be more than happy to clean it up and maintain it and and make it uh much better on the eyes as it is today all right thank you mike thank you so anyone else like to speak about uh fire lane six well i think just looking at it uh the north end of fire lane six is actually part of the beach area and parking areas associated with the beach so you know i i don't think abandoning the whole thing is uh even uh possible let's clarify that right now actually because i mean there is that kind of a drainage ditch going through there is any of that beach parking on shorewood property or is that altonka bay director darling do you know it's pretty close to the um the jurisdictional boundary there could be some part of it that that goes over but um the uh for the drainage purpose alone i'm not certain that the city i mean we do need that drainage purpose as well to go through there okay from a parks perspective just to make sure everybody understands this uh crescent beach used to be a co-op with tonka bay and tonka bay did take over full care and maintenance of this a couple years back i don't have a date memorized but um city of shorewood is no longer maintaining that beach tonka bay is thank you for that i did not know that and i know there were some comments from some residents marie do you know maybe are do we know if uh legally motorized vehicles or the snowmobiles etc are allowed on crescent beach motorized vehicles are loud in the parking area but tonka bay does not allow snowmobile access on their side of the fire league but to clarify we do allow right so it's fine to as long as you hit the shorewood side of the beach you're good with the motorized vehicle in this instance right right okay step so mike um malnicha mentioned that there's a nice road that comes into this speech that would imply that it's open to all motorized traffic if there's a road there there's a parking lot um right in this area right in here you know i i i'm familiar with that but if there's if if there's a nice road that's plowed that's created to that beach then car traffic out onto the lake uh would seem to me to be allowed it's my experience that tonga bay does their best to restrict vehicle access at that point well if i may add another comment um i've only experienced two winters there uh and there's certainly i haven't seen any attempt to limit motorized vehicles through their uh there's quite a bit of traffic it's plowed uh i don't know by who certainly probably not the the city but uh it is plowed from time to time and there is quite a bit of uh car and snowmobile traffic that goes through there that's in the last two winters yes can you guys hear me thank you could we hear you hey jeremy yeah we can hear you and sis michael yeah i've been fishing tonka for the last 20 some years ice roads are plowed by normal people normal residents that just want to go fish a lake like we take our own time we plow the road whether it be a four-wheeler a truck or what not look at carson's bay look at there's a ton of people that want to fish that lake just with certain access safe accesses like the one at the end of grant lawrence that's the safe access the one at crescent beach says safe access you want to go where there's no ice shifts or anything where the ice is good go in and out people should know this before they buy a house i mean it's one of the busiest public lakes in the metro area correct me if i'm wrong like you move on this lake you should know this i'm sorry to break the news to you but this is how it is all right thank you michael as far as crescent beach just a couple of things this is debbie's cycle council um member for sherwood um so yes tonka bay does maintain crescent beach and shorewood uh contributes to that so we pay them a fee to maintain that beach and i think that mr melnachek is correct i've never seen a police officer or anybody enforcing track traffic on or off the lake at chris crescent beach and i've lived there since 1993. so they they go out and they do plow roads and it has been you know an access point for fishing houses snowmobilers etc for as long as i can remember over here i think you council councilmember cycle anyone else want to speak to our uh to fireline sex let's move on to fire lane 7. chairman william yes go ahead um for purposes of this discussion uh can we just group seven through ten together unless somebody has an objection to that i don't see much difference between anything that's a good idea that's a good point yeah let's let's kind of keep them let's just tick through them hopefully it won't last too much longer um but you're right lake william is different than lake minnetonka so i think we can kind of put a different mindset for these next four yeah all four of these are overgrown with mature trees uh the one at the corner and rustic way uh i don't know how that would ever have been used as a fire lane uh given how much it drops off down to the lake immediately there they also but all of these are i mean there are 20 30 year old trees growing up in these for sure so i mean they haven't been maintained in ages yeah and especially with the lake the size of lake william do we need four for uh access points um just staying with this fire lane seven um any thoughts on this specific lane before we move to the next would you have one speaker sure uh miss o'brien uh we have a miss o'brien with a hand up is that person still interested in speaking well we can't hear you right now if you're speaking to us go ahead and break in uh if if you do sure manny i do have something to say if sure we're moving on in in the event we do want to maintain some lake access here i think fire lane 7 seems like the only decent option the other ones seem really steep and inaccessible i mean maybe we just keep one you know in the event like william becomes recreational again because that's the only one that seems like it's worth keeping i mean if we're talking about a walking trail and a sign i think you're right fire lane 7 did seem the most accommodating looks like i did talk to the owner next door and uh he said that once upon a once upon a time this was a pretty uh popular lake and um people did access it from time to time so i'd hate to see them all go away but uh eight eight is uh eight doesn't it's inaccessible nine's steep but you could make it work and uh 10 is not safe 10 is not safe to even navigate and do we have structure to the neighbor is there a neighboring structure on fire lane 10 and jump up to that look like it yeah that's the bench and the gravel area that looked nice but yeah i think that's what you're talking about dustin yeah this is jew and the sea o'brien is not able to be heard but put in that there is a parking lot right on minnetonka boulevard and also it gives direct access and right off the trail that's what they're okay from the chat thank you and if you are a member from who is dialed in by phone uh there was some background so we had to mute if you would like to raise your hand you can press star 9 on your phone and that will raise your hand in our participant window and we can recognize you by your phone number so let's open this up to until somebody raises their hand um any commissioners so we're we're kind of looping um so we've got another text message here see o'brien just added that it's right across from the greenwood entrance okay and so that it's kind of an argument that maybe you would want to make sure we keep some access to lake william over on that side what do the commissioners think what we got four of these three of them were pretty uninviting let's say given i'll say i don't have a use for them but i'm given that there is access for anybody who would want to uh kayak or otherwise from uh minnetonka boulevard um and given that it's a small lake there's not much incentive to go snowmobiling on the lake um i think that there would be minimal use to any fire lane where we could develop in any way so this is essentially a completely different discussion from those on lake minnetonka where there is considerable pressure and considerable motivation to use those hey dustin it's julie again um another person that now realizes that they can communicate this way has pat pat has said she would like to she or he would like to back to the snowmobile atv discussion and that they think that it's not legal on streets at any time and that snowballs operate on the inside of the plow ridge at a reduced speed and there is a curfew so i don't know if marie or you could answer yeah i think we did just check ordinance on that um i'll copy and paste it into the chat window the ordinance okay yeah there's caveats to it but we we do technically allow i do believe there is some hourly restrictions um on that as well it's in a different part of the snowmobile section but i don't know that right off the top of my head and i don't have my coffee with me okay i can cut and paste that as well i have it so there are thank you commissioners that's in the park section the hours perhaps that's something that we can um research and get back because i think we're generalizing without really um accurate data i think at a um a previous council on meeting when fire lanes were discussed it was brought up and confirmed that they were not allowed on city streets that's why i asked the question i think we need to clarify exactly what is and is not allowed and if they are when and under what circumstances because i think we're probably all under um a different impression that's a good point and i and we can also confirm that they are not allowed in fire lanes except for crescent beach and yet they get used there um i think given that as the one ms o'brien i think said that there's access from minnetonka boulevard to this lake i don't i agree with um everyone else that i don't think there's any reason to have these fire lanes on lake william i would agree with that one thing they all have in common is that all these fire lanes are in residential areas so just because it's like william i don't see that there's that much of a difference between what's on lake william and what you've seen on some of the fire lanes in birch bluff they cut between houses they're rugged terrain they haven't been maintained they really have not been used and they're really obsolete there's just been two that we've really talked about that are being used right out of this whole group as we have confirmed regular use out of them right now and the i think that drainage ditch is a different category too it's we have to if it's if we need it for drainage we need to keep that easement and that we said about crescent is that correct was that the one where you have the drainage ditch that we're saying is functional very least on all these fire lanes we should declassify it as fire lane they're not being used as fire lanes you know whether we want to call it some of them lake access or or park or something but the very least let's get rid of wire lanes that's a good point there we shouldn't call them what they aren't they haven't been that way for a hundred years and many of the descriptions for these class ones i mean most of these including the ones in lake william you're not going to bring a kayak down that you couldn't even get to the lake you know on cross-country skiing and what's permitted on these is pretty much obsolete for almost all the fire lanes whether whether they're on lake william or on lake minnetonka they're not going to be used in that way so by this mike my concern is if we were to get rid of all four of them on lake williams we don't have any access right to the lake within shorewood to like to to this lake and i think that would be a mistake because the the minnetonka boulevard isn't within the shorewood border i don't think that is not in in the city of sherwood i think we need to keep at least one so that we at least have some access if we need it in the future and so the point is whether we use it today for what access for what i i don't know but if the purpose is as we've talked earlier about lake access if we were to vacate all four of these then we we within shorewood don't have any public access to this lake and that would seem to be a a mistake on our part to not maintain the availability of at least one access if we if we had to make improvements to it in the future that's one thing but at least we would still have the ability to make improvements to have access to the lake that's where that's where i was going with it too i think the one thing that the neighbor told me is that this was highly used before the the the lake became um i guess it's too toxic to inhabit but maybe you know sometime down the line you know you still have this access should it get cleaned up sometimes i don't know i just hate to see it go away when you want it if sometimes you do want it you can't get it back right once it's gone it's gone yeah i'm not sure help me understand um where the conversation's coming where we have to maintain lake access for people where did that come we haven't done that that's not in our code or anything so where is that coming from it wasn't in the description tonight this is really um was supposed to be a discussion really about how they're being currently used if that's something as a city that we're required or that we should be doing or that it's you know we there's plenty of lake access if you go to lake minnetonka there's you know multiple access points for the public um that are free and that offer different amenities i'm not sure why we have to have it as a goal to maintain lake access we really haven't done that i think the reason why this became part of the conversation is one we're under utilizing some properties treating it as basically abandoned property and to through our comp plan update we did find that people like to be connected to the lakes so we we have access as a city our citizens like that access we're just having a conversation do we want to change this or should we just leave it as is that's all we're having right now we can make recommendations to counsel but um i guess this is the higher level discussion that i think we were aiming to get at after we talked about all 10 of these uh what do we want to do is do we want to make a recommendation should we try to find some money to upgrade these things where where the commissioners sitting right now i personally would say that i'm at a point right now where i would say we don't need all of these but i don't know that i want to let all of them go right it's not an all or nothing and even for me i'm struggling with what my list is one way or the other on which ones and you know you've got how they're being used today versus potentially what they could be used for and that's a loaded question of itself right the now versus the future but i clearly were not using these i don't think it's wise for us just to sit all this forever you know i i think it's bad for us to just end up with status quos the same if we're gonna keep them all then we're gonna have to sign them and you know define how they're gonna be used better in the future and how we're gonna enforce it that that would be the kind of balancing point i'm at with it okay if i can voice uh my opinion just to be very specific i'm i think entirely with uh chairman gold here my personal opinion is that of these um those on birch bluff deserve more discussion they deserve uh specific maintenance and signage none of the others have either immediate or long-term value to the city the access is just so limited and constrained and i can't imagine uh unlike williams for instance that down the line our grandchildren who may be sitting on the planning commission would decide that no we really have to develop access on those narrow lanes between properties so my personal opinion is the two on the islands and the four on lake william uh don't have much value and should be vacated and much more discussion is needed uh on those on birch bluff because those are being used and they are problematic there are both pros and cons i would agree with what mark just said i agree um i don't think there needs to be all four of the ones on the on um birch bluff uh but it's a broader conversation there i agree with justin's point of if we're gonna have these we need to we need to upkeep them that's that's under our responsibility to do it we need to sign them provide signage i think we need to most importantly provide certainty for people and if we want to have the conversation about greater access to the lakes i think that that's an important conversation to have because i'm not sure that these really fulfill what people envision when they talk about access to the lakes but i think that that's a a larger conversation um that council in particular i think will want to have now i know we're not looking for any motions tonight hopefully i think staff was hoping for direction from us to look into something further recommend something to the council what are we feeling right now yeah i i feel like i'm in agreement on this uh birch needs much more uh conversation or options you know look at the criteria how we're gonna work with that because we know it's being used the others you know i would look at options for vacating at this point well let's let's give staff direction oh go ahead um commissioner i think i think we're all in agreement that eight through ten should be vacated uh and i think yeah and you know what i mean maybe we just each one of these is kind of nuanced but maybe we start vacating three of them and then go one by one after that just kind of knock these off i feel like we should keep seven and one i think we keep all of them but i'm just going to take a conservative approach and you know i'd want to hold i'd want to hold on to them yeah once we vacate we can't ever get them back i don't know what the city is going to do in 30 years me too i don't know i mean that's probably why people have been talking about it for so long but i don't know what the i mean you're asking our opinion i don't know what the rush is necessary yeah we're trying to do what's best for our 8 000 some citizens like let's what somebody said before if the city really wants lake access they should buy a property or big enough property to actually make a decent lake access and not try and make one out of a fire lane and that could be i mean that would be putting the money where your mouth is seems like that seems extreme yeah i don't know if i want to spend a million dollars when we got like a 66. i think you just need some imagination to of each parcel make the most of what you got as cheap as or as economically as possible sure but i don't yeah but you also you also have to be willing to spend the money to maintain them i mean most of these they no one's going to use them because i i three people obviously are using it you know when people are using crescent beach but i i you know i do think that you know we have to if we're gonna keep them we have to take responsibility for them and you know from the sounds of it it's almost come to you know you know physical altercations over fire lane three so either way we gotta i think provide some certainty to people because we can't have that happening so actually that's a good point why don't we just pull fire lane three and just say hey let's give a definitive recommendation separately parks and planning what we want to do with fire lane three and then see if uh consoles willing to take that ball sorry council and uh but the others i mean where do you want to go with those and i think uh chairman gold you're about to say something you got around interrupted did you i'm sorry i lost the thought at this point okay um i did i i forget who says it but i think we were in agreement i think you could you you could structure as we you know we you know recommend to the staff to look at vacating you know eight nine and ten because those are we all actually let's try to i don't know that's the roll call but and just speak up now if you're not a concurrence that lane 8 9. we don't see any long-term uh seeing none um we'll give that to staff i couldn't hear what you you said there was a big gap okay yeah my computer told me my internet connection was unstable so let's try this again are we all in concurrence that fire lanes eight nine and ten don't show any long-term benefit for our citizens yes yes yes yes yes all right well we'll call that uh uh at least maybe not unanimous but definitely uh the opinion is going back to stuff that we should look into maybe dissolving lanes eight nine and can you ten to what the vacating process would be on these it's about the hearing process um we have to provide notice to well affected property owners um and it's a public hearing process and we also have to um provide notice to the dnr if we're going to to vacate any roadway or public lands along along a lake all right well then let's let's give our recommendation to council and staff that um eight nine and ten uh we don't we don't see a point in maintaining those um and then lane three we've always already decided we're going to give our our opinion that uh we need more need more conversation on link three um how about lanes one and two um on the in2 i think was the one with the utility uh the lift station that we have to maintain anyway so we got to keep that do we want to put a parking spot in a sign um that kind of thing looking to the parks board i don't know what it takes to maintain a sign in a pathway in a parking spot let's i would throw up the idea that if we're going to keep seven over at william that we're not gonna do anything with right now some of these we might not want to put a sign up we might want to just redefine it as you know city land keep out or maybe the sign is you know no trespassing i don't know how that works for the city and this stuff if we create a new class of those two you know hypothetically a few of these we're talking about just are for future use and are for utility use but it's not how they're being defined right now in these classes well you just muddied the waters well i'm just saying that if we're talking about we have to keep it and it's not going to be used you cut off the access to it but you still have it for future you really number two is what made me think of that right and having to keep that yeah i mean does anyone else have want to chime in do we want to give recommendation to council i like it well so this mike my question is if we change the designation what legalities do we have about the right away etc that's there in the first place right i don't know i mean it's city property we can regulate it as such okay at least i believe that's a case dr darling might chime in and correct me yeah right now they're all defined as fire lanes separate from public right away they are public right away but they're also defined as these fire lanes and they're shown on our official zoning map as such so right now the zoning code that regulates their uses is in the zoning ordinance and that would need to be changed if if um you wanted to propose anything further okay i'm not sure that that makes sense i was just throwing out the idea because of the lift station right yep i mean that's a good point we're not we're not going to vacate that one because we have utilities there um so what's our highest best use for the sake of our residence i would almost just for ease leave that one as is if we're not going to vacate it you know i i i like the outside the the box thought justin i just don't know if the juice is worth what it creates yeah yes well i still like the idea of a sign though i mean it's not going to break our budget to put a sign up and right and i don't think we need to i don't think we need to keep it as is as a fire lane i think it's it's a it's city property that uh and it doesn't fall under one of these categories of use it's it's for the city use only that way we still own it but it's not to be under this category oh you're thinking um take away the allowance for kayaks and cross-country skiers and things like that yeah it's a service road yeah i like that idea better you know it's just i mean it is at the most remote location in shorewood um the uh except in the winter when you can drive across the lake from crescent beach maybe that narrows bridge will open up again it's still the most remote location in the city i think designating it just as a service road for uh you know and and uh you know i think was pointed out earlier that all of the property on that island uh is has lakeshore um so and and i don't see anybody making the drive out there to put a kayak in or anything of that nature they would have to drive okay so to give direction to council where we where yeah without we saying maybe we don't need to allow recreation but we should have at least somebody maintain it every once in a while get rid of the boat lifts kind of thing i guess this is a the narrative that's far away i think the direction is that for two we need to review the classification and what is best fit for cities maintenance you know expectations or whatever we want to define that as for public works right let's give them the opportunity to give input on what they actually need to do there and what would be the maintenance regiment on it but it doesn't sound like it's an option for us to get rid of it is what we seem to be you know at its simplest level right now i don't know what we call it but we feel like we can't let that one go based upon that lift and whatever we decide there should be some kind of signage absolutely i mean we're trying to get out of this with actually a definitive answer not a we talked about it and 30 years later they wonder what this discussion was what happened what 38 years ago with 1970 what director darling almost 50 years ago maria you were all mute there sorry i had some background noise um so in 1972 they only talked about vacating one fire lane that was it wasn't the whole thing in 85 86 in that area there was the multi-year study um on the various uses appropriate for the fire lane all right so we're not repeating ourselves with any too much regularity okay so what do we want to do with fire lane one what's the recommendation there that we maintain it as a recreational or are we suggesting that that be uh abandoned i didn't eat dinner yet i didn't think this was gonna go so long trying to wrap it up you missed the uh fire lane discussion of 2019 i knew this would go along i i feel like we keep it but i'd like to as chairman gold said i'd like to know more about uh public works is maintenance regimen as you said i'm gonna i'm gonna want to keep all of them except for eight nine out of ten just from an equity standpoint and like access and i kind of said it before but well maybe that's our direction right now is that we'd like input from public works on maintenance and then you know general if there's any liability that the city should make us aware of as we make this decision on these that we could step out of or stepping into with signage that's a good point so right now the direction will be we want signage um eight nine and ten look into what it takes to give those back and um especially public works concerns on two uh is where else we want to give direction i know i see director darling writing this i think public works also has crescent beach concerns with that drainage ditch if we want to lump that type of stuff together yeah that's one of those i don't know if you want to give that back because that's like we'd have to have a drainage easement across it here i'm not sure how that works actually exactly i think we're going to want public works feedback on you know all those not you know seven eight nine ten not worried about obviously we already talked about eight nine and ten but you know just so we have the full picture of you know how much how much is it going to cost to sort of upkeep some of these because for some of them we might say oh that's just you know we're not we're not going to be able to do that and so therefore do we really you know do we still want to keep it or hey that that makes a lot of sense and there's more value with it um so i think well i think feedback as well as the you know the clarification on snowmobiles okay so so you're suggesting we get public works uh input on the maintenance requirements so that it can be used as defined uh in the classifications so there would have to be clear access to the is that is that what you're suggesting yeah i i just you know yes um you know so how so for instance on number you know five to make that of any sort of you know use what what kind of maintenance is gonna have to go into it in order to clean it up um you know if we wanted to explore putting in a bench or whatever it might be or you know with one getting you know answers about the you know is it marshy to marshy and and usable and things like that and that doesn't mean that you necessarily vacate them if they're not useful but um you know just on some of them i think that having that information would be helpful in saying especially on the you know birch bluff road you know are all these needed or all these do all these need to be signed um do we have the resources uh to maintain them like we're supposed to be doing or do we should be making um you know different decisions just an observation even number number three i know it's a drainage ditch but it looks terrible i mean if that was somebody's property we'd probably be all over them to do some numbers number six you mean on the number six yeah i'm sorry yeah number six yeah no i mean it is it's a it's a mess so i think you know if we're gonna if we're gonna keep whatever we keep i think we need to do some kind of maintenance all right so we'll add that to our request from public works we'll get director brown to give us his opinion on what it'll take to clean these sites up well that that was why my question about what kind of maintenance uh you know like let's let's take number five uh at the end of uh of uh eureka i mean right now it's fully treed and you'd have a tough time getting a canoe or kayak or anything down there or even walking down are we saying that public works should be looking at at the minimum of maintaining a clear path to the lakeshore uh you know in each one of these that we're going to keep or even i guess that's that's you know maybe being a bit more specific in in the direction we give public works in terms of their maintenance estimates right and even beyond access just even if we don't allow access i think they should be maintained somehow the trees trimmed or something that so they're just not growing up i grow wildlife that you know that no one even knows it's a city property i don't know maybe i'm wrong i mean that's what's led to the neighbors kind of taking it over because the city wasn't doing anything um so we should look into what it would take to actually maintain it is sorry just to jump in here on this the maintenance there's a bunch of different levels of definition so we have out lots that are you know super low thresholds of what they're actually doing verse you know say badger park right so there is i believe there's like four or five different maintenance levels for public works on properties that are city owned and you know if these fell in the lowest outlet category if i don't know that there'd be much done you know beyond what's being done right now and just be they would know to follow up if a tree fell down type of stuff in that lowest category maybe the minimum is just a sign maybe maybe that's the minimum maintenance or oh i mean i think a sign but i think justin if they're if they're at sort of the level one right now my terminology might not be right how much would it cost to take it to level two would be you know i guess my thought on it um because i do agree a lot of them i mean you know i i couldn't even see where five was i didn't know it existed because you get to the end there and it's all all covered up with a tree and then you have to walk onto someone's property essentially um which is not you know not ideal um anyway that was my point if you're going to maintain it you should maintain it to the level that the class allows you know it's either that or you just say you know what we don't we're not going to do anything with these so why do we even want to keep them in the city uh pleasure you know i think the minimum maintenance that would be recommended is whatever the class defines you know the the very minimum you know is allowing somebody to be able to walk from the street to the lake you know there's i mean there's no sen there's no sense in keeping them at all unless they're going to be maintained so they're usable by residents of the city that's my opinion i mean why bother councilmember cycle did you have something to add well i was just going to say i mean i know a lot of these people this has been you know conversation going on for a long time and it just seems that this conversation's kind of migrated to the functionality and maintaining with really not a lot of discussion about the impact to the people and the residents that live next to them um and you know what they've done i mean they've done a lot right if you do vacate them there's tax implications to those people i mean it's not just a question of the functionality of the fire lane um it's it's really the impact on residents not just those that don't live on the lake but the people who live there too and there's been a long history for many many many years of um stuff that's happened so you're kind of opening pandora's box um you know with stuff that you're not you haven't um asked questions and you really haven't solicited enough feedback from the people that it immediately impacts well i would i would agree with that we should be soliciting impact but i definitely disagree with we should give more credence to the people who are adjacent to that property and the multiple uh properties that are using it or would use it if they knew about it and it was available and it was accessible this is not property that we should consider is the only impact is the lakeshore residents that's going to the elite debbie and we've got many more homes off the lake that if they knew they had access to the lake would probably take advantage of it the fact that we don't know that it's there is a problem that kind of brings up a certain point i mean how many do we have a percentage do we know who's landlocked in this town how many people uh have access to the lake by their own deed versus someone like me who doesn't live on the lake um you know there's 8 000 some of us what uh what's the percentage that has uh lake access without these fire lanes well everyone has access via the neighboring towns you know and public landings so i mean there is that element but i think you're getting into a good discussion about you know that broader question of how how important is that and are they currently are our residents currently being adequately served by what is available and what would be the best way to adequately serve that well but i think that councilmember schackle makes a a good point is i mean i don't i'm not a a right-of-way person but i don't think i really understand what the vacate piece means if owners welcome that if they want that extra land or not that's a whole that's like a whole conversation and i and i say let's vacate eight nine and ten but no she's right i don't really know what that means i i want to know more but uh and this is a sounds like this this is a lot going to be a long discussion and has a lot it's really multifaceted so i'm open to knowing more but um until we know more yeah what happens if they say they don't want it yeah i don't i don't know i don't know that either so maybe this is the first of many joint meetings or maybe we workshop this again i don't know how best to proceed with what's the very uh uh i i agree that we need to kind of wrap up some of this and then we're gonna have to circle back on conversation again but for the question of what is this gonna be for public works input i think we need to narrow the scope a little bit because you know i'm talking about everything from what is their obligation and we're talking all the way up to maintaining it as a full access i don't know that that's fair to have them give us an opinion on you know some of these are just overgrown well it might be really easy to maintain it once it's under control they have a massive undertaking to get it to that maintainable point so i i think we should think about you know especially some of the ones that are regularly used what it would mean to maintain what they are today but i don't know that we want to go and say you know like lakes axis seven what's it gonna take to maintain that well from what status right so i'm just trying to make sure that when we ask for larry's input he has some understanding of what we're asking for but that's a good point we want to try to make more of a direct question uh ask to director brown just say hey what's it going to take to clean it up put a sign up and you know maybe a walkway i mean what what level of service are we looking at i can do that that's a narrow enough scope okay okay at least start the conversation um for council to opine with that idea we're trying to wrap this up it's almost 10. we uh director darling do you think you've got enough banter from us to uh come up with some some direction so can i say that i think we're looking into three things and just tell me if i'm off base on this it's first for maintaining these what is the input from public works what would our signage options be for them and then what is the input from the residents around these and what are the options on vacating right trying to work those three different lanes right now and the elephant on the table not included was do we want to change use of any of these or stick to stick to what's in code right now um that's a big unknown i think that discussion could be carried forward with learning more about those you know bullet points that we have right now as to build that's a good point if vacating becomes a huge headache maybe that's going to change our long-term you know thinking on use right that's a good point because we shouldn't make any use decisions or recommendations until we have as many facts as we can find so i'm comfortable moving forward just with that and make sure the council understands that any time you get eight commissioners on a zoom call you're going to get nine different opinions well you know i just wanted to uh thank chair maddie and chair mangle for kind of for keeping the conversation focused i think dropping you know 10 fire lane properties on us with you know 40 50 years of history and just to get make us do a yes or no decision on it was a a lot to bear so i mean hopefully the people watching bear with us while we make kind of grind out decisions on these thank you commissioner gorham i guess i i would love to call this done for tonight i know there's another planning agenda item um so if no one has anything else to say about fire lanes we can probably allow some people to drop off and then we'll try to piece together our minutes from our last meeting that's all that's left on our agenda i do see that there are with their hands up i don't know if you want to acknowledge more commentary at this point or if you're absolutely that's what we're here for let's who's who's uh who wants to speak mike milnoch has had his hand up for quite some time i'll come mike you're still there uh yeah yeah i was just trying to figure out how to mute myself i was just listening to the commentary about some people saying that the crescent beach fire lane is is has use uh and i'm confused on that i mean i i there is no use on that fire lane as it as it exists today uh it's a ditch with overgrown trees and weeds and buckthorn um i'm willing to maintain it you know but so i'm i just want to make it clear that if you haven't been out there on fire lane six please go visit it and go ahead and walk through it uh you're gonna have quite an adventure so it's not usable by any stretch that was my comment thank you all right thank you mike who else has a hand up oh i see the other hands have dropped off so i don't know if they if anyone else wants to say something go ahead and cut in otherwise we'll uh we'll keep on moving forward i've got something that i'd like to say bruce yeah that is uh my grandpa owns the property at 26080 birch bluff road and uh i know that uh me being like i've grown up going to their house all the time um i know that like you know it hasn't been maintained by the city at all i mean i've actually done a lot of the mowing on that and then i know a few years ago my grandpa actually uh he got new rip-rap installed on the property uh and he got a permit from the city or some sort of uh allowance to put to have riprap he'd pay for it but he put rip rap on that uh what's it called the uh fire land where it enters the lake so it's uh um yeah so he did that at no extra charge just because uh it kind of looked like compared to the neighbors rip rap and his riprap what it would be it would have looked like blighted or something i don't know but the city allowed him to do that all right thank you bruce anyone else all right see none let's uh let's go ahead and move forward um i think uh director darling is that as clear as mud i'm sure but uh have we gotten our discussion and conclusions to a satisfactory point i i think i have um some direction and so what i'll do is i'll put that information together and bring it back all right thank you very much and thank you everyone involved tonight let's move on to our next item on the agenda um discussion for planning commission regarding our our meeting minutes we just want to kind of clarify what happened on our august 4th meeting there are a couple of holes in the minutes we wanted to clear up for the record um it would be very helpful if you could um give me some information on um the holes that we have especially on motions and seconds um for uh several of the items you can see where they were left blank um well let's start from the top does anyone remember who moved the approval of the agenda um i thought i did that but all right sounds like something he would do yeah that sounds about right did you say that was um commissioner galt that commissioner galt made the motion and what other large holes do we have i guess adjournment is the next one for me is there one between them there's a section here that says director darling responded dot dot dot on page three top of page three yes oh yes let's see here i don't remember all right i couldn't remember what i had said and i didn't write down any notes but i remember saying something um i can just remove that if nobody else remembers i think we should probably remove it since no one can accurately remember it and then do we remember when we close the public testimony portion of the public hearing oh yeah i think we have to leave the x's there because we just i i remember before this meeting started three hours ago and then 8 31 i think yeah we well it said we started 37 35 that it went on quite a while it went on at least an hour well how long was the discussion that you had on 4840 strawberry lane if you can work backwards from that oh yeah well that was about 45 minutes maybe because if you adjourned at 8 35 oh i don't think that was right i think it was 9 30 does that sound right or yes 9 30. okay so we should change the tournament to 9 30. i'm making things worse maybe i should just shut up thank you guys um yeah i i don't think we should guess we'll just leave the x's i'm uncomfortable okay if we don't have a record let's not make one huh i think i think it was sometime in the middle we talked about 5840 for a while yeah probably was around 8 30. all right um moving on to adjournment does anyone remember moving to adjourn i believe i did i was as impatient then as i am today to end the meeting that's coming up you can make your motion here in about a minute i mean i might want to know whether she needs to yell fire or something all right so commissioner riedel moved to who wanted to second that one i think i may have done that that sounds usually second all right i think we're comfortable with commissioner gorham having a second and uh and we're changing it to 9 30. all right we are almost done with tonight's meeting director darling you have everything you need i think so okay i've got something dusty that i want to talk about that sure that had to do with the the deck for 5840 strawberry lane last time and it really bothered me after the meeting and i just want to talk to you guys and i know you voted how you felt you should vote but this whole idea behind the variance um you know my wife and i bought our property i didn't even know what a setback was i was looking at bathrooms and and you know the kitchen and things like that and i'm sure maybe these people the same thing so then five years later they want to put a deck on and they run up against this front variance and they weren't asking for 30 feet or 20 feet they were asking for less than five feet and they wanted to put the deck on all their neighbors wanted them to put the deck on and um the city staff approved it the recommendation was that they should put the deck on and then we denied it and i i this this idea that you know 50-foot setback is set in stone um that's the reason we have a variance process and i know you guys voted your confident conscience and what you wanted i respect that but i think we have to give more more basis to what's there and what what people's lives are kind of thank you um yeah councilmember johnson go ahead um tj i i wish you would have heard the comments that dustin made as he presented this item to council it was very direct that while on paper that maybe this is the right decision he encouraged us to really can strongly consider approving it um based on what um the comments that he had made and then there was also you know kind of this idea of does a practical difficulty exist and as it was explained by staff that one item which from reading the record it seems like the the one aspect of it that was causing some struggle uh had kind of been overturned that that practical difficulty did exist because of grade so it was very easy for me as a council member to come to a decision to overrule the planning commission based on the facts that i saw and commissioner matty's comments and we we did in fact go against the recommendation from planning and approve which i believe is this is the way city government should work so i commend both of you on one raising your issues talking about it as a group and then appreciate it when council does go a different direction and and to kind of dovetail on that yeah i've always seen the commission as an appointed body to just do the homework i want our elected officials to change the rules um and that was a tough one it was it was silly i they should totally get that deck we all agree with that but uh written how it's written actually we've got draft um ordinance that we're going to see this fall that would even allow that without having to come through variance and so it to try to keep legitimacy i know it seems silly but to try to keep our body legitimate just the facts ma'am kind of stuff uh that that was what i think we were attempting um but i i definitely agree with you i mean you should have seen my counsel report i basically blinked out and said overturn what we decided and that's why i decided to jump in and make the company yeah it just it just bothered me a lot and i wanted you guys to know where i was coming from thanks for sharing too um one of the things i like about the commission is that we uh we do have um different uh perspectives on the code and so um that was one that was one that surprised me and we typically mark and i usually rule more to the letter of the code and i was really surprised when i started hearing some other staff agree and then i felt bad but i'm you know i'm kind of the you know the uh the heavy with the no i'm not a villain but i tend to take a more a stricter reading of it but that was a tough one but i appreciate you being honest with us and certainly i like enjoy the perspective that uh that we all have that we all bring so i'm proud of you guys as as a commission to you to sit here and have this discussion our last um our last council meeting was a very painful one as well in terms of went to 11 30 or something and we had a number of split decisions but at the end of it the the respect that we all have for each other both your commission and council is something that i'm very proud of to be a part of i can keep my comments really quick um so todd i i agree and i appreciate you raising this sentiment that you felt um that in our deliberations we were being perhaps uh cold-hearted because it's quite legitimate um and uh to echo what patrick is saying i think the constructive debate shows respect for the issues at hand that we constructively debate them it shows that we have you know respect for the pros and the cons to argue um in favor of enforcing the code and limiting variances uh it often makes the people voicing those opinions appear cold-hearted because you know on superficially the request may always seem quite reasonable and certainly the people requesting it will feel that way but there is the flip side that um there are plenty of people who perhaps considered uh building projects and decided against them after consulting with staff for consulting the code and finding that those uh that their construction projects weren't allowed and there is a fairness issue that in essence instead of uh variances for aspects of the code that seemed overly strict the better approach is to revise the code and allow and allow for a code that's exactly strict enough in all cases but this is exactly what local government is for this is exactly why we're here to discuss it and um also i think us on the planning commission or even the council having differences of opinion is okay it's good it's healthy we don't always have to come to human unanimous decision on these it's this is this is how the process is supposed to work i clicked on i apologize i had to take a break and i did not hear commissioner eggenberger's comment was a specific to the the porch yeah the doctor yeah and what were what were your thoughts or your feelings about it well i just i just felt like they were only asking for less than five feet and you know i i don't know their their incentive but i i was guessing that when they bought the place they weren't thinking about the front setback and then they found out later they would like to have this deck and they were in favor of it all the neighbors were in favor of it um the city staff was in favor of it and yet we turned them down or recommended that we turn them down and um it just bothered me a lot i remember the conversation and actually had was sitting there and kind of agreed with your comments but i also understand why the planning commission thought as they did but as a council member and i can tell you when i was sitting there i did support it and reflected on what you had said but i also look at people or we've approved variances and approved requests that were far more um you know egregious than this this seemed pretty reasonable so i kind of felt like well i can't you know um we we gave somebody approval to put the pool in right i didn't i voted against that one it's like what we allowed somebody to do that pool we're not gonna do this porch i'm like that didn't seem fair to me so i don't know i just i guess every case is you know you do your best and you try to um do what's fair so i think ultimately they got the porch and it worked out and i appreciate what you guys said to us you know i i understand where you guys are coming from yeah but you know i i didn't respond to you uh todd but the reason i voted against it was uh there was a non-variance option available to them and but they wanted uh the variance option to save money uh so it was it you know when when you look at the code when you know that to me is not a reason to approve the variance uh you know that you know just to you know hey i want to do it this way because it's cheaper and so that was my reason because i felt that the code specifically states that financial consideration is not supposed to be a basis for granting a variance and when they had a non-variance option available to them that they didn't want to do basically because it was going to cost more money to grade that was my reason for voting against it yeah todd and let me just add um councilmember seattle did tear up a wound there the with the pool the poor i voted against the pool i voted against this because when you vote when you vote against this and you're reading of it it'll defend you against the pool so uh but you know but i think i think uh chair matty and i both agree that like we you know we present these things but the council members have been elected and it's up to them to make like bigger decisions about the people and i think you bring a you bring a kind of similar perspective on what's best sometimes for these people and for this community and what you know you're always kind of concerned with what this city is going to look like in the you know in different ways so one of you i tell you i appreciate that all right thanks all right thanks for staying after and listening this is another reason i think you guys are the best planning commission i've ever seen just uh on the record council is pretty good beyond that planning commission yeah you and jen go prove his point patrick all right well i think why don't we move forward and go to bed do i hear a motion to adjourn look at you mark yes yes second second yeah all right the motion to adjourn has been made by commissioner riedel and seconded by commissioner eggenberger no no it was nat oh did not do that all right commissioner gorham i got seconded um i suppose we should do a roll call vote with whomever is left it looks like just commission and commissioner mangold chairman gold is still here all right we'll um uh commissioner eggenberger hi uh i guess commissioner gorham hi commissioner riedel hi commissioner galtz aye chairman gold see if he's still around i'm working over on my stuff i uh we are adjourned goodnight everyone it was a good meeting tonight as uh vague as it turned out to be thanks everyone okay thanks dustin take care marie am i reporting this to council uh next week this will be on the second meeting of this month okay so not next week it'll be the the one following i'm gonna take some time to work on these minutes good because i hope we have a light council meeting after the last one okay thanks good night everyone