All right, we will call the EDA meeting to order and stand for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Uh, seeing no changes to the agenda. Do I have a motion to adopt the agenda? >> Second. >> Have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. We have an agenda. Uh, onto the consent. Any questions or items of clarification for that? Otherwise, I would take a motion to accept or approve the consent agenda. >> A motion. >> Motion in a second. Uh, all those in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. And the consent agenda is approved. No public hearing. So, we'll go on to the business. Uh, the economic development, strategic planning, and specifically the infrastructure. >> This part series instructure development tonight background on infrastructure and relationship in general and then the 2011 will be at our next meeting where we will basically apply that specific to the market and infrastructure both opportunities and challenges for us. >> And quick reminder to turn your mics on if you're going to speak so we can have a higher quality video going forward. So, everybody at the um council DAS knows me, but for those that don't, I'm Rich Reing. I'm the city engineer for Elquin New Market and I work for Bolton Bank. So, I'm the consultant to the city and Luke over there is uh is going to take my place in about three months. So, we've got a lot to cover, so I'm just going to dump jump right into this. Um you've probably all seen this figure or a variation of it during your orientations. It will come up again and again as I refer back to different types of um components of the infrastructure system in Elco New Market. We are going to tackle this uh in the typical order of acquisition and construction. So we start with we have to have rights away and easements to do anything. Then they'll typically do mass grading. Then they'll install sanitary sewer. Then water manes, storm sewers, finally streets, uh private utilities and lighting fall in there, walks and driveway aprons after that boulevard restoration and then final asphalt signage and markings. Won't spend a lot of time on those last four, but they are important also. So first of all, rights of way. I suppose you might not normally think of that as infrastructure, but it's essential because without it, we can't do anything. We have to have a place that the city owns or the public owns to put this stuff. Uh so the the right ofway is indicated crudely by these red lines on each side. So that uh land in between there is called the right of way. It's city-owned property. Beyond that, there are black lines you can see that go along parallel to the right ofway and then actually also go back in between each house in this particular image. If this was a commercial or industrial development, the same concepts apply, but the lots might be bigger, but everything still has to be there for them to operate as well. the uh rights of way are very precious. Even though they're typically dedicated by a developer to the city, um if you add up the land area of all your rights of way, it's a considerable not just monetary value, but it allows you to operate as a city. So, um I guess there's just caution in there not to give them away too easily. Uh the width and alignment will be per city code and policy documents and county access limits. And I already mentioned the easements, but they're also important. So we'll spend more time talking about the actually the timing and challenges of each of these pieces as we go through. So we have to have a rightaway recorded meaning it's yours before any public infrastructure works begins. We might allow grading to happen but not anything else because we don't want to get a th00and ft of sewer built. Something goes wrong at the development level, the project falls through. Now we've got this huge investment on somebody else's property. So that's probably the main reason we do not start any hard infrastructure until those rights of way are procured. Uh right ofway has to go to and through a parcel. So, if you imagine a piece of land that's sitting in the middle of a of a field that somebody owns, but it doesn't abut another road, there's no way to get to it. So, you have to bring right of way to that parcel before you can develop. And then we require developers to bring rights of way through a parcel because that avoids future to the parcel problems. We always plan ahead so that access can be made to the next parcel down the line so to speak. Uh even if that right of way won't be used for some indefinite period decades even it has value and we want to acquire that when it's opportune very difficult to get it later. Um partial rights of way can delay or obstruct orderly development. So imagine a road that's planned to be on a property line for example and one developer comes in develops gives you half the right ofway but you don't have that other half for who knows how long that uh can really be a problem. So we are trying to use planning going forward to avoid that to the extent we can. And then finally, and this is probably a big deal, city has the power to obtain rights of way, but it's costly. It takes time, and it can be pretty divisive. Um, if if a landowner next to another landowner doesn't want to give that right away and we want to buy it and they oppose it, there's a lengthy court process we have to go through, multiple appraisers. Uh, the value ends up being pretty high. So um eminent domain is what it's called and that's something we we can do we have done but we prefer to avoid example of a project when school was being built there was a need to get some right property owner that property owner um while initially indicating cooperiveness decided to not provide construction infrastructure of the public infrastructure related to that project and access to that project. So decisions the ability to acquire it judicious decision on when you utilize powers that we have can have a big impact on the timing and projects >> and so before you move on to the next piece are there any areas or land in Alcanumar right now where there's like a lack of rightaway or easements or things that are problematic for that could like inhibit future development or things that stand out that you know like this area, we have a problem. >> So, I have two thoughts. One, I can't think of one right now. And number two, I think we would get into that in round two, the next meeting. Um, but >> yes, >> we'll capture your question and we'll we'll see if we have some there's undoubtedly going to be some that come up. >> All right. Um, mass grading. You might not think of grading as infrastructure, but without it uh pretty hard to do infrastructure. So in this figure, if you imagine this fat red line that kind of bobs up and down across the screen as the original shape of the land at that particular location, that's what it looked like when it was filled. But we want over here, we want it to be lower for this house. We want to be level for the street. we want to fill this hole in the boulevard and so forth. Um, mass grading is pretty much done on every development whether it's commercial, industrial, residential sites. Um, it's also called rough grading. So, we're bringing that original land shape close to the land to the end land shape that we want by taking soil from high spots, putting in the low spots, and creating usable grades. It's typically done over the entire parcel or at least an entire phase of a project. We're putting good soil, meaning it's compactable, it's stable, uh it doesn't u turn to mush when it's wet. We want to put that where we need it, like under roads or under house pads. Less good soil like top soil or muck. you can put in, you know, park areas or boulevards or areas where it's not going to be a problem for the end use. This doesn't mean that the grading is done. There's always later fine grading, whether it's grading around the house after a house is built or fine grading for that final road subgrade shape or um or digging a pond or shaping a pond to its final contours. There's always fine grading that happens. So this is when we say mass grading, we're talking about the rough grading that happens early on in a project. Some of the timing and challenges of course you might guess it's the the least expensive and time consuming time to do the mass grading is before anything else is in the way. Uh if you start plunking things in the way, it just gets more expensive. Quality goes down. Another challenge is balancing cuts and fills. Uh, dirt is cheap until you need to haul it somewhere. So, if you can take from a high spot, put it in a low spot and they kind of get both to where you want them, that's ideal. If you've got way more high than you've got low or way more low than you've got high, you're either hauling dirt away to get rid of it, which is expensive, or you're bringing dirt in to fill a hole that's expensive. Um, another important point here, wetland. and other environmental environmental rules are really strict, especially the wetlands. Uh I've listed the sequencing here. If there's a big wetland in the way of your project, you have to first avoid it. If you can't avoid it and still meet the public purpose for the project, then you minimize the impact on that wetland. Once you've done that, anything that you do impact, you have to mitigate and that's expensive. So wetlands are a big deal when it comes to grading. economic >> and economic concerns are can't be the sole reason like well if I got rid of that wetland I could put in more lots or I could make the building bigger that alone is not >> that's not a defense it has to be for some public purpose and really unavoidable uh grading work is really weather sensitive especially here with the soils we have so you get a rainy day you might lose three days of work uh it affects the quality quality. Uh workers don't like it, of course. And of course, if the ground freezes, and that applies to the other things, but especially grading, the ground freezes, you're done. So, what that means is, and we'll talk about these other things, not so much about the time, but there's a lot to do in one construction season if you want to get a project from A to Z. So, you want to make sure you plan for winter in your in your scheduling. you maybe you could do this, but it would be so expensive that nothing would would happen. So, I just wanted to make sure that was thought about. >> So, I think Rich's point is that when you're you're going, well, it's it's August, there's all kinds of time. But if you're just starting this work in August, you have to get it all done. Otherwise, you're carrying it over into the following construction season and there's construction financing and then that somebody has to carry those costs for like possibly six more months without making any progress on the project. So, there's a big cost if you have to stop halfway through, so to speak, and can't get it completed within a single construction season. >> Yeah. And then uh erosion and sediment controls. I'm guessing you hear about that from time to time, but it is a big deal on these projects. It's costly. It can be in the way. Uh you've got silt fence everywhere. You've got sedimentation basins. You've got rock construction entrances. You have to sweep the pavement. All that stuff takes time and cuts into the normal progress. So they're kind of at odds, but the requirements are strict. And when we talk about erosion sediment C control controls just quickly we mean minimize your disturbed areas instead of opening up a 100 acres to erosion you know do it in smaller pieces if that's feasible. You want to put in erosion control things that what their purpose is to present prevent that soil from dislodging in the first place. So when a raindrop hits it, it's not smashing it loose. It's just kind of dissipating because you got mulch on it or something. And then any sediments that do get dislodged, you want to keep them on site. And there's a whole host of different techniques for that. But ESC, you know, consists of all those things. >> How many of these like requirements, uh, prevention things, whatever the right word, I can't think of it. I mean, some of those are local control, some of those are state, some of those are county, some of those are other things. Um, so BMP, >> how many we how much do we have control of or influence over at the local? So we have in El New Market we have two. One is there's a state uh permit. Anything over an acre they have to pull a state construction permit and its purpose is to regulate erosion sediment control. That puts the onus on the landowner and the contractor to have a a plan for controlling all this stuff. They have to do weekly inspections, clean it up when it's full, fix it when it's broken. But Elco Market is an MS4 community. That means we have a separate uh permit and I'm sure we've given presentations on this before. Part of that permit we have to monitor these sites. So we actually send our own inspector out every two weeks to check on all their stuff or their records up to date. They put together a report. It usually comes back non-compliant. It goes to Renee. It goes to the developer. and and so we're constantly after them to keep this stuff up because it's it's I mean frankly it's a pain. It's important but it is a pain. So from a control standpoint we have the burden of administration but the requirements are generally state dictated. >> Yeah. Sanitary sewage in this image it's this green thing would be a person hole and a little more on that. The green pipes are sewer pipes. So the main pipe runs down the middle of the street. You kind of lose it here because it goes into the pavement. And then the smaller pipes that go to each home are the service pipes. So when you take shower, water comes down here, goes into the uh mainline pipe and follows its way down through the system through any lift stations. It ends up at uh Met Council U wastewater treatment plant at what what's it called? >> It be empire. It's a name. I can't remember the name of the plant, but we're very lucky here that we don't have to treat our wastewater locally. Um, so I won't spend too much time talking about that financial issue. But, uh, the size of these pipes is based on the area that it's serving. So, if you're if a particular pipe is got home, uh, sewage from a thousand homes, it's going to be bigger than one that's coming from 30 homes. These pipes are durable. They're designed for periodic cleaning, but they can last 75 or 100 years if they're well taken care of and welldesigned. Timing and challenges. There has to be something, a pipe or a lift station downstream of the site to connect to. If there's not anything there, we're back to the developer either has to bring it to the site from wherever it is nearest by or it's a premature project and the project stalls until something happens to get that pipe closer. Uh, and then we always require a developer to bring sewage pipes through the project so that the next guy doesn't have to fight a battle to get it up to his property. There's often oversizing or over depth. So, if it's intended to serve a larger area that this project doesn't need, instead of an 8 in pipe, it might be a 12-in pipe. The city pays the difference in cost for that. Or if it would only need to be 16 ft deep to serve this development, but it needs to be 22 feet deep to serve the neighbor, we pay for that extra depth. or if there's a lift station, which I think you can imagine if you have a hill and there's a low spot on each side and you got to get sewage from here to here, you kind of run into real obstacles when you get into that 30 foot deep range or more. It gets really expensive because they have to move so much dirt out of the way to get the pipe in the hole. It's slower. It's less safe. It's hard to maintain. It's harder to get at to televise. It's harder to get at to jet. So that's not a hard and fast rule, but generally in that 25 30 foot range, we start looking pretty closely at is it going to be better off to put in a lift station and pump it over the hill rather than dig through the hill. >> When Rich says that the city pays for that, that's what we collect trunk fees for from developments to pay for those types of system costs. oversizing, over depth, lift stations, and on the water side, it would be things like water towers, oversizing, pressure reduction stations, those types of things. >> Yeah. So, I was going to say if a development comes in, some of these elements are in there, the city pays it, but if the money is not in that fund's account, the project will either be premature or delayed while we work out how to finance the city's piece of that oversizing. And then uh last point, sewage has to be compatible with collection and treatment system. So normal domestic waste, if we get um somebody that applies that wants to put in a food processing and they have really high strength waste for example, we probably couldn't take that unless they pre-treated on site so that we don't damage anything downstream or in our system. Jump to the water system. >> Yeah. >> Before we leave that um hooked up to the surface area and is that a 48 in pipe? >> I think it's 42. What would that allow us to do here? Because it is a an advantage we have in development relative to some of the other communities that are going to be on site. >> A pipe that big could probably serve a community like Lakeville that 75 80,000 people. Yeah, that's a big honking pipe. Is that a technical term? >> It is. Yeah. Yeah. I learned it I learned it in college. It was from my roommate, but I did learn it in college. Now I lost my place. I got all excited. Um I'm putting this slide up which is a little diff different than the pattern from the other ones just because this shows the big ticket water items. So unlike wastewater in the water department, we do have to supply our own water, treat it, store it, distribute it. And the big ticket items are going to be things like a city well, which can be on the order of a million bucks, water treatment plant. So we take that raw water, we run it through the plant. We um if you're interested in this stuff, we can talk about it, but uh basically you're cleaning that water up or making it nicer or both. and then pushing it out into the system where it fills a water tower. That water tower stores water for um emergencies for sustaining system pressure because it's always up in the air. So no matter where you are, it'll feel that gravity and you open the tap, you get water. There's no need for air or pumps to run continuously. And then uh it also smooths smooths operations. they can run the plant at a nice steady pace say you know 800 gpm instead of it's on it's off it's on it's off so the the tower provides a lot of benefits to the system and then these uh pipes are just buried below the surface we'll see that more distributing the water to customers so in this image the blue pipe is water main uh there's a small pipe that goes to each else. Sort of like sewer except it's putting water in instead of taking it out. There's a pipe that goes to every fire hydrant that tends to be bigger uh because a bigger pipe's going to give you more flow obviously. Uh and these are there's a water man by pretty much every house in town. There might be a few odd balls with a long service, but for the most part uh somewhere in front of your house or next to it, there's a a water man. Uh the size is based on the area served. An important difference from sewer here, sewer wants to all be branches. You don't want aworked sewer. You want it all coming into one going on all in one direction. A water system benefits from having loops, connections like a net instead of like a a tree branch. So that if something happens on one or more flow is needed, it can come at that location from two directions or four directions or six or seven, whatever uh your network looks like. Same thing as if there's a problem and they have to shut down a block of water mane with a network it can be routed around automatically. It just flows around and comes in a different way. So the long-term ideal would be to have pretty much a network system because of the age and growth stage of this community. You still have a lot of branch systems and then uh valves. We don't want to overlook the importance of being able to shut off sections of the water man conveniently without having to dig them up and freeze them or something weird. So, we install valves pretty frequently that allows public works flexibility to shut down pieces where they need to without unduly putting out more people than we need to. Again, there's got to be an existing pipe somewhere, ideally close to the edge of a development parcel that they can connect to to bring water into the site. If they don't, they're back to a two situation. You find the closest and you got to bring it down a city street or some other way to get to that parcel. Uh we try to avoid twos by always requiring throughs. And again, oversizing comes into play. same concept as sewer. >> But Rich, that that's an important I know and it'll be something we talk about the next meeting is the the capacity either upstream in the case of water or downstream in the case of sewer. If you don't build sufficient capacity ahead of time, you create bottlenecks for yourself in the long term um with regards to servicing particular areas as you continue to develop as a city. >> Yeah. Yeah. networking softens that, but you still want to have some trunks and some larger lines to uh to bolster that. And that's all planned out. So when a development comes in, we'll look at, okay, does this require a larger pipe through it? And we pay that oversizing accordingly. The last bullet on here is pretty important. I showed you a slide that illustrated what supply looks like, treatment and storage capacity. That has got to be adequate for a development to come in. um if it's not, we'd have to call it premature until we can drill another well or add onto the treatment plant or whatever it whatever the the shortage is. So, we're always trying to look ahead, projecting what are our needs, are we going to be adequate? Can we meet it? What do we need to do? What happens if growth is faster? What if it's slower? What can we delay? Um because those things require significant community investments upfront before the development comes. Probably before you know the development is coming. You suspect there will be development overall somewhere over time. But that's not a guarantee. So, it's really a balancing act between making sure you're ahead of the curve, but not so far ahead of the curve that if that development has a delay in it, your rateayers got to make up the difference. I don't know if there's any questions on that particular. >> Yeah. >> So, we have a plan going up 20 years. >> Yep. >> Yes. >> Um and we have a sewer line that could possibly us far beyond what plan does, right? >> Yep. >> So, how do we address the potential relative to the cost of doing it now? Because we've got that tremendous capacity with sanitary sort, but you still have to look at building your systems relatively affordable. >> We've still got to get our waste water in the community to that point. It doesn't run all the way through and everywhere. So we still have those issues. What do we need to oversize with this development to make sure and so we do have that all planned out. What what generally what our pipe sizes need to be. There might be a second look at the time when it comes to build it. But we have a plan that says okay we need a 24 in over here and a 36 inch over there so that we can make sure to get these areas as we come in. If that's >> that plan kind of operates almost exclusively on the comp >> they go hand in hand. We know where the comp plan is saying the 2040 limit is. We design pipe uh branch networks for sewer out to that far. That's irrelevant of timing. We just know at some point whether it's 2040 2050 when we get to there we're going to need and we know what the land uses will be from the comp plan. So that it all gets kind of married together so we can see what kind of wastewater flows we expect and project a pipe size for those areas so that if somebody comes in in some part of town, we already have an idea, oh, we need to get an 18 pipe down there, not just an eight. And we and we work that into the development design. >> But to your I >> I think we're going to say the same thing. >> Probably are. to your point, Bob, is that we because of that, we have what an ultimate service area that goes beyond our 2040 and while the 20 the 20-year plan might get to a at a more granular level of what that system might look like, there's always an eye to Okay, but how are we serving the area beyond that? >> Yeah, that's we have it laid out to max out that pipe. >> But I mean, e even with that, I mean, the two cities didn't merge. I mean, it was less than 20 years ago. So I I think back were they planning? So my similar question what I had before is like where do we have to replace some of the stuff that they didn't predict? >> So even prior to the merger the city's operated under a joint sewer board >> and the med council considered that. So >> so there may not be as many surprises as I you know could envision that there would be of two separate cities. >> I mean no there there are surprises. We our system does reflect and it gets to where you are. Uh when a lot of the core infrastructure for the communities was put in was in the 80s. Um and so you're looking at communities what was their vision for the community in the 1980s. Um you had a you had >> our vision now could be completely different. You fast forward 20 years and we could be completely off. And so then, you know, how do we balance that of trying to predict with the knowledge that we have at the moment that we have it to make these decisions? >> I think we're better that because we um I think the issue was back then was uh not anticipating what the community might be in the future. Um you had communities that were combined population under a thousand people. They had independent systems and while they worked together on the joint sewer board, that was really just to treat it. the individual city systems were planned independently. They just went to a same the same point to collect to go out and get to get treated. Um there's been a lot of work that we've done over the years. We have the issue as you guys know of two different pressure systems. There's the Elco pressure system because of pressure and where the water tower is located and then there's um everything else. Um and those are items and those are some of the items we will talk about at the next meeting because they create limitations and there are um bottlenecks so to speak that we have to work around because there wasn't anticipated that >> hypothetically this sewer pipe wasn't just going to serve this 100 acres but it might ultimately have to serve this thousand or more acres >> ultimately. Now and we'll talk about this. The reality is sometimes you have to make decisions as Rich was talking about balancing what you're investing today versus the time frame you're working towards. And those are some of those policy challenges. But as we get into and start looking at the community as it is today, where we have infrastructure, where we expect development to occur, and what barriers we have to infrastructure. We'll dive into that in in a much more granular level at the next meeting. But it seems like it's making the argument too for the whole regional approach to all of this too. So we at the local level can complain about losing local control, but really having that regional oversight and planning like the 2050 water supply stuff that they're meeting next week about and just how we all need to think because I mean I don't know if I would have ever guessed that Lakeville would be where it was growing up and graduating from Lakeville and then how does that impact us and so as much as we all want to maintain our level of local control there is some sense to doing a regional statewide plan or you know whatever kind a regional plan >> on the on the sewer side. That was actually the impetus for the Met Council was to address the sewer issues because and that was in like 69. Um because the issue was that individual cities were just treating it and they were doing it to varying degrees of success. And so the idea of doing regional sewer planning with regards to how treatment is done and how you provide it was really the impetus. Everything else the Met Council does now is an outflow. from that because if you want to know where you need to have sewer, you have to have land use planning. Thus, we had comp plans and then >> but it makes sense too then why me council is, you know, now we're doing transportation planning. So, because it's I mean so many of these things are interconnected. >> It's all Yeah, >> we can try to do what we want and think we're the most brilliant and whatever cost-effective city, but >> you're not on an island. Yeah. >> I'm going to push on because we have a long ways to go and a short time to get there. >> Got 28 minutes. >> Storm water system. Right. They're here for the superintendent after this. >> This is fascinating. [Laughter] >> All right. So, the orange pipes and structures or storm sewer. So when it rains, water runs off the rooftops, out into the street, runs off the street, goes into the catch basins, goes into these storm sewer pipes where it gets conveyed in almost every case, especially in our subdivisions to a pond of some kind. The purpose of those ponds is to mimic natural conditions. As the water is running off when it's a, you know, an alalfa field, we want it to be kind of the same when it's houses or factories. So, we slow it down. We keep what we can infiltrate it into the ground or let it go really slowly to mimic that. And we remove sediment and nutrients and stuff that we don't want flowing out of town. So, those are important. They're not shown on here. Um, but that's basically the storm on our management system. One thing I wanted to make sure you understood um is that we don't size these pipes for every storm. That's just not practical. We typically pick a return period of five years or 10 years, size the pipes for a storm that might happen that frequently, which still can be a pretty good size storm. But anything larger than that, we always look for, well, I won't use what we actually call it. The emergency overflow is the official term. So, if water is ponding in the street in a low spot and fills up, it doesn't run into a house window or something like that. it'll flow through a channel to a safe place without damaging any structures. So the EOF system uh is pretty important. If you ever hear us talk about that in a in a meeting, that's what what we mean. Timing and challenges. So storm water is different than sewer, water, or roads. It's almost always local, meaning 40acre development's got to manage its own storm water on its own site. Those ponds do occupy valuable real estate. If they take three acres out of the 40, that's three less acres for building houses. There are some regional systems in place. I can think of one. We may have another out by the school. But um so a regional pond would be where it's meant to serve more than one parcel. The problem with those, you got to buy the land up front. You got to know where the best place to put it where you're most likely to have development first so that you're not holding on to that spent investment for decades and decades. You got to pay to build the thing and then you got to have big pipes to get it untreated un slowed down from a development site into that regional pond. So they're just not very practical even though the idea is great. Yeah, it's going to be more efficient from a land standpoint to treat a bunch of parcels in one big pond than to have 20 little ones, but the practicalities of it don't work. Um, we require developers to maintain existing drainage patterns. It's pretty rare that a site will have only one point at its boundary where storm water runs off. Usually, this area runs off this way and this area runs off that way and the south half runs off this way. They have to maintain those patterns. We don't want to starve a neighboring site or wetland of runoff. We don't want to inundate one with runoff. So they have to maintain the direction but also the rate volume and quality as best we can with current technology anyway. And then the other thing and you've seen this neighbors are very sensitive to storm water run locations and changes in rate volume or quality. So, it's it's a big deal. It may not so much inhibit development on a particular site because it is local, but it's still pretty important and it's a big cause factor. Streets, I think they're self-evident on this image. Streets are typically the most expensive component of um say we'll just call this a roadway corridor. Um they're the most expensive and they're the shortest lived. there where the rain first hits, where the sun's always where the traffic is. Uh that's what gets beat up. Um and they need a lot of maintenance. Functional class system. I won't go into too much, although it's just just keep in mind that different roads have different purposes. The purpose might be on one end purely mobility. We want to get people from that end of town to that end of town as quickly as possible. That's mobility. That means higher speeds. When you have higher speeds, you're going to want fewer driveways, wider lanes, straighter alignments, flatter grades, uh, and more traffic means you're going to want a thicker and more robust pavement section. So, more costly. Uh, lower speeds means safer access. That's means a narrow road, narrower rideway, driveways, parking, stuff like that will tend to slow that car down that's traveling and make it more safe for those uh folks that live on it. A street consists of the underlying grading, so down underneath this blue zone that has to be firm and stable and well compacted. Then there's a subbase that we have in town that's usually about 2 feet of sand to help spread the traffic loads more uniformly on that typically less stable. Uh it's stable but it's not as strong as base that's subgrade. Um then we have base layers and then the paving layers is usually two layers of asphalt. the base course, which I'll talk about in a second, then the work course. And then, of course, the curbon gutter on a on an urban section like you see in this image with curbon gutter, runoff goes to the gutter and flows down the gutter into a storm sewer. On a rural section like you might see on Xerxes north of town or Dakota north of town, you have a roadway with ditches on each side. Those ditches receive and carry the runoff from the road surface and from the adjacent land if it's flowing that way and bring it to usually a creek or some low spot where it can flow safely away from from the area. So they're uh they have some commonalities, but most of our local roads are going to be urban sections like this. Um, we do allow on major collectors whose primary purpose is mobility to use rural sections because we don't need the parking. We don't need the curbs. We we just want to keep that tra traffic moving two ways. All right. Timing and challenges. No street, no access. So, you can't build a factory or a home without a street. Streets are seldom the limiting factor in capacity or this the they're they're not the main thing we worry about when a new development comes in or what's the traffic? We didn't worry about the street as much as we wor about the intersections. What's this new road when it intersects with that existing road going to do to the traffic in that intersection or even to an intersection that's a mile away if it's um you know contributing to a couple of major roads and we're that are already kind of iffy and we're adding more. So we we think about that type of thing um more so than you know a two-lane road even if it's lower speed will still handle a heck of a lot of traffic. But when you pile them all together at a corner, that's where we uh tend to see the problems. Um, keep in mind that even here jurisdictions differ. We've got city roads, township roads, county roads. Each jurisdiction wants to protect the function of its roadways. So, in the case of Scott County, for example, they have pretty strict limits on where we can connect to a county road two or a county road 91 or a county road. It's not willy-nilly. It's a minimum. You I don't need to go through the details, but uh that might mean extra road to get back to a site that's in the corner because you can't connect to that county road without going a quarter mile down the road and coming back up with a local road. I'm not advocating for this, but is there workarounds to or or >> Oh, we always look for workarounds, but we also respect the reasons they have those rules because we rely on those roads to get in and out of town, too. >> To respect our, you know, >> Yep. I mean, >> but Conro 2 is the lifeblood of this town. If you if you muck that up with a bunch of accesses that impede traffic, you're not helping anybody except the maybe the one guy that wanted it. So yeah, we got to be really careful about that. But a roundabout, for example, you recall that helped us to have not so far down a spacing because they could go right out, go around the roundabout, make the south, we didn't need the full. There's things like that that always get discussed, but as a general rule, they're fairly strict about that. Uh where was I? Oh, streets need to consider all transportation modes, not just cars. Uh and we've got an example coming up right now, which we can talk about next time. But you build a development, you bring a road to it, there's going to be other people trying to use that road and there may be places it's not safe. So, we got to think about electric scooters, pedestrians, bicyclists, baby carriages. Um, >> are we at a place yet where we have to start factoring in autonomous vehicles or is that still too far off where we don't have to factor that into our planning? >> Table that, will you? >> My quick retort is that autonomous vehicles should be adapting to us. Otherwise, it'd be easy to stop and just put your foot out in traffic and you shut down the freeway. Anyway, uh keep in mind streets are high maintenance. We've got to police them. We got to plow them. We have to do preventive maintenance like crack sealing and patching. And we have to rehab them, you know, every 20 years or so. kind of build a new surface or take off the existing surface and and maybe every 35 40 years we got to rebuild them. So they just no matter what we do there's no good way to make them last as long as the pipes under the ground. You probably have a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of pipe longevity to road longevity. Uh higher function roads can really be challenging. Um, now I'm talking about major collectors. Those mobility roads with higher speeds, flatter grades, heavier sections, developers are far more willing to dedicate rightway and build a road if they can put driveways on it because they can sell lots to help justify the cost of that road. But as soon as you say no driveways, you got to build separate roads with driveways and this is a main that gets tough. So the value of that land and its end product has to be really high for them to justify investing in a collector road through their development. But we have no other mechanism unlike sewer water storm sewer where we can charge a trunk fee and a colle connection fee. We can't charge fees for transportation to developers to help distribute those costs of those roads that benefit everybody to everybody. So it's either the developer builds it or they don't build or the taxpayers pay for that road or some combination. Uh our policy to now is that developer is required to build these roads if they want to develop a parcel and a road is indicated there. >> Collector roads end up being one of the biggest challenges for development because if you think about it, you have the sewer liner, you have a lift station, you've collected or will collect from this area to build this item here that serves all of that. roads are very linear and you need this chunk before you can get here. So, you've already seen some of the the concept plan for the property um between Dakota and Nevada. On Dakota Avenue, that property will touch Dakota Avenue. At some point, Dakota Avenue will have to be improved. If somebody in between hasn't improved it, it's premature. they're going to have to build it up to them or adjacent to them or the taxpayer is going to have to and of course we don't want the taxpayer to do it. So that place additional burden on development and essentially what it becomes is the first guy in or the last guy out usually has a disproportionate burden as it relates to those higher class roads. Well, the other things it does is it either delays development or reduces what they can afford to pay for the land. So, it'll delay the sale or reduce what a landowner can sell his property for. Uh, we can talk about that next time, but yeah, >> I mean, in this case, kind of the street fee impact or street impact fee >> that's related directly related to that. >> Yeah. >> Um, issue for development. >> I'm going to push on the other stuff. If you look under the sidewalk, we've got communications lines, we've got gas lines, we've got electrical lines. That all gets put in after the main part of the street is built. Then they'll come, if you're lucky, they'll pour a sidewalk and build the driveway aprons over it. Um, talk about the problems with those a little bit. Pavement markings. You can see in the background there's some crosswalks. There's a stop sign. Um, here we only allow that stuff or or prove stuff that meets the Minnesota manual and uniform traffic control devices. Deviations from that manual can lead to non-compliance. Josh has heard this speech a 100 times. Um, increased demands for enforcement and less safety. Putting up a stop sign where you don't need one not only does no good, it's almost politically impossible to take them out. Street lighting at intersections or curves are not so much about illumination. What they do is you're driving in your car, you see a street light splashing on a intersection of it. It tells you something's different, take it easy or there's a curves, take it easy. Can help pedestrians with some illumination as they're crossing the street. But the really, at least here, our policy is we install street lights for traffic safety. Um, we don't do decorative pedestrian scale lighting except maybe through the downtown. We have some uh let's see the important thing here, gas or electric availability for a commercial industrial project. That can be a significant deal. If somebody wants to build in some part of town, but there's no gas supply in that area that can meet their needs, it can cost millions to to drag it over there. Uh we ran into that in a smaller scale, but on recent development, we needed to build a lift station. Ideally, we want three-phase power for that. Nearest three-phase power was a mile away. It would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring that in. So, we ended up having to do a different type of system to make that work. um sidewalks and driveway aprons. Sometimes the developer is willing to put them in before the homes, but they can really get damaged easily by there's just heavy equipment running across them all the time. Um but at the same time, we don't want to have the homeowners or their builders build it because you get a checkerboard of of sidewalks and some may never get completed and so you got a gap for 150 ft that sits there for two years. So, we do require the development to put a bin, but we've been flexible whether they do it before building permits or after, but we'll hold security till it's done. Uh, I already mentioned traffic signage and markings. Um, you would be surprised that one of our biggest challenges in recent years has been boulevards. We want them to look nice. When a project is done and as they start building homes, they get tore up. you can't keep the grass, you can't keep the wheel tracks out. So, we've been escalating our requirements to try and get ahead of that, but that is a it's a pain in the neck. And besides that, when the grass gets damaged, now you have erosion. It's running in the streets. It's in the gutters and filling up the catch basins. So, we uh we did make some changes to our standards to hopefully improve that, but that's been a big problem. And then, uh you may already know this, but pedestrian ramps where a sidewalk meets a curb are a big deal. There's really strict requirements for the width and the configuration and the slopes and the ramps and the slope of the pavement and they are expensive. So, we want those done right the first time. Um, we don't want to be back in three years replacing them because they didn't meet a standard and now they're long gone. So, um, if we do a city project and you see a bid item for a ped ramp and it's $6,000, that's why I'm done. >> Tom already told you phase two will start applying some of this new knowledge around town, so you can see perhaps why things aren't just springing up right and left everywhere. Uh, one of them that I didn't talk about too much, so I'm going to I'm going to ask my own question. What about wetlands, Rich? How big a problem are they really in Elanu Market? They're a huge problem because what I talked about, you can't just plow it in for economic purposes, even if it would be cheaper. Um, and we have a ton of them. I can't think of a project we've done that doesn't have one. at least one and some have dozens. So, it's yeah, it's a big deal and it really affects rightway layout, road layout, grading, um storm water management. They're also a blessing. Uh their wildlife habitat, they do improve water quality, there's no doubt, their aquifer recharge benefits. Um but it it's it's uh at odds with smooth and cheap development. Today I uh I've been doing research on um lot sizes. So I've been talking to a lot of developers and a lot of other communities and um one of the cities I talked to today said they couldn't approve any more plats or uh they couldn't approve any more developments because they need a new water tower. Um so that's just one example. >> The fiddler must be paid at some point. we're we're okay for a while, but you know, we're planning one in 27. So, for for that reason, >> one of the national builders um during one of our conversations, he said some time in the last decade or so, our the storm water requirements were increased. So, um they take more land now than they did, you know, 10 years ago. >> Within my career, that has been the field where things have changed the most is storm water rules way different than it was when I started. Bob >> relative to storm water and being at the headarters of the vermilion in that which drove a lot of the metro thing I don't know if it's appropriate for this discussion obviously now but is that something that is going to be burdensome or cumbersome or whatever as we go on because maybe we're going to be impacted more than some other communities might or is that kind of >> the way it has worked and will continue to work is that we so we've got a comp plan update coming up in the next few years. So we'll update our rules based on different guidance we're getting from med counsel maybe some preliminary kind of things that the watersheds we're actually in at least three wersheds here Vermillion Scott WMO and um Canon Canon hasn't been they haven't really had any rules or anything that applied to us but the other two have. So we write our rules, our code best we can to match those. They review it and then we gain a concurrence. Then we're the LGU, but it's already been pre-reed and kind of so they're our rules are okay with them. Uh if that helps. So it's all coordinated. Uh I don't know what tricks they might have up their sleeve at this point. Um usually there's a good reason for the different rules. If there's not, we duke it out until there's consensus. So, >> well, I remember we ran into the cold water stretch of the million and that even though it impacted us here, >> yeah, >> again for another topic, but >> yeah, something if it's going to be a limiting factor because of the way >> we um we can have that run. We um studied the maps and found a 10 acre over 10 acre lake in between that our runoff passes through which was one of the uh reasons we were able to not have temperature requirements on our so >> but but there have been impacts Bob related to surface water um one because we're in the vermilion watershed um we're a small portion of the county which is in that and So we have we're subject to an agency who the vast majority of the area they have jurisdiction over is in a different county. And so our representation on that ruling board as you know is because you served on it is limited. And then the other issue that we have is that the nature of the watershed and how it functions is very different that way than it functions here. The you know we're that's Dakota County is a big gravel pit. We're a big pile of clay the rig and so sometimes getting sensitivity with regards to you know they want to apply the common set of regulations everywhere but it functions differently so sometimes we have to ask for them to be accommodating and recognize that there are differences within the wershed. The other area is close to 20 years ago, we were made an MS4 city under um that was a a mandate. We normally wouldn't be an MS4 city. So that places an additional burden on us from a reporting and regulatory standpoint that we would have not otherwise had. That being said, as we continue to grow, we would naturally become an MS4 city. So there have been there are some challenges, but I don't know that they would largely limit our capacity for development. More of a it's probably, you know, a tweak to a rule here and there might mean a little less density, but it wouldn't stop things. Any other questions for this round? The only last one I have is the emergency overflow. The aka what is that also known as? And I looked threw it into go co-pilot and didn't come up with anything funny or >> is it appropriate? >> It might be what you say if you dropped your wallet in the creek. >> That's what I wrote down, but all right. Um, thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um, nothing else on the agenda, I believe. Uh so we will adjourn at 657.