If you don't go there, go to a player story high school. So later [clears throat] we can take our seats. Um, >> it's 6:30. We're going to begin the meeting. >> Thank you. >> Let that gabble a little bit. >> I know. I'm going to All right. At this time, uh, we're going to begin start the planning commission meeting, uh, for Monday, June 8th, 2026 for the city of Lake Elmo. Uh, meeting begins 7 at 6:30. Uh, first item on the agenda for tonight is to all stand and say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [clears throat] >> I need a motion to approve tonight's agenda. >> Make a motion to approve the agenda for June 8th, 2026. >> Second. >> All right, we have a second. Uh, all in favor? I >> All right, the agenda is approved. Next is uh to approve the minutes. Do I have a motion? >> I mean, I wasn't here, but I I can make >> motion to approve the minutes >> from uh 511 from 5126. >> Thank you very much. >> Second. >> I have a second. All in favor? >> I the minutes from the May 5th, >> May 11th. >> May 11th. Thank you. 2026 planning commission meeting uh minutes are approved. Uh next we move to our public hearing portion and uh the first item up is Limmerch Village Plary Plat Reszoning and plan unit development. All right. Uh good evening chair and members of the commission. So uh tonight we are looking at a development project proposed in the southeast corner of the city of Lake Elmo. You can see the general location shown on the screen. Uh this is a roughly 80 acre property that's uh south of 10th Street North and uh just west of Manning Avenue. Uh it's on two unaddressed or actually sorry I think one parcel does have an address but there are two properties involved here. Um we we don't have any wetlands on this property. Uh the current use is a farmstead or um farmed property and the requests this evening in front of the planning commission are a preliminary plat and planned unit development proposed by Maplewood Development uh on this pro on on the site. Um just to note, if you have been uh checking in on city council agendas over the last two or three years, uh you may have seen one of the versions of the concept plan for this property. Uh there have been uh four or five city council meetings where uh they reviewed concept plans ultimately leading up to an environmental assessment worksheet environmental review uh which was completed uh over the course of late fall uh in and winter uh of 2025 into 26. So uh here we are uh this evening looking at the kind of the next steps the preliminary plat for this project um called Limmerch Village. So, uh, without further ado, here is the site plan that's proposed in the preliminary plat. This was included in the plans that were attached to the staff report. So, there's there's kind of a lot going on here, and we're going to walk through uh the different elements of the proposal here uh as reviewed against the city's standards and requirements. So, generally at a high level, uh what you're seeing are 679 uh residential units. This is an entirely residentially proposed subdivision. Uh those units are broken out between uh 67 detached single family homes, 60 patio style town homes, and we're kind of moving generally from uh left to right on the plan in front of you. Uh then 161 urban town homes. Uh those are in the northeast corner. Three multif family buildings uh on the south side of the project kind of in the center comprising 271 units total. and then one uh senior living building on the southwest or southeast corner uh with 120 units proposed on the center of the site. Just want to note that you'll and we'll talk about this in more detail, but you're seeing a park area that's roughly 9 acres with storm water ponding um adding to that open space in the center of the development. So uh from a land use perspective uh this site is currently zoned rural transition as you know that is a zoning district that kind of is kind of the kind of a holding district for uh lands that are imminent for development. The future land use map has this land guided as combination of highdensity residential and medium density residential. Uh and we are uh have a planned unit development proposed. So there would be a PUD overlay from a zoning standpoint. So in looking at the comprehensive plan, um you you have pretty interesting kind of dist line between the MDR and the HDR. If you look at the site, uh generally speaking, the intent when the comp plan was adopted was to concentrate the higher density development towards the south and the east side of the site, which as you can see is where that dark that brown color is. The orange color is the MDR area which transitions as you go to the east to low density. Sorry, I should say the west. So, uh here is that preliminary plat. The preliminary plat just shows you where those property lines are that will uh be associated with each of these sites. But uh with the preliminary plat uh come a lot all the preliminary plans the development plans those have been reviewed in detail to uh whether they meet city ordinances. U really just quickly want to cover planned unit developments in the city do have to meet several different criteria in order to be considered. The first one is whether the properties over five acres. That one's met. Uh at least 20% of the development has to be held as open space. that can look like common areas between um town homes and things of that nature. And lastly, the street layout has to maintain the existing uh street grid or um meet the plans for future streets. There are a number of PUB objectives uh that the applicant is uh basically in their narrative uh saying that they are meeting uh those are a range of different things uh like providing a mix of different housing options in the city. um in doing things like storm water irrigation. And uh now I'll just kind of jump into that preliminary plat review. So when we're looking at a preliminary plan set, we are looking at a number of different things and we'll kind of walk through those here. So here's just a refresher. Here is that overall site plan and then I'm going to kind of walk through each of the different elements that are being proposed here in a bit more detail. So uh first you have the single family homes. These are in the MDR, medium density residential part of the subdivision. Um, these are proposed to have 50 feet widths, 50 foot lot widths, which would be meeting the city's minimum. Um, pretty standard lot detail that's shown here with those lots. Uh, next are those patio town homes. So, these are the town homes between the single family homes and the proposed park area. Uh, kind of serving as a little bit of a transition as you go to the east. Uh these are a little bit more standard, you know, town homes which um you'll see around the city. We have three apartment buildings shown on the south side of the site. These are um at this point I think just there there's no known developer for these uh apartments as far as I'm aware. And lastly, if you look at the kind of the southeast corner, you're adding in that senior living or age restricted apartment building. And then here are what we refer to as those urban town homes. I just want to make a quick note. Um what was included in the uh plans that were reviewed was a urban town home uh with 129 units. Um, in fact, the developer did provide a different uh layout that they actually prefer more. This layout was reviewed with the concept plans um and it was reviewed with the environmental assessment worksheet when that was reviewed. So, this has uh been reviewed already by the city. This is the preference for the developer. They're going to be submitting an updated plan set. Uh generally, the differences are listed on the screen. So 161 units is what they are actually proposing. Uh they're also proposing to have a larger private courtyard. Um in the in the uh site the site plan that you see on the screen now you see just over 0.1 acres of private courtyard. So they're looking to increase that area and uh they are still meeting the setbacks that would be required in this area from just the zoning code. So there is a little bit of a difference. the units would be a little bit smaller going from just over 1,000 square ft to 800. I did take a look at the overall uh site here. If you look at just the uh portions of the urban town home part of the development minus the right of way, uh they are meeting the requirements of code to have at least I think that the requirement is on the next screen. 17,000 or sorry 1,700 square feet approximately per unit. So I also want just really quickly want to touch base on the um density for this development. Uh that's been noted in the staff report. We have in February, we received a kind of different methodology for calculating density for development from the Met Council. Because this development was planned largely before the Met Council kind of changed that methodology, staff are proposing to use the methodology that this development was applied for under which is um showing here and it's also indicating that the development would meet the overall density range for this area. So I'm going to go back to the uh these are the the bulk standards. We call them things like lot area setbacks etc. Uh this is a planned unit development. The developer is requesting a couple of different flexibilities from the city. So uh first just to look at um the areas that are highlighted. I won't go over everything here but um just the areas highlighted here. This was in the staff report. So it's a little hard to read up on the screen but uh the MDR. So really the single family home lots those are proposed at a at the smallest on the on the small end 5,400 square feet and they range some of the larger lots are even over like quarter or half acre. So depends on which lot but the minimum proposed is 5,400 square ft. The city standard is 7,000. We talked about the urban style town home area uh 800 square f feet per unit and uh for the multifamily buildings they are proposing a range of uh density. So the city's code requires uh 1,800 square feet per unit of general generally space on the property with for on a perunit basis. So if we go back to the site plan, essentially the developer is requesting some flexibility uh for these multif family buildings. Uh they are proposing a private park with the multifamily buildings uh to help get closer to the city standard. So those are just the the flexibilities kind of at a high level that are proposed. Uh we do have some more specific performance standards we call them. These are things like design uh for developments in Lake Elmo and uh these are generally listed on the screen and and they're provided in the staff report for single family detached. U these are the single family homes. Uh there's really uh not a ton of development requirements or or design requirements. Uh parking should be on driveways or in the garage and primary entrances and facades. The the the front of the house needs to be uh basically oriented to the street. Uh for single family attached, these are town homes. Uh the city does have more requirements. Uh buildings have to be smaller than 10 units or the project needs a conditional use permit. The uh building needs to be fronting a public street and uh there need to be shared open spaces of at least 500 square feet per unit in the medium density residential area and 300 in the highdensity residential. Um those are all being met right now. For multif family buildings in the HDR, um parking cannot be located in a front yard. And basically what that means is it can't be can't be located between the building and the street. It's got to be behind the building. There do need to be common open spaces uh within uh multifamily projects of at least 200 square feet per unit. And that again is being met. So, uh, there are a list of other design standards that are found in the city's design guidelines book. Um, generally speaking, the site design has been reviewed. The building design um for the proposed multifamily buildings and town homes has not yet been uh reviewed because they are in a future phase. So what you see on the screen is the proposed phasing for this project as proposed by the developer. So what I haven't mentioned yet is that this project is not uh next to any existing developments. It's non-ontiguous. And so what that means is the developer is going to have some off-site improvements that are required to bring in the utilities and bring in road infrastructure to serve this new development. And so what that's going to look like if you look on the left side of the screen or the west side, uh that's bringing in water mane, making a water main connection to the west. And then if you look south of this site, uh the developer [snorts] will also need to be bringing in water man. In in addition to that, they'll have to bring in sewer to serve this property and realign Hudson Road. That realignment has been planned. It's been a kind of a long time coming in that part in that area. And so the developer will be, you know, accomplishing that requirement uh through their alignment of the utilities serving the project. So that has been a requirement as well. So um they're also building Fifth Street North, which is a planned connection from the city's comprehensive plan. Fifth Street North runs generally, if you can see the cursor, which you can't, um it runs on the north side of the property and then as you go to the west kind of curves down a little bit to the south. So those uh those are the road requirements and infrastructure uh that are going to be serveing the site and the green area again that's the first phase. So that all gets built um before those single family lots can be brought online. So you have single family and uh the patio town homes proposed in phase one. In phase two or future phases they could be there could be multiple phases. uh you're looking at the multif family buildings and the patio town homes. When those projects are proposed is when that building, you know, the actual design review would take place of the building uh facads. That's things like materials uh entries etc. Generally speaking though, I would say that the site design for those for those parts of the development has been looked at through the number of iterations of the concept plans that have come forward. I just quickly want to touch base on design standards for the patio town homes since these are the ones that are that are going to be built other than the single family homes in the first phase. So now for the patio town homes uh the form and the facade there are specific requirements in code basically requiring that facades front the street. Um, in addition to that, the city code generally requires that town homes be double fronted, which means that basically, you know, you have a a front on a public street or corridor and rear loading the garages and stuff on another street or corridor. Uh, one really important uh, requirement within city code is for the building materials. Just to note, this is uh, seen as kind of a higher standard. The city does not allow for vinyl sighting in MDR or HDR areas. Okay. So, uh want to shift into tree preservation and some of the other site considerations. So, tree preservation uh there are a number of existing trees on site because of the way that the grading will will occur and the way that the development is proposed those trees would be removed. So there is a mitigation calculation that was provided with their plans and reviewed by the city's landscape architect. The developer is also proposing to replace those trees with new landscaping. Um this this landscaping would be provided throughout the project and it would uh I would note include trees that will mitigate for the trees that would be removed. Lastly, uh on this uh screen you can see some dark or shaded areas uh in the common spaces in the town home, apartment areas of the site. Uh the developer is proposing to use storm water reuse. So they'd be using storm water as proposed to irrigate the common areas on the site. That has been a common theme in new development in Lake Elmo to help reduce w new you know water use from from new development. So, uh, we've looked at a number of different plans. The landscape architect's memo dated May 18th does, uh, lists a number of requirements that will need to be met as we move forward in the process should there be an approval. I do want to also quickly note that uh buffering. So the apartment buildings shown on the south side of the site um development that occurs south of that south of those multif family buildings if if it happens in the future would need to provide some form of buffering mitigation between a future use and the apartments. Uh we also looked at parking and traffic. Uh parking has been reviewed for the uses where we have um fa you know within phase one that includes the single family homes and the town home units. Those uh definitely meet requirements providing um enough parking uh for both uh residents and visitors. Uh where we have uh a need to review further in the future is definitely for the apartments uh where we actually need a specific unit mix to assign a certain parking requirement. So when those projects are proposed and we have a unit mix that's known, that's the time where we can really refine uh the understanding of what the parking requirements are. So at this time, no flexibility is being requested for parking. As far as traffic goes, uh this site and area has been guided as medium and highdensity residential for quite some time in the city's comprehensive plan. So the comprehensive plan does kind of plan for the required infrastructure to serve these units with um roadway and other infrastructure. The EAW also included a traffic analysis that was reviewed with with that uh part of the project. All right. So access I just want to talk about a few different things with respect to access. Uh we've talked about needing to realign Hudson [snorts] Boulevard. Uh that's definitely an important u kind of planned realignment uh and will provide a key access for this development to Manning. There will also be the construction of that portion of Fifth Street North through the site. So that those will be the two points of access that will serve these units. And I I do want to mention um there there is an existing grain silo operation on the property just north of this site that um g kind of creates a challenge for for these plans and how that access can be retained. And so here is what is shown in the project plans. You can see uh that there is quite a long access from what if you're looking at kind of the right side of this image, that's where the grain silo operation would be kind of along Manning. And as you go all the way uh that's about I think it's like something like 600 feet uh you would need to hit before you hit that next intersection. And so that's representative of the city's access spacing requirements. These are a standard for Fifth Street North. uh what's being proposed right now um by the developer in in conjunction with the property owner uh to the north that has the grain silo operation is kind of an alternative access for the time being and so it's a little bit difficult I apologize to see on the screen let me see if I can get a laser pointer to show up here all right so um these are both basically the same image on the screen on the left and right so I'll just go on this on the right image just so you can follow along. So what's being currently shown here on the aerial image is an existing access on to Manning. As I showed you on the previous screen, uh what the development would need to do to actually provide access consistent with city requirements is bring an access basically from the west all the way up to this operation here. That doesn't necessarily help retain kind of the current function of the grain silo area. And so again, as I mentioned, the property owner and and developer have worked together on this proposal. So what's currently proposed is an access uh serving the grain silo operation directly onto Manning. Uh this would be a right out only or right out and then serving this uh grain silo operation from the fifth street north corridor here would be an access directly from Fifth Street North would be which would be a city road. So Manning is county fifth street north is a city road. They're proposing a right in to this site here. So generally the circulation might look like you know semi or semi-traffic uh during those periods of time where they do need to access the grain silos coming into the site down here. Generally coming out here, there may be situations where uh as things get finalized, they they might want to propose a ride out for very rare circumstances where a semi might need to go that direction. So that is currently what is being proposed uh between the developer and that property owner. Uh and so just wanted to talk about a couple of the considerations and ultimately these will be considerations that are shared with the the city council when they review this project. The pros uh certainly for this um this proposed access would be that Washington counties actually, you know, kind of reviewed this and had the opportunity to comment on it. They are generally supportive. This proposed access arrangement would retain really largely that current function of the grain silo site. um which is important to that property owner for sure and it would be required to get removed when future development occurs should it occur on the site that has the grain silo operation. So those are some of the the pros here. Uh from a from a con standpoint if you're looking at um this from that through that lens you would say that there's you know it's doesn't meet the city's access spacing standards which we talked about. uh there is not necessarily a planned end to this interum condition and if in the future there are you know concerns with the arrangement of this particular area this intersection uh they might that adjustments could need to be made at city cost. Um it's hard to say what exactly could create an issue. Uh there could be a number of variables but generally speaking um that those are just some of the considerations. So, all right, moving into sidewalks and trails. So, there are sidewalks generally proposed throughout the development. Uh, there are trails as well. Um, it's kind of hard to see again on this figure, so I apologize for that, but um the city staff has reviewed these sidewalks and trails against applicable requirements that city has. Number one, uh you have to have uh sidewalk on at least one side of the street. Uh in certain cases, like in high density areas, a sidewalk needs to be provided on both sides. So, um on the south side of the site, just north of the multif family building, there's a red line that's supposed to be uh kind of showing you where a sidewalk should be added. Um, the other kind of high level comment that I would provide here is city staff are suggesting the requirement of a trail on the north side of Fifth Street North. There's that laser pointer again. Uh, that trail corridor should run continuously along the north side of Fifth Street North through the project. So that's that's been kind of a long-term plan for that parkway through this area eventually providing connectivity up to Oakland Middle School uh Parkland dedication. So this project has um is proposing to dedicate a nine roughly nine acres of parkland uh that would surround uh two storm water features. One's an infiltration basin, one is a storm water pond. Uh this this part of the development would serve these residential units with parkland recreation space. Uh and they would satisfy the city's park dedication requirements for this area. I would note that this particular part of the city is within a park search area. So, and it's for a neighborhood park. So, this park would generally meet the criteria for a neighborhood park, particularly in terms of the size, the area of the park. So, there have been a number of review comments provided on this development and lots of coordination behind the scenes. Uh, the city's fire department, city engineer, city's landscape architect, uh, have all reviewed and provided comments that are included in the staff report. South Washington wershed district is in process for their review of this development. Uh, Washington County has also had an opportunity to review. So uh just a quick summary of the proposed PUD flexibilities by the developer. Uh number one, minimum lot size. So the area for detached single family homes, the town homes and the multifamily building buildings I should say and then a sideyard setback uh proposed flexibility for these single family homes. So uh there are findings that are required to be um created for approval or denial of a project. Those are generally summarized on the screen and they are included in the staff report. Uh staff generally uh feel that this development meets the city's criteria for approval in this part of this of the um kind of south growth area of Lake Elmo. So you have a number of options in front of you. uh you can recommend approval, approval with conditions, denial over table. Uh staff are again recommending approval but with conditions and so there are 12 conditions that are shown uh generally summarized on the screen here and that are in the staff report. I would um call you to the kind of the unique conditions that are shown on the bottom. These are the ones that staff really strongly recommend to you. Number one is that should the development uh be approved uh that there be a an access plan kind of a shared access plan approved or agreed upon by the developer and property owner to the north and certainly they've been working on that. Uh also because of the nature of the off-site improvements needed, the city would require uh easements on the city's standard form with those abudding property owners so that that work can uh can begin and u the public improvements can be constructed in that area. Uh lastly, I did show you the sidewalk and trails. So there are some adjustments needed to to those parts of the plans. And uh just reiterating that storm water reuse should be a you know a required part of the PUB. So uh just to note here a public hearing notice was sent out by the city in May and mailings were sent to surrounding property owners as well as adding this project to that push notification list. An example motion has been provided in the report on the screen here uh for consideration of approval to the city council. Uh with that I I would stand for your questions and I would also note that the developers team is here to answer questions that you have for them. So >> thanks. >> Thank you Nathan. >> Questions? >> I I've got a question. you did not refer to the landscape planning not being uh they're not being able to recommend it as as it is right now. Do you want to kind of did you go over that? Sure. A little bit in depth more depth. >> Absolutely. So yes, the landscape architect uh has a review memo just going over to the plans here. So number one uh tree preservation they review when the landscape architect reviews the project typically they are mostly focused here on the tree preservation plan and the landscaping plan. And so uh that landscape architect memo basically says that the mitigation for the removed trees although I think for a development of this size is relatively small uh number of replantings required uh that those uh plantings would need to be added to the landscaping plan. So the landscaping plan will need to be revised prior to the city accepting a final plat allowing the developer to move to the next step. So the proposed conditions for this development do include conformance with that landscape architecture memo. >> Primarily her one of her concerns was to help with the noise mitigation. Any proposed noise mitigation is what one of the things that she strongly emphasized which is important being by the freeway. The 84 trees are taken out. You're saying they need to incorporate another 84 into the >> Yeah. So there's basically a formula that the city has in code that developers need to follow. Basic it takes the removals, calculates how many caliber inches and then creates a kind of a formula to require a total number of replantings. >> So this isn't reflecting that that improvement yet. >> Uh no, but it will be required to be conform. Yep. Could you talk a little bit about the methodology that Met Council is using for the calculations and >> Yes. So >> that that part of the report and just conversation has evolved a little bit here. Um what what you see on the screen is kind of that that split between MDR medium density and HDR high density. um in in before February of this year, the way that we created the calculated density was really very, you know, tried and true. Um we take the net area, that's the buildable area. The buildable area does not include things like wetlands. There's no wetlands on this site. Um and then you just take that buildable area and then you that's your net acreage and that's how you calculate net density. In February, the Met Council came out with new guidelines for implementation of uh the they called it the Musa implementation guidelines, but basically this just changed the formula for how we calculate net density. And they actually did include uh certain things that um you know, they thought that cities were asking for, which were the ability to net out now storm water ponds and the ability to net out collector roadways. And so the way that this development was planned and applied for and even you know the developer has gotten gone a long way in in terms of having an EAW completed and doing all that all the planning work was done under the old methodology. And so um when we reviewed the preliminary plat we realized oh the the math that the mech councils effectively changed kind of threw off the calculation here. They were actually shown as being over the density limit when you applied the new math. >> Okay. That's what I was wondering. All right. >> Yep. So that that was kind of the the the impact but we did contact the Met Council. The sector rep told us that we are allowed to use that prior methodology. This development did come in technically speaking before the application was made before the new guidelines were released. >> Okay. What is the proposed population then for this specific site if it was fully completed? If it's fully completed. So, uh, the development has 679 units. The average household size in Lake Elmo is generally two and a 2.5 people. >> So, if we have someone that has a calculator handy, that's that might be the anticipated population. >> So, 1900. I'm just zooming my head. >> Sure. >> 1,697.5. >> There we go. Thank you, Sophia. All right. and water accessibility. >> Yeah, that's a good question. So, go to that phasing plan wrong direction. So, the if you look at this the bottom of the image here where that green starts where that green on Hudson Boulevard starts that's where the water currently terminates. So they'll be the developer will be bringing in water mane up to the site through Hudson and they'll also be extending on the west side the water man to loop it. >> So would it then it would just be from that holding tank that's up by Lake Elmo Avenue on 94. >> Is that where is there maybe a water tower as well? >> Water tower. >> So the city engineering team has definitely looked at that and um by they haven't voiced any concern over the availability >> and the sewer. Where would sewer be coming from? So, the sewer uh that will go the sewer will be in Hudson Boulevard. So, see that kind of curving to the south? That's where the sewer line goes. There's an interceptor uh that goes into the Met Council system on the Hudson Boulevard corridor. I think it might be at Lake Elmo. >> How about the uh property to the west and the south for the realignment [clears throat] of Hudson and Fifth Street? I mean, um, are those private property owners that are on board with this or does the developer control that property as well or? >> That's a great question. The developer has been coordinating with those property owners. U, one of our conditions for approval would require that they get an easement agreement on the city's on on a form on the city's form. There's a big difference there, right? Um, and so that would allow number one for us to understand, yes, they have the consent from those property owners to do the off-site improvements and then when they're constructing the improvements since it's on since that agreement would be in the city's form, the city would have the ability to go and do inspections and do those types of things. >> Gotcha. Has a traffic study been done on the grain silo operation where effectively you're going to be routing um grain trucks through residential um with their proposed um route to give them access. >> Certainly. Yeah. Certainly a uh certainly an area of of concern that's been kind of again kind of one of those ongoing areas of discussion. I'm trying to find my access slide. So uh when we look at the grain silo operation uh most of their our understanding based on conversations uh with the property owner is that most of the uh most of the semi-traffic will be and there won't be much traffic per day like the peaks for this are relatively minimal in terms of traffic. Most of that traffic would be taking that right south on Manning to access the freeway corridor. I just know the uh the county has a way of removing access from roads unexpectedly. >> So Washington County has certainly been part of this review process. They they've indicated that but they've seemed to indic indicate that they'll be issuing a permit uh they will have to issue a permit for the project to be able to move forward for access. So that's how they'll control that. And I I will also just note to you the developers also kind of had to talk with the Washington County so they might have thoughts on that as well. >> So the quarter mile isn't applying in this case because they're giving them an exit out a right turn. >> Yeah. So typically when when you're looking at like permanent new development, you're going to go for something like quarter mile spacing or less in some cases depending on the context. But because this is a somewhat unique condition with this grain silo being kind of right there and wanting, you know, reasonably to retain their their access for their operation. They're asking for some flexibility to the city council. >> The developer's cost. >> Yeah. The developer will be responsible for reconfiguring the access. [clears throat] Nathan, so with the new Met Council density calculations, [clears throat] this is too dense. The densities above and beyond what's required. >> The only the reason for that is [clears throat] because the developers would technically not be able to net out the storm water pond and the Fifth Street North corridor. So technically, you're right, but the density functionally hasn't changed from when the city reviewed this before. >> Right. Right. But yeah, >> by the new calculations, we're exceeding the density requirements with the new with the new methodology. >> That's that's correct. Under the new guidelines where I'm getting at is then if we're asking for reductions in spacing with single family housing so they can meet those old density requirements. If we've [clears throat] got the ability is the ability then because we don't need to be as dense to put these spacing back between the houses >> between the single family house. >> Sure. I understand your question. So are you asking about the PUD flexibilities [clears throat] proposed? >> What's that? >> What what can you repeat your question? >> Yeah. I think if if we're looking at the concern is is one we've got a we have an MDR requirement for detached single family home of 7,000 square feet. >> Right. Correct. They're asking for a variance of 5,400. And then also within spacing between those homes, we've got a 10-ft requirement and they are asking for 5T. And are they asking for that in order to meet these density requirements that were calculated with the old in the old methodology? >> I see what you're saying. I [clears throat] think uh when you consider what they're asking for, it's not it's sort of it's sort of I I guess modest with the nature of the development that's proposed here. I think part of the reason they're asking for flexibility is to be able to have that large park area in the center of the development. This has been a real focus from concept on forward. Yep. >> For them to fit the park in there >> and hit the density ranges and all of that stuff. they they've had to kind of squeeze a little bit some on the edges a little bit some of those units and so I think that's created a little bit of a challenge if you look at [clears throat] if you look at it absent the park area I think they would probably be meeting >> but I would counter and say with the new methodology for calculation even with the park area okay we don't need we don't need the debt >> I guess to be clear what they're asking for flexibility from is not the comprehensive plan and the density ranges It's the zoning code. >> All right. >> And so they're consistent. The zoning generally and comp plan are generally in alignment, but in this case, you have lot areas that are, you know, kind of tricky to work with for them. So I'll let them speak more to that. That's not necessarily for me to speak anymore to. So >> and is that calculation done, which is the proposal in front of us here, or that new higher urban town home proposal with more units? So where's the density calculation done or can >> Yes. Which the density calculation number of units you know we have the proposal in front of us here and you'd mentioned that the they discussed a higher density with60 something unit. >> Oh I see. So the the units that are different from what's in the preliminary plat plans are the urban town homes which are on the north uh east side of the project. So that area they're in the HDR the high density part of the site. So when we look at density though uh we don't we don't look at one individual part of the development. We have to look at the overall area of HDR highdensity residential which in this case is kind of a unique shape. So, I would also say that part of the reason for those four concept plan reviews is because they have a really funny um line here and they the developer worked really hard to not propose a comprehensive plan amendment so that this development would be able to kind of use the existing plans that the city has in place. And so, you know, they they have definitely had a challenge in trying to meet that that boundary. And so that's part of why they're it feels like they're kind of high on one side and kind of low on the other. And that kind of bears out when you look at the density ranges here. >> We want to hear from the developer. >> Yeah, I just one more question on uh on the Manning there. Um the trail, is there going to be a trail on Manning at all? >> That is a good question. Right now, uh, as far as we know, if you look at an aerial, there's no, uh, trail along the west side of Manning. So, um, at some point in the future, the c the county may may have a trail. And in fact, I think usually, um, the county's standard is to have a trail on both sides. >> Oh, okay. So, that'll be up to the county. All right. Good. Thank you. >> Thank you, Nathan. try and find a site plan for the developer to speak to. All right. This is the developer want to speak. >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman and commission members. Uh my name is Mario Cucherella. I'm the owner of Maplewood Development Company and just had a few comments since there's been a lot here. So, first of all, let me answer the question on the trail before I forget because a lot of things come up. Uh the county is going to require a trail section on the on the um the eastern end of the property but the west side of Manning. So we already know that and the ditch can be uh constructed such for uh storm water management that the trail can be constructed and we already know that. So we'll be able to do that. Um just a couple of points I just want to make. I know you're not familiar with us. Um you know I am proud of the fact that we we've done a lot of master plan communities. We do a lot of big projects. You know, we did the Willowbrook project down here in Oakdale, um Amber Fields down in um Rosemont and Southwest Crossroads up in Maple Grove and many many manys and Woodbury of course. So, we do have some experience and I do think there's some value in having uh one master plan for an area like this that you know you can really see and and know what the future's going to hold for those sections of the site. So, there's some value I think in master planning. I do want to say that you touched on a little bit, but you know, this one really is about how the Met Council has guided this area. Correct me if I'm wrong, Nathan, but I think there's about 100 acres roughly in Lake Elmo that the Met Council has designated for this kind of higher density use. About 76 of those acres is this. And that's kind of where it sits. It's been a difficult process because, you know, frankly, we probably would have proposed something a little bit more conventional in terms of the homes and and the layout and so forth, but that just wasn't possible for this site based on, excuse me, based on um the Met Council requirements for this. So, we went through a lot of iterations and I think that, you know, I think it's a good plan uh for what's required here and the mix of housing along with um some of the other issues that the med council fo on something like this and it's they're a little harder to get through. Um we do have considerable amount of off-site improvements. I think these are benefits to the community. The realignment of Hudson Boulevard and the extension of the sewer uh the water man to the to the west that allows for looping of the lines that provides water pressure for these areas uh sufficient without deadends and some of those things. Um we're fortunate in that I'm the owner of Bair site work and so we do a lot of uh earthwork and utilities throughout the metro area and other sites around the country. So, um, you know, we have the ability to to do that kind of work and it does benefit, frankly, your constituents. Um, you know, generally speaking, I think, um, we've got a good plan. It's been through a lot. I think the uh the screton to the north of us have done a nice job of reviewing what we've pres presented to them in terms of trying to provide them with access for their grain operation. Uh the county agrees with us. Uh these are sporadic uses. I know we you're talking a little bit about spacing, but the hard fact is is that these are uh farm uses that don't happen every day of the week. And uh I think um certainly the county has recognized that we've got a great park plan. I think it's going to look fantastic when it's done. We do a lot of you know we built um 40 acres worth of parks for Rosemont here just recently. This one has a chance to be equally as nice as that, maybe on a little smaller scale. So I really like this plan in that regard. And um I guess I would stand for some other questions. And I do have some of our other staff here who's been more involved in some of the uh specifics of the site. So we can certainly help to answer questions for you if you need to be. >> I'll go. Since you were just talking about the park, could you describe what you're planning for the park there? >> Well, we do have a plan that was shown um on one of the previous iterations, but there there is room for soccer fields. There's two of them up at the north end there. There's some uh pickle ball areas. There is off- streetet parking so the public can access this. Um so it's it's got some nice uses to it and um you know it's really going to be an active park. Um the area had designation for some smaller areas here, but without the development of the areas to the south and north, we took that on as part of this project as well. So >> are you planning any type of a pavilion for shade? I'm sorry I couldn't hear. >> Are you planning any type of pavilion for shade? >> No, these are going to be >> Yeah. Chair, sorry, chair, members of the commission. So, just to jump in on the on the parks process. Um, it's been a minute since we've seen a actual park within a development. Uh, but so just to refresh you on the process for that, uh, typically when the city receives park dedication from a development, um, the city will begin a process after the park has been effectively platted and provided to the city. So the city will manage the process of programming that park itself. And so there will be opportunities for people to, you know, say what they'd like to see within that park certainly. So I just wanted to kind of refresh the the commission on that process. >> I hear a lot about wanting pavilions in the parks because of the sun. So >> yes, makes sense. >> Put that on the list. >> The city will maintain the park. >> Yeah. >> And somebody mentioned something about a private park. Where was that? Right over there. >> Southwest corner. >> Southwest corner. >> That outlaw. [snorts] >> Yeah, I can understand your frustrations with the Met Council. I've had those for years. >> I'd be curious on price points and what would be the footprint that you're estimating for the size of the homes that are going to have the five foot sideyards. >> We can certainly let the builder speak to that. Um, LAR is partnering with us on this and that in the construction of those uh we can certainly give you some square footages and some general uh price ranges if you'd like. You want to speak to that? >> Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the commission. My name is Joe Jlansky here as a partner in this community. Um questions on price points and building types. Uh let's start with the single family homes. Those would be smaller. Um they are twocar garages. Uh we have them roughly priced from 420 to about 475 for 1,600 to 2500 square ft. Um they are on more of an urban style home site. We're prepared for that. And that's why you kind of see the square footages that you do there. Um the patio style town homes um just to the right of that, those are about 1750 square feet on average. Uh and their price points will be about 360 to 375 starting in that type of range. And then on the right hand side of the plan, the urban style town homes, uh they're about 1,900 square feet up to about 2,000, a little bit bigger. Um they do have rear load garages. Um so the fronts of the buildings actually face out towards the primary streets on those. Um and those price points are about 385 to about 430 starting price points. So, we kind of are hitting a spectrum of different price points and um building types and things out here and and with the densities in the space that we have, I think it'll be a really neat and interesting different u kind of housing stocks out for a a community like this. >> And will the single family homes have basements? >> Uh were these slab on grade? There'll be some that will and some that will not depending on how the final grading works out. >> As it currently says there's no developer for the senior living or the three apartment buildings. >> I should say a builder. Typically um we uh attract different uh builders for the u senior versus the u market rate product and those will have to come back through the process for you know once the vertical construction is known and once our uh builder for that is is uh identified. Pretty typical in the process that that doesn't happen overnight. That's going to take some time to develop the site and then see who's uh interested in that. >> I I assume this is going to be a homeowners association. >> Yes. >> And probably too early to ask, but do you have any idea if rental rentals will be allowed in those bylaws? >> Well, originally the uh northeast part of the site was designated for rental in this the 161 homes you have there. Um it's difficult to uh you know write in specific exemptions for rentals but you know they would be done just on a oneoff kind of basis. So if somebody wants to rent their their unit for a time >> I've seen it where you know 10 only 10% of units of all unit are allowed to be rented and >> we haven't we haven't talked about that but that's certainly something we would consider. >> Okay. Has there been any discussion about public transit in this area, it being so high density housing? >> Well, there was some plans in the past on the four corner site just to the south of us, which will be working in, but I haven't heard any update to that. And I understand that that fell through some time ago when that was proposed. Is that correct? I don't recall. Yeah, I think there there are some microtransit uh opportunities in this part of the city that would serve uh folks that need kind of the transit uh to the gold line which provides them with kind of direct access to some gold line access potentially but no fixed route transit at this moment. >> I find that interesting. >> Did you want to expand on that? I I can I guess it was this was supposed to be like a commercial park at one time and all of a sudden it got transitioned into this tight housing and I do happen to live beside one of these new town home type things and right off the bat I'll tell you there's not enough parking for anybody. It does become a big problem. >> People don't always want to accept that and realize it but um this is going to be tight and the gold line. Yes, I was I was there Met Council was here proposing the gold line to come down to Lake Delmwood and Manning Avenue quite a few years ago and the council in their wisdom said no that wasn't a good idea and so then they went kind of from Oakdale down into uh Woodbury and it's very not used utilized very well at this point in time nor has it been the last what year or so. >> So that's all I know to do. If there are any more questions because we got a full agenda here just trying to move things forward. >> Um >> any more questions for developer. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Uh and with that uh we're going to I'll open up the public hearing and then after that we can have discussion before we move to a motion. >> Um if you'd like to speak I believe we needed Did anybody fill out a form? >> Yep. >> If not that's fine. Um, is it already comes forward or we need still still fill it out? >> Yeah, if you want to come forward name and address. >> Name and address, please. >> We need a motion to open the public hearing. >> Oh, yeah. I haven't. Thank you very much. That's why you're here. >> Motion to open the public hearing. >> Second. >> All right. All in favor? >> I. >> Public hearing uh is open at 7:30. No, 7:27. >> Thank you. My name is Alexen. [clears throat] I am one of the family members who owns and farms the property to the north that you've been talking a little bit about today. Uh as I think that was described by Nathan, that's our bin site. And so that's really important to our operation because more or less all our grain goes through that. We I think Nathan did a good job of summarizing sort of what we think is a workable plan. I think the developer has worked with us and I think we've come forward with a proposal that that works for us. And so I just wanted to make that point first and foremost. We appreciate that and that's something that I think we can work with. The only other thing I I really wanted to say today was as a part of that proposed access plan that means we're taking a lot of lefts on Manning onto Fifth Street and then a rights into that bin site. And so we've got a proposed trail there that would cut across that access. And as I understand it, that trail can include bikes, ebikes, pedestrians, etc. And so we're a little concerned about having trucks and equipment and other things coming in at the same place as uh where we're having pedestrians and other people on this trail. And as as we understand it right now, there isn't currently that's sort of a trail to nowhere in terms of there's nothing along Manning. There's nothing across the street. We understand it sounds like there might be something on on the east of this. There might be a trail. And so it'd be preferential to us that either we wait and if and when our property develops to build out that trail or move it to the south. And that's specifically just that portion between Limch Parkway and Manning. We just have concerns about safety there. >> Sure. >> That's it. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else to speak on this project? All right. >> Motion to close the public hearing. >> Thank you. >> Second >> and we will close the public hearing at 7:29. >> Call a question. >> I'm sorry. Call the question. >> Oh, you call. >> Yes. Yes. All in favor? >> I >> I >> All right. Public hearing close at 7:29. Thank you. Uh and with that, do we have a motion on the table? I'll move to recommend the city council approve the preliminary plat requested by Maplewood Development on the subject property based on the findings of fact and recommended conditions of approval listed in the staff report. >> Second. All right. Uh discussion. >> Been a lot of work that has gone into this plan. Um and a lot of work with Met Council to make it happen. Um I do like that the price point. I mean, houses are expensive now, but we're not putting in $ 1.5 million houses. There's affordable houses. I don't love how close they are together, but um it sounds like there's not a whole lot with the medium density and the high density. That's it's kind of what it's supposed to be. So, for those reasons, I'm for this development. >> Thank you. >> I think it's really a a well-designed plan. I like that there's multiple different types of housing in there and the really big park in the middle. I I think it I think it's turning out really nice. Good job. >> I also really like this plan. I thought it was really thought out. I really enjoyed the parks in the middle and the different uses that that park will bring. Anyone else? >> To to me it's it's it's extremely dense, but you're trying to work with however you do. I I didn't really care for, you know, adding extra 29 units instead of to the area because it just makes it tighter. But, um, nevertheless, it's something we have to keep working on. I do have a concern on on good water going to everybody in time. And uh I guess it's it's something that's going to come get us. >> I look at generally the the growth in the communities around it, especially Woodberry, that they do have high density housing in that area. So it kind of fits the mixed use that is in that corridor at I 94. as well as there are there's plenty of infrastructure that it seems developers sometimes struggle with in Lake Elmo in terms of access to especially sewer interceptors and um traffic considerations the further into the more rural areas that haven't been as intensely developed. >> All right. I like the project. I know they've worked on it. It's been a long four years since the first time I came across it whether it was watching a council meeting or workshop. So, I appreciate the work that you guys have done putting this together and trying to meet everyone's objectives knowing that that's not always possible. Um, with that, should we uh call the question here the motion on the table, which is to move to recommend the city council approve the preliminary platin requested by Maplewood Development on the subject property based on the findings of fact and recommendated recommended conditions of approval listed in the staff report. All in favor? >> I >> I. Any opposed? The motion passes. When will this go to council? >> So, we are looking at uh we're looking at [clears throat] the council date. So, that's TBD for now. >> Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Um before we move to the next item, again, if you uh would like to speak during the public hearing for uh the Inwood commercial property development, we ask that you fill out a form in the back and get that to Sophia. Um we'll follow the same format in which we will take a presentation from staff. Uh, we'll ask questions and then we will open it up for the public hearing. >> Sorry. >> It's okay. I know. I know. I know. I can't do it. >> I know. I know. I I'm working on it. I'm working on myself every day. >> All right, Sophia. Next item is Inwood Commercial Preliminary Plat. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, the applicant for tonight's application is Vadness Associates. The property is out lot K of Inwood. It is just over 17 acres. It is currently zoned commercial with a partial Shorland overlay. In the city's comprehensive plan, it is guided as commercial. Little history on this area. It was included in the 2014 Inwood Master development as an anticipated commercial area. And the request before you tonight is for a five lot commercial subdivision. Um, just to get your bearings on the parcel, north of this parcel is 10th Street. To the south is Fifth Street and Quicktrip. To the west is uh Golf Course, City of Oakdale and Inwood Avenue. And then to the east is the Inwood residential component. So this is the proposed plat and it is flipped on its side due to the length of the parcel. Um, so north is on the left side, south is on the right side. It is a pretty simple subdivision. It includes one north south street connection, one east west street connection and I will note that these curb cuts are already in the streets um due to that 2014 master plan. And then it is five commercial lots for an application like this. Staff is reviewing land use and zoning, bulk standards, tree preservation and landscaping, grading, storm water and wetland impacts, public infrastructure and park dedication. And then I will note that this is not a PUD, so there are no flexibilities being requested. They're meeting um all of our zoning regulations. So specific items to highlight for this request include land use and performance standards. So there the application before you tonight is not proposing any tenant approvals. So no buildings, no parking lots, no users. Those will all come forward at a future date and receive necessary review and land use approvals at that time. Um, so they did ghost plat buildings on some of the plans. That's just to show that the lots could fit a parking lot in a building, but that's not necessarily the layout that would be at the end of the day. The next item to review is traffic access and parking. So again, there are two streets, one north south, one east west. There are two county access points with this proposal and one city road access. Uh, the rightway is 60 foot wide and the proposed street is 28 foot wide. And um again, because there are no tenants, we would review off- streetet parking um based on the use at the time the tenant is proposed. There is no signage proposed here. So, we would review that at the time with the tenants. And park dedication for commercial is a set fee based on the acreage of the lot. So, we'd be looking at just over $100,000. And then storm water management. So, again, this parcel was anticipated to be commercial in that 2014 master plan. And as such, these storm water facilities have capacity built into them to accommodate for this impervious surface. So looking at shorland overlay, because it is within the shorland overlay, the parcels are only allowed 30% impervious surface, which is hard cover. So buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, anything where rain can't get immediately into the ground. Um, and this is far less than our typical commercial development. Your typical commercial land use allows up to 75% hard cover. So, just by being in the Shorland overlay, you're going to have a lot more green space on these parcels than you otherwise would. And then a note that because it is in a natural environment shorland overlay, a CUP is required for the commercial uses here. So looking at landscaping, there are minor revisions required to the landscape plan and no tree preservation plan is required here because there are no significant trees since the site was masqueraded in 2014. Um there are boulevard trees that would be required at the time of subdivision improvements here and species include maple, hackberry, lotus, coffee tree, oak, elm, lynen, spruce, pine, crab apple, and lilac. And then just a note on screening and buffering since that was a um I received a few questions on that. So landscaping and screening will be required on each lot as they develop. Um there's really nothing to screen at this point since there are no buildings or parking lots with this proposal. So this slide further illustrates the landscaping that is in this area. So the purple polygon is the existing trees that were planted in that original residential development. And so those trees are 8 to 10 years old probably at this point. And then the green trees along the boulevards would be the ones that are installed with this application before you this evening. So those trees would run north south um adjacent to the existing trees and then east west on that new connection. And then the red area is just a general layout of where buffering would be needed for the tenants. So likely Birming and landscaping. Um so all three of those layered on each other is is your screening between the proposed commercial uses and the residential. So this application was sent out for agency review. We received comments from the fire department regarding drive lanes, access points, signage, hydrants, fire suppression, addressing, EMS systems, knock systems, and electric vehicle charging. Um, I did already touch on the landscape architect memo, but we can circle back if needed. The DNR provided comments on the impervious surface limit and the cup uh requirement within that Shorland overlay district. The city of Oakdale would like to maintain a full intersection at that 9inth Street proposal which is proposed. The Washington County provided a memo or a note that they have addressed the intersection concerns that they outlined in their November 2025 memo. The South Washington Wershed District has indicated the applicant is working on their permitting and review requirements. And then as this moves into final plat, the city attorney would need to review and provide a plat opinion. So staff is recommending four findings of fact. The first is that the request is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and future land use map. Second is that it complies with the subdivision regulations. Third is that it meets our zoning code requirements. And fourth is that it's consistent with our design standards. And staff is also recommending 16 conditions of approval. Pretty much all of these are standard since it is not a PUD with no flexibilities. Uh those relate to review memos, agreements, fees, permits, uh prelim plat expiration, and future reviews. And then a public hearing was sent to surrounded property owners on May 18th, published in the local paper on May 22nd, and it was also um we sent it out through that new push notification method on the city's website. We received two written items. Allan and Lou Stoker uh 8680 Upper 7th Place provided comments in support of the development but requested consideration for screening of vehicle headlights in addition to tree plantings. There was also a petition that was submitted by 11 uh different residential parcels which noted concerns on traffic light and noise. They requested a soundproof wall or structure and traffic calming methods. And then I will note that right before the meeting we did receive additional pages of signatures. So staff is recommending approval with conditions and I can stand for any questions and we do have the developer here this evening. Sophia, at one time I knew that our guidelines required um a fence or masonry wall in between a less intensive and more intensive use. Is that that's since changed, hasn't it? Is the fence still required or no? >> Uh they need to achieve 90% opacity and at least six feet in height and that could be through mixed methods burming fencing and landscaping. Um in this case because they don't have any users at this point, >> right? >> There's nothing to screen. Um that is something that would be required as the tenants come in. >> Okay. >> So it would be on each individual tenants responsibility and >> and because they're going to require CUP anyway, that would they're going to come through this body. >> Correct. >> Yeah. for each use. All right. >> Could you go back to the slide with the burm >> with the >> the red mark for the burm? >> So, it's not necessarily a burm. It's just showing generally where landscaping a fence >> landscape. >> Yeah. So, it could be anything >> that provides 90% opacity. >> Correct. >> At six feet. Yeah. >> At six feet high. I guess what I'm wondering about is what's going to block Ninth Street from those two houses number 11 and 12 since there's no nothing there. Those seem to be the ones that are going to have the greatest impact. >> Could you say that one more time? >> Um the homes on Irving Circle number 11 and 12, they're right where 9inth Street in the gap >> north comes in. >> It's possible that the again the the red area is just a general line that I had drawn on here. It's possible that the it could curve down to block um headlights as they turn it. >> And the and the green on there are trees that are proposed that are going to be put in by the developer. >> Correct. >> They all kind of stack on each other to achieve >> is already existing landscaping on those lots. >> Correct. >> Is there anything that says the screening couldn't be done on the north side of Irene >> in the purple area? >> Correct. should be >> um it's off the developer property, so they need to get >> consent. East side of Irene. My bad. I forgot we're flipped. >> So, it's off off the developer property, so they need to get consent. Um I think part of that's a city um pond. So, we'd have to work out some logistics there. >> Then you're running into personal property >> and then that would be Yeah. Well, it's we're talking about the Ninth Street with cars pulling in. No, you can't screen where the opening Ninth Street hits >> running there with their headlights all the time. >> That's why I was wondering if you could put something on the east side of Irene. But if that's not the developer's property, then >> they can't do it. But if they're putting trees in along the road, >> you could have a really nice arborite wall there. >> Or something decorative that just is a buffer >> to block the lights. That might be something to add. >> People are sensitive to different decibel ratings and lights and so on, which would be going in and out, which would be very discuss. Any more questions for Sophia? >> So, we talk about when the tenants, you know, decide to build their building, but ultimately still the developer is still owning everything. I mean, the tenants would be leasing, correct? >> Well, I'll let the developer speak to that. I believe they're selling the lots. >> Okay. >> Each of those will go through a review and we'll have an opportunity to talk about >> they're going to have to come here for CUP because of the watershed district, >> right? So, each of those lots will have a review and we'll >> correct. They'll have a public hearing notice and review and um the sites will be >> more fleshed out than they are right now. >> And is there a trail proposed along in wood there? >> Let's see. So, they are providing the corridor there and um they are also providing a trail connection in let's see if I can get the laser pointer up here probably from Fifth Street to up to 10th >> I see it there. >> Um it's not coming up for me but um running north south. So, starting at Fifth Street on Irene Avenue, they're proposing a trail that comes up on the east side all the way up to an existing trail that stubs by the city's pond. Um, so they're also doing an internal trail. >> Nothing on nothing on Inwood, though. >> It looks like there's trail on the west side and it says 4 foot turf mo strip along back of trail. >> Bottom right says 8 foot puminous trail. >> Correct. So that's within the the county's requirements is a trail along Inwood. >> That's a future that's not a part of this development. That's something the county would put in. >> Off the top of my head, I believe you're dedicating the >> correct north south on Inwood. >> Correct. So they're dedicating the necessary room for it, but the construction is not included with this. >> Perfect. Is it sidewalk or trail along Irene or both? >> Not a trail. >> Neither. >> It's a sidewalk. >> It's a sidewalk. >> Yeah. >> All right. >> Concrete. >> Concrete. >> Cool. Any other questions for staff? We like to hear from the developer, please. Hello, Commission. Um, appreciate the opportunity to present this. >> Can you pull the microphone close? Thank you. >> There we go. >> I'm Judy. I'm one of the owners. And this is Dan, who is also one of the owners. And we're very hands-on. This land was the original PUD was developed with um my father back 10 12 years ago and he has since passed on and we are just getting to the commercial area of it now. >> Sure. >> Any questions? >> There's there's one already interested in the the cafe, the gaming cafe. You've got one tenant already. >> Correct. So, even we have the four of the lots as ghost plans and we are getting more specific on the southernmost partial um basically to help them along. So, but they would still have to go through the whole process of getting their approval with you. Have you got have you had any conversations with the residents to the east? >> The residents? >> The homeowners to the east? >> No, I have not had any direct contact. >> Okay. All right. That's all we got. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for your time, panelist. >> Yeah. All right. And with that, uh, if I can get a motion, we can open the public hearing. >> Make a motion to open the public hearing. Second. >> All right. All in favor? >> I I >> I. >> And we'll open the public hearing for the Inwood commercial development at 7:49 p.m. Thank you. Uh, I've got two people who've chosen to speak. um when I call your name, you can come up and give your name and address and you have six minutes and uh I'll let you know when you hit five. Um again, we are here just to listen. We aren't here to answer questions nor as staff, but it's important that you get the opportunity to express your opinion, your voice, and your concerns. Um and with that, I'll talk start with Paul Prior. Chair and commissioners, good evening. I'm a little too tall for this. Uh I had three items I wanted to address. Uh the first one I was talking with Sophia earlier about this. The burm uh coming in along the purple there. Uh especially where you come in on ninth. uh that's not more than 3 ft high or so. If you go up Fifth Street just past the entrance to the development, that hill, that burm is like 10, 12 feet high and it's got trees and bushes and shrubbery on it. Okay, that prevents the lights from going into the back of those houses on Fifth Street. And on 10th Street, there is a burm starting, but it goes away pretty quick before you get up to Island. uh straight ahead from uh Ninth Street, those trees there, if they lose the leaves, there's no block in the light coming into your house. And coming in off of 10th Street, the house number four, five, and seven and eight, those cars come in there, especially in the winter about 4:30, five o'clock, it's dark and they're going to get hit with the lights, headlights, bright or dim. coming in off of Fifth Street, it's not going to be so bad. Uh you look at the houses 12, 13, 14, 15 there, and they're up on top of a a retaining wall that has to be about 15 to 18 feet high on the east or the north side of that pond, that holding pond there. Okay. So my question for the council commission is why aren't we building a burm or continuing that retaining wall or a portion of that retaining wall so the headlights aren't going into those homes? I would think a fence on top of a burm a sufficient burm not just a three-foot null. I mean a car could lose control. We've seen that happen before and just drive into somebody's backyard. That would not be good. Uh the next item is I'm sorry. The next item is uh what's the plan for lighting? We talked about that with Sophia. Uh there is no plan for lighting at this point for the parking lot. Uh we had the developers will have to come up with that. I guess my thought is I work for the city of St. Paul Parks and Recreation for 47 years. Built numerous recreation centers around the city. Every resident said, "The tennis court lights, the parking lights, the field lights, turn them away from our house, put shields on them, protect our windows. We don't want lights in the front yard." Two or three months later, hey, can you turn those lights towards my house, between the houses, a little more security. So, uh, people don't know what they really want. But if we look at the lights, for example, Washington County, the Lake Elmo Park Reserve, the ski trail, I'm a pilot. I fly over that all the time when I come in at night to Lake Elmo. You can see that trail and those are dim lights, but you can see that bright as day from the airplane. So, I'm thinking we can find some happy medium with the lighting not to have it so bright shining into the homes. On the other hand, it should be bright enough and enough lighting that they can cover the driveway on uh whatever that street's going to be called there. I don't know what that's called. North something Avenue. >> Irene. >> Irene. There we go. Uh the last one is a trail connection below the wall uh just to the south of house 12 1314 and there between there and the pond. Uh there's a retaining wall again 15 to 18 ft high and there's a trail below that going into the neighborhood. Is that trail going to be connected to a sidewalk or a path or any trail along Irene there? That would be a question to connect the neighbors to the businesses if they so choose to use it. >> That's all I had. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Uh next I have Dolly Lander Ladner. Good evening. I'm Dolly Ladner, 994 Irving Court North. I'm the house right next to 10th street there. Uh couple of questions. One was regarding the walking path. Um right now we get people walking across our burm kind of down into our backyard and so there is a concern of safety and privacy with Irene 15 ft from our property. I would support u some sort of a wall for privacy, security um and noise. Um some issues many of the residents are asking about where the developer is going to developer will place the buildings. Will the parking be in front toward Inwood or will the parking be behind toward our homes? It's hard to hear. Okay. And uh Sophia addressed the uh the new trees between Irene and the current property owners. Again, I would reiterate a concern and a request for something more substantial to keep walkers out, especially if a trail system is built in this development. And then I have one more comment. Uh the May issue of the business view magazine focused on Lake Elmo and it was very well done. We live in a great community. Um, Lake Elmo is described as a growing community that blends rural character with thoughtful strategic development. It's revol evolving while preserving a small town feel. One of the other comments was uh the developers are taking or the city, excuse me, is taking a deliberate approach focusing on where and how growth happens. It's expanding residential areas and park systems with the city balancing new opportunities with long-standing priorities, ensuring that change supports the character residents value rather than replacing it. uh that balance between growth and preservation has become the guiding principle behind nearly every planning decision in the city. It is reflected not only in zoning and land use policies but also in how the city engages with residents and stakeholders at every stage. From city leadership, this is not just a planning strategy. It's a commitment to residents. Developments are designed to integrate with the surrounding environment and support the broader goal of walkable connected neighborhoods, ensuring that growth enhances rather than disrupts the existing community fabric. So, my hope is that these aren't just printed words and that you will consider our requests. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. I don't have any other cheats you'd like to speak. >> Yeah, I'm not an agenda, but >> but then I need you to come to the I need you to come to the podium, sir. I need your name and your address, please. Thank you. >> My name is Dan Morales. Uh I live at 8669 Lower 8, please. And uh looking at the uh slide here, I just want to fill in some information that you need to know. Uh where it has reposed trees, our house basically or about eight homes are right uh there's a pond behind us. There are eight homes back there and where it has the existing trees. If you're to go between uh 10th and Fifth Street, there's probably maybe a total of eight trees that are scattered. There'd be one here, 20 ft later, another five, 100 ft later, another three or four. But, uh, what I'm looking at is I know they're proposing to adding more trees, but I honestly don't believe that that will fix the problem where we'll have, as a gentleman was mentioning earlier, the lights. If you're on Irene, the proposed street Irene is above the pond [snorts] and the homes behind there are lower. So, you're looking at Irene being higher than the homes behind you. Right now, when you have cars coming between Quick Trip, which is on Fifth, and Inwood, coming out of the lot, they're right glaring. The lights are glaring because of the homes being a little lower than Fifth Street. Can you imagine now an Irene street cars coming, especially if they're looking at the proposed buffering being on the other side of where the homes are. So, basically, you're saying, "This is Irene. You're the back of the development there between uh fifth and 10th. So the lights are going to be heading this way towards you on Irene because the homes are down lower. So if they're proposing to put a buffer, the buffer should really be on the other side of Irene. So at least there'll be a buffering from the headlights coming from that are going on Irene. The other issue is someone mentioned when we were having a conversation uh several days back that during the period of the construction traffic is going to be uh rerouted. Obviously, they can't go through Irene. So, there's only one way to go to between 5th and 10th. That's either Inwood or Island Trail, which is right in the middle of our development. So, you have people coming, traffic coming between 5th and 10th. And again, it depends on how long the uh the project is going to last. But if it's going to last an average maybe a year, we're going to have a lot of folks coming down Island Trail, which is a community residential area, which you're hoping they'll go no more than 25 miles, but you and I know that's not going to happen with people want to get on between 5th and 10th. So, we have a a negative right there when it comes time to building the project. So, uh, those are the basically the things I'm looking at is the traffic, uh, being rerouted and people taking the shortcut between fifth and 10th, which is mean, which means Island Trail, which means we're going to residents there are going to be having some possible traffic uh, uh, interruption. And what else? Uh, buffering trees. I think that's added. Uh, that'd be great. But again, that wall should be on the other side of Irene to eliminate the uh the lights coming down on Irene. That's all I have to say. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you for your time. >> Yeah. >> Is there anyone else that'd like to speak? [clears throat] >> So, my name is Tim Dwire. I'm at 8644 Irving Circle North. Um I share a similar concern to what Dolly had uh presented. So I have a the back lot that's on the burm in the purple. It's not as much of a effect of the lighting issue of the lights coming into the development. My concern is uh the security of of I I think a fencing a consistent fencing from 10th street to Fifth Street would be providing very good buffer for um privacy uh security uh and then also the issues here that are associated with uh noise and lighting. Uh, I think that would be a very easy a very affordable solution. I think it would be good in conjunction with the proposed trees. Uh, and also for the aesthetics of the subdivision itself. Um, my concern as being a property owner on the back is mostly the security of that. We currently do have people that come up in there right now. They're just manually walking through that vacant property. now that we would have the proposal of uh these tenants here um that would be a concern for me and I think it would be a very easy affordable way to provide a very adequate solution. So that's all I've got. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? >> All right. Do have a motion to close the public hearing. >> Motion to close the public hearing. >> Becca. And with that, uh, all in favor? >> I. And with that, we'll close a public hearing at 8:03 p.m. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Chair. If I could correct some information that I had previously stated. Um, so there is a sidewalk that's running on the west side of Irene Avenue and then a trail segment partially um from the south halfway up and connecting to that existing Inwood Trail. >> Okay. Um, and then they are proposing trails along the county roads, but that those details would need to be worked out during final plat. >> All right. So, the trail would come from the north side of the pond and then cut south back down to Fifth Street. >> Correct. >> Okay. Doesn't go north. >> What's that? >> It would just tie into the existing network. It would loop. It would not go north. >> Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, Sophia. >> [clears throat] >> All right. Do we have a motion to discuss? >> Motion to discuss. >> Nope. I need a M. The >> motion recommend approval of the preliminary P plat requested by Vaness Associates on the subject property based on the findings of fact and recommended conditions of approval listed in the staff report. >> Second. >> Have a second. discussion. >> I think having that opacity, that 90% opacity buffer that's currently proposed on the west side of Irene, if there would be a way they could move it to the east side of Irene to not only buffer parking lot lights, but traffic lights and pedestrian traffic. So basically just switching it to the other side of Irene instead of being in the parking lots of the proposed businesses would address a lot of the public comments we've seen tonight. >> You're saying shift it to the east. >> Yep. Shift it to the east. So shift it to the other side of Irene. So it is contiguous and offers a barrier between Irene and the residences. It may require Irene to be pushed over a little bit because you know the the city and the developer can't put anything on already existing private property. But just uh moving the buffer to the other side of the road would address a lot of the concerns, especially with noise, lights, sound um from the businesses. >> Building off of that, I I wanted to ask Sophia, so what is the setback requirement for the west side of those buildings from Inwood? Could could could that street potentially be moved to the west and the setback still have enough room for the [clears throat] setback and the parking in the buildings there? >> I believe there would be enough room for the building setbacks. The concern that I would have is the access curb cuts are already installed in the street. So the street geometries, I'm not sure how those would play out. That would be subject to engineering review. And then the boulevard currently is not large enough to fit a a burm. Um, so reconsiderations would need to be done there. And then also by making a larger boulevard, you're making smaller lots and they're already capped at 30%. So you'd be further reducing their buildable area. >> Um, but that's something for the developer to maybe take a look at. >> Yeah, I definitely think some a burm or a landscape feature rather than something along the lines of a fence that requires maintenance and then who owns it after the fact. if these are going to be sold. So, find something that is natural and durable and doesn't require a large amount of maintenance. >> Couple things that were brought up. Um, is it possible to do a no construction traffic through that island road when the construction goes on so that they don't have that traffic coming through there? Is that standard? >> Um, I'm not sure when there would be construction traffic driving through there. The construction to build the street would be off of Fifth Street and the county road. And then once those streets are in, um, the tenant construction would be done off of Irene Avenue. >> Um, >> I don't know when it would be >> right. There wouldn't be any need for construction traffic going through the middle from 5th to 10th >> along >> uh the island or whatever that road is through the middle of development. Okay. >> Yeah. the elevation of those homes in there next to um Irene that that that is definitely something to think about in terms of providing them some some sort of a buffer there. I mean this is you're going from residential to commercial there there there's really I mean it just seems like there should be something there. I' I'd be in favor of this proposal with an amendment to it. Yeah, these transition things are are challenging for everybody as we well know. And we do have still have the the the night the uh the sky ordinance, dark sky ordinance. So that should help a little bit on the lighting, the noise and the safety and privacy. It is important to those of us who live here and it isn't always thought about whenever people are doing commercial. And um it's just something coniferous trees probably would be a good buffer too. And uh some I did read in here that some of the trees have died and perhaps I don't know what the replacement protocol is anymore whether it's so many years they have to die within before they get replaced or if they're automatically replaced or how that goes. I think it's important understand the pond on the south half of this is owned by the city >> and then you're against private residences all the way going north. Correct. Yeah. So if there's mitigation work along the pond that's going to be that's the city's truly the city's responsibility >> if there are lost trees >> would there oh trees. Yeah. Okay. >> We wouldn't need a burm though over in that area. And I definitely feel for the the residents that purchased these homes as part of a master plan development, but residences were put in first and business comes second. So the expectations of >> maybe not knowing the development, >> but this was all platted. This was all put together at the same time. So there haven't been any zoning changes any >> since any house is built. This has always been called that it was going to be commercial property. >> Okay. Could there be some additional requirements for those lots that would be helpful to the residents that are neighboring here? >> Um, so since it is not a PUD, um, they aren't required to provide any additional amenities. They meet the zoning code. Um, I believe the planning commission can make a recommendation that they enhance that um, if they choose to. If I could just jump in to support I I echo Sophia's comment just chairing commission uh reconsideration of the trees that are proposed on the east side of the through street could be you know something just worth consideration just there was a comment on coniferous trees you know evergreen trees obviously help with headlight screening >> year round >> the reason I'm on this planning commission is because an office warehouse park was built in my backyard as Sophia well knows. Um and I you know I had the same feelings that you all did and um it's not perfect but it's pretty good and uh there's there's adequate screening and so when when these proposals do come before us and before the city council we're going to be talking about this all again to make sure that you know we're doing the best that we can to screen commercial businesses from you know low residential housing. But um similar to my situation, this was always planned to be commercial business here and so it's it's not like any zoning has changed like we talked about. But um it won't be perfect, but it'll be as best as it probably can be. >> I concur. I think we've got limitations within the way the law is written to what we can push back on. Uh if there an amendment wants to be made that we want to change and require that to be uh coniferous or evergreen trees, we can we can add that as an amendment, but I need someone to do that. >> But I think it's already in there because we have it it's in the guidelines to be 90% opaque, right? So, however they want to achieve that, it's um I know there's a little gray area whether it's 90% opaque >> year round when there's trees on them on new leaves on the trees or not, but it's something that I think we'll need to visit when these businesses do come for their conditional use. Right. But I think there's some requirement when the businesses come into play. But for now, this is the plan in play that's being approved with the road and the development. And obviously that needs whatever needs to get put in for this. We need to make sure we've got that covered. >> I think their concern necessarily isn't like the businesses and the parking. It is the traffic and the vehicle headlights off Irene. noise and noise >> and noise >> and safety >> and the street is we're locked in on that street where it is. That's what you I'm understanding. >> I would have to defer to the city engineer, but I know the curb cuts are >> predetermined and the geometries are predetermined. So, if there's flexibility >> over to the west a little further maybe and then create more space on the on the on the east side of that street so that there could be maybe two tiers of trees. It would require reconfiguration of the sidewalks, trails, street, and lot size. >> And what about something at the end of 9inth Street there? Just maybe it could be a part of uh the development introduction or something that there is a some sort >> at the T >> at the T in the road there because [clears throat] I think that's where I mean I I understand coming off 10th and fifth there's going to probably not fifth as much as 10th, but I think this ninth street is going to be more of an issue with the turning headlights on those back those back yards there. >> So, what do we propose? I don't I don't know what to some small retainer right there or like a a brick wall with maybe a sign of the development on it. Something that looks nice. And >> I I I I don't know you're going be able to get to a point where you're going to solve the problem for everybody with all things. It is what it is. I think beyond natural landscaping it is what it is with the where the location of the road and the location of the property lines. >> Well, here's a benefit. If if if we can look for the silver lining here, the these are 30% impervious commercial lots, that's really significant. If they're normally uh what did you say 70%? Yeah. I mean, so there's going to be it is going to be a much more of a greener green green space development for those commercial lots. So I guess I I'd have to look at that and you know keeping the balance with what we've got going here. >> And the hardest thing is is determining means of methods where what you said the standard is 90% opacity whether that is natural landscaping or physical barrier. It's not for us to determine how that is done. that is up for them to propose how to meet that standard. Could we apply that standard to the proposed plantings or buffer on the east side of Irene and just say there needs to be a 90% opacity barrier on the east side of Irene. >> I'll second that. Whether it's Conifer's retaining wall that's three feet high. I >> we add Can we say that as can we get that language as an amendment to add to this? So you want to say it again? >> I don't feel like that's a reasonable expectation for somebody to build a 90% >> opacity >> opacity barrier from for a mile along a road. But if they're all if they're all uh conifers >> at 90% opacity at six feet tall, that's >> could there be could there be two two tiers there? >> Just drop in here too. Um >> so when we did review the screening ordinance, it's from a more intense versus less intense land use and the city generally doesn't include a roadway as a land use category. >> Um so that's the intent of why it's on the tenant side because they're the ones responsible for screening. Um, if we were to put on the other side of Irene, I do think that would still, regardless of if it's a fence or a burm or retaining wall, you still have to have some considerations into the size of that boulevard because once those trees are mature, it would conflict with the retaining wall and fence. So, if that is the recommendation, there still would be some revisions required. All right. So, if we'd like to, someone would like to make an amendment to the current motion that's on the table or we're going to vote on the motion as as it stands. >> The only thing is to deal deal with something on the east side, I think. And I don't know how you do that with that just being the edge of the boulevard there without moving the street unless the property I don't know. You >> bring the motion back up. the planning commission may make a amendment I suppose to um urge the developer to reconsider screening on that side. So that leaves it open-ended on what it could be and doesn't speak to the feasibility requirement of it. >> Um >> but they could >> consider revisions. I want to make sure that we give staff and the developer enough guidance in what we're doing versus uh really vague language that doesn't help out. >> Um >> more specific. >> So would we move to recommend approval per request by Vandis Associates on the subject property with the requirement for additional screening on the East side >> of Irene >> of Irene. >> I I think I don't know if that's clear enough or that's too vague. Um >> additional screening on these. >> I think that should be sufficient. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Recommended approval listed on the staff report plus might want to make it slightly more specific to say the concern is vehicle headlights and traffic which is >> the reasoning >> not necessarily six feet but could be three or four. You know, we're trying to mitigate mainly headlights and lights from vehicle traffic rather than full city standard screening. >> The trees aren't going to do it. >> Yeah. >> Some a hedge or something in there. Last slide, previous slide, you had proposed I mean the answer there just reverse the proposed >> I'm sorry we're not taking public comment at this time. Thank you. So move to recommend approval of premier plat request by Vandis associates in the subject property based on the finds in the fact and recommended conditions of approval listed in the staff report in addition to addressing additional screening requirements on the east side of Irene. >> Do I have a second on that motion amendment? Second. >> Okay. Any more discussion? All right. All in favor of the motion with the amendment as read. >> All in favor? >> I >> I >> I >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion with the amendment passes. Thanks, Sophia. >> Just a note, this is going to city council on June 16th. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I'll take a five minute recess if people want to leave additional screening. So, it's open to whatever they want to come up with. >> High five. >> Thank you. >> No, always want to. >> Of course. Get home and we'll do it, right? talk to our spouses or friends or >> I Yeah, I recall the backyard. Your backyard. I remember that vividly. >> Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] >> Because you know, you've been through it like I've been scared. >> Thank you. >> It's horrible. >> I have had such a problem with my Century Link since I've had it. And the guy, they were out last week. They were out three months ago. I mean, it's Let's get uh started back in here, please. >> All right. All right. >> Hello again, chair and members of the commission. So, uh we're going to talk tonight about a city initiated comprehensive plan amendment. I'll tell you a little bit about how we got here. I think that's important. and then we'll talk about what it means for the city moving forward. So, uh let's begin with the background. The uh Lake Elmo is part of the Met Council area as uh city within the Met Council. The city of Lake Elmo receives a system statement um every 10 years or so and that's the real kickoff to the comprehensive plan update process. So, every city in the Met Council region receives a system statement. I think as you might remember from the planning commission training uh that we did earlier this year, the city's system statement um has within it a basically a table that contains the ex the expectations from the mech council on generally the population growth in the city uh in the in the year 2030, 2040 and 2050 or through those years. And so um system statements are published in September. Uh in this case the 2025 system statements was published in September. Uh from that time of publication uh the city has technically under state statute 60 days to appeal system statement. U majority vast majority I would say of communities in the Met Council region do not appeal their system statements. Um most often because they don't find a need for that. uh most issues that cities might have with their system statement uh typically as we'll talk as we'll talk about can be worked out through the through you know through just everyday coordination with the Met Council staff. Um in this particular situation the White Bear Lake court case appears to have had uh some impact on the system statement that the city of Lake Elmo received. uh the the impact seems to have been sort of a a decrease in the expectation for population growth in the city of Lake Elmo. And so we'll talk about that. So, uh first of all, I kind of mentioned what a system statement is, but uh just to touch a little bit more on this. A system statement is an individualized document uh that indicates how communities are impacted by regional plans. So this includes things like the transportation system, the water resources in the area, regional parks and trails, etc. Um once the system statements are released, cities are then expected to update their comprehensive plan. And so that's what that's kind of where the city is in process right now. Uh here is a little bit of information pulled from the system statement. Um at the top of the screen, that top table, that is the imagine 2050 forecast for the city of Lake Elmo. As you can see, the population is that top row in that table. Um, they tell us that the 2020 population was just over 11,000. Uh, 2030 is expected to be 15,000. Uh, 2040 16,900. And then by 2050, the city of Lake Elmo is expected to have 18,900. And so the implication of this uh of this table is actually it's quite important because um particularly with households this is kind of the expectation that this that lake that uh the Met Council has for the city of Lake Elmo like from a sewer service standpoint as you know the Met Council provides regional sewer to communities in the metro uh in order to provide and plan for regional sewer uh they produce these population and household estimates that they kind of base the provision of their services on. And so there's a number of different things that cities uh do to kind of meet regional policies and kind of work, you know, in in theory work handinhand with the Met Council to grow in a way that um is is planned. So the implications of these forecasts for cities, as I mentioned, they're important really. They they guide the updates that cities will begin on their comp plans. So each community is expected to carry some share of regional growth. It's you know expected to be proportionate to the size of the community. Um these you know these forecasts do aid in that long range wastewater system planning. The Met Council is thinking in really longterm increments and when they're thinking about providing wastewater service in the metro um and these forecasts in some cases might be used by other agencies. Um, you know, for example, the DNR when they're understanding or trying to understand what are the growth trends for communities in the Twin Cities, the Met Council does have uh dem demographers. They have people on staff that are trained in in this area um that are, you know, population modelers. So, I just want to kind of quickly walk through a timeline of events and then we'll we'll talk about the impacts here. So, in September, as I mentioned, the system statements were released. Um, in October, uh, the city's staff about a month later, uh, met with the Met Council and asked some specific questions just at a high level about the system statement. We noticed that the population estimates seemed a bit low, just to be honest. And so, uh, they did they just weren't quite squaring with, you know, kind of what we were seeing coming down. As you've seen now, a couple of developments, uh, in front of you, the the numbers didn't quite seem to square. So anyways, we were asking about what were the data sources or trends informing the population and the household estimates. Um and then we also asked what happens if development exceeds the forecasted growth because again we kind of got the sense that you know it seems like population growth here based on projects that are known to be in the pipeline seemed like the numbers might be need to be a little higher. So, uh, right after the meeting, the Met Council followed up. Their staff, uh, provided information on the primary changes to the forecasts were due to regional trends. And so, the Met Council was saying that across the Twin Cities region, that growth has slowed a little bit in in the last um in the last number of years. And so, that's impacted kind of their projection across the region. uh they were there was definitely an indication of openness from the Met Council to adjust the population forecasts in coordination with staff. This happens routinely. There's um continuously coordination back and forth, you know, between communities and the Met Council. Some communities might be not growing as fast as the Met Council is projecting and some communities might be growing faster. And so in those cases uh there is that regular staff coordination that ultimately in most cases just leads to an administrative increase in the forecast um because that's the expectation for growth. Uh there is also further clarification that the city is not punished for growing faster than being you know than the the forecasts project. There was also uh some specific followup uh that's gets really deep into the weeds on their um their methodologies. Long story short, the the White Bear Lake issue at this point in time really hadn't come up. That had not been part of the conversation. So, uh, then in November, about a month after that, the period for the appeals closed. And so, uh, staff at that point were comfortable not appealing the Met Council's, um, population forecasts primarily upon the ability of the city to expect that periodically these forecasts can be adjusted. So let's say we get into the comp plan process, we really dig into the numbers and we realize, oh actually the city, you know, just with the developments in the queue is expected to grow more. Um, then we could work with the Met Council to have that uh forecast adjustment made. Um, and so we we thought that those might be better understood as we move forward. And so then fast forward then again to uh early 2026 staff received a White Bear Lake methodology memo uh from the city of Hugo. This is something that u apparently was posted within the mech council's website. Apparently it was available to the public. Um but staff just didn't you know it wasn't part of the conversation at any point about these forecasts. But anyways, the Swiper Lake memo uh did basically contain a policy position of the Met Council that we'll talk about uh that's pretty impactful and so city staff identified at that point that that was seemed to be kind of an issue for the city. and so started to look at options to move forward with um how you know h first of all quantifying what does development look like in the city where are we at with respect to these forecasts and then what options do we have with the met council and then in February uh city staff actually met with the um met council staff and got more information and gave and before that gave them information on the city's growth to try to you know put a point on what are some of our concerns concerns with these forecasts are you know what we actually know about growth in the city. So at that point met council staff did acknowledge that the permitting data um helped to show that the forecasts were low and they agreed that there would be a solution needed for um you know for forecasts that were more representative of growth in Lake Elmo. And um I would mention to you that the city of Oakdale and there were a couple of other nearby cities that are having, you know, that are having the same issue. And in the Oakdale's case, they did end up appealing. They they made their appeal. So I just quickly want to talk through what data we provided to the Met Council and what it kind of shares or shows. So uh the city provided the first piece of information was a table on a projection forward. So based on the developments that are known to be in the pipeline, you saw one this evening, Limmerick Village, we knew that they were very very close to applying and we were right about that. turns out um you know based on all these new developments uh that are known in the pipeline what do we think the actual uh population will be if they go through as as planned and so as you can see 2026 is provided on the column on the left and then you as you move in fiveyear increments beyond that uh just looking at the developments that are known by 2020 or 2030 uh staff are projecting that we would be at 18,900 00 which is where they had Lake Elmo by 2050. So there's a pretty big delta there between what staff were seeing coming forward with these projects that we knew and uh and what the the cap was basically going to be by the the Met Council. And so as you move uh into 2035 and 2040, the city population growth slows down a little bit uh just because the number of development projects are probably likely to, you know, kind of plateau or even uh go down at some point just based on you know there's only so much land that's within the Musa that's developable. So um just to kind of recap this, if you look at the 2040 column, you can see the the biggest difference here. the city staff you projected a, you know, possible population of 22,000 by 2040 and the Met Council's 2025 system statement had the city at kind of being capped at 20 at 16,900. And so I should kind of reiterate at this point that the forecasts are important because they represent the sewer capacity that the Met Council expects to provide the city. So if the city is growing more quickly or at a rate that's higher than what they think or what they share in the system statement, that's a problem because that is a kind of a cap on the ability of the city to receive sewer service for new development. So that's a pretty pretty critical um thing to work through. Uh we also looked backwards. So we we just looked at you know kind of looked forward at new development. We looked backward. what is the demand that's been really uh that the city's experienced over the last 10 years, the last decade in permitting. And so on this table, this was in the report as well, uh the city has generally averaged over or between 100 units and 200 units um of detached housing in some cases, well, a lot more of detached single family homes per year. So that's not even accounting for attached residential units which are included in the overall household number. So long story short, the city has a demonstrated demand for residential growth over the last decade. Okay. So moving into March, uh the followup after that February meeting was that the mech council kind of offered a offered kind of a solution. So the solution that the Met Council offered was for the city to amend the 2040 comprehensive plan to adjust the forecasts for 2030 and 2040. So the the information included in that uh followup was that the city could amend its 2040 its current comprehensive plan to change the forecast from 2030 to have 7,200 households or 19,200 people or residents. and then uh 2040 to have 8,250 households and approximately 2,00 21,400 people or residents. So those are a lot more or a lot closer to being in line with where the city seems to be at already with the developments that are known to be in the pipeline. So I want to quickly talk about that Wiper Lake memo. The wiper lake memo is number one. It starts with a summary of the overall methodology that was used in their population estimates. Uh this memo was attached to your staff report. Uh it references the legislatively directed White Bear Lake comprehensive plan group. Uh they've recently, you know, put out some information that they've been working on. Um, but there is a group that's been reviewing kind of a long-term plan for for water supply. Um, if you're not familiar with the Wiper Lake case, the Wiper Lake case was initiated by homeowners on Wiper Lake. Um they sued the DNR effectively because the lake levels in the early 2000s were dropping in Wiper Lake and the the homeowners sued on the basis that the DNR was issuing more permits, more water use permits to cities than it should have and that resulted in the kind of the decreased lake levels in Wiper Lake. And so >> that was the hypothesis. >> That was their hypothesis. I think there's been an enormous amount of studies since that time. you know, some directed by court um that really have dove into that issues in ways that are hard for me to explain really to you, but uh generally speaking, um I think it's the connection between u city water use and lake levels is is a little bit more it's a little bit more of a nuanced issue than than what I think was initially represented. I I think I think we can say that much. >> It's opaque. >> Yeah, it's opaque 90%. and the city was taking more water than they were allocated. >> Correct. And there there is uh there are there are appropriation permits that the DNR grants to cities and that was part of that that lawsuit. Um so >> and that's why we were growing so much because they were getting more water than they were supposed to. >> So yeah, there's there's definitely a lot there. Um the Wiper Lake memo though from a population projection will kind of narrow the scope of this discussion really to the the forecasts. Um the the Wiper Lake memo really had two important policy positions that the Met Council was taking. Um they said, you know, I'll read kind of verbatim here in bold. Uh that it would withhold it determined it prudent to withhold its consent of additional growth in the local jurisdictions affected by the White Bear Lake Area Court decision until the Met Council is assured additional growth does not conflict with court orders. So basically uh that this is saying that the Met Council will not increase forecasts for communities >> we did >> within you know unless the White Bake area court issue is basically resolved it's not conflicting with court orders. The second uh line in bold is also important. It says if a request is made uh to increase the forecasted growth for these communities, if a request is made, it may only be considered after modification of the court order, a change in local conditions or a solution to water supply constraints are determined and implemented. So basically again this issue the white the M council is saying the wiper lake issue needs to be resolved before we will consent to increase population. And so what we were initially as staff comfortable with was the idea that we were going to work with the system statement and then would be able to work through administrative adjustments to that forecast when development proved development that was consistent with the city's plans proved to be more than what the forecast was showing. In reality, because of this policy statement that Met Council provided, that was not an option any longer because they're saying, "We won't let communities grow more. We won't consent to increase their forecasts until the water issue is resolved." And so >> this really is quite challenging for the city of Lake Elmo because now you're facing effectively kind of a a ceiling on growth that was previously not, [snorts] you know, imposed. And so that is that is kind of a challenge and I think that's really why staff's in front of you this evening, you know, recommending that the city amend its 2040 plan to at least provide a much more reasonable population and household forecast for for 2030 and 40. The idea being that the Met Council is going to and has communicated they will allow the city to carry over from its 2040 plan, this population as amended into the 2050 comprehensive plan. So staff do see this as an important thing for continuity of planning uh for continuity of just being able to kind of plan for utilities. So I kind of hit on the bottom line, but that's that's really it. Um [snorts] the bottom line is that the city is starting to work on its 2050 comp plan and it needs a reasonable baseline for you know population and household estimates. So just comparing these figures that this table was provided in your staff report. Um you can see in um in the bold in parentheses that is what staff are proposing to change uh change to what you see in kind of the the nonformatted the non-bold text in these columns. That's what's currently in the 2040 comprehensive plan. So this is exactly what staff are proposing to modify in the 2040 comp plan. Um proposing to change total households by 2030 from 6,500 to 7,200 and then total households uh by 2040 from 8,200 to 8,250. These are that bold number that I read on both of those. That's the number that the Met Council after that conversation allowed. Uh similarly with population uh changing the population in 2030 from 8 thou 18,000 [clears throat] to 19,200 and then population u by 2040 from 22,34 to 21,400. And so you'll notice that um it's kind of funny the households are proposed to go up but the population is proposed to go down. The key reason there is that the assumption is changing in terms of what is the average household size. And so Met Council is effectively saying you'll have more households, but average household size will be decreasing. And actually that's reasonable. That's been a trend across the metro for the most part over the last decade or so. So um that that staff feel comfortable with that assumption. I also want to mention that uh there is a projection of uh households that are unseeded. So these are households in rural areas of Lake Elmo. Um that population or those numbers of households are are shown to go down. Um staff have followed up on that question. We have not resolved that completely. I think it doesn't really make sense for unseured households to go down. It probably should be staying about the about even or maybe even going up a little bit considering that the city has approved new unsure developments since 2040 plan was adopted. >> Would that mean Met Council may have to increase its sewer capability for some of the outline areas? We have had areas that have had to be >> developed as either community or single residency septic just because Met Council had no capacity in that area. >> Yeah, that's a really good question. So yeah, does that account for or what's the situation with our planning for um you know basically for lack of a better term saving um you know uh failed septic systems? Um the the way that that's been managed managed to my knowledge over the last like decade or so has been the city gets the forecast. It gets its basically amount of sewer capacity and then needs to figure out how to work within that to save those systems. So that's my understanding of how that's worked. I don't expect that they would provide this like um additional kind of you know un unplanned but planned u sewer capacity. >> So uh should should the city's planning commission recommend this move forward? Staff are going to bring this to the city council for their consideration for approval uh and and their their determination. Uh if the city council approves the amendment that's proposed here, uh we would then be uh submitting that to the Met Council. We would need to do the affected and uh adjacent jurisdiction review. We hope that Oakdale and others are going to be sympathetic and they'll get their comments in quickly. So the Met Council would then uh need to review this and probably would take it to a full met council meeting for final approval. So there is a process for for review. We have posted a public hearing. I haven't got any comments. Steph do have a sample motion. We are asking for the planning commission to recommend approval of these amendments as I've described them. Um I am happy to take questions that you've got. So, if we don't approve and we would have the motion to stick with the published numbers as they are from the Met Council, we'd be limiting development. We'd be forced to limit development within Lake County. >> You'd be in a much tougher place to >> There's enough development that's been approved already. >> Yeah. that you're going to be in a tough spot when you're looking at the 2050 plan. And I think staff don't recommend putting yourself in a tough spot. >> No, [laughter] I I appreciate that. I I I'm I'm going to assume that there are those in favor of decreasing and limiting development within the Lake Elmo community and probably on this commission. Yes. >> And those are in favor of not. Um, and so I'm just asking those questions to understand where we stand a little bit. I find it interesting, just a comment, >> that there aren't people here for this because this is probably the biggest item on this agenda tonight and yet no one stuck around or dug in to understand what it meant or am I overstating the importance of what this is in a baseline from the, you know, from the Met Council and what we can or cannot do and putting us into a difficult position. chair, if that's a if that's a question, uh I would say that yes, very this is a really important item. Um staff, you know, >> definitely worked hard behind the scenes to try to understand what the options are. I think for it's unfortunate, you know, just from my perspective that a water issue has now kind of turned into a sewer issue. Uh that's kind of I mean, if I had to boil it down, that's kind of the problem here. And um if if the city has to work with the system statement that was published in September and those lower numbers, I think the city's going to have to make some pretty hard decisions with respect to how people currently have their land guided. There there could be situations where um folks are taken out of the MUSA that wish to remain in the Musa or other situations like that that could arise >> that would h they would be naturally required because you have to try to hit that number. >> So let me propose a hypothetical situation. So I guess in setting that up is every project that's been approved and fully approved so far would those meet the numbers that were provided initially by the med council >> if I think uh we looked at this recently I think if we just like draw a line and say okay today you know after today if we'd approved no future developments I think >> I think the answer would probably be that you would be We'd >> be over already. >> Do you know what that number is? How many are in on the docket? >> So, if we go back, this is kind of hard because we got >> And I know you've done a lot of work. >> Well, I saw the 962 there and I wondered if that was if that was the correct number. >> I think that um you're looking at 15,200 um residents is the is the expected sort of cap on population by 2030. staff project that you're, you know, very close to that right now. >> Yep. >> With what's approved. So, the issue here is um you've got a comprehensive plan that's guided land like Limmerch Village >> within a current uh de development decade. So there's land that could develop legally speaking from now through 2030 by like these developers, these land owners, they have the right to develop in a certain way with a certain number of units and they they may do so. Um you'll probably see more developments come forward proposed and you know we're basically you know it looks like we're already kind of at that 15,000 number. And so that's kind of the that's kind of the main concern. It's we're basically already over these forecasts. >> It just seems strange that the city fought like or the Met Council not to grow >> and then Met Council says, "All right, well, here's your population." We're like, "No, no, no. We're going to need more than that now." >> Right. >> It's completely backwards. >> A little counterintuitive. And I appreciate all the work that you've put into this day. It's not >> typically there's a dislike for them at council and the way they control Yes. >> and force growth upon you. And now >> they're over >> and the other shoe is dropped and we're kind of like, oh well, they can help us limit growth potentially if that's [clears throat] >> what I'm hearing you say, Nathan, is that, you know, legally these parcels could be developed and then we're going to run into legal issues by saying no, we can't develop them. We don't >> Yeah. Because would there be anything in ordinance that would allow us to deny it just based on exceeding our comprehensive plan goal? But then there's nothing in the ordinance. No, there's no ordinance saying, "Well, you can't approve because you over comprehensive plan." And then now instead of Met Council suing us, developers start to sue us. >> Yeah. Just just a couple things to clarify. I think just to put a fine point. So, um, with respect to the the systems, the wiper lake memo and what they're kind of capping the city, so to say, the this is all based on the expectation that there will be some resolution to the water issue. And so in theory there could be this magical moment in 2027 where u there's seemed to be some kind of a solution and now the wiper lake memo is no longer required and cities can move forward to amend their forecasts upwards. But the challenge there is that you would then be waiting for over a year while you're supposed to be completing a comprehensive plan on are we allowed to grow more than or not. And so I think because of that challenge, I think we're re recommending that, you know, we we proceed with this now to give some certainty to the process. Um to your question about uh developments being able to get denied. Um like like um the Inwood town homes or commercial development this evening, that was just a planned unit development. It was all by right. And so, um, in those situations, the city has far less opportunity to deny developments. They, the city can use its premature subdivisions ordinance, but it has to make really specific findings that there's not enough water capacity or enough sewer capacity or they're not providing roadway connections or something. So, it it's it it kind of can be done, but it gets to be a lot more >> risky. That being said, with then a PUD came forward and we didn't have the sewer capacity because the Met Council didn't provide that to us. We that PUD could be denied. [clears throat] >> Yeah. If you don't have sewer capacity, that would be a you know, that could be a reason to deny a development, but it's just that's not >> I it's counterintuitive to what your what your job is, and I understand that. [laughter] But I but I want to make sure we're considerate of all the different viewpoints. >> Sure. >> It's Lake Elmo. Yep. There are the people who have been here and don't want it to grow and there then there's the other side that does and they're both val and they're both got valid points, right? So, >> um I think it's important that we understand the the tools that are on the table as much as we can to make it hard for you. I'm kidding. I I'll make I'll make a few comments because I'm the one of the people who have been really concerned about it. I'm not against growth. I'm for controlled growth that meets the expectations of the residents that are here that have adequate water that is not that are not staking water from the people that are on the wells up north and enforcing this plume the pollution plume to go all around. I'm I'm you know, but slow controlled growth that pays its own way is fine. And the game, the numbers game really upsets me. You know, the number of people per household that we're going to use to calculate today, but we're going to use another number, you know, two days later because somewhere a demographer says, you know, this is a number we can use this year and next year. So, it's like tiddlywinks game. You never know. It's just going to keep changing. >> It's very frustrating. >> I thought the number was going down because my kids are going to be out of my house. >> Well, it's it's I don't know. It's interesting to see that they're putting a 2.5 is is the household. So, and they're saying that that is to me it seems like the it's a it's a age population change. We have an aging population so we're not seeing as many households with children in them. I think that's probably a factor in all of this that's not even included in >> families are having less kids. That's >> Yeah, less kids. They're getting married later and we have an aging population of older people that aren't >> We got to build a new school on a place that wasn't even supposed to be built on. >> Yeah. >> One issue at a time here, Susie. >> Huh? >> Yeah. >> All right. [laughter] >> What was the Oakdale appeal? >> Don't get me going. >> Uh it's for a similar reason. >> And what are they trying to do? What is >> they I think they were in the same boat. Uh they had concern about their population being capped as well through the the White Bear Lake water issue. So it seemed there were a few communities in this part of the metro that were really this the this situation was really unique. I I would say like a lot of the communities around the metro have not faced this particular issue. City of >> um Hugo is another one that has concerns. >> They have room to grow. Does Oakdale have room to grow? I mean like aren't they just all >> Where's Wood where's Woodbury at? Are they >> uh Woodbury was successful in working with the Met Council to raise their populations and households without having to appeal? >> Let's let's get the motion on the table so we can at least discuss that, >> please. >> Do we have a motion? >> Move to recommend city council approve approval of the amendments proposed to the forecast found in the Lake Elmo 240 comprehensive plan as identified by staff. >> Maybe I missed it. Did we host the public hearing? Oh, I'm You're right. [laughter] Thank you. Thank you. Sopia, >> stop. Uh, go back. Do I need a motion to open the public hearing? >> I'll resend that for now. >> Motion to open the public hearing. >> Thank you. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Public hearing is open as of 9:01. Any comments from the gallery? Anything mailed in? >> None at all. And with that, we will close the public hearing. >> Motion to close the public hearing. Thank you. Awesome. >> All in favor? >> I. >> All right. Public hearings close at 902. All right. Motion on the table. >> Move to recommend city council approval of the amendments proposed to the forecast found in this in the Lake Elmo 2040 comprehensive plan as identified by staff. >> Second. I'll second it. All right. Discussion. Do I want to amend this? >> I I keep thinking about the demand versus desire. >> Yes. >> Can you extrapolate on that? >> I mean, is the de is it the demand that's driving us or is it the desire to grow that's driving the this you know? Uh do we want to grow? Is that a question for staff? >> Yeah, I mean I'm I'm just trying to like where is it, you know? >> Yep. So, >> how is that determined? >> So, staff are looking at this from the two perspectives of what is the projection kind of like what we talked about for the data. What's the projection of what we know to be coming forward based on conversations with developers, concept plans that have been reviewed, uh land that's within the development decade between 2030 and for uh 2020 and 2040 30, sorry. Um so what do we what do we think's coming down the pipeline? Uh and then also what's the demonstrated permitting demand in the city? And so, you know, it seems like there's a strong demand for continued residential growth in the city and there's also development interest in in growth. And um it's it's a little troubling from staff's perspective that I guess I'll just speak for myself. I don't know, I don't speak for all staff, of course, but um you've got a a 2040 comprehensive plan that has kind of a set of forecasts that developers have been working under and and future land uses and growth phasing that developers have been working under for the most part. And for that to go down and then get capped to not be able to increase for a year or potentially more uh is is just troubling from a kind of continuity standpoint for planning for how how the city sets up its 2050 >> compran. So I think I I've kind of informally said to others it feels more like this amendment would help to kind of just keep kind of things on a on a more stable trajectory as opposed to uh with the system statement kind of creating a little turbulence. So >> let let me ask this question. If we had a 24 comp plan that was supposed to manage to a certain number what happened that we're already exceeding we're already blowing the budget. so to speak. >> I think generally speaking, the 2040 plan, the numbers are pretty similar to what staff are proposing to to have at the end of the day. So, in other words, I think the 2040 plan is generally seen as being, you know, kind of, you know, um >> on the trajectory. >> Yeah, it's kind of the trajectory where the city's going. >> Show those numbers to us again. But you know where I'm at and coming at Nathan, you know, if if we we had a 2040 plan that we were going to be at 18,000 by 2030, but now we're at 18,000 at 2026. >> Y >> how did we lose control? How did we get off the rails so early? How did we spend how did we spend all our population so early and not manage it appropriately >> that was according to the plan? So if we give more population and reset this, what's the guarantee to us and the residents of Lake Elmo that we're going to maintain and manage to those numbers again? >> So this is a >> it doesn't free feel like a free-for-all. So this is kind of, you know, this is a once every roughly 10 year >> y >> cycle. And so what you've got in the 2040 plan is shown on the screen here that the numbers that are not in bold. So you've got 18,000 uh residents roughly expected by 2030 and 22,000 by 2040. And so you know as the city staff is proposing to amend this, you know, in conjunction with what we've talked about with the Met Council staff, um these numbers are generally on track with where you are already headed based on the 2040 plan. So I don't think that there would be a hu huge change with the land use guidance moving forward in the 2040 plan. Um that's kind of that that's kind of the whole idea here is just to kind of keep this a little bit more reasonable um on the same general trajectory. I don't think staff are expecting a ton of changes from a land use standpoint between 2040 and 2050. um seems like generally there there might be little changes here or there of course but um major changes don't seem to be necessary at least in some of the preliminary conversation. Let me ask this question. Was the density requirements from the Met Council forcing higher population numbers than we had initially planned? Because instead of now having 500 people in this PUD, their density requirements said that now you're required to have a thousand people in this PUD and have thus limited >> what land can to be developed because we're having to meet these higher density numbers and we've burnt our sewer and our water numbers up. >> So yeah, it's a good question. And I think part of that question is about um in this new in this next cycle that the Met Council is increasing the average density requirement for all new development within sewarded areas. It's going from three to three and a half. And so >> the city then has to look at all of the developing or potentially redeveloping sites in the community and say all right the average of the development in these sites has to be now three and a half units per acre. One benefit is that new methodology that we talked about actually this earlier this evening that actually kind of tends to push up the density numbers a little bit. So in all reality it won't be extremely difficult to hit that 3 and a half unit per acre number be partly because of that and there are some other things to look at from like the math the number side of things. Maybe it's narrowing certain density ranges. I know Jason's looked at that in pretty great detail and kind of, you know, made the comment a number of times that certainly um the city, you know, should be in in a good place to be able to meet these requirements. >> I got the the answer on the demand side, but what about the desire side? Do does the community I mean do the people that live here or the majority of the people want the city to grow? I mean, how do we know? Has there been a survey or >> So you've got I I I can't speak for residents. I'm not a resident, but you've got an adopted comp plan that the community did adopt in for in its 2040 plan that has very similar numbers to what staff have here. And I would, you know, echo or say that there will be surveys the city's going to be doing moving forward certainly to understand. >> It's always after the fact. Like I said, the community was not involved really in the last plan. There were like 10 people most of them some of them didn't bother to come to the meetings and whenever residents came to the meetings and it was led by another person I don't know who she was and they they tried to make some comments they said that they were there to observe they could only observe they could not participate >> so that and in essence the residents who live here actually were cut out of the planning process they were just given this is what you're going to this is what we're going to do. So just from a historical point you and you might you know like you say you don't live here so you're not aware of that but other communities seem to have like phased plans where Lake Elmo just seemed to open up and it was splatball wherever you wanted to develop they said this part this part so it was hard for our maintenance staff and engineering and everybody to pull stuff together because it was just oh look it was a big freeforall >> I think there there are phase plans whether how closely they're followed is the question is part of the question I Well, like you said, it was a free-for-all. >> Yeah, it but I think we've got to, you know, at some point say, okay, the expectation from at least the com from our the volunteer commission that this is to staff is to say, here's your budget. You got to execute within it. Here are the rules. You got to you got to stay inside the lane. you can bounce all over there, but if you're going to stay inside the lane, if we're going to go out, and that's generally what variances and all that does anyway is that if you're going to go outside the lane, it's got to come through here and it's got to go through council. And and I think that would be my ask is that if we're going to bump these number change these numbers that we're managed to those numbers and a reasonable growth and we're not back in this position in 2040 or in 2030 2035 where we're already at our 2040 numbers where we've lost we've we've spent all our headcount and our water and our sewer. Putting that in a sense of currency. Does that make sense? I know this is what you expected tonight that this was going to be this. >> No, this is I mean this is an important conversation for sure. >> Yeah, >> I know I know staff will will review and we'll have those debrief conversations about you know what we're hearing. >> So, but I know this is a lot of work trying to figure this out >> and we really appreciate it. So, thank you. So, motion's on the table. Uh I propose that we bring it to vote. All in favor of the motion as it's stated say I. >> I >> I >> opposed. >> I >> All right. The motion passes. >> Yep. >> And I think the conversation was important. >> And I know that uh council at least and a few council members will watch it and pay attention to >> the conversation we had. >> No, they'll do it. But I think it's more of a direction for our staff to help again manage to that manage that budget so to speak. >> All right. Uh >> you have not to feel that they have >> We're not done yet. Don't pack up your stuff, kids. >> All right. >> What kind of goodies do you have then? >> All right. Uh any new or unfinished business? >> Not this evening. >> All right. Communication update. I have one. >> I have one. You're done. >> I have one. Sophia Jensen's been here for five years with the city. >> Thank you, Sophia. [applause] >> Thank you. >> Our right-hand person here making planning commission go. So, thank you for your commitment, your time, and your dedication to the community like Elmo. It is much appreciated. >> Thank you. >> And I'd like to make a comment if I could please. >> Yes. As we're looking at the old village area and and the development as it go forward, what I'm seeing happen, we've got new town and we've got old town. And is there some way that we can kind of incorporate some of the old title feeling a little bit more than what is currently being thought about in response really to the like that Schulenfield that is kind of before the regional park reserve. talking about transition zones, which I really enjoyed that that memo that I got that's coming will be coming somewhere along the line. But I just want us to to think about how the negative impact is happening in some of the areas of Lake Elmo and the wildlife and the wildlife corridors are gone. Um there's just some issues that are coming about that are disrupting to a lot of people and they won't know it until like these individuals came here. Yes, they knew what the plan was but yet they did not realize that negative impact at the time and I that my heart just goes out to them because I I know how >> how heart rate and it's really emotional. >> I I agree and I think that that shouldn't something we put together for a workshop. No >> to discuss. >> I don't know when the next one we have scheduled if we want to schedule one, but I think that's that's a great point. But it it's just a thought of there's a lot of anguish and you could see it here with the individuals today >> and what can we do to make it a little smoother for them or to understand >> or be more beneficial to what their needs are >> because remember people are coming to our community and >> to create certain expectations and they're not being met >> or hopes of expectations are different and we do have a big responsibility. Okay, that's >> Thank you. >> I received a message from a member of the community and they are um want to know what Lake Elmo's position is on data centers. So, is there anything that we could maybe that could be a part of a a joint meeting as well to discuss that? I don't know if that's even something that we could have in our community, but they're most people don't want them. >> We don't have any water, >> but they won't they don't want any water. >> The water is a problem. But, I mean, maybe we need to have that somewhere. that's just not allowed. >> Yeah, I'm I'm not entirely sure about the work a joint workshop schedule coming up since we do have the next few that are already booked out, but um both of those items seem like good items to put on the the work plan for the planning commission coming up. Um we are checking a lot of boxes off, so we'll need to add some things to work on next year. So, those could be items to bring back up at that time. >> Thank you, Sophia. >> And then again, like all this information, all the cross information was going with the Met Council and so on. It might it would have been nice to at least update the planning commission a little bit that that was going on as it was going on just to at least be aware that hey there are some concerns and that we're working on it rather than this was just this was great to learn it but it would have been nice to been maybe clued in a little earlier that at least it was an issue information. All right, Sophia, communication updates. >> All right, at the June 2nd city council meeting, city council approved 996057 Street variance, which is that detached shed structure in the residential estate zoning district in the CUP and variance for the Lake Elmo Medical Center. >> Awesome. >> And then upcoming meetings June 26th will be cancelled and we will see you on July 13th. June 26th is a Friday >> the 23rd 21st >> 20 whatever that one is >> 22 >> 22nd. >> Very good. >> So we don't get to see you till July. >> You're welcome to swing come by whenever PTO she has to take so she may not. >> They're gonna kick her out of here. All right. And with that, uh, I will adjourn the Monday, June 8th, planning commission meeting for the city of Lake Elmo. Thank you. >> Thank you. All good. >> May everybody have a good Fourth of July, our 250th. >> Happy 250th. >> Our D group is having a uh