money um so you could take this open space they'd probably have to you know make a park out of it anyway um so i i think i'm i i think is as good a intention as this is i just don't see its practical uh use in our zoning ordinances and so i'm going to i'm going to recommend no so yes first i just want to say how much i appreciate mr mayor you attending uh council member nichols so i i i see i see you at every meeting and i can't tell you how how much i appreciate that i just want to tell you a quick story a few months ago my daughter came to me she's she's learning to drive she's driving age and she said listen dad please please please let me let me drive your car let me drive your car no no no pretty please listen if you let me drive your car i promise i will fill it with gas every single friday i promise i will fill it with gas problem is i drive a tesla don't fall for my daughter's trick okay our residents through you their elected officials they deserve a say in what happens in this city uh now and in the future don't give up that authority don't don't give it up thank you well i i you know the developments that we've seen inside the muses since we all got sewer and water i've seen very little attempt from any developer at preserving open space i mean again you can look at some developers and they'll say we're saving 48 of the trees or this that i would argue that you're saving forty percent of what you can't cut down and makes doesn't makes no sense to cut down but um [Music] i you know as an inducement i i i'm just not convinced that that this is is going to induce them at all personally please well i was just going to ask a question if i could share yes um if someone could help me understand perhaps what does because you guys are are alluding to the fact that a pud would do similarly or you feel would do with greater discretion from the city would do similarly what the this uh document is saying where where do you see that happening well for instance how do you see that the the the square down there at hackamore and one 101 right right there in the in the crux of ravinia now as it has been mentioned by staff um puds are designed to um and what not to allow development in areas that have a lot of natural resources so in that particular development that pud they're asking for you know smaller lot sizes and this and that so that they can meet the density demands as required and yet save the wetlands and some of the tree lines and things like that so that pud is already going to accomplish maybe not in a large scale like this where you can preserve a whole field or or two non-contiguous parcels but the pud is already designed to as at least a negotiating chip to bring to the table that they preserve those types of areas anyway and at least as long as then as we're negotiating why give them the advantage of being able to say well we're going to we're going to have this open space right we're going to go to preserve this but then they don't have to negotiate on anything else they don't have to meet they don't have to prove to the city that to get the pud there's there's any other additional benefit where we have taken advantage of you know some increased siding materials and streets and ornamental stuff signs you know things like that that maybe you can better explain it but no mr chair i think that's exactly i think i think that is a fair statement um going back to recent beauties that we've seen there they've offered sites for potential water towers that is a huge benefit to the city and that wouldn't necessarily be part of a discussion for this but um i think we're not getting rid of the pud with this either so this would just be another tool in the toolbox but but you would agree that we are removing discretion from city council if this is approved correct if developers choose to move forward with this subdivision type there is less discretion from city council there is no discretion not less discretion there is no discretion correct it needs to meet the standards in the as it's written in the subdivision right but that means no discretion correct correct which means our city council has no authority they they couldn't stop it if they wanted to correct provided it met the standards okay and this would affect not only our current city council but every city council in the future correct correct okay thank you which conversely could mean that this has to be a value moving forward to preserve open space versus just removing the flexibility with developers if the next council comes in and has no value for land or open space it would maintain that this it becomes a city adopted value is that goals can always be changed in the future sure as well sure you're not really tying your hands permanently you just have to go back through the process okay if i may ask it sounds like there's been an enormous amount of work by the city council the round tables there there was a reason yeah there's i think a lot of work that goes in and it sounds so this this was a little overwhelming i first read it it makes me more sense what's the i mean what was the goal i mean what's the there's obviously a goal i appreciate you asking the question thank you yes thank you so this is actually a fairly popular initiative that several of us who ran in 2020 campaigned upon and the overwhelming theme as we talked to residents across the city was we don't want to lose the rural feel and the agricultural feel that corcoran has we don't want to see it drip dribble away and become just like the higher density suburbs around us so how do we permanently protect some of those areas that was the the challenge for us as a city and one answer to that is through the implementation of something called a conservation subdivision now in most other places that do this it's not done in a seward area most of these are done in rural areas that are serviced by sewer and water and the way these work is similar to what we have with our osnp plats i'm not sure if you covered that a lot in your training earlier today but typically how they function is you allow a higher density a higher number of homes in exchange for a certain portion of that parcel being preserved in our case in the osmp plats it's preserved temporarily until the music extends into those areas our challenge was how do we have that same kind of a system but have permanent preservation so that the open fields and forests that we may have today are not subject to being torn out 10 20 30 years down the road and how do we permanently preserve this rural feel that corcoran has today even as it develops and even as it grows and so we we tried to modify that osnp idea and we looked at a lot of different cities that have done it a lot of different cities all over the country not just in minnesota and we copied a few of their ideas and we tried to scale it into a seward system and so the function that we're trying to ensure is that we are still going to allow developers to build the same number of homes on a parcel we're still hitting the same overall net density target but we're giving the same kind of flexibility given historically to people who are doing puds so if you look at the example lots in the graphics you'll see lot sizes that are typically seen in the bellwether and vivinia neighborhoods so we're not giving any greater flexibility than what puds have given but in exchange we're getting a benefit that we are not currently getting there isn't a development in corcoran where you'll see 25 preservation of an upland area you might see a trail segment preserved you might see you know wetlands with a nice trail system around them potentially but it's not a bulk preservation so this was intended to create an avenue to allow that there's not really a way to do that within the pud unless the developer has that as part of their plan coming in and many of the larger developers that are developing in corcoran currently don't come in with those kinds of proposals a smaller developer who's doing you know a 10 20 30 acre parcel like some of the developers that we had come in and speak to us in august both of those two who came in person were extremely positive on this concept and said they would be very happy to propose something using this kind of a system they saw it as a great way to add additional value to residents coming into the city and into their developments and the data from similar developments and others in other states has shown that properties developed in this way tend to have higher value and appreciate faster than conventional subdivisions so it really can be a win-win but there's got to be a lever to make it worth considering and so that's where the removal of the pud requirement came into force um certainly if we if we take this step as a city and we're not satisfied with the output we can always refine the code requirements or we could strip it out all together but really this was intended to be a mechanism for us to try to deviate from the path that a plymouth or a maple grove has followed and try to establish something where we can permanently preserve what we think makes us special may i ask a question why why can't you do that with a pud what do what's different now you know i because one reason why i voted for you was because i didn't like the amount of development going on and and i hear that a lot from from my neighbors and with with respect i just i i would feel more comfortable knowing that with every application if my elected officials had the authority to thumbs up or thumb down i i would feel more comfortable with that okay if you want uh uh open space being there being part of a development and include it before you approve it now i just think it's a and and i truly applaud the effort that's gone into this i think it's a mistake for you to give up your authority and just let developers do as long as they check the check boxes let them do pretty much whatever they want with this if they set aside a parcel of land for all you know we might have houses five feet apart right with a three foot front door and a 45 foot garage door and there's nothing you could do to stop that and i just think i think by giving by abdicating your authority i think that respectfully i think that you would be making a mistake so but i do appreciate your your your position on this though your point is taken i i don't see it as an abdication personally we have pages and pages of code that developers can choose to meet and if they choose to meet those there's no discretion either but but you would be giving up your right to analyze your right to do a lot of things that you can do now to stop a bad development or maybe steer a development to creating an even better development you know i'm not anti-development i just want it done right and within our code and i think that by by giving up the authority by allowing a developer to just cordon off an undesirable piece of land and wave it under your nose and say yeah well now here's my 45-foot garage door and you can't stop them and your successors can't do anything about it either so i think your heart is in the right place i don't think this is the right way to get there i think that there must be a better solution with with all due respect and i think what i would encourage if you see that there are potential gaps in what this would require where you feel like there should be a restriction here one of our goals as a as a council and one of my philosophical goals as an individual is how do we how do we minimize the amount of effort and negotiation and grinding that is involved in this process sorry in the pud process in the development process in general i mean pud i think is one of the more obvious elements of it counselor benjamin you've made the case several times code is too complicated it's too hard to understand too hard to follow how do we simplify it how do we streamline it how do we make sure that we're getting the things that are really important to us in a way that doesn't require as much staff time and staff resource and therefore tax burden on the residents part of why we want to get your feedback is what are the things that are missing here that we feel like if we can put it into code and not need to rely on the pud and item by item negotiation for every single development in the city that would be a tremendous advantage for us as a municipality not to have to go through that exercise every single time if we can arrive at a code that we're happy with and that actually generates what we value i i get that and i appreciate that sometimes we just have to work i volunteer i know you guys do i believe sometimes you know i mean i signed up for this i'm not getting paid and i'm doing what i think is best for residents and i'm not looking to cut corners and you know i could be at home with my family right now i think it's important for us given the trust that we've been given i think it's important for us to be able to make decisions and i think that by you know and i will use that the word abdicate by giving up your oversight the the council's oversight and as a right grant to developers what this is proposing to grant this is not going to result in a better corcoran in my opinion there there must be a better solution i i don't think that it's a matter of what's missing from this i think it's a matter of there's too much here and that's giving up your role you know there there's no reason why you can't tell developers listen if you set aside this here's what we'll do for you you can do that but with this they're going to come in and they're going to say we set off this you know this this piece of land that you know between us we don't really care about and uh here's how we're gonna build it and uh you know you gotta take it and that that's what's gonna happen and i think it's naive to think that's not what's gonna happen respectfully so what thank you um you you mentioned that the developers the two of the developers at the round table and maybe i i i wouldn't be able to tell you which ones that they would be excited for this opportunity of course they are the only developers who don't develop in this city inside the muse line i've long held belief now that it doesn't matter what we do inside the muse line it's never going to look rural because no one's shown us anything any desire to want to develop a development with rural characters or any kind of real true preservation because that's just not the way they're keyed anymore [Music] and that's why i've always liked the idea of this but i think if i remember my comments were i'd rather just see you make really wide lots and fewer homes as a way to preserve some sort of open space feeling because people want space and and i think the the notion that no people want to live five feet from one another they don't want big garages they don't want front yards i think that's all hogwash i don't believe in that at all i'm hearing just the opposite that people are now starting to move out you moved out here to get out right and so before i you know what kind of goes against my natural instinct here is that we're going to in exchange for open space which is always a good thing but again we're going to fall into this cramming of a lot of lots into a small space with that being said do you think um counselor nichols that this if if approved if you guys pass this you really think that any of our developers and let's just say that the big folks who are eating up chunks of land at unbelievable rates that's the way they develop things you think any of them are going to embrace this and and abandon the pud anyway i mean we don't have all that much space inside the music line and i would bet you know let's just hypothetically say sixty percent of all that space will be developed by one of three builders do you think that this even has any chance to gain friction i think there would be at least a couple and depending on how those go there might be more okay it doesn't require that much of a shift for that once they take the time to understand it and the benefit that they get because it's the same homes that they have in their portfolios already it's just where you will rate them on the development and they have to design the development requirement well you know i one one reason why i would hey maybe in exchange for the the negotiation edge in a pud for better housing materials and things like that which makes no sense to me why they would want to on purposely build cheap houses but you know honestly in the puds that we've approved when they've come back through subsequent subdivisions we all listen the the trend is the lots get smaller and the materials get cheaper it's just the way it is and that's not driven by market that's driven by profit um so given a developer the inducement of land in exchange for a negotiation edge for better materials i think is almost a wasted argument because i don't see the puds giving us better buildings in the first place um but you know i'm not as close to the process of negotiation that our staff is you know this whole idea that we learned tonight that puds are negotiation i you know to me i don't i don't really know is it is are we uh are we you know i've always said that i think the tail is wagging the dog here uh but maybe i'm wrong because i don't know how much negotiation uh our staff does on the on behalf of the city to negotiate this so in a pud i think to fisher lanterns point if we've got a a nice piece of land where hey this is really some good upland that we want to preserve could that be negotiated right off the bat because i think there is some there is some credit you know if we take if we take um the development trivia sorry and you got that hillside with all the trees that goes down to the lowland you know a question is well would we count that as part of the open space if they were to say yeah we're gonna we're gonna go this route but it's not something people can use it's it's nice looking but they're not gonna cut it down you can't run your dog on it and play frisbee or you can't put a trail on it because it's too steep and so this would have to be really really really good quality land um [Music] may i respond to that really quick chair sure so 80 000 acres of trees are cut down every single day and that's an astounding number so to say that trees aren't a valuable open space trees are phenomenal for water quality for like forest life so i don't think that you finally interject i'm not suggesting that cutting down trees are good no no i don't know you're not well hillside by tavera is is beautiful if that was preserved through something like this there's basswood trees there like the number of of the ecosystem that would be preserved by allowing that to be 25 that we could guarantee would never be developed i feel like that is a win and i know that there is a concern i have it too like as i hear i didn't think about the are we giving up something there's a concern but i also feel like if we don't try to do anything different where is our opportunity to to like call out a different uh result from developers what we're doing like you said all the developments going in place are looking the same as all the surrounding communities so if we continue in that direction it stands reasonable to say that they're all going to look like that but if we attempt to do something different that we maybe stand a chance to have a different result okay first of all they're never going to cut those trees down it's an expense they don't want to partake in they can't do anything with the land in the first place on the hillside so in this kind of a scenario if if if if the developer came to us and said we're going to keep this as 25 but i want to keep a negotiating position i'd say well i want you to keep the trees on top of the hill too well they cut down what they did there's a if you look at the map when we get to that there's a huge number of trees that have been cut down for the townhomes and for the single family homes my point still stands i i'm just saying if you get if you can negotiate which portions of the land you're going to claim is the 25 open space right i would take those versus the hillside so could we add that would that be something where we could take a look at this ordinance as written and say like that the city gets to have a say in what that 25 percent is they don't get a say absolutely i'm saying could we change that that's in there now so if there's identified ecologically significant areas those have to be part of the preservation of the twenty-five percent that's there now if there's things that you can see to enhance that and make that language better please suggest it may ask what why so we were talking about the puds and we didn't do these things why why didn't we just say during all these other puds we require 20 or 25 open space because it's not required but we could have required it we could have asked for it we could have asked for it we just had never achieved but never occurred to do that i i don't know i wasn't part of the negotiations okay i don't i don't really i think that's what you're saying i don't know what the city's negotiation position was in each one of those negotiations to determine what part gets cut down or what part doesn't i don't know in some of what councilman nichols said earlier is this streamlines the process of having to have that back and forth but your concern is that the in order to do that you're giving up more than you're getting in return no no input okay what i'm saying is a builder could come in and say look i am dedicating this 25 it's land i didn't even want to deal with and i'm going to build whatever kind of house i want and council other standards can't cancel that meets the other standards but city council has no discretion and i i would rather have someone looking over this looking out for what's what's right and what our residents want then you know just offering builders by right something like this just because i don't want to take the time to review a pud could someone speak to why it hasn't been a part of the like uh the pewdies processed this thus far in terms of like uh why it had the city hasn't said hey we want this or you know why the city would say we want this amount of land preserved and that hasn't happened that has not been a priority for the council there have been other pud benefits for for the councils that have been in place that they said this was of value to us to make this pud happen councils change councils have different priorities and we can't get everything with everything right so each pud the council evaluated what was important to them when staff gets an application in the city administrator is talking with the council weekly at least i think with the mayor probably more often and so the city administrator's job is to kind of have a pulse on the council's priorities and those get filtered down to staff and when we sit in the room with the development team we share that message about what's important if we're looking at a pud for tavera what we said to them when they first came in they were removing a lot more of those trees and we said this is identified as a significant natural resource you have to do better and so for a city that doesn't have a tree preservation ordinance frankly staff is pretty proud about preserving 40 of the trees on that site and a larger number of the significant trees so that is a negotiation that we heard that was important to the council that we did that open space historically hasn't been this council has a different perspective i think in that if a new pud came in would be part of that that was part of the discussion with cook lake highlands i think that was one of the factors with the park dedication component that came in so as the council changes and their priorities change that gets filtered through staff and shared with developers and then comes to the planning commission and the council for the ultimate recommendation and decision so i don't think it's fair to say open space hasn't been important but it's been a balancing act between in that negotiation of this pud zoning district if i could just follow up on that if you were able to accomplish that preservation you went back and you told those developers that's not good enough we want to see more open space this council has a different set of priorities we want more open space you were able to accomplish that through a pud through negotiation i i'm having a hard time understanding why we would ever want to handcuff future city councils on something like this for a benefit that you could just negotiate through the pud process yeah well it's a negotiation so it is a negotiation you don't always get to accomplish it i think that's certainly something if this council said you know what with puds that's what we want to see that's something we would try to accomplish developers may or may not choose to develop in the city that's certainly sure fair i think there's a school of thought that says what cities should do is make it easy to accomplish their goals so i think the council has said our goal is to preserve open space and we want to make it relatively easy for developers to do i have heard from the commission and the council that you that we don't like puds developers don't like puds because it's a long process which costs money and there's no guaranteed outcome believe it or not they would prefer not to do puds the same thing that you said about staff at the store the city i should say is a cost to city to negotiate that and all within a 60-day review period it's challenging is it possible yes this is just another tool to try to accomplish the same thing but you're absolutely right if the council's goal is open space if a pud were to come in that message would get shared with the developer and they would say this is what we can do or not do sorry i'm just thinking about it it's almost exactly in some ways now i'm thinking the pro of this it's exactly what you were saying is the negative of this year the next city council would be stuck with this but at the same time by implementing it the next city council would just be like ah we don't care about open space so much so we're not going to worry about that with puds and now we're we're stuck again instead they'd have this as an option so it's kind of guaranteeing it into the future too so this is interesting like it's an interesting dilemma or that city council could just rewrite the code and get rid of it or they could do that yes but then that's a little extra work but if they don't care about open space this is still there they might not do that but this city council might do it through puds great and the next one might be like eh that's a lot of work let's not worry about it i don't know it's an issue i think it's a mistake i mean obviously you guys have talked to other other cities about this and somehow these houses don't become overly small i guess that's maybe the the concern here because i was noticing on this first page is this what we allowed today this this is the one with no open space therefore bigger okay but let it be known nobody has come in with a development plan for that yet are they always more more dense they're all puds they're all beauties nobody's come in and said you know what this is your zoning uh we got 40 acres let's we'll develop it just the way you've dictated in your zoning really really really yep every single one of them has been we've taken we've taken this as required and we've made it into this but with no open space but with no open space i see so they want to have small lines so this is what's happening every time we approve something so far you do what you've always done you get what you always got but um let me so i'm trying to just think of ways that i might be able to support this i mean might as well give it a shot because invariably without the option we are going to get exactly what we're going to continue receiving um i want to just ask this question though um i in this there there are no there's a minimum of 20 acres um but what about uh maximums there is no maximum should there be i believe we talked about with that with the council but but why would um i'd be interested to hear your thoughts about why you'd want a map to limit well for instance if we go into here and just say we got the 50 open space well if if this is put into into uh our ordinances is there a scenario here that this is limited to or is it all these scenarios so a developer goes hmm you know what i'm going to i'm going to choose the 25 percent and then i'm going to use the 50 on so many acres and then i'm going to you know what over here i'm going to do the 40 yeah like i'm going to buy a hundred acres and you know what but because then there's no maximum so i could put in 100 acres of 50 open space and i could just line it with 32 foot wide townhomes i'm sorry that's um probably didn't come through in the staff report and i apologize for that these are examples you saw at the june joint work session early in the process we were evaluating what was the minimum amount of open space that we wanted to see and these were some examples of what different open spaces would result in so for example if you tried to preserve more than 30 open space you couldn't do a single family development you'd have to be doing town homes or quad homes right and so we we i mean the council said we're not interested in that we don't want to see those other types of land uses we're okay with twin homes but we don't want to see town homes or apartments that's part of that okay so which models then are would we you're looking at the 25 examples only and 25 percent of them is lots like bass lake crossing south bellwether uh bass like crossing um maybe some of the smaller lots in rivenia the discovery units perhaps could be factored in there and again it doesn't preclude developers from doing a mix of you know lot sizes there might still be some larger ones but on average you're talking about those kinds of lots like you've seen in vaseline crossing itself and the bellwether type lots okay hypothetically speaking then if there's a 40 acre parcel it does not have a lot of challenging natural areas it's basically a farm field and and that field was zoned to look like this they could actually make it like this so we may never see the we may never see the other one either yeah i mean like you said the rss because in that's in that scenario if they came through with a pud we could easily say i'm sorry there's no basis for allowing a pud because they're this could happen again the you know i've always gone by the assumption that the development can get a pud if it is needed to promote the development because it otherwise would not be able to be done yeah i don't i think i would say as national i've been just totally misled by that yeah that the well i shouldn't say yes i would say that what we as staff say is a pud is a negotiated zoning district where the developer gets some flexibility and there's some been of public benefit on the flip side in rivinia if you recall a lot of the public benefit was public infrastructure improvements the council felt that that was worth some flexibility for them to pay to bring that sewer pipe in that was our first sewer development in the city and the sewer pump came from the north side of 10 down to rivenia we had to do get water we had to make a number of road improvements that was one of the pud benefits that they felt was part of this we got extra park dedication beyond what the code required they felt like that was a public benefit uh they provided the public improvements for our first city park in wildflower park they felt that was a benefit at the time we did have some architectural improvements they were doing lp siding which was a pud benefit they did come back later and not do that i can't remember the list but each council then says are these benefits from this development enough to offset the setback flexibility the lot with some flexibility whatever they're asking for so it's a negotiated zoning district they get something we get something when it's working that's what you get but it's always going to be a little different mm-hmm okay um can i ask a question yes please you said so you know with the pud it's a it's a negotiation right but we'll we'll give you this you give us that i completely agree that the infrastructure is a benefit to the citizens of of corcoran and that benefit was offset by the um well by what we gave to the builder when i look at something like that you know i'm a citizen here i live here and i look at this plan to me this looks like that open space is a benefit for the customers of the builder who live across the street from the open space where's the benefit to me and my family on a plan like that yeah if you live to the north or the west i would say that's a benefit to you you're a budding land that will never be 10 acres of land or 13 acres of land that'll never be developed well i i i'll agree to disagree with you because what i'm seeing here this this is something that the builder should be doing for their customers to drive business to get buyers in to buy those those houses i don't know why i don't see what the benefit is to our residents in general as a whole okay this benefits some of our residents infrastructure that benefits all of us this benefits them not everyone mr chairman yes sir so there is one way that this benefits everybody in the development of trails through these kinds of open spaces which is kind of envisioned by the ordinance and was discussed by the developers who came in so currently if you get a trail in a development it's going to be running along a wetland or along a highway if you're preserving open spaces like forests or they're going to create a wildflower meadow or restore native prairie now you can get a trail network through the city that goes through native open spaces which we wouldn't get any other way so that there is benefit even if you aren't living directly opposite an open space you'll be able to access it okay but maybe that then goes back uh to commissioner bruman's comments earlier about ownership if it's owned by an hoa organization and there is no trails that go through it as far as taxation might as well since i i did this in my previous life it would probably be classified as open space by the assessor and it will be taxed or valued as open space which is to say it'd be it'd be valued as land that has no other alternative use and that and and and staff is right it would be very low and the taxes would be minimum but aside from that how would that work then as far as public access if it's privately owned by an hoa and there are no improvements i mean i love the idea of putting trails through there but how did you know how how would that work it's required it said there was beauty on page four yes public trails okay would it be fair to say then that the ordinance would only allow as part of the 25 percent open space requirement that the land be something that would not be precluded from having the development or be part of a developable lot again i'm i'm trying to say what if it's a hillside where they wouldn't build anything anyway because it it just take too much fill it the the the topography just wouldn't work to allow it but they want to claim it does the city the city would imply then that well i'm sorry that is not something you're giving up it's something you can't develop anyway it'd be it'd be no different than the wetland or a flood plain district i mean somebody has to make that decision i would like all of this it's very different because we don't have a steep slope ordinance i would say with the price of land i think you we've moved a lot of dirt on projects that we've been working on so i think it would be early to say they wouldn't cut down a hillside especially depending what else is happening on the property you know corcoran we don't have a lot of grade change in general so i think you might be able to grade that out and make it up somewhere else on site but you're right we do not have that our selection is if it's a natural resource inventory that's identified in the comprehensive plan you have to preserve that otherwise we will just take the open space and if it's a steep slope that you think maybe couldn't be developed i think the council has felt that open space has value by virtue of being open space but that it needs to be upland walkable not wet okay and you can disagree but i think that's sort of i just want to know how this spread yeah that's the opportunity so so we don't we don't get to go out there and selectively choose which 20 acres or whatever whatever the 25 we don't get to choose that and say yeah no you're going to leave that part yeah other than anything that's not part of on this map you know we've chosen a lot of our city to say this is a natural resource okay can i ask a question have we ever as part of a pud have we ever negotiated public trails in any pud before yes okay so that's a benefit that could be accomplished just using a pud yes okay thank you so i think um the draft in front of you is the draft that's come out of the last 10 months of work and i think looking at the clock i think it might be helpful to make a mo like we learned today in training from natalie make a motion for discussion uh and if the motion for example is for denial it's a simple action if the motion's for approval then you'd have discussions about anything you wanted to change in the ordinance or have the council consider but i think it might be helpful to move to that point of the discussion mr chair yes sir i'd like to make a motion to deny [Applause] do we have a second to deny it all right we don't have a second so i guess the motion fails due to a second [Music] i'll make a motion don't like doing this at all is everybody comfortable with the ordinance as it's written in all of its specific wording well so there was just one question chairman that i had just regarding the open space shell be maintained free of noxious weeds litter or debris and the term that i was just concerned about was noxious weeds and for two folds one a lot of things that are considered noxious weeds are actually beneficial to the natural state of the the land so i guess i was just concerned on where we're getting i know even like the minnesota department of um i don't even know what department it is but some of the things that they consider noxious weeds are actually beneficial plants so i'm just wondering what is our standard like are we looking at what the state calls noxious weeds and then also if we're saying it must be free of noxious weeds are we indicating at all how it's kept free of noxious weeds because there's a concern too just about are we allowing you know chemical spray or treatment of of those large open areas so that that's my if i was going to get nitty gritty that's the only thing i would want request additional wording on or information mr share yes city code defines noxious weeds on page 134 okay and they include alliums buckthorn burr cucumber canada thistle corn cockle crest leaf ground soul curly dock daughter field bindweed french weed hairy white top hairy binge weed hoary crafts horse nettle johnson grass leafy spurge mile a minute weed milk sorry musk thistle uh oxide daisy perennial so thistle poison hemlock purple loose dried quackgrass russian knapweed russian thistle serrated tussock shatter cane wild carrot wild garlic wild mustard wild onion wild parsnip velvet weed bolt thistle choke berries and burning metal okay thank you are we and i guess would we have to the point earlier about the um this sewer and water do we have someone with an environmental sort of specialty that speaks into do you know what i mean some of these things as if we decide that that's something that we want to pursue or is it just kind of what's taken on the map itself like this is considered an environmental asset this is considered an environmental asset and then how do we determine that so for the purposes of this code the land that must be preserved is identified on the natural resource inventory map which is built from a field survey that bonus joe did in 2001 layered on with some uh dnr data okay and that's where those came from and got adopted in the comprehensive plan so those folks do very much have an environmental background um the obnoxious weeds uh is in our nuisance ordinance and so that's why we're using that term and that's i believe coming from the state i'd have to double check that's okay that's my memory in terms of the maintenance plan we do look at that with landscape architects um it's usually developed by the developers landscape architect for us to review the city doesn't really have any standards about not spraying so spraying i will say is very much a part of those maintenance plans today other cities have adopted regulations that that prohibits or limit those and really resort more to cutting and burning but we still allow spraying thank you but that maintenance plan would be part of one of these developments and it is something where we do have some discretion again it has to be within the realm of um i don't know the legal term but reasonableness to adopt [Music] one last question about just basic information i guess about who does the negotiating on behalf of the city so if i'm a if i'm a builder and i have a i have a pud application uh i pick up the pud and i throw it to who you know um is is there a committee of the city who is working in the committees in in the city's best interest to say no your your pile of cookies don't add up to my pile yeah it all starts with natalie as the planner applications come in through her but as i was saying the city administrator is in close contact with the council we certainly in a small city are paying attention to what the council's doing but the city administrator is chatting we have a weekly drc media development review committee with everybody involved police fire engineering planning administration and so everyone's involved and the the staff is getting the messages from the council that we're sharing with developers so is there a one person who signs off who has the authority to to say okay i've heard from all the different is that you natalie that i've heard from fire and and um and all the other departments and and i have the authority to say yes to this deal with this builder so commissioner schulack uh mr chair commissioner sheila i do not have the authority to give any kind of final approval on a beauty that is city council what i am doing is trying to convey what i am doing as this kendra is trying to convey the city council's will so that when they go to city council it is a plan that they are comfortable with as the developer that they are hoping meets the standards that the city council has identified as value and in addition to that we're also working with heavily working with public works on this uh including our engineering branch to be able to get everything as clean as possible again it's a 60-day process so we have to move very quickly but that's why it's a preliminary stage initially when a pud comes through and we also have a final to work out any other kinks so ultimately i don't have the approval but my job is to coordinate and share the message yes so if i could add to that there's negotiation on the standard plaque too i mean platts come in uh the bechtel farms one is a great example they came in with a plat that i suppose technically met the the zoning standards but the roads weren't aligning and there wasn't a good great place for the trail and so they certainly met the code and we could have brought it forward but it didn't really meet some of the things that we wanted to see so staff negotiated with that and brought that forward there was still negotiation here at the planning commission and at the council meeting before we finally settled on something related to the trail there isn't discretion on those but we still have conversations with developers about well what if you did this don't you think it would look a little better and sometimes they listen and sometimes they don't and you know we try to move it forward but we do that with the in the context of what the policy makers and decision makers are wanting to see because within that 60 days we have to package it up the only massive true negotiation is with the pud but again same process we're getting that message we're all sitting together and bringing that forward but i just wanted to clarify that certainly puds have a lot of negotiation but even a standard plot i don't want you to think we just go okay here you go guys you know we have a lot of discussions to try to make it better in terms of what the city's adopted vision is yeah i i completely agree and especially the thing about beth told firearms like that was a serious joint effort to get between planning and public works to get something that is workable for the developer but did provide a much better street connection that i had a better lined up intersection so there'd be less impact to the adjacent neighborhood across oh i forgot the street name but across the street um so yeah it's it is basically as planners what we're signing off on is that we are coordinating with everybody that we possibly can coordinate with and that is a significant part of our role but yeah to answer your initial question we aren't signing off saying okay the box is checked now um the deal has been made so it has to go to council it's ultimately we're getting it a plan as best as possible in place that we that the developer feels confident with that could be approved and then that goes to council from there we'll end to you as well in the preliminary stages at some point i'm sure that you've you've had to do this before in the name of the city of corcoran you've had to say no we won't budge on this issue and probably more more than you can count um there was a joke recently that's just like if you don't think we're working as planners in the public interest of the city just you just need to sit in the room with the developer with us because they're we're not friends with them all right thank you add that to the youtube channel okay any other any other discussion or let's take another uh another motion another vote on the ordinance the converse to what was made before is do we have a motion to approve this ordinance as it is written gossip i'll make a motion to deny i'll second that motion okay all um all right now how does this new process work so if i could just well i just want to clarify one thing on the vote you have a motion in a second to deny but the alter there are several alternatives you can move to approve as drafted but you can also move to approve with changes i made a motion to deny and that's on the floor correct okay so then at this point mr chair you would uh just we have a motion tonight you take a vote yep i mean you could ask for additional discussion but i i think we've had a lot of discussion so it's up to you we can go ahead and vote at this point um okay well i you know i'm gonna just clear my head on this because um um i i do remember when i first saw this and a couple things that you know i remember back i personally like the 50 one uh or the 40 for for areas that were high density because i thought if any place needed a rural feel it was it was though those areas but to accomplish that i would i would think what would be workable is you can't have 40 acres of you know well 20 acres of of townhomes um so i would think that you know i would have supported you know a measure for preserving open space for those properties that are already zoned or not currently zoned higher density now as we talked about today for meeting our our our density overall i could support something like this to get that higher density but then i would like to then maybe see us change some of our zoning to allow a less dense because i believe that that you know having more space between livable units is preferable than more livable units in a smaller space i also happen to believe a strong i'm a strong believer in that we can always obtain a more rural feel within our urban developments through setbacks we just went through some increased setback standards for some [Music] areas that for religious institutions and other assembly areas we could certainly always maybe improve upon our setbacks and our screening from roads and whatnot because part of i think and maybe to commissioner lanternman's position earlier is yeah we're not going to be able to go enjoy this open space i tell you what if we had more of an open space field meaning more shielding and deeper setbacks for uh tavara you know going up what was that two miles of 116 you know where you didn't see it well i'll tell you i'd take that i'd take that benefit any day of the week if that was something that was negotiated and again i don't see a lot of i just don't know how developers are going to embrace this but i suspect if the city council approves the ordinance i i sure wish it i hope it's success i i'd love to see it it happened but um i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna vote no on this as well so did we have a second oh yes so this is this is further discussion so i've said my piece i'm sorry anybody else okay all right all those in favor of of recommending denial of an ordinance amending the text of title nine [Music] say i i i opposed nay and i abstain and you abstained yes okay abstain all right so the recommendation is to deny okay thank you everybody and well i think a lot this is that you guys still focus this uh well again i'll be very interested to see what this what happens at the city council level and again i i wish it as much successes as anybody else if it if it works so i appreciate all the work that everybody did in it all right um does anybody need a break i think the last one's going to be quick but i'm fine with the break so yeah just up to you guys okay five minutes we'll be back at 10 10 this is in recess thank you thank you i haven't had dinner yet me neither i'm not going to be able to eat tonight because it's too late now all right have i heard from brad are we offline yeah well we're offline but this is still recording but we're not on i had ham and potato soup and i have the broth left would that at least give you no the problem is i get acid reflux so bad so if i want to lie down when i get home i can't eat anything anymore i was going to leave at 3 30 to go get food but we started having technical difficulties with the wi-fi and everything just got so screwed up it didn't happen so police did give me some snacks okay because like i am like legitimately concerned but are you ready but i'm still hungry if i feel like i'm headed you won't drive home right uh no i'm driving home later this month or next month but you're not your blood sugar is not going to tank and then go have lunch and see where you're shaking you think you'll be okay i have blood pressure problems okay anything but i've had enough caffeine today okay um but that also is like working against you then you have not had caffeine today or you can stay awake oh no i've had caffeine oh i've had a i've had a migraine for somebody that's why i keep taking pills every couple hours um because that's why i'm also [Music] right let it be the last one yes it'll it'll get replaced as a recommendation and then the firm that short view used was a different like it all came together but none of them are actually the same same verb connected it's pretty funny well they all i think you know when you can't reach down into your gut you might feel so committed to something i know it's tough but i also feel like i was i feel like if we just do nothing we are going to keep getting what we have always got and so i was willing to try it [Music] and private sector stuff because you could have turned around and changed it but that but that's the strongest argument for wanting to improve better number of applicants than that i don't see the city getting good land out of it and natalie's job um but we're not getting much out of the beauty anyway your job you've only got one so are we going to get worse than we're already getting he has a master's degree he's interned with other cities like i um i drive up on twitter right well yeah one really good idea right well and i was i was like i was thinking it could be like a damn [Music] our planning department but yes whereas you know if it's the older neighborhoods but now they're doing similarly they're just taking i remember that was one thing at brooklyn that the student i remember driving through that about me is they liked how i had that background but you're saying wider lots you're trying to take things off i guess that other guess if you're talking like the old or not wanting a girlfriend oh that's not right that's not there you know a little bit i think that it would be more than a quarterback especially during they are maternity leave the ones that if you can get them off of an acre are being subdivided but i guess that would fit even in what you're saying with life i call them we would tell them did not get a chance to call me back i should have clarified that he could have helped me after hours we can't i mean we can't i'll follow that email that's really exciting no she said we could do that it's just in 2028 are we ready you can change it in 2028. okay it's a pretty suicidal sure okay all right we're ready to go what the comprehensive but how much to say say instead of instead of it three to five hours all right we're gonna uh come back into session for the january 6 2022 meeting and we are now going to move on to item 6c tavara 3rd edition final planned unit development plan um staff report please yes i do have a couple extra slides tonight because we have two planning commissioners who don't have the background normally this is a pretty brief presentation but we've talked about to vera tonight i think everybody knows where it is it's a 551 unit single family twin home town home project on 274 acres it was originally granted preliminary approvals in 2020 and there have been a number of phases and an amendment and this is now phase three this is at the northwest corner of hackamore and 116. this is the townhome section this includes all of the townhomes in the project as you move through the site it's primarily single family with some twin homes in the northwest portion of the site the town homes there's a new entrance with this connection that will connect where the second edition road tamarac lane the north south lane stops it will connect all the way through to hackamore and so as part of this project this triggers the financial dedication from lennar to begin design more design work on hackamore road and start uh moving forward with that construction project hopefully if if this were to go forward and those dollars were received there are um single-family homes along tamarack that are planned as part of the third edition and then the remainder are those nine single-family homes and 134 town homes this is 37 acres for the third edition that includes those the entire project is part of a master hoa that's responsible for things like the entry sign some of the landscaping at the entry feature etc but the town homes are part of us a separate sub hoa because the hoa will own and maintain the exteriors of the buildings the common open space and the private drives those are private drives that serve the townhomes 62nd place as a public street but then those are private drives that come off as part of the pud there was some flexibility granted for setbacks and lot size that are met with the proposal and some beauty flexibility for the from the design standards for both single family and town homes and these are consistent with those approvals this is an example of the town homes that could be built the exact this image is from maple grove the plan set is the plan set for this particular development there's a mix of units with slab on grade units as well as those with lookout and walkouts the preliminary plan did have some full basement plans but those have been eliminated with the final grading plan is a mix then of slab on grade and the walk-out lookout units on this image those dark spots some of you may have noticed that there are some stockpiles down by hackmar those are the stockpiles the they have been approved by the council they are in the third edition and what i wanted to point out is the lots will be platted but obviously they won't be able to build on those lots until those stockpiles over the single family home units are removed they will not be eliminated until the property to the west develops so the land would get platted and the final grading some of the grading will occur with this phase but they won't be entirely eliminated until the property to the west develops the road however is already graded in if you've been out there so the road will be constructed to the to the hackamore connection the i wanted to highlight this it's really a policy issue i think for the council but you may recall that the pud approvals allowed a development sign at the hackamore entrance that is not shown on the plans at this point when they do decide the location either the east or the west side they will need to come in for a sign permit and they will need to grant us a encroachment or we will need to enter into an encroachment agreement over any of our drainage and utility easements and then they'll need to provide an easement over the hoa land uh so that the hoa is maintaining that sign at the entrance this sign that's on the screen is a welcome to corcoran sign or a community entrance sign this concept was shown as part of the preliminary approvals and was one of the benefits the previous council was interested in starting to establish a standard for when you come into corcoran on some of these county roads having a welcome to corcoran sign since that preliminary approval we do have a new council and so one of the questions for the council is is this something you're still interested in and if so uh it was considered a pud benefit lennar would design and construct that community entrance sign but if we're going to do it we should establish a standard so that it's something we could continue at other entry points in the city we did not include it as part of the cook lake highlands project which was at one point something that was considered so this will be a policy discussion for the council this is really more information for the planning commission tonight just again because we have some new folks on the commission and this is a very significant project in the city a park dedication with this project is dedic is planned for the entire subdivision and so different phases have park dedication and some have cash this phase will be cash in lieu of land for the new 143 new units no park or trail is being dedicated with this phase that's getting credit there is an off-road trail that's planned in what is now out lot b on the west side of the property when that property is planted in the future those trails will be in an easement and park dedication will be given for those off-road segments but when it moves around those those houses on the west side of tamarack it starts running up on tamarack that's an on-road trail and we do not give park dedication credit for that i wanted to note this was in the staff report but the 62nd place has a sidewalk on the south side or east side depending on how it's kind of at an angle and that should continue all the way up through the cul-de-sac along that private drive number four and then connect out to the one the future 116 trail that's planned that trail is going to be built by hennepin county at some future date when those improvements are made but we think it's important that that trail connection be made by this developer at that time so the x on the screen is where they were showing a trail connection that requires walking down a really long private driveway so we felt that it should come off of driveway number four so there's less time sort of walking in people's front yards on this public connection public sidewalk to a public trail so that's the reason for that uh change and then lastly i mentioned already the hackamore road improvement project is planned uh and that hackam there's a trail along hackamore that would be constructed with that street improvement project this is the approved preliminary flat for the entire site again we're looking at the lower right hand corner phase three of the subdivision with this application tonight this is the final pud plan this is the final plat just for reference there's a lot of outlaws in this final plat and we've encouraged them to try to consolidate some of them but the outlets are for the private drives and the common open space this is the phasing plan this is phase three the applicant has indicated that the next phase is likely to be north of horseshoe trail rather than to the west of this phase three so that's something we'll watch for we don't have that application yet uh the pud final development plan is uh to be reviewed for compliance with the preliminary pud development plan and staff finds that it is in compliance and we recommend approval of the resolution approving the final pud development plan with the conditions in the draft resolution okay great thank you may i ask a question yes you can mr chair thank you yes um isn't it true that we have no choice but to approve this we don't like we can't vote no on this we must approve this and do i understand that correctly if you find it's consistent there are things that you could modify like the trail connection that we're suggesting a change there but in in all terms of the number of units and the type of units that has been approved and is consistent yes okay so the you would agree then that the use of a pud in this instance has removed our discretion at this phase yes okay thank you we got a sign but future editions we will see this again that's it correct well or is this the last time we touch no you get a final beauty development plan for each phase and as a way for you to see that it's consistent with the preliminary approvals it's different this is unique to corcoran most cities don't send this back to planning commissions for that exact reason the pud final plan and the final plot have very limited discretion okay [Applause] all right does anybody wish to start i'll volunteer commissioner landerman thank you so this this actually goes back to the previous agenda item here in this instance the use of a pud has removed our discretion and requires both this panel and our city council to vote to approve we have no other choice that said it does seem uh that there is nothing that would prevent this from being approved because it is in substantial compliance with the preliminary plat that was approved there are some additional conditions like making sure mailboxes comply with you know what the postal system wants but that's it that's about it so i i think that we have no option but to uh approve this thank you anybody else [Music] i think every time the city enters into a negotiation with a builder they should bring us a shrubbery you know if you know what that means um when i take a look at the again the the small footprints of the houses in here uh one thing that stood out was a this major discussion we had a couple of months ago with a resident being told that they the resident had to apply for a special variance or something to build a deck or an elevated patio off of their house and you know just just knowing even before the discussions tonight the builders will make most of make the most of the land that's available to them and it's to their benefit that most of it is is home and concrete because there's less maintenance services that they offer such as mowing so is you know we ran into this before with the amount of um the um off the space off of the back of the house and in this instance do i i don't know but are would people be able to build a deck or an a patio off of their home of substantial size of medium size or will this be another instance where okay we were able to because the townhomes have an established footprint i can tell you that townhomes will have decks those are established and they will fit within the setbacks because each individual homeowner selects the home for their lot i can't say today that it yes it will but what i can say is we do review those the developer lennar has been to the council and talked about the new system that they have implemented to ensure that variance that you're referring to doesn't happen again or to try to avoid that from happening again so we have a couple of checks and balances we always tell them on their building permit how much room they have whether people review their plans or not as a different issue because it's you know the builder asking for it not the homeowner and sometimes it may not get conveyed but they are large enough but what i would say and i said with that variance is the buyer has a responsibility to look at what they're buying the developer has a responsibility to tell people what their limitations are and the city needs to continue to note that as well during the building permit process so yes i think they can build backs we'll see what happens because i think we all came away from maybe it was september october meeting or something where we just didn't want any more surprises for homeowners and we didn't want to put the onus on them to have to do research into our codes and zonings in order to find out whether they could have eventually built a deck right i think i felt good about lennar's new process and i think the council felt comfortable with that and i think mike has a good system in place with the building permit too so hopefully we're in good shape all right and with that it's not unusual for prospective homeowners to come and talk to me to see if they can put a deck with the plan so i that is a conversation i do have with people looking at lots and would that also be a discussion that you could have with other builders other companies oh i mean it's not specific to london i definitely have to discuss belinar lots if they've come in with the plan and asking me what their setbacks are and they have a survey if they have all the information i can give them like yeah you'd be able to build this amount of a deck without having a problem and that's not specific to lennar that would be i mean any homeowner can come in and ask me that based on their parcel but i definitely have seen um sense that variance i have seen more and more people come in and ask me directly good thank you that's all for me okay thank you i have a curious question all these outlets that are listed for these outdoor is that a common approach for townhomes or why is there so many outlets yes and no uh what i mean by that is it's common to have outlaws for private drives i can't think of in my 25 years seeing a project of this size with this many outlets lennar is on the line they certainly could comment but i've encouraged them offline to try to consolidate some of those well some of it's like every buildings and all and the outlets are all butting up next week it's just part of the that's not common normally there's a outlet for the private drives and those can be somewhat separate because it's serving different units and then there's usually just an overarching common outlet around everything else it's very unusual the way they've drafted this but um yeah they kind of just wrapped a yard around it around each building they called it an outlet yeah yeah okay not common but is there a benefit is there a reason i don't know from a city perspective is there something no on the other hand from a city perspective they're owned by the hoa we've got them covered by drainage and utility easements so that if we need to get in there and do any work we can come in there and we've i'm working with the city attorney to just make sure that all of the hoa documents are clear about the responsibility of the hoa for all those gosh i don't even know what that is 50 out lots with the double digit outlines yeah that's a lot um in looking at this one thing that i noticed is that these these townhomes are being built in blocks of six most of them are 25 feet in width the ends are 30. in some of the other materials that i've looked at and even in the last item that we just looked at in the examples we were using 25 or 28 and 30 feet so [Music] do i recall then that there was no minimum for the width of a townhome unit um i believe there is a minimum for the width of a townhome unit but this is consistent with the preliminary approvals is what i would say no i know that i i'm not saying it doesn't i'm just you know i in some units that i i looked at and in maple grove and whatnot they were 33 feet well i and i i know that things can vary i'm just we don't have a standard as to how wide they have to be don't believe we do but you know i'd have to check and get back to you that was a couple developments ago since we looked at that and i don't recall i'm trying to pull it up here right now but i don't recall off the top of my head yeah i mean 25 just seems a little thin to me um the other thing i noticed is that in between the blocks of six why i think if i was to walk between one block and another i'd have to turn sideways i mean do we not have a minimum a minimum set back from each other from one block of houses to the other we do and they comply well i mean it's so small i can't even see i can't even see where it's been enumerated again i i in comparing the original materials i still kept from before i i didn't see any difference in pretty much anything but this of course is going to be our first town home development in the city and [Music] i think it'll be quite a wake up to a lot of the citizenry of our community because of its location and the size and the compactness of this which makes that which makes the um the landscaping all that much more important so looking at l1 of one the tavara third edition landscape plan [Music] there are the required trees and then there are the proposed trees and all of the shrubs were eliminated and i'm sure there was a reason i read for that but can you refresh my memory as to why that is you're talking about the shrubs along 116. i'm talking about what's listed on that sheet 290 shrubs have been scrubbed [Applause] i don't pause on the line maybe you could ask the developer i'm not i'm not sure what you're talking about but um exactly but i don't see where they're scrubbed i'm not sure oh are you able to answer that at all uh sure good evening uh mr chair members of the council um i'm i'm not 100 clear can you all hit you can all see and hear me okay i assume yeah yeah great um i apologize i'm not quite sure what you're trying to ask mr chair but uh something is scrubbed okay on the sheet that talks about the landscape requirements yep the landscape plan looking right at it okay it says required 39 overstory 29 conifer 58 ornamental 290 shrubs right below proposed trees 47 overstory 96 conifer 48 ornamental i can only est i can only assume that there was an agreement or we got more over-story trees in exchange for the 290 shrubs [Music] i think i read that somewhere at one point we did we did talk to staff or maybe it was part of the preliminary approvals where we we put in additional trees in the overall community instead of shrubs okay and the purpose for that is is that the trees provide a little bit better screen than shrubs do and they tend to last a little longer and um just be a little bit more hearty with season this season and weather and conditions and things like that so um but we are i believe we are in compliance for the required number of plantings um for this phase and we're actually over pretty significantly for the entire community yeah and i wouldn't argue with that paul i i just was curious as to why uh they weren't here now um or why there were no shrubs but um in the staff report then uh under landscaping proposed in the second paragraph proposed trees also conflict with the location of utilities for townhomes particularly where trees are located between the second and third or the fourth and fifth units plants must be revised to eliminate all conflicts with trees and utilities is that going to be possible i mean i've never lived in a town home and i haven't studied the landscape characteristics of it but how do you eliminate when you don't really have anything to put a tree in in the first place mr chair to answer that question it's a matter of shifting it a couple feet it's the services to the units and the right at the front uh entry and so we're we've i've looked with engineering we're confident they're going to be able to slide that a little ways to be able to avoid those pipes um at the entry so it's a matter of either the pipe shifting a bit or the tree shifting so we feel very confident they're going to be able to do that without you being able to look at a plan and see that it looks different that's the scale of the movement we're talking about okay it's a small shift but when it when the plant when it says that for each unit a minimum of one over story tree or one coniferous you know um [Music] where does if you if you've got a line of townhomes six in number but i can only see three trees what happened the other three trees we don't require them to be at the unit lot so there's a number of them that are down on 116 there's a number of them down along the hackamore road and there's some clustered in sort of that area between buildings so they do not need to be in the driveway okay we would frankly rather they not be there because it is so tight with the bituminous that they don't do well as well in those locations as they do in the common areas so it's just within the townhome development they need to have the 134 trees and um they've got them and i think they'll be able to keep them generally in the front units where they've got them okay but then curiously okay there's not with the exception of a few i don't know if those are bushes or planted trees that you know there's just not enough space for my eyes to be able to delay but obviously the units along hackamore and some of them along 116. certainly those were built in as buffers but if you if you have say on some of these interior ones right so you only got three trees in front but i it's hard to find where any trees made it to the backyard is there a reason why trees aren't planted in the back of these units i'm looking at outlet double d and there's three trees there and outlet double c has three trees uh behind uh block 23 and three trees behind block 24. so okay but again there's a few cases in and the ones that are along the roads are there because we required them to be along the road i just was wondering if you have six units you put three trees in front why not put three trees in back in some cases it's the wetlands you can't impact that well okay then so along that north edge that might be where you're looking is that along that north edge there that's the right up against the wetland buffers and so there's really limited space in those areas okay but i just wonder is this a is this what you get with a town home you you plant them in the front where you don't have enough space and you don't plant them in the back for some reason i i don't know i was just curious yeah can i answer your two previous questions sure it's 15 feet between town home buildings okay and we do not have a minimum building width for town homes although we do have minimum garage widths okay what's the minimum what's the minimum garage with 20 feet it is and they got beauty flexibility to be 20 feet okay okay um i think um i think that was all the questions i had could i ask a question of the applicant yes by all means and and i'm sorry uh hi sir uh was your name i'm sorry i i don't recall your name uh paul de bruyne i'm an entitlement manager okay thank you so um when this matter first came before city council uh i had asked a representative of lennar a question and he said that he would look into it and then i i never heard anything could i ask you that question and ask you to get that information for me sure mr commissioner what's your question so in 2014 lennar and its mortgage arm were sued by the federal government for violations of the false claims act the complaint alleged that lennar quote engaged in a regular nationwide practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its loans the complaint further alleged that quote the extremely poor quality of lennar's loans was a function of management's nearly singular focus on increasing lennar's profits in 2018 lennar settled the case by paying the federal government 13.2 million dollars in exchange for the government's dismissal of the claims my uh my question is would you be willing to share with me a copy of that settlement agreement i don't have access to that information i can i can ask around and see i don't know that it's public record um i'm kind of not i'm i'm not it was that in minnesota or on national level well you're a national builder right and this was correct yeah and this is a federal national uh investigation i i guess let me let me just ask you one more maybe this will be easier could i ask you to just get back to me in this commission and let me know if my facts are correct can you just come back and either acknowledge or deny what i'm alleging um what i can do is uh i'll i'll check internally and see what information might be able to be provided regarding that excellent and then no matter what you hear back would you give me the courtesy of a response i can do that thank you or uh paul feel free to forward it to me and i can afford it with the commission as well that would be easier to coordinate probably better would that be acceptable yes okay thank you all right i just i just don't want to see a lot of foreclosed homes in corcoran because of bad lending practices okay fair enough um i did have one other question regarding the the sign the gateway sign concept um um i thought i read in here that it was up to the city to design it and that they were going to pay for it yes um but i did i not read in here or see in the report that lennar designs it and we just approve it well and i think there's a distinction there and i just i kind of wanna i don't know that there is but we could certainly rewrite that language if you think it's different well you said it that this is a policy decision for the city council so i guess i would question my my comment to the city council i this won't affect my vote on this here tonight it's a it's a relatively small issue to this thing and i understand the situation but i would think as a policy if the city has the right to that corner to put a gateway sign that maybe the city should put it in a design that is suitable to them that they could then use and replicate to other subdivisions within the city at later dates so that's condition 12j and i'm certainly if if commissioners have better language that you think reflects that better i think that that was my intent in writing that is i want them to spend the time hiring designers based on direction from our council if they want to go forward rather than us spending money on designers that was the intent under the direction of the council and then giving the council final approval but if that's not coming through i am very open to language changes but of course the council is hearing that as well so i think they understand what you're trying to accomplish and also could think of other language yeah personally again um someone's gonna someone's gonna put a sign there if if if if we have a way to control what that looks like and the quality of it i would think we would want to grab that opportunity instead of leaving it to lennar yeah that's what i tried that's my only point i won't make any changes in it and that's why you don't give up your discretion okay any other comments discussion recommendations just one this is my first time i believe seeing one of these so i just wanted to confirm because there were like probably at least four places where it said something wasn't currently in compliance or something need to be changed is that that's not uncommon is what i'm gathering okay that's getting back to the 60-day rule sure okay where there's just not enough time yeah uh mr chair members of the commission i did hear one question that i wanted to just answer or give a little um insight to and it was a question about multiple outlets why so many outlasts yes so the reason and actually that's it's pretty common practice um for us in every almost every single town home community that i've done um what we end up doing and it's a prep it really comes down to a preference there's multiple ways to plant town homes um our preference is to put each building in its own outlet and the reason is our hoa manager prefers that because when she goes to set up the documents for maintenance primarily landscape and snow removal as well as siding and roofing and building maintenance that's incorporated into the hoa it's easy to tie that building to a legal outlet instead of having all the buildings floating in in uh one large outlet as kendra had indicated that's that's a way to do it too but it's easier for us to set up and it's cleaner from a from a legal description perspective if each building gets its own outlook so that's how we that's how we set up our townhome plants thanks okay so paul then then every building then doesn't have its own set of directors and management and and things like that correct all the town homes in this unit in in this third edition will all be operated as one but with the exception of being able to tie specific costs and what not to specific buildings it all has one management structure every town home um the way and just just for everybody on the commission so you know what we end up doing is when we set up our homeowners associations we typically set up a master for the entire community and that covers typically it's the master landscape area stuff so like the entry monuments and things like that we also do um regulate architecture so that everything kind of stays in a conforming look and theme but what we typically do is we set up a master for the whole community um and then we set up sub-associations for each product type so this is a different product type here so this town home area would have its own sub-association under the master hoa for the whole community i hope that makes sense yep okay thank you so yes uh dean uh i'm sorry uh mr chair to your point um this um this townhome community will be its own sub association and there will be one association responsible for those buildings in the landscaping and the snow removal and the uh the maintenance to them to the area well that that that's great my my mother lives in a a complex uh that has different managers for every building and um as you can imagine some buildings are well cared for and others are not and so i can appreciate what you guys do there because in her situation it looks like a mess so all right anybody else anything else no all right um do we have a uh um can i get a motion to approve the final planned unit development uh for tavara third edition mr char i'll make a motion to uh approve i second okay all those in favor say aye aye opposed i will abstain okay one abstention okay thank you everybody and i believe that was the only one that we had to vote on right correct okay very good thank you thanks paul thank you have a good night everyone hey youtube okay okay sorry i don't write so fast anymore um okay let's move on item 7 section 7 reports planning project update does anybody have any questions of staff or comments regarding our planning updates [Applause] the question and maybe it's a duplication because of the late hour but the um cara nimi it says it's being closed out but was that a conclusion ever reached on that one when we say that uh they've they've been approved they're okay construction and so when you're when uh we do a development uh we take a letter of credit or a cash escrow and so that is not closed out they did not complete their work this winter so we're holding the money okay till spring okay with a couple of uh outstanding items like okay just making sure that the road is done done and the monument signs for the wetlands are in so minor things and then we will release the financial guarantees um it looks like item 10 cook lake highlands is coming to us next month uh no that's changed since then oh okay we were reviewing it but um uh that is still incomplete and uh we expect that actually on the march agendas has there been any changes contemplated there are some minor changes i think they've lost a couple of units and made a few tweaks but have been just primarily working to address the conditions of approval um [Music] how's our next door neighbor doing with their development plans you will see next month the landscape variants that we talked about for st therese so that will be on your next agenda okay maybe the only thing on your next agenda unless we bring back ms4 okay anybody else all right let's move on then to 7b the city council report councilmember nichols floor is yours sir in my review of the list it seems like most of the topics are administrative in nature and didn't necessarily directly concern the planning commission um the only one that i wanted to comment on was there was a note here on a posture agreement with saint terese on some storm water design charges just to identify the scope there so there are adjacent parcels some owned by the city the other owned by um ain't racing rather than independently trying to coordinate storm water design and then harmonize them between the two parcels we're pooling our resources to design for the overall site together and split the cost it's not that we will split the cost of the actual execution of the design by just paying for the design itself is there any other questions or things you're like me well now this i know as long as we're just talking about signs and design and everything else there's a co-op sign agreement or requirement for saint therese in the city is anything has that been resolved yet or we haven't discussed that further okay i'm guessing that'll probably complement so um the uh property tax levies and stuff is um is the levy going up faster than the market value or vice versa the reason the levy is larger is because more homes have been built so overall rates are falling slightly but because the new homes that were built two years ago are now being classified as residences that are occupied rather than raw land we're starting to see the levy go up because more properties are coming under um residential taxation versus raw land you're seeing the market value go up the levy is how much money the city is requesting i would assume the levy is always going to go up because as the city grows we need more staff and you know i just you know no matter the here's going to be the the the odd thing is that we're going to get all this new development eventually we'll have industrial and everything else and we'll have a lot of market value increases but the levy's always going to go up as you've got to add schools and more police and infrastructure and everything else and even though you've got all this massive building you know people call me up and they say what do you expect taxes to go up and you just say go it'll go up five percent you didn't have to look at the numbers you just knew it now some cities have been able to do it where you know as as as they've been able to hold the levees so that as your tax base increases then the actual taxes from year to year they go down but cities will increase their levy because their base is going up so much it always looks like they're getting a property tax decrease even though they're spending more money i just was wondering are we finally starting to see some some movement on market value increases that are meaningful in this calculation so let me ask a better question does hennepin county give you a good analysis on on on those numbers and and stuff that's probably a better question for jessica that we actually get from the county okay we don't get a lot of input into that yeah um and my impression based on what i see on zillow or whatever that is worth is that property values are going up faster than the county is saying they are so homeowners are seeing a benefit in that regard and the worst case scenario as a homeowner is you you get the realistic value increases that have been realized over the last couple of years that doesn't seem to be what's happening yeah we do see commercial and industrial property taxes going up faster because valuations are going up faster you spoke about different philosophies in different cities i think we would love to be in a position where we can cut rates to the point where people's overall tax burden goes down but that requires the demand for services to be relatively lower per person and with the kind of development that we're seeing that has not yet happened that would probably take more commercial industrial development like what you'd see like in medina where their population is a little bit smaller than ours now but they've got a lot of industrial and commercial property that has a higher contribution to their overall tax base we're not in that position today um maybe someday we we would be but we also want to be cautious about where we allow that kind of development we don't want to become an industrial city does bandana really have a smaller population than we do well their sign says 4 700. wow i never would have guessed that but okay great but their tax rate is 25 whereas ours is 43 ish wow we also have polaris and target and um any uh uh progress on our new city administrator any it is is there a is there a market of candidates out there i know that some of this stuff can be sensitive but we'll find that out soon um we'll be officially approving the the job posting on 13th and i think the timeline is it into march when we fully get a handle on uh the number of at least finalists or semi-finalists that we're that we're seriously looking at and hopefully by april we've made a selection of initial word that we've gotten is that there's going to be some good interest so oh good can i ask a question sure so i know now um and i i'm i'm embarrassed to say i don't recall her her name i'm getting old and i forget names sometimes um who who's the acting city manager now jessica jessica thank you has jessica applied for the position she's indicated that she's going to like tighten that if she does um i know a lot of municipalities will give preference to an internal candidate and i guess just as a citizen here i would urge the council to do that you know she has shown that she's committed to this city she's done a good job and she's already doing the job so just you know i just my two cents if she does apply i know i would support her but i would also recommend maybe adding a few preference points to that evaluation thank you anything else all right well thank you very much uh for the uh always insightful report um okay right now item 7c other business [Music] one we need to go through the process of appointing a chair and vice chair we did not have to do that tonight i'm just going to warn you that that will be something that we're going to add to put on the february february agenda um so just want that to be on our radar and then second we do have the northeast district plan and design guidelines want to alert you to some half sheets right at the front desk that provides you with the with a tiny url to bring you to our webpage it'll be easier for you to use that than for me to provide the very long website address and there is a community survey that you as residents are encouraged to fill out and it'll help us inform our data and then next tuesday we are having alien