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HomeMy WebLinkAbout02-25-08 WSMinutes City of Lakeville City Council Work Session Monday, February 25, 2008 @ 5:3o p.m. City Council Chambers, Lakeville City Hall In attendance: Mayor Holly Dahl and Council Members Wendy Wulff, Laurie Rieb, Mark Bellows and Kerrin Swecker. Also in attendance: City Administrator Steve Mielke, Assistant to City Administrator Brian Anderson, Community and Economic Development Director Dave Olson, Planning Director Daryl Morey, Finance Director Dennis Feller, Parks and Recreation Director Steve Michaud, and Operations and Maintenance Analyst/Safety Specialist Neil Normandin. The meeting was called to order at 5:3o p.m. • i. Liquor Ordinance Mr. Mielke stated that the restaurant requirement for on-sale licenses was instituted in i9~4. Prior to that only Special Club and Bottle Club Licenses were allowed. The Ordinance currently limited the number of On-Sale Licenses to i8. Councilmember Swecker questioned why there is a limit on the number of On-Sale licenses. Mr. Mielke stated that the number of On-Sale licenses correlates with the population and there are statutory regulations. At this point Lakeville has room for five more On-Sale Licenses. Mr. Mielke stated Crystal Lake is regulated through a PUD agreement which initially allowed Wine and Beer, and in 2001 an On-sale license was granted with conditions. Councilmember Bellows asked for clarification on the difference between Wine and Beer Licenses and On-Sale Liquor Licenses. Wine and Beer Licenses do not require the 50 percent rule, however they are only allowed to sell wine and beer, not hard distilled liquor. When the 5o percent rule was set up it was intended to be restaurants. Mr. Mielke reported that a survey was done of ordinances from other municipalities including the League of Minnesota Cities' model ordinance, and other Dakota County cities. Note that the League's model has no restaurant requirement; it looks at the facility as if it is a bar. For most of the cities restaurants are required. Mr. Mielke reviewed the various regulations for each city. Council Work Session Minutes February 25, 2008 Page 2 . Mr. Mielke reviewed the regulations of the three cities that have Brunswick Zone requirements. Blaine is considering reducing the food requirement for bowling centers, because their primary purpose is entertainment not food sales. Eden Prairie has a combined ~o% food plus recreational activities requirement for a bowling center. Mr. Mielke reviewed the history for Crystal Lake and how that residential area came to have a full liquor license for the banquet facility. Mr. Mielke reviewed existing on-sale liquor licenses referencing maps. The ordinance states that alcohol cannot be sold after io:oo pm on the patio if the facility is i5o feet from the patio to a residentially zoned property line. He stated the request that came was to look at 15o feet from the license holder's property line to a residentially zoned property line. The purpose of the 15o foot setback was a noise issue, to try and make sure that the noise of the patio was at least i5o feet away from any residentially zoned property. Chief Vonhof spoke about the Police Department's enforcement philosophy. He stated there are i8 on-sale locations, and 29 on and off sale locations with 49 licenses. He stated that the Police Department does compliance checks. A compliance check is an undercover operation where an underage person is engaged to go in with a fake or altered ID and attempt to purchase and see if the servers will catch it. If an illegal sale occurs an officer advises the server and there is an arrest that occurs at that time. The person is charged and the business sustains a penalty. In the last seven years out of 202 on-sale compliance checks there have been 21 failures, which is an 89.x% success ratio in that time. • A second type of enforcement is having officers walking through at all of the on-sale locations. The third type of enforcement is when there is an issue identified at one of our liquor establishment licensees the Police Department will go and meet with the staff, manager or owner, to find out what is being done to resolve the issue. In 2006 two officers were trained to provide TIPS training, which is a type of training to improve procedures for alcohol servers. To date 58 servers in the community have been trained. Currently TIPS is a voluntary program. Chief Vonhof outlined the potential Best Practices program. Councilmember Swecker asked whether any of the 58 servers who received TIPS training failed a compliance check in 200. Chief Vonhof responded they did not. Councilmember Bellows asked if there were any reasons why there was an increase in compliance check failures in 200. Chief Vonhof stated that the Police Department is increasing their compliance checks and they are more aggressive and checking the establishments twice a year. Councilmember Bellows asked how the 5o percent food 5o percent liquor requirement is enforced. Mr. Mielke explained that the state looks at the numbers retrospectively. Councilmember Swecker asked whether we have the resources for TIPS training. Chief Vonhof stated that there is a $15 cost for each person for course materials and the course takes five hours. Council Work Session Minutes February 25, 2008 Page 3 . Mr. Mielke asked if there were any additional questions or comments by the Council. Councilmember Swecker spoke about the i5o foot and 30o foot rules limiting the businesses and the city as to where the businesses can come in. Mr. Mielke stated that with the exception of the I-35 corridor most of the commercial areas in Lakeville are neighborhood commercial areas. The community has developed into commercial neighborhood nodes and there are restaurants in most of the nodes. Mr. Mielke stated that if the distance requirements are put into place it would limit the ability for restaurants to come into those areas. He also stated if the distance requirements are put in place it should be first come first serve, so if a restaurant is there before a daycare or church shows up next door, it should be grandfathered in and shouldn't lose it's license. Councilmember Wulff stated that there could also be the unintended consequence that it could be harder to find land to put in a daycare center. If a develop has to forego having a restaurant in the whole commercial property as a result, they may tell the daycare center they need to find someplace else to go because the developer needs the restaurant as a draw for traffic for the commercial area. She also stated that she's heard from people who like that Lakeville has neighborhood commercial areas, especially now with the .08 for DUI enforcement. Another unintended consequence of the distance requirements could be that those who can walk to a neighborhood establishment would no longer be able to so they would drive under the influence. Councilmember Swecker commented on the 5o percent rule being a good way to reduce the potential of having true bars here. Mayor Dahl commented on the current • restaurants and how they are near commercial areas and people like going to those that are not far from where they live. She also stated that she has not heard of this being a huge community problem. Mr. Mielke stated that with alcohol and liquor licenses comes police issues, it cannot be avoided completely. He also stated that with off-sale liquor establishments compliance checks are done. Councilmember Wulff commented that when the council looked at the fees for liquor licenses the Police Department did analysis of how much it cost for the law enforcement that goes along with that and also for the staff time of administering the licenses. The council made the licenses expensive enough to cover the costs so that taxpayers are not paying for the enforcement. The fee structure is quite aggressive and was an increase from previous fees. Councilmember Wulff stated that the development where El Patio and Copper Bleu are located was developed by the Crossroads Church. 2. Private Activity Revenue Bond Financing Policy Mr. Feller stated that private activity revenue bonds enable the issuer to issue tax- exempt debt -hence lower interest costs - to finance projects as authorized by the Minnesota Statues and IRS codes. The purpose of establishing this policy is to outline when it would be appropriate for the City to support the use of revenue bonds. Mr. • Feller stated that staff recommends that it would be appropriate under the following conditions: Council Work Session Minutes February 25, 2008 Page ¢ • Manufacturing - to encourage the development of appropriate industrial projects that will benefit the community by providing jobs and economic development, eliminating blight, and increasing property values. • Multi-family housing - to benefit the community by encouraging the availability of multifamily housing opportunities for residents of the City. • Health care facilities - to benefit the community by encouraging the availability of affordable health care services for residents of the City. City Council agreed with staff s recommendation and directed staff to bring forward the proposal as an upcoming Council meeting. 3. Water Meter Change-out Program Mr. Normandin stated that in 200, Council approved a proposal to convert the City's meter reading from contract meter reading to radio read. The basic objectives were to improve meter reading efficiency and water use monitoring. The original schedule spanned five years at a cost of approximately $2.5 million. Under the original schedule, retrofitting current accounts required the installation of • approximately 3,40o radio transmitters per year. Focused over the summer months, that meant approximately 51 installations per day. Based on discussions with one of the vendors and a review of the installation process, city staff will be able to more than double the number of daily installations making a short transition program feasible. Concurrently with the radio transmitter installations, City staff will be replacing approximately 3,400 older digital read meters to make them compatible with the new system. Benefits to the shorter transition are a faster and easier changeover for utility billing, an immediate start for installation in new construction, and a onetime bid and procurement process. All installations, except new construction, would be completed by city staff. City Council agreed and directed staff to implement the recommendation. 4. Re-use/disposal of Police Department Building Mr. Mielke requested feedback on the re-use of the Police Department. The existing Police Department will be vacated about August. He stated he has had inquiries from potential users, both internal and external. He also stated that there had been discussion of keeping this area as a civic center. The building is 1~,00o square feet. and could divide up very easily for an office building. It is zoned C-3. It shares access with the Fire Department from the public lot in front and the police entrance in back. He requested guidance on how and who to market it to. • Council Work Session Minutes February 25, 2008 Page 5 • Mr. Mielke has spoke to the school district about their office space and they are short office spaces. He has spoke to Dakota County about possible post-secondary use. He also stated there was an exploratory meeting with the Community Action Council and they also are short on space. He also mentioned the possibility of re-zoning to office residential or C-i, C-2. There are no encumbrances on the building. Councilmember Swecker asked if there is more value to keeping the building. She stated that the location is important. Mr. Mielke stated if the building is going to be rented out that it would need to be at least a 5 or io year lease. Councilmember Wulff asked for what the future maintenance costs would be and what the potential uses would be if the city kept it. Councilmember Wulff stated that the possibility of the Small Wonders/Community Education move there is interesting because their current location is a spot that has held up some re-development possibilities in the downtown area. Mr. Mielke stated that Council generally feels civic is a good direction and he will keep going that direction. 5. Updates a) City Wide Garage Sale For many years Thisweek Life & Times newspaper promoted an annual Citywide Garage Sale. The event was begun as a means to sell classified ads. The edition of the newspaper • published on the date of the garage sale included the ads sold, along with a map showing the garage sale locations. In the beginning, ad sales were good but, as times passed, resident began to use the date to hold their garage sales but did not purchase ads. Due to the lack of ad sales, the newspaper has decided not to continue the event. Although the Citywide Garage Sale was never a City sponsored event, many people thought that I t was. Each year, including this one, the front desk, administration, and communications begin receiving calls as early as January asking for the event date. In an effort to continue a successful and popular community event, Communications and Parks & Recreation propose to promote and support the garage sale this year. The date of May i~ has been selected. Promotion of the event would begin in March. With the help of Joe Morocco, GIS Supervisor, and Barb Laun, Communications Specialist for the website, a system has been devised to allow residents to register their garage sale online from the City website. GIS would then create a map with all the locations. The map would be available to view or print from the website. Copies would also be available at the front desk. There would be no charge for the listing service. The map would begin appearing on the website on May 1 and be updated daily through the event date. A review and evaluation would follow the event. City Council agreed and directed staff to carry out staff's recommendation. b) I-g5 BRT Station Planning • Mr. Mielke stated that they met with the Met Council to review the transit plan. As part of the UPA the Met Council would like to start planning for the I35 BRT and they believe Council Work Session Minutes February 2y, 2008 Page 6 that they are the proper lead agency to do that along with the City of Lakeville and Dakota County. The UPA calls for a station along I35 and for it to be up and running by the fall of 2oog. The only way that could happen to meet that timeframe would be a surface lot accessing existing roadways with a slip ramp onto I35. He stated that the Transportation Bill override passed. Mr. Mielke stated that he would like to know if the City wants to take on that planning. He also stated that it has been communicated to the Met Council that we are interested in the long-range vision, not just the short-range vision. Councilmember Swecker stated that it should be online only, not an offline station. Councilmember Wulff stated that if they are not going to fix the County Road 5o ramp and just have a little lot with a few busses a day, it would be better to have no transit than have bad transit. c) Relocation of Berres Log Cabin to Ritter Farm Mr. Michaud stated there is a unique, older log cabin that exists at the corner of Highview Avenue and 202nd Street, across from Quigley-Sime Baseball Complex. The property is owned by Kris Berres. The building is planned to be demolished as part of the Highview Hills senior housing project. Welsh Companies has offered the building to the City of Lakeville for the cost of removing the structure from the site. According to Mr. Bob Erickson, a local moving company has estimated its relocation to Ritter Farm Park to be $4,500 to $5,500. The notion is to relocate the building to Ritter Farm and use it as a classroom for nature programs. The cabin is about i,ioo square feet in size. Mr. Michaud stated that the Parks Department presently use the existing Ed Mako Environmental Learning Center (ELC) which is rather small. Having the existing ELC facility and the log cabin would provide needed classroom space for outdoor educational programming. Respectfully submitted, ~3~~,, ~. Ct„~,d.~ofl~, Brian J. Anderson Assistant to City Administrator •