Wayzata City Council Recap – Sep. 2, 2008

There were major concerns from the neighborhood immediately adjacent to the cellular equipment enclosure, and whether it should be expanded to accommodate more than 2 mobile phone carriers that the City has under contract at this time.

Resident Mark Hughes was concerned about the size of the parking lot and the removal of mature trees for said parking lot. Kathy Carlson was concerned that the size of the buildings continued to grow. Doug Hudson questioned whether the existing buildings were being under utilized. Dave Dudinsky, Director of Public Works answered the questions to the best of his ability, but could not speak on behalf of the telecommunication vendors.

After the input from the local residents, Mayor Humphry wondered how much of the expanding cellular enclosure was for new vendors versus the existing vendors. “Couldn’t this be designed in a more compact way?” He also indicated how important he felt the noise mitigation for the enclosure.

The City Council went on to approve a CUP & Variance Extension at 143 Huntington Ave, and a combining of two lots and splitting to three lots at 470 & 498 Ferndale Road, which ended up as routine matters.

There has been much in the local fish wrap factory about the City of Wayzata issuing it’s own administrative citations which are lower in price and do not go on a driver’s record. The benefit to the City is that they keep 100% of the penalty issued to drivers. The negative is that it may be unconstitutional. Regardless, the resolution to approve sailed through with a 5-0 vote.

The council went on to approve a standard resolution to receive SCORE funds from Hennepin County for evaluation of recycling proposals and the success of the programs. Sue Bangert inquired about the participation rate in the recycling program: “How is the organic program going? There was so much hype about it at the beginning and you just never here about it now.” Sonny Clark, Parks Superintendent, had this to say: “It continues on at about the same rate we started out with. We haven’t had any particular uptick in the amount. What we are looking for is that it didn’t go down. Right now we have about 50% of the people participating, not ever homeowner participates every week, or every month… and most of those are on a weekly or monthly basis.”

The Preliminary Property Tax Meeting was set for September 11th at 3:00 pm with a Special Meeting set for the same night at 6:00 pm at Wayzata City Hall in the Council Chambers.

Municipal Licenses were passed with no discussion.

Allan Orsen recommended the Truth in Taxation meeting be held Monday, December 1st, 2008. The City Council agreed.

There was general commentary as to whether or not Wayzata met the affordable housing requirements from the Met Council. The council wants to challenge the assumption that there are no affordable housing units in Wayzata.

The meeting was adjourned after some other miscellaneous notes.