Agenda - Council Work Session - 09/14/2010

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regardless of our size the reduced sales will kill us. We have 18 seasonal employees, plus us three property owners (brothers) who rely on the income. And we have invested years of extremely hard work and hundreds of thousands of dollars, counting on this business for our approaching retirement. We've been advised the city would be responsible to compensate for the value of lost business. There's another, more complex and expensive reason for not placing the road on our tree farm. If you've been there you'll know that our internal trail system allows customers to drive around the perimeter of each field, without having to back up or turn around. If sited on our farm, the project will need to pay for rebuilding the western edge of this internal road system. This will be a significant project. The Variolite path will cut into our hillside making it hard or impossible to build a north -south road with parallel parking. Without an internal north - south road each of our three east -west roads will come to a dead end at Variolite. We will then need to create large enough parking spaces so customers can back up and turn around, including trailers. Parking areas remove space for growing trees, and when trucks back up there is always a danger to young children. An entirely different but equally expensive project will be the underground, computer controlled irrigation system that will need to be relocated. Every one of our 25,000 trees is watered automatically, using 25 miles of state -of -the -art drip irrigation, buried moisture sensors, electronic valves, and a computer, all connected to the same aquifer used by the City of Ramsey. We've related all this de to show the loss of even more productive land, {he increased likelihood that we will not have enough acres to stay in business, and high '11ght potential city expense. Besides economics, anyone with a Christmas tree farm truly knows that it is much more than a business. The emotional, cultural, spiritual, familial and traditional feelings cannot be separated by either our customers or us. We hear our customers say each year that Christmas wouldn't be the same without the da} spent with their family and friends, wandering our woods and fields and finding a tree. We could never say goodbye to the 4,650 families who have purchased a Christmas tree at our farm over the last decade. I'd hate to think of their iny.pression of the City of Ramsey each year at Christmas if they are forced to drive to a farm in Clear Lake or St. Francis. As taxpayers we questio,z the timing of the project. Prudent use of public funds should put the project on hold until there are enough attractions in the Center of Ramsey (COR) to justify spending $344 million of public funds plus yearly maintenance costs. There is an optional route for the proposed road, on city owned property that borders us on the west. Part of this is wetland (a small part of ours is also wetland) and so will require additional steps for approval. If and when the road is built, we urge the city to locate it there. In summary, we wish this project would not happen. If it does, we would like the city to put it on its own property, which abuts us to the west. We do not see any reason for doing the project at this time. Please wait until COR has developed somewhat and there is a demonstrated need for the road. And a final note: we've read the recent Vision and Values for the City of Ramsey and find this project a profound contradiction. Thanks for your attention and your service to the City of Ramsey. Please contact any of us if you'd like to talk about the project. David Hansen Trygg Hansen Mark Hansen 651- 247 -1952 715- 239 -6688 651 -214 -2305 dIh(a�umn.edu hansentreclarm(c hanse0 4ki)> maiI.com