Agenda - Council - 05/09/1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I :1 I I I I I I I I Comprehensiv~ Plan There has bee~ significant consternation over the Comprehensive Plan. The concems that I have heard inc?de: 1) The 1~93 submittal did not have Council approval or a public hearing prior to submittal. 2) The ED~C overstepped their authority in review of the 1995 plan. 3) Data sdbmitted by Staff was either in error, non-responsive or non-existent. 4) Staff rn~nipulated decision-making. 5) Staff's handling of the whole affair was not as professional as it should have been. Regarding the~ initial concern, Council will recall that in 1993, the old "Metropolitan Council Development Investment Framework" was being changed to the "Regional Blueprint". O~ concern was that the "new" development process that would result would be negative to ~Ramsey, given the influence of State Representative Myron Orfield and his legislative pro~l~., sals since 1991. We were told that decisions would be made prior to year- end and most l~ikely in October or November. As it turned out, decisions were not made until 1994, b~lt we had wanted to get our plan in the works so that we could be grandfathered ~to the old process. Hence, once the draft was completed, it was shipped to the Met Council. A few days later, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on the document followed by Council action on 11/9/93. Council expressed concern that the transportation l~lan needed further review. Therefore, upon Council direction, we informed Met Council S~taff that a further update of the plan including transportation would be submitted upo~ completion. In fact, Council had previously hired the consultant to update this plan but action on it was delayed to after submittal of the 1993 plan. Given the ab6.ve, in December 1993, RLK and Biko started work on the 1994/1995 update. Our p~oblems with this update almost entirely can be boiled down to one thing. Staff attemptec~ to respond to requests made by any indiv/dual as opposed to a Commission as a whole or ~e entire Council. If someone thought it would be important to provide a certain analysi~ we would attempt to do that. What has been learned from this is that the ground rules m~st be set early on. It did seem th~ things were going fairly smoothly for the first six months of this update. Concerns after[that point are often attributed to EDC involvement. However, the EDC is generally invo[~ved in these things as was the case in the Highway #10 study and the 1989 Comp Plan re~ision. It was appropriate to include both the EDC and the Park and Recreation Co ~nrnission, even though commission personalities vary widely. It could be argued that an ~ven larger group should have been invited into the process. Alternatively, ii believe that had there not been a bridge location discussion in this amendment, th,: process would not have been a difficult one. The concerns listed as 3, 4 and 5 above relate to that discussion. Both sides of the bridge location issue picked apart Staff analysis i~ it did not point to their particular conclusion. Hence, Staff found itself in the middle of, issue that would ultimately be determined by the policy board, not Staff. Further, I hava ~ersonally always been very open to a two-bridge scenario to provide options for the ~[uture. I also stated a position early on that a connection to County Road #116 made ser se. Staff, however, was continually criticized for being in support of a Ramsey Boule~rard connection because of the Anoka County Transportation Plan and the City Transport~ion Plan map that had been developed in March 1990. I have encloseld a time line of Comprehensive Plan actions since 1988. I have also enclosed mem{s from Jim Gromberg (March 10, 1995), Ben Deemer (April 10, 1995), Dave Bawden 0~pril 20, 1995) and Terry Hendriksen (May 2, 1995).