Minutes - Council - 06/25/1984 - Joint Public Hearing with Planning and Zoning Commission

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on any expansion to the South. Legislature just this session allowed us to get $.15/cubic yard and that will have a significant bearing on how Council considers it. However, I want to make this certain -- Council has met approximately 15 times on this particular subject and each time I have cautioned them always, always the Conditional Use Permit is the number one issue here, even though you enter into a contract. Very similar to a person wanting to buy a piece of property which is zoned commercial and the purchase agreement is subject to the zoning. Similar to this situation, the applicant is trying to purchase the subject property. However, they are not going to purchase the property unless they get a Conditional Use Permit; a very typical commercial transaction. Council has been cautioned, written and verbally each time we discussed this subject; we are not selling a Conditional Use Permit -- that is a separate subject. You are talking about land use issues; you are not being bought off, you are not purchasing, you are not able to sell a Conditional Use Permit -- not withstanding the contract -- two separate subjects. This fact has been very much foremost in Council's thinking. If Council denies this Conditional Use Permit, there is no contract and they have no obligation to go forward. Natalie Haas - 7007 164th Avenue NW - I am the County Commissioner from this district and have been blessed with two potential sites in my district and two current sites. I would like to stand before Ramsey Council and Ramsey Planning Commission and respect- fully request that you deny the Special Use Permit. I have met with you on a number of occasions and I believe stated from the on sight, whether meeting with the City of Anoka or the City of Ramsey, that I opposed expansion of the landfill in any way. We are into a process that has been set on us by the State Legislature; I think we ought to let that process run it's due course. I would like to correct the man from Bart Engineering who said the County was drawing water samples; that is MPCA drawing those samples and they will be tested in the State Health Department laboratories and we ought to have the results of those tests before we do anything else. In defense of Waste Management, and I have had 15 years to look at landfilling in Anoka County, if I had to do business with somebody in the landfilling business, I would rather do business with Waste Management than any other company doing business in Anoka County. If you take a look at what is happening in Andover and the kind of costs that we are talking about there, there was a special use permit involved in that and no one has yet pointed a finger at the City of Ramsey or pointed a finger at the County and made us in any way responsible monetarily. The dollars are going to come from some place else; that is not $200,000 that has been spent by the City of Andover; that is being spent out of the Super Fund dollars. One thing I am sure about is that there is money in landfilling if we do it the way we are doing it today. I really do think that Waste Management of Minnesota, in terms of the kinds of dollars they have taken out of the City of Ramsey and Anoka, could well afford to commit dollars from their parent company, right now to take some protection if that is the thing that is needed out here. In terms of Site P, in order to develop Site P the way that it would have to be constructed under current legislation, the Council/P & Z Public Hearing Page 20 of 23