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IMPROVING LOCAL ECONOMIES <br />LE-1. Growth Management and <br />Annexation <br />Issue: Unplanned and uncontrolled growth <br />has a negative environmental, fiscal, and <br />governmental impact on cities, counties, and <br />the state because it increases the cost of <br />providing government services and results in <br />the loss of natural resource areas and prime <br />agricultural land. <br />Response: The League of Minnesota <br />Cities believes the existing framework for <br />guiding growth and development <br />primarily through local plans and <br />controls adopted by local governments <br />should form the basis of a statewide <br />planning policy, and that the state should <br />not adopt a mandatory comprehensive <br />statewide planning process. Rather, the <br />state should: <br />a) Provide additional financial and <br />technical assistance to local <br />governments for cooperative planning <br />and growth management issues, <br />particularly where new <br />comprehensive plans have been <br />mandated by the Legislature; <br />b) Keep comprehensive planning <br />timelines on a ten-year cycle due to <br />the financial and workload impacts <br />these processes place on cities; <br />c) Clearly establish the public purposes <br />served by existing statewide controls, <br />such as shore land zoning and <br />wetlands conservation; clarify, <br />simplify, and streamline these <br />controls; eliminate duplication in their <br />administration; and fully defend and <br />hold harmless any local government <br />sued for a "taking" as a result of <br />executing state land -use policies; <br />d) Give cities broader authority to <br />extend their zoning, subdivision, and <br />other land -use controls outside the <br />city's boundaries, regardless of the <br />existence of county or township <br />controls, to ensure conformance with <br />city facilities and services; <br />e) Clearly define and differentiate <br />between urban and rural development <br />and restrict urban growth without <br />municipal services or annexation <br />agreements outside city boundaries. <br />This should contain a requirement <br />that counties and joint power districts <br />that provide sewer, water, and other <br />services, which have been traditionally <br />provided by cities, include as a <br />condition of providing service the <br />annexation of properties that are the <br />recipients of such services in cases <br />where annexation is requested by a <br />city that could feasibly be providing <br />those services; <br />f) Facilitate the annexation of urban <br />land to cities by amending state <br />statutes that regulate annexation to <br />make it easier for cities to annex <br />developed or developing land within <br />unincorporated areas; <br />Oppose legislation that would <br />reinstate the election requirement in <br />contested annexations; <br />h) Support legislation to prohibit <br />detachment of parcels from cities <br />unless approval of the detachment has <br />been granted by both the affected city <br />and township and the affected county <br />has been notified prior to the city and <br />township acting on the request; <br />i) Oppose legislation that allows orderly <br />annexation agreements to be adopted <br />that prohibit annexation by other <br />cities of property not being annexed <br />under the agreement; <br />g) <br />League of Minnesota Cities <br />2015 City Policies Page 45 <br />