Agenda - Council Work Session - 01/10/2017

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safe and thriving neighborhoods and business districts, and a clean environment. Additionally, the City wants to ensure connectivity both within the City as well as the region for ease of navigation and to attract business development. These two imperatives really aim at enhancing community livability and environmental health. The Strategic Initiatives (and the tactics to accomplish them) guide the City on the path to achieve these goals. Many of our proposed projects involve The COR, a Transit Oriented Development focused around the Northstar Commuter Rail Station. The COR was envisioned to absorb much of the planned growth of the community preserving some of the rural elements across the city. As there is still a significant amount of undeveloped land within The COR, it presents immense opportunity to provide lifecycle housing with a mix of affordable and market rate options, walkability, significant retail growth, and innovative stormwater management (including reuse). The partnership with RCP would provide an opportunity to research and analyze a range of aspects from parking concepts to stormwater management, and whether market realities align with the City's vision. 3. Administrative Capacity. The City of Ramsey has seventy-five (75) full time employees across seven (7) departments (Administration, Community Development, Engineering, Finance, Fire, Police and Public Works). Team members have a broad range of disciplines, specialties and interests. The City has experience with service learning projects through past work with Anoka Ramsey Community College and has found that it can produce desirable outcomes while providing students 'real world' experience. Many of the anticipated project leads serve as either a staff liaison to one of our advisory boards or have regular interaction with our City Council, providing an efficient means of keeping the policy makers and the public informed and up to date with RCP projects. Furthermore, we also utilized our local cable access programing as a means to keep the public informed.