Agenda - Planning Commission - 05/07/2020

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Dear Ramsey Planning Commission, City Council and Mayor: I am writing about the request to rezone the Hunt and Trout Brook Properties to allow for more homes than the current zoning laws allow. I have lived in Ramsey for 43 years, raised my family, and now am blessed to have my grandchildren living in this community. I have seen many changes as the City of Ramsey has grown and developed and realize change in a community has many positives, including improvements and opportunities. However, I am opposed to these requests for rezoning. I am wondering who benefits if these properties are rezoned to allow more structures? The developer, builder(s), sub- contractors? Certainly! But how does this proposal benefit the residents of Ramsey? Maintaining the current zoning standards allows for growth and development of the property while honoring the vision outlined in the City of Ramsey's Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted by the city and written with input from residents. The City of Ramsey's mission is to work together to responsibly grow our community? Will changing the rezoning for these properties help responsibly grow our community? In my opinion allowing for rezoning will create more traffic, more noise, more pollution, more crime, and the inability of the schools and other infrastructure to be able to keep pace with the population growth. In my opinion, that is not being responsible. The City of Ramsey's Comprehensive Plan includes assumptions on physical development throughout the community and is the blueprint for the City over the next 10-20 years. This is an important plan and was established with residents' input and adopted by the city for a reason. It is my understanding that the Comprehensive Plan is to be used to guide public facilities, areas of preservation and development, and development of various zoning guidance. The current plan has this property tagged as R-1 Residential (MUSA) District, or 80-foot side with overall density less than 4 units per acre. The plan also states the City of Ramsey's allocation is 499 new units during this 10-year (2021-2030) period. These two proposals alone show 435+ units to be built. I don't believe the intent of the Comprehensive Plan was to concentrate most of the 499 units in one 240-acre development. Although the plan doesn't specifically state this assumption, I believe a large majority of residents enjoy and moved to Ramsey for the rural environment, and stuffing 435 homes on 240 acres is not most people's definition of responsibly growing the community. Just because studies show a demand for this type of product (per the Land Use Webinar on April 2, 2020), it does not mean the City is required to meet that demand if the result is not in the best interest of its residents. Again, I ask, who benefits most from this rezoning? As mentioned above I have many concerns, but the ones I will expand on are traffic (and the concomitant noise) and infrastructure. My home backs up to Variolite. I realize the road from Alpine to 173rd will be improved and reconfigured this summer. However, my main concern is the road is basically a "straight shot" with a couple of hills. For 43 years I have seen people speed down Variolite over, and over, and over again. I have seen animals killed, including domestic pets, drag -racing, and issues with maintaining the road my entire 43 years. Adding to the traffic is only asking for more problems. For 43 years, nothing that has been done to counter these problems has worked; people continue to speed, animals continue to be killed and the road remains in complete disrepair. Just south of where the entrance to this new development would be located there is a stretch of Variolite that has had issues maintaining its integrity due to some type of water presence beneath the road. That stretch has been worked on, repaired and completely replaced countless times in additional to all the times the rest of the road has been fixed. To date there has not been a single attempt to repair that spot in the road that has been successful for more than 2-3 years. Let's just say that it is 40 years of trying to maintain the integrity of the road and every attempt has failed —putting more traffic on that stretch doesn't help infrastructure that has a history of repeated failure. I hope you will consider my input as a long-time resident of this community. I pride myself if being adaptable and learning from change. However, unless you have a solid reason to deviate from the Comprehensive Plan that was adopted by the City and can provide information on how the community benefits from this deviation, I hope you deny the rezoning request. Pauline Knox 16931 Willemite St NW