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We live a few houses away from Central Park and in the twenty years we have lived <br />here there has been no upgrade to the playground equipment. Central Park is a major <br />hub for local city sport tournaments in the summer months as well as practice facility <br />for spring and fall sports for the Anoka/Hennepin area sports teams. There are <br />wonderful soccer and football fields, baseball fields with new dugouts, and new tennis <br />courts. Central Park has the potential to bring revenue to the city with a Parks and <br />Recreation program, employment opportunities for our young youth, and summer <br />camp programs for the residents of Ramsey. It would be wonderful as a local resident <br />to see the Park expand with an upgraded playground or splash pad. The nearby Lennar <br />homes neighborhood house hundreds of young families that could utilize this <br />expansion. Unfortunately, these residents will not have equal opportunity to utilize the <br />PACT school seeing as it is a lottery system and proximity does not warrant priority. <br />One single charter school will not improve the class sizes of our local public schools. <br />Once single school will not benefit the whole city of Ramsey. <br />Regarding the zoning issue of the proposed PACT Charter High School. It is my <br />understanding that the proposed location for the new school is insufficient in many <br />ways. There is not enough current land for future expansion possibilities. There must <br />be contiguous acreage whenever possible and land for expansion of the campus. The <br />land currently proposed for this school is 18 acres and the requirements for a k-12 or <br />small high school would require 30-40 acres. In addition to the under sizing of the land <br />is the issue of traffic. The proposed location for this school is not on an arterial <br />roadway. The land was initially zoned for residential purposes. The adjacent roads are <br />insufficient to handle the increased traffic from not only new developments north on <br />Variolite Street, but also sports such as baseball, soccer, and football, that use Central <br />Park in Spring, Summer, and Fall. Not to mention that the cost to residents for the <br />reconstruction of 161st street with sidewalks and city sewer/water doesn't benefit all of <br />Ramsey, just those on that road. Putting money into the Park would benefit the greater <br />good. <br />We live 5 houses away from the proposed building site, yet we are not in the <br />Anoka/Hennepin school district. PACT schools would provide transportation only within <br />Anoka/Hennepin school district boundaries. Why put a school at the very edge of the <br />district boundaries? We already have bus traffic from Anoka/Hennepin schools as well <br />as Elk River schools. I watch the buses follow one another through the neighborhood. It <br />seems futile to add a third bussing route to these neighborhoods. It would make more <br />sense for PACT to build more centrally located to either their elementary school or <br />more central within the transportation limits. <br />Has there been a traffic study to account for increase travel from the new construction <br />of the new neighborhood north on Variolite? As well as church traffic, high school <br />traffic, football game traffic, bus routes from three districts, and fall/spring sports <br />utilizing Central Park? <br />Have there been studies done for drainage? <br />A PACT Charter expansion is a wonderful idea and would be a fine addition to the City <br />