Agenda - Council - 03/08/2022 - Laserfiche WebLink

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