Minutes - Public Works Committee - 11/15/2005

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Motion carried. Voting Yes: Acting Chairperson Cook, Mayor Gamec and Councilmember Pearson. Voting No: None. Absent: Chairperson Elvig and Councilmember Olson. Case 113: Discussion on Public Works Campus Assistant Public Works Director Olson reviewed that On August 19, 2002, the City Council directed staff to retain the Alloy Recovery site for the use of the Public Works Department. On July 20, 2004, the Public Works Committee recommended to the City Council to approve the City taking control of the property out to Limonite Street. (KIH property) This motion was ratified by the City Council on August I0, 2004. He reviewed that this year, staff was fortunate to have the City Council award a Contract to provide a "temporary" fix to the need for office space by installing the current PW Office and also installing a new exterior and roof to the vehicle storage building to provide another heated environment for our vehicle storage. Assistant Public Works Director Olson stated over the past few years it has become increasingly noticeable that the Public Works Campus is becoming utilized and it seemed evident that we are in need of some long range planning for the site. Before the Public Works Department enters into any discussions about what type of "permanent" facilities will be needed in the future, we felt the most important question to ask was whether there was enough land available in the present location for all future maintenance and operations. He explained early in the research to provide an estimate of the amount of gross space (acres) that would be projected for Public Works Maintenance and Operations (Streets, Parks and Utilities), a couple of things became apparent. One was that projecting the amount of land area needed using square footages of warm and cold storage, offices, outdoor storage, parking, sedimentation ponds, Police impound, landscaping, drive lanes and accesses etc. was a complex exercise that required a lot of assumptions. The other matter that became apparent was that there was a lot more similarities in how different cities conducted their respective maintenance operations than dissimilarities. Assistant Public Works Director Olson indicated staff also learned that the City of Brooklyn Park conducted a fairly detailed survey of suburbs with populations near 50,000 (50k), for their public works analysis in 2004. These cities were; Apple Valley (46k), Blaine (45k), Bloomington (89k), Bumsville (61k), Coon Rapids (63k), Eagan (66k), Eden Prairie (55k), Edina (50k), Maple Grove (50k), Minnetonka (52k), and Plymouth at (67k). He advised Brooklyn Park's findings were that the only significant difference in these cities was the ratio of full-time staff to seasonal. However, the 'full-time equivalent' was generally consistent. Further into staff's research, we met with Brooklyn Park and Coon Rapids' staff and learned that both of these cities felt that gross acreage they had were adequate for their present and near-term needs. Both had 29 acres of land for the maintenance and operations needs of streets, parks, and utilities as well as a police impound. Assistant Public Works Director Olson explained to extrapolate how that would project to Ramsey's acreage needs at a population of 50,000, staff 'reduced' Coon Rapids' actual 63,000 population to a fictitious 50,000, (an approximate 21% reduction) - and then applied that same percentage 'reduction' to the 29 acres of land, resulting in about 23 acres of need at 50,000 residents. This same approach was used with Brooklyn Park's actual 73,000 residents, resulting in a land need (at 50k residents) of 20 acres. He explained since the current Public Works Public Works Committee / November 15, 2005 Page 6 of 11