Minutes - Planning Commission - 01/25/1999 - Special Jt Workshop

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Cindy Sherman January 13, 1999 Page 2 MUSA, the area of future MUSA expansion and the permanent rural area. Table 9 (p. 22) presents existing land use numbers for the City as a whole. It does not differentiate between urban single-family residential on small, sewered lots and rural single-family on larger 2.5 acre and 5 acre lots. It does not provide information about the amount of available vacant developable land inside the existing MUSA, inside the proposed future MUSA, the transition zone and the permanent rural area. This needs to be done. As indicated in the Local Planning Handbook, the City should incorporate Worksheet A into the plan. Worksheet A provides the necessary categories of analysis, and was previously approved for use by a task force of local government officials and consultants. Figure 9 (p. 25) showing existing land use is incomplete. It does show great detail in terms of parcels, and the City should commended for invest!ng in such a detailed map. However, the map does not adequately differentiate between urban (sewered) single-family and rural small lot (~on-estate) single- family. Also, the plan does not differentiate between urban and rural commercial, urban and rural industrial. Based on discussion in the plan, it appears that City zoning does differentiate at least some of these uses. The Land Use Map should also show the existing MUSA line so that it is clear to us and to City officials, which land is now urban and which is rural. The existing Land Use Map and X~qorksheet A should be .directly consistent with each other. Figure 10 (p. 27) showing the Future Land Use and associated text (p. 26-49) appears to be incomplete. It does not specifically articulate the City's proposed 2020 land use plan. Figure 12 (p.49) shows staging to 2015 as does Table 15 (p.48). These should show the 2015-2020 stage. Tables 12-14 are helpful, with Tables 12 and 13 showing staging for the period 2015-2020, but it is not clear from the maps exactly where this stage is. It is not clear from the plan, how much of the area that the Council designated as Urban Reserve is proposed to be developed in the period 2000-2020, what if any is proposed for urban development post- 2020, what transitional planning/zoning will be applied to preserve the Urban Reserve area for future urbanization. The very cursory review of plan details appears to suggest that the City does not plan to do anything to preserve vacant or underdeveloped parcels in the Urban Reserve from larger lot parcelization of the area, which may effectively prevent future urbanization. This may be a major policy issue and may be found to be.a substantial departure from regional system plans. Another issue may be the proposed Rural Developing density. This is inconsistent with existing Council policy and may be found to have a regional system impact. Housing - (Linda Milashius, 651-602-1541) The Ramsey comprehensive plan is complete for review. The plan provides a needs analysis, housing goals and policies, and identifies the implementation tools and strategies the City will use to meet its identified housing goals. The City is a LCA participant and includes its negotiated housing goals in the plan. To be clear that these numerical goals are the goals the City will be focusing its development efforts on and that they are included in the plan to fulfill the housing element requirements of the Land Planning A~:t).~e City is encouraged to include the following statements in its plan update: On page 64, it is suggested the last paragraph read: "The City of Ramsey is currently a participant in the Livable Communities Act Local Housing Incentives Account Program. As part of this agreement, the City of Ramsey adopted the following housing goals in December of 1995 to give direction to the City's