December 6th Council Meeting Update

Tonight’s City Council meeting covered the Fire District Agreement, Central Business District Public Hearing, Council Action on the possible litigation from Clark Construction and a gift from the Cambridge City Council.

I would like to thank the Cambridge City Council for their gift of an Atomic Clock for our new Council Chamber. They also extended their congratulations to Don Lorsung as Isanti’s new City Administrator. This shows the desire by both cities to work together.

We received an update on the progress of the Central Business District. The CBD is making excellent progress. There will be another public hear at the December 20th City Council meeting. After this public hearing Council will be asked to make the appropriate change in our TIF districts to allow for funding of the CBD.

The Council met in closed session to discuss the possible legal action from Clark Construction. This portion of the meeting is not open to the public and therefore I can not discuss it. After our closed door discussionthe meeting was reopened to the public, we voted on a compromise solution to the problem. We passed the preliminary plat with the following restriction. There can not be a structure larger than a twin home in this development. I did not want to have 4 or 8 unit buildings in this single family residential area. This is not ideal but solves the major issue of the rezoning of this area. Please reference my previous Blog posting for more details, http://georgewimmer.blogspot.com/2005/11/november-15th-council-meeting-update.html.

The last item is the proposed Fire District Agreement. As stated in my posting, http://georgewimmer.blogspot.com/2005/11/fire-district-update.html, I am opposed to the 1 vote per entity. Much of the discussion revolved around the personal relationships involved in setting up this agreement. This was used to stress that the City of Isanti has nothing to worry about regarding the expenditures of funds. This is a poor basis for a legal contract that must stand the test of time. The Townships and Isanti representation will change over time. I still strongly believe that a weighted vote is the only fair way to represent the interest of each Township and the City of Isanti. I was the only one that voted for this change.