August 6th Council Meeting Update

I wanted to follow-up on 3 items from last nights meeting.

The first item was the nuisance abatement of 459 3rd Ave NW. This is a property that has piles of garbage auto parts and numerous cars strewn all over the place. We have been working with the property owner since last October and had 9 visits/ letters to try to get this resolved. The property owner was quite adamant about his position but we could not allow such violations to continue. The Council voted to remove all the violations and then bill the owner. If the owner does not pay this charge then it will be assessed to his property taxes.

The next main item was regarding the many unfinished Iverson projects and his multiple Minnesota Pollution Control Agency violations. The City is in the process of pulling the numerous letters of credit - these are guarantees from banks that if a developer does not complete their municipal improvements the City can demand the bank provide the funding - to complete or correct projects that Mr. Iverson has failed to complete as part of his development agreements. These include roads, trails, holding ponds and so on.

The City has to complete these projects which include the business frontage road east of 65 so further economic development may occur, repairing the trail along 5 that is falling apart and numerous other Minnesota Pollution Control Agency items. We had a bit of debate as the bank holding the funds does not want to release the money. The bank wanted another 30 days for Mr. Iverson to complete the projects but as we discussed at the Council meeting last night there have been numerous broken promises to complete projects in the past.

The developer or the bank has till August 11th to complete before the City pulls this particular letter of credit to complete the issues for Villages on the Rum 3rd Addition. Unfortunately it was a 3-2 vote to pull the letter of credit. CM Duff, Kolb and I voted to pull the letter of credit to repair the crumbling infrastructure and CM Johnson and Larson voted to give Mr. Iverson and his bank more time.

The last item is the Council has approved putting our meeting audio on the City website for all to hear. This is a great step forward in adding to the transparency of our City government. I will inform you when the meeting audio is up and running.