06-19-07 PTRC Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

PARKS, TRAILS AND RECREATION COMMITTEE MEETING June 19, 2007 Page 2 Mr. Lehnhoff stated that the purpose of the Comprehensive Plan was to provide long-term guidance and help set priorities on a community wide basis for the City Council level on down. The Comp Plan overall usually included some form of a SWOT analysis that looked at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The last plan would be looked at to determine what has worked, what has not, what was missing, what still remained to be done, what was old and no longer applicable, and what the accomplishments were. Throughout the process, policies to strengthen opportunities and reduce the threats and other weaknesses would be developed. Cities are allowed to customize their Comp Plan, but must include land use and housing, transportation, water resource management, parks and open space and natural resource protection. One of the important reasons for the comp plan is that it would provide the city with strategic influence with Ramsey County, Metropolitan Council, MnDOT, and the Federal Department of Transportation. The plan has public involvement and technical components. Several meetings have been scheduled to get public involvement. August 8, 2007; 6:30-8:30PM (Visioning of the City as a whole)  October, 2007  March, 2008  In addition to these three meetings, there will be a number of small meetings now until March, 2008 that involves the City Council and Planning Commission. Also, there will be at least one and potentially up to three meetings involving the Blue Cross Blue Shield grant that the City has for active community living; one meeting will directly involve the PTRC. Chair Henry suggested having the trails presenter/speaker from Boulder come out. The presenter’s perspective was really important in terms of what the City does with existing trails and new trails. Chair Henry also encouraged the inclusion of an accountability section that encourages the City Council to monitor the plan on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. Also, he thought the plan priorities should be included as part of the annual goals of staff. Mr. Lehnhoff will email a PDF document that includes goals, policies and projects identified in the 1998 version of the Comp Plan to Committee Members. Please review and compare them with the 2002 Open Space Plan and 2006 Strategies. Committee Members were asked to review the goals, policies and projects and to write down comments. Also included in the PDF attachment would be Attachment B - opportunities, strengths and weaknesses when looking at the City as a whole. Mr. Lehnhoff requested that th the marked up drafts and Attachment B be returned to him by July 17. He and Chair Henry would then review the policies and comments. In regards to Attachment D, the City is required to have a natural resource protection section. The Metropolitan Council has provided a map of the area that they encourage us to protect. That area is identified as the area by Tony Schmidt Park that extends throughout the whole wet land complex up towards Mounds View High School, the remaining part of the National Guard Property and the Rice Creek Corridor. Mr. Lehnhoff stated that the City’s Shoreline Ordinance was more lenient and therefore not in line with the DNR’s Shoreline Ordinance. The Planning Commission will, by default, review this section if the PTRC does not. Mr. Lehnhoff will also add the applicable parts of this to the PDF document he will be emailing to Committee Members. The web address for the Comp Plan dedicated website is www.arden-hills.mn.us\compplan. This web address was also printed on the helpful links card that was give to committee members.