April-May 1977 - Laserfiche WebLink

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11 There will be a public hearing on May 2 on the sewer, water and street improve- ments in the Karth Lake area. This section of land is on the southwest corner of Lexington and Highway 96. (And isn't the left turn signal nice to have on that corner?) There doesn't seem to be a large amount of controversy about this develop- ment, but if you're interested, the meeting is at 7s30 p.m. in the Vfllage Hall. There are three other undeveloped areas in Arden Hills that are moving toward completion. Chatham Estates (the 'uooda Hills' land around Valentine Hills school) is already approved for final platting. The other two areas are Edgewater South and Heights of Johanna Lake, which are both over northeast a piece from Cleveland and County Road D. All in all, there are roughly 300 single family lots that will be available in these four parts of our city. Triose actually on Karth Lake should be lovely, so if you have friends wanting to build a new home somewhere, be sure to mention Arden Hills. Has anybody else seen the deer that cross Lexington just north of the Freeway? On two separate occasions we've spotted a doe and her fawn crossing from Shoreview over into Arden Hills. I only hope they can survive so close to Man. A new Dog Ordinance for Arden Hills is in the works. It includes such things as a lifetime license and mandatory rabies shots. The April 25th Council meeting discussed the issue, but the results weren't ready in time to make this paper. More later tho. The Fire Department situation in Arden Hills is on its way to being solved, we hope. A new Fire Board has been created to iron out the problems between the three suburbs (North Oaks, Shoreview, Arden Hills) and the Lake Johanna Fire Department. The Fire Board consists of 4 members: one from each of the involved cities plus the Fire Chief, Dave Koch. The representative from Arden Hills is Bob Woodburn. It seems that the problem begat, a year or so ago when it was suggested that the Fire Department needed a new truck, something in the $100,000 range. The Fire Depart- ment wanted each village to chip in so much for the truck and let the Firemen buy it. Since the Fire Department is an independent Corporation, the villages said: "Hey, wait a minute. If we just give you the money, we have no say on how it should be.spent. We don't want to do that." ,And the Firemen said: "Then pay us some wages instead." The current cost of the Fire Department is for maintenance and operating costs only. It is strictly a volunteer operation.. The cost is split up among the 3 villages according to assessed property valuation: Shoreview pays roughly 50%, Arden Hills 305, and North Oaks 20/. Last year Arden Hills paid about $26,000 towards the `Fire Dept., but of course that keeps increasing each ,year like everything else. Anyway, now tempers are rather short and the Firemen have asked for a pay of $4--5 per hour. It is difficult to estimate the actual cost of this, because no one ever knows how many men will show up to fight a fire. One rough estimate is a total coat in pay of $140,000 the first ,year (30/ payable by Arden Hills). This is with no equipment purchased. There are about 50 firemen involved. The next person interviewed about the situation was a volunteer fireman who wishes to remain anonymous. But two of his comments were% "There is no way they can get by with the amount of fire protection they are getting now at the same cost", and "I can't believe there are such stupid people in the world." Dave Koch, Fire Chief, really liked that last comment and had me read it to him again. He explained that the Fire Board is hung up on salaries now, and that the new truck, whih started the whole thing, hasn't even been discussed. He said new equipment has alwayseen purchased by saving for it. He feels a paid Fire Department will run