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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,August 27, 2018 Page 18 borhood, and they don't care about the character of neighborhoods in general. She thought the Planning Commission was exactly right on this and thought there was a feeling of neighborhood character. Councilmember McGehee brought up a memo that went to the Council in 2006 suggesting the Council look at items of neighborhood character and posing some questions about what that would mean. Certainly, the cities that have done this put some value on having diverse neighborhoods. She felt the Council says they do but they don't take any action to make that happen and are perfectly within their rights not to allow this for the same reasons that they are stating there or the reasons of health, safety, and welfare for that entire area. She noted when they clear cut all of those lots, they are impacting all of the property values because all of the screening and buffering is provided to that entire internal subdivision. Councilmember McGehee thought they had plenty of findings to leave it with the two lots that are there and the third larger lot. She thought this was another policy issue that they should look at and how are they going to, going forward, maintain some sort of growth pattern and neighborhood integrity because if they don't, they are just going to have accessory buildings and small and smaller lots that will become more uniform. She stated that is really not what the people of Roseville have said they want. Councilmember Willmus recognized and understood Councilmember McGehee's perspective on this, noting the thing that does carry the day is their Zoning Code and standards relating to that Zoning Code. This individual has come forward with an application that meets the Code in all aspects and he believed that this City would be hard pressed to defend their action should they deny this, and if the applicant pressed forward, he believed they would be granted their plat. He thought the issue regarding characteristic of a neighborhood with respect to a de- nial of zoning change and approval of a plat would be difficult for the City to de- fend. Going back to 2006, there were conversations that occurred primarily in this area about large lot districts, things like that, and nothing ever came of those, so this is what they have. Councilmember Etten stated he is a pretty big fan of trees and leaving trees. Some of the heritage trees on the site will be removed due to poor condition, health and/or for drainage and ponding. The preliminary tree plan saves 32 trees, cuts 28, and about 75% of the 28 are diseased in some way or already dead. He thought this lot is fairly open and does not have a huge tree coverage. Councilmember Laliberte indicated she did think that neighborhood character is important; however, absent Roseville taking the steps that Bloomington and Edina have taken, she also thought the City would be hard pressed to defend. She stated she was open to exactly what Councilmember McGehee described as something that this Council looks towards in the future.