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Regular City Council Meeting <br /> Monday,June 3, 2019 <br /> Page 27 <br /> and have done a thorough job of working with the community and coming <br /> through all of the open house processes and the public hearing. For her, she was <br /> not going to support it, but it is not for her about CommonBond at all or the need <br /> for affordable housing or the need for affordable senior housing because she is ac- <br /> tually in support of all of those components. This is about this particular area of <br /> the City which the Council has not done due diligence of determining that this is <br /> the best use for this spot. <br /> Councilmember Laliberte stated she did feel she had stated for the last year and a <br /> half to two years that the City has a lot of high density residential and she contin- <br /> ues to bring up that the density and intensity tends to be what she has pause about <br /> and have advocated for other housing options as transitions, buffers, whatever the <br /> City wants to define them as and even if she were supportive of this tonight of the <br /> rezoning, she would not be supportive of the Conditional Use and increased den- <br /> sity. <br /> Councilmember Etten stated the County Road C and Dale was an example for <br /> him about something that had changed even after it was started. The difference <br /> here is the whole process and conditions give the City a lot of control because it is <br /> a Conditional Use. He stated the City has some control over the type and the im- <br /> pact of that. To the idea of a study of Rice Street, he was open to that and if the <br /> Council wanted to add that later to the goals, he would be open to doing that. He <br /> was not sure that this has to wait in that process but that is clearly a concern and <br /> sure should raise the level of engaging the community and engaging the neighbor- <br /> ing communities and that is the challenge. The City has seen that challenge at <br /> Rice and Larpenteur and not an easy thing and staff may ask how to do both, so <br /> the Council needs to figure out how to make that reasonable. He wanted to state <br /> publicly that he would be open to how the City can move forward with that over <br /> time. Finally, to the Comp. Plan, the City has just finished going through a pro- <br /> cess with the 2040 Comp. Plan, but the City has regularly changed Comp. Plans <br /> to fit pieces that come before the Council, whether it is City or staff driven or <br /> whether it is a developer coming in. The Comp. Plan is certainly not a fixed doc- <br /> ument and not one that anticipates all and is set in what everything will happen in <br /> the future. This is something that is okay despite not fitting the current map. <br /> Councilmember Groff stated he would concur with Councilmember Etten's re- <br /> sponses and wanted to point out when talking about affordable housing, that the <br /> Council does not necessarily choose the sites and then go and get a developer. <br /> The developer comes to the City with a proposal so when saying this is not the <br /> right site, he was sure CommonBond looked at those other sites and this is the one <br /> that fit with what was needed. He stated if the Councilmembers are for affordable <br /> housing then he thought each Councilmember needed to vote for affordable hous- <br /> ing and not just stated that the Councilmember is for it. <br />