2021_0222_CCPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

1 Bryan Lloyd From:Bryan Lloyd Sent:Monday, February 8, 2021 11:21 AM To:'Alison Cariveau' Subject:RE: comments for PF20-029: McCarrons proposed development Hi, Ms. Cariveau. I’ll be sure your comments are included with the materials provided to the City Council for their review. With respect to the specific questions you’ve raised, I can provide some answers here, numbered (more or less) as you numbered your questions. 0.1 There isn’t a judgement call about who is “close enough” to receive give notifications about proposed projects. Instead, the City Council has adopted a standard notification area with a radius of 500 feet around the boundaries of a property proposed for development of this sort. The State of Minnesota has established a minimum radius of 350 feet, but Roseville’s City Council has chosen a larger radius to increase the potential for community members to engage with this sort of public process. There may be no perfect notification area and there may be people outside of any given notification area who wish they would have received the notifications. But this is a topic that the City Council is regularly asked to consider and the Council has found this 500‐foot notification area to be acceptable. 1 The developer’s tree preservation plan materials incorrectly identify Cottonwood and Boxelder trees as exempt, although the zoning code does exempt invasive species (e.g., buckthorn, certain species of elm, etc.). The zoning code also exempts trees in places where roads, or sewer/water utilities, or storm water management facilities will go. I suppose the theory for this locational exemption, if you will, is that a developer is really only proposing to build the homes and it is the City (and perhaps other regulating agencies) that require the developer to manage storm water, provide streets, and so on. Obviously, the City could choose not to allow such locational exemptions, but this is another thing that the Council has considered regularly and has found to be a reasonable compromise. I should note that in call cases, exemptions don’t figure into the tree removal/preservation calculations; while a developer may not have to replace exempt trees, they also don’t get any credit for the fact those trees are there in the first place. 2 If I’ve correctly understood the perspective of Public Works staff, I believe they have found it prudent to reserve the use of such crosswalk improvements for certain circumstances (perhaps as more significant intersections). Whatever their actual criteria might be, they are keenly focused on the safety of those trail users and believe that safety can be ensured by improvements that may not include flashing lights and so forth. Traffic speed may, indeed, be a problem, but that is something of a separate issue from the safe location and design of a crosswalk. Enforcing the speed limit, lowering speed limits, and implementing various design techniques (like allowing on‐street parking or narrowing the driving lanes at intersections and other pedestrian crossings) are among the ways that motorists can be encouraged or compelled to drive more slowly. I hope these responses are helpful, and please let me know if you have additional questions or comments to share. Bryan __________________________________________ Bryan Lloyd | Senior Planner 651‐792‐7073 From: Alison Cariveau Sent: Saturday, February 6, 2021 10:40 AM RCA Attachment D Page 14 of 51