Crookston Ways and Means Discusses Downtown Plan

City Administrator Shannon Stassen explained that the reason it was taken before the planning commission had to do with two factors, one that the council had previously wanted to hear from other city committees such as the planning commission about their feelings on the merits of the plan and two that they have been asked when discussing grants with representatives of the programs awarding the grants that they have asked whether the city has a master plan. The current response is we do, but it hasn’t been adopted.  Councilman Jake Fee expressed doubt that any granting agency has in their grant eligibility requirements, that a city must have a master plan to be eligible for the grant. Fee also expressed that the master plan should guide the city and if the council is uncomfortable with something it shouldn’t be included because once it’s adopted, no one will ever go back to change it.   Bob Quanrud thought similarly saying we can say we’ve received it, but he doesn’t think it should be adopted so the City isn’t tied into anything. Councilman Steve Erickson expressed similar concerns stating the master plan had been sat on for a year before going to the planning commission and be passed through in one night with no ideas, suggestions, edits. Nothing has changed in the past year and nobody has attempted to make changes to the areas of concern.
Mayor Wayne Melbye explained that the master plan was put back on the council agenda at the recommendation of the planning commission which is standard practice to have any recommendation from a commission go straight to the council instead of the Ways and Means Committee. In terms of the timeline, no explanation was given on why it had taken so long to go before the planning commission.
A major sticking point for council members is the road diet or traffic calming techniques described in the traffic plan. Fee said he doesn’t believe it would be good for businesses downtown, specifically noting deliveries. “A lot of deliveries come in on big trucks and because of the current set up they need to take up one of the three lanes of traffic during those deliveries,” said Fee. “If we go down two lanes through the downtown, those deliveries still need to happen, are we going to have those trucks blocking one lane and have traffic reduced to a single lane from the current three during that time.”
Through the discussion, it was determined the councilman wanted more time to review the plan and the ability to remove or change things they didn’t think was going to work. It was decided to take the next month to review and when the Ways and Means Committee meets at the end of October they will discuss all the concerns and possible changes to the master plan.  Melbye said although he hates to take anything off a wish list, he wants things to get discussed. “If there’s something they definitely feel is impossible or definitely disagree with it will be discussed and we’ll decide whether to keep them on the plan or not,” said Melbye. “The master plan is a matter of looking into the future and seeing how you’d like to see things go.”

For the B3 program, the Ways and Means committee approved the transfer of $50,000 from reserves to the Crookston Housing and Economic Authority (CHEDA). Melbye asked the Craig Hoiseth, the executive director of CHEDA, about the language of the grant being presented to the Ways and Means Committee. He was specifically referring to the eligibility portion of the program, which was stating that non-profits were not eligible. Referencing the latest CHEDA board meeting he thought it had been changed to allow them to apply. Hoiseth confirmed that there were some edits on the language and that still needed to be updated but was hoping to get the financing process started while they worked on those changes to be able to roll the program out in a timely manner. The transfer from the general reserve fund will now go to City Council for final approval.

The committee also discussed giving CHEDA a discretionary fund for new programs so that they wouldn’t have to come to the committee and council both to request money be made available and to request the resolution to enact the final program. This would allow CHEDA to plan a program knowing they had the funds and only bring the completed program up to the committee and council.

It was determined that the Lagoons land lease is for agricultural purposes only, the tenant is not allowed to hunt and should be reporting any hunters on the property to law enforcement. Crookston Police Chief Paul Biermaier also responded to a concern raised by Bobby Baird about ATV side by sides. Biermaier said operators are to follow the same laws as snowmobiles. They are not allowed to be ridden around town unless it is the shortest distance to a gas station and back or the shortest distance to get out of town.