Polk County Planning and Zoning Administrator Jake Snyder recently shared the City of Fertile’s Municipal Airport Safety Zoning Ordinance Policy with the Polk County Commissioners. Snyder’s department is reviewing the policy at the request of Fertile.
Snyder said Fertile has a policy in place since 1977, but they are updating it intending to meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. “The City of Fertile asked the county to review a safety zoning ordinance they are looking at adopting for the city municipal airport,” said Snyder. “They have stuff in place for that dating back to 1977, but it looks like an update to regulations within what they call an airport zoning district. The City of Crookston and City of Fosston also have these specialty zoning districts. Really what they are doing is regulating extensive heights within the district. The closer you are to the airport runway, the more heavily regulated you are.”
Snyder said there are only 113 parcels of property in county jurisdiction that fall into the zoning ordinance and it seems likely that the height permit requirements won’t change for a majority of them. “It’s not going to affect a lot of county parcels,” said Snyder. “On the northwest side of Fertile, it will affect some parcels as far as heights and what can be put out there. The county has height regulations all throughout the county with a specialty permitting process for anything over 100 feet in height.”
The one change for those parcels is that permitting would have to go through the zoning boards for both the City of Fertile and Polk County related to the height of structures. “The permitting we’re going to have to do is something where its kind of a joint permitting process which is something we do with a couple of townships around our larger cities in the county,” said Snyder. “The biggest thing is how active they are in knowing their own ordinances and then effectively pursuing those that are not in compliance. It’s a very extensive mathematical thing where you are looking at different safety areas within that district, and as you move away from the runway, obviously the height restrictions lessen. It’s just a matter of somebody who can review and knows and is knowledgeable about these zoning districts.”
Two townships in Polk County will get new bridges, by State of Minnesota definition, this summer. Both Fanny and Andover Township will have a culvert replaced by a box culvert which meets the state’s definition of a bridge explains Polk County Engineer Rich Sanders. “Fanny Township and Andover Township have bridges or culverts that need to replaced,” said Sanders. “We’re replacing them with box culverts which are considered bridges in the state of Minnesota. I had the plans approved by the state and funding set in those two locations, so the boards just approved the signing of the contracts between us, Andover and Fanny Township.”
The county will let the projects and pay for them initially with the townships reimbursing the county for their portion. The county had two requests for work on county ditches, the first being the addition of a new approach with the installation paid for by the land renter, Kevin Lien, and then the county will take responsibility for maintenance. The second was a request to survey, and possibly clean County Ditch 1 in Section 24 and 25 of Fanny Township explains Sanders. “County Ditch 120 we had a landowner slash renter come in wanting to put an approach into county ditch 120,” said Sanders. “The board approved the install of that approach. On County Ditch 1 we had a request for some cleaning and board approved having our ditch inspector go out and survey the ditch to determine whether it needs to be cleaned or not.”
The Highway Department will also rent a motor grader for the upcoming winter from RDO Equipment in Grand Forks for $5,610.00 from October 2019 through April 2020 with a maximum of 500 hours. The overtime rate will be $40.00 per hour over 500.
