03-21-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING March 13, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 11 of 21 Since the licensed engineer who designed the retaining walls is not responsible for the site layout in gradient services, I would request that the site civil engineer provide the written assurances that the work was completed based on known industry specifications and building codes for mitigating soil erosion and collapse of the bluffs. So my final comments, this was a massive, massive project. There were many, many dump truck, loads of dirt. I don't question the bluff work itself. I think Joe Valdes and his men did a good job building the wall. It was the method of just tearing away the whole bluff that had everyone concerned and has everyone concerned now. And my concern is that top wall doesn't meet the original top of the bluff. There are the indications that plantings are going to be made. I will say that the wall was built with a combination of dirt and stone behind those walls for good drainage. That is as it should be. I'm concerned, how will those plantings take effect in that type of soil? Certainly, you could add something to make it work. I think everybody tries to do a good job. The method of this one was beyond what we've seen for any lake owner. But that doesn't mean we can't go forward and just make it a bluff and retaining walls such that the neighbors on each side don't have to worry about that bluff falling apart. So you have my condolences on how you want to make your decision. It's tough. I agree. It's very, very, very tough. Johnson noted that this is a lot for a neighbor. You're a particularly educated on the matter and I'm sorry, you've had to learn this much about it. Thanks for your comments. We'll definitely want to integrate some of your recommendations there to our opinion. But, the other part of this is how we deal with this. How do we deal with contractors that go outside the scope? How as a City do we do this better next time to prevent it for neighbors like you when all you do is live there? Charles Price, Carol's husband, 2813 Casco Point Road, stated Melanie, you made a great point, that next time an application comes in some questions need to be asked. How is this going to be done? And I think that might have been lacking on this one, because everybody from the City who saw it was very shocked. And just to add another data point on the dump trucks, when we talk dump trucks, these are the kinds used on the interstate highways. They're massive. And the worst day I think it was, you know, we're there pretty much every day, we saw at least seven and maybe eight of these giant dump trucks of dirt getting hauled off. It looked to me like they were bringing in gravel and backfill so the dirt went out and hopefully proper backfill came in, the contractors might be able to clarify that point. He asked to have a photo put back up. This is showing the top of the bluff where it originally was. That really shows where the top of the bluff was from the top of the original bluff where that line is. That goes from one fence post to the other. And that is actually 22 feet from the new top of the bluff, so that gives you a rough idea that they've dished the shoreline back 22 feet from where it used to be. Drainage, we still haven't seen too much about drainage at the Planning Commission. I did ask about it. And Joe did clarify that he has that taken care of, but I'm not sure what that means. And I did talk to Wes today. He's still concerned. He doesn't know, has the drainage been taken care of or has it not?. Wes, on the east side, he did ask about the wall between the two properties, a border wall, if you want to call it that, does that catch water? So the water can't just freely fall from this property to the 2817 property. So he wants that wall to remain of some kind. It doesn't have to be exactly what it is right now. Margaret Martin provided a letter. And she has statements from a professional geotechnical engineer and some of his points are really, really important, I think. He's saying, where's the soil test? The engineer says, here's the wall design and I base my wall design upon internal compound stability, but my design is dependent upon a geotechnical engineer doing soils tests and soil samples, and making sure that the assumptions that I made to design