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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL Monday, March 26, 2012 7:00 o'clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 5 of 7 (MAYOR/COUNCIL REPORT, Continued) special use permit for a specified amount of time to deal with that situation. Rahn noted the enforcement component of the ordinance will be difficult. Rahn stated the larger issue for him is the ownership component of it. Rahn indicated there was a representative from Big Island at the Planning Commission meeting that spoke about his neighbor that has a new tenant every week. There were also a couple of homeowners that lived in the Crystal Bay area and had parking issues. Rahn noted they are not talking about illegally parked cars in that situation. That home has since been sold and the issue has gone away. Rahn commented if the overall population was aware that they would not be allowed to have a family member keep their boat at their dock, they would have had more people in attendance. The issue comes back to how the City will be able to police it. Loftus reported that she, Doug Franchot, and Jesse Struve attended a meeting with the Long Lake utility study group. The group spent approximately an hour and a half with a representative from the Metropolitan Council. At a previous meeting Long Lake had requested a utility study group because they had concerns about specific neighborhoods. At this meeting the group talked almost exclusively about I&I. Loftus stated it sounds like Long Lake would be interested in pursuing a program to incentivize the residents to correct their I&I problems. Loftus indicated she is not sure if the City Council was anticipating that as being a topic of discussion for this study group. McMillan commented there have been a number of I&I issues that have come up over the years and that in the past the City has not really focused on the line from the house to the street. McMillan stated she is not sure how much time the group should spend on that and to what extent that is a problem in Orono. Loftus stated the cities that have dealt with it have passed some type of ordinance requiring private connections to be fixed at the time streets are repaired. Correction of an I&I problem is usually a pretty expensive endeavor for private residents and is a big policy decision on the part of the City. Loftus stated she is unsure whether the City Council feels this is an issue at this time and whether Orono should partner with Long Lake on this matter. Rahn stated it was always his assumption that because those lines are smaller and when they cracked, roots would infiltrate their system, that the homeowner would become aware of the problem and would replace the lines prior to it causing substantial I&I issues for a number of years. Jesse Struve stated there are studies that show the overall length of city-owned sanitary sewer pipe in the ground is anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of the total and that private sanitary sewer lines account for 50 or more percent of the sewer pipes in the ground. If the City has an I&I issue and they deal only with their portion of the pipe, they would only be tackling about 50 percent of the problem. There are significant I&I contributions from private sanitary lines and a large number of homeowners do not necessarily understand what I&I is about. If a resident has tree roots in the system, that means there is an I&I issue. Struve noted that many cities will undertake programs to address private I&I issues. McMillan commented there is another meeting scheduled in April and that she would like to get all of the service agreements worked out between the two cities for the short-term and then perhaps look at the I&I issue sometime down the road. Item #03 - CC Agenda - 04/09/2012 Approval of Council Minutes 03/26/2012[Page 5 of 7]