01-25-1974 Council Memo - Laserfiche WebLink

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Agenda Items - January 28 , 1974 Page 2 7. You have in your information packet thc memo from me concerning criteria that you may wish to look at when interviewing engineers and attorneys. I called the Sun Newspaper and was assured that if we selected the Orono section of the paper as our legal publication, that everything that was published in that would also be published in the Mound paper. This being the case , I would recommerid to the Council that we appoint the Orono Sun as our offic�al newspaper. 10 & 15 . These items concern a gas rate incr_ease and a NSP increase. As far as the NSP increase is concerned, thc� franchise which we have agreed to join has not come about. In other words , NSP does not have the required number of municipal_ities participatinq to 1_egally at this time create the franchise. Therefore, bei.ny as therc is no other regulartory agency or authority over NSP, the Village has no way to really challenge the rate increase unl.ess it wants to go to court and demand justification for the increase. 12 . In your packet is a request from Di.rk Benson concerninq safety items that need to be purchased now to correct identified safety problems. This report was presented before the Vil_lage Safety Committee which met earlier this month and the vote was unani.mous to forward this to the Council and ask that approval he given to s}�end I�'ederal Revenue Sharing Funds for these items . This proposal has my full support and I recommend that the Council approve the expenditure of the funds . The Village Attorney will inform you in some detail on Monday night regarding the procedures that we will have to follow in calling the public hearing for the Planninq Commission in February to discuss the rezoning changes that are connected with the Comprehensive Plan. The problem that we encountered basically is this , the State law does not require a mail notice for a public hearing on a rezoning to property that is five acres or more. The Village code does require the mailing of notices to property owners that are concerned with rezoning. The Village Attorney felt that due to the fact the State Municipal Planning Act was a uniform act it therefore took precedence over any local ordinance that would concern itself with planning. This was the assumption that the staff was operating under until the Village Attorney discussed the matter with several other attorneys in his office and two of the attorneys that have had extensive land use background in law disagree with that decision. The two attorneys felt that the local ordinance requirements would prevail and that the only way to get around sending out a mail notice would be to change the ordinance itsel.f. The changing of the ordinance would require the Council to call a public hearing and that notice would only have to be published in the newspaper. The public hearing could be conducted at the next Council meeting, the ordinance changed, and then the public hearing could be called for the Planning Commission under the new Village ordinance which would then not require a mailed notice. After discussing this with Marc, I further checked with the attorney for the League of Minnesota Municipalities and he concurred that the proper way to go would be to changc� the Village ordinance to eliminate the need to mail a notice to the property owners and thus get the ordinance in line with the State requirements . After giving this matter a great deal of thought, and takinq unto conside.ration that it