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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-08-09 Applicant Email Re Potential Open Meeting Law Violation Julie Hultman From: jaimecpa@aol.com Sent: Tuesday,August 9, 2022 2:29 PM To: Mary McComber; Chuck Dougherty; Carly Johnson; lilegrens@comcast.net; mjrunk@comcast.net Cc: ksandstrom@eckberglammers.com;Julie Hultman;Jennifer Pinski Subject: Potential Open Meeting Law Violation re:J K& K Group, LLP Attachments: Potential Open Meeting Law Violation J K& K Group.pdf Dear Mayor and City Council, Please review the time sensitive material. J K& K Group wanted, as did we all a fair public hearing regarding a Comprehensive Plan Amendment Application. We don't feel we are getting that without your action. Sincerely, Jaime Junker J K& K Group, LLP 1 Potential Open Meeting Law Violation at June 8,2022 Plan Commission Meeting of Oak Park Heights—August 9,2022 Dear Oak Park Heights Mayor and City Council, Unfortunately,it has come to my attention that a potential Minnesota open meeting law violation occurred that I am requesting be assessed prior to the Public Hearing on August 11th fort K&K Group LLP's application for a Comprehensive Plan Amendment. The Walk-a-Bout project was added to the agenda at the start of the June 8th Plan Commission Meeting. The potential open meeting law violation is that the public and property owners were not able to attend the meeting with advance notice that it was going to be discussed and therefore unable to give any input or correct the city administrator from giving misinformation,thus the city administrator and City Planning Consultant Mr.Richards,biased the Plan Commission meeting on June 8th and the upcoming public hearing process on August 1e 2022. The remainder of this communication will speak to what the applicant feels is a biased pre-emptive report by Mr.Richards of The Planning Company in the name of the City staff. The remedy should be that Mr.Richard's report be pulled from distribution and not be read at the Plan Commission meeting on August 11th. Because of the application for amendment nature of the material,the correct process is that the Plan Commission and City council should evaluate the merits of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment application by comparing it to the City's 2018 Comprehensive Plan. I was sent the Scott Richard's August 4t1 Memorandum and review for our application for a Comprehensive Plan Amendment for our property at 5676 Oakgreen Avenue North. The community is expecting to participate in the public hearing on August 11th and debate the merits both for and against an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan based on the application and substantive comments pulled directly from the 2018 Plan Document. At issue is where the line for low density vs high density should be in that area of the city. The applicant argues that when the buffer zone was purchased by the city the line was therefore established as where the linear park is,not 58th street. The report issued by Mr. Richards appears to intend to pre-empt an excellent public discussion on the merits to change the property to a higher density. Without a fair and unbiased public hearing in front of the Plan Commission,the merits of the application are unlikely to receive a fair review at the City council level. The report appears to pre-empt the Plan Commission and the City Council from truly considering the project. The report is not entirely surprising when 1 watch the June 8 video on the City's VouTube channel of the Plan Commission meeting. Let me please explain some background. The initial meeting with the City staff was a zoom call on March 16th,2022. We were in covid protocols still. Eric Johnson was abrupt and rude to our consultants and me. At one point early in the meeting Eric Johnson scolded our engineer from Cedar Corporation after he made a thoughtful comment in his opening remarks that the project would bring valuable tax revenues to the City.Eric became emotional and scolded Mr.Russ Kiviniemi(my civil engineer)that,that aspect was not of any importance to the City staff. Mr Johnson made other emotional comments saying we had not given any consideration to the neighbors to the south with our project. He made comments that he "wanted us to be successful" with our project yet he was visually irritated and abrupt with us during the zoom call. Two minutes into the zoom call,Mr.Johnson turned the meeting over to Scott Richards who basically shut our project down. He said what wewanted was"insurmountable"his exact words. The whole zoom meeting left me and my seasoned consultants in shock. This is after I had invested over$20,000 on professional renderings to show the City staff our project. After a wonderful local career as a CPA in the area,it is my personal opinion based on this application experience with the City and my professional opinion that Jaime Junker • J K&K Group, LLP • 11550 Stillw2er Blvd North, Suite 106 • Lake Elmo, MN 55042 Eric Johnson,when he acts in the manner we observed and which was directed at us,can be a liability to the City of Oak Park Heights,rather than a leader of others. If you need to see the manner in which Mr. Johnson handled himself during that City staff zoom call,simply pull the video of the call. It it a public record. Join Zoom Meeting httos://us02web.zoom.usfi/81699253824 Again,the zoom online call was attended by the city attorney,city engineer,city staff,myself and my consultants. All observed the same biased behavior from Mr.Johnson towards our project and me. It's a very bad look for the City of Oak Park Heights. We met at City Hall on June 15th with the City planning group. Early during that meeting Eric Johnson took offense that I had stated at a recent City Council meeting that Councilmember Chuck Dougherty had stated to me on a phone call with him that the Comprehensive Plan was to be utilized as a guideline and was a tool for the City. Eric then stated something to the effect that he knew more about the comprehensive plan than any City Council member did,that he worked with it all the time. The city staff and my consultants were in attendance and herad his comments. We had come to the June 15th meeting to discuss pre-application for a 36 unit Walk-a-Bout project but to also get a unit count for the project. None could be provided to us. Eric Johnson started the meeting and said,"you can go one of two ways"and then proceeded to explain that a comprehensive plan amendment or a zoning amendment should be the first step alternative to submitting the application. Then Eric Johnson and Scott Richards discussed ideas they had for an alternative plan but stated they wanted more time to discuss this between themselves and they invited us back for June 29th meeting. They told us they couldn't meet with us on June 22"d. We returned to the city hall on June 29th and their recommendation to us was we should submit a Comprehensive Plan Amendment for a higher density. They were unable to provide allowable units for either the zoning ordinance or the Comprehensive Plan at that meeting. We agreed to order a survey to determine appropriate density at the time we submitted our project application. It was understood that we were not working with exact known allowable units for any project but that would be a matter of the project application,not the Comprehensive Plan Amendment application. This is a very important distinction. We agreed to submit with our application a current rendering of our project that depicted 36 units at the time without knowing allowable unit counts. In no way were we waving our right or ability to adjust the number of units at the time the City Staff calculated their interpretation of that allowable number. As mentioned before,on both June 15th and June 29th neither Scott Richards or Eric Johnson had shared any calculation of allowable units with us. They kept saying they would calculate that later at the time of project application. That calculation now communicated on August 4th appears to be 28 units,but it is not a final calculation either. Our application is for a Comprehensive Plan Amendment. Although Mr. Richards states In the first paragraph of his report on August 4th that"The details of the project are not being considered at this time,only the land use ccatron." Mr.Richards then repeatedly references the 36 units no less than ten times by informal count.His purpose apparently,is to remind the reader throughout the report,whether it is the Plan Commission,the press,the public,or the City Council that this project can't possibly meet approval because it is 8 units over the allowed units. In so doing he presents a biased report attempting to derail a fair public hearing on August 11th in front of the Plan Commission. By this time,the reader has forgotten that this is not a project application,but an application for a change to the 2018 Comprehensive Plan,where"the details of the project are not being considered". Every time the reader,reads or hears 36 units,they will assume the applicant should be disqualified. This is Mr.Richard's tactic and it is unfair and a bad look for the city. The 2 applicant feels the City Planner and City Administrator did not act in good faith by not providing their calculation of allowable units in advance on either June 15th or June 29th and are now using it in a way to unfairly influence the process. We as applicant have every right to adjust the unit size of our project. Mr. Richards makes a number of significant material omissions in his report. We will give a few examples here but it is not our intent to include all his omissions in this communication to you. There are just too many omissions to do so. In the Access/Traffic section of his report he shares our narrative that our traffic expert estimates 306 daily trips with a high density development but that a six unit development would yield 60 daily tirps. 'This is considerably less than the 306 daily trips with a high density development". Mr.Richards completely fails to mention that our traffic engineer stated in his report and we included in our application that Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has a 2018 daily traffic volume along Oakgreen Avenue adjacent to our project of 5,300 vehicles,and that Washington County 2040 Comprehensive Plan assigns a planning level AADT capacity of 10,000 to two- lane undivided urban roads like Oakgreen Avenue and 20,000 capacity to roads like 58th. "Therefore, both Oakgreen Avenue and 58"'Street have the remaining capacity to accommodate the approximately 306 daily trips expected to be generated by the proposed development. With this full and concise explanation of the 306 daily trips expected from the project put into perspective by our traffic expert, we can see that Mr.Richards comment that 60 daily trips, "is considerably less than 306 daily trips",is a form of literary bias. In his report,Mr.Richards is trying to convince the reader of a certain conclusion while clearly holding back the facts that were contained in the application. It is a rather large and apparently intentional error by a professional.The City could direct that Mr.Richards correct his omission and incorrect conclusion by changing his report in all the areas he mentions traffic to include the MnDOT and Washing County data that was in the application and he omitted. There are over a dozen direct quotes from the 2018 Comprehensive Plan in the amendment application that Mr.Richards either ignores or barely even touches on such as the following on page 11 of the application again pulled from the 2018 Comprehensive Plan such as: "Land use compatibility concerns exist, to respond to these land use compatibility concerns,the Comprehensive Plan establishes a policy of screening,landscaping and buffering commercial establishments near or within residential areas to minimize the impact of the surrounding uses and enhance the neighborhood and community." The above coupled with a detailed discussion of the linear park(buffer zone)on page 11 and 12 of the application gives the relevant statistics of homes adjacent to the buffer zone and shows how the existing buffer zone complies with the Comprehensive Plan for a "screening,landscaping and buffering". At no point in Mr.Richard's report does he state that the existing buffer zone is in full compliance with the 2018 Comprehensive Plan and the sites are therefore in compliance with high density on that topic. Finally,there are numerous examples we can pull from Mr. Richards report where he isn't giving the text of the application a fair representation if one reads the application and compares it to Mr. Richard's report that shows his bias,(and the experts will analyze this in time by comparing the application to Mr. Richard's report),but all one needs to do is watch the end of the June 8t Plan Commission meeting on the City of Oak Park Heights YouTube Channel in the 1:10:26 time area where the Plan Commission members talk together about the Walk-a-Bout project(in a potential Minnesota Open Meeting Law violation). Commissioner David White makes a thoughtful comment to the effect that'When it does come time to discuss(the Walk-a-Bout project in a public hearing)it might be helpful to have more than one meeting as we spent 45 minutes each on(two project hearings)and this one might need more 3 discussion." At that point Mr.Richards is shown on the camera rubbing his hands together in mockery of the applicant laughing and he says,"We haven't had a hot one for a while". It may be funny in the moment but the joke he's apparently making for the public to see is towards the taxpayer/applicant. After reading Mr.Richard's report, it is difficult to understand how the Applicant would have a fair Public Hearing on August 11th and how the report wouldn't intentionally negatively influence the Plan Commission and the City Council let alone the public. Throughout our application process,The City Planner and the City Administrator have made public comments and apparently had a goal to disrupt the Plan Commission and the City Council from weighing in on this"controversial project"because in there minds a few neighbors to the south should get special accommodations relating to the buffer zone. They both seem to be personally involved in not allowing a fair and unbiased public discussion of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment application. With the potential Minnesota Meeting Law violation on June 8a',and because directing Mr.Richards to add the omissions he makes in his report to the report at this time,it would almost certainly need to be a City attorney supervised project,the only remedy in this situation is for Mr.Richard's report to be redacted from the August 11th Public Hearing Process. Sincerely Submitted, Jaime Junker J K&K Group, LLP 4