votewojcik.org

May 22, 2012

WOJCIK WILL RUN FOR REELECTION

ROCHESTER, MN – After 4 years of service, I will seek election to the Rochester City Council seat for Ward 2. It has been a pleasure to represent the citizens of one of America’s great cities; built on the dedication of generations of progressive leaders.  I hope to continue to serve as a steward for the community and its resources, and promote responsible, healthy growth and development. Read the rest of this entry »

from Gary Neumann

Mayor and Council,

At the 5/21/12 meeting Jerry Williams will be providing you with an update from the Development Permitting Task Force (DPTF).  The DPTF has been meeting every two months and the staff has been updating them on our activities to make progress on the various development permitting issues.   I believe that the comments that we have had with the Task Force to date have been generally positive and supportive of what we have been doing.  In my opinion I think that our departments have taken the charge of improving customer service and making improvements in the development permitting process very seriously and have made very reasonable progress.

In addition to updating the Task Force on what the staff has been focused on I should have also provided our elected officials with an update. I have not provided that for which I apologize, but will provide you with a very brief summary now.  Our main staff focus has been on five items as detailed in a prior memo I sent to you in December. Our efforts in very brief form:

1.       Customer Service.  You are well aware that we have completed a multi-department effort to develop consistent standards and guidelines for employee’s customer service. In addition the Department Heads held a 2 day customer service planning session in which the brand statement of “First Class City, First Class Service” was agreed to .  At this point the Department Heads are in the process of discussing both of these initiatives with their individual departmental staff.  I think we have made excellent progress to date.

2.       Accela Improvements for automated on-line access and tracking. The Mayor and Council approved the retention of consultant services for Building Safety for this effort.  This is a work in-progress by Building Safety.  It is making reasonable progress.  A County upgrade in their GIS system is required to allow us use the newest version of Accela.  The County has approved that GIS update.

3.       Communication Improvements To The City Website For Development Permitting. I am pleased to report that the City staff, lead by Terry Spaeth and Steve Houglum of IS , have provided a new easy to access link to permitting information for building permits and land development matters. Hopefully sometime this weekend you can go to the City’s home page and you can click on the green development permitting icon/button that is prominently displayed thereon.  This provides a greatly improved way for builders, developers and members of the public to access all the needed information on the building and land development process.  Also thanks to Randy Johnson, Phil Wheeler and Richard Freese for the many flow charts and supporting information.

4.       Customer Surveying.  Planning has been surveying their customers for several months using the same questions as they used last year.  Building Safety has prepared revised forms for their surveying of customers and will start using those on permits issued this year.  Public Works is also developing revised survey documents and will start surveying in 2012, but only after fully reviewing the survey documents and what is expected with their permitting staff.  Each department is taking a little varying approach on this, but is committed to doing this and doing it in a way that provides them with the best input for their use.

5.       Process Improvements. As discussed with the Task Force throughout their work last fall, this primarily involves Planning as the lead agency.  To date Planning has identified some simple types of work for which zoning permit approval will not be required. They have discussed this with the PASC and are working out the details with Building Safety. In addition there are other process improvements relating to the Planning review process that they are working on.

Overall, I believe we have made very good progress, in light of the fact that these department heads that are working on this are already very busy staff members.

I look forward to Jerry’s discussion with you on May 21.  I do believe the Task Force has been very good to work with and very understanding of the other job pressures that our staff is under.

The Bicycle masterplan will receive a hearing in front of the Rochester Planning & Zoning Board on May 23rd at 7 PM (the meeting is at the government center and is typically in the council chambers).  If you care about these issues, plan on showing up and speaking.

Meeting notice.

They will be weighing in on whether the Bicycle Masterplan should be adopted.

Bicycle Masterplan.

Here are some facts you should know.

Minnesota bike facts.

• Minnesota has over 1500 jobs in the bike industry, 350 businesses, and 144 million in annual revenue.
• Biking / Walking in MN receives biking receives 1.5% of Federal funding, represents 12% of all trips, and 9% of all fatalities.
• The percentage of trips traveled by walking / biking is higher in cities and increasing.
• The cost of the entire bike masterplan is less that the Elk Run intersection.
• The cost of the entire bike masterplan is about 2.5% of total 2040 infrastructure spending. (per Phil Wheeler)
• “Gas Tax” revenues fund less than 2% of transportation infrastructure in Minnesota.
• The other 98+% comes from other sources.
• 40% of Minnesotans do not drive.
• Bike paths and bike lanes serve different users.

I want more safe routes for recreational and commuting bikers and fewer memorial bike rides.

Edit:  More data from Phil Wheeler:

Michael – My estimate of 2.5% of cost is high. For the 25 year period covered in the Long Range Transportation Plan, the $31M for bike infrastructure would represent 2% of revenues and 1.3% of total transportation system needs.

Citywide, bicycle and pedestrian commuting in the latest 5-year ACS data sums to 4% (3.3% for walking, 0.7% biking), about equal to transit’s 4.2%. If the 2,190 people now commuting by biking or walking were to each need a parking space in a ramp, we would need to spend $48,200,000 to accommodate them. Of course, not all of them work downtown and not all of them would park in a ramp, but it is still a large number. – Phil

A little plug for County Planner Phil Wheeler:  He saw this coming years ago.

USA today on the changing makeup of communities: USA Today

This is part of the reason why many of the downtown or close in developments like Orchard Hills Villas, The Hamilton, Cascade Creek have been successful while places like Pebble Creek in distant sprawled out areas have been failures.  It is also the reason Mac Hamilton’s new building and Metropolitan Market Place will be coming online (and there are more coming…)

From a policy standpoint I think it is crazy that we continue to heavily subsidize sprawl instead of make the users bear the full cost.  I opposed the rate increases to the Sewer fund because that in and of itself was a $60 million development subsidy.

Young Millennials and older Baby Boomers are rejecting traditional suburban lifestyles in favor of urban living and shorter commutes. Many want to live near city centers so they can walk to work, shops and restaurants or take public transportation. They also prefer smaller homes because they’re single or have no kids and don’t want to spend their free me maintaining their homes.

“It’s the kids (ages 18 to 32), the empty nesters (Baby Boomers with no kids at home),” says Chris Leinberger, president of Smart Growth America’s LOCUS (Latin for “place”), a national coalition of real estate developers and investors who support urban developments that encourage walking over driving. “These two generations combined are more than half of the American population.”

The housing bust of the last five years hit hardest in subdivisions in remote suburbs, drying up financing for such development. At the same time, gas prices soared and so did environmental consciousness, giving consumers pause about living in distant suburbs away from services, jobs and entertainment.

I asked our HR director Linda Hillenbrand why we can not offer our employees the same partner benefits that UMR offers theirs.  I thank Linda for getting the answer.  It was not what I wished to hear, but I understand.  I find it unfortunate that there are big state government policies that we can not change that make us more discriminatory and less desirable for a group of talented people.

Michael,

I apologize for the delayed response to your question as to why City/County organizations are required to follow state statutes relative to medical plan designs (same-sex partner benefits) while the University of Minnesota/Rochester is not required to do such. 

In speaking with the HR Staff at the University, I learned it was formed in 1851 while Minnesota did not become a state until around 1858.  As a result, the U of M is identified as “constitutionally incorporated” and is not required to follow some of the statutes that we are, medical plan design being one of them.  They can chose to follow some of these statutes but are not necessarily mandated to do so.  And that is how they are able to offer medical plan benefits to same-sex partners.  Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Linda Hillenbrand

Director HR, SPHR, CCP | City of Rochester

Here is the new language that appears to have unanimous support from the council.  In short, almost every affordable housing project gets some sort of Federal, State, or Local tax subsidy.  As such we have an obligation to make sure that money is well spent.  Our policy now more explicitly states what is affordable housing.  Our policy considers Housing costs, Energy costs, Associated costs, and Transportation costs.  As you would expect many properties that are cheap are not actually affordable when all costs are considered.

The Need for Affordable Housing

 

The City of Rochester is suffering from a critical shortage of affordable housing (housing that, through subsidy or other means, costs no more than 30% of the household income of households earning 80% of the area’s median income).  The proportion of households in Rochester paying more than 30% for housing has increased from around 20% of households in 2000 to over 27% in 2010.[1] There were 11,430 households in Rochester paying over 30% of income for housing in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

I was curious about the density of our city wards.  It was interesting that my Ward 2 is most dense.

Dear ZWP Members,

Over the last several months ZWP Planning Coordinator Norman Senjem has been working on a sediment reduction plan for the Zumbro River Watershed. This is an implementation plan funded by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to satisfy the requirements of the Zumbro turbidity Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study completed last year. Norman has held three public stakeholder meetings and also sought the input of ZWP’s technical partners in reviewing preliminary drafts of the plan. Using feedback from these meetings and partners, he has updated the plan to its most recent version. He would like to let you know that the Draft Plan is now posted on our website (http://www.zumbrowatershed.org/projects/active) for a final public review. Please take a moment to review the plan and provide comments by Tuesday, May 29th. Comments provided will be incorporated into a final draft which will then be routed to MPCA for approval.

After this plan is finalized, Norman will be turning his attention to developing the larger, comprehensive watershed management plan for the Zumbro.

Please let Norman or I know if you have any questions.

Thanks again for your help!

Lisa

Here is the new Ward 2.  The city wards are now fairer and comply with state statutes and guidance.  Ward 2 only saw some small changes.

• A small area North of Highway 14 was added.  No people live there.
• Bamber Valley Estates and Salem Sound moved to Ward 1.
• The entire Parkway and Historic Southwest Neighborhoods (outside of downtown) are now in Ward 2.
• All of Kutzky Park South of Cascade Creek is now in Ward 2.
• Precincts and polling places change significantly in all the neighborhoods west of Highway 52.
• Ward 2 appears to be the most dense in the City of Rochester (close with Ward 6).

A heart felt thanks to the 500+ volunteers that planted 1400+ trees on 5/5/12.  Your selfless determination has made a change to our built environment that will be apparent for the next 100 years.

People have different skill sets, but everybody found a way to help.  Many of you dug and planted trees, but others that were not able to do that found other ways of participating.  What an amazing event and an amazing group of people.

Great work everybody.  Read the rest of this entry »