votewojcik.org

While the council approved a liquor license for a future full restaurant at Holiday Inn City Center, that license is now on hold.  The city has a policy of not issuing licenses to business that have not paid taxes or other fees.  As it turns out owner Mayur Bhakta hasn’t paid his taxes for a couple of years. Read the rest of this entry »

Latest update with special guest!

This update includes discussion on:

• Villa / Chateau Road Safety
• Future Fire Station Location Purchase
• Minnesota Energy Site

At our last meeting the owner of the former Dos Amigos ran into a problem transferring his liquor license due to a violation for serving a minor in 2007.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a way that we can plant trees in dense areas and actually get them to live.  Ideally, we would always have enough space to support our boulevard trees.  However there are some places where we wish to have trees (everywhere in my case) where they don’t do so well.  I really don’t see the upside of planting trees only to see them flounder and die. Read the rest of this entry »

From Minnpost.  Like Minneapolis leaders, this Councilman has pushed hard for downtown trees.

Nearly 130 years after Minneapolis’ impressive park system was laid out, the city’s largely treeless downtown may be poised for a greener, leafier future. A series of meetings last week appeared to lay groundwork for softening downtown’s hard edges with more tree-lined streets, pocket parks and perhaps a central park, all aimed at bringing downtown under the green canopy that covers much of the rest of the city. Read the rest of this entry »

Goal: Core zoning

Grade: C

Comments:  See goal review 11 of 14…

Goal: Neighborhood design and development standards

Grade: C

Comments:  Until about December this wasn’t moving and it hurts neighborhoods and developers.  Neighborhoods are at risk of poor development standards.  Developers don’t have good guidance to start from and run into neighborhood opposition.  I will limit my sympathies a little because we have had some real ugly development force through using zoning tricks.

I am committed to getting the IK neighborhood zoning done and approved in 2011, I would also like to see similar zoning for Uptown.  The downtown masterplan calls for form based zoning.  There has been some conflict about who is slowing the process, the neighborhoods or planning.  To be clear only one of these groups gets paid to get zoning work done.  That group needs to lead the way and get this done.

I very much desire to see a successful Lourdes High School (where my daughter may someday go) and a successful Kutzky Park Neighborhood.  The two are not mutually exclusive goals, but if Lourdes wants to get a street vacation potentially worth a million dollars from the tax payers they are going to need to work with the neighborhood instead of trying to go around it. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is my bi-monthly video update.

Items Discussed:

1. Boys & Girls Club Vacation Request (and why it was very different than the Lourdes request) – Approved 7-0
2. Adoption of the Downtown Masterplan – Approved 7-0
3. My new committee appointments

Jeff Pieters at the Rochester Post-Bulletin covered the downtown master plan which will have a public hearing on Monday.  If you would like to be heard either contact me or come to Monday’s meeting. Read the rest of this entry »