February 25th, 2008 council meeting (updated)

After swearing in five new firefighter/paramedics (congratulations!), the city council made a variety of appointments to boards and commissions, including the reappointment of Steve Gunn to the Maplewood Police Civil Service Commission.
Most of the rest of the meeting was devoted to public hearings on street projects. The meeting ran well beyond midnight, and with that a significant remainder of the agenda was held over to a Thursday continuation at 5:00PM.

The Sterling Street (between Holloway and Larpenteur) project discussion ended with a decision to close the street between Ripley and Larpenteur. That section runs through three wetlands and cannot be built correctly due to the subsoils. Sterling north of that section is a Maplewood / North St. Paul boundary, with residents from both communities reporting the wetland portion of the street to be used mostly by drug dealers, gun shooters, trash dumpers, and Hill Murray students. It is the only through north/south street between McKnight and Century, and as such is apparently used by the residents of the not-to-be-paved deadend section of Idaho to get to North St. Paul, if they choose to brave the Larpenteur intersection clogged with Hill Murray parkers. After being closed, it of course cannot be used by the two different Maplewood fire stations, the North St. Paul fire station, and the two police departments that provide public safety services to the neighborhood north of the wetland section. The North St. Paul city council is a partner in the remaining project, and will have their go at a public hearing at an upcoming meeting.

In short, the hearing and attendant discussion was a classic example of asking the neighborhood what it wants.


Agenda item 'K2. Woodlynn Village TIF Guarantee/ Release of Escrow' produced a late-night discussion involving large sums of money in uncertain status. The story begins somewhere in the early 90's and turns on what the definition of 'bond' is. More on that after actually reading the reports.

Mr. Rossbach will assemble a task force to investigate possible courses of action on the woodsmoke issue.

The reworking of Visitor Presentations discussion will change venues to a council/manager workshop.

More after the Thursday continuation.

[Update 2/26 3:20] A helpful reader points out that the meeting started 1 day ago, not 11 days ago (original title = February 11, 2008 council meeting)