Chair Pete Storlie is running for position #2. Former Planning Commissioner and Board Supervisor, Cory Behrendt, is also running for that position.
Supervisor Brian Budenski is running for position #1, as is current Commissioner Butch Hansen.
You can be sure to stay tuned for more on that!
The agritourism committee (task force ) met again on Tuesday, January 28th. I was present along with two other citizens. The time was spent discussing different uses and also compiling questions for the attorney. If there were no issues raised with the Chair's phrasing of the questions discussed and decided upon, the scheduled meeting on Thursday, February 6th, will be canceled. The group's next meeting is on Tuesday, February 11th, when Senior TKDA Planner, Sherri Buss, will return with her research and input. This could be an informative meeting to attend.
At an earlier meeting, Butch Hansen made a comment along the lines that if it had been up to him, none of the task force would even be there meeting as he apparently does not see it as necessary to write agritourism ordinance language or to involve professional assistance--an opinion he reminded the group he had stated previously. This was at the time that he, Commissioner Fritz Frana, and member Phil Cleminson agreed to present the task force's recommendation to the Board to continue its work on the Ordinance with the assistance of a planner and the attorney. Leaving aside why he would want to argue for or at least present the recommendation to the Board when he says he does not agree with it (recall that he abstained rather than vote "yes" in favor of the recommendation), I am a little confused how Mr. Hansen takes that view when the Township has a current lawsuit concerning a use that still has not been resolved. In fact, that is what started a chain of events that has brought us to this point, as some of you realize. I raised this fact at another task force meeting as a member of the audience, explaining why I thought there does, indeed, need to be ordinance language if this use is to lawfully exist, yet its importance seems to escape him. In my opinion.
We must all realize that the Right to Farm certainly exists, but that it takes one only so far. At some point, the line is crossed from agriculture to agritourism. I have talked to former Board Supervisors and Planning Commissioners about this, and they agree with this view. Evidently Scott and Goodhue Counties agree that this is a separate use since they each have specific ordinance language addressing it.. Apparently, the state of Minnesota thinks a definition is called for as they are developing one, as was represented to the task force by Bob Patton. So why would one continue to argue that "agritourism" is already included within "agriculture" or that no "agritourism" language is needed when Eureka is clearly endeavoring to allow it as an accessory use to agriculture?
Along this same topic, it was also curious to me that Supervisor Ceminsky, who had previously argued that the task force should consist of six, and only six members, then argued at the last Board meeting that this committee should now be reduced to three members only! What has changed since his first speech? Thankfully, after discussion, the Board ultimately accepted that the six could and should continue as all were willing to. Thankfully, because anyone conversant or familiar with the Ordinance would know that such special committees must be made up of a minimum of five people. Curiously, this fact was not mentioned in the Board's discussion of Ceminsky's notion, so I was thankful that the Board ended up on the correct path after all. I'll admit it's hard enough to sit through these long meetings, without having certain members unhappy with me because I bring up some sticky such detail which they have overlooked!
As an aside that may interest you regarding the level of conversance with our community's laws, a different Supervisor had stated at an even earlier meeting when a use was being discussed by the Board that since the use was not addressed in the Ordinance (thus the Ordinance didn't regulate it) the use must be okay and allowed without restriction!! At break time, I felt I needed to point out to him the part of the Ordinance which clearly states that any uses not addressed within are prohibited, quite the contrary to what he asserted and on which no one had corrected him. He told me, "I didn't know that." I said, "Obviously, that's why I am telling you." I thought I was at least being nice by bringing it up to just him at the break, but he apparently didn't seem to think so, and I guess I hadn't made myself too popular with him. Who still remains nameless.
So, there is your update of sorts. As the minutes of the agritourism task force meetings become available, it is the bloggers' intention to make them available to you, instead of waiting for the IT person to be hired to get the Township website fixed. I don't know if that has been done yet or not, but the last time I asked a Supervisor about it--last Friday, January 31st-- it was unknown.
Can you pass the red stuff?
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