REMINDER AND AN INVITATION

This Tuesday, September 10, at 6:30, is the public hearing regarding the Township notifying all citizens by first class mail of any proposed changes to the zoning and mining Ordinances. While it is true that some changes to zoning, for example, may be quite minor, others can be far-reaching and affect the entire Township. Under current law outside of Ordinance 57.2, the Township is required to place such notice in the official newspapers (which are not read by many in today's times) and posting the notice on the outside bulletin board at Town Hall (necessitating checks to see if anything has been posted).

The Board seeks to do away with such notice by first class mail outside of newspapers n bulletin board. They want to change Ordinance 57.2 to eliminate mailed notice to you. 

To alert citizens of such changes is a relatively minor cost in our large budget and would go a long way toward transparency, not to mention any trust one might have in the current officials. Currently, the Planning Commission and the Town Board are looking to rezone ag property as various levels of Commercial/Industrial use. Many of those landowners affected by this do NOT want their property rezoned. Yet the Board doesn't seem to care and has pushed aside any suggestions that they start with the landowners affected, asking for their input up front be4fore spending t5ime and money pursuing this. Then there are the others who would live much closer to such development if the rezoning goes into effect even if their property itself is not rezoned.

You can attend the Public Hearing in person, via Zoom. You can also send your comments to the Town Clerk via email at clerk@eurekatownship-mn.us and ask that your comments be read into the record.

Below are two such comments already sent to the Clerk:

ONE

9/10/2024 Hearing re: Ordinance 57 Notifications

 My name is Jeff Otto. I reside at 25580 Dodd Blvd.

The Zoning Ordinance 240 and Mining Ordinance 165 have the greatest and most wide-spread impact on all the residents and property owners in Eureka Township because traffic and visual impacts may occur far beyond the immediately surrounding neighbors.  It is for that very reason these two Ordinances were specifically identified to require full direct communication to ALL property owners of record at the time of any proposed amendments to them.

There was a long period in history when an official newspaper was the only mass media and so was widely read. That clearly is no longer the case with the result that newspapers no longer assure wide audiences and even less-so with non-resident property owners.

Both of the Ordinances should have had the direct mailing requirement within them.  Now the current Town Board is using the technicality of the requirement being in a separate Ordinance 57 to change the requirement to reduce the visibility and potential greater resistance to zoning changes this Board is advocating. There also could be more support. This is a significant change to the Zoning and Mining ordinance amendment processes, so why was there not proper full notification for this proposed change?  Technicality trumps transparency.

There is growing evidence of this motivation to reduce transparency by the actions and inactions of the Board and its directives to the Planning Commission.  The decades long friendly culture of allowing input in public meetings from residents known to have valued experience as well as concerns about certain agenda subjects has been blocked. The alternative of knowledgeable written input has been completely ignored  to the detriment of residents and property owners.  Board and Planning Commission actions directly violating clear Ordinance language have occurred in spite of such violations being pointed out, in one case in writing in addition to verbal. Recent Planning Commission resignations are also evidence of frustration with this Board’s actions.

Again a Town Attorney has unfortunately given incorrect advice based on a general State statute instead of reviewing actual Eureka Town Ordinance. The recent example was on hearing notification of a zoning change. No person or Town official or Town body may arbitrarily override written Ordinance.   Ordinance language may only be amended by proper procedure.

So now the Board is suddenly pursuing clean-up duty on Ordinance 57.  Why would this be done now if they hadn’t recognized that the process of advancing the Tourism Ordinance amendment was handled improperly?  Even the applicant commented that the 2014 amendment proposal should be reviewed, but neither that nor the improper hearing notification was reported by the PC to the Board. Two Board members were present at the “open house” (since it wasn’t a proper hearing)  and neither of them reported either of those two significant points.

This is another example of hiding behind broad State language designed to enable local government units to then tailor more specific limits important to their circumstances.  This includes counties and municipalities as well as townships. To not understand this distinction is to impose local ordinances far too wide-open to follow individual Comprehensive Plans.

A reasonable compromise on the “first class mail” requirement is a less expensive postcard mailing. Surely a few hundred dollars in postage once a year or less often can be managed in a nearly half-million-dollar budget for the sake of true transparency. Eureka has been spending far more than that by continuing to use the company named “General Code” to “review” amendments, an over-rated service no longer needed in our township and used by only 4 other local governments in the entire State of Minnesota.

 Thank you.

 

TWO

Sent from Yours Truly:

Please read my comments into the record. 

Nancy Sauber, 9445 225th St W, Lakeville

I believe the Township should notify citizens by mail when there is a proposed Township-wide zoning or mining amendment of significance. 

Changing a minor detail in the zoning ordinance is one thing, but considering commercial zoning as is now going on merits such notification of all citizens. 

This sort of zoning change affects people’s property values, use of their land in the here-and-now (not just for the future as has been professed), taxes, quality of life, and so on. These are weighty matters and the public should be given full disclosure of such very substantive major changes. A transparent government FOR the people would do that. 

I ask you to be such a government. 

LET YOUR BOARD HEAR FROM YOU.

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