5.2. SR 10-11-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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r~rn: Pmotin@aoLcom [mailto:Pmotin@aoLcom] Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 5:20 AM T®: Johnson, Lori Subject: Fwd: outdoor storage actions The concerns raised in this email need to be addressed. Paul From: To: mayorerLq.com, nick.zerwas@ci.elk-river.mn.us, iwgump@yahoo.com, pmotin@aoLcom Sent: 06/15/10 7:33:28 P.M. Central Daylight Time Subj: outdoor storage actions Dear Mayor, City Council members, and city staff, I Russell Kostreba write to you today on behalf of Midwest Mini-Storage owned and operated by Ryan Kostreba and myself. We recently went through the process to get a conditional use permit amendment to have outdoor storage. In this process which was completed in mid April there were two items the council ultimately wanted us to address, erosion control and landscaping (plant new trees). We agreed to do this and were told the city staff would work with us to address those items. There have been failures on the city staffs part that have hindered us from completing these items while costing us a significant amount of money and leaving property and equipment vulnerable for weeks. In regards to the landscaping plan and planting new trees, the city council stated that we were to work with city staff to draw up a new landscaping plan that would allow us to accommodate the lack of water on site and the sandy soil. We began working with city staff member Jeremy Barnhart to draw up anew plan. I had a very different understanding of what the city council meant when they said the staff should work with me to get a plan in place to bring our landscaping up to code. It has been stated many times before, during, and after the planning commission meeting and the city council meeting that we have been having a very hard time getting trees to grow and stay alive. More then half a dozen times I mentioned planting trees that were 4-6 feet tall. Trees that would require less water to get established then the large ones required by the city and would hopefully get a good root system in place and in 2-3 years be large enough to meet the city's requirements. The initial information we got from Jeremy was an email on 4/28/10 stating to pick trees from a certain web site (most if not all trees on this website are between 12 inches and 3 feet in height when shipped). We submitted a landscaping plan based on this basic information, then received and email from Jeremy on 5/11/10 stating that the city code required a certain number of trees from different categories. We resubmitted our landscaping plan, then received an email from Jeremy on 6/9/10 stating that the trees were not large enough. In his last email he suggested I just go ahead and plant all the trees right away to the city's code. Telling me to do the same thing I did last time (which did not work) is not going to give different results. Essentially, we have been told to meet the original requirements and Jeremy has not worked with us to accommodate the lack of water and the sandy soil and it took two months for us to get this information. Along with the landscaping plan, we were told we needed to get a letter of credit so that if we did not complete the work, the city would draw the letter of credit and do the work. While discussing the landscaping plans, we repeatedly mentioned planting smaller trees that we would be able to keep watered and allow them to get established. Also on more then half a dozen occasions in my brief conversations with Jeremy, (Jeremy was always really short on time when I went to see hi~n) I