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Memo to City Council and Planning Commission Page 4 February 19, 1996 School District has had temporary buildings out in front of their high school • for the past 15 years. I've also heard "temporary" discussed as one or two years; so the point is, it is very difficult to define temporary and even more difficult to come up with a finite list of uses that could be considered as temporary. Therefore, from an administration standpoint, the whole concept of temporary becomes very subjective and difficult to interpret, as well as enforce. The most common method used by cities to identify allowable uses prior to city water and sewer is to allow uses commonly found in a low density residential or agricultural zoning district. These cities will have properties that are presently not served with city water and sewer, zoned as a holding district or, in Elk River's case, Rla or A-1. This method of establishing a zoning designation, along with a specific list of allowable uses, clearly identifies how property, whether it be residential, commercial or industrial, can be used prior to city water and sewer. The difficulty Elk River has is that a majority of the property is currently zoned for its ultimate use. Therefore, trying to implement the system described above may be very difficult given our current situation. The option Elk River may wish to pursue is amending the zoning ordinance to identify certain uses such as those found in the A-1 or Rla zoning district, that can be • used on properties zoned commercial and industrial that do not have city water and sewer. Can there be a compromise to allow development prior to water and sewer? Compromise on this particular issue goes beyond having a property owner or developer waive their rights to future assessments and guaranteeing hook up to utilities when available. These arrangements are well intended when executed, however, for some reason, be it time, change of property owners, or whatever, inevitably the City Council is confronted with an emotional and difficult issue. It is at this point that all previous bets are off and reality takes over. At this point, property owners and City Council are sitting across the table from one another discussing the actual costs and hardships that may result. Summary Growth management is a proven method throughout the country that cities have adopted in order to reduce public costs, managed traffic, preserve farmland, protect against environmental problems, and simply maintain a quality of life for the community. Although growth management is viewed as • s:\council\gmp.doc