The City of Eagan has decided to settle its
lawsuit with a developer who wants to destroy the City's Comprehensive Plan in
order to turn one of our last large pieces of undeveloped properties, Carriage
Hills Golf Club, in to a very large housing development.
Unfortunately the City used flawed logic to
arrive at its decision. According to
the City Council, in order to save the plan from change they had to change
it. Put another way, in order to save
the plan they had to destroy it.
The Comprehensive Plan is designed to
develop a long-term strategic vision for the City. It's so important that there are procedures in place to ensure
that our City is developed responsibly and for the good of the entire
community. The Plan has been developed
over decades and involved an enormous amount of effort on the part of past City
administrations and countless citizens.
The current City Council has hastily decided it knows best and is
prepared to throw away all this effort and careful planning.
Since Eagan has nearly reached build out,
we're at the end of the "long term".
The entire Eagan infrastructure was developed relying on the
comprehensive plan and plan process.
All who have invested in Eagan have also relied on the plan. The infrastructure was not designed for nor
can it safely and reasonably accommodate over 1000 new residents and another
3000+ car trips per day. That's why the
Comprehensive Plan has Carriage Hills guided as it currently is---open space.
Unfortunately the picture gets darker. The City is trying to endorse this whole
issue "under the radar screen".
They’re doing this by rushing it through the Planning Commission process
and scheduling the Planning Commission hearing the week between Christmas and
New Years. Such timing could only have
been contrived so that those who
would most likely oppose the City’s actions, i.e., the citizens of
Eagan, would be out of town or too busily involved in the holidays to be able
to effectively interject and raise their concerns. The City and presumably the developer know (and hope) that the
current schedule does not give anyone nearly enough time to reasonably review
the developer’s amendment request.
When we asked the City to move the Planning
Commission hearing from December to February they replied that they had agreed
to process the developer's amendment request in a timely manner. We’re okay with “timely” but not with "blinding
speed"
By law, the City has up to 120 days to
accept or deny an amendment application.
The amendment request was submitted November 28th. Thus the City could reasonably have the Planning
Commission hearing in February and still have time for the Council to review it
in March.
Last time we checked the Council was
elected to serve the citizens and not developers. We, the citizens, want more time to study this very, very
important issue. City Council---we’re
still waiting for a reply.
Given the city’s hastiness this development
process might lead one to believe that there is a double standard in
Eagan: one for developers and one for
the citizens. We would certainly hope
not because this would be contrary to the due process provision of the
Minnesota Constitution that gives us, the citizens, the same rights as Mr.
Wensmann, the developer.
If our Public Servants really want to act
as the Grinch who steals Christmas by hurrying through this immensely important
issue, it would come as a tremendous disappointment to many, many local
citizens. We just hope they give us a
GOOD reason why. The Mayor and City
Council owe us this. After all, we
helped elect them.