The Ramsey engineering department is professional, and implements things. It is not a policy making body.
The concern is to put together soon a storm water runoff management plan. Perhaps that's an oversimplification but I saw nothing stated or shown in the charts beyond that.
The consultants, Bolten & Menk did work on that unfortunate Gun Club sewer excess; but they were hired to do it, not to set the policy of putting the miserable thing into the ground to vex the rest of us in Ramsey not having ever been in the chain of title to the Gun Club, nor related by blood or marriage to those who were either in person or via a closely held LLC.
So you do not shoot the messenger.
The engineering consulting firm appeared sincere, and part - a big part - of the concern is the Ramsey wetlands we have in abundance throughout the city.
Brian Olson should put the wetlands mapping online. For all of us.
I asked, and got no firm answer, what overlap this storm water runoff concern has with Mark Riverblood and his greenspace planning effort.
Greenspace planning is great. I support it. We need it.
Greenspace is not to be obtained by inverse condemnation - by regulating properties that are desired to be kept green into a position where the wetlands and buffering areas foreclose development. You want someone's property for a public purpose, then you take it, and pay fair price. Not twice fair price, as possibly happened in one particular roadway condemnation I have studied - one segment of extending Hwy. 116, but then this is Ramsey, and it has had its ways and means.
So, water runoff planning. Yes. Do it. It is a needed part of the 2008 Comp Plan process, but do it in a way that does not backdoor some folks into being greenspace volunteers, uncompensated, unhappy, and unheard if they protest.
I am not saying there is a dual purpose. I am saying there could be, and as Brandeis said in his 1914 book, "Other Peoples' Money," "Sunshine is the best disinfectant."
Along those lines, I shall put in to city officials a public data disclosure request to examine copies of pleadings - public data, since they are papers filed in Court - for the lawsuit between Minnwest and the City. I would like to know the details, and for someone not consulting in closed chambers with Mr. Goodrich, reading the pleadings is all you can do to be best informed.
