On March 22, 2010, the Plan Commission approved a conditional use permit (CUP) for the Edgewater development. On April 2, 2010, the City received a timely appeal of that approval.Gee, what do you think he'll find. Nothing to see here?
Pursuant to sec. 28.12(11)(i), MGO, the City Clerk “shall file such appeal with the Common Council. The Common Council shall fix a reasonable time for the hearing of the appeal, and give public notice thereof as well as due notice to the parties in interest, and decide the same within a reasonable time.”
The ordinance requires a 2/3 vote of the Council to overturn the actions of the Plan Commission.
Therefore, the appeal has been placed in Legistar and will be on the Council’s agenda for April 20. The only role for the Council at that time is to “fix a reasonable time for the hearing of the appeal …” My understanding is that several other Edgewater items will be on that agenda, and will be referred to a future meeting. The appeal of the CUP should be set for hearing at the same time.
You should also be aware that our initial review of the appeal showed that it did not contain the necessary 20% or more of the property owners who received notice of the CUP application. In that case, the appeal is not valid, and there would be nothing for the Council to act on. However, there are some questions about the nature of the list used by those initiating the appeal and conversations they may have had with the City Clerk’s office. We are investigating exactly what happened, and whether this affects in any way our legal opinion that the appeal is insufficient. That investigation and our conclusion will not be finished until late next week, at the earliest. At that time, we will provide the Council with a more comprehensive memorandum on the appeal.
If you have any questions on this, please contact me, ACA Kitty Noonan, or Brad Murphy.
Michael P. May
City Attorney
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Edgewater CUP Appeal being investigated further . . .
City Attorney Michael May sent this out to alders today:
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Kitty Noonan was quick to declare the neighbors' appeal invalid, but now it's on the agenda and it takes weeks to investigate the city's own notification list?
ReplyDeleteIt's worth going back to Brenda's April 9 post "This Stinks: Neighbors Appeal of Edgewater" and compare her and Cal's comments to the city attorney's new memo.
After Noonen's last "memo," she would not be the first person I would turn to for legal advice.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link to her "memo" and my critique, which is eerily similar to the city attorney's office's new stance (other than parsing out the appellant's very good estoppel argument).
http://brendakonkel.blogspot.com/2010/04/this-stinks-neighbors-appeal-of.html
It's a pretty well known problem in city hall the Ms. Noonan prefers to try to make policy instead of giving legal advice. It's been a real problem, to the point that commissioners and alders ask her very specific questions and caution her to just answer that question. And when she is not trying to set policy, she is sleeping through the meetings or not paying attention, you often have to repeat your question for her. I attempted to get the city attorney to address these issues, but he chalked it up to a personality issue. Nice, eh? I just love when my concerns are addressed that way. I guess women are just catty, er, kitty.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link to the Noonen's memo, too:
ReplyDeletehttp://brendakonkel.blogspot.com/2010/04/edgwater-going-to-landmarks-at-earliest.html
One of the several things Ms. Noonan needs to learn is to simply read and apply a city ordinance, rather than to criticize the drafting of an ordinance while evading the question.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching the Plan Commission rubber stamp spot shoreline zoning for Edgewater, it was clear to me that attorney Noonan was more concerned with getting the mayor's shiny object approved than providing sound legal advice to the commission.
ReplyDeleteCity hall is in a sorry state when the city attorney gets better legal assistance from a blog than from his own assistant city attorney.
Library - No Library - Library - ??
ReplyDeleteAppeal - No Appeal - Appeal - who knows?
They need to take their meds down at city hall.