SANDMAR VILLAGE UPDATE

I have enclosed two memos - one from our City Administrator to the residents on October 6th, and then an update that was sent shortly after:

October 6, 2008


Dear Sandmar area residents:

Here is an update on what has happened since the Plan Commission met on August 20th:

· The developer (Hank Mehciz) has submitted the attached new concept plan, and a public hearing will be held by Plan Commission on Wed, Oct 15th. (You should have received a letter from me regarding this meeting.) As you see by comparing this plan with the concept plan approved 2 years ago, the major change is putting senior apartments where a YMCA was first suggested, on the east side of Pleasant Street, extended to the south of its current endpoint.

· There have been communications and discussions between the developer and City officials regarding conditions that need to be met in order for the City to allow the extension to the south into Phase 2 to facilitate construction of assisted living and senior apartment projects on either side of an extension of Pleasant Street. As of now, no decisions have been made and no approvals given, but I’m expecting that the developer will submit a proposed amendment to the developer’s agreement (a document signed by the City and the developer in 2007 that clarifies the rights and responsibilities of both parties), and I will bring this to the Council for review and discussion in closed session on Tuesday, October 14th. Please understand that City approval of additional work into the next phase of this project will be based on, among other things, the developer adequately addressing drainage issues and resolving a number of outstanding items remaining from Phase 1 of this project.

· With respect to stormwater management, which is of great importance to most of you, the developer’s engineer (Jim Knowles) has been working on this issue over the past 6 weeks, and he has offered the attached update. I’ll stay in close contact with the developer and his engineer to ensure that progress continues according to the schedule that Mr. Knowles has outlined.

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Hi Steve,

I wanted to update you on our progress:

We met with the COE onsite two weeks ago to go over the issues and what is needed to get water moving through site; namely, the ditch clean out effort. According to the COE they would seek to issue an exemption under the Clean Water Act as a minimum and/or look to issue a permit if exemption rules for the ditch clean out effort would not apply in this case. The COE agrees that the exemption rules would allow for sidecast of dredged material but if a permit is needed that the spoil material would need to be relocated into nearby farmed uplands. We will need to delineate the wetlands as part of this effort. I have scheduled the wetland field work October 9th with a report to be written on the 10th and into the COE and WDNR the following week.
We have been in touch with a surveyor that works frequently with Montgomery Associates. The surveyor has submitted a proposal to Hank for approval. We have scheduled both the topographic survey of the ditch area and wetland mapping to occur the same day.
Ann-Marie and her team are working on the stormwater engineering effort; she is shooting to have the draft report ready by October 15th. We are going to try to get her the results of the survey and wetland mapping details by the 10th or the following Monday so that she can incorporate that material into her study and draft report.
Once the field work and draft engineering is complete, we are scheduled to meet with Hank and go over the results; we are shooting to meet on the 16th or 17th here in Beaver Dam. At that point we should know what is needed and be able to develop a more precise schedule.
In the mean time we have some other steps to undertake, which are:
Meet with neighboring property owners that own land where the ditch is located and seek their approval to do the work; survey, wetland mapping and eventual ditch work.
Meet with the County to discuss permits at their level.
Meet with the railroad track owners and operators to discuss what may need to occur within the track corridor as part of this effort. We may want to hold off on this step until after October 16th.
We need to identify qualified contractors that can do the ditch clean out work. I believe that Navis Excavating in nearby Waupun is probably the best equipped to the do the work. I can make contact with those folks directly and seek a proposal from the owner Dennis Navis.
We need to meet with the WDNR but they have declined until some more concrete direction is obtained from the COE. I recommend we invite the WDNR and COE to a meeting, along with County, to be held at the City of Ripon the week of October 20th.

My hope is that we can get a permit package together and into the COE and WDNR, as needed, that same week of October 20th but no later than the end of October. With a potential 60 to 120 permit review time frame we would be looking at doing the ditch clean out some time in January or February which is ideal! We can seek County approvals simultaneous to the WDNR and COE review. I would assume that we will need to appear before the Plan Commission and/or City Council at some point during this process, also.

Any questions, feel free to give me a call.

James R. Knowles
Senior Environmental Professional
President

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Please call me at 748-4914 or e-mail me at sbarg@cityofripon.com if you have questions, or if you wish to discuss this further. I’ll provide another update on or before the end of October, or earlier, if conditions warrant.


Have a great week everyone!

Steve Barg
City Administrator