In a reversal of the way things usually work, the city of Annandale has given a piece of its territory back to Southside Township. The Annandale City Council voted unanimously Monday, April 2, to grant Dick and Pauline Connick’s petition to detach their nine-acre property from the city. The Connicks’ parcel, annexed in the 1990s with land that has become the Southbrook Golf Course and housing development, sits in the far southwest corner of the city. It’s too far to connect to city water and sewer or to receive many other services. But they’ve been paying city taxes that were much higher than they would’ve been paying in Southside, which abuts their property. So while the council is more used to rural landowners applying for annexation to the city, the Connicks in January petitioned for detachment. "We are in fact detaching a piece of Annandale back to the township," Mayor Marian "Sam" Harmoning said last week after the city looked into the couple’s request. "We’re giving Connicks back," she joked, "and you just wait, you’ll want to be back with us." The council in January had approved drafting a rural service district ordinance aimed at creating a special district in the city to give them a tax break since they receive so few services. Harmoning said then that the city was being extremely cautious because there are other properties on its edge that could try to make the same argument to leave the city. But city administrator Mark Casey said after last week’s action that creating a special district turned out to be "problematic." And the uniqueness of the property alleviated some of the concerns about setting a precedent. The city concluded it’s so unique that it won’t set a precedent, he said. Southside is willing to take the parcel back into the township, Casey said. The detachment resolution listed conditions unique to the property including its location 1,500 feet from the nearest utility line, which is accessible only through the golf course. The city anticipates it won’t extend utilities to the land in the near future, the resolution said. The Connicks tried unsuccessfully to separate from the city five years ago. Dick Connick told the council in January that he calculated he has paid $2,267 more in taxes to Annandale for 2005 and 2006 than he would have paid to Southside, and with 2007 taxes, that would total $3,700. In other action, the council: n Heard a report from Karla Heeter, Wright County commissioner for District 1. The proposed new county jail will open early in 2009 with about 340 beds, she said, and another 190 will be added in the future. A new Law Enforcement Center will be built next to it. The county is working on a new radio communications system that will link emergency services in Wright and area counties with those in the Twin Cities metro and St. Cloud areas by early 2009. The metro and St. Cloud have the 800 megahertz system and Wright County is an island in between them, she said. Heeter, who chairs the Methamphetamine Education and Drug Awareness Coalition of Wright County, said there’s been a huge decrease in the manufacture of meth in the county mostly due to a law that’s made it hard to get large amounts of cold medicines containing ephedrine, the main ingredient. Meth use is still increasing in the county, and there’s been a resurgence in cocaine use here and in other states, she said. – Heard from Gene South of Heart of the Lakes Cable that its Basic Plus charge will go up by $5 a month to $33.50 beginning May 1 to recover increased programming costs. Heart of the Lakes will continue to cost less than cable services in surrounding communities, he said. – Adopted a Natural Resources Protection Ordinance covering all new residential and non-residential developments. Protected natural resources include bluffs, woodlands, lakes, ponds, streams, shoreline buffers and wetlands. The ordinance preserves 70 percent of mature woodlands on a property, but the city council can allow 30 percent of that to be "mitigated" by requiring the developer to plant other trees and shrubs where the forest is disturbed. In areas where the council says mitigation can’t occur, the developer would give a sum of cash specified by the council to the park fund in exchange for removing trees. At the urging of some council members when they saw a draft in February, a $35,000 fee per acre has been specified in the city fee schedule. – Approved a proposal by the Beautification Committee to remove lilac bushes from the boulevards in the city parking lot at Chestnut Street and Cherry Avenue and replace them with 12 small flowering trees at a cost of $1,740 to $2,160. The committee proposed putting large rocks under the trees because grass doesn’t grow well, but Harmoning suggested using bricks. The committee said it is concerned about the southwest corner of Highway 55 and Oak Avenue, which was weedy and looked unkempt last summer. – Adopted an updated code of city ordinances that’s in line with the Minnesota Basic Code. The entire city code can now be viewed on the city’s web site, www.ci.annandale.mn.us/. – Adopted the findings of a the Attorney General’s Working Group on the Regulation of Sexually Oriented Businesses as a basis for regulating such operations. The action, which incorporates state law provisions into the city code, was just sound practice, not a reaction to any threat of such a business opening here, Casey said.
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