Legalectric

After wading through the bullshit last night, it feels a lot better this morning in Red Wing. Watch the video, particularly Agenda Items 7, 10C, and 10D:

Red Wing City Council Meeting – June 14, 2021

In order of appearance:

• Agenda Item 7 – Terri Cook appointed to Charter Commission, no discussion, no muss, no fuss.
• Agenda Item 10C – Recall – Brown and Buss – once again, no malfeasance or non-feasance. DOH!
• Agenda Item 10D – Shared space – Mayor Wilson does not have exclusive rights to the shared space at City Hall.

There was a call to SHOW UP and support the Council, that’s the folks in white shirts, who far outnumbered the “RECALL” folks, about the same percentages as in the Presidential votes in our fair city. Overflow crowd.

In the Republican bEagle:

4 things to know about the Red Wing City Council meeting

In the Rochester Post Bulletin:

Recall committee loses another round at Red Wing city council meeting

Here we go again. It’s bad enough that CapX 2020 is morphing into CapX 2050/Grid North Partners, but they’re having a “conference” (sign up here) in a couple weeks.

Look at the Chair of this panel, none other than the Chair of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, and the description:

… TO MEET OUR COLLECTIVE GOALS?

Remember the toadying for CapX 2020? Remember the toadying for Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project coal gasification? Remember the toadying for Prairie Island/NSP/Xcel Energy’s nuclear plants, particularly Prairie Island circa 1994 and 2003?

This sort of thing has been an issue before, and former Chair LeRoy Koppendrayer has been the only one to acknowledge this type of participation as an issue — this was in 2007:

IEDC gets carried away

When this happens, I contact the PUC and register concerns, and have always been assured that they know well the boundaries.

And, well, here’s Commissioner Tuma on DOE Nuclear Waste panel circa 2016:

DOE “Consent-Based” Nuclear Waste Mtg.

This was also an issue with Commissioner Reha when she went off on a coal gasification junket to Belgium and promotion of CapX 2020! See the John Tuma link, above, for this with active links:

When the promotion and bias is so blatant, I’m not about to watch silently. Earth to PUC Commissioners, here are the PUC’s rules:

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/7845.0400/

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/7845.0700/

And when you see something, say something?

Ummmm, right…

ALJ “INVESTIGATIVE REPORT PURSUANT TO MINN. STAT. § 216A.037”

Listen to Commissioner Tuma’s words that were the subject of our complaint at the link above. And the ALJ’s report delivers this warning:

I guess it will be an informal complaint, eh?

Just filed… Walleye Neighbors in Minnesota and South Dakota Comments on the Walleye Wind Draft Site Permit. Now it’s time for a nap!

Dorenne Hansen died this morning, and we’re mourning.

A visitation will be held from 4:00-7:00 p.m. on Friday, May 21, 2021 at Bonnerup Funeral Service, Albert Lea, and one hour prior to services at the church. A funeral service will take place at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 22, 2021 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Myrtle with Pastor Josh Blair officiating. Interment will follow at Pilgrim’s Rest Cemetery. A celebration of life meal will be held at the Glenville City Hall following committal services.

She was a founder and the very life of Association of Freeborn County Landowners. When we met, she let me know that she had been living with Stage 4 cancer for a while, that was June, 2017, and she’d said that she was on some sort of trial, the longest living person in the medical world. She was a delight, off the charts brilliant, strong, exacting, and angry and a fighter in the best of ways.

Dorenne was able to motivate and turn out her community, with neighbors meeting and coming together to foil the intruder to their neighborhood.

Dorenne was a little hesitant at first, and after a few rounds with Invenergy and the Public Utilities Commission, she got in the groove, was adept at reading between the lines, and channeled her outrage into action, rallying the troops for yet another round.

Dorenne Hansen was the voice of AFCL.

Association of Freeborn Landowners got the first ever contested case for siting a wind project, and in another first, the ALJ recommended the project’s permit be denied:

No small feat!! In the STrib’s article then, on both Freeborn Wind and the Bent Tree project, wind developers and wind promoters were histrionic:

Administrative Law Judge says PUC should reject Freeborn County wind project

A choice snippet from Litchfield in the STrib article:

Dan Litchfield, an Invenergy senior manager, objected to Schlatter’s interpretation of Minnesota’s noise regulations, saying it “is impossible to meet for a wind farm. … Every other wind farm in the state has not been subject to this interpretation.”

And what did the PUC do??

Freeborn? PUC upends ALJ’s Freeborn Wind Recommendation

Marie McNamara, who has been through the PUC grist mill with Goodhue Wind Truth, put it well:

Despite getting the site permit, Freeborn Wind did move 17 of the 41 turbines to Iowa, a different sort of success, 24 shy of our goal. Yet after that initial administrative win, followed by the PUC’s 180, it was downhill from there. The last gasp of our efforts came last month:

Freeborn Wind appeal – we lose…

And then NSP/Xcel tries to send us a bill, adding insult to injury — our Objection is here:

Xcel, cost taxation? WHAT?

Throughout all these very intense years, Dorenne was undergoing routine chemo treatments, on and off and on and off, with time to recover some in between, and she was often literally working on our Freeborn Wind project while infusing! We spent a lot of time at the library bonding over transcripts, zzzzzzzzzzzzz. And Myre-Big Island State Park was right next door, so a good place to have confabs and convenient for hearings in Albert Lea.

Dorenne and I last talked not long before the appeal came down, and she was getting ready to stop chemo, which because the cancer had progressed, was on a weekly basis, utter torture with no respite between treatments. She was not having fun, her quality of life was nil, and she was ready to stop chemo, though she was so mindful of her family and friends whom she cared about and who cared so much about her. I appreciated her advance notice and a chance to let her know how much I appreciated and enjoyed and leaned on her.

Over the last four years, people in the community who had not met before got together, worked together, and became fast friends over wind turbines, becoming large parts of each others lives. Dorenne, you will be sorely missed. What an impact you’ve had… what a life well lived…

Last night, the Red Wing City Council had just one substantive item on the agenda, a request for vacation of an easement from Tom and Anne Wilder. The land in question is that graveled area with driveway and car on it, and a wider section on the parcel to the north, also owned by the Wilders:

It looks like the City did not provide mailed notice to landowners owning property within 500 feet of the Wilders’ property! In particular, I’m looking at the landowners with contiguous parcels, those at 1231 – 5th St. W and 1268 – 6th St. W. They have smaller homes and lots, valued lower, and they just might appreciate the opportunity to add that land to their parcels.

Vacation of an easement is one of those things, like “cartway” that in law school was a big snooze. Yet it’s something to consider. Back on 2019, we got notice about vacation of the easement adjacent to Daniel Sturgeon’s property here on West. I was not pleased about this when he had bought a lot for, according to the County GIS site, “under $1,000” and that he was now asking the City to give him more land. We got a notice in the mail and so I looked into it then, and spoke against it at the public hearing.

After Sturgeon got the land, he turned around and put it on the market for many, many times what he paid:

He’s had some reality orientation since and the price is now at $25,900, still many times more than what was paid:

Anyway, the Notice for the Wilders’ easement vacation request was very different from that for the Sturgeon easement vacation request. Note the “NOTE” at the bottom:

At last night’s meeting, Jay Owens stated that Notice was published in the Eagle, but that was all, and he expressly stated that there had been no contact with the adjacent landowners, in particular, the ones on the other side of the easement.

The Charter has this notice requirement — publication, but no mailing of notice requirement in the Charter:

The timing of the Wilders’ request is odd, as they asked for the city to give them this land some time in March, based on the dates in the packet:

Agenda Item 10A – City Council Packet – 5-10-2021

The hearing was scheduled by the City Council at the April 12, 2021 meeting (9P – Attachment).

As you may recall, Anne Wilder drew this RECALL CITY HALL “cartoon” that was published by the Red Wing Republican Eagle — it was published days after scheduling of the hearing was placed on the Council agenda at the “Agenda Committee” meeting:

• I used to trust their judgment… Now I’m not so sure! What will they do next?
• I worry that this is just the beginning… Are we inviting big problems to our community?
• Great job City Council. My once-peaceful neighborhood just started FIGHTING over your decision to fire the Police Chief.
• This is the kind of thing that makes people move away…
• Shouldn’t a City Council always work to build a stronger, safer & better community instead of TEARING IT APART???

Just wow…

Here’s Tom Wilder right at the top of the initial Andy Klitzke – Ward 2 RECALL CITY HALL petition:

To ask for this easement vacation from the City while at the same time principals in the “RECALL CITY HALL” effort is, well, tone deaf, ballsy, to put it mildly.

My Letter to the Editor about this:

My question to the Wilders… shouldn’t this easement vacation wait until there’s a City Council you trust? Asking for a handout now (for the nominal fee of $425) seems a bit much given you want to “RECALL CITY HALL.“