It’s A “KO” – Not An “OK”
Lino Voters Reject Charter Amendment
LINO LAKES - By a significant margin, Lino Lakes voters roundly rejected a proposed amendment to their city Charter last week.
Out of 10,187 voters who expressed an opinion on the ballot question, 6529 of them—or 64 percent—opposed the measure, approximately the same split that occurred in 1995 when voters last addressed a similar ballot question.
The proposed charter change, which appeared on the ballot as a result of a citizen petition submitted to the city in August, would have eliminated Chapter 8 of the Charter to substitute, instead, the provisions of state statute Chapter 429 in the financing of public improvements using special assessments within the city.
Simply stated, proposed public improvement projects using special assessments would no longer have been subject to neighborhood vetoes and, ultimately, citywide referendums. Instead, the Lino Lakes City Council would have been responsible to hold project and assessment hearings as state law requires, and order—or not order—a project.
The change is one that Charter Commission Chair and former council member Caroline Dahl has adamantly opposed. She sees the current arrangement as a “power-sharing” arrangement, and removal of the citywide referendum would upset the balance.
The proposed change was panned by Dahl and individual members of the city’s Charter Commission but promoted by numerous citizens, many of whom live along West Shadow Lake Drive, an area that has seen three street reconstruction project referenda defeated by city voters.
One of those residents is Pat Smith, whose name was on the petition to put the measure on the ballot in the first place.
Smith said that a number of residents along the shoreline are “having problems” with their septic systems. Residents with failing systems are having to replace their inadequate drainfields with costly mound systems, he said, where city sewer could address these issues.
But the West Shadow Lake Drive street and utility project has failed three times, and the city is no closer to installing sewer now than it was ten years ago.
“At some point in time, something has to change,” he said. “Right now it’s gridlock, and nothing gets done.”
Not surprisingly, Precinct 4, which contains a considerable number of developed neighborhoods, including the West Shadow Lake Drive area and many of Lino’s lakeside neighborhoods, had the highest “yes” vote on the ballot question. Forty-seven percent of precinct voters favored the change.
The precinct with the lowest “yes” vote—only 28 percent—was Precinct 1, which includes Rondeau and Peltier lakes in the city’s northeast quadrant, where lot sizes and front footage—and, therefore, potential street assessments—could be considerably higher than elsewhere in the city.