Council approves plans, schedules hearing for 2025 street and utility improvements after debate over 50 Seventh Street

The Lake Elmo City Council voted to accept the feasibility report, approve final plans and specifications, and call a public improvement hearing for the 2025 Street and Utility Improvements project on March 18, setting the hearing for May 6 and authorizing staff to advertise for bids.

The vote followed more than an hour of public comments and council discussion focused on whether to include a roughly 50 Seventh Street section in the project. Residents who live on that block urged the council to remove that segment from the project, arguing the roadway still has useful life and should not face assessments now. City engineering staff and two council members with engineering experience said subsurface testing shows the pavement and base are deficient and that delaying reconstruction likely would require a more expensive full reconstruction later.

The matter mattered to residents because assessments are proposed to cover a portion of the project cost. During public comment, resident John Bourbon said the street was replaced in 2011 and “has not reached the end of its useful life,” and he described a subsurface drainage installation that he said had mitigated earlier failures. He asked the council to “strike this portion of the road from the project and let us get the full useful life of the road and our original investment.” Resident Brad Bergey asked the council whether the city could continue to claim the street “has exceeded its service life,” citing the city’s 10-year capital improvement program language.

City Engineer Mr. Stanley reviewed the feasibility study and said borings and corings show the pavement structure is thin in places — “an average thickness of only 3.4 inches” in the area at issue, with some cores as thin as 2.3 inches — and that subgrade material contained silty alluvial soils rather than a well-graded aggregate base. Stanley said those factors make the segment likely to deteriorate more quickly and recommended including it now to avoid a costlier full reconstruction later. Councilmember Dragic and Councilmember (title referenced in the meeting) also said they had reviewed the geotechnical information and drove the street; both supported proceeding now, noting seal coating can hide deeper deterioration.

Council discussion also addressed assessment impacts to neighboring streets. The city engineer reported that excluding the 50 Seventh Street section would slightly lower the per-property assessments on the two affected cul-de-sac neighborhoods (estimated in discussion at roughly $10,000–$11,000 per property under current estimates) but that if 50 Seventh were rebuilt as a stand-alone project later the per-household assessment would be higher (estimated at above $21,000 under present-day costs). The engineer said those estimates depend on today's cost assumptions and would likely rise if the work were deferred several years.

After discussing the timing and noting that the motion on the table at this meeting would not itself order construction but only accept final plans and call a hearing, the council approved the resolution to receive the feasibility report, call the hearing for May 6, approve plans and specifications, and authorize advertisement for bids. Mayor (name not specified) called for the question and the motion passed.

Next steps: the city will advertise the May 6 public improvement hearing in the Stillwater Gazette, mail notices to affected property owners, and solicit bids pursuant to the approved plans and specifications. The public hearing will be the opportunity for affected property owners to comment formally on the assessments and project scope.