Chaska Herald - County Politics - Comments

In this day of environmental

railroad169 — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:41:43 -0600

In this day of environmental impact statements why doesn't the city of Chaska need to get an environmental impact statement before pushing the abandonment of the rail line leading the United Sugars. Each train car holds 4 semi loads of sugar. 10 cars are brought sometimes 3 times a week in most times during the year. For those who hate pollution maybe you can do the mathamatics to figure out how much pollution the abandonment will cause not to mention the additional semi traffic through the city of Chaska. With the cost of oil increasing it also increases the use of diesel fuel for these additional trucks.

Mike Lehne

Jonathon Transload

patrick_dempsey — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:34:42 -0600

Jonathon Transload Facility

I thought the city was going to offer the Twin Cities & Western money to build a transload facility in Jonathon to help United Sugars get their beet shipments via rail. What happened to that plan? I've driven up and around the TC&W line between Chaska and Chanhassen and there is no transload facility and not even a reliable place to build such a facility.

The trestle that collapsed actually burned in a brush fire in 1950 when the Minneapolis & St Louis Railway ran the line. Unfortunately, when CN&W bought out M&StL in 1960, they asked many of their customers to move to the south side of the river to the old Omaha Road mainline through Shakopee so that CN&W could abandon the M&StL line from Chaska to Mpls - which CN&W did in 1991. Another crucial mistake by a myopic railroad.

One idea I have is to allow TC&W to build a connection from Cologne along the former Milwaukee Road right-of-way along the south side of 212 to Chaska so that United Sugars can continue operating and Chaska can still hear an occasional train horn in downtown...but, I know that will never happen.

I think United Sugars is screwed. But, I hope UP rebuilds.

In 1868, the Hastings & Dakota - one of the forerunners of the Milwaukee Road in MN - built their line through town (with the M&StL coming in 1870) beginning 140 years of railroading in downtown Chaska. Sadly, I think that era will soon come to a close for Chaska and railroading in downtown Chaska will be gone forever. To think, two Class I railroads used to pass through town on a regular basis. Now, most likely, the trainhorns and love affair many of us have had with railroads will come to a close in our fair city. Sad indeed.

As a software engineer

patrick_dempsey — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:53:23 -0600

As a software engineer myself, I question the competency of the people who oversaw the installation of the assessor software. Where are the test scripts used to test the software? Can a professional engineer such as myself evaluate the test scripts? Was any boundary testing done (negative, zero and large positive entry values) performed to catch these errors? What about software validation (upper/lower bounds) testing making sure that entry values fall within valid parameters?

Who is the vendor for the software and what are their credentials? I'm fine with the fact that Carver County has fix the problems, but it's obvious the assessor system was never properly tested. How many other counties have these type of 'easter eggs' in their assessment software?

I hope the county, City of Waconia and Waconia School Board cut their budgets appropriately to account for The Goof. No property tax payer should have to pay for mistakes of the people we entrust to do their jobs correctly.

The Carver County Board

Mark Olson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:22:57 -0600

The Carver County Board of Commissioners is holding a special meeting at 7 p.m., Dec. 11 to discuss this issue.

According to a press release, the board will also consider the 2008 budget that evening.

The meeting will take place in the County Board Room in the Carver County Government Center in Chaska.

A complete agenda will be available at www.co.carver.mn.us or by calling (952) 361-1503.

This is the e-mail I sent to

Citizen — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:07:02 -0500

This is the e-mail I sent to the Carver County Attorny:
Notice: It seems Officials in the jurisdiction of Carver County are proposing the Social Host ordinance that may become a conspiracy to commit a crime under color of the law and put the City, County, and official open to criminal prosecution and civil suit. Here is what strikes me on an elementary level as a Citizen of the State of Minnesota. City ordinance seems to violate Mn. Rules, unlawfully Mixes Criminal and Civil law usurping Mn. State Legislature Jurisdiction. The Ordinance requires under threat of coercion that A host individual must obtain age information from other individuals and therefore The City Must follow Mn. Data Practices act and procedure of the Tenneson Notice including if this is mandatory or voluntary and if they do not do this the City and officers making citation are committing a misdemeanor violating the MGDPA Section13.04(Subd.3.) of Mn. Statute One floating around Case Law:
CITY OF DALLAS et al. v. MITCHELL 245 S.W. 944
"The rights of the individual are not derived from governmental agencies,
either municipal, state, federal, or even from the Constitution, but they exist inherently in every man, and are merely reaffirmed in the Constitution and restricted only to the extent they have been voluntarily surrendered by the citizenship to the agencies of government."
In order to enforce the ordinance???s provisions, the zoning ordinance must incorporate the building code. See State ex rel. Utick v. Bd. of Comm???rs of Polk County, 87 Minn. 325, 341, 92 N.W.2d 216, 220 (1902)

Concerned Citizen with the open corruption in government, Citizen Gomez