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Benke answered, if the City forces a business to relocate, we are required to assist them in relocating to an acceptable site, which may or may not be within the City. Benke responded that zoning the area residential there would be an example of the old thinking. If the City required Beach’s to relocate, you would again have the situation where driving would be necessary to buy services. Benke said he used the example of Beach’s to illustrate the need for creative thinking to achieve area-wide goals. Benke said there is a need to add a chapter to the comp plan on the communications infrastructure. Many small businesses operate out of the home. New Brighton has a home business ordinance that may be inadequate. If half the small businesses in the future will be home-based, do we have the communications infrastructure to support that? If we do not, New Brighton may not see the healthy business climate that we want. We may have to look at our codes on telecommunications to see if they are appropriate. Matt Fulton, New Brighton City Manager, stated that a good example is the ability to transfer GIS information throughout the Corridor. There is a group of participating cable commission communities up to the Anoka County border. The Anoka County area is serviced by another cable provider. It has worked well for the area served by Meredith to use their coaxial cable for transmission of data. The challenge is to connect the systems in a manner where everyone has the benefit of all of the information, whether GIS information or another source. Zisla asked if Morrish had an example of hot issues the Design Center has defined for the area. How does that fit into the Met Council structure? Zisla said he could understand why we need a coalition for planning for the Twin City Army Ammunition Plant in Arden Hills. Are there some specific things that staff has seen in the last few years where working it with other cities would be better? Are there examples that apply to our area? Benke said County Road E2 was an example. If New Brighton wants to develop the pole yards, the City will be constrained by the fact that E2 is a county road and any improvements to the interchange at I-35W may never happen. The question is to get people to and from the jobs we would like to create on the pole yard’s site? The freeway is full of people commuting from the far suburbs through our corridor. New Brighton cannot solve the traffic problems alone, but seven cities can coordinate their efforts through a joint powers agreement and working with the Met Council and MnDOT. Several studies are underway in the metropolitan area dealing with various aspects of growth management. The Met Council’s development guide for redoing our comp plan says that we must address the problem of accommodating 650,000 new residents in the region in the next twenty years. More than 300,000 new jobs will be created. The impact on the transportation infrastructure creates a need for $10 billion worth of reinvestment. Only $3.4 billion of funding is available. Benke said that, considering the constructural framework going from the Met Council down to the cities, we have no idea whether or not decisions made at the local level will be adequate for what needs to be accomplished. The Corridor project is an effort to see if, in fact, we can do things locally to make the regional plan rational. If not, the Met Council and the Legislature have some rethinking to do in regional planning. For instance, at what point does the right of owning a home in the far suburbs become overburdening in terms of the public interest? We may need to start to put some costs to for the choices on the individuals making those choices rather than assuming that society will fund the answer to congestion problems. Therefore, fundamental public policy choices that we are beginning to be identified through the I-35W Corridor Coalition. Morrish said that the Met Council’s Regional Plan deals with the urban core and the edge. The Met Council does not have a strategy for the gray areas in the middle. The Met Council and some legislators see the Coalition as a mechanism by which to define the needs in that gray area. Urban models cannot be used in communities like New Brighton. We will have to develop new models. The Coalition and New Brighton have a great opportunity to articulate the criteria for looking at that gray area. I:\COMMISSIONS\PLANNING\MINUTES\1998\02-17-98.WPD 4