Business Friendly

I am finding out that everyone but me appears to have known that the City of Lakeville and the residents of Lakeville really don't have any interest in protecting the environment - everyone "chuckles" when I mention "environment" and "Lakeville" in the same sentence.  Unfortunately,. I am just figuring that out now.

In some further discussions, it appears that the conversations betwen Malt-O-Meal and the City of Lakeville have been going on for quite a while.  Why else would a company buy 4.5 acres of land with a 2.5 acre encumbrance if they did not get some very solid assurances that they would be able to build on it? This appears to have been a "done deal" long before the initial story came out.

It appears that the city has some incredible amount of power without oversight:
They can:

• Cancel the conservation easement since only they and Malt-O-Meal are parties
• Replat the property without having to record it with the County (according to the county surveyor's office)
• Remove the 70 foot north-south drainage easement that separted the lots in the original plat
• They can even alter or remove the 100 foot east-west drainage easement so the building could be 40 feet from the property line
• Allow a holding pond on the property which would impact the down slope wetland owned by the city

Some of these might require a "public meeting" but in the end, the city is still the decision maker without it appears any oversight.

I did find the following in the  Lakeville City Code (Chapter 75) for this property which is zoned "Office Park":
I. Usable Open Space: Every effort shall be made to preserve natural stormwater basins and features of the land to create passive open spaces

I don't know that this does me any good since who would enforce it and "every effort" could be interpreted a number of ways - or the city could just decide to remove this from their code.

I have contacted the DNR and they will not engage, the Soil and Water Conservation district referred me to the City of Lakeville, the Dakota County surveyor's office pointed me to the City of Lakeville...