Chaska mayor's state of the city address

Editor’s Note: The following column is taken from Chaska Mayor Gary Van Eyll’s state of the city address, given March 12 at the Chaska Community Center. It was excerpted in this week's print edition of the Chaska Herald.

By Gary Van Eyll

I would like to thank the Chaska Area Chamber of Commerce for giving the city of Chaska this opportunity to address you on the State of the City of Chaska the “Best Small Town in Minnesota.”

I want to again reinforce to you how proud and honored I am to be your mayor, the mayor of Chaska and to be allowed to deliver this address.

Isn’t it unbelievable Chaska being named one of the “Top 10 Best Small Towns in the United States to Live”? The criteria they used for this accolade coincide with our vision of being the “Best Small Town in Minnesota.”

Affordable housing. We have been and continue to be committed to life-cycle and work force housing. We do need to maintain a certain mix of housing opportunities to retain being a healthy community.

Plentiful leisure activities. An award-winning community center, a nationally known public golf course, along with a Par 30 golf course, Athletic Park, where 120 to 140 games are played each year and still considered one of the best venues in the State to play amateur baseball.

I challenge you to look at our community and gaze at the “green space” and compare it to other communities. A definite asset to Chaska is our trail system and our various green spaces and our many parks. We don’t need to encourage Chaska residents to enjoy the lakes, ravines, the trails, the passive parks, the green spaces, and the river. They already enjoy them as reflected in our citizen surveys. We just need to protect and enhance these amenities making them even better.

Job growth. I will go into this when we talk about some of our new developments.

Sunny weather. Well lots of sun, only sometimes not so warm.

Short commute time. This new Highway 212 has reduced everybody’s commute time by 20 to 30 minutes each day round-trip for those who travel it.

Good health care access. We already have numerous clinics with very qualified doctors, an urgent care facility and now an emergency room.

Plentiful cultural opportunities. Our own history center.

Their criteria and what we as a community would like to maintain and accomplish through our vision are unusually close.

Values

We as a city organization cannot accomplish our vision without a set of values intended to provide the framework within which our organization accomplishes its vision.

Those values are:

Commitment to Chaska. Chaska is a special community. It is unique in that it is a quality small town within a larger metropolitan suburban area. Our commitment is to collectively strive to make Chaska the “Best Small Town in Minnesota”.

Commitment to quality. As the Chaska community continues to develop and redevelop, we are committed to aggressively pursuing quality facilities and infrastructure, city services, recreational opportunities and private development activities.

Commitment to our employees. Our employees must be able to enjoy an exciting, challenging and fulfilling work environment where they are recognized and rewarded for their commitment to excellence.

Commitment to integrity. In understanding our duties, we are committed to the values of honesty, fairness and trust. Without preserving our personal and organizational integrity, the other values are meaningless.

Our values should never waiver from building a community that reflects our humanity. As a community we need to make decisions that achieve the greatest common good and reflect those values.

Small-town feel

We have something in Chaska other communities are attempting to capture. That quality small-town feel. We need to retain this feeling.

Through growth, we can improve our quality of life by adding services, creating opportunities and enhancing access to amenities. Business and community leaders, developers and local governments need to work together to ensure new growth improves the economy and the environment of our community. This has to be our goal. We need to make decisions that are best for Chaska not just in the present but also the future of our Chaska community.

Chaska is a healthy community, not only fiscally and economically strong, but also in our community culture, thanks to organizations like yours and the people who belong and make these organizations successful.

When we talk about how our community is economically strong, you the leaders of business both large and small of this community are a major part of how we accomplish this goal. Thank you, each of you and your employee’s for this involvement and commitment to our community.

Chaska has a history of community teamwork, civic engagement, trust and above all optimism. Over 157 years of history assures us these factors are present and have made us successful.

The population of Chaska – you – are responsible for maintaining our Chaska small-town culture. It is recognized that a “small-town sense of community” can only be developed by continuing efforts of community residents and organizations.

Taxes

A priority for our community is to have a stable tax rate. This graph shows we are accomplishing this goal. Boring is good when it comes to city taxes.

As you can see, our tax rate has been very close to the same rate since 1999 and one of council’s priority goals is to have these rates remain unchanged throughout future planning. Every year this is a challenge we have been able to meet.

The funds we receive from the state of Minnesota have been reduced substantially over the past few years. And this past year with the reduction of building permits it has made it even more difficult but as you can also see we again are one of the lowest taxed cities per capita in the metropolitan area.

With that being said, this year we are implementing a utility charge, user fee, or tax, whatever you would like to call it, for management of our storm water. The mandates for improving our storm water runoff and improving the clarity of our lakes and the Minnesota River have dictated the need to establish this as another part of our city utilities.

With these taxes, Chaska is maintaining a great quality of life and providing an excellent level of essential municipal services. We as a community should be very proud of these facts. Our community should be most proud, though, not of the amount of the taxes, rather the value we receive from those taxes. It would be terribly wrong for our community to have the lowest taxes and the result being inadequate municipal services. I know the value per dollar of our taxes exceeds other communities.

Transportation

New Highway 212 is the largest project to date we have been a part of. It is being constructed as we speak and everybody is happy to report ahead of schedule to open this next portion of Highway 212 in July 2008. This is tremendous news for our community. It has brought and will continue to bring opportunities and challenges for Chaska.

The new Highway 41 River crossing Environmental Impact Study is completed and the resulting recommendation should be released for comment soon. This crossing is important to our community it will affect our future for years and years to come. We as a community have been as active as possible in this study and will remain to be involved to assist MnDOT in selecting the crossing, hopefully W-2, our preferred crossing option which will be best for Chaska’s future.

We are in our fourth phase of our street construction. This year we will reconstruct Bavaria Road from Hundertmark Road north to Pioneer Trail/Town Course Drive West. This reconstruction will include two roundabouts and a trail on Bavaria Road. We will also complete Pioneer Trail West from Bavaria Road to Victoria Drive relieving some traffic on Hundertmark. Another project is an at-grade railroad crossing connecting Hundertmark to Victoria Drive.

The Heights of Chaska development and the vision of living where you work will be a key component in maintaining the vitality of our community as well as assisting those in the work force who are seeking home ownership opportunities. This process has taken longer than was expected but we cannot be afraid to enhance the good in this development to attain what could be extraordinary for Chaska.

Development

The designation of Chaska as a Bioscience Zone is another boost, not only our community, surrounding communities and all of Carver County, but also the southwestern metropolitan area. It could bring as many as 10,000 jobs and 4–5 million square feet of office space.

This zone could include up to 800 acres. We need to work in conjunction with landowners, developers, Carver County, and MnDOT. I feel confident a concept plan and some agreements will be completed this year, maybe even starting the first phase on the northwest corner of Engler Boulevard and new Highway 212.

What were those headlines? “State’s first stand-alone ER soon to open in Chaska.” What a great addition to our community an ER with an attached helipad for medical emergencies. Of course this will not only be an ER, it will also house primary and specialty care clinics as well as same-day surgeries and imaging services.

This development could employ 100 people the day it opens in 2010. Don’t tell any body this, but I heard Ridgeview is looking to affiliate this facility with a well-known oncology presence and also to have an affiliation with some place called Children’s Hospital. We are really excited for this. We need to thank Ridgeview of Chaska-Waconia for proposing this facility in our community.

Remember last year one of the dreams was Chaska University? Last year Dunwoody came to Chaska. They offer classes in Carver Scott Co-op campus. We are also getting something, which could even be better than Chaska University for our community.

EdCampus located in Chaska. It is hard to explain this facility. It will be an innovational educational model that leverages the power of combining dynamic students from diverse institutions into a single campus – outfitted with customizable classroom space and student-centric services.

EdCampus will offer state-of-the-art technology, never seen before in post-secondary education.

This facility located off of New Highway 212 and Engler Boulevard will be a compliment for our businesses currently located in Chaska and also the ones soon to locate in our Bioscience Zone. It should employ 200 professional and support staff and have 350,000 square feet of classroom space, student services, retail, corporate training spaces, lecture spaces and administrative offices.

This is being developed by Twin Cities based Metropolitan Lifelong Learning Center, and they are hoping to break ground this year. You will hear a lot more about this EdCampus. Tim Engen is from EdCampus can answer your questions after this address.

Leadership and strong infrastructure draw businesses. Strong vibrant communities are what keep these businesses. We need to continue being a community of risk-takers in seeking opportunities for partnerships, partnerships which first and foremost serve Chaska residents but will also at the same time serve our neighboring communities and Carver County.

Accomplishments

We have made great accomplishments as a community since the 1800s. Through the decades of growth and change, Chaska has remained a community of strength and character.

The tradition of living begun so many years ago on the banks of the Minnesota River continues to this day. None of our achievements were guaranteed. We have come to expect our quality of life to progress throughout our lifetimes and those of our children. As a community, we need to make sure we keep getting extraordinary things done. However we are the chief architects of our collective success. Whether we advance this quality of life the responsibility is ours.

At this time I would like to acknowledge and thank a few of our architects who have given their time and energy to further our quality of life in Chaska.

Bob Moeller has been very active in our community, including previously chairing our Planning Commission, but we are recognizing him today for being our representative to Southwest Transit.

To Jerry Personius from our Planning Commission, who also was a chairperson of our Park Board, Colleen Goodrich from our Park Board, and from our Human Rights Commission Abigail Haven, Wendy Zierman and Penny Tarbell.

I would also like to acknowledge a person who has a long history with Chaska. He is a life-long resident, our former city attorney, former president of Jonathan and he has just retired as our representative, through three governors, to the Metropolitan Council, Jules Smith.

They have served and for one reason or another have decided to move on in their life. Thank you.

We could not accomplish all of this without competent staff and we at Chaska are very fortunate to have employed this staff. They are our servant leaders and know our mission and the decisions they make are directed toward being the “Best Small Town in Minnesota”.

Community building is based on listening, providing responsive services and investing in our infrastructure, this will make our community a great place to work and call home.I am very confident in conjunction with our staff, our department heads, our commissions, and our council making decisions with this mission and these values in mind we will continue to accomplish our goals and maintain being the “Best Small Town in Minnesota”.

Our community needs to know our goals, our vision and our dreams and we need their assistance to accomplish them.

Our community needs to trust the decisions being made are made for the good of the city of Chaska. Decisions in our community need to be made from the heart.Our community needs to know they need to challenge this process and search for opportunities to assist and change the status quo: this means learning from our mistakes and also our successes.

Our community needs to know building commitment to these actions means behaving consistently with our values.

Our community needs to be focused on being the “Best Small Town in Minnesota”.

Dreams are like stars, you may never touch them but if you follow them they will lead Chaska to our destiny. To accomplish great things we must not only dream but also act, not only plan but also believe.

Chaska in 2020

So dream with me now what will Chaska look like in 2020.

Chaska was named the No. 1 Small Town in the United States to Live. How did this happen?

Our goal of having life cycle and affordable housing and living where you work sure has paid off. Seventy percent of the people who live in Chaska work in Chaska. In 2008 the figure was 45 percent. Striving for a balance of housing projects including work force housing for our teachers, police, city employees, waitresses, mechanics and others has sure improved our sense of community both by the businesses they work for and our residents who call Chaska home.

We have expanded our leisure activities. We now have an indoor snow ski and snowboard park, this facility also has skating for leisure and speed and figure skating. One of our hotels also added an indoor water park on their campus.

We have added trails wherever we can and average more miles of trails per capita than any other community around. Our passive parks have been enhanced to make just relaxing with a picnic a unique experience. Chaska was also voted the most walkable community in Minnesota.

We finally achieved our goal of 1.75 jobs per household in Chaska. Thanks to the build out of our Bioscience Zone. Expanding the trolley bus service in partnership with Southwest Transit sure has cut down on a lot of commuting and demand on our road infrastructure.

Now if we could just get MnDOT to release that EIS study choosing W-2 as the crossing for new Highway 41.

The stand-alone ER now is even better than proposed, with specialists in Children’s medicine and oncology. People from Rochester now want to be treated in Chaska. Some of those breakthroughs in medicine and other biosciences were former students who studied at Ed Campus in Chaska.

The expansion of our library downtown enveloping almost all of City Square, including our History Center and also houses two museums. Our golf course and our Community Center both are still rated in the top five in Minnesota.

This is just our dream of 2020. I do hope you will share your dreams your visions of Chaska with us.

The biggest mistake we can make is not dreaming large enough. We need to see the invisible, feel those intangibles and achieve the impossible.

Great things

To accomplish great things we must not only dream but also act, not only plan but also believe.

A small town feeling exists first in spirit and a commitment to community. Today as with every day we should celebrate and embrace who we are. Chaska is committed to building and nurturing a diversified environment throughout the entire community.

We recognize a community comprised of a wide variety of perspectives, viewpoints and backgrounds is integral to our success. This is even truer when we reflect on our history and know our ancestors, previous residents and previous community leaders made this community what it is today. Our community is going to change; the desire to care for and about where we live will always prevail. A sense of small-town spirit will live on in our hearts.

I believe one of my most important jobs, as mayor of Chaska is to share these values, goals, visions and dreams. There will always be new projects to take the place of these current projects but our process, our goals, our values, our dreams, and our vision are what really are important to the future of Chaska.

I started this speech by telling you how proud I am to be your mayor. I hope you can be equally as proud to be a business leader, a resident, or an employee of Chaska, the “Best Small Town in Minnesota.”

Again thank you for this opportunity to deliver this address.

God bless you and God bless Chaska.