Minnetonka City Council has greenlit new labor agreements with police and public works employees, a nod to smoother labor relations and a workforce seemingly content with the city's bargaining chips. The deals cut this time include terms with Law Enforcement Labor Services, covering the Minnetonka Police sergeants, and International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 49, which represents a band of approx 55 workers who toil in public works and one lonely soul over in recreation.
In the same breath, Council members flicked through the pages of the 2023 Strategic Profile end-of-year report, jam-packed with glistening achievements—whether it's their six strategic priorities, the bustling 21 key strategies, or the dizzying 84 action steps, the report, fancy as it sounds, paints a picture of a determined city in hot pursuit of intentional progress, so where the rubber meets the road, it's all about ticking those boxes.
The Council threw the wrench into development plans that sprawled before them on their table, snipping the threads of ambition for Minnetonka Flats and Emerald Estates, developers came seeking blessings for zoning changes, variances and the whole nine yards but biting the dust was the name of the game, those visions of new residential havens at 5290-5324 Spring Lane and 5295-5311 Tracy Lynn Terrace, as well as the subdivision plots on the higher numbers side of Plymouth Rd, now just footnotes in council minutes.
Number-crunchers and tree-huggers alike hold onto your calculators and saplings, the plans for Emerald Estates got the ax for a need of a floodplain alteration permit and a pass to annihilate some leafy green residents, but somebody up on that dais thought twice about messing with Mother Nature, so they shut it down, just as they did with Minnetonka Flats, the would-be sanctuary set among County Road 101, destined to live another day as just a stretch of good old-fashioned, untouched Terra Firma.
For a more in-depth look at the council's decisions, peek over at the official report on the city's website, it's all laid out neat and tidy, right down to the nitty-gritty details.
