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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Official stories don’t add up in EAW “oversight”

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 7/31/10

If a building project exceeds 100,000 square feet in the woods, but no county planner hears it, does it require an EAW?

It may not quite qualify as the proverbial question, but it is an obvious …

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Official stories don’t add up in EAW “oversight”

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If a building project exceeds 100,000 square feet in the woods, but no county planner hears it, does it require an EAW?

It may not quite qualify as the proverbial question, but it is an obvious one in the wake of the St. Louis County Planning Department’s mishandling of major new school projects by ISD 2142.

For nearly two critical months earlier this year, planners and project managers from St. Louis County Planning, as well as Johnson Controls and others hired by the school district, purportedly overlooked one of the most basic steps in major project planning— the need for environmental review.

So how did a roomful of people, all of whom are paid to understand such things, manage to miss the fact that the two new schools, one slated for construction in New Independence Township and the other in Field Township, north of Cook, required completion of environmental assessment worksheets?

Officially, it was a failure to communicate.

In press statements issued following a contentious March 25 planning commission meeting, county planning staff blamed the oversight on the school district’s project consultants. Mary Anderson, who coordinates the activities of the county’s planning commission, stated that the original conditional use permit applications provided by the district’s project manager, John Henry of Johnson Controls, had sought approval of a project smaller than the 100,000 square foot threshold that triggers a mandatory EAW.

County Planning Director Barbara Hayden made a similar claim in a May 25 memorandum in response to a data practices request from the Timberjay. “Johnson Controls submitted the original conditional use applications for both schools for buildings less than 100,000 square feet,” stated Hayden. “In discussions with county staff and Johnson Controls, the buildings were proposed at approximately 97,000 square feet.”

But those official accounts are wrong, as further investigation by the Timberjay has uncovered.

In fact, both conditional use permit applications, submitted Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 by Henry, indicated a building project in excess of 100,000 square feet (see attachment). In the application, Henry clearly wrote 100,000 square feet in describing the size of the primary building, plus three accessory structures, each of which exceeded 800 square feet.

“What is says there is what we submitted,” said Henry, who said he remembers having no meetings with county officials prior to the planning commission meeting in March. “In passing conversation, I said the project was growing, not shrinking,” remembered Henry.

Hear no evil?

By any calculation, the application should have prompted county officials to order an EAW. Instead, Physical Planning Director Scott Smith assigned the projects to two lower level staff members, Tyler Lampella and Jennifer Bourbonais.

Lampella, who was assigned the school project near Cook, noted that he inspected the site on Feb. 19, (when there was snow on the ground) and wrote a report for the planning commission the same day.

At no point in his two-page report did Lampella inform planning commission members that the project did not comply with the county zoning ordinance and would require a significant variance. At no point did he note that the project exceeded 100,000 square feet, or that it would require completion of an EAW before permits could be approved.

Despite a permit application that described the project (including all four buildings) as approximately 104,000 square feet, Lampella described the project as “a two-story structure of unspecified size.” Lampella may not have known how large the school project was— but that didn’t stop him from recommending it for approval.

Nor did it stop his colleague at the south site. Bourbonais also avoided any mention of the project’s size as well as the need for a variance and an EAW in her equally brief, and equally approving, report to the planning commission, written on Feb. 18.

New story emerges

County planners have modified their version of events in recent days, after the Timberjay challenged the official story earlier this month in an email to Hayden—an email which forwarded copies of the original conditional use permits to Hayden.

Hayden now acknowledges that the application stated 100,000 square feet for the school, plus the accessory buildings. But Hayden says that the application indicated the final size was “to be determined.” In fact, the application states that the length and width of the building was to be determined. The application clearly puts the school building itself at 100,000 square feet.

“We should have probably caught that as a mandatory EAW,” acknowledged Hayden in an interview last week. “But there was no intent to bypass any regulatory requirements, either state or local,” Hayden added.

Instead, Hayden now insists that the failure to order an EAW was based on a concept drawing that she says she saw at some point, a drawing which she can no longer find, but which showed the school size at approximately 97,000 square feet.

John Henry confirmed that such a drawing did exist. But the drawing was not part of the conditional use permit application submitted to the county.

That may be because the early concept plan was already out of date by the time the school district submitted its permit applications. By late January, the school board was considering project expansions that pushed the school buildings themselves to approximately 106,000 square feet in size. On Monday, Feb. 8, those expansions were officially approved by the school board.

Yet even if county officials were correct in assuming that the school building was 97,000 square feet, the project would have still required an EAW. That’s because the accessory buildings, which totaled more than 3,000 square feet, would have put the full project at over 100,000 square feet.

Hayden suggested that the primary building is the only one that counts in determining whether an EAW is required. But Hayden’s view is inconsistent with state environmental review rules, which require that all buildings must be included in determining total square footage of a project.

“We include all the structures on a site that basically have walls and a roof,” said Gregg Downing, director of environmental review for the state’s Environmental Quality Board.

County did violate state rules

St. Louis County planning staff not only erred in not ordering an EAW on the school projects, they appear to have violated state rules on March 25, when they allowed the planning commission to vote on the conditional use permit applications for the two projects. While the commission declined to approve the permit for the north site, it did okay the permit for the school in the south.

State environmental rules are quite explicit when it comes to such approvals— they can not be granted, even conditionally, until all environmental review is completed. Yet as of the March 25 commission meeting, the environmental review on the school project had yet to even begin.

County planners contend that the commission approved a project of less than 100,000 square feet, which means the rules on environmental review did not apply. “The staff reports and recommendations were based on the buildings being less than 100,000 square feet,” said Hayden in her May 25 memorandum.

While Hayden’s statement may be accurate, there is little evidence to support it. Indeed, Hayden now acknowledges that the permit applications submitted to the county were for projects in excess of 100,000 square feet.

And staff reports, which make no mention of the size of the projects, provide no support for Hayden’s position. While the reports do list a few conditions, a size restriction is not among them.

What’s more, the summary minutes of the planning commission’s March 25 meeting, make no mention at all of a size restriction.

The Timberjay did request documentation from Hayden supporting her claims on the size of the projects, but she did not reply as of deadline.