The old practice of accumulating a car and truck graveyard between one’s house and the road has been going by the wayside in Cook County. While a junk vehicle ordinance has been in place since about 1989, it was never documented properly with the state. On May 22, the county board re-adopted the ordinance with one small change that could affect a few people in the county.
Previously, parking, storing, repairing, dismantling, demolishing, or abandoning a junk vehicle was prohibited in lakeshore residential and single family residential zoning districts with one exception: a resident could take up to 60 days to repair one inoperable registered vehicle. A junk vehicle included any motor vehicle or trailer suitable for use on public thoroughfares that was not in operable condition, was partially dismantled, was used for spare parts, or was kept for scrapping, dismantling, or salvage.
The change in language added the word “recreational vehicle” to the ordinance. A recreational vehicle is defined as “a vehicular-type portable structure without permanent foundation that can be towed, hauled or driven and primarily designed as a temporary living accommodation for recreation, camping, and travel use and including but not limited to travel trailers, truck campers, camping trailers, and self-propelled motor homes.”
In other zoning districts, parking, storing, or maintaining junk vehicles is allowed “only if incidental to a permitted use.” They must be in a building or screened from public streets and adjoining properties. Two junk vehicles may be repaired without screening if the repairs are completed within 60 days.
Some people use old trailers and campers for storing junk, Planning & Zoning Director Tim Nelson said. Commissioner Sue Hakes asked about using them for regular storage. She said people should be required to get a permit and screen them in order to use them for storage.
Nelson said nothing in Cook County ordinances addresses this. They have been discussing it within the department and he has been consulting with other counties about it. “That actually is a little bit of a gray area within our ordinances,” he said. He suggested that they look at the issue the next time they update zoning ordinances.
Commissioner Bruce Martinson said he thought people should be given more than 60 days to repair inoperable vehicles. Nelson said his department has only enforced situations in which the vehicles had been abandoned or were being used for storing junk. The level of staffing in his department limits their enforcement, he said, so they prioritize what they enforce. They believe they have been “reasonable” with enforcement over the last 20 years, he said, although some might think they should be less stringent and some might think they should be more stringent.
A motion to adopt the ordinance as amended passed unanimously.
New culverts on CSAH 8
Five culverts will be replaced this summer along the first mile of CSAH 8 (Devil Track Road) off the Gunflint Trail. The work will take about 1-1½ weeks. The pieces of roadway affected may not be paved until the end of the summer in order to allow compaction.
The board authorized paying Ulland Brothers $17,316.40 to help with the culvert replacement and paying up to another $10,000 to have someone pave the affected areas.
School trust land
The Superior National Forest (SNF) and Voyageurs National Park are preparing a pre-proposal for money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire property within an area called the Heart of the Continent, which covers land in northeastern Minnesota and the Canadian land adjacent to it.
The State of Minnesota is interested in exchanging or selling to the Superior National Forest its land in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), some of which is school trust land that has been unable to generate income for Minnesota schools as originally intended because of restrictions on activities allowed in the BWCAW.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is an agency that provides funds to purchase lands for public use. According to SNF District Ranger Dennis Neitzke, who spoke to the board about the issue, the LWCF would buy U.S. Forest Service land outside of the BWCAW, and the Forest Service would use the money to buy BWCAW land from the state.
If the state exchanged school trust land for Forest Service land, the state could sell it and put the proceeds into a school trust land fund or keep the land and generate income from it. The Forest Service is considering a combination of exchanging land with the state and purchasing BWCAW land from the state.
Cook County is in the process of working out a land exchange with the Forest Service for county-owned land in the BWCAW.
Lockdown procedures
When the shooting occurred at the Cook County Courthouse last December, the Cook County Safety Committee had already been working on developing lockdown procedures for situations in which those in county government buildings were under physical threat. Since then, a security committee was formed to further address such issues, and they asked the safety committee to finish developing its procedures and train the staff in implementing them. Personnel Director Janet Simonen presented them to the county board at this meeting.
When under threat, the goal is to be inconspicuous, Simonen said. The procedures call for county personnel to move away from doors and hallways, lock themselves and people with them into the nearest lockable place as far from the danger as possible, and turn out the lights. They are instructed to be quiet and turn their cell phones to vibrate. If they are the first ones to encounter the threat, they are to call 911 and issue a lockdown announcement on the paging system. The procedures call for county personnel to stay out of the location of the threat and let law enforcement and First Responders deal with people needing help.
The board discussed numerous scenarios and how they could respond.
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