Capital Days are coming up in Saint Paul and the Two Harbors City Council met on February 20th to plan for the discussions they will soon be having with State Legislators. Capital Days is a series of meetings that happen annually where local officials meet with State representatives to talk about their community’s upcoming improvement projects and related funding needs. In addition, Representative Pete Stauber and Senator Amy Klobuchar have been encouraging the Council to seek federal funding for infrastructure projects. The Council’s efforts to set priorities and clarify plans on both of these fronts will likely increase the chances that the city will get the funding help it needs for the coming year.
There are a number of important projects either under way or on the drawing board for Two Harbors. After fairly lengthy discussion, the Council decided to focus on the Odegaard Trail fencing project and refurbishing or rebuilding the bandshell in Thomas Owens Park. Both of these projects are lower ticket items and can actually be made “shovel ready” fairly quickly which will help with attracting funding from the State. Bigger projects like Waterfront Development, Highway 61 and Water and Sewer infrastructure expansion on undeveloped property owned by the city are good candidates for federal dollars. Getting water and sewer services to city lots that don’t have it will have the added benefit of attracting developers to build housing which the city desperately needs.
Another topic up for discussion at the meeting was to help clarify the role that the Two Harbors Housing and Redevelopment Authority will play moving forward. Historically, the Two Harbors HRA has been tasked with managing the Bayview Terrace complex. It has only recently been looking at expanding that role to the wider housing needs within the city. The current thinking of the Council seems to be that it may be more useful and efficient to have the City HRA continue to focus mainly on Bayview and hand the bigger housing development picture over to the County HRA. The LCHRA is actually set up to handle issues like obtaining funding, planning, and developing actual projects. If the decision is made to move forward with this plan, there will be a city council member that will sit on the County HRA board to give city officials a collaborative voice in the County HRA’s decision making process.
The issues that were discussed at the Council’s strategic planning will be reviewed at the next Council meeting which will be held on February 26th.
