Eden Prairie was among several communities this past weekend that suffered public and private damage due to heavy winds. The wind storm blew in during the late hours of Friday night and wee morning hours of Saturday morning. Hangars were damaged and a couple of airplanes were flipped over at the airport. Trees, picnic tables and portable toilets were damaged in our parks.
There were several neighborhoods that appeared to take the brunt of the damage. One was the Hidden Oaks neighborhood in The Preserve area. It is a part of town that is heavily wooded. People live in the forest. They lost many valuable trees. There was also some property damage to some homes, although we had no reports of anyone being injured.
The aftermath of the storm has created a storm of its own. A number of years back, the City Council adopted a policy of not picking up storm debris from private property, unless the Council declares a “storm emergency”. The objective of this policy is to limit the expenditure of public funds on storm clean up to the debris removal that is required on public property. That includes streets, sidewalks, trail, parks, and other public property. And there was a lot of it from this weekend’s storms. We had 20 employees come in this weekend to clear storm damaged trees from streets and trails. City crews are still working on clearing storm damage all this week.
But this policy has proved to be unpopular with homeowners who suffered significant tree loss from the storm. They are dealing not only with the loss of their trees, but also the financial consequences of paying for the tree removal. Some of them believe the City ought to come in and pay for their private damaged trees to be removed from their private property. “Isn’t that what a City is supposed to do in a situation like this?”, was a question I heard more than once on Monday. We have some very unhappy homeowners right now who believe their city government has let them down.
It’s a tough question, but the City’s policy on this question is clear. I spoke this weekend with the Parks & Recreation Director, Public Works Director, Assistant Fire Chief, and the Police Chief about the storm. We evaluated the damage. In the collective opinion of the senior city staff members involved, we did not believe the damage rose to the level of what we would call a “storm emergency”. We did not ask the City Council to schedule an emergency meeting because we would not have recommended the Council make the storm emergency declaration. The Council has the discretion, of course, to call an emergency meeting and make the declaration, but they chose to accept our recommendation.
The large majority of property owners, however, did what most Minnesotans do after a storm. They got about the business of cleaning up their own mess. As I drove around the City on Monday and Tuesday, you could see lots of lawn service and tree service contractors at work, but you could see just as many home owners and business owners outside with rakes and chain saws clearing their land of the storm’s debris.
To assist them, the City is opening up a special facility on August 18, 19, 25 and 26 from 9am-3pm for residents to bring their storm debris. We won’t pick up the debris at their homes, but they can bring it to a central drop-off location for disposal. We have arranged for a party to come in and chip up everything at the site at no cost to the City. The location is the City’s Maintenance Outdoor Storage Site (MOSS) on Flying Cloud Drive across from the airport. Look for the enormous pile of tree debris. Believe me, it won’t be hard to see..
