Joe Drennan
Staff Writer

The warmer summer months in Columbus Township often bring with them a thinner agenda with little business to be discussed for the town board meetings. Last Wednesdayís town board meeting was one of those meetings with little to discuss.

As the town board was approving the minutes from the previous meeting held on July 8 Supervisor Glen Miles made a motion to clean up the wording in a motion regarding landowners who have a billboard on their land under CUPs.

There are only six billboards in Columbus with CUPs and at the June 8 meeting landowners with a billboard with a CUP wanted to know if they could subdivide their land and still keep their billboard without the land becoming a non-conforming lot.

This debate was important since the site the township is using for a well has a billboard with a CUP and the town engineer needed to know if he could move forward with some delineation work on the well site, but if this billboard issue was going to hold things up he might have to wait.

The town board decided to allow the engineer to proceed with his work, unofficially giving the impression that the township would allow the non-conforming subdivisions so the current land owners could still benefit from the revenue some of the billboards produce.

Miles wanted to clean up some of the wording in the motion that was passed to allow the engineer to proceed by taking out the stuff about billboards, but his motion was defeated by a 3-2 vote.

The other important topic on the agenda had Joe Eichinger of 17414 Potomac and his variance request that he be allowed to rebuild a pole building that burned down in March.

The original pole building was built in 1974, but codes have since changed and call for a larger setback from the property line.

Eichinger informed the town board that the property line that the pole building is close to is a 60 foot wide strip of land that is used for a driveway to a neighbors house and is not encroaching on any home building site.

Eichingerís variance request was approved.

Other news

ï An air release valve still needs to be installed and control work needs to be tested before Gander Mountain is officially hooked up to sewer. That work should be done within two weeks.

ï Sewer and water work along Freeway Dr. is moving along. The sewer pipe has been installed and work on installing the water pipes is moving along.

ï A public hearing for 189th St. improvements was called for early Aug. after petitions came back showing support for a possible improvement.

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Forest Lake Times
P.O. Box 218
880 SW 15 St.
Forest Lake, MN 55025
651-464-4601
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