5 - Correspondence with Timothy Bray, Mn/DOT Project Manager

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April 4,2007 Minnesota Department of Transportation Attn:Timothy V.Bray,PE,Project Manager 7694 Industrial Park Road Baxter,MN 56425 Re: T.H. 371 Ongoing Discussion Dear Mr. Bray, Thank you _for your letter of March 9, 2007 and also your attendance at our last Highway 371 Study Group meeting. We appreciate your input and guidance as well as your patience in this process. It is important that you know that we understand and acknowledge your concerns. We are going to work expeditiously to prepare and adopt another resolution to provide final clarity to the City's approach. This resolution will be written to rescind all previous motions on the project and should give you the documentation you need to proceed with confidence. We will forward you a draft of the resolution as soon as it is available. The City is dedicated to an alternate route#and is no longer interested in a through-town option. The only way we can envision a change in that approach is if the alternative route proves so problematic that,when compared to the many complications of the through-town alternative,it is clearly not feasible. While we leave open this possibility, we consider it remote. As we proceed,we will be staying within the corridor that was studied as part of the Environmental Impact Statement process. We are not planning to design the highway but merely analyze the impacts. We also do not desire to burden you or your office with significantly reworking the EIS. We understand your concerns in that regard and will certainly be respectful of your previous efforts. By involving experts from inside and outside the City,including Mn/DOT,we are confident that a final recommendation from the City will be reasonable,both financially and from a traffic/safety standpoint. We have heard from residents that safety is the paramount concern,with total City expenditures a close second. The main reasons for choosing an alternative alignment were to improve safety,which we believed was compromised with the through-town expansion, and to reduce the City's liabilities from the project,which were estimated to be in the millions. It is our intent to move forward as quickly as possible so that we can give municipal consent for the project. In the interim,we would be happy to negotiate a memorandum of understanding, particularly if it assisted you in moving forward with a higher degree of confidence. We would consider the draft you proposed to be a good starting point. We anticipate that 14084 Baxter Drive, Suite 7 1 Baxter, Minnesota 56425 1 218.828.3064 1 www.communitygrowth.com