Consider the 2018 City of Ramsey Legislative Platform

Annually, the City of Ramsey adopts a Legislative Platform for the purpose of defining a list of Legislative priorities of specific interest to the City of Ramsey.  Upon adoption by the City Council, Ramsey's Legislative Platform will be used to communicate City priorities to County, State and Federal officials.  Additionally, this document will be used internally by staff to guide legislative working priorities for 2018.
 

Attached is an updated list of eight proposed 2018 legislative issues that are considered significant to the City of Ramsey at this time.  Included in the attachments are the legislative platforms/priorities for Anoka County, the North Metro Mayor's Association, the Metro Cities, and the League of Minnesota Cities. Transportation funding continues to be an important issue for the City, and all of the other organizations on a state, regional, and local level include this topic as a priority. A section war added to the City position statement that includes specific support for the City of Anoka for the Thurston/Fair Oak interchange project.  Rail improvements are included in this section.  A detailed summary of each issue is attach as part of the City summary, and a reference to the policy documents of the other organizations is foot-noted at the bottom of each section. 

Note, the City differs somewhat from the County's position to have an elected Metropolitan Council, but their legislative priority document is vague in that language, and the Metro Cities position provides some additional recommendations for incremental change to the metro governance structure (see page 38 of the Metro Cities document 4-B, 4-C)
 

N/A

It is recommended that the City Council discuss and consider revisions to the City of Ramsey 2018 Legislative Platform as presented, and to forward to the next regular Council meeting for formal adoption.

No Motion Requested:
Base upon the consensus discussion, staff will bring forward a final (updated) Legislative Platform for formal adoption on the consent agenda of the next regular Council meeting of March 13, 2018.