The staff is testing my meeting management skills!

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We’re back to the Board Meeting plus Committee of the Whole format. The board meeting has:

• A presentation on Water’s Edge likely to elicit some healthy public feedback.
• The healthy public comment.
• 13 ordinance and resolution decisions.
• A liquor license.
• Choosing which Trustee #2 applications (of the 12 received) we will interview.
• Closed session to talk about the Raymond boundary agreement.

And CoW has:

• Public comment
• The usual committee updates
• Staff compensation report
• Comprehensive Land Use plan visioning exercise
• Discussion on agenda and priority management
• Proposals on resolving audio issues and live-streaming board meetings

I’ll hit a few of the highlights:

Water’s Edge

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Interestingly, if interested, the Facebook page of the original, now abandoned plan for the property is still here.

And here’s the old brochure:

Shocking that they didn’t get any takers at $1.3M for 3-bedroom condos.

The presentation on the agenda isn’t the old proposal, of course. It’s the proposals that we’ve had recently. Here’s the important part of what we’re doing:

1. We’ve heard you that we’re ahead of ourselves with proposals before a conscious decision about what to do with the property.
2. We’re trying to be transparent and show the proposals we have. We welcome your feedback.
3. We are not making a decision about these proposals. We’re just soliciting your feedback.
4. We will take your feedback into the discussion about vision for the property.
5. We bought it so we could control what got built there. We need to define that vision, with your input.

Also note, we put public comment after the presentation based on prior public comments that residents wanted a chance to comment during a board meeting on what was presented in a board meeting. Simple change, long overdue.

13 Resolutions

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• Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church is requesting Comp Plan and Zoning changes to accommodate plans they have for their school. This was presented to the Plan Commission and after some healthy discussion was approved unanimously.
• StorageShopUSA’s agreement on fee reduction will be presented for approval.
• The rest seem pretty straightforward.

New Business

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Main item of discussion in here is the list of candidates to fill the vacant Trustee #2 seat. We received 12 applications. We will discuss how many and which ones to move to the interview phase. Interviews with the board will be on Aug 4, 2026.

Closed session

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We have a closed session to update the board on the negotiations with Village of Raymond about our border agreement.

If I can rant a bit about our website, if you use the regular search and type “village of raymond” or “raymond border agreement” you get no hits. If you use the AI search, you get text that describes it and then a link to a document that is not the border agreement. Grrr. Maybe the border agreement is in there somewhere, maybe not. If you find it, let me know.

If you don’t know the background on that agreement, it was done back in 2009 and allows Caledonia the right to approve or deny development in the part of Raymond that is along the highway. The village president of Raymond came to a recent board meeting and asked that we release Raymond from that agreement.

CoW

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We’ll adjourn the board meeting, then start the CoW meeting.

The Comp Plan Visioning Exercise is about board vision for the future of the village. If I’ve kept the meeting running smoothly to this point and everyone isn’t irritable yet, this could be interesting.

Then we’ll discuss agenda and priority management. I have an idea. I hope it’s a good idea. It’s a simple idea, and simple is good.

Then the audio/video proposal agenda is back. We have had this on the agenda several times now and it hasn’t gotten traction. It needs to get traction. I’m willing to bet that my mic reverberates with annoying feedback at least 3 times while discussing this agenda item just to prove that we need to get it done.

Adjourn.

Final advice on attendance

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If you are interested in the Water’s Edge development, we put that right at the start. You can come for that part, give your feedback, and be home fairly quickly.

Right after Water’s Edge, the first two items in “Ordinances and Resolutions” are the plans for Trinity Lutheran at 7 Mile Rd and Nicholson Rd. If you are curious what is happening there, stick around for that.

The rest of the board meeting looks either uneventful or closed.

The comp plan visioning exercise during the CoW meeting might be interesting to hear, but you’ll need some patience to make it through most of both meetings to get there. I’ll do my best to keep the meeting flowing.

We’re not finishing this in less than an hour even if I read all the resolutions in my 78rpm voice.