Except for those words and phrases defined in this section, the words and phrases used in this title shall be interpreted to be given the meanings in common usage, and as may be commonly defined in dictionaries so as to give this title its most reasonable application.
ALLEY: A public or private right of way primarily designed to serve as secondary access to the side or rear of those properties whose principal frontage is on a street.
APPLICANT: The owner, his agent or person having legal control and/or an interest in the land proposed to be subdivided.
ATTORNEY: The attorney employed by the city, unless otherwise stated.
BWSR: The Minnesota board of water and soil resources.
BASE LOT: A lot meeting all the specifications within its zoning district prior to being divided into a subdivision of single- family attached units.
BLOCK: An area of land within a subdivision that is entirely bounded by streets, or by streets and the entire boundary or boundaries of the subdivision, or a combination of the above, with a river, lake, railroad, or unsubdivided acreage.
BOULEVARD: The portion of the street right of way between the curb line and the property line.
BUILDING: Any structure built for the support, shelter or enclosure of persons, animals, chattels or movable property of any kind.
BUTT LOT: A lot at the end of a block, located between two (2) corner lots.
CITY: The city of Albertville.
CLUSTER DEVELOPMENT: A subdivision development planned and constructed so as to group housing units into relatively tight patterns, while providing a unified network of open space and wooded areas, meeting the overall density regulation of this title and the zoning ordinance.
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: A comprehensive plan prepared by the city, including a compilation of policy statement goals, standards and maps, indicating the general locations recommended for the various functional classes of land use, places and structures, and for the general physical development of the city, including any unit or part of such plan separately adopted and any amendment to such plan or parts thereof.
CONTOUR MAP: A map on which irregularities of land surface are shown by lines connecting points of equal elevations. "Contour interval" shall mean the vertical height between contour lines.
COPY: A print or reproduction made from a tracing.
COUNTY: Wright County, Minnesota.
DESIGN STANDARDS: The specifications to landowners or those proposing to subdivide land for the preparation of plats, both preliminary and final, indicating, among other things, the optimum, minimum or maximum dimensions of such items as rights of way, blocks, easements and lots.
DEVELOPMENT: The act of building structures and installing site improvements.
DOUBLE FRONTAGE LOT: A lot which has a property line abutting on one street and an opposite property line abutting on another nonintersecting street.
DRAINAGECOURSE: A watercourse or indentation for the drainage of surface water.
EASEMENT: A grant by a property owner for the use of a strip of land and for the purpose of constructing and maintaining drives and utilities, including, but not limited to, wetlands, ponding areas, sanitary sewers, water mains, electric lines, telephone lines, storm sewer or storm drainageways and gas lines.
EMERGENCY OVERFLOW: A water flow path that is designed to safely remove excess water in case a pond or water body becomes higher than expected.
ENGINEER: The registered engineer employed by the city, unless otherwise stated.
FINAL PLAT: A drawing or map of a subdivision, meeting all of the requirements of the city and in such form as required by Wright County for the purpose of recording.
FLOODPLAIN: The area adjacent to a water body that is inundated by a 100-year flood.
GOVERNING BODY: The Albertville city council.
HIGH WATER LEVEL (HWL): The highest water level achieved in a water body predicted by the 100-year critical storm event.
KEY MAP: A map drawn to comparatively small scale which definitively shows the area proposed to be platted in relation to known geographical features (e.g., town centers, lakes and roads).
LOT: A parcel or portion of land in a subdivision or plat of land separated from other parcels or portions by description, as on a subdivision or record of survey map, for the purpose of sale or lease or separate use thereof and having its principal frontage on a public street.
LOT, CORNER: A lot situated at the intersection of two (2) streets, the interior angle of such intersection not exceeding one hundred thirty five degrees (135°).
LOT IMPROVEMENTS: Any building, structure, place, work of art, or other object, or improvement of the land on which they are situated, constituting a physical betterment of real property, or any part of such betterment. Certain proposed "lot improvements" shall be properly bonded for as provided in this title.
LOT OF RECORD: A parcel of land whether subdivided and/or otherwise legally described and recorded under a single parcel identification number as of March 17, 1975, or approved by the city as a lot and which is occupied by or intended for occupancy by one principal building or principal use, together with any accessory buildings and such open spaces as required by the city zoning ordinance and having its principal frontage upon a public street.
METES AND BOUNDS DESCRIPTION: A description of real property which is not described by reference to a lot or block shown on a map, but is described by starting at a known point and describing the bearings and distances of the lines forming the boundaries of the property or delineating a fractional portion of a section, lot or area by described lines or portions thereof.
MINNESOTA POLLUTION CONTROL AGENCY (MPCA): The state organization responsible for the NPDES/SDS permitting system.
NPDES/SDS: National pollutant discharge elimination system/state disposal system. This permitting system is managed by the Minnesota pollution control agency (MPCA).
NURP: The nationwide urban runoff program developed by the environmental protection agency to treat stormwater runoff from urban development.
NATURAL WATERWAY: A natural passageway in the surface of the earth, so situated and having such a topographical nature that surface water flows through it from other areas before reaching a final ponding area. The term also shall include all drainage structures that have been constructed or placed for the purpose of conducting water from one place to another.
NORMAL WATER LEVEL (NWL): For a reservoir with a fixed overflow, the NWL is lowest crest level of that overflow. For a reservoir whose outflow is controlled wholly or partly by movable gates, siphons or other means, it is the maximum level to which water may rise under normal operating conditions, exclusive of any provision for flood storage. For a closed depression wetland, it is the maximum level to which the water may rise under normal precipitation conditions exclusive of any provision for flood storage.
ORDINARY HIGH WATER LEVEL (OHWL OR OHW): The Minnesota DNR jurisdictional boundary of public waters and wetlands that is depicted by an elevation delineating the highest water level which has been maintained for a sufficient period of time to leave evidence upon the landscape, commonly that point where the natural vegetation changes from predominantly aquatic to predominantly terrestrial. For watercourses, the ordinary high water level is the elevation of the top of the bank of the channel. For reservoirs and flowage, the ordinary high water level is the operating elevation of the normal summer pool.
OUTLOT: A lot remnant or parcel of land left over after platting, which is intended as open space or other future use, for which no building permit shall be issued.
OWNER: An individual, association, syndicate, partnership, corporation, trust or any other legal entity holding an equitable or legal ownership interest in the land sought to be subdivided.
PARKS: Playgrounds, trails, parks or open spaces within the city, owned, leased or used, wholly or in part, by the city for park and recreational purposes or which are designated by the city council as a park.
PEDESTRIANWAY: A public right of way or private easement across a block or within a block to provide access for pedestrians and which may be used for the installation of paths or trails.
PERCENTAGE OF GRADE: Along a centerline of a street, the change in vertical elevation in feet and tenths of a foot for each one hundred feet (100') of horizontal distance, expressed as a percentage.
PERMITTEE: The person or political subdivision in whose name a permit is issued pursuant to this title.
PRELIMINARY PLAT: A drawing or map of a proposed subdivision, meeting the requirements herein enumerated, submitted to the planning commission and governing body for their consideration, in compliance with the comprehensive plan, along with required supporting data.
PRIVATE STREET: A street serving as vehicular access to two (2) or more parcels of land which is not dedicated to the public and is owned by one or more private parties.
PROTECTIVE COVENANTS: Contracts entered into between all owners and holders of mortgages constituting a restriction on the use of all private property within a subdivision for the benefit of the property owners, and providing mutual protection against undesirable aspects of development which would tend to impair the stability of property value and economic integrity of any given area.
PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT: Any drainage ditch, roadway, parkway, street, sanitary sewer, storm sewer, water system, sidewalk, pedestrianway, tree, lawn, off street parking area, lot improvement or other facility for which the city may ultimately assume ownership, responsibility for maintenance and operation, or which may affect an improvement for which local government responsibility is established.
PUBLIC WATERS: Waters as defined in Minnesota statutes section 103G.005, subdivision 15.
PUBLIC WATERS WETLAND: As defined in Minnesota statutes section 103G.005, subdivision 15a.
QUADRAMINIUMS: Single structures which contain four (4) subdivided dwelling units all of which have individually separate entrances from the exterior of the structure.
RESERVE STRIPS: A narrow strip of land placed between lot lines and streets to control access.
RIGHT OF WAY: The land covered by a public road, otherwise dedicated for public use, or land for certain private uses, such as land over which a power line passes.
SETBACK: The distance between a building and the property line nearest thereto.
SIMPLIFIED HYDROLOGIC YIELD METHOD (SHYM): Methodology for assessing water elevations of landlocked basins.
STORMWATER POLLUTION PREVENTION PLAN: A joint stormwater and erosion and sediment control plan that is a document containing the requirements of section 11-7-12 of this title that, when implemented, will decrease soil erosion on a parcel of land and off site nonpoint pollution and sediment damages.
Best Management Practices (BMPs): Erosion and sediment control and water quality management practices that are the most effective and practicable means of controlling, preventing, and minimizing degradation of surface water, including construction phasing, minimizing the length of time soil areas are exposed, prohibitions, and other management practices published by state or designated areawide planning agencies. (Examples of BMPs can be found in the current versions of the "State Of Minnesota Stormwater Manual", the Minnesota pollution control agency's "Storm-Water And Wetlands: Planning And Evaluation Guidelines For Addressing Potential Impacts Of Urban Storm-Water And Snow-Melt Runoff On Wetlands", the United States environmental protection agency's, "Stormwater Management For Construction Activities: Developing Pollution Prevention Plans And Best Management Practices", [as a reference for BMPs] and the Minnesota department of transportation's "Erosion Control Design Manual".)
Developer: A person, firm, corporation, sole proprietorship, partnership, state agency, or political subdivision thereof engaged in a land disturbance activity.
Discharge: The conveyance, channeling, runoff, or drainage of stormwater, including snowmelt, from a construction site.
Energy Dissipation: Refers to methods employed at pipe outlets to prevent erosion. Examples include, but are not limited to: aprons, riprap, splash pads, and gabions that are designed to prevent erosion.
Erosion: Any process that wears away the surface of the land by the action of water, wind, ice, or gravity.
Erosion And Sediment Practice Specifications Or Practice: The management procedures, techniques, and methods to control soil erosion and sedimentation as officially adopted by the city or local watershed group, whichever is more stringent.
Erosion Control: Refers to methods employed to prevent erosion. Examples include soil stabilization practices, horizontal slope grading, temporary or permanent cover, and construction phasing.
Exposed Soil Areas: All areas of the construction site where the vegetation (including trees, shrubs, and brush) has been removed. This includes topsoil stockpile areas, borrow areas and disposal areas within the construction site.
Filter Strips: A vegetated section of land designed to treat runoff as overland sheet flow. They may be designed in any natural vegetated form from a grassy meadow to a small forest. Their dense vegetated cover facilitates pollutant removal and infiltration.
Final Stabilization: All soil disturbing activities at the site have been completed, and a uniform perennial vegetative cover with a density of seventy percent (70%) of the cover for unpaved areas and areas not covered by permanent structure has been established or equivalent permanent stabilization measures have been employed.
Hydric Soils: Soils that are saturated, flooded, or ponded long enough during the growing season to develop anaerobic conditions in the upper part.
Hydrophytic Vegetation: Macrophytic plant life growing in water, soil or on a substrate that is at least periodically deficient in oxygen as a result of excessive water content.
Impervious Surface: A natural or artificial hard surface that either prevents or retards the entry of water into the soil, and causes water to run off the surface in greater quantities and at an increased rate of flow than existed prior to development. Examples include rooftops, sidewalks, patios, driveways, parking lots, storage areas, and concrete, asphalt, or gravel roads.
Land Disturbance Activity: Any land change involving the excavation, transport and filling of fifty (50) or more cubic yards of material that may result in soil erosion from water or wind and the movement of sediments into or upon waters or lands within the jurisdiction of Albertville. The following are not considered to be land disturbance activities:
A. Activities such as home gardens and individual home landscaping, repairs, and maintenance work.
B. Construction, installation, and maintenance of electric, telephone, and cable television utility lines or individual service connection to these utilities, except where over five thousand (5,000) square feet of exposed soil area will result.
C. Tilling, planting, or harvesting of agricultural, horticultural, or silvicultural crops.
D. Installation of fence, sign, telephone, and electric poles and other kinds of posts or poles except where over five thousand (5,000) square feet of exposed soil area will result.
E. Emergency work to protect life, limb, or property and emergency repairs, unless the land disturbing activity would have required an approved erosion and sediment control plan, except for the emergency, then the land area disturbed shall be shaped and stabilized in accordance with city requirements.
Paved Surface: A constructed hard, smooth surface made of asphalt, concrete or other pavement material. Examples include, but are not limited to, roads, sidewalks, driveways and parking lots.
Permanent Cover: Final stabilization. Examples include grass, gravel, asphalt, and concrete.
Runoff Coefficient: The average annual fraction of total precipitation that is not infiltrated into or otherwise retained by the soil, concrete, asphalt or other surface upon which it falls that will appear at the conveyance as runoff.
Sediment: The product of an erosion process; solid material, both mineral and organic, that is in suspension, is being transported, or has been moved by water, air, or ice, and has come to rest on the earth's surface either above or below water level.
Sediment Control: The methods employed to prevent sediment from leaving the site. Sediment control practices include silt fences, sediment traps, earth dikes, drainage swales, check dams, subsurface drains, pipe slope drains, storm drain inlet protection, and temporary or permanent sedimentation basins.
Sedimentation: The process or action of depositing sediment caused by erosion.
Soil: The unconsolidated mineral and organic material on the immediate surface of the earth.
Stabilized: The exposed ground surface after it has been covered by sod, erosion control blanket, riprap, or other material that prevents erosion from occurring. Grass seeding is not stabilization.
Stormwater: The precipitation runoff, stormwater runoff, snowmelt runoff, and any other surface runoff and drainage (defined in 40 CFR 122.26(b)(13)).
Temporary Protection: The methods employed to prevent erosion. Examples of such protections include: straw, mulch, erosion control blankets, wood chips, and erosion netting.
Urban: Of, relating to, characteristic of, constituting a city.
Vegetated Or Grassed Swales: A vegetated earthen channel that conveys stormwater, while treating the stormwater by biofiltration. Pollutants are removed by both filtration and infiltration.
Waters Of The State: As defined in Minnesota statutes section 115.01, subdivision 22, the term "waters of the state" means all streams, lakes, ponds, marshes, watercourses, waterways, wells, springs, reservoirs, aquifers, irrigation systems, drainage systems and all other bodies or accumulations of water, surface or underground, natural or artificial, public or private, which are contained within, flow through, or border upon the state or any portion thereof. (Constructed wetlands designed for wastewater treatment are not "waters of the state". See definition of Wetlands.)
Wetlands: As defined in Minnesota rules section 70750.0130, subpart F, "wetlands" are those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface water or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. "Wetlands" generally include swamps, marshes, bogs, and similar areas. Constructed wetlands designed for wastewater treatment are not waters of the state. "Wetlands" must have the following attributes:
A. A predominance of hydric soils;
B. Inundated or saturated by surface water or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support a prevalence of hydrophytic vegetation typically adapted for life in a saturated soil condition; and
C. Under normal circumstances support a prevalence of such vegetation.
STREET: A public right of way for vehicular traffic, whether designated as highway, thoroughfare, parkway, throughway, road, avenue, boulevard, lane, place, drive, court or otherwise designated.
STREET WIDTH: The shortest distance between the lines delineating the right of way of a street.
STREETS, ARTERIAL: Those streets carrying larger volumes of traffic and serving as links between various subareas of the city. "Arterial streets" are intended to provide for collection and distribution of traffic between highways and collector streets; hence, regulation of direct access to property is critical.
STREETS, COLLECTOR: Those streets which carry traffic from local streets to the major system of arterials and highways. "Collector streets" primarily provide principal access to residential neighborhoods, including, to a lesser degree, direct land access.
STREETS, CUL-DE-SACS: Those local streets with only one outlet and having an appropriate terminal for the safe and convenient reversal of traffic movement.
STREETS, LOCAL: Those streets which are used primarily for access to abutting properties and for local traffic movement.
STREETS, MARGINAL ACCESS (SERVICE ROAD): Those local streets which are parallel and adjacent to high volume arterial streets and highways and which provide access to abutting properties and protection from through traffic.
SUBDIVISION: The division of a parcel of land into two (2) or more lots or parcels for the purpose of transfer of ownership or building development. This includes resubdivision and, where appropriate to the context, shall relate to the process of subdividing or to the land subdivided.
SURVEYOR: A land surveyor registered under Minnesota state laws.
TRACING: A plat or map drawn on transparent paper, film, or cloth which can be reproduced by using regular reproduction procedure.
TWO-FAMILY DWELLING: A dwelling designed exclusively for occupancy by two (2) families living independently of each other.
UNIT LOTS: Lots created from the subdivision of single-family attached dwellings having different minimum lot size requirements than the conventional base lot within the zoning district.
WATER BODY: All surface waters, water basins, watercourses, and "wetlands" as defined in this section.
WETLAND CONSERVATION ACT (WCA): The Minnesota wetland conservation act of 1991, as may be amended.
ZONING ORDINANCE: The zoning ordinance or resolution controlling the use of land as adopted by the city 2 . (Amended Ord. 1988-8, 9-8-1988; amd. 2005 Code; Ord. 2009-007, 3-2-2009)
Notes
| 1 | 1. See title 2, chapter 2 of this code. |
| 2 | 1. See appendix A of this code. |