In last week’s town hall meeting, Orrock listened to a presentation on outdoor vehicle storage from the county, and prepared for elections and the winter season.

Outdoor Vehicle Storage

Dave Lucas and Marc Schneider from Sherburne County attended the Orrock town hall meeting in order to get the opinions of the board members and the audience on new language being introduced regarding the number of vehicles that are allowed to be stored outdoors on residential properties.

About 340 complaints have been made to the county since 2017 regarding junk cars littering residential yards. There currently is language that requires homeowners to move cars that are inoperable and unlicensed. However, a few repeat offenders have responded to the enforcement of compliance by simply buying tabs for the vehicles and restoring them to working condition — but, ultimately, the vehicles are not moved, and the neighbors continue to make complaints to the county.

New language would allow the county more force to attack the issue. It would limit the number of vehicles that can be stored outdoors on a residential property — this includes watercraft. Any vehicles stored in a garage or a pole barn would be unaffected by the new policy, and any vehicles being stored on a trailer would be counted as one vehicle. Only one more vehicle than the number of licensed drivers in the household would be allowed. Of course, these changes are only meant to deal with complaints. No one from the county is going to patrol the area to make sure every resident is in compliance.

One resident raised concerns about what would happen if even a reasonable number of recreation craft were stored outside. The resident stated that he stored ATVs for his adult children to use when they visited him, and that, even though it was not an excessive number of vehicles, he would be out of compliance according to the proposed policy. The county representatives took this into consideration, saying they appreciated the feedback and they wanted to find the right balance between trying to handle complaints and not infringing on residents’ lives.

Lucas and Schneider left a copy of the proposed changes with the town board and asked them to review it and give feedback at a later time. Residents wanting to give feedback can contact either of the men at Dave.Lucas@co.Sherburne.mn.us or Marc.Schneider@co.Sherburne.mn.us.

Election Information

Orrock Twp. will be using a new polling location this year, due to COVID-19 regulations. The new location is the same as the one used for the primary elections earlier this year, at the Sherburne County Snowmobile Trail Association Trail Shed at 17128 261st Ave. NW. Signage will be posted around town hall directing residents to the new location several days before the Nov. 3 election.

Absentee ballots can still be submitted directly to Sherburne County. More information can be found at www.co.Sherburne.mn.us/183/Elections.

Snow Plowing Season

The board reviewed the plowing agreement with Big Lake Twp. to make sure both townships knew their responsibilities for roads on the border.

The board considered offering winter maintenance to some of the developments in the community where the roads are privately owned. After discussion, they decided against offering this assistance, as they didn’t want to set a precedent of maintaining roads they don’t own. Still, they expressed a willingness to reconsider if Orrock residents approached the board asking for their plowing services. The board was under the impression that most of these residents understood that the development roads were privately owned and would take up any issues with the owner or the HOA.

The board once again debated paying to install swing-away mailboxes for all residents. They noted that with current language, the township is not responsible for snow plows hitting mailboxes, but the swing-away mailboxes would stop complaints. In the end, the board decided to save that decision for the annual meeting, to give residents a chance to weigh in on the issue.

Road Maintenance

After creating a system to track when road signs are updated throughout the township, board members were eager to discuss moving more road maintenance issues online. Becker uses an app that staff can use to quickly report potholes and other maintenance issues on their roads, and the board considered employing a similar service. They decided to do more research and make a decision at a later meeting.