Red Wing council hears issues coming during 2018

Jan. 31--RED WING -- The Red Wing City Council started its annual two-day workshop Friday covering issues that will likely come before the council during the year.

The topics during Friday's meeting ranged from gun ranges to test drops by the Air Force at Red Wing Airport.

The meeting kicked off with Community Development Director Dan Rogness explaining that since starting his job with the city less than a year ago, he has received numerous complaints about an outdoor gun range at 935 Hallstrom Drive.

"When I arrived here, I got some complaints on the gun range," Rogness said. "The complaints I received are about noise or sound levels, recovery of spent lead, hours of operation and non-conforming land use in Red Wing."

Rogness said the gun range owners have talked about their desire to work with neighbors to be less intrusive. That includes things like not allowing shooting on holidays and closing down if neighbors come to them with a specific request for quiet during a special family event, such as a graduation party.

While there are guidelines that gun ranges must follow, Red Wing Police Chief Roger Pohlman said there is a misunderstanding of the definitions of noise and sound. Sound is a more continuous event, he said, while noise is something that is more momentary that catches your attention. Most restrictions in the city have to do with sound.

For a noise complaint to exceed city or state standards, he said, the gun range would need to be much more loud than it is even on a normally busy day.

Having a shooting range in Red Wing is important to police training, Pohlman said. "We shoot four times a year, that's 30 officers apiece, including one inclement shoot where it's late and there's adverse conditions."

When the police department trains, he said, the department notifies neighbors that there will increased activity at the range.

If there was no shooting range in Red Wing for the police department, the nearest alternatives would be in Zumbrota or Rochester, and those sites would make training much more expensive due to travel time to and from the ranges.

Council Member Peggy Rehder said the discussion likely would lead the city back to the consideration of an indoor range, which can be cost prohibitive. The last time the city looked into constructing an indoor range, the cost was about $2.5 million.

Council Member Dean Hove said with the range having been located in the same place for years, any residents in the area were likely well aware of the shooting range before they moved into the neighborhood.

Drug Court

The city will hear more about the planned Goodhue County drug court in the coming months, Pohlman said.

The city has been working with the county and Judge Doug Bayley to develop a treatment court where non-violent offenders would receive the help needed to kick their addictions and return to being productive members of the community.

Pohlman said the city went from averaging a few hundred drug arrests per year to 469 in 2016 and 542 in 2017.

"We try to reduce the impact it's having on our citizens and our families," the chief said. "Obviously our enforcement is going strong."

The treatment court would provide one of the three legs to a three-legged stool in fighting addiction, he said. In addition to treatment, the city and county are focusing on enforcement and education, such as the GRATE program, a 13-week course for seventh-graders in the Red Wing school system.

Treatment programs give offenders a better chance to reintegrate and lower recidivism, he said. "We're looking to get some transitional housing grant money," Pohlman said, adding the city has talked with the Housing Redevelopment Authority and local nonprofit Common Ground. "And we're working with manufacturers to find places willing to give people a chance."

While the county is still waiting to see if it receives a federal grant to start the program, Pohlman said the court system has already identified a few treatment court candidates who are receiving treatment outside Goodhue County. "We should have them here in March," he said.

"It's quite emotional to see these people turn their lives around," he said.

Drop Zone

The U.S. Air Force Reserve has asked Red Wing Regional Airport if the the Air Force can practice dropping 15-pound sandbags 50-80 times a year from altitudes of 300 to 800 feet above the ground.

Public Works Director Rick Moskwa said the training would be done with large cargo-type airplanes such as C-130s.

"This isn't something we're really pushing," he said. "Maybe we could hold a test to see what it's like."

Rehder said while the city should look for ways to help the military, some concerns about using the airport include the noise from the training and whether it would rattle homes near the airport across the river in Wisconsin.

"It's really whether we want to get in another struggle with the neighbors who live around the airport," she said.

The drops would happen on the south side of the airport, Moskwa said.

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