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About 35 people attended the Chisago Lakes Lake Lake Improvement District annual meeting, Feb 2, in the lower level conference room at the Government Center.  
The newest LID member, Gary Schmumacher, is now serving in one of two “at large” seats. He was selected by paper ballot vote out of four applicants seeking the position vacated by Lou Sibik.  Mike Mergens was also returned to his North Center Lake Area seat, he was not challenged.

LID Board members,  (Eric Sogard and Rick Ekstrand absent) also gave Joyce Anastasi the nod for chair for another year.

The LID is managed under the umbrella of the county environmental services department.  The administrator is Jerry Spetzman.  

Spetzman reported the LID had a carryover into 2015 of about $48,000-- but a couple of budget adjustments adopted by the Board last week depleted that.  
The LID will contribute to a new fullsize pickup truck and portable “decontamination unt” that carries a tank of high pressure heated cleansing water, for abating invasives like zebra mussels.  There was also a transfer from reserves into an enhanced carp management plan.  

LID consulting engineers are working with a commercial fish harvester on a carp harvest effort this spring on South Center Lake and a later harvest on Green Lake.  Also radio-tracking devices will be attached to carp,  on Big and Little Green Lakes, which will allow the LID to monitor schooling/spawning of the rough fish.
Most of the two hour annual meeting was devoted to color slides and powerpoint information on various “Best Management Practices” implemented within the LID over the last year or so.  

Working with the Soil & Water Conservation District and local governing units-- the LID has helped make stormwater controls and erosion containment projects  happen.  The goal is improving the water quality of the 13 lakes in the watershed.

A chart summarizing the letter grades assigned to each lake depicting water quality, however,  shows not a lot of improvement.

But, degrading of water quality has been slowed the last few years.   Kroon and North Lindstrom lake monitoring measurements show improvement from 2011 to 2014 and are graded now with a “B.”  The other lakes continue to hover in the “C” and “D” ranges,  which means there continue to be pollution and nutrient issues to address.  Water quality  is measured by clarity (at what depth you can still see a secchi disc), water temp, phosphorus concentration and chlorophyll-a.

Two on-going items of interest were only briefly mentioned at the annual meeting.  

~ The boundary of the lake improvement taxing district has been proposed to expand,  but there were no details provided. Spetzman said simply that the LID Board recommends the entire chain-of-lakes watershed territory should be taxed, but no information was presented.  Details on numbers of new parcels affected, or how this impacts the budget were unavailable The County Commissioners must adjust boundaries because the LID is created by the county board.

Also-- the slow no-wake ordinance has had a public hearing, and was submitted to the MN Department of Natural Resources for review months ago at last report. But there was no update on the ordinance.  Spetzman said, “It’s still in process,” and there may need to be another public hearing and he hopes it becomes effective by summer.

There was a motion increasing the LID aid to lake associations. The LID will fund 75 percent of weed spraying costs, up from the 50-50 historic split with local associations.  The new cap for LID funding contribution is $6,000 per lake.  Chemical spraying is overseen by the DNR and the associations,  and is meant to reduce curly leaf pondweed and invasive milfoil.

The LID also will provide roll-off waste receptacles for end-of-ice-fishing cleanup.  

The LID Board unanimously agreed to a $1,000 cap providing disposal containers at major public access sites. Ice fishing houses must be off area lakes by March 2, 2015 so the containers ought to be available shortly before the deadline.

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