You know how it is when you’re living in virtual quarantine, and you’re leading a virtual meeting.

River Falls Mayor Dan Toland does. Here’s how last Tuesday night’s River Falls City Council meeting got underway.

“Let’s call the meeting to order. I’d like to welcome everybody to the …geez I don’t even know what day it is anymore. That’s horrible,” said Toland.

That said, the council embarked on an ambitious agenda and meeting for nearly two hours, with council members appearing from their homes and offices on video camera, visitors at the city council chambers and staff largely in their offices.

Terry Bekkum started off the meeting by questioning a multi-family housing project underway in the city.

“First I’d like to say thank you to Alderman (Christopher) Gagne for listening to our concerns ahead of time and also to (City Administrator) Scot Simpson,” said Bekkum. She and her husband live at 505 Kennedy St.

She expressed concerns on the development of land across from River Falls High School and Cemetery Road and Sixth Street.

“We have talked to many neighbors who are also concerned,” she said.

She said the city didn’t communicate well with the neighborhood that a large multifamily development was going to happen there.

“We were shocked to see the tree line in the field being torn down one day,” she said. “For some reason, we thought we might be in on the decision. We feel our neighborhood should have received some specific information about this.”

Bekkum expressed concerns over the population density of the development and traffic it will create in the area.

“We understand and we know River Falls needs housing and, more importantly, affordable housing, but does that necessarily mean that every project needs to be a multi-unit project such as this? Doesn’t’ a development with owners rather than renters provide better stability for a neighborhood?” she asked.

She said neighbors in the area hoped for a different use of the parcel, rather than 90 multi-family units.

“We are concerned with the added population density and the traffic that will be created. Getting out to Cemetery Road from Sixth Street is already a challenge at certain times of the day,” she said. “Secretly we hoped the city and the school district would have joined together and looked at this as a prime spot for a community center or some kind of park. We should hope our city leaders would see the value of this land and envision something better than a group of eight or 12-unit buildings.”

Photo by John McLoone.