This transcript features the Lakeville City Council meeting from January 2, 2024. [0:36] [Music] [0:51] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Good evening and welcome to the January 2nd, 2024 city council meeting. If you’ll join me for a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. [1:14] **All:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [1:26] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All right. Ms. Orlofsky, roll call please. [1:29] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Michelle Volk? [Present]. Luke Hellier? **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** John Bermel? [Present]. Dan Wolter? **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Joshua Lee? **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Here. [1:42] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Very good. Moving on to item number three, this is the opportunity for citizens' comments. Up to three minutes. If there's an item that's not on the agenda that you'd like to share with the Council, you can step forward, share your name and address; that would be most helpful. [1:58] **John Ness:** Good evening. My name is John Ness and I live at 19201 Jewel Path in Lakeville. Thanks for letting me once again speak to you about the proposed development at the 14-acre parcel at Kenwood Trails Middle School. As you are all aware, I believe I sent a letter to Bill Burgess, the president of the Minnesota Division of Lennar, on December 20th, and this was on behalf of 14 community members. For the benefit of those here tonight and those perhaps listening from home, I'll take a few minutes to summarize the main points of that letter. The letter spelled out how ISD 194 failed to engage the community and key stakeholders before proceeding with the purchase agreement, so it was unaware of the current land use by the middle schools, the cross-country runners, the Nordic skiers, and the community. The community is now engaged and is voicing its overwhelming opposition to this development to City staff and to all of you. [2:45] **John Ness:** The letter went on to say that the District's failure to engage with the stakeholders has placed Lennar in a very difficult position, no doubt. We all know that Lennar is a well-respected developer and partner to the City, and it's my belief that they would have not entered into this agreement had they understood fully the impact and importance of this parcel to the community and the amount of opposition to the development. The letter closes by encouraging Lennar to abandon the development as allowed under the purchase agreement, and by so doing, Lennar would demonstrate leadership and concern for the community's interest. It would be the right thing to do for Lennar, for ISD 194, for the City of Lakeville, and for the community. All of you have received copies of the letter. Several contributors to the letter are here this evening and have joined me, so we're here if you have any questions about the letter; we can take a few moments. [3:32] **John Ness:** Okay, seeing none... so in the remaining few minutes until Luke kicks me off, I'm pleased to report the community is engaged and the opposition to this development continues to grow. Our Facebook group is now at 762 members. A petition from a Lakeville student-athlete asking for the school board to reverse the sale and protect the land has now received 389 signatures. A second petition by a Lakeville resident asking authorities—defined loosely—to protect the trails, wetland, and wildlife habitat has received 515 signatures. We plan to continue to meet and we're going to be setting up an Instagram account in the coming weeks. So thank you for your time. [4:38] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Thanks, John. Any other citizen comments? Okay, moving on to item number four: additional agenda information. Mr. Miller? [4:43] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Nothing tonight, Mayor. [4:47] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Moving on to presentations and introductions. I'll turn over to our Fire Chief, Mike Meyer, for fire department retiree recognition. Give me just one second. [5:08] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for letting us present shadow boxes to two of our retirees this evening. If I can ask Taber Aken and Steve Glinsky to join me up here. Both Taber and Steve joined the department together in 2002 where they served 21-plus years on the department. Taber and Steve both started at Station 2 and then kind of went their separate ways, if you will, where Steve moved to Station 4 when that opened in 2003 and Tab finished his career at Station 3. Both of them held—kind of followed the same paths as they came in together—but they held the positions of Firefighter, Engineer, Lieutenant, Captain, and finished—I will say finished—as District Chiefs, but at the end of their terms, they stepped back down and served the remaining time as firefighters, mentoring those above them and around them as far as leaders. [5:54] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Some of the things that they did during their tenure on the department: their leadership helped improve the department's operations by helping develop our duty crew program, our drone team, station staffing coverage during COVID, and then they were the first to go through Incident Command certification that we went through as a department or as Chief Officers. I'm not going to say much more; I'll let them kind of convey their story. But I want to thank Tab and Steve for their leadership, years of service at the department, their friendship, and mentorship to me as a Chief. And most importantly, I want to thank their families for all the support that they gave Taber and Steve to be part of our community as firefighters and serving our community. One of you want to go first? [6:45] **Retiree Steve Glinsky:** I'm going first. He has the lower badge number, so I let him decide, and I retired first by about a month. So, couple of notes here. Thank you councilmembers, Mayor, City Administrator, for letting us speak here tonight and for this recognition and for our shadow boxes; we really appreciate them. First of all, I'd like to thank my parents, who should be hopefully watching from their home in Florida online, Joe and Arlene Glinsky, for showing me the meaning of hard work. They taught me how things work, how to build things, and how to fix things, and most importantly, taught me the value of every human life, which I think is very important in our society and very important in this career as a firefighter. [7:25] **Retiree Steve Glinsky:** I joined the fire department for two reasons: one, we were new to the community, I had no family here, and I wanted a way to be involved. I think the only way you get things from your community is to give things to your community. So this was an opportunity for me to be part of a team and really become a part of a very big family. So I'd like to thank my family at Station 4—a lot of those guys and gals are behind us right now and here tonight—but as District Chief, I also got to expand that family to all the stations, which really meant a lot to me to be able to meet with all of them. Chief Paulson, I got to work with you and all of his men and women of the Police Department; as a District Chief, we get to spend a lot more time with our police officers, and we have a fabulous department, so thank you Chief Paulson and your staff. [8:12] **Retiree Steve Glinsky:** There's two families that really went above and beyond in my career, and it's because my family and their family kind of got to be friends—my wife and my kids, their kids. Steve Meyer, Station 4 firefighter, and his wife Carmen were very helpful and supportive to me as a firefighter, as a Chief, and we just vacationed together; our kids grew up in high school together and I appreciate them and all they did. During rookie class, we were looking for a new house in Lakeville; we lived on the north side and we needed to move so the kids could be in Lakeville schools. My wife told me about some houses; I went to training and one of the other firefighters said, "Yeah, I think that house is in my backyard." And of course, it had to be in the two-mile radius of Station 4 because I didn't want to change stations. So it turned out to be the family of John Muma, a retired firefighter, and his wife Tovy. We raised our families together and if it wasn't for the fire department, I would not have my "brother from another mother," Mr. Muma. So thank you, John. [9:36] **Retiree Steve Glinsky:** Trying to make it brief: four firefighters that greatly impacted my career. Retired firefighter Greg Stasney, who’s here tonight, he was my first captain at Station 4. He taught me to be calm. I’m not a calm person—everybody will find that—but Greg was always calm and that was the biggest influence on me and really helped me settle down and get into this career. Former LFD firefighter, current St. Paul firefighter and paramedic Chris Horniak was my ambassador of firefighter knowledge. The guy is a machine; he loves this craft and taught me so much from the first call we had, which was a garbage truck fire. I was so impressed with him and learned so much; best paramedic I’ve ever met in my life. Fire Marshal Brian Carson, who's here as well tonight—he was my District Chief when I came on and scared the Jesus out of me because he is so calm as well. I've learned so much from him; as a District Chief, he always took time as I went up the ranks and was always there for me to ask questions and give advice in a very calm, mellow way. And as District Chief, I learned so much about fire behavior and fire investigation; he always was there and willing to spend extra time to teach. Thank you, Brian. [11:17] **Retiree Steve Glinsky:** One more person is this guy behind me: retired firefighter and District Chief Taber Aken. As you go up in the ranks, your peer group gets smaller, and I would not have made it as a District Chief without him. His partnership, his friendship... it was just a great team effort. I don't know if we can put that picture up there by any chance? All right, one other group to thank and introduce. This picture was taken pretty much right after the badging ceremony here. I think we went across the street. Ladder 4 is not here anymore; that's been replaced. My hair is not here anymore! But luckily, all the other people in the family are here. My son, if you could please stand, Connor, who's a lot taller than he was there, and he's joined by his girlfriend Lauren. My daughter Mariah and her Jack are with me tonight. And of course my wife Claudia, who... I saved this to the end because I knew I might get a bit emotional, but she's been my rock. She's allowed me to do this for 21 years and it wasn't easy on her, and I appreciate her letting me do this. So thank you very much. [13:08] **Retiree Taber Aken:** I don't have a choice anymore, right? Many of you know that I have the opportunity to serve as an elementary school principal in Lakeville, and I had the mistaken idea that I might get a minute or two today to put some notes together for tonight. So at around 5:00 or so when the end of the day was closing out, I pulled the notepad out and put some things down. As Steve and I were sitting there chatting with each other before the meeting, we said, "I don't really have anything put together." Well, I'm going to define "not having anything put together" because Steve is a terrible example of that as he's up here with his typewritten notes and I have a bunch of chicken scratch on here! [13:54] **Retiree Taber Aken:** I, like him, want to give a shout-out because I know I've got some family watching virtually, and of course my wife Beth is able to join me tonight to be here for this important event. For me, first off, I want to say thank you because I appreciate the opportunity to do this work. This is one of the primary reasons we live in Lakeville, because I wanted to be a volunteer firefighter. My wife was patient and kind enough with me as we said McAndrews is going to be kind of our south boundary, we're not going to go any further than that—and we did. I'm very thankful to have had the opportunity to live and work in this community. I love Lakeville; this is very much a home for me. I grew up on the East Coast but drifted out here and this is home. It just feels very much like the right place to be. Being a firefighter and getting to do that work was also very important in fulfilling that place to be home. [14:41] **Retiree Taber Aken:** I blame my dad. My father was a firefighter for 43 years, and I remember running down to the bottom of the driveway when he would leave on a call in hopes that the call would take him back past the driveway so that I could see the big red truck go by. That was probably one of the other big motivators for Lakeville—that we have red fire trucks! So that was an important piece and an important thing to do. Beth was sharing a memory the other day from Facebook. It was New Year's Day and she had posted on Facebook that she was a little frustrated because I'd left on a call, then I came home, only to leave again for another call, and then I think it ended up being three calls. Finally, I came home and said, "Start the grill and we're going to have some burgers." That's the nature of the firefighter work; you're responding to the community and supporting the community whatever those needs might be. [16:14] **Retiree Taber Aken:** I want to give a big shout-out and a big thank you to Beth because she's been with me through this entire process. She has been a supporter; she's been a cheerleader. She’s just been with me the entire piece; she’s been an amazing support, an amazing voice. As simple as tonight, she said, "You're probably going to need to button your jacket because you got something on your shirt." Calls that were just very, very difficult, when I would come home and she'd say, "How was that?" and I'd say, "I need a hug, I don't want to talk about it, but I need a hug." It was hard. And she was always there for me. So Beth, thank you very much for your partnership and your support. [16:47] **Retiree Taber Aken:** I want to recognize a group that's very important, and the group is Abijah. Abijah is currently a partner with the Fire Department and possibly the Police Department in providing therapy for firefighters, first responders, and others. I have had the fortune to avail myself of their services; they've been incredibly generous and made it almost impossible to say no. I get to go back on the 15th. They're incredible and they're doing some amazing work. I counted the other day when I was there—there are two therapists, an equine specialist, a service dog, and four horses. I was like, "I have about seven to eight beings taking care of me for an hour!" It’s amazing. I have to give a shout-out to Sally and her crew because that very unique approach to hanging out with horses in a barn has made an incredible difference for me and has been very therapeutic. [17:49] **Retiree Taber Aken:** Some of the people that I want to recognize: Todd Selner. Todd is reportedly out doing rookie training, but Todd was always a step ahead of me in the fire department. Todd would tell you if he were here that he's still a step ahead of me! But he was always a mentor for me, a guide, and Todd was always there to give suggestions on how to do things—and as the men and women can attest, he's there to tell you how not to do things as well. As Steve identified, we are a small peer group that we get to work with, but we also don't really have partners, even though we don't do anything alone in the fire service. [18:34] **Retiree Taber Aken:** There were two opportunities when I got to have partnerships, and that was with Paul Morkim when Paul was the Lieutenant and I was the Captain at Station 2. The titles didn't matter; we were partners in co-leading and facilitating the work that came out of that station. And then when I moved into the District Chief role, getting to be a partner with Steve. That one was just very memorable because you're the only two people doing that work. When you're a District Chief, there's one other District Chief. I would frequently refer to Steve as my partner, and it very much was that situation where we were constantly in communication, constantly using each other as sounding boards. In both cases with Paul and Steve, we were a good balance. I believe that we offset each other with our skills and strengths. [19:50] **Retiree Taber Aken:** And then I want to conclude by celebrating Chief Meyer. As Mike indicated, there are a number of facets to our relationship. Of course, he was my boss and he's the formal leader, the Fire Chief; however, he was also a friend, a supporter, somebody that encouraged taking risks and trying something new. He was frequent to offer opportunity but also frequent to collect feedback and work to grow right alongside us. I greatly appreciate his leadership and the opportunities that he facilitated and extended to me. And with that, I'm done. Thank you. [20:52] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** So you notice that they both have different styles to their shadow boxes. One piece that we used to have was a set shadow box, but as we grow our system, the question I continually ask them is: "Your shadow box represents your years of service, but ultimately when you bring it home, what's your significant other going to let you put on the wall?" So I usually connect them with a person on our department that makes them, and then they develop the shadow box as far as what they want it to look like. Why one's a different color than the other is that they work with one of our firefighters that builds them. One of the unique things that Steve did with his is that both of them were part of our drone program, but Steve put a little drone emblem in his. They all represent their badges or their service from firefighter all the way up to District Chief and back down to firefighter again. So thank you for the time to allow them to have a little conversation with you about their career and letting us have time to present the shadow boxes to them. [21:55] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Thank you, Chief. Council comments? Yeah, John. [21:58] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Steve and Tab, I just want to say congratulations. I don't want it to be lost on anyone the length of your service—21 years in a profession that is physically, mentally, and emotionally grinding. That's a huge commitment to our community. I'm proud of you, proud of our fire department. Those shadow boxes are nice, just a really small token of the amount of gratitude this community has for your service. [22:25] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** I just want to extend thanks on behalf of the community. Both of you retiring is going to be a huge loss for our department, and so we're just so thankful for your years of service and mentorship to the people coming behind you. You both mentioned "calm" and "partnership," and I'll tell you, I remember when we had a fire at our house when you were both there, seeing both those things work. So just personally, just grateful for that. Again, thank you so much for your service and we'll let you guys take a picture or stick around; it's totally up to you. Thanks again. [23:47] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, we'll move on to item 5B: our Public Works quarterly report. Turn over to our Public Works Director, Mr. Oehme. [23:51] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Right. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. This is a fourth-quarter report for Public Works. I'd like to start out on some of the street projects that we worked on last year. After our third-quarter report, we did open up 185th Street, a new section from Dodd Boulevard to Highview Avenue, early November. It was a little bit later than anticipated just due to some weather conditions, but opened it nonetheless; it's a great connection now to Highview and a nice east-west collector for the City. There's still a little bit of restoration left to do in the spring, but overall it's been a very successful project. [24:50] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Looking forward to this summer, the next project we're planning on is Dodd Boulevard, the reconstruction from Cedar Avenue to Pilot Knob Road. Again, this is a County Road, but eventually it'll be turned over to the City for future operations and maintenance. On this project, we're anticipating opening bids in the end of January. We'll have a tree removal contract ready to go in February out to April sometime, and then after road restrictions, start the project right away. This project will take all summer to complete. [25:19] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** This graph shows the number of miles that the City has added to the system due to new developments over the years. This last year, we added almost four miles, which is down from the last couple years just due to the growth in the community. Moving on to the Street Division, we did have seven call-outs this year so far from October to the end of 2023—same as 2022. But in 2023, obviously, we had a lot less snow and ice; the call-outs we have had are more ice-related, so we have used significantly less salt than we did in 2022. Our street operations went well this fall. We completed all our street sweeping a little bit ahead of schedule. Patching went really well. We were able to, with the warmer weather that we've had, do some inspections on our culverts and plan for some future repairs and replacements. Then we got a good start on some tree removals and tree trimming that we were planning on for this winter as well. [26:45] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Moving on to the ADA transition plan, just a little update here: the Council adopted the plan about three years ago and we're making some good strides to replace all the significantly deteriorated or non-compliant ramps. Those are the ramps that don't meet the federal or state guidelines right now. So we are down to about 66 ramps that still have to be replaced. We are anticipating replacing about 40 of those ramps next summer with other projects that we have scheduled, and we'll replace the rest of the ramps by 2028. We did inspect our street system again this fall for our pavement conditions; that's been completed and we are meeting our goals of having our overall condition of our street system in the 70s. [27:35] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Moving on to the Utility Department, we did have a record water production year this year. We did produce over 3 billion gallons of water this year; that's about a little over 5% more than we produced last year and that can be attributed to the hot, dry summer that we had and the new developments that came into town. For sewer maintenance, we did jet 71 miles of sewers this year, meeting our goal there. We did line 13,700 feet of clay pipe, meeting our I&I projections. And then we did rehabilitate one lift station which was in our CIP, Lift Station 16. [28:25] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Moving on to the Environmental Resources Division. I just wanted to highlight a few of the water quality improvement projects that we completed this year. Orchard Lake Hydrodynamic Separator: this is a stormwater improvement system that removes a lot of the sediment, pollutants, and floatable materials before it ends up in our lakes. Middle Creek Stream Restoration: this was a section of stream that was highly eroded and deteriorated. We realigned that creek a little bit and restored it so it doesn't erode as much anymore; this is the last phase of a three-year project and we are done with two miles of stream restoration on the Middle Creek area. Foxborough Park Stormwater Improvements: we constructed a pond there to treat some of the runoff in that neighborhood—about 220 acres—before it ends up in North Creek. It will help water quality and flood mitigation as well. And then East Lake Carp Barrier Project: this is to help prevent carp from going upstream into East Lake, which will help reduce the phosphorus loading in the lake. In all these projects, we used about $1.4 million worth of grant funds to help pay for them. [30:00] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Water Conservation: we did receive a grant from Met Council. We had five HOA audits and helped three HOAs improve their irrigation systems. With that money, we also had some left over to improve some of our own irrigation systems at the water treatment plant, Fire Station 4, and City Hall. By some of these improvements, we're estimating that we save the community about 3.3 million gallons of water. Management of natural vegetation: environmental service staff did some prescription burns, some seeding, some Buckthorn removal, and managed a little over 117 acres within the community. For MS4 permitting: these are the numbers we are going to be reporting to the state. We did meet our goal of inspections of ponds and outfalls—389, that's about 20% of our inventory—and sump inspections as well, cleaning out about 128 sumps. [31:25] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Waste reduction and recycling: we had a very successful recycling program that took place this fall. Pumpkin composting—just want to highlight that: 48,000 pounds of pumpkins were recycled and didn't go into the landfills. That is about double what we had in 2022. A lot of shoe recycling took place too, and the community really threw away a lot of holiday lights as well; I think about 50% more than it was the year before. These have been really embraced by the community. [32:00] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Moving on to the Forestry Division: we're still in the thick of it for Emerald Ash Borer. We had about 73 trees in the rights-of-way that are marked for removal by street crews yet this year. We’ve got another 134 trees that are in parks and natural areas that have to be removed by our staff and contractors. Right now, the forestry staff is starting their survey for private property Ash inspections as well, getting those notices out to the property owners. We did have a lot of Oak Wilt in the community; this can be attributed to the drier summer that we had. We had to remove a bunch of Oaks in our natural areas and parks this year. And then our forestry grant: this is our last grant that we have with the DNR. We have a little bit of money left from that grant, so we're still removing some ash trees and replacing those trees in our natural areas. [33:38] **Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** Additional information from the Forestry Department: we did renew our application for Tree City USA in December and we have ordered our trees now for our Arbor Day tree sales that take place in April. Residents can start ordering those trees and shrubs online starting in February. With that, that's my update for Public Works for the fourth quarter of 2023. I'll stand if you have any questions. [33:55] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, very good. Any questions, Council? Appreciate the update, thank you. [34:03] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Thank you, Mayor and City Council. Tonight is a bittersweet night. Daryl Mory, our Planning Director—this is his last council meeting. I have some numbers here just to give you the scale of the impact that Daryl has had on the City of Lakeville. 35 years alone—that's the number of years he’s worked here at the City of Lakeville. That, if I were to give you one number alone, is enough, right? But it gets better. He's had six job titles with the City of Lakeville: Community Development Director, Assistant Community and Economic Development Director, City Planner, Acting Community and Economic Development Director, Director of Planning, and Planning Director. He's had 10 planning staff, including John Hennen, and he turned out okay. He has worked with 27 Mayors and City Council Members, and 53 Planning Commissioners. [35:21] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** This next one I don't think is official; it's just one I came up with: I think he's gone through 100 boxes of colored pencils. Before we had fancy maps and everything, he would always come up here with colored maps that he would show, and I'm sure he wore those down to the nub. 641 Planning Commission meetings attended. That's probably still on the light side because that does not include any open houses, any joint meetings with city councils, any neighborhood meetings, anything like that. 675 plats have been approved since Daryl Mory has been in charge of the planning department. So by my rough math, that means you probably have better than two-to-one odds that if you live or work in Lakeville right now, it happened due to a plat or due to development that came through while Daryl was here working for the City. And that is also a population growth from about 23,800 people to our estimated 74,000 people now. [36:30] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** When I was researching the job to come here as City Administrator, I contacted Roger Jensen. Roger was our longtime City Attorney, and I just wanted to get his perspective on the job. The first and really only thing he said was that the City of Lakeville has the best planning department that he's ever worked with, and specifically, he called out Daryl Mory. That's a lot coming from Roger, who had been in a lot of cities and seen a lot of development. I would totally agree after working here with Daryl and his team. Daryl, on behalf of four City Administrators, 27 Mayors and Councilmembers, and 53 Planning Commissioners: thank you and congratulations. [37:33] **Planning Director Daryl Mory:** Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. I've told folks that I'm really uncomfortable talking about me. I can stand up here—and I have so many times before in front of you—talk about specific development projects or development in general, but talking about me, that's something different. Former Mayor Doug Anderson told me a couple weeks ago, "You know, write down some notes if you're going to do a speech." I wrote down some notes and I'm going to deviate from them right off the bat because I have an opportunity here. I still have a few more days left; I have an opportunity to impart some history. [38:19] **Planning Director Daryl Mory:** Today, my first City Administrator stopped by: Pat McGarvey. Pat hired me back in 1988, and he stopped in to tell me unfortunately he wouldn't be able to make my retirement party next week, but he did want to come in and say hi. I learned something new from Pat that I'd like to share with you. When I started, we were downtown in what the coffee shop is now, and I was up on the second floor and they just kind of stuck me in the corner because they didn't know where else to put me. Downtown City Hall was busting at the seams. But at the time, plans were in place for building the City Hall here on this property. Pat McGarvey had bought the land for it; he knew it was a bit of a risk because it was not considered "downtown" because it was on the other side of 50 from what was considered downtown. But he took that risk. [39:25] **Planning Director Daryl Mory:** He told me today—and I did not know this—when the original plans for City Hall that we're sitting in were prepared, they did not have the council chambers located where they are now. Pat told me, "The council chambers are for the people. This is where the citizens come to connect with the Planning Commission and the City Council. It should be prominent right at the front entry to the city and facing that intersection of Holyoke and County Road 50." So he had the plans changed to basically pull these wings out and put the council chambers right here up front. That's something I learned new today and I thought that was something that was worth passing on, especially if you knew where the old council chambers were—down in the Industrial Park, they were really tiny, really small. Back when smoking was allowed indoors, it was quite the treat! [40:30] **Planning Director Daryl Mory:** 35 years has gone by in the blink of an eye. Super fast. [Music] Sorry... Kelly and I moved to Lakeville 33 years ago. We started a family, got married, raised three kids here. They all went to and graduated from Lakeville North High School. They've gone on and got their own jobs and they're very successful. We've really enjoyed our time here. I really have. The staff at City Hall are awesome. I really, really appreciate the support of the City Council and the Planning Commission. If I didn't have that support, I would not have stayed here 35 years. But you guys have been great. Your predecessors, all those folks on the wall over there—of which I worked with most of those people—have been very supportive. [41:35] **Planning Director Daryl Mory:** What I really want to do is I want to thank my staff, the planning staff. We do have a great planning staff and I really would like to especially call out my longtime Associate Planners, Frank Dempsey and Chris Jensen. Chris is here today. They are the backbone of this department and without them, the department is not the same. And then of course my wife, Kelly, for taking care of the household and the kids during all those night meetings and hours that I was at night meetings. She had to take care of things, so I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed my time here, really appreciate it. [42:15] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Daryl, I have been able to work with you for the past seven years and you have taught me a lot. I didn't know literally anything about planning before coming onto the Council. I'll just never forget, I think it was my first or second year on the Council and some geography teacher had asked us to come over, and you had no problem sitting with high school students for four hours with me and talking about planning. I don't think they knew what we were talking about, but it was a fun experience and actually I learned a lot in those four hours and I won't forget it. So I just want to extend my gratitude to you for your many, many years of service to our community and look forward to your party next week. [43:08] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Moving on to item six: our consent agenda. Any items to highlight, Mr. Miller? [43:13] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Well, there's no more retirements! I do have a couple though. Item 6D is the designation of our legal newspaper for 2024; this is an annual item and we are once again designating *The Sun Thisweek* as the paper for all of our public legal publications. Then item 6K is a resolution accepting donations to the Parks and Recreation Department in the third and fourth quarters, and we are appreciative of those donations. [43:35] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Very good. Thank you. Council, any items that you needed or wanted to discuss further? If not, I'll take a motion. [43:42] **Councilmember John Bermel:** I move to approve the consent agenda. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Is there a second? **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Second. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any further discussion? All in favor say "aye." **Council Members:** Aye. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Consent agenda passes. [43:55] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** We'll move on to action items: nothing. Unfinished business: nothing. New business: appointment of Acting Mayor for 2024. This is a person from on the Council who would step in and run meetings in my absence or attend certain events. So we'll take a nomination for Acting Mayor for 2024. [44:17] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** I would like to make a nomination, and I'd like to nominate Joshua Lee for Acting Mayor for 2024. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Joshua, do you accept the nomination? **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** I do. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any other nominations? Seeing none... is there a second? **Councilmember John Bermel:** I'll second that. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, second the nomination. Any other nominations? All in favor of appointing Joshua Acting Mayor for 2024 say "aye." **Council Members:** Aye. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Okay, congratulations. [44:48] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** And with that, announcements. Next regular meeting is Tuesday, January 16th, here. Our next work session is Monday, January 22nd, at our water treatment plant, which is on the corner of 185th and Ijava Avenue. And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. [45:06] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** So moved. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Second? **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Second. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All in favor say "aye." **Council Members:** Aye. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? We're adjourned indeed. [45:14] [Music]