Since the provided transcript did not include timestamps, I have used `[00:00]` as a placeholder. You can sync these to your audio file as needed. *** [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Good evening everyone. I'm calling to order the November 12th Richfield City Council meeting. It's 7:00 p.m. and if you are able, please rise and join us for the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. Next, we'll move on to approval of the agenda. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** I move approval of the agenda. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. [00:00] **City Council:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All opposed. And we've approved the agenda. Next, we'll move on to approval of the minutes. And it is for the city council work session from October 28th, 2025 and the city council regular meeting from October 28th, 2025. And we did have one small clerical error. So if you look at the minutes for the city council meeting, it says the meeting was called to order by Mayor Pro Tem. And so that is correct for the work session. But if you go ahead to the city council meeting, it leaves off um the name of the Mayor Pro Tem. So first of all, thank you for covering for me when I was unable to be here last time. I appreciate that. And we want to make sure that we add um your name to the minutes. So if without objection that'll be part of our motion with that clerical error corrected. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** I will move approval as as described by the mayor. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. [00:00] **City Council:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All opposed. And we've approved both sets of minutes. Next, we'll move on to the open forum. Participants can share their comments in person, by voicemail, or email, and may also request to participate virtually. For more information on submitting comments, you can refer to the council agenda and minutes page on richfieldmn.gov/citycouncil. I have one comment card here. And if there's anyone else that wishes to speak, you'll want to fill out a comment card as well. And the way we've been doing this, if you've already filled out a comment card, you just need to tell your name and the city you live in. You don't need to give like specifics like your address and you have three minutes to speak and we'll give you a warning if you're starting to run out of time. So the first person is Kevin Claus. If you would like to come up to the microphone, go ahead. Thank you. [00:00] **Kevin Claus:** I haven't been here since I was a Richfield Arts Commission chair like 10 years ago. So, it's nice to be back today. Though, I'm here on behalf of the Richfield Bloomington Jefferson Jaguar Youth Hockey Association. [clears throat] And we're just trying to get the word out that you can still register for youth hockey. And a lot of people think hockey is only for kids that already know how to skate. And that's not with us. We'll happily teach them how to skate. And this year, registration is free. We were able to get a grant from the Minnesota Wild called Skate It Forward. So any kid ages four to nine in the Richfield or Bloomington area can register for hockey for free this year. And if they need any equipment, we also offer low-cost rental on equipment. And so we've got that taken care of. We've got being able to teach kids how to skate and how to play hockey this year. And so registration's open. There's only about two weeks left to sign up. So please go to jeffersonhockey.org. On the jeffersonhockey.org website, just click through. There's mites on the top. He's a third-year mite. This is Kip. And you'll see a registration information. And so just please get the word out on that. Hockey builds confidence, teamwork, and lifelong friendships. Please help us spread the word so more Richfield families can take advantage of this amazing opportunity. and we hope to see you on the ice. Thank you. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. And to help out the city clerk, can you state your name for the record? [00:00] **Kevin Claus:** Yes. Kevin Claus. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All right. Thank you so much. And thank you for bringing your um son along with you to to help participate in the city council meeting. Thank you. [00:00] **Kevin Claus:** Thank you. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Is there anyone else who wishes to speak for open forum? Anyone else? Did we receive anything ahead of time? [00:00] **City Clerk Michelle Friedrich:** We did not. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All right. Thank you so much. So, we'll close down open forum at this point and move on to proclamations and presentations. And I am delighted to welcome the president of our civil service commission to give the report on that. So, President Bruzzek, if you want to come up and tell us about civil service, we'd be delighted to hear you. [00:00] **Jeffrey Bruzzek:** Good evening. Thank you for having me. I'm Jeffrey Bruzzek. I am the president of the Civil Service Commission for the Richfield Fire Department. As you know, we meet four to six times a year to discuss employment hiring practices and other best practices. The commissioners this year: myself, I'm the President; James Fichette is the vice president; and Mary Stratton is our secretary. We had a big year with some endings and some new beginnings. For the 2025 outlook, Chief Dobesh was instrumental in beginning succession training and planning prior to his June 25th retirement. We can't thank him enough for getting everybody prepared for that. Early in the year, we had a firefighter eligibility register. In early 2025, we had to vacate that registry. Um, we had hired three candidates off of that and only one remained. We oversaw a creation of the new firefighter eligibility register which new hires will be pulled from. Other big thing that happened was the fire chief selection process. We discussed using both internal and external processes to ensure competitive selection and candidate search. We ultimately certified a fire chief registry register with two named candidates. One was external and one was internal. And I can say I'm delighted that we welcome Jenell Brooks as our new fire chief. She has been fantastic to work with. Other goings is that we regarding the resident requirement, we supported the removal of the 20-minute residency requirement. Sorry, my glasses are really bad here. In order to create an increase in diversity and a competitive search process. This marketplace has really become competitive with the full-time firefighter positions with all of the neighboring communities. With leadership structure, we proposed reclassifying the vacant assistant chief position to a deputy chief position in order to meet the evolving operational and administrative needs. And we also approved the deputy chief hiring process and we're in the middle of that right now. The firefighter register cancellation due to the residency requirement change and the limited remaining candidates—we approved cancelling the current firefighter registry. A new process will be approved and started in November or December of 2025. A couple other things to note: our firefighters are always working hard to serve the community. We have two long-term military employments, so I think we can all thank them for our services. The firefighters are also working harder than ever. It's my understanding that these service calls are projected to increase 4% over 2024, which was a record year with over 4,000 calls. And it's interesting to note, and I never understood this or knew this until I started on the commission, is that over 90% of the calls are medical related and are not fire service, what we would think would be fire service related. In fact, it's so time consuming that we now have nine-person shifts. Again, I want to thank former Chief Dobesh for his leadership and kind of showing me the way of what happens in the fire department. And I'm sad to report that Mary Stratton is no longer going to sit on the commission as of this term. She's been instrumental for the last nine years in serving the commission and she's been instrumental in assisting me with any leadership with the commission as well. So with that I have no further reports and I will see everybody next year. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** I wanted to just say thank you because I know you do a lot of really important work and please pass that on to the other commissioners. We're going to miss Commissioner Stratton. I know she has done a lot over the years. So, thank you for all that you do to help us and help with our fire department. All right. Next, I am pleased to welcome the chair of the planning commission. So, Chair Eddie Holvig Johnson, if you would like to come and tell us all about your important work. [00:00] **Eddie Holvig Johnson:** Thank you, Madame Mayor and Council members. Um, first of all, I want to thank our city staff that work closely with us, Planner Via and Planner Crosby. They really provide excellent administrative support, are very responsive to commissioner questions and the public, and whenever I talk to Sam Crosby, just like the amount of emails and this that she responds to—and a lot of things are handled on a low level so that residents are served quickly and fairly. So it's fantastic working with them and getting such great support. The planning commission is one of the city's oldest commissions and is established by state law and city ordinance. We have seven members and we guide the orderly and compatible development of Richfield, and the commission holds public hearings, takes feedback, and reports to the council with findings and recommendations. This year has actually been pretty slow. We've canceled four meetings due to no pending applications. Some of the things we have considered: Woodlake Nature Center, recommending approval of that; some work sessions with the council; hearing presentations about the Minnesota Independence College and future learning center; the Penn Station Apartments; and then another work session about multi-building housing concepts in the Legion site. Additionally, a large part of the discussion was about the changes to the zoning code. And that's been a process that we've been pleased to be a part of with the MR2 and the MR3 districts. Overall the members of the commission—it's a strong commission with lots of good members. Several of the members actually work in different levels of public service: someone from the university, I work in the public schools, Secretary Taraldson works for the state in the Pollution Control Agency, and then we have people who work in real estate and manufacturing. So we have a wide variety of experience in the public and private sector. Membership has been pretty stable. We haven't had people leaving midterm. And it's really a collegial body to work with. I think most many of our actions are unanimous, but when they aren't, it's very respectful. And I think we come to consensus and real compromises. So, I'm always pleased to have our meetings because we can really hear each other out and hear the ideas. It's also wonderful because we frequently get members of the public speaking before us and often Planner Crosby or Planner Via can connect them with the right city office if it's not the correct one, or we can just hear their feedback and it informs our views. I just wanted to thank the other members of the commission. Brett Stors is the vice chair. Ben Surma, Cole Julie, Matt Taraldson is our secretary. Stephanie Kowalcowski and Brandon Connealy are also members. So I'm very pleased to be the chair again of the planning commission and I thank you for the trust that you impart with us. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you so much and thank you for all of your work because I know there's a lot of detailed laws and rules that you all have to follow and everybody seems to really take it seriously and work really hard and we appreciate that. Did anybody else want to add anything? Council Member Hayford. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** Yeah, I just wanted to thank you all for being so prepared and thoughtful in our mutual discussions in those council work sessions. It has been kind of a slow year. Having been on the planning commission, it is more fun when there's specific projects in front of you that you get to work on. But that work is really important and particularly on the multi-family housing zoning code, there were really thoughtful good ways the planning commission improved the final result of that. So, thank you for your engagement on that. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Next, we'll move on to the consent calendar. City Manager Rodriguez. [00:00] **City Manager Katie Rodriguez:** Thank you, Mayor. The consent calendar contains several separate items which are acted upon by the city council in one motion. Once the consent calendar has been approved, the individual items and recommended actions have also been approved. No further council action on these items is necessary. On tonight's consent calendar: Item A, approve disbursements and claims. Item B, consider a resolution supporting the goals and projects outlined in the Richfield Public Schools safe routes to school comprehensive plan. Item C, consider approval to set a public hearing to be held on November 25th, 2025 to consider the issuance of a new on-sale wine and 3.2% malt liquor license for Brim 2 LLC doing business as Brim Restaurant located at 2910 66th Street West. Item D, consider the approval of an agreement between the Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department and the City of Richfield Police Department for an embedded social worker. And I submit these items for your consideration as part of the consent calendar. Thank you. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Is there a motion? [00:00] **Council Member Sharon Christensen:** I'll make the motion. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Okay, it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent calendar. Before we take the vote, I just wanted to thank all of our various partners that are mentioned here. I know we've collaborated with the Richfield public schools on the safe routes to school. We've worked with both Hennepin County and the city of Edina with putting in place the senior social workers and those types of programs, and so it's been very helpful to have the different parts of the government working together so that we can have a better product. So I want to publicly thank all of our partners. Any other comments? All in favor please say aye. [00:00] **City Council:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All opposed. And we've approved the consent calendar. Next we're going to move on to a resolution. So, I'm going to turn this item over to Council Member Burk. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** So, the item for consideration is a violation hearing and consideration of resolutions regarding civil enforcement for establishments that failed alcohol compliance checks conducted by Richfield Public Safety. Alcohol compliance checks were conducted by Richfield public safety staff on September 17th, 22nd, 24th of 2025. Compliance checks are done to determine the availability of alcohol to people under 21 and meet state statutes. There are currently 30 establishments in Richfield that hold licenses to sell alcohol. Six of the 30 establishments checked sold alcohol to an underage person. The action being taken today is enforcement and penalties against these establishments. It's a first-time offense for the following establishments: San Miguel Enterprises LLC doing business as La Pasadita Shortstop, 7034 Cedar Avenue South Richfield, Minnesota; and KMAC doing business as KMAC, 6420 Nicollet Avenue South Richfield, Minnesota. The following establishments have failed two or more compliance checks. However, resolution number 9511 states if a second offense occurs outside of one year of the first offense, it will be considered a first offense. The following establishments failed outside of the one year and are considered a first offense: Lindale Smokehouse LLC doing business as Lindale Smokehouse, 7745 Lyndale Avenue South; Patrick's French Bakery Inc. doing business as Patrick's Bakery and Cafe, 2928 66th Street West; Fred Babcock VFW Post 555 doing business as Richfield VFW Post 555, 6715 Lakeshore Drive; and El Habano Mexican Restaurant LLC doing business as El Habano Mexican Grill, 6519 Nicollet Avenue. Establishments will be given an opportunity to admit they made an unsafe sale to an underage person and agree to the penalties imposed by the city council or deny the allegations and request a contested case hearing. The city council will adopt resolutions imposing penalties for establishments that admit to the violation. If the allegation is denied and a contested case hearing is requested, the city council will refer the matter to an independent hearing examiner. Establishments will be notified of the hearing date and given the opportunity to present evidence and rebut the city's evidence at the hearing. For a first-time offense, public safety recommends the city council follow the guidelines set forth in resolution number 951: suspend the license to sell alcohol for 5 days, pay a $1,000 civil fine, meet with the director of public safety to present a written action plan to ensure future compliance, and require a manager to attend an alcohol compliance training and awareness presentation with costs paid by the establishment. The training must be conducted by a private firm and approved by public safety. The city attorney will briefly review the process for the city council. [00:00] **City Attorney Mary Tietjen:** Sure. Thank you, council member, mayor and council. So, this is an opportunity for each business to come up and either admit to the violations and then be accepting of the penalties that will be adopted pursuant to the resolutions, or the other option would be to have the business deny the violations and then they would go through the process of requesting an independent hearing that would be conducted outside of this meeting. So, this is not a public hearing, but it's a formal—it's not a formal public hearing, but the council should request if there are businesses present to come up and choose which option they would like to pursue. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Okay. So, at this point, I'll call up the businesses one at a time if there's somebody here from that business. If there's no one here, we're going to assume that they're admitting to the violation, but we want to give everybody who's here a chance to reply one way or the other. So, if there's someone here from La Pasadita Shortstop, if you want to come up and you can either say that you're admitting to the violation or you can request a contested hearing if you're denying the allegations. Is there somebody here from that establishment? All right. Um, so, Ms. Anderson, have you heard from them? [00:00] **Support Services Manager Jennifer Anderson:** Mayor, I was not made aware that they would not be here this evening. However, staff does contact businesses to let them know that they should be here this evening. So, I would assume that they would be accepting of the penalty. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Okay. Next we have a representative [from KMAC]. If you want to come forward and the choices are to admit that you made the unlawful sale or to deny that it happened. Go ahead. [00:00] **Representative (KMAC):** Um yeah, I admit my violation. [clears throat] [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All right. Thank you. Next. Is there someone here from El Habano? [00:00] **Representative (El Habano):** Hello. Yes, we do admit our violation to the unlawful sale. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Is there someone here from Lyndale Smokehouse? [00:00] **Representative (Lyndale Smokehouse):** We take full responsibility for the unlawful sale to an underage. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Um and it's my understanding that the representative from Patrick's Bakery was not able to attend, but they are admitting to the violation? [00:00] **Support Services Manager Jennifer Anderson:** Correct. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All right. Thank you. And then finally, is there someone here from Fred Babcock Post? [00:00] **Jeff Husby (General Manager, VFW):** Good evening, Madame Mayor and council members. Jeff Husby, general manager, and we do—I do take full responsibility for the unlawful sale to a minor. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Thank you. And so, Support Services Manager Anderson, you'll be working with the businesses for carrying out the required meetings with public safety and the compliance training. [00:00] **Support Services Manager Jennifer Anderson:** That's correct. Staff will be in touch with each establishment to set up a meeting date and time with myself and the chief to make sure that they complete the list of requirements for the violation. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Right. Thank you. And thank you for everybody that came tonight for the meeting. So, Council Member Burk, if you wanted to make the motion. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** Yes. So, I'll make a motion to approve the attached resolutions regarding civil enforcement for establishments that failed alcohol compliance checks by selling alcohol to an underage person. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? And hopefully we can get this straightened out so we won't have any more sales to anybody that's underage. Thank you again for coming tonight. All in favor, please say aye. [00:00] **City Council:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All opposed. All right, we've approved all of the attached resolutions. Thank you. So, moving on in our agenda, we'll go on to the city manager report. [00:00] **City Manager Katie Rodriguez:** Thank you, mayor. Um, there were no speakers at our open forum last meeting, so I don't have anything on that. Um, I did want to pass along thanks to Clerk Friedrich and her team for a smooth school board election. Also thanks to Council Member Hayford Oleary and the public works team that put together the Senate bonding tour. We got a lot of compliments about it. So, thank you. They were here visiting the Nicollet reconstruction project and so we've got an ask in for $10 million to cover our cost shares for that project. That's all I have tonight. Thank you. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** I'm glad that both of those went very very well and I believe we have a house bonding tour coming up tomorrow so hopefully that will go equally as well. Um, I wanted to talk about the fact that we are having a fall food drive and it will be now through November 21st and they'll take essential items in, you know, like feminine hygiene products, diapers, shampoo in addition to food because all of those things are very expensive. So, if you would like to drop them off at the ice arena, any of our liquor stores, or here at the municipal center. That would be fabulous. And we're trying to get a thousand pounds of goods to give to VEAP. And if we got more, that would be fabulous, too. So, the reason I'm bringing this up during the city manager report is it goes through November 21st, which is right before our next meeting. So, I'm hoping you can give us a report on what the results were for people bringing things in. So, thank you for that. All right. So, moving on, we will go to the council discussion items. If we have any liaison reports from the commissions—we've been fortunate to hear the chairs and the presidents giving their reports, but if you have any updates that you want to give. Also our hats off to hometown hits. Council Member Burk. [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the La Bonita market opening. But I did go there with my son who has quite an appetite for tamales and the place is quite a success and I'm very happy to go there and I will admit to having at least one—I'll leave that—but I'm very happy that they're open and wish them all kinds of success. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Council Member Hayford. Oh, okay. We'll come back to you. Council Member Coleman-Woods. [00:00] **Council Member Rori Coleman-Woods:** I am—I was grateful to attend in the mayor's place the annual fall benefit benefiting Friends of Woodlake and the Woodlake Nature Center. Um we had amazing dinner and turnout. Um and my understanding all the silent auction items went well beyond retail. So that was excellent for their organization and for our local community and Woodlake Nature Center. And then hats off to the Fix-it clinics that are now coming up bi-monthly and those are going to be the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. Those Fix-it clinics are for fixing your broken household items. And there are people that are there helping to teach and so people can gain confidence in repair skills so that we don't throw so much stuff away. But we appreciate everybody that's come out tonight for the first pilot and then anticipate more coming dates. The next one looks like December 10th. So, come on out and bring your broken items. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. Council Member Hayford. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** Um my two items are related liaison reports. I'll say transportation commission met last week. They discussed our 2026 sidewalk projects and gave some feedback. I know the council's already clued in on that, but we'll be having sidewalks around Sheridan Hills Elementary, 64th Street from Veterans Park all the way to Lyndale, and 73rd Street filling that gap. Um so they gave some final feedback on that. And the other item was they reviewed all of the phase one feedback for Penn Avenue and all the feedback we've received from the public and that relates to the Penn Avenue next open house which is November 18th at Sheridan Hills Elementary and you can learn about the sidewalks there as well although they're two separate projects. So this will be the one where they actually start to show ingredients of a street. You get to kind of vote on what things you think work well and they're splitting it between the Penn central commercial area and then the more residential area to the south. So, it'll be kind of a unique setup compared to like the Nicollet open houses. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Great. Thank you. Council Member Burk, did you have an additional— [00:00] **Council Member Walter Burk:** I did. I almost forgot that the Richfield Human Rights Commission is going to have a free legal advice clinic this Friday, November 14th, starting at 12:30 till 5:00. We have volunteer attorneys from the area who will be giving free legal advice about family law, housing, landlord-tenant disputes, and a wide variety of other legal matters. So, please come down. It will be at the Richfield Community Center. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** Thank you. As Council Member Burk already mentioned, we were very excited when La Bonita opened up and I want to say welcome to the community and I also want to thank our community development staff, everybody from the planners to the inspectors to the economic development managers. It was a team effort of everybody working together and working together with the business owner to get this off the ground. So, we were very excited and so hats off to everybody involved in that from the team. I also want to echo the thank-yous for the elections and for the whole staff that worked on that and they went very smoothly and so we're happy to have that. And I don't know if people are aware that we're doing this transition: eventually we're going to end up with only having elections on even years, but for a couple years more now we'll have elections every year. And we appreciate that. Um, I received an email from a resident who wanted to give hats off to our first responders. She talked about a car was on Lyndale Avenue and ran off the road and drove over the sidewalk and ended up along the side of their building by City Bella. And she saw the first responders working—the police and the fire department—and in particular one of the fire department staff stay behind and cleaned up all the debris from the car and the things that it had hit. I found out later from Chief Brooks that the other firefighter had to go with the individual that was injured in the accident to the hospital and they worked together with the police department to handle the whole situation. So, I just want to give a hats off to all of our fire and police officers for all the hard work that they're doing. And it was appreciated and it's fun to get emails like that that appreciate our staff and what a great job they're doing. Um, the other thing I wanted to talk about is I wanted to thank Council Member Hayford for covering and doing all the meetings while I was out of town for a family emergency and thank you for going to the fall dinner for me and covering all those things. So, just a team effort and I just truly appreciate that. And finally, I want to do a hats off to the students of Richfield. So, I had the pleasure of going over to Centennial Elementary and talking with the fourth graders about what local government does and they had all kinds of very intelligent questions and I'm always so impressed. It's like the kids ask adult-level questions and they're just like elementary kids and they come up with the most insightful things. And it was interesting how they could tie everything together when they were talking about—they were asking questions about why people litter, but then they were talking about the impact on animals and how it affects the parks and all the things that they could do and sustainability and different things. And so they tied it all together. So it was very fun to listen to them. And then the next day the Richfield STEM School had an assembly honoring veterans. And it's always so much fun to see the kids and they had the entire school sing a thank-you song for the veterans. So, it was very impressive listening to all of that. So, hats off to all of those kids and tomorrow I get to email and get questions from some third graders that sent some things in. So, the kids have been busy learning about local government. So, thank you to all of them. With that, if there are no further items, I would entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. [00:00] **Council Member Sean Hayford Oleary:** So moved. [00:00] **Council Member Rori Coleman-Woods:** Second. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** It's been moved and seconded to adjourn the meeting. All in favor, please say aye. [00:00] **City Council:** Aye. [00:00] **Mayor Mary Supple:** All opposed. The meeting stands adjourned.