good evening ladies and gentlemen it is now 5 30 and i will call this regular meeting of the burnsville city council to order it is our tradition to stand for a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance and we invite you to join us 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 if the clerk would note that all council members are present councilmember keely is uh joining us virtually and he's undo uh good evening councilmember keeley and everyone so we continue to create and find solutions during this global pandemic crisis that we find ourselves experiencing so tonight's meeting is being conducted in person most of our city council members and staff are in the council chambers and practicing social distance members of the public may attend in person if they like they may also watch this meeting online at burnsville burnsvillemn.gov meetings or comcast channel 16 or 8 59. if you would like to participate during the meeting remotely you may join online at zoom dot us slash join or call in at 651-372-8299 callers will need to dial 9 star 9 to raise their hand to speak and dial star 6 to unmute when we open a time for comments more information is available on me on our meeting web page and in the council agenda packets so and for all of our visitors tonight our guests who are here when your item is called then we ask that you come into the council chambers because we're practicing social distance and then you can come and address the counsel i have a sign up list that's going to be brought to me so i know who's going to be speaking so thank you upcoming meetings regular council meetings are scheduled for tuesday october 6 5 30 p.m and tuesday october 20th at 5 30 p.m we have work sessions scheduled for tuesday october 13th at 5 30 pm and tuesday october 27th at 5 30 p.m and tonight uh we are pleased to welcome the burnsville community foundation um mr michael ash is uh the president of the uh burnsville community foundation and mr esch um you're going to be presenting over here and you can take your mask i think you have something to present you to me for us i do we're very proud to be able to do this again this year i believe it's what the 21st year yeah that we've been doing this every year we raise funds to help pay for the lighting in the city of burnsville which is gorgeous was last year it'll be even better this year uh we sure hope that we'll be able to raise the same amount of funds this year uh with the covet of course it'll be a challenge but we have a great team working on it and we're pretty happy that we'll be able to do it so i'd like to present the city with 35 000 and thank you very much [Applause] [Laughter] yes thank you for always being a loyal partner and making sure that the city is vibrant and attractive to people and that they want to come so thank you for all the years of being a great partner and uh our other people so if the other folks from the foundation board if you could just come in so that everybody could recognize the people on the board who raises this money and uh some great work so here's the board so what we want to do but i'm not quite sure how we're going to do that in social distance what do you think it's an interesting challenge wide angle camera you want to go outside yeah so it's the panorama function on your phone yeah it's okay so you guys want to come and stand and amy why don't you come in the picture too and maybe jenny or bye stands in the back all right one two three one two three thank you thank you it yeah thank everybody it makes your eyes quench because i know it's what's it called yeah okay thank you so much to the burnsville community foundation thank you so the next item on the agenda is citizens comments this is the opportunity for anyone in the audience to address the council on an item that is not on a printed agenda and not an application form that will be coming before us at a future date is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the council anyone who wishes to address the council seeing no one we will move on the next item is additions to the final agenda and this is for emergency items only miss maskoli are there any emergency items to come before the council they're not made in there members of the council okay thank you and then we move to the consent agenda the consent agenda is a group of items that's considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion however an item on a consent agenda can be pulled for a separate discussion and vote is there anyone in the audience who wishes an item on a consent agenda to be removed for a separate discussion and vote ms collins madam mayor i have someone on zoom that would like to address 4m 4 m i will pull for n thank you madam mayor i was going to have that item pulled but mr lemke is connected through zoom and would like to speak to that issue and has some questions are you pulling for m council member keeley i am okay miss muscoli the staff want to pull anything from the consent agenda no matter mayor members of the council uh 4m is pulled for a separate discussion and vote may i have a motion for the balance second council member of gustafson makes the motion second by councilmember workman all in favor please say aye aye opposed nay and the motion carries council member keely 4m is an application of weekly homes llc for a development stage plan unit development floodplain conditions use permit to allow work in the floodplain of north twin lakes shoreland cup for impervious surface coverage shoreline variants for setbacks a lot width and a lot area preliminary and final plot of a 52-unit uh residential townhome flat to be known as twin lakes residential second edition for 23.5 acres of land located north of the intersection of carriage lane and south cross drive west we're asked to approve the development stage pud conditional use permit variances preliminary and final plot and to adopt the findings of fact and ordinance this item was before the planning commission and it was voted on unanimously for approval councilmember keeley thank you madam mayor mr olympia reached out to me earlier today and brought forth some questions and concerns and i felt they were valid he was unable to attend the planning commission and so i wanted to use this opportunity to give him some time in front of the mic or in this case doom to bring his concerns forward have staff address them and we can then discuss at council thank you okay what is it exactly that you were asking for staff to do council members am i asking staff to do yeah listen to mr lemke he's on the zoom oh mr lemke is okay i did not so mr lemke are you on i i am mad american you hear me uh we can hear you so are you okay are you on zoom or you're just going to be talking to us through your phone uh unfortunately my uh my connection isn't great when i turn on the video so if this works um otherwise i can try the video but i may cut out okay mr lemke we can hear you well so please proceed thank you madam mayor and councilman keeley for giving me an opportunity to ask a few questions here i guess the first question i have i i was disappointed to see this was on the consent calendar i understand that when things are decided unanimously by the uh the planning commission that's usually where they go but i think that uh this project um all three phases of this project are pretty um pretty large in scale and and probably deserve a few more questions but the the first question i have um would be about the the the decision by the planning commission to allow a variance for the impervious surfaces um i can speak for my my uh my yard and my neighbors and that the boat landing across from south twin lake that were all flooded for for weeks on end uh when we had heavy rainfall because the system was already overwhelmed that's that's the response we got from the city was that the entire uh system was overwhelmed so um i just hoping i can get a little more uh clarification on why the decision would be made to allow to go above and beyond i think it's what 35 or 40 i have to go back and look at the notes to see what the variance was but they allow a significantly more impervious surface than what's normally allowed okay [Music] well ms garros is the planning person for this item but who's going to feel this um mayor i can so christine the a lot under the ordinance is 30 impervious surface the variance is for up to 43 percent the a couple of things the when looking at the project we look at the project as a whole because the original project came in as a planning and development and it does include not only the project the 274 units i believe the assassin project that's under construction right now a future phase three of an apartment project but then also the townhouse project so when we look at the project holistically it from a staff standpoint we felt that the density is moved around and kind of shifted so that it's spread out throughout the entire development and not just focus necessarily if you look at it zoomed in on this project it's not unusual for um for the either staff planning commission or council to approve um differences from what the city code would allow whether it's a variance or planning a development deviation and as a whole in concept the city council has seen this plan in some form not the exact same footprint but there's been support all along for the proposal stormwater management is handled on-site for this particular project i do want to note that the applicant is in the audience if there are any specific questions for them i think his question was directed to staff as to how we got to the variances around all of that mr lemke did you hear all of that i i did not america um but i guess that that's the point i guess other than some assurances from the developer i mean we watched firsthand what happened this this summer already um what other assurances do we have that that this isn't going to amplify a problem that already exists uh with the existing home the community that's that's already there when you're going for it's a pretty significant variance i think from 30 to almost 50 percent um even looking at that project as a whole and that other first phase is under development now this is phase two and if there's gonna be a third phase i i i i think there needs to be more thoughtful discussion or something more assurances to us about what that impacts actually gonna be and then i know there was some disagreement i just reading through as councilman keeley pointed out i unfortunately was not able to attend the planning commission but i did notice in the in the notes that uh there wasn't complete agreement with staff on on the the variance for uh how closely together and how many units are going to be crammed into this area so that all is very concerning to us in the neighborhood especially those of us that are on on south twin lake that you're you're having a variance you're putting more units together more closely compacted and we already have issues uh with with water and flooding um i guess so maybe it is more of a question for the developer than staff it wasn't a process question um so i didn't mean to cause confusion there i appreciate staff's response but it wasn't a process question it was more of uh going forward we have real concerns with what's going to happen uh on on south twin lake um and how it's not going to be amplified and why why the decision was made or allowed to be made um that would that would allow that much more impervious surface on the opposite side of the leg from something that's already an existing problem okay and your concerns mr limke because i remember you were part of the when we uh were discussing this project i think it was what two three two two three years ago when we were discussing this project so right now we're with the town homes and uh your concern also having to do with the floodplains yes i think it would yes absolutely yeah okay and i think i'm looking at the um at the findings of facts um so what i hear you saying is that you want to have assurances that this development is not going to create any harm uh to the environment that's that's correct or that we won't see amplified flooding on the other side and south twin lake when we saw from reigns this summer that there was already issues and i don't know how uh how it's it's a good idea to to grant a variance for more impervious surface uh than is normally allowed it seems like the the the number of units should have been looked at before uh allowing that variance uh yes i'm going to go oh uh to our uh engineers engineer because she did all of the calculations and this is miss jen desrud and so they're looking at also uh do we have the drainage system in place and we have enough of a pipe to move all of that water so miss dejrud uh mary council um so all of their stormwater calculations have been reviewed and they are consistent with our requirements but i also wanted to point out that at the last council meeting we ordered a project and a public improvement project the south are the twin lakes drainage improvements that we will be having open houses and mr lemke will probably be getting a postcard tomorrow to have open houses about the drainage system and some public improvements that we're going to be making we'll be expanding the regional pond changing some outlet structures and so as far as assurance and you know we can't really assure anything with the weather and how that works but we can we've been modeling it and we've been finding like some potential improvements that could mitigate some of the issues that we've been seeing over the last few years that's good because we have been seeing a lot of issues with regard to the the drainage system but i do know that you've been working on it from our public works um lens so um mr limke i understand that uh so you're you're looking at the number of them the impervious surface and the environmental and the mayor if i if i just clarify um looking closer at the staff report the shoreland impervious surface request is a conditional use permit to increase not a variant so i misspoke um they're allowed to go actually up to 50 with approval of a conditional use permit so so there's no variance that's why i was going to the findings of fact and i didn't see a variance under the findings of fact um correct not being in dc and okay so mr lim key um there is going to be a an open house desert we'll be mailing postcards they were mailed today for a virtual open house on monday october 5th and an in-person open house at lac lavon park pavilion on october 7th so a couple of opportunities to meet with staff and our consultant to talk about the project so mr lemke there is an opportunity for you to attend in person or virtually and have conversations with the developer not the developer the consultant team on the project so the consultant on the project yes okay does that help mr lemke the phone called madame i'm sorry i did not mean to interrupt you i was just wondering if what staff has reported and the opportunities for you to address the consultant who's working on this project i haven't i have not seen that the notice yet so looking forward to seeing that and going to those meetings to learn more about that project and i are you okay with what you learned tonight i i am to a certain extent but i think it's set in the notes of variance so i'm a little confused where it's it was a conditional use versus the variance but i'll go back and look at that um just if i might if i could just ask one other question too i'm curious about the the market analysis that was done um to i know they it said in the notes too that they plan to have these marketed to uh young families and and price them at 360 to 400 thousand dollars plus in a homeowners association fee for uh for units that are are planned to be closer together and actually need a variance i'm curious why they think the market will will uh that that would be the market value of those those homes that's a business to business uh um question uh we deal with land use but uh that's a good question for you to ask mr limke because yeah they're marketing to um young families and the price point that they told us this product would be is 360 to 400 for each unit you're correct in reading that that's what i see also thank you madam aaron i guess i i i won't belabor this i i i kind of know where things are going here but the the the last thing i would ask um uh going forward and i on behalf of my neighbors and myself everyone i appreciate the postcards are gonna be sent out i think it would cause a lot of goodwill if if more people were noticed on the block we talked about that during phase one and that never happened i think there's three three houses on carriage lane that actually get the notice but and i understand that the letter of the losses that's as many that people have to have to be noticed but i think it would be in the best interest of the developer to notice more people so that they could come to that especially that stormwater hearing because that might pacify some people and answer some questions uh the other one too going forward um now that this is being developed and we see where the uh the the other two uh recent developments with the the apartment and the uh the senior living facility and uh the traffic study i would i would hope that the council or the planning commission when phase two was discussed would revisit that issue on on traffic uh because the first study uh i think was wholly inadequate and not credible okay mr rood mayor council so the um with the comprehensive plan amendment a full traffic study was done for all three phases it was completed by the developers consultant srf and then reviewed by our consultant bolton bank and found to be adequate and using all of the normal standards for doing a traffic study we looked at it as a whole for all three phases but if you break out this one phase the trips are all going out to south cross south cross is can has the capacity to handle the increased volume which is very minimal and also they looked at the delay at the um intersection uh we talked in traffic what's that was that plymouth and 42 where they did the actual counts also um yeah they did counts all over at every intersection in the area they got actual counts but to forecast the trips from the development they use the ite trip generation manual which is the standard used in in almost all traffic studies that have ever come across so they it was done in an adequate adequate way and was vetted and reviewed by our consultant as well this particular 52 unit townhome produces very minimal trips and south crosses their access point and there's no delay minimal delay onto south cross or on south crest at all it's got a large amount of capacity for the size of the road okay um did you hear all of that mr limke i i did but if i'm not mistaken weren't there two uh entrance points and access points in what was originally approved versus now they're talking one just straight on to south cross no i believe it was always just one access onto south cross and then the other development phases have access on to grand and and 145th so mr lemke if you remember when the whole concept plan was brought before us about is it two two three years ago that um the entrance into the development where the apartments were was out of grand and then the town homes were out of south cross and it winded around yeah because if you look at the topography of that whole area um it had a a big drop from grand so when you enter from south cross you're not it's about the same elevation yeah but i let me ask steph was it 300 how many um because i know that the this neighborhood wanted uh to expand out the notices uh not the 350 but how far out did we mail out these cards if i may answer um 350 feet to standard mailing we not only mail we also publish in the newspaper as required by state law but then we also have other avenues for people to become aware of different projects that are going on they can sign up for our egov delivery um we have a development map now where people can click on a property and sign up for um notifications to various um media streams um through social or media channels through our our city so there's different ways to get information okay so but this mailing went out to 350 right correct yeah so mr lemke if there's others in your neighborhood who would like to be notified if they can call staff we can help them navigate to on to understand how they can get all of that information and to be invited to some of the uh virtual and in-person town home uh town halls i think thank you madame i know some have reached out and they still aren't getting the notices but that's that's a separate issue and i'll i'll let you guys get back to your agenda i i just want to say i think that it's a mischaracterization of south cross having that kind of capacity when you look at that entrance i think anybody can drive by that and see that there's going to be issues so i'll just leave it at that and thank you all for your time yeah well thank you mr lemke for uh reaching out and um we can have this conversation and then uh you can also call and talk with our staff um miss regina dean or else deb miss deb garros is the planner who has this project and her portfolio and then our city engineer is jen desiroud so we're all available to help okay uh thank you uh you brought the point that we started this conversation two years ago and i appreciate the conversations we had then but unfortunately we're right where we said we would be now with this development and that i think that's very unfortunate okay yes it is and we'll continue okay thank you so much for calling in councilmember keeley thank you madam mayor and i appreciate mr lemke bringing forth some of these uh these issues the flooding and drainage uh did catch my attention and he had some other concerns that he shared regarding uh traffic and and uh so i i thought it was uh well worth giving him some time uh sarah's thoughts and and i appreciate you and and staff uh handling that on a fairly late notice but with that i would move to approve item 4m council member keeley makes the motion second second by council member gossips and all in favor please say aye aye aye opposing a and the motion carries thank you staff if you could also pull up some of the traffic study that we had from two or three years ago because i thought that was very well done and then also the plan that we approved and i think that was concept plan with regard to the townhomes and the apartment buildings so that's background information so that we can take a look and say here's what we acted on okay so it's available okay thank you very much okay we are now at our regular agenda and on the regular agenda we have um 5a and that's a public hearing and this is to approve a wine 3 2 on sale and brew pub off sale liquor license for an effable brewing company ms collins our city clerk is presenting ms collins thank you madam mayor and city council and i believe the owners of it of ineffable if you can come into the chambers please i know that they're in the audience there's seats back there yeah okay miss collins thank you madam mayor city council we do have richard and beiberstein who are here to apply for an on sale wine and beer license and an off sale liquor license to sell growlers at uh ineffitable brewing company that was the former nutmeg building is where this location is going to be at the investigations on the principles involved have been conducted and nothing was found to deny the license the license will be issued contingent upon approvals necessary from the state and payment of all fees and approvals from internal departments this is a public hearing i stand for any questions we also have the applicants here if you have questions for them okay any questions for staff okay great this is a public hearing i open the public hearing is there anyone who wishes to speak to this item anyone who wishes to speak to this item mr mrs stein do you want to speak or do you want us to act on your application uh okay uh this uh i close a public hearing um councilmember shots uh i do have a question for the applicant okay mr mr stein which one of you are going to come to the to the microphone good evening yes could you uh please inform me what is your establishment going to be like and what are you going to be offering um so to start it'll be more of a focus on beer um crafted beer and then we want to move more into the kitchen we'll obviously have some food to start but we want to have a fun atmosphere try to provide a fun experience for people who really like beer we've gotten a lot of feedback from the community that they're very excited for that and that's quite simply what it is we just hope to provide a fun beer experience and when will you be open our hope is october 10th we obviously are waiting on licensing and a few other things but that's kind of our prospective goal at this moment in time thank you thank you yeah yes councilmember workman explain what type of beer you'll be brewing for all kinds um we want to hear from burnsville and the public and what they want and that's what we want to provide so hopefully never the same thing twice unless you really like it good answer thank you you're welcome okay thank you and welcome because you belong in burnsville thank you yes okay i will now close the public hearing may i have a motion motion to approve second uh council member schultz makes a motion second by council member workman all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed a and the motion carries thank you the next item on the agenda is also a public hearing and this is a resolution adopting the first half of 2020 code enforcement assessments and presenting this evening is uh mr forslen mr forzlund councilman mr porcelain that's not of you know really came down for a whole bunch to only 1000. very small amount yeah kovit has had an impact on many things uh what i really wanted to say was it's really good to see everybody in good health um that's certainly important for all of us and it's good to see everybody this is a public hearing it's for the second half of 2020's code enforcement assessments uh these are for any collection of any outstanding fees such as mowing charges administrative citation fines or other expenses that the city has incurred for enforcing the codes so it is a cost recovery program this is to cover the period from january 1st to june 30th the required notices were sent to all affected property owners regarding any quote violations that existed council adopted the resolution moving forward with the public hearing on september 22nd 2020. on the 28th of august notices were sent to each affected property owner with the unpaid fee detailing the owner's property rights or property owners rights to object we held our open house associated with our procedure on september 9th that we had one person show up and we resolved that at the time since that date any property owners still wishing to object could submit a written objection to the city clerk prior to this meeting and it's to my knowledge we have not received any as of today see what else the total assessment at this time on the council agenda when we submitted it was 1 845 that is now 1 675 so substantially reduced from what we would typically see but again the effects of kova did play a role in this okay thank you uh are there any questions from mr forsen councilmember schultz and just to clarify there are no objections at this point not that i have been aware of thank you very much okay um any other questions for staff this is a public hearing i will now open the public hearing is there anyone who wishes to speak to this item anyone who wishes to speak to this item seeing no one i will close a public hearing members of the council your pleasure move to approve i will second uh council member um gustafsson makes a motion second by councilmember schultz all in favor please say aye aye and the motion carries um you know what i was just wondering uh because we have uh councilmember keely uh on soon because we're because we have a quorum in the chambers i'm fine with us proceeding with the process we are okay just for the members of the public would note that council member keeley's camera is viewable but both by me and by the city clerk okay we can hear his audio response so we are confirming his vote in participation in the call so i don't think we have to go with a roll call okay very good thank you i was just thinking that it just dawned on me and i'm thinking okay you have to make sure we hear your eye council member keeley well i've never been criticized for being a little okay so the motion passes thank you mr foreslin thank you okay great the next item is also a public hearing and this is to approve the south cross drive and portland avenue land sale and miss regina dean is presenting this item this evening miss dean good evening again mayor members of the council so just a quick um little background the land was originally purchased by the city for um development of a future fire station back in the 90s and um that didn't move forward in the 2000s the city decided to publish in a request for proposal to seek development on the site went through the process selected developer we saw a concept for actually preliminary approval for up to six lots on the property um we reguided the land at that time rezoned the land and and deals just it fell through it was kind of that time where recession was happening and just did not move forward so after all of that the city just decided to retain the land just in case if at some point we decided to build a fire station that that could potentially be a site so let's just keep it on our radar now that we have fire station one um new build under construction it a decision was made that okay at this point we don't need to retain it for a fire station we can now sell the land so in late 2019 a land for sale sign was posted on the property we referred to our land sale policy that we have established for the city and in that policy it says if multiple people are interested that you need to go to an rfp process and we did have multiple people interested in the property so we moved to the rfp process in early 2020 we ended up having four applicator four proposals received from randall anderson homes don a homes ryan contracting and timeless homes with purchase prices ranging from 138 000 to 585 000 for the piece of land don a holmes had the most i would say attractive proposal as far as purchase price and potential tax coming back to the city based off of the value of the proposed home construction so what what the proposal includes is up to nine units single family homes on a private street maintained by homeowners association this is in concept this was included in the rfp now the city council is only taking action on the land sale tonight and authorization for the city to move forward with the purchase agreement just i should probably slow down a little to give you an idea of of the actual concept that don a holmes presented um so again single family homes up to nine units with the up to nine units um as if don a homes is selected and as they move forward with some of their due diligence if they find out that because of slopes need for retaining wall need for storm water ponding things like that that they may need to reduce that number and the proposal says a reduction per unit up to a minimum of six units still with the six units it's still very in line with the other proposals actually the purchase price would be higher so it's i would say at this point more attractive to the city so we did bring this forward to the edc the economic development commission at their last meeting and typically that's the process that goes in front of the edc for a recommendation and then either to the eda or the city council depending on who owns the land for that final approval now typically the proceeds of the sale go to the general fund or capital fund or if it's the eda land it goes to the eda and this one was purchased with general fund money we believe it was purchased with the general money correct way back when correct mayor um so we did ask the economic development commission not only for a recommendation on the land sale and selection of the develop developer but then also for a direction of how to direct the proceeds of the money it can certainly go to the general fund or a capital fund or to hit on some of the economic development strategic plan goals one of the things we had posed to the edc is that perhaps this could go to fund a business or residential type assistance program economic development strategic plan goal number four talks to enhance and build awareness around existing residential and commercial programs and develop new programs as appropriate and we're actually in the works right now it was an agenda topic to bring up um you know what do we do now what do other cities do what direction do you want to go to to start having that conversation with the edc that will be before you also um in in future conversation with the council but we wanted to get some some direction from them as we move forward ultimately your as the council the deciding factor but the edc did recommend approval of selecting don a homes for the land sale and also to direct the funds to a residential program consistent with the economic development strategic goal number four staff is also requesting that council approved the land sale consistent with the rfp and then direct us to draft a purchase agreement with our city attorney we're also seeking direction on the land sale and where that would go i would like to know the the policies that we have in place with regard to land that is purchased with the general fund you know i'm not going to make a decision about where that goes without taking a look at what the policies are when we do things like that we get into trouble with making decisions that's outside of policy but we need to have those policies before us and then to say do we want to amend the policy because we've never done that before so the current policy would say i mean actually i don't know if there's an actual formal policy looking to our finance and community development director um that's just typically where it would go i don't again i don't know off the top of my head if we have a formal policy why don't we do some research around that and we can make that decision later yes the city does have a formal policy and that's why your memory is working as it usually is because yeah and the current policy is that uh property acquired by the general fund when sold the money go back to the general fund and similarly if the property was acquired by another fund most notably an economic development fund then the proceeds from that sale would be sent to that fund it is fund specific now that doesn't mean you can't deviate from the policy it is just that a council policy but you're right to mention that that's an issue for the council to consider yeah and i think we can make that decision later because the money isn't in the bank and that's correct we do not have to we don't have that and we have time to make that so we make good prudent decisions from policy and not just say yeah let's put it wherever let's make sure that we talk we think this out uh in a very prudent and thoughtful way council member customson regina on uh the edc when they wanted to create this new program is this just a one-time monies thing or is there something where we need to fund this for sustainability down the road um so these are some initial conversations councilman um the the idea is that this would be seed money and it would be revolving in concept but it could potentially be funded with additional money as the council or future council see fit but this would be a start for a residential program they did indicate that um for any commercial or business type land sales that those would be directed to more of a business program that was in their communities isn't that something that we could actually do out of the eda as well for economic with the residential okay so we already have a mechanism in place to fund residential if we choose to go that direction which i would not mind seeing but yeah but let's make sure we have good policies in place okay tonight we're only dealing with the sale okay are there any other questions for staff i do want to know that donai holmes is representative steve banke is in the lobby and it's a public hearing i think there might be people that want we have three people from follower who was to speak but i do know mr benkin is here so we're going to have him come forward and speak this is a public hearing so i'm opening the public hearing and mr benky you are the first person to speak and so the folks from wildflower are going to be listening very carefully to you mr binky and welcome thank you mayor members of the council good to see you again i do want to thank you for this opportunity um we did see this parcel as a as a very nice little piece for us to move into as we finish up the summit at buckhill project 100 units that we've been developing there since uh 2006 we were just completing last units we were looking for something to move into here it would have been nice it was a little bigger but i'll tell you what i think this can be a very nice project for burnsville and i really thank you for the opportunity be happy to stand for any questions you may have any questions for mr benky i'm just you know what uh our staff had shown as to what that product would look like essentially we have a similar project that we completed a year ago in woodbury again that one built out through the through the crash and we kept the whole thing and this is how we do business i guess in the state um we've we had a number of projects prior lake woodbury burnsville that all went through the crash we carried them all the way through we completed them all woodbury is a very similar project in terms of the size of the units they're the 45 foot wide house exactly the same size as wildflower when i first looked at the property i noticed and that there seemed to be an inconsistency between the original pud and and what would fit there and i really took a good look at wildflower which i actually worked with scott larson on that to a degree when when he developed that way back in the middle 80s but we do have a number of product that we currently build these are four of them on this photo we also extensively redeveloped in edina over the last eight years we've pulled over 80 permits and we actually have a new townhome project any dyna starting in the grandview area later this year a lot of those units are also this narrower lot product and we feel that a lot of them have character that i'll be bringing to to this to this site we do plan on on being complementary to wildflower although we are you know clearly building now instead of back when they were built our price point of 450 seems consistent with what is currently selling at the higher end in wildflowers so we truly believe that our product will help actually enhance their values um honestly uh somebody might be more interested in buying a currently existing you know building instead of a new one but in this case i think the new ones will have their own their own you know reason for people to buy them we do have ramblers as a prime focus thinking that we may be angling a little more to the empty nester and help pull some of those people out of other single families to open up those homes for new families however our uh our woodbury project uh ended up being about out of 30 units it ended up being about almost 75 percent ramblers but the balance was still two stories and split entries so there's definitely a market here i i like the veranda and your pillars because you know it faces forward it's very welcoming to the community so that you can have that uh ability to sit on your front porch and see the world go by yeah the front porch is seen in pretty much almost every house i end up with one on these days it's pretty much dictated by my bosses yeah but your buck hill project are you all absorbed up there uh we have three everything is purchased i'm still completing three units and i uh i have a walkthrough on the fourth one tomorrow and so i mean we're just waiting on some closings and finishing off kovitz definitely slowed some things down and created some problems but our our construction never really slowed down especially after governor opened up golf courses again we sold three houses that weekend so the thing is you're fully absorbed you just have to finish it right okay we've got everything soldered all the landscapings and all the irrigations and so basically the the project looks complete now from the outside there's just a few of the units on the inside that we're finishing okay mr binky i'm going to ask you is there any questions from mr banky i'm going to have him have a seat over here mr benky because i have mr keith peterson from uh wildflower 507 wildflower mr peterson please come in and listen very carefully because these are going to be your neighbors good evening mr peterson thank you very much for having me here of course um my name is keith peterson i've been 507 wildflower i was the second owner in wildflower so i'm very familiar with construction in the in the area okay i have uh if i look at my longevity in burnsville it's uh 50 years i lived in apple valley and burnsville cut right through my backyard and then i moved to carriage lane in 1983 and i moved to wildflower 97. this uh the sale of this property i feel like is deja vu the sale of this property was before the before this body in uh in about 2005 i believe it was and that's when the real estate was marking going up i don't know something crashed anyway it became economically in uh not feasible to develop that property at that time the pud for this property is six units from what i understand okay now in order for them to do nine units they're gonna have to go and get a variance is that correct and is this the body that's going to approve a variance well the process will go through with our staff first and they'll have conversations about all of that and then it'll go to the planning commission and then to us the planning commission will look at all of the technical details of the land use and the codes the uh the uh i remember when scott you know scott larson you probably might remember him when he built wildflower i mean it was a very arduous process of to develop the pud i mean there was landscape drawings there was you know detailed drawings of everything that was going to happen and the city was very stringent about making that happen okay and you want us to do the same and we i'm counting on the fact that but i mean it's it's interesting that don a is the only one that is going for nine homes okay everybody else that bid bid within the six home uh uh plan okay that scares the heck out of me because if i don't know if any of you ever looked at that property but nine homes looks like gerbil habitat to me okay now everybody was you're complimenting the uh builder there on his front look well the 10 of us that are going to look at his property are going to look at the backside okay and i have no idea what that's going to look like but it seems like to me that well i i really would not want nine units in that in that place because i mean there's price and then there's value okay i think that that their 450 with nine units okay does not will degrade the value of our homes okay now as close as i can figure out and talk to real estate our values of our homes when this thing goes in is going to drop about 20 to 30 thousand dollars okay so if that is true you're going to get a degradation in the in the uh tax value of those properties okay now if you look at the the run out of your sheet you're you're running out to eleven thousand eleven to twelve thousand dollar tax value for the city okay is it worth it you know i mean it's you're it's it's robbing peter to play paul pay paul and all that kind of thing but is it really worth it to do that okay now i know some of my neighbors are going to talk about green space but the economics of this piece of property does not make sense to me whatsoever and it did not make sense to the guy that originally did this 10 years ago all right it just didn't work and i don't think this works because i don't see anybody anyplace in the estimates of the infrastructure costs and it looks like to me that the infrastructure costs are around a half a million dollars that puts the lot cost up around 120 000 per lot that is too much for that area okay that the homes in the area do not support that level but anyway i got a feeling you guys are pretty much committed to uh sell this property rather than leave it as green it's like we were committed to sell to wildflower what we were committed to sell to wildflower yeah well i wish we'd wish 10 years ago we'd have bought the damn thing when it was when it was there we could have had it as wildflower yeah but uh the other thing is to it i mean have you thought about you know the the this is going to be a uh association okay that and and and it says that at the worst case or at the best case 30 percent of the people that live there are going to be on the board if it's a sixth unit place half the people all the time will be on the board of directors i don't know if any of you ever lived in a town home association but i've lived in several okay and it's a pain it's a real pain and to get to get a fifty percent participation rate on your uh board of directors i think is gonna really be tough really be tough so you want us to be uh thoughtful when we look at this particular development when uh when don a home brings in their concept plan yeah really be critical of what it is okay uh because i mean that that i mean you city is not going to fund any of the infrastructure are you you're not going to do streets water gas electric any of that i don't know maybe the gas and electric do it for free do they but uh but i mean it's a really significant cost and it's really going to jack the value now yeah uh donnie to deal with all of that cost oh i'm sure he will you know and he's got he's got i've talked to him out in the lobby and he's and he's got a pretty good idea of what that's going to cost you know but their the track record of donai and finishing a project within their scope is pretty dismal 14 years for root woodbury i don't know how many years it was for burnsville over here uh i don't know if you ever remembered don a holmes but uh that thing was on the books forever okay even when when when uh when uh the rest of oran thompson was selling everything out you know but anyway i appreciate you letting me talk and please consider not selling that property okay thank you uh miss diane newcomer 517 wildflower road this is newcomer yeah good evening good evening i guess i gotta get a little closer to this thing okay madame mayor and council members and it's nice to see all of you thank you for allowing me to speak and as you know we live at 517 wildflower my husband and i just moved there two years ago and we really loved the area and are happy to be there um some of my questions are really um related for mr benky so if that can work yes okay so um first of all i'd just like to say for uh mr binky so i don't know how you want me do you intend to turn around and speak to him okay well if you can hear me do you intend to leave any trees on this proposed development site i'm making a list he'll come back and he'll come back to that and answer your questions how about if you just give your questions and then he's he's taking notes right there and then he's very good okay um how much uh space do you anticipate leaving between the homes yeah he's so he'll take he'll just yeah okay so you just ask you a question just ask my kids i'll take it and now staff is also taking notes so that we can look at the the concept that comes before them they will take a look at all of that very good how far back from our property lines do you intend to build okay and we do face directly this lot so it would be kind of important to know um okay um and i don't know i think me you might have spoke to this earlier if you cut down trees do you as a builder add landscaping and trees onto each site after building each home or is that up to the new homeowners and then just maybe clarify the size of the proposed homes i think you have some smaller plans for some of the ramblers and you know some of them are larger plans if not i'm just kind of curious about the range of the square footage also um we understand you believe the average price would be 450 000 is this correct so maybe some would be less than that or i don't know if any would be more than that i'm just kind of curious so and then just some comments um we are very sad and bitterly disappointed that the city of burnsville is proposing to sell the wooded development behind our homes we lived in a new home as i said for the two years and have really enjoyed the beautiful green space the wildlife the good neighbors including deer and many types of birds we need green space in our community we just can't build on every square inch of the city we just can't also you should know it's already quite loud from traffic noise on south cross and portland county road 42 and the freeways you can really hear it at different times of the day there are some quiet times but you know there are many loud times you're going to add to that noise and congestion level if you build there okay i just have a few more comments also we feel you're going to decimate the value of our homes when all the trees are cut down because we paid more in fact i know that we paid an extra forty thousand dollars to buy the home on our side of the street and there's another neighbors to other neighbors that i know have recently paid the same price we did and we know it was almost forty thousand dollars more than our neighbors on the other side of the street so obviously when you build new homes and everything gets established maybe it's better but initially it's gonna be bad so we understand the city owns it and you know you you have you know the right to sell it and donate as a builder has a right to build homes when they win the bids but that said if you add up to nine homes in that small space people are going to live on top of each other speaking the same thing that keith said to be fair to all stakeholders current and future residents if you build less than nine homes say no more than six homes it would be much better than crowding all those homes into space so that everyone current and future residents can have a better quality of life i'm asking you to follow your conscience as a city and don a homes when they make these decisions please and please be aware of the wildlife i mean there were deer in our backyard just yesterday the day before where are they going to go they have to go somewhere so i just hope you're aware of that thank you for your time and listening to me thank you so much thank you for coming in uh the next uh person who wishes to speak is mr james h i think it's screaming it's great yeah yes thank you mr creman thank you so much james grievan and i've owned the property at 537 wildflower for about 20 years now i don't live there any longer i haven't lived there for 10 years but i have a tenant that's uh that's there and she enjoys the property and she considers it her home i'm interested in a few answers to some questions is has the decision been made about six or nine properties no okay tonight we're just looking at selling and then our staff will have that conversation with don a when they bring in the concept part of the analysis of course is whether you can get six or nine properties in there right uh i think our staff will take a look at all of that and have an idea of what fits best you know you can take a look at the uh what we have and i think one of the things that they'll take a look at is that um miss faulkner were you here when we built wildflower madame mayor just predated me see yeah yeah all of this is re-dating a lot of our staff i remember i remember wildflower okay yeah and a point about your your point about wildflower being built i'm looking at this this uh map here and it looks like maybe five properties were impacted directly in terms of uh abutting the wildflower development and i think wildflower is a zero lot line because if you look at the lot lines it's it's not the five was it five or ten because these are smaller lots if i remember these were much smaller lots and wildflower than the regular lots because if you look to the development to the east those are 10-foot lots and wildflower is not okay so the developments that i'm referring to are the developments or the lots to the east that were actually there before wildflower and there looks like there's five so five and here's the point i think that that some of my neighbors were making is that you look at this development and it will affect eleven properties three four five six seven eight nine ten ten directly where the lots of join okay where they share a common boundary but it's gonna affect the value of 25 properties you do understand that right if the property value of my house goes down and mine is probably the first or second most valuable property in the development um than all of the other properties seven yeah five thirty one the cul-de-sac i am in the cul-de-sac but it's also one of the in fact it's the only two-story house and uh so it'll if my property value is impacted everybody's property value is going to be impacted so you'll probably have 25. your backyard is to south cross correct yeah so my backyard's the south cross um but it also abuts part of the the property here which brings me to another issue that i'll address in a moment about water drainage because there are i predict there are going to be profound problems with water drainage and i speak from experience of 20 years trying to control the water issue with my property but to address the point about the property values my guess is you're going to have 25 homeowners in here on those days when we can come in and contest the taxes that were being assessed um i i don't know mr is it mr benky yeah i don't know mr banky you apparently have a relationship with him but it's going to be interesting to see which property he actually on our planning commission okay so it's interesting to see what he's proposing here i mean i can see how maybe some of those properties are consistent with uh what we have at wildflower but i can also see how some are not i asked mr benke briefly what is the material on the outside of your homes and he indicated that it was some kind of a composite ours is natural it's brick it's wood and it's stucco they're all natural types of materials that you would use to to build a property and so his argument that his properties are consistent with ours probably doesn't play out when you really get down to it miss dean had a good point about the crash and you know maybe you could elucidate for the council and the people listening what happened in the last crash when a developer proposed to build this and was it the 0809 great financial crisis that we had if you remember mr um screaming agreement um it was really the housing and the um and the more mortgage lenders and so there was no money to build and madam mayor we're just getting started pardon me we're just getting started yeah yeah yeah the the economy is still crashing and you're going to see a housing crash next year you watch yeah you're watching so where are we going to sell who are we going to sell half a million other properties to well you know ours is land use and so but it's good to hear your your thoughts about all of that right yeah but i did have a question to miss dean miss dean was it in 0809 that the last developer backed out because of the crash in the economy would you like me to answer that mayor pardon me would you like me to answer yes please misty um the exact date i don't have but um from the information that i've read based off of the history it was due to the economy at the time right probably 0.809 right yeah with the recession again i don't have the exact dates um i can certainly provide that um to i'll give you my email address okay so another question i had too is um at that time what was the proposal what was the value of the property at that time you know mr gremlin she can have that conversation with you because you're asking questions she doesn't have all of that information before her right now sure that would be historical information so i'll allow our staff to get those uh answers to you if you don't mind sure and there's a couple of points i'd like to make i already addressed the issue of the diminution the value of the properties um loss of green space i think has already been addressed um has anybody ever done the analysis of whether there's still an eagle living there my understanding is there was an eagle living in the trees you know that will all come up when they do the development of reviews i would imagine that you'll have requirements under federal law to address that issue if there's an eagles yes they do we deal with it all the time all right um and then the water issues i think that's probably my biggest concern i have water issues in my property and i am uphill from this development okay and so there needs to be sufficient analysis of that in addressing of that issue and mr benky hopefully you're aware of what you're getting into because i have profound water issues and it took me years and lots of money to deal with the issue and that was i think scott larson was the developer and you had worked with scott larson and there were numerous houses in our development that had water issues for years and i think some still do um i i would uh echo the concerns that were addressed on the previous um presenter in another development was there sufficient notice to appropriate number of neighbors this is the land sale and it's but when the development comes in then ours the developer will make sure that uh you are all notified this is a land sale sure because there's neighbors across portland there's neighbors across south cross and then obviously the traffic issue will be dealt with if the water issues will be dealt with i think that those would be the major points that i would have when will this information be known about whether there's six units or nine units that are being proposed for i can i don't have that information and i don't believe that our staff has misdeen because all we're dealing with tonight is the land sale when the development comes the application comes in that's when our staff goes to work okay and so miss dean i'll just uh give you my email address okay would you like to have her her card and then you can email her that might be yes i think that would be wise thank you so much appreciate it so thank you thank you for the opportunity to come up and address some of the issues here and i would imagine that as this project goes on that we will probably have some more concerns and more issues that need to be addressed thank you madam mayor very good thank you for coming in uh the next person is mrs i think it's connie lindeen 512 wildflower road good evening good evening um i appreciate this opportunity i don't have a whole lot to add because i've already submitted a letter to regina who i think has passed it on to you yep um i think um one of the concerns that i have is the density which probably wasn't emphasized much in the letter um it is a small space i think there are a lot of water issues in the lot i i walk past that property um almost every day and water is seeping seeping out from the lot each most of the time even yesterday when we hadn't had rain for a while it was damp so um i would want to make sure that the developer addressed those issues okay we are concerned about wildlife and the preservation of natural setting as much green space as possible and so i would ask you to give your attention to that my experience with burnsville and i've lived in burnsville off and on for quite a few years and has been my preference to live here but my experience has been that you have done a wonderful job of trying to save the natural settings much more than many of the other dakota county communities so i'd ask you to do that in this instance as well i i guess the only other thing i would mention is that because of the large apartment complex that is very near us that fronts on 42 and portland there's a lot of congestion there i my husband and i actually live across we back up to the apartments and um anyway there's a lot of congestion getting out onto portland sometimes and so i would ask you to to take that into consideration as well especially with nine units that seems a lot to me okay i think that's all i have well thank you so much for coming in sure thank you for sharing your thoughts okay i think that's all who had signed up to oh did you have someone who zoomed in mayor oh we have people on zoom okay very good um who do you have uh in the waiting room right now okay we have um oops okay um let me see i i sent you a list mary el marilyn bolt uh she said that she could not stay on the others are still here so i i'll uh call on mr glenn peary mr peary are you on zoom he's there they're pushing him into the oh okay they're letting him into the room can you hear me about him there uh yes so you're not is your camera off um there we go okay there you are good evening mr perry thank you madam mayor uh clemson 524 wildfire um i'm also on the other side of the street very cognizant of our neighbors that actually have the wooded lot um behind them so understand their dilemma on what they're going through we just had a few questions that some of my neighbors have brought up we'd like to understand really the city's development plan regarding the tree preservation if there is any and then if there's going to be replacement trees especially in the back we would ask that the builder consider putting a fence up around our properties adjoining each other because we are very very close and the lot lines are very small yeah um so we think that would be helpful but we also believe they're going to put a retaining wall in um i echo the thought of my neighbors with the water and the water that pulls up in several of the neighbors uh backyards already um so that's gonna have to be dealt with and if you put a retaining wall in that's gonna back the water back up into our property lines i believe so we need to look at that and then and again whether it's six or nine um wildflower is a very condensed neighborhood as well um as the houses did today uh but we'd like to understand if the builder's gonna build six or more okay and those are all the issues okay and i our staff is taking copious notes so that when the application for the development comes in we will make sure that we take a look at the the tree preservation because we do have an ordinance that addresses that and the other is the drainage issue and we do have all of that so they will look at all of those issues and uh i'm seeing odds from our staff and they have taken note of your concerns okay thank you council members okay thank you so much for uh voicing your your concerns and we appreciate it okay i think um miss linda schnickcloth i hope i pronounced it correctly miss schnickloff are you on zoom is she it just takes us out she coming on there okay um so are you on zoom do you want to turn on your your uh video yes i did there you are now we get to see you good evening good evening thank you for this chance to speak um yeah our my husband dennis and i we moved in about a year ago and um we are back to back with what will be the proposed development and we are concerned about losing our shade trees we get shade on our deck in the afternoon and we would really hate to see those trees come down we don't know exactly how far back our property goes so that would be something that i would like to find out exactly how far it goes back if if the trees that are there already you know would be left that would be fine and then and then we just hate to see those trees all those trees and green gold because we look at that from our living room and our bedroom windows and it it really was one of the reasons why we fell in love with this house before we bought it so okay so you're concerned about the tree preservation as well yes and then about the density it would be so much better if it was six units and not nine okay very good we hear you okay is there anything else thank you so much for um meeting with us and sharing your thoughts okay thank you i am now going to go to mr miss linda fierce mrs pierce okay i think she's being let in miss collins is our moderator communicating with you ah madam mayor we're we're asking her mrs fierce now i see her good evening uh you need to unmute okay there you are yeah all right thank you um i some of what i'm saying going to say is has already been stated but i wrote out just some of my comments and everything um first of all thanks for the opportunity um i am linda fierce and my husband john and i have lived at 504 wildflower for 19 years we initially were drawn to this area because of the beauty of the environment and not only the growth of trees on the corner of south cross and portland but the wooded areas in the in the whole neighborhood down by twin lakes park which you talked about earlier and along grand avenue i think the appeal of suburban living is having that wonderful mixture of nature and neighborhoods and over the past few years i've witnessed the destruction of those south cross areas gone are the fields of clover and deer and replaced by construction of high-rise luxury housing i must ask how housing can be defined as luxurious when it overlooks the busy and noisy 35w how are the sales progressing on that area or haven't you even reached sales at that point of selling selling the space and now we see the council ready to destroy another natural environment to construct either six or nine homes i want to know first of all have you actually been to the property have you looked at it physically can you honestly picture nine homes in this location and as several of my neighbors have already mentioned being aware of the drainage issues that have plagued some of the homes that back up to that site and how will that be impacted if they're if you allow new construction how does this goal of selling this property and building homes fit in with goal number four of your economic development strategic plan that says that you namely want to enhance and build awareness of the city's existing housing well this isn't existing you're talking about putting in new housing i i must say i'm so disappointed in the vision this council sees for our city it always sounds good on paper and yet the reality is something entirely different while we sit around and wait to hear what's going to happen to the loss of burnsville center and how will that be absorbed by the city we're going ahead and planning changes on the landscape that may not really be necessary so my question is is it truly with a vision for a more beautiful burnsville or has the council been enamored by the half a million dollar price tag thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us and we hear you you would like to see us leave that space um to be natural it's been there for a long time and um you know it's it's always been planned since we made the decision um to move um the fire station to a different location that is appropriate to where they can meet their calls that this was up for sale and part of that was the piece that you have while flower the developer did not buy the whole thing so um regardless as things have changed over the years i think it's still important that we that we try to preserve some of the natural beauty and not take money and put it into planned parks and planned trails and everything that is not the natural reality of of the natural beauty of what we have right right in front of us okay um and i i really i also ask it sounds like you've already made the decision to sell you're you're listening to all of us and you're taking a lot of notes but when will the vote be taken on whether to sell or not tonight that's going to happen tonight when will we why you know when will we hear our answers to all of our questions yeah so what a lot of your questions have to do with the development and that is taken into consideration right now our staff is taking notes we understand the concerns tonight we're looking at selling the land and then the project when the application comes in and the project is being reviewed by our staff is when all of those issues that all of you address this evening will be addressed and will be looked at so well pardon me but what happens if while mr benky is sitting there listening to all of our concerns about drainage issues and and um retaining walls and trees being replaced and he's sitting there thinking huh maybe i better take a second look at this maybe i'd better go back to my group and talk about this investment do we really want to do this or if they've already taken all that in consideration then they should be able to answer some of those questions for us now well mr behnke do you want to address any of the questions so thank you so much mrs pierce mr benky is now going to have the floor okay thank you i think what we need to remember here is that this project is this is a land sale currently while we have looked at a an initial concept we certainly haven't done all of our engineering drawings or anything else at this stage i have looked at the six lot project that was previously designed the impact of this project in terms of grading or tree removal would be no different it's the same amount of land development the the question about number of lots comes about when we are looking at the design currently creates lots that are the same size and the same distance apart as wildflower so density wise this project ends up modestly less dense because there are four lots that have larger lots where wildflower is more consistently all the smaller lot size densities shouldn't be an issue here the number of lots is going to be contingent on what we need to do for storm water management and grading and whether or not they're retaining walls or not none of those questions have been answered in full yet we're simply referring to what the six lot project had in terms of a starting point the home sizes you know that that pretty much we know already our ramblers will vary between sixteen hundred and fifty square feet two stories could have up to four thousand square feet finish when you're counting the basement the sizes can vary dramatically obviously that's a market decision and we'll be selling to we'll be selling homes to people that want to buy them to replacement the city has a very very healthy tree replacement ordinance we experienced it very clearly on on summit at buck hill trees are planted both by the homeowners and by the developer that is typically how it how it's done uh landscaping uh there could be typical landscape plans as part of the pud that should be something that i'll discuss with staff um you know i think the the real discussion about lot width and setback i think everybody needs to remember this concept matches wildflower's design it's no more dense than wildflower the homes are no closer together the homes are virtually the same size materials we did see this as a project that would receive a composite product composite is a generic term we're not using kleenex here we're using tissue typical composite products are hardy board or lp they typically come with 25 or greater year paint warranties the reason that those are used is for that purpose the homes have durability and long-term long-term looks we're aware of the water issues we've asked staff for the ability to do soil borings that would happen very quickly now so that we can move forward we don't see traffic as an issue on the site with only nine homes and with portland being right there i we feel most of the people are going to be taking a right out of the project and going up to 42 to move on to their businesses if there is a retaining wall offense is required by code the type of fence could be discussed with staff especially with some of the concerns the neighbor had neighbors have but the quantity you know we've tried to give ourselves a range we do see the ability to fit nine homes matching wildflowers density but you know if there are some issues that require us to to remove a home or something that will be based on that decision at that point and view what we present to the staff and then ultimately to the council um i think the part about the uh and i still need to address this i think the issue about managing uh the goal for in the strategic plan i think the part of this that affects the city's goal for is this provides new housing that could and likely should depending on who buys here open up other single-family homes to new families being i think i think we've seen some of the people here have actually moved into this project at a an a a more advanced age i'm also i'm prime market for this i probably won't move here because i still have my house and i don't think i can sell it for what i've got into it but honestly um you know i do see this as a product project where you will see some empty nester types move in and if they do then they're freeing up typically other homes in burnsville to new families and that's good for burnsville okay thank you so much i'll stand for any other questions any questions councilmember workman thank you and thank you steve for the answering those questions um you've lived here a long time as have i and can you jog your memory on what this space was before the trees had matured this was never a woods at its inception it just has kind of become one as a result of lack of development uh i believe so i mean i look back at some of the earlier aerials and things and it was all pretty wide open a lot of the trees that are there volunteer that doesn't mean they aren't trees it simply means that they've grown up because the development of the fire station didn't happen honestly a commercial development like fire station would probably have actually impacted more of the site than this than a single family will would have um but then having it not be maintained as a as a neighborhood might it's clearly there's a lot of volunteer trees that have grown up and if they're of uh the correct species and if they're of the correct size those are are required to be uh replaced under the city's ordinance i'm well aware of that we've developed in brunswick before okay that's all i have and you okay okay very good thank you so much okay um everyone who had signed on to speak have already been given the opportunities here excuse me so go and look at the site there are hundreds of trees there okay you asked a question um councilman workman you asked a question of somebody who doesn't live at the property about what the property looked like i moved there in 1999 there were trees that were high enough to block the intersection and block the semaphore down there so you could not see the intersection when i moved in 20 years ago so those trees were already 30 or 40 feet high so why would you ask him what the intersection looked like when you could ask any of us you didn't ask any of us who came up here any questions you could have asked some of the other people that lived at this property for as long as i have or as long as i've owned the property um density relative to development he's right the density relative to the development that he's proposing is similar if not exactly the same as wildflower but it isn't when you take into account both of the developments now it's much more dense and then trees in the area who decides that question what trees need to be replaced we have an ordinance around that we do have an ordinance okay that developers comply with and this is the reason why we have all of this so that we can address these issues and here's my question about that and maybe it's more appropriately opposed to you miss dean the question i have is who makes the decision about which trees get replaced is it the developer or is it an independent party misdeed so when the developer works through the development review process specific to trees we have a forester well we have a tree inventory that's required so they're required to inventory the trees document the size and species of trees and then we have a certain percentage that a developer property owner can remove without doing any replacement so depending on what that plan comes back at with their grading plan comes back um it will determine if and how much tree replacement they have to do then we have a landscape requirement as well so each lot according to city code is required to have a certain number of trees placed for new construction that will all be evaluated at time of development review application and there's a certain size of tree and certain type of tree that has to be put into the trees are all right so the last point that i would make is that i think you see that this is a pretty cohesive community um it's a it's a community i think that's fought a lot thank you sometimes i believe that's why we have ordinances in place that addresses all of these items yeah and here's my last point i think that after these presentations tonight you will definitely see people down here opposing their tax uh pro their assessments so thank you again thank you okay everyone has spoken and i will now close the public hearing members of the council questions for staff or are you ready to act on the land sale um councilmember schultz is possible could i have our city attorney outline the purpose of this meeting tonight and what we're voting on for please mayor council as it's been stated many times here tonight's decision is limited on to evaluate the rfp and primarily whether or not the city wants to follow through with the sale of the property and authorized staff in our office to negotiate a purchase agreement with danae consistent with the city's rfp and their response to it there's that secondary question regarding the disposition of the funds but as the mayor and other council members indicated that decision is not necessary to be taken care of tonight but the first part is does the council want to proceed with authorizing us to negotiate a purchase agreement for the sale consistent with the rfp and the delay response okay you have a follow-up question um council member shows i do not okay your pleasure i'll make a motion um and then a point of clarification that donnie holmes has a lot of work to do with our staff on the design of this project and this will go before the planning commission for a formal public hearing where i think a lot of these questions will be answered and everyone that's spoken tonight will have another opportunity to speak to an actual plan right now is just the sale of the land so it's we don't have those details but i appreciate everybody coming and speaking to this tonight but with that said this project makes sense here and i think by comparison to a fire station with what happens at a fire station this is probably a sound alternative and i'm comfortable with the developer that our staff has chosen so with that i would motion for approval of the sale okay i'll make a second with a comment okay as well uh we have a long ways to go with this project as we've been kind of trying to explain to people tonight before it even gets the planning it goes through our entire planning group our plan commission i said there goes our planning group and there's many steps many steps before we ever get to a real plan that we're the planning will look at and then we'll end up looking at and i know mr behnke is very familiar with the processes here and for everyone's uh at home that's watching this mr banky uh was on our planning commission and he was probably the toughest guy in our commission for making sure he got it right when he was dealing with the other applicants so i expect he'll be bringing us a good product okay councilmember schultz do you have any comments to me i do not i'm ready to vote okay the vote's been called all in favor please say aye aye opposing a and the motion carries uh we approved the land sale this evening uh to donate homes and also uh directing our staff to work with our attorney to come up with a purchase agreement so that was the the motion okay thank you um the next item may i make a motion for a five-minute break uh yes you may make that motion and i will now recess the burnsville city council meeting for five or six okay we'll go for seven minutes for seven minutes okay i will now reconvene the burnsville city council meeting to order and uh the next item on our agenda is 5d and this too is a public hearing and this is a resolution vacating utility and drain easements at one zero zero four came our lane as dictated on the plaque of orchard gardens country club edition um and presenting this evening is our city engineer ms des roots denser mayor and council i have just a brief presentation tonight so this is the subject property 1004 kmart lane the property owner is proposing a garage addition they came in for a permit and found that their garage edition encroaches into a 10-foot drainage and utility easement that surrounds the side yards side and rear so they requested a vacation and this happened earlier this year neighboring property across the street actually had a hearing for that back in march we send out this notification to all of the utilities to see if they have anything in these easements and it turns out that excel does have overhead power on the side that the garage is in and then along the rear so they opposed the vacation as initially presented by the the homeowner um but they did approve vacating just a three foot swath around the garage edition so they're not opposed to having it be a little bit narrow in that area so that's that blue line and then we would retain all but around the garage so it'd kind of just be a little cut out there on the west side we can have our standard 5 foot drainage and utility easement so we can vacate five feet and retain the five foot along the lot line um retaining the ten foot on the rear typically that would be a five foot easement but the overhead power lines are in that vicinity so dakota electric had requested that feast remain and then we would uh request that they dedicate 10 feet on the street side that's a standard uh for plants that are planted today so um the applicant has signed the easement already we're waiting on a mortgage consent so we're pretty much ready to go with that vacating with those conditions of how it was shown on this slide and then we did get a email of support that was sent to all of you today the property owner is on the zoom if you have any questions for him okay council member shows i am not that's a old okay okay members of the council do you have questions for staff no okay uh i this is a public hearing i'm going to open a public hearing is there anyone who wishes to speak to this item anyone who wishes to speak to this item seeing no one i will close the public hearing unless uh the property owner wants to make any comments does the property owner want to make any comments seems like this is sort of like housekeeping for us i don't see anything coming up miss collins madam mayor the property owner has not indicated to us that they wish to speak hold on there's no okay yeah i don't see anything here on my phone no comments needed okay no comments needed okay i will close the public hearing members of the council your pleasure move to approve councilmember gustafson makes the motion second by councilmember schultz all in favor please say aye aye aye aye okay very good the motion carries thank you so much miss desjard we go to five e and this two is a public hearing and this is a resolution giving host approval to the tax-exempt refinancing of a augustana regent by the cities of uh landfall village hampton and malacca miss rody yep uh the city received a request to provide host approval for other cities to issue um act as issuers of revenue obligations of approximately 23 million to refinance the augustana regent in burnsville and to finance certain improvements um yep this is a public hearing and there are three representatives from the borrower here if if there are questions for them um i think they're out there um no as you mentioned notes are to be the notes are to be issued by hampton landfall village and malacca the issuance of this debt is not an obligation of the city and will not affect the credit rating on bonds that the city issues for municipal purposes generally a city may not issue bonds for a project located outside its jurisdiction but under minnesota statutes the city in which a project is located may give permission for the issuance of bonds by another city so this resolution to be considered just provides the can cities consent to the issuance of these notes by the other cities and the other thing for everyone to understand that we're just a conduit there is no impact to the budget and all we're doing is acting as a conduit to facilitate their bonds yep we are just giving approval for them to issue the response okay are there any questions for staff okay uh this is a public hearing oh no it isn't a public hearing it is it is yes oh it is the tax exempt it is a public hearing i'm looking at five f this is we're at 5e okay this is a public hearing i now opened a public hearing is there anyone who wants to speak to this item anyone from augustana want to speak or if not you know you don't have to speak because we're just going okay all right okay see no one i will close the public hearing members of the council your pleasure motion to approve councilmember schultz makes a motion second second by councilmember rortman all in favor please say aye aye aye opposing a and emotion carries good night and good luck take care okay we're done with public hearings okay we're at f this is a uh resolution establishing the proposed budget uh the 2021 proposed tax levy and authorizing the cancellation of certain deferred tax levies and our um finance director miss roadie is presenting miss rhodey good evening madam mayor council members tonight we are our meeting to discuss the proposed max tax adoption uh previously uh two previous meetings we've discussed the preliminary budget in june as well as the preliminary max tax proposal on august 25th tonight the council will consider and adopt a max tax levy for both the city and the eda that is required under minnesota statutes to be done by september 30th and the county uses that to send out proposed tax statements in november following this max tax adoption staff will prepare the proposed budget book for council ready on september 30th additionally in october and october 27th the department presentations will will be made at that council work session in november there are two scheduled work sessions on the budget um the first one november 10th is looking at the general fund and other property tax supported funds and november 24th looking at capital projects vip and enterprise funds with with the adoption of the tax final tax living budget to follow on december 8. tonight the resolutions to be considered uh we have a city resolution to certify the 2021 proposed max tax levy for the city of burnsville additionally um just to note uh that resolution also includes the cancellation of certain deferred tax levies that portion is more of a housekeeping item dakota county requires us to cancel any levies for that service that are being paid from other sources like assessments or other funds so that piece is mostly mostly just a housekeeping portion of the resolution next is the eda levy the eda meeting will occur and the edu will authorize the 2021 proposed eda tax levy the third and final resolution will happen when the city council meeting resumes and that is the city council will approve the eda levy this next slide just walks through kind of where we started off with in the at the august meeting and walks us to where we are tonight um there have been some changes since uh council met and we discussed the proposed levy on august 25th the top portion just lays out the different components of the levy increases the general fund operations at current service level is levels is the first item with that added a 4.5 percent increase we also projected for the 2021 budget uh decrease in other revenue sources of about 900 000 and the third item is planned funding for capital capital purchases and infrastructure at two hundred and four thousand two hundred four thousand eight hundred dollars or point five percent that brought the city portion of the levy to um just under two point eight million or a seven point four percent increase additionally the eda levy increase of 50 000 brought the total august max tax projection to just 2.8 million or a 7.5 percent increase since then staff has gone back and looked and reassessed and brought forth another proposal with additional levy impacts we've proposed expense shifts and reductions of 120 000 so that will reduce reduce the increase and an additional one-time use of fund balance of just over 1.2 million dollars bringing the 2021 proposed levy increase to one million eight hundred and eighty three thousand eight hundred fourteen dollars or a four percent increase um so this this does bring the proposed levy down three and a half percent um it it you know it presents an overall balanced approach to the budget it really is a floor for levee reduction without for further operational impacts the 2021 proposed use of fund balance i just thought it would be useful to have a comparison to see where we started with and where we are tonight it just details the components of that one million 1.8 million dollars of total fund balance use um in at the 20 august 25th max tax meeting we proposed 677 000 in planned use of fund balance for specific items typical typical and consistent with previous years this proposal does add we did identify the city code overhaul as a one-time item so added that at 125 000 and then the additional one-time use on top of that at one million eighty-one thousand dollars for a total of one point eighty one million eight hundred eighty three thousand eight hundred um fourteen dollars another question yeah yes yes uh councilmember the additional one-time monies is that for one-time purchases or does this go into our general fund for operating it does address the one-time revenue impacts that we're experiencing it it does alleviate that and it would be one year only okay so we're kind of buying down this year just through the fact that the last few years through some of our uh changes that we've had in policies have created a pretty good substantial uh economic impact in our community which put us in a position that we can actually do something like this thank you so follow-up question on that because we're drawing down one time but it is about drawing down we're using fun balance to draw down and so what happens next year do we have to have to come back and backfill it yeah it does it does push that forward a little bit um it does give us time to kind of kind of see what happens here with the economic circumstances that we're facing but it does push that issue a little bit and will require us to to monitor that and look at that as we yeah we need to remember when we're using fund balance to draw down on the general fund and the levy it leaves a hole that we have to come back and backfill but we have some time to do that i hope i hope yeah yeah but it is something to be aware of i think okay um let's just kind of uh councilmember schultz so clarification uh when we talk about drawing down the fund balance and that we make a goal and that we have to fill it in that does not mean that we are deficit spending correct that's correct what percentage will that put us at for our fund balance because i know our goal is to have between 40 and 50 percent fund balance um what we've projected and i think it's on this slide um we've projected about 48 percent um of fund balance after at the end of 21 21 we have projected approximately 48 of subsequent years expenditures so that is within the 40 to 50 percent would you say for instance is that on the high end of 40 to 50 percent it is on the high end of 40 to 50 percent um what that level of fund balance does it does give us some flexibility as we move through 2021 for unforeseen circumstances so it does give us a little bit more um it just does give us a little bit more flexibility in that area it also ensures i think you know as we look look forward to our bond rating we do want to make sure that we do have a healthy fund balance that is one of the areas that they will look at um and i'm trying to think if there's anything else but yeah no i it does give us some flexibility i mean i think you know we really don't know what 2021 will bring and so i think we want to make sure that we um leave the city with as much available funds to deal with any contingencies or unforeseen circumstances i i definitely appreciate that i just don't want our residents left with the idea that because we are using those one-time fund balance transfer to ops that that we are deficit spending or that we are putting our city into a dangerous economic position yeah correct yeah thank you yeah okay councilman and then the councilmember achille did you wanna i i can't see hands up over there but you can text me if you wanna speak yeah earlier i i did the raised hand but i don't know yeah it doesn't show up for us so for you i'll text you yeah i just wanted to ask the question yeah uh kind of getting what care was getting at the backfill that we talked about that can be over several years to bring it back up if we're maintaining that our what our policy has been to be in that mid to high 40 kind of area which we would be if we did it this way correct yeah so we can slowly over the years as the economy goes we can if it needs to go higher we can do something like that without affecting our cash flow correct yep which is always my concern is affecting our cash flow yeah yep you definitely want to maintain um adequate fund balance for cash flow i mean that's a big part of why the general fund needs that money because of the property tax you know collection calendar so that certainly is important and we wouldn't be jeopardizing that certainly we are still in a very um healthy and cash cashflow position and we're within our policy i think that's one thing that's going to be very important we we need to make sure that we stay within our policy levels um that also is indicative of and i'll yield my time to mr keeley now yeah one of the things i just want to make sure that everybody understands is that when we have fund balances and you look at it and you say well that's healthy remember we only get our money twice a year once in june and once in december so when you look at it we've got six months of cash flow and so that's what it it does and then when you look at the budget and what you look at that is that it is giving us that cash flow but in the policy that we adopted with regard to the fund balance we also indicated in that policy that there's money cushioned in there for emergencies like the pandemic correct yeah okay just want to make sure everybody understands when they're looking at that unassigned fund balance and the policy that was adopted was it la last council meeting yes yes yes okay councilmember keeley did you want to see you met him here it is funny when you're on zoom and then now i'm looking yeah i know it and i'm looking i have my phone here not look at the screen while i'm talking um okay uh councilmark schultz and councilmember gastenson brought up a couple of really good questions and i want to just touch on that um number one if we were to move forward with this four percent max tax we would be at 48 which is dramatically not slightly but dramatically higher than we've been in the last several years and i also want to point out we achieve our aaa bond rating under a policy of keeping the minimum 35 percent per statute plus we kept we chose we didn't have to but we chose to keep two million on top of that and anything in excess of that we considered excess taxation and that we used it for one-time expenses so we would really only try and keep 35 plus that 2 million that 48 factor equates to something dramatically higher than 35 percent and 2 million and so when we talk about preserving our aaa bond rating remember that we earned it on that 35 and 2 million and we earned it because we made dramatic cuts during the recession that the bond ratings looked at us and said you are solid physically sound disciplined managers of the taxpayers money and we're going to reward you with a a nice bond rating for doing so those were hard decisions back then and council member gustafsson and madam mayor both remember those really hard decisions uh back then and so today you know with this 40 to 50 and ending up at where we're at by this 1.2 million use of exit funds to still be at 48 means we have a whopping large amount of taxpayer money in the bank and we are not by any stretch and this goes to get council member augustus in point we're not by any stretch anywhere close to deficit spending we're spending excess taxation that has come in as a result of a fantastic 2019 and obviously there's cares money that's being accounted for in there and so we're we're on very solid ground and i think we're maybe protecting it more so than even necessary per se but i think this plan from a max tax standpoint is a good plan and i appreciate staff's work to get us here because 7.5 is not a good plan and it's not acceptable i don't think anybody said yeah let's just do that so hats off to staff compliments staff's job is to protect the city's assets protect the revenues protect the taxpayers assets and they're doing a fantastic job at that we as policymakers have to remember and look at the entire numbers and how we got where we're at today how we got that aaa bonding and what's necessary to maintain that triple a bonding and there is no threat in my mind based on a 48 balance there is absolutely no threat whatsoever to our aaa bonding even in a pandemic year we're loaded make no mistake about it we have over taxed and we are loaded and we have cares money so there is no concern here that's my and i i feel like i know these numbers as good as anybody because i've been digging into them very deeply and i've been around for 14 years through all of those years of that 35 plus 2 million earning us that aaa we're in good shape and i and that's because staff has done good work to get us there but we have a decision to make um that that i think we're well within the comfort zone to make so i i i just want to push back on any veil threats of a triple a bonding you know being at risk here and other factors i get the pandemic has caused some issues but we're in a really really strong financial position thank you okay thank you um miss rody is there anything else um well yeah i mean the city is in a good position i think that is um we can we can go over this slide actually this probably goes nicely into this um i've just listed some things here what does this proposed budget accomplish it does maintain current service levels as well as our commitment to our funding of our infrastructure and capital funds those were maintained it also it does include right now the use of 3.4 million in cares funding to offset city eligible cities eligible covet 19 expenditures as we talked a little bit about on the previous slide it assumes an additional one-time use of fund balance of 1.2 million and an additional reduction of expenditures by 120 000 um the use of additional fund balance results in an anticipated fund balance levels of approximately 48 at the end of 2021 um assuming you know remaining within the council's policy targeted range and results in an overall proposed levy increase of four percent a decrease of three and a half percent from the original proposal that was brought to you okay the slide this slide it just kind of it summarizes the proposed levies that are included in your resolutions this evening the total city levy proposed at thirty nine million fifty eight dollars and uh fifty eight thousand dollars a change of three point nine percent and the um economic development authority authority levy of two hundred forty seven thousand five hundred dollars a fifty thousand dollar increase over twenty twenty amounts um the total cda our city and eda levy increase of four percent and my last slide this just um summarizes the value or the impact of a four percent levy increase um on a median value home which for 2021 is seven thousand 277 hundred dollars uh the median value home did increase three three point seven percent um since twenty twenty uh the total annual impact would be thirty nine dollars with three dollars and twenty five cents per month okay on that are there questions these are things that we've been going through with staff mr accounts remember schultz uh if we brought fund balance down to 45 what would that do to the levy um 45 percent i think is another 1.5 million i'm just trying to do the math in my head [Laughter] so that i think the levy increase is around 1.5 million i think it was one five one nine yes it will go to five five point nine percent so if we if we used additional fund balance for them to buy down the levy right if that's what you're asking that is i would anticipate we would be close to zero so at that point we would be close to zero thank you okay counsel if i may have one more question before we call the question um yeah councilman schultz you're calling the question is that what you're saying uh no i would like to ask one more question before someone else calls the question sure uh have we investigated and i know that city staff has really really gone over um over the budget um and i have a lot of appreciation for this because this is a big change from these the shocking 7.5 i'm personally still not comfortable with a 4.0 reason why i'm not comfortable with the 4.0 is you are pointing out that we do have economic uncertainty and i think when our residents are also facing this economic uncertainty what we don't do is we don't raise their taxes and i am seeing other cities and other cities that usually enjoy just taxing the hell out of their residents and have no qualms about it whatsoever they're even going to a zero i am seeing counties announce that they are going to a zero the fact that we are where we are at right now and in a position to be a little kinder to our residents because we are in a good situation because we have been careful and we do have a rainy day fund and it is raining i believe this is the time to do it and this is the time where we stand with our residents and we say no our max tax is zero so my question is if the decision is no we don't want to bring down that fund balance is there any other way that we could bring it down to zero uh not without impacting operations if we don't actually yeah i know one of the things that we had talked about back and forth was if we did a pay freeze and that was said that that was a non-starter uh is there any but my question is so what if we continue on and we need to reevaluate and we do see somewhat of an economic crash and we have to pull in tighter then what's our options if that's a non-starter and that's completely off the table and the only other thing is that we take away city services what city services would you take away instead of doing something what i would i what i think is a much more temporary and gentle approach i don't know what services would you remove instead the largest services is in public safety that is an accurate statement madam mayor and council we would need to discuss the reduction in city operations and what that impact would be i would want to do that in consultation with the council on what your priorities and expectations are to be able to meet that zero percent um i'm trying to remember off the top of my head the actual dollar amount that would we would be looking at and i'd have to look that up here but i don't have that off the top of my head i and i do appreciate that i don't want to totally put you on the spot but i also want us to start thinking ahead not just for looking at the max tax for 2021 but also for us to have our plan in place just in case things change quickly on us that we are not caught flat-footed and that we can react quickly to that so um i appreciate everything on this and i'm also going to urge you which i'm sure you already are i'm sure you're already looking into this um i i know that you are very prudent with the budget and our funds and all that kind of stuff but i also want our residents to know that um this is also on our mind we're going to be proactive on this and we're going to ask our residents to also you might have to roll with us a little bit on this just as we're all adjusting to this so i do appreciate that and i do hope at a future meeting that we can start to discuss what-if scenarios and have some plans in place and i would appreciate that but my final statement on this is we could go to our fund balance of 45 percent which is dead center of between 40 and 50 and we could stand in solidarity with our residents and do a zero do a max tax of zero and that is what i am asking our council to do council member gustavson i i appreciate what you're saying councilmember schultz um this is this is a max tax meeting we're gonna have the next several months to go over different ways we can reduce the budget if possible the one thing that i appreciate about where they got on this levy it keeps our services intact for our citizens and i think that's really important and i really don't want to entertain conversations of laying off our police and fire i mean this is not a time in our lives to be doing that so that for as far as i'm concerned that is totally off the table member workman thank you i feel like i should at least say something during this conversation um i get excited about the prospect of going to a zero percent i understand that this is a max tax discussion and that we've got a lot of work left to do um i guess i didn't realize before this evening when councilman russerson said that if we were to pull fund balance that that's something that could be backfilled over the course of several years so that's something i'll be at least looking a little bit more into i say this a lot but i'm proud of our staff for getting us to this point and i know that this wasn't something that was just done in a day that this took a lot of time and effort and probably sleepless nights to get to this point and i'm probably letting that dave ramsey class kick in as i'm evaluating this that i would hate to get to a point where we handcuffed ourselves in future years on a decision for this year and there's no way to predict that right now because we've lived in a lot of uncertainty right now i'm certainly open to those discussions to see if it's feasible to take it our fund balance from 48 to 45 given that we've just changed that policy and that would still put us at 10 points higher than what we were before that policy but i don't want to do that without really studying the implications of what that means and how that is going to impact future budget discussions and then the last thing i'll mention is and this is conversations i've had with our city manager is what projects are coming online in the next year to three years [Music] i feel like those items are worth digging into now so as we make our projections over the course of the next two to three years we can at least anticipate that found money that isn't there today to help maybe offset what potential impacts drawing down that 48 to 45 could have so as far as tonight's conversation goes i'm comfortable with a four but i'm also more than comfortable to continue this conversation to see if we can get lower as long as it's done responsibly and not short-sighted where we're making this decision now and then you know delaying a more uncomfortable conversation next year or in two years from now okay councilmember schultz uh in i do appreciate what my fellow city council members are saying on this and i do realize that this is a max tax vote meaning that's the ceiling not the floor um and yet my position is still that the max tax that we should be voting for is zero percent because we can do that without loss of services we can do that without affecting our bond rating we can do that without violating our policy which is a new policy which has raised from the previous policy of having that 35 plus 2 million to a 40 to 50 i mean that's dead center that is dead center it's not like we're going to 41 percent we're going to 45 percent and if we could do 45 percent and be at zero then that's what i would urge i understand that my fellow city councilors want to look at this more they may set the max tax which is the ceiling again not the floor we would have continued discussions um at that four percent with an eye to lowering it i also know from um previous years that what we set the max tax at is really close to what the tax is so that's my caution on that is um when we set that max tax at four percent it's pretty much going to be four percent so that's my caveat on that am i looking at cutting police and fire no i am not looking at cutting police and fire i am looking at being very proactive because if we have because we don't know what's going to happen in the future i do want to be ready and not have to have these discussions in a panic if they were to happen in six months or eight months or in a year it's better to have tough decisions and tough discussions before it's an emergency and that is what i'm asking for so that is my clarification on that i am not asking for services to be cut this evening i am saying we can do zero without cutting any services without violating our policy and without changing our bond rating okay very good any other comments to be made if not the question is called your pleasure move to approve the four percent take a second uh councilmember gustafsson makes the motion second by council member uh workman all in favor please say aye aye aye aye opposed a nay okay and the clerk has a division of the house i do madame thank you i will now recess the burnsville city council meeting so the economic development authority meeting can take place president gustafson thank you madam mayor i called the economic development authority meeting to order please note that all commissioners are present and one commissioner keeley is by zoom um item number one are there any additions to the final agenda seeing none i'll move on to the consent agenda which is approval of the january 21st minutes may i have a motion to adopt motion to adopt motion by commissioner schultz second second by commissioner coutts all in favor aye aye passes unanimously on the item number three is a resolution authorizing the proposed levy of a special benefit levy pursuant to minnesota statute section 469.033 subdivision six an approval of proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 finance director jenny rhode is presenting so um this is just an approval of the 2021 proposed levy of 247 500 an increase of 50 000 over the 2020 levy or a 0.1 percent increase and it is part of the total proposed levy as presented on on the slide you see now it also approves the total ex proposed budget i believe too as well for the eda fund but certainly um that is the proposed expenses and that will come to you for final approval in december as well thank you are there any questions discussion i'll entertain a motion to approve commissioner miss motion second second by commissioner workman all in favor aye opposed name the director 4-1 i have nothing else on the uh agenda so i need to adjourn so i need a motion to adjourn motion twitcher commissioner phil's emotions second fisher workman all in favor aye aye aye aye adjourned and back to you madam mayor thank you i will now reconvene the burnsville city council meeting and uh this item 5h is to ratify the actions of the economic development authority and i don't think miss rhodey needs to readdress this i have could you though do you want to go through this all again does the council want to hear this again no all we're doing is ratifying the actions of the economic development authority may i have a motion please to ratify motion to second council member workman makes the motion second by councilmember gustafson all in favor please say aye aye aye opposing nay and uh the clerk has the division of the house i do mad at me thank you we are at 5 i and 5i is the covet 19 response update our city manager melanie mescali is presenting miss mascari thank you madam mayor and i'm going to turn it over to our community development director jenny faulkner to provide an update on the business grant program thank you madam mayor members of the council as of today i believe we have 30 checks that we're about to hand out and get in the mail i think i provided that update last time um and then we have another um thank you you're welcome and another 27 that are some of them are on my desk so the the delay is waiting to get some feedback from the recipients we also learned today that dakota county has expanded their program so they will be funding an additional three million dollars to fund applicants that had applied to the state for funding and were not picked from the state's lottery so there they anticipate about 294 additional businesses in dakota county to be selected and i believe we don't have the number yet for what that results in for the city that was just happened today so when you look at our numbers we have 70 city applicants that are unfunded 46 of those that were not selected in our lottery will be funded by dakota county for 10 000 that leaves 24 city applicants that will not get funding from the county the state or the city so that's where we're at and the total applicant cost is to remind the council or excuse me the eligible requests was 2.3 million and our program is funded for 1 million of 20 000 each so the gap is about 1.3 million of unfunded unfunded requests and i'll stand for questions i have a question okay council member uh gossips of the 24 that didn't receive funding from us the county or the state was there do you have a number of what that adds up to in request or i do not have the total number of those we can i can get that to you tomorrow those total numbers um of course if we the challenges are well our amount is twenty thousand dollars which makes it a little different from the counties and the states program because they're not quite apples to apples but i can do some math and get that to you tomorrow okay thank you i will tell you it won't be more than four hundred and eighty thousand dollars well that's what i had okay christmas carly that concludes our update madam mayor i believe that the council wanted an update to discuss the grant program you asked for some more information at your last meeting so certainly stand for any other questions you may have so the only other question i have for we haven't had all of the other uh candidates for the grant uh two um uh two hand checks two am i correct we send out a request just to a handful of folks trying to cover a diverse group of businesses restaurants retail athletic those that seem super excited and we're very thankful we want to make sure we stop out there so we had just picked five that we would visit and we actually had the ask out to i think maybe six or seven so we have five of those visits set up already and there may be a couple more trickling in with that okay very good michelle councilmember schultz so we know uh like out of those 24 even if all of them got the maximum amount of that grant it would be 480 000 and we were discussing on and off whether we allocate another 1 million dollars and this is well below that mark so this might be something we can do to fully fund our grant requests just making that notation on that for council miss faulconer madame members of the council if you want to fund put more money into this fund there's lots of ways to divvy it up right and so 46 of our grant applications are going to receive another 10 000 from the county whereas the the original what 50 55 are going to get 20 000 from the city so there's a little disparity there so you could choose to fund the 24 at 10 000. so kind of all the all the non-first-round winners uh maybe get additional funds or fund them at the twenty thousand right there's just the dollar amount what it adds up or potentially fund the difference of what they get for the 10 from somebody else and and ours if we want to look at that so okay excellent thank you i appreciate that um miss faulconer and miss mescali did we calculate what we said that we would do for the hospital their ask was around 160 000. madam mayor council their ask was 168 000 and we have not made an allocation to the hospital as of yet okay members of the council are we going to be uh funding the hospitals ask at 168 000. uh i'm gonna meda mayor could we stay on the original discussion before we address the hospital pardon me could we stay on the original discussion of the business grants before we move on to discuss the hospital all right we can do that because i'm just thinking you know how much money are we going to put in and we need to make sure that we have the the calculation on all of that and the impact of uh all of that with the cares funds that you have already allocated so um yeah that's i didn't text you but yeah would you call upon me to speak if you could um i can i will do that a council member keeley i'll go to the council member gustafsson and then i'll go to you before i go back to council member schultz okay so in in uh the original presentation for our budget we're using 300 and some what 3.4 million dollars to bring down our to for our budget correct so if we were to entertain doing a second round of cares act type stuff it wouldn't necessarily be cares money be more like money that comes out of our reserve fund to pay this is that how that would work or miss me because otherwise your the budget we just max taxed is going to change dramatically real fast miss masculini matter and counsel the budget proposal that staff presented um did include 3.41 million out of our cares allocation to be used um as part of the overall budget package and so you choose to change that allocation of cares act dollars and that would have a uh the effect on the 2021 budget as well so because we used keep the cares act money doing what we what you proposed it to do and then look at our fund balance as a way to maybe offset some of this stuff for are we allowed to do that you you can you are in control of your fund balance because i don't want to i don't want to start messing up the whole the because you're taking 500 or a million out of it and then go okay go find that now because we just did a max tax of four percent yeah without the 4.0 that if we take the cares money that's already been uh allocated in the budget that we that's going to have an impact it would and so i was saying if we looked at what our funds balance are and we need to see what does that do to our percentages and all that and how does it what does it put us in a precarious position here going forward it's a a million dollars at a time you can get down to that 35 percent real fast without it plus you need that couple of million extra in there just in case the wind blows and trees fall down again okay miss mascoli madam mayor in council i'll ask finance director rhodey to step in if i go astray at all but will you approved a four percent levy right within that plan the staff had identified 3.41 million 3.41 million in cures allocation that is not i mean there is some flexibility i would say as far as that goes um if the council does want to expand the grant program though it would need to come out of the cares grant program or the city's fund okay balance you yeah but we have to make sure that it stays within the full point that we um that we adopted tonight could you adapt to the four point oh bro yes um okay councilmember keeley excuse me um you miss rhodey might have something to add okay yeah it would the 3.41 is part of you know how we calculated the fund balance and what the levels would be at if you chose to use more of that on a different grant program it does have impact on your you know percentage of your unassigned fund balance that's what i'm trying to figure where's that going to put us yeah yeah and it you know about a half a million is probably at least a percent down so it just i off the top i mean i just tried to calculate so when you drop down to 47. um well it depends on what yeah we you know depends on what you would but it would have an impact on your unassigned fund balance you'd have less available at the end of 2021 than we've projected so so a million dollars is about two percent in the fund uh to a little over two and a quarter to two so there's there's a little play for us there if we choose to do that and still keep the original cares act going into our general fund and okay i just don't again i just i'm concerned about the future going down the road and we don't know what's coming at us but i'm also concerned about our residents and ours and our businesses and what's coming at them and what they've our already has come at them and there is they try to dig out as well and yeah it just it does take that 40 you know instead of being 48 depending on a level it would be at a lower because because every every now that government can help right here it can't we don't have to be evil that's a choice exactly that's a choice okay i'm going to go to council member keely council member keeley thank you madam mayor um the four percent factors the 3.4 that still leaves the 48 fund balance so i think it's just the use of funds if we were to choose to uh do what i've been pressing for for the last few months or so and increase to two million dollars how much we give to our small business grant program which i'll remind everyone the simple economics when you save businesses you save jobs when you save jobs you save family income and you keep them employed they keep spending money and it keeps that cycle going over and over my priority is to save every business that we can we have 127 qualified eligible applicants that applied for our program and i'm proud to say burnsville's program is 20 000 not 10 like the deed in the county and probably many others very proud to say that we helped i've heard from businesses who received 20 000 and some of them i spoke to to encourage them to apply and they were very thankful that they took the time to apply because that 20 000 now becomes the ability to pay some rent that their back due on catch up on some other operational supplies that they were getting into a deep hole with that's going to keep those businesses alive longer it's going to give them a fighting chance to survive covet and keep their employees employed keep paying their property taxes because if they close and they own their building they're not going to be able to pay those um their their landlord if they rent will have to pay them but they're going to be in a difficult position just look at the mall paying property taxes when there's a lot of vacancies so my whole point i want everybody to understand this very clearly my whole point for pushing to use as much as 50 of our cares act funding to help our small businesses in burnsville is to help keep doors open keep people employed keep household incomes going with income and allow these folks to make the turn through this pandemic and minimize the impact on the other side of this with how many businesses have failed and are going to it's going to cost the supply chain more money to try and backfill and get those businesses a new business in that space or going again there's a higher cost to that than there is to keep the existing business going and so you know i may have um and i know councilmember gustafsson and councilmember workmen councilmember schultz me i i think every one of us i know the mayor has to been in a business for itself so we have an acute knowledge of what small businesses go through and what they're going through the last six months or so of this pandemic and the detrimental impact it's had the amount of stores that keep closing businesses that keep shutting down bothers me when we're sitting with this money and we can help at least we can help 127 of them the ones that applied they qualified they're eligible and again very proud that we went to 20 000 so when we when we talk about what the cost is and trying to find a way to maybe throw some problems around i want to stay with the original vision and fund whatever it is up to that 20 000 that each one of those businesses qualified for and take the care's money that the feds gave us and give it to those businesses to help them survive i know that a lot of the other the cities in dakota county used very little of their cares money for a business grant program their priority was very clear and simple let's buy down our levy as much as we can and keep the majority of that money for our city's needs and we'll give a little breadcrumb we'll give 10 or so to these businesses and you know some got a little bit and a lot didn't get any and unfortunately some of those are going to fail i don't believe that is the right approach when the spirit of this cares ad and the money that was given to states to give to local municipalities was to do business grants it was also to help the city so i think 50 50 is fair the city keeps half of it or maybe a little bit more than that in our case and we give the other half to our local businesses and we avoid more closures and we keep more people employed and we keep more households from going on unemployment that's the start of that whole economic money chain that is in my opinion the best investment and i'm thrilled to hear these stories that are coming through and that they're you know they're they're wanting to do a photo op with a big check this means the world to them even if they may have 150 000 worth of losses a 20 000 check is a welcome oasis in the middle of this pandemic when they've been struggling for six months if they're still open and able to do business so i would ask my fellow council members to stay on that original plan allocate the additional funds necessary if it were me i'd allocate 1.3 more and even though that would come out of the cares money which would drop that 3.4 that the city is using the money is there it's sitting in our unspent budget reserves which are so large that we actually are forecasting without this 1.3 that i'm talking about now we're sitting at 48 and if you remember the presentation 45 was better not by a lot but it was actually better than our 35 plus 2 million equation the 45 took us above that i remember that chart so even to go to 45 we're better off than we've been every year for the last 10 plus years so we have the ability to fund whether it's our levy buy down by 1.2 million or the one and the 1.3 this business if cares needs to fund the 1.3 so be it because we still have 1.2 more in our reserves that we can put toward our 2021 levy and i think that's the right thing to do so i'm asking please let's help our businesses keep our employees their employees employed and keep their households off unemployment and help them get through this this pandemic and let's allocate i would go more than one million i would go the 1.3 i don't believe it'll cost us all that but it could because the the way the county's program is like currently laid out their policy is if you much like ours was too right except for the fact that we have a higher limit if you get money because they're all everyone else's plan is ten thousand so if you get ten thousand from here then you're disqualified here well that makes sense the numbers are all ten thousand but ours is twenty and we committed to burnsville businesses apply for this and if you qualify if you're hemorrhaging that badly and you and you're eligible you could get 20 000 from your city government who got 4.7 million and cares money from the feds to help you through this so if they get 10 from the county why are we saying you don't qualify for any more than that now we said we'd offer you 10 20. oh but you got that 10 from there well you're out of the game for burnsville that didn't make any sense to me but that's the way the policy is currently written well if we were able to give 20 to a business and the county had given them 10 or was about to give them 10 because we're crossing paths here at the same time then then how are we going to deal with that business and and if we want to give them the 20 um does the county just pull back or does the county give them 10 and then we just give them 10 more which would lower our 2.3 to some other number we don't know the answer to that but those are those are scenarios my ask tonight is to take the 1.3 million and fund every single one of these small businesses who applied because every single one of them made the cut on need and eligibility they are hurting and they're hurting badly thank you okay councilmember schultz i agree with council member keeley on this he is absolutely correct that preserving these businesses and making it so that they can perhaps get through this winter um because you know we're all trying to look into the crystal ball um but we are hearing that not just for large events i mean we're hearing that large events are not going to be a thing through this winter that's just not you know they're saying that's not going to happen in minnesota but we're also hearing that there's not going to be much movement on using any of the other restrictions on our businesses through this winter so they're not looking at six months of heavy restrictions on the revenue that they can bring in they're looking at like a year and if we are looking at that then we have a different forecast of not losing 30 of our small businesses we're looking at 60 percent of our small businesses in danger of closing at the one year mark and that is something that if we have any ability to assist with we should be doing so right now because while we can pay down our you know our expenses and that kind of thing with the cares act and i think we should reimburse for expenses that we took on what we should be very cognizant of the fact is government does not produce anything government does not make things government does not engine the economy and if these businesses go out then we will see a reduction in our city services because we will not have that tax revenue from them so if a little more just a tiny more nudge right now could help that would be the difference between having to go through some pretty extremes six months down the road and i have a huge concern about that that that is the position that we will be in so i am on board with what council member keeley is saying let's let's do this little bit now so that we aren't looking at a tidal wave later it's it's a heck of a lot easier to slow down a bad situation when you get on top of it early than waiting for it to snowball and my concern is if these regulations stay in place if these executive orders stay in place through the winter i i can't even picture losing up to 60 of our small businesses that would be utterly catastrophic and also i'm just gonna put this out there other cities that only gave like 10 percent of your cares acts to help your city businesses you should be freaking ashamed so that's that's my position on that councilmember gustafson uh jenny i think this question is for you since you're kind of leading this whole thing for on behalf of our city i i i like what mr kiwi has had to say about you know helping the businesses and that but are there restrictions in place with the county and the state if they give a grant you can't get it from somewhere else or if you get a grant from somewhere else you can't get it so i'm saying what i'm saying is you get some you get 10 000 from the county and then we go okay we'll give you another ten thousand does the county go well no that's not how it works you don't get that ten thousand um council member gusen there are restrictions on other cares funded grant programs right right so because it's the same pot of money deeds original criteria said that it was okay to get local funds it wasn't specific to cares they have a question right now about if it's cares or not i think that they're discussing amongst themselves as the cities are starting to roll out these programs the county has a i believe their criteria is similar that if you get cares funding from the state or the cities that you can't qualify for for that as well so um i think the point was when these programs were set up was to distribute the funds as much as possible to as many businesses possible not knowing the details that we know today we know a lot more today than when we set up the program right so um it is possible that we could fund if we wanted to change our program guidelines additional money as long as it's it's it's already it's unfunded it's unreimbursed from an additional cares program right that's a lot of paperwork a lot of documentation deed has not put out their list yet of who they have funded that's problematic for us in trying to navigate that water my concern is if we give out ten thousand because someone thinks they're getting ten thousand from another source they find out maybe that other source is no longer gonna give them that ten thousand and now we just kind of it's ten thousand we could have given to someone else that that needed the ten thousand because that person is getting ten thousand already so right we have had um a couple of folks say that they've taken deed money thank you very much i'm taking the county money thank you very much and so it that has allowed us to go down our list in our lottery and that i think councilmember keeley brought it up this is this is kind of a moving target here the dollar amount but we think it will be less be at the end of the day than the total ask because there are other entities giving monies and because not every applicant we have asked for the maximum amount my opinion our goal should be to get it into as many hands as possible and not just a few hands right so miss muscoli um the desire if you understand the goal is to help our small businesses those who have already applied and if we draw down the fund balance to do this it would be at one point what is it i think the category from ms roadie is for every 1 million that draws down 2.2 percent of our fund balance and that'll bring our fund balance down to 45 48. probably in the 46 range 46 range so we're using the fund balance to help our businesses okay so um council member workmen i just need some clarification so we just got done discussing using fund balance to get a zero levy and now we're discussing about using fund balance for care so i think we need to figure out what trajectory we want to ask our staff to investigate this we absolutely could do it both and be still within over over 40 percent absolutely we could so i would like for our staff then as we're looking at this if we're going to fund this is to look at pro projections for 22 because what we're doing is the budget for 21 22 23 and 24 projections on all of this and everybody's been saying we don't know what this is going to look like in 21 but we're we have a budget that we adopted for 21. so and we want to help our businesses so let's take a look at that and and have the projections but uh to council member keely and others so we're going to fund and use our fund balance to help our businesses so let's also make sure that we are prudent uh about how we do this uh and also having some insight into what all of this is going to mean for 20 budget of 22. um sorry our city manager mrs coley um uh address that and then i'll come to you thank you madam mayor and council um when we talk about fund balance is kind of a multi multi-leg stool and so the what staff brought forward to was um i would say a conservative approach because we don't have that we have uncertainty for our out years drawing down the fund balance it can occur i would want the council's direction on the grant program and how much are you wanting to fund it or a little bit more guidance from the council on what you'd be looking for at the end of the day what is that what is the goal and then we can come back on how that could be what are the what are the impacts of that how many businesses that we have that did not make the lottery twenty-four many mayor members of the council in the city program there were 70 that did not make our lottery 20 46 of those will be funded by the county and that leaves 24 not receiving anything now the county is waiting uh they know you're discussing this item this evening so they're they are looking forward to an update and i will just let you know timing is very important here because uh once a decision is made or not made others are going to take action and they may take funds elsewhere and if we expand our program in a month you know then there's back and forth and who got what it just makes things a lot messier and and the businesses are waiting we just sent them out letters that said you've been approved or you've been denied so timing is i would just impress upon you that timing is very important uh to make a decision on this okay uh councilmember katie so you're wanting us to make that decision tonight yeah i and i i appreciate thank you thank you thank you miss faulkner that has been my message for the last couple months and why i got a little upset at a recent meeting as to why we were kind of taking too long to get here i knew all along and i think all of us did that we had plenty of money left over from 2019. we had a barrel of money bigger than any before plus we had cares act sitting on the table and so i was frustrated that we waited this long because we've lost a few more businesses since then so tonight i would like to say my suggestion is that we allocate the 1.3 we cover all the businesses that apply and then if because to jenny to ms faulkner's point we need to take action and be deliberate about what we're doing during that then when the county hears what we're doing they can discuss with us um a partnership for some of those people who applied at both and were granted something from the county we can then work with them to say we've this business qualified for 20 or 15 or 12 or whatever it is with burnsville we'd like to get them to our burnsville total would you like to partner and give them the first 10 we'll give them the rest or we'll give them 10 and you give them the rest whatever but or if they say you know what that's we don't want to go there just just do your thing fund your burnsville businesses and uh and and we won't you know they'll just once they hear from you that they've secured the grant from you they can tell our grant no thank you i'm in the business program i'm sorry of the first principle program this was created by the fact that we have a higher total and again more power to us you know we had the leadership we were the bold ones who led the way in this whole grant program so i think we need to continue to move forward finish what we started give everybody that applied that letter that says you're approved and get it going and let the county do whatever they're going to do and if they're going to help us and we end up instead of 1.3 we only spend 900 or or 700 or a million one whatever it ends up being so be it then we'll save a little but i think tonight we have to decide let's put the 1.3 let's fulfill the vision for everybody that qualified for up to 20 that they're going to get whatever they qualified for from burnsville and move forward okay i also want to make sure that we remember the hospital inventory fund the hospital i agree 100 yeah uh council member workman um that's an old button well that's an all button the councilmember shoals don't tell me it's a no button did you did you i have a button too yeah i can't remember what just have said i don't have a button i just have a technique no i know what i was gonna do is wave at me you get your little flag to wave what i was going to suggest through this discussion is that we fund up to 480 000 for the 24 that did not get funding and if the county later agrees that yeah we'll change our rules and that we can revisit that to get other people up to that twenty thousand dollars but we know this way everybody's getting some money and it's yeah and so that that would be my suggestion to us to do the 480 and then if we need more later we can get more because we can't give it to anybody right now until the county is able to go through what they're going to have to go through to do it and that's going to take some immediately let me tell everybody and uh mr jamnic we can always hold the special meeting of the city council to address this and uh very quickly and get that done if we do what you're suggesting councilman i would bother to actually can i do that well but i mostly do that now wait a minute dan what let me let me do my motion anymore i didn't hear my time excuse me i'm going to wait a minute i'm i'm going to uh continue to facilitate this uh council member schultz and then i'll come to council member keeley come back to council member keeley's suggesting okay councilman schultz so i am fine with going up to the 1.3 million however i am absolutely 100 prepared tonight to approve those 24 businesses right now for whatever the amount that is so that that happens tonight um i don't i don't want any more waiting on that so i am i am prepared on that so on the 24 businesses that's what i because that when we were talking the 24 businesses uh and i am also really ready to do a special meeting if the county is willing to work with us like i i will do that in a heartbeat so we can all come in and do that meeting whenever councilmember workman i guess i have a point of clarification and i'll let you go does that 480 include the hospital no no no we need to make sure we include the hospital so you need to make it go up to so it's okay you said four something what would that mean i don't think i motioned jeff kevin motioned yeah you could 480 for 24 businesses at the twenty thousand dollar grant and then uh six hundred six hundred fifty thousand hospitals requests of hundred and six so about six six fifty fifty for the hospital yeah to bring it up to the 24 businesses and the hospital okay council member keeley i need an explanation of where this 480 and these 24 so there's 24 businesses that were flat out turned down that did yeah and and that they and it sounds like they're all at twenty thousand so that means we had 127 that were eligible 24 only 24 didn't uh a 24 percent turndown letter call it from the city of burnsville and the other 100 103 received a letter with with jenny explained yeah uh councilmember keeley jenny is going to clarify that again a council member keeley the 24 are applications that we've received that are eligible that did not get picked from the city deed or dakota county so these folks are getting nothing we have a total of 70 that did not get picked for the city program but 46 of them are getting funded from the county up to ten thousand dollars right so that's that's the that's the group then that comes up short because of those though that number of businesses if they've qualified for 20 with burnsville we're basically saying well you got 10 from the county so you don't get anything from us that was what i was talking about earlier about let's fulfill the vision of the 20 if they qualify for it let's give it to them um and if the county wants to partner and still give them 10 we have to make sure that they'll allow us to give that business 10. so they get to the burnsville 20 and they're not suddenly disqualified about getting 20 because the county picked their name for half that much that's my point earlier uh dan and i i think that's why that 480 threw me off it didn't sound like it would be the right number because we i knew we had more than 24 businesses based on the earlier presentation not receive anything so we're still dealing with this group that oh the county offered you something well then you're out of our program wait you're in burnsville and you qualified for 20. why are you not getting the full 20 from us okay someone wants to put a motion on the floor i emotionally wait a minute um uh mr jamnik amir this is a process issue and i would advise the council maybe not to rush with any kind of action motion the agenda item that you have tonight is a coven 19 response update yeah oh and given the given the amount of money that that you're talking about if there's a substantive motion to transfer funds and those types of things i think it would be better for the council to follow your normal protocol to put it as a special meeting agenda item and either either recess tonight's meeting so that you can meet on wednesday thursday or friday this week if you want or have staff find when it would work in the calendar to give the three-day normal notice for your special meeting with some type of staff report that outlines your options and some of the impacts of that it's an awful large amount of money to be moving around without that background and without the notice i agree so the thing is if staff can come back to us tomorrow and give us when we can come back to a special meeting and members of the council i would say that you make yourselves available whether it's in the morning afternoon or uh at 5 30 but we can have a special meeting at any time so we can call that come in and do one item councilmember schultz a question for my fellow city councilor did you make your motion yet no but we can't make a motion on an update um while i appreciate our city attorney's input on that i will make a motion that we fund the 24 businesses up to an amount of 480 000 dollars and i make that motion that that happens tonight that is my motion do i have a second i suck at that it's a starting point okay councilmember keegley makes the motion discussion and i have council member workmen i'm i'm not comfortable making a vote on that without looking at the numbers um i think the first thing i said tonight is i don't want to make any knee jerk reactions and so i'm not going to vote for that um and i do need a point of clarification about um the total dollar amount that we're talking about right now um if we're talking about 480 000 for the 24 missed 700 000 for the 70 not picked but needing a supplemental 10 and 160 000 for the hospital that's putting us at 1.34 million and then we're talking about reducing the levy by 4 which my rough math gives me 1.52 million so all in we're talking about stripping another 2.86 million from the budget and we haven't even given our staff a millisecond to look into how we're going to do that so i understand we've discussed fund balance but i do not want to act impulsively on this right now and i and i agree i think the 480 makes sense but i'd like to sleep on it and give staff our staff at least a day to kind of figure out how this is going to impact wiggle and look um not just this year but forecasted beyond we've asked them a lot of questions and we've asked them to come back with a lot of things so i don't think it's a secret what we're asking but i want to at least let that opportunity present itself okay councilmember uh this is not something we haven't been discussing over and over and over and looking at this is this is not something new this is not something that is knee-jerk we have talked about this meeting after meeting and the last meeting i distinctly remember council member keeley talking about we don't want to slow roll this we don't want to slow this down the clock is ticking on this we have 24 businesses that are not that are burnsville businesses that are not going to receive anything i do not mind a later discussion of the other businesses that only receive 10 000 and maybe they could receive up to the 20 000 or you know all those other permutations of this but we have 24 businesses right now that were hurting were very hopeful and they get their letters saying they are not going to receive anything from anyone and i i i don't see i don't see that this is that great of a leap on this nor that we haven't discussed it we have discussed it we have discussed it over and over and over and 480 is a heck of a lot less than the 1 million that we have been discussing for several meetings now the additional 1 million and if we're looking at our budget discussion our fund balance and all that kind of stuff those are discussions that we're going to be having in the future and those are discussions now that you guys have voted to set that maximum levy at four percent we're going to be having those discussions so yes we do need to have those yes we need to look at what we need to do but no i i do not agree with letting these businesses sit without funding without any hope of anything i i don't accept that so i would hope that that is the bare minimum that we could do to help them out councilmember gus simpson um i agree we need to uh as far as finding four percent in our budget together we get it down to zero it's going to be a tough road to owe and our staff just found out about all this tonight as we headed this direction but on the other hand we have 24 businesses that applied that got qualified and didn't get picked unfortunately we didn't have as much money as we would like to have had to help them out and after tonight's discussion i think we're definitely in a position where we can allocate up to 480 000 to get those last 24 businesses taken care of and moved forward here and i i'm assuming i may be wrong but i think we're going to be having discussions like this several times in the next year because at some point the federal government's going to start sending some eight out again then we're gonna we're gonna be dealing with it again and we're gonna have to figure it out but any stop gap we can make and i understand what you're saying dan about the 20 000 in burnsville and that but if you're getting something you're getting more than what the people that got nothing got so i mean the ten thousand it's a start and if you can if you can work out a plan with the county god love you so it's we'll go over there but i i would be supportive and i'd joel i usually always take your advice you know that but in this particular case with the business and that then what's going on out there it's i think we need to act quickly and so i would prefer to go forward tonight with it okay your proposal by the way it does give 24 businesses 20 000 not 10 000. well it's up to 20 000. they might not have applied for 20 000. yeah it sounds like the numbers that jenny reported it was they must have all been she said she said it was no more than 480 000. okay uh councilmember workman thank you um i just want to clarify that if this is going to come to a vote tonight it's not my decision isn't based on not wanting to help those 24 remaining businesses my decision is based on i don't know that 12 to 24 hours is going to make a substantial difference as whether we can help these people or not simply by just doing our due diligence and making sure that this is done with some time at least a little bit of time to look at it before the final decision is made so i have absolutely no problem supplementing those 24 remaining businesses for 480 000 i just want to understand how that money is going to get moved and then how that's going to implicate the rest of our tax discussions as this proceeds for the remainder of the year and and and i'm very with you councilmember workman because all of us want to help our businesses and so we have 24 but we also want to make sure that we help uh every citizen in burnsville and every business in burnsville with uh taking care of uh our tax levy so uh and i agree with you we need to look at projections to the future and see the impact of all of that and uh uh i see um miss muscali is looking at all of the numbers right now so um yeah i see i see you council member keeley uh so i'm going to uh go to um to miss mescali and then i'll come to council member keely why did you go to council member keeley first okay i'll go to council member keeley and then i'll go to uh mr mascoli uh this would be a question for mr faulkner we have um just a quick review we have x number of businesses who were picked in the first round uh up to that million and then the remaining we have 24 that didn't uh fly or didn't qualify for whatever the reason from the county which the county's qualifying everybody that that applied so um what's what's left how many businesses are sort of caught in between that where they they didn't get picked from us they're not part of the 24 so they must be someone who got picked for 10 from the county how many businesses make up that last group um well so we have 127 that were eligible total right 70 of ours are unfunded 57 of them made it they got picked in our lottery five of those have accepted other funding five of those to the tune of about seventy thousand dollars okay okay and then and then of the seventy that did not get picked 46 are going to now use this word they're going to be vetted by the county they haven't been picked by the county so it's possible the county may reject them and they end up with nothing but but the county intends to look at them and and consider consider them as a completed application and they have to go through the vetting process so i believe we have we should have everybody covered unless somebody does not get picked by the county for whatever reason let's say they have 60 employees instead of 50 which was the county threshold or if their home occupation and the county kicks them out but they fit under our program so there may be a handful of those and and that last group becomes probably the largest price tag so that if 480 is this 24 out of those 70 then that remaining group um is somewhere around maybe 800 700 or 800 000 would be the total if we were to choose to give them the burnsville grant that would be on top of the 480 would be about another 700 750 maybe well our program is up to 20 000 so that would be what 920 000 right so 46 times 20. if every one of them were at 20 000 and we funded them all that would be our maximum expense yes i was kind of backing into the map because you had said earlier we have 1.3 million total left we had 2.3 right we allocated in the first round a million so that left 1.3 and 480 leads you know about you know 859 something like that so some of those businesses have been there must not have qualified for 20 but it's it's you know we're pretty close so we're taking care of roughly a third of the remaining businesses with these 24 that's correct okay so we have two thirds to go that's all i want i'm still going to advocate for the other two thirds so with all of that council members i also want to make sure that we agree to fund what the hospital is asking us councilmember i call the question okay and the question is for the 480 correct up to 480. okay the question is called all in favor please say aye aye aye [Music] nay because the only reason i want to fund all of them all of them but i also want to make sure we have the right numbers to go forward and also include the hospital and so and then we i want to understand the impacts on all of this but i am in favor of funding our businesses and making sure that they get the money that they need and hopefully that with jenny um working with the county we have a clear understanding of who's funded who's taking county money and who and so because they can't double dip and so i want to understand all of that and the other is that i want to understand the impact on the budget if we're taking it all the way down through the but i also want to make sure that we fund the hospital we haven't i haven't heard whether this council is going to fund the hospital for what they're asking us to do uh miss muscoli madam air and council um with regards to the 46 that jenny referred to that may be funded by the council we will read the county we'll reach out to see if we could come to some sort of agreement on a supplement or something else to get to that 20 thousand dollars so i i i would like that to understand so if they get if uh the county gives ten and we can supple and they and we supplement with another tent they get their twenty that certainly would be beneficial that would be and i'd like to understand that and and i would like to understand that and unless we have that discussion with the county that allows us to look at that so that that's one of the things that you and i would talk about if the county is going to say that yeah we're going to give them ten thousand dollars and they would agree that we can give 10 from us then they then that business will have 20 000. still coming out of the same pot but and uh it's if we all agree that they're not double dipping they're just meeting our threshold yes okay that's the point all along yeah and that's so for me along with councilmember workman is understanding all of that so that we really understand the numbers for us and the budget and 4.0 and what's left in the reserve as we continue to draw this down and i also want to fund the hospital council member schultz old button my apologies okay i got a new button i will unbutton my button okay so um um still okay we have that done this evening but i would also uh uh say something to the council if we need to come back and have a special meeting i would like all of you to be available for a special meeting if we need to take a look at this and also need to make that decision on the on the hospital ms faulconer madam mayor members of the council we will bring have to bring back a resolution documenting this we had amended it to expand the program or to change um last time so we'll bring this back certainly just want you to know this isn't the last you'll see this but we have to dot our eyes and cross empties and absolutely we need to make sure because this is a single audit kind of stuff and we need to make sure that we are complying with everything so we will have a special meeting because we need to do the resolution and we need to make sure that we look at the uh complete allocation and ms faulkner you'll talk with the county and make sure that they will partner with us so for those who receive the ten and if they we could supplement it with ours they still then get the 20 that they need that's correct madam mayor that will be my goal tomorrow i was going to have a conversation anyways with them so we'll have this conversation um and then also just to remind the council the allocation to the hospital is outside of the cares business program you can do a direct allocation to them so that can happen separately and that's what i want the council to understand at the next at the special meeting we will deal with the hospital okay all right you've noticed it now pardon me you've noticed it yes by saying that you haven't noticed it so it has to be on the agenda yeah so at least the hospital knows that we're still thinking about them uh councilmember schultz and one piece of information at that special meeting that would be helpful when we talk about the hospital is to know what our sister cities have also ponied up to the hospital because it's their hospital too yeah and so um i'm looking at all you cities yeah so yeah but the thing is oh yeah yeah but the thing is we've always boldly led the hospital we've talked about it from the beginning when we received their letter and i just want to make sure that we help the hospital and we can control our our decisions we can't control others but we're asking them to also help all right um everybody everybody's good uh councilmember keeley you had another comment that you wanted to make because i was ready to adjourn i was about to motion that yeah we uh didn't talk about something that was brought up in background was sent around uh about council salary so i want to have that discussion before i don't know uh um yeah however before i go there do you want to put that on a special meeting agenda because uh mr jamnic this was not on the agenda for tonight you were correct it was not on the agenda it's not on the agenda for tonight so it's not something that we can but it can be on the agenda for the special meeting that'll work we were going to talk about it during the budget but i noticed it didn't get noted there so i thought it was going to be an add-on somehow but we probably just punted on that one a little too much but the special meeting is a fine uh place for that discussion i have a question for clarification with um city attorney jamnic related to his comment earlier about us not being or his recommendation that we don't make any decision based on this money weren't we following the same process when we allocated the first million uh when we had the discussion tonight and wanted to make another allocation and was your recommendation based on simply the max tax and the budget as presented and and how the sources of monies would would shift was that really your your own concern or i thought we were following the same process we had this council mayor my advice was based on how we get these things in front of the council your policies are your policies they're designed to protect members of the council from surprise actions where you don't have a staff background research obviously in this situation council's action tonight is not impulsive you've been discussing this for several months and so as councilmember augustine mentioned there has been a long record established here so it's it's one of those issues it's really your policy that that is in place and whether you are acting as a deliberative body versus impulsively i would give the same advice if someone came in at citizen comments and asked you to vote on a land use matter or anything else where you know your policies and procedures are set up for you to have background information so you can make an informed decision my advice to you hopefully tries to present some of those downsides or positives or negatives but it's it's based as you go here and as ms faulkner indicated um the resolution documenting your action will come back to you the previous discussions were set up is what did you want to do to direct staff to prepare that yeah tonight's motion was more we want to send 480 000 to the next 24 folks there and that's the concern that i had it was in my view not something that that was structured enough but that's my opinion and and you have been clear that when we have these covet updates it's an update it's an update and it's not within the realm of a background information that we need to act on so but as you have on the other hand council's been clearing those procedures to direct staff that this is what you want to see and that's fine but a lot of those things are basically then prepared as action items and brought back to you such as reopening the parks and those types of things in my opinion tonight was a little bit different than that and what we've had in the past and that's why madam mayor i think i can speak to that we had a meeting not long ago where we as a council gave staff direction that we were going to discuss an additional 1 million in this grant program and staff's recommendation at that night was wait until the 22nd of september when we present and can give you a full budget picture so you can have that discussion at that meeting that's why we had the discussion tonight but not to be critical of staff the item wasn't put in our background the way it was stated and set up back on that previous meeting so we went ahead with the conversation i had every intent of having the conversation anyway however it was missing as a quote action item but it was intended to be an action item from that previous meeting where we all said okay we're going to wait till the 22nd that was the meeting that i got a little upset on this roleplay comment so it was very clearly and deliberately intended to be on our agenda and a discussion item and a decision item tonight if anybody's not clear on that just go watch that meeting yeah now it's it's also on on record it's it's um streamed and it's on video so you're correct all right is there anything else uh councilmember gustafsson are you making a motion i was i wasn't gonna let him get the last word well said dan with that i'll motion to adjourn second there's some a motion to adjourn by council member gustafsson second by councilmember schultz all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed a and a motion carries good night and thank you for being with us it was an 11 pm meeting for me you