This is the formatted transcript with speaker names identified based on the provided context and the meeting proceedings. [0:00] [Music] [1:00] [Music] [1:06] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Ready? Good evening. I'd like to call the regular city council meeting for Tuesday, March 4th, 2025, to order. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Welcome everyone, both those in the audience and online. With that, are there any additions or corrections to the agenda? No, sir. Seeing none, I'll move the agenda. All in favor signify by saying "Aye." (Group: Aye). Opposed? We have an agenda. First item up is presentations, proclamations, and acknowledgements, and I'll turn this over to Mr. Martin. [1:52] **Logan Martin (City Administrator):** Thank you, members of the council. I was just going to pull up the presentation for our friends at MVTA because I think as we came in from the city council work session, I failed to do that. If anybody else has any they want to give, they definitely can. [2:37] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yes, you sure did. [2:37] **Logan Martin:** Yes, you sure did. Here it comes. But I think we have Luther Wynder here, the Executive Director of the MVTA. Come on up, Luther, as I give a quick introduction. Every year, I think MVTA, our transit partners, like to give an update on what they've been up to recently and just get a chance to get in front of the City Council. I know Mr. Essler is on their Board of Directors, and so Luther's here tonight just to give a little update on what MVTA has been up to, how we partner with them, and what their plans are for the future. So with that, I think I saved us, Luther, and I've got you pulled up here. [3:22] **Luther Wynder (Executive Director, MVTA):** Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. I think last year we did this, I was away, so Matt filled in for me. So I hope I can do a good job this year. Thank you guys for having me. I think you guys know I’m Luther Wynder, Chief Officer for MVTA. Been there since 2016. I’ll talk a little bit about transit, my passion. I know I have 15 minutes, so hold me accountable, please. If need be, ring a bell. I’ll try my best to move along as quickly as possible. So, we'll do an overview. I'll talk about some fixed route service that we do have here in Rosemount as well as MVTA Connect, some updates there, our event services—really happy to share some updates and progress on that—some of our outreach and partnerships, and then talk about funding we're looking at on the legislative front. Just at a glance, I always start off with this. Not everyone's always familiar, obviously, with what we do as an organization, how many buses that we have, but just at a glance, we were founded obviously in 1990. We have 170 buses. We operate express, local, reverse commute, event service, and also on-demand service, which we call our Connect service. We have 24 routes, 14 park-and-rides, and two garages. Currently, right now, based on ridership and size, we're the second-largest transit agency in the state of Minnesota. I like to say it's going to take us a number of years to catch Metro Transit, but no, just give us about another 100 years, we might get there. But as of now, it's us and Duluth; we're similar in size as well as similar in ridership. The routes that we do have currently that serve Rosemount, we have our 472 and 484, which are express services that go down to Minneapolis and St. Paul respectively, and our 420 service. Overall ridership for 2023 to 2024 was up 10% on average in the region. I think Metro Transit ridership was about 6%, so national trends, we're about there when it comes to our suburban service. Our express service is up almost 10% (9.4%). Our local service was down 2% from 2023 to 2024, but that's because we actually reallocated about 15%—we cut 15% of our local service and redirected that to our micro-transit services. So we did expect to see a decrease in local service because we actually recommitted that service to another service type, which is micro-transit: our Connect service, which I'll talk to a couple slides down. Overall, our system ridership by month, what we continue to see is we're at 45% of pre-pandemic levels for 2024, up to 43% our year-to-date today. We're still trending up from even what we see there. We're up almost 4% for this same month of what we looked at the same time period for January 2024. I think overall, our ridership goal for this year will be 1.6 million rides. That'll be up from about 1.4 million that we did provide last year. Overall, when we look at our Connect service, and if everyone's not familiar with our Connect service, that's our micro-transit on-demand, point-to-point service that provides customers the ability to travel when they book their trips based on our app. In 2024, as you see, we had over 150,000 bookings. We're up about 44% from 2023. So as you see, you see the decrease obviously in local service redirected to our Connect service, which continues to grow. Our average daily bookings on our Connect service is about 434, and our average wait time is about 26 minutes. Our goal as an organization is for our wait time to be about 20 minutes or less. Right now, as you see, as we've added buses, we brought the wait time down, but as demand continues to increase, wait times will also tend to increase, and we'll do things like obviously redirecting resources as well as procuring new buses to get that wait time down. But our sweet spot is always being under 20. A little bit about what we have as far as Connect expansion—some directly touching Rosemount and some touching some of our partner cities here. We have our electric Connect buses that we put in revenue service a few months ago. They are, to date—remember, we actually demoed this bus in 2023—we were the first transit agency in the nation to have that bus in revenue service. It received just a couple months ago its federal waiver. We use state resources, state funds. In the transportation bill, we got some one-time capital funds to procure five of these buses. I’m really excited and happy with them. We demoed it back in 2023. There have been a few different electric buses demoed, and normally they have some really good claims about what they can actually perform, and then actually when we put them on the road or take them out, we find out they’re not quite getting there. But I will say, when we demoed this, it was one of the first times we actually demoed a bus that did what it prescribed it could do. Back in 2023, we actually had a really severe ice storm in January. We actually had to pull our service off the road, and at the time our maintenance director took out this electric vehicle that we were demoing and took it out on the roads, and it performed spectacularly because it's a heavier bus. Even though it's front-wheel drive, it's a heavier bus because of the batteries that sit low. It performed really well in those inclement weather conditions, and that was one of the main selling points for us too moving forward; no other service could operate, but that bus could. Also too, we have seven cities which MVTA provides service to as our partner cities. We were able to add our Connect service in Prior Lake and Shakopee. A little bit about our Connect being one of our newest services (2019), it continues to grow. We always like to make sure everyone understands the demographics of who we serve with this particular service because it is public transit. 65% of the people utilize service to go to and from work. 47% of customers say if the Connect didn't have an option, they would have used Lyft or Uber. But this is where we get to the telling signs: our Connect riders' annual household income, one in five is less than $15,000. So we want to look at the first one and see that primarily it's used to go to and from work, then we look at that third bullet and we see $15,000 or less. The average comparable Lyft or Uber trip in our communities is from $23 to $28 each way. It's simply not possible for a person who has that type of income to afford to use those Uber and Lyft services. So we like to say we're not necessarily competitors; it's two different service types. We may do an app, maybe a small vehicle, but we're a shared ride and we're serving a public transit niche. We do see that 47% of our riders are people of color, 60% of our riders are women, one in 10 of our riders report having a disability or long-term health condition, and we love this metric: almost 45% of our customers are between 35 and 54, which as you see is that prime working age. One of the demographics we still struggle with, but I think we're doing a lot better with our electric buses because it's a different bus type—it looks pretty cool—is our 25 and under demographic. Those younger individuals sometimes, when they used to see the older bus, they thought that was for seniors or people who were disabled. They have to understand it's public transit for everyone to utilize, and it's app-based. That demographic is continuing to grow for us. Overall, just some bright spots of what as an agency we've committed to: prior to the pandemic, the bulk of our service was express service that went downtown. We've always had a lot of regional events that we need resources and funding for to serve. We've been able to reallocate resources as we did from local service to Connect, and also to some special services in order to expand our event service offerings. What we do see is we had almost a 28% increase in ridership from 2023, primarily driven—I will say—by our "Swifty" bus. Taylor Swift, if everyone remembers, she came here last year and she did very well for us. We would love for her to come back every single year if she possibly could because as a whole to the whole region, she did extremely well. But as you see, we do Minnesota United games, our Vikings, our Gophers games as well too, multiple different community events and our concert series. But like I said, Taylor Swift was a main driver of that ridership. We just loved it. Some event service specific for Rosemount: we did Leprechaun Days. We had over 440 people on the route service; it's really good to see it was a 150% increase. That just shows you that obviously sometimes it takes time to develop that ridership, but it's there. As long as you have it there, people will continue to utilize it. The Haunted Trail, obviously over 500 people utilized that service; that was also up about 133%. The Rosemount Development Tour for the Port Authority, and we did a Rosemount Parks tour. And that bus, as you see the head sign there, that was the Rosemount Parks tour. I don't know if you recognize those individuals, but we have them on camera. Some more partnership highlights that directly affect the city: working with Dakota County Technical College (DCTC), we have campus connections, resource open house. We did an outreach survey for the Route 420 expansion. It's important to note, even though we had the service there originally, as we bring the service back now, we have had a really, really engaged student body. These individuals turn over every couple years, but then and now as far as the need for the service, talking to us and also connecting us with other fellow students that they believe also should be utilizing the service and helping us refine that concept to make sure it targets the best outcome. It's a wonderful thing to see how that student body has definitely just embraced the need for transit and the expansion of that to that campus and beyond. Also to the Transitional Education Service Alternative program, we've done some educational presentations on using transit combined with practice route rides. They get comfortable with utilizing transit. In 2024, we did a rider survey. I just want to give some highlights of some of the feedback that we did get. What we say is "work" is still being reported as the primary trip purpose (60% of responses). It's important to note that when we did our survey back in 2019, over 95% of the people said they utilize it to go to work. That shows you that with the different offerings we do with the event service, we have a different customer mix. 83% of the residents drove to their starting location in 2019; this was down to 54% in 2024 in the survey. What we find is that's also important because when you look at 83%, that means they were going to a park-and-ride. Now you look at this, and that's why the local and the Connect service is so beneficial; we're actually capturing more people in the communities that aren't necessarily going down to Minneapolis or St. Paul, even though that's still our highest book of business. It's actually serving the community with the suburb-to-suburb transit. Ridership has been improving since the start of the pandemic, but not in the same areas. Prior to the pandemic, local service was 25% of our rides; post-pandemic, it's 40%. That was a demographic where we were seeing the shift. Prior to the pandemic, what we started to see was large employers were moving from downtown to campuses and locations outside in the suburbs. The pandemic kind of exasperated that. We've always seen that trend, and now obviously we're trying to right-size our services to make sure we can capture that market that continues to grow in our suburban communities. We need for a future-driven focus that prioritizes our evolving ridership, and transit must adapt to people about where they're at. Which kind of brings me to my last slide—hopefully I'm doing good on time—which is our legislative and funding update. In 2023, the transportation bill was passed that allocated a 0.75% regional sales tax to go to transit. Currently, right now to date, Minnesota Valley and all suburban providers still do not have a set funding allocation. We have a temporary interim policy by the Met Council of which MVTA receives about 2.18% of that. When we talk about $450 million for the sales tax, it's important to note that the actual MVST (Motor Vehicle Sales Tax)—the previous funding—is only about $380 million. There's more funding coming in than sales tax in the region, but even for MVST, just understand the region's doubled in funding, but we don't yet have our funding certainty or the ability to... we don't have that allocation. So one of the things that we'll be doing this session is continuing to look to get a statutory dedication. We like to call it the "legislative fix." They mentioned us in the transportation bill, but yet we don't have that allocation. We want the same budgetary certainty. I think we've all seen the Council put out different proposals talking about increasing service by 35% and making us the BRT capital of the nation. I'd love to stand here and tell you that I'm doing more than just reallocating my local service to Connect service. We need that funding certainty so we can also talk about the plans in which we want to do to serve Rosemount and our cities accordingly. Our hope this session is we do have a bill that's being drafted now that will start the education process. We're asking for a sales tax floor—just the minimum that the Council has to provide to us moving forward. Approximately about 10% of the MVST we want to come into the suburban providers and be distributed among the entities. Some of the things we'd like to see if we did get that funding: we wanted to obviously expand our 420 service, add more service at DCTC and beyond because we have the Lifetime Fitness and all this happening on that 420 corridor. It's an important note: our MVST is a snapshot from 2001. So the funding that we currently stand on today, that we've had prior to that sales tax, was what your property tax looked like in 2001. That's how much we got for the City of Rosemount. I've been here since 2016 and there's been a lot of development, even more so obviously on the 420 corridor. Our MVST does not capture, and has never been able to capture, any of the growth that's happened in this community, or a Savage or Shakopee. Now you're one of the fastest-growing cities, but if you go back a couple years ago, Shakopee was one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. No additional funding for that. The sales tax funding should be used for a good allocation for us to allow us to do that expansion and meet the needs of what we see in our growing communities. It would also allow us to connect our Connect. Right now, our Eagan Connect service only can serve Eagan; Eagan residents cannot use Connect service to come to Rosemount or go to any of the surrounding cities. The expansion of our Connect would serve all seven cities. One of the challenges and things I've been asked for numerous times is more service from the park-and-ride to St. Paul. It would allow us to expand our express service to St. Paul as well and some additional trips to Minneapolis. So that's some of the things that we look at as low-hanging fruit if we got some additional sales tax. If they handed me a few million dollars, which you need more than that, we could definitely stand this up pretty quickly in Rosemount. We continue obviously to work with the city planners and this board to see where the needs are to be met, but the first thing we have to do is capture some of that funding. Any questions? [20:17] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Thank you very much, Luther. Looking at Council, anything to ask? Questions? [21:04] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Yeah, Luther. One of the things I know we talked about back at one of the goal-setting sessions you guys were looking at: the Pilot Knob location. Moving one of the... for Rosemount residents, largely for Rosemount residents. Just for those that are maybe online, have you guys decided whether you're going to move forward with that, or are you still contemplating that? [21:49] **Luther Wynder:** We're still contemplating. We have a lot of plans and we see a lot of needs, but we want to put service out only if we know we're going to have the funding to maintain it if it does well. So it's something that we have and that's also one of our high-priority items we have to do, but we're still in the planning phase of that. [21:49] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** We're hoping. And essentially what the conversation was is that the station over on Pilot Knob, by the South Target, looking at that as more of a direct into the city versus having to go over to Apple Valley on Cedar and go up that way. That's what they're contemplating—just closer proximity, etc. So it's a great station but an underutilized station. My predecessor was able to get some CMAQ funding to build that service there on Pilot Knob, but unfortunately we've just never been able to get MVST funding to actually put some frequent or high-frequency service there. [22:35] **Luther Wynder:** I talk about it from a personal standpoint: when I came here in 2016, that area—I used to call that my "secret Target," that's my Apple Valley South Target. I used to go all the time because no one was over there. Now you have all the development, you have the Hy-Vee, you have... I mean, all of that has really grown up in the past five to six years and you see the need for service. Some levels of service there. You have businesses who are asking for service. We have the park-and-ride, a great location, good proximity to Rosemount individuals. I know from here people need to get there because it's obviously it's a good retail hub there, but just no MVST funding because it's newer. That's what the sales tax would help obviously—building that connection. [23:22] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** And then also for the benefit of Council and those listening, "MVST" he uses that often: Minnesota Vehicle Sales Tax. That's what that is. You can tell these guys do a tremendous job lobbying and running the calculation for making the case for why they should get a higher percentage of that. So that's one of the things that from a revenue standpoint is actually more of a needle-mover than even trying to move the needle on the rider fare. Anytime you buy a car or boat, it helps. [24:08] **Luther Wynder:** And just so you know, when we did a calculation a couple years ago, our 13 suburban communities generated over 10% of the statewide Motor Vehicle Sales Tax. We got about less than 4% back. So a lot of inequity there. My apologies. [24:08] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** So, are there any plans to do direct from Rosemount location to Minneapolis downtown? I mean, pre-COVID, I think a couple of us on the council rode those expressways daily. 488 was the number? Is that in the future or is it just only going to be through Apple Valley? [24:54] **Luther Wynder:** No, there is service—there is direct service that needs to happen. What we did is, because our footprint was at the time all of our park-and-rides, we tried to serve some direct service. As you just alluded to, we condensed that down and what we did with some of that funding was we put it in Connect, we used it to expand local service. As the ridership continues to build back, to get new funding, our goal has always been because, you know, that's one of the attractive components: express service is meant to be express. Express service is faster than BRT—that's bus rapid—we're express. There's a difference; it's like being on an express lane on the highway. And we do need to make it more direct. So that definitely is one of our goals, as well as direct to Minneapolis, but also St. Paul as well too, because even pre-pandemic, that was one of the big drivers from the city—that you wanted more service to go down to St. Paul and we were never able to fulfill that. [25:40] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Okay. I'll just make one comment. I mean, I'm fortunate to get to spend at least one night a month with Luther and the staff. In terms of the MVTA staff collectively, they've won a number of awards, they're very creative, they're aggressive, and they do a tremendous job. A great group of people to work with and I'm fortunate to get to spend some time with these guys. They do a great job keeping people standing upright, which is very helpful for Rosemount residents and those in the community, so much appreciated. [26:26] **Luther Wynder:** I did want to ask, is MVTA part of the mobility session? I know National League of Cities is having a deal in Burnsville tomorrow. Yes, 100%. Our chair is the national chair of the transportation committee for NLC. So yeah, we did a lot of work with that. You'll see our logo. That's my next thing for tomorrow. I'll see you there for the early portion supporting council member [unintelligible] on that as well. [26:26] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Hope the weather... it's not looking too bad right now, so hopefully it stays like this and the streets will be plowed, right? Get over there. All righty, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Luther. All right, so that presentation, we'll consider that accepted and that completes item number three. Move on to item four, the response to public comment. I don't believe we have any responses this evening to provide. That'll move us on to public comment, item five. [27:11] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Anyone wishing to come before Council at this time may do so by stating your name, address, and your comment or question. These items would be anything not related to the remaining part of the agenda. I understand there may be some people interested in talking to us under some new business, which we'll take at that time. So with that, the podium is open. Anyone may come forward, state your question. Seeing none at this time, then we'll consider the public comment closed for this evening. We'll move to consent agendas. We have items including bill listings, minutes for the February 18th regular meeting, minutes for the Joint Powers Agreement with the state of Minnesota for our Fire Department Chief having access through the BCA authorization, creation of the Deputy Public Works Director for the City of Rosemount, the ballfield use agreement with ISD number 917, items related to the Roscoe Place Apartments development subdivision and temporary access, and the Amberfield 6 subdivision agreement. Does anyone in Council wish to pull any item for further discussion or comment? [28:42] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** No, sir. [28:42] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** No. [28:42] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Seeing none, would someone like to move the consent agenda in the affirmative, items 6A through G? [28:42] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** So moved. [28:42] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Second. [28:42] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** I have a motion by Theisen, second by Essler. Roll, please. [28:42] **Erin Fasbender (City Clerk):** Essler? (Essler: Aye). Klimpel? (Klimpel: Aye). Weisensel? (Weisensel: Aye). Theisen? (Theisen: Aye). Freske? (Freske: Aye). Consent agenda approved 5-0. [29:28] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** We'll move through public hearings, which we have none this evening. Item eight, unfinished business, and then on to new business. Item number 9A: Request by Magellan Land Development for approval of rezoning land from A2 Agricultural to R2 Low-to-Medium Density Residential and a preliminary plat to develop 58 townhome units. The way that we'll be doing this this evening is staff will be making a report, followed by any questions or comments from Council, and then we will reserve some time for comments from anyone in the audience wishing to make comments. This is not normal process for this—all comments usually are taken at the public hearing that occurs at the Planning Commission—but we did receive a request and I'll honor that with a few minutes for open questions or open comments. So with that, I'll turn it over to Planner Miss Hogan. [30:13] **Julia Hogan (Planner):** Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. So a little bit of an overview of the project. Like stated earlier, the applicant is requesting a rezoning and preliminary plat approval to develop 58 townhomes on a 10-acre parcel located east of Akron Avenue and north of Bonaire Path. The applicant is requesting the site be rezoned from A2 Agricultural to R2 Low-to-Medium Density Residential. The Planning Commission did review this at their January 28th and February 25th meetings and are recommending approval to Council tonight. Little overview of the site location: as I had mentioned, it is directly east of Akron Avenue and north of Bonaire Path. You can see that the subdivision to the west is Caramore Crossing, and you can also see Flint Hills Recreation Complex is located to the south of this site as well. Regarding the rezoning request: the R2 zoning district is an allowed secondary zoning district under the LDR (Low Density Residential) land use designation, which this property is designated for. The City's future land use map was adopted by City Council alongside the City's 2040 Comprehensive Plan back in 2020. The land use map assigns land use types to all parcels within the community to guide current and future planning and development through 2040. Any new development, redevelopment, change in land use, or change in zoning is required to be consistent with that official land use map. The LDR land use designation does allow for a mix of housing types which includes single-family detached homes, duplexes, townhomes, and twin homes. It does allow for a maximum density of six units per acre, which this project does fall under. A little overview of the site plan: the site is 10 acres in size and the proposed density is six per acre. There are 58 townhome units proposed with a mix of four to six units per building and a total of 12 buildings throughout the site. The site will be accessed by a single public street that extends east and south off of Akron Avenue. A private road is shown to extend east to give access to the townhomes throughout the site. There are three private drives shown to be extended off that main private drive, and that private drive ends to the east in a cul-de-sac. There are two stormwater pond management areas shown on site. The first phase of development will consist of the public access road off of Akron Avenue, the main private road, both stormwater ponds, and 30 townhome units. The second phase will be the remaining 28 units and the three private drives on the south end. The Parks and Recreation Director did review the plans and is recommending that an 8-foot wide trail be benched on the west side of the development along Akron Avenue. Since the City is not looking to acquire any park land with this development, the park dedication will be cash-in-lieu, which is $165,300. The landscape plan shows a total of 226 trees to be planted throughout the site. Landscaping is not able to be planted to the east of the stormwater ponding area due to infrastructure that goes north to south in that area. Here are a couple renderings that were submitted by the applicant. You can see that the townhomes do have a similar look to single-family detached homes and are similar in height. There were four different types submitted. There are two recommendations in front of the City Council today: Motion number one to adopt an ordinance changing the zoning from A2 to R2, and motion number two to adopt a resolution approving the preliminary plat for Akron Ridge subject to conditions A through I. I can answer any questions that the Council may have. I do know that there are additional city staff members here and the applicant is present as well. [35:36] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Okay, thank you. Open up to council members. Anything you'd like to ask staff about? [36:21] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Yeah, so it looks like with the Planning Commission, they initially had this on the January 28th agenda and they voted 6 to 1 to bump it into February. What were the open items and what was the resolution? [37:07] **Julia Hogan:** Some of the main concerns from the commission were pedestrian access. There were concerns that there would not be safety accesses to the park to the south, the Flint Hills Recreation Complex, due to the trail being on the western side of Akron, not eastern side. The applicant did speak with Dakota County and Flint Hills Resources. Flint Hills Resources said that they would have to do extensive research due to some pipeline and other infrastructure on that eastern side. For Dakota County, in their CIP, they didn't have funds for a trail on the eastern side right now, but staff is always working with Dakota County in regards to advancing development. [37:53] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** And then coming out of the Planning Commission, I understand Item I was added per the recommendation of the Planning Commission. Can you talk a little bit about the issues with that property to the south? [38:40] **Julia Hogan:** Yes, the property owner to the south did have concerns with potential trespassers. One mediation the commission thought would be beneficial would be for the HOA to add in some language making sure that residents know that that property to the south is private and is not allowed to be accessed. The applicant was fine with adding in that language. [39:26] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Is the applicant available to come forward? [39:26] **Jason Palmby (Applicant):** Jason Palmby, Magellan Land Development. 7129 Heatherton Trail, Edina, Minnesota. Anything you'd like to say? No, she did a wonderful job. It was vetted quite well by the Planning Commission. I had a number of discussions with both Dakota County and Flint Hills, and there's not a hard "no"; it's something that is going to be reviewed as we move forward. [40:11] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** What's the anticipated scheduling? [40:11] **Jason Palmby:** Probably starting in mid-to-late June with the first phase probably finishing up in August. [40:11] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** Phase one is units 1 through 30 on the north side, correct? [40:11] **Jason Palmby:** Correct. It'll be mass graded, but the infrastructure development would be just on the northern portion. [40:58] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Staff, I didn't see it in here—do you have where the public comment map was that showed where people had sent letters? [41:43] **Julia Hogan:** Yes, we did have nine public comment letters. The yellow is showing what was sent out for public notice (a quarter-mile notice), and the red dots show where staff received public comment. There were a total of nine public comments submitted. [42:24] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** All righty. So with that, anyone wishing to speak on this, we'll open up for comment. Council has read the information from the Planning Commission; if there's any additional comments that haven't already been expressed, we'd be interested in hearing those. I'll open up the podium for comment. We'll limit it to 3 minutes a person and up to the next 10 minutes. Seeing no one making a mad dash, we're not going to sit around and wait for 10 minutes to pass either. We were informed that some people were interested in showing up this evening; apparently they have not. And so with that, I will close that portion of comments and look to Council to move the recommended action. [42:24] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** I'll make a motion to adopt an ordinance amending Ordinance B, City of Rosemount Zoning Ordinance, to change the zoning of the site from A2 Agricultural to R2 Low-to-Medium Density Residential. [42:24] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** I'll second. [43:14] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion by Essler, second by Freske. Roll please. (Clerk calls roll; all vote Aye). That passes 5-0. And the second motion? [43:14] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** I'll make a motion to adopt the resolution approving the preliminary plat for Akron Ridge subject to conditions A through I. [43:14] **Councilmember Tami Klimpel:** Second. [43:14] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion by Theisen, second by Klimpel. Roll please. (Clerk calls roll; all vote Aye). That also passes 5-0. Completes new business item 9A. Thank you very much. We'll move on to new business 9B: Adoption of the City Council goals and strategic direction. Mr. Martin. [43:59] **Logan Martin:** Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. Happy to be here tonight to give a brief recap of the work that the City Council and staff did in January of this year to establish some short-term work plan and initiatives for the years 2025-2026. The five-year strategic plan for the City was adopted in 2024, encompassing the years 2024 to 2029. Each year, staff and the Council meet to discuss short and mid-term actions to ensure that we're staying on track for that five-year strategic goal. What I’m encompassing tonight in 8 to 10 minutes was a 5-to-6 hour meeting we had back in January. We really enjoy reflecting on the successes of 2024. This is our guidebook and our benchmark for what we're pointing towards. It allows us to be transparent and engaging with our community so they know what your vision is. You'll hopefully see us using some of this language: growth, connection, engagement, supporting a high culture of performance. Growth and enhancement of Rosemount has been a vision of this council for quite a while. As we grow, we have to create community connections to stay connected as a community. We also want to preserve that "hometown feel." We've heard that time and time again in community feedback. How do we do that from a staff perspective? We have to support a culture of high performance. That means we're trying to be an employee of choice and retain the best and the brightest. Summarizing each department: **Police:** One of the biggest tasks is finishing the transition into the new building. It’s a $58 million building; we’re just finishing that transition. We are continuing our focus on emergency management and being prepared for a crisis. We are also focusing on recruitment—how we find the best and the brightest to keep Rosemount PD a top-shelf agency. We will be rolling out a K9 in 2025. **Fire Department:** We have a new Fire Chief, so one of the goals is to continue to onboard and learn from Chief Springer. We’ll begin the work on analyzing future fire staffing needs as Rosemount grows. We currently have staff in an EMT program and we are looking at the "Blue Card" program for universal scene management. **Community Development:** We’re starting the 2050 Comprehensive Plan process soon. We’ll keep looking at growing the City's toolbox for economic development. On the staff side, we are looking at technology advancements like permit software to make processes less staff-intensive. **Parks and Recreation:** Dan and his team have a lot of trail investments planned. We have the dog park and pickleball rolling out this year, as well as the building at UMore Park. We are looking at the future of Central Park and Erickson Park. We want to continue high-quality community events, like the barbecue fest. [54:45] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Can you speak to the new one that's coming in June, "Patriots in the Park"? [55:30] **Logan Martin:** Certainly. It's a partnership with Beyond the Yellow Ribbon. They are expecting a pretty big crew for a fun night for veterans and their families. I think that's June 10th. **Public Works:** They also have to transition into the public works and police campus. We’re going to invite the community to see the campus this spring (May or June). They have a lot of infrastructure projects: the roundabout at Rosemount High School this summer, the Akron and Connemara roundabout next summer, and the Biscayne signal. They are also a frontline member of our economic development pursuit team, handling water and roadway capacity questions. **Administration:** We're going to complete an employee survey to ensure staff are as happy as we think they are. We are blowing up our entire financial software to move to JD Edwards for much more 21st-century accounting. We also have a third member of the IT team joining soon to focus on network security. That is the final slide. I am happy to stand for questions; otherwise, we would ask for Council to acknowledge receipt. [1:00:51] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Open up to council, any questions or comments? I think we've seen this pretty well. It's a lot on their plate, but high expectations always seem to go to the staff. If there is nothing, I look forward to moving the recommended action in the affirmative. [1:00:51] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** I'll make a motion to adopt the City Council's goals and strategic directions as presented. [1:01:37] **Councilmember Tami Klimpel:** I'll second. [1:01:37] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion by Essler, second by Klimpel. Roll please. (Clerk calls roll; all vote Aye). Passes 5-0. It completes item 9B. Extraordinary work going in there. City staff updates? [1:01:37] **Logan Martin:** Just a couple tonight. Chief Springer had to run off to a call, but we have open recruitment for firefighters. There is one more meeting this Saturday for interested parties. Also, the Expo is coming up on April 5th—it’s sold out for vendors. That evening is "Guns vs. Hoses." And finally, it's going to snow tonight—wet, heavy snow. Please be patient with our plow drivers. [1:02:22] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** On the bright side, it'll melt soon. Any other announcements from Council? Seeing none, we'll proceed to the upcoming community calendar. Fire department recruitment is March 8th, this Saturday, at Fire Station Number One. Planning Commission meeting is March 17th. Port Authority will be on March 18th, followed by the next City Council meeting. With that, there is no other business to come before Council. [1:03:56] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** I'll move to adjourn. [1:03:56] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Second. [1:03:56] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** I have a motion and second. All in favor signify by saying "Aye." (Group: Aye). Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you. [Music]