it's probably about time y hereby call to order the Roseville city council meeting for Monday February 12th 2024 Mr C man would you call the role please council member St here council member ratton pres council member Scher here council member gra here mayor roow here uh and with with us at the Das we also have uh by way of introductions our City attorney Rachel tney who's on my uh right at the end of the Das and city manager Pat trudon on my left at the other end we also have other uh staff and others who will participate in the meeting and will'll introduce those folks as uh the various agenda items come up I would note for members of the public that if you need a copy of tonight's agenda there are extra copies on the table in the back of the room underneath the clock we also have uh one master copy of all the meeting materials in a giant throughing binder back there that you can refer to if you need to um also we want to make sure folks if you have a cell phone that you either silence it or otherwise assure that it doesn't disrupt the meeting uh and then uh we'll give you further instructions for public comment as those opportunities come up but otherwise we'll ask folks to stand if they're able for 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 next on our agenda then is approval of tonight's agenda and I'll check with Staff first are there any changes or Corrections from a staff perspective on the agenda this evening yes Mr Mayor we'd like to remove item 10h which is approving a business license for a temporary overnight shelter at Roseville Lutheran Church there's been a change in the dates and we' like to call that out and have the council approve that revised date all right so we'll take that up under Section six items removed from the consent agenda any other changes from the staff perspective there's no no no other changes no right any uh Council requested changes or items council members wish remove from the consent agenda Council M at i' like to remove item D about the south mcar retaining wall for some more information on the T hit all right so 10 D will be considered separately earlier in the meeting as well I do want to check also with members of the public if anybody is here for an item in section 10 of our agenda which we were just referring to uh those items are typically taken up at the end of the meeting as a single motion with a limited opportunity for public input or discussion they're usually fairly administrative in nature but if anyone is here for an item in section 10 of tonight's agenda 10 a through K uh this would be an opportunity to let us know and we can actually take that item off the consent agenda and considered it earlier in the meeting uh so that you have your opportunity to ask your question or make your comment uh uh before waiting to the end of the meeting is there anyone here for an item in section 10 of tonight's agenda all right does not appear to be the case uh therefore we've got the request to approve tonight's agenda with item 10d and item 10h removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration is there a motion so moved second all right it's been moved by council member schroer second by Council Bratton to approve the agenda with those items uh taken off the consent agenda for separate consideration uh any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed that motion passes unanimous and we have our agenda for this evening that then brings us to our first opportunity for public comment uh this is an opportunity for generalized public comment uh we will provide an opportunity as agenda items come up uh further into our meeting for specific comment about those agenda items uh but we do offer at the beginning of each meeting a chance for members of the public to speak about uh General City business type issues or items of interest to people in the public of Roseville uh so if there's anyone here this evening who wishes to speak under our general public comment uh you can indicate so now and I'll go through some instructions is there anyone here to speak under General comment all right seeing no one then we'll close the opportunity for public comment at this time on the general nature and move into our agenda uh first then we gets us two items removed from the consent agenda and we have those two items we'll begin with item 10 d uh which is a consideration of a resolution awarding the contract for the South McCarren's retaining wall project uh I believe we have our uh Public Works director Jesse FR Hammer here to introduce this item for us and then we'll recognize Council Bron for his question or concern Mr Fram uh thank you mayor and councel um this project is for this Council items for Award of the mccaran retaining wall project we had previously bid this last fall or last spring I believe uh rejected bids because we only had one bidder and bids were over uh were high we did some slight modifications in bid the project is an alternate make sure we'd fit that within the budget so we did open bids uh had multiple biders um and are recommending approval of the base bid plus alternate one all right thank you Mr Fry Hammer uh council member Edon are these down yeah our monitor is oh we just maybe had it turned off well I just turned it off and back on again we'll see what happens okay no it's on um I'm looking for some more detail the uh RCA does not outline what uh what is covered under the base bid and what the alternative things are so we can see that sure so um I don't have a great our our plan set doesn't have a great map so I might just show you on Google Street View but we bid basically the base bid included two B two of the wall two of the retaining walls um and then the alternate one was for an additional wall and Alternate two was a fourth wall so um let me just walk you through real quick so we labeled the walls if you're if you're on McCarron's um from Glen Hill going to the east we labeled the walls from east to west it's a b c and d so the base bid included walls well let me look here yeah a a through D the base bid included walls A and C and then wall the second wall a b or all alternate one was for wall B which is a short wall and the last wall which we are not recommending approval is for wall D and that's this wall east of this kind of uh grass driveway okay so there's stairs coming down there so everything to the east of those stairs going over to the next two properties is correct is not we recommending that would part of two and you're not recommending that correct and we made that recommendation um there there's nothing wrong with alternate or there there's nothing really wrong with that wall we even had structural failure it that wall is significantly not as steep as the others um we we don't anticipate that having the other issues as the other ones we are recommending the alter um alternate one or wall two just because it's in the middle um if we end up doing a different wall to the east potentially this one would just tie better aesthetically in the price was very reasonable okay I appreciate that extra information great questions for staff uh council member St thank you Mr framer can you tell us what this looks like um some consternation from some folks about how this does or doesn't match or match the other um items in the area so can you tell us what this proposed uh rock or nail surface looks like sure sure so the the the technical engineering part of the wall will all be kind of hidden and what what they end up doing to hide it is pour a basically a new concrete wall with the new concrete wall will actually stamp it and the pattern that we chose and we shared this at the neighborhood meeting uh when we met with them can basically look exactly like it is today so we anticipate it would look exactly the same other than the Ivy and all the the leaves that grow up on it that most likely won't happen or it won't happen as quickly um but it it will look like kind of a stacked Limestone wall so it should be very similar to what is out there today today and we did hear generally very positive reviews from the neighborhood or the residents adjacent to the wall when we presented that and then just on cost um are there other less expensive options uh that are are available that would be reasonable consideration uh when we did the feasibility study this was the recommended Choice based on the mo of excavation that would be required for other types of walls and that would anticipate either needing more right away or just generally more costs so we believe this is the most cost- effective way to replace as wall all right thank you other questions from Council for staff all right we'll check if there's anyone from the public who wishes to speak to this item does not appear to be the case all right uh we have the request before us to uh authorize the award to the low bidder on uh for the base bid plus the one uh option as outlined in the materials I move approval thank you all right it's been moved by Council Mor and seconded by council member gra to uh authorize entering into that contract with the low bidder uh discussion on the as the maker council member oh I appreciate the extra information in short order Mr prammer I hadn't gotten that item until shortly before I I left for for the meeting so I appreciate that fast turnaround and the extra information all right and as the secondary council member gra you know retaining walls are an issue with many parts of the metro area and I'm just glad they're addressing it because they don't get better when you ignore them over time they'll just continue to deteriorate and this is the solution that will help improve the problem property and stabilize that land so I'm supporting it any other discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor of authorizing entering into contract with the low bidder signify by saying I I I opposed that passes unanimously and that is authorized uh next under items removed from consent we have item 10h which was removed by staff and this is for uh consideration of a business license for a temporary overnight shelter at Roseville Lutheran Church uh and Mr TR I'll turn this one over to you thank you Mr Mayor uh as you mentioned uh item 10h approves the license uh under city code section 3101 sub e to rosville Lutheran Church which is located at 12:15 Ros La Avenue to operate a temporary overnight shelter uh the shelter will serve up to 24 people experiencing homelessness Ros Lutheran has submitted all the required information and City have City staff have been out and inspected the premises to ensure compliance with all relevant uh relevant codes we do recommend approval of the SL license the original application did indicate the uh time when this would be in operation be from February 26 to March 26 we learned uh earlier today that they're going to have to change that time based on uh the group they're working with uh to be ready so the change um is from March 6 to March 31st of this year so a little bit shorter time so the only change from our original request is changing the dates um from February 26th to March 26th to March 6 to March 31st and the information you have in front of you has that cored right the bench hand out the bench hand out yes thank you uh all right are there questions from the council for staff on this item Council M I thank you I had my question answered by um um chair no Miss gunlock I was like all of a sudden your title you're having the you're having the mayor's disease yeah the mayor's disease um but I had the question and I thought I would just share for ocation of anyone else who might have um questions regarding this that this is a temporary overnight shelter and that people will not just be turned into the streets at at the end of the night they will be taken to other programming and other locations so just that the neighbors um are aware because that can be unknown um to folks and and possibly unknown creates new new things that people think about so just wanted to make sure that that's aware um as part of the situation thank you right is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak to to this item uh the approval of the or recommended approval of the business license uh for Roseville Lutheran Church to operate a temporary overnight shelter for uh approximately a 30-day period which is maximum allowed uh from March 6 to 31st anyone from the public wish to speak to this all right with that then we've got the request before us is there a motion from the council so moved second it's been moved by council member ston second by council member Aton to approve that permit uh discussion the motion is is the maker of the motion counc thank you council member as the second um I know we had a lot of discussions about this a few years ago um I think we're in a good spot and appreciate the work of rosille Luther to support folks who need extra support absolutely any other discussion on the motion and I would just note too that this is uh a I don't know for sure if it's the second but it is at least a repeat of something that rosille Lutheran had done before in the neighborhood so hopefully neighbors are fairly familiar with it and and know kind of what to expect so I think it it worked out very well the first time around and uh hopefully will again this time and can help some people that are in need with that we've got the motion before us all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed that passes unanimously that business item business license is approved and we wish rosille Lutheran success in that endeavor and certainly all their partners and the people that they'll be helping with that then that brings us back to our business items this evening we've got a number of business items uh the first of which is to consider adopting an ordinance uh establishing a local Housing Trust Fund for the city of Roseville and we have our aformentioned community development director Janice gunlock with us this evening uh to introduce this item thank you mayor members of the council um this item has been previously before you although it was before The Economic Development Authority the last time that happened was in November of 2023 um at that meeting you did receive a draft of the ordinance um and we had a discussion and received feedback from you uh since that we have made changes to the draft ordinance and we're now seeking adoption of the ordinance which creates the local Housing Trust Fund um just real quickly as a reminder local housing trust funds are designated sources of funding um they address a variety of different housing needs um they're also known as affordable housing trust funds which is what ours would essentially become because um these funds fund programs and housing initiatives that serve people and or households at or below 80% Ami there's a provision to go up to 120% for owner occupied units but um that's generally the scope under which uh parties are served uh the funds can only be created by adoption of the ordinance which is why we've been before you a couple of times the City attorney has drafted the ordinance we base it off the city of minitonas it's very intentionally broad to capture a variety of different projects that allow the city to preserve as many options as possible moving forward after we've created it um with the draft ordinance sets in front of you no changes have been made to the eligible activities the project prioritization or the funding sources that are outlined in the ordinance um we did make two technical revisions real quickly we did have to place this in a new chapter 912 because we assigned reasonable accommodation to 911 which is where we had it the last time we were in front of you and then there was some um an unintentional omission of the very lwi income persons under Section 911 paragraph 3B number two we've since uh inserted that back in it was just an oversight um I just want to take this opportunity to highlight two other points uh before I turn it back over to you um as a reminder we're doing this now so that we won't lose any of the tax proceeds from the city's portion of the housing aid sales tax that money um is supposed to be spent within 3 years of receipt on eligible projects however if you don't have an eligible project you can park it in your local Housing Trust Fund so that's why we decided we need to create that now uh Roseville is slated to receive about $400,000 annually although that number will be adjusted uh based on the number of housing uh cost birden households that our community has but it is a significant amount of money we don't want to lose and then um I mentioned this in November but we think it's probably time appropriate to update our housing needs assessment um we did that last in late 2016 and we've done a lot of housing since that time specifically affordable housing so staff right now is working on gathering information meeting very very informally with companies that do that work to sort of bring you um an item later on this year to evaluate whether whether or not to proceed with updating that housing needs assessment and we also want to see if there's more study that can be done besides essentially a mathematical demographical exercise about what kind of housing units that we need so more to come on that but it'll help you um understand better how to program the money that eventually will be placed in this local Housing Trust Fund so we would ask you to adopt the ordinance that's in your packet we also have created or the City attorney has created a summary publication ordinance so that we can save a little bit of money and not publish the ordinance in its entirety so with that I will try and answer any questions you may have all right thank you Miss gunlock are other questions from the council Council Sher um thank you for this presentation and actually when you brought up the funds that we are going to get from the sales tax that was really important item up and I wanted to make sure that got covered again tonight because it makes sense to set this up now to capture that and I think you have done a good job in you know presenting this the last few times and in this packet so um actually I just wanted to say good job and I'm looking forward to voting for it I did have one sort of technical question I don't know for sure if you'll be able to answer it but are is the state already collecting those funds through the property tax and what is the sort of time frame for payment to cities that's a good question I do know the answer to it so they started collecting the tax I believe well this part I'm not 100% certain on but I think they started collecting in July um we initially thought that we would receive our first payment um in December but we've since learned that they're going to hold these second half collection of 2023 and not pay it until they give us the first collection of 2024 so we don't have any money yet I've already talked to finance we need to make sure we don't commingle those with our other property tax proceeds and that those get carved off into the right into a separate account right well and we don't have any sales tax proceeds now so this would be the only I property tax right no you said property tax but people were trying to correct you to sales tax I was correcting that correction but uh uh okay so uh it sounds like something that we would generally get twice a year then we'll get it twice a year just like our property tax proceeds at the same time okay y all right very good other questions is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak to this item this evening of establishing the local housing local affordable housing trust fund for the purpose of uh parking these types of funds uh so that we have them available for those purposes does not appear to be the case we move to council consideration that we have the proposed ordinance before us is there a motion from the council so move second all right it's been moved by council member Scher seconded by council member uh discussion on the motion as the maker council member schroer anything to add I just no I think it's good council member St no I I guess I just do appreciate um the continued effort to make sure that we uh capture these really important funds and um have them available when people of High need uh present themselves and uh situations come up that we are prepared and thinking ahead any other discussion on the motion all right we've got the motion before us to adopt that ordinance establishing that local affordable housing trust fund all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed that pass is unanimous that ordinance is adopted uh secondly for that uh for this item we do need to uh consider uh public publishing a ordinance summary is there a motion to authorize publishing the ordinance summary so moved second it's been moved by council member gra seconded by council member Aton uh this requires a super majority which in our case would be a four fifths vote of the council uh any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed that passes unanimously meeting the 4 fifths uh and a summary will be published thank you everyone uh the next item on our agenda under business items is item 7B which is to consider adoption of an ordinance r revising our regulations related to short-term rentals uh and to restart the issuance of short-term rental licenses uh to new applicants in the City of Roseville and once again miss gunlock is back with us as well as our codes administrator Dave England welcome to both of you again thank you uh mayor members of the council I'll just go through some summary points and then Dave is here with some technical information should you have any questions related to the licenses that we have the setback um Etc but this item has been before the council many many times going back a couple of years um the most recent time it was in front of you was December 4th of 2023 uh during that meeting we went through a bunch of different issues problems how we might address those and the council did provide a lot of direction to City staff on how to amend the ordinance to help address concerns of the public and the council um I did include the meeting the minutes from that meeting meeting in case you wanted to um review those we have um gone back and amended the ordinance to reflect that discussion um with the city attorney's help at this time we're now seeking adoption of the ordinance this would allow for the issuance of short-term rental licenses to resume because they have been on pause for on nearly a year now and then um those license issuances would be under revised regulations um really quickly I'm going to go through the revisions that we made to the ordinance um we did tweak the definition of the minimum stay the seven or 10 days to seek some clarity about what that actually means um we did establish a 500 foot setback around short-term rentals so um any individual properties we can't have more than we they have to be at least 500 feet apart I want to clarify that any existing short-term rental licenses that wereact Ed before the pause would be grandfathered in and there are two properties that are within 500 ft so I just want to make sure you were aware of that we uh included some language clarifying that the local lodging tax has to be paid to the city's finance department on the forms that they provide and we have included a language that says failure to pay that lodging tax would subject the owner operator to a suspension or revocation and then the other two big items that we implemented was we established a notice to neighboring properties requirement so essentially once the city council grants a short-term rental license the owner will have to notify properties within 300 feet of the short-term rental about the fact that they've received a license um include a copy of the license as well as the name email address and telephone number for the responsible party of that rental so that the immediate neighbors know who to contact in the event there is a problem of course they can always contact the city that says that actually on the license along with our phone number as well but this would be an additional layer of um protection for adjacent property owners and then lastly we have established a requirement that the owner keep a log of rentals it would have to include the dates and duration of stay and then that be submitted with the local lodging tax which is required to be submitted on a monthly basis if they take a rental in that month um we have posted this ordinance on the city's web page um more than 10 days in advance of this discussion we also provided notification to the seven current short-term rental license holders I don't believe we were contacted by any of them um I also received a call from a resident who's been following this issue seeking some clarity about what the 500 foot setback meant so I explain that and um I don't believe he's in the audience so I'm going to assume he got the answers that he needed um other than that we uh received some comments from a couple of council members uh once the packet was published so we did make some minor tweaks to the language we passed out an updated ordinance um I also emailed you explaining the changes that we made so I do want to note if you are prepared tonight to adopt the ordinance that you would want to reference the bench handout for those uh minor amendments that we made um other than that I will stand for questions as well Dave all right thank you Miss gunlock uh questions from the council uh Council can you point out what those minor changes were in this bench handout yes um I remember my email correctly on line 66 or 67 previously and I just want to clarify we didn't we had to amend the ordinance back in February of 2023 to change the language to stop allowance of new licenses being issued so then when the city attorney drafted the language to inact revise regulations we had to go off like the version of the ordinance where we paused them which was a little different in terms of how we did the language but on line 66 we had previously stricken 67 we had previously stricken the words has not and that didn't read as well it it made it seem like you the reverse was necessary in order to receive a license so we switch that and then this line [Music] one Sor 188 yeah so paragraph C of section 99.07% line 189 and 90 we just clarified owner agent to stay consistent with the language is that's represented in paragraphs A and B above okay thank you so they're very minor yep exent other questions for staff councilor strong thank you um uh one is just a point of clarification and I think you've made it clear but just to the general public that um the notice to the neighbors is not for their agreement or disagreement the um license has already been granted by the time they're alerted so it is not um a time to debate whether or not it's acceptable to have that so I just kind of given our previous history I think it's important to point that out um I know it's not referenced here but um and we can talk about it whether or not at some point we want to limit a total number of properties just like anything else it's easier to talk about that before before we have that out um there was no mention about how we would be alerted of non-compliant properties so people who are currently renting without a license so how what is the process for well someone to bring that forward you know hotline I don't know what that is um I did note and I pointed out that there are some even currently licensed um locations that are advertising that they can have 10 to 14 people in their um facility and so it is while it is possible that one family would be 14 um people I I just think it's important maybe to remind the people who have the licenses that there are they're still bound to that they can advertise how they choose but in no language in any of those that say limited to one family and I could have just signed up for any of those and no one would have ever said anything along those lines so it's kind of was like an don't ask don't tell kind of thing um and then I didn't see anything um Wonder asking what indicating what the rate of the local lodging tax would be is that going to be applied for the nights that the people occupy the home or for the full 7 to 10 day potential stay based on how the ordinance is set out so if um how they you know what how they know what the rates are and then which night there to be charging those on thank you it's going to look okay so I'll start with the last one first I believe the lodging tax is just a percentage of their gross sales so thank you um uh and that is by city ordinance there um the other concern about the number of people in the rental I just want to note that um a single family home can be occupied by one family and as long as they're related it can be as many people as are related but the short-term rental ordinance does not prohibit somebody from using a short-term rental as a propert as a for a party so a family could be staying in the short-term rental sleeping in it if they decide to have a party with 10 people or 12 people or I think one of them said 16 people they could certainly do that there are Provisions in the short-term rental ordinance about noisy parties and Gatherings or other issues that could cause the police to be called or you know for Dave or his staff to go out and observe a violation that could be subject to suspension or revocation at at a future time but there's nothing that would prohibit somebody from allowing 16 people to be in a short-term rental just to clarify I think the problem was that they slept 14 so that's a little bit more than a party unless you're planning for sure a really wild night um and that gets to the um alert of non-compliance okay we you know we have seven of these actually I think we only have six now because the seventh one did not renew their their license this year um and we really sort of we published in various City newsletters or on our website that a short-term rental license is required in order to use the property for a short-term rental um we've been notified from The Neighbors in the past that a property is being used for a short-term rental so Dave and his staff will contact the owner to let them know a license is required but what we talked about the last time is there are software there is software out there that can proactively monitor these websites VRBO and Airbnb where if a new one comes on we could review the ad and and you know look for things like what you say but we just felt that the cost of that software I mean it was like 12 to1 15,000 a year based on the number of licenses that we have it just didn't seem worth the effort to go that route um and I would also point out we actually haven't received a complaint on a short-term rental at all last year so I I think the word is getting out about acceptable behavior and what the ordinance requires because I don't think we've been made aware of an issue now that doesn't mean that people still don't like short-term rentals in their neighborhood there's definitely people who do not like short-term rentals just on the face of it but in terms of an actual violation in accordance with the ordinance we haven't observed in over a year other questions for oh you had one other the total number we did talk about that the last time and I believe we are going to enact the 500 foot set back and then once licenses Dave brings licenses forward we we'll track for you this is number seven this is number eight and if you feel like it's getting to be too much we can put a cap on it before we reach the point of oh my God we have too many um but again we've had the ordinance in place since 21 and we have six now so just don't see there being this huge demand for short-term rentals and in fact we've had a reduction in the numbers since we last talked about this so just one just I would hope that you would also bring to us um when it becomes too much because and you know without adding additional staff if it came to the point where you're like okay this is an extra burden I think that's important that there's a you're bringing it it to us when you give us the number to you say okay this is kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back we're not able to do this without hiring someone else or something like that so making sure that you're keeping us aware of how that works with overall workload great other questions uh council member a few questions maybe just hopefully just technical on line [Music] 124 uh language added says payment must be made monthly to the city's finance department forms by this by the city do we want to say a day of the month or the last day of the month or the 15th of the month or is there any use to having something specific for that I believe there is a date on the form provided by the finance department and I don't have that form on me so I don't know what it is but if I recall do you have ITP that's one thing I didn't ask you to bring I'm pretty sure the form that the finance department uses has a date that they have to submit it by all right very good and I maybe a technical question for our attorney then a few lines down line 130 has ordinance 1596 and then pass on 2H 2021 do we need those references if we are going to be passing like some of these there are several of these in this ordinance some of them with changes to the text some of them not do we leave that kind of thing in there or is that something we would strike council members council member uh it it can probably be left in at this point as you may know the city's going to go through recodification process where we'll clean some of those things up um as you know I've been striking some of those um I missed this one um but I think all of that will get cleaned up in the recodification process so I think it's fine you can strike it too if you want it it if we if we catch them all they're like four in here and I'm not going to do that so I don't yeah no we'll be fine later great thank you council member schroer um I too I just have a technical question um for an example on line 160 e under 99.06 it says the city manager may administratively deny a license when it says the city manager does that also infer then if for some reason the city manager say for some reason he's not available does assistant city manager or someone else could do it or is it have to be just the city manager to do these things where it all says city manager and it's it's peppered throughout this document actually and our whole code yeah yeah so our council members council member schroer generally when it's a city manager um we interpret that to mean city manager or his design the there may be exceptions to that rule the other thing is often these are not decisions that need to be made immediately and generally they're either there is a city manager or there's an acting city manager and that would be the person who could approve these types of things so the so the acting person is this okay I just wanted to clarify that because I know sometimes with legal language it can be very precise so thank you that's all I had other questions I did have one uh question myself and this is in uh 99.7 B on line 185 through 187 we say that the owner agent must Post in each unit a current copy of the code sections there those code sections can be rather um detailed and long and somebody you might not read through the whole thing I wondered if it made sense to add something to the effect of or a city approved summary as something that they can post as well so that we're approving it and it may not have to be the full ordinance we might come up with a standard form or something that we provide to all the license holders to post that would be a suggestion it's about six pages of text that we send yeah with I'm just thinking about when I'm renting a short-term rental you know and I see six pages of probably rather fine print text it's not going to be something you read them you immediately you know you you you read you could potentially even generate it with well so right now the license that's generated by the software that we use has some summary stuff but we could even have it generated as part of that license where when they print off the license they just get it all we we we'll check into that but yeah that's a good idea does it does it make sense to have language that allows that or is that something that can happen even with the language the way it is M uh council members um mayor row I uh think you'd need that language in here this clearly says they have to post a current copy um I would just recommend you know probably leave all of those sections in there and then just maybe uh semic call and say or other form as approved by the city that would work all right St uh staff is making a note of that language are there other questions from Council right is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak to this item this evening does not appear to be the case then we'll proceed to council consideration is the council prepared to take action on this ordinance this evening if so an order a motion would be in order so moved second right it's moved by council member St second by council member Scher to adopt the ordinance and I'm imagining that would include the language just discussed about adding or form approved by the city correct right so we've got the motion before us to adopt the ordinance as the maker of the motion council member strong nothing further right as the second or council member sh other discussion on the motion mayor can I just make one point of clarity sure that we're talking about the amended version on the bench the bench handout correct thank you the motion is in applies to the bench handout because that's got those other corrections to it thank you for that clarification everybody understand that who's going to be voting on it but that's what we're talking about all right with that then uh if there's no further discussion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying I I hos that passes to un I believe for this one we also have a summary uh so is there a motion to authorized publication of a summary so moved second it's been moved by Council gra second by council member Edon any discussion on that motion no once again publication of a summary requires a super majority which for the city council is a four fifths vote all those in favor signify by saying I I oppos that passes unanimously meeting the four fifths vote requirements so a summary publication is authorized thank you again to the Community Development staff for these items I appreciate them uh going through the process and coming back with the final product we can pass yes that then brings us to to um uh discussion about our city street light policy uh and potential update to that and we've got our city uh Public Works director Jesse frymer back with us this evening for this item I'll turn over to Mr frymer uh thank you mayor and Council um so I have a I'm going to try to make it a relatively brief presentation there's a lot of slides uh but about discussing our street light policy so this has not been a um updated since 2003 and there is currently some need to update it um so I'll go through my presentation but certainly if you have questions uh ask as we go so just going to go through a little bit of background um some needs for changes from a staff level and then also um some proposed changes to the policy from that that staff is is suggesting um so lighting purpose and need so street lights um are critical part of City infrastructure they provide lighting for safe pedestrian bikes and vehicle access um streets lights can also be a deterrent for unlawful activities um in 1957 when the city established our first policy was pretty generic just said we're going to install 100 lights a year 1976 we got a little more detailed and said uh establish some of our criteria most of this is in place yet um we still do the 600 foot spacing we still do intersections and most of our lights are overhead um in 2003 was the last time we updated the policy so this is our current what we're operating under currently um there's a lot of language about what a standard light is um a procedure to get lights in place which is 100% consensus of residents within 150 ft um places where lights would be installed which would include um intersection of two streets end of cue saacs uh 600 foot spacing or more on a severe curb um at a dedicated pedestrian crosswalk the other thing the current ordinance talks about is existing over um overhead electric is available um there are parts of the city that do not have that so that makes that a little tricky in in the it doesn't really speak to that um with how some of the existing lights have been put in um funding the way it's currently spelled out is funding is is there's there's no cost to Property Owners unless in in the enhanced District um and then there's some language about development and Redevelopment and procedures for that um a little more background on the lighting so we have just under 1500 lights in the city um majority of those are owned and operated by Excel so just over a thousand of them we just basically pay a monthly bill they're pretty much the standard uh wood pole street lights that you see on most Corners in the city so on this map they're the ones in yellow um Xcel also leases um 124 lights these are ones that most of these were installed approximately 20 to 30 years ago they are slowly become if they haven't become the city east they will be becoming ours shortly currently we just pay a uh basically utility bill on them but Excel manages them once they um the lease expires they become ours and we have to we have to manage them and then there's about 307 that we own outright these are ones that we've typically put as part of a project such as uh the larpenter streetcape the Twin Lakes Parkway but we own and operate the lights if they get knocked down we have to hire someone to to put them up um just to little give a little context for lighting so it's kind of we're kind of defining it as residential commercial/industrial and special areas the residential is um kind of like the map shows our standard residential lighting which is generally at intersections um we also have the AO Hills which I'll get into more later and like lank and drive we have a lot of commercial areas such as Center Point Long Lake Road Lincoln Drive and perimeter those have a little different standard which we'll get into a little more and then what I'm what I'm calling special areas you could certainly call another name these are areas that the city out one point said hey we're going to put more Lighting in um larpenter Twin Lakes County Road SE uh the campus um real quick these are just kind of the snapshot of the lights we have um the majority of them are LED most majority of them are existing cut off lighting the exception right now is really the uh the second and third lights those really are not cut off which we'll get into a little bit later um cut off as lights that don't shine up they they all shine down kind of meeting some of the dark sky stuff so we do have a couple lights that don't really meet that um and we would propose not replacing with that style going forward um funding and budget so the 2024 budget um all in the general Levy uh street light fund is $225,000 the majority of that is paying for utilities a little bit for contract maintenance which is basically used for knockdowns of City owned polls um we did have money this year in the street light replacement um and this is a fund we had talked about previously potentially um needing more money as as we have more lights that would be coming due uh but currently this year it's 52,500 um so XL lights when like I said when XL owns the lights we just pay uh pretty much a flat fee that ranges from $10 to $20 a month depending upon the wattage the majority of them I think are $11 because it's a 65 watt bulb or whatnot um we do have a few uh Excel will put in sometimes a fiberglass light if we need to or they don't have a wooden pole available a lot of times we have to just pay the initial cost of that but then the the that future cost would be at $21 a month but that pole gets knocked out XL takes care of it we don't have any ongoing costs versus City owned lights it gets knocked down we have to pay for the the the light itself um so City owned and the Xcel EAS ones typically those are metered so we we end up pay in the meter cost um and as I mentioned if a pole gets knocked down we replace it they vary greatly but a pole can depending upon how fancy it is they can be five to10 th000 um some of the ones on larpenter are even more than that um but generally 5 to 10 covers most range of poles and then the commercial area which aren't as decorative sometimes more just a standard steel or or fiberglass pole about $3,500 per light so consistency we did want to bring this up um when we actually map the lights we we kind of looked hey our existing policy generally says doing intersections so how many intersections in crosswalks don't we Mark currently there are approximately 156 of these intersections and it varies a parts of town um some parts are very well lit and there's just a random one missing and others it's very consistent so there's no lighting there um but it's part of the general Levy everyone's paying for electricity should it be applied equally should we apply it at all intersections uniformally um and then also crosswalks we we tried to we tried to consider these crosswalks not at intersections more of like a mid block Crossing or more of something special um I do know like when we when the county redid larpenter Avenue a few years ago we they added three crosswalks we did add lights there but looking back in the past we've probably added crosswalks and we didn't add lighting um so just more to that on the consistency you look at a few neighborhoods um we just kind of highlighted spots where um you know majority of the neighborhoods lit and then we we there's a few curves missing or a few intersections um the neighborhood just west of St Rose Al Lima it's really odd we have a bunch of midblock cross mid block lights and then two blocks don't have them so some of that may be with the way the procedure is written and how lights get approved so we can discuss that so kind of equity um and we talked a little bit of this about um with the public works commission but should should we have it at every intersection should every qu crosswalk or every 600 feet should that be consistent or should there be different criteria for each one of those um should lighting differ by land use um right now we kind of have higher lighting standards in commercial although the policy doesn't speak to that some of that is related to how those were developed and and turned over to the city um same thing with uh the lighting locations what should the requirement be should the burden be on the property owners request lighting or should the city just have a standard or or should the threshold be a lower threshold like only 51% of the residents uh request that um as I mentioned one of the biggest needs for the change is Excel is replacing um or a lot of our leas our 25 year leases are expiring we have repl a few of these systems but are looking to um use utilize potentially the new policy so we can address um uh change change our our lighting as we go forward go go as we go forward um most of the existing these lights are uh uh high pressure sodium so HPS not LED which we we do want LED they they they're less maintenance and cost a city less um and then many of the systems that these have are much higher lighting standards than what we would currently allow by policy um so some proposed changes we do want to Define um and we do have that as attachment I believe it's attachment three as some of our recommended changes um we certainly would recommend um requiring all new Straight lighting be full cut off and meaning no up light as I mentioned that would all existing lighting pretty much meets that except for those two standard lights that we have um lighting standards a lot of that is referenced in the the policy we'd prefer that to be in the just in an engineering standard so we can refer we can change it as pole fixtures change or just lighting standards change but just keep the general policy stuff in in the policy um so basically what the exact type of poll the exact fixture Foundation light levels color temperature exact spacing that would really generally be in the in the standards and just get general direction on it with would be in the policy um we are proposing to differenti lighting area areas uh the main reason we're doing that is we're kind of already doing that so we just so our our initial thought was we kind of keep our standard um this would basically keep the locations the same as they are currently in the current policy um but potentially change the procedure on that of when when a new light would get installed um the one we are proposing new would be Define a business area or a business district um basically that would uh allow us to modify the space and to have a higher lighting standard um stand would be about 200 to 250 ft like I said we wouldn't necessarily put that in that would be more of an engineered standard uh but that would generally be just for for scale of you're you're going to have two and a half to to three times the amount of lighting that you would in a normal residential neighborhood um but these areas we would Define um upfront so it wouldn't be we'd have a little more control of how often they are I mean certainly business areas can blur within streets real quickly so that would we we try we try to find that and I'll I'll have a map of that um then enhanced lighting so this is a current standard that we have that uh residents can request if like their block they want to have a higher level standard they can request that there's the petition process we're not proposing changing any of that but they have to pay the increased cost of both the new lighting going in and the ongoing maintenance so we're not proposing changing that um we do have a map we do think there are two districts we don't have great documentation on it but we have two districts that have um public lighting that are paid by HOA by an HOA so we would consider those enhanced districts uh but they're very very small one is uh album Earl court and the other is um I'll get I'll show it on the map here in a minute uh and then otherwise the other District we're proposing is the city special district this is pretty much city-owned lights that we controlled or we decide to install for a variety of factors um such as the C City Hall campus uh County Road SE larpenter the Twin Lakes area uh so this is the map I'm kind of I was referring to so uh in the proposed policy this is actually this would actually be appendex a that we reference um where we would highlight the city special district areas and those would be the areas kind of circled in red uh the business districts those are kind of in that Aqua or the green um you C that certainly could get expanded we just highlighted the existing current districts that we would interpret as staff that are already kind of differentiated there certainly could be additional ones added but um I think that would we'd want to add those as as requests or looked at it and then the enhanced districts so we have the one um over just to the west of um Autumn Grove and then uh the one like I said El Mar Court like I said those are paid by um HOAs and then future developments so there's current polic about future developments I will say I don't think the the existing policy has been um followed extremely well we we have development agreements but most development agreements did not include language about uh the lighting agreements within them a lot of our developments are not as straightforward I think as the policy originally thought they we don't have a lot of new streets go in um the exception is like the aaso Hills neighborhood but that one uh was pre this policy which is maybe what that policy was trying to correct but basically the the intent is they're supposed to pay for it anything above the standard they're supposed to pay for it into perpetuity I think that was the intent and but which is why a lot of these developments got put in the in the 90s or early 2000s under leases and I think the intent was that the leases would stick with those Property Owners but there's nothing recorded which is why they are ours and we have to maintain them so we can either still stick with an enhan making them petition keep the enhanced district and keep that higher standard or potentially go with what we've done in some cases just a different lighting standard for those areas so some examples of some projects we've done in the past so Perimeter Road there used to be a lot more Lighting on that Corridor when that lease expired or maybe it was even before the maybe the lease expired and we took it over but the lighting started failing the city just worked with Excel we just put replaced it with five lights um and we we entered into a new lease so that was done in 2014 um pretty much meets our res our our current standard but um that area already had a plenty of lighting from the businesses so at the time I was told the staff that that seemed like a good a good solution the other area we did more recently was the Terrace Drive area um there was uh 20 lights on that section when we redid that lighting we took it on as a city so those are now city-owned lights but we reduced the lighting from 20 down to 8 so basically it's still a higher standard lighting than what would meet under the residential but it is a lot less lighting it still meets kind of the the needs for for lighting safety of the intersections um but in this case we still we own and maintain those we did this as part of the Twin Lakes Trail lighting which is actually more of a trail lighting um standard on that but it was it was all tied together and and that district there is more of a decorative style it's kind of the Twin Lake style lighting that we have in that area um Center Point this is one of ones that will be expiring the Le the least expires this year um we do know the lights are going to need to be replaced tentatively right now we have it on the CIP for 2028 although that may need to get moved up if we start seeing more failures but there is a lot of lighting out there at in that area so we did reach out to excel to give us a proposed plan of what they would suggest um if we kind of met a more of a business standard they propos reducing the lighting from 23 to 12 that spacing ends up being that 250t spacing um the cost of that's about $442,000 and then ongoing monthly costs Excel would own this one outright would just be that 21 $21 so um a lot not a lot of cost going forward but they're just a little bit up front but certainly if you kept the existing lighting you can basically double that cost up front and then like I said we would have this as part of a proposed business district standard um oaso Hills this one is kind of the exception to the rule for residential lighting within the city this was in installed by the developer done with an Excel lease the lease expired already uh there was like three different systems they expired between 21 and 23 so we now own these lights they are decorative lights um at a much higher density than is normal throughout the city um they're more of a pedestrian level lighting they're one of the lights that do not meet the the the cut off standard so most of the light's going up um we tentatively have this scheduled for replacement in 2026 um staff is looking at this lighting this area and we interpret this as if the neighbors want this area we would suggest that this if they want to keep the lighting standard they have that this should probably go through the enhanced lighting process because it it's a it's a higher decorative style light as well as more intense light for a residential area and this is the only area like that that that doesn't meet it so the map at the top shows what the existing lighting is the map at the bottom would be if we did standard lighting so um it would reduce Lights by about 14 now some residents might like that but some might say why can't we keep it the same so but staff would if we keep if we keep the policy we would propose um having the residence petition to keep it if not we would go down to a different standard um in this neighborhood if we did this um we would probably um probably under either scenario um certainly if the neighbors go inhance they could have a little more say in how decorative of lights they want but since there are no wooden poles all electricals here this would typically be an aluminum pole with a LED Cobra head most likely um and then Special Districts just real quickly we have the larpenter lights we think this was the first area of the city said hey let's put a higher level Lighting in um from what we can tell they're decorative lights we actually have an agreement with Main St Paul to maintain them we both have street level lighting pedestrial level lighting uh probably one of the more highly lit areas in the city um um we did reach out to St Paul since our lights are really tied to theirs we we'd replace on their schedule um they are at the end of their life but St Paul says they're still operational they are they are not LED um or not full LED at least so but there is no plans to replace these in the short term because we would coordinate those with uh St Paul uh Twin Lakes area um we did this in three phases they're all LED they all meet are cut off standard uh but we have both pedestrian and street level lighting um very intense lighting compared to most areas of the city um just some background a few other cities a lot of them have a petition process um for for for getting into lights um a lot more detailed process or more Council involvement so just wanted to just give you some general background of what a few other cities did based on what we saw um so we kind of Incorporated some of that into our draft policy but we did we did present most of this to the public works commission um they certain they recommended having a mission purpose statement uh they did recommend lighting should meet dark sky standards when we did update the draft policy we're just proposing not using the word dark sky standards because that's a little higher level we're just proposing using um full cut off lighting that meets the majority of the requirements there are some other things into the dark sky but that can get a little more tricky about the exact color and stuff um so we didn't want to reference the full dark sky standards most cities just reference that full cut off um like I said we are proposing to differentiate a standard between business and residential or they they they proposed having a different uh standard for business and residential um they thought intersections curves and crosswalks should be more of a standard um less need to petition and that should just be more of a we should just do it um but they thought mid block cross midblock areas or are greater than 600 feet um that should be petitioned although they thought the 100% petition wasn't necessarily fair if one person doesn't want it why should that prevent everyone from getting in um and then they did suggest there should be potentially be a process to request removal light we did not put anything in the current policy because I couldn't think of a great way to uh how we would do that based until we get some feedback on other policies so um otherwise like I said just some uh questions for the council to consider um should we do different lighting districts um based on land use um should there be a difference standard location or spacings for example should we you know some cities use 350 fet as that mid block tier or 400 feet as six 600 was established in the 70s is that still a good number um when should lighting be installed should we have some default stuff that like intersections and crosswalks regardless of uh public feedback um and then what about other ones should should should we have a petition process um or should there be like a compromise intersections are standard and B Block mid block our petition so that was a lot of stuff thrown at you but I am certainly here to answer any questions or get any feedback from Council on some of the proposed policy changes right thank you and to be clear tonight we are not being asked to adopt this policy this is a discussion item to begin the conversation towards potential adoption uh questions or thoughts from council members uh based on the information in the proposed draft policy quick question this is just kind of a detail that we could go down the you were talking about the enhanced Lighting in the oaso Hills area and if they residents decided to keep that lighting um the question came to my mind is who pays for it if one of the polls gets knocked down like that illustration you had in the in the a where someone hit it yeah that's a that's a good question on polls um because we really don't have any um yeah I guess the current policy doesn't really speak to to maintenance but I I guess you could really interpret it as ongoing cost that that could get reassessed or redistributed or or you build in some contingency factor for knockdowns I will say we've considering we that neighborhood is has a decorative style light right behind the curve I don't we have not had an issue with that in that neighborhood um we've had a lot of issues on County Road C yeah and larer more County Roads where where we have the more that's where we get more of our knockdowns yeah thanks other questions thoughts from Council Members I would just note I think generally um I'm not sure I'm in favor of lots more lighting as opposed to less lighting um I understand sometimes people have concerns about sort of the public safety aspect of it but but I believe primarily the purpose of our street lights is the safety of intersections crosswalks things like that people using the actual facility the roadway um as opposed to sort of lighting surrounding properties for safety purposes that's what individuals can do on their own properties for uh their their you know what they'd like to see for their own Lighting on their properties um so I'm not so concerned about you know creating a lot of lighting for that purpose necessarily uh and I think we should always try to move towards less lighting instead of more um uh you know I think but at the same time we want to make sure like I noticed on the map of the proposal for aaso Hills if we went to the the more standard policy there looked like they might have been a couple of intersections that didn't have dots on them so I just you know we if our policy is to have them at intersections we'll want to make sure that we are are following that and I think it makes sense that any intersection you want to have have a street light an overhead light to to provide that safety um you know and I think as to the petition process I'm not 100% sure that I'm not 100% sure that we need to have 100% standard um I think it could be something less than that I don't know what the magic number is but uh I'd open to some discussion about that that um and I would include you know if we go to a midblock petition process I think it should be the same standard as for you know other petition processes which shouldn't be a separate standard other thoughts council member I would agree with pretty much everything you said that less is great I love your examples of where we're making some changes and reducing significantly I feel like we overlight a lot um I would agree to Target intersections and and formal crosswalks um that additional lighting and is 75% the right thing at 50 I don't I don't know what that right number is but I would agree that midblock plus any other interest should have some sort of um equal whatever that percentage is we should say this is what it takes to add that light um and I think it should be at least 50% but 100% seems unlikely you get a snowbird situation and you're out of you're Lu um and looking at the different uh land use area I think it might make sense to have different things for businesses but I I don't you know you can fly in the Twin Cities at night and you see business areas and they look like a bonfire right you know there just lights everywhere is that really actually necessary um I don't know um and so I I wouldn't want to just say automatically uh 250 ft for business areas because because they're business areas right so I I I would be reluctant to make it more than double the number for residential areas but um maybe there's something I need to know more about with some of those business areas why we need significantly more lights just to add to that I think because they're going to have it on their own proper own property right right they have lights on their own property so I don't know why the street there would necessarily need some significantly different standard other thoughts and feedback that was the point I was going to make about the business was they typically have their own light systems going there and so I what the question I would have the same is why are we having it so much closer for the business versus residential you know what what's what's that based [Music] on yeah just just to add like you said we were just kind of taking over some of these systems so we kind of looked at a midg ground because we think if you go from the really high intense lighting if you went down for example um you know what we went with Terrace we think that's kind of a mid tier we we pretty much dropped light it used to go every other side of the road we just dropped one side of the road and and spaced them a little more but if you look at Lincoln Drive if you go to what the city standard is you're going to go from 25 lights to four that seems really dramatic um and like that area is a little different because it's by Northwestern so there's probably a little more pedestrian usage at KN night but it's why if you if you go more of a little if you have a little more of a mid tier at least you have some more lighting no maybe that should be enhanced though so I mean certainly You could argue should those businesses pay for that but it gets a little more tricky in the businesses because it's it's the uses are are are different depending on everyone's space um you know we didn't you know the areas we highlighted we didn't we we we don't really like I said we only did the ones where we basically have existing lease systems um and we're not proposing necessarily like I said a set standard like every 250 fet here's where we'd work with Excel to find what the spacing is and that's why that Centerpoint example they gave us what they thought was appropriate for that area um and then like I said there certainly could be more added but we just took only we only showed the existing ones if anything just a document where we currently have a different standard than anything but that could certainly be changed going forward in the future if those lights get replaced differently with your Center Point example what is the stand that was used when that happened I don't know it's probably proposed by the developer they might have said they just wanted a certain Loom en count or they just worked with their engineer and they came up with that higher of lighting they they you know it might have been part of the development and they that was how they're going to sell just more lighting it more yeah I don't know okay thank you um I think it is worth considering a difference between between the residential and the business districts but I Echo the others in in that um businesses especially those that are only occupied during the day it seems kind of counterintuitive for them to be so well lit if um there's not people there if it's a 24-hour business that would have a different standard but um if people are I think it'd be better to sa our lighting for residential areas where people are more likely to be um I think that putting them standard at intersections and crosswalks is really important um and it's nice for standard and safety and um pedestrian as such I was wondering about when you talked about like that um neighborhood to the west of St Rose and there was the two blocks that did not have that mid block um lighting if in that situation are those folks going to have to pay the h ongoing price of um requesting if there was when when it's just bringing everything into a standard so the where the current policy reads if you meet the if it if it meet if a light is allowed the city pay pays all the cost so in this case the I think the spacing is every is 600 feet to the mid the the blocks are 1300 feet so 650 ft so I don't know what the why they are but like the residents on shrier Belmont or el Eldridge they're not paying for that light the city's paying for that light so same thing if skilman and I don't know if the history of people didn't petition for it or people said I don't want a light I I we don't have any history on why that those two blocks don't have lights maybe I got missed on the plans for devel I don't know and I mean that's kind of the question on the the intersections did they get missed or did people not want them we don't have any history of how they got installed um so counc graph I would say I agree with most of what's been said t so far it's in my mind it's uh safety versus basically what we used to call light pollution you know especially with the up lights and all that sort of instead of having them down where we need it uh as as council member Adam was saying you you fly in a night here and it's a glowing thing that is not necessary it's really not good for a wild the the night Wildlife it's it's detrimental to the have so or humans either yeah and and some people don't want the lights shining into their homes and all that sort of thing if they want to have that on their own property that's their own choice but so I would go towards you know the minimal Ting um but still accomplishing our safety um concerns other thoughts I think the only other thing I was going to mention on the you had mentioned that that you hadn't hadn't put anything in there about a removal a request to remove a light um I'm presuming that if a light is sort of Allowed by our standard that removal doesn't always necessarily make sense I guess where and I think that was more re uh regarding the mid block light okay there's a petition process to put one in at at at 600 ft so somebody on correct and a bunch of people moved out should we have a process to remove it part of me says it's there we someone had to invest money to put it in um most of these light are not like you said the ones that are owned by Excel which is generally the way we're going they're they just replace them as needed there there's not a fix CIP where they go through the neighborhood and replace them I mean they they did replace all the lights with LEDs four or five years ago but um most of these aren't existing wood poles they just they don't have to replace those very often yeah I was going to say I I don't know that we need to have a process if anything um if there is existing lighting installed you know more closely than our standard and a light pole is damaged or a light needs to be replaced that may be when we just consider not replacing it at that point and and I don't know if we need to put something in the policy and writing about that but I I think that that makes sense as a practice um and and I don't know that we need to have a a process for people to be able to request removal because as long as it meets our standards you know y it shouldn't be an issue if it's if it's enhanced lighting already and they petition to have it I suppose maybe then there could be the ability to ask for it to be removed but maybe we cross that bridge if and when we ever get to it anything else from the council in terms of feedback are there unanswered questions that the staff had asked us Council um I think you were kind of letting me know that things like the color of the lights and lumens would fit inside of a standard rather than inside of this policy is that correct correct okay in case in case standards change it's easier to policy we can we can can just adapt with it's a lot easier to adapt on the Fly do we have standards around the color of light or yeah standards yeah we currently do not now but we could certainly adopt that and at least present what the current standard is to council yeah I just I already spoke about this at a previous meeting but um the lights that are getting replaced at spots across the city are turning blue and I think that's that next level of horrible um so thinking about that light type is something I want to make sure we do and thinking I appreciate the full cut off standard um but it's not just about casting down it's about putting a a cone on the top of that a lot of times so that is if it's for the intersection it's for the intersection period right it's not for casting out 400 feet sideways into people's yards and things like that so how we make those standards happen the total lumens U that are there I think is something we should be thoughtful about in that standard policy standards document well certainly I think you know we may be able to maybe get some guidance in terms of how we address lighting standards in our zoning code AS to Lighting on private property and what happens at the property line and I could see something along the lines just conceptually of if you're putting a light in place to light the right of way you know it that light should not necessarily excessively cross the boundary of the RightWay it might be a challenge because the pole might be right next to the edge of the the right away but you know maybe just conceptually that's something to think about as how we to look at that cuz I know just and I think I brought this up at our last discussion street lights uh when the XL replaced the light in our neighborhood they put in uh it extended too far from the pole and it was shining in everybody's living rooms and so they came back and they shortened it and and downcast it more and that helped and and I that was something that our public work staff had helped work with XEL on so that Council M strong but I also want to make sure that we're not only considering cars um when we're considering lights that people walk at night and bike and other things things so that it's not just so local that we're not considering someone who might be walking the length that street especially 1300 foot street with a street light in the middle if if we've only focused that light in a really tight area that's really doesn't add much to me if I if I'm walking that 1300 feet to go from there I just don't want it going into the you know yards on either side of it necessarily if we can but also you know I don't want to get so so restricted to only that crosswalk that we only think about that that motor vehicle traffic and not pedestrians I think it's always been pedestrians and vehicles as as what the safety reason for having the lighting is thanks okay anything else that we need to address um I think we're generally saying less than 100% but more than 50% and to be determined as to what the specific number is um so if we make so question if we make if we we say yes we'll do lights at all intersections so we work with Excel to put those up should we do some sort of should we have that as a notification process that we're putting a light up or do we just install any thoughts on that on areas I mean we have 100 approximately 100 intersections have never been in certain neighborhoods that have never had a light well I mean addressing the safety issue of the intersection seems to be important to do yep I think if there are objections raised we can attempt to technically address those with the the installation details is maybe a way to answer that do that make sense I I just there I know some cities in have a more formal process for putting any L lighting in and majority of our our it's random it's pretty random there's very few in or neighborhoods I would say that don't have it the one exception I do know is uh uh the middle area off of Ros lawn that neighborhood has no lights in for whatever reason that's one of the few exceptions I could find otherwise it's more random like you you see here over by km Park where one or two intersections don't have lighting yeah you know I think we may want to work with communication before that process starts to get the word out in the city newsletter and other places to say hey you might notice a new light being installed and here's here's why we're doing it you know just to to give people a headset it doesn't mean people won't still say I never heard about this but as we know but at least we're trying to get the word out there um and as to um the mid block and requiring a petition for the midblock I think if it meets if it's Falls within our sort of standard I don't know that we need to have a petition for midblock I don't know or how am I trying to say this I don't know that we want to go in and install a bunch of Midlock lights just as the like we're trying to do with intersections but at the same time I don't know how onerous we want to make the process to be if if a neighborhood says oh yeah why why don't we have one just for reference we don't get a lot of we get maybe one or two requests a year for Mid block um usually when they request it they don't meet that 600 foot standard then the process goes away but every once in a while it comes up rarely do they I don't know if they I guess we don't we tell them the petition process we rarely see the petition come back so I don't know if that's because they can't get four neighbors to sign off because that's typically What It Takes and that's why it dies on Vine or or what but we don't get a lot of requests so for that mid block you're getting what's the range of homes that would is it 100 yard 100 feet on each side or what think it's currently reads 150 feet 150 ft so yeah four to six homes I mean we can maintain a petition process um you know certainly we're not going to ask them to pay extra for it because if it meets our standards right yeah like said I think the Public Works commission just recommended keeping that as petition process but potentially lowering the threshold from 100 make it the same 2/3 two3 seems reason what's our um6 and one that's percentage I'm trying to think of what the policy is on our on our um 70 our our other Street petition process for the safety improvements we can look at that I it might be good to try to consist I agree good idea mayor just couldn't think of what the name of it was traffic safety yeah yeah all right I just had I just had another question as far as um would we ever consider um uh criminal activity in a certain area as a consideration for adding additional lighting you know someone if there was not that we currently have a ton of neighborhoods but if there was a neighborh neighborhood that um was experiencing higher crime would we be willing to go outside of that uh parameter and maybe putting a light a little bit less than that in the interests of safety I think that would be pretty reactionary and that once you put it in then when it goes away do you take the light away seems like you should just be more consistent overall but I think that once again that gets into the there are things that people can do on their own property to try to deter crime and maybe we just refer people to the um um you know the folks in the police department who can help people you know determine what's best to help deter crime in their properties and in their neighborhood because some because once again I think we try to focus on the the user safety of the roadway all users but uh but once again trying to light adequately to deal with potential for property crime is is challenging because we probably would have a lot more Lighting in the city than yeah and I wasn't thinking I was thinking more if there was a a pattern of issues that were occurring that you know that was an opportunity that based on you know not just one weekend spree but you know like a couple Summers worth of problems that someone could have an opportunity to bring forward or maybe the police department could help and be part of that process and maybe there's just that conditional opportunity regardless that would exist already but just wanted to that it maybe wouldn't always just be 600 ft that there might be an other opportunity where it might exist I think we if we refer people to the police department they can probably figure out what's what are the best solutions for a neighborhood and if that does happen to involve Street lighting you know we have those conversations as a staff and try to resolve it I don't know that we can put something in a policy to necessarily get at that that makes sense um all right anything else on Street lighting have we adequately answered and provided feedback all right with that then thank you um the next item on our agenda this evening is under business item 7D which is to consider updates to our city council advisory rules procedure and I think I'll turn it over to or excuse me advisory commission rules procedure I'll turn it over to Mr trudon to introduce this item thank you Mr Mayor so I'm going to pull up on the screen apologize for those that don't have it right in front of you have to fix that um we've talked about this a couple times previously or at least one time more recently about um amending the city council and advisory commission rules of procedure around two items one about allowing commission members to bring items forward for discussion and the second one about remote participation So based on that discussion working with the city attorney and uh the mayor also helped guide where we are here so in the packet in attachment one is showing the changes there are a couple changes that are just cleanup um Extra Spaces so you notice in line 60 that's just taken out of space between motion and otherwise uh what the thought process where we landed is to use the same rules um about the procedure to get items on on a future agenda for commissions the same as council members as a result uh was felt that we should move the whole uh conversation about the order of business for agendas up to the commission and Council versus at the bottom so you'll see the green there is just moving it from one section to the other and then the red uh underline are things that are actually new additions to that so U where we say items Mark with an asterisk appli to Commissioners with items item numbers adjusted accordingly we're indicating that those items should be on every uh commission agenda so you know in particular uh number eight uh we would change that from Council to commission Direction uh I should say commission um or member I think is the is the best way to say it initiated agenda items so we'll we'll clean that up I thought we maybe had dealt with that but we didn't so uh that just allowing for that to be um shown on the agenda and then uh further down uh we talk about the same rules applying to the the um commission as well and so when we get into line 89 about uh introducing new items we're following the same path as council members and just added the word uh commission members on there and uh I would know a number two typically if a council member wants to initiate something um between meetings they contact the city manager here we saying the the uh commission member should contact the staff leaon so you can see uh we just added a lot of um word Commission in there just to be consistent uh with what we have be there before so I'll just I'll just scroll down to the bottom and show you where we took that out so that used to be rule 9 agenda so we just move that whole um section up and uh add the word commission the other change is a brand new rule remote participation where it states as follows members of city or Council and commission will attend all meetings in person and may only attend remotely when permitted to do so by the open meeting LW and must follow all notice and other requirements of the open meeting law as you know the open meeting law generally says you have to be here on public space there are some exceptions for medical exceptions um we did not want to get that specific into those details because those could change over time so just referencing the open meeting law then it gets into other folks participating all St all staff reports consultant reports and citizen testimony will be in person unless remote participation is required due to unforeseen circumstances or situ ation outside of the control of the individual remote participation should be coordinated with the city manager at least one business day in advance of the meeting so it might be a special accommodation we need to make uh so we want to be prepared for that or as I said something that we just can't um um um um plan for and uh we would use that very infrequently but in cases of emergency we would use that once again it would go through a process contact it through my office to make sure it makes sense and then we can uh set up um the zoom um software to be ready to go so those are the two changes and so I think I hope we landed where the council wanted to be on this but certainly we can U talk about this and alter anything else here but these changes here should address the um topics we talked about in January 8th so with that I'll pause and see if there's any questions all right thank you Mr trudon uh questions from the Council on the proposed draft changes to the rules coun TR thank you um city manager Tran does this address our concerns with the uh folks kind of Zoom bombing us um by not allowing public participation in our meetings then yes it would be uh if somebody if a member of the public said they needed to uh um corre join us virtually because for an accommodation there' be some interaction between me and that person to understand what they're talking about okay and what what they're there for um you can't prevent everything so there's always that one possibility but um having gone through that I think we'll be um all that much quicker on the trigger if something offensive is said to shut that down I really don't see it happening the need for this that often but U this is good to have guidance so there will be an ability to check in with me to make sure I know what they're going to be talking about and they're at the right meeting and uh they stay on topic to whatever the city business is and then I was just this is more for the City attorney do we need to keep a provision in their covid part too that we might all have to be online at some point or we just take that as it comes I think we take that as it comes I mean Co part two remember when we I'm assuming when Co came we declared emergencies and we created all kinds of rules that would be in effect during that emergency So Co part two which will probably be anything thing we don't expect um we'll we'll deal with that at the time yeah not necessarily Co whatever the new emergency is right okay thank you and also to that point we have the general reference to the open meeting law which a lot of that when Co hit Co won um the state legislature did make amendments to the open meaning law to accommodate some of that so and that I think a lot of that language is still in there about the declared emergency and things like that so we still have that available but that's a good good question good point uh other Council questions feedback I just one thing I I forgot to mention um Mr Mayor and members of the council so the exception for council members to appear virtually um due to medical reasons that also apply to commission members um that has been asked uh occasionally for situations that they find themselves in so they will be able to participate remotely but I guess the idea is that person is participating remotely everybody else is here still a public meeting they have to be seen and heard and all those type of things to comply um but um that that happen right now under the open meeting law only three times per year only three times per year yep okay other questions or feedback Council M schroer um I do um thank you for putting this together because I think this was one of the things the Commissioners had been questioning and it's good to have it spelled out um just if if we're going to be updating this policy I just had one other small thing in here when under um now we have it as rule 10 timing of council packet it says that will every offer will be made to get it to us in 10 days doesn't that seem a little um that doesn't happen every yeah I know right so maybe we want to shorten that down so expectations are like thank you you you may want to change that cuz you'd have to you'd have to figure out before you know I mean sometimes it's seven days between meetings and that'll be a little difficult to have two piled up behind them impossible I I think what the and this maybe what you're about to say the original reason behind it was to try to get information to the council maybe even before something is on the agenda so that if there is Advanced type of information as soon as it can be done it can be gotten to the council just to kind of give people a heads up for a lack of better way of saying it but I get the point about you know actually the packet itself is not necessarily going to be able to be made available 10 days I I do recall Mr Mayor I'm not sure when we stopped doing it but probably soon after became city manager not that it's related but uh we used to have a pre packet that was sent out 10 days that was literally a packet with cases that was sent a week and a half before which put a lot of burden in getting things done I'm wondering if that's a leftover from that that might be yeah so maybe you want to change that to seven or less or I you whatever yeah well we typically get it on the Thursday so yeah yeah um which is [Music] four yeah we could just uh I mean it's nice to still have the notion of trying to get the information of the council ahead of time well and you do know occasionally we'll send out emails with some detailed information as background either coming from me or Department had hey this is coming up on a future agenda here's a background let us know if you have any questions we do that more informally than formally we don't do that in every single case yeah maybe the language about draft agendas and supporting documents might be too formal yeah maybe it's more every effort will be made to send or provide you know information to council members but this is titled Council packet yeah you're right it does right it's maybe we strike the whole rule or actually go back to because I don't know that we have something specifically saying Thursday the Thursday before the meeting in our rules but maybe putting Thursday in there you could put an additional note for larger items or more consequential items to make an attempt to get additional information to council least 10 days you could you could pull these pieces but we don't want to go back to the prepackage that was a ton of extra work for staff for very little uh benefit and so I would I would think this should move to Thursday it's our current practice or even even the Friday but the the goal there is that we and the and the community have a chance to look at it but uh 10 days is a lot to require yeah y so we need to address the delivery method it says delivery but then it doesn't mention that in either any of the subsequent lines um like how you know can it just be that word be taken out and like how how the material is is it showing a picture door or is it just an email that you're using on your own computer obviously we're a hybrid of that at the moment both so in order delivery covers all of those I don't know that we have to get more specific than that y would you like me to uh work on just cleaning that up and bring that back um through on a future consent agenda with these other changes or you want to do it on F no no let's not do it on the Fly okay speaking for all my fellow counselers without consulting with them okay well I I think whenever we try to write something you know especially as not very simple as this on the Fly we it just kind of it's better to have some time to reflect and I don't know that we're going to suffer from having uh the original the existing rules in effect for another couple meetings or what I just wonder what we changed except we were going to get rid of the council part of something versus council member and we were making a change there On th Council packet formation I think those the only two changes we were making so you're saying uh rule 10 would say every effort be made to send draft agendas and supporting documents to council members the Thursday before Monday meetings period what if a council changes the or what if we have meetings that aren't Mondays I think that's what I was going to say I think you say so many so so many business days prior to five days in advance right now it's four bit four days four days um you know so should probably stick with that yeah okay all right four days we're just Ching 10 to four all right okay that works all right I think we can pass this okay somebody wants to get it passed I will move to pass this with the uh two small changes as outlined in our discussion period second all right and is everyone clear on what those two changes are the one is or member and we had the word member keeping member G where is that again line 74 thank you shortening council member to member yep on point 8 or line eight item eight y okay and then what we just discussed under rule 10 7 Days L 139 to four days [Music] yep got it you might be looking at the original yeah I'm looking at the draft the draft I'm sorry draft it's 139 I was going to say I think the original rules probably don't have as many lines looking at that wrong understand 13 rule 10 or current rule 10 yep all right we've got the motion before us actually I do want to check if there's anyone from the public who wishes to speak to this item we do want to before taking Council action I apologize for missing that step commission member here thank you hello and welcome thank you for remembering may just want to point out something that it's personal to me if you can introduce yourself also oh I'm sorry my name is Rich James I'm my address Rich James um I live on Pascal Street and I'm uh the chair of the um H perfect of at your Jan at the January 22nd meeting I had planned to be there I've been released from the ER that morning and um I would was hoping to get here but my situation was so that I really was not feeling well enough actually actually went to sleep didn't wake up till 6:15 but one of the reasons I didn't even ask for saying could I re participate remotely was because I I knew that that was currently not possible and it would not fit in with being in touch with uh city manager Tron as a day before so I that's a personal experience for me and I don't know whether you want to consider that as something that you know through an emergency or some physical emergency or something that might cover because I'm probably not the only person that has been in that kind of situation and we wanted to participate but couldn't so you are exactly the reason that I asked the city manager to change the draft language to say instead of must be cleared with the city manager a day in advance to should so we've got a little bit of flexibility to deal with those issues so in that situation if and I would like to as much time as you can in advance yeah so I say this turned out I would not have been any good showing up in that meeting anyway but uh I I just wanted to put that in as a personal experience for me well and I think actually your question raises a whole other question about um whether you could have done it anyway because that was a joint meeting of the H and the city council which is a a posted meeting which might F qualify under the open meeting law as one of your three that you could miss you know that kind of or participate remotely as a member of the commission so there would have been a whole host of interesting questions around that situation just bring it up so that if that's if that isn't covered in there that's something you might want to consider thinking but yeah that that was definitely why we changed it to should okay thank you thank you all right we have the motion before us uh and I apologize I didn't make a note as to seconded the motion counc strong sorry about that I I got to thinking about public comment before I wrote that down all right we've got the motion before us to adopt the rules of procedure with those two uh corrections as noted previously in our discussion um if there's no further discussion on the motion actually I don't know that we had any discussion on the motion maker the motion any discussion I'm good thanks okay seconder all right hearing no further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed that passes unanimously thank you everyone and thank you Mr James for being here this evening um next uh a quick topic to go through uh up a a review of our annual budget process and discussion about uh some some questions and other matters related to that um and I'll maybe turn over to Mr trudon to begin and then uh there may be some other other discussion leaders going through it here y thank you Mr uh mayor and members of the council um as mentioned we are here just to have a conversation about the budget process and information um it's really um in not any reaction to any particular thing it's just an opportunity given that we passed our budget in December that seems like a long time ago now as we sit here in February but it's an opportunity before we get too deep into the next budget session to make sure and check in and have a conversation with the council regarding overall process we follow uh as well as the information I think in in both cases the process and the information has been kind of followed for many years with some changes along the way um but probably never really had a direct conversation in the whole process so um I I think also i' mention bring this forward doesn't mean we have to change uh this is just a check-in um and I think with the amount of information that's in front of you tonight and where we want to go uh may take several conversations to get uh where we want to go I would also just State and I try to uh remind myself all this time um whenever you're looking to do change It's always important to ask why or what issue are we trying to resolve or fix what are we what's our goal on this and we don't want to change this for change sakes we want to make sure it's meaningful I think I think uh most of us can articulate some of those reasons why we may want to do that but just try to keep uh that in mind so in the RCA there are a couple things that staff is bringing forward for discussion and then um information prepared by the mayor um that I will let him go over at the uh we get to it but if we could just run through the quickly the staff items here and um get some feedback on that the first one um listed in the report here right Mouse is a budget calendar uh staff is not necessarily proposing any changes to the budget calendar as it relates to um the uh city council process but uh we will be bringing uh forward information here as we get into the spring and a little bit more heavier in the summer a few years ago we did change the city manager budget to the second meeting in August um to provide some more time to to um prep of that budget here so the there's these check-ins we also have check-ins with the finance commission as well which I'm not showing directly on here but they're part of that process as well so I'll just pause like I said staff themselves um do not have any particular changes to the calendar I think it works really well uh it is a big document to put together um it seems we we finish one and start the other one but uh that's okay um but given enough time we can prepare a budget and hopefully when you get that it's as complete as it can be in late August so I do appreciate pushing that back to late August so we'll just pause to see if there's any thoughts or questions on the process calendar right feedback questions on the budget calendar part portion of the process doesn't seem to be okay we got that right all right the next item I don't have a a graphic show necessarily is but uh we talk about in our budget documents property tax supported and non-property tax supported budgets we break that up I'll have a slide saying this is the property tax supported and non-property tax supported I don't know but I imagine originally when it was first uh created that way it was pretty clear lines that we had programs and services and maybe whole departments that were fully funded by property taxes and we had other uh things such as utilities that were just covered by uh fees and no property taxes um but I think over time we've had blending and every time we have this caveat saying this is the property tax suppored budget primarily property taxes but there are fees and same with the fee schedule primarily fees but there are also property tax and um so we've been doing that forever but probably never stopped the question why are we doing that or is that important for you to know when I typically present that I go through it pretty quick and I don't ever recall a sustained conversation around those two distinctions so just asking if that's something you find valuable we should keep doing or we should look at no longer presen in the format we do thoughts from the Council on whether we need to segregate the budget into those two portions the property tax supported and non-property tax supported going forward council member I looking at the various things that have been presented since um kind of like blending them together because it shows the big picture for each department you know in public works here are the six categories and not here are three over here in part of this part of that and over four pages later here are the other two and a half things they do um and this other agreement we have and whatever right so you don't get a you never get a big picture for a department under the revenue we would show those different sources of revenue um but under the budget looking at here is X department and here's the budget for that for me helps um clarify things probably more than in the past other thoughts on the need or lack of need for that segregation of the budget into two halves two pieces Council M Scher um you know for for me and I think thinking back part of that might have been because of the Enterprise funds was trying to make sure that they were supporting themselves and I think you know when you get down into the detail showing that but we also realize that they don't or they and so there are some property tax or that are coming coming in so we can still show that cuz even though you have the total budget and putting them together is one thing but making sure there's still the detail by each area so you can still tell say you know an enter you know say I'll just use the um Golf Course for an example you know that's a question you know I get asked is it self- sustaining and so still being able to see that detail which is fine but when you're looking at the really big B overall picture I'm not so sure how helpful it is to break it out yeah I I would agree with those I think it's better not to have that designation because it confuses people I mean we work with this all year long so but but to say something is you know property tax and then except and then add on all these exceptions I think it just adds confusion so I think Clarity is better and that would clarify it in my mind it doesn't sound like there's an objection to uh getting rid of that distinction okay great so noted uh we'll go with that understanding moving forward uh the next item um I think we've had conversations before and I'm just bringing it up for additional conversation this opens up here open up to here so traditionally we have um shown the Eda budget and a lot of detail in this format and I think you're all familiar with that as I mentioned in the RCA I we were using this format back when um Eda was an HRA and really a citizen board with a council member appointed and to go into a lot of the details here we've used that since then um I think a year or two ago we tried to show it differently and much more Consolidated and that is what what happened to that there excuse me something like this which has the same numbers as shown but a lot less detail it shows the revenue of the levy uh the charges for service uh that would be the rice Larter and the miscellaneous Revenue in this case Northwestern but you noce the two items Personnel 204,000 everything else 269,000 so that's not a lot of detail uh the other document shows detail uh which you are all familiar with and have seen over time I think um I would note that in the RCA we do try to provide some detailed information on the breakdown so just asking uh whether or not the council wants to continue using uh the document that's shown we typically have this created and you know we can populate that certainly we also have the ability to you know go to the the more summary uh version of it I would note that we don't get into this level of detail for any other program good or bad you know we don't so just bringing this forward here um understanding I think there's a lot of desire to have this so um that's fine if that's where we end up but just wanted to bring it forward so right thank you Mr trudon uh Council feedback Council M short um I do like the the uh old f for meathod detail but I understand having consistency and having it all of them in the same format consider in that we're also wanting to include this into our budget process but my biggest point would be um if we change the other services and charges because that's still too big of a number you look at this it's it's bigger than the Personnel Services yeah and and so to me changing to this format I would not be in favor of if that stays that way but if we go to where and I believe we'll talk about that later about breaking that down into more categories then I'd be more comfortable with ited other thoughts counc I I would agree with that I maybe it's because I got to be on the HRI and it's last year but I really like that format it's the only time I can actually see what's going on inside of a department and it's probably not fair but um but I it's something that I've appreciated I understand why it may be excessive um but even within that there are categories right uh their marketing studies or Economic Development you know there there are some categories how could we make that so there's some detail without having to do within uh Economic Development there are five items right can we just do economic development but having two items for that budget leaves us with very little information and I think that that getting more of that for and in all areas would help illuminate us and the public as I did mention too in the RCA for Eda budget we do get into the breakdown this this stud is going to cost 20,000 this is with the difference so it's not necessarily shown on a sheet but it's shown as supporting material which may or may not be helpful but um understood your point about having that that knowledge the Eda is a unique body of the city council and it's a relatively small budget it gives you the ability perhaps to look a little deeper than the $60 million budget in every single line at just don't have the time to do that so so I can understand the tradeoff on that other thoughts I would I think there may be a way to sort of do both um and we can maintain this document when the Eda looks at its budget but then when it gets to the council it's the it's the the standardized format I would note also I was looking as I was looking at all the information that was was provided um yes the uh I get to that the um the the the net changes report that talk about you know changes in costs and changes in revenues you know Citywide there were some line items in there about Eda program changes and so it is accounted for in sort of that the city's documentation um um but I think it's nice to have that detail maybe that first time you see it at the Eda level to see more of that and then you've got that document and then maybe you know as it goes through the rest of the process um we use the more standardized summary information knowing that some of those other changes in the pluses and minuses may end up in other reports as well and certainly in cover memos as as Mr treer noted or RCA's request for Council actions um and then I I do tend to also agree with the notion of potentially breaking down that other services again right to help that also um so I think there's a way to do it where we we can get it standardized in the rest of the process but also still have this as maybe the worksheet that starts the conversation at the beginning of the the Eda process and just is always on file for us to refer back to at that point and maybe doesn't carry through through all of the the council packets going forward necessarily but that's a thought I think the other category is a great opportunity to expand a little bit so people can see um that would go a long way towards providing some transparency so yes so we'll hold off on this until we have that larger conversation where we end up well I think unless there's objection we can still use this as as that starting point and the eda's first look at the budget and then that gives us a chance to know the detail and and you know hopefully doesn't overburden the finance staff in terms of developing this and providing it I don't know if it's Eda staff's going she's all well yeah it's it's more of the Community Development staff that gets into the nitty-gritty of this but okay that's that's fine then the rest of the stuff is uh really in the packet is uh mayor Rose um suggestions and um thoughts so I will turn it over to the mayor to walk through and I do have them I can pull them up as needed so just let me know so first of all well before that I will uh thank the staff for passing forward all the bench handouts that I generated over uh this last few days and certainly not even just only related to this agenda item but we'll get to that later um uh but I also wanted to make sure that as we got into this we maybe had some framework for some conversations and I had noted some items through last year's process that that we sort of sounded like we wanted to talk some more about so that I tried to capture that here so the first part of it is uh just some process questions uh and then we can get into some of the information presentation Communications part of it uh the first and these aren't in any particular order other than just how I ended up listing them but the first one was you know we have the uh utility rate study coming back uh the update related specific speically to the sanitary sewer and as Council may recall and public may recall uh as part of our budget process this last year we froze the sanary sewer fees and didn't increase those uh and part of the basis for that was the the the fund balance in that fund is very it's well funded right now um and it appeared that if we froze those rates we weren't significantly impacting our Capital financing over time and certainly weren't uh going to be negatively impacting operations for this year uh and so the question came to my mind anyway as we were looking at that was well does it make sense since we're doing the study to do some kind of analysis of you know could we potentially freeze it for a longer period of time and what would the impact of that be uh or some other you know maybe we increase it less over time or something like that I know there was a a plan that was laid out that was kind of a five year four or five year you know process and we basically just put it off a year uh I guess the question is is is putting it off a year is there is there more that we could be doing in this fund just based on the fact that is quite generously funded right now so that's that's kind of this topic and so I'll stop there and maybe see if the council has any thoughts on that and the only other thing before I go to that is on any of these things or any of the things we've already discussed if there's any desire to refer these to say the finance commission for some feedback before we make a final decision that's totally a legitimate path we could take so uh with that once again just done this utility rate study for the sanitary sewer side of it thoughts C my I think we had a conversation about some of these funds and some of our other Capital funds uh where sometimes we were increasing it um and yet they were far outpacing any future expenses and we as a council ended up in the in the 2024 budget process um pulling some of those down right so I don't know do we need to study or we need to make sure that we aren't just just increasing for fun um but we're saying yeah okay we don't have inflation in these and this and that so we need to be thinking about that sum but if there's this line and the costs are down here how do we adjust that trajectory and so not remembering specifically though it's probably somewhere in one of these 30 pages where that exact fund is at I just think that our goal should be to be more closely aligning our revenues with our expected expenses um without getting into the details of a study of 0% for another year or two years something like that and specifically I was asking in relation to the sanitary sewer fund because of the fact that a study was being undertaken for that fund that was one of the outcomes of that discussion that we had last year and and so that's why the question was specific to this I I take the point on we always want to be looking at all the funds and kind of you know making sure that we're not sort of just putting it on the trajectory of of income continue to increase unnecessarily over time um uh so that's why I pointed it out specific to this fund uh Mr TR uh just just two quick thoughts you know we are currently undertaking a utility study so SE so it's very easy for us to do so I think that's kind of yes we can we can do that and just look at that sound like we have to go back and contract with somebody we never had before so that's easy I would also say you know we're trying to do utility studies on a more regular basis so our assumptions today oh for the next five years we need to do this will be checked every few years and then okay you know what we don't need as much as we you know as what we know today this is maybe how it needs to play out but over time we'll get better ideas on cost and and and trends of um you know infrastructure breakage and stuff like that so I think we'll be able to stay on top of it pretty good doesn't mean we have to stop talking about it we need to be intentional about it but I think we got some mechanisms in place so we don't get too far away we probably still need to recalibrate kind of where we're going uh right now and and look at Alternatives but I think hopefully moving forward there'll be that regular check-in so we're not going to get so out of whack where it's going up this way and the costs are stuck there I think the challenge is is further out you look uh it is challenging to predict the cost and so what may look like a huge Surplus today in 10 years may not if you don't do anything but that's why it's important to keep going back and checking the reality of the situation and making sure we have sufficient funds um allocated Council Sher well and again my point would be why wouldn't we do this it's not it's not like as as our city manager say it's not like it's going to take an army to do that and so why not and a good point that we are verifying our assumptions when we're doing this um again you're right the fund is very uh robust at this point and and and and council member to had the point we should do this with all the funds and make sure we look at it because if you think about we do some of our funds we have that U minimum balance thing or and minimum to maximum balance and if there goes beyond that it gets moved over and I'm not saying to do that with this but we are checking we have a checkin balance on some of the other funds if they get too big that it gets moved over to use for other things and so it it makes sense to me that we would be checking These funds as well and again you know we wouldn't have to move anything but if it's this big and and then you do a study in the next five years it's still looking healthy then you you do want to possibly do the zero so again it's it's more as an ongoing uh making a deliberate check on it I guess and and then I think the point being is then closing that Loop and coming back and saying to the council we did this and it's looking like this you know and so it's it's more of we just shouldn't assume it's being done that way we can actually have it you know come back and say yep we looked at it so I think it makes sense any objection to taking a look at that no so then I think the only thing as with anything when you ask for uh somebody to look at a couple of scenarios or a different scenario you kind of have to Define what you want them to look at and so that's why you know do we say we want them to look at X number of years at at 0% or do we want to say you know how far can we go before we run into trouble or you know what do we want to tell the consultant to look at when they're doing that other scenario in their analysis of the study or do we have a sense of what we might want to say want both those things cuz you'd want you you certainly want don't want to go to the we're in trouble so you want to know what that date would be I think anytime as as uh city manager trud was saying anytime you go out 10 years you're getting into iffy territory I think three to five years your predictions are a little better so I don't know I I would not make an adjustment banking on the 10 year plan right no no so something looks at one two and three years out exactly and then that's beyond that there's so many VAR we just adjust you know look at it next year and do the one two three years out again right we will get an update every year to a degree just not for this this right and I think we're already doing the one year out because that's what we ended up doing by doing 0% last year so that would just be one or two additional years beyond that we'd ask them to look at and see what what the line does on the graph essentially in those situations okay all right thank you I appreciate that hopefully that helps uh our process so then the other the second one is is and we've already talked a little bit about this is the notion of of getting that Eda more um into our overall budget process and and I don't know that necessarily anybody objects to doing it and maybe I went into too much detail in what I was talking about here but I I think the idea is just unless unless there's objection from the council I think we we do want to it sounded like we discussed last year trying to make sure that the Ed is more more regularly and systematically incorporated into our our process so the only thing if I could yes Mr the only thing I would say with the uh we talk about budget and tax presentation in hearings often times we need to do that as the Eda um so so I don't know if you meant when the city's having their public hearings that we're doing that the same time or we because we do conduct the hearings um yeah no I think it's definitely want to mention we we definitely want to make sure we don't leave the Eda out of what we're looking at and that uh that um end of your tax hearing for the rest of the city operations that the Eda is part of that I think that's kind of what I was referring to there because you do pass an Eda resolution right understood yes exactly are you really thinking about letter D there yeah yeah EXC and E make sense but letter D may not because of some of the requirements for the Ed no yeah is what I was saying is is we just want to make sure that that final hearing that the city holds where we we mentioned the Eda and we passed a resolution as a city council adopting the Eda Levy for the for the next year that the Eda is also part of all the documentation that's that's supporting that that and we use you know this sort of standardized format and everything and that that we make sure that um you know there's involvement of the finance Commission in some of that preliminary prior step before we get to that point yeah as well so council member short and I think that's the point is that this was not part of the process it didn't go before the finance commission and we never until I asked for it we didn't get updates on the fund balance we only got the budget so I guess to me you know making it similar to all the rest of it you know I'd like to see and of course I talked about this at other meetings making sure we get the the B the fund balance of the Ed a as well as the budget because when you looked at it you saw how healthy that fund is too but most most people didn't know that unless you really dug for it so I the whole idea that you I know legally there's things we have to do separately but I think just the whole process of how it's done and how the council's updated on you know how we are and all the other funds and and you know and again having the finance commission look at it as well and yeah just more of the the process is the same versus having it over here and and just yeah have a different process makes sense and that's why I was talking about the different sheet yeah yeah as well but no understood I just wanted a clarification what the expectation was with the budget and presentation hearings because there are some responsibilities Eda has in the council just trying to incorporate that more everything else makes sense to me as well hopefully that clarification has helped y right anything else on that topic from the coun y right uh the next one is the afor mentioned or alluded to notion of of trying to break down the other category um you know as council member Sher noted during our budget process and I think tonight as well and I've I've concurred with that um oftentimes especially in some funds that can be a really huge number relative to the rest like the Eda um and it's hard to know what that all is and so are there some some broad categories that makes sense to represent in you know in addition to that so that the other shrinks down a little bit and truly becomes sort of that catchall miscellaneous um and the things like I noted um you know in my suggestions were looking at utility expenses and services and contracts as kind of the two additional breakdowns of that utility expenses theoretically could get you your payments to met counsil to process sewer water and your payment to St Paul for water uh in those funds and it can also so then obviously deal with our payments to Excel for street lights and facilities and things like that and other and you know I don't know if that necessarily includes cell phones and then the other category being services and contracts that helps like when I look at the city council item there's other as a big part of that and there's things like Northeast Youth and Family Services in there there's our I think that's where our legal stuff is or whatever but so you know those might be a couple of big pullouts that will help us to understand the other category better and I totally open to other ideas and certainly this may be something that makes sense to refer to the finance commission for further thoughts but uh I'll end it there and kind of open it up for Council feedback councilman Bron for services and contracts would you just pull apart that services and contracts are one thing or would you ask to have those delineated at to the detail of the exact service no I made it as one category including all of those and just listed some examples of what would be in that category uh and just just to note on the uh Eda General summary if we were to do this breakdown that other number that's 269,000 now it doesn't get a lot better necessarily but there would be $200 for utilities I that was I can't remember what that was um and then charging the cell phone 235,000 roughly for services and contracts which is primarily like our you know golden shovel and economic development Consultants and things like that as well as our our pass through of the rice and larpenter funds would be in there uh and then other would be about 35,000 at that point or 34,000 so you know you can see it it breaks it down a little further does that help I don't know in you know that's just an example do we get to somewhere that you say hey anything over 5% of an area's budget would be broken out somehow or you know where is that line where here here you've got more than 50% right and there's nothing there is there a 10% what what is that part point where you'd want to be able to see hey here's an item in some other part of the budget could be worth $12 million but isn't pulled out I don't know what or a million dollars it isn't pulled out I think my my concern with that is that you start going from having you know on your reports three or four categories to suddenly you've got 15 because one particular fund has an over 5% thing and it's only in that fund you know and it's not able to be compared cross compared between funds necessarily across the whole whole organization and like when you get to that summary of the entire city now you've gone from having four or five categories under expenses to 20 you know and I don't know that that's good what if other services and charges below that things that me certain threshold would get further listed you get under service the charges as you said you noted there for the Eda budget you're still looking at almost 50% of or around 50% of the budget so we still haven't illuminated almost anything right and and likewise for the the water budget you know the utility number would be over 50% of it because that's the amount we pay to St Paul for water that might be a little more straightforward because it's one thing and it's you know it's fairly straightforward but I I would note in the uh in the document that I provided as a bench handout that that summarized everything there is in that um and I was just trying to think of where where that might be did you put page numbers I did not or line numbers uh what fund were we just talking about Eda the Eda water water oh shoot it escaped me at which one I was going to look to but um but there is detail provided under the um the budget detail by function in various areas sometimes there's a little more detail provided Andor in the sort of plus minus for the year oh that's what it was it was the um so like in the um on page I guess it would be page three and four this is sort of the expenditure breakdown across all funds I believe if you go to the to the water section there it just talks about water as a total I guess so that's not that's not maybe it was under the water fund itself well anyway um so like I said I'm open for thoughts but I don't want it to get too complicated I say okay even if it doesn't break it down a lot more it sure sounds way better than other I mean to me when I to me that almost in in in my career is like others be really small so so if it is if you if it's um services and contracts at least now you know it's services and contracts it's not just this big giant other ball so that I think that is helpful on that also there's a you know you do get more detail but is you could do something if for a particular fund and I know this might be something we have to run by Finance if it is a big amount you could have a sub report to go with just that particular fund you wouldn't have to do it across all the funds so it's more you have an ass dists and then it would be C detail or whatever yeah is this what you were looking for yeah so I guess again anything but the giant aler I think it would be helpful kind of yeah except they don't break down the other of course right uh Council strong I do appreciate um the suggestion possibly of council member kind of lost it here but of um you know including including the finance commission um and their commission expertise as much as possible along these lines and so including them in the process of making sure that other isn't 50% of the fund balance but or the budgeted balance but really we have these amazing Minds around Finance so I really I'm hoping to lean into that so that we because of the scope and Bre of things that were requested and required to do I would really uh um you know in any way possible I think it's important that we tap them for these important um budget considerations especially because to me that's where we really should be seeking out their guidance and um looking to their and we may not I'll follow everything always every time but um I I do think that these delineations and such and you know I think we can go by what probably um chair petrick and and uh others I would consider best practices too so you know I don't want to reinvent the will to something that is not necessarily A best practice in the field um so I think kind of in consideration of that too so utilizing our resources and the talents that we have and not making it too honorous for everyone involved so Mr treasure if I could just add I think it makes a lot of sense to me to break down other into C bigger categories um and I think the suggestion by the mayor about utilities and the contracts are really a good start and that's what it is a start and and maybe we don't have to get Perfection here tonight to have everything down I would note that so so the utilities are a really big driver of that number overall number typically the others for most departments are going to be about contracts and services so you'll be able to see what that is and I would say while you may not see every single contract down there any contract that's going to have an increase in cost is going to show up on the reconciliation which I have up on there so you can see some finer detail is it going to count for every single dollar no that just shows you the change from year to year but then you have a sense Pat why is this budget going up you can see kind of exactly what's happen that's a good report by the way yes yeah yeah so I I think breaking it the others down to a couple of big categories yes and then see how that goes and having this should provide a lot more illumination and then we can look to improve in the future as as we desire to anything other than other yeah to me it's like other than other than CU yeah CU in best practices in in you know most places our other should be this small amount and and yeah it shouldn't be half your budget well that's a good point and that's what I was going to point out on the on the Eda actually services and contracts well it is 50% at least you know it's services and contracts and what the Eda does is they contract with organizations to do things and provide services in the form of financial assistance to Residents like the um the um energy inspections and things like that so that's what it is so and then you know if one wants more detail one can look for that um since that uh sort of summary summation document is is on there I think to transition to the communication side of it rather than going to all the pretty pretty pictures first uh we'll go to or some people think they're pretty um the today's bench handout was sort of that Gomer of three different documents into one and one of them is the this plus minus report and then the other one is the sort of the fund balance analysis for each fund and then finally the the expense detailed descriptions for the sort of the function areas within a fund and right now they're three separate documents and they never sort of meet and if you want a cross reference between them it's very difficult yes and so the what I did today was just to try to find a way to try to combine them together to make it a little easier to to track and so it starts at the top level with the the fund financial analysis of All City funds so here in one on one sheet you can see all sources of revenue across the entire organization and you can see all expenditures in those categories across the whole organization you know subject to what we change other to be um but that's a nice you know starting point and then the next couple of pages is a breakdown of expenditures by function and this corresponds very closely believe with our um budget document that we actually publish each year um because we talk about B function and there you can see for instance under the the first half of the page is the general fund it includes city council Administration elections fire Administration police all the different categories and then it goes into the recreation fund the Community Development Fund Etc and so that's a nice way to break it down a little more and then the next couple of pages or four pages I guess are those expenditure Rec reconciliations and and revenue reconciliations which gets into the changes from last year's budget to this year's budget in these various areas and gets fairly specific you know it it says the skating center is going to buy 13,000 more of merchandise to sell so that expense item is going up for them and Etc throughout the organization um so so that's kind of all the summary of those three documents for the entire organization and then the rest of it just does the same thing fund by fund general fund uh Parks direct funds Community Development Fund and then you know to the extent we've got expenditure details for some of those funds they're right after that fund summary for that fund so it seems to it seems to put it together in a way that's a little easier to track so you know my suggestion is that we we try to ultimately do something like this as our standard document and combine those three together I like this you know where it came from you talking to you oh about what was missing you that got the wheels turning so I appreciate that and I would say from a staff perspective this is information we have it's just assembling it exactly in a different order trying trying not to invent something new but maybe make what we have work better it's it it because it puts it all in the same space and it offers a little more detail on some things and you can see those changes in there um it's really much easier to see what going on yeah it it was um it was actually quite a um project to you know go tie them out and go back and forth and and uh and and I think about you know what it took me to do that I was thinking as the you I always try to think about the public too and and for them to be able to try to navigate through this as well you know because there's you know I always say know your audience and so you know I know what I want and what I need for this maybe a different level but you also want to make sure it's communicated really well and people can follow it and so I think that's and finance stuff can be a challenge anyways so to make it as organized as possible I think makes sense and you may have noticed that I anticipated the conversation about tax supported and not tax supported and I took that whole thing out of this document so it doesn't even have that in there yeah but anyway um appreciate that um then if we maybe want to talk about I think then it gets to some of the maybe graphical presentation of information and I would just say um for this this is where you really want to know your audience and you want to know what you're trying to portray as messages and I think maybe if we can just go right to the to the bar graph section um I had included some of I repeated some information it turns out that the city manager put in again so I apologize for that but um I tried to capture Trends over time in a bunch of different ways and so I don't want to get into a detailed Des each each one of these um but just to say so this this was an attempt to try to put on one sheet both revenues and expenditures and try to show how they relate to each other and show Trends over time um but it's a lot of information and I don't know you know that may cause people's eyes to roll and I'm okay with that um I was just trying to think of different ways to present things uh the next one just uh instead of actual amounts it just relates to what the percentage of the budget is in each of those once again a lot of information I'm not sure how helpful that is but then I got into um specifically on the revenue Side by itself and comparing that to some indexes that may or may not be meaningful to people in terms of um you know one is our city tax base that's the top orange line uh the next one below that is the median single family home value in Roseville over time and then the bottom line the sort of brown line is the uh Twin Cities inflation rate as represented by Consumer Price Index so just some you know ways to see what we're trending in terms of those categories over time and then um sort of the subsequent graphs are just sort of similar exercises for specific categories like specifically the property tax compared to those same indexes uh and then the charges for services which is largely the utility Fe but not entirely same thing and then breaking down as percent of the total thank you for scrolling and keeping up path this just is the same analysis but on the expenditure side instead of the revenue side same type of thing I just also took out Capital just to see what operating expenses were over time and what they how they trended um so that's uh overall City budget and then if you go down pat maybe a couple more sheets to the next graph there that was taking the information that we provide in our typical budget presentations about the impact to the average single family home and comparing that to the those same indexes so this Stacks all of the things that we charge it's got your on the bottom the pink is the property tax this the salmon color above that is the uh Eda tax the massive Eda tax um the icing on the cake as you might say and then the water utility fees in B and usage and above that the brownish colors are the the sewer San color system sewer is brown water is water is blue yes and then recycling is green so that's that's all of the impacts yellow yes that's all the impacts and then if you go to the next one once again it's as a percent so you can see kind of as a trend over time as a percent how it's impacting uh and then I broke it down into the taxes versus the utility fees the utility fees I think is the next one yep and all compared to those same indexes so anyway this is just a bunch of ways to to show information with Trends over time and try to help present information graphically that we've got a lot of information in tables of numbers and different people look at and process things in different ways and so trying to think about how we can we can help visual analysis of things one of the things I'll note is that if you if you look at a year or two different budget years and their pie charts you can't tell the relative change over time except for the change the size of this of the pieces of the pie but it's even hard to tell that so a line of bars over time helps with that uh seeing changes over time but you know so that's just my thoughts on those and I don't know if you know how we want to deal with this if this is something we want to refer kind of as a general topic to the commission to look at and with these examples as a starting point for conversations or we don't want to do anything with any of it that's fine too so thoughts from council members and once again it depends on the audience and what we're trying to say to that audience too Council yeah and I I actually do like you're right about the pie it's it's it's more difficult to compare and I what I like about these is it's multiple years I like that just two years to me is not enough for comparative and also then to have the different indexes like that you know what are you comparing it to you know to me you know for me I it's more you know if I'm looking at this as a a homeowner I think this dollar amount for example on this U monthly charges is much more um useful than the percentage I mean you know so just knowing I mean it's you the percentage I don't really care how much of this is how much I got to pay you know I know this is how much I have to pay and I'd rather know it in dollars I mean that's just me person personally but I do I do like the bar better than the pie chart as in a comparative so that's just my two cents on it well and certainly you can gather the percentages from sort of looking at the the actual number bars and kind of same yeah other thoughts council member strong um I think a lot of them are really hard to understand and um if you are not Savvy in Revenue some of these um 100% bars are going to just be lost and so um I think some of these that are visual are easier to um make some assessments or smise I really want to make sure that we're not they're not just a pretty thing that doesn't really do anything for people like that doesn't provide Extra Value these are so small on uh Revenue sources versus indexes attachment to that I it's just there's so many topics there that I I don't see that that is a useful chart for me and I also at the same time or this attachment revenues versus expenditures like that is mindboggling to look at that so I just I don't want to for the sake of a graph have a sake a graph for the sake of a graph um I also want to make sure that whatever we ask is a logical thing of Staff like we're not just creating something in order to create something um and that it would be user friendly that the average person who has some idea about budgets could step in because they're going to spend a fraction of the time that we do on it so why put in Oodles of time on something that they're going to glance at so whatever the glance needs to be meaningful um but if it's if it needs a half an hour and a and a degree um I don't think that that's any it's not a good Roi for anyone right right no and I would just note on the revenue side there's so many tiny Revenue categories that that would be an example where other is an excellent use of yeah but I don't think a lot of people know how to read those charts um I don't think a lot of people understand what that means and so if unless we're going to each and every home to do a little inservice on how to read the certain kinds of charts that's not a useful but over time if you see things go up and down in lines at least you kind of can pick out the right thing no point well take uh council member I would tend to agree with M stra there's some of these that show growth or change over time like this is the total monthly City charges um for Medan single family home or the total monthly utility charges those are easier to understand I think it might illuminate some of these others like the first one in that um really is just kind of plot par of things that um I I looked at and said next side you know um so I think that a lot of these are more information than is useful and it requires so much explaining even for us to understand that it wouldn't be but maybe some of those bar charts looking at some of those charges or taxes over time and might make sense as good tools for people to better understand in a quick way well and I agree because I think the dollar to me again the percentage I think people don't that that's a little more confusing but but that's why picked out that one about the city charges and in with the indexes but to me to say okay I'm spend says right here you know okay it's $130 and 217 and now I'm paying $180 or whatever I think that people get is how much money more am I spending on this stuff so yeah there's a and and I and that's why you said earlier too know your audience because you know uh and that's like all the other reports were talking about you know that who who's it for and that's you know if this see this might be something Standalone that you could show you know put that in the newsletter and say this is what you're what you've been paying and this is what changed I think you understand that monthly charges where where then yes some of these other ones um you're right you know combining them a little more these are probably more um I think you know some of the council might understand this or the finance commission would understand this very well you know and so depending on who who you trying to get the information to but I think it really depends on who is creating this and for what purpose I really don't want to just for the sake of us a few I really want to make sure that we aren't asking staff or external sources to be in putting a lot of time in some of these items for a small audience accepting of this information so I think just like everything else the ROI is includes your time and your effort and so is the is the return on that investment worth what we're offering I'm sure to some yes but we should look at it a big picture Mr treas oh Council graph you well I would just say yes to all those things that that first graph I did finally it but it I I was like wow you know reading through all that and then trying to decipher which color would we um but having said that your your comment about council member uh when you were saying about the years I thought that was a good comparison when I finally dug through it all I like that I like that better than the pie chart just to give some clarity to that however now council member st's comment about how much are we going to put on staff here I don't want to create you know 50 hours more of work or something like that for them just to give us bunch of graphs um I think we get a lot of work a lot of information in our budgets and uh improving it somewhat but you have to look at where we're spending our time well certainly we don't have a lot of graphical representations of information now no so I don't know that we want to go Whole Hog to the extreme of 20 new things yeah um but maybe there are some things that might make sense and maybe that's what thank you Mr was going to say that there's a lot of information presented there and and yes to all the conversation means different things to different people I think U maybe to help Focus the conversation if there are several key indicators the council wants us to see and I think you've talked a lot about the monthly charges to the home owners is one the stack charts those are some that we can focus on let's do a few of them right and then we can always build off of that over time but then we can really focus on those include them in the budget documents that you receive in August right and then you can see what that impact is so you're informed and then also we can then produce that out into the public uh through newsletter websites and other things so I think that would be a really good start I think there's some good uh gems in here that could be very helpful to use and it's just a matter of us repurposing how that data is displayed once we have the data we have to get the data first to put in there um and I think hopefully we can work that through so that's why I would say just not do 20 of them this a few and then we can build off of that and I would say all the data that was used to variate these is the data that we already generate so we've got the data it's just it's just a matter of I'm just talking about for 25 we're not going to have it until later exactly until we actually have I think it would be helpful at least it seems to be logical to me that whenever tools are built into our accounting system I mean there's probably some of these come pretty standard or not too far off potentially or even better right instead of Reinventing the wheel if there's something that is similar to this and yet fulfills a similar task and takes three buttons let's let's start with that rather than create a stack chart that is so detailed that we it it's hard for the average person but my guess is the system itself probably can utilize a lot of this data and maybe a lot of it's prject proposed and predictive and so we can't you know but there's got to be some resources available in any um in our beautiful new accounting system no so so so so on that uh so we're in the process of uh of switching over here so um we anticipate that's going to be done May Jun is so we're going to try to incorporate as much as possible into this budget process but we're kind of stuck in between having two systems here um in the end not sure what can all be produced it there's a hand in the audience yep if if she wants to come up she can explain but she doesn't have to I think I can handle it um that that that um you know there there's going to be some limits on what we can produce yes the followup really is to have a budget mod module that is a dashboard that we can many cities have that that people can literally create whatever Church they want to to their heart's content with with the data that's in there it graphically represents really easy so whatever is important to you but that's going to be 25 going into 26 before I would I would see that really realistically implemented I think in the meantime we can focus on what information can we present and hopefully um at the bare minimum Mr Mayor you can share us with the templates of of of these documents so it's it's literally just putting new numbers in there and um then and then it comes out of course like I said we don't want to do 20 of them so we should probably Focus tonight or future meeting about what those would be um would look like yeah no and and I think that's these were just provided as examples of what could be so that you know that at least we start a conversation you didn't watch that football game huh oh this was all the um so I don't know uh do we want to uh and I don't want to prolong the conversation tonight because we got a few other meaty items to talk about is this something we want to provide some individual feedback to staff on as council members about which may be the ones that are the most helpful to us or is something we want to get some insight from the the uh Finance Commission on or how do we could we differ to our finance director well definitely I thinkk staff would definitely probably have some insight into which of these are if I could suggest I would like to take this back and have some conversations certainly if any of you have individual thoughts feel free to reach out on on that we' want to bring that back again for another conversation so here's what we heard here's what we think here's what we can do um I I think as a baseline the council probably wants to decide that then we could talk to the finance commission here's what the council's thinking is the council missing anything the staff missing anything that would be helpful um but if give us chance to regroup from this conversation and understand and then you know if you have any individual feedback just let us know and we can incorporate that that would be good uh Council want to take about a 5 minute break 45 40 minutes fast all right we'll take about a 5 minute break then okay see right we're back from a short break here just want to make sure we're all back online um so we are continuing with our uh business items this evening and our next business item now that we've talked about 7e is item 7f oddly enough and that is a discussion on the city commission scope duties and functions and so I'll uh I believe turn it over to city manager treason to start the conversation yeah I'll start the conversation so um as you know the council um has been talking almost for the past year about scope duties and functions uh each commission did talk uh amongst themselves so what they would suggest changing in the ordinance regarding their scope and duties and functions um as a result of that we've got a whole slew of information that a subcommittee of council member Aton and Schroeder have been working on in addition with the city attorney and myself a little bit but I didn't do much of the work so I won't take credit for it uh about uh trying to consolidate all those thoughts into uh a document in the packet tonight under attachment one is uh the suggested changes to chapter two of the city code which covers commissions and it does reflect changes to most of the commissions uh with the exception of the H as you know there was a joint meeting uh with u members a few meetings ago to talk about what they um had brought forward and as a result there needs to be continued conversation on trying to sort out scope duties and functions on that but was felt at this time that um these other ones were pretty straightforward and that we could bring forward for discussion tonight I would note this has not been published on our city uh website yet so it's not eligible to be adopted tonight but since this is the first look and the whole Council we want to bring It Forward for feedback uh on that and I would note the mayor has added uh a bench handout regarding some changes to the Planning Commission moving stuff around the city code which we can get into in a little bit but I will pause there as I said um the bulk of the work was done by the City attorney to put in form and then the actual content uh with um council members at and in Scher so they may want to add to what I presented all right uh perhaps council memb at and schroer want to uh introduce this a little bit from their point of view um I think we've talked about this fair amount as far as an introduction and I think the city manager did a nice job of uh putting that in place uh the changes we see for the commissions that have uh changes here we're largely looking at either cleaning things up putting things in order to create uniformity in the code language um a lot of that code language adjustment was done by our City attorney um and then trying to incorporate some of the ideas of or most of the ideas of the commissions uh as they brought back ideas to us from this summer and the fall uh this past summer and fall um they um there's no major change to the scope duties and functions as these things have functioned but maybe they are better uh better organized and clear and um people will be able to look at this and understand what's going on better I will say that the park and wreck thing I did spend some time um combining things and maybe they could be combined more but uh there was a pretty long list that didn't always connect from be Toc I try to put them in in some categories at least um to shrink some of that um some of that list um that was the only one where there was I think more editorializing or combining from from other commissions uh compared to other commissions when there and and surprisingly I was in charge of the finance commission um rewrite and um what I will note on that what we um because looking at the discussion tonight we did incorporate putting the Eda in there they did not originally have that in the rewrite but since we talked it through um we went ahead and just said that was one of the things that they would be looking at the Ed and all funds yeah yeah those exactly and and utility rates also we put that all in the into this and so that that there it is those were the little um changes that weren't initial and they're from the finance commission but again we had that conversation already earlier tonight so and I would note that under a number of the commissions the uh meeting frequency was left blank um so I think the only one that it was put in there at a specific frequency was the Planning Commission if I remember right um so just wanted to knowe that Council I think that's a great thing for us to discuss um in the previous or in the actually really the current code um um and the proposed code under meetings and reports is commission shall meet at least quarterly except for otherwise required by this code or state statutes right so that's that's actually what's there most are meeting monthly um many skip a month here or there because of it's December and there's other things or it's whatever right um but the code outlines at least quarterly and I think that we talked about maybe adjusting some I personally the finance Commission in the current way it's serving doesn't need to meet 11 or 12 months a year but I think maybe it makes sense to leave the open must meet at least quarterly and let those commissions slug that out but understanding they you know you don't sometimes I I I'm concerned they meet to meet right right instead of using mon L because they're told to me instead of using their their skills in key times or when important things come up we just got ready to send them a lot of things um right so that is a key thing they may have to chew on for a couple of meetings right and that's super important but um do we have the meet u in February normally when you're done with the previous year's thing the new stuff isn't back the report outs the actuals from the those things aren't there so what's going on right so um I might go back as I've thought about this because I've spent a lot of time bouncing this around might go back and take out that item except for for the Planning Commission and maybe not have it say within each separate commission code this is how many times a month or how many times you will meet so it so you were saying that that all commissions would be required to meet at least quarterly yes and beyond that they're also required to set their annual schedule of meetings yes and and they determine what that schedule is yes so within the code for example if we look at I don't know because this where the page I'm on I guess but um on uh 20602 and we are um talking about public works and for Line 440 to 441 the commission will consist of seven members supported by the city council and will meet L right mhm um so maybe that category is just membership and all these and the commission will consist of seven members appointed by the city council period and the number of meetings comes back to that required to me at least quarterly that's in the 21 the overarching code versus changing it for each different commission and setting it for each and setting it for each commission yes it's an interesting concept uh council member gr do they need to put in the notice from the city how do they have the calendar at the beginning of the year it's easier to what I understood being on commission it's easier to cancel a meeting than to schedule one absolutely y so and that is part of the general code is that they have to set their schedule meetings at the start of each year yes council member yeah you see we council member and I disagreed on how often the finance commission should because you think they should be 24 times a year right well and if you look at the budget schedule and you know because I need to be part of that and the utility and now you get some other things on that but I do agree I I do think it's easier to cancel meetings and so I I would actually say um you know that they could have them schedule but then at when they do their um work schedule they can actually sit down and purposely decide we're not going to meet maybe in June or something you know where then so each of the commissions could then make that decision which they do which which they do versus but I I think um um you don't want to just have them set out where they only have four meetings scheduled per commission and then you add them in I don't know if that would good the current and the old code I'm sorry the the current code and the proposed code if we ignore the stuff within each different commission actually are not changing anything right this is not an area that's changing you must mean at least four times a year quarterly right and you get to set your own calendar go right so I think that we should step away from delineating each thing as is proposed and just go to uh what we have already yeah and I'm okay with not having it in each commission yeah so leave it the way it was and clean it up yep so that category just turns into membership instead of membership and meetings or whatever except maybe for the Planning Commission except May the plan commission maybe ethics commission have specific well and police civil service we have three that are but if you leave it if you leave it just at least quarterly and they have to set their meetings the Planning Commission May figure out that they need to meet on a monthly basis anyway and set their meetings as monthly meetings but they well the the Planning Commission is reactive to Applications right so almost typically every month that you're going to have a meeting because there's always cases but there's been some instances lately that we haven't had any particular cases and didn't have a project like a zoning code we're working on so um those means are cancelled um but typically for practical purposes they should schedule a meeting for every month because we have application periods we communicate you want to be in the November meeting you have to do something in October and so on and so forth if it comes that there's no cases and no other items to bring up then um they can cancel it at that point I'm not sure that's any different than any other what if we propose that they schedule monthly meetings but do do content meet no less than once per quarter like that they you know so if they don't even have content for three months they at least meet once in that quarter so we schedule monthly meetings for each commission and then based on need um you know that they wouldn't meet any less than once per quarter it seems like that would be something you could do universally across all of the commissions based on except for ethics ethics and also police and police civil service yeah there always an exception well I I kind of like the general approach of council member Aton though and just kind of I mean commissions are going to know how ain't broken right now we stay out of it practically speaking every commission does schedule meetings throughout the whole year and then they make decisions as either get closer you know that they need to cancel a meeting so it kind of Happening by itself right now yeah there may have to be some adjustments to the the general um commission code under the meetings because we may want to um as I'm thinking about it we may want to add some specificity that when they set the regular schedule all the commissions uh you know have have a schedule that is also regular in the sense that they don't meet on the second Tuesday one time and the third Friday the next time and you know that it's it's like the same day of the week and week of the month each time they do meet so that there's some consistency there I don't know if we need to put that in the code or not but it's just coming it came to mind so I wanted to well I think they've all done that already so right and that's through the city scheduling of available this room I would say we're we just we've beaten this I think it it wasn't actually a problem if if you accept um former chair of the finance commission suggestion to stay away from the monthly meetings Jason then we don't have any anything we need to worry about and then we just move on because we'll just leave it as it is and the propos language leaves that as it is my one question would be for our attorney because you did add some very specific um language for the planning commission's meetings was there a purpose from State Statute for that no that was a uh I don't remember if it was conversation with staff or how it came up that I think it was a conversation with staff yeah that they have meetings scheduled regularly but that they cancel them when they don't have any matters to consider and so I just wanted to reflect that in the ordinance well that really is like spelling out in words what we're saying exactly yeah well and I have to be careful about that too because it is actually inconsistent with the language in the general 201 uh where it says that commissions uh can amend their schedule cancel meetings or call special meetings by a majority vote of the commission at a regular meeting there's nothing in there that says the liaison and the chair can decide to cancel a meeting so if that's the case we should take that out of the Planning Commission and actually put it in the general commission language because right now they can only cancel meetings by a a majority vote of the commission at a regular meeting and that's not how we've been operating operating was we did when I was on that so so you would talk about that you could cancel them through less than a vot but it would be difficult to add do you add a meeting without oh you would have to have a vote of the commission to add a meeting to add a meeting but to cancel would be a different standard say you could take the standard for the Planning Commission and just apply it to everybody well I maybe the only point that I would make is the Planning Commission is is a unique right creature it it deals with requests from the public that come in that need to be dealt with in a timely manner right mhm so so it's not just so their workload is is driven by things that are external yes the other commissions aren't the same so for the Planning Commission what we wrote in the language is if there's no business then the chair and staff can get together and decide to cancel so it does make have a requirement that there be no business otherwise I don't think the chair and the staff should be canceling Planning Commission meetings no no right or any meetings actually I mean if there's no business before for the human rights inclusion and engagement commission I don't know why we have to have them have a higher standard of having a vote of the commission to cancel a meeting I think that's the same standard for the Planning Commission could apply to all the commissions okay I my only the only point I was making which is which you can 100% ignore but just so you understand what I was saying is just that the way that their agendas are driven it's more Mission driven and and and so I I'm just not sure the the language is the right fit we might want to consider I don't know I don't know how to particularly with the hi I that that becomes very complicated think but with the others maybe it works I think it works for all of them okay yeah I would at least that would be the starting point and then we can figure out if there are problems I agree so move that language to the general right take the Planning Commission language to the general 20.04 a a yep and then you want that just taken out of the regular ordinances so that that that what is the 0.02 in all these ordinances which is membership and schedule of meetings would become just membership membership for all of them yep yep all right other thoughts on any of these I'm going to hold off on my Planning Commission plan commission uh thoughts that are good but do you have other anyone else have other things details missed things important things you want to include for commissions that we aren't changing here I think so I don't want to go ahead of other people but I but I will go right ahead I was running the meeting for a minute is opening the door to other people um all right uh let's see that's fine that's fine so I guess on page 10 which is the parks of Recreation Commission I believe and that is uh say lines 399 and 400 okay um I had a general aversion to a specific reference to a specific policy by number um in the sort of generic ordinance because similar to why we don't refer all of the time to very specific State statutes or other sections of our own code those may change so it might make sense to just strike out the parenthetical reference to the specific parks recreation operating policy number 40 and just utilizing a departmental naming policy right and and then I wondered if it's better to say the city naming policy rather than the departmental naming policy but I'm not I'm not you know do we have a city naming policy well it's the Department's naming policy no not really the city's policy yeah I mean it's big umbrella is the city policy but it's specific especially the deleting the reference to the specific specific policy sense and then you know you can figure out whether to say City or Department there um and then on the number seven below that the park dedication one I just think there's uh Missing an and between Park dedication and and take out the period and change it to and provide rather than two separate sentences there this actually was a very intentional thing I have to read it again to think about it because I did this like six weeks ago I think it was just to make it not a super long sentence yeah four lines actually codes codes are full of runon sentences well but we don't need to change it no no right you're right you're right okay more substantive items yes okay Public Works environment Transportation Commission on the on lines uh 456 and 459 I wondered if it made sense to say recommend policies rather than develop policies granted they may be developing them in the process but the point being they're an advis Rec commission so they're they're recommending policies so 456 evaluate and recommend policies and likewise on 459 and then on that same page uh item F the very last line of that page 467 uh envir uh Public Works environmental and transportation services I wondered because we're collaborating I wonder if we're actually collaborating with those types of authorities rather than Services once again maybe overly technical but just want to be sure we're clear right here line thank you sorry it's yeah thank because some of them may not be services but then again some of them may not be authorities I don't know yeah I have no strong feelings it's a suggestion um did you have to take yeah no you don't have to do because ultimately it'll come back to the council for consideration right then on page 12 line 486 I think we want to be specific to say that the members are appointed by each commission so it should be so shall consist of one member appointed by each commission it's just not like the city manager goes and anoints people by each City advisory commission y or case commission I got I'll get that and that crazy that's all I had other than the plan discussion that makes sense I just did one clarification under um organization on page three says the formation of any other committees task forces or alternative work groups would be subject to the provisions of this chapter and shall be created only after approval of the city council sub commmittee sh report and work underway um do they so just to clarify that especially if when we move on with the HRI I because part of such a big part of theirs is working in groups and then bringing it back do they need to come to us every month with any change or how are we going to handle that you mean like change in membership of a committee a committee yes if they if they they need a different work group or a different committee or something comes up in the summer and they're trying to get to different events in in the city and they need to form a different committee well I can say historically the reason that language was in there is because we wanted to sort of have a little bit more of a reign as the Council on subcommittee activities um and for any commission for any commission obviously this one has many more right um so I don't know if maybe this language is sort of an over regulation of that that was that made sense at the time but maybe wasn't going forward I don't know but it's good that you ask about it maybe we can have some more thought about it I don't miss Tyne if you I I wonder if what this is actually getting at is the council's ability to create new advisory commissions because that middle sentence there the formation of any other committee's task force and Alternate work groups would be subject to the provisions of this chapter and shall be created only after the approval of the city council other being the key word there probably yeah so I'm wondering if that's if if if well this last sentence is in the wrong spot and that it they should switch places and then it makes a little more sense yes okay then the then the commission can create a subcommittee yeah yeah but if we want to create some new task force or something to work on a bigger item we would be voting on that I think that would be helpful for them and also if they of course they're talking about doing their work plan in the fall is what they' been proposing so they probably would have General committee spelled out for us so that we could be informed of them I understand what mayor is talking about with wanting to have some input on you know right it's just not going but I do stand corrected by what the attorney was pointing out is that I I think that's absolutely right those sentences is a idea that the notion is that the committees or the commissions can set up their own sort of subcommittees and stuff and manage those okay great but the formation of other types of committees task forces and Alternate work groups would have to be the council I think the you're exactly right yeah yep okay good good to clarify that though that's that's why we're having the conv or things like the cedar home Community Building task force or things like that I think actually more of the cedar home kind of thing than the me yep no and oval task force and things like that yep over historical times y anything else on the draft that as it was presented all right oh no oh no my question when do we move on to talking about I okay the planning commiss I was going to say we I think the last sort of topic will be the H once we get through some of these other um so just on the Planning Commission the bench handout consisted of two pieces the first piece was to pair down the Planning Commission language so that's the specific it's title at the top page row language plan commission and not withstanding side of the handout yes the back side together they were stapled in a different order out my own C sorry so I've got it on one sheet okay um so the idea being there and obviously not withstanding some of the other things we talked about membership and schedule of meetings under scope duties and functions my primary Mission here which has been a mission of mine for many years has been to pull out the process to do and update the comprehensive plan out of our code section talking about a commission and its functions and put it into our land use code so the first part is to pull that out and then the second document or the second portion is to actually create a title uh a chapter 1024 under title 10 and the land use code to specifically outline that same and it's just the same language I just put it in the format for for that um obviously we couldn't adopt this tonight because it's not fully written out as an ordinance but at least it kind of gets to what the suggestion is and then specifically back to the Planning Commission language what it would be then is they would they would have four items under scope duties and functions a would be as a is now the general reference to State statutes just taking out the duplicative word generally um and then taking out the last sentence um because I think it's also kind of repetitive to say well and also they can do the other things we say they can do in this ordinance so um and then adding B which makes reference to the other bench handout which was in our zoning code there are specific duties and functions and processes related to the Planning Commission um outlined there and so I just made a reference in this case a specific code reference to that and certainly you could change it to just title 10 I suppose uh C stays largely the same except instead of having a specific reference to holding a commission or holding a hearing ing per chapter 108 I just made the general reference to the procedures in title 10 once again because that's where that's all covered uh and then I added the D the all important perform other other duties and functions and conduct other studies which was in every almost everything you missed it in this we tried well we did we really purposely worked on that one too so so that's my suggestion for the Planning Commission uh and I'll stop there and see if there are any questions or concerns uh council member I I would say that I generally support this uh both members of this little subcommittee had taken a big circle around the whole comprehensive plan part of the Planning Commission code and said what is this doing here so you've kind of pulled it out and said hey let's just do this and I think that absolutely gets after what we were doing and we're going to have a discussion around you kind of jumped ahead of discussion planned ahead a little bit um it is a been chall Al so not too much I had but yeah um but that this uh this is what I think needs to happen to make help make this fit the other code stuff and to clarify where we're going to find this really important information yep any other thoughts and certainly this is all just think on this since it's the Planning Commission by way of drafting um well the planning the amendments to chapter 10 in the zoning Cod will need to go through the planning commission that it's an update um but then this new these this amended chapter 202 should also refer to that section yes okay y that's that's in under C it makes a reference to thatle see yeah and just call it yeah yes and likewise under b instead of specific chapter you could just say title 10 there as yes so we don't have to get it if we re something or something we will which we will I agree all right so and this is obviously you know to to be taken back and yeah and if you need Word documents I can get you those um I will say that I copied the the Planning Commission code out of the PDF and so the line numbering got really interesting when I created a Word document out of it but anyway not my problem my problem wow what time is it a fair warning okay all right party time so it sounds like that's generally okay with the I think it's an oh I wouldn't also know thank you councilman R in title 10 in title 10 there is actually a reference to specifically when the Planning Commission and variance board meet oh and so we may want to take that out of title 10 if we're addressing that in chat title two okay so that's on the first two P well actually it's the third page of his document um number one or two chapter 1026 and then lines 1081 82 and then 1089 it's all specific about when they're going to have their meetings and which day of the week they're going to have their meetings oh do want probably doesn't make sense probably except except for the fact that we just said something else elsewhere in our code so we need to be board though it says it meets on the first Wednesday at 1089 yes y all right then that I think that brings us to the H counil member Aton I think you had some thoughts on that um well I would say that there's ongoing discussion that uh City staff and myself have been uh meeting with they're talking with either former current members or other uh diverse members of our community thinking about the HC um and some common themes are starting to come up and become apparent and um a lot of frustration obviously from former and or some current members about the whole code and what's going on with with the commission there's um a general frustration with with big pieces of that um and it's really pointing towards some sort of evolution of the current format and purpose and trying to think about this in bigger ways and there's more discussion to have so my thought is that we would have we could have uh some discussion right now but really A a bigger discussion maybe pushed off to our March um work session then would give us time to continue some of these conversations looks like we have a chair here who has things he's been spending three and a half hours so far hanging out with us um and so we want to hear from him I know he's also had an opportunity to meet with staff um soort to get some more of those things as we try to say hey what are these common themes and what might that mean for the future again thinking about a a fairly broad Evolution probably because right now it's not working very well and there seems that seems to be an area of a fair amount of consensus from a lot of folks um again this is a a commission we talked about I think our last meeting or a couple meetings ago that is replacing two-thirds of its members every year on average for the last five years and that isn't normal um and suggests that we need to think really differently as a city and as a council think that makes sense well and again the environment has changed since the original development of that um commission and and I think we talked about that when we met jointly that how the environment was back then and what's happening today and how to figure out what's what what's you know how to get people wanting to do meaningful work and have it all be useful for the city and and Council so yeah so if we how would we go about offering our own ideas or solution or not Solutions if I knew the answer um suggestions suggestions along those lines or is that something that best waited until we gather or or do you want to hear I just have two preliminary things I want I think we should hear if you have ideas it's a great form then we don't have to worry about any me laws or anything like that here is right in front of I have two yeah I have two things that I I think um a couple years ago the HRI came to us and said we would like to propose um compensating our members and it would set a city precedent um to consider that but we are asking people to do a different level of work and we're having a harder time with engagement um I'm understanding that um Ramsey County and the state of Minnesota do compensate their uh folks who are on their commissions they have a lot higher level of Engagement and so I think you know I think it should be on the table that we at least entertain that possibility it was shut down pretty quickly before but I think we need to really understand what the difference is and why it it could be a a powerful tool to um make that suggestion I also would like to um I would also like to have us really decide and think through why we have human rights um Commission in the title as I brought up when the last time we met the Human Rights Commission set up from the state um are intended to be exploring and um investigating human rights violations and if we're not tasking our um folks on that commission with doing that type of work then maybe right away we're setting up for fil failure because we're not giving them any actual of what we're working on maybe it would be better for us to um really lean into that racial equity and inclusion piece or you know equity and inclusion and belonging you know we've heard the word belonging even more than the catchphrase of Dei but what does it really mean to belong to the city and equity and um you know it's not just about skin tone or but it also involves um socioeconomics and opportunities and things like that and so maybe kind of a moving past um implementing that racial Equity toolkit we and applying that to some of you know I would love if it was applied to some of the things that come before us if someone was sitting down and taking that racial Equity toolkit and actually applying it to the items that we see instead of surmising kind of well it seems like there's no racial impact but is there really has it been talked about and thought about from that point of view and then I think just lastly as far as um the Human Rights Commission you know it has not functioned And yet when we start here we've had almost a complete consensus of who we put on that commission these are good people these are I mean it's not like H I don't like any of the people Everyone Else picks no we have really chosen very similar and so I think we have put them in a situation of failure because we are not clear about what we want and so garbage in equals garbage you know we're taking really nice people but we're getting garbage out because we're not we're not clear about what we want and so I think we need to really be clear if human rights if we're not asking them to evaluate the human rights of people then maybe that's just not where we start with that maybe we just scrape that and start fresh but I also hear when we talk that there is some acrimony and some um I felt like there was some argument of when we gathered and I think we also have to throw at our own presuppositions we all have experience with people who've been on it or yourself um and we need to I think we need we owe it to everyone on this commission to wash your hands and start over with a fresh mind maybe that's with culture Brokers maybe that's with a set of former chairs I bet we could fill the room with you know first row with a bunch of former chairs from the last 10 years but to really create a process of something intended to be successful because I don't think we intend that it's not going to be successful but if we don't give any more direction we're not helping move them in that direction so well said right uh so I think the thought is to bring this back as a a discussion item on the the 13th work session uh continue the continue the conversations with people as as was out L and uh and work towards you know what that might look like obviously I don't know that we'll have the solution on the 13th even necessarily but maybe a sense of a process just so we're clear it's the 11 11th 11th thank yeah we meet on we we went the wrong direction from uh the fact that usually March and I went the wrong direction usually March and and February have the same dates but because it's Lea year it's one day off try to stay up with your logic Mr Mayor the chair would like to talk I was going to say we do have a member of the public who wishes to speak and so we'll certainly recognize uh James my name is still Rich James good and I it's important that I uh tell you upfront that I speaking for myself I am not speaking for the commission I have not discussed my comments with the commission I do not have their permission this is what I think and this is where I am okay so that being out of the way um I viewed the video of the 29th meeting um and I panicked I became defensive and angry I felt as though the rug was being pulled out from under the H that any effective functioning of the commission would be essentially gone it we would not be able to function the few remaining members would be basically placeholders until September or until something was decided about how this is going to be for four or five members cannot function and make this commiss commission work other than waiting for some other people to help show up and do the work I prepared to come here tonight to uh persuade enough of you to resend that particular decision to Halt the process um I've changed my mind I don't think that that's what needs to happen um it's obvious as you've said as the as the H is constructed it does not function as you want and as we want there is a not dysfunction because we're not trying but it just doesn't work the way it was envisioned or the way that it has been functioning um there's some things that I have initiated to help change that but it isn't something that's going to be obvious to anybody for a year you know before those things it's not we'll do this and everything will be great um there are many reasons for it not functioning and I just told you a one little one here that lots of reasons for that um but I believe that there must be a way forward for the city and we Volunteers in the H to create something that would be even better than what currently exists I don't think it's impossible I think it's possible I believe that the council and H have shared values what you want and what we want are extremely similar probably exactly the same um we're we're reading the same book about inclusion equity and human rights but we're on different chapters we're way on different chapters of this book I see it as imperative that we find a way to get together to create a plan so that all of us are on the same chapter and on the same page of that book we cannot move forward in a in a productive way without doing without doing that and you can't be satisfied with what this commission is without doing that it's my person this is my personal View I I think the positive First Step would create a task force which is the word that I wrote down as you were talking before um existing of city council the H and City staff like Rebecca Corey and Rachel this group would meet informally it's a task force where there could be a free exchange of ideas and create a greater understanding of what you want and what we perceive as our what our job is and what we can do and not just if you say we want this and say we can't do that there's not we don't have the people we don't have the for whatever it is that we that we can't we would there would be a a round table of discussion everybody coming there equally nobody having more power you're not going to dictate to us we're not going to dictate to you it's a discussion and it's something that can produce the object objective would be to produce a document a plan some way that we as that group agree to if all that group agrees to probably the rest of the people will agree to it too maybe with some modifications you know some explanations needed for that um so the current configur of the current configuration of the HRC may not be the best one there may be another way of looking at this but it's not going to happen if you are up there and we're over here it has to happen when we collaborate together so what I'm essentially asking you to do is have create a task force create a group of people who are going to work out the nuts and bolts this is what we consistently do with the H our subgroups work out the nuts and bolts work out all the things that nine people are not going to get done in one meeting and come to the the group to come to the full commission and say this is what we think the full commission discusses it adds things takes away things before any so there's a consensus that's made before any actions are taken or any recommendations are taken from that um we we think that the I believe that the three stakeholders you us and uh and City staff that's the important part of this and uh I'm gonna say this up front here if it doesn't meet until after um March 31st there will only be two commission members that can meet without violating the open meeting laws because at the max we' have five members and if we had three people people working with it it's O it's open meeting and that's not what we're looking for we're looking for something that's less formal that's less um not adverti and not videotape because I I personally would never say anything that I don't care if it's videotaped or not um but it may hinder may increase the ability to communicate if we're not under these lights and and under these cameras looking at each other um again I believe this Con this kind of conversation is so essential that it's the for me it's the only way to move forward it's the only way for us to fulfill your expectations and for you to fill our expectations um I believe that our shared values um will help us come together to make a commission if we have the will to do that I'm willing to do I am personally willing to do this to participate in this and I believe that I can get at least one of commissioner to to work with me in doing these meetings um so the the the basically the need for the original vision of the work of the IRC still exists has not gone away it had maybe hasn't been addressed the way that it should be or way it could be most most uh efficiently but the need is still there you need to have a an HC or some evolved version of that group in order to help you find out what what's going on in the city and report back to you about what trends and ideas and complaints and issues that would have that you could help deal with um so that there it we're we're your ear and I know that being an advocate is one of the issues that you that you come up maybe you don't we're not Advocates but we're out we want to go out we hope to be able to go out to the the city to organizations to various groups and talk with them and find out what's going on and also at the same time promote things that the city does you know that that I know as I have meetings with the staff members there are things that are brought up to say oh I didn't know that was being done I didn't know and I'm a commission member I've been on this commission for five years and there things that I find out almost every not almost every meeting often that I didn't know about that and if I don't know about it as as a person who's working here the regular ordinary citizen doesn't know about it either so that's part of what we would see in in our proposal you know for the revised scope of the 205 that's a part of what we're trying to tell you what we want to do what we would like to do perhaps we I'm going to say condensed things too much so it really wasn't a full explanation or full something you could fully understand about what our motivations are and about what we hope to do um I'm going to say let's find a way to work make this work let's find a m way to make this better and it can start tonight it doesn't have to wait for a long time we are we will be participating in that March 11th meeting um and if something can be done before that to for you to decide and this is your decision it's not we can't make this decision you as city council have to make the decision whether you want to go forward in some way my plan doesn't have to be my plan some plan some way to make this work so that we are we have been in the past working parallel and occasionally Crossing at this point I think we're doing this and I don't want that to happen I know you don't want that to happen either so let's get the tracks together so that we're working in parallel and doing things that we all know are important and need to be done in this city thank you appreciate that I think that's kind of the direction we're we're headed um from what I I've been hearing from the conversation we're having but I definitely appreciate your Insight in into specific areas of that and the notion of of you you're evolved thinking on whether or not to appoint new members to the commission um so thank you for those comments too would be no point in create in adding new members to a process in chaos right exactly why why would you want to do that why would we want that we we didn't really want to do that to people either I fully understand so um I'll leave if you want me to leave I will stay we have more work entirely your option no I will I will be glad to stay and and if you want I will try to answer whatever questions you have I I think the process we're not going to take this too much further this evening because we we've got some other business to attend to and I think that the the scheduling on the the 11th is because of the what's sort of on other agendas between now and then so that's the next opportunity the council is going to have to get to it um but I think that it's going to be a good conversation at that time and and you know I think what you're kind of suggesting and what we've been kind of talking about we're going to figure something out to get moving I think in some fashion at that time so I was encouraged as I listened to your discussion about that you know I I um here I I think we are again pretty much on the same path exactly now we do that how do we make that path clear to both of us and make it work exactly so we'll be we'll be doing that okay right thank you for your patience sitting through extra long discussions that we intended to happen P it happens to our commission too thank thank you you're welcome all right I believe with that then we're done with our discussion of the commission scope duties and functions and we can move to then consideration of city council minutes and Council Council initi I apologize for that I I've got so many marks on my agenda I didn't even see it so thank you so um uh city council Direction on council member St had initiated a suggestion to look at a junior city council member uh once again this uh process as we've set it up for the city council is not to necessarily have an extensive discussion of the merits of the the suggestion uh but rather to have a discussion about uh whether to put it on a future agenda and if so how um in thinking about this process and what I've sort of been doing as practice up to this point is to start with a threshold and then potential other steps can happen from that threshold so uh and I want it to be sort of a positive threshold not a negative threshold so the thought being is um I'll start by asking if there's any objection to putting it on a future agenda if no objection is heard we put it on a future agenda and we can have a conversation about how and why and wherefore and whatever um if an objection is heard then I think the next step somebody would have to move to put it on a future agenda and if there's not a second to that motion then that would be the end of the conversation there if there's a second then we would have the conversation uh further at vote does that make sense to the council yeah okay so the first question then is is there any objection to putting this on a future agenda council member Aton I at this point considering some of the things we talked about and the um that we're struggling to get commissioner to uh I'm sorry youth to commit to a commission once a month I I don't see that this is an area I want to put a lot of time into so that's an objection that is an objection all right so then there would have to be a motion uh to put this on a future agenda motion to put on a future agenda right it's been moved by council member St to put it on a future agenda is there a second to that Mo seconded seconded by council member gra all right discussion on the motion council member St is the makeer the motion and suggestor of this item um while I agree with um that we have struggled to have youth um I think that shouldn't be the end of the story and we should continue to find ways and try to find different ways and clearly we have a lot of work ahead of us with some of our commission work but I do think 50 years from now we're all going to be gone and we need to make sure we're finding backfill and so if we can't get um we've had young adults here and we've sometimes shot them down and they don't come back so if we had a council person um with us who maybe was offered a small stipend of some sort to be part of our group and could be offering a vision and a voice that is different than say someone who is double or triple their age or more um I think that is a service that our city could all benefit from and so I just want to see it look at it from a different View and see if there's a possibility of looking at it from a different lens because what we were doing again wasn't work isn't really working we're not getting the people the way we were asking before so maybe we need to ask the question in a different way all right and as the second of the motion uh council member gra I look at it a little differently I think that there's some interesting information here and I would look forward to a discussion on it that does not mean that I I see that as a work a thing I just think it's it's worth a discussion all right other discussion on the motion Council SCH um you know I I I actually agree more with um um commiss or council member Eon on this I just if we we don't have our commissions figured out and we I think having Junior people on the commissions would be more useful I think asking one I have so many questions around how this would even work and I just think this is way too intense for somebody to do and I think you know until we get our house in order on the commission side I don't see that this would be a good thing to be spending our time on right now um you know because there's this you know you have to pay them the you know how do you how would you even consider the election of somebody for a city council position and so all these individuals were appointed appointed just for your information yeah council member sh yeah yeah yeah and so I think it would be better to try to get them into the commission side and then I think that because that's a lot of work there too there this is a lot of work to um do that but again I just don't think we have our house in order for this one and I just don't see us putting the effort getting the bang for the buck in here just the return on investment as um said before that I think that would be better in the commission level than on Council level so that's my point right any other discussion on the motion I one answer once again this is a motion to uh put this item on a future uh Council agenda um oh I didn't discuss um forgot about that so I think that this this is something that can have some Merit um I I just at this point as to the question of whether we should put it on an upcoming Council agenda I'm not sure it's a it's it's yet something that we should be spending time on discussing I I think that that doesn't mean it's not a good idea I just I think we've got a lot to focus on right now uh and so I'd like to focus on that uh but I don't uh want to say that I think this is a bad idea so um as to the motion uh I would be voting against it is there any other discussion at this time right hearing none then all those in favor of the motion to put this on a future agenda signify by saying I I opposed n nay uh that motion fails with council member schroer Eton and mayor Row in opposition right that then brings us to approval of uh minutes we've got two sets of minutes before us this evening uh one is the uh minutes from the city council meeting of well the both January 22nd one EA one city council let's make this straightforward were there any uh changes or Corrections uh to what was presented to the council for consideration this evening hearing none is there a motion related to one or both of these sets amends so move to approve both second all right it's move by council member shter seconded by council member Aton to approve both sets of minutes from the 22nd for the Eda and the city council any discussion on that motion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I oppos that passes unanimously those minutes are approved that brings us to our consent items with the exception of item D and item H which were taken up earlier in the meeting Mr trud would you go through the remaining consent items yes uh item 10A approves payments in the amount of 1, 88,000 $69 44 item 10B approves massage therapy establishment license for massage by Craig at 2310 County Ro and a temporary liquor license for bent bertiller for St Patrick's Day event on March 13th item 10 approves the both fuel purchase from the state contract a new asphalt router for Public Works the hiring of escape fire to conduct inspections of 430 hydrants private hydrants located throughout the city in the purchase of a new field liner for the Parks and Recreation Department item 10B uh was already um acted upon item 10e approves an amendment to the food and beverage Services agreement with teo's restaurant for service at the cedar home Community Building under the amended agreement te will no longer uh provide Daily Kitchen and Grill service but offer grab and go food items for purchase two evenings of Grill service and continue to provide catering for events at Cedar home in addition the city will take over the selling of wine beer and seltzers at Cedar home and will not sell hard liquor item 10 F approves entering into agreement with J&M display for fireworks for June 29th parting the park as part of rosefest item 10g approves appointing Audrey arners as youth commissioner to the Rosell Parks and Recreation Commission item 10h has already been acted upon item 10i approves accepting the Minnesota DNR tree bounding Grant of uh $264,000 the funds will be used to support the city's Emerald Ash boore mitigation strategy and will allow the city to remove $150 EAB infested trees and plant up to 300 replacement trees as the council is aware we have allocated money from the tree replacement fund and the CIP for tree removal tree planting just described as a result of receiving this grant we'll be able to repurpose those dollars on both those funds to uh plant more replacement trees in the future item 10j approves accepting rules in BS payment to cover the cost of travel and lodging for the rosville fire department leadership staff to attend preconstruction design meetings in their headquarters Rosen Bar's headquarters and manufacturing plant in Austria this is all in relation to the recently approved purchase of the electric fire engine the City attorney recommended the city council formally adopt a resolution accepting the covering of the cost for travel and lodging by Rosen bar as a donation and finally item 10K approves entering into a settlement agreement with Westwood Village Association regarding Financial Obligations between the city uh and Westwood Village to resolve the shortfall in funds regarding the payback of the bond issued in 2009 as part of the Westwood Village housing Improvement area which was created by the city of Rosell for the benefit of Westwood Village Association under the agreement Westwood Village Association will pay $23,500 and the City of Ros will pay approximately 57,000 from the existing Debt Service funds to cover the shortfall of funds and that is the consent agenda all right thank you Mr Char is there a motion with respect to the consent items so moved second moveed by Council gra second by Council M schroer to approve those items any discussion on the motion no hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed that passes unanimously those items are approved uh that brings us to Future agenda review Mr treas if you could go through that and then also obviously Le on reports things like that real briefly um works here there we go um not much to report in upcoming means I would note um we have scheduled February 21st and 22nd for interviews for commission applicants most likely it's going to just be one night and and and probably the 21st but the application period is still open until uh Wednesday so we'll contact everybody Thursday uh morning to let you know what the schedule is uh after that we do have a February 26 city council meeting we don't have a lot of business items at this point we do have a salute of Public Works city code up States mostly technical um but there's a couple policy items there I know we have a lengthy consent agenda at this point so we'll see what else is filled but it might not be as busy of a meeting as it was tonight for instance so uh with that in mind that's all I have uh to report for future agendas all right thank you are there questions on the future agenda or uh items council members would like to suggest for future item future agendas uh or any layers and reports or announcements from Council Members all right doesn't appear to be the case hearing none uh the only other item of business this evening is adjournment is there a motion to adjourn so move second all right it's been moved by Council M Aton second by Council M Scher to adjourn uh no discussion on the motion to adjourn uh all those in favor signify by saying I I oppos that passes unanimously and we are adjourned Happy Valentine's Day to all those who celebrate e