Based on the context provided for the City of Lakeville, here is the transcribed townhall meeting with speaker names added. [0:00] **(Introductory Audio)** [0:18] **(Music)** [1:11] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Good evening and welcome to the September 5th City Council meeting. If you would join me for a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. [1:36] **Group:** (Pledge of Allegiance) [1:51] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, Ms. Orlofsky, roll call please. [1:52] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Michelle Volk? **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** John Bermel? **Councilmember John Bermel:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Dan Wolter? **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Joshua Lee? (Present) [1:56] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Great, we'll move on to item number three: citizens' comments. This is an opportunity for those to address the Council for up to three minutes about any pressing issues that may not be on the agenda. It does not look like we have any citizens' comments tonight. We'll move on to item four: any additional agenda information, Mr. Miller? [2:30] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Nothing tonight, Mayor. [2:33] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, and we will now move into number five: presentation, the Fire Department quarterly report. And I will turn this over to our Fire Chief, Mike Meyer. [2:45] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** All right, gotta go get back to the start. Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'd like to present the second quarter report for the Fire Department for 2023. And I'll start with our mission statement: The Lakeville Fire Department is dedicated to serving the community through the protection of lives and property by providing public safety education and professional emergency response. Looking at fire calls from '21 to '23, you can see the year, second quarter, as far as—they're pretty consistent as numbers. And then to the right, you can see by quarter, by month. And I'll just highlight: June of '23 was our highest call volume ever as a department with 300 in the month of June. [3:31] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Wow. [3:32] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** And then breaking down the 841 incidents by stations: as far as primary stations, you can see Duty Crew responded to 447 calls, followed by Station 2 at 115, Station 1 at 104, Station 3 at 85, and Station 4 at 73. And there were 17 officer-only calls. And then the graph to the right is just showing the multiple calls in progress. So you can see two calls in progress occurred 142 times, 24 times for three calls, and then four calls in progress four times in that same quarter. And I'll just highlight a couple of the incidents that we had during the second quarter. So the fire that you see—the top two slides—was actually started on the shed next to the home and then spread to the home, but fortunately, it was just exterior damage to the home and nothing interior but some light smoke. And then the bottom two pictures are actually from our drone team. We had a water rescue where three individuals went out in their boat with ice still on the lake that was breaking apart. They had some engine troubles and then they couldn't get out. Then we had to go out and pull them back to the boat launch. But we used a drone to fly out, locate them, make sure that they're okay, and then send the watercraft to go out and then pull them back. And just a breakdown on the 841 calls that were in the second quarter: you can see 563 of those are rescue or EMS, which is about 65 percent of our call volume; 121 "good intent" calls—of those 121, 95 of those are canceled en route, meaning that we were responding to whatever that might have been and then were not needed so we were canceled; 76 false alarms; 46 hazardous conditions; 21 fire calls—I'll break those out in a second; and then 14 service calls. [5:11] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Can I ask then, from your previous graph where you showed the number of multiple calls—that would not include the calls for intent that were canceled? [5:23] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Correct. [5:24] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Correct. So those were when it was four calls in progress, it was four calls that you needed to respond to? [5:30] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Correct. So not only—and a good example would be the Duty Crew may be on a call and then we're paging out a secondary station or third station to respond to that emergency. [5:40] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** To make sure that when you were putting that graph up, it didn't have any of the intent numbers. Yep. Okay, thank you. [5:46] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** The 21 fires: seven of those were building fires. You can see the other one—the one I will draw your attention to—is the cooking fire, confined. So there's three of those. And what that means is that there is a fire predominantly in the oven of a stove, and as long as we keep that oven closed, the fire is contained. That's how it's defined; it never left the container, or the oven in this case. And then of the 563 medicals, I won't go through all. The one I want to highlight is the motor vehicle accidents with injuries. We've seen an uptick in the injury side of that. Typically we see, you know, quite a few accidents, but normally there's pretty minor injuries, but we've seen an increase in the injuries and motor vehicle accidents. In the same motion, you can see the one water rescue is the one that I highlighted in the pictures. Looking at fire inspections in the second quarter: so we had 228 commercial inspections completed; 43 plan reviews—these are new or remodeling businesses that we have to look at the fire alarm sprinkler systems; 11 new child care/foster care; 11 burn permits; and then 34 food truck inspections. And you can see the pictures across the bottom. The one I'll draw your attention to is with the lime green paint in it. What we're seeing more and more in not only commercial but in residential is families are setting up kind of a cooking area, if you will, in the garage of their home. So you can see that's quite the extensive cooking setup that they have—a couple burners in there with propane and then the oils that they're using to cook whatever their food are. [7:34] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Hmm. [7:35] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** And just to give you an update because we're almost done with the third quarter, but just to see where we stand today: currently we're at about 2,205 calls as of today. On the third quarter, there are 600 incidents and I have those broken out by stations. And then again, that multiple call in progress: so two calls are 109 times, then three calls, and then four calls. And looking at second and third quarter, that's about 20 percent of the 600 or the 841 calls. Response time: so when we look at the 90th percentile, this is exactly that. And these are all emergent—all incidents and then emergent only. So we don't count anything that was canceled en route or that we've slowed our response, whether it was routine or we went emergency and then slowed a routine. Our goal is call processing time—so this is a time that our Dispatch Center handles a call—is two minutes. On average they're around that one minute, 1:30, depending on if it's a medical or a fire. And then our turnout time and response time that you can see there. So we're looking for that—the first numbers, the two minute and the eight minute, is geared towards Duty Crew. So that Engine 5 is our Duty Crew response. You can see they're slightly below three; they're at 2:53, so just below three minutes. We continue to work on improving that. And then their overall response time is 11:30. When we look at stations, we're looking for an eight-minute turnout from the stations and a 12-minute response time. You can see we're at about an 8:30 for turnout per station and we're just at 14 minutes, 30 seconds on response. Fire prevention visits: so I won't go through all of those, but the middle picture shows the fire extinguisher training that we did with all the middle schools last spring. We brought in extra firefighters, extra trainers to get through all of the middle schools. Safety camps that we were part of, elementary school festivals that usually end the season for them, and then the Hope Kids event at Branch and Farms, and Pan-O-Prog, and the Apple Valley parade. Training: so just to highlight some of the topics that we've covered in the second and now the third quarter of this year for training: live burn, pumping and aerial operation. So the picture you see to the left is actually everybody had to go through and climb the 75-foot ladder, go through the operations and set up on the ladder. Auto extrication. The driver FAO training was our class of '22 completing their driving requirements so that they can start driving the vehicles as far as to calls and from calls. Physical ability tests—we actually started that this month. And then we got to go to Farmington for some thermal image camera training that Farmington hosted. And then we hosted a Fire Officer training class that involves Apple Valley, Lakeville, and Farmington. Recruitment: so just to show you a timeline that we went through. So a special thanks to HR for all their efforts and help that they assisted us in this process. But at the end, we hired four new firefighters: three at Station 2 and one at Station 3. And then recruitment/retention: so it's a very busy slide with a lot of lines on it. The bottom green line is actually retired firefighters, the red line is resigned with less than 20 years, and you can see my bullet there—50 percent of our firefighters are leaving prior to their seven-year mark. And then the blue line is our hiring of firefighters. If you look at overall from 2013 to '23, we've hired 75 firefighters and we've lost 74 in that same window. So we're plus one. And this year alone we're seeing probably our highest retiree [numbers]—so we've already had one gentleman that we had here last week, we have about another three more that are coming up here shortly. And just to provide an update on the SAFER Grant: so they have announced a few awards on August 11th and August 25th for the last round that they've announced. Those are for recruitment/retention, not necessarily for hiring firefighters, so we're still waiting for that. We are at the completion point or nearing the completion point for our station study. We did hire a fire inspector—he will start later this month. And then as I mentioned, we hired the four firefighters and actually tonight is their first night of training. And just give you an update on Pan-O-Prog: we completed 44 food trucks that are specific to Pan-O-Prog. We did provide extra crews as far as for downtown events, so we had a medical response crew that was active on Thursday and Friday. And then our drone team was also assisting PD on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And then the number that everybody likes to hear is a waffle breakfast—we set a record there with 2,152 plates that were served. That's not necessarily waffles; that's the plates that were served. So it's probably north of 2,500 waffles that we served in that morning. [12:46] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Oh, you can put more than one waffle on a plate! I was gonna ask... [12:50] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Well, people will come back for seconds, so we don't... forward. [12:54] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Oh, gotcha. Okay. [12:55] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Just to recognize our partnership with the Lakeville Public Safety Foundation, some of the events that have occurred: Firehouse Bingo, Bourbon and Cigars, and then they had hosted their golf tournament at Brackett's—Lights and Sirens golf tournament. That completes my second quarter report. I want to thank you for your support to the Lakeville Fire Department and I will stand for any questions. [13:17] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, thank you Chief. Any question? Yeah, John. [13:21] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Just when you showed the slide with calls for service, and in 2023 they were significantly higher than the previous year—is that distributed among all the call types or are you seeing a rise in specific call types? [13:37] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Vehicle accident with injuries is one that we've noted that is climbing a little bit higher than normal. But overall we're up 10 percent compared to last year in call volume. [13:48] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Okay. [13:49] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Question about the response time slide. The turnout time for Duty Crew is significantly less, and it seems like the overall response time decreases significantly, but not as much as the turnout time is that—are you talking their response time? The total response? The degree to which that decreases on the Duty Crew seems to be less of a drop? [14:19] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Correct. [14:20] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Any thoughts as to why that difference? I mean the turnout time is faster but for some reason the overall response time is not as... [14:27] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** It's the distance travel that they're going. So during the daytime or during weekends and days where they're staffed at Station 4—so wherever that call is, they're responding from there, and that's farther. You know, they're covering the entire city is the issue. [14:44] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** So thank you. [14:45] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any other questions? Thank you Chief, appreciate it. All right, moving on to item number six: consent agenda. Any items of note, Mr. Miller? [15:07] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Thank you Mayor, Council. Very short consent agenda tonight, but a few items I would like to point out. Item 6D is the approval of the Convention and Visitors Bureau 2024 budget; I just wanted to thank the CVB and the Chamber for administering that program for us. Item 6E is a donation from Bobbie Morgan—this is $500 that they are donating, and that's going to go toward the Fire Department to provide animal oxygen masks when they respond to those incidents. And then lastly, 6F is a parking license agreement. For a long time there's been a need for additional parking in the downtown, and Wells Fargo Bank along with Tina Goodroad, our Community Development Director, have negotiated an agreement that will allow us to use those spots during non-banking hours. And that's a long time coming and will solve some problems downtown. [15:53] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Very good. Um, any items that those in the Council want to discuss? I'll take a motion for the consent agenda. [16:04] **Councilmember John Bermel:** So moved. [16:05] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Second. [16:07] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. [16:11] **Councilmembers:** Aye. [16:12] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Consent agenda passes. We'll move on to item number seven: resolution approval in the preliminary 2024 property tax levy and 2024 preliminary budget. And I'll turn it over to our Finance Director, Ms. Stahl. [16:30] **Finance Director Julie Stahl:** Thank you Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. First off, I want to extend thanks to the staff and the Council for all their hard work on these budgets. It is a very intensive process and starts back in May, so we're reaching the culmination of a lot of work. So, we have had—there's a few changes since the work session from last week. We did add the staff that Council directed us to, so that was the two additional police officers, two streets, and one facilities position. There was some reduction in debt and then we added a contingency amount. So those are the changes from what you were presented last week. The resulting change in the levy that we're looking at then with those changes is an increase of 10.8 percent. Two percent—roughly two percent—is the debt levy that's due to the referendum that was passed in November of 2021. So with this increase, we're looking at an impact to the median value home, which is now a $446,000 home, is $92 a year. So 37 percent of that $92 is the levy increase and 55 percent of that $92 is the market value impact. Just a reminder: this is preliminary. We'll continue fine-tuning and working through this to try and lower it before the final adoption in December. And just another reminder: it is a state law that we need to certify this to the county by September 30th—and it's our preliminary levy amount, the budget, and then setting our public hearing date. And a reminder, too: this is our preliminary levy; it's what's used in the county's property tax statements that they send out in November that the homeowners receive. So we will be holding our public budget meeting, which is open for public comment, on December 4th at 6:30 PM. And with that, I'll stand for any questions. [18:31] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Council questions, comments? If not, I'll take a motion to approve. [18:40] **Councilmember John Bermel:** John, I move to approve the preliminary 2024 property tax levy and preliminary 2024 budget. [18:47] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Is there a second? [18:48] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Second. [18:49] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Any other discussion about the motion? Okay, I'll just add that the Council I think had a pretty robust and broad conversation at our work session, and I think this is a good opportunity for us to look at investing in some key areas of the city, and I think that we all kind of came to that agreement. And I'll just echo my predecessor for the last six years who always said this is just a preliminary levy, and we always hope that the staff can figure out a way to trim that down before the final. So that one was for you, Doug. But that was the rest I had. I will then now take a roll call, Ms. Orlofsky, please. [19:33] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Volk? (Aye) Bermel? (Aye) Wolter? **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Hi (Aye). **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Lee? **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Hi (Aye). **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Hellier? (Aye). [19:35] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All right, motion prevails. Thank you. We'll move on to items eight and nine: unfinished and new business. Anything Council wanted to raise? Okay. Moving on to item 10: announcements. Our next regular meeting is September 18th here in the City Hall at 6:30. Our next work session is September 25th at the water treatment facility. And with that, I will take a motion to adjourn. [20:10] **Councilmember:** So moved. **Councilmember:** Second. [20:12] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All those in favor say aye. [20:13] **Councilmembers:** Aye. [20:14] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? We're adjourned. [20:36] **(Music)** [21:11] **(Ending Audio)**