you you you you good evening everyone it is 5:30 and I'll call our work session to order our work sessions we get right to our agenda and around the room or let's just go through because I see we have someone that probably don't may need to know who all's around the table Meghan Hamilton deputy city clerk dan Gustafson City Council Vince workman City Council I'm Peterson Poe works director Jenny Faulkner Community Development Director at least try finance director Greg Bloomberg deputy city manager Melanie Lee's city manager Dan Keeley city council kara Shultz city council Elizabeth Coates mayor welcome welcome yes thank you yeah thanks okay the first item on our agenda is the max tactus discussion for the 2020 budget and our presenter is our finance director Kelly stri and our city manager Milani Moscow Lee so are you teeing it off or we go straight to Kelly madam mayor I'm gonna have Kelly walk through the presentation we worked with staff to develop this information before you tonight and we'll be happy to stand for any questions but I have Kelly walked through the presentation okay very good Kelly it's always your show well thank you tonight's meeting is one of it's the the third really and well I guess it's the second meeting it's a third step in our budget process we began back in June as you looked at the preliminary projections that were based on last year's budget projections we as you know we do a five-year budget projection for all of our funds during the budget process so the where we begin the next year is with last year's projection and based on that then we staff goes back in prepares takes a look at all the detail on the budget and the CIP and we come up with a max tax so tonight's meeting will be your opportunity for discussion and then at the next council meeting will be the adoption of the max tax and the max tax is the amount that is the most the maximum that the tax will be that the the city can levy it's the amount that will show up on the property owners preliminary tax statement that comes out in November so is that much you can go down from that number but you cannot go up from that number once it has been adopted then we continue on you will get a budget workbook on September 30th which is a month earlier than you normally have so we are we've tried out a little bit different process this year and so we you know in a couple weeks based on these discussions we'll be giving you your workbook with more details so we're really looking at a high level tonight this evening and then we will have a final proposed budget at that time then opportunity for feedback during October and your first council work session is October 29th I think that's us very small number there and that's where you'll hear more detailed presentation from us an opportunity to discuss you typically have two meetings and again this has moved up a little bit from prior years you've typically had two meetings in November this year we're going to have a one meeting in October and one meeting in November the second meeting is optional the last two years you have elected that you've had enough information at the first meeting you've elected not to have that second meeting so that one we have that up there as optional and then the final budget adoption is December 5th so there is the rest of the year laid out for you in budget terms tonight's agenda will be talking about current service level funding franchise fee proposed increase in the franchise fees the Economic Development Authority it has a lot of changes in this plan so we'll be talking about that we have some changes to debt service in this plan and on the capital side we'll be talking about facilities capital fund and we'll mention some other capital things along the way but that will be the extent of the capital discussion for this evening you will get a proposed CIP September 30th in your workbook and then we'll be looking for counsel at the end of this were looking for counsel policy direction on setting that max tax for next week's council meeting we as staff go ahead and prepare our budgets looking at it with Burnsville vision in mind that people find an attractive well balanced city and with keeping the financial constraints in mind so that's where we begin and we base everything on that funding community needs and council priorities with respect for resources that is really the the guts of this whole budget process that we've done we look at current services and the value of those services we strive for a high level of service and at that same service level unless we see some opportunities for changes that hopefully you've seen some time throughout the year as well and we do an operational review so everybody really starts all the departments start from a kind of ground zero what are we doing now and what are the opportunities to change that up or down what makes sense based on what they've seen and then economic realities there you know if we have cost increases coming in one area what are some trade-offs that might be good to offset some of those economic realities I'll call them we're always looking long-term we're looking for creative problem-solving strategies that will not only work for this year's budget but work for the future the five years as we're looking out and we're looking beyond the five years as as we look out at it to it what you see is five years it's a long ways that's you know kind of a crystal ball in some ways but it's the best information we have today it builds a place to start our future budgets as well we want to maintain the infrastructure in the assets and be good stewards of those assets and so that we are not creating a bubble down the road where we have problems or we see deterioration that sort of thing so we want to make sure that these plans are taking care of what we have and that they're responsible and sustainable as we look at new priorities community needs that have come up over the year council priorities that you have given direction to staff and what your priorities are in setting the budget and then of course responding to unfunded mandates um sometimes there are things that come down that we have to do it may be new and we don't have the option of not doing them and so we build those things in as well when we met at the June work session we gave you preliminary projections we were looking at a six percent levy increase for current service levels just to do what we've been doing kind of in the same way that we've been doing additional we identified that there were going to be some additional service pressures in Community Development and Fire in particular and that those would be on top of a six percent at that point and that we were going to go back to work and and identify some more details about that we looked we gave you information on tax based information and trends what ours our tax base looking at how is the growth what kind of tax increased is that support the two bottom squares are things that you gave us as direction to come back tonight looking at the franchise fee funding options what would be the property tax reduction reductions that could be associated if those were to go forward what property tax reductions might that generate and then clarify the effect on different home values we talked about the median home value and what that might be and and last years there were some questions related to last year's budget process really we've we've always used the median home value that is something that's very consistent among other cities and looking at the median home value what was the median home last year and what is it this year so half of the residential properties in Burnsville are below that amount and half of them are above that amount what is what would the tax increase beyond that particular property last year there was a wide range of increases at different levels of property values so when we when you look at just what that median home is that hypothetical you know one property in the there in the center that doesn't that last year because there was a wide range didn't necessarily reflect as closely I mean we always say this is a hypothetical home there's there's lots of factors that go into what the values increase or decrease but it's usually a little bit narrower range last year's such a wide range so we wanted to come back and give you some examples of what is what does that look like on three different valuations of home so we did that for you and weather and also gave you well we'll cover that when we get to the slide this is for I always give you this as a point of perspective if the levee changes by 1% what does that mean in levy the total levy dollars for the city so if the direction is that you would like to reduce by 1% or 2% that means that would be at three hundred fifty six thousand or seven hundred twelve thousand dollar increase so while one percent might not sound like a big change it does make a big difference so it's just and also I give you the point one percent and that kind of shows you how little things added I'm can add up so you know add thirty thousand here thirty thousand there it does add up pretty quickly so we keep these things in mind as well as when we are looking at things internally there are a lot of factors that affect an individual property tax bill you as council have really control over one of them and that is the city tax levy increase that's the dollar amount that you are going to set as a tax levy increase the other things that affect property tax bill will vary by property tax it varies by legislation the calculation the formulas all of those things go into it and we we don't have control over that so I just wanted to point that out residential value change that can vary among different properties the market value homestead include exclusion that is the credit that you get off of the top of your valuation before the property tax is calculated that number declines as your property value goes up that number declines so if your home value is less than $400,000 and your valuation is increasing you will see an increase in the property tax and also an amount due to the fact that your exclusion decrease so there's a little bit of a compounding effect there commercial values change as well and they change differently than residential values as you've seen over the last several years the commercial values we're not increasing as fast as residential this year if you look at like just in big total numbers they were more similar so that means there isn't as much of a property tax shift this year we did see as we were looking at some different types of properties within commercial there is kind of a wide range of valuation changes there where our large retail properties were going down actually and some other types of properties going up so again you can look at overall commercial values may have increased 6% you will see a wide range of differences on the actual property individual properties again we don't have control over that you don't have control over that new construction that I guess you could say that you you your economic development activities are driving that but the amount that actually hits the valuation each year is some delayed because the first year of valuation does take a while for it to hit the property our our market value base and then fiscal disparities change that is a pretty big formula and that is just something that started back in the 70s that tried to even out the commercial tax base among different suburbs and Metro actually the cities and the suburbs in the metro area so as valuations and commercial properties change in the different cities that affects the fiscal disparities that that happens here in Burnsville so that is another thing so here's the slide I was talking about that the tax and power back to that I was willing time a lot of that also is by statute but what's important in this particular piece in looking at all of that it has a direct correlation also to our bond rating it's a market value of the community it does yeah I mean it's one of the critical criterias very much so and your economic development initiatives are things that do help drive those things within the city of Burnsville the investment that you make in maintaining infrastructure also contributes to property values all of those decisions that you make well well you don't have specific maybe control over that that bubble you do have policies that are affecting it on the long term I just want to add to that one note just so far this has been the best graphic presentation from our budget that I remember I really appreciate the work you put in it it's I think for people watching they're able to follow along really easily this year and the other thing is there are six things that influence a person's property tax bill and as your good graphic points so we only control one yeah in the two major ones market value change market forces economy we can't control that and obviously there is some ups and downs with that physical disparities commercial new canoe construction we kind of have some influence on that and there's a lot of cranes in the air and we will see the benefit of that in a couple years with the two year lag from the County Assessor's Office but it is important to note and I love that slide that's a really good slide we have control over one of those six major influences on a person's property tax book so this slide gives you really three different two different scenarios on three different home values so a $200,000 home the very first line a $200,000 home if if the value does not increase that's the second column the estimated city and EDA tax levy in 2020 based on these maximum tax proposals that we have here would be 784 for the city and the 8088 we always look at city and EDA together because you have control over those things while they're separate levies on a person's bill they you have control over it so we want to face facts that those are the the pieces that you control particularly this year as we are the proposals that we have that you had in your packet there were a lot of changes between what the city paid for versus what the EDA paid for and they were there were swaps so we want to be upfront about that so as compared to a $200,000 home value at at the 2019 tax rates if there were there was no value increase that home would actually see a decrease of $16 even with your levy increases at these rates but most homes did go up an average of 5% so we're showing that $200,000 home if it went up 5% it would be almost here in $10,000 and so the value with these tax rates are this this proposed based on the the information that we have was estimated about 31 dollars a year or a 3.9 percent change so a 6% levy increase results in about a 3.9 so we did that for each of those three different valuations the median home the one that we usually talked about last year's median home value was 250 for 800 and so we and and this year it's two hundred and sixty-seven five and we calculated the same things and and it makes about a three point seven percent change difference so again it it it can affect everybody differently the four hundred hazlit three point three percent that has to do with some of those factors we talked about on the previous slides where the market value exclusion is declining as valuations go up various things that's the that is the difference so I when we talk about the budget we talked about the whole budget at the city we have we budget every fund and there are different types of fund the majority of your activity is in the general fund that's your general government services so things like police and fire and administration and Community Development recreation all of those kinds of things you think about Street maintenance park maintenance when we're talking about special revenue funds those are things that have a specific purpose to the revenue source so we have to spend them in a certain specific way they're in their own fund the revenues that come in and the expenditures come out the net amount stays within that fund and is available for use in the future years so in that fund those type of funds are talking about the EDA and I I've bolded the funds that have a property tax levy we have the sustainability fund and forestry fund has a property tax levy and we have some other smaller ones which I I didn't list here but you do get them in your budget document and when you get that our larger capital funds we have the ITF fund our infrastructure trust fund which provides the city funding for the city portion of road infrastructure replacement and maintenance and then we have the IT capital fund which is our technology our equipment and vehicle fund which is basically our fleet and some other larger equipment type items that are in the other departments too and then we have the these fund which takes care of our facilities then we also have debt service funds which those are bonds we've issued to do various things typically for construction of assets we've issued them in the past and we've made commitments to pay principal and interest back on those things and so we're levying for debt service on that and then the enterprise funds are funds that operate like a business the fees that are charged in that fund are going to pay for the services or activities in that fund our biggest one is our water and sewer fund and that is it in stormwater and those funds are almost as big as the general fund or I'm not even sure which one's theirs they're very close very similar in amounts so that's providing your water and sewer services and your you get your water bill and and those fees are going directly to pay those things and then we have a couple others mainly the Ice Center golf course and the Ames Center where operations are in those areas yes I see you noted at the bottom the bold items are property tax supported is general government services think about it to be assumed I guess yeah yes you're right I missed that well that's good to know I mean it's I don't know that it's been displayed this way I think this is again just a great presentation on being able to understand where what money funds what type of thing let's how people know that this is a huge operation and we're tasked with being good stewards of what the people own and then the services that we provide that they expect and so that's what they're getting I mean when you look at the infrastructure trust fund that's roads IT and all of those things equipment and vehicles and then you look at the debt but when you look at also at the enterprise funds you know when you want your water and you turn it on it's better run and when you flush your toilet they're gonna expect that waste to be discharged someplace and not back up and there's a lot of work that goes into this and it takes a lot of people and Ryan knows that when ou 24/7 whether it's during summer time and there's roads that backup because we were on a hill I'm glad that you pointed out I want to build on something that was at a previous meeting a person came forth and was questioning the special assessment in the heart of the city and I believe they're there the gentleman commented it appeared to him that we'd collected a couple million dollars and why would we need to continue to collect when you build things it cost money to maintain them and we do try and maintain our roads or water or infrastructure our buildings our assets all the assets put it that way parks natural resources etc all of our buildings require ongoing maintenance and so there is an ongoing cost to maintaining the assets that the people own and I think there's plenty of evidence out there to show that when you invest in properly maintaining something you get an extended life out of it and it's more it's more costly to let it go and have to replace it as opposed to maintain it and get a significant lifespan and we've we've gotten over the years especially in those extremely lean economic recession years we extended the life of a lot of things but to make it go as much as we could possibly get out of it before we had to replace it so but also taking care of the community really has a return on investment where businesses look at a particular community and say do I want to locate there right and it also has another return people look and say do I want to live in that neighborhood we experienced some time in the mid 90s where and into the 2000s when there was beginning to see flight because we needed to take care of the neighborhood and so that's why it's important that we our neighborhoods are viable and and taken care of so because it has a market value and that market value is reviewed by the bonding agents the rating agents and to see if we have value so thank you that is very good so that our residents see that this all belongs to them the annual budget of all of these funds in total is around a hundred million dollars so that is we met in June we gave you some projections on where the levy increases were where the pressures work on current services and we looked at some high-level estimates of rebbe and other revenues that come in and how they might change we looked at planned funding for your capital funds you have long-term plans on those in those the aim Center debt service abatement levy there was a scheduled increase in the debt service levy that was due to the heart of the city was - it was originally timed back when it was issued a long time ago was originally timed to coincide with the decertification of the heart of the city TIF district the heart of the city TIF district when it desertification that provides some tax relief to the remainder of the properties and the debt service was scheduled to increase at that time which would be then a net zero offset we have in the as you'll see going forward we have leveled that and feathered that in over we are able to to restructure that to feather it in over a few years to take advantage of that property tax relief against the general property tax levy instead of off of this with no harm done to that debt service fund also because there were some funds when we refunded the debt we had restructured the timing of the payments and so we're able to just do some tweaking on that to feather that in over a couple of years so that was very helpful in offsetting other increases yep yeah that's a really important point because when a TIF D certifies we have to acknowledge the the increment that we're no longer dating back it's as a tax increase when it's really been there all along but it was given back to the developers in a different pot so the 1.4% is part of our six total correct yes yes so we're dealing with 4.6 percent excluding this TIF decertification in terms of what a property owner is really dealing with as far as this levy and certainly for John and he's been through this every time we had a decertification of tip to I think we went through that and it was 1.2 million and it was a large percent and it saw it on a chart it looked bad because it looked like our levy was really high when in fact it was 1.2 million lower in real terms but because we booked the way we are because we're a government entity we have to actually show that 1.4 percent as if it's an increase when it's actually money that's already been coming in all these years that was given back now it's not now your point I just want to delve in that really quick because you you had made a good point about feathering that in so I guess my question is is any of the 1.4 offset in any of these numbers that we're looking at or can we still walk away and say we're really dealing with 4.6 to taxpayers because the 1.4 is a TIF decertification and it's really not part of the the impact to me as a property owner so I think we're actually talking about two sides of the same equation so the the levy that's coming in or the tax base that's under there that that's still that 1.4 percent is still there offsetting property tax increases the side of it was the spending side of it so it was the debt coming in at a big increase and that so we had the one point four on the levy coming in that matched the one point four on the debt service increase going out and so we still have the the market value coming in the tax base coming in but what we've done is feathered that increase of the debt service in over a few years because we had that ability to do that and the debt service fund because of funds that were available in there and and that as we look at the next slide it offsets a lot of so so as you know as you've read through your background and these and you got these slides earlier there are a lot of pieces that moved a lot of funding sources that moved around and funding expenditures it's one piece of that puzzle that fits in there that offsets some of those other things that allows you to fund some of your other priorities not sure I mean well I mean it's okay very very confusing accounting process so if we didn't let's just put it in in more simplified terms if that TIF district was not be certifying let's say it's going to be certified two three years ago the one point four percent would not appear on our chart correct side here's where it shows up so on these home values the reason why that if the evaluation doesn't go up your property tax levy goes down even with us it's because there's more a bigger pie to spread it to yeah so that that is basically that that's it there's more value that's offsetting so a 6% increase looks like a three point something to the residents on their property tax base can you go back to that slide that had the one point four there so in the if this was 2019 s budget it wasn't D certifying that one point four percent would not appear on this chart so since this is the spending side the debt service was planned to go up no matter what it's the debt so as it was originally structured debt payments were going to go up four hundred and eighty two thousand dollars a year regardless of whether the MARTA the TIF district decertified or not that's how the structure what I'm sure what I'm getting at is I'm looking at it through the eyes of a resident sitting at home watching this presentation and I want to make sure they understand that that 1.4 percent is tied to something separate from what their property tax bill the actual net impact on them that won't have any impact but they're gonna look at the six percent and go oh my gosh you're raising taxes six percent actually we're not that one point four is part of the numbers that we have to report but it's not part of the four point six that really does have an impact on their property tax bill yeah in other words it's us it's a number that we have to show here but it really is a sidebar cost and revenue that that is neutral as far as the impact on me as a homeowner I'm really gonna focus on the four point six percent because that's where the cost drivers from labor and benefits and other things that we're trying to do that's really the number that is that is going to show up in way shape or form on my tax bill and I the reason I bring it up is every time we have a decertification we go through this discussion because the six percent is what everyone focuses on and they just take away oh six percent increase on my my home property taxes well it's actually a four point six right now at least the max tax at four point six net even though we have to state because we have to report that one point four it's part of the total but that's not the total that's going to hit me as a property owner another way of saying it is that one point four percent is was in the bucket that's called tax increment financing and it's the growth from that and so now we just move that growth into the general fund yep but it was always collected but now it's moved over to the general fund because the tax increment financing district is decertified and that's another way of saying that thing to to the average citizen unless there are CPA yeah it's it's not easy and it's not even following you know generally what private sector businesses use I mean because they don't have d certifying TIF funds and so and obviously they operate in a different different world and some of these numbers so I just I know that the four point eight operations that's gonna affect my property tax bill I'm getting a credit of 1.1 from revenues that came in above expectations and so I'm looking at a three seven plan to capital funds nine percent so I'm really looking at a four point six percent that I will see in some dollar increase if that's what we ultimately pass in December that's what's gonna be on my it's not gonna be the six percent that is presented here it's the four point six that's actually gonna have a net effect on my property tax bill and to clarify that four point six percent is if the EDA levy crease increase is at 0.1 percent yeah if that changes so let me move on to the next slide cuz I've added a slide that once you got your passion yeah so this is where we are for the max tech so we made all of those movements that we described in your packet and and addressed some of those council priorities that you had our service level pressures and all of those things moving that around to stay within that six percent so this is how this looks different current services net of revenues that come in are at 5.1 percent that that is because we have a number of things we moved around we and will cover those in the next few slides but we moved some expenses out of the EDA fund into the general fund we've we've moved things around and we'll cover those so 5.1 on that we had our planned funding for capital funds the debt service is looks like it's going up but that is because we have centralized it from the EDA fund and the general fund it's a net effect of zero on that and that is and the EDA levy decrease is because we moved the funding for the aim Center debt from the EDA and we moved the funding we moved some of the funding for the personnel costs into the general fund we moved the expenses in there but let me move on from that this is a high level of you let's talk let's pull apart some of those pieces this is also new from your packet and we're we're still refining this as we pull together your September 30th books as we look at those five-year finance plans the the blue bars are where we think and it's it's conservative estimate so we would hope that it would go down from there in the future but where it with the updated franchise fee increase and service pressures added and priorities met and the EDA strategy as it is in this packet that's where those bars would be the dashed line is where we were when we were looking at the budget last year and if and the the solid line is what would have happened if we had funded those council priorities the EDA the pressures and all of those things where would we be had we not made all of these changes that we talked about so we would be facing a much higher percentage if we weren't employing some of the strategies we have in the next slides dan gee is this a a property tax increase or a levy increase there's a different thing yeah but it says property tax increase I want to kind of clarify I'm sorry we're talking about a levy increase now the levy percentage applied for a property the end result is an increase or some sort on my property tax bill right yeah I use it thanks for the clarification yeah no and words matter because when people words matter because when people look at that and they go oh my property tax when we're only talking about the levy and and what does the what it accomplished in terms of the budget so moving on what does this budget accomplish so the city is a service organization and that is really the heart of all of this there is where we're maintaining current service levels we are the budget is about 70 percent of the general fund expenses are for personnel services and the council has approved the implementation of the pay plan that was the result of the compensation study that the city completed this past year you were recognizing the importance of having investing in a high quality workforce to provide high quality services it's not only important in maintaining our current workforce but to reduce turnover and the costs associated with that but also as the city competes to recruit new qualified staff in all areas as we face replacing open positions I think you know we've had some challenges in that um in the past few years and this current structure helps us meet some of those issues and we when we say it's a service organization it takes people and so that everybody should understand that when we're a service organization it takes people and we had not done a compensation study to ensure that we are paying people at the right level for almost 30 years right I think the last one was 1992 was the last compensation study so here we are because we continued always have been considered pushing it pushing it and we need to make sure that we retain the high level of professionalism and the people that we have we have great people here and we have been remiss and so it's great that we have accomplished the compensation study and we're rolling it in also remember that was a phased in approach so with with steps so most employees are back in in steps and they're receiving phased in over most over three years to reach that that same level so that does add some of the pressures and of the out-years that we looked at in that previous slide the city also sees a great deal of value investing in organizational development many initiatives to equip staff with the tools they need to be the best employees that they can be to address proper service levels provide the most efficient services and effective services so that has been built into this budget as well or the beginnings of that there are economic realities of increasing inflationary pressures they've seen and that's been compounded with a decade of budgets that have been very tight and departments who have not increased budgets in current expenditures for quite a number of years push things off I think councilmember Keely mentioned making things last as long as possible it does sort of create a bubble that we're dealing with and we're trying to deal with over the next several years as well so we it is addressing some of those inflationary pressures we are maximizing the use of revenue sources to fund services where possible throughout this as well we've talked a lot about franchise fee increases that and how do we ask that property tax increases with that we want it to be a sustainable long-term facilities fund to maintain the our investment in infrastructure facilities that we have it the one of the things about franchise fees it does broaden the payees to more users so it does expand to owners that that don't pay property taxes that and rightfully so but like nonprofits or schools and churches and yes it reduces debt and increases Pago funding for phases two and three of the facilities plan so that is part of your financial management policies too be prudent and how we issue debt and and provide at least some bagel funding portion of that it provides for major capital replacement at all facilities which further reduces future levies that would require a regular debt service tax levy so this plan is a long-term plan as we're looking at it's not just next year what we replace it or its future years and if we don't increase facilities our franchise fees then that would indicate that we would need to do a tax levy down the road a debt service levy issued debt that sort of thing we did dedicate some of the franchise fees in this plan to park facilities and trail maintenance in the parks capital fund as part of the strategy that is will require a policy change in what you in your financial management plan we indicate we have a list of what facilities qualify it is a way to use though those dollars to offset property tax levies so that is a policy question and then currently host fees are 100 percent dedicated in the facilities fund with if there's if the franchise fees were increased those host fees are available for other uses and what we've done in this plan is moved the host fees to the Ames Center so currently the Ames center does get a portion of the host fees that were implemented in 2006 there was a dollar portion of the host fee that was dedicated to the to the Ames center and then there is the amount that has used to be in the general fund that was three dollars and 33 cents a ton that that was moved from the general fund to the facilities fund this plan moves all of it into the Ames center fund and that allows us to do the debt restructuring that we were talking about funding that it also allows us to pay down the general fund advance so if you recall in the first several years of the aim Center it was opened at the very beginning of the recession and host fees did not come in as planned and so there was a significant funding shortage at that time due to the host fees not coming in and host fees are something that the landfill has as so much capacity and it's nearing the end of the capacity as it as you're well aware of right now so what wasn't collected in the early years or is being collected now but we've in this plan moved it to the Ames Center and would be using that to pay down that advance that the general for the Vance is it's a it's a loan from the general fund to the Ames center and that would pay that down and that provides fund balance to the general fund and frees up the general funds fund balance which then makes that available to offset property taxes so yeah so one of the things as we look at that at the landfill and because it's reaching its its capacity you have another plan with regards to because you're using a hundred percent of the hosts fees dedicated to the Ames center operation and the Ames center is continuing to do better and better in terms of its revenues so we looked at that host fee kind of as a one as it winds down now it kind of becomes a it's ending and it kind of becomes a one-time used for one-time kind of expenditures which is why we targeted that advance and the from the general fund to the Ames center so it's not now the aim Center would not be reliant on those funds going forward because it's taken care of that advance that occurred in ten years ago and it does it frees up the funding the fund the five-year plan as you looked at it did provide for pay down of that over the future years so it would take some operations but then it also did not have enough funding to cover capital replacement as it needs and so then there would be a need for funding sources in the future to do that capital replacement so if these host fees are used to pay down that advance then the operations are available to meet their capital needs as they go forward their capital replacement needs so it makes that a sustainable and it makes it more clear as you look at that fund you can see what they're generating and what general fund support is in there and and that is it's just more clear more simplified the same question is our mayor but I want to I want to know how fast this is accelerate our pay down of the aim Center itself then does are we gonna pay it off sooner than we had anticipated and by how many months years weeks do you mean the advance are the debt who debt itself so the debt itself is the same as when we refunded it so that is the same end schedule as it was it was refunded a couple years ago and we had over a million dollar savings due to the the refunding and savings on interest so it's the advance we're gonna get rid of that take to get rid of 1.2 million dollars that in the first few years and that we have not been adding to that negative amount but they've been slowly reducing it but it was somebody so so we could be way to get rid of it a year or two at the most it will take two years with us okay two years to get rid of the advance and in the original plan that's probably more like six or seven years yeah so that's freeing up general fund money a lot faster that's a great plan because now it takes a look and it's what they're it's sustainable long term and it it isn't beholden on the capacity of thee at the landfill and even with the capacity we've got one or two years at least before if they don't get the ther khon thing that they'll be operating yeah they were going through their process there yeah yeah danke well I just want to put it in terms that I going back to last 12 years it council member gazanova Gustafson will love this the aim center costs for debt service because the host fees early on weren't coming in ended up putting some burden wasn't planned yeah taxpayers so we made a decision way back when to say it's gonna be alone then because we want to pay back one day and so we're getting paid back the taxpayer portion that subsidized the service the debt service had costs in those early years is gonna get paid back in fact it's gonna get paid back in a couple years the set up over maybe six years as originally thought so that that's that's really good news yes and I guess I want to put it that way everybody been paying their taxes to this city helped get it through a bad time when the host fees weren't coming in and now they're getting the money back back into the general fund that could be then used to lower other cost drivers fund other things that we deem necessary etc but that's very good news thank you yeah Kara I do want to clarify just a little bit our taxpayers are not getting that money back they're not that money is not going back to them we took that money from them to help the Ames Center get through a time when it needed it or you know it just wasn't gonna happen the money isn't going back the money is going is still being brought in and is going to be paying for services now residents get to have those services and enjoy those services but I don't want people thinking that they're getting money back like no one's seeing a check so just to make that really really clear cuz we don't want that to be kind of ambiguous on that I completely get what you're saying I just you know avoided using the word refund right back into the general fund which goes toward saving with all the taxes and if you continue to fund what we deem as priorities under maintenance and/or cost drivers like labor and benefits and if we weren't getting it paid back we would be looking at a higher level to fund those ongoing services or some finding some cuts but it's relieving pressure but yeah there's no refund checks going right yes and also it this was a very good presentation and I do think that this was done in a way that our residents could understand it and absorb it and you know not have to go fishing for it so thank you really good but what we're talking about when we're talking about raising the franchise fee that is a tax we can call it a fee but it's a tax so what we're talking about is looking at raising the levy and looking at raising another tax to so that it doesn't look as bad on that levy number is is really what we're doing and I think we need to be very transparent about that as well this is what we're looking at for the levy to maintain services you laid that out really well I do think it was clear for the franchise fees I also want people to understand when we raised the franchise fees unless the state legislature takes that away from us those will stay raised like that's not that's not something that we would raise and then that's coming back so that will be something that stays and and I do like that the franchise fee is part of this discussion so that people can see that and see it in the totality because I I think that is pretty pretty crucial for us and when we're talking about well we won't have to raise the levy as much in the future that's also a discussion where we shouldn't be talking about that that's saving money because it isn't saving money it's we're still going to be looking at levy increases we're looking at less of a levy increase but I also want to have a care with that language too because I don't want our residents to think oh well then we're gonna have we're gonna have a decrease like a true decrease and then next year when we have this conversation again then they're like well what the heck I thought you know I thought you guys were talking about a decrease long as everything's very upfront then it's then it's all good but yes you're right earlier when you said that language matters and and you as well language matters so so one of the things that we need to also understand when we're talking about the aim center the aim center is one asset that belongs to the people the ice center is another asset that belongs to the people that we also have responsibility to be good stewards over the golf course is another asset that belongs to the people and every Park 79 of them or is it less than 79 that's the prize is really cool is that about all belong to the people and we have those responsibilities and everybody uses them so when we're looking at franchise fees instead of only looking at one group of people who own homes or have a business paying for all of these assets that they need to take care of with that we need to take care of for them everybody uses them and the franchise fees allows everybody to to pay for those because all of us have houses and we all have to improve whether we put in a new roof or we put in the infrastructure the furnace needs to be done the water softener all of those things need to be done if we are homeowners so imagine the city that it's a big home with a lot of infrastructure that we have to take care of and how do we pay for it so one of the ways and taking care of the facilities that belong to the people is this way and that it's not coming out of the property tax so everybody pays it's clear and upfront how it's going to be done we have thank God we got police all taken care of but we have a firehouse that's a sick firehouse that needs to be done and that's where this is all going to come in so everybody uses those services everybody needs to pay for it so this is a good clarity and helps people and having this discussion allows people to understand how we're funding these things to make sure that their assets are taken care of when we met back in June we talked about some of the in places where we have some increased revenues but we also have increased service pressures those things are are due to volume increases and so that is driving service pressures on in the EMS area fire area there's it's affecting work/life balance safety there's high over time and in scheduling of leave and so this this starts to make a dent in that or make a plan to make a change there and permit revenue trending up also all of the development and redevelopment activities are are fabulous and they brought in increased revenues and but we also have to meet the service needs that are associated with those and we've had some pressures with that and so we are making a plan as part of this to deal with that as well in addition rental licensing lots of rental a centel Editions drive that up as well so in those two areas just wanted to address we are conservative when we budget and project permit revenue projections because those are economy based those are things out of our control we don't want to base a budget that is too reliant too heavily reliant on those things happening and then they don't happen so but we also try to be realistic we don't under we don't under budget that but so permit revenues are available from so 2019 we had a conservative permanent permit revenue budget it's provided funds above expectations and so so there are revenues available from that to fund some of our new implementation some of our capital costs with increased staffing needs and we have a community development software that is needing to be replaced and it has been in our IT capital budget and it's a very big number over a course of years so we're proposing that instead of having that be funded by IT capital levy that that would be funded by a use of fund balance that will be generated by these additional revenues coming in in 2019 so that has been built into this plan on EMS revenues we the safer grant was had a hard end date and we had not filled the positions during that hole and so they recently gave us an extension and so we'll have more revenue due to that this year it's a one-time revenue but that's one of the things that is good in EMS revenues continue to increase as those call volumes and we're able to respond to call volumes excuse me so some of those those are some of the things that those this budget is addressing those call volumes have a pressure on personnel also they do so economic moving on to economic development initiatives the 2019 EDA five-year plan the EDA fund recognized a significant investment needed to maintain current service levels it invested additional funds in in that but we also did that as sort of a temporary basis and and using fund balance so if you remember I think if I pop over no I'm gonna get ahead of myself sorry later in the presentation we will show the the chart that shows the EDA fund balance being used to offset those things and that was the plan when when you looked at that and approved that we weren't sure exactly if that investment that was being made at the beginning of this year was something you were going to want to continue on a long-term plan if it was going to continue what you would need to add to the EDA levy more than that or it ends after about four years and the fund balance goes away so we also so we addressed that in this plan we also wanted to preserve EDA levy Authority for the council's priority IDI initiative so things like the center village plan things that you may want to use your EDA levy Authority in the future we wanted to preserve that and may sure that that was available for those specific uses if you so determined in the future we redirected staffing and debt levies to the general city levy so if you remember back and as part of of 2009 2008 when we had the the cuts on the the the original plan we moved economic development activities out of the general fund and into the EDA fund and started spending EDA fund balance in order to do that and then increasing the EDA levy annually every year to build that back up to the funding source so this actually so so that actually accomplished what it was designed to do we used available fund balance and we incrementally rebuilt that fund the levy in order to fund that so we are suggesting that we move those staff back to the general fund and free up that levy swapping a portion of that levy back to the general fund while and then also the aim Center debt funding swapping that back to the debt service fund and I have another slide that tries to sort out that whole complicated funding structure as well a little bit later so we will get to that so let me ask this and probably this is under development review fees because sometimes we pay personnel out of that do you or do you not on those fees madam mayor you're talking about land use clearance applications yeah yeah those funds go into the general fund we all go into the general fund so you just want to make sure if they all go into the general fund because sometimes when we do whatever the the different activities are and those monies come out of that activity it has a direct correlation to the service that's being provided I can speak to that um that is a different as different staff than we're talking about here so those would be planning staff typically they're doing something specific related to a development activity that's outside of and and can be specifically attributed to that and they pay for that the development pays for that that's a revenue so it's on the planning side and not on the economic development right so because it's at its economic development but it's on the planning side that that's where that is those personnel cost are it's like how early it is an early church yeah so the staff that we're talking about here is the economic development coordinator and the redevelopment coordinator positions and we're having some turnover as one retires and MS Faulkner has done some restructuring to fill that position differently and it really means taking those staff and splitting that duties across numerous staff or a couple changing the staff at and that will be sharing duties with the general fund so it makes a lot of sense that the staff is all in the general fund because there is this mixture of duties and just efficiencies yeah it so that's that the aim Center debt moving to the general fund debt levy is just a swap of different kinds of debt levies again as you know back in the first slides we talked about we look at the city and the ed8 together this is just swapping in doing that it preserves the EDA 'la because now your EDA loved you is quite a bit lower than it was and you have a cap on what that can be you have preserved a minimum amount there it also we looked at your initiative you had talked about earlier this summer about low-income home loans so instead of using EDA levy for that we are proposing that we redirect the CDBG funds that are in the general fund that are paying for some youth and senior services redirect that to to the CDA in order to administer more home loans that they do now so administratively you've got one program all that we've just given them more money than we are currently giving them in that program we eliminate administrative overhead for the senior and youth services we don't have to file reports on that we don't have to you know follow their rules of CDBG of how we offer those services the city has more control over that so we're still funding it but it's not coming out of CDBG so basically it yes yeah because I my next question is what are we doing to the seniors and the youth there's no change there's no change okay that's good to know okay seniors if you're listening there's no change and to our youth there's no change so thank you it really removes some of the red tape and ties and there was a lot of red tape bow with the seniors and the youth program so that that's good local control yeah and then the other program then just grows and what was originally an administrative expenses now can go towards that it's it's not as much as you had originally been talking but it you know it does add to it so yeah we don't want to get seniors upset after they're going through all of the facilities things over at the school district and then for them to hear about services but no services are being reduced to the seniors program yes no Dan well I just want to thank you and complement you on that I I don't know that it's it's one of those things where you know we pushed to to do something and it's sort of like we turned over some rocks went oh if we do this we no longer have to pay for this and meet these obligations this is a better and I don't know that we would have done that had we not had the discussion on trying to move some cbdu CDBG money into the housing because we've been funding the senior through CBD G from long as I've been on council and going way back so it's kind of like one of those just automatic things that we really don't take a deep look at until we maybe come up with an idea to challenge it and maybe challenge the funding and then suddenly oh there's a win-win coming out of this we're gonna fund that and we're gonna have less regulatory obligation and be able to fund the seniors out of the general fund so a lot of good stuff came out of that that I didn't expect but that way yeah good job staff so another thing that we're affecting here is the debt service restructure so we're consolidating debt service levies we're providing for the just making it more transparent what what's the amount that we're loving for the debt service here it's all in one spot and then the feathering in of the debt for that the increase that had been planned that is part of this as well and then that also then leads into our ability to make the aim Center a little bit more clear the operations piece that fund it is gonna look a lot different too and I do have some slides a little bit later on to the like I can point out where the changes will be added a few slides since your packet so these slides that I'll go through fairly quickly because I think we're we're getting it's getting long but in your I'm sorry did you I'm going to ask that we take a five-minute break in and we'll come back so we'll recess for five minutes you you you you you you you you you okay you're still on pictures all right sure okay I don't see my presentation up there there we go okay so we got fancier so we have many departments and these are really the general government services but they some of them also have control over enterprise funds and special revenue funds too but I just want to highlight a few of the things that are going on in each of those areas in fire and we structured this like we when we talked about in our beginning slide at the beginning where we talked about current services and what are the long-term pressures and what are the new priorities so just highlight a few things there for the fire it really is that their big thing is the fire station one replacement that will be dominating a lot of the things that go on for fire and then looking at how we are structured and how we go forward for the future and how we meet all of these two increasing demands and as we add more rentals and more housing and all of that stuff and that's more people and more seniors runs and so there are a lot of things we don't know about the future or EMS but in fire but we are trying to keep ahead of that so the the new priorities that we have built in there's there's some personnel requests to add additional capacity for data analytics and increased fire inspection needs so data analytics that's that is the you know that's the the buzzword everywhere and the big term is really using that data that we have in order to design services deploy our current staffing and deploy our current needs in the right way so that's where they would like to begin in in focusing there and then there are some fire inspection needs that also will be addressed and they bring in some revenue as well and some ties I'm not sure if I can speak as much to that particular one but we will have more information as the full budget document comes out and when apartment presentations I'm sure yes so a community development we have already really talked a lot about this but some of the they've done some staff reorganization as they prepare for retirement some long term needs in that areas a lot of big things going on with your economic development activity apartments under construction the mrq still going the center village poised to make some big changes there and then of course the landfill expansion consideration and and all of those things so those are long-term issues for the Community Development Department new priorities there will be personnel requests to meet those increased economic development activity and needs and and we will propose some use of permit revenue to do that okay danke you there's a slider earlier that said 1000 units of apartments are under construction right now just let that settle in a resonate I know I know Dan then is enjoying that one I don't know when's the last time that the city had as many cranes in the air and as many units being built do we have an estimate of all the projects that we have that have at least come in and some level of proposal the total number of units yeah if all the projects that we know about were completed how many total units would that be for the city madam I remember that council I think wrapped about 1200 or so there's a several in the pipeline that are coming in for entitlements of all winter for next year's construction the Healy ramie is Healy Ramy how many total units both all the buildings and the townhomes does that complex there were two construction so 275 units is under construction now and I believe the total combined on the concept was I want to say 350 on the first face or 430 total those two numbers are coming to my mind yeah it's a substantial phase two yes yeah and then you have the Brewers a senior overrun Grande and that's eventually Jason to get there Gallery is in you have a really exciting department right now so what's going on when the branding and so yeah we're glad thank you for your help with all the branding stuff and this work this branding continues fire mustard was the rollout that part's not over but the work on that continues on top of everything else there's a lot of good feedback on that listen to people they just loved you belong here you know that stems back to your economic development strategic plan that we did last year so that's what a lot of this is coming from and driving a lot of what you're seeing today and we'll see in the short-term we plan to check in with you I think in the beginning of the year on that and that will be been tweaked and changed along the way as the economy changes as your priorities changed but that's a living document that's giving us direction of what you want to do in that area and as you all understand we already put in place the County Road 42 corridor it's the center village all of the regulatory tools have been adopted right we still need the economic tools so all of that stuff is ready for the owners of the property and the developers to move forward but we've done our work madam mayor would say we continue to do our work yeah we yeah because we still have economic tools and we still when people think about whether they're going to do a plan unit development or a Cu people it's still a work to be done but the regulatory tools have been adopted and they and they continue to evolve so example our comprehensive plan we started that work in 2015-2016 it was just adopted yeah June of 2019 by the Met Council well our center village plan was adopted in December of 2018 so we need to go back and amend the command to operate the center village yeah we need to amend the zoning ordinance we have perhaps some environmental reviews so we still have some a few regulatory tweaks I would say to do before that's dates I would say updates were that's ready to go but in addition to the special legislation for TIF that we're very optimistic that we'll get this next session but so a lot of things happening behind the scenes in addition to all the development and the stuff that you're seeing and that our residents are seeing out in the city it's nice to finally say that annually instead of a couple hundred thousand expansion of our tax base that we're talking of many millions you know projects that are 40 million dollar projects and 80 million dollar project it's a it's been a long wait hasn't even now it's hard when you're built out community and you are looking to redevelop and you have to work with the property owners you know so that's but everybody is feeling the abundance of of their business and they're willing to do that so I just give great credit and kudos to our property owners who continue to work with us and have patience well to government you know we just took us how many years seven years dan when we first launched that idea taking down that no rental policy seven years of it and when you get government out of the way it's amazing what the private sector will do well there were also times when we were going through in the 90s when our residents did not want density so but things have changed everybody has changed but you know we serve at the pleasure of our residents and business recreation facilities they've went through some staffing restructure with some staffing changes in 2019 added community festivals and and we've talked about the CDBG funding changes that will the in there really doesn't affect their current services but it does just affect their revenue source so and then I think that there's been you know changing community interests too that they're they're factoring into things so long-term on the facility side phase two of the facilities plan which is the fire station phase three is in the five year plan all of those things are be big things to the recreation and facilities department and they'll continue to address facilities maintenance needs for parks and natural resources there's trail maintenance as is a big thing we've built out trails and they need to be maintained and that's one of one of their challenges and then those new priorities that we've been talking about they also affect Park Development Center village or will have things that will affect really many areas but Public Works we've had we've just come off some snowy years I'm had some challenges and in replacing our salt stores and being in that area we have a long-term vehicle and equipment replacement there's a lot of challenges there back to council member Keeley's comment that we've made things last as long as we could that we continue to feel some pressures on that there have been a lot of cost increases for vehicles in inflationary cost increases that we're seeing in vehicles so those are those are some big things for their the utility rate study that is something that mr. Peterson and I my team and his team will be working on with it beginning this fall we'll be looking at rates for 2021 so we are not it it won't be for the 2020 rates that we'll be implementing but we'll be looking at some rate structure changes with the last time we did a rate study it's been a while an external rate study it has I I don't know we've done it I don't remember but we do a rate study an internal rate study a very extensive one really every year as part of our budget no we do that because we have good policies in place they do set all of that but what we are one of the things we've been talking about for the last few years and back when Steve Albrecht was here yeah we were going to begin this rate study to look at what the structure is versus we've always looked at what is the funding how much funding do we need but there's different structures and should we have more in our base fee versus our variable fees how do we structure that and with regard to the upkeep of all of that expensive I mean when you look at our construction cost a reconstruction cost every year I look and see how much money is coming out of water and and sewer and funds that goes into that you know it's it's a pretty big amount that covers that and we've had a few years now of seasonally different weather patterns that have affected usage and that we are heavily dependent on variable rates we don't collect as much as we had budgeted for but our Xterra costs are really much more fixed than they are variable so we have a difference between those two and so we really what we want to do is take a look at that a very deep dive into what that rate structure should look like so that is not in none of those changes are built into this plan but so we're going forward as with the same kind of rate structures that we have but knowing that in the next budget process we'll have something for you to look at that we anticipate there will be some big changes we don't necessarily mean that think that it's going to collect more money but we want to make sure that our rate structure is fair and sustainable to the plan and sustainable to to maintaining that system I did I guess I skipped over to that one of the priorities on public works to us is creating some maintenance trainee positions and building the careers in that area so that we can can fill our positions with highly trained staff that have been it's been difficult to to find Vince can you explain the replace seasonal staff does that play into what you just touched on as far as getting more consistent help rather than our concept here is we've been jealous of the police with their Community Service officers how they get up to chance to develop my flying folks yeah then when positions come open that they get to and then there have an unknown entity when they're trying to hire full-time positions this would we would have the poles would have three trainee positions maybe like two-year positions that they'd stay with us they'd replace the three seasonals for trail plowing and then we'd have a reduction in our seasonal staff in general to help offset the costs of these folks we think that if we get some people who really want to do the job they'll be more valuable than just one typical seasonal employee and then when someone retires we know what we got it's also helps its building your bench that's what it is it's building a bench when it could be a cool opportunity to work with the Career Pathways program at the school if you smoke because that's all part of it it's like what fire is doing yeah and that's how they'll get some of that and that's all part of building a bench cool thank you and in engineering tied to public works too but the the five-year CIP is always a one of their big challenges and their long-term focus and and dealing with cost increases in that area one of the things you'll see in your plan as we look at the infrastructure trust fund that has been a flat $50,000 increase every year for a number of years and what we are proposing is that we're still proposing a $50,000 increase for this year but then converting that for the out years to a percentage increase similar to it with a percentage Kelly if you remember back in 1996 when we started so its percent of the budget oh yes mm-hmm so this would be their budget not the overall budget right yeah so this that will just build slight ever so slightly that 50,000 to keep pace we're trying to keep pace with inflation Airy pressures that we see in those areas so we reduced it to 50,000 during the recession mm-hmm and we took it out of the percentage so we're trying to get back to par as you were I'm organizational services really in our administration area we that's our areas our city manager council city clerk communications I thr finance legal insurance all those areas that support all of the other operations are internal services and in supporting the council and some of the long-term things that area in that area is the IT capital fund their technology organizational development which you've heard we've wanted to put some more efforts into that builds that culture and values and get us to be a that learning organization we started out is important yeah thanks gosh good I'm glad to see these things coming back which enriches the our our organization our staff enriches them and and for 2020 some big things would be in addition to the organizational development diversity and inclusion the branding Martius in heavily involved in that and communications and of course we have a little election coming up and three next year and and our HR strategy looking at that department as well so clarify because when they hear three it's because the state now we are now doing a presidential primary where we never had so that adds to the three to the two yes instead we're going to continue with police [Laughter] so some of the things that that they have oh but these are really tiny little words sorry about that the we have body cameras which you know we were the first and you need to be replaced there is no we're it's a it's a five year contract that is a new contract this year and they're the company has restructured how they're doing it and they're providing lots more services that are our staff savings in redaction that is one of the big pressures with those body cameras is being able to deal with all of this data all of the the video and storage and cloud storage and all of that so there's some they have some cost pressures as they do that but we've worked hard with with police and IT and we've got a good palatable number with with that company as we're planning moat for the next five years also tasers which they're the same company but there's more required for training with tasers and the supplies the actual supplies and the number of times you have to train with them that's all gone up and they have some body armor that it has reached time for replacement and we need to get that done as you look at different kinds of body armors now because those AR can tear through the ones that they have it's a 22 rifle and AR is a 22 rifle emergency management our sirens need replacement and so we have a five-year plan and replace those that are the not the sirens on the vehicles but the warning sirens that need to be replaced as well so we want to make sure those are working we have regular vehicle replacement needs the mobile command unit that we got through a grant is in the five-year CIP for replacement so that is a big piece coming up in the next five years radios replacements are in 2021 and there is a new vehicle that's a placeholder in the CIP at this point a shared armored vehicle with Egan that several of the cities have this type of vehicle for a response to different situations so it's five years out it's a split cost care first of all apologies for speaking out of turn second of all on the shared armored vehicle since the 70s Burnsville has enjoyed a reputation and at times nationally for our place on how our place engage with our residents and that our police officers take a real community engagement approach a peace officer approach and we've never been a militarized police force and in looking at even partnering with another city in an armored vehicle which is a it's a military vehicle I would really like that to have a closer look to see if that fits in with the culture that we have in Burnsville with the relations the good relations that we have between our law enforcement and our community and I would like I would jealously guard that because most cities don't have that they don't and once you lose it you're not going to get it back yeah so that will be something that you will have lots of opportunities over the next five years to address that will have Police Department give you more information on that as it comes Department so I think that covers all of the different departments and I apologize to police for skipping police so fun balance you have a fun balance policy and we always take a look when we prepare the budget at how we can use fund outs do we have the right minimum balances and then are there some balances above the minimum that can be used for property tax relief so that we're not levying if we have available funds to be used so use of fund balance we target one-time uses because we don't we don't want to pay for services that are going to be ongoing with fund balance because that just creates a problem next year when you don't have that same fund balance so we try to be very careful with that and then we have our landfill abatements the statutory requirements so that really hasn't changed so Dan the additional 5% for contingency is that the two million specified dollar means we boys I don't think we've ever expressed it in a as a percentage and that might be a different approach as our budget gets bigger the percentage that that dollar amount is gonna grow but it may not need to I would rather control it as a dollar amount I think you're right it's like you just showing the 1% is three hundred and some thousand dollars I remember when 1% was two hundred and seventy some thousand hours don't we do that yeah I think we've always said it's two million because that's how we looked at it I don't know whether what has changed in terms the cost of things since 1990 when with that storm you know when that storm went through and we had to use general fund money because FEMA did not pay us and we wanted to make sure that we have money for those emergencies where we have no control over them so Melanie you had a comment to me no I'm agreeing that we need to have that additional we need to we've experienced it and we don't ever want to get back to that again because it really created a big pressure when you look at how much it is what 1 percent is what 2 percent and when you we had to yeah it was not pretty yeah it wasn't a criticism I just a clarification that it's a it's a two million dollar specified dollar amount not a percentage of our budget that's the first time I've seen it expressed as a percentage and it could actually be just equal to 5 percent right now but so it's okay that way but it is something we're managing is a defined dollar moment okay so we're when we look at this we look at what we think 2019 will end at into the clarify for people watching and I always think it's always good for us to say when we say we have a fund balance of 35 percent that is also state auditor and that is because we need cash flow we only get our money twice a year yes so you have a levy that you the first time you collect the majority of the levy is in June so we need to operate we need to be able to operate from January to June and those dollars cash flow wise so with this budget that you're getting and the uses of fund balance that we've identified we're projecting that we'll be within the target range over the course of the next five years and so I that's just to show you that the choices that you make do are sustainable under these set of circumstances our planned use of fund balance is the same as what we had shown you before we're going to continue the eye center debt service that is just one more year at this point the eye center debt service itself I want to point out that's not the end of the eye center debt service is the end of the ten years that we said we would commit to using fund balance for that so yeah you could make the decision to continue that through the rest of the debt service and use available fund balance or you could the other option is that it does bump up the tax levy in the year that this goes off so if we don't use fund balance it's a 140 increase we can make that decision as we get closer to it yeah how much will be left on the ice Center after the 2020 transfer I want to say it's five years five more years five more years okay and a hundred and forty mortals of the year 40,000 does not pay the pain of debt cerebus it was just a portion supplemental yeah and that was the debt that we refunded recently so we have savings from that but it still it's not the whole amount yeah and everybody should understand we are paying on this debt and you all have been seeing that we've been replacing the roof and on one of the right one of the yeah this is being very protective of it ensuring that the wind is going away from it yeah to allow the firework show to go yeah so we're doing one roof for is it number two huh I don't know yeah and then the other one's gonna many other roofs to come to Oh quarter chief and said this is the best wind we've ever had for fireworks that was West this years right straight west away from the ice that was perfect that was much a minute ago that everything yeah anyways okay it's been our policy to use fund balance to fund elections instead of having an avi that goes up and down so we've continued that and then as we do our final book which is we're very close we may identify a few other small to be determined so we wanted keep that as an option the landfill's we're continuing on we fund our sustainability fund and the general fund support of that through our reserved tipping fees the recycling in the parks that was added a couple years ago we had identified for 2019 the trash enclosure for Nicollet Commons and Ames Center that's currently being re-evaluated due to cost and you've had you know so that at this point we are not expecting that it's not happening right now but yeah I'm delighted that councilmember Schultz brought up and I think others some options for us to discuss so we don't shoot ourselves in the our selves in the foot by having it forcing ourselves with a hundred thousand dollars unfortunately that doesn't do anything for the people who have who have come in over the last several years and had to build expensive trash enclosures there's nothing we can do about those now except to apologize but I think we can put together a smart plan going forward so these funds are finite they're not growing this reserved fund balance but there it what can it is sustainable for quite a number of years yet at this rate so some other funds that we have a lot of funds as I pointed out earlier in the presentation but there's some funds that we wanted to point out some highlights and we all talked we've talked a lot about the EDA fund already we'll talk about the facilities fun the aim center and a little bit about our utility rates so we talked again already about the rate study that's coming for 2021 we're continuing on with the same plan for 2020 so as we have been so the rate structure increase of on the variable portion of the rate so the usage portion at 4.5 percent of our flat fees base fees are staying the same so that is where we're at stormwater we are able to keep that increase at about one percent which is where we have been in over the last several years I think we had some zeros but we're at 1% and that was what we had planned last year and the street light there are no current project so we're able to put that to zero and a lot of our lights are going to LED right the ones that we own and we don't own that much lights need light we put it now as an LED and then when we're replacing in neighborhoods both da and Excel allow for LED light replacements as well which is great because it has a long life span and the rates are lower so this was the slide I referred to way early in the presentation I said it's gonna be later this is what the EDA Fund looked like in 2019 the finance plan it had in previous years had a $25,000 increase every year and with the new economic development initiatives your strategic plan additional staffing and activities we had a plan to spend down a fund balance and that way as you can see so that line a point out so the lighter blue bar is how much revenue or how much levy you were levying the blue the darker blue bars are how much we were spending every year which was more than we were leavening levying so the that means the fund balance is going down and you can see that could last till about 2024 at that rate and that had a concluded that we would increase to $35,000 an additional earth 35,000 instead of 25,000 a year so to sustain that required an increase if you're going to go beyond five years on that we I think we've already talked about all of these things so I'm gonna skip ahead so nobody goes to sleep on me but the with all of the changes that we talked about moving the pardon me moving the people to the general fund and the aim Center debt to the debt service fund would we would lower the expenses and we lower the levy but we would still be contributing to the fund balance so what this does is provide you've been talking for over two hours it provides capacity both in the fund balance and in the levy honey it provides some capacity for economic development initiatives I'm gonna just grab some coffee if you know you wanna sing elaborated music you're saying boy a little brain image HDTV brady renovation music you dance too so that preserves your ability to maybe have some funding if the council chooses in the future for center village or some of those other projects if i can mayor while Kelly's taking a drink one of the things we're looking to get plugged to your CI PR the Center for genetic improvements that's what the majority of what our role is in is that is that it's not dealing with getting across over-under County Road 42 perhaps some public parking structures some other streets trails that kind of thing so those have not been plugged into the CIP yet but assuming that's the continued vision there will be some public dollars to be spent on infrastructure in the area and wouldn't we get some of that increment also from the TIF for the for for some of this infrastructure needs correct madam mayor if we get the special legislation that could be a funding source for because we that's what our ask was correct in pooling that we would use that those funds for the for the public infrastructure you're correct yeah I want to just make sure that that that money goes into that fund for this so is that going to be how this is going to be it'll be a different fund then and that increment is going to go into that fund to build the infrastructure madami remember also we don't have the TIF yet when we slide create went into an yeah we will identify sources and uses of funds at the time that's like we've done in other absolute yeah okay I just that's the intent though yeah I'm gonna go to Vince and then to you Thank You soldier speaking to planning ahead for this are we saying that the TIF would be the match that would light the fuse to begin stowing away money for infrastructure improvements many members of the council it does not have to be okay if we don't get the legislation I mean you can start to plan for this now without that with that mr. Mun think about the different funding sources that could go into this course the county is a player in this too because there's County the property owners are big players and exactly and there may be some grant opportunities so this is where right now engineering is doing the traffic analysis and the utilities study on this area will help guide what we need and perhaps you out the magnitude of those public improvements are needed so we can kind of take it to the next step and start to plan for funding of those to get to the desired outcome this is a long term process but we don't plan for it it likely is not to happen so we need to get some plans in place to make it to happen the only events that we put the infrastructure in before buildings went up is in tiff one but that was Green Acres and we needed to attract people so they had to put the infrastructure in so people knew but that was all green it this is redevelopment so we have property owners here and that would that's the root of my question is is there's a lot of uncertainty in this area and a lot of other stakeholders that are gonna determine the success or failure of this project so I don't want to get too far into funding something if we're not quite sure what the size and scope of it ultimately will be it's going to come when we put our plan in place and the economic development and if we get the TIF legislation that's when that that's when we start to take a look at all of that yeah yeah putting it in the CIP doesn't fund it it just okay no plans for the future someday this is something we may be doing and things come and go out of our CIP over the years and it is about it's a placeholder for us to keep looking at down the road dan okay you forgot it was this dam that was up on and I I mean he just yeah yeah yeah there's never sources his way you know he says Danny to start I just want to point out this is these are huge numbers and this isn't a five-year project this is a 20-year project so this is gonna be phased in over many many years I don't want people to get the impression that they're looking at 23 the 30 min $1,000,000 that we have to come up with somewhere it's not gonna happen that way this is a grand plan it's over two decades probably before it's completed and these are completed numbers right but everybody also needs to understand that it comes it will come out of the increment yes and we will be working with the property owners so it's a plan for the future good night I shouldn't even have paused on that particular slide the the point of this slide was the magnitude of your future future projects not not not necessarily think it is when you zoom in the numbers are fuzzy are they fuzzy for we've talked a lot about the facilities fund already plan just pausing here on the franchise fees because they are the the key to being able they're really the the key to being able to do all the rest of these reworks that were talking about so how did we land on there and what are we funding on the facilities fund for 2019 the budget was a million two so that's what about what you're collecting now in franchise fees the 2020 budget when we did the plan last year and we did the next year out we predicted or projected that we would need to point for at least just to fund it as it was last year with the same amount of debt and all of that not doing doing a lot of debt to actually in in funding it that way we took a look at our communities are comparable communities that have franchise fee we looked at our fee policy our fee policy says to be in the upper quartile and we yeah then we calculated what would that be and that is what generates the four point one two five million for the 2020 budget it provides you're a good ability to be more Pagal than debt so um a good use of debt and yeah she's would love that mm-hmm it provides funding to be able to move those host fees out of this fund that was not something because in that plan it had the host fees in this fund mm-hmm so that allows us to move the host fees out to the other fund and make the other funds whole and it provides the ability to to do the changes in the debt a debt service that we were talking about we would have to begin to work on these agreements this year yep although we can start anytime nine it takes 90 days to publish and implement to change and we'd have to be working with our partners our utility companies and now to do it before the legislative session and so the residential this this would be that right now Residential's are one dollar per month per meter this would be residential four dollars per month per meter which would put us in the upper quartile of our comparable cities and then we would the commercial rates would would be consistent with that so we would the changes would be consistent and that does actually match up as well there is a wide range of fees charged by other cities and what their uses are the it does one of the things that it does is it anything we charge as a franchise fee commercially stays in Burnsville and as opposed to a property tax levy which goes to fiscal disparities and then comes back to us right through that calculation yeah we send in more than we get back we've been a donor since nineteen when it was promising that we've been a donor ever since always use the term loser but donor so I always say we're a payer so in franchise fee commercial franchise fees 100% we collect 100% space here yeah that's right the other thing that happens all our new construction as soon as they're hooked up to their utilities they're beginning to pay yeah through your leg to the leg so that you know that's a one two year effect and then you have more users so when we talk about expanding the pie and that's what reduces you know the tax or increases the tax base which in it reduces the tax part of it okay so yeah to your point council member hschultz it they're there to tax two different kinds of taxes but they are on different there they're using different there's there's some some differences absolutely yes thank you danke please okay this relatively simple um when we're talking about these fees were talking about gas and electric yep so realistically we're at eight dollars a month yes yeah per resident yeah okay to today going to eat in the proposed again correct mm-hmm danke I think this has to be said I don't know how many years it goes back that the county has a two-year delay on assessing properties where they come on the tax rolls but honestly we're in it's 2019 technology has dramatically changed there's really in my opinion I would I would I would like to hear the justification for why there is still a two full year delay when projects get built before they actually come on our tax rolls there's to me no reason why it can't be cut to a year or less and so I would I'm saying this on Khan on camera to our good friend Commissioner workman to bring that to the Commission to County commissioners and ask them why do we still live as if it's 1950 and that there's a hand trail of process that requires that and that with today's technology can't we close that timing gap and maybe make it a year instead of two I think that's a really good discussion to have again because it has something to do with appraised value as well as then the assessed value but it's a good discussion to have again Kelly I'm not so sure that it's as much the the county's processing time as it is time for people to respond to it so there has to be a cut-off time which is January they have it as January 1st and that addresses all of the construction that happened during the previous year so the two-year really kind of comes into did the property finish its construction may be back in February they get at that kind of extra or if you just finished in December then it you're right on on target for a year but so the you set the property valuation as of January 1st and people get notified and then they have an the ability to talk with it they have a open book time where they can talk to the county and and dispute that amount so there has to be some time to process that and then we are using the numbers that then I mean beginning already now and those in June those numbers that they came up with so for next year a hearing like in April or something like that tell you is it same I think it's April May where they yeah hearing that they have where everybody can come in and dispute yeah so I think it's it's more of a there has to be it there has to be a time to cut it off in order for us to start working with this budget cycle so that's process that's where the time happens so so this is the same slide that we had earlier I just wanted to remind you the franchise fee the things that it does sustainable in the long term broadens the pays increase to pay go reduces future levies helps by funding some park facilities and trail maintenance and then all of the host fee information the circling back so this slide you did not have in your packet Oh tell you what number does the franchise if you need to be at to get us our fire station project I'm sorry of that so if it's if it's lower if are you asking could it be a lower amount yeah it can be a lower amount that will mean there will be more debt funding the debt may be longer you know where we I think I think I put in there a 15 year payback maybe we'd have to do a 20 year so there's a lot of pieces that can change there's there's not necessarily imagine gonna go to Melanie yeah madam mayor and council like it could maybe build on Kelly's comment that we've anticipated the firestation project and so our current revenue is I would suspect I would it's sufficient for that project what this proposal does is sets us up for a long-term sustainable facilities replacement plan that includes City Hall maintenance facilities our other facilities throughout the community at some point will have to make changes to the second fire station so our current plan is a short-term plan what we're presenting that the council provides for a long-term plan and the the direction and discussion Kelly and I had was how do we set this up so we make an adjustment this year and in a way that produces future debt increases our ability to have pay go and it reduces the the need to come back and adjust the fee again in the future so those were the parameters that that I had outlined for Kelly had asked her to help me put together a framework so just a little bit of context for that we we could build a fire station under our current structure it's it's the other needs that we have looking long-term that this would set us up for and if you go to our financial management plan it has all of the facilities that are part of this and like anything else all of those like Melanie said there's fire station to the ice center an increase also the maintenance center is also going to be needing some of those aims ah yeah and the aim Center it's coming up to ten years so there are some things that's going to need replacement yes as I hear this you're you're eliminating the host fee which we don't know whether that's sustainable or not so we're not gonna get caught off guard one day finding out that just disappeared we're eliminating having to bond for maintenance for all of our buildings going forward with this one is that correct well still bond we won't find as much using this as the funding source for the debt service payment so more the pay-go kind of stuff all right all right so though I mean those are its it shows us that we can sustain all of our properties in the city long term through this process without raising property taxes every couple of years to do that and it gets us out from underneath so we dig it don't get surprised by a fund that just suddenly disappears in the middle of the night on us either yeah I like that okay DK we will though still be looking at levy increases so just like I'm just putting that out there I'm saying for building DK I've said before but because we're having this discussion and we're talking about the franchise fee instead of incrementally going up over a period of years I agree with C manager Lee's and staffs approach to sort of bite the bullet get it set and put it into place so we don't have to increase it in the future we we can revisit these numbers but I asked for them about a year ago because a hundred percent of everybody in the city pays the franchise fee and we get to keep it all we don't get to send at the st. Paul and get a portion back the chart that I was given a dollar increase in franchise fee equates to a dollar roughly a dollar forty decrease in the levy so to council member shirtz point earlier they're all tax increases absolutely no one will debate that I certainly won't this is a tax increase to lower another tax revenue stream more because everybody pays and we get to keep it all from the commercial side which I actually forgot about that so another another added benefit to this the other thing is is we've never fully funded the depreciation of the Ames Center in fact we went years not hardly funding anything we are basically going on well it's all new hopefully the last a while and then we started funding it partially but we've never fully funded and we are in dire need of carpet which ain't a replacement and there's other things that are wearing out that we need to do so I'm very supportive of this plan because it puts in place once and for all a funding mechanism that everybody in the city is paying towards that eliminates the pressures on the levy for funding all these maintenance things and I think it's more predictable and and hopefully we don't have to touch it for many years to come so I agree with this it's a philosophy I've been advocating ever since we took up the franchise fee and I'm delighted that we are moving forward on it I think the original idea of the franchise fee I brought forward as I've also wanted to eliminate the special assessments when we do road projects and I still want to eliminate that as other cities have the franchise fee was used in other cities to this step at a time let's let's just do this and I'm glad to hear some positive Oh God you know out of our city if you've looked at all of them it's our assessments are pretty low in comparison to others and everybody gets the benefit because it also has an improvement on their property it increases the value so let's just focus on this as we move forward I so Kelly so this slide just shows you how the current Ames center operation debt service funding structure works we have levies and funding sources from multiple areas they're going into the aim Center fund and into the debt service fund they go from the ain't Center fund to the debt service fund that levies and the from in the general fund so all that is just would turn into this yeah so in the aim Center enterprise fund you would have the there's a there is some general fund operational support but that would be reduced and the host fees would go in there and that would pay for operations in capital you could look at that finance plan and you could see here's the operations and here the capital needs in that plan and it pays down that 1.2 million dollar advance over two years so this is gonna show not only operations but our debt service on the center itself is one dollar the debt service is in the debt service fund yeah so that so that is funded by the debt service levy so you got to two different funds yeah and instead of all these funds that transfer between each other which there was a purpose for that as it was set up nicely done yeah we I don't know if you want to go through this but in the finance plan this is where you will see that happen it's and of course teeny little numbers and this is last year's finance plan but there's a in the plan there's a section in the middle that talks about where the transfers are coming in and where it goes out to the debt service fund that stuff just that would go away for the future yeah we will it was just leave capital yeah very and there we are okay so I thought I had seen this at some point in the last 12 months what when does are when are we free and clear on our debt service to them sir the aim center was originally a 20-year bond and we just refunded in 2018 I think we did two sets of refunding for so to what we read about we have more about ten more years eight more years eight did I say eight with that refunding was there a slight reduction in that initial 20-year term to pay it off it was maybe one year yeah we did not we kept the same structure and same bunny but we were able to save a million two overall and we do that whenever we issue bonds we put a call feature in it about halfway through the bond so if we have a 20-year bond at about ten years we can call the bonds and refinance them issue new bonds when we're issuing new bonds instead of a 20-year bond it would be a ten-year bond to to do the remaining ten years and so because interest rates are usually short lower for that and if the market changes we're able to have some savings at that point in time sometimes the market doesn't work for us in that way but it has so that's where we got the savings and that we refunded what was originally do in years 10 through 20 with a new ten-year bond Thank You G no I was just insistent okay so Kelly you want us to have a discussion on the max tax and it is at six point zero yes and also four dollars on the on the fee but the max tax only gets at the property tax that's the combined city and and again 86% CDA incidences that's both so any thoughts or are you well two things that was a great presentation it was very clear people can understand what was going on and you guys got really crave this year this was some of the things that came out of this for I'm amazed that we were going to be able to make some of the changes you're doing and and reduce the ad a level at the same time and still funny EDA pretty amazing you did a nice job on it I I think at six percent I'm and I've been I'm in good shape on this one okay Vince I don't have anything at this right now Cara let me say that first of all so on the franchise fees and I and I realize this is on the max tax however this is part of it on the franchise fees I do like that it is going towards debt reduction I like how that is structured I do like that it stays in the city that we're not donating it to pirates that just come along and plunder us I also like that it's very transparent you know it it was a buck you know on your thing per meter so two dollars a month they're gonna see it's an $8 a month bill so like it's just right there residents can can see that I do like that there would be less bonding because you know when you're when you're borrowing and bonding and all that kind of stuff that's not always the best position to be in so if it was just if we were just breaking off the franchise fee that would actually be something that I would be in because of of those particular issues and because it's because of the particular areas that it's going to which are core functions of our city when we're looking at the max tax and to have that still be 6% although I realize that there's you know the voodoo math that we have that goes on that I'm still still not in favor of I I think it is too high I have concerns about our liabilities that we can't change which is our staffing and our pensions and not and all of those kinds of things so I have concerns about the sustainability of that I'm looking forward at the levels that we have to do with our fire and rescue and it's not the fire side it's it's the medical side and and that is just flat-out not sustainable and and I we don't have a solution at this moment so I'm looking at all those things in the in the future and that makes me extremely cautious I am also looking at how our economy is going and I don't think we're as rock-solid as or as optimistic as as perhaps some people are feeling or portraying that and that makes me a lot more cautious as well so that's where I stand on it dan Keeley well the six percent because we're only up by any comparable year this is a number and it's the six percent given the the TIF decertification and I believe the slide points to a potential 8% but as a result of the impacts of the franchise fee the shifting all good things all probably very complicated and difficult to really for anybody to understand because it's moving things around within our structural budget to put them in a better place to have them funded better more stable II in a more stable manner sorry and everything I heard tonight was all good financial decisions the the end result is a bigger increase on taxpayers that I've then I've ever wanted to support in the past at the same time we have issues and things that are also different than in the past as Madame mayor pointed out we have a compensation study that hadn't been done for 30 years we found out that we have people that are significantly and slightly and in varying degrees of being underpaid by compared by comparison to all other cities of our size of our sister size of our comparable size so we have a we have a catch up that we have to do it's sometimes I wonder how did we retain all these people all these years but as as most people are aware of there's not a survey out there where the people said salaries number one and nothing else matters salaries usually number three or four behind working conditions benefits culture of the company etc and Burnsville is a great example of people work here because they love working in a healthy open team environment where they get a lot of support and that's more important than well I could make more if I jumped over to this other city to do the same job but that can you can only live on that for so long and we're probably not gonna do another compensation study for a while I don't know if we're gonna go another thirty years but maybe ten or so but hopefully this will put us in a position where we don't have to do one or even if we do one it doesn't result in such a large impact to cost in one given year or over multiple years which city manager Lee and staff is recommending that we sort of phase it in which I think is the right thing to do there's obviously if you have good people working they expect a raise in in today's economy you know they deserve a raise if they've done a good job they deserve a raise and we have I think your number was seventy percent of the budget is staffing and so it's labor and benefits and so that's the big sauce tractor I mean it's a big cost driver with companies it's a big cost driver with governments no difference so we're dealing with the benefits health insurance increases and wage increases and etc so there's this you know the there's a three or four percent that we can't walk away from and I do want to reflect back we spent the last 10 years or so twelve years dealing with a recessionary period where we we really cut everything that was non-essential and got ourselves an extremely lean operating position and we didn't add staff for many years even through the expansion because we weren't necessarily expanding because we didn't have available land and/or we didn't have a policy that that need you know that eventually got changed we had a policy in place that sort of pent up that demand now we do and so we have a development or an economic development that we have to invest in before we're going to see the benefit of the expanding tax pie which then brings property tax relief and it's not reflected in your forecast because you can't you can't put a bunch of you know things that we know some about but not all about until it's built you can't bank on it and and and you can't present it saying well look at we've got another 100 million worth of new money coming in in about four years so we'll just you know put that as so you can you can only see what cost drivers are in those forecasts you really can't see all that revenue benefit that we're gonna get and so I expect some much better years in a couple I wish that the county were closer to reality when it comes to assessing the valuation and bringing those projects on the the tax rolls as I noted earlier but we are living within the system that it exists today and there's nothing we can do to change that so we have to wait a few years but all that work and the staffing that Jenny's Department needs to support all of these crane projects I love saying that Dan I know you do too like there's cranes in the air and that's a that's a sign of prosperity for a city to be building and it's great for us so this is this is one of those years where I made a commitment that we would fix rotten boards and buildings and our parks that we've put that off for many many years and we sort of survived and harvested the benefit of those buildings and put off parks for long enough and it's time that we give that a little bit of attention and funding to get those fixed and so you put all those things together and there's just no way that we're gonna have a two and a half or three or three and a half percent levy increase there's a few more things going on today that we have to bite the bullet and absorb I do believe in two years a 2021 s budget and even 2022 especially we're going to see a lot better budget picture and part of that too is the moves that we just discussed that we're just presented and thank you that was a fantastic presentation best by far best ever and thank you for that those shifts are gonna put us in a position where we can be bringing a lower levy proposal to our residents and businesses in the future so with the same cost pressures but a few other things that are going to be in place that we won't have what we have this year where we have our normal cost drivers and we have economic development and we have a one-time adjustment with our compensation study and catching up in parks and all these other things that we we really have to do and it's time to do it this year I believe so I'm I'm not thrilled about supporting it 6% but I know it why I understand all the components and I believe every single piece of those components is what taxpayers expressed to expect us to do to take care of the assets of the city and compensate people people who have done a good job and we want to continue to work for Burnsville so I will support it thank you so I will support this budget as well as I look at everything that you presented and gone through it I can and you that every year Kelly you improve the presentation and you have worked very hard so that our people because I would say remember we're you're presenting to us but you're also presenting to our folks and you've taken the internal speak out of it and even in your slides people will understand what we're talking about so when you talk about how we're spending the people's money it's been very clear how we're spending the people's money it's taking care of their assets and you talk about that we are a service organization so it's said that we're a service organization we have one product it's called water and that's a different fund but we are a service organization and we have capital investments that we have to make so that the people's assets are preserved maintained and improved and we also take care of the debt we have a triple-a bond rating and that is something that a city our size and age is very hard and we held it through the recession and will continue to hold that but it is about having good financial management having a five-year budget plan having a capital approvement plan that's a five-year and making long-term investments in the city all of that has a direct correlation to how other people see us and those are the rating agencies and where they rate our economic vitality and our marketability so thank you for all of that there are a lot when you are a city our size there are a lot of things to take care of and when I talk to people about what we take care of I said there are more miles under the ground that you don't see then there is on top of the brown is there correct I mean you've got you've got sewer lines you've got water lines stormwater drainage and all of those things that are under the ground that people don't see but we have to take care of them and so there are a lot of things especially also in your budget and how you talk about how the budget what it's going to accomplish thank you because that helps people to understand and they can go to our website and pull this background and all of the slides so that they will understand and they can also call if they have any questions so with everything I am proud of this city and if we don't take care of it then we can say you belong here but people might not want to come here if it's not well cared for and it doesn't have the visual appeal or the desirability to have your business here or to live here so we have a big job to make sure that we do that and to make sure that we have the services that people expect us to deliver so with that thank you very much I'm in support of it it's not that we all like it but it costs money even cost money for your house for all the repairs you had a lot of repairs that you had to do on your townhouse so all of us had to do a lot of repairs in our homes everybody does and this is one big house that we're taking use and so thank you for the good work all of you Melanie and staff I know I see those emails from people and also a resident who came and said thank you to staff for being you'd go over and above you go over and take care of somebody's house when they think it's flooding and I don't know how many times you've gone out but you got it resolved best yes you do all of that one point I want to reiterate the slide where you pointed out that this proposal equated to about a three and I have 3.5 3.4 3 points depending on the value of the house that I think about in this terms the the 6% number which is really more like four and a half is in my my opinion you know this is a bad year and yet in a you know in a bad year from a levy standpoint were affecting about a three point three to four percent increase in a person's property taxes and we're handling an enormous amount of costs in this particular cycle so I think that's a testament to how you've managed the finances and moving those shifts where they need to be for a long-term sustainability and the net impact on the property owner is pretty minimal in a pretty tough year yeah and I'm very proud that we have always been fiscally response of conservative but socially responsible because we need to take care of the people's assets so thank you very much so Melanie and stop that for max tax you will bring back a max tax of six percent okay we don't I did I did I did Vinson she passed I did ask him I did ask him this is our job I know and I've listened and I've asked questions along the way I'm drinking through a fire hose right now a little bit I assume we'll get into department budgets and we're specifically and all we're doing is the max tax and then we really do the deep dive that's so this is your first budget we'll do the dive so this is the max tax we can't go above it hmm okay thank you so okay I just wanted to say to thank you for all of the nice comments what I really wanted to share with all team Melanie's direction and Greg's direction and though all the work that all of the management team has done working on it it really is a big team effort and and kudos to everyone so yeah okay and I and I want people to also understand that inside this organization there is a lot of transparency and inclusion because you have 50 budget prepares do you still have 50 budget preparers throughout the whole organization there there are a lot of people that prepare at some level some level of detail so everybody understands how much it takes to run this organ to run the city because that's exactly what it it is so so thank you to all of you to Melanie Kelly and all the staff in the city of Birdsville thank you so much okay you have your directions for the next council meeting and the next item on the agenda is the community builders Award nomination so yeah thank you for that Community Builder that we're about to look at I couldn't find this guy's name to save my life and you did so thank you [Laughter] okay did you want to recess Kara okay [Music] okay we'll move on to the next item and the next item on our agenda is the community builders award and before us members of the council are 12 nominations and all of the candidates meet the policy and so you're it is your pleasure do you want to acknowledge all 12 as community builders or did you want I like them did you want to when you say acknowledge all 12 acknowledge individually read them off or just know that you wouldn't this is the community builders that we will award its king if anybody has any issues with any of the twelve well that's what I asked they met and according to the analysis that our staff did in looking at all of the nominations they all meet the policy I have no problem with them I think this is a great way to highlight and recognize folks in our community who sort of step out of the ordinary and do the extraordinary and in all types of ways and so they all appear to be great nominations I don't have any problem it's probably the largest number we've ever had one it is it is good you're good you're good mm-hmm okay so Melanie of you we will award all commute all 12 community need emotion we know it needs so that yeah move to approve all 12 second okay there's a motion in a second to approve all 12 nominees to be community builders all in favor please say aye opposed say nay motion carries okay I don't remember like oh we do that's right we do because you're gonna have to get the plaques and everything and then we do yeah and we do that yeah okay now we go on to the first item on the round table and items on a round table are brought before us so that we can say yeah go forward with it or NN staff will do some work but the first one is winter lighting and I see that Ryan has already done some work so Dan Keely this was something that you wanted deadlines well the Thank You Madame Mary council I'm this is not I can't take credit somebody not my idea I'm bringing it forward but I've heard this from many people over the years and I just decided this was a year that I wanted to suggest it so I did just jot some notes of my thoughts on it and pass it about so I didn't necessarily have to repeat them all but I will just run through quickly but one of the things that really caught maybe was a trigger for this as I thought mm-hmm this could save money because we spend a lot of labour putting him all up and then taking him all down and then putting him up and taking about every year and so I did a little research as I noted down further of another city that took it up and did actually save money so I think there is some potential budget savings in there I do believe that keeps the Heartless city beautiful every night all year long the lights gets so many compliments in people this is kind of where this came from people say you know why can't they just leave these up you around a lot of downtown areas do so this is not a new idea the meta mayor spoke to me and said you know and brought up some great concerns and like okay the holds a tree branch growth the bloom in the summer time is gonna affect leave the lights that write the leaf bloom bloom or bleed and the branches are gonna grow so the lights might need to be adjusted every couple years or when they're put up put up with the idea that you know with the leaf bloom in the spring and summer that that's going to affect how the lights are gonna look so that's something to consider also I sure upper mounted mayor brought up a good point about the whole lighting ceremony and I thought about that but the lighting ceremony in niccola Commons Park is a very special celebration for the city and we all cherish it and it's a it's a great community bring together and enjoy a hot chocolate and cookies and song and then and then flipped a switch one of the things I've noted and people have also made a lot of comments over the years to me is white aren't all the trees in nickel Commons lit up because it's only a select and there's actually large blocks of trees that aren't part of the lighting and and I think we've shortchanged that whole effect in ceremony and the lighting of that part because it isn't all the trees and I'm not sure I believe I asked city manager Li this earlier today if there could be some information pulled together and that is what Ryan has done and thank you very much Ryan for literally you know on the day of the meeting accepting this a request and actually jumping in and getting all kinds of great information and I'll just knock these last few out and you can take it away I do believe the lights in Nicolette Commons Park or mostly all colors they're beautiful they really set themselves apart from the boulevard lights which are predominantly poor they are all just white twinkly lights Hamilton Ohio did take this up in 2018 as a matter of fact feedback they got from the entire community was mostly positive the items like you know it felt safer due to more lights as a much warmer feel more welcoming year round a festive hometown feeling I think those are all the reasons that most downtown's do put lights on trees and leave them up your own because they wrote they really want that to be what the messages that they send and then the cost savings in Hamilton they actually found that the cost was lower to keep them on compared to the cost of installing and removing and they only had one long strip of street there call it their main street that had lights on trees and so we would have quite a bit more more than likely which actually could actually just actually be a slightly bigger savings more labor more trees they do LED lights just as we do so I wanted to bring it forward let the council discuss and and see if there's a support for for this idea again I'm not bringing up anything that is new and innovative I've heard this every year that those lights have been on the boulevard I have heard from residents telling me why can't we keep it up all year long and I just decided us again this year I would bring it to the council and see if council was has thoughts on it so maybe if mr. Pierson would like to present her yeah and then we can all comment on sure because what I said is that people will not be able to see the lights because of all of them foliage right yep so placing lights is important and dusk is about 9 o'clock and dawn is about 5:30 not too many people are going to see it between dusk and dawn and so but Ryan sure yeah but the other part also is that we and like I said to you we have a partnership with a community foundation and the reason why they have blocks of trees that are not in Nicollet come it's all about costs and how to raise that money when they're also raising it for the for the snowflakes Ryan take it away all right there's been lots of comments on Kelly's presentation on well was thought out and how professional I can't go to you I was literally putting together well I'm not expecting those same comments so oh so the holiday light oh it's really well thought oh maybe just executions vacuuming but we'll do the best we can here so the holiday lighting program we currently have lighting from Thanksgiving to mid-february and Hoc includes tree lighting street lighting nikla Commons Park so we got the trees we have about 25 that we do light we don't light about 30 as I spend discussed and we bring in the one big holiday Christmas tree and it really needs some help because it always gets shorted every time it rains and then it's not lit up it is in the capital plan for we're gonna limp it along one more year and then it's mostly out last year it was hot and that's why we're proposed mistakenly fix this wire so many different times and then also the oven we put the snowflakes up on the light poles as well the costs of the program that we have for the last three years have fluctuated between seventy three thousand and eighty five thousand dollars per year the Foundation provides about thirty five thousand of that and then the city pays the remaining costs so when we start talking about lighting up the boulevards and medians right off the bat the biggest challenge we have is can you see this extension cords there so we have about one receptacle for two to three some cases for trees so the this in the winter time we put the extension cords down and they they do short out a fair amount but we don't have the mowing tripping all those sorts of hazards that are associated with it so to go forth now I would it would basically make them all boulevards I don't wanna get too dramatic but on mobile to do it you know we did be a major ordeal yes you wanna you want to put electricity under the ground and all of that and that's a big cost that would be a very large cost job so that's the number one overarching challenge that this would have the other things that I would say is right the first bullet when I say it's ready to be removed like last year we probably had 2/3 or third of the lights out and we just made the decision just okay let's keep it till February 15th yeah the system was ready to be taken down it was faltering so then if we were to try to do this year round the cost of that 73 to 85 would go up because we won't be okay that's just limping along for two more weeks three more weeks we would be having to replace more of them we'd be having more electrician costs so that's that's the case the system it does function nice but by the time that we're ready to take him down it's ready to be taken down we think in the summertime that with the wind and the foliage gonna be blowing around a lot more because there's a lot more surface area with the leaves so it's gonna result in more times that we have to put the lights back together and reconnect them they're just me moving around a lot more just so you know we do in wintertime when this is up we do have a seasonal on our Park area code every Monday through Friday before the lights come out and take a look to see what what is on what's off can the staff go and plug all does this plug it back in or do we have to have the electrician that's part of the yearly contract that we have go and actually fix something so we'd have that we'd have to do and obviously as you stayed on is now at five so do we have a seasonal coming in at 4:30 that type of situation to make sure that we can inspect the system and then we're busier in the heart of the city we've added the two party on the plaza events stressing that those folks are we not didn't add anybody but if we add this onto the plate that is going to be a significant driver windy days they would probably require a couple people all day long to reap with the lights back up and put it back together I was already discussed well the leaves blocked the lights and the shorter duration so these are just considerations my job isn't to say no no no no no but it is to reality yeah to discuss what some of the stuff that we put together and it's so I guess that my job isn't no no no it's what can we do so we would either and we would recommend either just continuing with the current holiday lighting program taking it down or if if we wanted to try something out consider a significantly smaller area and that would focus on the niccola Commons Park one side 126th Street we aren't thinking we can get a cost savings out of this we think there would be a cost escalation to run it unfortunately we could look into the situation there I don't know if it's because of the season you know the winter that we have here maybe compared to Ohio they don't have quite of the same situations where their lighting system is struggling at the end of the winter time or not but like I said I we think it would be a cost increase to keep it all year-round so to give this is pretty rough I wish I could have had this out wider I apologize but this just goes through what's lit up where when so those yellow hablo hablas yes thank you are those lights have lights in the ground that will like shoot up into some birch trees so those are year-round lit now but they aren't between cleese they're just lights that shoot up so that's your own that's the Iran lighting we have on trees so when we do holiday lighting you can see the yellows are the same in the same spot those continue to have the up lighting and then the Reds are where the lights are put on to the trees that exist in there what it doesn't show is the holiday light in the kind of in the middle or the the halt the big holiday tree and then the black area is the air is that or do not have receptacles in a reasonable way to light those up and not create tripping hazards so the black areas are dark as far as tree lights are concerned and then the two long narrow ones on Nickelodeon 126th Street are Boulevard lights that are adjacent to the park that have lighting on them and one nice thing on 126th Street they they each light has its own receptacle like in a little box out so that we wish the whole system was designed that way unfortunately it isn't the one on Nicollet as extension cords going up and down I'll keep going so if if we wanted to try do a trial this this is what we'd recommend that we think would be in the neighborhood of $10,000 more to do would be to basically keep the the lighting that we have it - the niccola Avenue section because that would have the cord problem we could continue with the 126th Street because those have the receptacles right next to the tree so that would be our proposal that's very rough but we we would have to we would obviously be keeping this these lights in good condition all throughout there would be no letting it get ready to be taken down in February obviously because we know that we'd be trying to take it up but our rough estimate on staff time and additional contracting would be somewhere you know a little electricity they're all LEDs electricity is pretty minor but the lights still do burn out here and there and so that's that's what our recommended concept would be I mean idea you know from our staffing standpoint we do have like things with writing the plasma come and they are already doing more down there with the same amount of staffing so we don't need this but obviously we're here to try to figure out ways to do what you want to do so that is what I had put together thank you it was very good information I thought and this is a want not a need the the way that lights are put on the tree right now they're basically you know encircling branches I've noticed in other cities for year-round lights they wrap the trunk and then they go out on major branches so it illuminates but it's it's more trunk and branch source lighting as opposed to just sort of hanging around you know I could deal Christmas tree in the way we do our lights now with that for the trees where there is a receptacle closeby would that be a better way to attach lights where they're not wind blowing him off and you know weather affected and maybe could preserve their their life expectancy on the tree because they're not going to be exposed to being whipped around and you know what's the wind blows that kind of stuff I'd have to ask something that I would say staff would need to take a look at because it'll probably have a lot more cost to fill unit because they'll be need a lot more lights to be wrapped around the trunk and into the so I think that I don't know whether this is something that you Oh go well I was just gonna comment on a few things because I saw those cords earlier and started thinking about the whole lighting project in the heart of the city and how do we handle that I will tell you if you go down to E Street or rice Park in the summer you see those lights just fine that's not not an issue seeing them with leaves or anything so I mean you can go check those out I've talked a lot of business owners for the heart of the city and a lot of them would like to see our lights on all the time down there you know as we're as we're developing it and getting into the resurgence of development down there with all the apartments we're gonna be putting a lot of residents in that area and this has all been supposed to be a walkable urban type environment which is starting to happen and as people start moving in we're gonna see a lot more foot traffic on the street down there and so I I'm kind of looking at this more of the long term and the long term in my mind would require us to do some hard wiring in that area and the long term down there may we have a look at maybe up lighting in the industry because those trees are gonna grow eventually some of them are gonna be hard to rap anyways we're in the branches but but you have uh plating where you can change the colors throughout the year for different events in this and that and it gives you kind of streetscape where people are walking down and it's it's a well-lit area that that looks nice and but it's a it's a long-term thing this it's I'm not interested in spending an extra ten thousand dollars a year to light the park but I am interested in us in developing something in that area that makes it much more pedestrian friendly and an area that you do want to walk around in and if if you have well-lit streets that look nice the aesthetics of it with all the things going on in that area I think that really will benefit the city and as a whole and all the new residents are moving down there I mean we we've changed a lot of the zonings in this area we know there's gonna be a lot more mixed juice multi-housing coming to us I mean it's just gonna happen down there and I think we need to start preparing for the future of what the heart of the city is and so it may cost more but look at as long-term and and see where it's at and in Sabich something be faced in I mean that's just one way to look at it and mm-hmm I agree and our percent I think you know mr. Peterson brought out some great obstacles to get where we were but the some of us would like to get to councilmember Schultz noted solar up lighting and it really and that would be better because as a tree grows then the you know the the wires if you wrap the trunk they don't have to be rewrapped or wrapped in bungee wire lights so I can expand with it but up lighting can create really the same effects and I really do like the idea of LED lighting that can change color yep just like the 35 bridge and some other bridges that have that mean that's fantastic so we can aim Center absolutely so there's and so maybe this is a better discussion I'm with you as a capital long-term where we start addressing sections a little at and can do it over a period of years where we put the wiring in to have the up lighting and that same wiring could then feed the holiday lights if we stay with the current timeline of install and and take down having those receptacles at the base of the tree are gonna make that a better scenario so either way I guess in the broader scope I I agree with counsel murugesan's perspective that it's not just about temporary fix in the park because it's the Boulevard lights that everyone is asking how do we keep these on all year I love your idea though it's great Thank You Melanie madam mayor and council one thing to perhaps think about as we think about a long term solutions what and what the goals of the council are I believe we have an assessment for the hoc for a higher and higher level of service and right now the lighting doesn't fall within that and I think it's probably because it's a seasonal and it's we've got some community foundation dollars that offset that but I think that is a question to discuss as the funding source is it wrapped into the assessment pot or is it funded through general levy dollars I would like to see sin because it's what we're looking at is how do we continue to improve the heart of the city and lighting is one of those elements and electricity I remember when we started all of this and electricity was the biggest obstacle because it wasn't factored in when we were putting it in and so when we were doing all of this so from my perspective I agree with councilmember Gustafson but I would like to see a long-term plan brought back before us what would that look like if you're going to put electricity in the boulevards and how do you phase that in if you just go the parkway one year and then go down Nicollet and then in the park what would that look like but it needs to be a long-term capital investment and and but we need to see that that work so I'm not seeing that this is going to come back to us while we're in the midst of budgets but it'll probably next year but the thing is what is that going to look like and how is it going to affect the budget because I'm looking at how many dollars is 1% and what does that change so does it go into the infrastructure trust fund no it doesn't because it's not roads but how is it going to be funded and I don't know if you're going to look at a higher level of service and you're going to put it on the backs of those of us who live in the heart of this city you better be a big public hearing and conversation but if it's on a capital plan how is that phased in and what that cost is going to be and then it's the maintenance and all of that right we do studies for these all kinds of different things like this my recommendation would be then to put something that cap my plan for 2020 funders to review the study for this and then you know some rap solar you know maybe maybe the answer is solar up lighting and we don't have to do a bunch of us so we need an expert to say is that feasible or not so what we could do is bring forth these you know get something in the capital improvement to do a study and they would provide the financial aspect and we could go through both at the same time so and we just got put into the solar smart solar yeah yeah solar smart because of all the work that we've done in our sustainability and that's another but unless you do the work we don't know right really don't know but if it's in a capital improvement plan then I'm okay now it is very transparent and we know what the cost is before we vote on anything and say go forward thank you very much sure we'll bring 4-h every year thank you you turn me on okay the next item on the on the round table is adding an additional night to unite dan this is yours if you flip your handouts over on the other side you'll find those related to this this was base this idea is based in finding a way to do something that is that certainly seems in all the years I've gone out as a council member to five parties in the first Monday in August it is a phenomenal gathering of neighborhoods and enjoying yard games and fellowship around a barbecue or a potluck and it's such a great event know it obviously comes with cost to the city but I wanted to explore building on this momentum of adding more festivals that we've done which have nothing have been nothing but great positive feedback generated great positive feedback so in the springtime and this was a city manager Lee's idea talking about well if you want to do another one of these and it really becomes a kickoff to spring then maybe something tight around the isle of Burnsville week and there's some discussions on bringing some new thought process and ideas to to that event so I started looking at well what would we call it what would it be is there a is there an existing spring version of the fall National Night Out or night-to-night and there is a neighborhood night out and that's used by some cities in the country in early August some use it in July and it's not maybe as widely known as night to night or national night out but for instance West sites uses neighborhood night out a week earlier than 99 National Night Out East Lansing uses it in late July so I my thought was national neighborhood night out could be something that we could consider using in the spring tying into Isle of Burnsville week and I threw down a couple ideas I love Burnsville neighborhood night out yeah as part of the event or you belong here neighborhood night out hanging into our new logo or motto so I just it's it's it's such a once-a-year phenomenal event I thought why can't we do it more than once right why can't we do one at the beginning of summer to kick off summer and then because we do one in August which is sort of getting to the end of summer it's close but we still have hopefully some summer left but so anyway I wanted to bring bring forth the idea and see if the thoughts on the council if this is something that makes sense and maybe can be part of the aisle of Burnsville week I like the Isle of Burnsville neighborhood night but the thing is I'd like to have staff take a look and see what is the cost yeah well we know it is but we know what we're funding with national nature yeah but we know what that is and how big it is but let's find out what is it go what does it mean and what is it going to cost and then you know you're gonna have to work with our block captain's also to do two parties from each neighborhood I mean because one in this in this in the in the early summer and then wanted and and I think this is where we have to talk with them but I'm I like the idea of Isla Burnsville night out neighborhood night but the thing is it's more than just the five of us sitting here it means our staff needs to take a look at it our community needs to take a look at it and they're the ones who are going to put the parties together and the other thing is that you know that right after night to unite that our public safety has picked following that I go to them they're filled with people and we have wonderful and it's another time to explore all of that there was a lot of stuff going on in a city so I think it needs our staff to take a look at all of that that they're doing throughout the summer I did talk about this with some of the folks that I interacted with it nightie-night and just instantly really cause I'd be great we love this again this is what everyone seems to love 1999 a tional I know and so that sort of was the inspiration of saying why can't we do a second one okay so with what you say and also with what the mayor has noted about the fire the safety picnics that happen the day after and we've incorporated some new festivals if if you would take a consider a friendly amendment this is a good open discussion I mean my suggestion would be that we take a look at all of our events that we're doing through the year and look at them with fresh eyes when their dates are when they're held together because again so we have 19 unites and then right away we have those public safety picnics and we are there up to the park in the park do more of a strategic look at how do these all fit together how can they leverage them where are some moles and if there are lulls what could be put in place are there things that could be consolidated so that would be my friendly amendment is that we look at not just this but let's take a wider look yeah yeah rather than a piecemeal right are you cool with that her absolutely well I think it's having staff take a look at that all of these things all have a cost yes to them and the other is that they all have human source cost and then it also has community investment in all of that so I like the idea of taking all of the things that we do and we look at the investment that the city puts into it and then the investment of our partners you have the International Festival and their investment into all of that now art and all that jazz and all of the investment that goes into that and the heart of the city race and the fire muster and there's all these costs and they're all wonderful then we need to do it but I think we need to be very thoughtful about all of that and take a look and see what does that mean I know that the return on all of that is the community engagement and but the thing is let's look at not only the the financial costs but the human resource cost and the community cost that that's all a part of it so we need staff to do some work yeah I I really appreciate city manager Li bringing for the suggestion of Isla Burnsville week because I think I'll of Burnsville week needs a refresh I think it needs updating pretty badly I think it's it's kind of it needs something else and this could be the thing that actually gives it some brings it back to some significance and it it's you know there's one party on the plaza that is connected to to them and the party on the plaza enriches the reading because it's connected it's on a Thursday night and it's just evening and it just extends the the rocking reading comments and that's a that's a festival that brings everybody to one place the thing I like about and I don't know maybe this is the only one this is the one that gets always you stay in your neighborhood and you get the neighborhoods together rather than trying to bring you know the whole city to one place you're allowing them to have their own little festival in their neighborhood and bringing the neighborhoods together yeah well I like the idea of getting our community together as often as we can and I love Bernthal week is probably is a good week for it because there's a kickoff of arsons our festive season and our summer festival season and burns ball really is what it is I mean you look what we just went through this this last summer we had a ton of activity in this city and not only just what the city did but bar kill and Center did that car thing with her cronies thing and the food truck but all these different things were happening one thing one thing I noticed this year and it really completed out well at the fire muster the crowds at the fire muster were fabulous this year they're really good and I just got the sense that because we've been doing so many things to bring our community together our community is just starting to attend more things I feel I really do feel that just stepping up and showing up and all the things that are happening which is very good for us so if we can work out some detail on that I mean I think it would be a lot of fun and and I do like the National Night Out because that's always I always get a couple double digs I'm so what I'm hearing then there's consensus are you okay with having staff doing some work and bringing back I don't think for us to take a look at and and we really have some good idea of the costs involved one thing I think you could look at I know it's a lot of work to get all those neighborhood parties together but we have a lot of parks that sit within those neighborhoods so maybe you could look at hosting those within our city parks you know they have we started that our staff started the pop outs those are good you know in a different parks now and the people in the neighborhood recommended their parks to be the one for the next pop up which is nice it gets the community engaged and they say oh let's have a pop up at my our park and the spirit of this I think that might be something that can - is you do a night out here Park mm-hmm I like that and we have seventy three seventy seven or seventy nine parks and how many parties neighborhood parties were registered so we were you know and the parks are bigger than someone's front yard for the most part so you really could you've got you could the number of parties in have and just go to the nearest park and the park can handle pretty much all of those let's take a look at it and come back with information Melandri no madam Erin comes late I like the ice we've got a lot of good momentum so what I'm hearing is that we want to continue to build that so I'll go back to staff and see you know what do we already have in the queue what can we build on and how can we kind of develop a be a more broad master calendar of events because I really like the idea with when we had the the parties in the plaza that staff came up with the idea of using the rocking reading at Nicollet Commons Park and it's an add-on so it took it from all those little kids and now you got the big kids and it went into the night adults and stuff and and that wasn't that was an improvement who is an add-on an improvement so yeah if staff can take a look at it staff has great ideas I love the pop-ups and if you haven't gone to a pop-up in a park you need to go council members it's huh recommend to staff you're okay very good so that's it so it's Melanie get direction yes Ryan resident here's been here for three no flowers human she did raise her hand did you have something that you wanted to add is something to keep in mind as you're doing this welcome to the come to the so that our citizens can hear you and see you yeah I know and Donna you always have a nice party we get between 200 to 300 and you always have a nice hard night and understanding one thing to keep in mind for that if you're talking a second one is that's a budgetary item yeah and that's a major and large for us anyway in a lot of other communities I know that's a very large budgetary item so to put in a secondary there's a good chance you're gonna have to cut back somewhere on there so maybe it's a compromise maybe is that idea of the nearest park yeah conjoining in and I love the idea of I love burn fill week with it but I just wanted to bring that out because I know a lot of the rental communities that's very very much in there every year is that night to unite and I'm talking drilling out cooking the whole nine yards with it yeah no and I that's the reason why I said we need to understand what a what happens in a neighborhood the reason I know that is because I go to some of the apartments and it is a big thing and I've gone to yours and it's a big thing and it's a big expense for you all because you buy all of the the food and all of that yeah so just want to mention that when you're thinking of that that's just one thing that's all they take input from some of those yeah management companies on that too cuz we're always looking for more ways to get out and interact so don't forget about us because that may be something we can take back and we have multiple communities within yeah and Melanie perhaps a police with I think it's is it Dan Anderson who has the management of multiple housing management group but you're absolutely right and that's why I said we really need to have a better understanding of the cost of all of this not just our cost but the cost of the people yeah our neighbors our management company okay thank you so much Donna yeah all right reports do you have anything Vince fire master was this weekend mmm Friday was busier than Saturday but Saturday was still very busy and the rain held off just long enough to get us through the fireworks and then the dedicated and ly baited people stayed till the ending got wet and it was uh overall it was a very successful weekend we're still reconciling all of our numbers but from first glance it seems like we did almost as well as we did in 17 when we went free so it was good very good night we can excellent I agree the fire monster was really good this year I was very impressed on Saturday after the parade - just they just kept coming in - didn't stop it was amazing them so it was a lot of fun I have nothing to report I couldn't be at broadband last month and tomorrow's is canceled because we have a strategic meeting here in City Hall here in a week I believe so I'll have more to report on that after we have all that fun with four hours here in the city hall where else would you want to be here so DCC met we are still talking about if the county will want to take over administering and that's still looking like a big nope but we'll continue talks on that we also approved the the budget which we had given parameters on the budget and on the contract for on the contracts and they came in higher than we wanted but that's what they that's what they negotiated with and they negotiated in good faith so we reluctantly approved okay Dan the H OTC race the Harlan City race was Saturday morning I was at the fire muster sidenote Friday night and Saturday night and I don't remember a crowd that large on a Friday night in a decade I loved the new position of the stage which allowed an amphitheater effect up that hillside that has not that stage is usually the back that the amphitheater Hill is the back side of the stage and it's unused space so I think there's room for another couple thousand people to squeeze in there as we get as the fire monster gets bigger names in but it allowed people to enjoy some food and and converse but still hear the music without the speakers pointed right now I thought it was a great idea and it looked like more vendors than ever before great food selection there was a Texas barbecue there that I think Linda had ran into they done they have been doing the Eagan fourth of July for five or six years and she ran across them tried their food and said would you come to the fire muster and he did I eat there twice fantastic yeah just excellent so overall and I was there Saturday night and running to the car in the rain I wasn't one of the inebriated that stayed but say I make kids with grandkids but we it was a great fire muster overall part of the City race we ended up with 503 registered this year we actually had a run for Jordan group which is our current board chair her daughter lost her life in a car accident five years ago last year so there's a five year anniversary and she had a hundred and thirty more people there last year so they weren't there this year and so we had a tough road to hoe to be able to get to try and offset that hundred and thirty and keep our numbers we came within basically 20 so we were able to get a roughly a hundred and some additional people registered the growth was in the 15k it literally doubled in the 10k numbers were doubled there was increase in in the 5k as well but the we are trying to figure out you know where that came from I mean we did a lot of the same type of advertising tactics that we do every year is this is our eighth year and I think the only thing that I can point to that was different than any of the prior 7 years was the city's legacy status for this event triggered more City originated h.o.t see race branded ads Marty did a fantastic job and I can only think that that that was the difference-maker that gave us a big boost in general population non run for Jordan just everybody else boost because biggest year ever for the 15k and entries and the biggest year ever for the 10k and that's where we really like to see the growth is in those more serious runners and so very very pleased with how it turned out and we had we've gotten tremendous compliments and energy lots of new people were offering up unsolicited comments and feedback we did have some hiccups that we realized in our new location by the way we moved around the other side of the Ice Arena we recertified all three courses with a new finish and new starting points and we we just need to add more bathrooms we had two bathrooms and there was a line 25 deep for a solid hour almost putting our starts in jeopardy so we're gonna have five bathrooms over there next year and the stage orientation we're gonna move it so it's pointing at the crowd during registration where the crowds over in a vendor area and then at the finish line for awards afterwards and a couple other things like you know we started the 15 K's runners at 7:30 and at 8 roughly 8 we sent the 10k out and then 810 the 5k well the fast 15k runners were coming through and they had to skip over the other side of the road to get around this crowd of 5k so we did that was kind of like oh what were we thinking we got to fix that in the future so a few things that we're going to adjust but the new location and I'm really happy to give credit certainly always give credit where credit's due and this goes to skip Neen house our winner of the fire muster ken slip cohort volunteer work it was skip that said hey I just just thinking outside the box a little over a year ago you know there's a park over around the corner of the the Ice Arena and you could pretty much ice have your outdoor ice rink with the outdoor ice rink but there's a parking lot there you know you it would get you away from the fire muster so you're not pushed to get out of there for Kids Corner to come move in and Wow was it phenomenal great suggestion we took full advantage of it and and it's gonna allow us to really adjust our timing we're gonna probably we're talking about now actually doing the 15k at 7:45 and then 10 minutes later the 10k and 10 minutes later the 5k so we don't have that overlap and then we can have all our pre festivities beforehand we actually had to send the 15k runners out there was a 38 of them and then do some welcome madam mayor was there and welcomed the crowd and we did the check presentation the money raised for the Boys and Girls Club was fifty thousand which was ten thousand a higher than last year last year was ten thousand higher than a year before so we're very happy with the the overall and just fantastic energy and so many new faces Wow I couldn't couldn't be happier with how many new faces that we had show up and that we're just so thrilled to be there we had more teams than ever before and I've already talked to the owner of run and fun running store and I went there and bought a pair of shoes today and delivered his 5k third place win from last year he couldn't find her office and just gave up and it sat in my you know in her office and I finally I reached back out to him and and he wants to engage and there's a there's a moms who run out of Lakeville that say they have 90 in their running group and there was a bunch of them there but they'd like to get you know all of them they're so tremendous growth potential for the next year so with with this thing and so just so much better to have time and not to be trying to get to get D Awards in and rush offstage and get everything broken down and get out of the way for these vendors that are coming in for our muster and the in the kids corner and all that kind of stuff so overall skip thank you very very much you're a true Community Builder and and certainly great ken slip codeword winner the notes I had from our Metro cities I think we all went to those our last meetings I believe that all happened this week maybe we did there's only one thing I want to bring out about that I was very engaged I made the first meeting and Ryan covered me for the second meeting and he was there for the third meeting and it's always great to have staff with you we brought up that at the first and Ryan continued that discussion and made sure that it was discussed and part of the policy positions one of our legislative priorities is to have the authority to declutter group homes because it's in the best interest of the members of the group home to be in a community of single-family homes and not have two or three in a row which we had first class cities Duluth Rochester Minneapolis and st. Paul are allowed to keep them a quarter mile apart but we aren't and no one else in the state is so we buttoned up the language we ended up getting some feedback from a person who actually had a problem with it but also was on a committee with the League of Minnesota cities and the staff ran and got the League of Minnesota cities language on their policy position which was exactly stated the way we wanted ours ours was just stated in a different way and it was a little wasn't buttoned up as tight and so we voted to adopt the language but it was a lot of discussion probably that item was more discussion than any other and so the metro cities is going to advance that along with Liam Otis Otis cities to their boards for approval to push that so one of our key legislative positions is is taking a position with the Metro cities and leave men Association so we're thankful for the support hopefully we can get that legislation pushed through in the next legislative session and 835 is this Thursday Thursday and Dan will be covering for me as I'll be out of town and we had a presentation from Metro mobility at our Metro cities and talking about all of their opportunities and challenges so I won't get into detail I'm sure you all know about it but interesting innovative thinking to incorporate third-party private providers to to get uber and lyft to to be able to meet the needs and the changing needs and the and to further their on-demand service thank you so I was not able to attend the municipal legislative Commission but my staff cohort was there Greg absolutely yeah and from the from the first from the meeting before there was not much in terms of the legislative agenda moving forward was there anything else that you thought that was significant that we need to report on there was some discussion on recent conversation about the use of the use of permitting revenue and some of the reports that have come out recently a little bit of discussion on how that might be approached in terms of getting the appropriate information in the hands of legislators when it comes to when it comes to using accurate data to frame that disguise so that was that was about it man American yeah there was not much in terms of moving forward with the Met Council and on the policy level correct yeah if so okay very good so Melanie and Vince and Ryan and I are on the Savage Burnsville collaboration and so we had some legislative updates that we just talked about and had to do with the County Road 42 redevelopment plan in our Tiffin how we didn't prevail but we're going back we talked about the street infrastructure and that's going on and speed limit legislation that came back up again and we just you know and one of the things that Brad talked about was they didn't want to go and open that door because it might not result in what the residents might want with regard to you might want to lower the speed limit but when they do an analysis then it might be a higher speed limit so that was one of the things the others at County wrote 13 corridor and this is mostly what Savage reported on it was the corridor study from what 101 to Nicol it that whole study Annette's and the other one was the Dakota Yosemite project so those are long-term ongoing things we've been talking about it for a while and that study is going to continue then we reported on the Minnesota River quadrant and the waste management issue Cramer mining and material and freeway landfill you all know that so and then there was a report on the bridge and where it just an update on where all of that's at because the savage wanted to know and then the orange line and then we also talked about the Rose Bluff trail and the Lake Marion trail all of you know about that but because Savage is our partner and on the Rose Bluff and I don't know we don't get into savage all with the Lake Marion but they're residents who use the Lake Mary in also they'll be they'll be using that trail so we report it to them about it whereas the plan does so going into Savage the segment we're building that's right and then so we talked about that and then the other was we talked about some of the internal stuff BCA training and a laser fish because they wanted to do some they wanted to learn from what we've done and then we reported to them on our branding and marketing and the conclusions of all of that and then that was it was there anything else Melanie government madam air yeah yes I just want to add something would you please tell our communications staff in BC TV that this entire summer they did a fabulous job of getting the word out on everything that was going on in this city and that really I think it really did make a difference and I agree with you down about the legacy thing in that support system so since a long ways they did a great job absolutely we'll make sure that's a lot yeah and one of the things that Melanie and I have talked about is that that small group of people pump out so much because yeah the thing is is that the the branding is out of economic development but who-who did a lot of the implementation in the push out was Marty's team and he has such a small group of people and I know he had said that they were going to have to take a look at a long term plan on how they're going to do that yeah yeah yeah no they didn't they did an excellent job and um the branding and marketing is it's throughout the long organization so we're weaving it into everything we do so we can't do it without our communications people yeah and all of my speeches and presentation I am starting them out I talked to Marty and I say and I'm doing one with Uli real estate folks and I'm going to open it up with say all of you developers and Finance ears you belong in Burnsville and then I'll go through my presentation Ryan I just sat in on one of the branding meetings with the consultant and just AK what you said they were like they tried to find a weak spot and what they did they were amazed at how much work already puts out that was they weren't testing us that was that was real real stuff so I was yeah I said it to him but with melania and everybody else I mean they they've done just a phenomenal job so yes okay community foundation we're meeting one of the things as they've been working with a construction company and James to begin looking at the placement of the sculpture and all three pieces have already gone to the [Music] okay just went out of my head when they fire the phone the foundry foundry yeah yeah so all its going to look great it's all copper but so now they're working to begin the review of constructing and have been working with staff on the placement and how it's all going to happen so that's coming along they have transitioned we've transitioned from IDI to three people to do all of the raising of the money for the snowflakes and also for the lighting because they also needed to change the process because it had a process that was archaic perhaps because of the way the software's have changed but so you have three young guys who really have updated software and of course so they have a plan they have the meat and how to get a hold of everybody but also the follow up they have a they have a plan they're gonna execute it well so but those are really the highlights of all of them I think that's it because International Festival we did marvelous and I already reported on that you wanted to add something bad just a shout-out to Ryan and the streets department we had asked for some cones because I forgot that they already put out some to block lanes off and we ended up borrowing some cones for intersections from the fire muster kids corner they were small little orange cones but they worked perfectly and when I got out on the course as the bike lead in the 10k group and by the way the hills going up Parkwood from Traverse trail all the way 134th my wife carrie told me you're gonna have trouble you need to take a golf cart I said no I can do it boy was that trouble I had to stop a couple times and walk the bike fast but the the lead person passed me but I was able to stay ahead of everybody else the peloton anyway I got out on the travelers trail and come to find out there's cones blocking off the right-hand Lane had long stretches of travelers trail and other key roads where there's a lot of traffic so thank you very much they did put a bunch of cones out I wasn't expecting and it really made for a very very safe course and that was some of the comments that people said well I just love the course I felt safe it was really well marked and cordoned off basically so thank you very much to the entire streets department they did an outstanding job and PD was out there and forced at all the right intersections the the support from the city this year was was just incredible so thank you thank you Oh make sure they know people have to work on Melanie no matter Mary think we've covered it all okay if there's nothing else Megan you we stand adjourned