good evening I am calling the Monday May 1st 2023 parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting to order at 6 30 PM happy Mayday everyone summer is coming tonight's parks and other Resources Commission meeting will be held in person and virtually by using Zoom as chair I will be leading the parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting and the public is welcome to participate when invited throughout the meeting members of the public May attend the meeting in person or join via online on Zoom If you experience any audio problems we suggest you leave the meeting and then rejoin this usually fixes the issue additional instructions on how to participate are posted online at burnsvillemn.gov in the public meeting calendar as usual tonight's meeting is available for viewing on bctv and the City website if you're unable to participate this evening and would like to submit public testimony I encourage you to email your comments to City staff or mail your comments directly to City Hall now on to tonight's agenda tonight's first item is adoption of the agenda do any members of the commission have any changes to the agenda any changes all right hearing none um staff are there any changes tonight no changes perfect do I have an adopt motion for the adoption of the agenda so move second and all in favor aye anybody opposed all right we'll pass that one um and now for the approval of the minutes um other we're looking at the approval of the minutes for April 17 2023 parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting are there any changes to the minutes commissioners any changes from staff nothing from staff do I have an approval for the minutes so move the second second all in favor of any opposed and that motion passes um at this time are there any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak is anybody on Zoom oh sorry we usually have a huge following on systems we appear to have nobody on zoo all right it's perfect um and with that um we're gonna have the annual state of the Lakes report on surface water quality we have Mr Caleb Ashling here tonight to tell us about our likes welcome Caleb your look all right well thank you for having me tonight Commissioners uh my name is Caleb Ashling I'm a the natural resources specialist with the city of Burnsville which means part of my job is working with all the great lakes that we have here in town and my plan for tonight is just to give you an update on what's going on with water quality in our Lakes uh talk a little bit about some recent or upcoming projects on some of them and then it was also requested I believe from the commission to hear a little bit about uh fish as they relate to water quality so I'm going to hit on that a little bit as well uh so just a quick review of how water drains through uh Burnsville in the bottom left corner here in green uh is the the credit River Watershed so water in that area drains to the credit river which then goes to the Minnesota River uh in the central right side in Orange is the Vermilion river that drains to a smaller portion mostly the lake Al Magnet to the Vermilion River and then on to the Mississippi and then the main portion of Burnsville drains to the Minnesota River and water generally flows from black Lavon if it Outlets then to Keller through Crystal where it meets with water from wood pond in Twin Lake onto early Lake through Sunset Pond through Kramer Nature Preserve on the left side of the map here upper left and then on to the Minnesota River and then the whole North East part of town drains through a series of ponds down to Black Dog Lake and then the Minnesota River as well so that's just a little bit of an overview of how water flows through our city and then of course it's not draining uh above ground a lot of the time it's moving through a lot of storm water pipes that connect all our ponds and our Lakes so on the left side of the screen here we have green green lines those are all the storm pipes that run underground there's about 185 miles of storm pipes in the city the little red dots are the actual storm drains or catch basins that you'll see in your neighborhood so those are all the points where the water drains down into those pipes and then most of the time it's going to a pond before it gets to a lake then from the Lakes it's moving through the system as I mentioned then on the right side you can just see here that we have a lot of ponds as well as some lakes in town and I'll be focusing on our eight kind of priority lakes that we Monitor and manage and then I'll be talking about water quality relative to two different types of Standards one is the state water quality standards and the other I'll talk about separately is the city standards so the state water quality standards mostly we're talking about nutrients and for nutrients we're monitoring for phosphorus which causes algae blooms chlorophyll a which is basically a measure of algae and then Clarity which is also a measure of algae and potential sediment in the water column and for the state standards their standards for shallow Lakes most of our Lakes are considered shallow here in Burnsville and also a separate standard for deeper Lakes like Crystal Lake and if a lake is if it fails to meet two of these standards for nutrients over a 10-year period then it will be considered impaired by the state and if that happens it starts the whole process of figuring out what's going on with the lake where these nutrients are coming from and then how you're going to reduce the nutrients to be able to get the lake to meet standards on here in Burnsville we have two impaired Waters the first is Al Magnet Lake and the second is Keller Lake and then we've had two water bodies that have been removed from the impaired Waters list most recently was Crystal Lake which was removed from the impaired Waters list of 2018 because water quality had improved enough to take it off the list then back in around 2012 early Lake was also removed from the impaired Waters list and then the other way we uh track or water quality conditions is relative to the city's Water Resources master plan and that plan has water Clarity goals as well those goals are all at least they're mostly more stringent than the state standards and these uh these um conditions Clarity is measured by volunteers they go out throughout the growing season once every few weeks and take a secchi disc measurement that's the thing you see on the right side of the screen here it's basically a black and white disc that's lowered into the water column when you can no longer see that disc you take that measurement and that's the clarity for that particular reading you average them all together and then you get a season-long average for the clarity for that water body uh and on the left side of this table we have our three year average for these different water bodies and on the right side we have the goal that's laid out in our Water Resources master plan and as you can see generally we're either above those goals for all these water bodies except Sunset which is right at the city goal of 1.7 uh the rest are all above except for Keller Lake um and then I highlighted in red here are two impaired Waters I will look a little closer at conditions for those as well but aloe magnet lake is uh oh it's just under the goal there at 1.2 goal is 1.3 on a Keller lake is above the goal so I had that swapped L magnet is still slightly below color lake is uh currently above the goal for the three-year average we need that to go longer for it to be considered good enough to be off impaired Waters list uh then now I'm just going to go through our eight priority lakes here and talk about the nutrient levels specifically phosphorus over the past 20 years or so so we have a nice uh collection of data going back quite a ways which allows us to really track Trends over time uh so on Lake Al Magnet Lake which as I mentioned is one of our impaired Waters we are having we've had four good years for phosphorus levels on the lake which is a good sign we are still slightly above the state standards so that orange line there is where we want to be below if we at or below if we're meeting state standards we're still a bit above that for the phosphorus level but over the average of the 20 years it's a lower than it's been the past four years so overall a positive trend but not quite where we'd want to be to be getting off the impaired Waters list and that kind of brings me to uh one of our next topics so there's been a lot of work done in the L magnet Watershed the city has met its requirements for nutrient reductions uh for the L magnet Watershed and now that the Watershed is in pretty good shape for the amount of phosphorus that's going in we're starting to look at how you can reduce the phosphorus that's already in the lake and built up over time uh so the Vermillion Rivers Watershed joint Powers organization which manages that Vermilion over Watershed they are leading uh aloe magnet Lake feasibility study this year and the city of Burnsville and city of Apple Valley are participating as well um but Alan aluminum sulfate is something that can be applied to water it binds with phosphorus in the water column but also precipitates to the sediment and then if there is phosphorus released from the sediment at a later date it can also bind with that phosphorus that's released later so it can provide good control of the internal phosphorus that kind of Cycles up and down in lakes and so this feasibility study is basically looking or bar engineering we'll be looking at uh is it a good option Is it feasible to achieve the goals that we have in L magnet Lake to use Alum and what what is that going to cost what's the best timing to do that and so that study is expected to be complete by later this summer or early in the fall and that would position The Watershed and the city in a good place to potentially apply for Grants than to later conduct these type of album treatments if that's what is recommended in the study and then moving on to Lac Lavon Lac Levon is the the water body with the best water quality in the city it's an old gravel pit that has an extremely small Watershed um mostly just the Park area around the the lake and a little bit of the direct homes drain to there but it has a much smaller Watershed than most of our Lakes which helps the water quality quite a bit but as far as phosphorus you can see where uh more than we're not even at half the level that would be state standard so we're way below the state standard the clarity is really really good on Lac Levon it's one of the best Clarity lakes in in the Metro uh then on to Keller Lake so as I mentioned Keller Lake is another one of our impaired Waters so looking at phosphorus levels here uh you can see that over the last 20 years we've been above the impaired line there that orange line most of the time the last four years we've been below that line that Clarity has also been below that line the last four years um and part of that's due to some of the big water quality improvement structures that prevent nutrients from getting to the lake and then one of the big things that changed the level in 2019 there was an allen treatment that was conducted on Keller Lake so you can see in combination with getting nutrients and control on the Watershed and then an allen treatment for internal loads of phosphorus we've been able to have some good years for water quality there and we'll see we don't uh things can change weather conditions are variable so we don't want to get ahead of ourselves but that's a positive sign for what's going on with the lake and where we're headed in the future uh then hitting a little bit on fisheries and also future projects here for Keller Lake uh so uh 2021 we did a survey that found uh it was a fish survey um and also geared at assessing goldfish that we had heard we're in the lake before we did our Alum treatment out there and we found a population of very large goldfish which can potentially create issues like stirring up sediment and uprooting plants similar to carp but that assessment which we received this last year uh determined that the population of goldfish we're not at levels which were anticipated to create severe issues enough to Warrant their removal uh we're finding the Goldfish uh we're mostly these very large individuals but not a lot of smaller ones that would indicate that they were successfully reproducing so we had pretty good Predator control of the Goldfish it would seem uh and then the that current population that we uh had in there appears to be centered around a previous winter kill which happened in 2013 2014. um there were some Goldfish collected and they were aged and they were all about that age so that last winter kill may have provided a good opportunity for them to escape predation for a while and get to the size they are at but after that they didn't seem to be successfully reproducing uh then also on Keller Lake uh last year we did our second round of native plant reintroductions uh Keller Lake does not have good aquatic native plant diversity which is something we'd like to see in a healthy Lake system we'd like to see Crystal Lake has maybe 12 13 14 different types of plants Kelly lake has four so we'd like to see better aquatic plant diversity uh so we've been doing uh this is our second round of transplanting four different species of native aquatic plants into the lake to try to improve the diversity uh and then also in 2023 we did have a winner kill on Keller Lake uh so it's pretty common especially in Winters where we have thick ice deep snow for there to be low oxygen levels in the lake and that can result in fish die-offs in the lake and we know there's at least a partial winter kill on Keller Lake we're still assessing to see whether it was more than partial um but we're tentatively planning on doing some fish stocking probably of largemouth bass to help to try to get Predator fish in a good uh place in Keller Lake to prevent some of those rough fish like if there's goldfish that survive or bullheads try to get some Predator control on those fish before they get too big uh then on to Crystal Lake so Crystal Lake has been in good shape for a number of years as I mentioned it came off the impaired Waters list in 2018 and water quality conditions have remained strong since that time as you can see we're well below the state phosphorus standards for Crystal Lake which are even more stringent than some of the other ones because it's a deep lake with more stringent standards so that's a good sign out of crystal the one of the projects we worked on out there last year was rerouting some foot paths that were almost on the shoreline near tayaki Park and the Crystal boat launch we wanted to move those footpaths a little bit farther away from the water so we could prevent some trampling and vegetation and potential shoreline erosion also we got a grant to work with the Minnesota Youth Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa uh and they helped us uh move that footpath create a new footpath farther back uh replant the areas around the old footpath with native plants blanket those areas to get native plants growing in those areas and then they don't have a picture of the current fencing that's out there but we installed some fencing that allows some areas for fishing but keeps most of the access off some of those vegetating areas while we let it establish so hopefully that helps us strengthen the shoreline and prevent erosion in the future in that area well then on to Twin Lake so we do monitoring on Twin Lakes South as you can see uh phosphorus is below the state standard on Twin Lake we had a bit of a jump in phosphorus this past year but again still below the state standard levels Twin Lake gets a lot of its water maybe most of its water from Crystal Lake Crystal Lake wasn't uh draining very much last year because of the drought so Twin Lake was also pretty low which may have concentrated phosphorus in the water increased algae last year we did have a fish kill in summer of 2021 on Twin Lake and again just to try to balance the Predator fish populations we did some stocking of largemouth bass in a Twin Lake in the fall of last year and then on to Wood Pond here wood Pond is again well below the state standard for phosphorus so conditions are good out there as another example of Alum treatments you can see a noticeable drop in 2019 there there was also an Alum treatment conducted on a wood pond in 2019 so we've had pretty good control of the phosphorus and reduction since that 2019 period out there and onto early Lake early Lake again is a below state standard so it's uh looking good out there we did have a winter kill not this winter but the last winter on early Lake again it's a Shallow Lake and sometimes that does happen in the Shallow Lake systems uh so we did some largemouth bass restocking last fall in early Lake as well and on to Sunset pond so Sunset Pond is in General on average below state standard levels we did bump above those state standard levels a bit in three out of the last 10 or so years there so on average we're still below State Standards but that's something we'll monitor over time to make sure we're trending in the right direction out there and then just uh hitting a little bit um fish impacts on water quality uh so I'm not a Fisheries biologist I'm more of a generalist in water quality uh so I won't dig super deep into it but in general as we're relating fish to water quality usually we're talking about you know fish that are stirring up sediments maybe uprooting vegetation common carp are probably the biggest example of a fish that does that and luckily we don't have any significant issues with carp in the lakes that we manage uh goldfish are another one that can potentially cause similar issues but tends to be maybe more of an issue for ponds where there's not a lot of Predator fish to control them bullheads are another one that can uh create high populations especially in Winter kill Lakes because they can survive really low oxygen conditions whereas a lot of the Predator fish may die and they stir and feed low in the water column and stir can stir up sediments and even stunted Sunfish where you have a lot of really small sunfish and not enough food for them can start feeding in the sediments and stirring things up so that's generally one of our biggest concerns are some of these fish that can uh stir up sediments or disturb vegetation which then allows more phosphorus to come into the water column and for Fisheries uh the city does conduct a regular fish surveys on Al Magnet and Keller Lake those are more of a focus because they are impaired Waters where we're really trying to get them off the impaired Waters list so we do fish surveys about every three years on those water bodies the DNR does fish surveys on Crystal Lake and then we have done some fish surveys on other water bodies as needed and then for fish stocking Uh Wood Pond is stocked by the DNR as a fishing in the neighborhood pond that's a program that they have to provide fishing opportunities for some species that may not commonly be in those types of water bodies for people that live in those neighborhoods so they're usually very accessible water bodies often with the dock so that's stocked by the DNR Sunset Pond has been stocked as a fishing in the neighborhood program by the DNR as well though it's been a few years and then again Crystal Lake is stocked by the DNR as well and then the city will stock generally where there's a water quality concern like I mentioned or trying to stabilize a predator fish population but more as needed and then I just wanted to mention uh Fisheries related that we also have some really cool fish species in the Minnesota River along Burnsville there's a at least 63 species that live in the Minnesota River I have a picture of some of them here left to right freshwater drum common carp shovel no sturgeon common uh channel catfish a white bass but obviously many many more fish down there as well so lots of opportunities to catch all sorts of different things if folks want to go fishing so that's a really cool Fisheries opportunity for people who live in Burnsville too uh and with that I will stand for any questions so um we share our magnet with Apple Valley are they contributing to the um project yes yep the city has a joint Powers agreement with uh Apple Valley so we share uh funding for monitoring uh the lake and then each City conducts its own Watershed Improvement projects so the city's met our Watershed reduction goals Apple Valley has met a good portion of their goals as well and they have some upcoming upcoming projects as well so we're active participants with Apple Valley and all things L magnet and then Goldfish do they show up because people throw goldfish into the Lakes yes uh so yeah they're they're showing up because they're unwanted pets basically so people are putting them in the lake some of them may be very small to start but in the lake environment where there can be a lot of food for them they can get quite big people may put them right in the lake they may put them in ponds a storm Pond but then that connects to the lake so they can get into the lakes that way as well and have we reduced the amount of water going into the Minnesota River given the flooding there um uh our projects uh a lot of our projects where we put in new storm ponds and other water quality improvement projects that have slowed water getting to the river maybe it's reduced to some by allowing it to infiltrate I'm not sure if we've reduced it a ton but we've definitely reduced the amount of phosphorus and sediment that get to the that area as well I think a lot of the big flooding in the Minnesota River is also agricultural areas Upstream of us that put a lot of water into the river pretty fast question yeah um invasive species of Legions and such is that an issue in our Lakes yes like the Asian milk oil and such it is yep so pretty much all of our water bodies have trying to make sure this is correct they all have invasive species I'm pretty sure they all have Eurasian water milfoil and currently Leaf pondweed which are kind of the two big ones that are in most water bodies in this area um some Lakes if they have a pretty healthy native plant Community uh like Crystal Lake is one example where we have invasive species but they have some competition so they may not be as severe of issues other water bodies like Keller Lake we have more issues with invasive species because there just isn't a lot to compete with them so the city does some invasive species management as well we will use harvesting sometimes to remove vegetation especially where we have healthy native plant communities so we can do so without impacting the native plants as much and water bodies where there's less native plants we've also used herbicide to help control the plants and then like in Keller Lake we've done that and we're also trying to reintroduce new species of natives to help try to restore the ecosystem so there's a little better balance of native plants versus invasives another question please um because I walk it Black Dog lake is that part of does XL Energy control that it's a it's a public water so the DNR would technically be the regulatory Authority for that water body the shoreline areas I believe are owned between the power plant and the Wildlife Refuge so the city hasn't done any work on that lake so I think it would be more the DNR and those Shoreline owners to manage that our body that is I know it's fairly shallow okay I'm not sure specifically right now you're not walking in right now are you no how have the trans the transplants been successful yeah so in 2020 was our first year and we've been monitoring them over time um and so a lot of those ones that first year that we put in have been successful and we've seen them survive through most of that time period and one negative that we saw last year which is kind of hard to manage for was the lake level got solo that some of our transplant plots ended up being dry for a period of the year which some plants can actually survive that some may not but we're a little bit limited because we can only plant them in areas where we can get to the bottom and we were already kind of a bit above waist height where we were planting the lake just got so dry and low last year had some of those dried up so uh overall uh we have seen success in those plots surviving over time and we're still kind of tracking what rate that they're going to spread but some of those really unusual on out of the ordinary conditions can create some challenges and then I suppose are you going back in then this here to replant anything or do you go back in annually then to replant the ones that may have dried up yeah so we've done it every other year so far so we're not planning anything this year this year we'll continue to monitor but we are preparing to do it again next year so I've got some follow-up to that how do you measure success for the transplant and what's I guess a benchmark yeah so they're there there are not a not a ton of examples of this type of restoration out there to compare it to It's relatively new so we do Upland management where we're managing buckthorne we're restoring Savannah we're planting prairies that's pretty well established there's a lot of examples of this being done in other places there are a number of other organizations doing aquatic plant reintroductions uh but there isn't a great long-term database of sort of what success looks like so for us I think we're we're first looking to make sure that when we transplant them they can survive for several years so that's kind of Priority One and then we're also tracking now once you know they're getting rooted they're dealing with sort of the transplanting trauma I guess now do we see them spreading outside of the plots which we did see a little bit uh starting last year with some of those older plots so that's kind of the second priority they're surviving now are they spreading and then maybe third priorities how quickly are they spreading to kind of fill in the gaps so I'm guessing next year you're going to have some good data for us on that right yeah I think we'll we'll be getting there yeah it takes time but we uh like I mentioned it is a newer science but we're one of my colleagues was invited to a late conference to present the city's work in this area so I think we've been leading uh leading for others and providing information for others to learn from with this project look forward to seeing that next year I know me too I'm excited um and then my next two questions kind of go together so first is how many years does the lake have to be below that phosphorus level before it's removed and then when does a lake get put on the list as an impaired body of water yeah so it's put on the list if two of those parameters the phosphorus Clarity um phosphorus Clarity and chlorophyll a if two of those are above that standard line over an average of 10 years then it's put on and then it's kind of the opposite to be removed off we have to have at least two of those parameters be below State Standards over an average of 10 years so it's kind of all about that 10-year period and the average of it okay it can't just be for phosphorus if we have phosphorus sets below but chlorophyllate and Clarity are still above the state standards we wouldn't be able to get off the list you have to have at least two of those parameters that are all kind of tied into that nutrient category be below to get off the list so I think it was sunset that was kind of jumping up there right did I start am I remembering correctly uh yeah um and for clarity it's closer to the the city Clarity goal that was not as concerning for the state water Clarity uh Clarity goal but it is getting closer to that yeah so I'd have to be over that 10-year average okay sounds good so it's kind of normal to see it jump up and down then like we're kind of seeing yep it is normal to see those ups and downs especially in water bodies that are you know relatively close to that standard to begin with um but it's definitely that's why we collect the data so we can see over time if it's changing any other questions well there is no action required on it that was just an update for this year and we will move in to our annual deer management program report again welcome Caleb on tell us about the deer how are they doing all right uh so yeah I'm here to do our annual deer management report for anyone who's just turning in I'm Caleb Ashley I'm the natural resources specialist uh and yeah I'm just going to give you a little bit of an overview here of our program history uh the natural resources master plan which was passed by City Council in 1999 recommended that the City established a deer management program uh that initiated the deer management plan being developed and that was adopted by City Council in 2001 and among the things that that uh plan did was it set the population density goal for a deer in the city well this program was established for several reasons some of the most important ones were to try to reduce the impacts of deer and vehicle collisions which obviously is bad for all involved but it can cause injuries for people and expense for vehicle repairs uh High deer populations can also result in negative impacts to Natural areas so deer can really over browse the native vegetation in our natural areas and have a negative impact on the plants themselves and also other pollinators that may and other animals that need those plants as well so that can I can deer can also create landscaping depredation for people who live especially in and around some of our our Park areas and then a higher deer population is at a greater risk for disease spreading so that's another reason to to conduct deer management so I'm going to be reporting on our past program year and then also making some recommendations for our upcoming program here and each program year runs from April 1st of the previous year to March 31st so it doesn't run the calendar year it runs a little bit offset just uh just due to some of the activities over winter activities that are conducted so for going over the program here I'm going to cover a couple different aspects of it the education side of things the feeding ban monitoring of the deer population and then also population control so for Education we have a web page with educational information to the for the public we have a link to our plan and also updates on the management activities that are conducted we do also try to post articles in the Burnsville bulletin especially related to the city's deer feeding ban try to get that information out there as well as using social media to relay information about deer and then for the feeding band so there there is a no no deer feeding ordinance in Burnsville uh that means that you can have bird feeders but bird feeders have to be at least five feet above the ground or otherwise screen to prevent uh deer from feeding on it so putting food on the ground whether it's intentional or not if deer can access it that's against ordinance um the birds put the feet on the ground yes we will not the birds will not be in violation I guess but if people are making good faith effort to keep food off the ground that's the main thing um and uh there were no feeding violations this past year which was great usually we have at least a couple but when we do have those feeding violations what we do is we send a letter um and give them some time to remove it and then double check to make sure those the feeding situation has been changed um and that's almost always enough to to stop the issue then on to monitoring so we monitor in two different ways we have an uh aerial account conducted to count the population and then we also monitor vehicle collisions with deer also vote for monitoring and our deer program in general we break the city into six different zones Northeast Northwest uh West Central East Central Southwest and Southeast so let's all be kind of referring to some aspects of the program in the next part of the presentation and then uh we try to have an aerial survey conducted every year um this past survey past program year the survey was conducted on February 7th and this is an aerial survey conducted by helicopter um and the Three Rivers Park District conducts that for us they also fly Murphy Hanrahan Park they often fly for the city of Bloomington sometimes for Fort Snelling State Park so they're covering a number of areas in the South Metro so it works out well for us to work with them and they're basically flying over these areas when there's at least six inches of snow cover so the deer are fairly easy to see and this picture here is a picture from a helicopter so you can kind of see how the deer stand out pretty well from the air uh so for our most recent survey the total deer population that was counted um was uh actually 106 it says 104 on the right side here because we're factoring in some deer that were removed after the survey uh but in general the the biggest population or biggest herd when the survey was conducted was in the Northeast part of town which often is one of the bigger areas because it's where the Wildlife Refuge is and there's a lot of habitat down there uh the next biggest was in the southwest part of town around Murphy hand or hand that usually is the second biggest population because there's lots of habitat in that area as well uh and then following that was the East Central with a 26th deer counted that is a fairly High count for that area where there is Terrace Oaks and some other relatively big parks but not as many big natural areas of some of those other parts of town and then for tracking uh do your vehicle collisions this is a map here that shows where those deer vehicle collisions occurred uh the way we track that is by having our Police Department pull the record that are associated with any deer related issues uh then the city also works with an animal control contractor where they pick up deer carcasses along the roadway and they take notes on where they pick those up uh so we cross reference between our police reports and animal control contractor pickups and basically get a minimum number of collisions that happened we know we know every Collision is reported report but in general we had a total of 53 based on those records which is a bit above uh we've had in the last couple years it's been closer to 40 but below some of the higher years before the program was started that was more like 70 and 80. the most the highest number of collisions happened in the southeast part of town this year followed by the Southwest part of town and then that East Central Area numerous ones around Terrace Oaks was kind of the third third most there with 11. and our recommendation is to continue with these annual monitoring methods that we've been using then on to the population control part of the program so we use two strategies for population control we use archery hunting and then also Sharp Shooting conducted by the Burnsville Police Department uh for our archery program we encourage archery hunting on private property there's in general not a ton of private properties where that can happen in Burnsville but there are some especially in Southwest Burnsville where the lots are large enough where you can actually do archery hunting uh within what's Allowed by city ordinance so there is some private property archery hunting uh and then we also operate archery Hunts on public land where it's possible uh right now Kelleher Park is the park where we do that and then for that archery hunt there were five deer harvested in Kelleher Park last fall over two hunt sessions um and they're at the same time as the city hunt there's also a hunt conducted by The Three Rivers Park District in Murphy Hanrahan park there were 38 deer harvested in that hunt um about 10 of Murphy Hanrahan park is in Burnsville for the purposes of our program tracking we consider about four of those deer to be removed from Burnsville and then for our sharp shooting program we utilize our Burnsville Police Department Sharpshooters to do deer removals when needed last year we conducted sharp shooting in the Northeast East Central and Southeast units um over this past winter and through that effort there were 17 deer harvested and so just looking at our removal goals and actual Harvest for the past program year and the removal goals are based on the population estimate and their overall goal for that area 15 to 25 deer per square mile of habitat uh in the Northwest part of town which is kind of where the Kramer mine inquiry is and the landfill we don't have any accessible properties so we didn't do any deer management in that area in West Central we didn't do any deer management in the southwest part of town there were nine deer removed through archery hunting in the Northeast part of town there were 10 deer harvested that's the area near the wildlife refuge and the East Central part of town we weren't as successful as we would have liked only one deer in that area and in the southeast part of town uh sixth year so between archery hunting and our Sharp Shooting there were 2060 removed we would like to have removed some additional deer it was a challenging winter with really high snow depth that changed some of the deer patterns where they just weren't coming into some of our Sharp Shooting sites like they made other years I mean it's a lot easier for them to move around but and generally we were able to get some deer reduced from the population this winter 35 or so would have been a for 35 or including archery Maybe 40. foreign and then for this upcoming year so as I mentioned we have a density goal based on the habitat within each zone so that's kind of the target for each section of town there on the left side of this table in the middle we have a projected population that's basically the survey information that we collected and then we have a population model similar to what the DNR does that we factor in some Fawn birth some natural mortality that gives us what we expect the population to be in the fall um and that should actually say projected fall 2023 population and then that gives us our recommended population removal goals according to our plan for this upcoming winter so again in Northwest part of town the city doesn't have access to any areas to sharpshoot so we won't be doing work there on the west central part of town there were no deer accounted so no removals warranted there Southwest Burnsville the goal for that area is 0 to 13 deer and that's the area where we do archery which will continue with we're proposing to continue with that archery hunting in those areas Northeast part of town the goal is one to 22 deer on the East Central part of town uh where there's a little less habitat as I mentioned uh there's a removal goal of 15 to 23 deer and in the Southeast where there we didn't count any deer the goal there is zero and then the total potential harvest the range recommended by the plan is 16 to 58 deer just get the ones that are eating my wax plants uh and then our recommendations for Sharp Shooting based on that is to conduct sharpshooting in the Northeast part of Burnsville that's Wildlife Refuge part of town in general and then the East Central part of Burnsville as well and then again the archery in South West Burnsville um Sharp Shooting locations will be determined so we'll identify the zones but then we'll identify the specific actual sites within that part of town based on deer activity uh and then for archery hunt recommendations we recommend continuing with the Keller hair Park archery hunt in the southwest unit last year we switched from that being facilitated uh directly by the city um to having that facilitated by The Three Rivers Park District with the city also participating and then the actual hunt uh coordinating the actual Hunters on the ground is conducted by a non-profit organization called the Metro bohunters resource base they specialize in conducting public archery hunts in uh Suburban environments basically and we've been working with them for a long time and then it is part of our uh program that the pnrc review the art the proposed archery hunt dates and potentially recommend them for approval by city council so the dates for hunting at Kelleher Park as well as Murphy Hanrahan Park this upcoming fall those proposed dates are October 13th through the 15th it's a Friday through Sunday and November 10th through the 12th another Friday through the Sunday so those are our proposed dates for this year uh and then with that I would be happy to answer any questions so a hunt is going to take place I know I'm Bloomington because I walked the river uh they'll have signage like you know that they're doing their hunts on the Bloomington Side do we do the same thing where we post like you may not want to walk today uh yes yep we have we do public notifications for archery and sharp shooting so notification letters to adjacent homeowners and press releases to the public and then we definitely also have signage on actual hunt days on all the main trail access points to those Park areas follow-up overall deer population in Burnsville uh steady increasing decreasing yeah it can depend on the part of town I guess but in general the overall overall population has been decreasing over the past few years is it migration or just management or combination It's a combination so management is definitely part of it deer also move around so we're surveying Burnsville but they don't necessarily care about the city Lots so they're moving in and out of town at times so that can impact the population uh other factors like we've had a couple of deep snow Winters which can be hard on deer can also impact the population as well so there's multiple factors but management is definitely part of it so question for you when they surveyed the southeast part of Burnsville where do they look yeah so our deer management plan identified preferred deer habitat areas so those are basically the natural areas areas or or private property if it has significant natural component to it so they're not serving every street or every backyard in town that just wouldn't really be feasible we're really focusing on the areas where the deer are most likely to hang out so there may be a few deer missed here and there but it does give us a good Baseline knowledge of you know at least this many deer are present where we can make management decisions off of it I'll send you my neighborhood information there are seven living in my neighborhood right now that we have counted and they're eating all the plants and they like my backyard a lot about my friends yes I've almost hit I almost hit a whole family of five one day one evening a couple weeks ago and that's that's good information and we do have a reporting Forum online where people can submit reports and observations of deer and then we can use that because you know that information from the public can help us gauge if there are areas where we may want to do some additional surveying so we do have that monitoring forum for the public where you can submit that information or send it to me directly perfect because I do have someone in my neighborhood who's been using the shotgun so well we didn't mention the police are involved in the program right right you can use some attention in my neighborhood I think oh my gosh so speaking of that what is the ordinance for archery in your backyard uh yeah so you have to be able to set up uh to be able to discharge your bow at least 200 feet from the property boundary 200 feet uh yeah so you have to be able to be at least 200 feet from the property boundary that means your typical quarter acre or even half acre left you're not going to be able to find a spot like that but if you have maybe an acre or a little bit more land you'd be able to find you could potentially find a spot where you can set up your stand far enough from your property boundary to be able to archery hunt we do know we get questions of some folks on the public who do archery hunt in Burnsville so there is some of that going on perfect any other questions commissioners I was debating whether or not if it was a silly question but um just going back to the whole uh no feeding ban um like I see kids all the time running around the neighborhood setting up like little beading type stands and one of my neighbors I won't call them out you know all of a sudden there's all these ducks that keep shutting up at their house and I drove by one day and realized there's all this stuff in their yard and now all the Ducks are landing on top of their house or all over the neighborhood foreign you said there was like no feeding violations I mean is this just Community reported yeah so it is community uh reported there is in addition to the deer feeding ban there's also a waterfall duck and goose feeding ban um so it is also against ordinance to feed those and in general a lot of people I'm a natural resources person I enjoy feeding Wildlife most of people aren't out there to do something that's bad they just enjoy seeing Wildlife but they aren't always aware that that can impact their neighbors sometimes there's environmental issues uh if you're attracting a lot of ducks and there's all the duck poop that goes along with it if you're near pond it all washes into the pond so there's a number of factors that people don't always realize so we do kind of rely we're not out there driving around looking for this but we rely on the public to let us know and we always try to interact uh kindly with people to just educate them on the issue great any other questions all right um clarification question did you need a vote for us to approve the recommendation tonight yeah we uh need a vote to recommend city council approval of the archery hunt dates at Keller here in Murphy and Murphy Hanrahan Park so recommend do you have a second second all in favor aye anybody opposed your emotion passes okay thank you thank you very much for joining us this evening thank you for having me our next Parks and Recreation Commission meeting will be June 5th 2023 commissioner training is scheduled for June 14th of this year as well at this time I would like to request a motion for adjournment of the May 1st 2023 parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting all in favor aye anybody want to stay here longer all right have a good evening everybody and we will see you in June have a great month off oh wait I guess it's not a month off