Welcome to the 2025 State of the City address. I'm Roseville Mayor Dan Row. It's been another productive year here in the city of Roseville with lots of news to share. So, let's dive in. [Music] Our parks and recreation department continues to brighten our community. First off, thanks to a donation from the friends of the Oval Foundation, we reit the Minnesota Oval with seasonal lights for the first time since 2019. Crews placed 500 strands of LED lights in the evergreen trees surrounding America's largest sheet of refrigerated ice. The city completed construction of Sunset Park in Southwest Roseville last fall. The city's newest park features a playground, a nature loop trail, a basketball shooting area, and a picnic space. It also moves us closer to our goal of providing a park within walking distance of all residents in Roseville. Sunset Park is the city's 33rd park. We take playtime seriously here in Roseville because we know our award-winning park system supports kids physical, social, and emotional development. This spring, we unveiled the new, more inclusive playground here at Lexington Park. We thank the nonprofit Friends of Roseville Parks organization whose $75,000 donation helped to make this project possible. The playground features a new three-story tower accessible to all ages and abilities, a variety of climbing structures, slides, swings, a safer, poured inplace play surface, and additional shade structures for park users. Our parks are more than just a place for us to play. They also include valuable natural areas and habitat. The city of Roseville is moving forward with a new long range plan to ensure that our parks remain healthy, beautiful, and biologically diverse spaces for all residents to enjoy. The city council approved the natural resources management plan in November, which provides for the preservation and restoration of forested areas, wetlands, and prairie, including oak savannah in Roseville's nearly 680 acres of parks and open space. I'm proud to say Roseville is ahead of the curve on natural resource management. Staff, volunteers, and consultants have already completed hundreds of preservation and restoration projects that were guided by the city's earlier 2013 natural resources management plan. And many of those same people were integral in the development of the newly adopted plan. In addition to habitat restoration, the city has planted more than 400 trees in the past year along boulevards and in our parks. With an eye towards species diversity to ensure healthy urban canopy for future generations. With the help of a generous donation, we added an outdoor art installation at the Harriet Alexander Nature Center. The towers feature beautiful mosaic images of animals found in our region. Thank you to longtime volunteers and donors John and Chris Robertson Smith and the friends of Roseville Parks which facilitated that donation. All of this wonderful and meaningful work in our parks has been nationally recognized. We're one of only four agencies in the state to be accredited by the National Recreation and Park Association. Roseville is largely a builtout city, but our community development department continues to attract and guide new infill projects and redevelopment using flexible regulations that improve the quality of life in our city. The city of Roseville successfully lobbied at the state legislature for local authority to license hotels. In 2024, the city of Roseville began licensing hotels to ensure the health and safety and dissuade criminal activity. Fire and community development staff completed comprehensive inspections of a dozen hotels which have more than,300 rooms. The effectiveness of this new licensing program was demonstrated by the fact that one hotel was required to cease operations and was unable to obtain a license due to ongoing maintenance and life safety deficiencies. That hotel is working to address the deficiencies in hopes of being able to become licensed and operational. Two major commercial projects were completed, including the opening of a Dick Sporting Goods flagship store at Rosedale Center and Ramsey County's environmental service center, which is a one-stop shop for safe disposal of everything from old paint to electronics. We are seeing more electric vehicles on our roads, and in response, the city has begun implementation of its new electric vehicle charging requirements for new or expanded parking lots, which have resulted in new electric vehicle charging stations at Rosedale Center. The city of Roseville issued a building permit for parallel apartments at the corner of County Conny Road B and Pascal. This is only the second market rate apartment building built in Roseville in the last 25 years. Housing and market studies have continued to show a real need for these types of units. The city also continues our efforts to build and maintain housing at all price points. In the last 5 years, Roseville has added nearly a thousand new homes and apartments. That includes market rate and affordable apartments, affordable senior apartments, single family homes, and town homes. In addition to building new homes, the city of Roseville is also helping residents stay in their homes, and we're helping a new generation achieve the dream of home ownership. Over the last decade, we have provided 82 loans that have totaled over $5.5 million in home improvements and down payment assistance. We've partnered with Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and have helped 12 families become homeowners and more home sales are in the pipeline. Roseville firefighters responded to 7544 calls in 2024, an annual increase of more than 9% over the previous year. That includes calls for fires, rescues, and emergency medical service. We've added equipment and staff to bolster our response capabilities. We anticipate the delivery of our first electric fire engine later this year. This engine will reduce emissions and improve working conditions for our firefighters. The electric fire engine also has a longer lifespan than its diesel alternatives. On the staffing front, the fire department has used its successful cadet program to train and recruit new firefighters. A full-time fire inspector position was added. This position plays an integral role in the city of Roseville's rental licensing program as well as our new hotel licensing program. Even with all this critical life-saving work, our fire department continues to prioritize community outreach. Fridays with firefighters, summer events attract more than a thousand visitors to the fire station each year. The Roseville Police Department responded to nearly 45,000 calls and incidents in 2024. Roseville police and city leaders remain committed to creative problem solving with additional investments in the community action team or CAT for short. CAT was created in 2021 to respond to pressing community needs including homelessness, behavioral health issues, problem properties, human trafficking, and other complex social issues. The nine-member team includes a sergeant, five police officers with specialized training, two social workers, and a homeless outreach coordinator. Roseville is a regional shopping, restaurant, and entertainment destination that attracts millions of guests each year. In 2024, Roseville Police in partnership with Rosedale Center created the Retail Crime Unit. This team is made up of two police officers who work out of a police substation at Rosedale Center. These officers build relationships with business owners and store managers, monitor intelligence and surveillance, communicate with other law enforcement agencies, and use other specialized techniques and tools to thwart and investigate organized retail crime. Building relationships with the community remains a top priority for the police department. They're a crowd favorite at nearly every community celebration. We have school resource officers working in our schools. And this past year, hundreds of residents lured ways to protect themselves against scammers, thieves, and fraudsters. Roseville Police Department's financial crimes experts led two 90minute community presentations on identity theft and fraud. Our public works department is the backbone of our city, maintaining roads, pathways, water and sewer systems, and other public infrastructure. In the past year, the city has updated its street light policy and in partnership with Excel Energy committed to adding 160 new street lights at intersections across the city to enhance traffic and pedestrian safety. The city of Roseville completed its lead free Roseville campaign last year. Federal safe drinking water regulations required an inventory of all water service lines to reduce any potential lead exposure to residents. Thank you to the more than 90% of residents who responded to the survey. We are pleased to report that only 28 Roseville homes or less than 1% were found to have lead water service lines. Those residents have been made aware of the presence of the lead and can explore replacement options and timelines. The city council passed the green to go ordinance requiring food takeout containers to be recyclable, compostable, or reusable. Restaurants were given a year to ramp up with enforcement starting in January of 2026. Given the number of restaurants in Roseville and the surge restaurants have seen in their takeout business, we believe this will help reduce our community's collective waste stream. The city of Roseville has created its first ever bike plan, which identifies and prioritizes bike routes for improvement or construction based on safety, community health, and equity goals. After a competitive bidding process, the city of Roseville contracted with Waste Management to take over as the city's recycling hauler. Residents received new recycling bins in June. The city is starting to work on a climate equity action plan, a blueprint for how our community will address and prepare for climate change. This plan will document ongoing climate work, including transforming to clean energy, reducing pollutants, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and leaning into resilient practices. We'll have more to share on this in the coming months. Perhaps the biggest change on the horizon for the public works department is the new maintenance operations center to be built next to our city hall campus. In November, voters passed a half% local sales tax to fund the facility. Thank you to the voters for carefully weighing the community needs and moving forward with this project. We are now hard at work planning the design and construction of this facility, which will serve as a more efficient, centralized hub for essential city services, including road work, snow removal, water distribution, and sanitary sewer systems, maintenance of the city's 33 parks, and much more. We are currently working with architects and with our city staff to finalize plans and we'll have more to share on this soon. Finally, we could not have accomplished all of this without the assistance of our volunteers and commissioners. Our volunteers are critical to the success of many of the programs and community events in Roseville. From Rosefest and Cleanup Day to serving on one of our commissions, our volunteers make a positive impact to our community. In 2024, over 2,000 volunteers donated 5,400 hours of their time through our robust volunteer program. That is the equivalent of 2.6 full-time city employees. Thanks for joining us for the 2025 state of the city. I encourage you to get involved in our Roseville community. Share your voice at a city council meeting, join a city commission, sign up to volunteer at an event, or follow us on social media. We hope to see you soon.