Based on the context provided, here is the transcribed townhall meeting with speaker names added. [0:02] [Music] [0:51] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Good evening. If you would please join me with a for a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible Liberty and justice for all. Hey, I forgot to say this before. I'm calling to order April 21st meeting. Um, and with that, roll call, please. [1:34] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Volk. **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Bermel. **Councilmember John Bermel:** Here. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Wolter. **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Here. [1:40] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All right. Very good. Moving on to item number three, citizens comments. It's opportunity for anybody to address the council for typically up to three minutes. Moving on. Any additional agenda information, Mr. Miller? Okay. Uh and then we'll move into five, our presentations. And I think Ms. Anderson is here. Oh, sorry. This little computer screen is blocking your face. Come on up. Yeah. To uh give us some background on the National Day of Prayer. [2:10] **Mrs. Anderson:** I sure will. And this year, I'm excited that I can speak boldly. Last year, you remember I had lost my voice and I had to have somebody else talk. So, with great excitement, I come to tell you about the task force in Lakeville that is presenting a time of prayer for National Day of Prayer outside of City Hall at noon. And you all are invited to join us. And a little history hasn't changed a whole lot from last year when I told you, but the National Day of Prayer has actually began—well, it wasn't National Day of Prayer at that time, but an observance actually began before we were a nation that July 20th of 1775. At that time, it was a Continental Congress and they issued a proclamation recommending a day of prayer, fasting, and public humiliation to be observed. And then our first president then a few years later in 1795, George Washington proclaimed a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. And it wasn't until almost 200 years later in uh April 17th of 1952, Congress proclaimed a joint resolution for a national day of prayer in which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation in their churches, in groups, and as individuals. And that was to be observed on the 4th of July. [3:34] Every year since that time, there's been some type of an observation of that day. And then it was Ronald Reagan, Thursday, May 5th, 1988, he signed into law that designated the first Thursday in May as the annual observance for National Day of Prayer. And I found this quote that Reagan had said: "Americans in every generation have turned to their maker in prayer, in adoration, and in thanksgiving, in contrition and supplication. We have acknowledged both our dependency on Almighty God and the help he offers as individuals and as a nation." And it has been proclaimed every year since then. And then most recently, our last president, Biden, in his 2024 proclamation wrote, "Scripture tells us to rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, and constant in prayer. Our prayer for our nation is that we keep faith that our best days are ahead of us, and continue to believe in honesty, decency, dignity, and respect. May we see each other not as enemies but fellow human beings made in the image of God and precious in his sight." Our nation has been strengthened by the faith of its people and we are fortunate to live in a country that the constitution protects that. So again I invite you again first Thursday in May now is May 1st. So come and join us outside city hall and pray for sunny days. Thank you. [5:08] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Thank you Mrs. Anderson and I'll have Councilwoman Volk read our proclamation. [5:12] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Okay. Proclamation for National Day of Prayer 2025. Whereas National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. And whereas the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a non-sectarian group with no political affiliation, encourages citizens to pray for our leadership in America, especially in the areas of government, military, media, business, education, church, and family. Therefore, the city council of the city of Lakeville does hereby proclaim Thursday, May 1st, 2025, National Day of Prayer in Lakeville. [5:58] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Very good. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Look forward to it. All right, we'll move on to item B, which is our fire department badging recognition. I'll turn over to our fire chief Meyer for a presentation. [6:08] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Good evening. Good evening, mayor, council members. Uh tonight we'll be recognizing the five full-time staff that were hired in March of 2024. And as I call them forward, uh we'll be—I'll uh introduce them, but if they can come forward with their families that are going to be pinning their badges. So for A-shift, we have Captain Colin Heagen. Uh B-shift is Captain Zach Weise, who is not here—they're expecting their second child either shortly tonight or tomorrow. Uh firefighter Steven Moses. For C-shift, we have Captain Tom Ness and firefighter Dan Parid. So, as they come forward, this group obviously successfully completed their first year probation uh which included four weeks of a joint fire academy with uh Burnsville, Eagan, and South Metro Fire. Uh they played a very vital role in our transition to a hybrid department. So, these are obviously the first full-time firefighters and had a a long difficult road in front of them as far as making this transition for us. Uh they've been instrumental in uh preserving and promoting our department's culture and in addition to that when they're on shift they're providing additional training hours to our pay-on-call staff to kind of hone their skills to what they have and keep that going forward. Uh so and then how we serve our community better. So all the skills that they bring or that they learned at the joint academy and then beyond that they're sharing with those that they're working with each and every day. [7:40] So, you have who's going to—we're going to do an oath around. So, if I can have you raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, state your name... [7:51] **Firefighters:** I, [Name]... [7:53] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...do solemnly swear... [7:55] **Firefighters:** ...do solemnly swear... [7:57] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...that I will support the Constitution of the United States... [8:00] **Firefighters:** ...that I will support the Constitution of the United States... [8:02] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...and the state of Minnesota... [8:04] **Firefighters:** ...and the state of Minnesota... [8:06] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...and faithfully discharge the duties of your position... [8:09] **Firefighters:** ...and faithfully discharge the duties of my position... [8:12] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...of the city of Lakeville... [8:15] **Firefighters:** ...the city of Lakeville... [8:17] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...in the county of Dakota and state of Minnesota... [8:21] **Firefighters:** ...in the county of Dakota and the state of Minnesota... [8:25] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** ...to the best of my judgment and ability, so help me God. [8:29] **Firefighters:** ...to the best of my judgement and abilities. So, help me God. [8:33] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Awesome. If your family member wants to now pin your badge on you. So, just a note, out of the the five that uh obviously there's four here, but out of the five that we hired last year, four of those are internal and one was an external candidate. [9:06] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Well, first of all, we want to congratulate all of you. So, we'll give you a round of applause. [Applause] And others can weigh in, but what I'll say is I—you know—this is a really historic moment for the city um for you guys to be the first part of helping the transition to moving from volunteer to hybrid. So we're really excited to have everybody here full-time and look forward to your leadership in our city and we thank the rest of your family and your kids and your spouses' willingness to serve our city. So thank you very much for that. Councilmember Lee. [9:45] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Yeah, I'll echo what uh Mayor Hellier said, but uh I love seeing your families here. Um to you all: We are very proud of uh the firefighters that we're ushering in and uh I I know you all are too. So, thank you in advance for all the the nights that are interrupted and the service that your whole family is doing for the city of Lakeville. So, I appreciate it. [10:01] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** And I'll just say thanks for bearing with us as we find you a home in Fire Station 5. We'll give you guys a moment for you to exit with your family and then we'll get back to business. So, thank you again for being here. All right, we'll move on to item C, which is the fire department quarterly report. So, I guess you could stay if you wanted, but I don't know if the chief already gives it to you at the air meeting. [10:35] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Treats and some pictures to take across the street. So, that's better. And of course they arrived at the last minute. So two of them are on shift. So they were out on a call and had to change to get here. So all right, Mayor, Council, [Administrator] Miller, I'd like to present the first quarter report for the fire department for 2025. And starting with our mission statement, the Lakeville Fire Department is dedicated to serving the community through the protection of lives and property by providing public safety, education, and a professional emergency response. Looking at incidents for the first uh quarter, and this is a three-year comparison as you look from left to right, but the first one is just total incidents. So, we ended the first quarter with 886 calls. So, obviously increasing each year uh that we see. Uh and then if we look at the first quarter by month, you can see uh how busy those months are. They're fairly level. Uh obviously January and February are slightly busier this year than they were in previous years. March is fairly level uh with comparative to the previous years breaking those incidents down. So out of the 886 obviously 500 or 600 roughly are medicals. So that's about 65% of our call volume in that first quarter. Uh good intent calls, false alarms, uh fires were at 17 for the first quarter, so it's slightly up compared to last year. Uh but some of that accounts for the dryness and lack of snow that we've had as far as that goes. And then just looking at overlapping calls. So out of that 866 incidents, we had 236 incidents where we had multiple calls going on. Uh 228 were two incidents or more. Uh and then you can see three incidents were seven times and we had uh one occurrence of five calls or five incidents back to back on that. And then just looking at the station incident. So as far as if we're paging out a station uh and we fully suspect this as we move into the hybrid staffing—a truck is at the duty crew—you can see that on the far right they're at 700 calls for the first quarter. And then the stations, you can kind of see those trending downwards as we rely more on that staffed engine. But we're still in need of those stations to cover when we have those overlapping calls that that one crew is busy. And we will watch those numbers probably decrease about a third again when we add the second truck on this coming Monday. [13:07] Just to highlight uh three of those responses that occurred in the first quarter. So, we did have a a significant accident with a semi versus semi or a box truck on the left side that you see there with injuries to the driver. Uh the center picture is kind of a an interesting one where uh residents called that two male eagles that were uh fighting and got entangled and then got stuck in the tree basically. Uh the Raptor Center came out. Uh we actually had Raptor Center people in the ladder going up to free them. As they got about where they're at, the eagles unlocked or got free of each other and then flew away. So, that's how—and then the right picture is just showing a vehicle accident in a residential neighborhood that rolled over and just some of the measures to get the uh the occupants out, how we have to secure the vehicle or make it stable uh to work in and around that vehicle. Uh our drone team was out in Farmington for uh for one call helping search for a missing lady that uh walked off in the neighborhood. And just to kind of show some of the support that we have with that is uh the red trailer is our—I'll call it an all-encompassing trailer. So we carry extra air bottles for structure fires that we may need. It's got a heater. It's got uh water and such in there. But it also supports our drone team. So if they are on a lengthy deployment, it's got a generator in to help charge batteries, a heater for if it is in this time of year it was chilly out there. But then we can also uh pull up uh a software program that we can monitor any drone that's in the air that is registered to that mission if you will for flying for searching for that. So we can actually see our drones, the PD's drones, and anybody else that we give permission to log in and see that. [14:55] Response times in the first quarter, they remain fairly consistent. Uh the one piece that I'll just draw your attention to is that we've seen an increase on the alarm time that PSAP handling. So the time that uh our dispatch center receives the phone call to the time that they dispatch us—slightly over it's about 2 minutes 15 seconds, 2 minutes 20 seconds. Uh the standard or the benchmark that they should be is at 1:30. I know they've had an influx of new uh dispatchers now coming online from training. So uh so we'll keep an eye on that. Uh and then just on the bottom, I should reference these are all emergency response calls, not if it was a routine call, those are excluded from this time frame or the the report there. And then uh the bottom bullet point on EMS calls is that we are running about 55% of our EMS calls that we do respond to, we're arriving in front of the ambulance. Uh training, uh so we had active shooter training or ALERT training. This is a countywide uh program that's going on for this year to train all fire, EMS, and PD in uh different response plans as far as that and coming together with a grander or bigger response plan throughout the county. Uh hazardous material operations, which we have to do every year, medical training. Uh and then we also added uh to our uh EMTs on the trucks that they—we now carry a cardiac monitor and then we added some medical variances as far as if it's a cardiac arrest or certain things that we can do above and beyond uh what we have done in the past. And then we also had a joint academy with fire officer fire instructor training going on. [16:21] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** A quick question for you about training. You know, we keep seeing all these pictures of car accidents. We have specific training for EVs? [16:31] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Great question. So, tonight uh we actually have a company that came in this month is doing EV training. So, they actually have a Tesla over there that they're going through how to open it if the batteries are dead. Uh he has a semi-trail that's out back with different batteries. So, you kind of get to see what's in there. But, it's uh been very good training. They were out at FDIC for uh basically the international conference. Uh so it's been very good training. Some of the things that we're taking from that is just the how to make the vehicle safe if they're in a vehicle accident or if there's a vehicle fire that that battery's on fire. What do we—you know—some of the procedures that we have to update for ourselves. [17:11] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, good. I take it you have to use a different fire suppressant or whatever the technical term is for for the electric cars. [17:18] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** The water is the best thing is you want to maintain or cool the battery if the battery is in a thermal runaway. So, one of those battery cells ruptures and starts going. Uh they're also recommending fire blankets. So, if it's around another vehicle or an exposure is that we want to try to cover that and then protect the exposures. You're not necessarily going to get the—extinguish the vehicle or the car fire—the battery in there. Uh but if we can protect everything around it or move that vehicle out of the way. So, okay. Uh there's been some instances nationwide of a—you know—uh one of their uh pieces they had out in California: car uh electric vehicle drove into a house, caught the house on fire, the battery's on fire. They drugged the vehicle out of the garage that it drove into to get it out of the house to put the house fire out. Otherwise you're dealing with that—that battery's on fire for quite some time. [18:03] Uh community events. So obviously fire prevention uh food trucks we've done 29 in the first quarter. They continually come in. Uh fire safety talks, we've done quite a few at daycare centers, our uh stations. And then also we had a crew at the home expo at Lakeville North. And then looking at fire inspections, uh we completed 325 inspections and kind of the pie chart shows a breakdown of of those different ones. Obviously, uh the annual inspection, the 52% is the majority of our work. The rest of the the ones are just kind of follow-ups that we do or routine. Uh and then you can kind of see some of the pictures to the right uh of that we've found there. So a golf cart blocking an emergency exit obviously is that something that we want corrected. Uh and then the bottom one is while they're out doing inspections we're completing pre-plans on those buildings. So we did 415 pre-plans were updated in the first quarter. And you may ask what does a pre-plan look like? Uh so I thought as I was going through and I added this. So the the picture on the left that you see is actually Century Middle School. So a lot of the stuff is—it tells us where our key boxes are. So if we need access into the building, how—where we're going to find the master keys, so to speak. Uh any of the utility shut offs—gas, electric, uh the sprinkler connection—and then for all of the schools, we've gone through and numbered our doors. So if we get called and they want us to come in a certain door, we can look at the pre-planned map and determine where that door is on the school. [19:33] Uh a unique thing about the program that we are using is that some of our neighboring cities are using it and we can share those pre-plans with each other. So uh the picture to the right is actually the Burnsville Center. Uh so that's Burnsville's pre-plan that they've done on the Burnsville Center. So if we're responding to the Burnsville Center, we can pull up in our response and see uh if they tell us they want us to go to a specific door or potentially go find the fire sprinkler system to support that. Uh so it's become very helpful that we're we're integrating in that way and it's not just Burnsville, it's other cities around us that are moving to the platform that we're using. Uh recruitment—uh so in March we started 16 full-time firefighters that were part of the SAFER grant. Uh as of last Thursday they completed their joint academy fire training. Uh this week they are—and it's part of my update so I'm a little advanced—but they are doing Fire Inspector I training this week and on Monday afternoon they'll start working 24-hour shifts. Uh late January we hosted our annual awards banquet at Brackett's Crossing. Uh it was a very good attendance and you can see uh Joe Tolmes was our—nominated as our firefighter of the year and uh Corey Blanchard was nominated as our rookie of the year. Corey unfortunately couldn't make the banquet because he was sick that evening. [20:53] And just some of the stuff we probably already covered, but just some department updates. So, we added the EZ-IO kits, which is uh we can do an IV line basically uh for a cardiac arrest uh patient. Uh the cardiac monitor, which is a picture to the top right. Uh we did the groundbreaking at the First Responder Skill Center. And then we've obviously worked uh been moving forward on the fire station as far as design meetings and such have been happening. Uh one thing we are waiting for is the report pending on our ISO review that was completed at the beginning of January that we're at. And as I mentioned, the joint fire academy just completed this last week. That completes my first quarter report and I will stand for any questions. But thank you for your support to the fire department. [21:35] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Council, any questions? I think especially the EV stuff. That was—I'm thinking about that a lot. Councilmember Wolter. [21:44] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Thank you, Chief. [21:45] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Uh, okay. Moving on to item six, our consent agenda. Anything you'd like to highlight, Mr. Miller? [21:51] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Thank you, Mayor. Uh, tonight I want to highlight item 6D. It's a resolution accepting donations from customers of Lakeville Liquors. Uh, this past month over $29,000 was raised from our customers, and those are going to be split equally between the food shelves at 360 Communities and the Open Door. And so we're very appreciative of that and I'm sure that we'll have them here at a future meeting and present them with that. Item 6G, it's time to start thinking Pan-O-Prog. And so we're going to be uh asking you to approve a resolution temporarily closing streets for those festivities. Uh just as a heads up, item 6J, we are delaying the start time of the work session next week till 7 p.m. to allow for everybody to be there on time. And then item 6L is an ordinance amending title 8 chapters 1 and two of the Lakeville City Code. Um that was the code that uh detailed the organization of our fire department. As you know that's going through a lot of changes. So this was reviewed by the public safety committee last month and we're asking for approval of that change. [22:45] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Very good. Council, any items you wanted to pull for discussion? If not, I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda. [22:56] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** I move to approve the consent agenda. [22:58] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Second. [23:01] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. **Council members:** I. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Nay. Okay. Consent agenda passed. We'll now move on to item 7A, Pumpkin Creek Preliminary Plat and Reszoning. And I believe the applicant David Canabaly—are you going to present first or come on up? Did I say that right? Cany. Oh, it is "Can-a-bal-y," way off. Welcome. [23:29] **David Canabaly:** Yeah. Thank you, mayor, council members. My name is David Canabaly. I'm a civil engineer with the firm Civil Site Group. Here to present the Pumpkin Creek Residential Development Project. Project is located just south of 185th Street, north of the Preserve Third Edition project off of Exonia Avenue. Project is for the subdivision of the property into 26 single family lots and a rezoning of the property from an RS-2 zoning to an RS-3 zoning. Um the project we've been working with the city for quite a long time went through planning commission. They um approved or recommended approval of the project. We're here for approval tonight and we're here if you've got any questions or anything on the project. Be more than willing to answer. [24:18] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Thank you. Any questions yet? Thank you. Welcome. [To Tina Goodroad] [24:23] **Community Development Director Tina Goodroad:** Thank you, mayor, members of the council. Um as Mr. Canabaly said, um the property is um Pumpkin Creek Preliminary Plat is proposed just south of 185th Street um north of 190th Street. Um they are requesting both a preliminary plat and a rezoning. The existing um property the existing zoning is RS-2 single family. They're proposing RS-3 which is the same zoning to the south um where Exonia Avenue will be extended from. Um this falls within the range for the low-density land use category. Um the preliminary plat—um we've altered the the layout. Um north is 185th street. Um at the top of your screen you can see the layout for the 26 lots. The street—main street—only will extend up to 185th street. And then there is one other um short extension of a new street that could extend to the west as well as a cul-de-sac. Um the property does include three wetland areas. Um the applicant worked um really well with staff to protect these wetland areas as well as the buffer. Um and then at the same time tuck in all of the required storm water management. It was a challenging site. Um they worked hard with us. Um we pushed them a little bit. Um lost a couple of lots in the process—um which they don't love but we have to um abide by our requirements—and it turned out to be a really good layout. Um, in the end, the lots range from 11,000 square ft to a little over 24,000 square ft depending on um, the location. Um, all of the lots meet all of the required setbacks um, for the position of the home site. So, um, everything is being met. Um, as he mentioned, the planning commission did review this and held a public hearing on March 20th and unanimously recommended approval of the preliminary plat and the rezoning. And I stand for any questions. [26:15] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, council, any questions, comments? Councilmember Lee. [26:19] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Just a comment, not a question here. Um, but I guess I appreciate the work that went into adjusting this. Um, you know, I I was hopeful that through this process, we weren't going to try to find the most—the smallest possible lots um for this uh zoning. And you know doing some some statistics on the the uh square footage it's clear that most of the properties are larger than the minimum which is uh appreciated. Uh the preservation of the wetlands is is great. Uh congruence with the properties to the south. I mean I just—it—it's clear that this took some creativity and some work to make this happen. Um, I know that there's—it's never uh our our priority to clear-cut some of the forests that—or I shouldn't say forest, they're wooded areas. They're not always quality wooded areas. Um, but to get all of the uh requirements in to maintain the water quality was was something that I appreciated, too. So, um, just well done uh around the board and and thank you for the work that went into it. [27:40] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Other questions, comments? If not, I'll take a motion. Councilmember Bermel. [27:54] **Councilmember John Bermel:** I move to approve one, a resolution approving the preliminary plat of Pumpkin Creek and two, an ordinance amendment rezoning the property from RS-2 to RS-3 and adopt the findings of fact dated April 21, 2025. [28:15] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Is there a second? **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Second. [28:16] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any further discussion? I'll just say I want to extend my gratitude to to staff and the planning commission. I you know—as I mentioned—they took a lot of testimony. I watched that meeting. A lot of—answered a lot of questions—so I appreciate that and and that of the developer as well, so thank you for that. And with that, we'll take roll call please. [28:44] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Wolter. **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Lee. **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Volk. **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Bermel. **Councilmember John Bermel:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Hellier. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Hi. Very good. Congratulations, good luck. Uh moving on to items eight and nine, unfinished and new business. Okay, seeing none. Announcements. Next work session is next Monday at 7 p.m., not 6 p.m., here at city hall. Our next council meeting is May 5th here in chambers. And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn to a close session to discuss some land acquisition. [29:16] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** So moved. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** We have to say out the—oh yeah. Councilmember Volk, numbers in there. [29:21] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Uh we move to adjourn to a close session to discuss the land acquisition of PID number 22733700070 and 220090079011 pursuant to Minnesota statute 13D.05 subdivision 3C3. [29:44] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Second. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any amendments to that? Um, any discussion? If not, roll call, please. [29:54] **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Wolter. **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Lee. **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Volk. **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Bermel. **Councilmember John Bermel:** Hi. **City Clerk Ann Orlofsky:** Hellier. **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Hi.