This transcript is from a Hastings City Council meeting (circa late 2020). Based on the context provided and the dialogue, here is the attributed transcript. [0:00] **Mary Fasbender (Mayor):** statutes chapter 12 and other laws further attendance of the meeting by members of the city council city staff or the public at the regular meeting location in the city council chambers is not feasible due to the coven 19 pandemic and closure to city talk city hall to members of the public as a result of foregoing the special counsel meeting will be conducted solely by telephone or other electronic means as provided in minnesota statute 13d .021 and no in-person meeting will be conducted in the city council chambers i think it is important to re recognize that using a video conference is not as good as an [0:45] **Mary Fasbender:** in-person meeting but it is necessary under the circumstances we are doing the best we can to maintain transparency and due process i would appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation as we work through the meeting please stand for the pledge of allegiance [1:08] **(All):** i pledge allegiance to the... indivisible with liberty and justice for all. [1:24] **Mary Fasbender:** all right thank you seeing that the meeting is being held remotely when i call your name please indicate your presence council member balsanic [1:48] **Joe Balsanek:** here **Mary Fasbender:** council member brock's **Jen Fox (Brax):** here **Mary Fasbender:** council member falch **Tina Folch:** here **Mary Fasbender:** council member lifeville **Lisa Leifeld:** here **Mary Fasbender:** councilmember lund **Trevor Lund:** here **Mary Fasbender:** councilmember vaughn **Vaughan:** here **Mary Fasbender:** let the role reflect that all console members are present and a quorum has been established council members are there any corrections to the minutes from the special meetings on august 14th and 25th and the workshop and the regular meeting of august 17th seeing none they are approved for pub and now we'll have comments from [2:35] **Mary Fasbender:** the audience for public comments we have options for comments to be emailed prior to the meeting as well as an interactive feature during the meeting for the emailed comments they have been forwarded to the city council and the receipt is acknowledged please recognize that items not on the agenda will not be discussed this evening we all we ask that attendance use the raised hand feature and they will be invited to speak one at a time i also want to remind everyone that the public comment period is not intended for an extended dialogue is there anyone here who would like to speak to the uh council at this point [3:29] **Mary Fasbender:** i see no raised hands so uh council members are there any council items to be considered [3:44] **Mary Fasbender:** okay consulate would accept a motion to approve the council's consent agenda **Tina Folch:** this is council member full try some move **Jen Fox (Brax):** second **Mary Fasbender:** council member fultz with the second by council member brock's counsel do you have any discussion clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten (Clerk):** uncle member vaughn **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Joe Balsanek:** yes [4:27] **Kelly Flatten:** yes yes the motion prevails **Mary Fasbender:** awarding of contracts and public hearing for this item we will have an introduction by community development director john hinsman and followed by a public hearing then potentially several action items by the council john welcome **John Hinzman:** thank you madam mayor and city council members so uh the first of our public hearings tonight deals with property located at the villas at pleasant which is at the northwest corner of northridge drive in pleasant drive and so i will go through the actions that we're looking for you to act upon tonight and uh give [5:15] **John Hinzman:** some explanation on some current issues that have come up on the project as well here so i'm going to share my screen to give a little more background on the proposal itself so what we're looking at here is this property here it's 10.3 acres presently owned by the lawrence property group and looking to be developed by civic property group what they're looking to do is to create 32 with villa home sites and there are three actions before the council tonight the first of which is to hold a public hearing to consider an ordinance amendment which would be a rezoning of the property changing the land use and this would change the land use from a agriculture in r1 single family residential to r3 medium density medium high density [6:02] **John Hinzman:** residents planned residential development so you're asked to hold a public hearing to consider that action tonight with an ordinance amendment we have two public hearings that are held one at the planning commission and also one of the city council in addition to that we also have actions scheduled for you for the preliminary plan and the final plat these are not technically public hearings uh but action is requested for you on these items the preliminary plot would be the subdivision into 32 villa home sites and the final plat would be the first phase of that development which is about 16 lots altogether so uh background on this investigation here and on the the actions before you we had the planning commission review this on a couple of different occasions [6:48] **John Hinzman:** first of all on august 24th they did vote 5-0 to recommend approval of the rezoning at that meeting during the public hearing we did hear from several individuals who provided comments and sharing concerns on the location of the cul-de-sacs in relation to backyards zoning of the property storm water market for homes screening and traffic flow so these these items were included and have provided a summary of those comments within your packet itself so they took action on the rezoning of that night 5-0 recommending approval of that but they did have some concerns related to the western cul-de-sacs and the relation to existing homes and they asked for that to come back with some further investigation that occurred on september 14th at that meeting uh there [7:35] **John Hinzman:** was an explanation given on on the cul-de-sacs which i'll get into in a little more detail in a moment and a recommendation by the commission on a 4-2 vote to recommend approval of both the preliminary and final plats so all the actions before you tonight are recommended for approval three separate actions and they just require a simple majority for action tonight so let's take a look at the at the subdivision itself and the actions before you this is a copy of the zoning map here the the property in red this is zoned agriculture at present this is zoned r1 single family residential the entire area here is proposed to be r3 which is medium high density resident plan residential development kind of [8:21] **John Hinzman:** multiple there similar type of zoning as you can see this area up here which is 15th street and meadowview trail a similar type of zoning when you take a look at the zoning we always look at the comprehensive plan for guidance the comprehensive plan for this property guides it for low density development it also provides some explanation of what constitutes low density development within the low density development section of our comprehensive plan it does provide for maximum density for the sites lot sizes and type of units taking a look at what's being proposed today which is a single family detached villa townhome which is a smaller lot size these do meet the requirements and the lot sizes of the [9:07] **John Hinzman:** comprehensive plan so being it is consistent with the comprehensive plan we are looking looking at a recommendation of rezoning to the r3 designation for this property when you take a look at the development itself here's here's what the the development outline would be as far as the units itself it's kind of a unique subdivision from the standpoint of public space what you're showing here is a rear yard uh perspective of the development in which there is not proposed to be active space the active space is actually on the side of the development which is shown here which i'm circling and shown over here so what they do is they activate the areas between the units for their public for their private outdoor space [9:54] **John Hinzman:** and really using this as open space separation between these units and the development itself you can also see from the design of the subdivision itself that there's some variation within the units itself proposal of the subdivision is in two phases we have 32 units as part of the preliminary plot which is everything you see here this is northridge drive to the south this is old bridge lane which would connect through the subdivision and 23rd street connecting from the west at pleasant drive there are two cul-de-sacs that would be added to towards the west melody court here and orchard court over here this would be the entire preliminary plan for the subdivision we look at the the civil plans grading drainage erosion control as part of that review to make sure the whole system [10:40] **John Hinzman:** accommodates and works well one of the things that did come up in kind of a unique aspect of the site here is it is very flat and there are some drainage issues currently towards the northwest area of the property so we did spend some time with the developer and our engineering staff has reviewed this and uh it will be a betterment of the situation for this property for drainage at this northern area of the property what we're showing here in this dashed line here is the phase breakup the first phase which is the final plot is this area down here this is what will be constructed first the first 16 lots and then there would be a separate final plot for the second phase of development towards the north here and so we're taking a look at different aspects of the plaque itself [11:27] **John Hinzman:** you know we're looking at uh at areas such as park dedication drainage road construction road linkage uh we've we've done our review on that and uh we feel that this proposal meets the requirements of the subdivision code and are recommending going forward with it now one of the things that we've looked at here has been the cul-de-sac locations and you can see that the cul-de-sac locations on the west do come very close to the western property line in fact the the right of way for the cul-de-sacs to touch the western property lines at these two locations here and so certainly there's been some concern raised as to separation [12:13] **John Hinzman:** at these areas now the the cul-de-sacs that we're showing here meet our design requirement we've had a design requirement that we've had since the 1990s here in what's termed a teardrop design and the teardrop design here provides for ease of movement for our maintenance vehicles when a street and a cul-de-sac is publicly dedicated here and so this complies with our requirements for the design here what the developer has done is to provide some items to buffer the site from the neighboring properties you can see faintly here some tree plantings around the cul-de-sacs these are six foot coniferous plantings that are 15 feet on the center so that we [12:58] **John Hinzman:** planted six foot tall every 15 feet along these cul-de-sac areas in addition to that there would be a foot privacy fence constructed in this location here along this northern cul-de-sac and along the west side of this cul-de-sac too so this would be to provide additional screening on this when the planning commission reviewed this on the 14th uh they did at add a recommendation to this that the the standard cul-de-sac design that we have the public cul-de-sac design uh that they are looking for something that would be smaller and i'll get into that in just a moment here this is what the properties would look like the homes itself variety of things that would happen um cul-de-sac options are as follows we can have [13:45] **John Hinzman:** what the planning commission is asking for is the consideration of what's termed a reduced-sized cul-de-sac and this could be termed either private or public uh we need to determine whether that would be publicly or privately maintained from a staff standpoint we would we we have a public standard for public right-of-way cul-de-sacs for a certain reason it's the ease of maintenance for us it's the most efficient way to do maintenance on the cul-de-sac and this should really be the uh the rule not the exception and when we're looking at these and so uh our our staff here we would like to to see the the private uh excuse me the cul-de-sac teardrop designer if it's gonna be public remain that way there is an option from [14:30] **John Hinzman:** the developer that the developer could consider which would be a private cul-de-sac now private cul-de-sac would be privately maintained privately owned by the subdivision there would need to be homeowners association documents established in order to ensure that the maintenance and the upkeep of this cul-de-sac will continue over time the advantage to that would be you could have a different design that could meet our minimum radius designs for for larger vehicles fire and so forth but would not have to be that the teardrop design which is our preference for public maintenance on the property so we're not we're not necessarily opposed to a smaller cul-de-sac it's having a smaller cul-de-sac [15:15] **John Hinzman:** that the public works department would need to maintain and so that is an option before that if the developer could develop these privately now the developer has shared that he would prefer not to do it that way his reasoning is that this provides additional burden uh an additional cost to the owners of that subdivision i i don't think that that the developer is opposed to a smaller cul-de-sac uh if it was publicly maintained but uh he's not uh would not prefer to have it privately maintained for those reasons our public works staff would like to see any publicly maintained cul-de-sac be built to the standards that we've established here within the report itself we did note that a location of another cul-de-sac [16:01] **John Hinzman:** that was done that is publicly maintained publicly dedicated and that was built off summit point in 2006 i believe and uh so we we have done that in the past however that is the exception and not the rule on that here so really what we're asking for you tonight in relation to the uh the planning items on this is to provide some direction on that uh what with any recommendation on the preliminary and final plaque we would we would like to see the maker of the motion provide direction on these items do they are looking at the standard size cul-de-sac to our design that is presented in your packets are they looking at a reduced-sized cul-de-sac that would be private or public [16:46] **John Hinzman:** that recommendation can be made and staff can follow up on the details of that that would not need to necessarily come back to the city council but we would need your direction on that so that is the proposal that we have before you tonight again the actions before the council are to hold a public hearing on the rezoning aspect of it and also to consider action on the rezoning the preliminary plat in the final plat and that would be consistent with the conditions within your packet we do have the developer present stuart simek who can answer any questions as well he's in the audience and i can stand for the questions prior to the public hearing as well thank you [17:53] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator):** your honor i think you're on mute i'm sorry councilmember masonic did you have a question **Joe Balsanek:** yes i did thank you your honor uh question for john um the cul-de-sac the sax i guess we're talking plural right uh the reduced size what does that do to i you're talking about maintenance which is snow plowing things like that uh what about emergency uh vehicles like fire trucks which are going to be a lot longer uh a lot a lot more bulk with that [18:40] **Joe Balsanek:** equipment how does that work out with a reduced cul-de-sac **John Hinzman:** sure councilmember we would have certain turning radius standards that we'd have for our fire equipment and emergency services vehicles and uh they would need to to meet those requirements now we do have private streets and private cul-de-sacs elsewhere which are smaller than the standard that has been established this we established the standard i think really for the for the ease of our public works vehicle maintenance uh the uh emergency aspect of it for fire and ambulance uh we we have a standards of minimum turning radius which are are less than uh than what we'd have for our maintenance vehicles [19:26] **John Hinzman:** and uh i know i've got uh i've got nick egger on on here as well and then i want to make sure that i'm answering that correctly as well nick if i could jump in your honor on that **Nick Egger (Public Works):** um just to expand on what john's saying i think in the scenario where if there were a private cul-de-sac i believe the developer is suggesting that they would remove the uh the island that is required when we have uh the standard teardrop design for the publicly maintained cul-de-sac so that um the act of opening up that space does does help out with the the larger turning radius for an emergency vehicle such as a fire truck uh what it does put us at a disadvantage [20:13] **Nick Egger:** at when it comes to maintenance maintenance is that is even more snow to clear and stockpile and deal with uh for clearing out the bulb of the cul-de-sac the reason for the island is to try to minimize that and to create a one-directional path around the perimeter of the island so that it's conducive to fitting for our plow trucks we you might have seen in my memo segment there where it's discussing this uh we've got around 100 cul-de-sacs in town and we arrived at this sort of design um 25 or more years ago after adapting uh to the type of equipment that we have in our fleet that takes care of 100 miles worth of other streets [20:59] **Nick Egger:** so we're kind of fitting things to what we have in our arsenal to do an efficient job applying there that said cul-de-sacs are among the most time intensive areas that we do have to clear snow from so i think from my standpoint in in overseeing that operation uh i certainly don't want to take something that's already not ideally efficient and make it even less so uh with with a shrunken size and uh more difficult maneuvering in there for the the regular maintenance that comes with winter time so i i think that's that's where i'll leave it **Joe Balsanek:** okay thank you john and and thank you nick and then one more question uh [21:45] **Joe Balsanek:** you mentioned that the curb on with these would end up on property lines with homeowners on the west is that correct **John Hinzman:** remember the the extent of the right-of-way wood i'm going to share my screen here for a second to show what this would be here let's see so when you take a look this is the traveled area of the cul-de-sac here this is the right-of-way itself so the right-of-way would touch the property lines in a couple of locations here albeit the paved surface would be you know some distance off their 10 or more feet i believe **Joe Balsanek:** okay so 10 or more feet that's going to be enough for room to uh pile snow [22:32] **Joe Balsanek:** so that we're not going to have snow piling up on uh homeowner property to the west **John Hinzman:** yeah councilmember uh tough question to answer they're at to a point uh we we even with the cul-de-sac uh inventory that we have we do find ourselves having to go in and remove snow from them if we have a really heavy winter with lots of snow you just run out of places to put it plain and simple and that wouldn't be exclusive to this location uh we've got many other areas around town where we've had to do that if it if it persists and piles up over the season **Joe Balsanek:** okay uh do we need a motion before we open the public hearing or we do the [23:19] **Joe Balsanek:** public hearing first **John Hinzman:** uh no we would just open the public hearing first uh no motion required **Joe Balsanek:** okay thank you uh nick and john and your honor thank you **Jen Fox (Brax):** councilmember broxs thank you my question john is about light um i saw one of the public comments was regarding concern of light leaving these properties and being in back windows and lights shining in their house um can you speak a little too i didn't see it a light plan but maybe that is something i missed um just in terms of how we evaluate light and and foot candles and how we don't want it to leave the property [24:04] **John Hinzman:** sure yeah from uh because this is a residential subdivision next to other residents uh we don't have we don't net have a a light plan requirement submittal is part of this uh that being said the most significant concern that i would see from light is going to be from the cul-de-sacs themselves from movements around there getting close to the property lines the addition of the six-foot privacy fence will will block the headlights uh from from shining onto properties in those locations and so what we're looking at beyond that would just be the ambient lights that would be on either as part of the public street lights or you know the lights coming from structures so nothing unusual in this [24:50] **John Hinzman:** sub subdivision related to that **Jen Fox (Brax):** okay thank you **Tina Folch:** councilmember fulch um thank you your honor i had a follow-up question for john in regards to the city's recommended uh teardrop island uh cul-de-sac i just wanted to make sure that um todd seaworth's uh concerns about that were being addressed so in what you're recommending it does for sure include the privacy fence and then the large evergreens within that design so if we make that recommendation that is the features that would be included with that that's not on that's not an optional design correct **John Hinzman:** sure council member i'll [25:37] **John Hinzman:** offer some clarification there the recommendation that we would have for approval part of the conditions on your resolution would be to construct a six-foot privacy fence and i'll put my screen back up here again a six-foot privacy fence along these areas north of this cul-de-sac west of the cul-de-sac here at melody this would also include the evergreen plantings at 15 foot on center six feet in height generally here that's on another plan as well as the construction of a six-foot privacy fence in this location to block headlight views and uh similar evergreen plantings there **Tina Folch:** okay so what you just said is that it would have to be a part of the [26:23] **Tina Folch:** resolution when we go to it **John Hinzman:** so i'm sorry councilman it is part of the resolution **Tina Folch:** it is a part okay there we go i could have just said it as a part sorry thanks okay **Trevor Lund:** council member lund did you have something to thank you yeah so we say reduced size but that really doesn't mean anything unless we can put some uh numbers to it so could you give me an idea of what that looks like if you were to show that map again where you know where would that new uh new shape lie then **John Hinzman:** council member very generally speaking [27:08] **John Hinzman:** um you know something you know maybe like this if you can follow my cursor around here uh you know the teardrop that we have here is for two reasons you know for the for the ease of moving around and i think also for snow storage space as well here so uh a smaller space you know we'd have to if it was public we need to truck that off put it someplace else find a storage place for it be a little more difficult privately same thing as well you'd have to they'd have to figure that point out but from a distant standpoint you might be able to lessen the distance from that western and from the northern property line here you know maybe maybe to this point and then what that means in general terms here and i'm taking very rough approximations here [27:54] **John Hinzman:** you know you might be 20 feet off from the property line with the pavement maybe more on that one but that that's really uh that that's really a hypothetical on my end **Trevor Lund:** and the one on the north is i mean that is the thought process when we were taught when when discussing the reduced size that one would remain tear dropped **John Hinzman:** yes councilmember this cul-de-sac up here at old bridge court or lane would remain as is there would not be any recommended changes to it it would only affect the two to the west melody court and orchard court [28:42] **Lisa Leifeld:** i have a follow-up question your honor um so if this were strictly r1 entirety of the property how many units would be able to fit an r1 **John Hinzman:** i think the minimum lot size on that's 9 700 square feet so i i don't know what the what the number would be off the top of my head uh council member but uh with the lots shown here i think we're looking at 6 000 square feet and up [29:23] **Lisa Leifeld:** council member council member lightfelt did you want to speak first yes your honor um i have a couple questions first can i is it safe to assume that there's no parking in these cul-de-sacs **John Hinzman:** i i i might look to to nick egger on this as well but these are public streets and they would be if they're built to this design could accommodate public parking is that correct nick **Nick Egger:** yeah i think we have some degree of that there uh with the the standard design the drive aisle is about fee wide so uh it's not uh you know that can present problems of [30:08] **Nick Egger:** course if there's that kind of activity happening in the winter like anywhere else but uh summertime conditions it does allow maneuverability around there for uh standard vehicles **Lisa Leifeld:** okay thank you nick my next question is more along the lines of what we're looking to put here okay if in the perfect real estate environment and everything the stars align we've got 32 right units of um cottage living for i don't want to say senior but maybe 55 plus now um a number of years ago and one of you may know i'm thinking around 2004 or [30:55] **Lisa Leifeld:** 2006-ish there were cottages built up near um oak ridge manor the oak ridge manor cottages um i knew a couple who bought that they were um over 60 but into that owned it and within i believe two years those places were being sold to other families they now had children on bikes they now had um you know younger couples who were tinkering with their you know muscle cars all this different stuff i guess the biggest concern is to me an r3 with this medium to high density fits in the scope of when we're talking [31:43] **Lisa Leifeld:** a couple people in a residence you put my family of seven kids in that neighborhood and that just changes the entire environment of what i think it is we're looking for so i just don't understand where or how we would have any reassurance that that's what this is going to be now i look back and say okay you do an r1 or even an r2 if that's an option fewer which gives them more space more yard i guess where i'm really stuck at is what assurances i love the idea i'd love to see a place just like this but i'm concerned about what keeps it at level of [32:30] **Lisa Leifeld:** um senior housing or whatever whatever they're calling it cottages for you know people with money who are over 55. **John Hinzman:** okay okay accounts remember i can i insist on that a little bit tonight you know the developer may be able to add more to this as well what happened with the the augustana one that the cottages that were there around 14th street is those were specifically age restricted i believe and then those age restrictions were were lifted at a later point this situation here there is no age restriction going on there's marketing directly towards uh empty nesters seniors that the developer has shared but there's no actual restriction that would be placed upon these from an age standpoint their experience in building these type [33:16] **John Hinzman:** of structures they've built these in 26 different states and and really focus in on this type of product in this market is that you know they're fairly confident that the uh the people that are going to move in here are going to be of that age group however there's no restrictions on that that are placed do see a raised hand from uh developer uh stuart simek if you'd like any further clarification of that as well i can bring him into the meeting **Lisa Leifeld:** i'd be more than happy to hear what he has to say john you've explained it okay sufficiently to me that there are no age restrictions that in itself does give me a little bit of concern um so before he speaks let me ask i read [34:03] **Lisa Leifeld:** a number of emails what are they referring to when all you'll see is these black walls did anyone else read that in their um facing pleasant is there what was it some sort of privacy fencing were they making reference to the roof lines what were did anyone else catch that where am i mistaken **Jen Fox (Brax):** i'll jump in yes i did see that i i don't know do you know council member balsanic what it was in reference to **Joe Balsanek:** i think it was a long pleasant right but i there's nothing in the designs uh that i saw that would [34:48] **Joe Balsanek:** indicate any kind of black walls **John Hinzman:** i'll jump out here let the developer thank you yeah and i do have the developer stuart stimac here as well i'll also share quickly here oh we're getting stuart on uh this view here which is uh artist rendering of what that re what that rear yard would look like to the neighboring property owner so you'd have uh the walls of the different developments here there are some windows within there uh some different structures a fencing between the units to provide some privacy for uh for the private space between the units so that that's what uh the developer has proposed here and uh stuart i think if i unmute you or are you a mute yourself you can speak [35:36] **Stuart Simek (Developer):** hey good evening members of the city council and mayor um yeah thank you um i appreciate this opportunity to uh talk to you on this so just to maybe go through and address questions some of the concerns um uh council member uh lee fell you talked about you know previous development that changed and my my one comment would be the the number one the hoa does not allow uh swing sets play you know any of those things so those are number one a big discouragement for somebody wanting to move in there um you also look at the old saying birds [36:22] **Stuart Simek:** of a feather flock together while it is not age restricted it it does attract those type of people and that generally speaking and i could bring in uh steve hack with epcon who's out of ohio he could talk to more of the stats there but typically speaking you're going to have under you know one and a half to two people living in these homes um driveways you're going to have room for two cars so i don't think you're gonna have a ton of you know you don't have uh high school kids i've got a couple high school kids well with it usually goes an extra car could be their friend's car whatever so some of those things [37:09] **Stuart Simek:** really don't show up and again i can bring stephen on that one of the other questions on lighting these homes will probably have more lighting impact from the two-story homes that are behind them than they will have then they will be giving i guess is what i would say you've got a one-story versus a two-story and again with modern lighting that's out there for street lighting i would have to talk to your engineering department but i'm certain there are standards on that for you know keeping the light on the property that's been a a big thing probably for the last 10 years at least the drawing out there is a little bit deceptive what everyone has seen [37:56] **Stuart Simek:** and there's been a little i would maybe call it a little bit of misinformation or maybe it's a poor job on our part with the the curb line absolutely positively does not go up to the property line what you are seeing is the public right-of-way so you have you see the line where it goes that's it'd be no different than any of these properties probably have a public right-of-way coming off the cul-de-sac or b if it were on pleasant avenue or northridge there's there's typically always a a public right away in there um the in you do you have a unique design where it also reduces the impact to any neighbors behind there you're not going [38:42] **Stuart Simek:** to have a a deck looking into their backyard and it's it's kind of a win-win that way and it's also landscaped uh attractively and properly to provide screening and working with one of the key neighbors there mr c words we have had some good uh conversations i think you know where he's he's even made the comment i think uh publicly he's tired of looking at a soybean field and he ultimately would he's going to be the person who's going to be impacted by this the most and ultimately what he's fighting for is is no different than anyone else you're fighting for you know your backyard you want it to be done right you want it to be done respectfully and we are i think i think [39:29] **Stuart Simek:** we've had a great dialogue going back and forth we've also had good dialogue with public works we've been which i completely understand public works position that hey we've got a standardized cul-de-sac that's what we'd like to see there you don't want you know they don't want 20 different cul-de-sacs and 20 different plow trucks we get that so our hands have been a little bit tied with that what i am told from my engineer there's been a discussion of public versus private as a as a developer i have an opinion what i would like to see it as i would personally like to see it as a as public streets for the main reason [40:15] **Stuart Simek:** of what does the development what does the street look like in 20 or 30 years you know the city council will have turned over i'll probably you know we will we will have all moved on i my opinion is a city is typically better financially capable to tax and improve roads repair roads all those other things for me there is no um immediate or substantial i mean there's really no benefit to me as the developer whether these streets are public or private developer pay for those streets when they get put in free ride on those streets there's no [41:02] **Stuart Simek:** free snow plowing okay so if the public if they're public streets hastings is going to assess property owners or street maintenance which includes plowing if the streets are private the homeowners association will assass for snow stone removal and street maintenance what i am told by my engineer is if we go to a private street we can only start maintaining some standards that are out there for fire and for i think it's fire is what it comes down to for fire emergency vehicles it only reduces the size of the cul-de-sac by four feet [41:48] **Stuart Simek:** but then it trips it into public utilities so any utilities in there again which i am going to pay for as the developer it's not hey the city pays for it or there's any free there's no free lunch in there i need to put in those utilities but over the next you know the life of the development the hoa is responsible for maintaining those utilities deal i don't think you're going to be replacing water and sewer pipes in 30 years it might be 50 years but it's then there's a little there's some easements and some other stuff that has to go in there so long story short um this product um you're seeing it your couple your planning commission members talked about [42:33] **Mary Fasbender:** it was uh council number one i'm gonna wait for the honor good okay i'm sorry um high demand for this product it's also a product to keep members that are already in your community it's somebody who's raised kids in hastings the kids have moved out and instead of moving to you know cottage grove wood barrier lakeville they've got an option to stay there you've got something that has no stairs they have the option of a bonus room on the front if they if they chose that um and again a lot of demand out there and i think you will see that um you know in your community so any any questions for me [43:35] **Mary Fasbender:** council member sonic you're unmuted oh i'm sorry uh council members michael bond wanted to speak okay councilmember vaughn you're unmuted **Vaughan:** thank you honor um rook i guess real quick question for um and i think all this is going to tie into the first item that we're going to have a public hearing on the rezoning but stewart you mentioned this i mean these designs and i've watched the planning commission meetings and i've worked with you on this since the beginning are the culvestacks a requirement or just something that you want to put in there for this because i look at melody court as an example there's one two five homes in there and nothing on the other side why can't i just went through some other things for tonight's meeting and there's [44:22] **Vaughan:** some other ones why aren't they why aren't these dead ending into extra parking spots uh look at even orchard court or maybe maybe just have a street why does it have to be a cul-de-sac so um or is that a requirement **Stuart Simek:** uh very very good question um it's a requirement and uh you know truth be told if if there was not that requirement we would probably put some sort of hammerhead turnaround down there and again not having to put a big cul-de-sac in the other thing they think about these culver sacks uh your typical cul-de-sac you know probably has six homes on it if you look at this design you got about one to two homes so they're not really servicing anything um but they are [45:10] **Stuart Simek:** unfortunately a requirement and i think in the you know in the whole i guess picture of this reason that we can't work with the engineering department to come up with some sort of solution i mean we're not i guess we just got to figure it out and see what's going to be acceptable with the engineering department and and and how we do it um but ultimately these call this tax they're just a turnaround you know that's ultimately what they are and you think about it if you were if you owned there clean into your home are you really going to drive through the cul-de-sac drive around and then come back into your driveway [45:55] **Stuart Simek:** i live on the front of a cul-de-sac and the first driveway i turn into is mine i don't even drive in the cul-de-sac you know there won't be really any homes off so it's a requirement and then your **Vaughan:** thank you um you're on a follow-up that if this i'm assuming the city is requiring this and oh the math on it not making any sense to me because i look long-term the cost of payment the cost of maintaining it in space i don't know why we went dead in that because we've done it we're going to talk about them tonight i see i drove up and down them granted they were private sector so if this was a private sector road could they put in whatever they want or are we going to require [46:40] **Vaughan:** again more cul-de-sacs i i'm not seeing the value of it i personally think especially when in look at who their target marketing is that that down by uh the end of orchard i would be putting two or three parking stalls in case somebody wanted to come over that's ryan laney i'm all in favor of this project i have been from the word go because i think our community needs it i understand the neighbors directly behind it are not in favor some of our but we've had a lot of calls and emails that are in favor of it um and i think working with them and i give stuart and his staff credit working with the neighbors on seeing different designs here but that's i think that's more into the preliminary and final plan that i'll have this discussion more on the cul-de-sac but that's my [47:27] **Vaughan:** overall opinion i think it's a needed thing in our community and i like it but i i really want to question these cul-de-sac requirements thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilman vaughn council councilmember bolsonic **Joe Balsanek:** yes thank you your writer i you know i was looking at those two cul-de-sacs that i'm saying to myself if we didn't have them the developer could slip in two more uh villa homes in there it's just taking up so much property space uh now that's an advantage to the people that live to the west uh but in terms of the development if all we're doing is putting those in so that a city truck can [48:12] **Joe Balsanek:** [Music] do a u-turn with a plow it's a residential street the plow driver could just as easily back up onto old bridge lane just do a straight shot in on orchard court and melody court back up old bridge lane and they're out of there it's a lot of space it's an awful lot of space i'm looking at my you know my copy of the drawing seeing any any actual demarcation distances but because of those two [48:59] **Joe Balsanek:** cul-de-sacs uh you're kind of wiping out two maybe three original villas thank you **Mary Fasbender:** council members any oh uh nick sure go ahead i think dan had his hand up before me but oh i didn't see that sorry dan would you like to speak **Dan Wietecha:** i i i was gonna refer to nick but the comment i wanted to take up a lot of space it's more than just a snow plow it's also fire trucks it's garbage trucks it's maybe not the the market they're putting towards here but school buses uh delivery vehicles [49:45] **Dan Wietecha:** and there are a lot of other vehicles that do need to be able to go in and turn around not just the resident on there that holds it in and out of their driveway and that's the reason that there's a requirement for the culver sex but i'm sure our engineering expertise nick or even ryan to elaborate **Mary Fasbender:** sure nick go ahead **Nick Egger:** yeah thanks mayor i i'll go back to what i said earlier here in that we we have a situation where you know cul-de-sacs are obviously not through streets and we've got a pretty strong inventory of them out there right now and each one of them has comes with it a more cumbersome set of maintenance practices that have [50:33] **Nick Egger:** to be in there equally likewise could be said for a hammerhead or a dead end i don't think that uh it's going to be nearly it may be even less efficient than an already inefficient cul-de-sac to have a 40 or 50 foot long dump truck plow with the 20 foot wide blade backing in and out of there trying to push snow around and so forth and and putting that into the places it needs to go to clear the street so what i'm looking at here from from the long term caretaking upkeep of these streets and in cul-de-sac areas is uh aiming at making that an efficient [51:19] **Nick Egger:** operation we we inherit everything that a developer builds if it's a public right-of-way space forever there's no baxis on that so the these are setting the tone for what we will inherit and deal with for the long haul and and so that's why we come at it from an angle of thinking about these operational things on the front end in addition to what dan mentioned too that it's about more than just that it's uh private types of uses to deliveries garbage etc that have to use these spaces and easily maneuver in and out thanks nick **Trevor Lund:** councilmember lund thank you i'm curious nick if [52:05] **Trevor Lund:** um if there's a ever been an example of a more of a hybrid situation where plowing is is on the homeowners association but all the other general maintenance and upkeep is on the city so you know um the point point is is good on um mr cynic's part about you know what he said is you know what's gonna happen 20 years from now um you know it seems like getting a snout snow plow in and out is a major factor in the overall design of this thing and it's kind of the point of contention here so can we [52:51] **Trevor Lund:** minimize the plowing issue and not sacrifice quality or anything else **Mary Fasbender:** nick you want to speak to that **Nick Egger:** i i don't think i'll have a very well formulated answer here for it that's a new one i have not been asked before about having public snow plowing or sorry private snow plowing but public street maintenance i don't believe we have any situations like that elsewhere in the city i'm sure i'd be aware of that if that were the case uh i'm not sure about other communities whether they've done similar arrangements so i i'm sorry i'm kind of at a loss for the here and now to be able to answer that uh and speak with with a high degree of detail thank you nick **Lisa Leifeld:** councilmember lightfield thank your honor [53:50] **Lisa Leifeld:** so back to the whole cul-de-sac thing so i'm get from understanding correctly it's our requirement that those two cul-de-sacs be at the end stuart this isn't something you guys your um your company is built in that's something on us that in order for everything to plow right and drain right that needs to be there is that did i understand that right **Stuart Simek:** uh your honor uh yes councilmember i felt that is correct it is a requirement **Lisa Leifeld:** then i guess my question then for um staff then because it is in our [54:36] **Lisa Leifeld:** packet tonight the rendering in there from um mr seawort have we looked at that have we taken anything into effect i mean there it has a cul-de-sac and then a i don't know what you call that nick that the road that turn looks like the letter c the way i'm looking at it but i'm sure you engineers have a name for it so that is something that doesn't work i mean i guess that i don't know that we've discussed and i know he mr c would also builds houses for a living so i would ask if we've taken a look at this and is this something that one is something that could be looked at [55:24] **Lisa Leifeld:** or or where what are your thoughts **Nick Egger:** nick i'm going to defer to john hinsman on this we've seen that but uh i don't think that um you know we haven't we haven't given it a real deep dive on the engineering standpoint or the public works maintenance standpoint i think clearly from viewing that it allows through passage it doesn't have a turnaround per se so that's a little more advantageous from that standpoint but i think stuart and john will probably both have some additional things to say on that **Stuart Simek:** yeah your honor yes i'd like to address that so um mr seibert did [56:09] **Stuart Simek:** put that out there we did look at that it does it does two things um it it puts four of the homes on essentially an island so if you kind of envision yourself you know those homes would be pretty hard to market i guess this is the easiest way to put it the most important part and we did we did talk about this at the planning commission the most important part about that plan which it does not take into consideration is the storm water management so that plan the site wants to drain the way the site wants to drain and that's why we have the stormwater ponds where we have them when we first started [56:55] **Stuart Simek:** these discussions with the neighbors one of the the the biggest issues we heard about was hey what are you going to do to improve the storm water you know because and we saw some pictures and you've maybe seen them circulated of springtime flooding you have the soil issues there and you have basically the way the site wants to drain and our plan um you know we can't correct what goes on on a property adjacent to us but per storm water requirements with the engineering department with i'm going to forget who controls to be like a watershed we have to capture all water that's on [57:40] **Stuart Simek:** our site it can no longer like it does now off a soybean field when it's in that freeze thaw cycle in march and april you know we got to take care of our water is is the long and short of it there um furthermore the last comment on that plan would be it also pushes some homes closer to the neighbors which again i think if given the choice would they rather have homes closer or call the sack i can't speak for them but i you know i me personally i'd vote for a cul-de-sac that no one's going to use versus having a home closer to me but that's only one person's opinion so thank you stuart [58:29] **Mary Fasbender:** any other comments counsel okay at this point then i think we'll open up the public hearing john **John Hinzman:** yep that'd be appropriate mayor **Mary Fasbender:** okay and uh we asked that the attendees raised their hand feature and they will be invited to speak one at a time i'm opening the public hearing at this point for [59:02] **Mary Fasbender:** comments the public hearing is now open if you'd like to speak those of you in the audience please signify by utilizing the raised hand oops uh kevin green [59:30] **Kevin Green (Citizen):** welcome yes can you hear me yes we can kevin please state your name and your address yes kevin green um um counselors and commissioners um kevin green 1782 fallbrook drive in hastings um i've just been listening in on the conversation and i know it's quite a challenge the the cul-de-sac the snow plowing it you know everything's a trade-off and i don't have any answers for that um i do know that um if we add it up this is probably 15 million dollars worth of development it's good for tax base i think in the 15 million there'll be enough extra tax base that we can figure out the traffic we can figure out the cul-de-sacs i'm empathetic to the neighbors to the [1:00:17] **Kevin Green:** west into the north they have a legitimate concern i'm not really sure if i have any answers but i'm fully in support of the project 15 million dollars of additional tax base on a piece of vacant farmland that's been sitting there for well it's been sitting there 13 years that i've lived here and it's probably going to sit another 13 years unless someone comes up and does a project like stewart so that's all i have to say i'm in favor of it um i think i think it's something that we should be able to work out the cul-de-sacs get it done and uh everybody wins so um but again i am empathetic to the to the homeowners that it's you know that it's backed up to so i'll yield with that thank you mr green **Mary Fasbender:** anyone in the [1:01:02] **Mary Fasbender:** audience wish to speak uh paul hiller welcome paul and please state your name and your address [1:01:33] **Paul Hiller (Citizen):** welcome paul please uh state your name and your address please my name's paul hiller i live at 2467 rivershore court i would be one who is very much probably the most affected by the cul-de-sac issue and i can't tell you how much i would oppose having this in my backyard uh i don't care if you plant a fence in redwood sequoias i don't care you're still running a street into my backyard if this goes through and i've been here 15 years an original owner of the house my property rights shouldn't be infringed like this it's not like i bought a house or a lot that i knew there was a street in the [1:02:19] **Paul Hiller:** backyard that is a serious concern for me it should be for anybody if any of the council members lived on the street on a had a house that they decided to run a street to the backyard i could i would think that you would really be adamantly opposed to it and i mean i don't even i don't even know what to say that this is the r1 neighborhood and this is not doesn't fit in our neighborhoods and i you know i would say even the street light issue i know john says it's not really an issue but you're still putting a light in my backyard that would be visible light into my yard i mean even uh anything [1:03:04] **Paul Hiller:** that comes down the street it doesn't matter if there's a six foot tall fence we i mean you'd have to there's no way that that's going to keep light from shining right on the back of my house not to mention concerns of if this is truly a senior residence you know development what if they have an issue and drive right through that fence into my yard i got i have an eight-year-old son i mean play in the backyard and i get to and more maybe a car just runs through into my yard hits my house and i know that sounds like a rare occasion but as a contractor that does insurance work i do at least three houses a year from cars driven into them so while it's not super common it does happen and [1:03:50] **Paul Hiller:** everything about this just it just doesn't fit in the neighborhood if it was a regular r1 neighborhood where i had a yard backing up to my yard i wouldn't care because that's what i signed on for 15 years ago and you know our tax we pay a lot of money in taxes we would at least expect that our property values are respected because this will undoubtedly i don't care what you do to this plan this will harm my property value there's there's nothing else i can say about it that's that's a fact we didn't approve it on the other side of wyndham hills last year because it was going to harm property values putting a street curb this close to my backyard will harm my property value and [1:04:37] **Paul Hiller:** i don't know what else to say so thank you for hearing me **Mary Fasbender:** thank you mr hiller anyone else in the audience wish to speak else in the audience wishing to speak **John Hinzman:** your honor before you do close the public hearing i'd recommend that you do acknowledge of that each of the emails and other correspondence that were received prior to and right up to the time of the meeting including i believe mr hiller's that came in a little late that those were received and are considered part of the record **Mary Fasbender:** thank you correct as i stated at the beginning of the meeting we have received emails and including the last one [1:05:23] **Mary Fasbender:** that you had sent paul so council was um had those in their packet so we have looked them over and uh received them all with that i'll ask one more time is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak [1:05:47] **Mary Fasbender:** i'm not seeing any more hands being raised so at this time i will close the public hearing at this point and counsel i will bring the discussion back to you **Stuart Simek:** stuart i i i did want to just comment on mr mr hiller's comments that it's very uncommon to have a public street in a backyard i don't know how to share my screen on here but if i were to direct you to northridge court and pleasant drive [1:06:34] **Stuart Simek:** very nice neighborhood there you do have a home that backs up to a street in fact pleasant drive that backs up to uh last traffic counts we pulled there's over 30 3 800 cars per day and those homes do that home in particular and then there's another one that's on the north side of the cul-de-sac they it's not um it is not uncommon and again i would uh you know pull everyone back to it's it's a turnaround ultimately so just i didn't want to have that so **Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you thank you member **Tina Folch:** um thank you your honor i had a question for mr simek [1:07:21] **Tina Folch:** so uh the homes that are on the west of the developments are you know the most concerned and they have very legitimate uh issues and so um i was wondering what more can you i'm trying to look at the tree rendering plan for plantings and with the way it was put into our packets it is very difficult to see the very edge of what the landscaping is supposed to be particularly around those cul-de-sacs um and so i was wondering what more could be done [1:08:06] **Tina Folch:** to bolster so that there is um more of like varieties or um you know thicker evergreens or something to that effect thank you um i can't see what's on this on the most western edges um because i think the more that you could do the more that could be screened um the better you know the softening of the landscape so it's not just you know looking at so many of the of these homes and so it's hard to get a sense of what this is going to look like once things are grown in but it doesn't look like it's it's a [1:08:52] **Tina Folch:** lot of greenery from the communications that we've received from these landowners they're saying that they can't put up privacy fences themselves um because of the covenants of their own associations i think and so um can you talk a little bit more about what more is it that you could do to um create create more of a screen so that some of their concerns can be alleviated **Stuart Simek:** your honor and uh comes up councilmember uh um we do have and again this has been part of the discussion with the neighbors we [1:09:37] **Stuart Simek:** as part of our development and again primarily based on comments from mr seaward we do we have added that privacy fence and that was in addition to the evergreens and i think if you look at the the plan that uh mr hinsman has uh you know you're it seems the point that's most sensitive and i i do respect that you know it's no doubt a change from what they are looking at but i believe we are you know adequately compensating for that by putting up a privacy defense which ultimately it's going to be pretty difficult to even see on the other side of the cul-de-sac you have a privacy fence and you will have [1:10:23] **Stuart Simek:** uh evergreens there i would have to pull my engineer into this discussion but we also do have a number of evergreens showing along the property line if you look along um yep right there thank you mr huntsman um so we do have that and also um while not all of the homes along the west but in one in particular they already have all a wall of evergreens kind of a living fence if you will so the good news is while they may not be able to put up a privacy fence i wasn't aware of that we will be able to put up the privacy [1:11:09] **Stuart Simek:** fence around the cul-de-sac and then with the evergreens that go in there that is going to provide you know a lot of uh separation there and also the comments too and working with the neighbors in fact it was from the sullivans their the original plan the homes were i'm going to say they were approximately 10 feet off the property line we have moved those back substantially so we we did listen to the neighbors and we took a lot of those comments in into our revised and updated plan **Tina Folch:** that answered your question just to clarify where are the privacy fences that whole [1:11:54] **Tina Folch:** western edge is not a privacy fence correct it was just along the cul-de-sacs that they were it's it's hard to tell from this depiction exactly where where are the privacy fence is going to be installed **Stuart Simek:** yep great question i uh since i don't have the screen and it would take too long to figure out yeah where mr hensman is showing uh where he had his cursor so you basically have it running from east to west north to south essentially a company encompassing the bulb if you will on the cul-de-sac **Tina Folch:** can i ask why don't you just extend the privacy fence all along that westernmost edge then um i mean what what you what i'm hearing you say is that you're going to [1:12:40] **Tina Folch:** have a break in it and so just um why won't you just make it continuous all the way down **Stuart Simek:** mainly for purposes of ongoing maintenance and typically and i don't know if we're able to pull up an aerial there is a substantial amount of plantings and again i'm not going to be able to refer to poem on there but if you able to share a screen at all the host would have to allow you to do that okay **John Hinzman:** again i don't know if that's easy but this is kind of an aerial map here stewart that uh okay yeah i'm out here and [1:13:25] **John Hinzman:** yeah i'm on google maps and i've got the ariel and it really does give a good let's see i'll see if i can pull a map up of that area too on uh system here in just a moment yep [1:14:07] **John Hinzman:** okay i'm gonna share this over and a little more clarity on on things here okay you able to to see the aerial map here this shows some of the plantings along the uh the western edge of the property here uh some some are you know some have more landscaping than others **Stuart Simek:** yep but and i do think you know as we plant those trees if um this is actually and i i can relate to this one because i live across the street from a high school i have essentially a uh evergreen wall on my uh on my property line or on a corner house and i think when we would do our [1:14:53] **Stuart Simek:** planning to again further increase that you know visual separation we could essentially plant a room in between these and uh pretty hard to see through um a set of two evergreens one on each side of the property line so i i feel really good that we're gonna add that and you know i i think that will do a lot **Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you mr simek **Trevor Lund:** council member lund thank your honor what's the opportunity to retool these cul-de-sacs and you know if they are going to be smaller to [1:15:40] **Trevor Lund:** the look at that that rendering and whatnot i'm just trying to understand where we're at tonight versus what you know what down the road might um that look like is if we just say just theoretically saying we just said we want the smaller ones etc etc what's the next step then how does that look **John Hinzman:** john sure councilmember if the commission were to opt to go in that direction they could put that as a recommendation for a condition on the approval on it direct staff to to uh ensure that there's a smaller cul-de-sac in there there would need to be a determination made by the city council as to whether that would be publicly or privately maintained on it [1:16:27] **John Hinzman:** but we would be looking at at minimal geometrics for emergency service vehicles uh that sort of thing but again with with the standards that we've established with what we would like to see as public publicly maintained uh that you know we're looking at our equipment maintenance on there uh that doesn't preclude us from looking at um emergency service uh geometrics there for for those type of things so long story short council member uh i think a direction by the commission on any approval as to as to uh whether it be public or private or and uh direct us to to look at something smaller i think would be something that we could work with **Trevor Lund:** thank you john **Joe Balsanek:** councilman balsanic thank you your honor at the risk of throwing a monkey wrench into this well first of all two things about the uh potential of uh uh somebody going out of control and going through the cul-de-sac into somebody's backyard uh in addition to the trees could there be some room for some good sized boulders to stop anything that is intent on heading that way that's just a suggestion we don't have to talk about it but the the monkey wrench here is uh john i'm looking at my packet [1:18:05] **Joe Balsanek:** and the very the second to the last page shows another layout the development that that removes the two cul-de-sacs on the west end of the property uh is is that plan no longer a possibility i think i'm counting the same number of units for that one and you don't have any cul-de-sacs with that one **John Hinzman:** sure oh i'm not sure why we're not why that hasn't been mentioned or mention it to say that we decided not to go with that and council member i can address that uh the what you're referring to there [1:18:51] **John Hinzman:** is a depiction that was submitted by by todd see where neighboring property owner there as to how the development might be done by eliminating the cul-de-sacs and essentially connecting the two streets there i think earlier on in the meeting uh the the developer discussed that it would bring uh more units closer to the western property line so it would provide more activation of that space which might not be as desirable for the for the owners to the west and that would also leave a situation in which you'd have four units within kind of an island which um there was a street would essentially circle these four homes there so that's something that was proposed by the uh by the developer himself but a suggestion by a neighboring property owner **Joe Balsanek:** okay uh thank you that that takes care of that but suggestion put some boulders in around the cul-de-sacs that should stop anybody including a snowmobile from going through thank you your honor **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember **Paul Hiller:** do you have any objection to allowing mr hiller to speak again okay mr heller come on back in thanks i just wanted to comment on what stewart was saying about northridge court those houses were built after the streets were in that's what i'm talking about we can't i'm talking you i'm talking about that it's not that i didn't buy a lot with the street in the backyard that's all that's all i want to say **Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you **Lisa Leifeld:** councilmember leiffeld thank you honor uh john i don't know if this one's um you or maybe nick so just looking at my google maps um and i'm looking at this the map like this the map is this big so when i look at this kind of square [1:20:58] **Lisa Leifeld:** where we're looking at here on that corner of north ridge and pleasant and i count 33 homes in there okay as i'm counting the surrounding neighborhood i'm coming up with what appears to me to be the basically the same amount of homes on the same amount of land so does that i'm not an engineer and i'm not an architect i don't build homes john i'm you know i know you guys have that fancy little machine on your computers that show you the distance of certain things so i'm curious to know because as i look up into brook court in the 22nd street where dead ends brook court dead ends [1:21:45] **Lisa Leifeld:** coming up with the same amount of holes is that simple well i put the the screen up here brook court is here ridgewood court uh up to the north here i mean these property sizes are going to be larger they're zoned r1 they're going to be at least 9 700 i would assume most of them are going to be 10 to 15 000 square feet in size so you're dealing with some some larger home sites here uh the home sites that we have within this development are going to be from 6 to 12 to 13 maybe at the top end of it so to answer the question you have a little more you're going to have a a little more density of homes within this development [1:22:32] **John Hinzman:** certainly that neces necessitates the rezoning of the property uh but they are they're a single family in nature and um i i don't know if that's answered your question **Lisa Leifeld:** well it it is in a way but i'm seeing ten homes on a cold river shore right i called a sack on brook court being two four six eight ten eleven maybe on ridge on ridgewood court so i i'm looking at that and i think mr hiller is saying and at the same time you did build i think he said he was the builder there the the first owner at least of a home that had a field behind you that would someday be developed this if it weren't our one [Music] question that **John Hinzman:** yeah councilmember i'm losing you a bit there oh you know i it's moving slow okay yeah i'm not sure if others are having difficulty or if it's on i apologize um don't know i don't know if i got the gist of the question council member [Music] your internet question being is it reasonable that how if this were to stay our one if yeah and maybe that the question council member is you know hypothetically if this was developed under the r1 [Music] r1 zoning what could be developed here and you certainly could put detached homes that would need to have a minimum lot size of size of 9 700 square feet [1:24:54] **John Hinzman:** so there would be many of the home sites that are proposed on here that would not meet that requirement and i think a lot of it comes down to frankly the the market that is is being uh sought here and frankly home standards as well i mean the the r1 district that we have uh was was established and we had many homes constructed that were 10 15 000 or more square feet on the lot sizes from a marketability standpoint today the general trend that you see in construction is smaller lot sizes because people are looking to put more into a house as opposed to the property in this particular situation being the market for this really is an empty [1:25:39] **John Hinzman:** nester and there's a desire for limited outdoor outdoor spaces and not uh you know larger lawn areas uh it's kind of a different market scenario here i think go ahead tell me if you give me a thumbs up if you're hearing me okay at the moment okay so my question is if an r1 development happened to come in reasonable that there could be a cul-de-sac in that spot okay yes uh i'm going to take this thing off here i'm going to put the uh the other screen that we have on here [1:26:25] **John Hinzman:** which would be this one okay so hype of that hypothetically speaking here i mean if you were to use a similar type of scenario here i mean you would you might have less lots going through in this direction uh because you would need to have larger lot sizes in these locations but as far as the cul-de-sac design potentially could be similar clarifying john sorry about my poor internet no worries sure **Trevor Lund:** council member lund thank your honor yeah uh council member lifefelt that was my i think my first question today tonight was regarding um if this were an r1 uh holy and we just kept it that way [1:27:13] **Trevor Lund:** um how many units could potentially go on there obviously that depends on uh layout and and whatnot but i did do an exercise similar to what you were doing where i overlaid neighboring homes uh adjacent to that property um in a way that made some sense i'm not an engineer by any means but i don't recall the exact number but it was in the high 20s of units of existing homes in the neighbor in the in the adjacent neighborhood that would fit in that in that land now take that with a grain of salt but i just needed needed to have an [1:27:58] **Trevor Lund:** understanding for myself what that might look like if it were to be strictly an r1 developed okay so **Joe Balsanek:** councilmember balsanic thank you your honor uh just uh piggybacking off councilmember lund and councilmember lifefield i did the same thing uh take take the size of the property in question overlay it uh you're talking single family about 25 to 27 or so uh with this development you're talking 33 so it's not like it's doubled the amount of uh [1:28:44] **Joe Balsanek:** home sites that would be going in there uh it is going to be you know a little bit smaller i have a question too john do we have restrictions or on curb cuts for driveways on pleasant so if a developer came in and wanted to put homes uh on the west side of pleasant in that property in question uh could they do that or not **John Hinzman:** okay i'll start the answer here and i'll look to our esteemed public works director as well on this uh on pleasant drive i'm fairly confident it's a collector road we would not be allowing any direct curb cuts onto [1:29:29] **John Hinzman:** pleasant drive right northridge drive i'm uncertain of i with i know further down on northridge drive there are curb cuts on there but uh maybe i'll turn it over to nick **Nick Egger:** thanks john um in either case well i'll start with northridge you're right there's there's kind of a pattern established it's a long bowl to the run of northridge drive that the type of uh density that's that's all along there is pretty consistent and in that scenario driveways have been allowed to occur pleasant you really don't see any of it there and that does have i think around twice as much traffic volume on it it's a place [1:30:16] **Nick Egger:** where we would strongly discourage that in fact i think that's how our ordinances read uh for placement of driveways on higher volume collector or arterial type roadways um we we suffer the consequences in the way of a lot of complaints and concerns from that sort of thing down the line so again one of those you know upfront decisions we have to be very very careful of with that sort of scenario **Joe Balsanek:** good thank you because that pretty much limits uh any kind of configuration for single family r1 uh on that property as far as i can see thank you your honor **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember sonic any other discussion [1:31:02] **Mary Fasbender:** council john anything to add nothing for my admirer hey and nick okay and then council i would accept a motion to adopt an ordinance of the city of hastings minnesota amending section 155.01 zoning code of the city code having to do with official zoning map **Joe Balsanek:** your honor i'll make that motion **Jen Fox (Brax):** councilman and councilmember brax seconds it **Mary Fasbender:** any other discussion council council member fulch oh your honor i'm sorry i thought we're going to take a [1:31:48] **Mary Fasbender:** vote hope you're unmuted all right clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** lets remember **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** remember **Joe Balsanek:** yes **Mary Fasbender:** motion prevails all right secondly then council i would accept a motion to adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of hastings granting preliminary plan preliminary plat approval of villas at pleasant **John Hinzman:** i'm i'm sorry uh excuse me uh council member mayor i just want to make a quick clarification with that motion we are seeking direction from the council on the status of the cul-de-sacs to the west uh options before the council include uh constructing the cul-de-sacs as public to our standards which is what's shown in the plans before you uh and uh the other option would be is [1:32:54] **John Hinzman:** to have a smaller cul-de-sac and with that the direction from the city council whether that would be public or private **Joe Balsanek:** thank you your honor i'll make that motion uh with the cul-de-sacs being standard to our city requirements thank you **Lisa Leifeld:** council member both sonic i'll second that your honor council member lightfelt **Mary Fasbender:** discussion with this council uh councilmember vaughn **Vaughan:** thank you honor um i'm not going to support that motion because i just think um everything i'm reading and everything we're seeing is density and these these pockets of developments are coming this is a demand i mean we've been asking for single family and r1 here for [1:33:40] **Vaughan:** years and nothing happened we know of developers shown an interest in this and i think we need to start understanding that because we're going to talk about these in a few more items on our agenda there is developments out there that do not build a cul-de-sac this way and i don't know why all of a sudden we're holding our standards how do we let those ones go through so i disagree with this motion because i think those couples attacks need to be discussed thanks thank you **Trevor Lund:** councilmember vaughn councilmember lund yeah i i just i i agree with councilman point um you know i think we're um not looking at this as a as a bigger opportunity or bigger the bigger picture to council member vaughn's point [1:34:25] **Trevor Lund:** um this may be a one case scenario but it's by no means the the last that we may see and i don't mean to minimize it to anybody in public works but if we're looking at this as an equipment issue um as to why we're designing a neighborhood in a certain way or impacting mr hiller in a certain way as an example then maybe we need to look at different equipment in the future and i understand there's more complexity to that nick than what i'm saying but as an example um you know that may be something that we need to look at so i think looking into these smaller size makes more sense or reimagining it all together [1:35:14] **Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you council member lund councilmember folch **Tina Folch:** your honor i'd just like to remind the group that it it's the staff recommendation not only for snowplowing operations but it also has to deal with the ability of uh fire rescue vehicles to be able to access the homes that live you know within those neighborhoods and if this is going to be an older community if that's the goal i mean there could be you know very well you know possibilities that there's first responders that are going to be you know coming on site and so i think that it's important um in this scenario to take into consideration the staff's recommendations and if it's um if we're not going to go with the with the with the with the standard um i [1:36:01] **Tina Folch:** don't think that they should be public streets then i think that they could be you know treated as other high density townhome associations where you know they dead end in the parking you know and and and you deal with it that way but i think that if our if our public works department is going to be maintaining them we should be honoring how it is that they feel that um the desi the streets need to be designed um to be able to maintain them you know efficiently so thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember faulch **Joe Balsanek:** council member bill sonic yeah thank you your honor i'll uh piggyback off of councilmember fulch and just a reminder too of what uh city administrator uh dan wiltich has said that uh in addition to [1:36:47] **Joe Balsanek:** emergency vehicles and uh city equipment vehicles you've got amazon ups cub delivery so on walmart i mean i'm in a town home project and i get three deliveries a day for my business my wife gets sometimes two a day uh for her business and uh there's there's going to be a lot of that kind of traffic coming into this kind of a neighborhood and we want to keep everybody safe and especially our city equipment and our city staff so if they're going to be operating uh equipment in and around that area that they're able to do it in a safe [1:37:33] **Joe Balsanek:** and constructive way thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember sonic any other discussion kirk clatton please call the role **Kelly Flatten:** that's number one **Vaughan:** no **Kelly Flatten:** member folks **Tina Folch:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Lisa Leifeld:** council member whitefield yes **Kelly Flatten:** looking over lund **Trevor Lund:** no **Kelly Flatten:** that's a member **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** mayor across the other yes motion prevails and then council i would accept a motion to adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of hastings granting final platt approval of villas at [1:38:20] **Joe Balsanek:** pleasant your honor i'll make that motion thank you council member bill sonic **Tina Folch:** i'll second i'm council member fultz second **Mary Fasbender:** discussion council all right **Vaughan:** councilmember vaughn i just i just wanted to state again i'm gonna vote no because it goes with my first vote i i'm hearing from some of my colleagues that yes we understand fire and ems but i'm telling you some streets i just drove if there's a need the fire and ems are still going to that street no matter if it's a private street or not that's part of what we offer as a tax base so i understand the fire ems i get the snow blowing i think we can revisit that um [1:39:06] **Vaughan:** i just uh i want us to make sure that we're looking at this bigger picture it's amazon and that's why i think the cul-de-sac just need a different look not just saying i like the hammerhead concept the truck can turn around and come back out but um just want to say i'm gonna vote no due to that thank you **Tina Folch:** councilmember vaughn other discussion council councilmember fulch um i would really like to see that the landscaping be bolstered you know so that it's more appealing i can see why neighbors are concerned um it's a bit of a shock to the system they weren't expecting it whatsoever and i think that we should be doing whatever we can it to make the area more attractive and so if that means bolstering the green barrier you know between [1:39:52] **Tina Folch:** the the west side of the homes or even along um oh i'm not so great with the street names over there um on the south side that faces old bridge lane um it didn't i couldn't see any trees on the rendering um that was before me and so i think that um i think that if they want to show a goodwill i think that the homes themselves look like they look nice and you know the materials look nice and so i think um the only other thing i could suggest is making sure that it's appealing from the curb thank you councilmember folch **Joe Balsanek:** councilmember bosonic yes thank you your honor after all of this discussion i would like to say that i am tremendously excited [1:40:38] **Joe Balsanek:** about having this kind of a project uh coming to hastings we have needed this kind of development uh ever since the recession and this is going to uh be a tremendous asset uh to the community of hastings it's going to give some options to our seniors to to move into these which is going to free up existing housing which can be purchased by uh younger families and this is going along with what the uh 2040 plan and the hedgerow plan has been uh pointing in the direction of uh for the last couple of years so uh [1:41:23] **Joe Balsanek:** i i look forward to this and i think that the neighborhood is going to be very pleased with uh this development in terms of uh the kind of housing uh the kind of architecture uh and uh the care and maintenance uh going along with this kind of a project thank you **Jen Fox (Brax):** thank you councilmember sonic councilmember brox thank you mayor and i just want to say that i supported the rezoning of this property as well that will support this motion and the reason being is it's interesting that when we have these conversations a lot of times it comes down to rights you know whose right it is to maintain and keep their property [1:42:09] **Jen Fox (Brax):** nice and a suitable home i think we all have that same goal that we want to live in a safe neighborhood that has a nice home and is something that we feel safe in so i want to acknowledge that but also you know the person who owns this piece of property has a right to sell it and else and to develop it according to their own needs and what they want to do so i feel like our role as the city council is to interpret the information they've given to us to line it up with the rules to see if they're checking all the boxes and dotting all their eyes and tees and we we want to make sure that everything is is legal but we don't necessarily you know sit here and we can't every time we have a development we have [1:42:54] **Jen Fox (Brax):** people that come to us and say i don't want to live next to this and i i do understand that because it's a big change and especially when it's a density change you are going to have more people in your neighborhood you're going to have more traffic in your neighborhood and we do understand that that is a difficult change and it is going to change the look and feel of your neighborhood but i don't live very far away from this development and i will say that i am looking forward to seeing something going in there and i also have to remember that my role as a city council member is to make sure that all the rules are being followed and if they are if there's a major glaring you know factor then i can say no i don't think we should have this development in this neighborhood but absent a major glaring error [1:43:42] **Jen Fox (Brax):** as a city council member i also know how many times i speak with the chamber and he sings family service and i hear we need housing and we need housing and we need housing and we all have that in the back of our minds when we're looking at these developments because we know there's people that want to move to hastings or stay in hastings who can't find the housing that they need so one of the things is this increases our diversity of housing and i know that it's going to be painful for the neighbors and we do understand that but our role as city council members is to make sure this development is legal that it matches the rules and then to make modifications as we see fit and um so i'm sorry if this feels like to the neighborhood that we're not empathizing with you because i think we [1:44:27] **Jen Fox (Brax):** are but we're just check looking at all the boxes and making sure that all these boxes are checked and then we're proceeding with the understanding that we will have more housing available in hastings because of this and that is one of our major goals that we've set forth is that we need more housing and hastings and so this is what we're going to do so i just wanted to clarify that a little bit because i think there's a lot of confusion around the notice process the neighborhood meetings and why do we have this feedback process it's not so we can hear your opinion and then ignore it it's more like we're putting you on notice that something's changing in your neighborhood and you do have an opportunity to say something about it but if absent anything being illegal you know we really do then go forward and allow the property owner who owns [1:45:13] **Jen Fox (Brax):** this property to use the property as they see fit so i just wanted to say that as my two cents thank you **Mary Fasbender:** councilmember brox and uh mr simek you've been hearing all the comments i'll get all right just a sec trevor but i just uh you know i think she'll you'll take everything into consideration and uh that's a part of you know what councilmember brox is just saying i mean the developer we all have to work together to make the right thing for the community so thank you **Trevor Lund:** councilmember lund thank you honor um well said council member brock's you know one thing that i've noticed over the [1:45:58] **Trevor Lund:** past several weeks um of this being an issue that you know we're we're we've been uh looking into and and uh working through that um it is a little bit unique um as compared to some of the other developments um or proposals that have come through in the past four years three and a half years or whatever it's been for me um i i don't know of another one where it's been so um evenly i mean there's been so much positive feedback i guess um typically you don't no we haven't been hearing the positive feedback it's a lot of i don't want that near me mentality whereas with this one there seems to be an appreciation even [1:46:45] **Trevor Lund:** for with people that live in the in the vicinity so i do understand that there are there are some that are more impacted than others uh namely the people that abut the property um and i i just i ask uh stuart i know the mayor just just said it but i i ask you to do everything you can as you're developing this to keep those folks in mind be respectful from i know you will but you know let's let's make this a positive community development because it is needed and and that's all i have to say i guess thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilman mr simek did you yes go ahead **Stuart Simek:** yes your honor and uh city council uh we absolutely positively look forward [1:47:32] **Stuart Simek:** to working with the neighbors and we will we know change is never easy it would be no different if this was in my backyard or any of your backyards and the view is changing i do think when it's all done it is an asset to the community just for again freeing up your single family home so you've got another option and it will ultimately be a win change is hard but we're gonna put our best foot forward do everything we can to you know work with the neighbors whether they were for this or against it um we're gonna we're gonna work with them and be good neighbors so thank you for the the support and the confidence it's it's exciting to hear coming into a community with a reception like this so thank you [1:48:20] **Mary Fasbender:** thank you mr simek uh councilmember vaughn did you want to say something okay uh clerk fought and please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** what's the member going **Vaughan:** no **Kelly Flatten:** council member **Tina Folch:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** member of all sonic **Joe Balsanek:** yeah **Kelly Flatten:** that's remember **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** remember **Trevor Lund:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** council member brox **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** aircraft better uh yes motion prevails good discussion council okay we also have a public hearing tonight on an ordinance amendment a rezoning property to our two medium density residents sieben ridge general stephen drive uh john [1:49:10] **John Hinzman:** thank you mayor city council members i i will make a clarification of the actions that we're taking before us tonight we we do have a development sieben ridge before us with three actions on the agenda one would be a public hearing in consideration of rezoning and then action on a the preliminary plan the final plan for the subdivision itself what we're going to be asking for tonight is to hold the public hearing for the rezoning and to have the council consider action on that on the items related to the preliminary plant in the final plant we did receive some revisions to the civil plans that we need to spend further time reviewing before we're comfortable bringing that forward to the city council and so we're asking for those to be removed from consideration tonight [1:49:57] **John Hinzman:** the preliminary plan the final plaque we're continuing to work hard with the developer and his engineer to resolve those issues we hope for those to be back uh as soon as the next meeting for you to consider but we believe it's premature to take those actions tonight so with that i will uh share my screen here and go through the actions that we're looking at tonight which is the rezoning property is 40 acres here general sieben drive to the west or to the east st elizabeth and seton church northridge drive gravestone road you may recall this is an annexation area that was approved by the city council earlier this year and in fact that annexation has been official as of about a week ago it was filed with the state of minnesota so this is now [1:50:44] **John Hinzman:** officially within the city of hastings proper so the action we're looking at tonight is to re-zone this property when we we uh annex a property the the zone that is attributed to the property is agriculture that's the d that's the default zone and so we're looking to rezone this property from agriculture to r2 development and the development itself would consist of a variety of items it would be 116 lots altogether half of those being what we would term traditional single family lots and half of those being villa home lots so it's kind of gives an idea here of what the development design would be bringing northridge development through the property fallbrook drive through the property and a couple other access [1:51:29] **John Hinzman:** points out to link up to future development here so the action that we're asking for tonight is to hold the public hearing and consider rezoning of the property a planning commission did review this at their august 24th meeting they did vote 5-0 to recommend approval of the rezoning as well as the other development actions during the public hearing we did have a few residents discuss mining activities and their effect on the development you can see on the aerial map here that the solberg mine is located just to the south and west of the development uh solberg and the owner of the property mr bauer have also submitted letters to to uh to to just uh provide some clarification on their activities uh within the site itself and so tonight we are looking to hold the public [1:52:16] **John Hinzman:** hearing related to the rezoning if the council is comfortable as well uh we could consider action on the rezoning uh if the council is not comfortable taking the resulting action tonight we would uh take that action up along with the preliminary and final plot when that comes forward uh to the back to the council here we do have the uh the developer mark ginther available in the audience as well if you have any questions for him thank you [1:53:04] **Mary Fasbender:** okay sorry about that okay well at this time we will open the public hearing and i am looking for hands raised in the public [1:53:24] **Mary Fasbender:** attendees looking for any hands raised in the public audience to speak to this [1:53:46] **Mary Fasbender:** one more time public hearing likewise manner here uh you may or here if you could just acknowledge that any uh written submissions are part of the record that will be considered before the city council before any action is taken **Mary Fasbender:** sure any emails on this topic were received by the council and received and read okay at this point i will close the public hearing any discussion council okay **Joe Balsanek:** councilmember paul sonic thank you your honor question for john uh the property between [1:54:34] **Joe Balsanek:** the property in question and uh the catholic church is that is that in the city or is that going to remain in the township **John Hinzman:** a council member that would remain within the township itself i'll put my screen back up here so this this property here is owned by saint elizabeth elizabeth and seton but is still within energy township oh they the the church owns it then so **Joe Balsanek:** okay because it's kind of an oddball piece if another developer comes i'm not sure if you can even plant anything of you know for farming in that that uh a backwards l [1:55:21] **Joe Balsanek:** configuration or not i'm just whether it's worth it to uh annex that portion into the city as well as long as we're doing this **John Hinzman:** remember i did confirm that uh this property in question these two parcels are owned by saint elizabeth and seton i know and in talking with them in the past they have longer-term plans for potentially school or or other facility expansion on this property but that would require an annexation **Joe Balsanek:** great very good that answers my question so there's plans for the future for that great thank you your honor **Vaughan:** councilmember sonic uh council member vaughn i was just going [1:56:08] **Vaughan:** to make a motion to rezone to r2 for sieben ridge **Jen Fox (Brax):** second second invite council member brax **Mary Fasbender:** any other discussion council uh **Tina Folch:** council member fulch thank your honor i had a question for john in regards to um building standards when we you know i personally i'm worried about the actual uh use of the the quarry that's very close in proximity to this and the explosions that take place there and the effects that that could have on the homes themselves if the if the residents who live in the [1:56:55] **Tina Folch:** cul-de-sac that are on the other side of general steven are concerned about their foundations cracking and things falling off the walls and all of that i can't imagine what that would be like moving closer to it and so i was wondering if there are standards for building homes that are more stringent for like seismic kinds of activities and i don't know well enough to know all i know is like in california they have higher standards for seismic activity than we do here in minnesota right and so um i was just wondering what kind of thought process went into that considering that that quarry doesn't sound like it's going to end operations anytime soon or do we have any um authority over [1:57:41] **Tina Folch:** it and so um so it just seems to me like we should be building those houses a little bit different **John Hinzman:** sure uh council member as far as the specific standards that that the houses could be constructed to here for uh for vibration activities due to the blasting of the mine i'm uncertain of of that i know that the location of the mind we want to make sure that any person who is purchasing and developing property there is it comes into the situation with eyes wide open that this is an active mind it will be active for some time period to come that includes uh periodic blasting activities has been pointed out by solberg here so we we'd have uh put the res we have put [1:58:28] **John Hinzman:** the developer on notice uh with one of the conditions that we will be having in the future preliminary plat resolution that the the residents the future residents be notified of these activities and the effects that it can have on that uh you know that being said you know there's different every development has its attributes and it's in its uh constrictions as far as uh desirability for development you know some some some some areas are you know will have more and have less on that one so we want to make sure that the people that are moving into this development move into it with with eyes open **Tina Folch:** no i understand that thank you john and i did see that in the packet however what i'm talking about more specifically are the standards for construction for the buildings i mean i don't know well [1:59:14] **Tina Folch:** enough to know what other kinds of examples there would be out there where there is something similar to this effect but it just seems to me like as a for instance you know when you look at the homes that are around the airport how what was that maybe 10 years ago where there was this huge push to you know have the airport um responsible for uh the replacement of windows that were placed within the you know that were within those homes and so a sizable settlement was happened there and and then and all those you know people got you know new windows for their homes you know to be able to make it quieter and so um so i just don't want to see that we get into the situation where these homes are built and and then there are [2:00:02] **Tina Folch:** the homes have problems right because of the shaking the blasting the seismic activity and um and then you know people have lemons right and how does that affect you know the the value of the homes and things of that nature and so i would feel more comfortable with all of this if i knew that there was actually um you know yeah that yeah we're building to a different standard and we're going to make these kinds of accommodations for the shock of the blasts or we're going to be just doing anything you know rather than just building a house as you would anyplace else in town i mean i've talked to some of the neighbors that do live in those cul-de-sacs on the other side general stephen and they're not kidding but it really is um quite shocking literally when when the explosions go off and so [2:00:48] **Tina Folch:** um i just feel like we should be doing more than just saying yeah yeah they're on their own um it just seems to me that we should be more thoughtful about it thanks **John Hinzman:** sure thank you councilmember fultz **Lisa Leifeld:** councilmember lightfeldt thank you your honor you know i've done just a little bit of research on this because i know there's a quarry i believe it's still active over in apple valley um right off of 46 there where all of that new housing is going in as well and so i was just kind of checking in and you know gotta love the google and um it everything i'm seeing it really makes it sound though is the biggest concern living near a quarry is the um um the pollution is any air pollution with the trucks that carry it and they don't i don't know that i've when i was living [2:01:36] **Lisa Leifeld:** in general steven there i don't know that i'd ever seen them come up general steven but i'm not finding a lot of information on the damage to foundations or to homes as a result of living in proximity again not my specialty but i'm finding more comments and concerns about the exposure to high levels of um you know health risks regarding diesel trucks so i'm not sure if that helps anyone feel a little bit better but um to mr hensman's point i think this is one of those things that as long as you're being told you know hey by the way you know this is right down the street um and there's a church next door i mean [2:02:22] **Lisa Leifeld:** i think they need to know what's in their neighborhood so i'm i'm in support of this and excited to see um hastings continue to expand in the right direction so thank you your honor thank you **Trevor Lund:** councilmember lightfold councilmember lund thank you your honor um i i just wanted to clarify we're we're not really voting on any of those types of decisions right now we're talking about zoning right so those those are comments that we could explore further when the uh design comes forward correct **John Hinzman:** that is correct uh council member the issues of the plat development are not on the agenda for consideration tonight just the rezoning **Trevor Lund:** okay **Joe Balsanek:** councilman balsanic **Joe Balsanek:** uh council member lund took the words [2:03:09] **Joe Balsanek:** right out of my mouth and again we're gonna start a gofundme page to send him to law school so all right discussion any other discussion council clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** the member gone **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes yes **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Kelly Flatten:** afres yes that motion prevails also tonight we have a public hearing on a vacation of easement lot 10 block 3 riverwood 8th edition west 36 for this item we also [2:03:56] **Mary Fasbender:** will have john hensman followed by a public hearing any potential action by the council will be at a further meeting john **John Hinzman:** thank you mayor city council members i will share my screen here to take a look at uh what we are considering tonight and that's the public hearing for this area here this is west 36th street village trail the riverwood development what this development looked like originally as planned was this which was going to be town homes and the townhomes would be developed and what are these termed a lot boxes in which these are the individual units and then the yellow area would be common open space around it it did develop was like traditional single-family homes in which the lot boundaries here were [2:04:42] **John Hinzman:** reconfigured so that they are no longer lot boxes but uh full properties all the way uh subdividing this property up that was all well and good uh but one thing that was not done at that time was over this whole area in orange was a drainage and utility easement which prohibits any construction activities from occurring and so we're coming into situations now where some of these single-family homes either have additions that extend beyond these original lot boxes into areas that are drainage and utility easements or they would like to do that in the future and so we are looking to to reconfigure the easements so they would look something like this and the yellow areas would be the areas [2:05:28] **John Hinzman:** that would be vacated these would resemble the type of easements that we would have on any single family development with those we we are still in need of some legal descriptions to properly describe these and so we want we have to take action at a later meeting until that those are prepared but uh we had the public hearing scheduled tonight so we wanted to move forward with that and ensure that the the council was supportive of uh this so what this would do is it doesn't really provide any new development opportunities but provides opportunities for existing property owners to do expansions consistent with other single family development so i can stand for any questions [2:06:19] **Mary Fasbender:** sorry thank you john um at this point we will open the public hearing and i see there's a couple attendees if you wish to speak to this please raise your hand [2:06:40] **Mary Fasbender:** uh one more time if you wish to speak to this issue in the public hearing please raise your hand okay no public no one wants to speak so i will close the public hearing you want to have a discussion on this counselor or would you just rather wait until further okay all right then we'll move into uh reports from city staff and as you see most of them have been covered but tonight we do have a resolution for a relocation of existing home al stephen 535 35th street west for this item we still will have john [2:07:26] **John Hinzman:** hinsman give us a little update welcome again john thank you mayor and city council members i'll put my screen back up sure what we're looking at here today we are looking at a house load relocation house moves so you're serving as the board of design review tonight uh the charge on this is to really establish whether the home in question it can is compatible with the neighborhood in the area in which it's moving into so we'll start first with where the house is at right now the house right now is located off galina street 245 galena street it's a manufactured home a wausa built home uh that looks whoops looks something like looks something like like this so this [2:08:11] **John Hinzman:** is the existing home here on galena street and this is what they're they're looking to to potentially move to this location here which is 35th and lester so this is a property owned by al sieben when you take a look at the surrounding area mr sieben owns apartment buildings which are located to the west which were built in the late 1960s you've got commercial development immediately to the east of it and then the century south development immediately to the south of it which is uh primarily townhomes single-family development uh to the north of it so kind of a hodgepodge of development that surrounds it so we did have the planning commission take a look at this at their uh last meeting i will note that when we when the planning commission looked at this [2:08:58] **John Hinzman:** the details they were looking at under the presumption that it was going to be single family and mr seba did clarify that this is something the house itself would actually be a duplex what he would be doing would be building a permanent foundation raising the prop raising the home up a bit and having uh a first floor residence and then uh the manufacturing home on top of the foundation there now the the type of uh situation from a zoning standpoint in the r3 district is something that's allowed uh but it is something that is different than what the planning commission reviewed uh this is something that there was another proposal similar a lot by mr sieben in i think 2014 [2:09:43] **John Hinzman:** similarly for a for a duplex on there this was uh was a traditional stick built home that would have been placed there and so we did have the planning commission look at this uh the planning commission made a recommendation to approve that was that failed uh it's a little bit confusing there in consulting con in consultation we we we deemed this to be similar to a recommendation for denial so you had a on a vote of two to four to recommend approval of the structure move uh it failed and there was no further action by the planning commission at that time so we had a majority of the planning commission members that were opposed to the situation here we did have some other information that was submitted to us [2:10:29] **John Hinzman:** comments from neighbors and some of it in opposition to the development as well so the resolution that we have before you tonight is consistent with the majority opinion of the planning commission which is a resolution to deny the house move by mr sieben uh the reasons for the denial are based upon the adjacent structures of the zoning district do not include any other stack duplexes the finished square footage of the proposed structure even as a duplex is smaller than the average six structures in the same zoning district so that would be a little bit different when we look at how we make determinations on fit we're looking at the style of the house we're looking at the valuation of the house we don't want to have something that would potentially be detrimental to the neighborhood from a [2:11:16] **John Hinzman:** valuation standpoint so those are really the key issues that we're looking at here again this is what the existing manufactured home would look like a better view of the lot itself this would be where it would be placed this house this lot owned by mr sieben and then this is a survey of the property showing where the where the home would be itself so itself it's not a public hearing it's an action item before you tonight i believe mr sieben is on tonight so if you have any questions for him i can bring him into the meeting as well thank you **Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you john counsel any discussion [2:12:08] **Mary Fasbender:** okay no discussion console i don't see mr steven with a raised hand **Vaughan:** member vine i thank your honor i drove around this property quite a bit um this weekend is it is there any requirements john on i mean there's going to be zero grass left i mean it doesn't really in my opinion this structure does not fit in this spot it's kind of shoehorned in and i can tell you i've got a lot of feedback from neighbors they do not want it in there um and i agree with them it doesn't look like a fit for this area especially with the industrial to the east of it so i'm curious that do we have requirements i know we have a lot how far it has to be back from [2:12:53] **Vaughan:** the street but is there requirements on much green space that has to be there **John Hinzman:** yeah yeah council member the uh we have minimum planting requirements yard establishment requirements for any any home that would be put there so yes i would need there would need to be some transformation of the property **Vaughan:** and you're on one follow-up then would it would there be a requirement on the driveway can the driveway stay gravel then or does it have to turn into a pavement **John Hinzman:** i believe this would be a new structure there so it would need to meet our our paved requirements so it would need to be paved thank you **Joe Balsanek:** councilmember vaughn councilmember balsaneck thank you your honor uh john isn't there a requirement for a garage [2:13:42] **Joe Balsanek:** it seems to me i read somewhere in the notes that uh mr sieben was not planning for a garage **John Hinzman:** yeah council member there is no requirement for a garage there's a requirement that for each unit you provide two off street spaces so mr sieben would need to provide uh four off street spaces for this development but it would not necessarily need a garage **Joe Balsanek:** four spaces not right two for each unit because there would be uh two units all together here right okay thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember sonic **Joe Balsanek:** see your honor i'll i'll move to [2:14:27] **Joe Balsanek:** to uh deny the request **Mary Fasbender:** thank you council member bill sonic **Vaughan:** and councilman will second it **Mary Fasbender:** discussion council council member fault you're unmuted does that mean oh no i was gonna suck it but um vaughn beat me **Mary Fasbender:** okay clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** number one **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** both members **Tina Folch:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** both member ball sonic **Joe Balsanek:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** member lightfield **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** another one **Trevor Lund:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** what's the member brad **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** aircraft bender yes emotion prevails thank you [2:15:15] **Mary Fasbender:** thank you john tonight under administration we have with us christy bars from the hastings chamber president of the hastings chamber welcome christy **Christy Bars (Chamber):** thank you your honor and council members um i know you have a packed agenda so i will i will be brief but i'm gonna try and share my screen i just have a quick presentation on um what we've done for uh hastings tourism over this past year which has been an interesting year um and then i also did submit a uh marketing plan and a preliminary budget for the upcoming year for your approval tonight so i'm gonna pull this up [2:16:02] **Christy Bars:** can you see my presentation yes okay perfect well hopefully you'll be able to see some pretty pictures in between the other items tonight so um so first we'll just kind of go over um briefly what we have done for the 2019 and 2020 hastings tourism marketing plan and i'll review the the plan that was approved last year so if you can remember a year ago we were really focusing our target markets on four niche markets that were called out in our tourism assessment report and those included active lifestyle tourism so really highlighting our trails and access to natural resources our cultural heritage tourism which [2:16:47] **Christy Bars:** really highlights the history of our community multi-generation travel which allows for our itineraries to do multiple activities that cater to different ages and then also focusing on visiting friends and family so really promoting our assets to hastings residents so when they have friends and family visiting hopefully those friends and family will stay for a weekend or a week as opposed to just a day um so we really wanted to capitalize on what we were doing well and continue to strengthen our online presence through targeted online ads that were seasonal um and then also increase our social media presence so uh the the tourism committee uh wanted to overcome one challenge that we continue [2:17:34] **Christy Bars:** to hear um not just for visitors but for residents and and that is this perception that hastings is so far away um so we really wanted to kind of turn that around um and capitalize on the fact that we are known as a good day trip destination and uh we created a campaign called getaway to someplace close so all of our um targeted online ads and a lot of our print ads were focused around that that campaign to overcome the perception that hastings is so far away from from the twin cities area um and then we also uh wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had hired a new tourism lead who happens to be a professional photographer um and create a new website that would showcase his [2:18:19] **Christy Bars:** beautiful photography and also allow us to create an interactive historic walking tour and create some really uh in-depth itineraries that would cater to our multi-generation target market lastly we wanted to leverage our partnership so continue to work with the steering committee that's being run by the hastings park and rec department on the people moving people plan so that we could advocate for improvements to our already excellent trail systems and then we had made plans to partner with some neighboring chambers on bike events where our connecting trails happen so we were able to accomplish a good portion of that in the beginning of the year all of our active lifestyle [2:19:05] **Christy Bars:** campaigns went out and we did some really strong targeted online campaigns that focused on our trails and we began some really good online campaigns that focused on our ski hills in the winter and we also started planning with the prescott chamber to um to do a point douglas trail event called the eagle watch tour that was supposed to kick off in may our website did launch so we do have the new website up and running visit hastingsmen.org that does include the interactive downtown walking tour which focus which caters to our cultural heritage market and then we also were able to create those itineraries on that website as well [2:19:50] **Christy Bars:** so there was a little blip in the plans in regards to a global pandemic and so we um we kind of had to take a step back and in march we did we stopped all of our marketing so we we stopped our um our online campaigns we we took a break from social media and we realized that we needed to be to just listen and and that means listen to our our health professionals listen to our um state local and federal government and learn uh what our our businesses especially in the hospitality industry needed to do to keep their employees and their consumers safe so so we had to take a break we had to learn terms like social distancing if you can believe that that was a term we didn't know um as of a year ago um and then we had to make some tough [2:20:37] **Christy Bars:** decisions to postpone some pretty large tourism traffic events so we we ended up postponing rivertowne days and we did end up postponing the the eagle watch tour um so so once we we as a society started to um understand what we could do to keep each other safe we shifted our focus from the getaway to some place close campaign and moved to increasing our consumer confidence to start to get people to come back to hastings and enjoy all the things that they love about our community so we created a um campaign called create a smile behind your mask and safely shop dine and explore in hastings um we use the money that was originally allocated to our summer [2:21:23] **Christy Bars:** online campaign to do targeted online campaigns focused on uh shop safely experiencing hastings um and then we created a page on our website that talked about all that the city of hastings and the local business community did in partnership to keep uh consumers safe and it also included itineraries of um items that people can do outside that visitors can do outside to to stay safe so um with that you're under our belt as we look towards um the 2020 and 2021 marketing plan um as i'm i'm sure you know there's still a decent amount of uncertainty however things are are starting to get [2:22:10] **Christy Bars:** back to normal when we look at what we had budgeted for our lodging tax we really are at about 15 down from what we had budgeted for the year so um not as significant as we may have anticipated and in talking to our lodging community a lot of that has to do right now with weekday stays so because road construction is up our hotels are able to maintain a pretty strong occupancy throughout the week um they are still seeing a hit in their weekend traffic because a lot of the large events have been canceled so what we did going into um 2020 and 2021 is we budgeted for about a 20 decrease in lodging tax just assuming [2:22:55] **Christy Bars:** that that it's going to take time for that consumer confidence to build and we're still at a point where larger invents are not considered to be safe so we're going to focus on increasing that consumer confidence with safely experiencing hastings targeting ads around that we are going to continue to push uh the getaway to someplace close to overcome that distance perception and we are going to focus on what we had planned to focus on last year on those four niche markets which is the active lifestyle multi-generational travel cultural heritage and then visiting friends and family we are we've seen success with some short videos that we've created recently it's specific to the um safely experienced hastings campaign so we're going to continue to do those [2:23:42] **Christy Bars:** um we are hoping to bring back those tourism traffic events so still planning on doing rivertown days although it's going to look different um and hoping to be able to kick off some of those bike tours that we had planned in this previous year um and we're going to continue to sell staycations to our residents so really focus on selling our assets to the community um hoping that they will invite their friends and family during holidays and and the off season to spend time in hastings so that was a very quick presentation um i'm going to leave it at that and just see if there's any questions **Mary Fasbender:** thank you christy uh council do you have any comments for christy [2:24:34] **Mary Fasbender:** well i'll just say thank you christy i know it's been a tough year on everybody but thank you to you and wendy and dave for your diligence and continuing to um bring tourism to hastings i i think the business community appreciates what you've been doing on business calls and look forward to it getting better and better each year **Joe Balsanek:** council member bosonic thank you your honor christy uh it's just wonderful the way you adapted everything uh at the chamber to ensure that anything that happened in town was done safely uh that's that's very much appreciated on my part i know [2:25:19] **Joe Balsanek:** on the part of many of the citizens of hastings uh there is one suggestion i have and i'm going to be working with our economic development director on this and i would love to see a paddle wheeler in town that would uh do river tours up through uh the pine bend area uh it's absolutely beautiful i know a lot of pe i ask people have you been up through pine been on the river no and uh eagle nests uh all kinds of wildlife everything uh that's something that uh i i think is uh kind of a sleeping giant in terms of what we could do for tourism so if you if you have anybody that owns a paddle [2:26:05] **Joe Balsanek:** boat send them down this way okay and uh we'll see what we can do from hedgers standpoint thanks **Christy Bars:** sounds good thank you council member appreciate the suggestion and i will just say um thank you to you your honor and uh the city council for all you've done to um help our our local businesses during this time and um the heart grant was a really good example of what we could promote for um a good partnership between the city and our business communities where we were able to give funds to their pandemic safety plan and i know that there were several other pieces that went along with that so just want to thank you all for what you've done for our hospitality industry because as you know they have been struggling yes sure thank you [2:26:53] **Mary Fasbender:** all right looks like dan oh **Dan Wietecha:** dan thanks mary i just wanted to quick interject when i put the script of motions together for this meeting i left this one off by mistake i was distracted by the there being a presentation so we really we do need to oh it counts as sewing crying you have a motion recognizing the uh marketing plan and budget for the tourism board thank you so much **Mary Fasbender:** your honor **Tina Folch:** this is council member folch and seconded by **Trevor Lund:** councilmember lund **Mary Fasbender:** additional discussion clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** remember bond **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes [2:27:41] **Joe Balsanek:** yes **Lisa Leifeld:** mother life of yes **Trevor Lund:** yes **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** yes and that motion prevails thank you uh christy **Christy Bars:** thank you christy thank you your honor council **Mary Fasbender:** okay for this item we will have an introduction by city administrator dan waticha talking about uh cares act **Dan Wietecha:** thank you um little bit of uh complexity here but i i think it's something we can we can handle fairly well uh there are uh two packages of recommendations uh the first set is uh at our meeting two weeks ago [2:28:28] **Dan Wietecha:** uh there had been a motion uh regarding reimbursing hedra uh but that was table going to confirm the dollar figures so the first package of items is to remove that from the table and then to vote down that original motion because the number was correct the second package are a few uh small purchase requests in response to the the health emergency uh and then also some more specific requests with relate related to economic development business support [2:29:15] **Dan Wietecha:** that the council previously had enacted but recognizing it specifically now with hydra or with the cares act in place and it also corrects that that dollar figure that was talked about uh for hadra so there's two separate uh sets there um quickly going through the uh the second set the expenditures uh one is recognizing that uh over the last six months i believe this is through um through august um uh we've spent uh roughly fifty two thousand dollars on a variety of uh telecommunications disinfectant [2:30:01] **Dan Wietecha:** legal plexiglas pd in response to the health emergency but wanting to recognize that those prior expenditures um anticipate there will still be some over the next month and a half two months but those are the pieces through august and hit there are what we have reported to uh the state um with our first monthly report on the the cares funding the second item is 1 000 for some portable meeting room tables as we've been trying to utilize larger meeting spaces the council chambers the community room [2:30:46] **Dan Wietecha:** um it would just be helpful to have some portable tables to move around be able to use two spaces at the same time when we've got elections volunteers or staff meetings going on so it's an inventory for uh better able to have social distancing in our meeting rooms um a thousand dollars for some white boards in the fire ems training room uh the prior uh disbursement you had approved uh upgrading the av equipment recognizing the the training needs for the ems and as we got that squared away recognize that some whiteboards would still be helpful um an additional item would be a [2:31:33] **Dan Wietecha:** thousand dollars for uh online access to the minnesota building codes this is licenses for both of our inspectors and the building official with building hit construction has not stopped but they really had to adjust some of their processes with more online meetings scheduling remote inspections but really more that online meetings piece and being able to access the codes wherever they are whether in the office or in the field this online aspect is real convenient for cut and paste and highlight so that when [2:32:20] **Dan Wietecha:** they're meeting with somebody remotely they can show them specifically here what the code requirements are so that would assist the applications that they have had to make for building inspections during this covet environment not on the list but i would ask to add 2500. [2:32:40] **Dan Wietecha:** just get the quote this morning for uh adding plexiglass barriers to the deus and the city council chambers um it's not something we would use uh immediately we're still looking at some other pieces for how we can best use that room for uh in-person meetings but note that over the last month month and a half we've had three committees that have had in-person meetings and wanting to expect that some of that will continue uh and wanting to make sure that where a meeting might have some difficulty with the social distancing we have adequate barriers in place so it has to add 2500 to the list the other four items are specific to [2:33:27] **Dan Wietecha:** economic support for businesses two of them are that number uh discussed at the last meeting with reimbursing hedra the heart grant as well as the expenses for the parklets as well and encompassed in that figure is also the uh the detour signs the extra porta potty hand wash station and all of that assistance to having a safe uh social distance downtown the other two items are really some good conversation with our financial auditors first we expected was was [2:34:14] **Dan Wietecha:** reimbursable by the cares act but last spring the council reimbursed from march through june a variety of liquor massage pawn shop tobacco licenses to businesses that have been shut down or had their their occupancy limited 27 000 reimbursed to the city there the other piece was actually a bit of a surprise last spring we also waived the first half of the on sale liquor licenses um at about 43 000 [2:35:00] **Dan Wietecha:** and our auditors indicated that that is not necessarily a revenue replacement something that's not eligible under the cares act they indicated that uh as the record showed with the original intent clarifying it with our memo in action tonight uh the intent was that for that to be as if a grant and providing economic support to our our businesses uh and and as such it is reimbursable through the chairs act so adding that to the list here those are the actions uh i do want to point out there's two other things one uh hedra is meeting thursday this week uh to square away [2:35:45] **Dan Wietecha:** uh some of the um sub-recipient grant agreements related to businesses and nonprofits that were since we're running those those funds through hydra um so that's moving forward the other piece i would note the numbers a bit in flux recognize we still have some uh items we're looking at or some projections that may still be coming um but there's about 280 000 uh that's undetermined at this point we've got about six weeks to figure that piece out so i do want to make sure that's highlighted and has some attention uh maybe not [2:36:30] **Dan Wietecha:** tonight but certainly needs to be brought forward fairly fairly soon and with that i can stand for any questions **Mary Fasbender:** thank you dan so any questions for dan council if not i'll look for a motion to bring the cares act funds for hedra business assistance out of the table motion i'll show you many at once sorry i heard council member about sonic and i heard council members **Joe Balsanek:** i'll second your honor **Mary Fasbender:** okay so that can be discussed again your [2:37:17] **Mary Fasbender:** honor that should take a vote to bring it take it off the table **Kelly Flatten:** okay clerk patton please call the role what's the number on **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** both member folks **Tina Folch:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** welcome congratulations [2:37:39] **Joe Balsanek:** yes that motion prevails **Dan Wietecha:** so your honor i think that that was intended to take the motion off that was put on the table last meeting uh which staff at least had intended that that motion would fail but the content of it would be picked up in the other action that would be taken so i think if that's a council's wish then you could either call a vote on it and have it fail or actually if if the person or the members who made the first and second last time wanted to consent to it being withdrawn then it could happen i look back at my notes i think that was council member fortune balsanic but perhaps the clerk could verify that that's correct **Joe Balsanek:** well i'll remove my [2:38:26] **Joe Balsanek:** second year honor which in essence would make it die uh per the ordinance both the the person who brought the motion and the person who seconded i think i saw council member fault speaking there but on mute so if we could sorry **Tina Folch:** yes i do i i make a motion to remove the i'm sorry to withdraw my my original motion thanks **Dan Wietecha:** i think that takes care of that issue your honor **Mary Fasbender:** all right thank you so then council i would accept a motion approving the first set of recommendations of the staff memo **Joe Balsanek:** also move your honor **Dan Wietecha:** dan would you want to say something else i think that took care of the first set i think [2:39:12] **Dan Wietecha:** i'm looking for attorney flegal but i think that the next action will be the second set of recommendations **Dan Fluegel (Attorney):** that is correct **Mary Fasbender:** okay sorry okay then councilwoman would accept a motion improving the second set of recommendations **Joe Balsanek:** also move your honor **Jen Fox (Brax):** second council member brock's **Mary Fasbender:** discussion council i'm sorry i think your honor yes **Tina Folch:** comes america so the original motion was to accept the first set of items which is items one through eight and and we had a second and so shouldn't we take a vote on those first and have discussion before you move on to a [2:39:58] **Tina Folch:** second motion you're on **Dan Wietecha:** i can attempt to clarify if that would be appropriate your honor sure thank you dan uh councilmember fultz the first action that was just taken was to bring the motion that was brought at the last meeting off of the table it was placed on the table at the last meeting the content of that was to approve funding a reimbursement of hedra the staff's intention was to there were the numbers didn't match up for that motion that was presented last week so staff's intention was to incorporate those actions into this second step which is part of one through eight and then the council would take action on that certainly we have a first and second on that but [2:40:45] **Dan Wietecha:** it would be time for deliberation and any changes if the council would so wish **Tina Folch:** okay so now we're so just for clarification we're so we have a first and the second to move forward with items one through eight correct **Mary Fasbender:** the second oh dan for clarification one through eight plus 2500 from plexiglass or just one through eight with clarification from the yeah that went really fast well **Joe Balsanek:** my motion would be to include the 2500 for the plexiglass in addition to one through eight [2:41:32] **Joe Balsanek:** that's my motion **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember sonic are we having discussion now then no i'm looking for a second mayor we have a second from councilmember okay i was waiting for her to just nod to what joel reiterated sorry **Mary Fasbender:** okay now we can have discussion **Tina Folch:** councilmember fulch um yes i was gonna suggest uh before uh council for number eight approved consideration of license [2:42:18] **Tina Folch:** waivers as business grants totaling forty three thousand dollars i think that's wonderful um thank you for making that correction so that we can include that into this um i was thinking that since we can make these grants um i just for for further consideration of the council is if we would want to double that amount and then also provide then coverage for what is coming up due clerk flattened would have to help me here but i think their next um their next payment would be due december 1st if i'm not mistaken um for the next set of uh on sale license [2:43:04] **Tina Folch:** liquor license fees um and so uh kovid's not going away the numbers are taking up the governor doesn't seem to have any um he's not making any indications that he's going to remove the 50 percent occupancy limit on our restaurants and then furthermore it's about to get really cold and so as uh tasha nelson said on all of the major networks just this last week they are terrified that it's gonna the weather's gonna start becoming poor and they're gonna lose the capacity for all the patios and so i don't think anything's gonna be getting better when it comes to our restaurants and them being able to [2:43:50] **Tina Folch:** uh to take on much else and so i would uh i would lobby for us waiving that um that impending um next set of fees that would be due and again clerk flatten would have to help with i can't remember what the due date was but i thought it was coming up pretty soon thank you **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember falch **Trevor Lund:** councilmember lund thank you your honor dan maybe you can help me out um the balance is 284. um 284 000 is that um after the recommended but not approved items that are on the list at the the last page here is that assuming that those will [2:44:36] **Trevor Lund:** become uh it's after the ones that have dollar amounts **Dan Wietecha:** so if there is uh the thought that there might be a contribution towards the dakota communications center we don't have a dollar amount on that don't have an estimate so if that's not included in there but the the payroll figures that we have estimates are included so only where we have numbers okay thank you **Mary Fasbender:** okay dan **Dan Wietecha:** the other piece uh in in looking for for attorney clegal's input possibly but um in response to councilmember folch uh completely [2:45:23] **Dan Wietecha:** appreciative of the the difficulties of the the restaurants um the cares act would not be able to fund that second half because it is beyond the november 15th window **Tina Folch:** so clarification so that would be simply from sitting general fund in order to pay that and my question for attorneys legal is that's not on the agenda simply the cares act can council take action on that or incline other particular magic words to make that happen tonight or is it something to pick up in a couple of weeks i i would just like to clarify though [2:46:08] **Tina Folch:** i mean we can give a grant whenever we so choose and as long as the expenditure is made before november 15th that then is an allowable expense and so it doesn't matter that the actual due date for the fees would have been in december and so that i would say that that's incorrect and if you'd like for me to table this issue and so that you can verify it i will but i don't want to make um i don't think that that that that's a correct interpretation as to how it is that the the funding uh sources are working and and the expenditures it's just that you've spent the amount not exactly as to when it is that it would have been um for a future and in this case it's a grant and so it would be a grant to cover um that amount so if you'd like to for [2:46:56] **Tina Folch:** me to table that for now i'm more than happy to do so but i don't want it to be just thrown to the side with uh with you know that asterisk but it wasn't an allowable expense so go ahead go ahead dan thank you thank you um not not trying to throw anything to the side council member really simply trying to look from a procedural standpoint yes you are completely correct that providing a grant of 2200 [Music] uh to each of these these businesses is is doable if it's being tied to a future um license fee i think that would fall outside the cares access [2:47:41] **Dan Wietecha:** but strictly saying the grant is twenty two hundred dollars i i think yes you certainly can do that for the council certainly to do that **Tina Folch:** okay thank you dan any other **Vaughan:** councilmember vaughn thank you that's why i recommend that we we vote on what's in front of us so staff can come back we still got time to do some research on it if we want to do the next level that i i would like to vote on what's in front of us and the motion that's in front of us thank you **Mary Fasbender:** councilmember vaughn any other discussion your honor **Tina Folch:** wants to remember fulch i was wondering are you going to move on to other con are you going to move on to the next [2:48:27] **Tina Folch:** agenda item after we take this vote to just approve these so is now the time to ask for additional questions uh dan fleegle can you help me with that **Dan Fluegel:** i think if there's a a question regarding this general subject matter i think it would be appropriate to ask that now um i don't know what the question is so it's hard for me to say but i think if it's related to this subject matter then i would say yes if it's something completely unrelated that's perhaps not on the agenda so i would normally see you moving forward to the next agenda item you're on **Mary Fasbender:** okay all right **Tina Folch:** come to memphis thank you your honor so i had questions for dan in regards to [2:49:15] **Tina Folch:** some of the items that he's asked for in the past but aren't on this memo and i don't know where he is um whether or not he's going to continue to ask for um council consideration of these particular items and uh so i just wanted to tick through a couple um and so dan could we do a little back and forth um so poor mary doesn't have to continually um just acknowledge me but um the first one i had was twelve thousand dollars for unemployment insurance and then the second one is you had uh 114 thousand dollars for the police mobile command unit and there was forty four thousand dollars for the emergency operations center within the police department you had um those were all kind of big [2:50:02] **Tina Folch:** ticket items that i don't see within your memo here and so i was wondering if you were not going to ask for those into the future **Dan Wietecha:** the um unemployment insurance would be cares act eligible but at this time the state has said to hold off on paying those bills it appears that they're overwhelmed with processing and verifying eligibility and etc with uh unemployment pieces um so we don't have although we got an initial bill they said don't they subsequent so don't pay it [2:50:47] **Dan Wietecha:** so we don't have a bill to pay and at this point it appears likely that we will go past the november 15th date before the state gets that cleared up if possible could come back in the 11th hour but it really appears unlikely um the uh upgrades to the mobile command confirmed with our auditors i think she said definitely eligible uh but in talking with the vendor at this point it is back ordered or that work is not to say back ordered but uh getting in line not until april of next year so uh if we had an interest in doing [2:51:33] **Dan Wietecha:** that we we were too we're too late we missed that opportunity uh the auditor uh questioned the um uh forty four thousand dollars of equipment for the emergency operations center essentially recognizing we were able to in march uh partially activate our emergency operations able to act virtually and question the eligibility of those expenses as a legitimate response to the health emergency since we were able to work virtually [2:52:19] **Dan Wietecha:** so so that one the auditor said don't go forward with that **Tina Folch:** thank you so you you really you really don't have considerable expenses then after what you've had within this memorandum **Dan Wietecha:** everything everything at present is on there there's a couple of uh softies that we don't have a figure that we would like to look at some cyber security pieces uh since we have uh certainly had but continue to have employees working remotely and it was one thing to have to rush and send everybody home but are there some pieces that we should shore up there [2:53:05] **Dan Wietecha:** don't have a cost of stuff stuff that we're investigating there's a couple of before mentioned the dakota communications center i have a meeting this friday with with my peers across the county to hopefully get that more fund up there so there's a couple of numbers that we would like to bring forward but don't have but essentially everything that we've talked about or anticipate having is on this list i recognize there might be other ideas of where things could be spent but i did not want to start speculating on increasing funding for the anchor nonprofits as an example i heard [2:53:51] **Dan Wietecha:** or earlier there had been some discussion about assistance to the school district i saw some correspondence but not to the city correspondence with the county about assistance to the hospital so there might be some other places but but this time don't really have a specific proposal with any of those others **Tina Folch:** okay and that was my um and then just my one little last thing was in regards to um your first bullet on the first page of your your memo where you were asking for fifty two thousand dollars of miscellaneous expenses are these is this an additional fifty two thousand dollars to the forty two thousand dollars that you've already [2:54:37] **Tina Folch:** expended or have you just increased it by ten thousand dollars **Dan Wietecha:** that that's that's from the forty two to fifty to that **Tina Folch:** okay thank you for that so you you truly do have almost 300 000 that's unappropriated unappropriated at this point and so um how is it that um you would propose that we have uh conversations about how to program that within the next two years weeks so that we could have um more conversation about this uh in at the next council meeting we could send it again to um like the administrative committee for discussion or um just wondering uh what your thought process was about it because i'd hate to see for us to [2:55:23] **Tina Folch:** come in two weeks and meet again and then you say okay well we only have ten thousand dollars of um funds for that are needed for the dcc as a for instance you know and we're still sitting on 250 000 and so um you know in the past like you said the school district had asked for 300 000 and they had made a um a strategic decision to go to the county and they're waiting for the county i had cena uh the my my oldest child is still in high school and so i had to receive the communications from from the school as a parent that from this uh superintendent saying that they're with all of the covet expenditures they're currently 1.6 million dollars in deficit so they truly do need funding um at the school district level [2:56:09] **Tina Folch:** and so um so just thoughts for how it is that you would like to see for us to proceed and be supportive of these planning efforts um [Music] **Dan Wietecha:** i i attempted to respond to the school piece like trying to not not do that uh and just focus on on how to proceed i i really think that that's discussion for the full city council that the city council might choose to delegate that administration committee but my recommendation really be that that's decisions that the council should take the lead on [2:56:54] **Jen Fox (Brax):** go ahead **Jen Fox (Brax):** out to member brox i appreciate the suggestion since i'm the chair of the admin committee but i i don't necessarily feel that that's the best fit for a committee we did work on the non-profits money and so if there is a committee that's needed to work on that we certainly can i don't necessarily think that's the purpose of the admin committee because it's supposed to be dealing with more administrative type functions and i don't know if this really is that but i'm happy to do it if it's necessary **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember brock your honor **Tina Folch:** councilmember fultz i was going to say it could go to the finance committee for a discussion um which would be myself uh councilman [2:57:41] **Tina Folch:** brock's and vaughn since it is a budgetary issue and and figuring out how it is that we would like to strategically move forward as another suggestion **Jen Fox (Brax):** your honor **Mary Fasbender:** yes comes america so the original motion was to accept the first set of items which is items one through eight and and we had a second and so shouldn't we take a vote on those first and have discussion before you move on to a **Jen Fox (Brax):** finance committee and you want to pipe in at all council member fault is the chair so she would be the decision maker **Tina Folch:** okay i i would be happy to chair a committee meeting so that we could have a smaller group discussion about how it is to move things forward and and if any of the other council members would want to give impor input to the committee you're always always welcome to do that it's just difficult to have uh like a full robust you know conversation you know in this context and so that's why the committee meetings work so well but so i'm willing to do that [2:58:43] **Joe Balsanek:** your honor we have to be careful of the open meeting law if you've got a committee that's getting together and you've got council members outside of the committee contributing information that's not going to fly it's against minnesota's statue your honor thank you **Tina Folch:** councilman balsamic your honor thank you i mentioned the context if they'd like to contact me and provide input and that is within the guidelines of the open meeting law and as chair i can take input from any of the members of the council on any of the issues that come before the group it's only a troll it only becomes [2:59:28] **Tina Folch:** trouble if it's a chain conversation where um information is being passed thank you okay well **Joe Balsanek:** your honor you're walking on eggs when you do that and i would not recommend uh members uh talking to any committee member chair or otherwise because it you know it does become a chain of conversation uh and and i i just if if i can say here that i think dan our city administrator is doing a fine job at uh putting these things together in [3:00:16] **Joe Balsanek:** terms of allocations uh he's working with staff you know and i don't see anything in any of this that makes me suspect or disappointed in any way shape or form and i just think that what what's our deadline november 15th then yes dan go ahead yeah so we've got we've got two three council members there are council meetings to go to decide where we want to put this money so i i just assumed leave it with the staff because they're the ones that are seeing you know in all the nooks and crannies of uh [3:01:04] **Joe Balsanek:** things that need to be covered to protect staff citizens council everybody from the virus thank you your honor **Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilman so dan let's keep it in staff hands and you move forward um just for clarification though um dan just said that they're almost to the point where they don't have any other city expenditures to cover and so it would be more of a policy decision as to how it is that we would want to appropriate any additional funds to community be it the business community or if it was non-profits or the school district or anything to that effect and it's become quite prevalent to me when i've had conversations in the [3:01:50] **Tina Folch:** past with staff is that they don't feel necessarily that it's within their purview to be making decisions that are in regards to outside of city operations that it's not that's not normal procedure whatsoever and so if dan wants another two weeks to you know be thorough in reviewing the expenditures perhaps that the city would have that's fine but i don't think that it's also prudent to be placing staff into a situation that's outside their normal operating comfort zone and and so to be respective of that and so that why they it is that we are council members is to lead within our community and come up with recommendations to help guide staff in times of need like this and so i think that dan is very [3:02:38] **Tina Folch:** very capable but i think that we need to be cognizant about all the conversations that we have that and the feedback that he's been providing to us **Mary Fasbender:** so dan how would you like to proceed **Dan Wietecha:** go ahead dan um i i think two weeks is fine uh part part of that's having some behind the scenes um knowledge i mentioned that we've got our county managers meeting this friday uh i know one of the items expect one of the items to be discussion about the dcc i don't think it's going to be a big ticket figure it might be in that ten thousand dollar range that you uh proposed councilman the folks i expect that some of the other discussion is going to be in the area of school districts and hospitals i know that prior conversations with my peers i'm generalizing here and across multiple communities and painting with a broad brush uh but [3:03:45] **Dan Wietecha:** their feel uh or their settings feel was although they've had requests from uh hospitals and school districts uh that they were going to wait until october and sort of see where they were at with the end of the money make sure that any business assistance or operational needs were taken care of before looking at schools and hospitals and why i mentioned that is expect that we'll see what other cities are neighboring cities are thinking when meeting with washington county managers wednesday dakota county managers friday and that might help inform the council in two weeks just in terms of what [3:04:31] **Dan Wietecha:** others are looking at in those areas doesn't mean we have to follow them in the same fashion but i i wouldn't have additional information i can provide in two weeks that i can't provide tonight **Tina Folch:** okay thank you dan are you okay with that councilmember fulch **Mary Fasbender:** all right thank you we do have a motion on the table or council member brock's can you remind me what the motion is on the table i forgot mr fleegle **Dan Fluegel:** i believe it was to uh recommend approval of the items one through eight on the front page of dan with memo plus the 2500 allocation for the [3:05:18] **Dan Fluegel:** forgetting uh the plexiglass and i think other items **Mary Fasbender:** thank you i appreciate it thank you all right if no other discussion clerk flattened please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** the member vaughn **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** member folks **Tina Folch:** yep **Kelly Flatten:** let's go over balsamic **Joe Balsanek:** hi **Kelly Flatten:** humber life of **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** remember lund **Trevor Lund:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Mary Fasbender:** afs yes and that motion prevails we also have tonight a resolution to approve preliminary 2021 city property tax levy preliminary budget and setting truth and taxation hearing uh for this awesome for this item we [3:06:05] **Mary Fasbender:** will also hear from dan waticha **Dan Wietecha:** i do have any too many things to click should be getting a share screen i do have a presentation to give an overview of the 2021 budget and preliminary levy um i'll try to move through it quickly since i know we've been here a while and still have other items to get through um i do want to note chris eight miller is online our new finance manager started a week ago tomorrow so appreciative of having uh chris with us he comes from the city of saint paul i also want to note that following the [3:06:50] **Dan Wietecha:** presentation we have two resolutions on the agenda and i appreciate the council's patience uh with transitioning staff and working around a few vacations where we thought we were and hoping was a quick phone call to clear it up this morning turned out to be a bit more tracking down making sure we had all the right numbers tied out in the resolution so those were sent later this afternoon two resolutions uh on the agenda and i appreciate the council's patience um to the uh presentation uh quick overview we'll have a summary note [3:07:36] **Dan Wietecha:** the proposed levy changes how our levy has been historically as well as the impact of the proposed levy and note some other considerations coming up a couple of summary items that i really want to highlight uh this is a hold the line budget uh we recognize that we have had uh some growth so it does take advantage of that increased tax base but it holds the tax rate the same uh it also looks at holding our other inflationary increases essentially holding our 2020 operations the same in 2021 uh the other piece that i really want to [3:08:22] **Dan Wietecha:** point out uh second from the bottom of those bullets uh this is set up to not require or not rely on local government aid for capital expenses i expect that that's going to be cut by the state uh hope that it so set up a budget that's not relying on it in the hopes that if it does not get cut and that there's money there it allows us to go deeper down the list and take care of some of the second tier priority capital projects as noted the tax rate is about 57.4 percent uh holding that the same as current year [3:09:09] **Dan Wietecha:** 2020 there is a levy increase about three and a half percent based on growth in the tax base um increase market value uh which we'll see a little bit more on the future slide uh and i know a common question is what is one percent uh influence about 153 000 you've seen these slides before it shows the detail um at a high level or not quite high level showing the what's added expenses and added revenues and subtracted expenses subtracted revenues um for where there are differences from 20 to 20 21. [3:09:55] **Dan Wietecha:** in the end this figure here 193 000 i know i've talked with a couple of the council members about um that is what i would recommend we keep as for now a cushion uh recognizing that the preliminary level sets a ceiling and uh there could be adjustments between now and december um that cushion could be a number of things one a matter of anticipating that there might be difficulties financially next year whether that's cuts in local government aid tax delinquencies reductions and some fees that we might normally receive [3:10:40] **Dan Wietecha:** it it helps to buffer lost revenues uh it also uh could be a matter of uh between now and december looking at reducing that tax rate uh that levy uh it also could be a matter of uh picking up uh additional uh a little bit further down the capital project list we were able to fund the first tier ones but holding off on some other ones that might be important and can we reach down a little bit deeper or are there other expenses that might might come up where right on the initial end of negotiating all of our union contracts [3:11:25] **Dan Wietecha:** uh over the next couple of months and although we use a placeholder in here we don't know what we'll actually get when negotiating so wanted to point out there is a placeholder but i recommend that it available out there but recommend that it be kept as a cushion or placeholder for the time being um noted that we've had uh increase in our market values the green line represents the residential values obviously even the total has gone up the commercial side has been more steady but it also has increased [3:12:10] **Dan Wietecha:** you can see the year-over-year percentages up in the top right corner on apartments have been the largest increase from 20 to 21. [3:12:24] **Dan Wietecha:** roughly laid that on top of the the levy and the tax rate so in this case it's the same bars the same great same what color is that beige tan bar is showing the increase in our market value uh the green line showing a uh modest uh increasing levy amount uh but it working in conjunction where we've actually seen over the last eight years in this chart i think it goes back further a decrease in the tax rate itself and you can see at the far right side the preliminary rate for 21 is holding the same eyes in 20. [3:13:13] **Dan Wietecha:** uh this is uh the impact of a three and a half percent levy on uh a a few different uh market value houses uh hypothetical houses i think 234 is roughly the median price that half of the houses in town are less than half or above that but you can see that that that would have a 54 increase in the city's portion of taxes due to increased valuation of the property not due to change in the tax rate i do want to speak a little bit about the capital projects um concerns about the [3:14:02] **Dan Wietecha:** availability of local government aid we took uh projects holdovers from 2020 because of spending freeze but also they anticipated projects for 21 uh and group them into categories priority a priority b priority c um so the thought is as funds might become available we would look at each of those categories where are we at on category a are these still the right projects are there any to demote or promote uh and then look at the available funds and the proposed projects within that category uh looking at you've mentioned [3:14:48] **Dan Wietecha:** on the prior workshop looking at the some saved money saved for radios looked at the fact that we have money budgeted this year for the pool but then with that close we'll end up saving so let's spend that money on the pool we're actually able to essentially fund all of the category a project and still not rely on local government aid or increasing that levy rate um this is a quick list of the hedgerow proposals uh [3:15:35] **Dan Wietecha:** it also as we've done in the past proposes to keep it at the limit amount of .0185 of market value um through some of these fairly quick because i know we've been through these as a team previously uh the utility rates as we saw in the ellers study a month ago uh water would be a three and a half percent increase sanitary sewer one percent increase in storm water uh a four percent increase you can see here the impact on a quarterly basis what that would do to a average single family homes utility bill [3:16:23] **Dan Wietecha:** on the three-month quarter if a typical home might use 15 000 gallons of water and assume the same down the sewer uh those increases total about two two dollars and seventy nine cents over three months this shows two next steps but i propose three um maybe even four depending on how you want to count the steps uh one of the actions with in your resolution setting the levy preliminary levy tonight is also scheduling the truth and taxation hearing for december 7th uh and typically we would adopt the final uh levies and tax rates uh the subsequent meeting december 21st [3:17:10] **Dan Wietecha:** i've talking with staff this afternoon the thought is we could had a council workshop either i believe it's november 16th or prior to the december 7th meeting but recognizing that the approach to capital projects this year is fairly unique i wanted to make sure that you understand what projects are or not in that priority rankings uh discussing potentially some long-term bonding projects discussing the 193 000 um a matter of does the council want to have a workshop prior to that truth and [3:17:55] **Dan Wietecha:** taxation hearing just a chance to have more of a discussion and have a package instead of trying to change numbers on the fly during the church and taxation but those are the next steps um note that it is a essentially hold the line budget and keeps the tax rate the same and with that i can stand for any questions that you might have there are two resolutions before you decide thank you **Mary Fasbender:** dan counsel any discussion sorry there we go okay uh **Tina Folch:** councilmember fulch thank you your honor i had a question for dan on your slide number 12 for hedra on those budget items i wanted to make two comments um the first bullet that you had had was ten thousand dollars that was set aside for housing and that's actually a carry forward from this last budget cycle uh where um that money was appropriated just to remind everybody housing was the number one uh issue that we all did you know agree to as you know for priorities and something i know i'm concerned about is uh the fact that uh rusty left and he was kind of like 80 percent you [3:19:31] **Tina Folch:** know along his uh his research that he was doing and um and so i'm i'm really concerned that in this last year that we didn't uh make it we we didn't really accomplish anything in putting together recommendations for housing um and ten thousand dollars is kind of a pittance when it comes to consulting fees and how much work it is that you can get done and so i i don't sit on hendra but i'm i'm really concerned that this hasn't been given enough of a priority and enough money as uh set aside to actually do anything meaningful in this next year uh uh with housing and then my second issue is in regards to the um your fourth bullet point [3:20:18] **Tina Folch:** site acquisition 180 000 for the purchase of a vermillion street downtown redevelopment site this 180 thousand dollars is the payback that we just authorized for the the heart grants and uh in our last council meeting we again um i brought up the fact that the covet economic task force had made the recommendation that that hundred and eighty thousand dollars uh be rather ear marked as you know contingency uh looking into this next year if uh a second wave comes through and um is you know very detrimental again to uh the business community and if grants you know immediate grants were going to be necessary so that we had something that [3:21:04] **Tina Folch:** we could pull from and so again i don't think that it's appropriate to be earmarking that money for um for the city to act you know make an acquisition of uh of of uh a parcel of land when there are so many parcels of land along the vermillion street corridor i don't think that this next year is the year that we should be we should be concentrating on flipping just one lot you know along the way and so um i don't know who has the authority over budget priorities there if that's a council decision but um i we had talked about that if with that money was yeah given back to hedra that that's how the money would be earmarked and so those are are my um my [3:21:51] **Tina Folch:** big concerns there in regards to hedra and i just wanted to thank you for your fiscal um conservativeness that and your approach dan with working with staff and making really um tough decisions and uh originally you had provided uh an increase um suggested your suggestion was 4.1 and after we asked you to tighten the reins a little bit you brought it back down to three and a half percent and so thank you for um your efforts i know it's not easy and thank you for also um putting together recommendations on a priority basis you know the abc d and i know that those are hard um decisions to make and i want just to recognize that i'm i'm really proud of you and the staff who have been making [3:22:38] **Tina Folch:** all of those um those decisions as you go along so thanks dan **Dan Wietecha:** go ahead i appreciate the comments on having some great staff and being able to delegate a lot of that to them um just a quick point of clarification on the earlier calculations that have looked at it the keeping the tax rate the same a 4.19 increase as we indicated we caught a math error we also had updated figures on fiscal disparities and i think there's another element in there that actually just [3:23:25] **Dan Wietecha:** recalculated that keeping the rate the same at 3.54 so as much as i'd like to think credit for it uh that there was some diligence to staff to just keeping keeping on top of a moving target thank you **Mary Fasbender:** any other discussion console okay then i would accept a motion to approve the resolution adopting preliminary 2021 city tax city property tax levy preliminary budget and setting truth and taxation hearing date **Trevor Lund:** so moved **Mary Fasbender:** to remember lund and a second by **Tina Folch:** council member fulch **Mary Fasbender:** discussion council [3:24:12] **Mary Fasbender:** click flatten please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** the member vaughn **Vaughan:** yes **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Mary Fasbender:** yes yes of course all right last number **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Trevor Lund:** yes **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** yes yes and that motion prevails and we have another resolution to approve the proposed 2021 hedra hra special tax levy **Vaughan:** don move your hunter i'll make it you **Mary Fasbender:** council member vaughn and **Trevor Lund:** council member lund **Mary Fasbender:** any discussion click flatten please call the roll **Kelly Flatten:** the member vaughn **Vaughan:** yes [3:24:57] **Kelly Flatten:** yes **Joe Balsanek:** hi **Lisa Leifeld:** yes **Trevor Lund:** yes **Jen Fox (Brax):** yes **Mary Fasbender:** yes and that motion prevails thank you uh now we will go into a closed door session to discuss a evolution of an individual subject to city council authority pursuant to minnesota statute 13d point zero five subdivision three a first we will allow everyone to leave hey i'm sorry i'm sorry we're going to do reports and announcements now counsel any other on any announcements okay i have a few um first of all happy birthday to councilmember brock's [3:26:00] **Mary Fasbender:** this week we have a special last week oh last week yeah that's okay last thursday this month this month this month we have several other recreational programs coming up at levy park raptors in the park on wednesday september 23rd at 6 p.m a live raptor presentation and partnership with carpenters nature center movie in the park the karate kid will be shown friday september 25th at 7 p.m sponsored by ardent mills taran harmon state farm insurance agent will host fund giveaways including glow sticks please remember a non-perishable donation for hastings family service performance in the park tuesday september 29th at 6 pm brickfast [3:26:48] **Mary Fasbender:** dance company will be giving a break dancing martial arts and contemporary dance performance story in the park on wednesday the 30th at 6 pm for kids zero for kids zero and under i don't think that's right for kids enjoying big books music and socially distance activities all about animals kids must be accompanied by a caregiver meetings we have tuesday hedra thursday september 24th monday september 28th we have a planning commission at 7 p.m and monday october 5th is the city council meeting with that then i will now [3:27:36] **Mary Fasbender:** ask if