This transcript reflects a City of Hastings City Council meeting from late 2021. Based on the context provided and the officials mentioned, here is the attributed transcript. **Note on Council Names:** Some names in the original transcript (e.g., "Vaughn," "Lund," "Brox," and "Folch") appear to be phonetic transcriptions of Councilmembers **DawnMarie Vihrachoff**, **Lisa Leifeld**, **Jen Fox**, and **Tina Folch**. I have used the names from your provided list where the mapping is clear and retained the identified speakers for those not explicitly on your current list. *** [0:00] **Everyone:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Welcome everyone. This is always a great meeting to have, um, our milestone dedications here with us tonight. So we have another full house, which we always love to see. I'll—Council, let the rule reflect that all council members are present and a quorum has been established. One of the highlights each year, as I said, was when we get to shake hands and present to these uh, service people that have worked for the city of Hastings for numerous years. And um, tonight with that, we have 330 years of service from these uh, single individual people by 5 years, 10 years, 15, 20, 25, 30 and a 35 as well. [1:02] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator):** So I will at this point hand it over to Dan Wietecha and we will applaud for your awards and afterwards there will be photos taken so please stay for the photo afterward. Thank you. Thank you. I am pleased to recognize the employees of the city of Hastings who have celebrated milestone anniversaries this year. We are fortunate to have their service and expertise on staff and are happy we could recognize some of them in person this year. Thank you to those who have—thank you to those of you attending. The following employees have been with the city of Hastings for five years this year, 2021. [1:49] **Dan Wietecha:** Nicole Beagle serves the department and city as a paid on-call firefighter EMT. Bless you. Nikki represents the department in a professional and positive manner and she is very dedicated to the department. We thank her for her service and look forward to her future contributions. Don't believe Nikki is here today. Brady Andres has been a parks keeper two with the park maintenance division since March of 2016. [2:22] **Dan Wietecha:** Brady is a valued team member at Parks and Recreation, always willing to tackle the most challenging projects as well as the menial tasks. His positive attitude, consistent work ethic and laughter make working with him very enjoyable. Brady and his wife Claire recently welcomed their first child, Wayne, in early November. Congratulations. Brady has already begun to introduce his son to the outdoors and deer hunting. Is Brady here tonight? Officer Blake Nosel started with the Hastings Police Department on August 15, 2016 and served as a Hastings police reserve prior to his appointment. [3:08] **Dan Wietecha:** Blake is one of our field training officers and currently works the night watch in the patrol division. He is routinely recognized by his superiors for his excellent, innovative, and compassionate service to those in need. Come on up please. [3:34] **Officer Blake Nosel:** Thank you so much. Thank you. [3:44] **Dan Wietecha:** Corey Honkin has been our facility supervisor at the Hastings Civic Arena since September 2016. Corey has excelled in his position at the arena tackling the routine day-to-day operations, tournaments, special events, ice maintenance, building maintenance, concessions, and so much more. Corey always has a positive attitude and is more than willing to make sure everyone at the arena has a great experience. Outside of work, Corey and his wife Ann enjoy spending time with their two daughters, Evelyn and Emily. Corey also enjoys playing slow pitch softball during the summer and fall as well as working on his 1970 Plymouth Duster. Come on up. [4:30] **[Applause]** [4:45] **Dan Wietecha:** Jeremy Bichner is a paid on-call firefighter EMT who has been very active in response to department activities. He is currently one of our ice rescue instructors and brings a positive approach to the department. We thank him for his service and look forward to his future contributions. Timothy Likes also is a paid on-call firefighter EMT active in response and apartment activities. He is one of our ice rescue instructors and has been involved in department committees. Tim brings a positive approach to the department and we thank him for his [Applause] service. [5:32] **Dan Wietecha:** Thank you. Phil Nelson, paid on-call firefighter paramedic, has been promoted to a full-time firefighter paramedic. He brings a very focused approach to his work and service to the community. Phil has been involved in committees, training, and maintenance of our equipment. Recently he has been very involved in our truck committee and in modifying our current truck to improve our response. We thank him for his many contributions and look forward to his continued service to the community. Not here tonight. The following employees have been with the city of Hastings for 15 years. [6:21] **Dan Wietecha:** Connie Lang is an accountant in the finance department. Connie handles the important task of paying our bills as the accounts payable accountant. In addition to processing payments and setting up vendors in AP, Connie does numerous reconciliations, handles various insurance policies and cash receipting. She also researches expenses as needed and often helps departments realign their expenses with their budgets. Prior to joining the city, Connie worked as an accountant for Northwest Airlines. She and her husband live in Hastings. [7:00] **Dan Wietecha:** Matthew Lindemann has the honors of becoming the first public works operator to complete all six steps of the public works operator program which makes him a valuable asset to the city. Matt is a well-rounded operator but he excels with the city sanitary sewer system by taking on the role of line cleaning, televising, lift station maintenance and flushing of the lines. Matt is also a good mentor of new employees by taking time to educate and answer questions that benefit the whole department. Matt is a hockey and baseball dad which keeps him on the go year round. [7:44] **Dan Wietecha:** Brian Showalter celebrated 15 years with the Hastings Police Department in April. Showalter began his career here as a patrol officer in 2006 and was assigned as an investigator on the Dakota County drug task force in 2009 where he became a team leader. Showalter returned to the patrol division in 2014 and was promoted to patrol sergeant in 2017. He was appointed to the rank of police commander and completed Northwestern School of Police Staff and Command. Brian is a task master and an invaluable asset to our agency. He currently oversees our operations division. Congratulations on your accomplishments and thank you. [Applause] [8:49] **Dan Wietecha:** Mark Noel also is a full-time firefighter paramedic who has served the department and community for 24 years with 15 of those in his full-time role. Mark has served in many roles during his time here including EMS training coordinator, instructor, FTO mentor and many more. He most recently served on our truck committee and manages our EKG monitors. He is very dedicated to serving the community and his fellow firefighters. We appreciate his dedication to serve. [9:28] **Dan Wietecha:** Craig Latch has served the fire department and community for 24 years as a firefighter and paramedic with 15 of those years in his full-time role. Craig has been active in many committees including most recently our truck committee. He also represents the department on the Dakota County special operations team in which he serves as the chief. He also serves on the Minnesota Task Force One as a logistics manager. Craig is very dedicated to serving the department, our community, and the state and we appreciate his service. Derek Latch is a full-time firefighter paramedic who served on the department and community for 17 years with 15 of those years in his full-time role. In addition to his firefighter paramedic role, he has been involved in the safety and wellness committee and fire training committee. He has performed safety checks in our department and managed the uniforms. Derek brings a calm positive demeanor to our department and his shift. We appreciate his many contributions to the department. [10:45] **Dan Wietecha:** Denise DeWall, Building Services, marked 15 years with the city this summer. She is appreciated by her co-workers for being reliable, forthright and productive. She is pleasant, fun and funny to work with. Denise loves her family and is highly involved with her church. Last summer she and her husband took a trip to the Boundary Waters which achieved social distancing but also proved to be very popular since campsites were difficult to find. Thank you Denise for being such a dependable and hard worker. John Caven, Assistant City Engineer, is our utility man in the engineering department. [11:30] **Dan Wietecha:** He truly covers all areas of expertise and is a great resource for history and knowledge to all of us. John has a calm and patient temperament to handle any challenging situation that comes his way. He takes the lead on our pavement management program, storm water management MS4 permit, wellhead protection, building permits, site reviews and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance contact for trails, sidewalks and parking lots. John enjoys downhill skiing and getting out in nature with his family which includes wife Janet and four kids ages 10 and under. Is John here tonight? Nope. The following employees are celebrating two full decades—that's 20 years—with the city. [12:17] **Dan Wietecha:** Officer Nathan Wood started his career with the Hastings Police Department on February 26, 2001. During his career he has served as a patrol officer on the night watch, spent 11 years as an operator on South Metro SWAT, was a field training officer and most recently completed a three-year assignment as an investigator on the Dakota County drug task force. Nate is currently assigned to day watch in the patrol division. Thank you and keep up the good work, Nate. Officer Michael Schmitz started his career here on January 2nd, 2001. During his tenure he performed the roles of police officer, investigator and canine handler. Mike is best known for the numerous canine demonstrations he performed in our community with canines Ice from 2005 to 2011 and Ozzie in 2011. Schmitz currently works day watch in the patrol division. Thank you for your service. [13:30] **Dan Wietecha:** Sam Schmidtke, Engineering Administrative Assistant, heads up all phone calls to the engineering department and does this better than anyone. If Sam can't answer a question she knows exactly who can, which is a wonderful and efficient service to our residents. Sam has a caring nature for those around her and does whatever she can to make people feel welcome. She handles all engineering department mailings, archiving, payments, audit support and prevailing wage compliance for all construction projects to name a few of Sam's day-to-day responsibilities. Sam's institutional knowledge of the city is valued and allows us to accomplish more as an engineering department. Thanks to Sam for always lending a hand and making work a more pleasant place to come each day. Congratulations on your 20-year milestone. [14:49] **Dan Wietecha:** The following employees are celebrating 25 years of service in Hastings. We've got one out of order. Since July of 1996, Corey Likes has been a staple in the Parks and Recreation department. Corey spent the first part of his career as a parks keeper completing all of the varied maintenance tests. For over 10 years now, Corey has served as the maintenance and operations supervisor for the parks department and his years as a parks keeper have helped him to be successful in this role. Not only does Corey know the ins and outs of every park and every mile of trail, every playground and every facility in the city, he knows just about everyone in town too. [15:36] **Dan Wietecha:** This combined knowledge has served him and the department very well when faced with unique and very odd tasks as he always knows who to ask and how to get it done. Corey takes a great deal of pride in his work and the work his crew does on a daily basis and he cares deeply for this community. He always wants to get the job done the right way and enjoys seeing happy residents after a job well done. [Applause] And to continue embarrassing him because I've turned the page and saw there was still a little text—I'm sorry—outside of work, Corey and his wife Lisa have four children and continue to enjoy watching their children grow. Corey enjoys playing in the woods whether that is riding the wheeler, cutting trees and firewood, hunting for ducks and geese or hunting deer. You can bet he is having a great time. Corey is a tremendous asset to the department and the city and truly a pleasure to work with day in and day out. Thank you Corey. [Applause] [16:55] **Dan Wietecha:** I'm going to use this photo twice because it looks like we missed one of our 25-year photos. Joe Burke. In his 25 years of service, Joe Burke has pretty much done it all from his start in the parks department to becoming the senior lead operator of public works. Joe plans daily work schedules for the crew and then works with the crews to get the jobs done. When it comes to snow plowing, he knows every street, alley, cul-de-sac and parking lot that needs to be plowed. In the summer months, Joe shifts from snow plowing to maintaining all the asphalt in these same areas. Storm water maintenance is also a big part of Joe's work in the summer. He ensures that the city ponding basins are flowing correctly and the lines coming in and out of them are in good working order. Farming is also in Joe's blood and he enjoys working the farm he grew up on just outside of town. [17:54] **Dan Wietecha:** Now back to the script. The following employees are celebrating 30 plus years with the city of Hastings. For 30 years, Greg Page has been an asset to the city. When you see the street sweeper out working, chances are Greg will be the operator. Greg has excelled at all street operations such as sweeping, patching, paving, storm water and catch basin repair. When the weather turns cold, Greg is a very accomplished snowplow operator, clearing the streets of snow while operating one of the city's two tandem axle plow trucks. In better weather, Greg can be found trimming boulevard trees for clearance so the plow trucks and sweepers along with garbage and delivery trucks don't come in contact with any low hanging branches. Greg has a passion for horses and traveling out west to ride them. If Greg could choose a second career it would certainly be cowboy. [18:55] **Dan Wietecha:** And last but not least, this employee represents the most with 35 years of service. In his 35 years of full-time employment with the city, Mark Shute has become a very well known employee. Mark is also a native of Hastings and really cares about his city. During his time here he has held many positions, beginning in 1981 until 2001 as a part-time paid-on-call firefighter EMT. His full-time status began in December of 1986 as a utility operator where he learned all aspects of water and sewer operations. In 1990 he accepted a new role in the street department as a heavy equipment operator. Once in this role, Mark also added on the role of mechanic, making him the first city heavy equipment operator/mechanic, which is a title he holds today. With all of his experience, Mark is often the go-to guy everyone looks to with questions or to get something done. Away from work in the winter, Mark enjoys traveling to different ski resorts both domestic and abroad with his wife and friends. When summer hits, he can be found on the river water skiing. Together these employees represent a total of 330 years of combined service to the city of Hastings. We are fortunate to have their knowledge, dedication and continued service. Thank you to each of you. [20:41] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** And if we could break the meeting for a little bit and have the milestone employees come up and some photographs with the city council please. [22:51] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** All right, again that's such a uh, great beginning of our last meeting of the year too. Get in line. Good humor, love it. Okay. There are also several residents who have volunteered their time on citizen commissions and we would like to recognize a couple of those tonight that are going off of our commission. So, John? [23:09] **John Hinzman (Community Development Director):** Thank you Mayor, City Council members. One important aspect that doesn't get a lot of attention is the service of our citizen commissioners. The work that the City Council does is aided by these individuals meeting in Parks and Planning and Economic Development, Historic Preservation—many different fields. Things that make this city unique. The work that they do behind the scenes typically deals with public hearings and the nitty-gritty of what makes policy into action; it makes our city a better place. The work of these commissions can only be completed by the dedication of individuals that are involved within them. Tonight we have two commissioners from two different commissions that are leaving us that uh, we would like to recognize that service. I've got Dennis Peine here tonight. Dennis, come on up here. Dennis has been with HEDRA. [Applause] Dennis currently is our HEDRA president. [24:25] **John Hinzman:** And you might ask, what is a HEDRA? That's our economic development group. All the work that we've been doing with Hudson Manufacturing, with some of the riverfront renaissance, with some of the redevelopment of buildings, loan programs, industrial park—those type of things are done through our HEDRA board. And Dennis has been on this commission for 12 years. Prior to that, Dennis served on our Planning Commission for six years as well. I've been able to serve with Dennis and been able to learn from his expertise of his Hastings roots here, as well as his vision for development. Dennis is an architect by training and what he does is he likes to take drawings of the city and try to make it a better place. When you take a look at what's happening down at the riverfront, what we've done over the last few years, Dennis is one of those first people that came forward you know, almost 15, 20 years ago and said "Hey, we got to do something better down here, let me sketch some stuff out." And it kept going and going and eventually we have what we have today. It takes people like Dennis to have the ideas to come forward with that and the dedication that they have to serve within the community. So Dennis, I just wanted to thank you for your 12 years of service on HEDRA and the service you had in planning commission. Wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much and officially I have this award for you. I'm going to take a picture here in a second. [25:40] **John Hinzman:** Okay, the other person I have to recognize tonight unfortunately cannot be here and that is Emily King, one of our planning commissioners. The Planning Commission is involved with a lot of the land use applications that we have—things for new development, residential, commercial. They hold a lot of public hearings that come and they do a lot of the background work prior to things coming to City Council. Emily has been involved in the Planning Commission for about three, four years and she's been a valuable member of that committee, being able to bring a youth insight into it, experience, and being a manager of a coffee shop, she gets to talk to a lot of people. That was always very insightful for some of the stuff she would bring forward. So I want to recognize Emily for her years of service as well. But if I could call you back down here again, now that you're comfortable, take a picture with Dennis here. I'd appreciate it. Thanks. [28:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** All right, tonight we have with us uh, Commissioner Mike Slavic with Dakota County and he's going to give us an update on what's been going on for the last year or so. Welcome Mike. [28:22] **Mike Slavic (Dakota County Commissioner):** Well good evening Mayor, Council members, city staff. It's always uh, great to be here. This is actually my 15th last meeting of Hastings City Council in a row so uh, six of those of course on the City Council in the last nine um, as a County Commissioner. So I just wanted to go in and give you my annual update of just kind of what's been going on in this year for Dakota County. And I always like to start with the budget, mostly because I'm a numbers guy. So it's a—um, we'll use arrows. So just you know, very much like the city of Hastings, we've certainly had some of the uniqueness and the challenges of a budget in 2021. For our coming up year, we've been very blessed that our non-levy revenues have stabilized. The budget outlook at the state level is very positive with surpluses. We've received a plethora of federal funds with the ARPA and uh, those have been able to go and do that. We also haven't—our labor negotiations were a year ago, so we were able to kind of not have to deal that for this year. So we're really kind of uh, we have some challenges of course with that. One of those is what does the "new normal" look like for staff, for society in general, once we eventually figure out what post-COVID life looks like, as well as many communities and many private employers. The labor market is pretty tough. And lastly with inflation, we have a number of cost pressures that keep going up with that. [30:00] **Mike Slavic:** All of that being said, with that year we were able to go in at our last board meeting last week and go and approve a zero percent levy um, for 2022. Our budget is roughly 441 million dollars with that. It's an increase in our capital improvement, so we're still working on doing projects, but the overall operating budget going down for the year. A little bit of a breakout of what that looks like: you've seen this pretty much every year who's been around, just on where our money goes and of course we do receive a substantial amount of money from federal and state resources. About a third of our budget comes from the property tax payers of Dakota County, with about two-thirds being staff and operations and about a third being the capital costs. Something of make note: we are now in our next year will be our fifth year of being debt-free as a county. We've been able to go and work very closely to pay off all of our debt. Additionally with that, we will now be going for the eighth year as the lowest per capita levy of any county levy in the state of Minnesota. And now for year number two—so 2021 is our first year of that—we are able to be the lowest tax rate of any county in the whole state of Minnesota. [31:04] **Mike Slavic:** So we've been very fortunate that we've been very aggressive on our financial stewardship and really making sure that we can use those dollars the best. We've had a little bit of good luck and a whole lot of hard work. And obviously, just as you've been working on your budget for the last year, it takes a lot of team effort to be able to get there. This is just a chart here to show you a little bit what the median home value: it went up roughly ten, eleven thousand dollars from 2021 to 2022. Of course your taxes are based on for next year's value. The median home value went up roughly 10, 11,000 and in that, if by chance that happens to be your home, you're going to see about a 1.74% reduction in your county property taxes. So it all varies on depending on what your value is. Obviously with medians, some people lower will pay less and those who have a higher value will pay more, but just to kind of keep a good steward of those tax dollars, that gives you perspective. [32:00] **Mike Slavic:** One of our exciting things that happened in 2021 is we opened up the SMART Center. That is the Safety Mental Health Alternative Training Center and with that uh, Alternative Response Training Center. This is kind of a different way of doing soft skills with public safety and law enforcement and that has been a joint effort—it's a partnership with all of our communities as well as the state of Minnesota. This is the kind of soft skills um, with law enforcement and really kind of uh, particularly what we've been dealing with in our society in the last year and a half—just a different way of policing and really that extra training. It's really cool. They actually, if you go on the sheriff's website Facebook page today, they actually—it's a virtual training. So it's a big empty room and then you put on the headset and you can actually see and it's a full living room in there and you're trying to address mental health issues. It's just the next way of how technology is being done and we're fortunate that we were able to receive some state funding and partnership to create a regional center for that. So that did open up this past fall. [33:00] **Mike Slavic:** Another exciting thing that's been happening is we're going to be reintroducing bison to Spring Lake Park Reserve next fall. So you can see a map of what the park areas look like and those dotted areas will be prairie area where we will have paddocks of bison starting with 13 that will come. And this is part of an initiative that the Minnesota State Lottery helped support and fund to go in and reintroduce bison, which were natural to this area, back into the Minnesota environment. So that is something next fall. Stay tuned. You'll be able to go along the bike trail, the dotted area there, and be with the Mississippi River Greenway and check out bison in our park system. That is also part of a greater plan for a park redevelopment. So in 2022 and beyond, you're going to start seeing about a five plus million dollar upgrade and improvement to Schaar’s Bluff and Spring Lake Park Reserve. [34:00] **Mike Slavic:** Last thing that I kind of wanted just to share a little bit about what's been going on and that is just kind of our housing and homelessness. Some of this, Council, we had a workshop prior so some will be a little bit of a repeat, but I think there's some components that I just wanted to share with you particularly. I know that as Council and the Mayor you've received phone calls, as have I, about the homelessness population in Hastings and we've kind of chatted a little bit about that as county resources have really tried to work with that population. This is just kind of a chart that I wanted to share with you with what we were doing. So in the last four years Dakota County has quadrupled their investment in homeless outreach and homeless alternatives. This is just kind of something to give some perspective. In the winter of 2020 where we were: we own a shelter called Dakota Woodlands which has 22 rooms—those are for a family homeless shelter. Hotel Connect is actually a partnership primarily driven by the Hastings area which is individuals who are really—they're choosing to be outdoors but sometimes the weather gets a little bit more than they can handle. We have these polar vortexes and so there's a set of five rooms that we've partnered with to go in and make them available. Additionally I should say that we have typically had a traveling shelter that has gone from church to church every two to three weeks and with COVID we could not run in something that... so we've actually, when I say rooms, we're actually renting hotel rooms. And this is going—we have the funding set through 2022 to uh, for our homeless population to do 137 rooms total. [35:42] **Mike Slavic:** So the other values in there are just kind of throughout the process of what is available with our housing. So right now we can say—and we won't always necessarily be able to do this—but as it stands right now every individual who chooses to have a roof over their home or their head has been given the opportunity. That does not—that quite frankly is because of the funding that has come from the federal government to make that happen from CARES Act, from American Recovery dollars. So right now we're in a scenario where those who wish to do that have that option. Just to say with you, so this Ally part in there is actually in addition to the rooms. They offer our homeless outreach. You may have seen this, or those of you who I've chatted with since a lot of the attention was drawn to the population in Hastings, has been that this is a homeless outreach group that works in partnership with Hastings Family Service to kind of do weekly checks with the population that is living in the area to just make sure are their needs where they want to do that? They do have options and to work on that way. [37:00] **Mike Slavic:** I want to just kind of share that as we've been really working on those options, there's a conversation—a community conversation—that is looking to happen in January regarding homelessness in Hastings. So we're working with some of the local elected officials, county, partnering with Ally, who is the homeless outreach connection, to actually do a community conversation in Hastings. Because we are, as was evident, a very generous community that wants to help, and we're trying to find out what is the best way to go in and serve a population in a safe manner that hopefully gets results. I think we know that a person can't just have a roof over their head to be safe and stable. You know, oftentimes it's a mental health issue, it's a job employment issue, it's a child care issue and some of the family homelessness. To be able to find a way to make our population safe and stable so that they ultimately can thrive is the ultimate goal. And my slide here is really kind of the next step where the investment is. [38:00] **Mike Slavic:** So I said that we quadrupled the investment in here. When we have individuals who are in our shelters, one of the problems where we were creating our bottleneck was Dakota Woodlands, which is our family homeless shelter, and with that they would stay there and they weren't able to get out because there were no options for them to find housing to find something a little more permanent. And secondly, many times they needed additional services attached with them. One of the first things we did is we partnered and built a number of years ago was the partnership with Lincoln Place. That's the one in the corner here. That is the youth homeless permanent housing. So that has services, but that is ages 18 to 26 years old. They're couch hopping oftentimes; they're single. Those are all efficiency units that we have available and those are using levy county dollars and social services to help cover some of those costs of trying to really make a person successful and thrive so that they can go and be on their own. The upper left-hand corner, that would be Cahill Place. That is a partnership with Center City that was able to receive a number of state funds and private funds that opened up last fall of 2020 during COVID. And that is individuals—it's all families—who currently were either on the street or in the Dakota Woodlands family shelter are able to move into two, three, and four-bedroom apartments. And in there, there's actually a social worker on site that's working on employment and mental health and child care and many of the challenges with these individuals to be able to go and ultimately thrive. The average stay in both of these is about two to four years. And as they cycle out, hopefully you have some that are a little more successful than others who may stay longer, but that cycle is able to continue to find success. [39:32] **Mike Slavic:** Center City is based out of Duluth and we're looking actually with this great success of a second facility. About seven hundred thousand dollars of property taxes pays to do those social services on this building alone. And the last one you may have heard is when Harbor Shelter closed in Hastings. That was our youth shelter, some homeless, some in situations where the home life just didn't make sense. And that facility closed in 2020 and that created a large gap particularly in the Dakota and Washington county areas. So Dakota County is now in the process of purchasing that building before you at the bottom and that is going to be a shelter for youth who are either home life issues or homeless. And so that is kind of the next step. That's the under 18 population that will go in there. There will be 12 beds in that facility. Currently it's a group home and will be going in there. So I think as we have this conversation, because I know many of you continue to have conversations on what we need to do, I just thought I'd take the opportunity with all of our great successes to be able to share a little bit on what the county is actually doing for services related to the homeless population. And stay tuned for a community conversation coming up in the first quarter. And with that, as always, feel free to reach me at home, office or email if you have any questions or concerns. And with that, Madam Mayor, I'm certainly open for any comments or questions. Thank you. [41:04] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Thank you Mike. Council, any questions or comments? Okay. I do know that that date has been set. It's Thursday, January 6th. [41:14] **Mike Slavic:** It is. We're looking at some potential changing of that date. There's a couple conflicts with other individuals but yeah, there is a date of January 6th as of now and they're looking to potentially change that due to some other conflicts. I was—there were text messages going back today so... [41:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Okay. Well, thank you. [41:35] **Mike Slavic:** Otherwise thank you. Wish you all a very good holiday season and I look forward to being back here when other issues are coming up or otherwise next December. So thank you much. [41:43] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Also with us tonight, we have with us uh, Julia Carlos, and she is with the Pleasant Hill Library right here in Hastings. Welcome and thank you. [41:55] **Julia Carlos (Pleasant Hill Library Branch Manager):** Is it an HDMI? Yeah. What do you got there? [Logistics discussion about cables]. All right, thank you Madam Mayor, council members, members of the public. My name is Julia Carlos, I'm the branch manager at the Pleasant Hill Library here in Hastings. [42:59] **Julia Carlos:** So the last time that I was here was the meeting that was the day before the last day of library service at the beginning of COVID. So a lot of things have changed since then. After we closed in March of 2020, we quickly wanted to pivot our library services because just because the building was closed didn't mean that the need for our services disappeared. And in fact, it kind of transformed and there were a lot of new needs. We quickly pivoted to launching a curbside pickup service for requested materials. That was something we'd never done before so we had to invent that kind of—we got you know, some info from other library systems, but kind of inventing that from scratch. We had started planning a Books by Mail service for folks who have a hard time getting to the library and we were able to speed up that planning process and launch that service. Folks work with our staff to request books; they can either say specific titles or "mysteries please" and we'll get them some things sent to them, and then it includes you know, a thing to send it back to us. We also invested a lot of our resources into digital materials and of course our e-books and e-audio books and other online content really skyrocketed in use. [44:31] **Julia Carlos:** We also reimagined our summer program, Summer Discovery. Now you get a book just for signing up because the reason we do a summer program at the library is because we want children to continue to read and engage with learning over the summer. It really helps them succeed when they go back to school in the fall. So we give them a book right away when they sign up. That partnership included for us working with the Hastings schools where we distributed over 2,400 books to students through going out on the bus routes with the meals that they were distributing, and that was really great. On the third slide, we're starting to reintroduce a lot of the things that we were doing. Our study spaces and meeting rooms are open again for public bookings. The study rooms are just first come, first serve. The meeting rooms can be booked through our website. Businesses can use those rooms—that was a recent change—so as long as you're not doing like a sales thing, you can have a meeting. We're hosting lots of Homeowners Associations, Girl Scouts, etc. So we've got the space and we'd love you to use it. We also have our iLab makerspace reopened so you can 3D print, you can scan your old family photos, convert your old VHS tapes and family movies into digital video, make a button (which is for some reason very entertaining and popular). Buttons are cool. Those are all coming back. We also introduced as a new item virtual court hearings. Since when in-person was not really an option, we would loan someone a Chromebook, they'd have the Zoom link, they'd be able to use one of our study rooms and still attend their court hearing or whatever other court interaction they were having. So that's been a great partnership with the courts system. [46:53] **Julia Carlos:** On the fourth slide, I just wanted to give you these: these are the top 10 checkouts for those of you who can't see the list. We have some anime series from the teen section, we have some kids series like Dog Man and Paw Patrol, and some adult titles like Kristin Hannah's "The Four Winds." But we also have something that was a brand new service that we started offering, which was using CARES Act funds and some other funding sources to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots and put together kits with a Chromebook and a hotspot. We know that everybody doesn't have reliable internet at their home, or maybe their internet's okay, but when three people are trying to attend virtual school and somebody's trying to go to a work meeting, it's not enough. So those hotspot kits are really making differences in people's lives that we hear about almost every time one is brought back and it's really been very gratifying to hear about. The Wi-Fi hotspot only has circulated over 925 times in the last about a year, and the Chromebook kits—we have fewer of those, but it's still over 750 checkouts. [48:15] **Julia Carlos:** That's a little bit about what we have been doing. On slide number five, we have a few things coming up in 2022. First off, in January, now that the county budget has been approved, we are officially dropping late fees on youth materials. So that is any teen or children's book, DVD, those little Launchpad tablet guys—there will be no more late fees on those. We are really dedicated to improving access for all library users. There's a lot of children who you know, they get to a point with fees where their cards are blocked and then they don't come back to the library, and that's just really... we want them to come back and use our services. So this will unblock a lot of cards for kids and their families and we hope to see people coming back to the library for that. We'll also on January 9th resume our Sunday hours, which will bring us back to our full pre-pandemic hours of service, and we'd love to see you there. [49:11] **Julia Carlos:** In February, the "Hastings Reads" annual partnership program with the schools and many other organizations will celebrate native voices with "The Firekeeper's Daughter" by Angeline Boulley, which is a Reese's Book Club book pick too, so it's been getting a lot of attention. So we're pretty excited to bring that author here to the art center in February. There's also a title for middle schoolers, "Indian No More," and a picture book called "Fry Bread." I'd encourage you to check any or all of those out. Final thing—oh no, one more thing: the virtual intake appointments. This is another partnership with another county department. We've been working with the employment and economic assistance department to set up virtual intake for their services where an in-person appointment might not work for various reasons, and we'll have a scanner—a dedicated scanner—and then they can do a Zoom meeting with their caseworker and get set up for those services. And we also this past year offered in the spring a vaccine clinic at the library. I've been really excited during the last year and a half to be working with a bunch of county departments that we hadn't worked with before and just connecting. Also other folks... I never thought I would work with the food service folks from the school district, but they were great partners. We gave out summer meals at the library, they gave out our books. It was a great success for everyone. [50:43] **Julia Carlos:** Then finally on slide number six: in 2022 we will be hosting at the end of the year, October 13th through December 12th, an exhibit called "We Are Water." This exhibit will be at the library; it's created in partnership with a bunch of state agencies: the Pollution Control Agency, the Historical Society, the Department of Health, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Department of Agriculture. It's funded by the National Endowment for Humanities and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Legacy Fund that we all voted on in 2008. So we're really excited to—if you know somebody that's got a great story about water in this town, you know, Hastings is a Rivertown—we're really excited to talk about the science of water, the stories that people have around water, and that exhibit will be customized to Hastings. So we're working on that with the county department of Natural Resources and county parks and the watershed. We met with some folks from the city last week so there's a lot of relationships that we're creating and developing, and it's been really fun so far. I hope you'll come visit us. You'll all be invited to our opening ceremony on October 13th next year. So it's fun to have some things to look forward to. If you have any questions, thank you so much for your time. [52:43] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Thank you Julia. Councilmember Vihrachoff? [52:45] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff:** Thank you honor. Thank you Julia. It's great to see you again. Um, does the county still have the mobile library, the bookmobile? [52:56] **Julia Carlos:** Yeah, the bookmobile. You know, they retired that a number of years ago, but it is certainly something that we are thinking more—or maybe not—it wouldn't look like the bookmobile again, but we know you know, with the southern half of Dakota County being fairly rural or people just can't always make it to the library, so we are trying to go to more things and bring maybe a small selection of books and other things. But yeah, the bookmobile as it was is gone. [53:29] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff:** That's what I'm requesting I think is, um, sometimes it's hard even for transportation in town. How do we get people to the library? But I know Eric and John were doing some pop-up events. I just wonder maybe we can get some books brought to our events or staff to our events to help make it a little more accessible if it's an option. But the bookmobile was fantastic. [53:44] **Julia Carlos:** It brings all the things with itself, right? Um, thank you. [53:46] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Sure thing. Any other? No? Okay. Julia, thank you. I hope we see you before December of next year. Happy to be back and see you all. [54:05] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Council members, are there any corrections to the minutes from the workshop or the regular meeting on December 6th? Seeing none, they are approved. Comments from the audience at this time for public comments: we have options for comments to be mailed 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 their receipt is acknowledged. Please recognize that items not on the agenda tonight will not be discussed this evening. For the live comments there may be either through Zoom link or in person. We ask that attendees either raise their hand in person up front and they can come to the podium, state their name and address, and on Zoom a raised hand feature and we will pull you in from the Zoom lens. Anyone in the chambers would like to speak to the council at this time? Okay. Anyone on Zoom? No one on Zoom. Council, are there any council items to be considered? Okay. Council, I would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda. [55:23] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld:** Motion. [55:24] **Councilmember [Jen Fox]:** Second. [55:25] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion to approve the consent agenda state by saying aye. [Chorus of Ayes]. Opposed same statement and that is approved. Tonight we have a public hearing for the adjustment of city fees and for this item we have an introduction by City Administrator Dan Wietecha, followed by a public hearing and a potential action for City Council. Welcome Dan. [56:05] **Dan Wietecha:** Thank you Mayor and Council. This is a follow-through on the budget actions that council took at the last meeting, December 6th, but because fees are done by ordinance there is a public hearing requirement as well as two readings and that's what's before you this evening. To quickly review them, the most notable of the fees I believe are in the city utilities: water, sewer and storm water. Those are going to touch every one of our residents and businesses. This is following through on a utility rate study that we had done with Ehlers about a year and a half ago which recognized that a couple years previous we had a fairly significant increase. But what this rate study was trying to do was looking forward over a decade or longer, identifying large projects that we might have coming up, how those would be funded and looking at putting in place a consistent rate structure. So although it's proposing an increase of three and a half percent on water, one percent on sewer and four percent on storm water, the thought is that having that as an annual increase avoids sort of the boom and bust of you know, 20 percent or more in a year and zero percent in others. It's really trying to get that consistency. [57:37] **Dan Wietecha:** Other fees that are proposed to increase are in our ambulance runs. Our ambulance service fees which currently we actually have two fees, resident and non-resident rates. The proposal is to combine those into just a single rate. We also have a couple of fire fees that are covering costs. So when we do safety inspections or fire extinguisher training, basically a fee to cover staff for consumable expenses associated with those. We have a couple of fees in the parks department or categories of fees in the parks department at the aquatic center as well as at the ice arena. In both of those cases, although there's an increase, it balances with the corresponding counterpart on the expense side. So really those are needed to balance the budget as staff and other costs increase from an inflationary standpoint. The other fee that's in the list this evening is related to water meters, particularly in new construction. We've seen an increased cost for the meter itself, so we need to cover that, as well as putting in place a fee for staff time related to installation of the remote reader for those meters. So again, it's covering expenses that are specific to that project. With that I can take any questions or obviously we've also got the public hearing this evening. Thank you. [59:40] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Thank you Dan. I think we'll open the public hearing first and then close and then we'll come back for discussion for council. At this time I'll open the public hearing. Anyone in the audience that would like to speak? No one. And no one on Zoom. So at this time I will close the public hearing and council discussion. If no discussion then council I would look for a motion to adopt an ordinance of the city of Hastings, Minnesota amending Chapter 34 of the Hastings City Code pertaining to fees and municipal services. [1:00:15] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff:** Motion. [1:00:16] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld:** Second. [1:00:17] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Additional discussion? Councilmember Vihrachoff? [1:00:25] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff:** Thank you honor. Um, this is for staff. I would ask that staff discuss fee increases because I think the reason we do fees—what I'm looking for is kind of a marketing plan to let the community know. When we raise water fees, it still gives you as a resident the understanding that you can control that. We're putting this on your plate to make sure you know, because with the water bills I got a few phone calls about this. When you go to a second or fourth level of our water, if you use too much, your bill will reflect it. I just want staff to maybe get a little marketing plan, a communication plan that gets out to let the community know: keep an eye on this stuff because fees are up to you to kind of watch. Why we use fees is because you can control it a little bit. Mostly about the water bills, but I think it's good for communications to talk about fee increases to let the community know so they're not surprised. Example: at the aquatic park, "why did the fees come up so fast?" So I would just ask staff to kind of put a communication plan together for that. Thank you. [1:01:21] **Councilmember Tina Folch:** Thank you your honor. I just want to lend support to the comments that Councilmember Vihrachoff just made. I agree wholeheartedly that we oftentimes miss that. So if we have the opportunity to place some information within the city's newsletter, on Facebook, things of that nature to help just get the word out as to why those increases are happening, I think that would be very helpful. Thanks. [1:02:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Thank you Councilmember Folch. Additional discussion? Okay. There is a motion on the table and all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye. [Chorus of Ayes]. Those opposed state by saying nay. And that motion prevails. Okay tonight we have—Dan will continue with the resolution for acceptance and appreciation of a donation from Tecla Karpen. [1:02:20] **Dan Wietecha:** Thank you. Yeah this is really exciting. Um, we were approached a couple of years ago by Tecla Karpen’s estate about a sizable quarter-million dollar bequest to the city, intended to be towards conservation and management of natural resources within either the Mississippi and/or Vermillion River watersheds. Initially we talked with the executor about what sounded like a good project. We looked at purchasing some additional land next to the River Flats park area/Lake Rebecca park area, expanding that natural area, keeping it in passive recreational form. It's below the bluff where Tecla's home would have overlooked it, so it seemed very fitting. In talking with the owners of that property, Flint Hills Resources actually led towards working towards them just donating the land, so we didn't have to spend the bequest in order to make that purchase. We certainly have noted it as potential matching dollars on our state grant request for Lake Rebecca park. That state process is very slow and cumbersome and I do not know how that will play out, but there is a possibility of working there or other conservation enhancements in either of the two river sheds. We're extremely grateful for the 260,000 dollar donation. The uses certainly will be in keeping with Tecla Karpen’s intent. With that I can answer a question or two, but really I think it's a resolution of appreciation. [1:04:28] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Thank you Dan. Any questions council? Okay then I accept a motion to approve a resolution expressing acceptance of and appreciation of a donation to the Parks and Recs department. [1:04:40] **Councilmember [Jen Fox]:** Motion. [1:04:41] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld:** Second. [1:04:42] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Any additional discussion council? All those in favor of the motion state by saying aye. [Chorus of Ayes]. Opposed state by saying nay. And that motion prevails. Thank you Tecla Karpen and we hope to do you justice for your donation. For this item tonight we have Mayor and City Council wages and Dan, you may continue. [1:05:17] **Dan Wietecha:** Sure. Um, this is not an action item tonight but is carried on to the agenda because it's a carryover from our last meeting, December 6th. Last meeting council had called for a public hearing in order to consider this ordinance. Unfortunately we missed the publication deadline so we were unable to have the public hearing scheduled, which means no action tonight. But in terms of transparency, we felt it was still important to keep the date and provide the update. There is additional information; last meeting there were questions about the data rather than just the final number, so that information is in your memo and packet. But the other piece I think is really interesting is in the meantime, in the last week, we had interviews with the three potential consultants for our compensation classification study for employees. In talking with all three of them just last week, they indicated that the Mayor/Council wage piece is really pretty straightforward and something that they could include within the broader study without requiring an additional cost for that study. So although it's above and beyond what the initial request for proposals was, they felt that they could include that. You—there's no action tonight. You certainly could call for a public hearing at an upcoming meeting based on the conversations at our last meeting and that additional information from the consultants. I think really at this point it's probably a matter of letting that study come forward in April, May, thereabouts, and see what it comes up with for any comparisons on Mayor and Council wages. With that I can take any questions. Thank you. [1:07:47] **Councilmember Tina Folch:** Thank you your honor. So just for clarification then, what are the next steps? Because it is on the table right now—or I shouldn't say it hasn't been tabled but rather um, it was supposed to have been brought forward for a second hearing. But at the same time you had just said that the consultant could incorporate it into the scope of work that they're going to be conducting. So what is staff intending on doing at this point? Thank you. [1:08:17] **Dan Wietecha:** If the council is so inclined, looking at the Mayor and Council wages could be included within the broader employee compensation classification study. Following the interviews that we did last week, I anticipate that we will be having a contract for one of them brought forward maybe as soon, hopefully as soon as January 3rd. It's a little bit tight around the holidays, but if not the 3rd, certainly the next meeting January 18th, which would have the contract to hire the consultant. I do anticipate that there would need to be a budget amendment—the three proposals all came in a little bit higher than what we had budgeted—but in order to move forward with the study, depending on who we hire, the process might vary a little bit. We've certainly talked with them about being able to start right away, talked with them about the communications plan they would have for working with a management team, keeping employees apprised of what is being done, keeping the Council and Administration Committee apprised of the process. All of them indicated they would be able to complete the study in about four months give or take. One did pause that the timing there at May happens to be the timing of some other data that may be a desire for us to lengthen it out a little bit further to get new data that comes out at that time. But certainly we're looking at all of them being fairly prompt and finishing up late spring/early summer and look at implementing it at that point. [1:10:34] **Councilmember Tina Folch:** Great. Um, thank you your honor. I would be very supportive of that pathway of incorporating the council into the scope of work that the consultant will be taking on. Because you know, I think that there needs to be further conversation um, you know from a policy perspective of the Council as to what is the approach that we want to collectively take in compensation? You know, do we just want to be middle of the road, 50th percentile? Do we want to be more than that so that it's more competitive wages that are being provided to staff? So I just think that there's more conversation that the Council needs to have collectively and I think that it nicely couches into that larger conversation. Thanks. [1:11:15] **Dan Wietecha:** All right, thank you. [1:11:20] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** Council members, do you have any announcements? Okay, a few. Santa will be accompanying the Hastings Police Department as they drive through town in the decorated command vehicle following the addresses in the "Show Us How You Shine" holiday lights display. The parade will leave at 6:00 PM from City Hall on Wednesday, December 22nd. Recycle your old lights with the Hastings holiday lights drop-off collection; residents can drop off their unwanted light strands at the Joint Maintenance Facility at 920 10th Street West during the holiday season until February 1st. City offices will be closed Friday, December 24th and Friday, December 31st. Council and myself would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season and we're looking forward to 2022. With that, we will have meetings on Thursday, December 21st, five o'clock Finance Committee, and the Heritage Preservation Commission meeting that day has been canceled. Monday, December 27th, 7:00 PM Planning Commission. Monday, January 3rd, 5:30 City Council workshop and 7:00 PM City Council regular meeting. Council, I would accept a motion to adjourn. [1:12:35] **Councilmember Tina Folch:** Motion. [1:12:36] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld:** Second. [1:12:37] **Mayor Mary Fasbender:** No discussion. All those in favor of adjourning state by saying aye. [Chorus of Ayes]. Opposed state by saying nay. All right, we are adjourned.