you you and welcome to the Burnsville city council work session and our work sessions are informal and so we'll go around the table so that we can also meet our guests and they know who's sitting around the table Elizabeth couch I'm the mayor Michelle Collins city clerk City Council Vince workman City Council I'm Peterson Boat Works director Jenny Faulkner Community Development Director and we'll go here at cos skip is going to introduce you folks and Keely Burnsville city council city manager ok welcome and skip the first item on our agenda is the update on the branding initiative and you have our guests and you will be introducing them thank you madam mayor as you know from our council meeting a couple of weeks ago a e2s is going to engage in a branding and a marketing exercise for us and andrea bow was here with her team and i will allow her to introduce her team and she has a short presentation to update council on what we've accomplished so far and how we're going forward thank you and and welcome back yes yes so I'm good evening everybody I have Taylor Corbett with me she is digital and social media for eat west communications so you commented a Millennials sitting beside me classic millennial with social media and digital and then I have Nicole Goss dead here on the right and she is branding and marketing specialist so they are here to interject I'm going to go through the presentation but they might chime in too and then if you have questions at the end we'll all be here to answer them thank you so this slide is really just a quick introduction to our staff again ETS communications is a marketing and public relations agency tucked away in an engineering firm so basically I can summarize it by we help communities communicate better so that's communicating through branding and messaging public relations that type of stuff and this is just a snapshot of our team we have 14 or 15 people and two interns right now so and I always like to put this slide in as I'm discussing and branding because and I know that I have a coca-cola bottle there but this is really to put up the discussion about branding and what is branding so most people think branding is a logo and branding as far beyond a logo the logo is a visual presentation of your brand but branding really aband product and city it's the experience you have so in a community it's the experience you have when you're living there when you visit the feelings you get when you enter that city and all those the personality the place all those things are wrapped up in your brand it's much more than the logo so I like to just throw that in there as we start we are in the process of discovery right now so this is the first task of the project is discovery and discovery is research the communications audit the survey so right now we are poring through all the quantitative and qualitative data that your staff has provided for us and I just would really love to give a shout out to your staff your communications staff they have been amazing and providing the data they do great work we've been really impressed with what we've seen so far as in terms of the content they put together and how they communicate with the residents so right now we're pouring through some of that data previous studies we're looking for gaps communication things that can be tweaked to be able to engage your citizens better and more often did you get some of the data from my experience Burnsville and they and the survey that the university did for us yes oh good so you've gotten all of that information from experience Burnsville yes all about information we have previous surveys we have the analytics from all your tools and we're diving a little bit deeper into the analytics right now so we have been poring over all those those documents as well so it's been great the other part of discovery as I said is the communications audit so once we go through this data it's identifying those gaps in communication and then providing ideas and way to engage and reach your citizens and so at the end of the discovery period you will get a memo that's the communications audit so you have that memo immediately if you would like to implement some of those suggestions right away you're not waiting till the end of the study so that's something you get right away with the discovery also part of this is the Community Survey and we are planning to launch the Community Survey during the I love burns belly so it's a great week to tie in to that what do you love about Burnsville what does it mean to you those type of questions and so that will be a digital survey it'll be promoted through the city channels and then we'll also be engaging the chamber and the CBB and other organizations to help broaden that reach for that Community Survey so every year and I don't know how many years I think it's ten years we've had third graders write essays about what they love about Burnsville and our sponsor for the for the winners and we give them cash prizes is Firefly and next week No the following week we're going to be going over all of those essays and so perhaps you can get some of those it's from third-graders I mean this is the view of a child who is going to be an adult - mm-hmm absolutely what is a great suggestions you mentioned earlier going through the analytics is that of just the city stuff or what you got from the CVB as well we do have some analytics from the CVB as well so we have that report the annual report of analytics that the city received so we have some of those we're going to be digging deeper into the city specific tools and CVB does analytics monthly they gather all of that okay yeah and an audit was done also so you can grab that information Skip knows all of that as well okay so going on from discovery then task two is brand development and this is where we take that information we've gathered from the survey from the discussions we've had with the different organizations and you see some themes developing through this data and what we like to do is we call it putting it in the into the three P's so people place in personality and we start to develop those themes and from those three P's and our team puts together it's usually about six to eight themes we'll float it through some specific focus groups within the staff and our team and that so that we narrow it down to about three and then we'll develop those themes a little bit further in terms of the visual design of those themes and presented to larger focus groups to get input from for those themes and then do a final presentation on those did I miss anything in that so from the brand development after that final theme has chosen and that brand is really coupled with your current logo we will roll into the implementation phase and so we'll have a plan specifically for the brand rollout and we'll have the internal rollout so internal city staff it's a lot of logistics and talking points and how are we going to do this as a city to roll out this brand and that'll be in August and then the external rollout will be in September and we're targeting the fire muster event for the for the community rollout of the brand the next task is the integrated marketing communication plan and that discovery period also lends and supports this marketing plan but also will be having conversations with a number of groups and getting input as well the plan is really focused on supporting your economic development strategic plan goals so that's what it will be wrapped around it'll be wrapped around those goals and this is it's really hard to see because we put a lot of text on a slide what you're not supposed to do but we wanted to give you an opportunity to see an outline of an integrated marketing communications plan you'll see it has an executive summary about that background is that discovery and research that will summarize will have the goals and objectives and they'll be supportive of your economic development strategic plan will have the target market so those audiences the internal and external stakeholders those influencers that you have in the community and Beyond developing the messages surrounding your brand and theme and then we'll have that schedule and responsibility so we're going to go through and say okay for this particular tactic maybe it's our team that's gonna carry it out or it's gonna be a combination of our team and your staff or your staff here's the time it's gonna take here's what it's going to cost that's kind of where the rubber hits the road and you have the budget and timing of that and then measuring success of course we want to measure our success the return on investment that we've made into these marketing tactics so that's basically what that plan will entail and then I mentioned this a little bit earlier but this is the I'm line of events we're at the work session right now there's a little star on the different areas we'll come back and report to the council we're in the discovery we're gonna do the communications audit discovery results in June start developing that messaging in July we're going to have that internal brand rollout in September or August external in September draft in October November for that marketing plan and then finalized in December that's all I have questions beginning of a good long trip did I tire you out multi-month several months project looking forward to yeah very nicely done but I think you'll you'll be pleasantly surprised to read some of the third grader essays because yeah I've enjoyed reading them every year and and then we choose the first second and third but I think you'll get a an idea of how the children when you're looking to find out what their experience is about the city they live in great any other so Andrea and your team thank you very much Taylor and Nicole we appreciate the work that you're doing for us and we look forward to seeing you next month when you come back to update us okay thank you thank you so much and now we move on to the sink single-family permit rebate discussion Jenny thank you madam mayor members of the council this item is a follow up item from the all-day work session which was a directive that came from a work session where we talked about continuing the permit rebate program and at that time I was consensus not to continue that into 2019 and then we talked about it that's all they work session and then you directed us to get you some more information on what other housing programs are out there what are other cities doing kind of what could those costs be also this is part of the adopted economic develop strategic plan that you'd opted in November one of the goal for is to enhance and build awareness around our existing housing and commercial programs and develop new programs as appropriate so this also falls under that goal that the council has there's a lot of a lot of information in the background I tried to summarize kind of what our market cities were doing and I will summarize even further in this presentation for you but generally the cities in Dakota County I'll fall under the umbrella of the Dakota County CDA so we all have similar tools primarily what's used to help homeowners as CDBG which are low and moderate loans or grants to homeowners and also they utilize some weatherization funding and I provided a summary report in the background that has what the annual number of loans and grants were given last year I think they're about seven home rehab grants and probably more than twice as many on the weatherization we also have an assessment policy that says we will help homeowners with property maintenance issues if they if they are unable to seek financing at a bank or something then the city will help them finance the improvements needed to get compliance with a property maintenance issue in my history here we've only done that maybe once or twice but it is a tool that we do have to use for to use if need be we also doubt that throughout CDP she fun no not necessarily that is something where we just provide alone and then they pay for it on their assessment over a negotiated period of time fee we also have our housing improvement area HIA that is enabling legislation that seems to sunset I think every ten years but that is a loan program that we can use to help associations and we we were close to helping on a project on that probably about eight or nine years ago but they have to get a certain number of votes from their owners to proceed with that and they were unable to do that at that time but this certainly is a tool out there again one of our criteria is that they have to be turned down by a bank so Association certainly can go and get their own funding the city wants to be the last resort in helping those folks and then there's other homeowner fix up resources these are more than nonprofit kinds of things we do have these listed on our website we have the metro painted on that we participate in hearts and hammers helps folks with specific improvements on their homes Senior Tour services a grace Church here here in town has offered to help folks oh they have some resources there and of course beyond the yellow ribbon helps our veterans with some needs looking at our market cities as I said the cities in Dakota County all fall under the umbrella of the CDA I did meet with the CDA this week it was after the background went out so we may be able to use CDBG funds to help homeowners with code enforcement improvements or improvements to comply with the code so they're gonna get me some additional information on that what that could look like certainly it has other implications in the mix but this could be another resource for us should you choose to do that other programs that are out there other than CDBG are several of our market cities utilize HRA authority under the either separately or under the umbrella of the EDA so the EDA can take on the authority of the HRA so they have various funding sources that they use so they use CDBG Minnesota Housing or Minnesota Housing Finance Agency Department of Commerce is oversees the lot of the weatherization funds that are available and certainly local levies help fund some of these housing programs they're mostly low-interest loans with or without income limits to penning on the source of funds there's some emergency home improvement loans that some of our market cities do again with or without income limits depending on what their funding sources there's those energy improvement assistance that I talked about the Center for energy environment administers that for a lot of our market cities not in Dakota County and then some cities have the truth in housing which are housing inspection programs before you sell a home to help bring homes up to code that that help improve the livability and the code compliance of it but there's no city funds involved in that other than the inspections and that's a self funded program some of the highlights from the market cities so Plymouth has an architectural and I'm not going to go through what all these cities have these are just kind of the things that stood out a Plymouth has an architectural design program so they cover about half of the cost for residents to meet with a consulting architect the total fee is about two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars so for three to four hours and City of Plymouth because it covers half of that Rapids has an aging housing stock very similar to ours they are just implementing what's called a curb appeal grant program and that's for exterior improvements $5,000 up to $5,000 no income limits so this is to help improve the curb appeal of their aging housing stock they also have a program called housing homes for generations similarly they give up to $5,000 grants they give permits on rebates on their permits something that we used to do that they picked up for this program they also subsidized architects consultations and they provide low-interest loans up to 50,000 and these are for projects that are adding thirty-five thousand dollars or more in value so these are things that increase the tax base st. Louis Park kind of is a similar program they call it move up in the park so they will give a deferred loan up to $25,000 for people who add living space to their homes that loan is forgiven after you're there for I think it's 30 years and they have income limits on that and they also do architectural design services they subsidize a lot of that so it only cost the homeowner twenty-five dollars to go meet with our architect to talk about if this addition works on your home it's a lot of people don't know where to start and can they do sir can they not so Dan did either these cities or three of the cities note especially Rapids in st. Louis part any today were they willing to share any activity on this adoption people utilizing number of people that utilize these services to give us sense as to how maybe how well they're received and utilized versus others I mean Plymouth is a little bit like us maybe we offer some you know reduced or no fees permit fees but when you're doing up you know if your house needs ten thousand dollars worth of improvements and we're waiving a 150 bucks and fees it's not a whole lot of incentive there and pelisses a small incentive let's put it that way Rapids in st. Louis Park have some pretty interesting out-of-the-box ideas so can you elaborate on the customer Keely I don't have the information on the dollar amounts in these programs or the number of yes the curb appeal program and Rapids is just rolling out this spring summer I mean they said it's that one's very very new and I think they're trying to deal with some challenging housing neighborhood issues there to help with that I move up in the park I believe that's been around for quite quite quite a long time I can get those numbers and emails email those to you would be a good one we don't have some sheriff interesting offers and incentives and deferred counselor Kelly just to build on that I think the Rapids program I think it's the homes for generation it's a couple years old but they I understand have increased the funding for it because it was such a popular as a program I'm pretty sure these are these are pretty popular programs cuz they're very unique meeting a need but I'll get you those numbers I apologize that I don't have those offered by suburbs that are aging we have aging housing stock that needs yes and then some of the urban programs something unique to Minneapolis they offer $25,000 and up to $10,000 grant which is substantial for health and safety repairs housing violations and led remediation there's a waiting list for that program and I believe they use the majority of that for lead just because they have an older different housing stock than we do and then the suburbs but and then st. Paul has a new program that they are just rolling out in 2019 or rental rehab and that is to help single-family duplex tries and quads help they have $750,000 set-aside for this program beginning in 2019 to help with rehab some of the sub take out some of the substandard issues in their rental housing and landlords have to be open to have rent restrictions for the duration of the loan on that program so again another interesting one that kind of stood out when you when we did our survey so we have options for what we want to do if this is something that the council wants to pursue we could waive permit fees we talked about that at the all-day I did provide information on what those dollar amounts are and those number of permits are in the background certainly as we talked about at the all-day work session it's easier and less costly administrative if we waive them all instead of giving rebates that takes time and staffing finance we got to cut checks and and do all that stuff so it's just easier if we do it across the board not suggesting that you do it but if we do do it there there's a cost to that we could raise our EDA levy we would have new funds for programs we could potentially start like a revolving loan fund up front and that could help funds things long-term for the city in the housing type program we're starting to see that with some of our CDBG loans that we've done and that those funds are coming back to the county and they have to be used first before we use new CDBG money so that could help long term we can use tax abatement so we can always abate the city share of property taxes paid we can pick an area and create a pool and use that as a funding source of course that means that affects the levy or then on the other side because that comes out of the general fund or the EDA levy and somebody's got to pay for that so it would have a raise the balance on the other side we could do something self-funded if you want to like the truth and housing inspection program that is a way to have improvements made to our housing stock without city involvement self-funded program we could perhaps look at using one-time funds if we want to look at if we ever get an increase or get some LGA funds or our excess reserves that we have to try to start something up that way just kind of through some ideas out as options for us and so really I think what what I'm looking for here what we are as the staff Melanie and I have talked about this is you know what is the objective what does the council looking to do here because that will help us hone in on what kind of research and information and we can get back to you to give you some ideas to make something happen so you know are we looking to maintain our property values are we looking to help a certain sector of the population low mod homes are we looking to increase the curb appeal and do something like this and are you willing to fund that objective once you identify that because all these programs are likely gonna take new money so that's the way that we want to go and depending on what it is staff exactly madam mayor and we don't have a housing department we don't have a housing State Housing staff so there's a staffing need there to get that expertise in-house and going before we could even roll out a new program and if there's any additional information councilmember Cooley I wrote a note on those numbers I'll get that to you but if there's any other information that you need before giving direction I'm happy to get that to you we do a housing windshield survey about every five years the last one we did was in 2013 so we're looking to hire an intern a planning intern in 2020 and we can have them update that windshield survey that tells us kind of what neighborhoods are in need of more exterior how they look from the curve and it's kind of a universal rating system that we've used and the CDA is currently has Maxfield under contract they're doing a housing study for the CDA and certainly we plan to bring them before you to talk about where they're at with our overall housing in Burnsville so that's some more information that that's coming your way on that Jenny can you speak a little bit more about the CDBG funds and we have about two hundred and sixty five thousand dollars allocated into that fund say more so that everybody understands how we use those funds thank you madam mayor so we do get about $266,000 is what our current allocation is we are at what is considered an entitlement city by HUD so those monies come come to us through the CDA they are administrator of that with an agreement with them we use about 44 percent of those funds right now for what's called public service activities and so that is to fund Senior Services youth services we give some to 360 communities and then the other 5650 about 52 percent is for a housing rehab loan programs that the CDA administers for us the seven or eight that we all abide income qualified and the purpose of CDBG is to serve very low and moderate income folks so it's very targeted and there's a broad range of things that we could use that for and that kind of changes from year to year depending on what your priorities are how have we used that in the past and how many people have been qualified for for the use of the that grant well I would say madam mayor I don't have that particular with me and I would say we have the dollar amounts that we have have been declining over the years because I think used to get a lot more than we get now I think I started here in 2000 my awareness of it is that we used to spend a lot more on it on youth services than we do now so we've transitioned into have half B for housing rehab which is very helpful to those that are that need that and there are restrictions on what you can use for the public service component and we have had more like I said in the in the youth bucket in the early 2000s I believe that limit is is generally 15% of your CDBG allocation we're at 44% so we have been able to be more than what HUD is looking for because we're part of the county pool so if other cities start to do more in the public service side with their allocation that means potentially we could do less so we would be we would have to make a decision then on where we would put those funds we could use it for helping those with code enforcement if we want to make the shifts um there is I think a point half or 0.6 FTE that is funded for the city out of the public service side that would could potentially be affected if we start to make too big of changes in that area yeah I think I would like to see what the number says that we use in a public service site because I see more and more need for subsidizing the ambulance fees for seniors and folks who cannot afford so that comes out of CDBG funds because that's they qualify and I wonder if we use up all of that money you know but I know that back in 2010 when we did this right during the recession that our goal was to retain and enhance our tax base correct and the waving of the permit fees yeah yes and so prior or just prior to the all-day work session in preparation for that we put together a GIS map of where these are and I don't know if I shared that with you at the all-day or not but the the numbers of permits that we've rebated are all over the city so there's not any one particular area so that's good and then we we tried to look at the values right so what was the increase in value and is there a payoff in there when we look at the increase to our tax base and that was very challenging because somebody may pay a contractor fifty thousand or seventy thousand dollars to add on a four season addition and the county assessor maybe it would be more like 150 thousand but the Assessor may say well that only adds fifty thousand dollars in value and so we may rebate a project it costs more to build it then it's not a one-to-one ratio right and it depends on the fit and the finish and the square footage and all that kind of stuff so it was very hard to go back and try to look at any kind of indicator or guide or ratio as far as what the value increase in property taxes is based on the value of someone's home improvement they they don't really line up the way we would want them to from an analysis standpoint dan I'm just thinking that shouldn't we be like whether it's rebaiting or not charging for people that actually have income issues and not so much I make a lot of money and I qualified for this rebate so I get the rebate I mean why would would be rebating people that can afford to do it um this is a decision of the council right at the at the time we were in a masculine wrong oh yes talk to this third over you exactly I mean why are we doing that that's why we would rebate people if they can afford to do it I understand we have our seniors that are fixed incomes we have people that are underemployed there's a lot of different reasons why they can't do things with their home and those are the ones I think we need to kind of look at and that's just so that we can at least maintain the value of their home because the home next door to me goes down my home value just went down that's just the way it works you know I don't know what the right answer is on that yet and I really would like to see what the CDA comes back with and what they're doing I kind of get of us assessment of some of our housing stock here but I agree with what Dan when you looked at some of your target cities these are older cities like ours that are aging and they're taking steps so that we're not going to take out a whole neighborhood one of these days because we have to do it we got to kind of get ahead of it you know what I'm in real estate we deal a lot with the truth in housing and that the downside of treats in housing it costs people money to have it done on their home the upside is when someone buys a home they know what's wrong with it it has to be fixed before you move in city of Bloomington actually makes you sign off either the buyer or the seller that they will repair the all of this within so much time on any and any deficiencies fine and that's how they that's how they keep a lot of their housing housing stock up well Jenni and Amir on the truth and housing when you looked when I looked at that some cities require them to be prepared or repaired before closing some say that you don't have to repair them at all you're just how you're aware of them now right as a buyer so you're probably gonna self negotiate that out and some people are in the middle like you said councilman Gustafson where you have to sign a thing saying it will be taken care of Valley actually makes all houses are there sewer lines from the house to the street have to be inspected before they can sell the house all right you know if it's deficient they have to be replaced right that's how they deal with that infrastructure over there if I can't Madam air one last cut it's an older community than we are Jenny I'm the permit rebate you know I think my recollection is why we did that we were in a recession property tax values were declining what can we do to kind of not have them go down so much and adding new square footage helps increase that so I think that was a goal and a way to say thank you resident for investing in Burnsville in this downtime also when we talk about income qualifying people for anything that's a whole different database right we don't income qualify we're not in the social service business here at City Hall so we don't really income qualify people and so that gets us into another realm and expertise and staffing that we should be cautious of it sounds let's just income qualify people for you know ten or twenty a year but it's gonna be a lot more work on the back side getting that private information from applicants I think then we realize so doesn't mean we couldn't work with like someone like the CDA to help implement our program somebody who is used to those data privacy rules and all that stuff but exactly exactly you know in reading the background that you have genuine just looking at what you put out in 2010 we talked about truth and housing we also talked about leveraging our partners and putting something on our website for instance like Centrepointe energy that you put up that you have in your background this time around also so these are companies that can help our residents with with Windows so that they can reduce the cost of their energy so Center Point Energy has that there are some other nonprofits who also helped so I think we can also leverage and I think we need more information before we make a decision one way or the other because when I look at it looking at what we did in 2010 and our goal was to say thank you for investing in Burnsville and increasing the market value because one of the things we were concerned about back then was keeping out triple-a bond rating and it all had to do because it's all connects to the market value of the city so we needed to make sure that that market value stays high and continues to improve so how do we do that and I think I agree with with Dan they should be income qualified we have a lot of seniors who are staying in their homes because it's cheaper for them to stay in their homes than to transition to an assisted living but at the same time they can't take care of the maintenance of the home and I don't know how you folks did when you were out campaigning but when I was out campaigning I saw a lot of seniors we're in that and I think it was one of those that I connected with hearts and Hammer and they helped us and also now grace but also faith covenant also helps so I think before we go down the road and say we're going to forgive the permits do we want to do it for everybody or income qualified or some of the other how do we put together and leverage a resource for our citizens so that they can have the benefit of all of these like center point energy and I believe that Excel has a program as well and I think yeah Dan well I just as we're wrapping up this discussion I want to share a conversation I had with Melanie when we talked about this campaigning which Vince and I did last year every four years when you walk the city you discover a lot of things that you might not see in our day to day lives and when you get into the neighborhoods and you come up on houses that are very well taken care of and in many cases they were seniors of right had retired folks who had well manicured lawns landscaping houses trim everything was well taken care of but then right next door along the street of houses is a house that hasn't had any lawn care for a long time hasn't had any painter stain for maybe 20 years has shingles missing the gutters hanging down front doors look like they've been kicked in a few times and I really feel bad for the neighbors to the left and right and sometimes there's two in a row because if they were to want to sell their house when a realtor drives up and shows the house and they see what's next door I mean it's hurting that whole street not just the house that is dilapidated and blighted so it is a problem with our city in some areas in its spotty it's kind of all over so the zone thing there are some zones where there may be more examples but there's cases sort of scattered throughout the city from a remedy standpoint or what the city can do my thing is the city needs to be made whole so we're not I don't I don't agree with a grant where we're gonna take some taxpayer money and say okay you qualify income or otherwise you know put 50 grand in your house or twenty five thousand years of grant but what the city can do is leverage its ability to borrow at very very very low rates and be in a position where we could supplement what banks may or may not be willing to do now in many cases I think what we heard we have this discussion license last time is we don't want to get in the business of the banks some of these folks have no ability to go to a bank and get a home equity loan to put ten or fifteen or twenty thousand to actually improve the property they're in a position where they're barely able to make the payments and there's a cite comment here related to a lot of these properties were rentals and it was well known by all the neighbors that they were rentals because they watched people stay six months or a year and then somebody else comes in and the landlord is off-site and it's an atrocious condition and so how do we get to the landlords in these situations who are renting these homes hold them accountable for their property maintenance violations is one one aspect but back to the people who have their heart in their home they own it they would love to improve it but they are in no financial position whatsoever to do so and they are dragging down the homes around them the value they're dragging down that home value the city is not realizing the maximum potential of property tax revenue on homes that are being dragged down in value so as long as we're made whole I'm interested in offering incentives and opportunities low-interest loans matching to me the fee waiving the fees but we're talking in such a small amount I'd make that part of the program we'll waive the fees period end that's not a big dollar amount but it's something and if we have to work with the CDA because we're not in the income qualifying business and have it route through them or help help help us manage it I have no problem with the city offering up low-interest loans because we can just like a bank could put a lien against the home if they defaulted on it then they would take the banks don't you know the banks that are saying no to those loans also really or don't want the burden of taking the home over that's the last thing a bank wants us to have to repo a home and turn around and sell it fix it up we have the ability of 4:29 power so it can go against the the property tax and so we're gonna get paid one way or another whether it's the current owner or the eventual owner so that to me that leverage is what we can do we can do very well and maybe there's some room in there with our partners to be able to put some sort of assemble some sort of grant money but I don't necessarily see us doling out other other people's taxpayer money but leveraging it where we're made whole I have no problem with and I think we got to do something we've talked about this over the last 12 years I've been here this is the second or third time I've been antsy about anything other than deferring the the fees because we didn't want to get into that business but every single four year cycle I'm out walking and knocking on doors I'm reminded of how bad that problem is and I talked to a lot of neighbors who lived right next to these homes and they were desperate for help they were desperate for some solution and we're could they turn when I got a turn to the private sector banking from financial institutions they're coming to the city they were asked they're pleading with me and I'm sure you may have heard it to ven's pleading with me can the city do something about that next door it's I mean it's destroying my home value and so we got to figure out something and that's the same thing with homes and we know one that burnt down and nobody did anything about it and as I remember now tanned talking to the neighbors because nothing was done and they couldn't sell their homes around that neighborhood because it was like what two or three years Jenny yes madam mayor we do max out the funds that we have available in CDBG for home rehab programs so we've we only have so much money and can only do so many so there is a need for it from that standpoint based on my recent conversation with the CD okay did you used to follow up on that does the CBG those those loan funds they're essentially being the bank right the it's not a grant they're offering low interest loans to allow people to impress to improve their homes and they're getting paid back right so they're they're sort of doing the role now they just don't have enough funding to meet all the demands correct yeah so that's maybe where we can partner with them and if we assemble some fun yeah and so right we're not putting up the money in they're not putting its allocated through yeah federal right yeah correct but if we want to do excuse me if we want to do more yeah we either need to change our CDBG allocation which has implications internally or we probably need to raise the levy to some amount you're comfortable with to be able to offer it to get this program started and of course have a discussion with the CDA about their willingness to administer such a program for us yeah yeah that's the other piece is it's about the funding and if we have the appetite sure increase that levy that's the piece and then you have to come back and say do we need to add a half of FTE or a whole of tea I think that's information you need to bring to us just quick fault I think we get sorry events week we the city comes out ahead in the long run and and you know we all learn our position in the city is not a quick short term return on investment we we are the long term play because we have the long-term interests of the city in mind and that applies to the return on investment when we calculate things like this not only do we get paid back with a small interest rate but we also get paid back in higher property tax revenues when those properties raise their quality level and and maintenance levels those homes become far more marketable and sellable which in a market like this continues to go up and so we we not only get just what we're talking about helping back but we're also getting higher property tax revenues so it's a good thing for neighborhood I appreciate how this conversation has evolved over all the years that we've discussed this I agree with you Dan I think I think the short-term loan type things or loans that we can do with 429 s might be a good Avenue for us to go down but we should probably make it clear to anyone that's watching this is not a widespread problem in the city no it is there's a problem we have errors it will spread if we don't deal with it scattered you want it we want to get it now before it does become a widespread problem and I just want to get that point out yeah yeah that's so if we're talking about implementing this now we'd be talking about this year's budget correct well I not necessarily see there's still a lot of yes I would still say that there's still an information we need because that was gonna be my next point as I'd like to maybe poetic break a little bit and see what the county study comes back with and then the updated windshield report yeah we got a lot of really on our plate for the 2020 budget that's right now and when I was yeah this is for future okay Jenni correct madam mayor timing is up to you certainly what I'm hearing is is that there's census for some kind of loan program income qualified we need to explore what this relationship could look like with the CDA what it looks like internally to administer such a program and then how much what the need is and how much funds we would think that we would need could potentially be twenty twenty if that's your desire I think there's time and you have budget stuff coming and we can hustle but you're right the CDA survey will not be done and we won't have our windshield survey done until next year but that's that's up to you if you think it's something you want for 2020 that would be good to know so that we can make sure we get you the information as part of the budget process we included in your max tax discussion just a draft or a ballpark number so that it's there and you can decide by the end of the year something like that just so you don't lose the opportunity to implement something in 2020 if that would be one of the things you're looking to do no madam mayor and council I would I would echo Jenny's comments I think it's appropriate for this to be a 2020 budget discussion just because it seems like there's still some broad parameters that we'll be wanting to go back and do some research on for the council to feel comfortable and there are financial implications so what you're saying instead of looking at it this year for the 2020 budget look at it next year for the twenty one budget no no I think we can look at it for the 2020 budget but I thought I was hearing implementation in 2019 no that was nice Vince the new guy who doesn't realize government doesn't work out no no the other thing is that we I'm still not sure I you know I still am thinking about what this budget that's coming up that we need to take a look at and you know and this is going to mean to Jenny's point is it going to be an EDA levy addition to it that means it's going to continue from the general general levy to an EDA it still comes down to a higher number so high and what the CDA is going to be and then and whether we're going to have to hire and a half or a full FTE but I won't know we won't know that until you bring back information and that what's the total cost for running that kind of a program correct yeah good point of clarification Jenny on the Dakota County CDA section of our background it says in 2018 seven households were assisted with rehab loans that's through the CBI correct yes specific to Burnsville correct yeah in the attachments Commissioner workman if you go to page 15 16 I had I put in the annual reports from the CDA so you'll see what the CDA did for all of Dakota County they did this 29 home in rehab loans and then on page 16 burns over seven of those yeah and that was that pretty consistent yes because it's based on the dollar amount that we get so it's gone and it depends on the dollar amount of the loans that are given so I can get a breakdown of that information so that'll help give us some guidance for what the need may be some so the thing is you should see that we do want to do something I can tell you that and and you get it that we're objective you're if I came at a Mary your objective is to maintain values and increase values but specifically not across the board but it's more so for low end but also protecting the neighborhoods yeah low and mod income folks and to help eliminate blight and improve housing stock so that's kind of what your objective is are you willing to fund it sounds like you are but you want to know what that looks like or it may be not for the 2020 budget but maybe 21 budget because there are some things that are coming I mean the comp plan the compensation plan is going to be more than what we usually do for employee services so you have a bucket of things yeah over the budget there's a bucket of things that sits in my head all the time I'm not gonna go there about all this stuff that's coming before us okay you're absolutely right I just I don't want to leave this discussion before I make this comment the CDA is currently conducting everything as you noted earlier they have some fun CBG we allocated they administer we don't have to get into that business I don't see us and getting into that business I see us deciding whether we're gonna raise funds to increase the pot of funding that they have to work with to do more houses in Burnsville and what that number is what it needs to be if we vote on it next year or the year after is down the road but I don't see us having to put a administrative position here to start doing what the kind of the county already does I think we just to me we're just talking about providing additional funding for them to continue to do more of what they're already doing as as our city manager point out if they're willing to do that correct council member Kelly yeah give some more money twelve oh it's fine remember something also they charge us an administrative cost and so we need to understand what is going to be also because I think right now it's eight percent or twelve twelve yeah cuz I can remember eight and it just and it went up so you add more yeah we're going to have for that so Jenny well madam Eric that's that's the goal here rights is to minimize the expense to the city it's not our goal to add staff to run these programs that we want to do if there's a way to partner because you know this is new to all of us they are housing department is how I've always looked at them they are willing partners with us and so that we would start there with them I also know that the county does put in some money and some of the programs that cover some of the admin but if they don't have capacity to do it either right now they're maxed out you know what does that picture look like but but now that we know what you want and kind of what you're looking for we can go have discussions with them and certainly we'll circle back with you as part of our budget presumably for this year and you can move it to next year if you want to but we'll do it we can to get you those information the information sooner than later so you can make those decisions okay very good anything else for Jenny thank you okay we move on to the all-day work session follow up on Boulevard mall mowing and I think we have Jeff is going to be presenting madam mayor councilmembers thank you for having me Boulevard mowing is a follow up item from the holiday work session and it's a a third item of Ryan and I identified of things Public Works really does poorly one of the things that we did correct was Park recycling we corrected that in 2017 also this winter we corrected sidewalk snowfall this is a third item on that list of things we identified that we really do poorly and we would like to change our level of service of what we do um just overview what I'm gonna discuss this evening Boulevard mowing the history of the current practices of it we did a market city survey the options we've developed and in case have it a chance for council discussion and direction the history Boulevard mowing has evolved grown and reduced over time has changed several times and in the mid 2000s we were running what we called an enhanced Boulevard maintenance program and that pretty much went by the wayside of 2009 2010 reductions we had a full time staff member that left and we did decided not to replace that and it was both a an immediate in 2009 and then other items we needed more discussion on and hapten happened in a phased approach and also like median weed control is something we revisited even after we made the decision I think you're wrong on the weak control was worth was out got it and I went out and did the weeding of the Bulova Job Description cheap weed inspector you're pulling an inspecting exactly in risk well I was so embarrassed we're going to have the fire muster and people are coming into the city and the boulevards look horrible horrible talk about just a comment talk about curb appeal well no because it was the council cut the funding on that show natural wild grass like in front of City Hall is just belongs in certain areas not in boulevards right no that is that has to do with our sustainability of making her full of birds well progressed for well I would say we turned over commercial and multi-family and they really helped us out we have no issues really with commercial met multi-family picking up their boulevards and helping us the problem we have is on the residential side it's mostly we we decided to retain the hardship parcels what we call a hardship is a resident who doesn't have direct access to their Boulevard either behind them around a side yard due to landscaping or a fence or something along those lines and currently we identified the hardships when the program rolled out in 2010 mowing season and now we review the parks superintendent and I review on a case-by-case basis and do the fencing changes landscape changes we pick up a couple here here and there every year even though I say we do we do it poorly we do it as efficiently as we can we still retain a Boulevard mowing and trimming crew it's one of four crews we run we also run three high capacity mowers every day of the or every day of the week and they have their own routes but the boulevard mowing and trimming crew does public property to the public medians and then they also do the Hart residential hardships there have they have 25 20 26 routes within the city that they do and we our goal is one level of service at once a week and we we usually maintain that except for the spring in the fall when it's really hard to get seasonal employees every route within this does have residential hardships and residential hardships are where we pick up the more in between what we are mowing these are two examples ones on nickel at south of 134th one is on judicial south of south cross we mow everything in the red currently and you can kind of ski where we where we skip residential hard or where we skip the heart where we mow the residents hardships and skip the ones that are not hardships we did do a market a market city analysis this is really this distillation of that and where all our market cities are at everybody does most humble of Arts Jason to private property some have a method to the system and others have evolved over time like we have notably Apple Valley has all major major city and county roads identified and they do the boulevards within along those right away regardless if it's a hardship or not then they do not go out of their way to mow hardships after that lakeville is they will not touch a county road they'll just do city roads and all the rest have pretty much evolved over time mowing residential hardships is prep approximately a 50/50 if they do it or don't do that do that and then we also looked who is memorialized as Anna Boulevard mowing policy or in some something along those lines and very few have gone to that extent yet the options we we discussed and developed there always option we provide a level of service above what city code requires by mowing residential hardships we could always give those back obviously that would create less work for Public Works would create more work for code enforcement and we don't really we don't really want to do that we have a good working relationship with code enforcement if they identify something that's long you know we tell them hey it is in the residential hardship notes and I'm the residents on hardship here and there and we have a pretty good working relationship with them and we do not want to really oh we can always maintain what we are doing this program doesn't have very good optics as we are calling it because you know literally what we are saving is maybe 30 seconds here there what the residents quite often to understand this multiply that times 300 properties and it's actually we are saving time but it does have poor optics it you know you you have all I've seen the people take videos of us skipping properties and blowing certain properties how much time does it take to raise the blade and then lower the blade again so what we would we were going down lines of actually developing a major roadway mowing program or all Boulevard program and wrapping that into the trail and sidewalk fee and as we got going along that road not even Ryan or I one of our one of our management team says we are gonna really make this expensive as there other options and we came up with this block-by-block option to not raise significant costs but still do a better job than we are doing so what the black by black option is is we'd apply the residential hardship to a block from intersection to intersection if there's somebody within that block that has a residential hardship we would mow that entire block a lot goes to back to the sidewalk snow plowing discussion we get on the boulevard we went to the end we get off the Boulevard and then we go to the next block that has a residential hardship so that that is what we have developed for the block by block option this shows you I have a couple examples of this is really a mapping exercise Evoque where we are filling in this is Nicollet south of 134 again we have a couple of properties on the east that we are skipping we'd know those to fill out the block so in red is what you will mow red is what we currently moment when purple is what we are picking another example is this Burnsville parkway heading down to the development developed in a way that there are a lot of properties in a row that had residential hardship then there weren't we pick up the properties in between with this option another one is judicial roll it south of south cross this is this is probably one of the most scattered examples that we have that we and we pick up quite a bit here to clean up on the block by block option but it gives us the it gives us the chance to mow entire blocks so on the last one is County Road 11 between basically one hundred and thirtieth and a hundred and thirty fourth Street there there are properties we skip in there and the purple would be the properties we pick up in this option the county doesn't mow their own we we have taken on basically County Road 11 and McAndrews because they don't do a good job yeah and it's within our capability we still rely on them to do Road 42 that would be major undertaking for us yeah and we have we have we've pushed them to do a better job than they have in the past and I believe they have done a better job than they have in the past obviously it's not our once-a-week standard that we do on other county roads for them what the boulevard or block by block option gives us it removes our poor optics in our indivisible situations you you've seen those where we do pick up the mower deck and leave them both blades running we aren't saving a lot of time in those situations it would get rid of that it's customer service orientated that's what a lot of our residents are asking us to do this is operationally financially feasible and sustainable this is something we can do with our current basically with our current crews and adding seasonal employees we're not talking full-time employees here if we would go to a Marc's more enhanced option I'd say we'd have to hire additional full-time staff and it would give us also the continued work innovation ship we have the code enforcement instead of basically during this problem over to them the cons is some residents would like us to do all backyards inside yard Boulevard mowing for them we don't provide that level of service and you know they there is still some residents that well one would want us to do that for them the costs operating costs are it's basically one seasonal employee year and some additional fee land maintenance on that equipment and some and we've identified some equipment that would actually retain instead of get rid of to roll this out it does have a one kind of capital cost of $50,000 I do stress to our our maintenance superintendent's if we can reuse pieces of equipment or things like that this most its adding one more but it's changing out some more as we you see the on the right there it's it's more of what you will see on a Boulevard than our traditional mowing stuff that we use so council discussion and direction the other options we've identified again we can revert back to city code we can maintain the status quo we can try the block to block option developing that within the 2020 budget and or we could go back and investigate other options of major Boulevard mowing or all Boulevard mowing but those would be at costs at least at the 2009 level and you're saying that we go block by block we can maintain the cost because you'll use existing crew we just have one capital cost help which we do seasonal help every year so that and the block by block gives us better optics and our residents will like that they just won't have the backyard mix yeah address councilmember Augustus Sims one comment there about how much time does it take and raise up the deck the challenge isn't the raising up the deck that typically our boulevards are two or three more whit's wide so we can't just go past it we'd have to go back and forth and that's where the extra time really comes in so if it was one more if they were all one more with wide then there would be no reason not to just keep going but yeah by the time you've all the way down all the way back and all the way back down again that's where the time is up you know in Jeff and and Ryan you're bringing a solution that we've been struggling with but the block by block is a great solution I don't know members of the council what are your thoughts yeah I think the block by block is a really good solution for this and it's in uniform I've actually have gotten phone calls for people asking why is the city yeah mowing the boulevard they get to my property and they lift it and they go buy it and then they drop it in a steep going down yeah I'll find out yet I found out we literally have pink marks on the sidewalks showing lift up blade yeah put down penny with that's what we have to do so we know we're not to move you're still going down it anyway so what's the difference if the blades turning while you're going broke I said if you have to go back you're still gonna have to do that mm-hmm right yes okay Vince what if we stopped mowing hardships and then removed it from our code enforcement again it's the visual appeal of the city Oliver stagger over could I just get a clearer collagen question because I'm kind of thinking one lines events I feel like we're just doing something because somebody's offense but I can you clarify what the hardship really is for a property most of them are fences I do not have gates to their backyards we do not rely on them to go around the block to get to the boulevard in their back or their side or have good relationships with their neighbors that they could actually use their neighbor's property to get to their Boulevard so the vast majority of them are fences that don't have gates and is there grass to mow between the fence and the sidewalk as well as then the Boulevard from the sidewalk to the court curb there is a little bit yes that we do sometimes that sometimes there's a narrow strip of grass sometimes people put rock there or landscaping but sometimes it's grass foot or two or three and then the sidewalk and then the Boulevard then you mow all of that we are finish that up with your trimming against their fences yes can you doing the trimming form - yeah and it's no different than when we we ask residents to shovel their sidewalks and they don't do it now we do all of it so this is the same thing that's a little safety hazard problem that I'm you know to me that's different yep it doesn't are wheelchair folks don't have a problem getting through sidewalks when there's long grass growing next to it versus ice buildup in it's slushy surfaces different different animal altogether strictly based on safety I don't know I've just I feel like we're just mowing people and trim in their lawns form because they have a fence like that well I think that's why I've been struggling with this in the past right when we do have certain occasions where there's ponds and lakes between there which is would be really be a difficult situation could you answer how many parts of parcels we have that might be an interesting about 300 330 I think somewhere around there's the number number we're currently at and the block by block option would get every single I think there's two of them we we looked at them they shouldn't be in the hardship program at all though we were gonna kick him out but but it was about 328 about 330 we pick up doing this like I said it has evolved over time I couldn't tell you when we actually started the boulevard maintenance I think we've always done it to some expired discussions I remember your predecessors and your predecessor saying the city got themselves into this problem because we were so nice we were mowing everyone's Boulevard for them and when we started to cut back and say this is your responsibility we've been doing it for decades but now we'd like to not do it of course people were upset I don't have a fancy can't get to it well you it's your property it's your responsibility you have a fence and because you don't have a gate to the fencing you got to walk your mower all the way around it's now our responsibility I have a problem so a lot of it was how the city developed quite often these bullet are these long fences were actually put in by the developer they separate the major road from the neighborhood so it's quite often that they didn't even have an option of getting a gate or not I think you benefit that we need to decide we're gonna expand which is your presentation or stop doing just let the ballpark's grow hold the property maintenance accountable for doing their what they're supposed to do what everybody else does it doesn't have a fence just because it's more convenient to keep the mower going down to the sidewalk to see putting fortunately people set the solution yeah we did for that's the next step we do for everything else that's that's poorly maintained right now we just talked about helping people with we're deal and we're talking about 300 properties and I've blocked these properties these people don't have a problem with financially being able to mow the rest of their lawn down to the street as opposed to the other 95% of their lawn this is strictly a convenience that the city has been providing and we're stuck providing it and it's hard to take something away once you give it to them yeah well Jenny madam mayor members of the council the ordinance does require property owners to maintain and mow the grass out to the street to curb it so in neighborhoods where there's no sidewalk property owners are mowing or to the right away so this is just kind of the thoroughfares areas where we have sidewalks and whatnot and I would say and a lot of these there as a walker in this town our sidewalks aren't very wide you know so when these things start to go rogue they start to encroach on the sidewalk we have good estrogens when you pass somebody you're already in the grass and so we're not set up necessary you know that's my code enforcement is important I would say because we're we're we don't have wide trails on all these corridors that were moving right now yeah thanks if we were to stop this completely would it just create what would be your hypothetical uptick of phone calls and emails from people well you can go back when we've took the money away from you in 2010 will be a record I'd say yeah three three months of hard discussions with with residents and quite often a lot of them after they're 8 inches we are gonna turn them over to code enforcement yep to get resolution Jenny a merit that's upwards of yeah 300 more inspections 300 letters yelling out you know dealing with that I'm not saying we can't but that it is a learning curve is what I would say when we change policies like and then now we have garbage cans we have in the summertime we're not picking up people start right no no but I think that's one of the tactics it's it just said all of those things I was just on the city's Facebook website and look at the comments that people have it I'm thinking you know not good when there's don't take a look at some of the negative comments anybody can say anything on Facebook I understand that I do understand that nasty yeah but it's something we have no control over what we do have control over is what do we want the city to look like and is there something that we can do to ensure that our city continues to have great visual appeal because if you take it away from Jeff adjust that they have good relationships with inspections with code inspections but if one or the other then it's it hits Jenni's division madam mayor members of the council I would just say a good communications campaign is what we would need if we're going to change this to reduce those and increase the awareness give people some time I don't you know if we just changed today that's gonna be a problem people need time to put in a gate so you mean to stay with just revert to the city code and no mowie if you just if you decide to do that one way to roll it out trying to lessen the impact of city resources by getting the word out often and frequently if this is what the direction that you decide to do to change people's ways it's a it's gonna be a tough a tough change a tough change if we go down this road no doubt but because we can drink yeah I know we can we've done it and that's the thing is we all get the complaints and if we're okay with that and to revert to the to just city code and have Jenni's division do code enforcement and no mowing of hardships then a really intense communications campaign that needs to happen and then you can monitor it and see how it works but yeah Brian help with Jenny I would recommend that we would not do this in 2019 we would develop the plan we would bring a policy back to you and then later in the winter we would we would do the robust communication plan and then moving that forward in 2020 for the 2020 budget C's yeah I understand we know where these homes are right we haven't met we can invite them to meetings it's it's we can put the information on them because we know where that we know where they are that helps yeah we also have seen where people say why is it that the city raises the blade when they come by my house cuz you decide not to put a fence in so yeah but I'll know this person's because they decided to put offensive we roll that up next year with the new branding of the city that should work quite well pull yourself up by your bootstraps yeah maybe they'll come back that's a good idea yeah I like that mantra okay what's the direction to staff maintain what we're doing now and then come back with a plan on how we communicate and revert to the city code and and no mowing of hardships is that what I'm hearing we're gonna have a split anyways cuz we're missing a councilman's right yeah well the thing is I want to make sure the city looks good I want to make sure we're going out and we're spending money on a on a branding campaign and we want to attract people and so how much money we're going to have a loan program so people can improve their properties and this is something that's not going to cost us a lot to help the city but if you don't want to do it that's fine I also want the city to look good yeah I used to water the baskets in the heart of the city every other weekend and we had to be very diligent about not a single weed in those rosebuds and I don't think that that philosophy has been lost but I agree with don't remember Keely that it just seems like we got ourselves down a road here at some point we got to maybe just stop doing right on the foot if we're talking after we get through with the capital I don't know could we spend up to $20,000 a year on all our court costs all our do we have to have someone else sofa cost us $20,000 a year and instead of mowing grass we're going back and forth from Hastings I'm not sure that the this is just my opinion that the value is necessarily there if that's what we're gonna end up doing much more of and then obviously mr. fors ones group is and it's in the summer time right when they're the busiest so I just would like to add that perspective is I don't know if there goes up because we go to court on all these other things that that's a property code enforcement jitney many members of the council when it comes to weeds we don't go to court for weeds but we have a contractor that we hire to mow people's yards when they don't and we assess it so when we do our property maintenance assessments they're being charged for mowing their yard so when they don't so it will be in an expense and there's an administrative expense that goes with that and and we'll still have to deal with it there will be if so when it comes with the assessment you have everybody better vote to make sure that we charge all of that and cover it yeah $20,000 over 300 households is sixty six dollars and 67 cents for the whole year to have their Boulevard mode should we just charge them can we how much do we charge if they don't do it and we have to assess it it's a lot higher than 66 bucks for the whole year right it's per mowing I think there's a couple hundred two hundred when we do them or was it cost what do we what do we build them when we go in and mow it because they've not like yeah what is that per mo so when we mow the three parcels on five and 13 we haven't sold yet those are about $150 each time obviously have boulevards last but probably most the cost is mobilization out there right yeah so these 300 properties could be assessed $67 for the whole summer and have their multiple of our demote form and the city doesn't have any cost out of pocket then and we did that when we first start at the the sidewalks we've been the question B do we have to let them hopped in and laptop opt out if if they want to mow it himself at seventy bucks or yeah yeah you know we actually did think about that a little bit and then our problem was just trying to keep track of it but we'd find a way how did we approach that when it was the sidewalk plowing and we were assessing everybody the thing that the benefit to that is is we're just going along and doing all the side all right so we don't have to remember which ones which one right which is the same philosophy here itself you know who they are you're gonna just go then it's make it this far you turn around come back and you're mowing everything in between no more painting now sidewalk mow don't mow that sort of thing we assess the entire city about there's no point because we've done enough an upgraded service with our sidewalk and no so if we treat it like that we should be assessing the entire city for the boulevard morning it would make it less expensive per property but if we're just talking the 20,000 incremental increase to do these to do this plan right the 20,000 and that one-time equipment cost was just to take on this block by block so let me put something before all of you 419 staff is going to continue with what you're doing right now and then as we look for the 2020 budget let's have further discussion on whether you want to then charge the properties so that the city doesn't incur further expense and we can take a look at that for 2020 but 2019 to move forward with what we have now is that agreeable so that staff has direction okay to me this is an unqualified handout from the city I have a fence so therefore I get my Boulevard and moat for me I I would be embarrassed as a property owner if I was one of those people I've never let the part of the city do my job for me but we've been doing it so we basically trained everyone in these areas don't worry about it the city's gonna mow your lawn for you and do your responsibilities for you we just have to be very careful and very diligent about how we back out of that and I think that I was thinking the same thing the communication campaign yeah it's got to be very deliberate unless next year we choose to say let's assess those whatever that dollar amount is maybe it's an even 70 bucks and you know you can continue to not have to worry about your bowl of are getting mowed yeah and I think prior to that piece I think staff should have a a meeting with all of them with those residents and see what they say if we could you know what do they think about being assessed and we'll do that and I think god that's part of that communications campaign but bring them in just like you do with all of the assessments and have a conversation with them we know who they are are we bringing back three options how about charging properties looks like the block by block and then just not doing hardships yeah let's propagating the agreement on bringing those three options back yeah we're just not making a decision for the 2020 budget as we look at it yeah yeah in the meantime we will we'll do a little outreach with those property owners and let them know that conversation yeah and if they're okay with being assessed true by the way your presentation was fantastic this is a good discussion and we needed to have it so thank you thank you and and it's true it's been evolving throughout and we took it away in 2010 and then we came back with a modified plan yes I'm sorry just for more clarification are you were expecting us to have a notification prior - the next time you see us - these folks or wait I was thinking you would try and get the position and then if it turns out to be that then we bring it up otherwise I mean we could start quite a quite a discussion with residents but if you're telling us - you go ahead of time before we come back and we'll certainly do it okay so we're not gonna reach out ahead of time we're gonna bring this back for more discussion then if it turns out that we are not going to mow them anymore then we would tell them bring you mental I don't know yeah what's the harm in reaching out to those property that's that's what I'm thinking yeah business I think we ought to reach an agreement just have a conversation and that might be telling for you the full council on what feedback you hear that's that's what I would suggest have have them understand what's coming you know they're gonna be charged are you going to be okay with being charged you're essentially SS Holum here survey I'm a little bit would you pay your tweet now to Dan Gustafson whether you want your Boulevard motor not the cost of 70 bucks simple as walking through this and say hey you know what this is the the kind of philosophical discussion that we are having your impact it help us with that conversation yeah and this is how much it would cost if you want us to do it and how much it'll be assessed to you I think this if I may that's because I was getting the same thing as your comments Ryan wasn't quite that clear but it was well we got three options here and do we throw three options out or do you just say this is the direction that we're going we're looking for some feedback on what you pay for it or just do it yourself because that's really gonna be your options possibly if that's what we end up voting we're getting a pulse really getting a poll from the people who are airing we're gonna respond and engage they might give you an inclination us an inclination one way or another they'd say I'll just keep moaning because I can't do it that would likely point out the three options that we like they bring back again and to watch the video and if you want us to do it it'll cost you sixty six dollars the season are you willing to pay the $66 it's a season four premiere okay very good but stay the course this season thank you thank you so much thank you okay the next one is Ryan it's yours result of your research on the use of water towers thank you very much I'll go through history how we got here real quickly and then some of how we did research this subject and some of the results we had and then I'll briefly get into if you have any input on lighting of the city logos on the Heather Hills dollar after its rehabilitated so we came to you on January 15th and we actually requested some information or some input on whether when we rehabilitate the that tower should we light the logo so we can see it at nighttime and we received direction to research advertising on water towers in general so that's what we've spent our timeline basically how did we go about researching this we used internet search engines and then also the city engineers in Minnesota has a listserv and we pulled those folks to see what what might have been done in this area in the past we found two examples where there was some sort of revenue or cost benefit to the city one was Rochester back from 1994 to 2004 they received about a hundred thousand dollars over that ten year period to advertise the apache mall you might be driven on fifty two you can see that towers right there um it was not renewed after that there was an option to and they chose not to the tower is the top picture now there is zero on there and it's just white there's no Rochester or Apache Amal Olympia Fields Illinois they actually reached out to the local hospital in town and said look we got a repaint our tower will you pay for it and we'll let you put your logo on there and they the hospital said no so interestingly they went to the hospital ten miles away to that one and that the hospital that hospital took them up on the offer so the hospital ten miles away is advertised in the town of Olympia Fields and I guess now that they've said well next time how we do want to because they're probably taking customers because of it so they ended up paying the cost of the painting the tower in exchange for putting the local on there that's how that worked out DeKalb Illinois in this situation this isn't the particular tower in the top bullet but for there Monsanto is a huge company in that town they were having 100-year celebration they paid two thousand dollars a month to wrap the tower not paint it and so then when they what they learned was don't you don't allow wrapping because it's very difficult to get it off after that amount of time if you can do something paint and then also in the same city they traded the sighting rights for a different tower so they needed a tower in a certain location happened to be where the University of no northern Illinois is so they traded the right to advertise the University of Northern Illinois with no cost to use their land to put the tower on so there was that situation River Falls Wisconsin clearly a college town they basically just allowed UW River Falls to paint their logo on the tower if they were willing to do it there was no cost they're not paying a fee to have it up there Luverne Minnesota was similar to DeKalb the that that's the same to Durham pictures of the same tower on one side Sanford paid Sanford allowed the tower to go on their site so that the city didn't have to pay for it so on one side it says Sanford on the other side says Laverne a beautiful place to live so that's basically found you know and this was we didn't keep this city our statewide we did to do the best we could national that just wasn't a lot of information on it customer key we provide some information you might have saw the one that was the degree antiperspirant can what we've learned there was that was a mock-up of one that never did get put in place so there were some things were that was being considered but then never occurred so my conclusions would be this is very very rare occasion that this is occurring where and maybe why would that be happening I mean typically it's one of your most iconic City assets that you have and it just historically has been used to put your own logo to advertise your own city on there and I you know to go along with that there there was a couple where it was considered and then then the comments from the staff person at that city said you know we just didn't want to go through the hassle of taking all the calls from people who do who wouldn't want this more the traditionalists and then you know why else well now if they're trying to change out and advertising you know you got to go up there either sandblast off the painting that you have to you know I mean so it's a big deal in today's world with antennas and all that sort of thing up there it can be quite a situation to start changing those kinds of things out and then you know maybe there just isn't enough revenue to offset those factors if Chester got a hundred thousand dollars over ten years is a worth in that type of situation other considerations the city does have an advertising policy which I think you're aware of included in the background I did a lot of little dots in there but basically you know advertising shall not reflect negatively on the city's image I'm not you sitting here today saying it does but there certainly would be people in town who would feel that way if we were to go that route and then you know another thing we should look at we had a to us sitting up here before with our branding you know how would this fit in with with that whole initiative runner taking if you know if we're trying to improve our own brand no because it can help us if there's some major company up on our water towers on the flip side we're always looking for an on property tax revenue that's for certain we don't want to just dismiss them so that would be the other flip side of the coin basically that's my report to you back on water tower advertising I don't know if it makes sense to have a little discussion on the other hills logo and then discuss both of them or would you rather discuss this one first and so we were basically looking direct for direction on whether you want to have us looking further into a water tower advertising and then we can either juice or not well let's talk first about the water tower advertising and then talk about the lighting of the logo okay what do you think does we know where you are at well I you know we it's we have to I guess understand that we do have a city owned asset with brands on it the Eames brand is a Ames construction company brand on our most iconic performing arts center inside there's brands on the wall for the now the dance theater the Dodge pickup window so we've sold advertising on other city assets the question is are we open-minded to selling it on a city asset that's a water tower it's just a different surface what we've already set the precedent that we will sell for a sponsorship dollar amount a brand on a city asset selling naming rights is a different thing it's on an asset whether it's the US Bank Stadium that's a big thing TCF stadium you have a target all of those are naming rights and that's what the Ainge Center is it's a naming right now when you have it on a water tower that people see all over the place and it is the identity of the city that's that's a different piece so what are you thinking my notes is I'd like to consult with the a e2s and see what their opinion on this would be the marketing consultant because if we become the city of Medicine or the city of festivals is there a company that would play into that like Park Nicollet or Fairview I'd really like to hear what the marketing people think about this good point well initially I was totally against it cuz I agree with the mayor its water towers more well it's not the asset that we have in a Performing Arts Center where people sponsor they get that or we were gonna sponsor for the Burnsville ice rink and things like that which Ames has done out of the lake film that sort of thing I'm willing to listen to what the marketing people have to say but as we brand the city or we gonna be you know welcome to Burnsville home of you know whatever names condition well would be in construction it could be fantasy house two might be proud to put that I mean they they have a right to advertise as well so any one of those type of places could come up come up and say I want to advertise on your Tower right and as we go into our branding part of this that is really something we can talk to the marketing people about us how does that affect our branding I mean everything we're doing gonna do going forward it's gonna affect the brand we're about to roll out citywide with everybody and I think we really need to be very much aware of all that what are the effects of everything we do on that so I wanted to listen to what the marketing people have to say for now home of Ames construction on one side first of all the other home of northern you know we always think that a lot of us that companies are going to shell out money for a lot of those things I just believe that to have our water towers display who we are this is your movie you're coming into Burnsville it is Burnsville and and i'm proud of that and you take it away and put something else up to there well wouldn't take it away we're just in addition to we're not taking away city of Burnsville off the water tower there's there's lots of sides to a big water tower the ones that you say oh - you know for city of festivals or this and that that's a tagline for our city whatever we're gonna use right that's different than putting a company name on the water tower itself and and quite frankly I think perception is you see a company name on a water tower it's almost like the city's endorsing that company and I'm not sure we're in the endorsement business any other point that Ryan brings up we have a lot of different assets that we lease out on the water tower and how many years before we repaint it which I get 10 to 15 years so and you said that Rochester only received what $100,000 for 10 years and years for 10 years as a million so the thing is it's all of the other assets that are on on the water tower that's going to be affected so there's a lot more than just putting a logo on a water tower and I just am proud of this city and I'm proud that it displays its name and then people see it and they come in and they say oh we're in Burnsville not all we're in PepsiCo country you know Pepsi can put up their own water tower because they drilled their own well you know they drove their own Wells they can put up and do it to make Pepsi logo can and they can but it'll be their own asset just like other but it's their asset it's not the city's asset so I guess if the thing is to just let it go through the process of the branding and see what they folks from the branding pieces but then then the next question is what do we do that'll be delayed but your you have to get that done this summer right we're putting the project out for bid this summer fall and then it'd be a 2020 project so we depending upon the how long it takes them to give us some good information how it's going to fit in we can always keep the painting of the logo out of the contract and come back at some other time I'll cost us something with remobilize ation but that's something we can certainly do and so we'll talk with them a to us and we'll decide when a good time to come back to you with some more information is okay yeah I appreciate all your comments and I maybe you sound very much like a traditionalist protecting what everyone just has always known them to be and I have no problem with that at all it I mean I fully expected that sort of feedback when you're trying to come up with new ideas you got a break traditional thought processes traditional beliefs to some degree and step outside the box a little bit this is probably one that requires a bigger step out of the box because most of the country just puts their city on their City logo ten years now there may be more cities doing this because the there's been more recent activity than ever before because others may be like me look at it as a giant billboard opportunity for a company that has long history and deep roots and deep pockets who can afford it to put their name up next to the city of Burnsville but I bring it forward because I'm always trying to bring up revenue opportunities and I think this is one big giant billboard waiting for revenue for the city but we'd still have Burnsville on it well Melanie madam mayor and council will certainly visit with our marketing and branding consultant I'd ask the council to give some consideration what's the what's the dollar amount for which you would feel comfortable yeah this is 10,000 okay it's a hundred thousand okay is it something what's the what's also putting a low somebody else's logo up there justjust you don't answer that tonight I'm not asking about it tonight but just ask you to give give that some thought as we as we walk down this path yeah because you're gonna have to go out and sell it that holds up what we need to get done and you know about fundraising don't you and you're not asking for a whole big money and I'm I'm always looking at how we raise money for the city and going outside but for me it's driving up and what what defines who we are look at how long it's taken us to get to put up welcome signs into the city of Burnsville it's as long as I've been here because I wanted to see people understand that they're coming into the city of Burnsville and that takes a long time because of the money so you know for me I'm proud of this city if I'm gonna be a traditionalist about the logo and the city on the on the water tower and so be it but I know that everybody is different and that's okay but that just think about when we go out and do that work and who's gonna go raise that money anybody want to go raise that money and once we find out what that knows you know what the marketing people think about it from their philosophy on it and if they think it's outside of what they're trying to do then and you'll wait for that and you can wait for that but it just needs to get done okay thank you okay the next one the next part of the agenda is special assessments Jen welcome so tonight I have a short presentation on a little bit of a history of our policy this came up at our public hearing for the street improvements this year where one of the residents testified that they'd like to see but it'll change to the policy from a front footage and a basis to a per lot there's a per-unit basis for a single family so I thought I would start with our current policy the front footage basis and so all the front footages are measured 30 feet from the property line and four properties with only one frontage that is what we'd be assessing them based on is that a distance of frontage that's 30 feedback for two frontages corner Lots or ones that have two streets on either side we for single-family assess fully on the short side and half the long side and for all other property types they get the full frontage assessed and then for three frontages for single-family we we do short front frontage half the long and no charge for the third side and and all other property types get all frontages assessed here's an example this is in our 2019 project area and there's a setback where that line is that's where we measure the front edge and the red line shows if there's only one front edge that's what the frontage is in that case seventy seven feet would be their frontage or on a two-sided this corner lot the short side is 87 and that would be assessed the full side for that and then for areas where there's a blue line that's there long side and in a single-family area like this they would be assessed at half of that so in this example and that corner I'm pointing to short side 87 feet half the long side is 44 and in this example that corner lot would be assessed 131 feet at the rate whichever is for that project I did ask other cities our market cities and then some of the cities in northern Dakota County what their how they didn't do their special assessments and this is the information that I got I got 12 responses Burnsville is up there so 13 including us two others besides us use a front footage as the basis to use a combination I think that means and I have to delve in wondering what that integral height so what does that mean in their policy they just list all possibilities and they I couldn't really get to what specifically they use for certain projects and West st. Paul seems saying they they indicated we use both in my response back so I'd have to dig in a little bit more to find out more about what that meant but eight eight cities use a per unit or per a lot basis for their single-family also noting four of the cities I asked don't use assessments and three didn't respond to my my questions on all cities that use special assessments have to follow state statute 429 and I just pulled this piece of it so the apportionment of the cost has to be based on the benefit of the improvement based upon what's receives the benefit received and case law and this is from League of Minnesota cities indicates the special benefit test must be met so the land has to receive a special benefit what is a special benefit that's not defined but in case light is as not exceeding the market value due to the improvement so if the improvement comes along and we assess $5,000 their property value has to increase by at least five thousand dollars in order for it to meet this test and the assessment is uniform is applied to the same class of property and so that doesn't necessarily mean you have to go to a per unit assessment but we have to have a big methodology that is consistent so we use the same rate for all single-family properties and that would be a uniform uniformly applied question yes is that you noted the it has to increase by that but it was our timeline is that in the same year that it was that the improvement was done to the road that the property has to increase by that amount I believe so yeah it's before and after sales should be before they improvement it's valued at this and after the improvement it's valued at at least what you've assessed sure have we've been challenged by anyone on that who's had their home valued and then appraised and then appraised afterward which costs 500 bucks or going to do it twice but want to do it twice but and then said may my property didn't go up by three grand like my assessment so Ryan we've been challenged most recent one was actually on a non-residential case but we spent considerably more than five hundred dollars defending it this is saying we want our policy to remain bulletproof we weren't gonna negotiate you couldn't negotiate these down but then word gets out you're negotiating and then everyone starts putting motions in the district court and then everyone's expecting reduction but we found out that the increase in value was equal or more than what we'd been for assessing in that case was seventeen thousand dollars or something from business property so we've only had one that was the most recent one we've we've had others through the years but it's it's not an annual no because I was gonna say I don't remember seeing but but that just goes through administrative and you do that because I don't remember seeing us being challenged on this on an assessed on an assessment I think the process is madam mayor and council I think the process is you have to file an appeal yeah and then you have 30 days for which to file yeah port yeah and then so yeah then it marches through from that I think I think the hot the bar is relatively high for a property I want to prevail if our policy is a strong one and I remember people objecting but they didn't have to get that done okay so under this law does it mean that the road actually caused the property value to go up yes yes because in today's market you're gonna go that every year I mean that's just the weight I mean that whether broads done or not and what happened to you entertain when we're in the recession and property of ours were declining but we're still assessing do they factor that in when yeah I do believe they do so we've are currently undergoing a special benefit consultation with an appraiser in which they will take the market sort of on average the market value increase due to just the improvement so that's some history on the special assessment policy and how Burnsville is applied it and the rules and mechanisms we have so just kind of going through what might be reasons that we might want to change to a per unit or per lot assessment one reason might be fairness in a residential neighborhood in a change in policy would mean that everybody would be assessed to the same neighbors assess the same and that was the point of the the resident that spoke at the meeting earlier this year and then also an argument for it would be that everyone in the neighborhood approximately uses the street the same so the use of the street is kind of you to go income the same corner Lots and unusually large frontages are sort of outliers that the question kind of goes back to fairness should they be assessed a higher assessment when they're kind of embedded in a neighborhood and they just are not uniform but valued similarly I've talked to a couple of appraisers and when they do a special benefit consultation they indicate a single-family property in this neighborhood will benefit by X amount due to the improvement it is difficult for them to say this lot has two feet more so they benefit by two feet more or this corner a lot as in that other case where's 131 feet and the properties around it were in the 90s that they benefit by 40 feet more so like a 50% increase the appraisers that I've talked to have indicated that that is not something that they are able to get down to that minut of a a difference in special benefit less staff time would be involved in going through we right now we get together as a group and we look at every single property and make sure that their frontage is is we're doing it right so we would be just counting up the properties and dividing it um the assessment revenues may increase which this could be seen as a positive would be a lesser take on the ITF and the reason that would be is because we'd have to we'd have to come up with a new scheme for how to we still use 40% but it might be that we just do the actual costs instead of the three year running average which tends to be lower than 40% so we it could increase we're not exactly sure without looking into it more some reasons to keep the policy in place and you'll see some of these are the same than we the flip side of that but we've had a policy that we've applied consistently since Burnsville was a village so we found the old assessment policy I'm not sure of the year on it but it had the short side plus half the long I'll list it out in a table so it's the same thing yeah the fairness so someone who is on a smaller lampblack may think that it's unfair that their assessed the same as a larger lot so fairness is in the bi and the eye of the beholder this recently assessed on a different basis that has to do with the transition so we make a switch after 40 years of the same the people who are assessed last year are gonna maybe have issue with making that change we are currently meeting the benefit test so on the previous slide I indicated fairness and and use of the street and those are not part of the benefit test the benefit test is an increase in market value and we I believe are consistently meeting that and then on the flip side assessment revenues may increase so that's maybe bad for the property owners that are being assessed so the process to change we think it could take some time we want to do a thorough job of it and we might have to hire some expert consultants or appraisers to help us with that we would do some staff research I've done just a little bit of baby research just a little delving in haven't really gotten too far that table is just an instance of a quick survey I sent to some cities we'd need to take the proposal and test it and make sure that we were still meeting the benefit test and we'd also see what was the impact there's gonna be winners and losers to making this change if you're on a big lot you'd be a winner and a small lot yeah a loser and then we'd have to have some public engagement we want to reach out to the each other the residents who would be impacted which is you citywide because it's a public policy going into the future we'd come back to a work session show you what we've got learned and then figure out if you wanted to move forward with it for a final approval so tonight I'm requesting some direction if you'd like to have us pursue a change to the policy or if you'd like us to keep it the same and then the only real recommendation I have is that it's not a quick turnaround so I don't believe we could accomplish it for our 2019 projects I think 2020 might be the soonest if you probably 2020 would be too soon if you're looking at the process and you're gonna have public engagement it'll probably 21 to make to make sure that we engage the the citizenry and have them understand what this change is going to mean to them possibly yeah yeah Dan we're on this we're just talking about single-family homes so single-family duplex and for plexes sort of the low density properties so I'm not including townhomes multifamily commercial industrial I would recommend keeping the frontage for those properties since they're so different in size and you know it'd be difficult to come up with a per unit to title it or not and I think that's where consultant do you so you you test out the fairness on all of that okay any other comments yeah I'm all in for changing it I think we're our current policy as good as it's served us there's still behind the times in that chart with the comparable cities was pretty much clear telltale everybody we when I was surprised early I was surprised to see so many cities that were on a per-unit basis so what does what does Bloomington do front footage yeah they started it up a few months ago I was just one of the things that really I liked about the per lot approaches I've always felt that we disproportionately were we're charging corner Lots just because they were on a corner and I always wondered if corner Lots are really worth as much as an interior lot and I've done some reading and it could have just asked Dan but the majority of the opinions by real estate agents around the country reading on this blog is they are not they usually are the last Lots and a brand new development there the last Lots to sell houses are usually built with a couple thousand less to make them more appealing to our audience because they they're not you know ideal necessarily in demand or in error as appreciated and so when it comes around to these assessments where we're taking the corner lot that may have a very immeasurable but a more difficult time to sell and and we're slapping a larger assessment on them just because they have wrote on two sides and so I just I think that per lot it just levels the playing field and it gets rid of all of the problems that we've had no not all of them cuz I think you brought up in previous discussions some lots will end up with a small with a larger assessment than what they do now but it seems to me that there's a minority of those and there's a majority of benefit coming out of this so it's the needs of the many outweigh the needs is a few and I think I just coined that for the first time did anybody else ever hear that yeah I think I was surprised to see how many of our neighboring cities do the per-unit and then we just did Southwest Burnsville with per-unit blocks rather than front footage so when we go down this road it's not a big step away we were already gotten owned this Road but I do see that the people who have smaller lines that 10,000 square foot Lots there are a lot more 10,000 square foot Lots than there are the others so there will be that the people with the larger Lots because their corner Lots are the ones who will have the benefit the other ones their assessments will all come up but there are more 10,000 square foot Lots because that's what it is in suburban areas so yeah and I saw that Hastings and burns were on up yeah but I was really surprised to see so many about Bloomington because you didn't include Bloomington and you had you know Edina and Eagan and I included our market studies and my understandings believe it's not it's not on Monica our front footage and same thing since our next-door neighbor your next-door neighbor yeah since the beginning of time you know and then there's flemeth Plymouth is I think they're bigger than us and square foot and square miles they're also bigger yeah yeah so what's interesting Sarah thinking okay yeah but some are gonna see that they're paying more than what they did before but I but when we go to the 6040 you're gonna probably take that forty percent and equalize that route all of them and then that's where the others are going to pay more where's yeah question though I mean I've been doing this quite a few years as most of us have how often does a home actually get assessed in the city well as far as like a lifetime of a road my road in my neighborhood was almost 50 years old yeah it was yeah and I don't recall having been assessed for maybe and overlay or something if they even had that prior to that so it's about 32 so there's a lot of residents all actually live here that will never ever be assessed yeah another's will maybe a couple times because of the longevity in the in the city itself and yeah okay so the direction to step is or move forward with looking at the per unit and how long that's gonna take and it's it's a long process so if we go 21 let's make sure that we do it right and the citizens are engaged and they all understand what's going to happen just one more question when you're going through all this could we get some sort of idea of the amount of staff time we're gonna save by going to this type of scenario you just mentioned that now you're gonna be able to count lots and instead of measuring every each and every lot and that's got to take a tremendous amount of time for you to have enough to mow the boulevards okay so clear you know don't don't worry about for this this year or next year it's 21 I just wanted that well okay and make sure that people are engaged and they understand what's gonna happen okay okay because we will be getting probably some complaints from those who were assessed last year and so can I just say one thing cuz I thought about that yeah it's it's kind of like when our taxes rates changed well they changed yeah yeah we used to pay this now we pay this you should be happy about that I know I just have it does we just we just need to be aware of it raise the awareness and understand that this is going to be part of the impact of any time we change things so okay thank you so much thank you Jen okay now we go to round table and there's one item in round table and then you wanted to talk about setbacks yes I was recently contacted by a resident who wanted to put a storage shed in his backyard he lives on off of Nicollet Avenue so he's got a road abutting the side of his yard and I met with him walked his property looked at the ordinance and initially thought the setback of 20 feet was from the road not his property line I said you're fine you're you're within the ordinance then got clarification and found out it's 20 feet from property line his property line is I walked it off it's 16 give or take a foot 16 feet from the curb so his the site of his story shed would end up 36 feet from the curb roughly it might be 38 actually but 36 for sure and I thought wow this is why do we have to force him 20 feet away from the property line because if he weren't a budding a road it could be five feet from the property line when there's another yard next door and our ordinance requires ten feet off the back property line and so in his particular case his his property elevation is quite a bit below the road it goes to the fence and then there's a drop a drop down and then he's got a bunker of landscaping timbers that drops another four and a half feet maybe to his backyard level so it's sort of down off the elevation of the road and he's got a wooden fence and then his yard in the backyard about half way through the yard drops off on they're three or four feet to another level so he's got two shelves of elevation in his backyard and so the twenty foot setback from the property line in his case would actually put his building his storage shed he wants to make it 12 feet wide 60 feet deep would overlap that drop-off and he would be forced to put in bricks mm-hmm Nicoll it and I don't know I didn't ask him if it would be okay to give out his so it's it's close to Sleepy hall yes close to the hall yeah so I stepped off 20 feet from the property line and and then another 12 and I went okay now he's gonna have to put a retaining wall support basically because his story shed would overlap that drop-off and I the whole thing got me thinking okay were five feet if we're again next to Yard 10 feet from the back but 20 feet when you're a budding a road well he's already 16 feet from the road now writing another 20 why are we forcing that shed if he's a budding a road to literally be in the middle of his backyard rather than closer to a corner let's say closer to the left to right back corner and and I I really questioned why because this is the first time in 12 years that I've ever had this scenario presented where I was walking a property applying our ordinance and going this doesn't make any sense to me why are we crying requiring this additional 20 feet because there's a road there versus not a road you know like the fight fluid or whatever and so I just thought 20 feet was a little excessive so I would like us to look at that I would like staff to maybe give me some give us some some thought behind what the rationale for the 20 feet is the additional I'll call it the extra 10 I think a 10-foot setback is logical you got 10-foot from the back property line make it 10 from from the site property line wrote or no Road and that's right now it's 5 if there's no Road but question when you talk about properly are you talking about 20 feet back from where the right away ends or no that person's property line based on the Dakota County is I don't know we have a big easement there on the clip because I see a well I'd like to find out there must have been a rationale on why there's it's a 20 foot setback from the road Jenny well madam mayor as we just talked about corner Lots typically in our ordinance corner Lots are 20 percent larger and I think on thoroughfares like this with larger anyways a lot of traffic is do you think safety in aesthetics you know when we have a corridor there and the by the way the principal structure setback is 20 feet so it lines up all the structures in that corridor whether you're on a corner lot or through lot if someone's very yard backs up to that so so I believe that's what the intent was was to keep clear view triangles on a corner and to keep that core door open visible if we've got sidewalks on there people feel safer when there's a little bit more open and the buildings are set back a little bit so it was a standard that that we put in place many years ago this of course predates all of us here you know of how we wanted our community to look right we want things to be lined up and so and and in this particular case there's a large right away we also have the tool of the variance one staff met with this person and you Dan talked about some unique circumstances and perhaps some practical difficulties and so I think the discussion is do you want to change the ordinance holistically or do we want someone to go through the variance process to deal with the situation on their lot we don't see this very often like you said that's a perfect tool for a variance or do you want to change change the look and feel of the community and let sheds be closer to a side yard than someone's house I can see where we may have we certain setback from the right away that maybe is equal to that of me being next door to my neighbor or something like that I mean quite frankly 21 feet of clearances I'm coming into an air-sex and I can see rearview of gives me plenty of eyeball space to see what's coming off the side streets on me and I'm always I'm always hesitant to do things by saying oh they can get a variance because the variances always cost them money and we don't I don't think we have to always do things that's going to cost our citizens money every and they want to come to this want to build something and you know I think we can find a nice safety part of it which I agree with intersections especially on corners they should be some clearance there so people can see but you know be a little more realistic and how far back you want to make them onto your property and yeah under their property their um the I don't know if this the sense has been there a long time right so the defense is on the property line and it's a standard solid wood you know six foot fence and so visibility wise you know there's some landscaping and that fence when you're coming from this side street the neighborhood to Nicollet actually isn't really all that great of sight line but that's because of the fence and the landscaping that's very close to the property line fences already there where the animals are there where the this structure would be in the you know that here's the front of this property and a Nicollet this the shed is going to be back there so to Jenny's point how it lines up visually might not be sight lines or visibility access you know for traffic reasons more just as you're looking down the road seeing sheds may be had different offsets you know the original goal was let's try and line things up houses are lined up like that with their setbacks and stuff so I kind of get that I just in this in this case I I'm and I did look at several other cities there 20 25 31 there's enough budding lot so everybody's kind of following that same rule for probably similar reasons I'm challenging it I don't think it's necessary now here's another alternative to is whether whether we move forward to change to take a look at that ordinance and maybe change that setback when there's a is one thing the other thing is in this particular case because we're the gentleman and his wife would like to put the shed would be a variance because they would get inside that 20 feet probably about 4 to 5 feet so a 15 foot setback rule would would actually allow him to put it closer to where he'd like to put it and it would keep him away from that drop-off in his yard so he wouldn't have to you know he could just use the flat area he wouldn't have to start building up a stone wall or brick wall to support the the right side would be we're facing south basically the right side of the building so that would help him in that scenario but the other thing I want to talk about is this variance staff said well you were asking for a variance so you need to come to reverence process and we need a $2000 ESCO probably gonna spend most if not all of it because you got to go in front of council we got all of staff work to do all this I don't think his sheds gonna cross to Graham so in this case I think we need to maybe change our approach to these storage sheds and make them administrative without the $2000 escrow costs because I think it's bad government to have a $2000 escrow required to build a shed that probably won't even be 2000 or might be 2000 but when the when the escrow and the city costs with permits equals or is greater than the cost of the shed Wow that just doesn't make sense to me so I'm sort of approaching two things one is the ordinance and then the other is is there an administrative way we can do these sheds these accessory sheds not an accessory building where there's going to be a bedroom you know in a two-car garage right that's different this is truly storage sheds for yard stuff okay Jenny a couple of comments on this particular issue on this particular lot the fence is in our right-of-way so I just want to caution you if we're trying to accommodate a particular homeowner I would suggest that you not do that as part of your discussion because there's some differences on this lot that could affect whether he can or can do it the gids look like whoever put the fence there long again our right-of-way so you can measure off the fence mayor these folks may or may not be able to do what they want even if you change the ordinance I think you should think of this broader are you okay with having a side yard setback on a corner lot to be out of alignment with where the house is and to what degree that is it may or may not solve the issue with this particular homeowner at the end of the day but because there's other issues with your slab and then regarding the costs and application so we've historically operated we we look at our fees on a market value basis what our market city's charging for all things that we do in the city when we do our budget right this is what we're asking you get as staff and cost recovery yeah and this council previous councils decided when it comes to development applications that developers homeowners should share the face of that and the taxpayer should not so there is a cost to process a variance and our fees for variance is $750 and the escrow is $1,000 but escrow for all other applications like a commercial application is $5,000 because we know that's gonna maybe be more intense and take take more resources and be more family with time more time and that's what we're trying to to recover as part of our pay our fee philosophy so the basic fee and we looked at this a couple of years ago I think you had asked us to look at this at the budget when we looked at from a market comparison where cities are all over the board when it comes to these kinds of fees right so some of them charge a lower fee for a resident a lower fee for a variance they may charge $3,000 for a PUD and $100 a lot you know so the fees really really vary but I think my recollection was at the time when we looked at the fees we decided not to raise them because we were right in the market yeah and because we have the escrow that covers recovers our costs for any exorbitant or staff time to do the review right and whatever who's left goes back to them it does but the 750 really is we actually spend more than that on a cost recovery basis to process any given application they still need a public hearing we have you know software costs that we approve every year we've got fees that pay for our Community Development and permanent this is spread about everything cost to turn the lights on I don't charge my time or Melanie's time Orion's time to review staff reports and to meet with developers that initial fee kind of covers a pre-meeting that we would have with an applicant right a couple meetings after that before they make application walking them through the application process public hearing notices those kind of the things that apply to every application is what sets that standard fee so this is again a discussion of policy of the council if you want to subsidize those applications and have the rest of the taxpayers pay for that we can lower the fee we can not charge an escrow but that would be a 180 or thinking completely different councilmember Keely then what we have on other things so that's why that's why we do what we do and we certainly can change it to you whatever your wishes are I think the in this case when we get to accessory dwellings versus accessory sheds like storage sheds do we have a size of shed that falls below requiring a public hearing and that whole process for someone to put up a twelve by twelve to put their mower and stuff in or do we really make everybody go through all of that just to put it a little shed in their back yard to put all their yard tools yeah Ginetta mayor members of the council if they meet the setback yes it was just a building permit so if it's 200 square feet or less you do not need a building permit but you still have to meet the setbacks yeah if it's but fifty square office if it's up 50 to 200 we would have a thing called a zoning permit so that gives us a quick review do you meet setbacks a little drawing of where it's gonna be we have limitations on height 15 feet tall and its square footage sizes anything less than 50 square feet you don't need a zoning or a building government for but not everybody goes through this process we have sheds built all the time that are done administratively gotcha so what do you well then I I think and I in and I wasn't trying to carve out something for one person my issue as I stated earlier is I think 20 foot setback off a property line is way more than necessary and I I would agree that all the other cities do the same thing I just think it's it's unnecessary ten foot in my opinion is plenty so why don't we ask to have to bring back the impacts of ten versus twenty on these corner Lots because is that the only place that you would see this yeah cuz all the other circumstances that's fighting yeah I mean if it's if he were to put it on the other side of his lawn which would be the opposite you know being the garden area and I've saved meas garages on this side he could stick up five feet from the property line of his neighbor yeah administrative leave without any variance and yeah his neighbor might not be thorough about that but you know he's putting it on the side it's not it's just or 12 by 16 15 foot tall it's a decent size Jenni madam mayor members of the council will do whatever you ask but with all due respect to our resources we've got a housekeeping ordinance that we are about to publish for on Thursday if you know or believe this is something you want to change without staff coming back and doing research and impacts we can just roll the ten-foot change into that but if you do if you do think your mind may go another way or there is not consensus then we'll bring back information but really just trying to use our resources effectively if you have a strong feeling one way or the other well let me ask you deal with this on an ongoing basis that 10-foot setback on those corner Lots from a thoroughfare because that's what Nicolette is is a thoroughfare for you Jenni and Ryan what are the impacts yeah there's a sight triangle part of the ordinance for sight line that's what it always has to do with public safety we'd have to make sure that that wouldn't supersede that particular part of the ordinance yeah to make sure that we can see around it if I may one one way that might help solve this person's problem perhaps they could talk with us and say why is there 16 feet of right away between is it on the back of a sidewalk maybe for the fence if there's another foot or two it's 18 feet yeah what I'm saying is maybe we have excess right over there I couldn't tell you without knowing it you know vacation of easement yeah I would ask them to come in and talk with staff and see what that is all about because then maybe it could be solved could be but that's trying to find a solution just for this one I have a major problem with the 20 foot setback no which came out of this and I I'm like here but if you hold this project I don't have any idea why we require 20 feet because now you've got 36 foot clearly there's no sight problem whatsoever I mean it's so far off Nicklin and in his case his his yard sinks down so yeah isn't definitely not but let's assume that all Lots are flat and there is a concern for that I think 10 foot plus our existing easement or you know right away is is sufficient for any need I honestly don't understand the rest now on the 20 at all or 25 or 30 whatever it is that only four corner Lots madam mayor that's correct now we recall we just had a discussion on through lots and yes proposing to change that from 30 feet again kind of that's the front down to you honey so it was thought everything could kind of line up and that wouldn't be an issue so we're going reducing it 10 through lot you got a phone on us both sides Oh a few of those in the time where they have two fronts basically yeah and sometimes have a side road yeah three sides in row and we just changed that so maybe a look at reducing it to where it doesn't get outside the sector angle so it maybe 10 feet by feet that may be what it is that make it work or not I just want to make sure that those sight lines and that Public Safety principle that we put in place in everything that we do is is that here too so many mere sight lines so the principal the front yard setback is still 30 feet yes all the sight triangle just gets narrowed at the 30 foot that apart so you still have to be 30 feet off the front you can't have your shed closer to the street than your house for instance so I think we'd be okay from somebody turning a corner you're probably seeing more of the landscape and fences then you are somebody's shed in my opinion but it's also sight lines when you go through a visual quarter corridor and we've talked about this right the wider the street the faster people think they can go the more you can see the faster you it's safer you feel it's that that kind of visibility traffic thing and there's going to be things closer to the right of way than they were allowed in the past changes the feel and perhaps perhaps some safety this from that stamp those people don't maybe I don't I don't like making decisions without a lot of information I don't see an issue with this but for a resetting ourselves up for unintended consequences and somewhere else it just I mean the proposal is ten feet from the property line and so in every case there's going to be right away an easement to the street so it's whatever that is plus another ten I think that's where I where I started to go by why are we doing this why is it 20 and and more lining up it's just it's a visual sight line it's its aesthetic pure there's because there he's way off the corner I mean he's 16 of the 18 feet right off the corner already and his fence is more of a sight line or I mean safety sight line not not aesthetic sight line safety sight line issue and but everybody down aisle not everybody but a lot of houses down that street have fences and you know so their houses are set back like you know like 45 feet from from Nicollet we're sinking my house on a corner lot if I took the easement and then 10 and I guess now I'm getting into the weeds here but because I could do it on my side yard or my front yard or are we talking about just the rear yard and this is the people said I want to make sure side yard its rear side so I mean if they did that my house would be kind of smack dab in the middle of my yard which is I guess my right to do that but the entire city because this is not solving one person's problem this is how does it affect all other properties in the city so if you go ten I'm just looking yeah so there's Spence so but I'm not opposed but I just um I don't want to make a decision something with more understanding all that yeah all over the city Jenny murmurs we're happy to bring that back I just threw that out what list you may not be able to get to it as quickly as we can because we've got parking and Tod we got other things that we're working on but we will add it to the stand work sessions are filling up so we will we will add it to the list and bring back more information and I think the better information we have the better the decision we make for this for the city as a whole yeah we can once we get the information back from Steny many members of the council any ordinance change like this 2totango has to go to the planet come yeah but first it has to come to us that the information is going to come to us then we give direction once we give direction then then it goes through the process how long do you think this one all based on your workload but we're talking a few months I believe so I think we were into the fall if not the end of the year when you look at our work session yeah because we only have okay when does your when does the resident want to put up a shed he came into said he hauled him by a permit to do it and then ran into this $2,000 for 1750 1750 variance process to put it where he'd like to put it again if he puts it 20 foot setback it's there's that hardship of there's unlevel land so he's got to go to more expense to build up and it's not where I want it I want it I wouldn't want it the mill my backyard now you create two small halves but you can't do much with when you you you have done on'y like yard for kids to play in because you've cut it into two halves so I and where I've seen more sheds than I have seen in the middle of the backyard I've seen him in the corners yeah generally speaking they're in the corners when there's no a budding side road because they can go five feet from the side and ten people in the back in his case cuz he's got a road oh no he's has got to go in the middle they are I don't agree with that I think it's there's no common sense to it and I'd like to change it sooner than later but I respect and it's his desire for more information well I think we all need to get better information speak to one other councilmember nobody else but but the person who's missing and she was all in favor of making the change she what she said let's just make an administrative thing and not even put a person through variance I said I think I'd like to just get it change the ten feet and she was a hundred percent agreement and that's only person I spoke to government does work so staff is going to bring back some more information for I know and then we can make the decision and then and then direct staff to go forward whichever direction it goes is that okay that's my man we're just looking at our agenda I mean what are you what did you say that you're bringing that back well looking at our there is time on your July work session but it's a matter of staff resource and if we can what I was asking wasn't wasn't the long road but yours oh we're publishing on Thursday for our housekeeping ordinance and that has some things we've got other direct well I just we can amend and there's no no problem with that because we can always amend the housekeeping ordinance and we've done that before so let's make sure that stack rings that those information we need to make a good decision other ways it wedding on Thursday next week to the plan you have two weeks to the Planning Commission a housekeeping yes that's that's actually gonna go through the yeah janitor mayor members of the council we're working on a housekeeping ordinance that has several changes in it you've already given us direction on there's real lots stuff from the audio work session yeah height requirement so there's a bunch of things in there and we're publishing for that on Thursday yet for the Planning Commission meeting not next week but the posters so once we publish we have to put in every section of the ordinance that we're changing and our notice so I just threw that out there if you're ready to go let's do it but your you want additional information and it's gonna get fleshed out at planning then I guess maybe that's where my thought was is if if we had an opportunity to flesh it out so if you think there's enough time to give it no no there's always I would really know for them unless you give direction to just do it yeah but there's not enough time to yeah that's a work session background and you yeah so you're no I mean if she I believe Miss Faulkner offered to slot it into that publication to get it into that process look you're just getting the background out it's gonna take them a little time still doing yeah Jim and members of the council our red line housekeeping is already done that work is done and our staff is busy with permits and other activities what would you not want us to do to take care of her offer earlier oh yeah but I like your backing off of it no I'm hearing consent that there's not a strong consensus to throw it on I sawed out in I saw Planning Commission process member workman the background information that the mayor's also asking for the impacts of this we generally don't do that little keeping ordinance and that's kind of taking that's gonna take more time to put together the impacts are of the whole city then just do a redline ordinance change okay we'll slide it in when we can all right okay thank you all right reports Vince you have any report I do actually I wrote them this week instead of saying nothing fire muster we have the Como Zoo secured for Saturday and we met with Jason Hopkins of I got skills who runs a soccer clinic about potentially setting up a soccer tournament at the fire muster this year which was bring in a whole crew of people that may have never been there before and then we went on the Met Council Orange Line tour last week councilman Ricky Lee and I got to sit next to the chair and get to know her and told her all about our freeway landfill and everything else going on in town it was a very productive right along dad yes last week at the Dakota broadband we did make an offer for an executive director and we're waiting on background and psychology tests and all things to come through with that so hopefully by next month I'll be reporting that we do have a new executive director approved how much is that gonna cost the city of Burnsville what is our we're already contributing in that so it's yeah we're there it's already in depth of our contribution so we're good on that okay and then we had my CVB meeting was last week really good discussions on a lot of different things we're gonna do a retreat June 20th and we'll be talking about everything from hotels to bylaw changes which Dan McElroy is leading that charge on that and it's it's pretty exciting it was nice to have Marty Dahl there I think he's gonna be a really good addition he's yeah his communications along with the marketing the CVB I think is a really good fit so it's just looking very positive right now and everyone's pretty excited over there so and the golf tournament is coming up June 6 the same day as our first party on the plaza so anyone wants to go to the CVB golf tournament at berm wood they can go to CBB and sign up for it and then afterwards head over to the party on the plaza which promises to be a lot of fun was it on June 16 June 6 yeah all drain I love Burnsville week and with Dan I 35 thanks to the work of our own mr. Ryan Peterson we were able to get a speaker to talk about autonomous vehicles thank you for your work in rounding that person up it was a truckers association the head of the truckers Association I wasn't at the meeting exactly no I know I'm looking around going he got the guy here I'd asked to get some help in and he came through and I said where's right but anyway they it was a good presentation pretty interactive it dispelled some some myths or and filled in a lot of blanks on information that generally people don't know that's the first of more to come I'd like to pursue some of the members or former members of governor Dayton's autonomous vehicle task force to come in and and take a deeper dive into the facts because a lot of a lot of interesting stuff coming down that has impact but they're very long-term and I think what people were what motivated me to ask for this was a lot of people just dropping that while everything's gonna change when autonomous vehicles are here and when you're talking transportations like it's it's like wow when that next iPhone comes you know that has the foldable screen no one will want any you know non foldable screen well when is that going to come what does that really mean what is it you know how does it work and so one of the more interesting things that came out and this was a CES presentation by dom ler they said they would have a stage or a level for autonomous vehicle ready for production by 2021 which is not far away and there are five levels of autonomous vehicles level one is not autonomous and we're all driving level one autonomous means there's nothing a ton of us about it or automated level five is there is absolutely no human interaction with the car whatsoever it is a 100% fully automated vehicle so number four is very very close to that with very little human driver interventions and so it is definitely a technology that's moving very quickly forward I mean I'm thinking to myself as a as a policymaker on a city council could be some interesting discussions when level two three four there's level two being tested and three on the roads today in Minnesota unbeknownst to most law enforcement and there's a bill at the Capitol to help rein that in commissioner workman told the story a couple the last couple meetings of being followed by an autonomous vehicle and she kind of freaked her out the first time when she notice there was no human silhouette driving the car and it was following a little close and what she noted in this story at this particular meeting was that that car also caught across three lanes on the interstate to head to exit which I believe our law enforcement officer can can attest whether you're supposed to just zip across three lanes are you supposed to take one lane at a time carefully and it apparently zipped right across three lanes and to make the exit at which kind of shocked her as well so there's some interesting testing going on in the state of Minnesota and it's been in Arizona in New Mexico and other states for quite some time but very interesting presentation a lot comings one day will we'll be dealing with that I'm sure at a discussion point I the orange line tour that councilmember workman talked about was was really was really good everything's under construction so it wasn't like we were seeing they did provide a handout which had renderings of all of the stations along the orange line so everyone was looking at their paper and then they were pointing it's gonna be over there type of thing but some good coverage by Fox nine a reporter got on the bus with the cameraman and followed and did segments along the way and it was good NBTA some reason I didn't take notes and I'm not sure there was anything of major it was all legislative related anyway the I know was a lot of legislative discussions right now in funding so but nothing of major there's a brand new we got a big update from I'm trying to think of the acronym for the company anyway its vehicle monitoring software it's a new system it's a very expensive system being installed on all the buses and they gave us a basically a stage update of where we're at in the process and so far everything's been going very well and then we got to get on a brand new bus actually the orange line that was a new bus one of the two-part buses with the accordion in the middle i sat in the back section and I have to tell you that was a long time since I've done that when I lived in LA the last time was probably 20-some years ago I wrote on the bus it's very interesting when it takes a turn and you're going forward and he's supposed to do that it's a little bit like a movie where the trains are derailing and that train goes that way you keep report that suddenly you follow it around it was an interesting experience that's it we're obviously all watching the legislature and from the transportation standpoint we are definitely paying attention to every detail okay Regional Council of Mayors we had our meeting on Monday and we had a great report from the new president and CEO of Greater MSP with all the things that's going on and one of the things that Greater MSP continues to work on is our talent retention attraction and also growth and and then the whole new look to the future with greater MSP and how to look at our diversity and how we also attract entrepreneurs and what needs to be done so that continues to move forward we also had a report from the Red Cross and the work that the Red Cross does in Minnesota and throughout the country and internationally and one of the things that they continue to look at is blood and we are one of those organizations that have a blood drive but there's a big need for blood throughout the whole country and how the Red Cross interacts with our fire with regards to making sure that homes whether they're multifamily or single-family have smoke detectors and also they pay attention to carbon footprint and all of that and then how they work with the why and the thing that they also stress is that all Minnesotans should know how to swim because we live in a land of eleven thousand lakes and also how do we help save our children when they fall into a pool you know and they and they also want to make sure that all of us know how to do what is it Joe when someone is having a heart attack CPR yeah so that we should all be trained to do CPR that helps them and then the other part that we're doing as mayors of the state of Minnesota is bringing us together the Metro mayors and the mayors of Greater Minnesota and we've been doing this for the last two years and for the first we've been out to Bemidji Duluth's Owatonna Owatonna and and now we're coming into the metro area but for mayor is all of us have the same issues they're all in different degrees they're challenged with transportation issues how to get to that they're challenged with roads and we know what it's it's at a different degree but they also get a lot of money and then their roads gets reconstructed but they go for miles and miles and it's not highly traveled as our roads so we all we talked about those things because one of the things that have happened in the past when legislators run they blame mayors and and cities but they the the Greater Minnesota folks don't get as much money because the the regional people are saying that they need the money so they so what we decided to years ago as mayor's is that you know let's not have somebody define who we are that we define ourselves and how we work together so that's where that's at and so they're going to be here this week and we'll do that the Burnsville community community foundation we're continuing to work on homage and getting all of that money raised for homage to of the three sculpture pieces have already been to the foundry and then so the other one is yeah the last one is going to go so working on all of that they're an unveiling this fall but we're just waiting for all of that so that's that's continuing to move forward the other part is that the Burnsville Community Foundation has partnered with students and they're doing our social media campaign yeah so we've partnered with them and so it's really interesting the students have have asked questions about if we're and they already put up a Twitter page Facebook page an Instagram page and all of that but they asked the members of the of the foundation why is this organization important to you and what do you get ahead so a different question so that while they're building the communication piece that goes out so the students are doing that for us and they're also doing a crowdsourcing camping we yeah for young for homage and for other things that the foundation needs to do so that's all coming along real well and the International Festival we're moving right along continuing to raise money and we also got a grant so yeah Margot Swenson was our grant writer and so she's doing that part are you ready Tom who gave you the grant ah you know what I was kind of joking about fire musters tisha okay all of that is and so you all have seen Melanie's report on our work at the legislature mm-hmm and we're still working hard you saw the letter that Melanie and I wrote to make sure that we get on the omnibus tax bill I have to thank representative Cantrell and Elise man for the work that they've done to put it into the house omnibus bill it's not on the Senate and we wanted to get into the Senate and you've seen all of that I said to Melanie if we have to go back down we need to go back down to the legislature and we need to have that conversation because the things that I saw didn't make sense to me that it was going to cost the state it it's not going to cost the state they're gonna make money ahead of us ours legs so that was a confusing piece to me I said to Melanie I don't know where this is coming from but somebody doesn't know what they're talking about so that's what's going on and we have a good plan for icsc yeah and I've made a lot of tax we're having meetings with ICSC and we're having meeting with the executive VP of ICS CNN we're also having meetings with Sara touch so we got that also reached out to Stirling and I haven't heard back from them I heard back from CBL and they're going to be there and so it's going to be very productive very good so all of that is going well Melanie do you have anything else to add to all of that I think today because no formal any do we know anything else about what's happening at the legislature I think you all covered it madam mayor yeah no more new information today information tonight okay I forgot one thing the chamber held a County MnDOT City MBTA and Metro transit transportation forum I believe it was called transportation forum was May 7th I was there at Keller Williams offered up their large motivational conference room the walls are just lined with all kinds of inspiring motivational types and stuffs was a very positive room to be in and first up was our very own Ryan Peterson who did a phenomenal job covering the plan a and plan B for the landfill clean up showing the on a large screen the green pyramid versus an incredible billion dollar valuation development when it's all done and and then tied in the transportation cliff and the 35w bridge and into that whole presentation but I hats off Ryan that was an outstanding presentation I'm so glad that you brought that landfill clean up into the discussion because it has transportation impacts and there are a lot of people away from all levels of government and MnDOT spoke Dakota County spoke Ryan spoke on behalf and say the MBTA and Metro Transit so it I don't know the last time they've done one like this but the attendance was pretty good and it was the first one I know of of this nature in a long time and chamber was very pleased that that everyone involved in transit from the state to the city and and our local transit providers were able to be there and presented updates on things that are going on that could impact Birdsville Orange Line was of course part of that presentation so it was good oh and by the way on that tour Regina got the microphone that's right and was doing a tour guide presentation when we were driving around personal so she did a nice job good Melanie is there anything else no madam mayor okay Michelle anything else Ryan and Jenny a buckets full okay we stand adjourned I'm holding on to those numbers