[00:00:00] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Calling this meeting to order. I'm calling this meeting to order. The first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance, so please rise. [00:00:15] **Everyone**: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [00:00:30] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, will the Clerk please do the roll? [00:00:35] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Councilmember Kada? [00:00:37] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: Here. [00:00:38] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Councilmember Olsen? [00:00:39] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Here. [00:00:40] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Councilmember Thiede? [00:00:41] **Councilmember Dave Thiede**: Here. [00:00:42] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Councilmember Garza? [00:00:43] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: Here. [00:00:44] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Mayor Bailey? [00:00:45] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Here. [00:00:46] **Tammy Anderson (City Clerk)**: Mayor for a Day Lily Schmidt? [00:00:48] **Lily Schmidt**: Here. [00:00:49] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: There we go. All right, so the next item on our agenda this evening is open forum. This is the opportunity for anybody who wants to speak on something that's not on tonight's agenda is welcome to do so. We did have a sign-up sheet out in the entryway. We did have one individual that signed up, so we'll start with that one. In case somebody missed it, I believe Rachel L... Miss? Yep, if you would just like to go on and state your name and address for the record please, and welcome. [00:01:20] **Rachel L.**: Good evening. I'm here representing LeafLine Labs, 8235 97th Street South here in Cottage Grove. Good evening Mayor, Mayor for a Day, City Council members. My name is Rachel L. I'm a long-term resident of Minnesota, currently living in Inver Grove Heights with my husband and daughter. I'm the operational compliance manager for LeafLine Labs, and LeafLine also owns the eight RISE dispensaries in the state of Minnesota. I started in LeafLine in 2015, so when the building first opened, I was one of the folks that helped move in the first round of plants into the building. So I've been part of the organization for almost 10 years now, so it's been a very rewarding career opportunity for myself. Early on, I started out by helping to manage the cultivation facility, so very familiar with the operations that go on there. LeafLine has been headquartered in Cottage Grove since 2015 and it's one of only two companies currently licensed by the state to cultivate, manufacture, and dispense medical cannabis products. We currently serve over 48,000 Minnesotans that are enrolled in the medical cannabis program, including a lot of juvenile patients. We currently employ 67 Minnesotans in union-representative positions at our Cottage Grove facility, and we've invested millions of dollars at our operation at Cottage Grove, building robust distribution channels ensuring that our safe, high-quality products reach patients across our eight medical dispensaries. I'm here tonight to urge the city council to revise the proposed ordinance that was approved by the Planning Commission on October 28th and work with you towards a solution that benefits us all. The ordinance includes a 40-acre minimum requirement for cannabis cultivation, which would present a significant challenge for our continued operations and immediate compliance. We recommend that the city reduce this minimum acreage requirement to 20 acres. We would also welcome the opportunity to work with the city on adding a use option that would accommodate existing cannabis operators and reflect modern cultivation practices. As a proven good corporate citizen, we are committed to working collaboratively with the city to ensure that LeafLine has continued operations. Doing so will protect our dedicated workforce and ensure consistent access to the medications relied upon by thousands of Minnesotans, including several vulnerable populations. We remain steadfast in our commitments to our employees, our patients, the city of Cottage Grove, and we will continue to meet all of the odor reduction and operational requirements. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight and for considering these critical needs to medical cannabis patients and the role that LeafLine plays in supporting this community. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions or address any concerns that you have either now or at a later time. [00:04:15] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Okay, thank you Rachel. So, what we'll do is we do take all that information in and then we'll work with our staff. So thank you for coming, I appreciate it. And yes, they've been a great business partner in the community. Good. All right, was there any... no one else had signed up. Was there anybody else that wants to speak during open forum at this point? Okay, so at this point I'm going to close open forum and we're going to move on to number five, which is adoption of the agenda. [00:04:45] **Councilmember Dave Thiede**: Move the agenda. [00:04:46] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Second. [00:04:47] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, so we have a motion by Councilmember Thiede, second by Councilmember Olsen. All of those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:04:54] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:04:55] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. So that's adoption of the agenda. Next on our agenda is kind of what is a special evening this evening, right? And this is... we're going to do a presentation. I'm going to ask Council to join me down in the front. We have next to me here Lily Schmidt, who is the Mayor for a Day. She was one of many students that presented or submitted letters about why or what they would want to do if they were a Mayor for a Day or Mayor of Cottage Grove. And so, I got a chance to look at many of them. It was tough, but I have to tell you, her penmanship was amazing. So, she got today... she got to spend a lot of time learning about all the different departments and agencies around the City of Cottage Grove. Fire truck... what else did you get to drive? [00:05:40] **Lily Schmidt**: A Zamboni. [00:05:41] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Zamboni, yeah! She remembers that because I keep saying I've never, as Mayor for 16 years, been on a Zamboni yet, but she has. And what was your favorite thing? [00:05:52] **Lily Schmidt**: Down at Public Works. [00:05:53] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: What did you do? [00:05:54] **Lily Schmidt**: Digger! [00:05:55] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Yeah, she liked to do down and Ryan Burfeind, our Public Works Director, is smiling because her favorite part of the day today was doing the digging and the machines down at Public Works. So, she had a great time. We had some pizza before the meeting here. I got a chance to read to the entire Council and staff the great letter that she wrote about the City of Cottage Grove. Just kind of encapsulating a little bit before we go down and present her with a certificate of appreciation: she's very much about the environment, wants to make sure that we all get together and work together, also picking up trash and litter and things around the community, and would love to see us plant more trees because trees are important, correct? There we go. Council, why don't you join Lily and I and let's walk down into the front up here and we're going to present you with a certificate. We'll get it for you. You don't need it. I did notice she did have this... she has totally Cottage Grove with the strawberry on there. And so as I was sharing with you earlier, Lily's had the opportunity today to see and be a part of a variety of groups and parts of our city. Took a lot of tours. She got picked up by our Director of Public Safety in a police car out in front of her school, so that was kind of cool. And then Dad, obviously, who's out in the audience here, got a chance to hone in on this too and have some good times. So what we want to do is, we think this is special and I think it's important to get our youth involved, no matter what the age is, into local government and becoming more of a part of our community. And so what we're doing here is, I'm just gonna... after a great day here—and I know her dad told me she's got dance tonight yet, right?—and so we're giving her a certificate of appreciation. It basically says presented this day to Lily Schmidt, and in sincere appreciation for your service to the City of Cottage Grove, Minnesota, Mayor for a Day, Wednesday, November 6, 2024. And it's obviously signed by the acting, non-acting Mayor... this is the Mayor right here! So now, after I hand her the certificate, I get to have the Mayor's job back, right? There we go. So I'm going to present that to you there, and then we'll see if anybody wants to take some pictures. Are we good? There we go. So let's give a round of applause! And Lily, I'm going to give you this too because you get that with you, okay? And then we'll walk up there, we'll grab some of the stuff. I know you got some patches from the Public Safety department, Odin, one of our stuffed animals that's one of our police dogs. So we're very excited to have you. And I know you got a lot of candy up at the ice rink—I did hear that, right? Was it good? All right, cool. And I also hear Public Works presented her with a street sign that says Lily Avenue. So again, kind of a neat thing for kids these days. Next year we do this again, hopefully we'll see a lot more people joining in. So thank you for being the Mayor for a Day here in Cottage Grove. We truly appreciate it. Okay. All right, so let's go grab your stuff. I know Dad wants to get you out of here. Thank you. [00:09:45] **Everyone**: [Applause] [00:10:00] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Thank you Lily, we'll see you around! Have fun dancing. Congratulations. Say hi to everybody for me, Mom and Grandma. Great work. All right, that is always fun to do every year. I love doing that. All right, the next order of business is the consent agenda. I'll ask Council: is there anything you want to pull off of this evening's consent agenda? All right, so not seeing any, do I have a motion? [00:10:30] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: I'll move the consent agenda. [00:10:31] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: Second. [00:10:32] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, we have a motion by Councilmember Olsen, second by Councilmember Kada. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:10:40] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:10:41] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. So if you are here for anything on tonight's consent agenda, all of those items have been approved. Number eight on our agenda is approved disbursement; 8A is to pay the bills. [00:10:55] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: I move to pay the bills. [00:10:56] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: Second. [00:10:57] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Second by Councilmember Kada. Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:11:03] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:11:04] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. Moving right along, nine is public hearings; there are none this evening. 10 is Bid Awards, and we actually do have two this evening. The first one is the Low Zone Water Tower bid award, and our Director of Public Works, Ryan Burfeind, is going to walk us through this one. So Ryan, welcome. [00:11:25] **Ryan Burfeind (Public Works Director)**: Thank you Mayor, members of the Council. So tonight, I'm talking about our Low Zone Water Tower project, for which we took bids October 24th, so about two weeks ago. We did take bids on this project. Just a reminder for Council on where this is located really quickly: this is kind of just south of the park-and-ride along the frontage road, just kind of behind the railroad tracks, really close to Hamlet Park. You can see it in the red star. And just for the Council or for the public, because it's not very often that we build a water tower, here's some renderings just as a reminder of what we're going to be building here in the city. A little different tower in that we call it a composite tower, so it's got a concrete column and then a metal bowl at the top. You can see that in the renderings from East Point Douglas Road and Hamlet Park in the pictures here. And that's really a cost-savings measure that you don't need to deal with all the painting of that column like we do all of our other water towers. Looking at our bid results, we did get three bids for this project. You can see the engineers' estimate was just under $6 million, and we had two contractors that were below that engineers' estimate amount: Gerard Tank and Steel and Landmark Structures. One thing that's a little different with towers, but pretty typical for water towers, is to have experience requirements. So we did have experience requirements in the project specifications for this project. Like I said, this is pretty standard for water towers; a lot of communities and different entities use these just because it's a little different project. Obviously, they're much more complex than a lot of our street and utility projects where we do not have experience requirements. For this project, they were set at having completed three 1.5-million-gallon composite elevated tanks—so it's an elevated tower and it has that composite nature—in the last five years. The bidders were required to submit their experience requirements after the bid, and with Gerard Tank and Steel, they have only completed one composite elevated tank, which is 400,000 gallons, so they do not meet our experience requirements that were set in the specification. They do have some larger towers that are under construction now, but our specs are very clear: it does have to be completed. So we are really held to that; we can't waver from the standards with the bidding that we did take. Landmark Structures, they have completed eight 1.5-million-gallon tanks in the last five years, so they did meet the experience requirements. So due to all of that, the bid award resolution does include our rejecting Gerard Tank and Steel's bid because they do not meet those experience requirements. And with that, there's two recommendations in front of you: one is the bid award, and the other is a resolution related to the bonding. Because we are bidding it in 2024 but not bonding until 2025, that's why we have this additional resolution just declaring our intent to reimburse the project with those bonds in 2025. With that, I'll stand for any questions. [00:14:15] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Great, sounds good. Council, any questions for Ryan on this topic? [00:14:20] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: Is there any unique challenges in the design or service requirements of this water tower that would have excluded certain vendors from bidding for this project? [00:14:30] **Ryan Burfeind (Public Works Director)**: Mr. Mayor, Councilmember Kada, so specific to the tower, I mean I would say it is a standard composite elevated tank. Access is a little different, a little challenging; it's right by railroads so there's some extra requirements on that, working with the railroad to get access. But in terms of precluding certain bidders, it's really just those project qualification requirements which, in this case, does exclude Gerard Tank and Steel. Obviously, it's like I said, it's typical to have those standards. They could be slightly higher or lower but, based on the experience requirements they submitted, really even if it was smaller standards, they just have not completed those towers. Like I said, they do have ones under construction, but the way they were set—and that is typical, you want projects to be completed to meet that qualification—they just don't meet it at this time. [00:15:30] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: All right, thank you. [00:15:31] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, Council, any other questions for Ryan? Okay, so Council, as you can see before you on the screen, there's as Ryan mentioned, two separate motions that we'll need to go through. So who would like to do number one? [00:15:45] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: I move to adopt resolution 2024-151 awarding the bid for the Low Zone water tower to Landmark Structures 1 LP in the total amount of $5,183,000. [00:16:00] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: Second. [00:16:01] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, so I have a motion by Councilmember Kada, do I have a second? Second by Councilmember Garza. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:16:10] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:16:11] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. And who would like number two? [00:16:15] **Councilmember Dave Thiede**: I'll move to approve resolution 2024-156 declaring the official intent of the City of Cottage Grove to reimburse certain expenditures from the proceeds of bonds to be issued by the city with respect to the construction of the Low Zone water tower. [00:16:30] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Second. [00:16:31] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Second by Councilmember Olsen. Again, any discussion? All right, seeing none here either, all those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:16:40] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:16:41] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Ryan. And we do have one more item under Bid Awards this evening, which is the Kingston Park electrical improvements bid award, and our Parks and Rec Director Zac Dockter is going to walk us through this one. [00:17:00] **Zac Dockter (Parks and Recreation Director)**: Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. We took bids for the Kingston Park electrical improvements on October 31st. Just to remind Council of the project area, this is the Kingston Park location, and the objective of this project was to increase power capacity while also improving access to power for all the large events that happen at Kingston—large or small events that happen at Kingston Park. We would be adding 10 parking lot/security lights at the facility, and each one of those parking lot security lights on the poles would have an outlet source for vendors to use or the Athletic Association or whoever might be using the park at that time. There was a layout of the lighting system around the parking lot. There were six firms that submitted bids. Kilmer Electric provided the lowest bid and does meet all the bid and contractor requirements. Their bid was $152,345. So the staff recommendation for resolution 2024-154 is on the screen for you to review. [00:18:10] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Fantastic, thank you Mr. Dockter. [00:18:12] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Zac, thanks. Could you just take a moment or two and paint a little picture verbally for people regarding this project and then sort of the larger scope of how this fits into some of the grand improvements that you're looking to make at Kingston Park? Because this is kind of step one. [00:18:30] **Zac Dockter (Parks and Recreation Director)**: Councilmember Olsen and Council, so this site has been wholly underpowered since it was created back in 1987. So we haven't really had the ability to expand the power grid much there in terms of adding outlets or things like that. We're actually getting a power source from Indian Boulevard now; it currently comes from 75th. So Xcel will help us move the power from Indian Boulevard which allows us to increase capacity. So we'll have a new transformer there, and then should the Council decide to replace the building in the future, we would be powered up for something like that, or if it's additional lighting for picnic shelters or security or additional cameras or things like that. So we're kind of at the limit of our power source there right now. This kind of sets the tone for the future and, as you were alluding to Councilmember Olsen, there's certainly a growing usage of Kingston Park in many different regards of all the different events and activities. It's a great park, it's a great campus with the connection to the elementary and the middle school there, so there's just a lot of space there and it just keeps getting used more and more for bigger events, and this will help in that regard across the board. [00:19:45] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Thank you. And then timing? When are you envisioning that this work would begin, and would it have any impact on some of those events that we know take place at the park every year? [00:20:00] **Zac Dockter (Parks and Recreation Director)**: Good question, Councilmember Olsen. Part of the reason we're taking the bids now is so that we can get those materials on order and get Xcel's schedule in line. It takes them some time to obviously catch up with all their work orders for projects like this to expand on electrical. We hope to have this project done by May, early June, before any of the major events take place. [00:20:25] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. [00:20:28] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right Council, any other questions on this topic? I know we've had a few workshops about this, so that's all good. All right, so if somebody would like to do the motion and or the second for the recommendation. [00:20:40] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: I'll move to adopt resolution 2024-154 awarding the bid for the Kingston Park electrical improvements to Kilmer Electric in the total amount of $152,345. [00:20:55] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: Second. [00:20:56] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Second by Councilmember Garza. Again, any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:21:03] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:21:04] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you Zac. All right, next on our agenda is number 11 which is a regular agenda. We actually don't have anything specific on a regular agenda this evening. Believe it or not, we are down to Council comments and requests, and I will start with Councilmember Kada. [00:21:25] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: Nothing to add. [00:21:26] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Nothing to add? Okay, sounds good. I'll move on then to Councilmember Olsen. [00:21:30] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: Thank you Mayor. I have a couple of things. First of all, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate firefighter Ryan Spee on his recent retirement. Ryan achieved 20 years of service to the Cottage Grove Fire Department and Public Safety team. And this is kind of an auspicious retirement because his dad Dave Spee also worked for the fire department and... Pete, you're going to have to correct me if I'm wrong, but did Dave make 40 years? Close. So between Dave and Ryan, it was a long time having a Spee or two on the roster, and it'll be the first time in a long time we don't have that. But Ryan is a tremendous individual who gave just thousands of hours to our community as part of the fire department. He handled a lot of different things, retired as a lieutenant with the department. He had his hand in training and he had his hand in a lot of the documentation of that training that is required to be sent to the state. He was a very key component as part of our part-time team and he will be sorely missed, but we wish him well in his retirement. The other thing I wanted to mention about Cottage Grove Fire Department is this year, for the first time that I can recall, we had a drive-through Halloween event at the Cottage Grove Fire Department and it was appropriate. It was a little bit of a chilly night, although there were a lot more people out than I thought there would be. But I know Captain James Olsen and firefighter Mike Dandl were handing out candy and greeting the families as they drove through, and it was really a neat event. We had Sparky out on 80th Street waving people in, and I think families across the community really appreciated that. So kudos to the fire department under the guidance and supervision of our public safety director... [correcting] Pete Kerner... to make sure that they pulled that off without a hitch. And I don't think they ran out of candy, but they got awfully close. Somebody came to the rescue—I can't remember his name, might be Olsen or something like that—brought them a bunch more candy! But it was a really cool thing, so I hope we do it again next year. And then the last thing I had for this evening Mayor is, unless you've been living under a rock, you're pretty much aware that there was an election yesterday. Of course, it was a presidential year here, so we all saw the commercials on TV and on the radio and on the internet and everywhere else, and I think we're all grateful that those will be done for a while. But there was also a local component of course, with House of Representatives at our state capital seats up for election, and then we also had a city council race here in the city of Cottage Grove. First, I want to say thank you to everybody that was brave enough to put their name on the ballot. That takes courage; it's not an easy thing to do. And when you do it, you open yourself up to a lot of different forms of communication from the public that as a private citizen you don't normally encounter, and it takes a strong heart and a good support system to be able to run a good campaign. It's a lot of work, especially at the local level, so kudos to everybody who decided that they wanted to take a shot at it. I also wanted to congratulate the person to my left, Mayor Bailey, for another term unopposed. Really exciting to have Myron in the Mayor's chair for another four years. I want to congratulate Councilmember Garza for her election to the next two years of the term she was appointed to after Councilmember Dennis moved out of state. And I want to congratulate Dave Clausen, who is in the room. Dave is a retired police officer here in the city of Cottage Grove who put his name on the ballot this year and was successful, so Dave will be joining the Council here in January. But I really want to take a moment to congratulate the person to my right, which is my friend and colleague Councilmember Tony Kada. Tony has been an absolute joy to work with as a councilmember. He came from six years on the Planning Commission so he has a very good handle on things like setbacks and building codes and all those wonderful things that a lot of us don't pay much attention to. He also happens to be a real estate professional, so that adds another layer to his expertise. He's a great guy, he's a wonderful dad, he's a good partner, and just a class act all around. So, unfortunately, you know, Tony did not win re-election; that's the nature of democracy. But I know he will continue to serve this community in a lot of different ways, perhaps on a commission again at some point. I'm sure he'll find many ways to keep serving the citizens of Cottage Grove and I just wanted to thank him for the time that he's spent as a planning commissioner and as a city councilmember and wish him well. The last thing that I'll say is I was grateful to the voters. I was also on the ballot and was successful, so you're stuck with me for another four years whether you like it or not. But you know, it's a very humbling experience when people cast a ballot for you. To me, that is a vote of trust that requires a great deal of hard work, of responsibility, of humility, and it's really a sacred trust. It's an agreement between the both of us that you're going to check that box and I'm going to be worthy of that checkmark, and I promise you to do everything in my power to do that for the next four years. And who knows what'll happen beyond that, but thank you to the residents of Cottage Grove for your votes and thank you to everybody who took the time to go cast a ballot. Back to you. [00:27:00] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Fantastic, thank you Councilmember Olsen. Well said. Councilmember Thiede. [00:27:05] **Councilmember Dave Thiede**: All right, so Halloween's over, Monster Bash parade is done, but now it's time to start planning for Strawberry Fest 2025 which is going to be held on June 19th through June 22nd. And maybe if we can get the camera to come up, we have chosen a theme and a logo. Can the camera zoom in? There it goes. It's a cute one, by the way, called Berry-saurus Celebration. And so there's all sorts of things that now everybody's got to put their thinking caps on and take this theme and let's turn this into a fantastic celebration in 2025. You know, we were thinking, we were talking about things maybe... maybe we could have a Tyrannosaurus Rex race or something like that, or maybe Movies by Moonlight can get involved. We love to get people involved and getting different ideas on what kind of things we can do to celebrate this community. So get excited! Some may think it's a little early, but it's always good to start planning and before you know it, it's going to be here. So I wanted to say that and then also, you know, just as Justin was mentioning, to all everybody involved in the city council race and all the other races that we had that democracy... and I am also glad to not see those commercials. It's a challenge to the intelligence, I think, sometimes. But at any rate, congratulations to all, and again, there's some good things and there's some bad things that sometimes happen—unfortunate things I should say—and so but we do have a good group and I know that we all get together and help any way we can. I guess that's it. [00:29:00] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: All right, thank you Dave. Councilmember Garza. [00:29:05] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: Thank you Mayor. So first, congratulations to everyone. Congratulations to you, congratulations to you all, congratulations David... this is really an awesome race and I've learned a lot, so congratulations. And Tony, we'll be seeing you still in my backyard; he's friends with my neighbor so I get to see Tony quite often. [00:29:25] **Councilmember Justin Olsen**: He's got a little neighbor there for a minute! [00:29:27] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: No, he's friends with our neighbor so I get to see him. [00:29:30] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: You said it again! Like, "I'll see you again in my backyard." That made me a little curious, but... [00:29:35] **Councilmember Tony Kada**: We have a bonfire... [00:29:36] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Appreciate clarifying that, thank you! [00:29:40] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: But I also would like to mention, I'm going to piggyback a little bit off of Dave and Strawberry Fest. There are a lot of fun family events that are coming up in the next month or two. So one big one that is coming up for Strawberry Fest is Princess for a Day, and that is going to be held at the River Oaks... no I'm sorry, Princess for a Day is at the VFW Red Barn and that's on November 17th. That is an amazing event for families to get out and their kids to come and dress up like princesses or be princesses for the day and they get a little taste of what Strawberry Fest is like. So it's a good opportunity to learn a little bit about Strawberry Fest and be a princess for a day. Also, we have the Breakfast with Santa that will be coming up and that's on December 8th at River Oaks, so that's another fun family event, as well as the holiday train. So that'll be December 11th and that will be a lot of fun and we are just going to pray for warm weather! We do not want 30 below again, or was it 20 below? I don't remember, a couple years ago... that one year that Cheryl Crow was singing and it was... that was kind of a neat one. So a lot of fun events, so if you guys have some time, get out there and have some family fun. [00:30:50] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Fantastic, thank you for bringing those up. Actually, what I was going to do—and I think maybe staff is probably going to do what I'm going to ask them to do—as the Council's aware, next week we have a special Council meeting because we have to canvas the vote and we have a workshop with a business in the area to talk about their processes and such. And then we have a Council meeting the week after that which is basically right before Thanksgiving. I would just ask if we're going to have an opportunity to have Molly or Zach or somebody come talk about all these events that are coming up. And if I might just make a plug also to include maybe some of the other like the Lions—I know have their breakfast—River Oaks has their breakfast, there's all these multitudes of different events and craft fairs, and then obviously our Hometown Holiday celebration here at City Hall. So there's a lot of neat things that are coming forward here that it would be nice at that particular meeting to have our staff kind of share with the public exactly what's coming up in the next couple weeks. As Councilmember Olsen and everybody else along here said, you know, first of all, I want to once again thank the voters of Cottage Grove, myself as well as all my peers that were up for re-election here. Obviously going to have the opportunity to meet and work with Dave. It's going to be kind of interesting to have two Daves on the Council here, one on each... double Daves here, I don't know! But I couldn't say it any better than what Councilmember Olsen had said. No matter if you won or if you lost, whether you're an existing person that maybe has been in the role and got... oh, I see Zac's doing hand signals back there! Yeah, he's already talking about where they're going to sit! But no, I was just going to say, whether you won or lost, it does take a lot, and I just want to thank everybody that ran, whether it's for our local race here. But I also want to mention a couple people that also won that obviously will affect our local area here: Tom Dippel, who is also from Cottage Grove, he won one of the House seats—there's kind of two that are part of Cottage Grove here—and then Wayne Johnson, who used to be on the Council years ago and I believe County Commissioner also. I should mention that he is also one of the other house members who also lives here in Cottage Grove. And so those two will be going up to the Minnesota House of Representatives. And then I was very excited for Congresswoman Angie Craig that she won her re-election representing our area. I have just to say that she has been absolutely amazing to work with; it's truly a breath of fresh air. I just have to say it because it's so true, in helping secure funding and so on with all the different projects and things, which kind of is a good segue to the last thing I was just going to bring up. And that is, as everybody is aware, we did have three questions on the ballot for the local option sales tax—or the acronym LOST, which is always crazy to me—and none of those questions did pass from the residents of Cottage Grove. What I did want to make sure that everybody is aware, because I've had a lot of people reach out to me—obviously there's people on both sides, some that wanted it, some that didn't want it—one of the things that's very important to remember is: pretty much all of these... not everything that was in the proposal or the proposals, if you will, is slated 100% that is going to happen in the future, but for example improvements to Hamlet Park, which were part of this program, we will eventually do those. It just may take longer than maybe we originally anticipated. And then of course the new park along the backwaters of the Mississippi, which a lot of people are excited about with boat access and so on, instead of maybe building that sooner, it may take a little bit longer to kind of complete these park amenities or these park projects. On the other hand though, what I wanted to mention—and Zac and our staff is absolutely amazing, all of them, Ryan... I could just... I'm looking at everybody out here from a staff perspective—we absolutely, whether the referendum questions would have passed or not passed, we're always out there and really have challenged our staff to go out there and look for money. Whether it's money for road projects, whether it's money for park projects. Zac, on this park side, I believe it was at 700,000... is that for the park up by Oltman? 350,000, sorry. So 350,000 that he was able to go find some money to help with park improvements in a plot of land that we own up by Oltman Middle School, and we'll eventually be working on that, so we kind of plug those in. Second thing is, whether it's the backwaters of the Mississippi, you know, we're going to go look for those. There's opportunities out there, especially being on the backwaters, and there's a few things that we've been already talking about, whether the local option sales tax would have passed or not passed. And if it would have passed and we were able to still go after the dollars and get the dollars, then we wouldn't have used the local option sales tax. So I just want the public to be aware, for those that might be concerned, "Hey, does this mean we're not doing any of these projects?" From day one it was always that we're going to do them, it's just how soon that we were going to do it and how long it will take to get them. And a lot of that will depend on how we as a Council, new Council, decide on what we call our Capital Improvements Plan and where these things will be in the Capital Improvements Plan, which we usually plan out more succinctly for the next five years. But as I've talked with staff, some of these things may take 25 years to get everything completed. But that also depends on funding sources and that too. So I just want to thank the public though for expressing your opinions one way or the other. It's great, as was commented earlier, this is a democracy. And whether you wanted it, didn't want it, or maybe you wanted it but just don't want to pay for it, that's fine too. But the fact is, we'll continue to look at options and opportunities to bring these things like we always do from a Council standpoint and a staff standpoint to not have such an effect on our local property tax, which was frankly part of the reason we did the local option sales tax idea. With that, that was it from my comments. And next on our agenda was a workshop open to the public which we do not have, nor do we have 14 which is a workshop closed to the public. And so I'll look on 15 which is a motion to adjourn. [00:37:30] **Councilmember Dave Thiede**: To adjourn. [00:37:31] **Councilmember Monique Garza**: Second. [00:37:32] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Second by Councilmember Garza. All those in favor signify by saying aye. [00:37:35] **Councilmembers**: Aye. [00:37:36] **Mayor Myron Bailey**: Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you everyone!