Below is the transcript with speaker names added based on the context and names provided. **[00:00] Chair Gerding:** Good evening and welcome to the August 19th, 2024, meeting of the Oakdale Environmental Management Commission. Very glad to see each one of you here, and to those online, thanks for watching and joining. Um, we'll begin this evening with our roll call of commissioner members present, and commissioner staff liaison Hannah Dunn will now be taking roll. **[00:20] Hannah Dunn:** Chair Gerding? **[00:21] Chair Gerding:** Pres. **[00:22] Hannah Dunn:** Commissioner Doolittle? **[00:23] Commissioner Doolittle:** Pres. **[00:24] Hannah Dunn:** Commissioner Yang? **[00:25] Commissioner Yang:** Pres. **[00:26] Hannah Dunn:** Commissioner Lash? **[00:27] Commissioner Lash:** Pres. **[00:28] Hannah Dunn:** Commissioner Brendan? **[00:29] Commissioner Brendan:** Present. **[00:30] Chair Gerding:** Great. Also joining us tonight, in addition to uh, Oakdale's Community Development staff, is uh, EMC’s City Council liaison and Oakdale Mayor Kevin Zabel. Um, next item is to move to our Pledge of Allegiance, so if we’d all please rise together. **[00:45] All:** 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. **[01:00] Chair Gerding:** Okay, next item on our agenda tonight is uh, to move towards approval of the agenda itself. Um, everyone did receive a copy prior to the meeting. Um, one of our presenters, I will add, is en route currently, so um... do we need, pardon me, do we need to approve prior to moving or we just need to just approve the... **[01:15] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** Just approve it as as as written and submitted. **[01:18] Chair Gerding:** Thank you for the clarification, Mayor Zabel. Um, so with that, you were all sent this in advance um, of the meeting, so assuming no amendments or further discussion, I'd like to ask for approval of the agenda for tonight’s August 19th EMC meeting. **[01:30] Commissioner Lash:** Move. **[01:31] Chair Gerding:** Thank you. Get a second? **[01:32] Commissioner Yang:** Second. **[01:33] Chair Gerding:** Awesome. All in favor to approve tonight’s August 19th, 2024, um, agenda as presented say "Aye." **[01:40] Commissioners (In Unison):** Aye. **[01:42] Chair Gerding:** Opposed? Great, thank you. We will now move to our approval of our meeting minutes from our commission meeting um, June 17th, 2024. Two months ago. These minutes were also sent prior to the meeting, so assuming no other amendments, clarifications, questions, discussion, I will move to ask for approval of the minutes from the June 17th EMC meeting. **[02:00] Commissioner Doolittle:** So moved. **[02:01] Chair Gerding:** Thank you. Get a second? **[02:02] Commissioner Brendan:** Second. **[02:03] Chair Gerding:** Awesome, thank you. All in favor of approving the June 17th minutes say "Aye." **[02:07] Commissioners (In Unison):** Aye. **[02:08] Chair Gerding:** Opposed? Great, thank you. Now we will move to uh... we would normally move to the public and open forum section, but as I was starting to say, one of our presenters is en route, so we are just going to hold the presentation from RCC, which is Resilient Cities and Communities, um, until our second presenter arrives, which should be in a a few more minutes. So moving on to the EMC review section, which is 7.b of new business. Hannah will provide an overview of the status of our commission's continued participation in the Adopt-a-Drain program. **[02:35] Hannah Dunn:** Thank you. Yeah. Um, for those that don't know, the EMC adopted three drains um, out in the parking lot of City Hall in Walton Park. Um, so in order to ensure that they are being cleared of debris—um, leaves, trash—uh, the schedule in your packet memo was created to help organize when each commissioner is responsible for cleaning. In August, we have Chair Gerding. In September, Commissioner Yang is responsible for clearing. October is Commissioner Doolittle. November is Commissioner Lash, and December is Commissioner Brendan. The level of commitment is relatively low um, all that's needed um, is to volunteer maybe 15 minutes twice a month um, sweep leaves, trash, and other debris off the drain service and if you'd like to um, and you remember to, at each meeting you can report back maybe your estimated um, total debris and we can track our impact. Um, Chair Gerding, you're the only one um, who's probably done this before. Do you have any tips or um, things to share with other Commissioners as they do this for the first time? **[03:40] Chair Gerding:** Probably. I think, yeah, I think great question. So tips for sharing impact on storm sewer uh, debris cleaning: I would say just get in the habit of it. Um, I know this is only one time per month per year that we're doing this over five months—six months, five months I think is what's been proposed. But I guess my biggest tip is just to um, think about when you're collecting uh, if it's sediment or solid in terms of: what are you sweeping up, like sand, or are you like picking up trash and leaves and more solid type stuff? And just let the city know about how much of a rough guesstimate, if it was like 2 lb or 5 lb would roughly be in each of those set categories if that makes sense. Yeah, I don't know, I don't have any other, any other hot tips, really. No. **[04:25] Hannah Dunn:** That's great. Are there any issues with the assignments? Um, we can rearrange if a certain month you've been assigned doesn't work. Um, I just went ahead and took the liberty of assigning, so please let me know um, either now or feel free to email me and we can work something out. **[04:40] Commissioner Lash:** Looks good. **[04:41] Commissioner Brendan:** Good. **[04:42] Chair Gerding:** Okay, thank you Hannah. Moving on in our agenda, uh, we've got... I think we have the commissioner updates um, starting with staff liaison um, updates of the... I think the content calendar is what we're going to yes, move towards now on communications. Thank you. **[04:55] Hannah Dunn:** Yes, I'll uh, be brief. So first up for my updates is the review of the editorial calendar. Um, and once discussion on communications content is finished, um, I have a few Community Development updates to provide. Um, looking ahead, the theme for September is electric vehicles. There are lots of rebates and incentives out there that we could promote to residents uh, via social media. Uh, the theme for October is Energy Efficiency. Um, I don't have any updated numbers uh, regarding the usage of the Oakdale-sponsored Home Energy Squad rebates. I know they're being used, but I know we have um, we still have some available, so we'll do another push on social media and hopefully in our Oakdale Update newsletter um, as room allows. And then the theme for November is reuse and recycling. I'm hoping the pumpkin recycling drop-off that was um, available in the City Hall parking lot will return. That's a Washington County sponsored service. Um, I anticipate we'd be a host site again, but I would need to confirm with them. So hopefully that's something we can promote. Um, that was uh, really well-used last year. And then um, I'm not sure if you follow City of Oakdale social media, but Chair Gerding was featured featured over the weekend. Um, he kindly provided Communications with a photo and quote about his and his family's experience with the food scraps pickup program. Um, so it's gotten really good traction. It was nice to have a post with a personal touch. But I um, I bet we'll we'll promote the food scraps pickup program again in November um, because like the County is really pushing this initiative, they've invested a lot of um, time and resources into it. So um, we're doing everything we can to make sure that Oakdale residents are participating. So that's what I have in store for the next few months. Um, if any commissioners have ideas about content or resources to share, please feel free to offer them now or as always you can email me. **[06:45] Chair Gerding:** I all... I just want to note and make a comment here um, that this is this is great to see into like November, like a full three months ahead. I know that it may depend on the content and the month, but it's just again, it's just nice to see everything that's that's been done and that's coming up. Um, tell a lot of work has been put into the themes, specifically around Nove... or October and Energy Efficiency. So thank you for always supporting us in this way as we support the city. Does anybody have any other comments for staff liaison Dunn about the editorial calendar or questions or ideas? **[07:18] Commissioner Lash:** None for me. **[07:19] Chair Gerding:** All right, great. Well I think our um, our next guest, our last remaining guest, has arrived—yay! So we'll yeah, so we'll now move to the public... we'll now move to the public open forum time of our agenda. And tonight we'd like to welcome Sean um, and Steve. Sean and Steve are the Executive Director and the Board President respectively of Resilient Cities and Communities, or RCC as they're known. Um, they will provide pass-wo... again, they will provide an overview of what they do and how cities and businesses and residents can learn more about their work um, and invite any questions from us. Sean and Steve, good evening. The floor is yours. **[07:55] Sean (RCC):** Oh, thank you. And then by the way, Noah is on our board also with RCC, and I was good buddies with Keith Miller for many years so he and I go way back. I just grew up on Highway 120 over white by Century College so I always used to come down to Silver Lake and go down the slide in the summer and it would be so hot with the slide, you know. So, um, anyway the uh, kind of our main message with Resilient Cities and Communities is we want to make sure that every city in the Metro has a solid foundation for getting things done on sustainability and climate. So that's the tripod of your citizen volunteers—we also support a lot of citizen environmental commissions as well as citizen coalitions like for example the um, Sustainable Stillwater in the modern media area green initiative. We also support cities to get new teams going; so we just helped Vadnais Heights to get their team going. And then having elected leaders that care about this is also very important, because if you're missing one of the three parts of the tripod—either the citizen support, the elected leaders, or the staff support—you're kind of dead in the water. You can't move anything. So we're really trying to help more cities to get that tripod of support. And then the other part of it is is sometimes you can lose momentum just as one city. So we're working to get a bunch of cities to team up together. Um, so we for example Steve is helping with our Ramsey County cluster of cities and we'd like to work with you guys to get a Washington County group of cities going. We were meeting quite a lot when they're getting the comp plans started like about five years ago, um, but eventually it would be fun if Hannah could help us to connect with the other GreenStep staffers maybe quarterly to connect. And then with you guys, we would love to team up with you to get together with the other environmental commissions maybe twice a year. Woodbury has a strong commission, there's a lot going on in Woodbury right now. Um, so and then kind of the big picture is—you probably heard this is a bit of a scary news with the hottest year on record and who knows if the currents across the Atlantic are going to start getting screwed up with... anyway, so it's kind of time to really try to get these climate goals done on time. And luckily there's a tremendous amount of incentives from the federal government with the IRA tax credits and all that, but if people don't use them it doesn't do any good. So that's where we're trying to help a number of cities let's say in Washington County to team up to really promote a bunch of residential customers to do the—if you probably heard about the "Electrify Everything" campaign—where they're basically encouraging homeowners to check out getting a air-source heat pump, um, maybe an electric car, maybe putting an electric range, and there's all these tax credits like with Rewiring America. So if you did it over three years, basically just have the tax credits pay for it. So but there's no need for all the cities in Washington County to kind of reinvent the wheel, you might as well just kind of do the same campaign. So with the residential customers like with the Home Energy Squad as well as with the businesses as well. So maybe I'm going to turn over to Steve to just share how kind of they got things going with with um, Vadnais Heights and kind of the vision we have for the Ramsey County cities that we would like to try to do with the Washington County cities as well. **[11:05] Steve Joris (RCC):** Yep, thanks Sean. So I'm Steve Joris. Uh, I'm in Vadnais Heights. I'm on their Green Team, I'm also on their Planning Commission and I'm also on the board of RCC along with Noah. Uh, and Sean's our executive director. Um, but with Vadnais Heights, we just uh, we entered the Gold Leaf program um, back about a year ago now, and I was on the kind of the forming commission and Sean helped uh, the the staff at uh, uh, Vadnais Heights get the thing going. The Gold Leaf program, we had to pick two impactful uh, deliverables uh, that we needed to get done within um, six months I think it was. Uh, the two deliverables: one was to form a Green Team uh, which we did and I'm on that. Uh, the other one was we organized a uh, a uh, um, Adopt-a-Drain Community-wide Adopt-a-Drain program where we had about 15 volunteers, we did over 100 drains um, and did a big cleanup. And that was in the fall, which I know you're doing. The Adopt-a-Drain in the fall is a great time to do it because all the leaves accumulate. And also in the spring, we also organized a second one in the spring when—I don't know what kind of trees it are—but they really drop a lot right into the gutters that we need to clean up. Um, so we've been working on that. Um, the Ramsey County cluster thing I've been working... been working with mostly the citizen uh, groups. So we had Resilient Roseville, Citizens for Sustainability out of uh, St. Anthony and um, St. Paul 350 and Sustain St. Paul. And then my... another thing I do, I co-lead a group called Northeast Metro Climate Action. Um, so our five groups got together a couple times and and uh, prioritized actions that would happen on the county level. So we were given you know, to try to figure out what the jurisdiction is for the county including county roads, land use, uh, food scraps, uh, those types of things, the waste recycling. And we we put our heads together and got uh, two meetings uh, with both the Ramsey County staff and the Ramsey County Commissioners—two of the commissioners were on there including the board chair um, Victoria Reinhardt and uh, Trista Martinson. Um, and to bring a coalition of groups to the uh, commissioners is a powerful message. They tell you that they want to hear from you um, about what what you would like from them on climate action. And when you can get a coalition of groups together, prioritize, and bring that message to your County Commission, that's a very powerful message to bring to them. So those are the couple of things that I've been working on that um, Sean wanted me to talk to you about today. **[13:40] Sean (RCC):** Great and so then I'm going to just share this... I actually brought out copies so we can pass these down. One of the things we're going to be working on—the microphone? Yes. Okay. So it's... so one of the issues that cities have is, "Hey, we have a climate action plan but then number one: who's going to do it? And number two: how are we going to pay for it?" And so there's two different solutions for that and we're going to talk about them on September 25th, which is a Wednesday night. With the... we're going to have Kate Knuth with the MPCA climate department talking about the new State of Minnesota climate action framework that they're updating and they're trying to get ideas of how to accelerate city level actions. So it's going to be like at 4:30 at the um, Minneapolis College Skyway Lounge. So I hope you guys can join us. They're going to open up the registration link tomorrow on the EQB web page. And so if you make sure to get... give a Hannah one of these handouts too here. Yeah. So then um, and then we're going to have a separate event. The EQB event gets done at 6:30 and we're going to stay in the room with anybody who wants to get together with one of your County Commissioners from Washington County as well as maybe about six or eight cities from Washington County are going to be there. So you'll get to meet people from Woodbury—they just passed a climate action plan. Stillwater... um, we're trying to get Cottage Grove to get back on gear, man, they're they're kind of falling behind a bit. Um, but so then generally what we're looking at is brainstorming: what would be some action that we could get going? For example, the Washington County Economic Development Authority is a bit worried because they have so much residential properties in Washington County but not enough commercial properties. So they feel like their tax base is kind of off whack. So one way of solving that is by getting you know, more of the businesses to put on solar panels, to put in EV charging, and to switch out their old HVAC with newer heat pumps. So one of the thoughts: maybe we could just work together with a bunch of the cities to work on all of your little strip malls—and forget who owns the dang strip mall—and how to get them getting connected with all these incentives. Another big thing I've been hearing about is that people tell me, "I'm going to Stillwater but I can't plug in my electric car." And so like, like they want to go on a bike trip around Stillwater but they they want to recharge their electric car when they're there. So like you could really work countywide to beef up the electric charging infrastructure. And then another concern people have had is um, you know, it's great to bike—and I know Keith Miller is a big biker—but how are you going to get across Highway 36? Or you know, there's a bunch of different places that are very challenging for bikes and pedestrians. So if all of the different city commissions could team up—like Sustainable Stillwater is working on this, uh, Woodbury is trying to become a bike-friendly community—so if you kind of team up and look at: when is the County planning to redo these various roads? So they have to kind of repave the roads about every 10 years. So you could really take advantage of that to put in better bike lanes, put in some storm water things like in Woodbury where they capture the water off of the road and they capture it to water the golf course. So instead of having to use—Woodbury does not want to pump any more groundwater because of the dang 3M chemicals—so they would rather use water off the street to water the golf course. So um, so I'm just curious if you guys were... had your magic wand and could help you know, a number of the cities in Washington County to team up to get things done, what would be some areas that you might be interested in trying to see actions that might be easier if you get them done all together? Is any... like, does anybody have any Master Water Stewards here or people working on water quality? **[17:15] Commissioner Lash:** I think the like the Adopt-a-Drain is a great one where you could have a bunch of cities doing that together. The tree planting... because of the emerald ash borer, like all these trees are going to get taken out. Um, I'm just curious if if you guys... any other thoughts you have of things that you would like to see happen in Oakdale that could maybe be easier if a bunch of cities teamed up to get it done across the county? **[17:40] Chair Gerding:** I think you hit on a one thing which is—well you mentioned get over Highway 36—but just trails in general, right? No one cares about what city they're in, they just want to get from one point to the other. So trails—any sort of a comprehensive more larger scale trail program, right? And the same thing goes for like watersheds, right? Watersheds are... doesn't matter what the boundary is for a watershed, right? And so having a plan that's sort of a watershed-by-watershed basis um, would would be something that would unify people, too. **[18:10] Steve Joris (RCC):** Yeah, one of the things we talked to Ramsey County Commissioners about was more what we call 4-to-3 conversions. Uh, roads like McKnight Road between Beam Avenue and 694 is this four—you know, two lanes each way—and I bicycle that all the time and it's terrible for bicycling. And what they've done with a number of roads is they uh, make that three lanes: one in each direction with a middle turn lane, and then they have room on either side for bike lanes. Um, you know, the really the gold standard for that if you've ever been on Wheelock Parkway from Phalen Park to uh, Como, it's fantastic for bicycling and has the... they they made that again, they're taking car lanes they don't need—they really don't need four lanes, two lanes each way out on these county roads—make them one lane each way, put put one in the middle for turning, and then uh, either a separate bike lane or have a uh, the shoulders. That's something that you could bring to your Washington County Commissioners as a as a coalition and look at the map and figure out where that would be uh, really appropriate. **[19:15] Sean (RCC):** Exactly. And then also with this issue of the the watersheds um, the Met Council has a great tool for looking at where there's potential for flooding. So when you look at the different county road improvements, a lot of times the infrastructure to replace whatever to deal with flooding is kind of expensive. So if you could kind of team up with the the county to reduce some of these flood-prone areas. Um, the other issue is with all this rain seems to me like the water table might start going up and maybe people who didn't have a wet basement before might start having a wet basement. Um, so one of the other things you could do is work with your watershed districts and others to figure out: is there any changes in like where these flood zones are with the FEMA maps? Are there new households that might start having a risk? And then having some different homeowner education things um, to make sure if you have a sump pump, you know, to um... I guess one of the questions is, can you just have your sump go into the stor whatever. Um, and then trying to prevent moldy basements and all that. Um, but like Duluth has been doing a great job on dealing with their flood-prone areas. Um, I'm curious Hannah, do you know, does Oakdale have a plan for dealing with your trees and tree diversification as well as like the emerald ash borer? **[20:30] Hannah Dunn:** Um, yeah, we have in Public Works the City Forester um, and that forestry division would handle all that. So I um, you know, right now at my fingertips I don't know what's what we've got planned, but we um, you know, we take pride and in our tree canopy and um, we... I know we do a lot of work um, to help combat emerald ash borer and diversify our canopy. **[20:50] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** If I may add one thing to that one: we also have a Tree Board which which acts like a commission—oh great—but it's it's the the structure is a little bit different, but it feels the same as as this. So they're they're also in lock-step with you know, comp plan and oh great and bigger goals. Um, and I would say that our annual uh, Gresen Tree Giveaway in April around Earth Day I believe is a is something that we also do; we're very proud of that one because we give all trees to Oakdale residents at no cost. **[21:20] Sean (RCC):** Well fantastic! And it'll come out to your Earth Day... I guess you have your... you live in Oakdale? Um, no, no, I'm just going to come to be a vendor at your next Earth Day event so um, uh, that we'd enjoy, right. So then I think uh, just in general when you're looking at your environmental commission getting things done, it's not just the environmental commission that has power to do things, it's also your Planning Commission and like your whatever, your Tree Board. Some other cities have their own Transportation Commission; so like both Edina and Richfield have extremely solid transportation commissions, and if you ever go to Richfield you can't believe the amount of great things they have with the different turnarounds and crosswalks and it just... Richfield is like kind of an oasis for bikers. Um, so one of the things that you could also get ready for is the 2050 comp plans are going to ask cities to have more elements related to climate mitigation and adaptation. So um, when you're doing that you could begin to like deal with your Planning Commission about things like zoning and new developments. So I... I do have a toolkit here for you if you... I know you already have your big development over at Forefront, but there's a lot of things that City... you know, your Planning Commission can do to help shift developments into the correct direction. And then the other component with your Planning Commission is um, are you going to be getting any transit corridors coming out here? BRT or LRT? So like which transit corridors are coming out? **[22:45] Hannah Dunn:** Gold Line BRT. So we'll have two stations serving Oakdale: Greenway and Helmo station. **[22:52] Sean (RCC):** Great! So then that's that's a key thing to be considering is the station areas around the Gold Line and how to have different, high—slightly higher density development to be able to then have um, more people kind of living right there where the transportation is. And with a lot of seniors needing to get out of the individual homes, you could put in some like four-story senior co-ops or other things like that. So so there is an issue of how to deal with the zoning trying to maybe reduce some of the parking requirements and and then gradually trying to get developers to put in um, uh, the new heat pumps so they don't have to deal with natural gas for the next 50 years. Maybe Steve, why don't you talk about what you're doing with that one multi-family building downtown? **[23:40] Steve Joris (RCC):** Yeah, so we're getting affordable housing and and... well, it hasn't been approved yet by the Met Council but um, we're hoping that it's going to get approved uh, and their City Council in September. But there's a 58-unit uh, uh, low... uh, affordable housing unit that's being uh, put in our Walmart area near a City Center, which is a you know, we would want to see higher population density at our City Center. And with your Gold Line transit-oriented development you know, around there, it would be perfect. But I'm working... trying to work with the developer on uh, having them not put natural gas into that building as a you know, as a a representative from our Green Team. Uh, I'm working with them early before they get the approvals and everything and just saying you know, these uh, what they call the "Fresh Pack"—they're uh, air-source heat pumps air conditioners—they work as well as the the gas, and then you don't have any worry about you know gas leaks, blowups, no carbon monoxide detectors, that type of thing. Of course they'll probably have to put them in anyway even though you wouldn't need them, but uh, that would be great if they had no gas at all. **[24:45] Sean (RCC):** So um, yeah, so yeah and so eventually um, somebody has to keep the eye on the carbon footprint for your city to see if it's changing. And so this is where your commission can be really powerful for that. The Met Council will give you a report card every year of your carbon emissions from buildings, transportation, solid waste. So that's currently available on the Met Council's website and they also have a separate calculator so you can figure out um, if we did this action how far would we get to reduce our carbon footprint. So what I'm encouraging, which I think would be fantastic, is if maybe sometime—maybe half a year from now um, before you got to get into the 2050 comp plans—um, you guys could meet up with Stillwater um, and um, Maplewood, Woodbury... um, and dang, what's the little city... Bap... what's the little one that's right right across from Stillwater in 36? Bayport? Yeah. Well there's Bayport, Oak Park Heights. Oh yeah, Oak Park Heights. Is that... I always forget Oak Park Heights, but anyway, so there's no need for you guys to all to have to hire your own high-buck consultant to work on your climate action plans because basically the GreenStep Gold Leaf program has all the actions laid out and then if you um, kind of look at the Met Council's climate tool, you can see how far you're going to get with these actions. And then another really fun thing that you could do that would accelerate action would be if, let's say Oakdale and Woodbury join Partners in Energy at the same time. That's a program with Excel Energy with Center for Energy Environment where they give you something like $50,000 worth of free staff time over two years to develop an energy action plan and then to help help you get it done. So but if you kind of teamed up like with Woodbury then you wouldn't have to do as much work because you could have one committee working on commercial outreach, another committee working on residential outreach, and and so there's you know probably a lot of overlap with the churches and things with Oakdale and Woodbury anyway. So that's on my my list of these on this handout I gave you. It basically has the event for the... make sure to to join us over at the St. Paul College on September 25th. And then the next thing is to um, uh, you already have your solid tripod of support in your city here. So then the next thing is we're hoping that maybe we could work with you guys sometime perhaps in the fall to organize a meetup some evening with the other environment commissions across the county so they could kind of learn from each other and hear share what they're up to. So I can talk with Noah about seeing what would be a time maybe in September-October that wouldn't conflict with your normal meetings, you have to see when all the other commissions meet so you're not going on the same night or whatever. But getting everybody together I think would be fantastic. And then this first opportunity here would be to join Partners in Energy so you could develop a comprehensive plan to reduce energy usage within the commercial buildings and residential buildings. The second thing would be maybe sometime to have a multi-city workshop where everybody comes up with a three-year climate action work plan and then um, the next thing is to try to get money to pay for this stuff and so there's there's a bunch of different federal grants that the county could maybe help you apply for. And then finally the getting stuff done together; so that's where I would suggest like looking at this "Electrify Everything" campaign that um, Minneapolis is involved with like Eden Prairie and several other cities to get the homeowners to put in like the air-source heat pumps using the tax credits. And then this last resource is this guide book we have for shaping any new developments you have so that they're greener. Um, I've working on this kind of thing for 20 years so I'm sorry I have maybe too much information to share. Um, so I'm curious... Austin, um, what are any other issues of like that are kind of top of mind for you that or things you get to work that you like to work on? **[28:35] Commissioner Brendan:** Well I just joined the commission, this is my first meeting, great. So I'm still kind of learning the ropes. **[28:40] Sean (RCC):** On the spot, sure! Right, we're good. And then so Tim, someone's like okay... I think we're pretty much done. Yeah, yeah, so we'll we'll circle around to figure out how we can get all the commissions together this fall and then I'll talk with Hannah about getting the City GreenStep City staffers together and then um, how many people are free on September 25th? That Wednesday night? Do you think you could join us downtown at St. Paul College? That would be... I think you'd be able to meet people from the MPCA who are working on the state's climate action plan. **[29:15] Chair Gerding:** Sean, when did you say the registration for that goes live? **[29:18] Sean (RCC):** Yes, it goes to live tomorrow. Okay, so so now the EQB will have about limited spots but for the second part of it with RCC we're going to say anybody who comes can can join us. So but I think if you sign up tomorrow there should be no problem to get in there. Yep. Hey thanks you guys! **[29:35] Chair Gerding:** Thank you both so much. **[29:36] Commissioner Lash:** Thanks. **[29:37] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** Yeah, thank you. **[29:38] Sean (RCC):** And then here's my extra copies of our handouts that as... thank you. **[29:42] Chair Gerding:** Great, thank you very much. Nice to meet you. All right, shifting back and next up we're going to continue on our uh, agenda item number seven, the EMC review. And as we just finished talking about the editorial calendar, um, I believe that um, Hannah has some Community Development updates for us to learn about. **[30:00] Hannah Dunn:** I sure do. Um, I don't have too many to share. Um, first I do want to remind Commissioners that the Citywide fall cleanup event um, is uh, basically a month away. Um, this is an opportunity for Oakdale residents to uh, conveniently dispose of furniture, electronics, other hard-to-recycle items. This event is Saturday, September 21st, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Um, you'll be seeing more communications regarding this on social media and our Oakdale Update newsletter. Um, this is open to only Oakdale residents. Fees will be charged for almost all items um, and they must be brought to Oakdale Public Works. Um, and then additionally, the Willowbrook Commons Park is coming along nicely. There's still lots of work to do um, but we're on schedule. Um, so I just wanted to give you a heads-up to keep an eye out for um, an invitation to a grand opening that will occur this fall. So we'll be sending a flyer out to all the commissions um, and other other guests. It'll be open to the public um, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up to keep an eye out for that invitation. If anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them. **[31:05] Chair Gerding:** For the Willowbrook or Forefront development, is there... I forall... can you remind us what the retail is? Has it been identified yet? **[31:12] Hannah Dunn:** The Aldi and Starbucks are going in, yes, right. Um, in front of Forefront. Thank you... to my knowledge that's all that is confirmed there. **[31:22] Chair Gerding:** Great. Next we move to any any commissioner updates you like to share? Wow, all right. Yes, I mean hearing none... Mr. Mayor, EMC’s city council liaison... that's we can give it to him. Mayor Zabel. **[31:38] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. Um, I have a number of updates since we didn't meet last month, so there's a lot going on. First and foremost, uh, a big welcome to Katie and Austin, our newest commissioners here on the EMC. We are very excited to have you. Um, we're always excited to see people willing to step up and serve in these roles. So uh, look forward to uh, providing valuable advice to the City Council going forward. So thank you for volunteering. Um, our City's Park System Plan is still open. It closes at the end of the month, uh, August 31st. Um, this plan includes different concepts for each park in our city, so I think we in total have 28 parks. Um, one area of interest to the EMC—you know, part of this project is looking at some of our passive parks um, and identifying those areas that might currently be turf grass, figuring out a different use for those. Obviously there's environmental benefits in converting that land to maybe a more natural use. There's also operational um, benefits not having to mow that grass. So that is something that the city is looking at and we we are asking everybody to provide feedback on those concepts by the end of the month. Um, my phone just went to sleep on me so um... you can find that on our city website um, pick as many parks as you like. There's one... there's a different survey for each individual park. Um, there's even some parks that we didn't even know where parks in Oakdale so um, we definitely want to figure out how to best utilize that land and be good land stewards. Um, so please weigh in on that. Hannah mentioned the City Cleanup Day—this is so exciting for us. You know, for Oakdale, we haven't done this in 15 years. Um, it was an idea that popped up earlier this year, late last year. Um, City Council said we wanted to do it and we handed it off to Hannah and she's absolutely crushed it. So um, thank you Hannah for all of your work on this. Um, Council got a sneak peak at the the fee schedule—there'll be a nominal fee for for the items—we got a sneak peak at that at our meeting last week. I think it'll be finalized this week or next week and we'll get that out to the public. Um, there's a Facebook event created for it. Hannah mentioned it's going to be at Public Works, so easy drive-in, drive-out. Police will be out there directing traffic. We want to collect a lot of trash um, and for anybody like me that's been working at home during the COVID years, a lot has built up. So we are excited. Uh, we have some great partners who are helping you know, remediate that trash. So um, yeah, it's definitely something we're looking forward to bringing back and we definitely want to keep going in this community. Budget work continues—this is always the biggest lift of the City Council's year. Usually we start in late spring um, and it goes all the way through December. So our next milestone in terms of the budget: um, state law requires us to adopt our preliminary levy by the end of September. We usually do that at our first meeting in September. All this means is this is the ceiling for our property taxes for the year. From September through December, the City Council works with our staff to get that down as low as we can, um, but that is the high watermark for for um, our our property tax levy. So uh, work continues as always. We're looking at a few more staff additions; we're a growing city. Other highlights: you know, we continue to fund our vehicle equipment replacement program. Um, this was something that we changed over a few years ago, no longer issuing debt for vehicle purchases and using cash instead. Um, as interest rates have climbed over the last few years, that's been a very big benefit for our our financial planning as as a city. Um, we also have a development proposal at Tanner Lake. This has been working its way through the through the process the last couple of months. Um, that parcel has been living in city government for 15 years, maybe in 20 years you know, um, you know for history, it was the old Tows and Blackie site as well as Harmon AutoGlass down there by Tanner Lake. The City EDA bought it 2008, 2009, 2010; did the cleanup and we have struggled to find a developer ever since. We are very excited that we have a a very interested and engaged development partner. Um, of interest for the EMC: you know, the EMC has um, shared concerns many times with that parcel just in terms of storm water runoff. So we are excited to get that parcel developed, get all of that buttoned up. Obviously that will be a big positive impact on the lake, so we are looking forward to working that development pro... uh, proposal through the process. I'm going to make a plug for the Home Energy Squad audits. Uh, the city is still offering rebates for that program. I went through it uh, June I think I did it... it was right when it opened. Um, it is a it is an easy process. Residents should be taking advantage of this. The city will pick up 50% of the cost of the home energy audit. I think the other 50% you can get a federal tax credit. So it's a win-win. It takes a few hours um, but you know like my home built in 1991, I had never even been up into the crawl space in the attic because that kind of creeped me out. Um, just to have experts go up there and tell me: do I need insulation up there? Are my walls... do I have good enough insulation in my walls? What about my original windows? Having somebody look at all that, put together a report that also includes um, possible funding recommendations for grants or or other funding sources to make those repairs or upgrades is huge. Um, I thought it would be a little daunting going through that report; they really made it so easy. So uh, mncee.org, you can just go ahead and sign up there. They already know Oakdale’s a partner, so they'll take the 50% off right off the top and bill us. You don't have to come to the city and get your rebate. Um, check it out. It's very worthwhile just knowing how we can make our homes more energy efficient. Last update, I promise—this one's exciting. The city has taken ownership of the new Public Works campus at 32nd and Granada. We have complet... well the uh, 3M, the previous land owner, has completed the PFAS soil remediation. It has been certified by the MPCA. Um, they transferred the deed over to the city so we are the owners. We will be breaking ground on the new Public Works campus next month. Next month, right? Yep, September. Um, and the new campus will be opening late fall 2025. This has been a very long process. We are excited to get a going. At our last City Council meeting, we approved a bulk of the bids for the project. Um, $32 million project, the largest capital project in City history. We are very excited to get this going. Obviously getting that PFAS in the soil remediated is a huge benefit as well. So um, I want to offer a very big thank you to 3M; they were tremendous partners in all of this. Um, just you know, owning up and taking care of the problem and donating the land to the city, saving us some money and land acquisition costs. Um, it's going to be a big positive for our community, so we are excited to keep that project rolling. How about questions? Any questions for me? **[38:20] Sean (RCC):** Um, I a question about the old Public Works site. What happens with that one? **[38:24] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** Uh, the current plan is: so the water filtration uh, plant is going to stay there um, and eventually will be expanded using the 3M settlement dollars. In between that, you know, the other project we have coming up I think next year is an expansion of the Police Department. So that... we have looked at police temporarily relocating to that Public Works building while the work is going on here. And then once they move back here, then we'll demolish the existing building, expand the water filtration, and that'll be the sole purpose or the sole use down there. We're hoping all these Legos or dominoes or whatever toy you want falls into place. That's the plan, but the best-laid plans... we know how those go. So any other questions regarding the new Public Works facility on Granada? **[39:15] Commissioner Wrich:** Um, is there a place that residents can go to check for status updates? **[39:20] Mayor Kevin Zabel:** Uh, yes. So we have a City website um, I think you I think it's actually probably on the the homepage of the City website. Um, and then once construction begins there will be more frequent updates. So you can sign up under the "Notify Me" tab on the city's website and get text alerts, email alerts as things are going on. Um, there was talk once upon a time about doing a site camera; don't know if that's still a thing where people people can watch the construction in real time. Um, we we'll check on that—that'd be kind of cool. Um, but yeah, um, that'll be the bulk of it—those text and email notifications as well as any you know, updates I mentioned in the Monday Morning Minute. Yeah. Any other questions? All right, thank you everybody. **[40:10] Chair Gerding:** Thank you. Thank you. Well, this brings us to the end of the agenda for this evening. Our next meeting of the EMC will occur on Monday, September 16th, in here in Council Chambers. If there's no further discussion, I will call for a motion to adjourn tonight’s August 19th meeting of Oakdale’s EMC, please. **[40:30] Commissioner Yang:** So moved. **[40:31] Chair Gerding:** There second? **[40:32] Commissioner Lash:** Second. **[40:33] Chair Gerding:** All in favor of adjourning tonight's meeting say "Aye." **[40:36] Commissioners (In Unison):** Aye. **[40:38] Chair Gerding:** Post? Meeting is adjourned. Thanks, everyone.