[0:00] [Music] [0:46] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, sorry, not... we just thought like we had to do something. I was looking for somebody else that's important and I'm so sorry that I wasn't understanding of that, so thank you. All right, we're on. No, don't... oh, yes. Yeah, Logan, are we able to pull up the pretty pictures? Yeah, we got them ready? Okay. All right, we all set. I'd like to call the regular City Council meeting for Tuesday, January 16th, 2024, to order. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. [1:33] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** 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. Thank you and welcome to everyone here this evening, both on TV and online and in the audience. First item up is the agenda. Any additions or corrections to the agenda? No, sir. Seeing none, I'll move the agenda. All in favor signify by saying aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? The agenda is approved this evening. Presentations, proclamations, and acknowledgements: we have none. We'll move to Item 4, Response to Public Comment. My understanding is we have nothing to report there. And Number 5, Public Comment. Anyone wishing to come before Council may do so. State your name and address, and if you can, limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. Again, these comments are open for things that are not on the agenda. So if you are here for the public hearing, this is not the time. I'll tell you when that is a little later. So, public comment. Anyone may come forward. Podium is open. Seeing no one making a mad dash, I'll close the public comment period and we'll move on to the consent agenda. [3:06] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** The following are the consent agenda items: bill listings, minutes from our regular meetings of December 21st, January 2nd, our work session from January 2nd, licensing for 2024 solid waste haulers, agreement to provide solid waste and recycling coordination services between Farmington, Hastings, and Rosemount coordinator, the JPA with Dakota County for acquisition and construction of the Rosemount Greenway in the Caramore Crossing area, accept the feasibility report and order public hearing for the Aspen Avenue Extension project between Highway 42 and Connemara out near Lifetime, approval of the city entry into a JPA with Dakota County for a temporary traffic signal on 42 and Blaine Avenue, renewal of the small-scale mineral extraction permits for Bolander, Vest, Schaffer, and Dakota Aggregates, and a zoning ordinance text amendment requesting a rural residential modification, application to conduct off-site gambling from the Rosemount Area Hockey Association, the 2024 Community Development Block Grant allocation, the 2024 to 28 Dakota County South Metro SWAT JPA, and the approval of a senior police record specialist position and grade revision. Anyone from Council wishing to pull any of these items? [4:39] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Item O. [4:40] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Item O we'll pull, and I'd like to pull 6E. So would someone like to move consent agenda A through R with E and O? [4:50] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** So move. [4:51] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Second. [4:52] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion by Theisen, second by Freske. Roll please. (Roll call taken: All Ayes). Consent agenda is approved 4-0. We'll pull first items up, 6E. I pulled this item and Mr. Schultz, not a whole lot for you to talk about here, but I just wanted to... I pulled this for just recognition of the residential haulers that we have. So we have five, six haulers, correct? And the point I was trying to make to this is every year we run into questions about why we don't have one service that handles all the city, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have—which we do—six different haulers that may come through the neighborhoods. And so I just wanted to call out here we have the six that are listed: Waste Management, Nitti Sanitation, Allied Waste, Dick's Sanitation, Highland Sanitation, and Inver Grove Sanitation. My only thing for bringing this up is we give you the most opportunity to contract with whoever you want. In some cities they try to do just one hauler and it creates a lot of angst. And so the way that Rosemount has approached us in the past and continues is that if you were in a neighborhood and you wanted to reduce that traffic, we ask that you as neighbors get together and maybe contract with one service. And so this is one way of reducing the amount of time and effort, I guess, of having up to six—although generally I pretty much only see two or three at the most in some of ours. Correct? [6:57] **Dan Schultz (Parks and Recreation Director):** Mayor and Council, you know we do promote that neighborhoods do band together and try and make a decision on only maybe one or two carriers in the neighborhood. A lot of times the carriers themselves will negotiate with folks when they have a handful—you know, anywhere from 5 to 25 haul users in a neighborhood—they'll give you a better price. The other thing to note is that with our haulers, our city ordinance identifies that when a hauler leaves the residential industry, we don't replace that hauler. So over the years, I think probably 15-20 years ago we had seven or eight, nine haulers, and over the years they've either combined, they've sold out, they've been bought out, and that number continues to get smaller. So our goal is to end up with like, you know, four haulers max, maybe three in the future, so that people do have a good choice and options, but at the same time we don't have seven different residential trucks going up and down streets every day. So that's why we do encourage people to try and work with their neighbors and try to limit who they have coming through their neighborhoods. [8:10] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Thank you. Just wanted to kind of highlight and bring that forward. Any other comments from Council? Otherwise I'll go ahead and move the recommended action to approve the license for the firms listed in the executive summary to haul solid waste in the City of Rosemount. Is there a second? [8:24] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Second. [8:25] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Roll please. (Roll call taken: All Ayes). That concludes 6E and then we'll go on to 6O. [8:35] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Yep, and I just pulled this for clarification. In the memo, the Rosemount Area Hockey Association is using their gambling permit to do the event on Saturday, February 17th, which I think is the bingo. But then it also says there'll be a fundraiser for Leprechaun Days. So just wanted to make sure we clarified who is the beneficiary of the fundraiser? Is it RAHA or is it Leprechaun Days? [9:15] **Councilmember Tami Klimpel:** Paul, I can answer as the liaison to both Leprechaun Days and RAHA. We are running our annual bingo event to fundraise for Leprechaun Days. In the past, we always partner with an organization within Rosemount to use their gambling license for bingo because Leprechaun Days does not have a gambling license and it doesn't make sense when we only do one to two events a year. In the past couple years it was Rosemount Football Boosters and they have opted out, so we are now partnering with RAHA. 100% of the benefits goes back to the Leprechaun Days Committee. We're just doing it in partnership with them, and for them it's kind of additional PR and communications. [9:55] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Okay, perfect. Good to know. [9:57] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Would you like to move the recommended action? [9:58] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Yeah, with that I'll make a motion to approve a resolution approving an application to conduct off-site gambling for Rosemount Area Hockey Association. [10:04] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** Second. [10:05] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion by Essler, second by Theisen. Roll please. (Roll call taken: All Ayes). That completes 6O. Before we move on from the consent agenda, there is two I'd like to kind of just do a go-back on: 6G and 6H. If we could pull up the graphic that shows where those two items are located in the community. The first one is the JPA with Dakota County for the acquisition and construction of the Rosemount Greenway. This is in the Caramore Crossing area and just wanted that highlighted so residents in and around that area and also the rest of the residents kind of know where we're putting the Greenway extension. And if you could just speak to the timing on that. [11:05] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director):** I don't know how well this is going to work out, Mayor and Councilmembers, but so the portion of the Greenway that is already built... this is kind of a comeback for the city working on behalf of Dakota County and the developer. We had—the County and the developer had an agreement to have the developer install the Greenway improvements when they did the rest of the streets and utilities and the infrastructure improvements. So on this map, this pink area here is the Greenway and the Greenway trail segment that was built along with the trail under the underpass under Akron Avenue. This area here on the map is the Flint Hills Athletic Complex. You can see the this long green line on the left side of the map, that's the Bella Vista Greenway. And so the Caramore section was built two years ago, and the developer is now coming back requesting the funding that was promised by Dakota County. And so the city is working on behalf of both parties to connect the two, to get the finances in place, and then we will act as the administrator of those funds for the developer and Dakota County. So really this Greenway is fairly well connected. There's one small missing segment on this property that is owned by the McMenomys. It's kind of the middle segment that we're missing. Other than that, we'll have a nice 10-foot wide trail segment that starts down in Meadows Park, crosses over Bonair Path, goes all the way through Bella Vista, eventually will connect up to the Caramore Crossing, and we are working on trail sections right now in the Flint Hills Athletic Complex and that'll come all the way down to the bottom of the Flint Hills Athletic Complex on the south side on Bonair. So it's a nice trail loop that will continue out further east going out to the Spring Lake Park area from Dakota County in the future. [13:17] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, I just appreciate the clarification. The crossing segment is already existing. This is not like another one coming through or anything like that. [13:25] **Nick Egger:** Correct, the segment is complete. The trail has been in use now for about a year and now they've just kind of finalized a bunch of their improvement projects out there so they have the final billings and all of the warranty work is done and everything is in place. And so now the County will pay the City and in turn we will forward that money on to the developer for paying for that segment of the trail section. [13:50] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Okay, thank you. And then the other one I wanted to give a little life to was 6H, the Aspen Avenue Extension. This is a new part of town that's growing and just wanted to kind of highlight and speak to, I guess, the traffic that's going to be redirected? [14:14] **Nick Egger:** Yep, thanks Mayor. Again, Aspen Avenue... I think you alluded to it when you were listing off the consent agenda items, but the corridor is essentially abutting the east side of the Lifetime development right there, connecting Connemara with County Road 42. That will allow traffic to be routed out of that site as commercial development intensifies there. There will be multiple different paths that one could take both to access that property and those businesses and to leave through there. The other part that this will enable is continued development to the east side of that roadway as interest becomes intensified there. You can see there's the old Dakota County Technical College and former City Hall property there to the east that I believe the DCTC is looking to perhaps sell off at some point. So this would enable redevelopment of that property should somebody choose to come in and do that. The corridor will include trail as well as utilities to help serve those properties in the future. [15:37] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** All righty, thank you very much. All right, so that fully completes the consent agenda. We'll move to the public hearing Item 7A, Public Improvement Hearing for the 2024 Street Improvement Project, City Project 2024-01. All right, Mr. Erickson. [16:12] **Brian Erickson (City Engineer):** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a presentation and I will go through that. I'll do my best to keep it succinct and then after that you can open the public hearing and hear the comments. So again, this '24 Street Improvement project, you can see in the map there the streets that are on that program and they're detailed here a little bit further. I want to make just a comment: you'll see numbers in brackets behind the roadway—that is the pavement condition rating for each of those roads. So none of them are in fantastic shape; they range from basically 11 up to 59, if you think of that on a percentage or a scale from 0 to 100. Again, our goal is to really rehabilitate the pavement through there. A few other little utility type improvements, but generally all street work. All of them are local roadways, they do range in that 30 to 32 feet in width. It's all urban section, so curb and gutter throughout. And again, just kind of some general review of that. One of the other big things that we'll do as part of that is improve the ADA pedestrian ramps at the intersections to meet current standards. So reclaim is what's anticipated on this work just because of the condition of those roads right now. [17:51] **Brian Erickson:** We did put a video on the city website. I understand what reclaim is, and the Councilmembers, you've probably seen that, but that's not always something that the public knows about. So if there's an opportunity and you want to know a little bit more about it, you can certainly go take a look at that video. We would do some spot replacement of curb and gutter where that's severely damaged or sagging and holding water, and then same thing with the sidewalk and the ADA improvements as needed. Just a couple photos of past projects and what that looks like. One of the biggest things—and we've heard a few comments on this—is an idea from our consultant as they looked through and saw a couple streets that potentially could be removed. The idea behind that would be to remove those streets and then put in a 10-foot wide paved trail that would still keep those connections in place. So vehicular traffic would be prevented, however, kids on bikes or people walking dogs would still be able to go through there. There's some savings on construction initially—not substantial—but the real savings would come for future maintenance issues in there. And then it is noted that we had the potential for putting rain gardens in or some sort of landscaping as well just to make that area presentable and in character with the residential neighborhood. [19:28] **Brian Erickson:** Just a little touch on some of the utility improvements: we would be adding some valves on some of the existing hydrants. They currently don't have valves, so if we have to do repairs there, we do need to shut down a portion of the street and the residents would have their water shut off for a period of time. So this does help with that. No surprises here. Large equipment, gravel type surface for at least a portion of the project until the paving comes back. Dust, noise; if we get rain there will be mud. There would be some staking or flags in the resident yards and then the potential for some impacts to the edge of yards if we had to do any curb replacement. I do want to say that if there's damage to driveways, that damage would be repaired with the curb and gutter. Generally we're not going to go into somebody's yard if we're not doing anything with a curb and gutter. [20:58] **Brian Erickson:** Just touching base a little bit on the public engagement: there was a neighborhood meeting held on the 6th of December. It was lightly attended. We sent a mailing out a couple days after that with similar information. Thanks to the help of Lee, we were able to put a "plain language" URL for the link: rosemountmn.gov/2024streets. Just a few little general pieces of feedback that we've heard from the residents: questions clarifying scope, concerns about access to their home through the driveway, how long they would be delayed. We also had some residents make comments about speeding and inattentive driving. We actually had a Traffic Safety Committee meeting today where that was brought up. Public Works, in cooperation with the Police Department, will be taking a look at that throughout the next few weeks here. There were questions about parking restrictions; at this point in time there's no plan to change any restrictions. And again, I mentioned the restoration of yards. Also, there are a few comments on some backyard drainage issues that could potentially be addressed if those streets are removed; otherwise it's not likely. [22:52] **Brian Erickson:** Other pedestrian improvements outside the project core area: in particular, we've had some questions about Shannon Parkway and 151st Street. We do have a plan to review pedestrian crossings throughout the city on the collector roadway system. That's likely to start next year at some point and that'll identify those areas just to help put together a plan for improved pedestrian improvements throughout the whole city. And of course, always there's always questions on assessments. That's not uncommon. I realized that, and I've come to expect that. And then of course, there were some questions on the street removals—what does that mean, and concerns about whether they're going to be able to get through there at all. I did have a few more questions that came up earlier today and I've addressed those. I provided an updated list of those comments to the Council this evening. I will certainly look to probably put this on the project website so that folks can see that as well. [24:16] **Brian Erickson:** Then just a real quick high-level summary on our estimated cost there and the funding sources. You'll notice the street improvements are, of course, a bulk of the cost on this project and it's just under $2 million is the estimate at this point. That does work out to be about a little over a million dollars from the street fund for that, and then of course assessments are about 600,000. The City does 35% of the street cost only for assessments. And again, here's the properties being assessed. Just call your attention to those. There's a few properties you'll note on the south end that are in 155th Street. The city's policy is only to assess those properties that are addressed off streets being improved. So there's a few properties you'll note that don't have any assessments being proposed on them because they're not addressed on either Claret or Columbia Way. [25:34] **Brian Erickson:** Finally, just again, this is the improvement hearing of course, but I know the assessment questions are likely to come up. There will be additional information at the assessment hearing planned for the middle of April. I did mention how they're assessed. It is a 10-year assessment term should the residents have that certified to the County for their property taxes. We do have an estimated amount for both single family and then there's a small multi-family portion just on the west side of Claret right up by 151st Street. Again, final assessments would be based on the bid when we have that contract amount. And a quick rundown on the schedule: looking to have some discussion on the improvement hearing this evening. We'll move to look for the final design being done early to mid-February, then opening bids in March, and finally contract award at the second Council meeting in March, at which point in time we'd call the assessment hearing and that would then be roughly a month later. Construction to start in late spring/early summer and then be completed by September timeframe. Just a quick note, I do have Larry Popper from TKDA here as the project manager on this project. With that, I will conclude my presentation. [27:49] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Can you leave up one of the pictures there? Yeah, that's good. Open it up to Council. [27:54] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** A couple questions. Did we do any traffic counts on these streets to determine if it was worth... I asked because a lot of the comments I'm seeing from residents are around the street closure. So I'm trying to get an understanding of: are we doing this because it was recommended to us, are we doing it because the residents want to, are we doing it because there's low traffic? Just trying to really understand why we would do this. [28:36] **Brian Erickson:** Sure. Yeah, part of it was a comment from our consultant just saying, "Hey, this is an opportunity to potentially save some road maintenance dollars." I realize they're very short selections—300ish feet on each in each case—so not huge lengths of road. But you know, there was a question or a concern: does this mean more homes on those two streets? And it does not. We do have utilities through the area so we would at a minimum keep that right-of-way so that we did have access to any utilities through there. So it was really just an opportunity—it's something that we wanted to present to Council. I think it's definitely something worth considering, but should Council decide that those streets remain as a full-width street... [29:26] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Yeah, I've never seen it before so I was just really curious. And for me, if there's not a safety rationale or a desire, I'd really like to hear from the residents because they live here and I don't. I just see their comments, so that's where I'm at from looking at that perspective. [29:43] **Brian Erickson:** I should mention too, we have talked to Emergency Services and the bus company as well. To be honest, had the Fire Chief or Police Chief said that's a problem, we don't want those closed, you wouldn't even be seeing this. [29:56] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** I would just second that too just to say that by doing this, is this going to push traffic to one major artery where that all of a sudden is going to overload one artery? [30:13] **Brian Erickson:** Certainly that's a fair question. These streets are local streets, so they really don't see what I would consider minimal cut-through traffic coming through there. The exception might be 155th Street because that does connect both Shannon and Chippendale, but otherwise there's no real direct route between those two collector streets. The amount of traffic that would be on any of the streets within this neighborhood are well within the capacity of those roads. [30:52] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Okay. Yeah, and I'm assuming the number of residents are going to speak on this because I'm very interested in hearing from the residents. Unfortunately, I wasn't made aware of the December 6th meeting and I understand that just got missed. But that would have been something I certainly would have wanted to attend; it wasn't on our City calendar. Having said that, you said it was pretty light attendance. I'm hoping that we do get to hear from residents tonight because I have generally a reluctance to do it if residents who live in that area... unless they're opposed to keeping it. My first thought is we just keep it. I mean, Columbia Circle, if they're used to driving that road... the only benefit would be to individuals who live right on that road that might feel like they get a little bit more yard. Those residents would be thrilled probably. But I'm just really anxious to hear comments from the residents on that tonight. [31:54] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** And then I just, on the Claret Park shifting gears a little bit, there's no parking lot. And I think the only other... Dan can maybe weigh in here... the only other parks... is it Chippendale and Kerber? Are those the only three in Rosemount that don't have parking? [32:28] **Dan Schultz:** Off the top of my head... Birch doesn't have any parking lot, nor does Biscayne. Claret, Kerber, Delehanty... oh yeah, you're digging deep here. But we have a handful. A lot of them are a little bit older parks that were built back in the late 70s. Charlie's Park doesn't have any over by the middle school. Back then when we built some of those parks, that just wasn't the style of park because there's no ball field or playfield. Really it's built more for the neighborhood where people are going to walk to it and access it by foot or by bicycle. So we don't really see a real need for the parking. I know we did have some issues at Claret Park probably maybe six or seven years ago when we first introduced the pickleball courts to that neighborhood. All of a sudden Claret Avenue was just lined with cars. And so we are going to be taking those pickleball courts out of that park. Those will be converted back to tennis solely because we are building the new pickleball complex out by the UMore ball fields. Knowing that has been an issue in the past, we want to alleviate that issue. Our goal is to take the pickleball nets out of there, restripe that, and fix the cracks in the courts so it's just used for tennis. [34:15] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** And am I understanding correctly, there may be an opportunity where we could decide to have a little bit of a bump-out for parking? Or is there not enough land? [34:50] **Dan Schultz:** I'd have to look at that. There might be some land on the east side of the road closest to the tennis court complex. That's something we could definitely look at. If people do want to drive over there if they've got a carload of kids... we did that up at Greystone Park if you recall. Greystone Park is more of a neighborhood park, doesn't have an active playfield, but we did put a bump-out in. Because there are going to be people... maybe Grandpa and Grandma are bringing them over and they're unable to walk them four or five blocks. We could definitely look at that because the concerns that I read here was that there's parking on both sides of the road, which always brings a safety issue. [35:48] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Question for me: when was the last time this area was dealt with as in maintenance or construction? Has there been a... or is this like the first time out? [36:12] **Brian Erickson:** This is pretty close to the first time out. I don't have all that information in my back pocket. [36:18] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** I'd be just curious as to... how much life we got out of what was there. I appreciate that, recognizing this is just a resurfacing, it's not a full type deal. [36:34] **Nick Egger:** Mayor, if I could. I think what we found were the streets had a range in age from... some were originally constructed in the 1970s era up through late 80s early 90s if I'm not mistaken. So there's a variety out there. Having said that, on the whole they're very, very low and well below what we aspire to have as street conditions in any given place. I think the highest-rated streets fall below that 60 rating threshold that we use to mark when a more significant reconstruction or pavement replacement is due. [37:25] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, it just feels like this area is due for some reconstruction. All right, any other questions? Then we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak on this topic may do so. Come forward to the podium, state your name and address and your question or concern. The floor is open. [37:57] **Nick Egger:** Mayor, before... I'm sorry sir, one more comment just to clarify one thing coming into this meeting. There are publication requirements that come with a project being facilitated like this where there will be assessments involved and so forth. And we had a mishap with the newspaper receiving our notification, therefore it didn't publish on the dates that we required it to be. So we're safe to proceed with opening the public hearing tonight and taking comments, but we cannot close it at this time. We'll have to ask the Council to continue it at the next Council meeting where we can take additional comment if there is, then close it and then Council can make the decisions at that time. [38:43] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Just because of the newspaper article didn't go up in time. [38:46] **Nick Egger:** Correct. Technicality. Residents were still mailed the notice as required and we post it here at City Hall like required, but we had an electronic transmittal error that occurred and the newspaper didn't receive it unannounced to us until it was too late. [39:15] **John Anderson:** Hi, my name is John Anderson and my address is 1547 Choke Cherry Avenue. So I would be kind of in one of these corners. And I respectfully disagree on the condition of the roads. We have a couple of dogs and we're out walking our dogs just about every day around this whole neighborhood. And since I got the letter, I've been kind of driving the roads kind of giving them an extra good look. Honestly, the worst road out of all these is 155th, and that's not even on here. So that really surprised me because that is the one road that's traveled the most. So with the pictures and stuff up here, you know, anybody can take a camera and go around and find the worst spots on the roads. But gosh, I've never driven down any of these streets and said, "Oh wow, these are really in bad condition." There's no potholes. There's some cracks and stuff like that. But the other thing is, you know, I've been around since 2009 and the roads have never been tarred and rocked or patched in any way at all. So I don't know. The other thing is if they're going to do that, then what's the condition of the other utilities underneath the road? As long as they're going through it, I would hate to see this done and then in 5-10 years from now having to tear them all again to put fiber optic in or whatever the case would be. I don't know what the average life of a road is—is it 50 years, is it 40 years? I don't know. But there's been no maintenance on the roads at all since I've been around. I would go for patch repair and oiling it and rocking it on a hot summer day and letting it tighten up just like some of the other roads in the neighborhood that have been done. So thank you. [41:24] **Cory Hografe:** My name is Cory Hografe. I'm at 3556 154th Street. I've lived there since the house was brand new, 1998 we moved in there. I agree with John, there's never been any maintenance to those streets. They've never done any cracks with the tar, they've never put gravel and tar on there ever since I've lived there. My opinion on taking out Circle Avenue—right now it's a small street obviously, but there's street drains on each side of that street. How much does it cost to take those street drains out? Are you going to just cap off the sewer system there? I think that's the biggest amount of money is taking out those two streets. And the people that live on both sides of that street, they have fences, so it's not going to benefit them. Their yard's not going to be any bigger. So if you put a 10-foot trail through there, then as a city how much does it cost for the next 20 years for the city to take care of the grass there? You know, is it going to come all weedy and crappy looking? There's more upkeep. We didn't upkeep the roads to begin with. We don't have sidewalks on 154th Street. I already thought that they have wheelchair accessibility at the end of those sidewalks there, so I don't know why that would be. And then again, the letter I got here is my assessment's $1,999. On the screen there he just said it's $3,700. So the money assessments are all over the place. I mean, one's $100, one's 4,000. I don't know how you can assess somebody if you haven't decided whether you're going to take out them streets. And I think those streets don't need to be taken out. That's the highest cost of the project. Thanks. [43:44] **Steve Elm:** Hello, my name is Steve Elm and I live at 3855 154th Street West and I've lived there for 28 years. So I mean history, I've got a little bit of history what's going on on there. I'll tell you the road between Columbia and Claret, where I drive every day a couple of times a week, is crap. It's coming apart. And all the years I've lived there, once we put rock and oil down, and that's been a long time since that was done. And so it's just getting worse. Something needs to be done. I don't want to pay $4,000 to have the roads done, but something needs to be done at this point because they are getting worse. Fixing a pothole—they did it and a month later it's getting worse, and so the area is getting bad. I ride my bicycle through the whole area, in fact all over Rosemount, and you know, I search out the new roads, they're wonderful. [44:35] **Steve Elm:** I know it's easy for a consultant to go, "well, we don't need those two sections." I drive on Columbia every day at least twice a day. I'm sure the people that live down there would like to continue to have it. Columbia connects 153rd and 155th, so it gets a lot of traffic both ways. And I guarantee you if you close those down, there'll be more traffic on 153rd and 155th and people already speed on there already. I mean, I don't have as many young kids on my street as we used to when I first moved there, but there's still a lot on 153rd. Near the park right there, people are speeding through there already. So I just think if we close that out, we are going to force traffic onto that part. I think we need to do something with the roads; it's been a long time since anything's been done. I'm sure we're spitballing the amount that it's going to cost at $2 million if we don't have any bids yet. So that was it. Thank you. [46:24] **Patrick Wowski:** Good evening Mayor, Council. Patrick Wowski, I'm on 15231 Colbury Circle. I got three points to make tonight. The first one, semi-speaking on behalf of a neighbor that wasn't able to make it tonight. There was a comment made about if there was any comments from the Chief of Fire or Chief of Police, and my neighbor has reached out to them via email; they have not responded. So if you're waiting on comments from either of those two people, put out a request for information if there's any issues or concerns with that. Second comment is that even though I don't live on a street that necessarily uses Columbia Avenue, we traverse that quite often. We have friends and neighbors that live on the other street over. Often times I will take Columbia to get to 155th just because it's so much easier to turn left at that point at 155th versus trying to turn left at 153rd. There's a large tree there that blocks the view plus the wind people come through there quite often very quickly. Just the point is that we do use these streets quite often. I agree that it's not something that should necessarily be closed. Yes, thank you. [47:54] **Adam Bangson:** Hello Mayor, Councilmembers. My name is Adam Bangson. We live at 3628 154th Street West. We are essentially at the south intersection of Circle Avenue and 154th Street. I also am speaking on behalf of a couple of neighbors that weren't able to be here tonight. I also have three points to make. But the first is really a thank you. I appreciate the Council, the City, always looking forward to how we can better our city. I understand that road improvement is part of that and so I want to thank you for looking thoughtfully at this. I also want to thank the City Engineer; I spoke with him this morning and he's been super responsive and really great at getting answers to our questions. The second is: we bought our house in 2005 and at least at that point Circle Avenue was in place. I also spoke with our neighbors that have said that it was in place before that as well. I assume that when a neighborhood is planned there is thoughtfulness and good planning that goes into that about ingress and egress and traffic. And while I understand that connectivity would be maintained from a pedestrian standpoint with a trail, I can validate that our family uses Circle Avenue every day. And when it comes to maintenance, in closing off that particular pathway, more traffic would be driven out to that main artery of Claret. That is the spot that I see many potholes forming. And so when it comes to preventing maintenance costs, I think that this actually would be one way to keep that from happening—is to keep those streets open because it lessens the amount of traffic that goes on there. And then the third point is something that was mentioned earlier, and that is if we are doing this project no matter what, I would encourage the Council and the consultants to consider how we can improve our utilities. One particular utility that I know is an opportunity is the installation or upgrading of fiber optic cable. I spoke with a company that serves Rosemount called Gigabit Minnesota; they currently do not have fiber optic cable in that area and they would certainly like to do that. If when the roads are at least partially torn up that would afford them the opportunity to do it, I would ask that the Council and the consultants plan to talk with those utility providers to make sure that those opportunities are utilized. Thanks. [51:06] **Anita Gash:** Hello Mayor and City Council. My name is Anita Gash. I'm at 3644 154th Street. I live right next door to Adam. I, along with several others, am against the closing of Circle Avenue. That avenue is used as a regular—on a regular basis—by neighborhoods and all the people in the neighborhood and utilities and what have you. I also guess I just have a few questions. I've been there since December of 1998 and there was at one point in time some oil and gravel put down, probably in the early 2000s. So there is road improvements that probably need to be done, especially to Claret because that does get a lot of potholes. But I guess I don't know myself how the road construction works. How long is the road going to be shut down? Can we access our driveway? We actually store a trailer on our driveway in the summer months; would we be able to get that in and out of the driveway? And I guess if they are going to be doing some regrading or improvements to the road... when that road was put in, there's drainage by my next-door neighbor's house, but it's not graded properly. The water actually pools in front of our mailbox and in front of our driveway. So this time of the year if there's a nice storm or a lot of snow melt, we get a big huge icy spot right in front of our driveway where the mailbox is. The water doesn't actually make it to the drainage where it's supposed to go. So that's a concern that I have that if we are going to do some road improvement, that I would like looked at. So thank you. [53:11] **Andy Amdt:** My name is Andy Amdt. Thank you for opening this up to the public. I'm right on the corner of Columbia, the proposed change. We are right on the corner of 154th and Columbia, so our backyard is parallel to Columbia. My house number is 3899 154th Street. So we have kind of mixed feelings, mostly because who wouldn't love to have an extension of their yard? But the fastest traffic we see comes around that corner. It whips off Shannon and comes through. So my little kids—with no sidewalk there—that's always been a concern. There's not a four-way stop, so cars just have to be yielding. So I have mixed feelings about whether we close the road or not. There's definite drainage problems in that whole backyard area; there's just standing water there every spring. The other thing is there's no sidewalk on 154th as has been mentioned. So I didn't know if that was something they were planning on putting in. If you put in this nice pedestrian path and it goes nowhere, then we're going to have foot traffic across our yard. We've never had a sidewalk down either side of 154th. That definitely needs road work. I'm not necessarily thinking that taking out that road would change that, but that corner is terrible for potholes. They fill them, fill them, fill them, and nothing. So either way, again we would love more yard, but that would take a lot of questions from us for homeowners that sit on that bank right there: if we do jet our fences out, what more do we own? If we keep the road I'm fine with that; I would just hope we would do some improvements and possibly think about a stop sign. That is a very fast road where our kids without sidewalks... it could be dangerous. And that's all that I have. Thanks. [56:15] **Jim Cotz:** Mayor, Councilmembers, my name is Jim Cotz. I live on 3933 154th Street West. I moved to this house in 1988 and so I'm on the cul-de-sac side. There's nine houses in the cul-de-sac. When I first moved there, there was no 153rd Street; that was put in like about a year and a half later if I remember right. To get to 154th Street, you went on 155th to get there. And actually, I am... actually, I like the idea of closing those two portions. And the reason for my thoughts is I think it would actually help the traffic flow because I think right now we actually have too much access point. I have a feeling just for myself, as I leave, yes I would go out on 155th. But if I'm out on 155th, as someone mentioned earlier, turning on Shannon Parkway... 155th on the Shannon Parkway is much easier to make that turn because of that little curve on Shannon Parkway. In the past, the snowbanks would cause a block on 153rd. And yes, the road does need work. It's only been done once as far as resurfaced. But so I just wanted to state that I was actually for the closures. Okay, thank you. [58:23] **Marie Wowski:** Thank you everybody. Marie Wowski. I am Patrick Wowski's wife, 15231 Colbury Circle. So we're back in the cul-de-sac. I remembered his third thing and I have one other item. So the first one that I'll bring up is just the assessment fee. This neighborhood, as you've heard, a lot of people have been there a long time. We have been there 10 years, almost 11. We bought this when the houses were much less than what they're going for now. And so to see some of that assessment fee come in and think, "okay, we have to pay that or get a TBD interest rate"—that's like a dagger. Because you're like, "okay, well that's a family vacation or other things." Also speak for a couple other neighbors; we have some single moms in the neighborhood who are trying to make things work and that would be pretty detrimental. So I get that it's $2 million, but there clearly hasn't been enough work on the road to warrant... like, we've all paid enough taxes to probably cover that road a couple times, right? Like, that's my request: would be how can we lessen that burden on this group of people when we've been neglected on that work? Also, last thing: if we were to close those, I would ask that we get speed bumps on 153rd, maybe on the other streets. We have a lot of young kids and they all play together and it's a wonderful neighborhood. We teach them safety but there are just people that cut through that to get to the movie theater and they just fly. Those are my couple of points. Thank you for giving us the time. [1:00:43] **Robert Rees:** Good evening Councilmembers, my name is Robert Rees. I live in kind of the circle, which is 15366 Choke Cherry Avenue. I've been in this area for about 11 years. I would agree with just about everything that's been said as far as there hasn't been a lot done. And I don't think enough has been done to warrant this level of cost for the homeowners to take this on. As far as the roads being taken out, my opinion would be to leave them in because I don't think the city would want to upkeep that area. And with the pathway, are you going to bring snow plows and clear it? I mean, I don't see it being done. And then if it's a sidewalk being through there, I mean I've seen a lot of the sidewalks in that area that there's cracks, there's grass growing through them. I'm not convinced that this area is going to be upkept as well. [1:01:45] **Robert Rees:** And it was mentioned earlier about parking for Claret Park. I don't know if that's technically on the docket, but I just wanted to bring that out. People tend to park on Claret Avenue on both sides just to park. There is a grass area that is kind of behind Great Clips and stuff like that where I think even if it was just three or four parking spots, I think it's well worth it. When they redid the park, I also asked: can they just even put in a soccer goal for because it's just a random field and nobody uses the field. But I think if you just even had a soccer goal, kids would come and just kick the ball. I want to also agree that I think 155th probably should be on the docket. I think that road as far as wear and tear... if you did a compare between 154th and 155th, I'd be like, "who missed this?" I think that road is just as bad. I agree that some things need to be done. Claret Avenue tends to get a lot of potholes that are just kind of patched every year and then just kind of last for a few months and go away. But yeah, that's about it. Thank you for your time. [1:03:53] **Ed Les:** My name is Ed Les, 3915 153rd Street West. I just have a couple of questions. Why are you considering removing these streets? What's the purpose for doing it and what's going to be in its stead? Is it just grassland across? What's this "optional trail connection"—what does that mean? And "rain garden possibilities"—what does that mean? I mean, you're talking about getting rid of something but you don't say what you're replacing it with. As far as I'm concerned on the Columbia one, it would be great for me. I don't have to look at my rearview mirror when I back out of the driveway because Columbia jumps right into my driveway. But that's just my questions: why is this being proposed at all and what benefit is there for doing it? So, okay. Thank you. [1:04:47] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Thank you. Anyone else? As you heard earlier, we will not be closing the public hearing. We'll be continuing it to... what's our next date? February 6th. So the action item that's on the agenda, we will not be taking any action this night and we will reconvene on the 6th and reopen the hearing at that time. So right now, motion to continue the hearing until February 6th. [1:05:39] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** So moved. [1:05:40] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** Second. [1:05:41] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion and second. All in favor signify by saying aye. (Group: Aye). All right, so again the public hearing is continued till the 6th. We'll take additional comments between now and then. Information... unless there's anything that staff wants to respond to specific now? Or we'll come back and respond probably that evening. [1:06:12] **Logan Martin (City Administrator):** Just thinking out loud here a little bit, Mayor. There may be benefit for the folks that are in the room if we run through the questions now. I have a feeling that that could help just bring clarity heading into the next opportunity for comment. Then maybe something will have been made more clear from our end. But I would look to the Council to give staff direction on which specific elements you'd like us to speak to. And I would ask that City Engineer Erickson and our consultant lead the way with responding to those. [1:06:48] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Well first of all, I would just like to say that I think that the feedback is really good and we appreciate all the faces here. And I think I would just like to know more about if we just leave them, if there's a huge cost to it, because... or speak a little bit more to that. Because I think there was a question if there is a sidewalk, why is there a sidewalk, what does it look to? And I think you touched on it a little bit, but maybe just go into that a little bit. Because from what I heard, the majority is "leave them there" from what I saw. 8.5 out of 11 on my... okay, yes. [1:07:47] **Brian Erickson:** Yeah, you know, really it was an idea presented to us—something to review. "Hey, there's these seem to be some additional connections, there's no driveways on those in particular." I think there was a misunderstanding at one point for example, somebody thought Choke Cherry was one of them to be closed, which we can't because there's driveways there. As far as the construction cost piece, there's not a substantial difference between leaving the road in place or taking the road out. It really comes at a future—with future maintenance—on whether it's just a trail or whether it's the road coming through there. I did hear some comments... but the idea that these would be not necessarily sidewalks but trail widths through there. So they would be probably added to our plow areas if that was the case. That's... we've had that discussion, yes, and that would be the plan. There's talk of water issues in and around that area; I think that spurred the ideas of rain gardens maybe being a part of that solution. Circle Avenue in particular does have storm catch basins at the mid-block point. You know, so that would be an opportunity there. That's why we wouldn't propose removing that storm line through there. It would provide an opportunity that if we did put a rain garden in there, it does have an overflow then it could go into that storm line should we get a large storm. [1:09:18] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** One of the things that stood out to me... I think I heard 8 and a half of the 11 that spoke don't necessarily want to have them removed. But the other piece of that that I thought was interesting is that 154th doesn't have a sidewalk. So if we do have a walking trail, where are we sending the flow of people? So I guess that doesn't make sense to me either for the removable land. [1:09:51] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, I do know that you know, like you say, these areas are developed and that's some time ago. I think our current standard is... although it feels like it should have had at least a sidewalk on one side of the thing. The problem that we run into now, and we've seen this in other much higher-trafficked areas, is that when we try to go back and put a sidewalk in, as much as we think that that's a great idea, we've left it up to the homeowners along there and a lot of times they don't like having a sidewalk to either shovel or they don't want to lose the land. So it's always a problem to try to go back and put a sidewalk. I would certainly agree that there should be... personally I'd like sidewalks on both sides of the street, but that's a different issue. So that is a concern. There was I think a question I saw about the assessments. There was two numbers floating around and I wanted to pull back to where you were showing that. I think one number was being shown at like 4,000 and the other number that was being talked about was 2,000 or something there. [1:11:32] **Brian Erickson:** Yeah, I'm unsure where a $1,900 assessment came from. I know that the letter that was provided showed the estimated total project cost of 1.9 million. And so I'm not sure if that's where there's a small disconnect. I'm guessing after we finish, if you've got some information like that and you want to bring it up and share it with staff... [1:11:58] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Back up one. Yep, so that's a project cost. So that's the total project cost that includes design, there's a construction contingency in there and all the construction cost. That's for everything. And that number is—I went back and checked the letter that was provided to the residents—that number is in the letter that they received. That is the number. So that is not an assessment cost. The assessment dollars that are being assessed are shown under that funding summary under "Assessments." The total amount being assessed is $615,000—estimate right at this point. [1:12:44] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** And then based on... I use the single family as the easy piece, right? We just do a plot assessment and it's divided amongst all the homes on there. Was there any other ones... there was a couple comments and questions around the process for identifying when roads would be constructed. So can you speak a little bit about just about our overall annual budget that we have to play with every year and how we identify streets and how the rating is? [1:13:11] **Brian Erickson:** Sure. You know, we have the Capital Improvement Plan where the streets are selected. So we do that review based on what we know with the street conditions. These numbers that were shown in the presentation are from three years ago. And so we're actually doing that every three years—we do that pavement condition rating, so that's coming up this year. But back on the numbering in the system, that's something that I know that we've had in place for well over 10 years, maybe almost 15 years now, that we've had some type of assessment to be able to identify what projects. And you're saying that those numbers... they're in our Asset Management System and that does calculations that will... unless we do a major reconstruction, those numbers are not going to increase over time. They're going to be worse. Exactly. So that system does calculate that. It's fairly accurate as what we've been finding. Those numbers are where we start as a baseline for which neighborhoods. I did do a calculation today; this whole neighborhood is roughly at about a 36 or 37. I realize there's a couple that are much higher, but you know, even a 59 on a test is not something you really want to see generally. [1:15:37] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** And I think to recognize when this process takes, like you say, over a three-year period and then we've identified them... what neighborhoods they get into kind of in line. Some of them are stretched out depending on where they are. But then the thought that, yeah, in some areas here you might have higher numbers, in the other areas a little lower. We can't go in and just do two houses type thing. It doesn't work that way, right? [1:16:14] **Brian Erickson:** No, it doesn't. We generally don't like to "orphan" those streets—do everything around it and leave one street. It gets more expensive. You have to bring in everything you needed for the larger project to do a smaller project at some future date. [1:16:29] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** And has this area been delayed a couple years already? Possibly one. Okay, but it's been on the Capital Improvement Plan. [1:16:41] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Mr. Mayor, I just got a couple followup questions here. First of all, one of the first comments that made was the question was asked: why are we doing the project? I think there's a recognition that it has to be done. We just talked about the index why it has to be done. Also, I heard a few issues where we had drainage issues, water sitting. That's the other benefit of doing a project like this: not only do you fix the surface, but you fix a lot of the alignment and the settling and you fix a lot of those potholes permanently—or at least on a longer-term basis. So I think if there's any questions why we're doing it, hopefully that's been answered tonight. Followup: 155th. Couple individuals pointed out that 155th may look worse than the rest of this. Do you happen to know what the index is on 155th? [1:17:39] **Brian Erickson:** I do not, not off the top of my head. I can certainly get that. [1:17:42] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Because I'd be curious. You know, as we go in two weeks from now and we're looking at this again, I'd just be curious: would 155th viably be something we should be considering as well? Pretty unanimously—almost unanimously—leave the roads. Going into this, when I first read the packet, I asked the question of staff too: "What's driving this?" There's no savings to the assessments because all of these roads—the circle and Columbia—those two roads don't have any driveways off them. So there would be no savings in the assessments to the residents; that would all be City savings. So if there was some net savings there, you're not going to benefit from that in terms of the assessment. Just as a data point for you guys. The sidewalk on 154th: I agree with the Mayor. I think it'd be a real challenge to try to ask all those residents to say, "Hey, we're now we're going to put a sidewalk in." I think we all would agree we'd want sidewalks on one if not both sides of every road, but I think after the fact it's going to be a lot more difficult to do it right now. The question was brought up about utilities. If we're digging up the streets, are we in a position where we can do something with utilities? You know, the question was asking about fiber. I do think that's something that definitely staff should be looking into. [1:19:17] **Nick Egger:** I'll chime in on that if I can. Every reconstruction or major infrastructure project that we do, we do connect with private utility entities to inform them about what our plan is. What the City can't do is force an improvement by a private entity—can't tell them you have to put whatever it is in the ground there. It's more of a coordination type of alignment than an imposition. If they see that the market's there for their product, they'll probably do something. We heard from some residents that there may be interest in this and they can check into it further, but the City can't forcibly require them to put in their facilities. [1:20:07] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** So I just want to... that followup might be, since they know this is going to be... if that's really something that you want to pursue, contact them and inundate them with that request. [1:20:19] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** And then the last comment is Claret Park. I'd love to get pricing on what we could do maybe on a bump-out just from a safety standpoint there. I think that's something that we should probably look into. [1:20:29] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Did you mention there's a future project though that was going to deal with crossings and with pedestrian crossings? Would some of that be part of that, or this would be kind of separate? [1:20:41] **Nick Egger:** That would be a separate program. What City Engineer Erickson was alluding to is this year we're going to embark on examining all of our collector roads to determine where the most appropriate locations would be for crosswalk enhancements. So it's more of a system-wide look and then setting the course to do individual projects at key locations. So nothing would occur on that front with this project specifically, but folks may see something on either of those streets that were mentioned in the next couple of years as an improvement coming out of that study. [1:21:26] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Anything else? No, that covered mine. Thank you. [1:21:31] **Brian Erickson:** Just to address a couple things that were mentioned, Mr. Essler: I have had a very brief discussion with our consultant about the potential for doing something with that curb line on the east side of Claret near the park. You know, could we get a couple parallel spaces in there potentially? So certainly something we'll look at and see how that fits in with the alignment. And then just to touch base—I know utilities was mentioned and a concern about we do the street and five years down the road we have to come through and tear it out... I've been coordinating with our Street and Utility Supervisor. From a general standpoint, the utilities in this area are not seeing any problems. The sanitary sewer connections are fine. You know, the water main is 70s to 90s, so water main of that vintage has probably got 80-plus years of life, give or take. Same thing with the sanitary sewers. So these streets could potentially be reconstructed this year and one more time before they would even do a full reconstruction. [1:22:48] **Brian Erickson:** And there is some stuff now where we do... we try to do in-place so you don't even have to tear the whole road up to redo sanitary, for example. So those public utilities are in fine condition. [1:23:05] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** You were talking about the fire plugs, hydrants? [1:23:07] **Brian Erickson:** The fire hydrant, correct, yep. Some of those do need some work. [1:23:11] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** That was one other thing that was asked today that maybe you can clear up too: that access as construction is commencing. People have access to their driveway. I mean, we're not going to not allow people to get in and out of their driveway. I'm sure there's going to be gravel and stuff, but I'm sure you guys will communicate all that, right? [1:23:28] **Brian Erickson:** Yes, we'll have a full-time inspector on site when that work is ongoing. There will be times that you can't get into or out of your driveway; that will be passed along to those residents ahead of time so you don't wake up in the morning a little bit late for work and next thing you know you can't pull out of your driveway. Certainly something that will... we'll pass that along. And really those windows are very limited because they do try to... for example, you've seen the reclaim photo, you really can't drive through that until they do some shape and work on that. They don't... it doesn't sit like that for days. They're usually right behind that working on getting us a drivable surface again. The other time would be when they're paving. Generally once the rollers come past, on some of it you can generally drive over it. If they do put the tack coat down, the oil down, we certainly don't want folks driving on that because they're not going to like what it does to their car. [1:24:26] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** No, I was just going to add: I think you guys were looking for some feedback. By my count we had 11 people speak, and thank you for doing that. Nine people were against closing the roads, one was neutral, and one was for. From what I'm hearing and seeing, I'm still not understanding the benefit of why we would close them, so I would go with the residents. That's all. [1:25:07] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, and I anticipated coming into this that that was the feedback we were going to hear. I mean, people live in the neighborhood, that's what they're used to. Barring any safety concerns or anything like that, I don't know why we'd want to do that. But thanks for the innovation. Appreciate that. All right, so nothing else. As indicated, 7A will be continued till February 6th. Thanks. And that completes Item 7 for this evening. We'll move on to Item 8. [1:26:13] **Logan Martin (City Administrator):** Thank you Mayor, members of the Council. Per State Statute, the City held a closed session on January 2nd to do my performance evaluation. And so per State Statute, we need to report out on the results of that performance evaluation and that closed session at the next open regular City Council meeting. So we are here tonight to convey that and we'll just briefly go over the conversation that was had in the closed session regarding my annual performance. First of all, I want to thank the City Council; we had a really productive and good conversation on the 2nd. A little bit of context for anybody listening at home: City staff HR Manager Jamie Isaac sent out a digital survey performance evaluation to the City Council to assess my performance from the previous year in a number of different categories—similar categories we've had since I started here in the city—that we can then benchmark kind of my performance and trajectory over the course of my tenure here at the city. So thanks to the Council for filling that out. [1:27:31] **Logan Martin:** The categories are listed in the Council packet: organizational management, fiscal management, relationship with the Council, long-range planning, relationship with the public, intergovernmental relations, and personal and professional development. Overall, on a scale of 1 to 5, most scores were received in the 4 category, indicating meeting or exceeding expectations in those categories. And again, I think Council can provide any perspective that they had. From my standpoint, I think we had a really good conversation about my strengths, my weaknesses, areas for growth, and abilities to continue going well going forward. And as that aligns, we've got our goal-setting session this week with the City Council—first one here on Thursday, second session next Thursday—where we can kind of establish the next 5-year strategic plan for the city. So things like this and these conversations really get us in a good headspace to start to kind of chart out the future. But like I said, positive conversation, appreciate the feedback, and continue to certainly enjoy our relationship in my time here. So with that, Mayor, I can turn it back to you. That should serve as the report out as required by State Statute. [1:28:44] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Any questions or discussion amongst Council? [1:28:47] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** The one thing I will call out is I think the trend continues to improve year over year. I mean, these are pretty incredible rankings. But what it doesn't show is it just continues to get better and better. So thanks for all your work. You're doing a great job for the city and you represent us well and we all love working with you. [1:29:10] **Logan Martin:** Thank you. [1:29:11] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Well and I would just add, not only for us to work with—it's been an absolute pleasure—but your staff too. The feedback we get from staff continuously is that you're just absolutely crushing it. A great leader. Talking about innovation, talking about some of the things that we're talking about, the growth mindset... you show up well each and every day and I think that shows on how the staff receives that. So congrats. [1:29:43] **Logan Martin:** Appreciate that. [1:29:44] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** Just thank you. [1:29:45] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Thanks. All right, so that'll complete Item 8 and we'll move on to New Business 9A, which we have a project update. [1:30:05] **Logan Martin:** Thanks Mayor, members of the Council. I'll take this one again and then Public Works Director Egger is here as well from the project team. No recommended action or formal action needed tonight; we just wanted to place this item in New Business just to get it in a spot where it can get some recognition. But as we discussed previously, we're going to give a monthly update to the City Council on the status of our Police and Public Works campus project. Anybody who hasn't had a chance to drive by safely on Biscayne Avenue and take a peek at that project, it is flying. It is going very well. We also have a really active and regularly updated website page dedicated to the Public Works and Police campus project. I said in the correct order that time there for you, Nick. [1:30:46] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** What's the web address, Logan? [1:30:48] **Logan Martin:** Very easy: rosemountmn.gov/pdpw. Alphabetically. So that page has the attachments that you see here live on that page. Namely, the first attachment is this kind of colorful infographic that the Council's got in front of them. We update that monthly, and then there's also a monthly updated time-lapse video of the project. Just from a construction standpoint, obviously it looks like a building when you drive by. The structural steel, the tilt-up panels, the joists, and the roof decking are all in place and completed, which then allowed the beginning of internal pouring of concrete floors to happen. As the underground utilities have been put in place, concrete floors in PD and the PD garage and the gun range have been poured on top of those utilities. In the PW area, there's some final underground utility work happening and then we'll begin pouring the concrete floors over the next several weeks. [1:31:38] **Logan Martin:** There'll be a bit more exterior wall framing in PW, the finalization of the roof in PW, and then mechanical and electrical throughout the building. Right now and for the next few months, it's on temporary heat inside the building, which is done so that the curing of the concrete as we pour the floors can happen. Got to keep the building at a nice temperature to get that concrete to cure before we can start driving vehicles back over it. The project remains on budget as discussed. Council was on site in November, did some hard hat tours, and then sat in the construction trailer to really inspect the building and the project schedule and budget. Our construction contingency is at $1.53 million, and that number is assuming that change orders that are attached that are still pending are spent. It's certainly trending towards a project that would come in under that $58.2 million budget that the Council set at the start of the project. [1:32:55] **Logan Martin:** Really, really good news there. Kraus-Anderson continues to do just a fantastic job for us in managing the project. You'll see a change order listing here on the final two pages. All those listed as pending are under the $50,000 limit that staff can consider, but for one, which is high right now and they're working on reducing that number. The other thing that we'd mentioned previously is we continue to be through the portion of the project that would lead to the largest dollar change orders. That typically happens in soil correction time and then as we—which we did not have—but we did see it in steel construction and the joists. We're through that. Really hopeful that the things coming down the pipe here are smaller change orders, if any at all. We completed furniture tours last week. So a few of the finishes that the owner gets to select and install throughout the project were separately bid with Kraus-Anderson, but then we can select based on the catalogs that they have for us—things like Information Technology and office furniture. [1:34:25] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, we're all looking for better chairs here in the Council chambers, that's on the list trust me. [1:34:32] **Logan Martin:** But as we have to sit in some chairs and do some chair tests and look at cubicles and things of that nature... really exciting to start to visualize what that building could look like. Still on schedule for a December occupation by our two teams and on track to be at least on budget. Nick, anything that I missed there that you want to add? [1:35:10] **Nick Egger:** No, that was very robust and full of energy. Great job. [1:35:14] **Logan Martin:** Happy to take any questions. [1:35:16] **Councilmember Paul Essler:** Is your office not concreted? I haven't been over there to see in a couple of weeks. [1:35:21] **Logan Martin:** Not inside... I don't think they've reached that area yet, not on PW's side. Could be wrong, but we're going over there tomorrow. [1:35:34] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** One of the things that I noticed from our November visit: we were talking about the possibility of getting the roof on, and it just seems like it's gone so much faster than I had expected. You guys are in the construction business, you're more aware of this, but all of a sudden we see lights in the garage area and everything like that. It just seems like it's really coming alive in the last month or so. Did we really gain a lot because of the weather, like not a lot of snow or anything like that? [1:36:12] **Logan Martin:** It hasn't hurt. We haven't asked Kraus-Anderson to quantify it, but it sure seems like it. [1:36:20] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** No, I'm just saying it's very impressive. I guess from a person that's not in this industry... my comment was not to start this, more to say it's really impressive. [1:36:45] **Logan Martin:** It impresses us too, Paul. We go there every Wednesday for construction trailer meetings and it changes every week. It's really wild. Whether it's... I think Kraus-Anderson runs a very tight ship and we got lucky with really good contractors. They are burning through it. [1:37:16] **Councilmember Paul Theisen:** Is the building getting "smaller" yet? I remember you saying that on the tours. [1:37:21] **Logan Martin:** It depends what part of it you're in, but certainly that kind of spatial awareness or impression phenomenon is there when you see some interior structure taking form. It does have a way of making you think that it's smaller all of a sudden than it was when it first was going up. Definitely bigger than our current setup though. [1:37:41] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yes, yeah. Which is good. We're not asking for an expansion anytime soon. [1:37:45] **Logan Martin:** Not yet. [1:37:46] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Any other questions, comments? All right, we'll consider the report accepted. That completes 9A. Move to announcements. Anything from staff updates? [1:38:15] **Logan Martin:** I can take a couple Mayor, members of the Council. First, hard to believe as maybe folks watch the national news with the Iowa caucuses, but Minnesota is up soon here with presidential caucusing. In-person absentee voting starts on Friday. We are geared up and ready; we have a brand new Deputy City Clerk on city staff who's been wonderful and she's getting trained up with Miss Fasbender. To that end, we still could use election judges. We'd love to have some more election judges if anybody'd like to go online, fill out a convenient form. And then Mayor, one of the consent agenda items that you did tonight was the creation of a new position in our Police Department for a Senior Records Technician. Another nice innovation from Chief Thomas here to give some internal promotion opportunities for records technicians that we currently have on our team. And then also addresses a really critical need that we have in the management of our evidence room. These folks are the critical lynchpins of how we'd run our evidence room. When we take in evidence, these folks are really directly managing that really important process. [1:40:04] **Logan Martin:** We'll be talking more as you hear over the coming months about some of the more innovative things that we're having to do in the Police Department to attract and retain individuals. One of the things that we can preview here is a program that the State of Minnesota is rolling out which is like a police transition program that allows folks to transition from another career path into policing in a more focused training schedule. Wanted to call that out. Just one: if you wanted to give kind of an early view of what we talked about at the Port Authority tonight was the Expo coming to town and have people get that date on their calendars. [1:40:55] **Logan Martin:** March 2nd is the Rosemount Expo, formerly known as the Home and Business Expo. We have decided to brand it a bit differently and broaden it out a bit. In the past maybe it's been focused on "you need a new roof" or "you need windows"—those folks will absolutely still be there. But that's also a community expo and more of a business expo as well, breaking in new ideas like classes: yoga class or a coffee flight class, an improv class. Someone is teaching that. And then a CrossFit class, things of that nature so you can come and stay busy throughout the day. We've got catered-in food that we're subsidizing via our sponsorships so folks can get an affordable lunch. Some beer options as well to make it more of kind of a fair-type event. So really hoping to get as many bodies through the event as we can. March 2nd, 9:30 to 2:30 at the Rosemount Community Center. Watch for more; it's kind being branded as "Discover Your Community." [1:42:21] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Yeah, so this is a great thing. Again, get it on your calendar. You'll be hearing more and we'll keep bringing this up. I think residents will enjoy it. So with that, I'll move on to 10B, the upcoming community calendar. The City Council, as noted earlier, will have a special meeting—this will be our annual goal-setting session on Thursday, January 18th, from 3:00 to 7:00. The Parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting will be held on January 22nd from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. here at City Hall. The Planning Commission will be on January 23rd from 6:30 to 7:30 at City Hall. The Youth Commission meeting will be held, I believe it's at Steeple Center, January 24th, 3:45 to 4:45. And we will have our second annual goal-setting second session on January 25th from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. The next time City Council will get together after that will be at the work session for February 6th from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., followed by the City Council meeting from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. here at City Hall. So with that, unless there's any other business to come before Council, I'll move to adjourn. Is there a second? [1:44:00] **Councilmember Heidi Freske:** Second. [1:44:01] **Mayor Jeff Weisensel:** Motion's been made and seconded to adjourn the meeting. All in favor signify by saying aye. (Group: Aye). Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you. [1:44:15] [Music]