This transcript has been formatted with the names of the officials and staff provided in your context list. *Note: Several names in the raw transcript (e.g., "Vaughn," "Folch," "Brox," and "Fox") appeared to be phonetic transcription errors. These have been corrected to match the names on the official City Council list provided (Vihrachoff, Haus, Beck, etc.) based on phonetic similarity and context.* [0:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Council meeting to order. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:26] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Welcome, and let the roll reflect council members. Lund is absent and all other members are present and a quorum has been established. Tonight we have new employee introductions. Hastings is fortunate to have many employees dedicated to our community, and with us tonight we will have introductions of a couple new hires. [1:04] **Kelly Murtaugh (Assistant City Administrator)**: Good evening council members, Mayor. I would like to introduce Emily King, and Emily, please stand so everyone can see you. I am super excited to welcome Emily into the City of Hastings family. She joined us on February 15th as the Deputy City Clerk. She may be familiar to some of you for many reasons; she's a native of Hastings, she recently served a term on the Planning Commission, and she managed the local Caribou for several years—that is, I think, how I recognized her. Emily comes to us from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and we are benefiting from her many talents. She brings great project management skills, a knack for organization, and is very attentive to detail. [1:50] **Kelly Murtaugh (Assistant City Administrator)**: She's learning the many facets of the role very, very quickly. Other than the upcoming election season, a few of Emily's very favorite things include Easter, Yahtzee, pretzels, and of course Walter and Wilbur. Emily has fantastic energy and she is a pleasure to work with, and we are so glad that you are here. [Applause] [2:23] **Chris Jenkins (Parks Director)**: Good evening Mayor and Council. Introducing here tonight is Nick Coomer. He is our most recent hire and is a Parks Keeper 2 with our park maintenance division and began working with us on April 4th of this year. Nick is born and raised in Hastings, comes to us with a solid background having worked in our park maintenance crew last summer as well as working for the City of Mankato and Washington County in park maintenance crews. Not only does Nick have these experiences, he recently graduated from Minnesota State University in Mankato with a bachelor's degree in Parks Recreation and Leisure with an emphasis in resource management and leisure management planning—they didn't have that in my degree so I don't get used to saying it. Outside of work Nick enjoys family time, time with his friends, hiking, exploring, hunting, and fishing. We know Nick is a hard worker; we've put him to the test before. He's a team player, courteous and thoughtful. He's demonstrated his park maintenance skills, work ethic, and a great attitude, and we're excited to welcome Nick to our team and we're looking forward to watching him grow in his role. Thank you. [3:36] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Welcome. Council and the two new employees, if you step front we will take a photo. [4:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Yes. [4:27] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you. Thank you. [Music] [5:07] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: All right, tonight with us we have Helen Strike, and Helen is going to give us a Regina Hospital update. Welcome, Helen. [5:07] **Helen Strike (Allina Health/Regina Hospital)**: Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you Council, and thank you everyone for being here tonight. This is Jason Bainbridge, and Jason is a Hastings resident and he's our Director of Operations at Regina Hospital. So we're going to have a go at doing this together, and Jason's been our main person on the technical changes we're going to be doing at Regina. So first of all, I'd like to thank all—it's been a heck of a two years, maybe two and a half nearly, for COVID. I think the last time I was here that's what we were doing was a COVID update and how the hospital was supporting our residents. I just have to say that without all of you and our communities, to whom we are so grateful and thankful for all the care we provided at the clinic and at the hospital, it would have been an even harder two years. So thank you. It's with all our heart we thank you for all that. [5:53] **Helen Strike**: Well, I've got some really exciting news, and exciting for us and I hope for you as you hear this as we explain to you how we're creating a sustainable healthcare environment here in Hastings through Allina Health. So we want to talk about our commitment to care here from Allina Health and the background about why we're going to be making these changes that we're talking about, really what the benefits to our patients and the community members and our employees are, what our next steps are, and then I think you might remember when I was here last we talked about our "whole way to better," and so we'll talk more about that as well. [6:38] **Helen Strike**: So we announced a couple of weeks ago that in August of 2022, United Hospital and Regina Hospital were going to come together under one hospital license, or something we call one CCN (a CMS certification number). This means that United Hospital and Regina will become one hospital with two campuses—or as Jason likes to say, "one H2C." That allows us to have many things we're building off of areas that we already provide where we already provide outstanding shared services. We have many shared doctors, shared providers, and shared staff with United Hospital, and in our east region with River Falls Hospital, we also share many leaders. [7:24] **Helen Strike**: A year ago in May, Regina's Cancer Center joined and integrated with United Hospital as a department of that hospital for the Allina Health Cancer Institute to help us to come together to have less administrative burdens for our cancer patients and for our staff, and to help us with some federal funding called 340B. I have to say that's gone very well and has been painless really for everyone except our bottom line; it has actually brought 1.9 million dollars back to Allina Health by taking advantage of the 340B federal funding, which is about high-cost drugs for cancer care. Because we were able to join with United Hospital, we were able to take on those savings. So that was a very good thing. [8:09] **Helen Strike**: So our patients and our care teams will benefit from the closely connected programs and services that we already have and we hope to extend, and our close relationship with River Falls Hospital will not change and they will remain a critical access hospital in our east region. We will, though, get a new name. So in August of 2022, the technical change going under that one license will mean that we will change our name to Allina Health United Hospital - Hastings Regina Campus. We're already practicing how to answer the phone. [8:55] **Helen Strike**: It's a mouthful; however, we've tried it. "United Hospital Hastings Regina Campus, how can I help you?" It's not so bad; we can make that work. And Hastings Regina Campus will continue to be a Catholic hospital and Allina Health will continue to support and maintain the Catholic stewardship agreement that was started in 1991 by Sister Tabitha and our Sisters of Mercy. So what does all this really mean when you say we're joining together under one hospital license? Hospital licenses are created by CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) as guidelines and boundaries for how hospitals work—how they work internally and then how they work with each other. What they do is create boundaries around admissions and discharges, transfers, how you can move patients up and down through your hospital through the floors, and then how you can bill for and really make sure that when you come for care at Regina Hospital, you get a bill from Regina Hospital. [9:43] **Helen Strike**: Our Excellian product, which is our Epic product, is one of those things that helps us through our electronic medical record to be able to make sure that you get the best care you can and to receive that one bill. Well, when we are becoming one hospital with one license, it allows us to really enhance the collaboration that we have with each other. We already share services around our emergency care; we have the same emergency room doctors that United Hospital has, we have the same cardiologists, we have the same urologists, we have all sorts of specialists that are the same as United Hospital today. Investing in this partnership will help us to reimagine healthcare delivery and create a sustainable future for Hastings and our surrounding communities. [10:29] **Helen Strike**: Some of you may know that Allina did this a number of years ago, a project that I took part in: Mercy Hospital and Unity Campus joined together in 2017 under the same model and it has been extraordinary. Unity Hospital was a dying campus because of the way the rules were around the two separate licenses. By joining the two campuses together, they're both thriving campuses today and that's what we're looking for: two thriving campuses. [11:14] **Helen Strike**: How it benefits our patients is by taking down the walls and the barriers of patients moving between our campuses. Some of you may know now that we move a lot of patients from Regina Hospital to United. United Hospital is the tertiary hub of our system in the east region; it's where the heart surgeons are, where you can have a clot removed from your brain, all those things that you need when you have to have care that we can't provide here at Regina. But being able to start your care here at Regina allows you to be stabilized and prepared to transfer in a very calm way. That all will still happen, except as you come into Regina Hospital when we are "Hastings Regina Campus," we'll be able to move you to United Hospital with a transfer and not an admission and a discharge. That's taking down those administrative barriers of that one license. [11:59] **Helen Strike**: Probably the best thing is you'll get one bill. Whether you're at Regina or you're at United, there'll be one bill for that care that you have. And then maybe even the best thing for all of us is you won't get a bill for the transportation. If we need to move you from Regina to United today, you receive a bill to do that because of those administrative barriers of those two licenses. Starting in August when we have all of the technical change done for this, there'll be no bill for that transportation. It'll be an internal charge that we take on as United Hospital to actually make it easier for us all to work together. [12:45] **Helen Strike**: I think our EMS folks would say that's probably been a barrier; they haven't known where to take the patient because if they bring them to Regina and then they need to go to United, they can get stabilized here but they still receive a bill to get to Regina and then a bill to get to United. So that really helps, I hope, our EMS folks to make a decision about where to go first, which really will be the closest best care for that patient. How will it change for our staff members? Well, all of our Regina-employed physicians and team members will become United Hospital employees. Jason and I, even though we go back and forth between Regina and River Falls, we're based at Regina, so we'll become United Hospital employees. All of our physicians who are Allina Hospital Regina now will become United Hospital employees, and that actually helps a little bit because we already have a lot of doctors that go back and forth. Doctors who are now at United but don't have credentials to be at Regina will now, starting in August, and that has to help us to make better care and services available here as well as in St. Paul. [13:32] **Helen Strike**: One Excellian product (Epic) is the electronic medical record. If you've got MyChart and you are able to look up your records, none of that will change, but you will receive notification from United Hospital Hastings Regina Campus. It will be one Excellian product, so our staff who work at Regina will be on the same product and same hospital number as United, and so we will just transfer you to United instead of having to discharge you from Regina and admit you over at United and back and forth. So if you're in the ER at United, have surgery up there, but we believe you can come back to Regina to recover, we can do that with one bill from United Hospital and no transportation for you. That's got to be better. [14:18] **Helen Strike**: I think as part of our staff—our regular staff who work at Regina—really nothing will change. We'll have the same union contracts; those of us who are non-contract, that will stay the same. The only thing that will really change is what it says on our pay stub. So I think what we really believe in, as when I was here last, was: how do we start to think about our healthcare delivery systems and what's our "whole way to better"? How can we make this less burdensome for all of us who receive care? How can we make it less burdensome for our caregivers who work so hard every day and make it more seamless for them to make sure you're transferred to the place that is the best place for you to receive that care? And then let's make care more equitable and inclusive, too. By reducing costs and making sure that we're able to move people back and forth, I think we're well on our way to do that. [15:49] **Helen Strike**: This doesn't happen until August because Jason's got a lot of work to do. He is working so hard with six different teams between United and Regina and Allina Health. He is helping to make sure that all of the technical changes that need to happen—which is everything from our name change to that Epic product or Excellian product, all the way to our signs on the hospital—will change, and how all our policies work, because we have to go through every single one of our policies and make sure that it says United Hospital and not Regina any longer. Jason, anything you'd like to add? [15:49] **Jason Bainbridge (Director of Operations, Regina Hospital)**: I may throw in the fact that, well, one of the good benefits is bringing the patients to United without getting an extra bill, but the possibility of the patients coming back from United to Hastings and vice versa. We all know United Hospital is really, really busy at this time with the closure of other hospitals in St. Paul. It gives us the opportunity to help with our census at our place by taking offload some of those patients for them. Plus, we've seen it during COVID that a lot of these patients would prefer to have their care at a regional hospital—get a little more attention to detail, a little smaller facility. And so we're hoping that that structure will benefit Regina with a better census and a more stable census. [16:36] **Helen Strike**: Many of you may remember that we closed our family birth center just this past February and that was really difficult and hard. What it has helped us to do is have some more med-surg beds available in that space where our small number of moms were when they gave birth. But it also means when we become one campus that if we do have a pregnant mom who arrives in our ER, we can move that patient up to United maybe a little more seamlessly than we could right now, and so we're glad for that. We have been able to keep our outpatient OB-GYN program going; we're doing outpatient GYN surgeries every day, and so we are working really hard to ensure that we're keeping outpatient care here. We've seen the Mother Baby Center census go up a little bit up at United, so we know our moms are going there and I know they're receiving extremely good care there. Do you have any questions for us? [17:21] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: Thank you, Helen and Jason. You mentioned the campus a lot—you have a lot of property up there. Is it too soon to say if you guys have a master plan to expand because of this connection? I mean, we have one building probably to fill first, but you have more land. [18:08] **Helen Strike**: You know, that's a great question—big campus, do we have plans? We've still got that first street clinic that's sitting there, which is actually the biggest PPE storage place right now for Allina. So we've been grateful to have it because we've been holding a lot of personal protective equipment for everyone. But it's always a possibility. What is happening right now, though, without this change, is Regina isn't sustainable because of the way our census is—because of all those rules around who goes where and quite honestly, where Hastings and Cottage Grove and Prescott folks are choosing to get care is not at Regina campus. So we're really hopeful that this rebranding to our new name, being able to come out into the community—and our board community board is going to help us with this in June and July to go out to share with patients what those benefits are to our residents of what services we have—we're hopeful that that will bring us back to a good thing at Regina. And then maybe, you never know, maybe in five years we'll be building on. [18:55] **Jason Bainbridge**: The area that is right across from the YMCA, that two and a half acres we have right there—we're in a process right now with the YMCA to turn that into some athletic fields. They've been using that ponding area across from the YMCA and they want a more stable area with parking. So that should be sometime this spring that we'll be putting up a fence in June and then the YMCA will take over mowing the grass and getting it all set up for—I think they're thinking flag football and T-ball fields. [19:41] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: Good to know, thank you. Yeah, that'll be exciting. [19:41] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Thank you, your honor. Thank you for coming today and sharing this information and, you know, furthermore thank you for saving the life of my ex-husband in the last two weeks. He went to Regina at the emergency room and they stabilized him and he was transferred up to United, and so I mean that from the bottom of my heart, thank you. My question is about ambulance services. You know, something that we've heard from our fire department in the past is how difficult it has been for the transports going back and forth from Regina. The fire chief had said that it was really too difficult on their staff to be doing those lower-level transports. So with this merger, you were mentioning that you're going to be absorbing costs and such—does United itself have its own ambulance service or how are you envisioning that transfer? Because it's something that we've talked about now is hoping that we would have a better system to serve our community members, because it's hard to hear from our fire chief that we can't provide that service at the level that they wish they could. How do we work collaboratively so that residents aren't stranded for a long time up at United trying to get back into town? If you could speak to that a little bit. [21:13] **Helen Strike**: Maybe one of the best things would be for us to come back with our fire chief and talk to you about all the changes that have happened in the last couple of years, because we've been working really hard together. They have a new medical director, Dr. Joey Durn, who is the medical director now for Hastings EMS. Allina Health has our own EMS system—very large, with I think 80 to 90 ambulances and many personnel, and we work all over the state, actually. They also run the EMS in River Falls now. So we've made a lot of changes here in Hastings as well as how our EMS here works. What kind of transports do they do into town? Allina EMS has actually taken a portion of the transports that Hastings EMS used to do, which was those transfers from the hospital to United or to Abbott, and that leaves our Hastings EMS here and able to work with our residents. Now, there are some things we want Hastings EMS to go straight to United for, like if there's a heart attack and there's something called a STEMI (ST-elevation MI) that we can see right away on our EKG machines—we want you to go right from here to the cath lab at United. We don't want that to change. So we've been working hard with Hastings EMS and our emergency rooms to come up with how and what are we going to do together, and I think things are much better. Some improvements still to do, but I think we've got some better division of labor. They're not leaving Hastings as much as they were before, and I think we've had a better relationship with them in that we're doing monthly care conferences around the patients that we care for together. So that's been really helpful. Developing relationships is a good thing. [22:44] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Terrific, we'd love to hear more about that, I think. [22:44] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Yes, yeah, thank you. It's all very exciting for our community. I mean, for us to have the thought of even losing a hospital was really important for our community, so I appreciate your efforts and I think it's going to be wonderful. Will it help—I mean, I know there are staffing issues—will United staff get to come to Hastings and vice versa if needed? And the other question I have to that is, I know we've had less specialty doctors within our community—will that be more of a pathway for specialty doctors to be able to come into the facility in Hastings? [23:29] **Jason Bainbridge**: I would say yes to all that. For the nursing portion of it, there will be a separate contract, so it's not so easy to move a nurse from United down—so that won't happen. But for our specialty, we're sitting at 13 specialists at Hastings right now and we're growing. We have Shannon Wagga, the new manager of the specialty at Regina and River Falls; she's doing an amazing job of making sure that we're bringing on new specialties as fast as possible, and we're just expanding. So I'm really happy with where we're at. We might be looking at needing more space than anything. [24:16] **Helen Strike**: Sure. We have a brand new ENT doctor, Dr. Mikhail, who—if you ever need something like that, we've been to him ourselves—he's fantastic and brand new to the community, so he's just building his practice like crazy. We have another GI doctor, Dr. Chime, who's joined us. We have other specialists who are waiting to sign on. So I think the idea that we're with United Hospital has made a difference to our providers, too, of being able to go back and forth a little easier than they did before. [25:01] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Yeah, that's great. I just see as our community grows, the need for specialty doctors is important to someone that wants to move to a community like this. [25:01] **Helen Strike**: Well, we always say in hospital work that volume is a good problem to have. So if we grow, we will bring them; it's when we don't grow that we run into trouble. So we're excited to grow with you. [25:01] **Jason Bainbridge**: Like Helen mentioned, Dr. Mikhail, our ENT—we heard loud and clear from the community that one day a week ENT at Regina is not enough. He's here four days a week now and he's full. So it's a good problem to have and we just need to keep hearing what you guys need and we'll do our best to get it. [25:48] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Well, we appreciate everything you're doing to keep our community safe. So thank you for your update, and thank you, I'm sure we'll be chatting again. [25:48] **Helen Strike**: Great, thank you. [25:48] **Jason Bainbridge**: Thanks again. [26:34] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you. Tonight we have an update for the 61 Corridor Study Preview as well, and Ryan Stempski is with us and he will introduce the team from MnDOT. Welcome, Ryan. [26:34] **Ryan Stempski (Public Works Director)**: Thank you Mayor, members of the Council. Yes, I'm just going to be brief. We do have the Trunk Highway 61 study team here with us tonight—HR Green and MnDOT. They'll talk about their team a little bit. I just want to say I think we have a great team; honestly, I've been part of many studies, and I'm excited about this study. We're just here to kind of introduce and overview the study for you. One thing that kind of speaks to the partnership is that MnDOT and the team have really embraced our Vermillion Street Corridor Plan completed in 2018 and our People Movement Plan. I mean, they've read it forwards and backwards; it's in our discussions, and we've incorporated major elements from it. So it speaks volumes to the true city partnership that MnDOT is bringing to this study. So I'm excited about it. I'm going to stop there and turn it over to Bryant Fisek; he's going to get the team rolling here and we'll go from there. Thanks, Bryant. [27:21] **Bryant Fisek (MnDOT South Area Engineer)**: Yeah, thank you, thank you Ryan. Thank you. Yeah, Bryant Fisek, I'm the South Area Engineer for MnDOT's Metro District and I've met many of you and am excited to be back in the community working here again. Looking forward to meeting more of you. And just in the interest of full disclosure, I have not read those plans backwards; I've only tried to read them forward. But anyway, up here we have the main people on our team for this project. Ryan is our point person for the city. As I mentioned, I am the project manager. Kirsten Klein in the audience here—again, I know many of you know her—she'll be working on our communications. And then for our consultant team, the two main people: Tim Thurin is our consultant project manager and then Dan Pfeiffer who's helping us with public engagement. [28:08] **Bryant Fisek**: Again, I guess I could echo Ryan—I think this is a great team, we're excited about it, and really looking forward to diving into this and understanding the issues out there and moving forward with it. So we have here on this next one—this is just a quick overview and then I'm going to turn it over to Tim. But the project is really the city limits for Hastings; we go from 4th Street down to roughly 316, so we're covering the city in this one, looking at the whole corridor of 61. Our scope is to really understand: what are the issues out there? How is it operating? Who's operating on it? We're looking beyond vehicles; we want to look at pedestrians, how they're crossing, how they're using it today, bicycles, and we're really trying to do a full evaluation of this and then come up with alternatives of how we can help those—either remove issues, remove barriers, improve them, minimize them, you know, whatever we can do to make it better. So again, trying to really fully embrace the study and really dive into it and develop those alternatives, develop that vision for the corridor. I'm excited to see where this is going to go. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tim and take you through some more. [29:31] **Tim Thurin (Consultant Project Manager, HR Green)**: All right, thanks Bryant. Mayor, council members, thank you for having us here tonight. I really appreciate it and I'll just, if you can let me diverge for just a moment—it was maybe 15 or so years ago back when I was working originally in the City of Hastings, we were trying to decide on a new location for the Hastings bridge. And so I was able to be a part of the community then and understand what the issues are there, and we got to this point where I'm able to look out this window and see this fantastic bridge out there out the window. And so it's really a point of honor for me to come back here today now and come in front of you and speak to you about what the future of Highway 61 to the south will look like. So I'm very excited about that opportunity. As back then, it was a great opportunity to work with the City of Hastings staff, and I got to work with John—I guess his nickname is "Terra Cotta" Hinzman—and now it's been a real pleasure to work with Ryan as well on this project. [30:19] **Tim Thurin**: It's been a lot of fun, really appreciate the access that the city has provided to us on this project and look forward to bringing more with you. As Ryan mentioned, we are looking at previous studies. This corridor has been studied and we're going to take advantage of those studies. So the previous Vermillion Street Corridor Plan that was done by HLA back in 2018 really does point us in the right direction with some of the key issues. That was, of course, oriented a little bit more economic development-wise, but there were certainly some transportation elements in there and we'll take advantage of those as we look forward to solutions in the corridor. Similarly with the People Moving Plan that was done more recently—that one, of course, was looking at crossing of the corridor more so than really trying to think about people moving up and down the corridor from a pedestrian and bike facility perspective. You'll see some of that start to even come in some presentation here today as we look at some of the issues in the corridor. And then also in the Comp Plan itself, we start to see some guidance towards what you might see for a vision for especially for the south in the corridor. It really stands out in my mind where we see some opportunities; you see like the idea of closing 21st Street and maybe realigning that to the 23rd Street intersection, and so there's really some creative things there that can be playing off as we move forward in the study. [31:50] **Tim Thurin**: So I'll just give you a quick run-through of the schedule that we anticipate. There's no fancy graphic here, unfortunately, but we're really looking at getting through this study in early next year. So between now and January/February of next year, we're going to be going through quite a bit of work to get through some recommended solutions or alternatives and a vision for the corridor. So when I do studies like this, what I like to apply to it is called a "context-sensitive solutions approach." And that's where we see on these milestones that approach kind of outlined. It's in this stage of the study when we're going through that existing conditions analysis where we're really trying to understand what's happening in the corridor, what those key issues are, and those key issues then translate to evaluation criteria that we use for evaluating alternatives. I really want to stress the importance of the public engagement component of this project early on in getting feedback from the community and from the council members and the mayor about the key issues in the corridor because that's the foundation of our study. [32:36] **Tim Thurin**: As you can see, then, we will be working through a series of kind of back and forth between public meetings. We go through a range of alternatives, we have public meetings, we get feedback on that, and we get to a final matrix using those evaluation criteria and applying those to our alternatives. So you can see we'll have a routine of public meetings planned; we've got one planned for August and then again towards the end of the year as we get closer to recommendations on the study. I've got four alternatives identified—we don't know at this point how many alternatives, that's what we're identifying. We think it will be a number of alternatives. We're doing a study right now in Two Harbors Highway 61 up in Two Harbors—we had thought we'd be at three, I think we're going to be at five. I'm pushing for five, but they're very similar. So I feel like there's not a big loop, but it's just indicative of how this might play out and we'll see where the issues take us and where the community feedback takes us. [33:22] **Tim Thurin**: So I made reference to the importance of public engagement and that's why we've got Banning and Kirsten here today to help support that effort to get the public involved. And so that's going to be through a variety of means: we're going to have virtual meetings and in-person means to get public input on the project. We have a website already up and running; you can see on the bottom of this page the address for that website. You can go there today; it's in the early stages. We're going to start piping out more information as we go along, including items like informational core videos about the corridor, the intent of the study, and something that anybody can access at their own leisure. We'll also have on there a comment map and a survey tool that people can use to input their own feedback. I personally really like those comment maps; I think they're really effective. You'll have an opportunity to drag and drop issues or point issues out on the corridor and speak to them in your own terms, how you experience them in the corridor. I really like those comment maps—they provide a lot of value for the study. But we'll also have in-person tools, and you'll see here on the right-hand side of the image there is an example of pop-up events where you might see us appearing at Rivertown Days or something like that, where we'll have people on hand, take advantage of those congregational events, and we'll be there as well to be present and get community input. [34:54] **Tim Thurin**: Then I'm just going to skip to what we're seeing in some of the early analysis. This is nothing earth-shattering here, I'll say, but what we see in just gathering some of the data is 30,000 vehicles a day coming through Hastings on Highway 61. And that stays pretty consistent through the whole corridor from 4th Street all the way down to 316. And then of course we know what happens at 316—we see a big split and about two-thirds of that vehicle traffic goes to 316. And so as you get further south on 61, we're down in the 7,000 vehicle ADT (average vehicles per day) in that part of the corridor. So it really—you know, the data do validate, and it's something we already know—the importance of 316 to the project, and obviously there was just a project done there and we know that that needs to be integrated into whatever kind of decision-making we make on the corridor. [35:40] **Tim Thurin**: The other thing that really stands out here in our early studies is that heavy vehicles are predominant in the corridor. I'm sure that you observe it and there's lots of trucks that use Highway 61. And so just on a flat numbers count, we see about eight percent of the vehicles are heavy trucks or heavy vehicles. That compares to maybe what an average might be, about half that. And then if you think even further, if you want to really ratchet that down, some of the numbers you get down to maybe where you see trucks really operating in that 9:00 to 2:00 or 3:00 window, you might see trucks constituting more like 10 or 12 percent of the vehicles operating on Highway 61. That's a pretty significant proportion of the vehicles moving through and something we need to be thinking about. [36:25] **Tim Thurin**: If we look at solutions, how does that relate to the pedestrian environment? How attractive is that for pedestrians to use the corridor or even cross? And then getting to that point then with people movement and safety—here's a couple images from early studies. Again, this is using StreetLight data. If you're familiar with it, that's a web-based or a cell phone-based collection of movement—typically vehicles, but you can also get pedestrian and bicycle movement with that. This image on the left shows what I'll call "block user groups." Within the City of Hastings, there's these block user groups that StreetLight uses, and they've identified that of all bicycle trips that are happening in Hastings, 72 percent of those will go into multiple block groups. So you can kind of see where patterns are for pedestrians or bikes moving through the community. And it's no surprise—you see the red where the downtown Hastings area is; of course, that's going to be one of the higher, more used areas, but then others to the west as well. And so it gives us a sense of where we see the movement happening with bikes, and it's very similar patterns with pedestrians as well. [37:11] **Tim Thurin**: But maybe a little bit counter-intuitive, and it starts to speak to some of the things that we start to see in the corridor, is when you start to overlay some of the safety numbers where you see, in the last five years from 2017 to 2021, crash data for pedestrians and bikes. Where do you see the bike crashes? Those are occurring mostly south of Highway 55, kind of in that 12th to 17th/18th range. It makes sense in some ways—you've got a little bit more robust system on the north and more understood conditions for pedestrians, and you get to the south you see no crashes there because there's virtually really no pedestrian accommodations in there. But it's in kind of that middle zone where you start to see that mix of users and kinds of facilities that accommodate users where you might see some conflicts, and that's what we're seeing in the data right now. It validates, going back to the People Moving Plan, the importance of 15th Street as a crossing location. And so we've observed that, we recognize that in the crash data, we've seen in the People Moving Plan there's really a priority on getting crossing at 15th Street. So again, we're building that into our study. [38:43] **Tim Thurin**: I think that's—I've kind of rapid-fired through it. I'm happy to talk to other things. Getting towards the end here, I just wanted to reiterate again: really important part of the project where we want to get issues and hear from the community what the key issues in the community are. We've got the project website up and running; please go there. And especially as we continue to go there, we'll keep on adding features and functionality there for you to add input. Now I'll turn it back over here to Bryant to let you kind of close things up. We've got these other resources as well when it comes to Facebook and Twitter and other typical MnDOT resources. So thank you. [39:28] **Bryant Fisek**: Thank you, Tim. So that's really what we have tonight; we just wanted to give you that quick overview. We are at the front end of it. We will have lots more opportunity to talk. Like we said, our first public meeting is coming up in May here. So we're happy to answer questions now or comments if you want to tell something about the corridor—happy to take those. But like I said, right now we just wanted to give you that overview, let you know we're starting it and looking forward to really digging into it. [39:28] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: Thank you. I have two questions, but I don't need the answer today; it's just for future. We just finished 316—I appreciate it—now we're doing this one. Do we know when north of the bridge is going to get done, or 61 south is going to get done anymore? Just trying to get the residents so they don't get "orange coned" too much year after year after year. It'd be nice to know how long before we have to do this again on coming into the city or leaving the city. And the other one that I'll be curious—has MnDOT done any—you mentioned Two Harbors—what other cities have you done recently where you're in a corridor, just for us to reference to see what you did somewhere else and see what was good or what was bad or what we should be looking at for what our residents would like to see? Thank you. [40:14] **Bryant Fisek**: Yeah, for the timing of other improvements, I can get back to you on that. I know some of it off the top of my head, but I'd rather be firm with that and get that info to us. So I'll get back. And unfortunately, I think I'm going to give you the same answer on the corridors; I can think of a couple, but they don't necessarily have the same characteristics. So I want to make sure that we're providing some apples-to-apples comparison rather than something you look at and go, "Well, this looks nothing like us," you know? So both of those I can definitely get back to you on. Thank you. [41:01] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Thank you, your honor. When is the public meeting going to be? I'm sorry, you said it was in May. [41:01] **Bryant Fisek**: May 18th. [41:01] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: May 18th, and that's going to be here or...? [41:01] **Bryant Fisek**: Yes, at City Hall. [41:01] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Okay, great. And then I had two other questions just real quick. I would love to see the analysis if the improvements that we did on Highway 316 have done anything to divert the heavy truck traffic away from 316 by putting in the roundabouts as we did. I would just really love to know if that's helped at all to divert some of that onto Highway 61 rather than going through the neighborhoods. [41:46] **Bryant Fisek**: And I don't have any up-to-date information on that. We still have a few things to finish in the spring/early summer here on 316. So it would be after that that we would really be able to look at that and see what it's doing. [41:46] **Tim Thurin**: Sure, great. Awesome, I'm glad to hear that. I'll just chime in quick because numbers are a little bit fresher. One note, and I agree with Bryant, we'd have to—it's a little bit probably early to tell. But when it comes to just the raw data for the corridor, I talked about the two-thirds split; it's roughly two-thirds, but you see two-thirds going to 316 and the other third going south on 61. It's not the same for every vehicle—it's more of a 50-50 split already. So that was already coming into this. So we would anticipate that to stay there at least and maybe even see more go to 61 than that. [42:32] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: But if we could get that data, I think that it would help us to help prove that that project was worthwhile—that it helped divert some of that heavy traffic from going down the... the truck traffic is really a problem for those neighbors. And then the other area I just wanted to point out was on 18th Street where there's the intersection at Ardent Mills. Something that you might not see, but I've seen it because I live in that neighborhood, are semi-trucks so afraid to try to take a left turn. If they're on 18th Street and they need to take a left turn, I've seen them take the back neighborhood streets down to 15th and then go up to 15th to the light and then take a left because it's so dangerous. So I just wanted to point that out. I think that would be interesting to talk to the Ardent Mills and I don't know how semi-drivers do that—if they're contracted or if they're employees—but it'd be interesting to hear what they've seen. So that's my two cents. Thanks so much. [43:19] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: Thank you. I'd like to piggyback off of Councilmember Haus. For those of us in the west side of the neighborhood off of 18th, we know not to go to that intersection because of what she just mentioned. That is not an intersection where we try to cross traffic to go north because of semi-traffic coming out of Ardent Mills. Excellent, excellent point. And those are things that I don't know that you guys necessarily hear about or know about, you know, when you're out talking. I am curious to know—when we're talking about that area from I kind of heard maybe 12th to 18th is where the most of the pedestrian traffic is—that's because that's where there's businesses that the pedestrians need to get to, right? Walgreens is over there, CVS is over there, Dairy Queen is over there, Dunkin' is over there... everything's across the street. So we see a lot more traffic. As a kid, I wasn't allowed to cross that street—that was the busy street that you didn't cross when you lived on the west side of town. But I am noticing in the last six years that I've been on council, it seems like I'm consistently or constantly hearing changes regarding best practices for moving people, right? "More signs—that works because cars see it." "Nope, not more signs because then pedestrians think, oh, I'm safe because there are signs." I feel like over the last six years I'm hearing a lot of different changes in what is our policy or what is our best practice in regards to: do we want to stripe lanes like at 18th Street? Do we want to put flashing signs about pedestrians? Well no, cars are supposed to know pedestrians are there. But what are you seeing in your work as you're doing a whole corridor like this? Obviously, we can't have a stoplight at every street. What are you seeing as best practices for moving people from the east side of the road to the west side or vice-versa? [45:34] **Bryant Fisek**: Well, I think I can start with an answer on that one by saying over the past 10 to 15 years, you see a whole lot more involvement of peds and bikes. I mean, it used to be just solely focused on vehicles—how can we move vehicles through, how do we get them through. Particularly for MnDOT, it was not even in some cases consideration of how the city might act; it was "we need to get them through on the highway, the highway's purpose is to move them through." So you're seeing a lot of rethinking of that, and that's where, you know, best practices—we keep finding out what the best practice is as we try things and then move forward and say, "Okay, that did work" or "That didn't work as well as we wanted it to, now what can we do?" So I think a lot of what you're hearing about or a lot of what you may be seeing is us trying to learn. Really, we've had lots of experience with vehicles and now we're trying to catch up and do the same thing for pedestrians and bicycles. And so that's where it is still evolving; we are still learning. And so, specifically for a corridor, unfortunately my answer has to be: well, it depends. What are the characteristics? How many people are we expecting? Is there a school on one side? Is there a retirement home? You know, all these different characteristics can matter as to what type of facilities we put in place, how we handle it, and what we're trying to do. So the good news is we do have lots of tools that we can turn to and try to make it better, and that's where, as we explore these alternatives, we'll be looking at them and saying: what do we think is the best for this particular area? And that might not be the whole corridor—it might be what's good on the north end versus what's good in the middle versus south, you know, as we look at these different areas. [47:07] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: I appreciate that answer, just for myself being able to talk to residents about how we evolve and things change and best practices change. What we tried five, ten years ago... it's important that we're reviewing this. I think one of the best answers I heard at our last meeting was how far we've come in asphalt—how far asphalt has evolved in the last 30 years. Constantly, I think it's really good for the community to hear that. This study... everyone's like, "Ah, what's a study for?" Well, I appreciate your time and effort in this. And like I said, as a kid who grew up down that street, I've seen a lot of things and it'd be nice if the kids were able to cross the street and know it was safe to do so. So I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. [47:53] **Councilmember Mya Beck**: Thank you, and thank you for being here. My question is about data collection. So when you're looking at what is and you're doing this study, are you also considering what will be? So if we have new businesses either retooling their existing parking lot for a new use, or we have a new business being built on one side of the road, how much does that factor into your analysis? And how do you guys find out about all the things that are coming that might not be visible yet in that core corridor? [48:38] **Bryant Fisek**: So for that one, we are looking into the future and we do project traffic out—we try to figure out what are the volumes going to be, what's it looking like. We may not look at a little pinpoint—you know, what's this specific driveway going to do or what's this specific development going to do—but we try to look at the whole area and say, "How do we want to treat development in this area?" and come up with guidelines that say, "Yeah, okay, for this area this is what we want," whether it's trying to consolidate access or trying to treat them a certain way. You know, again, there's different ways to handle it. And what we want to do as part of this study is come up with some guidelines that then can be applied when a new development comes in and make sure we're thinking about it and that it's reflective of what comes out of this study. Bryant, maybe your latest, greatest work with Community Development? [49:23] **Bryant Fisek**: Yes, yeah. Did you hear that okay? [49:48] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld**: Yes, thank you. I have a similar question. So you're saying there's 30,000 vehicles a day—is that both ways? [49:48] **Bryant Fisek**: Yes. [49:48] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld**: I thought I heard somewhere that there's more traffic going from north to south in the hours from two o'clock in the afternoon forward. I mean, is...? [50:34] **Bryant Fisek**: Yeah, so the data we collected—and Tim, you can elaborate on this too if you like—but the data we collected was in 15-minute bins. So we know specifically how much traffic is moving during each period of the day. For something like this, we throw it in a "per day" number—that's a common factor that we use as just a way to express how much traffic is out there. Now when we evaluate it and when we set up our models, we will be looking at specific peak hours, and that is when some of that directional flow will come into play of: okay, now again over the course of the day it's this many, but for this particular hour that we're looking at, yes, more of it's headed south or more of it's headed north in the morning. We'll be looking at those splits and that'll come into play in our models. Do you want to add anything? [51:20] **Tim Thurin**: Yeah, thanks Bryant. I would just say the initial observations would be that you would anticipate the directionality of traffic. In mornings, you expect more traffic perhaps to be moving northbound versus southbound. That's not as much the case as you would maybe expect naturally; it is a little bit more balanced than what I anticipated. We'll learn more about it and yes, Bryant is right, we did the traffic count on February 15th where we got increments every 15 minutes and we used that as our kind of check against the StreetLight data. We also did our own traffic counts as well to validate some of the current traffic. So yeah, directionality is definitely going to be part of it. Just having been out here just last week, we were just observing the morning peaks and the afternoon peaks and it's kind of striking; the corridor is very evenly balanced in terms of just that morning peak—it's a very intense short peak. 7:30, it's a race car strip out there and cars are going both directions. It's not totally directional. But yeah, as we dig into it more, we'll see how the trends play out for the whole day. [52:07] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld**: Great information. Thank you. Follow up to that, gentlemen: we've been hearing a lot about traffic on County Road 46, we've got some county stuff coming up, we've heard a lot about traffic on Highway 55, now we're hearing about the traffic running from 4th Street out past 316. So that number 31,000 per day—is that what traffic made it all the way to the south end or is there a number of what's turned off because people turned off on 55 and people turned off on 46? Is 31,000 the amount of cars that made it from 4th to 316? [53:15] **Bryant Fisek**: No, the 31,000 is really just a point count. [53:15] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld**: It's closer to 4th then? [53:15] **Bryant Fisek**: Correct, closer to 4th Street. But that's one of the things we look at with different tools—is that percentage of traffic: how much is going from the bridge to 55 and vice versa? How much is going to 316 or continues on 61 or 46? So we're looking at all those paths, and that helps us really as we go through the study to figure out where the traffic is coming from and going from. You know, even how much is in the city itself, how much is just going to the businesses around here. So the 31 is definitely just a point count at one location, and then it varies as you move further away from that point because people are turning on and off. [54:02] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: To that, I was kind of surprised—I found out recently there's apparently a large number of people who, instead of taking the Wakota Bridge, are coming through Hastings and going out 55 to get to their destinations in Inver Grove Heights and Eagan and such, instead of getting stuck in traffic up on 61 and 494 up there. So I was kind of interested in that idea of the number of cars who are coming through the loop back up towards the cities just to stay off of the Wakota Bridge and the traffic around 494 there. Yeah, we've been hearing a lot of numbers about all the cars that come through our town. Now we just got to get them to stop and have dinner and do some shopping. Thanks, mayor. [54:47] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Thank you, your honor. Just for clarification for public's sake—the first meeting is May 18th, then Kirsten, I think the next one's in August and the next one's November/December. How will those meetings evolve over this project so we can bring our best public engagement to those meetings? Do you want to handle this one? Or we can bring Dan in, or Kirsten too. [54:47] **Tim Thurin**: Sure. Yeah, so like I referenced, we really want to focus on: this first meeting is really important to get baseline issues, understand what the issues in the community are and what the needs are. I would anticipate that when we get to the August time frame—rough time frame—but the August meeting, we'll start to present implementation solutions, opportunities. They might not even be in the form of cohesive corridor alternatives; they might be very site-specific. So, "we're seeing issues here, these might be some things to be taken care of at this location," and present that: "what do you think?" kind of thing, and start to bounce some ideas off the community then. And then at that last meeting towards the end of the year, we would have definitely full complete corridor alternatives presented. We'd be saying, "here's what we're seeing for results against our evaluation criteria and this is kind of where we see a vision that's performing for the corridor. What does this corridor want to be over the next 20 years?" type of thing. So then at that point we're saying: this is a little preview of our final report. We'll be looking for input of course and feedback to say, yeah, thumbs up, thumbs down. This meeting I think is really important; next is going to be interesting because we're going to start proposing ideas, and then the last one's going to be, here's some of the outcomes. That's the way I'd characterize the flow. [56:20] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Wonderful. Thank you. [56:20] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you to your team. We'll be sure we'll be seeing and hearing more from you. Very exciting—as much as it's going to be a hard deal to deal with, as we know how street projects are, I think at the end of the day it's going to be accepted well and it's going to be beautiful when it's all done, right? Exactly, that's what we all want. So yes, thank you for your time, I really appreciate it. [57:07] **Bryant Fisek**: My contact information is up there, feel free to email me if you have any more questions and I think I will again echo something that Ryan said—I really appreciate the partnership that MnDOT has with the city and I'm looking forward to carrying that forward. [57:07] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Great. Thank you, Bryant. Thank you all for coming. Okay, Council, are there any corrections to the minutes from the regular meeting of April 4th? Okay, seeing none. Comments from the audience. For public comments, we have options for comments to be mailed or to the meeting as well as an interactive feature during the meeting. For the email comments, they have been forwarded to the Council and their receipt is acknowledged. Please recognize that items not on the agenda will not be discussed at this time. For live comments, you may step up to the podium and state your name and address, and we'll also check the Zoom at that point. Is there anyone that would like to speak to...? I would like to speak. All right. [57:54] **Barb Hollenbeck (Chair, Arts and Culture Commission)**: Barb Hollenbeck, 212 East 2nd Street, proud owner of SC Toys. So I'm here today to talk about the program that is coming up before you on the consent agenda—the Rec, Art, and Police program. I initiated this program with the help of Paige when I was viewing some of the programs that she had put together last year. I was very pleasantly aware or surprised by all the depth of her programming, but while I was participating in them, there was really nothing for middle school. So that was what I approached her about—that middle school age. And it's not all altruistic of myself, because those are some of my biggest fans and consumers of my products in my store. Those are the kids that drive those trends: the fidget spinners, the poppers, the loom bands, and it goes on and on. [59:25] **Barb Hollenbeck**: During these past few treacherous, awful years called COVID, the community has always supported me and I can proudly say I have been in this community now for 26 years. Like I said, the community's always supported me, but the last two years have been just phenomenal. When the emphasis was on "shop local," everybody showed up and I had record-breaking sales. So this is my opportunity to give back to the community—to provide a fun program for these kids who have been, and families who have been, all stressed out these last couple of years. So my goal tonight is to kind of launch this program. And not only did I approach Paige, I said let's add another component; I reached out to HPAC to provide an art component to go along with the Rec program that Paige has put together. [1:00:12] **Barb Hollenbeck**: And Paige took the entire season—the winter season—and had multiple meetings with different advisory youth groups and she came up with a fabulous plan. One of the things is, I wanted to make sure all kids in Hastings were able to participate in this program, so the program is going to rotate among the different city parks. Also, part of her research showed that the kids wanted to be able to go to a park where they can bike; they want to be independent, they don't always have access to transportation through their parents, and they also may bring younger siblings with them since they babysit them during the day. So all are going to be welcome to the event, but mostly structured for that middle school age. [1:01:00] **Barb Hollenbeck**: So I'm just happy to bring this forward and I'm excited to see where it goes. I'm hoping to grow it next year, finding more funding partners so we can expand on it because these kids really need something productive to do. And then also Paige introduced the idea of talking to the community engagement officer—so now the youth are going to be able to engage with the police department in a positive, non-threatening, non-crisis environment. They have a potential to be more successful in reaching out to different age groups and for the youth to see the police in a more positive light than they may otherwise. So I'm really excited to bring this forward and I think it'll be a great initiative for the city and the community members. It's just my way of thanking the community for all their support through all these years, and particularly the last couple of years where it's been so difficult on all of us. I hope that the kids can really get out there and participate and have a blast and just have something to do—because that's what we hear, "the kids don't have anything to do." So now they're going to have some programming and it's up to them to participate. So I'm just really looking forward to this program starting. Paige has just been phenomenal coming up with different programs and options for the kids to do and to plan. So I thank you for your time and I'm excited to launch this program. [1:02:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Well, thank you, Barb. I mean, when I saw in the packet it was "Arts, Rec, and Police"—I mean, what a wonderful environment to be able to have kids interact with the police and in arts. [1:03:17] **Barb Hollenbeck**: Yeah, and I thought the art component was just a nice creative feature where kids might want to gather but maybe not be comfortable doing that scheduled activity. The art activity is going to have its own leader—HPAC is going to do the funding of the materials. So I think it will reach a wider variety of kids that want to do something and they can get out of their house. Parents can finally say, "Get off your screens, go do something, go to the park and have some more engagement." [1:03:17] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Well, we appreciate all that you're doing. And yes, who doesn't love SC Toys? To have this toy store in our downtown is wonderful. As kids, as adults, we can go there and have fun. [1:04:02] **Barb Hollenbeck**: I do—when you try things out, it's like... that's why, yes! That's what we encourage everybody to come in and have fun. You're never too old for toys! [1:04:02] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Okay, you said it here today! [1:04:02] **Barb Hollenbeck**: And then I'll add one more thing. So I took an underutilized building, 209 Sibley Street—I gutted the interior and I'm proud to say we have a new creative business downtown: Squeaky Wheel Pottery. She opened her door, had a soft opening last week, her ribbon cutting is coming forward. So I hope everybody can participate and support and welcome Babette and Squeaky Wheel Pottery to our community. And there again, I thought it was a very important thing for our downtown and for our community to have a creative business and keep that pottery tradition alive in Hastings. Thank you. [1:04:49] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: And the building turned out beautiful. [1:04:49] **Barb Hollenbeck**: It's beautiful. Not done yet, but I'm getting there. [1:04:49] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: It looks near complete. So we appreciate all that you do for the buildings—and you have a few of them. [1:04:49] **Barb Hollenbeck**: We do. And we're thankful that John and Eric can help you out in those situations. [1:04:49] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: I'm appreciative of that as well. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, let's see. Council, are there any council items to be considered? Okay. Council, I would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda. [1:05:34] **Councilmember Lisa Leifeld**: [Motion] [1:05:34] **Councilmember Mya Beck**: [Second] [1:05:34] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Any discussion? [1:05:34] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Your honor, I'll be abstaining for a potential conflict of interest. [1:05:34] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Okay, thank you. All those in favor of the motion state by saying aye. (Aye). Opposed of that motion state by saying nay. And that motion has passed with Councilmember Haus abstaining. Tonight we have a resolution receiving bids and awarding contract for the Project 2022-1 and the 2022 Neighborhood Infrastructure Improvements. And Ryan, we welcome you again. [1:06:21] **Ryan Stempski (Public Works Director)**: Thank you Mayor, members of the Council. This kind of ends our bidding season, so you won't see me up on contract award much more this year. Anyway, on April 7th for the 2022 Neighborhood Infrastructure Improvements, we did receive four bids, which is typical for us. Again, nervous with all the work out there and the volatile pricing, but of those four bids, we did get a competitive bid with Danner Inc. The bid came in about seven percent under our engineer's estimate. So again, on budget for our 2022 line item for the street improvement project, which is excellent news. As we always do with the neighborhood projects, we go through a qualifications-based bidding process. They have to submit qualifying projects, qualifying superintendents; we spend a lot of time on the phone with other cities and interviewing Danner and Danner's team in their approach. Through all that, they have to score a minimum of 10 points. Danner scored 11 points, so they are qualified. Also, I did have them here in 2017 on a neighborhood project—they did a good job, they were on schedule, on budget, and completed quality work. So I am here tonight to recommend Danner Inc. for our total base bid award in the amount of three million, three hundred seventy-six thousand, five hundred dollars and seventeen cents. And with that, I would stand for any questions. [1:07:54] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you, Ryan. Any questions for Ryan, Council? Okay, with that I would accept a motion approving the resolution receiving bids and awarding contract for Project 2021-1, 2022 Neighborhood Infrastructure Improvements. [1:08:39] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: [Motion] [1:08:39] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: [Second] [1:08:39] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Any additional discussion, Council? All those in favor of the motion state by saying aye. (Aye). Opposed to that motion state by saying nay. And that motion prevails. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Community Development administrative citations—John, welcome. He will give us an introduction on the administrative citations. [1:09:28] **John Hinzman (Community Development Director)**: Thank you Mayor, city council members. This administrative citation item has been a long time coming. A lot of work has gone into this by city staff and especially our city attorney, Corey Land. Essentially, what we are establishing is a more efficient method to be responsive to the public in code enforcement issues. Right now, most of the code enforcement issues we have have to go through the criminal system, which as we've discussed before, can be time-consuming and may not be a priority for courts to take on. And so you have people that are afflicted by a code enforcement action that takes a long time, and people that have complained a long time for resolution—so not a great system. Corey has been instrumental in being able to assist us with models established through other communities in which we can do this through an administrative citation system because we are a charter city. [1:10:13] **John Hinzman**: So we've gone through that—last week we had the first reading of a number of city code amendments pertaining to the establishment of it. There are no changes to that tonight. Summarizing what we're looking at, we have amendments to Chapter 10 (General Provisions), which essentially establish who can perform or who can be named to write administrative citations; Chapter 95 (Health, Safety, Nuisances), what is defined as a public nuisance; Chapter 32 (Disposal of Abandoned Vehicles); Chapter 158 (Property Maintenance); Chapter 34 (Our Fee Schedule); Chapter 91 (Our Dangerous Dogs); and then the repealing of criminal penalties and violations and various code amendments. So we have these seven items which constitute the establishment of an administrative citation system in Hastings. Attorney Land is here if you have any specific questions for her, and I can stand for any questions as well. Again, what we're looking for is an action to consider second reading and adoption of the seven ordinances before you tonight. Thank you. [1:11:02] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you, John. Any questions, Council? Okay. Attorney Land, would you like to speak? [1:11:02] **Corey Land (City Attorney)**: The only thing I'd like to add: we had two changes to the versions of the ordinances that you saw last time. The first is that I did find about 15 more references to the word "misdemeanor" and "criminal penalties," so those are added to the "repealing criminal penalties" sort of laundry list ordinance. And thanks to Mr. Stempski, we added the water sprinkling ban fee for violating the water sprinkling ban. I think we decided on a 20-dollar penalty, so that was an addition to the fee schedule in Chapter 34. Other than that, there weren't any changes, your honor. [1:11:48] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Okay, thank you counselor. All right. Councilmember Haus. [1:11:48] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Thank you, your honor. I too just wanted to thank you, Corey, for... you've been a wonderful city attorney to us for the—it's been what, maybe two years? One year? COVID's been a long time, right? But yeah, and I agree with a comment that you had made at the last council meeting where we shouldn't be using the criminal justice system for nuisance ordinance violations and treating our citizens like criminals in that respect. So thank you for all of your dedication and hard work. I'm sure it was a difficult task to go through and make all these updates. Oftentimes we don't have a lot of discussion when we're in the council meetings because we've talked it to death already, and so I just want to point that out to the public as well so that they realize that you've done a wonderful job explaining all of these changes and that we have had a lot of conversation. Thanks again. [1:12:35] **Councilmember DawnMarie Vihrachoff**: Thank you, and that's a good segue because I got asked on the radio station the other day about one of these. I think coming out of our workshop, we need to do a great job explaining each one of these, because you're right, we talked about it, but the community needs to know: what does this really mean? I would ask our staff to kind of take them one by one and use our social media—let's get this out there so people understand so they're not surprised. I gotta admit it, I may ask our attorney to maybe go to that radio station and try to explain these because it was difficult for me to... it was on a nuisance dog and I'm like, "I really wish Corey Land was here" is what I said. But I would ask that our staff does that so the community understands it. Thank you. [1:13:21] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Great recommendation, Councilmember Vihrachoff. Councilmember Beck. [1:14:08] **Councilmember Mya Beck**: I did want to bring up something that is—I hope this doesn't take us down a rabbit hole—but I did have a member of the public reach out to me. They had a situation where they're purposely growing their lawn long in the spring to provide more plants for pollinators and they had some reasons why they were leaving their yard long. I don't think this is inordinately changed by what we're changing right here, but in this situation, a member of the public came and mowed their lawn for them without asking them—and clearly that's something that never should happen. And that isn't something that... that's not how we would handle it as a city. But what it made me think of is, you know, we do have standards about how long your grass can be, and how do we come back over time and look at some of the standards that we've set and say, "Are these standards reasonable or have things changed?" Not to open a can of worms, but chickens—we talked about it several times and eventually we did pass an ordinance to allow chickens because we felt things had changed. How do we come back to things like length of grass and things like that that may change over time and address those? Do we have a systematic way of kind of coming back around or are we just doing it ad-hoc as someone suggests it? It just made me think about what other things we may have in ordinance where things have changed and how we readdress them. Also, don't go mow your neighbor's lawn—it's not a good idea. You should probably let them handle that or the city and make a complaint. So I just wanted to bring that up because it's a little bit of a one-off; it doesn't totally fit in this box, but it did make me think: if someone does want to grow their lawn a little longer for environmental reasons, should we allow them to do that? Is that something that we want to encourage people to do? It's something that maybe we should talk about separately, but I think it's a relevant question. Thank you. [1:15:41] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: Thank you for bringing that up, Councilmember Beck. It's something that we didn't have conversation about, but it was on the consent agenda and it was that the city has decided to move ahead with the Mayor's Monarch Pledge and we're proclaiming April 18th as Mayor's Monarch Pledge Day. And so in that, the city is identifying three specific items that we're going to be doing to help further establish habitat for monarchs. And then moving forward, if you read the write-up that Chris Jenkins did, he goes on to say that the city must commit to implementing a minimum of three actions in 2022 to gain recognition as a signatory by the National Wildlife Foundation. He goes on to say, "I believe we can easily implement the three actions listed in 2022 and look to implement additional actions in future years. As we progress through year one, we may find opportunities to implement additional actions and gain a greater level of recognition." If we are able to reach eight action implementations, the Mayor and the city would be recognized as a member of the Mayor's Monarch Pledge Leadership Circle. And so that would just go along with what Councilmember Beck is suggesting—is that we revisit how it is that we are supporting monarch habitat and be a little bit more progressive with it. I think that the parks department has been thinking these thoughts for a while now and just expanding upon that and making it more of a standard for our community. Thanks. [1:17:13] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Thank you, Councilmember Haus. Any other discussion? Then Council, I would look for a motion approving the second reading and adoption of several ordinances relative to administrative citations, public nuisances, abandoned vehicles, property maintenance, fee schedule, dangerous dogs, and criminal penalties. [1:18:00] **Councilmember Angie Haus**: [Motion] [1:18:00] **Councilmember Mya Beck**: [Second] [1:18:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Any new discussion, Council? All those in favor of the motion state by saying aye. (Aye). Opposed to that motion state by saying nay. And that motion prevails. Thank you, John. Tonight we will have a closed meeting pursuant to Minnesota Statute 13D.05, subdivision 3B for attorney-client privileged communication. First we will hear reports and announcements, then we will go into closed session. Afterward, we'll have a brief return to open session to formally adjourn for the meeting. Council, any announcements? Okay. Of course, I have a few. [1:18:46] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Spring cleanup: curbside and drop-off option through April 22nd. Celebrate Earth Day with a self-guided Story Walk of "10 Pigs" along the Mississippi riverfront Friday, April 22nd to Sunday, April 24th. Start at either Levee Park or Jaycee Park. Recommended for families with kids 10 and under. Story Walk is a partnership with Pleasant Hill Library. On Saturday, April 23rd, Carpenter Nature Center hosts the Earth Day Birding Festival with bird banding demonstrations, guided birding field trips, and live raptor presentations—five dollars per person, or 15 dollars with a boxed lunch. Lunch requires advance registration. United Way of Hastings will be hosting a three-session series on fentanyl awareness on April 26th, May 3rd, and May 10th. Information at United Way of Hastings. [1:19:32] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Meetings coming forward: the 7 PM Heritage Preservation Commission meeting on Tuesday, April 19th. Thursday, April 21st, 6:30 PM Public Safety Advisory Commission. Monday, April 25th, 7 PM Planning Commission. Tuesday, April 26th, 7:30 AM Administrative Committee and 5 PM Public Safety Committee. Wednesday, April 27th, 6 PM Public Safety Advisory Commission. Monday, May 2nd, 7 PM a regular City Council meeting. [1:20:47] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: Litigation counsel for the city, George Hoff, has asked the City Council to meet in closed session for an attorney-client privileged discussion of litigation strategy in the matter of Greg J. Holmes of Hastings, Inc. vs. City of Hastings. Mr. Hoff and our city attorney, Corey Land, are both present. Confidentiality is necessary in order to allow a candid and open discussion with the City Council about litigation, including defense strategies and possibilities for resolution. Such a discussion happening in an open session could jeopardize the city's legal position. Closing the meeting is authorized by Minnesota Statute 13D.05 and subdivision 3B. I will therefore seek a motion to move into a closed-door session on that basis.