[0:00] Mary Fasbender: further attendance of the meeting by any member of the city council city staff or the public at the regular meeting location in the city council chambers is not feasible due to covet 19 pandemic and closure of city hall to members of the public as a result of the ford going the special city council meeting will be conducted solely by telephone and other electronic means as provided in minnesota statutes 13d .021 and no in-person meeting will be conducted in the city council chambers i think it is important to recognize that using a video conference is not as good as an in-person meeting but it is necessary under the circumstances we are doing the [0:47] Mary Fasbender: best we can to maintain transparency and due process i would appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation as we work through the meeting 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 all right thank you seeing that this meeting is being held remotely when i call your name [1:32] Mary Fasbender: please indicate your presence council member balsamic [Balsanek] [1:36] Joe Balsanek: here [1:38] Mary Fasbender: council member brock's is absent council member fulch is absent council member life help [Leifeld] council member lund is that council member lund hello [1:51] Councilmember Lund: yes he is present [1:54] Mary Fasbender: and councilmember vaughn [1:55] Bill Vaughan: yes here [1:56] Mary Fasbender: okay let the role reflect that council members are present and a quorum has been established established with the exception of council member brock's and council members welch tonight with us we have matt carter and he is with the dakota county historical society [2:19] Mary Fasbender: uh welcome matt you're going to give us an update welcome and mariah is with too [2:42] Matt Carter: all right did you want us to do the update now then is that okay all right so thank you mayor fassbender and uh all the city council and staff uh we've uh enjoyed the the last couple of months here so we're gonna give an update it's been a little while partially due to covid and uh so we had submitted our packet of information um related to the organization um so just an update for those of you that may not have seen that um our organization we operate three historic sites within dakota county and when covet hit in march we did close our our three sites to the public and all staff worked remotely um starting march 16th and we worked closely with dakota county [3:28] Matt Carter: i.t and other uh entities to ensure that our staff was able to kind of carry out our our day-to-day operations working so with that we were able to uh again work remotely and continue to meet on a regular basis with our staff and kind of talk about our three sites and how those were going to continue operating in the future with those closures we did end up having to cancel a number of our presentations um so we we still have some events that we we tentatively mentioned that they were postponed um other events that we had to just outright cancel because there's no way we'd be able to host those in person in the foreseeable future unfortunately [4:15] Matt Carter: some of those events did include our first planned um fundraiser for the laduka state that was going to take place at the hastings golf and events um and uh we're still hoping we can do that um it was going to be kind of a beer beer tasting i think it was technically called uh beer battle or a brewery battle so mariah you can correct me if i butchered them on that so we're still hoping we can do that once we're able to do that in person again um but as we went and proceeded you know uh again we we kept our sites closed from march until july so of our three sites uh the washi museum in south st paul was opened on july 8th to the public we had a quilt show we followed all social distancing you [5:01] Matt Carter: know mass guidelines everything along those lines um started to operate at a reduced capacity so you know we're still not to the point where we have to worry about that too much because there's still not too many people that are out venturing into the museums um most of our researchers that are coming in is the bulk of our attendance at the washington museum uh we opened the laduca state on july 9th to the public so we have mariah that was mentioned she will give an update on that but our sibley site it's a minnesota historical society site and they've decided that most of their sites are going to remain close throughout this year um in this season which now we're nearing the end of that um so we've been able to do a couple of outdoor sites at sibley but bulk of it's been been close to the [5:48] Matt Carter: public uh financially we estimate that we've lost about six to seven thousand dollars per month that we were closed and uh despite that um we've done a couple of um steps that have ensured our financial stability which has been great to see um we were able to take advantage of some of those ppp loans and we have all of our submitted information so hopefully that'll turn into a grant and that'll be forgiven in the end we also received a union pacific foundation grant and uh that was a coveted relief grant that's allowed us to basically take all of our programs that were scheduled for like our mendota after hours our genealogy programs um at the laduca state some of the um [6:34] Matt Carter: history presentations like the coffee with the general even our civil war weekend um we took those and made them virtual and because of this grant it allowed us the opportunity to do that so to date we've had more than 650 people register for those programs and that's not counting those that registered multiple programs or multiple events that's just unique registrations so that's counting each person once um we have at least 30 different states that have been represented more than 175 cities from across the country within minnesota alone we've had 89 different cities attend our presentations and 14 from within dakota county um so even though we we haven't been able to [7:20] Matt Carter: do our programs that that we're used to you know our mendota after hours our genealogy programs we've actually been able to expand our outreach um we've increased our memberships from these programs we've actually received since march about 45 to 50 new members that weren't renewals they're just outright new members to our organization because of these programs um so we've been able to you know not fully bring back and reach that income level that we had in the past but we've been able to offset that with these virtual programs that we were able to offer we also received a minnesota humanities center coveted relief grant um so that grant has allowed us to [8:05] Matt Carter: offset some of our payroll expenses that wasn't covered by the the paycheck protection program um some pending grants that we have out there and i don't want to jinx us too much so i'm going to knock on wood and we have a minnesota historical society grant that we sat through their discussion and review of it and it's actually been forwarded for funding and that was a large grants where we would hire um if it goes through the 106 group and they would come in and they would help us establish a plan to expand the george daniels exhibit at the la duca state so right now that that exhibits in the the carriage barn just as you're facing it head on it's on the left side um we would actually use them the 106 [8:51] Matt Carter: group to help us develop that exhibit and take over the entire carriage barn and tell more of george daniel's story um and some of the the race relations and um the history that we have within the city of hastings in general too so it won't just be focused on george daniels we're looking forward to that um and again it's been forwarded and recommended for funding now they just have to get final approval um which most of the time that that goes through without any changes so we're looking forward to that um so as i mentioned we've been hosting about 30 different presentations all of them have been virtual we've done a few of them in person um like i said at the sibley site we've done some nature walking tours and then we've also done a few uh movie [9:36] Matt Carter: events um where we would turn the sights into an outdoor movie theater and we had some decent attendance at that as well so with that i'll turn it over that's kind of an overview real quick of just the dchs organization and mariah will go specifically into a little more detail on the laduca state [10:14] Mariah: thank you matt um so for more of a leduc specific update um during quarantine as i was working from home we increased our social media output so we did different posts that went out daily that were themed for different um like monday was more than a house monday [10:24] Mariah: so we showed pictures of different things on the site or around the site and a description of that and then we also did um for the love of art friday and featured the art that um came out of the house and things like that so um those got a lot of attention and people really seemed to like that um as far as our followers went and then we um also did my co-worker and i but we also did a lot of um webinars and things to channel into how we're going to update our sites and and put out different content or improve what we already have so some of the ones that um i participated in in particular had to do with um tours and so we actually are going to [11:10] Mariah: be putting out some more themed tours and i know i've mentioned this in the past at past meetings but um we were supposed to debut a women's themed tour for our mother's day tea which unfortunately we had to cancel but that's prepared and then we're in the final stages of tweaking a civil war themed tour and an architecture tour so that we have more offerings than just the standard tour and hopefully can generate repeat visitors and also just get other people in that maybe wouldn't have come for a standard tour who just want to know about the architecture or things like that [Music] we also had we were able to have our valentine's day tea so that was a positive it happened just before everything shut down so we could have that we had [11:56] Mariah: 28 people there in attendance plenty of volunteers to help we still used emily's to cater and are hoping to when we can reopen continue to use emily's and other local businesses to do the food for these events that event was fun though we incorporated chocolate into different portions of the tea and people really like that in may and april is normally when we have lots of school tours that come through and of course because school was shut down we didn't have these tours coming but we did however get to do a virtual tour through zoom with five classes of second graders from pinecrest so they had their online classes [12:42] Mariah: and um they were there for it was a 45 minute presentation so 30 minutes we went around the site and the house and we highlighted different things they got a um it was sort of like an eye spy that i put together and sent out beforehand so they knew what different items in the house were and what they should be looking for and then we left some without information there were trigger items so if they saw them in the room they were supposed to interact and then we would discuss that too and it went really well so we're actually looking to do more virtual tours and to promote the fact that we can do this while people are still doing school remotely um and we've been working with the the hastings area historical society [13:28] Mariah: that is the new name for the friends group they've changed their their name back to that um to see about a partnership with that we also were able to hold a virtual concert fundraiser in may where we had the new pearl buttons play a concert from the parlor while they were social distanced and we accepted donations through facebook live and also through our website for that in addition to the concert we also had a virtual silent auction that we put on and that went really well we sold everything um really and we raised two thousand dollars during that fundraiser for the site um through donations and silent auction purchases um and then in september in lieu of a [14:15] Mariah: civil war weekend like matt mentioned we had a virtual civil war weekend and what we did is we actually worked with the reenactors to be able to still put on um something that was equal to the caliber even though it obviously can't be because it's not in person um but we had reenactors who actually filmed themselves doing things like the drill marches that people would have been able to see or shooting demonstrations gun cleanings and things like that some medical demonstrations and then we used past videos that we had taken during the event as well and we posted them hourly throughout the day on a schedule we also had um the third minnesota [15:01] Mariah: when they do other events this is something we were hoping to incorporate this year into our civil war weekend but they do a candlelit tour of a civil war encampment at night so i actually they still set up their civil war encampment they wanted to be able to have it so they still set it up at a farm um in goodhue county so i went there and i did a live stream of their candlelit tour for part of our civil war weekend and then i also gave a presentation on facebook live about jesse james his involvement in the civil war and connection to it and also the northfield raid then last month we did a screening of the documentary women outward bound as a virtual program and we had a question and answer with the director maxine davis who was also a [15:46] Mariah: participant in it so that was one of the other virtual programs that we did and as far as like um other publicity for the site and and things along that line um not event related um i gave an interview for minnesota public radio for the dakota county historical society about women's suffrage in minnesota and um how the south saint paul women were the first to vote but we also did a kstp interview for their so minnesota segment that featured william and george daniels and their relationship in in minnesota so that was a neat opportunity to be able to do as well [16:34] Mariah: and then we also participated in um the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage by lighting 100 luminary bags and placing them on the fence line in front of the leduc mayor mary was there and so was councilmember folge to help us set up which was a lot of fun [Music] and then we have some upcoming virtual events that we will be doing as well we're doing some planning for some holiday events that we can do since we can't do the victorian holiday tours this year we'll still be doing victorian holiday tours just not the teas so we'll decorate the house and people can still come through in limited numbers to see the house decorated for the holidays um just like we're doing [17:22] Mariah: our candlelit tours coming up as well which are almost sold out which is really awesome so fingers crossed that we keep going at that rate um so we'll be doing some virtual programming we're looking at doing a victorian um christmas card making demonstration and we would send people supplies to that as well as maybe an ornament and potentially a recipe demo and then bringing in um margaret goterstad one of our educators to give a presentation on the leducs and their holiday practices as well as victorian holiday practices as part of a virtual presentation as well said in the parlor with all of the decorations around here so that should be a lot of fun [18:08] Mariah: um so we're we're still looking ahead that's what's interesting about history is that we present the past while always looking at the future so it's kind of kind of unique so we're planning ahead there um as far as reopening i just realized i didn't necessarily talk a lot about that we were able to reopen on july 9th and we have been doing tours every thursday friday saturday sunday since then um and at the time that we sent this report there were 235 people that had been on tours we've had some more since then actually yesterday was our last day for tours for the season and we had 15 people go through the house we had a tour in every time slot actually yesterday which was pretty [18:54] Mariah: exciting to see and we still are doing social distancing measures mass are being worn by staff and by patrons volunteers and we disinfect the house in between tours as well which made it a little tight yesterday because we had so many people come through but we've had people come from all over the state which is really awesome because we're one of the few sites that are open so for example we've had people from blaine savage saint cloud uh mankato saint peter nuom and even some people from eau claire um which has been really exciting to see as well all right and then to end here real quick we'll uh just go and you know we'll open it up for questions but a couple more things i [19:40] Matt Carter: i wanted to point um so with our up grant that we have um a lot of the programs that mariah mentioned were covered through that um offsetting that cost so um because of that in our grants you know you know nonprofits were hit you know hard as well as businesses but the general public so one of the things we did is we offered our programs free of charge to the public um so because they were being offered to us you know essentially free through this grant to put on we wanted to make it available to the public to to attend free of charge and um the only thing we asked is you know we encourage people through our events sign up to to donate to the site or the sites depending on who was hosting it and generally we just about every event we had we had [20:26] Matt Carter: enough people donating um that it averaged out to about five dollars per person again on average so even if we were to charge five dollars per person to attend um you know we ended up kind of averaging out the same in the end um you know at the start of covid we did freeze all of our non-essential spending and our staff did a great job doing that in making sure that any expenses that were um you know needed were essential expenses um but because of that we were able to limit the impact that it's had on our organization so even though our um our revenue decreased um based on what we had projected our um our expenses did as well so in the end they kind of averaged out um we were expecting to operate at about [21:12] Matt Carter: 33 um lower than what our budget was projected um so our our revenue is about 33 percent lower but our expenses are about 36 percent lower um so we're actually projecting in the end to be a little better situation than what we had before and we're also looking right now into some potential funds to help offset additional payroll um so that'll you know again impact dchs as a whole but leduc as well um especially because leduc is one of the it's the only site we have that's operating where tours are given so that's going to help the bottom line of the laduca state so with that i'll end it there and if anyone has any questions related to the financials that were included that the city council was able to look at or if you have any questions related to [21:58] Matt Carter: the site or just dch and dchs in general we'd be happy to answer those [22:10] Mary Fasbender: okay thank you matt and thank you mariah counsel any questions okay seeing none thanks for your update and for all your continued works it's kind of difficult to try to run a historical site when we're not supposed to be um distance but you have become uh very um what am i looking for uh can't work think of my word and anyway thank you for your update and [22:43] Mary Fasbender: uh i lost my word i don't know anyway thank you and continue to uh do your job and i can't wait to see it online for the christmas tour that'll be great [23:05] Matt Carter: yup thank you and i thank the the staff and the city council for the support we appreciate it [23:10] Mary Fasbender: yes yes thank you so much you're welcome okay also tonight we have a presentation from uh the recap for the 2020 um the levy park programming and with us we have paige marshall bageler welcome paige [23:25] Paige Marshall Bageler: thank you mayor mary um i do have a presentation tonight um if i can uh be [23:30] Paige Marshall Bageler: enabled to share my screen [23:47] Paige Marshall Bageler: all right perfect thank you there we go all right and just to confirm everyone can see the levee park rory pavilion recap well good evening council members and mayor i'm here tonight to provide a recap of our fifth year of programming at levy park that just wrapped up a few weeks ago this year i modified and adapted our programming to follow guidelines our outreach our event space and our partners were all affected guidance on outdoor entertainment certain weeks leading up to our [24:33] Paige Marshall Bageler: programming season which was anticipated start in june um which posed a challenge for timely communication to our 49 different uh program partners for this year so our department made the decision to cancel all june events and to wait for phase three of information to be released in mid-june which then provided me with more concrete yet fluid plans to put into place including redesigning our calendar promotional graphics and language within our online platforms that were drafted months beforehand along with the development of our program plan to address the safety of our community and the event partners so this slide that you see now outlines some of the program plan components [25:21] Paige Marshall Bageler: so similar to previous years i utilized our many avenues of communication online and with our local media partners this year i did not distribute calendars to uh in person to local businesses um and our calendar wasn't wasn't featured in our rivertown newsletter due to timing and the rovertown newsletter is actually one of our top ways people hear about our events when we collect feedback so we hope to have that calendar featured in 2021 for our clip and save rivertown newsletter for residents to place on their fridge as reminders our program attendance this year despite our missing communications avenues our attendance for programs were similar to previous years for different series um and you can note here that the [26:06] Paige Marshall Bageler: programs in the month of june um did not take place uh dude and then that um identifies the decrease in programming offerings to 25 versus that upper 30s that we typically have for our season at levy park our offerings this year we had a variety of offerings similar to most years a little bit different with additions and then omissions of other programming so of course we had our our movies and our music which are most attended and then our performances our raptors in the park our story walks and story times bike with ranger and our annual party in the park event which is in celebration of national parks and rec month in july [26:58] Paige Marshall Bageler: some of the changes as i mentioned the no june events due to uncertain restrictions week leading up to our calendar of events we did host a virtual make music day at the hastings arts center we had over 2000 people attend virtually online and then we had 10 performers over morning to evening so it was a full day of virtual make music day our music in the park was scheduled weekly versus twice a month and that was a direct result from community feedback that we receive um each year when we do our surveys and just our authentic communication that we have with people in our park system [27:44] Paige Marshall Bageler: and then we did a discontinuation of our fee based programs which would be art and fitness so yoga in the park crossfit painting due to low attendance over the last few years sorry our city funds and our sponsorships which also include donations and grants we had a huge leap in funding this year last year i applied to grants and built more partnerships with organizations for this year's events we received a seven thousand dollar metro regional arts council grant to support our performances that brought in diverse groups and focused on cultural awareness the ten thousand dollar donation from [28:31] Paige Marshall Bageler: the ruth and george staffing charitable fund to expand our music in the park series our our funds weren't expended for the june events we'll plan to use those leftover funds for 2021 levee park programs and our highlight this year was by far our expansion of music in the park which consisted of nine acts and more than two thousand attendees overall so we're appreciative of that donation from the ruth and george staffing charitable fund to make these events happen in hastings so that was fun to have that big change this year despite covid we had almost that capacity for all of those nine musical acts [29:17] Paige Marshall Bageler: and um continuing we have our programming survey that we put out each year for about two weeks so it does end tomorrow so i just wanted to share our current responses is over 250 so i want to encourage the public to take our survey to provide feedback and this survey really does continue to shape our programming offerings that we plan for really starting now for next year open and available on our website our social media pages and shared by our local media partners hctv and kdwa [30:00] Paige Marshall Bageler: and our programming is really made possible by our all of our partners our sponsors and our attendees that make it possible um so i want to express my appreciation to our program partners and our sponsors for including which includes ardent mills smead manufacturing and our donors including dakota electric and the ruth and george staffing charitable fund and they can our community here in hastings as well as visitors that continue to express excitement to have these offerings at levy park and to highlight um how we also utilize the rotary pavilion in levee park is through our rentals um weekends are often booked full in a [30:47] Paige Marshall Bageler: normal year and we hope that's the same for next year [30:55] Paige Marshall Bageler: and i can stand for any questions council and mayor [31:02] Mary Fasbender: thank you paige it was a great schedule of activities and heard many many positive um comments so with that uh council member valsonic [Balsanek] [31:18] Joe Balsanek: yes thank you uh your honor paige just wonderful it was such a breath of fresh air to be able to run these programs in the middle of this pandemic to give people an opportunity to get outside to go down to be safe and such a nice variety of programs as well congratulations you really did a wonderful job and i'm [31:43] Joe Balsanek: not surprised because i've said that i think year after year it's a tremendous asset to have the park so lively throughout the summer thank you [31:55] Paige Marshall Bageler: thank you for your support councilmember balsonic [32:00] Mary Fasbender: sure any other comments council okay once again paige thank you for all you do and look forward to the fun schedule next year thank you mayor thank you council members have a good evening thank you you too all right council members are there any corrections to the minutes of the regular meeting of october 5th [32:30] Mary Fasbender: seeing none they are approved for public comments we have options for comments to be emailed prior to the meeting as well as an interactive feature they are featured during the meeting for the email comments they have been forwarded to the city council and their receipt has isn't it is acknowledged please recognize that items not on the agenda will not be discussed this evening we ask that the attendees raise their hand if they would like to speak i see no raised hands okay council are there any items to be [33:15] Mary Fasbender: considered [33:22] Mary Fasbender: nope okay uh under um our agenda we saw that there was um an item on the agenda for the apartment conversion i'm sorry and we do not have enough council members so we are moving that to another evening so that would be a will be considered i don't know when so that'll be in our future council i would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda [33:55] Lisa Leifeld: motion to approve your honor council member lightfelt [Leifeld] [34:03] Joe Balsanek: all second councilmember sonic [34:06] Mary Fasbender: any discussion clerk flatten please [34:11] Clerk Flatten: call the roll council member balsanek [34:15] Joe Balsanek: yes [34:16] Clerk Flatten: council member leifeld [34:17] Lisa Leifeld: yes [34:18] Clerk Flatten: council member lund [34:19] Councilmember Lund: yes [34:20] Clerk Flatten: council member vaughan [34:21] Bill Vaughan: yes [34:23] Mary Fasbender: motion prevails council member that's uh any announcements we have nothing else on the agenda for tonight any announcements okay i have a couple uh the canadian pacific railroad has scheduled repairs and track replacement work at east 2nd street crossing beginning today weather permitting the work will take three to five days to complete during the work traffic will be detoured to leah [34:58] Mary Fasbender: east first and tyler streets the city council has created a grant program to aid local non-profit organizations that can demonstrate financial hardship due to covid19 priority will go to organizations that provide human services or public health services such as food delivery mental health counseling community outreach housing assistance and economic security first review of applications is october 23rd please see the city website for more information uh monday october 26 7 p.m there will be a planning commission meeting tuesday [35:44] Mary Fasbender: october 27th 6 pm there will be a public safety committee meeting monday november 2nd 5 30 city council of a workshop on second whack and 7 pm the city council regular meeting will be after that could i have a motion to adjourn [36:12] Joe Balsanek: also move your honor council member of all sonic [Balsanek] [36:17] Bill Vaughan: second councilmember vaughn [36:20] Mary Fasbender: and clerk flatten please call the roll [36:23] Clerk Flatten: council member balsanek [36:25] Joe Balsanek: yes [36:26] Clerk Flatten: council member leifeld [36:27] Lisa Leifeld: yes [36:28] Clerk Flatten: council member lund [36:29] Councilmember Lund: yes [36:30] Clerk Flatten: mayor fasbender [36:31] Mary Fasbender: yes