This transcript is from the **Farmington City Council** meeting on **July 1, 2024**. Please note a discrepancy: While your provided context lists Nick Lien as Mayor, in this July 2024 recording, **Joshua Hoyt** is serving as Mayor, and **Nick Lien** is serving as a Councilmember. Additionally, while your context lists Jake Cordes, the councilmember present and addressed as "Katie" in this transcript is **Katie Burham**. [0:00] [Music] [0:46] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** We'll call the City Council regular meeting to order for Monday, July 1st, 2024. Would everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? [0:56] **All:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [0:56] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Call the roll, please. [0:56] **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Mayor Hoyt? **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Burham? **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Bernatz? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Lien? **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Wilson? **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Here. [0:56] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** All right, are there any changes to the agenda? Leah? Nick? Holly? No. Katie? No. Steve? No. Lynn? Any of our team? Right, seeing none, I would seek a motion to approve the agenda. [1:43] **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Motion to approve. **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Motion by Katie, second by Steve. All in favor say aye. **Council:** Aye. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** All right. Item 5.1 under announcements is the Park and Recreation Month Proclamation. And Kelly? [1:43] **Kelly (Parks & Recreation Staff):** Good evening, Mayor and Council. Since 1985, cities, communities, park districts, and people across the United States have celebrated Parks and Recreation Month in the month of July to promote building strong, vibrant, and resilient communities through the power of Parks and Recreation, and to recognize the more than 600,000 full-time Parks and Recreation professionals along with hundreds of thousands of part-time and seasonal workers and volunteers. So this month we are celebrating Parks and Recreation Month on July 26th, which is a Friday night, at Lake Julia Park. The party starts at 7 p.m. with kids' dance and games, face painting, crafts, and more. Kids' Dance is a DJ service that does lots of dancing and we'll have beads and all the fun stuff for the kids. At dusk, which is approximately 8:40 p.m., the movie *Shrek* will be shown. We want to make sure to recognize our sponsors of the event: Castle Rock Bank, Dakota Electric Association, Farmington Youth Hockey Association, Marshall Line, and Farmington VFW Post 7662. This is a free event; all are invited to attend. So we hope the community comes out and celebrates with us on Friday, July 26th at Lake Julia Park. I also want to thank all the volunteers. What we do in Parks and Recreation wouldn't be possible without the volunteers. This starts with our Advisory Board at the Rambling River Center, at the Parks and Recreation Commission, but also volunteers at the front desk at the Rambling River Center, our fitness instructors, youth T-ball coaches, soccer coaches, and all of our Adopt-A-Park volunteers. Without their service, we wouldn't be able to do what we do every single day in this department. I also want to thank our seasonal workers. We have probably 20 or 30 of them this summer. They've done a great job; many of them are returning. And then also we have a number of new, young employees—15-year-olds—it's their first job. So we are very fortunate to have a group of hardworking young folks in our seasonal roles. Our full-time staff—I couldn't have created a better team. I am proud of them every day for everything they do. They come to work, they do their job and make our spaces clean, our programs fun, and our facilities look great. So thank you to every single one of our full-time staff for what you do on a daily basis. It may go unnoticed to some, but trust me, it doesn't go unnoticed to me, obviously to the Council and the Commissions and the Advisory Board. So thank you, and we'd love to proclaim July 2024 as Parks and Recreation Month in Farmington. [4:02] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you, ma'am. At this time, we'll read the proclamation for Parks and Recreation Month, July 2024. Whereas Parks and Recreation is an integral part of communities throughout this country, including Farmington, promoting health and wellness and improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks; and whereas Parks and Recreation promotes time spent in nature which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's; and whereas Parks and Recreation encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles; and whereas Parks and Recreation programming and education activities such as out-of-school time programming, youth sports, and environmental education are critical to child development; and whereas Parks and Recreation increases a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses, and crime reduction; and whereas Parks and Recreation is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community and the city's parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of Farmington and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors; and whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month; and whereas the City of Farmington recognizes the benefits derived from parks and recreation resources; now, therefore, I, Joshua Hoyt, Mayor, on behalf of the Farmington City Council, do hereby proclaim July 2024 as Parks and Recreation Month. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the City of Farmington, Minnesota, to be affixed on this first day of July, 2024. Our next item on the agenda is our citizen comments. If there is anyone in attendance wishing to speak at this time, please step up to the mic. Seeing none, we'll move on to item seven, which is our consent agenda. I seek a motion to approve the consent agenda. [6:19] **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** Motion to approve. **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Motion by Holly, second by Nick. All in favor say aye. **Council:** Aye. [7:05] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** All right, our first action item here is our public hearing. So the next item on the agenda is a public hearing—a public hearing for the cannabis business moratorium. So at this time, I will open the public hearing. And Leah, you want to take it from there? [7:05] **Leah (City Staff/Legal):** Yes, thank you, Mayor and Council. So this is a cannabis business moratorium which the new cannabis law at the state level allowed the city to do in 2023. Previously, there was no need for the city, in the view of staff, to implement the moratorium because practically no cannabis businesses were planned on being licensed or opened until 2025, and under the statute, you can only have the moratorium until 2025. Well, with changes in the last legislative session, there's some opportunity for businesses to start earlier. We don't quite know when that timeline is, but we do know that pre-approvals could be given as early as mid-August and maybe September. So, just as a way to give staff and the council more protected space to consider these whatever regulations might be appropriate for Farmington, staff is putting forth this moratorium prohibiting all cannabis businesses from operating or putting in any land-use applications or receiving any kind of approvals until January 1st, 2025, to allow for that kind of full, robust process to play out the way we designed it to initially. [8:37] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you, ma'am. At this time, are there any questions? Nick? **Councilmember Nick Lien:** I have none. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Holly? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** No. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Katie? **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Nope, none. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Steve? [9:24] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** All right. I have no questions at this time. This is a public hearing, so if there is anyone in attendance wishing to make a comment on the agenda item, feel free to step forward. Seeing none, I will go ahead and close the public hearing at this time. Any additional comment or dialogue? Steve? [9:24] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** You know, I guess I just have one quick question, Leah. So, 1/1/25 is actually not terribly far away. Without having a confusing conversation, I mean, does the law allow us to continue a moratorium for a certain period of time if we feel it would be beneficial for the appropriate planfulness of a potential operation? [9:24] **Leah (City Staff/Legal):** In this situation, as it relates to these businesses in cannabis, the answer is no. It's just until January 1, 2025. We'd be preempted otherwise. [9:24] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Okay, thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Katie, any comments? **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Nope. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Holly? Nick? All right, I have nothing further to add. With that, we look for a motion to approve the passage of Ordinance 2024-06, an interim ordinance prohibiting the operation of cannabis businesses. [10:10] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Motion to approve. **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Motion by Steve, second by Katie. Call the roll, please. [10:10] **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Burham? **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Bernatz? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Lien? **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Councilmember Wilson? **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** Mayor Hoyt? **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Yes. [10:10] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** All right, our next item is 12.1, which is our 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report and related audit reports. Kim? [10:10] **Kim Sommerland (Finance Director):** Good evening, Mayor and Council. So every year, as you know, we have to do an annual financial audit. This year we began the process of reviewing the 2023 data in February, and we just wrapped that up a couple weeks ago. So we have Bill Lower from MMKR, our audit firm, here tonight to give you a recap of those results. [10:55] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you, ma'am. Welcome back, sir. [10:55] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** Thank you. Seems like you were just here... it was a while ago and I always enjoy coming to address the Council. Thank you so much for time for me on your agenda this evening. What I plan to do, first of all, there's some required communication I need to make sure that you as a body charged with oversight for your financial reporting for the city understands what our role is as auditor and how Management's responsibility differs from that as far as the financial statements you received. Second, I'm going to go through the opinions and the report letters that we issue as a result of our audit process. And third, I'm going to just briefly go through a few of the real high-level financial results for your 2023 fiscal year. As I mentioned, the first thing I need to do is remind you that all of the data and the disclosures go into making up the primary document that you received, which is your Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, is provided by City Management, and the responsibility for those financial statements rests with management. We come out and perform an audit, provide an opinion that goes in that document stating as to whether it fairly presents your financial position and results for the year under audit. Also, you're required to have an audit in accordance with governmental accounting standards, so you'll find a separate internal control and report letter with our evaluation of your controls over financial reporting and your compliance with governmental accounting standards. Finally, you're subject to an audit of your compliance with Minnesota state laws and regulations. There's an audit guide that the State Auditor puts out and updates annually that we audit to, and you'll find a separate report letter that we issue for that. As far as results of the financial audit, once again this year we were able to provide an unmodified or "clean" opinion, as we refer to it, on your financial statements. In addition, for internal control and compliance over your financial reporting, this year we reported no internal control deficiencies and no instances of non-compliance noted in the current year. As far as your compliance with Minnesota laws and regulations, we did have one thing to report this year. In testing your contracting and bidding, we noted that there was one instance where a contract that was over the dollar threshold to require a sealed bid was not awarded on the publicly solicited sealed bid, and that the successful vendor—when you have labor involved in a contract like that, you're also supposed to obtain payment and performance bonds from the vendor, and you didn't have those either. Kind of what happened here is the city understood that this vendor was on the approved state contract list—there's a cooperative purchasing group that the state does, you kind of pre-approve certain vendors and they were going through that process—but this vendor was not fully approved yet. So you should have had to do your own bid until that happens. Then something to point out that changed from last year: if you recall, in your internal controls over financial reporting, we cited a couple of material weaknesses in internal controls last year. First of all, on segregation of duties, and second of all, there was a prior period adjustment that was made to correct some reporting for development deposit revenues. First of all, on the segregation of duties, there are some changes that the city started implementing at the end of 2022. We came back and tested those to see that they were in place and functioning properly for 2023, determined that we had enough mitigating controls there to eliminate that finding. And we did not run across any other prior period adjustments this year, so there was no similar finding for that either. Then, something kind of new this year... I'm going to have to get a little bit in the weeds, I apologize, just to kind of explain the difference. Typically, if you earn over $750,000 in federal awards, you have to have a separate single audit of those federal awards expenditures. There is one program—the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds that you were awarded—that kind of came out with an alternative to that. You have to qualify for it; basically, if you're getting $750,000 in direct awards through this particular program and you wouldn't have had to have a single audit except for this program, you can have this alternative compliance examination engagement, which the city did qualify for. Kind of the main differences here is you don't have to have a schedule of expenditures of federal awards, so the other smaller programs don't have to be put together in a schedule form with an opinion as to whether that's fairly stated in reliance to your overall financial statements. And also you're not required to comply with all of the parts of the Uniform Guidance, which is kind of the compliance Bible for federal programs. The Treasury Department came up with a specific audit program with specific compliance areas that they wanted tested and requirements as to how to do that. So it's kind of an agreed-upon procedures; it's a different type of examination. It's actually a separate engagement from your audit, so it's a little different than you're used to seeing. As far as the results of the audit, we did issue that report letter stating that the city complied with all the specified requirements of the Department of Treasury put out there. One thing we did have to report, because this was done under government accounting standards, any non-compliance from your financial audit has to get reported in here. So that same Minnesota legal compliance finding that was reported for your city audit, because that was purchased with this particular program's dollars, we have to also report it here as another matter. It's the same transaction, basically. From an opinion and report letter standpoint, that was everything I was going to go over before I move on to the financial data. Any questions on anything I've touched on so far? [17:04] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Any questions? No? You're good. [17:51] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** Okay, then I'm going to move along. The city maintains two different types of funds: governmental funds and proprietary funds. Your governmental funds are those that are primarily financed with your property tax levy—your General Fund, Special Revenue funds, Debt Service, and Capital Projects funds. These are on the modified accrual basis, so I report current assets, current liabilities, and the equity is reported as fund balance. What you see here is a table showing the change in fund balances by classification and by major fund. At the end of 2023, you had about $28.4 million in fund balances across all of your governmental funds. That was an increase of about $2.9 million from the year before. As far as changes year-over-year, you'll see a fairly big increase in assigned fund balance. That's actually something you did internally; you separated what had been one Debt Service fund and created a closed bond Debt Service fund. So those debt service accounts where the bonds were no longer outstanding, any residual there you moved to a separate fund and then went from a restricted fund balance to an assigned fund balance. So that's kind of where you're seeing that $1.5 million increase in assigned fund balances. Restricted actually still went up by about $28,000 there. Kind of the other big piece of that offsetting that change in debt reporting is you got about $1.1 million right at the end of the year in Public Safety Aid. That was... I think you got it December 26th, right around Christmas or just after. You couldn't use it for any expenditures that took place before that, so basically all of our clients have all that money that they just got at the end of the year and it has to sit in a restricted fund balance because you can only spend that for public safety purposes. So that can offset that change in the restricted bucket there. Then your unassigned fund balance went up about $882,000. That primarily relates to your General Fund, which had an increase there of about $1.1 million. Kind of drilling down then into that General Fund, that's your primary operating fund. At the end of 2023, you had cash and investments of about $7.8 million and just under $9 million in total fund balances. Both of those went up by about $1.2 million from the previous year-end, and that compared to a budget to break even. So you're about $1.2 million better than projected in your budget. What makes that fund balance up? You've got about $1,200 in non-spendable fund balance which relates to prepaid expenditures reported in that fund, and all the rest of it—almost $9 million—is unassigned. Your fund balance policy is to maintain an unassigned fund balance between 40 and 50% of your subsequent year's budget. That fund balance level at the end of the year represented about 47.6%, so you are right in compliance with your policy. General fund revenues for the year were $16.2 million. That was about $813,000 higher than budget. That was the majority of your variance—about a 5% variance over budget. That came mainly in three categories. Your intergovernmental revenues were about $230,000 over budget; that was mainly MSA Street Maintenance Aid and a couple other smaller grants that you hadn't budgeted for. Your charges for services were also about $233,000 over budget. The biggest pieces there were fire service charges and engineering charged out for services. And then your "all other revenue" there, which includes your investment income, went up by about $313,000. If you were here in 2022, we were talking about this going the other way. 2022 was a very bad year from an investment standpoint; things kind of bounced back in 2023. You have to report your investments at fair value, so if you've got investments that you're holding for several years, those can fluctuate in fair value year to year. You typically hold all those until maturity, so you usually end up realizing the par value of all those, but you will see some fluctuations, and that's kind of what happened the last two years. On the expenditure side, you spent just under $15 million in the General Fund in 2023. That was about $335,000 under budget—roughly 2% variance there—mainly in your Public Safety and Public Works areas. In both cases, that was primarily in personnel costs where you had some budgeted positions that you were able to fill or keep filled all year. I mentioned the other fund type that you maintain are proprietary funds. Enterprise funds are the main proprietary fund type that you have. These are funds that are funded primarily with user fees. You've got your municipal liquor operation and then five utility operations: Sewer, Water, Solid Waste, Street Light, and Storm Water. These are reported full accrual, so these include all your long-term assets, outstanding debt, and all of the long-term liabilities that aren't reported in the governmental fund types. So that's reported as a "net position" rather than fund balance. At the end of the year, you had about $72.3 million in total net position across all of your enterprise funds. Just to point out one of the things that makes this so different: about two-thirds of that—roughly $48.5 million—is your investment in capital assets. A lot of your utility enterprise funds are very intensive as far as the amount of infrastructure that you have there—water, sewer, storm water, things of that nature. So those aren't spendable funds; they're invested in your city infrastructure. As you can see from the lower part of this where we show it by fund, other than the Solid Waste fund, all of your enterprise funds had positive increases in net position. Your Solid Waste fund you've been closing down over the last two years. You quit operating fully two years ago; you had, I think, one client that you contractually were obligated to continue serving for longer than that. So at the end of 2023, you're basically ready to shut that down, which I believe was planned for 2024 to close that fund out entirely. Your liquor operating fund ended the year with about a $49,000 increase in net position. Gross sales in that fund were up about 6%, roughly $378,000 from the year before. Your gross profits have been very stable as a percent of sales, right around 25.5% year-to-year. Operating income has been trending upward the last few years; you had about $554,000 in operating income compared to $447,000 prior year. And you do use this to make transfers both for administration and support of the general fund, and you transferred $100,000 for park improvements, which is kind of an ongoing goal with what you do with the profits in this fund. Your Sewer operating fund ended the year with a net position increase of about $273,000. Here, you will see there was a small operating loss of about $111,000. That green line on the bottom shows your operating income or loss versus all expenditures including depreciation. The red bar shows the out-of-pocket cash costs without depreciation. So you've been pretty close to financing all of your expenses there including your depreciation, but you were a little below this year. But you did have about $630,000 of contributed infrastructure—street projects that you completed in the governmental funds where the sewer portion of that got transferred into this fund. That was about 630,000, and that caused that net increase in total net position. Mentioned your Solid Waste fund... kind of dwindling down to the end here. As you can see, it only had operating revenues of about $9,000, and a total operating deficit of about $67,000. You do have a net position of close to $1.5 million left that you'll have to figure out what you're going to do with—maybe you've already made that decision as far as distributing that—but that's pretty much shut down at this point. Your Storm Water fund had an increase of about $1.1 million in net position. You had operating income of about $650,000, which has been pretty stable year-to-year; this fund's been doing well each year. You also had about $870,000 of infrastructure contributed from those same street projects for storm water infrastructure. The Water fund similarly had an increase of about $1.7 million in net position. You had an operating income of about $622,000, and you had $786,000 of infrastructure contributed from your street projects. On this fund, you still have about $2.5 million of that net position that are funds restricted for a future water treatment facility that have been sitting in that fund for a number of years. Finally, your Street Light fund is a much smaller utility fund than the others. Your total net position went up by about $440,000. You had an operating increase of about $23,000, and your total net position at the end of the year was $384,000. The final table I will go through with you is actually the very condensed version of the first financial schedule in your Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. This summary of net position takes all the fund information and converts that governmental fund information to a full accrual basis to kind of match what you do with your enterprise funds. So the bottom half of this—Business-Type Activities—equals exactly what we just went through from your enterprise funds. The part that changed is the top piece there going from your governmental funds. So the governmental activities include bringing in all the capital assets that serve these funds, outstanding bonds, long-term employee benefits that aren't reported in the funds... so it gives you kind of a longer-term perspective of your net position and how it changed. Entity-wide, you had about $137 million in total net position at the end of the year, an increase of about $6.4 million. Kind of half and a half, that increase from the business-type and the governmental activities as you can see there. I'm not going to go through the business-type because it's, again, dollar-for-dollar just what happened in the enterprise funds. The governmental activity change there: you see most of that increase came in net investment in capital assets, about $2.1 million. That was mainly from street construction and reconstruction projects that you are financing either through state aid or with internal resources—so without issuing new debt. You know, that's kind of driven by how fast you're depreciating your assets versus how fast you're paying the debt back that you issued to build those assets. When you're able to add capital assets without having to issue any debt, that's when you see that go up a little more than typical, and that's what you experienced this year. The difference between restricted and unrestricted is primarily that change in your debt service fund we talked about when we were going through the fund information, and that unrestricted also includes the increase of about $1.2 million in your General Fund. So that was a lot of numbers. Questions? Anything you wanted me to go through in any more detail? [30:54] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you, sir. Steve? **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Have none. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Katie? **Councilmember Katie Burham:** None. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Holly? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** Well done, sir. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Nick? [30:54] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Well, I was going to ask him, but now you're all saying no. Can I have one small... can you go back quite a few slides to where you were kind of showing Public Works and Public Safety and their actual versus expected budget? Sorry, it's quite a few slides back. And just notice there was some amount of drift that you had in like the Public Works budget, for instance, where you know we got some Municipal State Aid dollars and it kind of threw off the number just a little bit. Yeah, right there. [30:54] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** That one right there? Okay. [30:54] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Well, actually the one before, I think. Revenues or expenditures? [30:54] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** The revenues? [30:54] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Okay. I mean, how far do you have to drift on budget versus actual before it starts to raise concern for you guys? Is that well within the bounds of normal? [30:54] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** Yeah, it kind of depends a little bit on your philosophy, how conservative you are with your budgeting. If there are reasons for the variances—like if you got a new aid this year or, you know, just about all of our clients budgeted really, really conservatively for investment income because of what happened in 2022. You know, $300-and-some thousand out of $800,000 variance was that investment income. So that isn't concerning from my standpoint. [30:54] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** I just want to make sure like if John's going and finding dollars for Farmington that we don't get accidentally slapped on the wrist for coming in way too high on our actual, you know, as an unexpected income kind of thing. That we don't get flagged for some kind of audit risk. [30:54] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** No, not... I mean, if you just couldn't even explain why it was different, or something unexpected didn't happen that would explain it. A lot of what happened with your city happened with a lot of my cities. As I mentioned, everybody was real conservative budgeting for investment income, everyone was very conservative budgeting for charges for services, especially related to development because of interest rates going up, and by and large it wasn't as bad as people were allowing for. I'm conservative; I'd rather budget conservative and come in a little better than I thought. Obviously, you can't do that every year—you don't want to be building up excessive fund balance—but you're right in line with your policy. You're budgeting fund balance to be 40 to 50% of your next year's budget, and you can see right here is a perfect example of why you need that. You get the vast majority of your revenue from property taxes, which you only get paid twice a year—that comes in May and June and then again in November and December at the end of the year. So you need that fund balance and that cash to finance your operations and cash flow until you get those settlements. That's why you have that policy; you're right in line with it. So that doesn't raise any red flags, I guess, from my standpoint. [34:00] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Awesome, thank you. [34:00] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Yeah, I have no questions. I appreciate the presentation and the work of our team. We changed our budget process a little bit last year and we got it cleaner and more efficient, and the net outcome is positive, so all the better. Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate it. [34:47] **Bill Lower (MMKR Auditor):** Thank you. [34:47] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** All right, we'll move on to Roundtable. [34:47] **Leah (City Staff/Legal):** Okay, great. Kind of along the cannabis moratorium theme, the Office of Cannabis Management continues to produce resources for local governments that staff is digesting. So, yeah, just look forward to those conversations coming down the pike. Thanks. [34:47] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you. Nick? [34:47] **Councilmember Nick Lien:** No Buffalo News... not today. Okay. Thank you to all the volunteers that came out for Dew Days. It was a lovely weekend even with the rain. Appreciate everybody's help. I'm not going to steal all your thunder, don't worry. Everyone should have a hopefully safe and happy Fourth of July. I guess that's about it today. [35:33] **Councilmember Holly Bernatz:** No thunder! I don't... if every single one of us up here says thank you to the Dew Days committee and the volunteers and the staff that were there, I don't think it'll be enough. Great event, really, really, really well-run. You know, Mother Nature didn't fully cooperate, but she got her act in line partway through, and they did a great job. I'm looking forward already to next year. I won't steal Chief's thunder or the Mayor's thunder with regard to fireworks, but I will say it is Fourth of July week and there was something interesting that I had read and learned about keeping your little humans safe. So if you are going out and you are swimming in lakes or pools and you are also in the market for new swimsuits, get the bright ones—the orange ones, the yellow ones, and the pink ones. They show up in the water. So just another note of safety around the week we are all... many of us at least heading to some sort of water at some point over the weekend. And blue and blue... not the best way to go. Wish I would have known that when my humans were little. That's all I have. [36:19] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Thank you. Katie? [36:19] **Councilmember Katie Burham:** Yeah, Dew Days was an absolute blast. The community did a fantastic job. It was really fun to see downtown full and buzzing for a few days. So, excellent work by that entire team. [36:19] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Steve? [36:19] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Yeah, so people might be wondering why am I wearing an "I Voted" sticker. Well, actually the primary is coming up and I get to see Shirley, who can help any one of you who wish to vote early for the upcoming primary. Her and her team will do a great job to help you out. So just wanted to acknowledge... you know, Kelly started off earlier making a number of comments about the Park and Rec department and the team, and I just want to second that. I know Kelly's going to talk about something she's super excited about here in a minute, but boy, our parks and trails are heavily utilized. And the condition of the parks and trails are, of course, thanks to all of you for picking up trash and litter and keeping them attractive, but also to the park maintenance crew and everybody that does a great job out there. So, just huge kudos to all of you. I do want to congratulate Wendy, who Mayor made happy watching for the Kiss the Pig. Congratulations to Wendy—you did a very honorable job serving that new role. And then I did want to comment too that the Mayor encouraged all of us to consider attending the Coronation a couple weeks ago and it was really quite... it's an amazing event. And I think you're right, it probably doesn't get the attention that it deserves, but you look at these young ladies and women who are representing our community, the enthusiasm, all the parents that spend so much time driving around to parades... I just want to give a special shout out to all those ambassadors, young ambassadors, who are going to be representing our community over the summer and for the next year. And congratulations to all of you then. All right. [38:40] **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler:** I'd like to let everybody know that City Hall will be closed this Thursday for Independence Day, and we'll be back open on Friday at 8:00 a.m. Thank you. [38:40] **Julie (City Staff):** I don't have anything tonight. Thank you. [38:40] **Leah (City Staff/Legal):** I just want to highlight... on the consent agenda, we appointed six new employees tonight. So that was a really big deal to fill some gaps for paid-on-call firefighters, a full-time police officer, and a full-time natural resource specialist. Thank you. [38:40] **Deanna Kuennen (CED Director):** Good evening. It's just a reminder that on July 16th from 8:00 to 10:30 we'll have our Small Business Resource Fair here. So I encourage all small businesses to take advantage of this opportunity to have access to some resources that you may or may not know about and to network with your peers. Thank you. [38:40] **John Powell (Public Works Director/City Engineer):** Thank you, Mayor and City Council Members. An important project regionally, and certainly to the City of Farmington: Dakota County received five proposals for a corridor study—preliminary engineering on Denmark from County Road 50 down to 220th. In partnership with the city, we'll be reviewing those proposals. The study would begin immediately and they'd expect to complete it by about this time next year. Thank you, sir. [39:25] **Kelly (Parks & Recreation Staff):** Like Councilmember Wilson said earlier, I do have some exciting news. The new playground equipment at Rambling River Park was open for play early this afternoon. So come on and join us. The zipline was not open today—they are still missing a part, hopefully it will be here tomorrow, so that'll be up and running within the next few days. The orange snow fence will stay around the perimeter of the park while we let the turf establish. The old playground was also fenced off today in preparation for demolition of that playground equipment. At this time, I want to send a huge thank you to the City Council for your support in making that happen. The vision to use ARPA funds (American Rescue Plan Act funds) to purchase that equipment and that surfacing and make it an inclusive playground for the community is amazing. It will be a draw; other people from other communities will come to use this equipment. So thank you for your support for this project. Also want to thank Minnesota Energy Resources; if you remember, we got a grant from them to put towards the purchase of the equipment. So thank you to Nicole and her team at Minnesota Energy. And then I want to send a thank you to the park maintenance staff. From ripping out the tennis court surface—which we did not expect 12 inches of asphalt—to prepping the site for playground installation, to getting the fill and the turf... the awesome job they did with the cement pads for the benches and the bike rack. They did great work out there, so I wanted to send a thank you. I did talk to one of them today and they've been on that project for about a month and a half, and he did say he's looking forward to a new project. So, thank you to that team and to the community. We will have a grand opening probably in July or August, but it is open for play and we're excited to see the kiddos and the adults on that playground. So enjoy the playground. [41:46] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** And with all the rain that we got, right? It didn't make it to the playground? It's on high enough ground? [41:46] **Kelly (Parks & Recreation Staff):** It did not. Yeah, for the first time in how many decades? [41:46] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Forever. [41:46] **Kelly (Parks & Recreation Staff):** All of them. Since that park... 1968. [41:46] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Yeah. Yeah, that was good to see. Good to see. Thank you. [41:46] **Kim Sommerland (Finance Director):** Just as a follow-up to tonight's presentation, I just wanted to give a shout out to the Finance Department and all of the management team. Couldn't complete that audit without them, especially with me only having been here two months of last year. So I appreciate everyone's help. Thank you, ma'am. [42:33] **Police Chief Nate Siem:** Two quick things. At the last council meeting roundtable, I made a plea for everyone to please be safe and be careful with all the extra traffic and all the extra activity downtown for Dew Days. I'm happy to report it was a largely incident-free weekend all the way around. It was safe, it was fun, everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, and nobody got too carried away. The second point I would like to make is that I am a 22-year resident of the City of Farmington and I spend a fair amount of time in our parks and on our trails, and I would like to give a shout out to Kelly and all of her staff for keeping them in amazing condition. It's a real asset to the community and I'd like to thank you for that. Thank you, sir. [43:19] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Yeah, Dew Days... I mean, let's start there, right? Three years ago, basically three years ago, there was almost no event to be had—it was on that line. I remember when Holly had shown up and pleaded in March to make it happen, and each year since it has built in awesomeness and it has increased in attendance. To the Chief's point, knock on wood, it has been mostly incident-free the last few years. But the one compliment that I heard people say most throughout the event was they were surprised at how clean it stayed—just like how many trash cans were put out, but that people were picking things up and putting them away. Not a shot at any other city, but you go to a lot of events and that's just part of the deal; there's just stuff everywhere. There's a lot of people eating and drinking and doing the things, and it's like the mess that comes with the large event. We've managed to stay away from that. We've managed to have a very clean event. People respect the community and the businesses, and they're not damaging stuff. That's a testament to the character of our residents and those that come into our community for events like Dew Days. Huge holiday on Thursday: Independence Day. Be safe, have fun. This is a holiday that is usually welcomed with many aerial explosive devices that we call fireworks, and while they are still illegal—certain types—in the state, you can still be respectful of your neighbors. Like, there is a pretty amazing display that is put on in any number of the neighborhoods across the community on not only the night of the 4th, but the weekend that happens to follow after that. Just remember that not everybody has the same holiday schedule; not everybody has the same days off. Some people work nights and they try to sleep during the day, or they have dogs or kiddos or even adults in the home that have sensitivity to sounds. Just be aware of your surroundings. You can have fun, you can be responsible, but you need to be respectful of your neighbors at the same time. And please help our Public Works department out. Clean up your trash, all the debris that's left behind, all the cardboard pieces, all the stuff. Take the time to sweep them up the following morning, throw them in the garbage, make sure they're safe, use water, all the stuff. But don't leave that stuff out in the street, especially if it's going to rain—chance of rain Thursday or Friday. Just please clean it up so it doesn't end up in our storm water ponds. With that, look for a motion to adjourn. [45:38] **Councilmember Steve Wilson:** Motion. **Councilmember Nick Lien:** Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** Motion by Steve, second by Nick. All in favor say aye. **Council:** Aye. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt:** We're adjourned at 7:45. [46:10] [Applause] [Music]