okay good evening it is now 5 30 and i call this regular meeting of the burnsville city council to order the clerk will note for the record that mayor coutts and councilmember augustuson are absent this evening we begin our meeting with a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance and we invite invite you to join us i pledge allegiance to the fight 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 tonight's meeting is being conducted both in person and online members of the public may attend in person watch this meeting or watch this meeting online at burnsvillemn.gov backslash meetings or on comcast channel 16 or 8 59. the public can also participate through zoom by joining us at zoom dot us backslash join more information is available on our meetings webpage and in the council agenda packet we move on to announcements and present presentations we have upcoming meetings regular council meetings upcoming are tuesday august 16th at 5 30 pm and tuesday september 6th at 5 30 pm we have a work session to discuss the budget and tax levy on tuesday august 23rd at 5 30 p.m in dakota room b and we have a special work session for service discussion tuesday august 16th at 6 pm in the dakota rooms and we also have a special meeting august 12th at 2 p.m to canvas primary election results and that is in conference room d we have a proclamation this evening for night to unite and i will read that proclamation now make sure i'm not missing anything whereas the minnesota crime prevention association along with triple a and local law enforcements are sponsoring a statewide program called knight to unite on august 2nd 2022 and whereas knight to unite is designed to get to know one another in your neighborhood build neighborhood involvement by bringing police fire local government and communities together and to bring an awareness to crime prevention and local law enforcement efforts and whereas knight to unite supports the idea that crime prevention is an inexpensive effective tool in strengthening police and community partnerships and whereas knight to unite provides opportunities to celebrate the ongoing work of law enforcement and neighborhoods in the city of burnsville by working together to fight crime and victimization and increase public safety for all citizens and whereas the citizens of burnsville play an important role in assisting the city of burnsville through joint crime drug and violence prevention efforts now therefore i vince workman on behalf of the city council do hereby proclaim tuesday august 2nd 2022 to be night to unite in burnsville and do hereby call upon all citizens of burnsville to participate in night to unite activities on august 2nd proclaimed this first day of august 2022 we move on to citizens comments this is an opportunity for anyone that would like to address the council on an item not printed on the agenda and not coming before us at future meetings does anyone wish to address the council is there anyone on zoom seeing no one we will move on and we have additions to the final agenda this is for emergency items that need immediate council action or discussion do staff have any additions to the final agenda nothing from staff member thank you does council have any additions to the final agenda seeing none we will move on to the consent agenda all items listed on the consent agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion however an item may be removed from the consent agenda for a separate discussion and vote is there anyone from the public who wishes an item to be removed from the consent agenda for a separate discussion and vote does staff wish to remove anything from the consent agenda nothing from staff mayor members of council would you like to remove an item no then i would entertain a motion for the consent agenda motion to adopt motion by council member schultz second by council member keeley all those in favor please say aye aye all opposed and the motion carries there are no items on the regular agenda tonight but council member schultz would like to make a comment before we move to adjournment so it's nice when i get to share good news with council and staff and with our residents and i do have really good news to share this good news um takes the form of a thank you and i i would like to thank my council members and i would love to thank staff and also our residents this is an update on a bill which had been utterly dead for years could not even get a hearing since 2019 i think and this was a bill to help a help protect a small category of pain patients and and it was those who have intractable pain or suffer from a rare disease um and it was to keep them from being cut off their medications um or to to make it so that they um could have proper proper management um it also protects doctors from being prosecuted or having their license removed for treating this category of patient now normally nothing like this is discussed in in council chambers but our council took on this complex issue when we uh like other cities across the state were offered settlement money from the national opioid settlement there were conditions we had to agree with in order to accept the money and some of those conditions and their possible negative impact on vulnerable patients and their doctors gave this council pause and so we initially decided not to accept it we then had another meeting had some clarification and some deeper discussion and did agree with some reservations to continue to accept it we had those several meetings and we also had really active and engaged residents in this issue we had excellent input from staff especially from our first responders we also had visitors from around the state that came to address council because we were the only council in the state who even had a discussion everyone else slammed it onto consent agenda did not even discuss it and it's not an easy topic and emotions were high but our staff our council our residents really came together to have a rational in-depth heartfelt conversation about it and perhaps residents may not realize this council may not realize this but our council meeting was watched and discussed nationally and it it did make some national media as well so here's the update and i i cannot thank everyone enough this bill which formerly could not even get a hearing is state law as of today so this is the bill to protect intractable pain patients and their medical teams it was in the health and human services omnibus policy only bill and it passed it did not have an effective date and when they do not have an effective date that means it is august 1st which is today and i absolutely believe and many of the patients and doctors uh from around the state who are pushing hard to support this bill also believe that if if this council if this staff and if our community had not taken up this issue and championed it it would still be ignored and dead it would not have passed so i i am exceptionally pleased about this i did receive an email from one of the patients who had come before our council asking to be heard because her city wouldn't hear her other cities wouldn't hear her but we did and so many of you remember cami labelle and so she sent me this email and i did forward this on to our city manager to send us to staff into council cami said i wanted to send in a thank you letter to counsel as i honestly don't believe we would have even received a hearing on this bill without the support of burnsville city council and your amazing advocacy as you're aware this legislation was approached proposed in 2019 it wasn't until march of 2022 that we were granted a hearing in the minnesota legislature the burnsville city council played a vital role in all of this and was instrumental in helping to get more sponsors and raising awareness throughout the state of minnesota there are honestly not enough thank yous to suffice but i wanted to send a letter of gratitude on the day the law became effective burnsville took a stand on principle and humanity and was willing to open up a forum no other city would do and no one was left out other cities need to follow burnsville and not be afraid to have the hard conversations no matter how unpopular they are this law will save lives and it would not have received the attention it did without burnsville city council thank you sincerely cammie lavelle and so i also again extend my grad extreme gratitude to my fellow city council members to to city staff to our residents i because of what you did you have impacted people's lives in this state you have saved lived lives and you're preventing people from living in in agonizing torture and it's not often that a city council can have this type of effect throughout a state but it can when you all push together so thank you very much thank you councilmember schultz and thank you for raising this issue initially and bringing the attention to it i you know we all participated in the conversation but but for your attention to it and and bringing it before this council i don't know that we would have gained the traction that we did and had those conversations so here's here's what all those tense conversations and meetings here's the payoff so um if there's nothing else councilman richie i just want to say it is all really to the credit of councilmember schulz for bringing this information to our attention we would have operated like many of these other cities and not questioned the language had we not had a subject matter expert among us and thanks to her she educated all of us we dismissed on the surface that that lawsuit proceed forced that that public hearing and brought everybody together and it was it all started with council remember schultz's knowledge and expertise and i think this council ended up doing state level legislative heavy lifting on that night and the entire public was educated in a wholly different way to the truth of both sides of that issue and and all of the parties affected by it so it was probably one of the most memorable most meaningful work that i've ever been involved in sitting at this desk and want to thank you councilmember schultz for that it was awesome oh thank you i really appreciate it and i really appreciate being on a on a council who who was willing to have this type of conversation and not just do what was easier politically expedient and that that just speaks to that to speak to our community how wonderful our community is so i appreciate it 100 it's the icing on the cake this evening with that i'll move to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn is there a second here's a second all of those in favor please say aye all right i obviously don't want to pose thank you for being with us tonight and have a good evening you