This transcription identifies the speakers based on the provided list of officials and the contextual clues (addresses, roles, and subject matter) within the dialogue. **Transcript:** **[0:01] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, good evening. Welcome to our December 11 work session. If you’ll join me, I’ve almost silenced 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. Okay, moving on to number two, citizens' comments. And I’m assuming you’re all here concerned about the fact that I was taken off the distinguished alumni board at Kenwood when the principal retired, so I appreciate you coming for that. But here, citizens' comments are an opportunity for people who live or work in Lakeville to share comments about issues that are happening. We prefer to have it kept to about three minutes. If you have something to share, we’ll use that podium. But I assume folks are here about the Kenwood land deal based on TV and media and all those types of things and Facebook updates. I’ll just share from our perspective: process is kind of what we would be able to talk to tonight just because we haven’t seen an official, as of this afternoon, anything from the purchaser or developer. I will tell you that the City Council takes our land comprehensive plan very seriously. I want to say in the last year, only two times have we actually been willing to amend that; both were denied the first time and came back with pretty serious concessions from the developer and buyer before we approved it. So that’s kind of setting the table where we’re at. If a plan does come forward from the developer, it would go to the Planning Commission who would review it and have public input, and then ultimately come to the City Council for discussion and voting, and we require a four-fifths vote of the Council for approval. So that’s kind of where we’re at process-wise. Happy to talk about that and obviously happy to listen to any thoughts or concerns that you guys are here for tonight. So I’ll turn it over to whomever wants to start. Again, if we could just keep to three minutes, I’d be grateful. Three minutes each, sorry, not total. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, sorry, I should say name and address—it helps our folks keep a record of everything. And then the whole point also is we’d like to be able to follow up with you to keep you as we kind of move through the process. **[2:43] Henry Caswell:** Good evening, Council. I’m here to speak on the topic of the possible Kenwood Middle School land sale, and this will only take a minute of your time. My name is Henry Caswell. I am a resident of Lakeville at 20319 Kensington Way. I’m also a student-athlete at Lakeville South High School, one of hundreds who uses the land at Kenwood Middle School. I know that you have not yet received the official paperwork for the land yet, but when you do, I look forward to my and my fellow residents' and teammates' opportunity to tell you that another housing development is not the use for this land. Community green space used by our kids, families, and school teams in the middle of Lakeville is what makes us special, and we want you to keep it that way. There are plenty of alternative uses for this land. Thank you, and I look forward to further opportunities to give you much more information. **[3:53] Don Duffy:** My name is Don Duffy. I live in Bloomington, Minnesota. I’ve been on the payroll of Lakeville School District for the last three years where I have served as assistant coach, then for the last two years, head coach of the Lakeville Nordic ski team. This year, I’m volunteering my time. Over the course of my time watching our athletes, I’ve seen middle schoolers graduate up and ski on the varsity team. I’ve seen our varsity skiers go to State to compete. I’ve seen our skiers leave the area and go to college and compete. I’ve seen our college athletes return over the winter break to encourage our middle schoolers and our high schoolers to do better. The property that we practice on is at Kenwood. There’s about 2.3 miles of trails that we maintain on a volunteer basis—parents, athletes, other volunteers. We’ve had donations to secure equipment to groom those trails. They’re not only used by the athletes; they’re also used by the public. For this to have occurred without any stakeholder involvement of the teams or the users just baffles me. So I hope that you can do something to correct that. I appreciate the letters. My wife and I sent you a letter over the weekend. I really appreciate your prompt response. Thank you very much. **[5:43] Mayor Luke Hellier:** We getting off that easy? I can’t stand... **[5:55] Amy Eggers:** Just a minute, please. Thank you for your time. My name is Amy Eggers (E-G-G-E-R-S) and I live at 110 Wood Way. My home backs up to the woods that is proposed to be demolished. I want to tell you my backstory; I won’t take long. November 30th of 2014, I had a massive heart stroke. I’ve been home since May of 2015 recovering in my living room. Basically, my back door looks out to the woods. That is my serenity; that is my peace. Please do not take that away. I have many animals that come through our yard. We see deer, wood ducks, fox, squirrel—I even saw a possum with babies on her back walking through; it was disgusting. My home backs up to two wetlands. We have frogs that go all year round until they’re done mating; it’s a soothing sound. I invite you all to come to my home and just sit for five minutes—I’m sorry, I’m very anxious here—sit for five minutes and see what I have, see what we have. We’ve been fortunate enough to live there for almost 20 years now, and I don’t want that taken away from us. We were told when we bought the house that that would never be developed, and I don’t know how anybody can promise that, but that’s what we were told when we bought that home. Thank you. I’m sorry if I went over. **[7:28] Elise:** 18609 Irvine Trail, Lakeville. Hi, I’m Elise. I live on 2098 Carr, and we are part of the Nordic ski team as well as the cross country team that use trails at Kenwood. I’ve been a part of the program using those trails for seven years now, and it’s been a place of a lot of memories. It’s kind of like a place where you go just to have fun with your friends and kind of take a mental break, and it’s helped me a lot throughout the years. I just want that to be there for the next generation too as I leave and go to college. I just hope it’ll be a place that I can come back to as well. I would like to state that I’ve started a petition called "Save Kenwood’s Land." This petition states for anyone that is against the purchase of this valuable land, that the sale should be canceled or reversed. 1,075 people from all over Lakeville and other states have signed the petition stating that they are against the sale of this land. I am going to be a cross country captain next year, and this is a great, valuable green space to be, as Ellen said, as well as do a lot of great practice work for Nordic and cross country. **[9:16] Unnamed Former Teacher:** I taught at Kenwood for 20 years. I live at 17761 [Address]. I will say, I taught science at Kenwood, and we spent many hours on those trails collecting data, making observations in science classes. To take that opportunity away from kids... they need to hear that. We talk more and more about getting kids away from screens and getting them out in nature, and that is something that is important to us. So I wrote lesson plans; we developed dichotomous keys to go out and identify animals. The conversations you have with kids outside are different than the ones you have inside. The incidental learning and connections that you make with children out in nature are unique. I hope that you will think long and hard about rezoning that property. **[10:43] Jackson Thunker:** My name is Jackson Thunker. I live at 8355 173rd Street West. I’m a captain of the Nordic ski team, but I’m also an Eagle Scout and a cross country runner. I’ve used those trails for countless hours of practice, hanging out with my friends. I think we’re all pretty furious about what’s happening. Apparently, my faith in the school board is at about zero right now, and I think if a decision like this were to go forward, I don’t know if I’d be able to raise my kids in Lakeville. Just earlier this year, a deer gave birth in my yard because there’s no place for them to have the kids anymore. And they haven’t even been managed properly, so they’re all trapped by a golf course, and the deer almost died. So you know, I think it’s pretty important that we realize what we’re doing to our land. Thank you. **[11:53] Mark Eggers:** I’m Mark Eggers, and I live at 19141 Kenway. I’ve been there for nearly 20 years now. From what I understand, most of the school board members had no idea what this land was even used for. I don’t know how they managed to sell it off without anybody knowing, but they were obviously deceived by it. It may be too late for that. One of my largest concerns is safety because Kenway is not much more than a goat path right now. The street is only two years old, and I’ve already told you guys this before, but to plumb another street in there, it’s just not going to be able to handle it. It’s barely safe for me to go to work and from work making my turn on CH Trail. And if you triple the traffic going out there, it’s going to be problems. Also, I saw surveyors last week in front yards, and I imagine they’re surveying our streets because if they have another street, they’re going to have no choice but to make ours wider, and that’s going to take 8 feet of my front yard and take my backyard away. It’s very disturbing for anybody on Kenway. Thank you. **[13:27] Joanne Paul:** My name is Joanne Paul. I live at 19705 Jersey Avenue. I just... it’s such a treasure back there for the ski team and the Nordic and our track team. It’s so hard to think what we do for our football teams, what we do for our hockey arenas, and we’re just taking away something so valuable that other teams come here and they’re envious, thinking this is right in their backyard. We’d have to think about busing to Clear Lake or Highland. And I just look at the traffic, the runoff that’s going to pour into Lake Marion. We’ve got... it’s just... it’s hard. There’s just too much to lose, and I really hope that this does not go through. **[14:49] Josh Walter:** I’m Josh Walter. I live at 18462 Exonia Avenue. I’m right on Honey P Street down here. I’m also a coach at Lakeville North. I work with the track program, but I also get to see a lot of the cross country runners and a lot of these athletes that are in our school that use this land. To see it taken from them is really disappointing. But I also want to point out that my yard right on 185th, I get a lot of runoff from North Lakeville. My dad lives right across the street on 185th, he's on the south side. This is a designated swamp in the city where it filters a lot of that northern water coming down. Now, that flow goes almost directly through this property from what it looks like on the map. And so, what other way is a lot of this water going to go from North Lakeville and get to Lake Marion? This is a watershed area. I don’t know what other direction the water’s going to go if we put houses in. There are already water problems. It seems like not a lot of houses around there, so I think it just needs to be taken into consideration: the flow of water really heavily through this area and how we could disrupt the watershed throughout the whole Lake Marion area. **[16:39] Rick Ringeisen:** Good evening, City Council, citizens of Lakeville, and interested parties. My name is Rick Ringeisen. I’m a lifelong resident of Lakeville, live at 20085 Italy Avenue, very close to Aronson Park. The reason so many people are here tonight is they’re counting on our City Council to have the wisdom that our school board did not. We’re counting on you to protect a cherished piece of land that is virgin timber. It has virgin timber on it going back before the territory even opened. Finding virgin land in the metropolitan area is almost impossible, but here it is and being well-used. It has been used by the citizens of Lakeville for over a hundred years, but especially by the school district and the community since the 1970s when the Kenway building opened up. That land was originally designed for the expansion of that to be one of the last high schools we’d ever build in Lakeville because that building was supposed to double in size. The wisdom that you have... I happen to be a retired teacher from the district that taught Social Studies, so government meetings are something I have a passion about. And I’m a coach; I’ve coached for 45 years and I’m still a coach in the district. My family’s connection to it is my daughter was captain of the Nordic ski team. This is a special place for our community. When you take into account the runners from all three middle schools go there, both high schools go there, they compete there—I mean, where are these kids going to run? They’re not going to run there; well, they’re going to be on our streets. We all know what the traffic’s like in Lakeville nowadays; we really want them on the streets? Not only should this land be protected, it should be preserved forever. It should be put in a park along with all the trail areas. It’s special. I’ve served on every future facility task force in our district since 1979; never have we considered selling this land. I served on the Lakeville Envision task force that talked about what’s the vision for Lakeville for the next 10 years, and believe me, I looked at the zoning real close. This was not part of it. Where did this come from? Well, we have a school board that has many new members, we have a new superintendent. I’m pretty safe in saying where our superintendent came from in Iowa and in Missouri, they don’t have Nordic ski teams, right? So I can understand their ignorance of not knowing the use of the land, but not checking with the schools, the ADs, the principles, the academic uses that we use it for, the solar gardens, the joint powers act with the city for the Frisbee golf and all the other things that are there. This was just plain oversight. They started seeing zeros, dollars, and figures. If we could find somebody else to buy the land, the district could still get their money and it wouldn’t become houses. We have plenty of land for houses, and we are a wonderful city. We know that we’re one of the most attractive in the metro because of our high-quality schools. But I really don’t want to embarrass our school board, but they missed this one. Due diligence was not done by the administration, and they didn’t understand the value of it and what it means to our community. And this is not just a use for the school; our citizens are there, people are walking their dogs, people are running those trails. Please listen, please save the land, please save our school district, please save our board. This is something to be cherished and held onto and protected. This is what’s in the best interest of our community. I firmly believe it, and I don’t think anybody went into this with any malice; I just think they didn’t know the value. And I think the school district looks at it different than the city. Thankfully, you guys have a two-step process: you got a Planning Commission, you got a City Council. You’re there looking out for us. Thank you so much for your time tonight. **[21:16] Nate Larson:** Good evening. My name is Nate Larson. I live at 19172 Jewel Path, which would be the street opened up with this development. My family moved in in 1989, and in 2017 I had the privilege of buying the property from my widowed mom. I grew up skiing on these trails, running these trails, and now I have two daughters that I had planned on doing this with them as well. One of the things not mentioned tonight is the amount of teams, student-athletes, and adults that train on Jewel Path all year long. They run up and down the street, the mountain bike team, anything you can think of—they're out there training. Opening this street would endanger their lives. Thank you. **[22:14] Amy Golly:** My name is Amy Golly (G-O-L-L-Y) and I live at 949 178th Street West, Lakeville. I grew up in Burnsville, and that was a wonderful community when I grew up. But I think if you ask pretty much any resident of Burnsville now, they regret the amount of growth that took place in that city. I don’t know of anybody that I graduated with that lived there and stayed there afterwards because they grew so fast and so far that there’s no open land there anymore. The school district suffered, the city suffered, the land value suffered. So I just think it’s so important to keep that open land with the uniqueness of Lakeville here. **[23:22] Brent:** So, Brent [Last Name Unknown], 111937 Jewel Path. I have a long stretch of property that butts up against that land. It’s directly connected to basically what makes it one large woods. So I’m lucky enough to partake in that scenery daily; it's right at my back door. Grew up in Lakeville my whole life. Rick Ringeisen, the long-time swim coach, was fantastic being here today to support us. What I don’t think a lot of people mentioned today is that it’s not about the people here today; it’s about the future. We’re not talking tomorrow, the next day, 10 years from now—20 years from now, it’s going to be gone. I think the school board 20 years from now will be like, "What? We had all that land and they gave it away?" They'll think we were complete idiots. So I think it’s not just about the people today, which it is, but the future is what we’ve really got to think towards. Thank you. **[24:26] Amy Eggers:** One more thing if I could, please. I just wanted to say my grandchildren, when they come over, they love to go to Grammy and Grampy's house and take a nature walk. They love to go out and play in the woods and on these trails, and they find the most interesting things and bring them home to us—whether they’re trash or not, they're treasures in their eyes. So that would be so sad if they lost that because they love coming to Grammy and Grampy's house taking nature walks. **[25:15] Sophia Eisinger:** My name is Sophia Eisinger and I live on 19237 Jewel Path. I’m going to middle school next year and I’d really like to join the track team or the ski team or something. It just would be sad if they take away that place and they wouldn’t have any more sports to do there. **[25:41] Don Cher:** I’m Don Cher. I live on [Address] Avenue. I moved here about 18 months ago, and after I moved here, about six months later, I got a letter from the city that I have to connect to water and sewer. This was very new news to me; it wasn’t disclosed to me. And stuff like that. So the first letter there that you see in the correspondence that I got sent to me by the city—the past owner didn’t inform me of any of this stuff. It's not a small project; it's a 60-grand project for me to do. And I’m getting very low luck so far out of the previous owner. And the city had commitments with the previous owner; I had no idea. It maybe could have been disclosed if it would have been recorded other than just shoved in a file someplace, or maybe somebody would have just given another look at it before they sent information to the title company. So I’m here looking for some help. One thing I’d like to bring up is on page two: 2012 is the last communication the city had with the previous owner. We're supposed to report to the city every three years to make sure it was in compliance. I feel the city kind of dropped the ball on this, and all of a sudden I’m getting the tab for it. When I did purchase the property, I know one of my neighbors said they did talk to the engineering department because this wasn’t mentioned in the disclosure. He did look at it, and the engineering department said, "Don’t worry about that." I’d like to visit with you sometime on this if I need more time. **[28:46] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Yeah, so I did get an email from our City Engineer early this morning and hadn’t been able to go over it yet, but I will definitely set up a time for you and I to connect, and then feel free to reach out to other people on the Council. We’ll be in touch. Good luck, everybody. I’ll let you... any other public comment? Okay, well, I want to, on behalf of the Council—and they’re obviously welcome to share anything they want to—but we want to express our gratitude to all of you for being here. We are listening to you. As I said, we kind of have to go through a process and see what the developer and purchaser wants to do. I’ll just say from my own perspective, I did walk the land last week and so I know it well. I appreciate you guys sharing your personal stories. The process would be that a plan would come in from the purchaser/developer; that would go to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission is a board of appointed people that act like a judicial body to review our land comprehensive plan. So they will give a recommendation based on the presentation from the developer, they’ll have a public hearing and public input, and then make a recommendation to the Council. Then we as a Council have a similar city hall public comment and we would make a decision on the land request. We would have to have a legal reason to not do that, and currently, if they are going to residential, it’s not zoned for that. Part of the issue is to protect the taxpayers; we will have plenty of reasons to be able to talk about that because we don’t want to get sued. So there’s a legal aspect that we have to maintain and preserve our comprehensive land plan. **[31:37] Dan Bell:** Dan Bell. Dan Bell and Steve Norton, volunteers, first built those trails. Dan was doing... he had a science club and he had some designations for some of the areas of the wetland area. I don’t know if that was DNR or where that came from, but is that something we’re going to be looking at too? **[32:15] Mayor Luke Hellier:** I would imagine. I don’t know anything about that, but I will make a note of it and we’ll connect with our planning staff. **[32:34] Howard Schneider:** Howard Schneider. I live on 19634 Jersey Avenue. I guess two comments: first, I really do want to thank you again. People have said that—the openness to listen to citizen comments here about this issue. We’ve had students, parents, grandparents like myself speaking about this, so it’s really a wonderful contrast to how the school board has conducted this business. I did mention to you when I walked in, related to the process, what I saw in the six minutes that are publicly available to us from the school board: the school board and the key leaders there apparently think it’s pretty much a done deal except for possibly minor design changes. And I think that’s on their misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to accuse you of having staff mislead them or "getting ahead of their skis." So I would hope that in some future discussions, you can make that clear that you have a process. I hope that can be communicated because they really were quite clear in their comments. One board member asked, "So that road would be the responsibility of the city, and there would be that new roundabout, and they would take care of road maintenance and snow plowing?" And the answer was yes. So I hope that you can disabuse them of that notion. But again, thank you so much for being open to listening to all these citizen comments. I was out on that land on Friday; I'm sorry we missed each other. **[34:44] Rick Ringeisen:** It's a tough position that the school district’s been put in because they really set out to do a good thing, and I don’t think they really realized what they were walking away from. But the timing of the announcement of the sale couldn’t have been more destructive. When you consider all of the kids that have run on those trails and skied on those trails, and the people in our community who walked those trails have used it as kind of this jewel in this park. We passed Question One for the new elementary, but Question Two came up less than 150 votes from passing—and that’s about $33 million of operating funds for our district over a decade. And that was voted down. When I’m out in the community and I see people, they say "I voted no. What are they thinking? They’ve got to be punished." And I’m like, yeah, you punished our kids. Yeah, you punished the school board, you put them in a tough spot, you’re going to make their job harder, but you punished the kids. But you know what? I understand why they voted no. This is really in the best interest for the use of the community. Again, counting on your wisdom here. I would love it if the developer would go, "Wow, we didn’t know that land was used that way," and just walk away. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? That would save everybody the embarrassment. **[37:24] Mayor Luke Hellier:** All right, really, last call. Again, thank you. We’re going to move on to our item three, and that’s our legislative priorities draft. You’re welcome to stay or not. If you’re going to head out, I’ll probably just take a two-minute break to let folks clear out. **(Pause in proceedings)** **[40:07] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, Mr. Miller. **[40:09] City Administrator Justin Miller:** Yeah, the Council is aware, every year we do legislative priorities. 2024 is no different. Staff has put together some draft ideas for you guys to consider, and I’ll turn it over to Allyn on some that we’ve changed in the last year’s version. **[40:53] Assistant City Administrator Allyn Kuennen:** Thank you. As Justin said, it’s kind of a routine document together every year so that we can keep our legislators updated. A couple of key changes this year: School Resource Officers and Earned Safe and Sick Time. There were several items that were changed in the last legislative session, so those are new items in this document. Couple of other items that have been updated: the Regional Public Safety Training Facility, storage of rail cars, the County Road 50 and I-35 bridge, cannabis usage, as well as some other items. So I’ll open it up for questions or more discussion. **[42:11] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, Council, are there any... a couple items that I wanted to flag, but I don't know if we want to go section by section or just jump around? I would just recommend... see if anyone has comments. That works fine. So let’s start with State Mandates and Local Authority. It looks like we pulled the salary and compensation limits out; that was repealed. B, Post Office improvements, just changing our population number there. C, School Resource Officers—this probably is some language from the League of Cities. Does anybody have any concerns? D, Public Safety Training—added a few paragraphs there. I think it’s very clear on the fact that this project, for a variety of reasons, it’s a little bit bigger than when we first talked about it a couple years ago. On the storage of railroad cars, the red stuff is fine. But the sentence about "the project includes construction of 90 car storage"—we don’t know if that’s what a long-term plan would be. So if we could just be less specific, that would be helpful. Just pull that sentence out. 50 and 35, there’s some pretty big connections there. I just wanted to verify that the way we’re describing this is up to date with where we’re at with State and Federal funding. I’ve heard Commissioner Holberg talk about this on a few different occasions, so I just want to make sure the messaging is the same or complimentary. **[44:29] Councilmember Dan Wolter:** I would say it’s up to date as what we know it today. It’s changing pretty rapidly, but I think it stays pretty generic. **[45:15] Councilmember John Bermel:** Are these top six in random order or they are specific order? **[45:20] Assistant City Administrator Allyn Kuennen:** The six are priorities, but they’re in no particular order. **[45:30] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, moving on to local control specifically about adult-use cannabis. There’s a whole bunch of new stuff in there. I feel comfortable with this language. **[45:51] Councilmember Joshua Lee:** My only comment was on the last bullet. It seems redundant to say "the city opposes any proposals to diminish local control" only because we talk about it in the first priority as well. To me, it implies that the city is against it, and we may very well be; I just don’t know if that’s how we want to phrase it. **[46:11] Mayor Luke Hellier:** I get that. My only... my biggest concern is as the legislators talk about this, the phrase they always use was, "Well, we’ve been tweaking liquor laws for a hundred years, we’re going to tweak cannabis laws." I’m okay with being redundant just because what if this is the only section they look at? **[46:49] Councilmember Dan Wolter:** I’ve had retailers reach out to me, and they totally understand our perspective about protecting our enterprise, and we’re just concerned about the red area that we had added. I was comfortable with just taking that out if everyone else felt that was okay and just maintaining that first part. **[47:20] Mayor Luke Hellier:** So you’re proposing removing the red text? How does this proposed change enhance this section? **[47:35] Assistant City Administrator Allyn Kuennen:** It’s meant more for education. There’s a narrative out there that 3.2 beer and 3.2 beverages are going away, and that’s just not the case. And so we wanted that to be out there. **[48:00] Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Honestly, it was a confusing narrative to me. I was trying to figure it out. Can I make sure the minutes show that I’m abstaining on any discussion on this topic? I’ve got a potential conflict of interest with my employer, so I won’t be participating in discussion on that. **[48:22] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Letter C, Elections. We’ve got a couple new provisions in there. I’m comfortable with these. I think we all know how expensive elections are to maintain. Met Council governance: no changes. **[49:08] Councilmember John Bermel:** There is a task force currently running at the moment. I didn’t know if we want to call that task force out and seek a voice in that recommendation? **[49:15] City Administrator Justin Miller:** I mean, my take is that task force composition is pretty established. They’ve already been meeting for several months. They’re still taking public comment. We could submit a letter stating our position using this language. **[49:54] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay. Nothing new to revenue restrictions. Data practices—anything anybody’s concerned about there? This is similar to voting; expensive to do this. And then Earned Sick and Safe Time. I think this is obviously something we’ve talked about quite a bit. **[50:40] City Administrator Justin Miller:** I think we should. I just like the fact that we’ve been able to dialogue with them and they can ask questions and get a better understanding of where we’re coming from. Just kind of in this realm, now that the federal Congressional schedule’s been published for '24, we’re looking at hosting like a symposium or forum on the 35/50 project where we would invite electeds on all levels from Burnsville, Lakeville, Scott County. We’d invite the two senators, Congresswoman Craig, and then anybody else that has an interest in this part of the region and that upgrade of 35 from Burnsville down to 185th and to do a "dog and pony" and try and get everybody on the same page. That project was the highest-scored project for Corridors of Commerce in the whole state that did not get funding. **[52:14] Community Development Director Tina Goodroad:** Mayor and Council, what we’re hoping to start doing tonight is to start having a conversation and hearing how you all want to prioritize the direct local housing aid. As you know, the legislature passed a billion-dollar bill for a variety of housing programs. Some of that is through a new Metropolitan Regional sales tax that will trickle down to communities. Lakeville will receive a distribution this first year in 2024 of $385,500. The caveat with this money is it has to be utilized for households at 115% of Area Median Income (AMI) for any projects related to home ownership or 80% of AMI for rental. So for a household of four, at 115% we’re talking about a household income of $143,500 and 80% AMI for rental is $94,650. Cities must spend each year’s allocation within the third following year, so we have three years to spend. **[55:42] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Just to clarify, it’s considered spent if we put it in a trust fund, correct? **[55:45] Tina Goodroad:** I believe that is correct. **[55:46] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Does it accumulate? If this is an annual tax, we just get the next year and it builds? **[55:50] Tina Goodroad:** Exactly. I put together general categories. One is affordable development, owner-occupied or rental. Second really gets at "NOAH," or preserving our naturally occurring affordable housing. One program we currently do is through CDBG funds; we hand off our dollars to Dakota County CDA for home improvement loans. The CDA would like to expand that to an "enhanced housing rehab program" up to 115% AMI. Other preservation efforts could be a program geared solely at seniors. Any kind of maintenance repair—ramps, grab bars. The last one is homebuyer assistance, like down payment assistance. I also threw in grants to help residents with minor property code violations, like a failing fence. **[1:01:40] Councilmember John Bermel:** Can I ask a question? Would that also qualify for helping the homeowner out that needed sewer and water connection? **[1:01:50] Tina Goodroad:** Radon mitigation is another one. And then lastly, a way to control these buckets is to create a local Housing Trust Fund. Any governmental unit can do that. You can take donations and other resources to utilize within this funding umbrella. So tonight I just want to hear your thoughts. Am I missing the mark? **[1:04:12] Mayor Luke Hellier:** This is great. My initial thought is having our own local trust fund allows us to do a lot of different things and have flexibility. I had a conversation with 360 Communities; they said this year alone they spent over a million dollars on emergency rental assistance. That continues to be a need in Lakeville. Another thing is a partnership with Habitat for Humanity where the city buys older homes, owns the underlying land in a trust, and Habitat fixes it up. Personally, I think having a conversation with the County about another Senior CDA apartment makes sense. **[1:06:30] Councilmember Dan Wolter:** I noticed that much smaller cities in Dakota County than us got double as much money. Is it based on existing affordable housing or do you know? **[1:06:50] Tina Goodroad:** It is a very complicated formula, but it is largely based on "cost-burdened" households. I can send you the calculation. **[1:07:15] Councilmember Michelle Volk:** The other idea that I had... you mentioned the program that helps seniors stay in their houses. I was thinking of kind of the opposite of that. I think there’s a number of seniors that are looking to make the transition into independent living but might need some financial assistance for that—like moving costs or first month's rent. That would open up existing housing stock. **[1:08:01] Councilmember John Bermel:** My thoughts went to this homebuyer assistance. That's how I ended up in Lakeville; I got some homebuyer assistance for a first-time homebuyer. I agree with this naturally occurring affordable housing. You know, if I’m going to buy this house and all the carpet is shag carpet and the appliances are avocado green... if it needs a serious makeover, some people walk in and see it and go, "Boy, I wonder if I have enough money to be able to do this?" **[1:09:34] Councilmember Joshua Lee:** The metric that I keep thinking about is the flowchart of how many folks are living outside of Lakeville and work here. The data is showing that our wages are lower than the cost of living average-wise. So folks that can afford to live and work in Lakeville... if they can just get here initially. **[1:11:52] Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Several times there’s been a fire or natural disaster where a home needs to be rebuilt or there’s temporary housing needed. Maybe this pool of funds could assist with rebuilds or temporary housing if needed. **[1:12:38] Tina Goodroad:** I’m hearing that the local Housing Trust Fund is a target. I’ll go through and figure out what it’ll take to create that. **[1:14:12] Councilmember John Bermel:** My only thought is how are we going to get the most bang for the buck? If we split this out in six different ways... I think we need to decide on one or two. **[1:14:58] County Commissioner (Guest):** Can I just chime in a little bit here? The County Board has not made any final decisions on any plan. I want to make sure that I can accurately represent that your inclination is to not turn your money over to the County, but that you’re going to do your own programs and possibly use some County infrastructure if necessary to expedite? We at the County of course are struggling with some of the most difficult housing issues with shelter. We built Gateway up on Robert Street trying to cater to that restaurant worker, but we’re finding that some of these lower price points come with a real need for services that are very expensive. If you’ve got a good spot for senior housing near a grocery store or a library, let us know. We’re not next up, but if we had a spot, we might get a project. **[1:19:38] Mayor Luke Hellier:** Thank you. We’ll now move on to items for future discussion. **[1:19:50] City Administrator Justin Miller:** We have the final phase of the HR Director search, so hopefully there’s an offer this week. We’re going to have a closed session at the next meeting for the Administrator's review at 5:15. **[1:20:07] Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Do you think we need to move it up even more to 5:00? Last time we were at 5:30 and it seemed like we were a little bit rushed. **[1:21:13] Police Chief Brad Paulson:** The police chief presented a phlebotomy program... They received training from the BCA much like the DRE training to do blood draws for evidentiary purposes. **[1:21:58] Councilmember Dan Wolter:** On tomorrow’s School Board agenda, I believe they’ll have the renewal of Hasse Arena. The Hasse family has made that commitment for 10 years plus another renewal of 10 more after that. Part of the family’s commitment was to ask the city to work with some local people to help do some matching fundraising. **[1:22:44] Councilmember Joshua Lee:** This is not a committee update, but Luke was asked to talk to folks that were turning a hundred years old at Highview Hills. Luke did a great video for them, and then I got to sit there and meet people. One of them was Bob Lawson's mom. The best part was everyone had their own cake with their face on it. **[1:24:07] Public Works Director Paul Oehme:** I'll provide one update. Hamburg and 50—lots of accidents. The final report is due out December 15th for improvements. It’ll be recommending a roundabout. I’m trying to fast-track it with no city cost-share. As soon as that report comes up, then we’ll look for January to get it on the agenda. **[1:25:39] Mayor Luke Hellier:** We appreciate the effort of no city contributions. With that, I’ll take a motion. All in favor? See you guys next week.