[00:00:00] Commissioner Hanzel: Good evening. I'm calling the Monday, April 6, 2026 meeting of the Parks and Natural Resources Commission to order uh at 6:30 p.m. Burnsville's Parks and Natural Resources Commission meeting uh meetings are currently conducted in person. Members of the public may attend in in person, online via Zoom, or by calling in. Additional instructions on how to participate are posted online at www.burnsvillemn.gov in the public meeting calendar. As usual, tonight's meeting is also available for viewing on BCTV and the city's website. If you're unable to participate this evening and would like to submit public comment, I encourage you to email your comments to city staff or mail your comments directly to city hall. Now on to the agenda. The first uh item of the parks and natural resources commission meeting tonight is the adoption of the agenda. Uh do many any uh members of the commission have any changes to the event agenda? [00:01:15] Commissioner Frank: No changes. [00:01:20] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Nothing from staff. [00:01:25] Commissioner Hanzel: Uh therefore, I would ask for a motion for the adoption of tonight's agenda, please. [00:01:30] Commissioner Cody Matz: I so move. [00:01:35] Commissioner Gomez: Second. [00:01:38] Commissioner Hanzel: Uh we have a mo motion and a second. Uh all in favor say I. [00:01:42] Commissioners: I. [00:01:45] Commissioner Hanzel: Any opposed? No opposition. The agenda is adopted. We are now on to item number two of the agenda which is the approval of the March 2nd, 2026 Parks and Natural Resources Commission um meeting minutes. Um commissioners, are there any changes to the minutes? [00:02:05] Commissioner Alpa: Nope. [00:02:08] Commissioner Frank: No changes. [00:02:10] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Nothing from staff. [00:02:12] Commissioner Hanzel: Therefore, um may I have a motion to approve the minutes? [00:02:15] Commissioner Gomez: I move to approve. [00:02:18] Commissioner Hanzel: A second, please. [00:02:20] Commissioner Cody Matz: Second. [00:02:22] Commissioner Hanzel: A movement and seconded. Um all in favor say I. [00:02:25] Commissioners: I. [00:02:28] Commissioner Hanzel: And any opposed. That motion carries. Uh, at this time I understand we do have um some citizen comments from Ian Pollson and a student group from the University of Minnesota. Um, I ask Ian and any of those who are going to participate to please step forward to the uh podium and and address the commission. Thank you for being here. [00:02:50] Ian Pollson: An under acknowledged aspect of public green space management management is pollinator health. Pollinators are an important part of maintaining botanical d biodiversity, which supports healthier soil and communities by improving community garden yields, reducing stress, and enhancing public parks. Good evening. My name is Ian Pollson and I represent a group of students from the University of Minnesota, uh, working to enact environmental policy change in the Twin Cities metro. Our proposal tonight is that the city of Burnsville adopt a ban on neonicenoid usage as neighboring communities have. Such cities invol uh include White Bear Lake, Maplewood, Menota Heights, and St. Paul. Uh we've collected excerpts from those cities and will provide copies if desired. A major threat to pollinator health is the use of neonicenoid pesticides or neoix for short. Plants sprayed with this type of pesticide absorb the compounds and self-replicate making the entire plant toxic including the pollen grains. This makes non-target kills very common as the three main forms of neonix emittthox and clothodian require a median dose of four to five nanogs to kill a honeybee. Studies have shown that pesticide usage uh particularly particularly neonic usage is a ma major factor in pollinator population decline. Furthermore, they are highly water soluble posing a threat to water quality and aquatic life. As model resolutions exist, it is clear that other city councils and commissions have seen the value in such precautions and implementation would be streamlined. uh prescriptive regulation such as uh such as this pro protects our environment and provides a healthier city for citizens for the years to come. As we face a worsening climate crisis, it is comparatively small actions like this that can better our communities one step at a time. We applaud Burnsville efforts in limiting pesticide use at a city level. We have also noticed theformational campaigns on the city's social media sites and the overall push to get people outside. You're right. We know that the first step in change is recognition. Our group is also not naive and we realize that telling people what they can and can't do on their own private property is a great way to become unpopular and potentially leaves a bad taste in the mouth of big box retailers who have already in large part shifted away from neoictoid based products. But however, if this was an easy thing to change, it probably would have already been done. Our goal in coming here today is to present this issue in an easy way for Burnsville to accomplish its natural resource goals and provide value for your community. More than anything, we wish to establish an open line of communication so that ultimately the Burnsville Parks and Natural Resource Commission will bring this issue before city council. On behalf of all of us, Tyler Buts, uh Sasha Alaviski, uh Mason Johnson, Nathan Navitzki, Finley Taylor, and myself, we would uh we thank you for your time and cooperation, and we are available for any questions you may have. [00:05:45] Commissioner Hanzel: Excellent. Thank you for that presentation. Um commissioners, do you have any questions? [00:05:52] Commissioner Frank: Please, Frank. Uh yeah. Hey, uh Ian, thanks for visiting us. Um, uh, is there another city that you would recommend city council copy their legislation and what does it do? Like what would your ideal state be? [00:06:10] Sasha Alaviski: Um, please, anybody? Yes, I think we just need your name for the record. Yes. Yeah. Uh, good evening, Sasha. um any of the cities we listed, they all have uh fantastic resolutions from our research. Um there's also um Pollinate MN is a organization that has a sample uh resolution on their uh pollinator friendly communities section of their website. Uh as well as they provide counseling services to help streamline the process. Um, we can certainly get you a copy of our little handout here. Uh, it has the I'm aware you can't press the link that's printed on the page, but it has the URL typed out for easy navigation if that would be of service. [00:07:05] Commissioner Frank: That would be helpful. And and what does that uh legislation do? [00:07:12] Sasha Alaviski: Yeah. So um it prescribes that um on like public lands uh neonoid use is highly limited if uh if banned if I apologize um it prescribes that it's highly limited if used at all um and that other less lethal or less impactful methods are used uh if they are as effective or more effective or if they're just more accessible. Basically using neonicotenoids as a last resort possibility in order to better protect our pollinators and our green spaces. [00:07:45] Commissioner Frank: And does that apply to uh private uh sellers as well? [00:07:50] Sasha Alaviski: Many private sellers in our research have already shifted away from uh selling. So like Home Depot doesn't really sell neonicotenoids anymore either. Um and we were very glad to come across that in our research. Um but there certainly are likely isolated cases, but it would be something similar to um I unfortunately am not the most versed. I will completely admit that. Um, but I'm sure there are other methods of regulating um like drain cleaners or other um harmful substances in private businesses. So, I would assume it would be similar to that. Unfortunately, I don't have probably as precise of an answer as you would like. I apologize. [00:08:35] Commissioner Frank: No, that's great. Thank you. [00:08:38] Commissioner Hanzel: Any other questions, commissioners? Um, neonic neonoid pesticides also really hard to say. Yeah. Um, what are they typically used for in terms of uh getting rid of just bugs? What what are what are they used as a pesticide for? [00:08:55] Tyler Buts: Thanks. And uh we again we'll need your name please. Hello. Uh my name is is Tyler Buts so you're mostly going to see them use for Japanese beetle and and tree applications. 90% of what neonic use looks like in Minnesota is based around agriculture. Um, so the remaining 10% is in those residential pesticide products that you can find at Home Depot. In 2016 is kind of when this all went down that we realized that neonics are are not great for for the bees and butterflies and that sort of thing. So your Home Depots, your Lowe's, they said we're pro we're going to stop using those as a way to get ahead of it. But you can still find you can still find them on on shelves. Um, so yeah, like I said, mostly mostly for your bushes and your trees and that sort of thing. So Japanese beetles, the thing that probably comes comes to mind. Um, and to answer your question from earlier, what it looks like, a lot of cities, because it's within their control to do so, have said, "We're not going to use neonics at all at a citywide level." Um, but like we mentioned, it's a it's pretty hard to say uh you can't put this on your lawn. Um, and so what most cities have done is said uh here are some alternatives for what you can do. Uh, in some cases, I forget the the city uh that outright said you can't use it. I'm not sure what the the legislation looks like on the ground and how they're enforcing that, but there is at least in writing uh something that says you're you're not supposed to basically. So, um but yeah, there's certainly a big educational and you know, the scope of what we have is is pretty limited by our by our class. Um but ideally, there is a a dissemination of of information to your to your residents that says, "Well, here's what we've done. Here's what it means for you." Because it doesn't mean anything if it just sits in in the ether of city code, right? Um, so that would really be the ideal the ideal case. But hopefully that answers some of your... [00:11:15] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah, I got a followup. So, you can't necessarily or you can find them at Home Home Home Depot or Lowe's. They're just limited. [00:11:22] Tyler Buts: Yes. [00:11:24] Commissioner Cody Matz: Do um any of the city regulations that you know of um require most like most homeowners have pesticide companies that come and spray. Do they limit those as well? [00:11:35] Tyler Buts: That's a good point. That's something that's kind of outside of our scope of research. Your true green, that that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's something I were not familiar with. And um I know that your pest control companies that are coming out for spraying. Um I I did that for a while. And unless we're providing that additional service on on trees and that sort of thing, it's typically outside of what they're they're using. But I'm not sure uh for that particular particular point. Okay. [00:12:10] Commissioner Gomez: Yeah, I'd be I'd be interested in um in the information that you have to share with us and then I'm trying to think about what we can actually do here as a commission and I think this is something we may be able to add to an agenda in the future possibly. [00:12:25] Commissioner Hanzel: Very possible. Um I think yes, we do need some more information and more discussion is required uh especially with our city staff that are working in these areas. [00:12:38] Commissioner Gomez: Yep. And I would and so some of the questions that I would have and I don't expect you to have these right now because these are I think are more Burnsville specific would be you know what do we currently use and then to take a look at some of the information you have about policy I'd be interested you if it goes to regulate the sales versus the use and then if it goes to any of those agencies as well. Um but I appreciate you guys taking the step to put it onto our agendas that we can continue. [00:13:08] Ian Pollson: Yeah. And that's that's our goal here. We know that there's only so much we can do, but we certainly want to, like I said, open a line of of communication going going forward. [00:13:20] Commissioner Alpa: Thank you. Did you have a... So, I guess it's a kind of half comment, half question is like I know that some of the big box retailers did used to sell plants like specially flowers that were treated with neonics. Are you saying that they like there's no longer plants that are sold that are already been treated? [00:13:42] Tyler Buts: If they do sell them, they've denoted it with like a tag that says, "Hey, this was treated with neonics." Um, and those are are certainly less than you could find in 20 2016. Um, so I'm I'm sure they're still out there. I'm not 100% sure if they're still if they're still out there, but um your your Home Depot is saying, "Well, we know nobody wants to buy this stuff anyways, so we're not going to sell it." A lot of the the local um stores that we talked to in our research said there's not really a point to treat them with neonics anymore because people won't won't buy them. Uh just because the bees have a pretty good marketing campaign uh be behind them. So, [00:14:25] Commissioner Hanzel: Um, I commend you guys on on the work that you're doing. Um, and I think I think this is for me as an old guy, but for me, and I think for this commission, the the enthusiasm of of our next generation coming up, we really appreciate that you guys are looking at this stuff and and taking it seriously. Um and uh again I I'm not sure the best way to sell cert um you know get us the documents that you have. Um can they send the paper copies to you or... [00:14:55] Jeff Thompson (JJ): I'll step out after this uh when Caleb starts to present and get their information. [00:15:00] Commissioner Hanzel: Fantastic. And if you could get um the correct spellings of the names. I'm sure I've butchered them terribly. Um but thank you so very much for this for the hard work that you're doing and for the presentation. And I think you've raised a really important issue for us to to fold into the things that we're talking about with uh with city council as we move forward with recommendations for them. [00:15:25] Student Group: Well, we appreciate the enthusiasm on on your side and being willing to to hear us out. So, thank you for... Absolutely. [00:15:35] Commissioner Hanzel: So, at this point, uh we're going to have a um a review of the annual deer management uh program. uh Caleb Ashling will come forward to present that information for us, please. Oh, hey Caleb. How you doing? [00:15:52] Caleb Ashling: Good. How are you all doing? [00:15:54] Commissioner Hanzel: We're great. Thanks for coming back this year and presenting again. [00:15:58] Caleb Ashling: Yeah, thank you. Um you have the floor, sir. All right. Uh yeah, thank you for having me. Uh and yeah, my name is Caleb Ashling. I'm a natural resources specialist with the city of Burnsville and part of my job is working with the city's deer management program. So I'm here to talk to you about that tonight. Uh so just a little program history. Uh the city's first natural resources master plan in 1999 recommended a deer management program. Uh and then that uh initiated the city developing the deer management plan which was adopted by city council in 2001. And one of the important things that that uh established was a population density goal for the city. Uh so the program is intended to address a few different uh concerns. Uh one is deer car collisions. So at higher deer population, you're more likely to have more uh deer vehicle accidents. Uh another is negative impacts to natural areas with a high deer population. Uh so at high deer populations, deer can impact tree regen regeneration or native plant coverage uh in natural areas. Uh then of course there's also a lot of landscaping depradation issues that can happen on private property. Uh and then at high deer at high population there can be more risk for disease in the deer population. Uh what I'll be doing tonight is reporting on our past program year and then making recommendations on our upcoming program year. And just a note, uh each program year runs from April 1st of the previous year to March 31st of the current year. So I'll cover a few different components of uh the program. uh the education component uh the feeding ban monitoring and then population control. Uh so to start uh I'll cover education. Uh the city does have some information on the city website. Uh we link to our deer management plan and and have a location for us to provide updates on our deer management activities. Uh we also try to use the Burnsville bulletin and uh social media for occasional updates related to deer. And really the the the main update that we try to provide is just getting education out about not feeding deer as that's the best way that residents can uh help reduce deer related issues. Then another component of the program is monitoring and enforcing a feeding ban. Uh, so you are not allowed to feed uh deer in Burnsville. You actually can't put uh bird seed or other food on the ground where deer could access it. So you either have to have a covered feeder that deer can't access or bird feeders have to be hung at least 5 feet above the ground so deer can't get at them. Uh typically when we learn about issues that's from a report from residents. If there are reports and we investigate that. Uh we investigated a few uh reports, but we didn't document any feeding violations in 2026. Uh but if we do document uh something, we'll send a a nice letter informing people of uh of the ordinance. Um and that's typically all that we need to do to help uh uh fix that issue. Uh then on to monitoring. Uh there's two different ways that we're monitoring the deer population or deer related uh issues. One is through aerial counts and another is through monitoring known car deer crashes. Uh so monitoring for monitoring and for uh population control we look at the city in six different zones. Uh northeast, northwest, west central, east central, southwest and southeast. Uh each of these zones are u we calculate the population for each of those. Uh and for monitoring the deer population uh monitoring is done by an aerial helicopter survey. Uh for a number of years we've been working with the Three Rivers Park District for those aerial surveys. Uh Three Rivers Park District does aerial surveys throughout the metro area uh for a lot of their parks but also for a number of other cities throughout the metro area. Uh they conducted a survey on February 2nd and 3rd of this year. Um and this is a picture of kind of what taken from a helicopter of what you see when you're up there. As long as there's decent snow cover, we look to have at least six to eight inches of snow cover on the ground, which makes it a lot easier to see the deer. Um but if there's decent snow cover, the deer are actually pretty easy to see from the air. And this is the aerial survey map that came from that uh survey. Uh across the city, there were 229 deer uh that were observed during the survey. Uh that's down from a little over 260 on the survey last year. Uh there were big population centers were uh the southwest part of town. Uh there were 77 deer counted there. Uh that's uh where Kellair Park is. uh Murphy part of Murphy Hannerhan Park um and then a lot of uh wooded residential lots down there as well. Uh the second to highest area was the East Central unit uh that has Teras Oaks Park, uh Wal Park, the Civic Center campus here, Walden neighborhood. Those are some hot spots for deer in that area. Uh followed by the northeast part of town. Uh that's by Cliff Ben Park all running up to uh the northeast part of town uh where there's a lot of habitat down in the river valley there. And then for uh monitoring a deer vehicle crashes uh we look for the total minimum number that we can uh track uh and that was 47 um which is right around what we've been seeing for a number of years in the 40s or lower 50s for crashes per year. Uh we track this information by getting reports from Burnsville police. So if they respond to an incident related to deer then we can track that report. Um, and then we also have a animal animal control contractor that picks up roadkill deer from the roadway. Uh, so we have a report of where they pick up all of those deer. And then we can cross reference those reports and, uh, if there were any overlaps, we eliminate those. And if there were any, um, non-overlaps, then we just count that towards the total. Uh, hotspots for deer vehicle collisions. Uh east central unit, again, that was a higher area. um goes along with the high population in that area. Uh the southwest part of town uh was the next one followed by southeast uh that's around Al Magnet Park and Crystal West Park. Uh so recommendations for our monitoring program, we recommend continuing these annual methods so we can continue to have some information to track uh the population. And then for population control, there's two different strategies that are used. Uh the first is archery hunting and the second is sharp shooting. Uh so for archery hunting or the archery program, we do encourage archery hunting on private property where possible. It's not possible in the majority of Burnsville because uh lots size wouldn't allow it. Um, but there are some larger lots scattered throughout town, especially in southwest Burnsville, uh where people do have enough acreage to do private archery hunting. Um, and there are some private businesses along the river valley and other locations that have larger acreage that can allow archery hunting on their property as well. So, that is a way that people can help us control the deer population where ordinance would allow. And then we also operate archery hunts on public land where possible. Uh for many years, our archery hunt uh that uh for city parks has been at Kellahare Park in Southwest Burnsville. Uh and the city works uh uh with the Three Rivers Park District and a nonprofit organization called the Metro Bow Hunters Resource Base that works with cities to organize kind of these closeartered archery hunts in suburban parks. Uh very organized, very structured for uh operating hunts in this type of environment. Uh the there were three deer harvested at Keller Park in the city park archery hunt. Um, and this hunt is also now combined with the larger Murphy Hannerhan Park hunt that operates at the same time. So, both there's no boundaries. They can all kind of work together um and coordinate things uh between the the two hunting areas. Uh, and in Murphy Henry Park, they harvested 72 deer um at their their hunt. So, 75 total between those two areas, which are basically adjoined to each other. And uh we consider about 10% of Murphy Hannerhan in Burnsville. A lot of it's outside of Burnsville. So just for our population tracking purposes, we consider seven of those uh 72 deer to be removed from uh city of Burnsville. And then for our sharpshooting program, we work with our Burnsville Police Department to do sharpshooting where needed. Uh this past program year we did sharp shooting in the northeast, east, central and southeast units and there were 35 deer harvested. Uh so this looks at uh the goals uh removal goal for each unit for this past program year and then the actual removal. The removal goals are based on that uh 15 to 25 year per square mile of preferred habitat density goal set in our plan. Uh the northwest part of town, there's no accessible property for the city to to conduct sharp shooting. On the west central, that wasn't a focus area because the removal goals were lower. Uh southwest, we had a removal goal 3 to 20 and we were able to remove 10. That was through those archery programs. Uh in the northeast, 87 to 108, we removed 17. East central 64 to 72, removed 14. Southeast 12 to 15 and remove four. um, and I did add a note that uh the city of Apple Valley hasn't had a deer program previously, but they initiated their deer management for the first time and they did they harvested deer on the Apple Valley side of El Magnet Park. Uh, and they removed 10 deer on their side of the park, which is a big help uh for our program. A lot of deer in Elm Magna Park actually move over to the east side of that park, the Apple Valley side in the winter. That's where they kind of hurt up for the winter. Um, so having other cities get involved with deer management does definitely help our program. So that was great this year. And then recommended harvest for the upcoming program year. This should say 2026 2027. Uh this table has the population goal for each unit. Uh the projected population in the fall um and then uh the potential harvest range that our plan would allow. Again, that northwest unit, we don't have any access for population control in that area. On the west central unit, the plan could call for 1 to four. Uh southwest 63 to 80. Uh, northeast 17 to 38, east central 55 to 63, southeast 30 to 33. And overall, uh, potentially pretty high removal goal. We're not going to be able to remove that many deer in one year. Uh, but we'll definitely look to remove as many as we can with the resources uh, and officer time that we have available. With that in mind, we'd recommend focusing on the southeast unit, the east central unit, and the northeast unit due to the high deer population or more vehicle related incidences in those areas for sharp shooting. Uh and then we'd recommend continuing to work with the three rivers park district, the and the metro re metro resources base archery group at Kellahare Park. Um and then the Three Rivers Park District will be hosting an archery hunt at Murphy Hanhan Park again as well. And then we'd also request the commission recommend council adopt a resolution for special archery hunts in let me get this date updated, but this would be for 2026. um, the hunt dates would be October 9th and 11th and November 13th and 15th. And this would be both for the hunt at the city park, Kellair Park, and then also authorizing the Three Rivers Park District for their hunt within the portion of Burnsville for Murphy Hannerhan Park. And with that, I would be happy to answer any questions. [00:27:15] Commissioner Hanzel: Thank you, Caleb. Uh commissioners, any questions for Caleb? [00:27:20] Commissioner Frank: I didn't know I went first last time. That's not fair. Um, so has there been any um thought of instead of using helicopters for uh aerial counting but um to employ drones? Um, I believe that could probably be done at a I would assume at a much lower cost than employing helicopters or are we simply using helicopters when they're doing typical flyovers anyway or is this an additional um expense to the city to do these other um aerial surveys? [00:27:52] Caleb Ashling: Yeah, there it is expense for the helicopters. We pay for the helicopter time, not the the Rivers Park District staff time. They cover their staff time. Um but yeah, so that has been discussed before and I know there's a lot more and more use of drones in wildlife survey work. So I think that definitely will be the way it goes eventually. Um I know Three Rivers Park District staff have looked into it. They're continuing to look into the best options for it. I know at times there's been concerns about battery life for some of these drones that are available to them um and wanting to make sure they can get the whole city completed in a timely fashion. So there isn't deer movement or you're not doing a section a day and then you end up having a lot of deer movement in between the different surveys. But I definitely think there obviously been a lot of improvement in drone technology and that's definitely something that is at some point going to be feasible. Um but there is our survey is also done in conjunction with Murphy Handerhan Park. um if they have time they they they do clear potentially some of those all in the same day. So they're covering a pretty wide area which adds to the efficiency of using the helicopter. Um so they'd have to make sure that the efficiency of the way it's being done now would be improved with the drone. But I do think that's probably where it will end up eventually. [00:29:25] Commissioner Frank: Okay. And and then my second question has to do with um the completeness of the reporting for deer automobile interactions. Um, so for example, I I ran into a deer in South Dakota once, minimal damage, but I know that never got reported through the police. Um, but I did have to file an insurance claim. So, is there any interaction with uh local insurance companies to see any reporting there or would we have a gross loss of efficiency or a lot more trouble than it's worth when it comes to getting more accurate numbers of of those collisions? or does that even really matter? Um, that's another part I would add. [00:30:10] Caleb Ashling: Yeah. So, all of our information comes from those two sources. So, in your example, that would be a type of report that we wouldn't wouldn't have tracked. Um, and I think maybe one of the the most important things is this is the way the city has been tracking this information for a long time. Um, so it provides a consistent way. We know that there are reports that people may run into a deer and not report it at all because they don't want to to go through insurance. Uh so we know we're not going to capture every issue that happens. Um but we have been uh monitoring consistently which allows us a way to track it over time. [00:31:00] Commissioner Frank: Gotcha. Very good. Thank you, Caleb. Any other questions from the commissioners? [00:31:05] Commissioner Cody Matz: None. No white. Lots. Yes. Several. Oh, you mentioned the density population density target at the beginning. What is that and is it the same across the districts? [00:31:20] Caleb Ashling: It is. Yep. So, the plan calls for 15 to 25 deer per square mile of preferred deer habitat. Um, let me see if it's on here. [00:31:32] Commissioner Cody Matz: And how many square miles do we have in Burnsville? [00:31:35] Caleb Ashling: I don't have the exact total for you at this moment. the you can see um if this is on your screen here uh on the legend there uh the preferred deer habitat is that kind of orange orange coloration there. Um so those are the areas that are tracked for preferred deer habitat. Um so those are the acreage of all those areas is what gives the basis for the number of deer that should be in each unit. So I couldn't tell you right now exactly what that acreage is per unit, but that shows the areas um that were developed when the plan was initiated. The city worked with the DNR to determine which were the preferred deer habitats for the city. [00:32:25] Commissioner Cody Matz: And uh Southwest seems to be the the trouble spot. 77 uh uh was it car accidents or what was uh 77 harvested? [00:32:35] Caleb Ashling: Uh 77 was the survey number from this past survey. [00:32:40] Commissioner Cody Matz: So like by far the most deer in the southwest corner uh this year. Yep. And it's pretty common that it's up there. River Valley sometimes has a a high number as well. And so how far off is that from the density target? [00:32:55] Caleb Ashling: Uh it it... yeah. So the population goal is 25 to 42 for that area. So current population is 77. Uh we'd project obviously the the count happens before fawn birth. Um, so when we say projected, we're projecting in the fall there's going to be fawn bursts and that number that we counted is going to be higher. Um, so there will be a lot of deer to remove. We may not or we're we're unlikely to be able to remove it all the way down to that target goal, but we can still remove it and get it lower, which there is still benefit even if we're not able to achieve the absolute maximum population target goal. There's still benefit to those areas, those natural areas that we can reduce the deer herd. [00:33:50] Commissioner Cody Matz: Is there a downside to being below the target goal if you overshot the goal? [00:33:55] Caleb Ashling: Uh, deer are part of our natural community, so we want to to have them in our natural areas. Um, so and people enjoy seeing deer. So, uh, people don't want us to remove all the deer, obviously, or some people at least. Um, so we don't want to overshoot those goals for those reasons because they're part of the natural community and also we don't want to overh harvest for for folks who are wanting to see deer in the community. Um, if we were to overh harvest, I would say the deer population can respond quickly and recover. Um, but those are reasons why we wouldn't want to target below that number. [00:34:45] Commissioner Cody Matz: Uh, okay. Um, is there any tracking of chronic wasting disease in deer kills? Are they sampled? [00:34:52] Caleb Ashling: Uh, they're not currently sampled. [00:34:55] Commissioner Cody Matz: Is CWD present in Burnsville? [00:34:58] Caleb Ashling: Uh, it is not that we know of. There was a few years that the DNR required sampling to occur. Um, and we didn't detect it in any of the Burnsville deer. [00:35:10] Commissioner Cody Matz: Nice. Um, so, private archery hunting presumably is the cheapest method. people on their own private property shooting deer. The city doesn't have to get involved. That's free, right? And you encourage that. [00:35:25] Caleb Ashling: Yes. [00:35:28] Commissioner Cody Matz: What's the cost for the city um archery hunt versus sharp shooting? Like what's the cheapest way for the city to get it done? [00:35:38] Caleb Ashling: Archery hunting is the the cheapest way. Uh... [00:35:42] Commissioner Cody Matz: Does do the police have to provide security at the hunt? [00:35:45] Caleb Ashling: Uh they do not. There's some costs for there's some staff time involved in helping to to coordinate things. There's some signage, so some things like that. Uh but there is not a lot of cost to running an archery hunt. Um typically typically you may remove less deer per acre using archery than sharp shooting. Um and uh yeah, so that that's one downside. The other downside, one reason that archery hunting isn't operated in a in a number of different parks, say Teras Oaks Park or Alam Magagnet Park, is uh those parks often would be then closed to the public over a number of days. Um so there can be some disruptions to other community members that are trying to use those parks. Um or there's adjacent properties that may have issues with the archery in some of those smaller park areas um operating as well. So, that's some re some of the reasons why it's not used everywhere and why Southwest there used to be some archery hunts in a few other places that were tried in the early years of the program. Um, and where it ended up at this point is Kellair Park being the most suitable location in town where where we've used it. [00:37:10] Commissioner Cody Matz: And so, the park's not closed during the hunt. [00:37:12] Caleb Ashling: Uh, portions of the Kellair Park are closed. [00:37:15] Commissioner Cody Matz: Okay. Um, and presumably sharpshooters are on the clock when they're harvesting deer. [00:37:20] Caleb Ashling: Correct. Yeah. [00:37:22] Commissioner Cody Matz: And what's the cost for that? [00:37:25] Caleb Ashling: Uh I don't have all the costs and I don't have a budget summary for that. Um but obviously if we have our staff out there, our police officers out there, they are getting paid for that. The overall program budget is $25,000. Um so that gives you an idea of what is set aside for the program. [00:37:45] Commissioner Cody Matz: And ballpark, what is like what's labor cost of that versus where does the 25,000 go? [00:37:50] Caleb Ashling: Uh so it goes to a couple things. There's the officer time. Um there's processing of the deer. Uh so all the deer have to go to a processor where the meat the deer are processed so we can donate the meat. Um the meat is all donated to the 360s food shelf community. Nice. So we donated just under 1300 pounds this past year, but there is a cost to doing all that processing. um and uh also getting the deer picked up and and brought to the processor. um and some other bait related supplies and the helicopter survey. That's where the the costs go. [00:38:40] Commissioner Cody Matz: So the venison gets distributed to food shelves, but it includes the cost of the sharpshooters and the processors. [00:38:48] Caleb Ashling: Correct. [00:38:50] Commissioner Cody Matz: And so do we know what it costs per pound for venison? What we're getting... [00:38:52] Caleb Ashling: Uh I don't have an exact cost per pound. I would say, you know, it's wouldn't be the cheapest way to give someone venison, but there are these other program benefits that go along with it. So, we're not doing it for the purpose of donation. Um, but it is a nice added benefit that we get to get to donate the meat. [00:39:15] Commissioner Cody Matz: Uh, so, is there a formal minimum lot size for private archery hunting? [00:39:20] Caleb Ashling: Uh, so the it's based off your distance from where you're archery hunting to your property boundary. Um, it's in code. I believe it is 250 ft from your property boundary. So, you have to be uh discharging your bow 250 ft from your lot line basically. or if you have approval from a neighboring property, then if you have written approval, you could be closer. [00:39:48] Commissioner Cody Matz: Interesting. Um, so it's not an exact acreage size. It's more based on how far you can get from your neighboring property and have a tree there where you can do your you put your stand and that type of stuff. But that does dictate that you do have a bigger lot than typical smaller lots and... [00:40:10] Commissioner Cody Matz: Uh so last question. Um, people want to feed deer. They want to be nice and they're cute and we like seeing them around. We all do. Uh, what do you recommend people do who would otherwise feed the deer? They just want to be nice. They want to help the environment, the ecosystem. What should people do instead of feeding deer? [00:40:32] Caleb Ashling: Uh, yeah. So, uh, if they're interested in, you know, having wildlife around, I'm always a big advocate for planting native plants. Um, so if they want to feed deer, deer also eat native plants. Uh, so they'll come and eat some plants in your garden. uh but some will pollinators and other other critters as well. Um so if if they're interested in trying to provide habitat overall that are going to be used by deer and a lot of other animals, planting native plants is definitely the way to go. Um and of course if you like, you know, seeing wildlife, we don't recommend feeding or you're not allowed to feed deer, but you can have bird feeders that are hung five feet off the ground. Uh so you can see a lot of other wildlife near your house. Even if it's not attracting deer, you can get up close to a lot of different species of wildlife through just regular bird feeding. So, we'd recommend people keep their feeding to birds um and use other types of landscape manipulations, habitat improvements for other types of wildlife. [00:41:40] Commissioner Cody Matz: Is the Birdsville tree sales still going on? [00:41:42] Caleb Ashling: I think I hear they may have just sold all the plants that they have, but I'm not sure. It was going for a little while there. It may be wrapped up or close to wrapping up. [00:41:55] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah, but Dakota County soil and water probably still has some. [00:41:58] Caleb Ashling: I'm not sure the exact timeline for their sale. Um but yeah, definitely check their website. I know they had information on there about it. [00:42:08] Commissioner Cody Matz: Oh, I got mine, but I'm trying. Yeah. Thank you. [00:42:15] Commissioner Hanzel: Any other questions, commissioners? Um Caleb, one actually I thought of this as Frank was raising some issues and that is um because in some of these areas we are fairly significantly overpop populated um the the timelines for the archery both the bow hunting um and the sharp shooting is pretty restricted. Is that by other regulations that that that exists or would there be opportunities to have bow hunting several weekends in a row um so that there would be more opportunity um to prot potentially call some of the deer population. [00:43:00] Caleb Ashling: Yeah. So the the dates that are selected that's been over time what we found is the best range and the best balance working with the neighborhoods and other folks that use those parks where we can get in we can have some harvest benefit but we're not overly impacting the parks for other folks that want to use those areas. And we did at one point have some additional hunt sessions for that Killahare park. Um, but we did find that some sessions are better than others. Um, and having hunt hunters in there four times in a row doesn't necessarily mean you'll have four times more deer. The deer do kind of respond to that hunting pressure and may move out of those areas if they they sense that those hunters are there more frequently. [00:43:55] Commissioner Hanzel: Okay. Yeah. I was just wondering that if you could like rotate and do early morning sessions before we have peaks and people who might be visiting those parks during those time frames be because that's when deer are moving the most anyway is in late in the evening and early in the morning. And so would there be a potential benefit to shifting? We'll do it here, we'll do it here, we'll do it here, and then we can, you know, move move amongst those parks so that the so the deer population who are spooked by the hunting that was going on kind of have a chance to get to forget what was going on, if you will. So, um I I I guess from my perspective that would be the only thing I would add is look at the and it sounds like you already have, but if it makes any sense at all to add potentially some additional dates um in different areas just to try to because it seems like we're in previous things we've talked about the fact that maintaining the correct balance and the correct numbers is critically important to make sure we don't have chronic wasting disease. um and overpopulations of deer and an increase in automobile accidents. So, it seems to me that getting trying to, you know, get on this because some of these populations seem fairly significant. I mean, we're missing goals of, you know, you're saying, "Oh, we should get 166 and boy, I we're probably no going to get nowhere close to that." um, so maybe if there are ways like that to, you know, increase the harvest a little bit that I if that's worth looking at, I I would suggest that we do that. I think that would be something that could be added to the plan. [00:45:40] Caleb Ashling: Okay. [00:45:42] Commissioner Cody Matz: How many archery ranges are on city parks? [00:45:45] Caleb Ashling: Uh, I believe there's only one. Is that or is there Am I missing one like archery target range? [00:45:50] Commissioner Hanzel: Yeah, just the just the one down at um Archer Park um off of 13 and I can't think of the cross to Rudy. [00:46:00] Commissioner Cody Matz: So So there's no public archery range in Southwest. [00:46:02] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Not on not in the Burnsville park system that I'm aware of. [00:46:05] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah. Are they expensive? [00:46:10] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Yeah. I I there are several on Dakota Park property. I mean if you go down to Yeah. Well, but and and lanes. So there is a bit to it, I think. But yeah, Commissioner Bar, there was a lot of work that went into relocating the range, the archery range to that location uh from a spot behind uh Dodge of Burnsville. Um I know where that is. Yeah, but we that's where our previous park was located. Um and just making sure we had safe distances from other people that may be out using a park and things like that. So, [00:46:55] Commissioner Cody Matz: But I mean conceivably there's space for an archery range in Kellair or Hanan. The the big where the big archery hunt happens anyway. Presumably there's space for a standing archery range there, right? Because they're already having the hunt. [00:47:12] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Yeah. I I think there I guess it's kind of two different things. Archery range would have to be in a developed portion of the park. Um and I'm not sure how much space there is for a new archery range. Well, I mean, there could be space, but it would probably take the place of an existing amenity of some type, or it take clearing of land to create that space. [00:47:35] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah. Um, so I guess there could be something that could be looked at in a parks plan down the road. That's more of a recreation type of thing. [00:47:45] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Certainly could. That isn't something that we heard in our most recent parks plan. Uh, that there was a demand for additional space. [00:47:55] Commissioner Cody Matz: Well, I didn't know there I had a demand for private archery hunting till today. And I got a 5-year-old that I can't teach archery at home. So, if there is one in town, he'll be hunting deer in 10 years. [00:48:10] Commissioner Alpa: I don't have any concerns with the recommendations other than I echo my fellow commissioner's concern about um if you know for multiple years we're really not meeting our targets for the amount of deer. I spent some time in Iowa where they the deer population is out of control and there is disease that is and it's sad to it's sad to see. And so I mean um so yes, you know, I' I'd support these recommendations and you know if there was something else that we could do to help um meet those goals, you know, like we would we'd want to hear it hear about it whether it's today or some other time as well. So thanks Ken. [00:48:52] Caleb Ashling: Thank you. [00:48:54] Commissioner Gomez: I just have a a comment is that it seems though even though we're not meeting the goals that we still don't have the disease and the did the amount of accidents go down. [00:49:05] Caleb Ashling: Uh yes. [00:49:08] Commissioner Gomez: So I mean weighing the fact that we didn't meet the harvest goal. That term really gets to me. Sorry. But um it's not the consequence of that is there's nothing terrible happening. [00:49:25] Commissioner Hanzel: Well, I if I may, I I I think the part of this though is prevention because if the population re it'll reach a critical point. Caleb, please interject if I'm incorrect, but you reach a critical mass and then suddenly here comes chronic wasting disease and other issues. So, and having heard these reports, it's like you want to make stay ahead of that. Um although and I agree with you, harvest seems I don't I don't know the other word to use in a public contexting. um, but I think that's part of the whole plan is we need to stay ahead of these populations to make sure we don't tip into those disease states and other things that that make it much harder to deal with. That's with biodiversity, with everything. [00:50:18] Commissioner Gomez: That's right. It's a It's all a balancing act, I think. Um, commissioners, if we have no other questions, I'd like to go ahead and move on uh to um requesting a motion to um accept the deer management program uh report and recommendations for city council. Do we have a motion, please? [00:50:40] Commissioner Frank: I move I move to accept it. [00:50:45] Commissioner Gomez: Is there a second? Second. [00:50:50] Commissioner Hanzel: Okay. Uh all in favor say I. [00:50:52] Commissioners: I. [00:50:54] Commissioner Hanzel: And any opposed? Caleb, thank you for your uh for your time and for your efforts in this area and um we'll look forward to hearing again next year how things are going. [00:51:05] Caleb Ashling: Thank you, commissioners. Thanks, Caleb. [00:51:10] Commissioner Hanzel: As a part of our work plan, um this commission has made a choice to take on research of some topics that may be unique or of special interest to individual commissioners. Um the we are going to uh talk about those topics at this time. No formal actions are going to be taken on these topics or on these items. Um as I introduce the topics, I asked the commissioners that are working on that item to provide an update. Um and the first one is um exploring adding a biodiversity index to the sustainability dashboard. Um and um I guess we can include in that working with local school districts to assist in raising student awareness on sustainability natural resources and um oh wait a minute I just saw that pop up on the screen. Cody, you should go. [00:52:12] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Uh Commissioner Hanzel that this is what's on the screen right now isn't what uh the public is seeing. It's just it's just loaded up as the next presentation. Doesn't need to go. [00:52:25] Commissioner Hanzel: Okay. Very good. Thank you. Um so um so Frank if you could please um fill us in on uh the latest efforts in our div biodiversity index. [00:52:40] Commissioner Frank: Uh so actually I am really happy you came today. Uh uh so our city has a really loudable uh sustainability dashboard. Um a lot of different dimensions. Uh, but one of the first things I noticed was that it um would do something that cities kind of typically do where they'll like buy carbon credits or they do things that are on paper very friendly to the environment, but you know doesn't necessarily show the holistic commitment we have to having a a thriving ecosystem and um a lot of pollinators, things like that. And so one of the first um quantifiable things that we thought maybe we could add to the dashboard is uh a biodiversity index where you calculate each population within the area of Burnsville and see how we're doing and compare it to uh previous years and and how we can do that going forward. Um, this is um kind of a combination with the other project we're working on, which is trying to coordinate more with uh ISD 191 private schools and maybe a little bit with ISD 196 um to get kids involved with research projects. um, and so I think together we're uh in the process of evaluating the different resources because not only can you get biodiversity index, but you can get a whole GIS map of every... Yeah, every square foot of your town. Um, and so the call is out between myself, Commissioner Hansel um uh Albbright uh Albert and, um, let's see, go swami, I think you were working on a school too. Um, so we'll regarding the biodiversity index first. um we know that there's somebody at the University of Minnesota and it might be one of your teachers uh that can get us some good numbers for something quantifiable that we can put on a website and track ourselves year. Um so uh we've we've got some social connections with some extension folks that uh we're working on right now. Um so as for the IST 191, I met last week with Allison Jordan, which uh JJ, I think she's worked with you kind of extensively. I also met Ham Daud and Sue. Have not formally met Sue Schiffman yet. Uh, but she's, uh, working on a school garden. I want to say, Neil. Yeah. Yep. Uh, and then I also have a Gideon Pond, uh, learning garden as well. So, uh, meeting new teachers, uh, new city staff. And JG, I think I could use some help kind of mapping out these relationships here because um the school district has Hamday, which is who is the community engagement coordinator that does party on the plaza. Does that... she has... Yes. [00:55:50] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Okay. [00:55:52] Commissioner Frank: Um and so there's an interface there where you know we're already coordinating. We also want to add a couple things on. So if I can talk to you a little bit, that would be helpful. Um Albert isn't here. Alpa, do you have anything you want to add to that? [00:56:10] Commissioner Alpa: Um my only update is um I reached out to SCES and um we have a meeting on the calendar for next week. So just going to explore some ideas of um what students might want to come to um present. [00:56:28] Commissioner Frank: Yeah. Their beehive projects. Uh yeah, so uh uh coming along as far as uh early spring progress. Could I do my update about Tennisu Park because it is not a presentation. It's just a quick update. [00:56:45] Commissioner Hanzel: Sure. [00:56:47] Commissioner Gomez: Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. So, uh, my idea was to write a report on Tennisu Park to provide an update. I have since then, you know, kind of defined what it is I'm going to be writing a report on. So really making sure that there is a record of the current geographic boundaries, the history of the park, not just when it was created in its development but before um there was you know European settlement on it or American settlement on it and then also to provide a clear explanation for the origin of the name. And so when I'm thinking about what projects and I and I have laid out this like framework I was thinking about what projects could young people what projects could a young person do and I think writing a report on a park um and it would force them to look at you know to look up um the the name which lots of times is linked to uh you know native people who have been here the native community as well as just other you get to learn who was the farmer on the land you you know, I I know that's a huge one too here in Burnsville. And if I'm right, Burnsville has 76 parks and I feel like that would be a great, you know, a little report that could be made. And then I was just trying to think about like end goal. What would this look like? I know that each park has a website. But if there was a way to, you know, make sure that all of that information is able to be linked, I think that would be a dream. But then again, I'll have to chat with city staff about that, about feasibility. So before I go saying what I'll do, I'll check for permission first. But that's my update. [00:58:35] Commissioner Hanzel: Very good. Thank you, Commissioner Gomez. The um interesting thing is when we presented all of this to the city council, how excited they were to the mayor specifically mentioned the Tennessee Park history. So I think that there is some interest at that level, but again, that can go through city staff to make sure that that reaches uh the correct folks. Cody, I guess we're now to you and uh for your uh water restrictions research. please. [00:59:10] Commissioner Cody Matz: I have a presentation. You like formal presentation. It's weird to be on this side of things. um, so I kind of did this how I kind of do things in life. So I'm a meteorologist for those that don't know. um been one for almost 20 years now. And so I figured I would kind of present this in a way that uh actually gives you some data to kind of cling on to because it's a very I don't want to say arbitrary, but it's kind of a out there sort of topic like do we really need watering restrictions? Does it really matter that much? So we'll kind of go through why. The interesting part that I noticed and this is with this first chart is that yes the city of Burnsville website is well from what I've experienced from all of these other cities hands down the best city website and by far has the most stuff to it. um, but you look and I so I kind of developed uh different categories kind of based off what I was seeing um in each individual city. So, currently the daily watering restrictions, and it's mostly uh confined to lawns, with lawn watering, um is 11:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the city of Burnsville. By far that was the least restrictive of any city that I've came across. Neighbors, the Twin Cities, Metro, outstate Minnesota, everybody. um, which I thought was interesting. Most of them are somewhere some variation between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Some are a little later, some are a little sooner. um, some of them some of the websites and I stopped at a a few hours. I went through dove through websites. Some of them have violations listed, some of them don't. Some of them have um restrictions during drought. Some of them don't or at least they're not listed um where I could find it. And so this kind of gives you a snapshot of other cities. Um there is a second list. It goes on. um, I did a lot of the major metro cities and a lot of cities that would be very uh similar both in size and in population to us and then kind of compared the big really big ones and the really small ones. um, and they were all somewhat similar. Most of them had um uh every other day watering or even odd watering and stuff like that. And you can go back and look at this and to your heart's content um on our city's website because it records all this which is great. So I want to kind of talk about like why watering restrictions are super important. um, as we know in the city of Burnsville and everywhere else, rain is not guaranteed. Obviously, running out is just not an option. You can't run out of water. um, a little bit of kindergarten science because we all kind of forget Earth's surface is 70% water. Of that, just 3% of water is drinkable, which is a very small number. Now, granted, that surface water doesn't include ground water, which I'll get to in a second. Burnsville is in a better position than most. We uh obviously use groundwater. We also use uh the Minnesota River water which we took uh a tour a year ago, year and a half ago of the city water um uh what's that called? Water treatment plant. Thank you. um which was super informative and very uh uh fascinating on how kind of all that comes together. So we obviously use underground water. We use uh the Minnesota River. We're in a great spot statewide uh because we have the Great Lakes nearby which is about 20% of overall global freshwater. um, so we're in a good position but we don't want to um get above and beyond ourselves. So we use mostly groundwater and most of that comes from this. So our underground water resource isn't it's just it's not just like oh there's a underground lake. Our water actually comes from several different aquifers kind of on top of each other. It's called the Mount Simon Hinckley aquifer. Aquifer is basically a fancy word for a lot of like mud. It's not like an underground lake. It's not an underground reservoir. It's just basically permeable. So, permeable soil that houses a lot of water. um, and so it's porous. Think of like a wet sponge. There's still substance there, but there's a lot of water in it. So, that's essentially an aquifer. So, you look at the top of this and you have many different layers. Dakota County is kind of on the eastern center of that. um, and if you want a more information you could ever possibly know, go to the website that's listed there, um about the aquifer. There's about 150 pages of any information you want to read. There's way more out there than you think in terms of info of where our water is and where it comes from. So that's kind of the aerial extent of the aquifer and then this image gives you kind of deep down like how much is down there. The Mount Simon uh is essentially the bottom layer and then there are several other aquifers kind of in between. um, and so this again this is all on that website. You can go uh view it yourself, but we essentially have about if you look at your scale, bottom lefthand corner, we essentially have a little over a thousand feet of aquafer underneath our shoes and then underneath that is bedrock and that's it. So, we run out of this, we're out of ground drinking water, which sounds like a lot, but it's really not all that much. So, one of the reasons for this and kind of for the watering restrictions is obviously so we don't run out generally speaking, but also so we don't deplete it on a daily day-to-day basis. um and there have been signs that that's actually occurring in other parts of the world and probably going to become a lot more frequent in the years ahead both because of any sort of climate change varying to varying degrees as well as just how many people are on the planet how much of us have access to clean drinking water which we should. So this kind of gives you an idea of what's actually happening. So, this is an article from a couple years ago of NASA actually taking a view of groundwater in the state of California and kind of viewing the soil levels and parts of the central valley there because obviously it's very heavy agriculture have dropped 25 ft because they've just sucked out all the groundwater. And there are different um uh many different aspects of this, many different ways to find out. And so this was actually a chart put together by a climatologist and I'm blanking on his name at the moment. um but it kind of shows you gives you kind of a glimpse at where groundwater recharge is either increasing or decreasing. So anything in the brown is essentially groundwater is being depleted faster than it can recharge. And then the green sections are vice versa. Admittedly I don't remember the time scale. I think this is over a 34 30 or 40 year period. um, so there's certainly some wiggle room in here. And one of the that's one of the hard parts with underground aquifers is you can't necessarily measure the whole thing. Like we don't really know how much is down there. um, but there are certainly ways to find out. So you can kind of see that most of the southern US because it's heavy in agriculture is depleting their groundwater significantly. And what's what I found interesting was that at least in this particular survey parts of Minnesota have also seen some minor depletion which I thought was interesting. um, but this kind of highlights some of the main aquifers in the United States. um, that if these were to fail or go dry there would be a significant change in overall food source in the United States. And then the UN actually just put this article out. This was not even two months ago, February 19th. They're declaring Earth has entered a period of water bankruptcy. They're basically saying the exact same thing I am, is that humanity has reached a point where we're now depleting our water resources faster than they can be replaced. So, all that to say, rain is not guaranteed. This is a perfect example. So, I was anecdotally talking with some city staff at our parks and natural resources commission tour of all the parks we do each August, I believe. Yeah. And um most of the city staff were anecdotally saying it's been a very wet year, which is accurate in a lot of cases. But the red circled area is the city of Burnsville. That is in an area that was well below average compared to everyone else. So this overall map shows a 180day departure from normal rainfall. So anything in purple and blue and green is above average from the April 2nd 2025 to September 29th 2025. So essentially that is your growing season. Most of the Twin Cities metro well above average in some cases 10 or more inches above average. City of Burnsville well below average. So, I have two rain gauges in my backyard because I'm a nerd. And um my house was about five and a half inches below average and more than 10 inches different from MSP airport, which is four, five miles away. So, that's the interesting part about this is that not only is rain not guaranteed, it's not all the same and can vary wildly from place to place, especially in the summer season when you get heavy downpours. So, just kind of something to keep in mind. So rain is not all the same. You have heavy downpours in the summer and then you have slower steady downpours. um your heavy downpours are far more beneficial for runoff which is some is necessary for lakes and rivers and streams and creeks and all the things but to recharge groundwater you need slow steady rain. And that is actually starting uh to drop significantly. I didn't put it on here because I just recently found this out, but there was a new study and I'm blanking on the name, but uh suggests it was pushed out by the American Meteorological Society, I want to say last year, uh that suggests that our slow steady rain has dropped anywhere from 20 to 35% in the last 20 years. So, you're not getting the rain necessarily necessary to recharge the soil because it takes a lot longer to recharge the soil. One of the reasons for that could be this. So, um, this is called the Clausius Clapperon equation. It sounds ridiculous. um, even harder to say, but basically what it says is, that anytime your temperature goes up by one degree Celsius overall, you increase the amount of moisture in that column by about 7%. That sounds like a climate change stat. It's not. That stat is actually from the 1830s um and has been reaffirmed ever since and is long been known in the scientific community. So when you have warmer temperatures, you have more water. That's basically what that says. So because you have warmer temperatures or warming in some years, cooler in others, sure. Then you can have more water in that column. Well, if you have more water in that column, there's going to be more that gets squeezed out of it. Therefore, you have heavier rain. So all this kind of goes along the same source. So soil different soils can um allow permeation differently. So your Burnsville, Minnesota soil will soak up different amounts of moisture in a in a specific period of time than your Brainer soil or your North Dakota soil or your Arizona soil. It's all different. It all depend a lot of it depends on the soil comp complexity itself but it also depends on how often does it rain um are you in a drought are you is the soil really wet so there's a lot of variables that you can't account for in any individual time and so you need the slow steady rain typically a tenth of an inch an hour or less to all soak in the ground. It doesn't soak in as fast as you think that's one of the reasons why when you get an inch or inch and a half of rain in an hour in the middle of July, your yard looks like a giant pond because it's just not going in the ground. Okay. So, back to residential lawns. So, this was a a study was produced uh by the American Geohysical Union. This was a long time ago. um the link is at the bottom of your screen. Again, it's several hundred pages of more information you ever could want. um, but it was also included parts of the University of Minnesota. And again, I think this is from like the 60s. This was a long time ago, but they basically um looked at snapshoted basically seven or eight cities in their study. One of them happened to be Minneapolis St. Paul, which is great probably because U of M was involved. um and they determined that evapo transpiration or aka the amount of water coming out of a plant during peak growing season which would be essentially June, July and August um most days would be 1 to 2 millimeters or roughly 400s to 800s of an inch. So that's coming out of the plant but you would imagine that that's also coming out of the soil. So that's your overall moisture loss on any day, any given day in peak summer season. um the study didn't actually detect any differences in evapot transanspiration based on the type of um stuff in a yard. So like the the native grasses, the tall grasses, there wasn't really any difference. um trees didn't have any difference. It was all kind of the same. um that is specifically for evapot transanspiration. That has nothing to do with root strength, how far your roots go down. That was specifically what was being ejected into the atmosphere from the sun. Okay. So, um this basically means that evapot transpiration is basically a physically driven process. So, it's driven mostly by the contact with the sun. So, direct sunlight. Traditional law lawns have a very high rate of transpiration because they have a high leaf index. What what that means is the plant itself is a leaf. And so that would make sense because you have all these tiny little leaves giving out more moisture, which is why lawns go brown really quickly. traditional lawns and tall fescues take longer and really tall grasses take longer because they have more up to the plant than just the leaf and there's obviously deeper roots. So that's basically what that confirms. Taking all that into account, I told you I have a there's a lot on here. I wanted somebody to be able to read this without me actually talking and understand it. So primary factors through all of this basically is water usage timing should be overall based on sun angle and a combination of warmest temperatures of the day because we already know it's a long known fact that the warmer the temperature the more evaporation you have. So those should be kind of your combining factors. I realize the city of Burnsville 11 to three kind of hits that point but probably not aggressive enough at least in my scientific opinion. So, um, this would include both seasons and time of day with the highest sun angle, warmest temperatures. Highest sun angle here in, um, Burnsville. It's roughly 16 68 and a half degrees above the horizon. That, uh, occurs on the summer solstice, roughly June 21st, um, and then basically goes from right about now to late September. So, essentially your growing season um, is kind of your peak sun angle. So, it goes from spring equinox to fall equinox. So with that in mind, just scientifically based, uh you'll look for solar solar radiation is basically peak above your 34 degree above the horizon. So essentially half of your peak um sun angle. um this is also the point when your outgoing solar radiation is higher than incoming. So that's why you have a peak temperature in the um summer season like your high temperature of the day is like 6 pm versus 3 p.m. um because your sun is now low enough in the sky where your outgoing solar radiation is actually over your incoming and so your temperature starts to drop and yes you do have outgo outgoing solar radiation. This kind of sums it up. um, this is just a random chart I found at like sunrise and sunset.com or whatever it is. um, I kind of put I put um the summer solstice is basically the header on this. So this is your overall um sun angle on your summer solstice. So summer solstice we have what's called solar noon or peak sun angle at 115. Your altitude is it's it rounded. It's 69 degrees 68 and a half. Either way, um you're looking due south and so that kind of gives you a sunrise sunset platform and then kind of gives you a couple times in between of your overall altitude of the sun at that time. um leans a little earlier than most think because you know it's not hot at 8 a.m. So you wouldn't think the solar angle is that high, but it's actually higher than it is at 7 p.m. when most people are outside. So, gives you a little glimpse of that. Again, there's a link at the bottom of that screen for Climate of Minnesota, and they have thousands of pages of climate information you could ever want. So, my overall recommendation based on all of this is to change the current from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. um, in my in this basis, there is no scient scientific reason for even odd scheduling. That's where the man-made stuff comes in that can be decided way way above my head. Obviously in a perfect world, watering restrictions would wax and wayne in average daily stuff, but this isn't a perfect world where humans were flawed. It's fine. um, I just put up hard in and hard out. The same could be said for time of year. You could just say all year round because most of us aren't watering our lawns right now. So it's like, okay, well, when you're watering your lawn, here's your restriction. Most of us are watering between May and the end of September. um, this factors basically all of that in. It gets your highest sun angle, which is essentially 9:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. and your warmest times of the day, which is on average 2 to 7 p.m. It also allows residents to set timers for sprinklers in the daylight because you need to be able to see something. And you don't actually have a a 700 p.m. or later sunset till September 28th, which is essentially the end of growing season anyway. And in most cases, there's exceptions. In most cases, it doesn't matter at that point. On a personal note, pull the scientific out of this and go to homeowner. I actually find the odd even schedule more restrictive than anything. I understand why we would do it for man-made purposes. um, but on the average in the average day, I find it moving hoses and trying to figure it out and what day of the week is it and all of that stuff. I mean, I don't have ingground sprinklers, so I'm moving hoses. It's a pain and it sucks. So, that is just in me interjecting as a homeowner. Did I get through enough? Any questions? [01:14:10] Commissioner Hanzel: Yes, I do have a question. And and and Commissioner Matz. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for all of the... I that's that's a lot of digging. um but but as a science guy, I I I'm loving this. Okay, this is great. You've got data. um but let's throw a little bit of a curve to that. And that is what happens when you're watering after 700 p.m. Because from a horiculture point of view, leaving plants wet overnight encourages fungal growth, encourages mold growth and those kinds of things. So, so how do we balance that part out? Sorry, I work in agriculture. You know, I'm a soil like... [01:14:52] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah. So you don't water the plant. You don't... like the leaves don't need water. The roots need water. So you put the you put the hose going slowly. And I would also remind you that this is lawn watering. So this is lawn watering restrictions specifically. um and that's that's different than the average plant or the tree or what have you. Right. So this is essentially your sprinkler system if I'm if I'm understanding the verbiage correct in city code. [01:15:20] Commissioner Hanzel: Right. Well, I know that when I water my lawn, I've got a sprinkler and it's hitting my, you know, it's hitting my red twig dogwood and and and my milkweed at the same time it's hitting my grass. So, I I guess that's the part of it that I... and I would assume I could be wrong, but I would assume most homeowners don't water very low to the ground when they're watering their yards. So, I I I guess that's my my concern is that, you know, how do we... are we going to be encouraging some things that... not that I would mind if a lot of our lawns got destroyed, but but I that's the only side of this that I could see where you're leaving grass wet and plants wet at the end of the day and would that encourage... [01:16:05] Commissioner Cody Matz: True. um, I would say that that would be in my opinion would be more beneficial than not just because your ground is allowed to naturally dry out and the water can permeate into the soil. um, as long as you're not overwatering at that point and there isn't standing water, which there shouldn't be to begin with, um, I don't think you'll have a huge issue. If you're getting uh if you're getting fungal disease on plants anyways, then you're already overwatering. And I don't think watering in the middle of the day is going to be able to solve that. [01:16:40] Commissioner Hanzel: Okay. But our agriculture expert agree with that. [01:16:45] Commissioner Gomez: I would agree with that. And I would say like if this ordinance, let's say it gets passed by city council and then there's the learning part, right? So you got to like reach out to our community and like there's like so many different ways of like taking care of our gardens and lawns. Like I mean we could just really like go for like the clover lawns like we have up at this garden. I mean there's just so many other options and I think when people are educated they'll make a better choice except for the ones who you know they're going to dig their heels in because that's their personality. I think that's where we've actually come across where the Bolton has been very effective and that could be one of many tools we could use to educate people on not only if we change but even if we don't change some continued education is probably good. [01:17:35] Commissioner Frank: Any other questions? Yeah, a whole bunch. Uh you are an incredible educator. I would take a class from you, right? As far as lectures go, I would take a quiz for you. I was kind of expecting a quiz at the end. Can Can you repeat the equation name again? [01:17:55] Commissioner Cody Matz: Oh yeah. Clausius Clapperon. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm saying it even correctly. um but I will come back to it on the slide and you can physically read it. [01:18:10] Commissioner Frank: And so you said 0.1 inch an hour or less the slow and steady rain will allow it to soak in. [01:18:18] Commissioner Cody Matz: That is a that is an absolutely generic example. um it is far less than you think and that's where the multiple factors come in because every single soil, every single yard uh slope is a factor there's too many to count. um but in a lot of cases it is much smaller than most think which is why um a lot of times you want to if you have like ingground sprinklers you set them up at a level where you're not inundating the ground and you're getting runoff um which a lot of times is a quarter inch to a third of an inch an hour or less. [01:18:55] Commissioner Frank: Um so uh so matched the evapot transanspiration that was in millimeters at 0.0 04 in to 008 in per hour. [01:19:08] Commissioner Cody Matz: Yeah, that... so that's evapo transpiration. So I did talk about a few different things kind of overlapping. So that's not necessarily um the moisture you're losing from the soil. That is just the moisture that the plant loses every single day. um and one of the reasons you have to water because the plant's losing moisture and soaking it in from the ground. So in theory, you could say you could um extrapolate from that and say that quite likely the soil is actually losing more than that because the plant is going to take in more than it loses. [01:19:42] Commissioner Frank: And is that on that heat map you showed where we had less rain than everyone else around us, was that due to elevation? [01:19:50] Commissioner Cody Matz: That had nothing to do with anything that we can measure. I get asked hundreds of times a year the same similar question which is basically why do the thunderstorms always seem to miss my house. um and I can tell... I my answer is usually they don't because it's not dry as a bone at your house. You don't live in a desert. But um a lot of times you'll just get um different patterns in different time periods that just set up and you just get more rain or less rain than someone else. [01:20:22] Commissioner Frank: There's no seemingly physical property to point to. It's not like a heat island effect or anything like that. [01:20:28] Commissioner Cody Matz: No, there is a heat island effect in the Twin Cities, but this was likely not the cause of that. [01:20:35] Commissioner Frank: Well, maybe the city could advertise we have more sunny days than any other suburb around us. [01:20:40] Commissioner Cody Matz: I would highly suggest suggest not doing that. [01:20:45] Commissioner Frank: Well, I I love the idea of of giving people the information that 8 to 7 is when you're wasting water, basically. um, I actually just bought the cheapest uh hose timer on Amazon for 13 bucks and we have a well that is you have to turn on manually and move hoses around and it's absurd to try to keep up with that every other day. Yeah. But um if there you know you're not going to be surveiled every day when you're watering your lawn. So, you know, we give people the information 8 to 7's great. Uh, and I think the simplicity that you provided of saying just year round, forget the even odd. I mean, that sounds like a great idea to me. [01:21:25] Commissioner Cody Matz: Thank you so much for doing this. [01:21:28] Commissioner Hanzel: Yeah, and I appreciate that and I hope the city council sees it the same way and we can come to some agreement both naturally and with our current water treatment system. And maybe the enforcement is you get a letter that tells you where the city can help you purchase a timer or something. I mean, more carrots than sticks and you know, not a lot of city time to deal with enforcement or anything like that. Yeah, it's great. [01:21:55] Commissioner Hanzel: So, so JJ and and and again, a lot of work and I think we're all kind of digging in and doing a lot of work on these projects. I I don't know that... and and we can certainly take this offline so that we can all get out of here and go home, but especially you because you've been here all day, I'm assuming, right? But but um h what's the next step? Obviously, the work has been completed on this individual project and the and the city council stated they would like to hear the results of these things. So, what's the next thing for moving this on to city council? [01:22:30] Jeff Thompson (JJ): So, since Commissioner Matz has done such a great job of spelling it all out and writing out his report so that he doesn't need to present it again to additional city staff members, I'll forward this document on uh to the powers that be, have them review it against the information that they have and and and verify whatever it is they need to be looking at. um it because ultimately I think any change to a policy comes kind of through a staff level of of their findings and if if they take a look at this and say, "Yeah, this makes complete sense um they would then move that towards council and um or or move it forward to council for their review and approval. um because of the extensive work that you've done, it's possible the council may want to hear from you uh at some work session in the future before any decisions are made or finalized on making any changes and go from there. [01:23:25] Commissioner Frank: Okay. GJ, do you know what the city the city's practice for watering is on city property? [01:23:35] Jeff Thompson (JJ): um it might be slightly different at our golf course versus some of the parks where we have irrigation systems. But it is the... it's usually even later in the evening or early in the morning. um because most of the time there's activity out in the park until 10:00 for example down at L Leavon Softball Complex. um so it's kind of hard to turn on the the water. You know, until after that or it comes on like I said early in the morning. So... [01:24:05] Commissioner Frank: So the city is presumably already in compliance with anything he would recommend. Do we need to move to recommend something to city council? [01:24:12] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Uh nope. Uh, this will go for a staff review first and we'll go from there. Great job. An answer for you. [01:24:20] Commissioner Hanzel: No formal action will be taken today. The um, and just to tag into this because as you know, I've been working on the lighting issues and I got some great answers from city staff. Thank you for helping me with that. um, but I would like to compile that information for the rest of the of the commissioners and then if that... because I still think there... and I would ask the commissioners to help with that, but I think there's still a couple of things we could ask for, especially knowing the city is starting to plan the next um their next activities and next uh planning sessions. So, I I think there's a couple of things I would like to recommend that they look at in that time. And if it's okay, I would like to present that at our next PNRC meeting. [01:25:05] Jeff Thompson (JJ): Sure. Okay. Commissioner is is my plan to have these four items listed each month as looking for updates. And quite honestly, if there's nothing that has happened over that over that month window of time, it's okay to just say there isn't any new update at this point. U but Commissioner Hansel, we will certainly add your item for next month. [01:25:35] Commissioner Hanzel: Fantastic. Thank you. um, at this time I'd like to request a call for adjournment. [01:25:40] Commissioner Cody Matz: Oh, I motion to adjurnn. [01:25:42] Commissioner Frank: Oh, very good. Uh, any second? Oh, second. [01:25:48] Commissioner Hanzel: Thank you. um, any uh all in favor say I. [01:25:52] Commissioners: I. [01:25:54] Commissioner Hanzel: All opposed. To those of you who attended this evening, thank you so much for your participation and thank you for being here. um and at this time um the April meeting of the Parks and Natural Resources Commission is concluded.