This transcript features the Farmington City Council meeting from July 15, 2024. Based on the context provided and the dialogue within the recording, I have identified the speakers (noting that while your context list identifies Nick Lien as Mayor, in this July 2024 meeting, **Joshua Hoyt** is serving as Mayor and **Nick Lien** is serving as a Councilmember). [0:00] [Music] [0:24] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: We'll call the regular city council meeting to order for Monday, July 15th, 2024. Would everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? [1:01] **All**: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Call the roll, please. Mayor Hoyt? **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Buron? **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Bernatz? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Lien? **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Here. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Wilson? **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Here. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: All right, any changes to the agenda? Any changes? All right, seeing no changes, I'd seek a motion to approve the agenda. **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Motion. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Motion by Holly, second by Steve. All in favor say aye. **All**: Aye. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Moving on, first item here is item six, which is our citizen comments. Is there anyone in attendance wishing to speak? Please come up at this time. Seeing none, we'll move on to item seven, which is our consent agenda. I'd seek a motion to approve the consent agenda. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Motion. **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Motion by Steve, second by Katie. All in favor say aye. **All**: Aye. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: All right, next item on the agenda is item 10.1, which is our public Park trails and open space dedication ordinance. Kelly? [2:23] **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. As you're aware, the city of Farmington has an ordinance that pertains to dedicating land for public parks, trails, and open space. The current Park dedication ordinance was last amended in its entirety in 2003. Several text amendments were made to the ordinance in 2005 and 2007. Over the last several years, staff noticed when platting of developments, there has been confusion with certain aspects and language within the current ordinance. In addition, recently, Park dedication has been a contentious issue for developers and it has made its way to the Minnesota State Legislature. Minnesota Recreation and Parks Association, which the city is a member of, has a legislative committee and hires a lobbyist to monitor and track state legislation impacting the Parks and Recreation industry, so they keep us apprised of Park dedication up at the capital. With all this to consider, HKGI was hired to do a park dedication study in February of 2023. If you remember, City Council, the Planning Commission, and the Parks and Recreation Commission had a joint work session in March of 2023. At this work session, Rita from HKGI provided an introduction to park dedication and an overview of the city's current ordinance. Since then, staff has been collaborating with HKGI on the park dedication study and possible revisions to the current ordinance. At this time, I want to turn it over to Rita Trap from HKGI. I know you guys are familiar with Rita to present the park education study findings and the recommended ordinance updates. [3:57] **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: Here should be all right. Good evening, it's great to see you again. I am going to walk through a presentation that covers some of the basics of Park dedication, mostly for the audience at home or those that might be watching. I know you are all fairly familiar with that, but we do want to provide a foundation on the "whys" of Park dedication and then we'll go into the study findings. So, just a brief background—I'll try and make it brief—but we do want to get this, make sure we're all on the same level playing field. State Statute does empower cities to require a reasonable portion of buildings and/or buildable land to be dedicated for public purposes. So that is something that you are empowered to do. There are very specific requirements that we need to meet, and those are some of the elements that we reviewed when we looked at updating the park dedication ordinance. In terms of what "reasonable portion" means, it is specifically defined and treated, and the areas that we can look for for dedication are shown in red: Parks, recreational facilities as defined in section 471.191, playgrounds, trails. There are other—this section is actually where you see the dedication of streets and storm water, road, sewer, all those other elements. So it's nice because the legislature does acknowledge it as infrastructure similar to other types of things that the city may be looking at dedicating. The fees that are collected—if we choose to do cash in lieu of an actual land dedication—any fees must be directly related to new growth. It can't just be that you need to refurbish a park and we're going to collect fees to refurbish a park. It has to be related to new growth causing the need for new facilities to be created in the city. We can't use it for ongoing maintenance and replacement of existing features; in fact, it's actually supposed to go into a specific fund that is then used for any types of improvements related to new growth. It is not expected that Park dedication will fully fund all system improvements, particularly when you're thinking about any type of ongoing maintenance or replacement of existing features. And then as you look at building out the park system, there's just no way—and that's one of the elements we looked at—to really fund through Park dedication the creation of all of the facilities that folks expect and want to have in their city. So those funds have to come from grants, general funds, donations, other types of resources. In order to have Park dedication, you must have either a parks and open space plan or a specific open space park and open space component of your comprehensive plan, which you already have, as well as an adopted CIP, which you also have. But it's good to know that you need to have those two elements, because not all cities have those. So those are the foundation of your Park dedication ordinance. You also have to establish an "essential nexus," which is what really part of the purpose of our study was: to demonstrate what is the reason why you need to collect additional Park dedication from development as it occurs. And then we need to ensure any fees are based on the fair market value, and that'll go into our conversation later about how we might want to make some adjustments to the ordinance. There was the recent Minnesota court case, and that is one of the reasons for the delay in our study. I think we were hired and they were in the middle of talking about that case, and it took the Supreme Court all the way through the end of the year to make that determination. And so we wanted to hold until we had an understanding of how Park dedication law may or may not change. Ultimately, there wasn't a significant change, and so how we all have understood Park dedication has remained generally the same. I think we're all a little bit more aware that there may be cases that are out there and we want to be very precise and make sure to protect the city as best we can, but in essence, the same rules still apply. For context—and this was in Burnsville, so you're probably pretty familiar with it—but in 2018, the city of Burnsville required a property owner to have Park dedication for a commercial use. That property owner did not think it was fair because it was a commercial use and they didn't feel like it was fairly applied to their situation. They had approved their regular Park dedication fee; in their case, the fee was equal to 5% of the gross land area. The property owner objected. Ultimately, the district court agreed with the city, but then the appeals court overturned that decision and found that the fee was unreasonable. They wanted to have a reasonable determination that the actual development is required, or an individualized assessment. So they wanted to make sure that the park dedication required—the amount of it—was reasonably related to the commercial use of the property. So in their case, it was not a "rough proportionality," and that was a part that I think cities were very concerned about—what would happen—because that would really change the nature of how we apply Park dedication. In the end, the Supreme Court did find with the city, and so we were able to continue in the process that we've always been using in terms of Park dedication, and that is—again, that happened in late 2023. So we had started it, we had met with you, but then we wanted to see the results of that court case. The study findings: the first course of action for us was to determine the essential nexus, that there is a demonstrated need for you to collect Park dedication, either the park dedication fee in cash in lieu or the actual dedication of land. The statute really relates to both of those, and so our essential nexus process was to try and demonstrate that there is a need for those, and we also need to show that it's proportional to the need created by the proposed subdivision or development. So what we did to do that—and we have an Excel spreadsheet, a multi-page spreadsheet that shows all of this information—but we made a prioritized list of improvements and acquisitions that you had identified that you needed. If you recall, as part of the Jim Bell Park Master Plan process, there was some additional services to look at the city as a whole to understand the system. So we used the information that was collected and produced at that time. It had very specific plan requirements or planned improvements for each individual park. And we took that information and we identified with staff what the improvement was, how much it cost, how much of that was attributable to new growth, and how much of it was just implementing the master plan as it was originally conceived. So for every single park improvement, we identified: "This improvement is about people that are already here in the city," versus "No, there's a neighborhood growing around there, and so we want to attribute it to new growth." So from that, we created an entire spreadsheet, and we have a cost of system improvements. We also looked at how much acquisition was needed to implement the plan that you intended to have, and that's how we come together with a final number of how much the cost would be in order to create the park system as was envisioned through that Master planning process. So we used the comprehensive Parks plan and recreation chapter. That's really helpful for us to establish how much parkland you already have in the community and how much you're looking to have into the future. And then we also—I think I went ahead and talked about this—the city-wide analysis that you already had. So in terms of doing the four elements, we look at: Park land acquisitions (how much additional land do we need?), new park development that I mentioned, park improvements already identified, and then trail construction. So we make assumptions about all of those four elements to come up with the total cost of the system itself. I do want to pause for a second and talk about a policy shift that we had talked about in our first meeting with you in terms of how much Parkland are we looking to have in the future. We use the analysis from the comprehensive plan and the system planning that happened through the Jim Bell Master planning process to talk about how far apart should future neighborhood parks be. This map was included in the packet; it shows the existing park system and then it shows where new proposed neighborhood parks would be. At the time, we've talked about a shift in the policy to look at having neighborhood parks be about 0.75 miles apart instead of a half-mile apart. Right now, you have a lot of overlapping parks that are fairly near each other. The thought is that because of the trail system that you do want to create, people will have the ability to get to different neighborhood parks, and so it's okay if we create fewer neighborhood parks in the future. And I think we are looking at eight. We are also looking at establishing a bigger park size. Currently, some of the parks are fairly small; that creates some inefficiencies in terms of maintenance. It also means that you have to repeat yourselves in terms of how many playgrounds or basketball courts—there's a lot of need in that way. And so by having a larger park, we can provide a little bit more of an experience at those parks. So the park size that we established was four acres. That also went into how much land we identified as needed to be acquired for each of the parks, because we do factor that into the cost of the entire system. So again, we talked about having fewer but larger neighborhood parks. Kelly and I also had a conversation—there are some areas, for example, just east of Flagstaff where there's kind of a gap. It looks like there's residential neighborhoods that wouldn't be served, but a couple things to remember: we'll show you on the next map, there is a community park thought of in that area, so folks in that area would be able to access the community park. And the "bubbles" are showing only a half-mile from those parks to the east of Flagstaff. And so if you do 0.75 from those, it'll actually kind of cover that area. So there's a lot of reasons to think that most of the city is covered by the parks that we are proposing. The circles do get cut off on any of the major roadways because it is assumed that folks don't really want to cross the major roadways. So that's why we show that, but in essence, people could cross those if they felt comfortable, and if there's trails, people could feel like they could do that as well. There is a recommendation for two new community parks. They are up in the northeast and northwest corners. For those, the exact location is to be determined, but it's assumed each will be about 30 acres in size. There's also an estimate about 62 additional acres needed for existing community parks. You can see I listed them; they have varying needs in terms of acquisition—some of them have more acquisition, some just have a few acres left—but Mystic Meadows, Rambling River, Middle Creek, and Hildy. One element that was interesting as we went through this process is we tried to identify how much parkland was needed per person as part of the process. And it was interesting to see that we kind of—even with these additions and how the community is expected to grow at this point (I know I'm doing the comprehensive plan amendment, but those numbers are not factored in yet because we haven't finished it)—the numbers that we had in the existing comprehensive plan, the amount of acres of parkland per acre is going to remain consistent. These additions will be used by an increased number of people and we've actually maintained that amount of parkland, which is not about a national standard or applying anything else; that's just reflecting what you have today and what we think are the needs for the future and looking at how that is serving the community. And that forms the foundation for the formula that I'm going to talk about in a few minutes. So I just wanted to note that while we're on the map, that's how we came to that number: based on what we think is reasonable for providing neighborhood parks and community parks and adding those acreages up. We did have to make some assumptions about what would be included in those new neighborhood parks. So this assumed, you can see, about $476,000 per park. That would include a small playground—2 to 5-year-old and 5 to 12-year-old playground—a shade structure, some park amenities, and some trails. So those would be included in neighborhood parks. And on the community's park side, we looked at a playground, a shelter, some type of major feature that is needed in that area of the community (those are just some examples and obviously those will vary in cost), a parking lot, restrooms, trails, and amenities. So it assumes about 3.3 million per park. These were developed with Kelly and my colleague Gabrielle, who you worked with on the Jim Bell Master Plan and other master plans, in trying to identify what is a reasonable number for park improvements. We also estimated cost for the entire system. So there's nine out of 18 parks where there still are improvements needed that are about new growth, and so those are listed on the right. So those are parks that will still have some new growth surrounding them that we can attribute some of the additional improvements that you want to put in to that new growth. And then trail improvements: we estimated the cost for trail construction. We assume the trails along the roadway will be constructed outside of the park dedication process, so that's just a standard that you have that folks construct those trails. These trails are more about trail segments that connect parks that are outside of development. So there's about 11 out of the 18 trail segments that are identified that would be attributable to new growth. So again, in my spreadsheet, it would say 100% of these costs are attributed to new growth. I know they vary from 10% to 50% to 100%, so we really did try and calibrate it as best we could in the estimates. All in all, the total system cost estimate was over $44 million to implement everything that's been discussed, and the cost attributable to new growth is over 36 million. This is a lot of money, and I understand that that is your system out to the end—it's looking at a fairly long, lengthy time. These are in present dollars, so we don't do any estimating out. The real reason we need this is to demonstrate that you should still collect land dedication and cash in lieu dedication; it's not to solve and say "If you do this and you distribute it across everybody, you can collect all of those fees." This is really to demonstrate that there is a nexus, there is a reason why park dedication continues to be collected in the city. We did try and use this number to estimate out and kind of distribute it across all of the square footage or the unit growth, and you can't collect enough—that fee would be so high that development would be stopped. So it's not really an approach that we can take, but it is something that we looked at. So in establishing the rate, as we've talked about and I've referenced, you can use land dedication, cash fee in lieu of land, or a combination of land dedication and cash fee. The current Park dedication—I think you're all familiar with this—there's a table that's based on units per acre and land to be dedicated. That table we had already identified was of issue because it didn't match the actual densities or units in the zoning district. So we already knew some changes would need to be made. And the non-residential is 5% net area. This is more background again for those that may be joining us: the city can choose to accept a cash in lieu fee for all or part, and that needs to be based on the average fair market value of the unplatted land at the time of the final plat approval. And so that is something that you've actually been doing successfully in your Park dedication ordinance today—you are requiring an appraisal in order to establish that fair market value. Not every city does that. So sometimes when we do this process, we have to look at adjusting and figuring out what that value is so we can figure out a fee; that isn't something you've been doing, which I think probably is good from the standpoint of your valuations fluctuating given the nature of the development you're having in the community. So this fair market value question is a little bit less of a concern in terms of establishing the park dedication ordinance. It was a factor in our doing our calculations, but it is something that I think you already have put in place in an approach that works. In terms of potential approaches, if we try to determine a rate based on the system cost that I showed you—36 million across all of the residential units—this would be challenging. It's going to be too high, and I have the number in the spreadsheet, but it's too high. It doesn't adjust to the fair market value of the land. So we did do a GIS analysis with the assessor data that was available to us to see what the value of land is according to the assessor, which is the only source of information we can use. That assessor's data is significantly lower than the appraisal values you've been getting as of late in terms of value of land, but we only have pinpoints in time from each of those. So we know that using that 36 million and distributing it against units is just not going to be a way that you can do it and be able to justify it if anybody would question it. So I just wanted you to know we did look at it, we tried to see if it would work, but it doesn't seem like that's an approach that can work. We did a second approach that's different than how you do it today, which is the idea of determining the amount of Park dedication based on a "per person" assumption. In that method, we established that the city intends to have 0.20 acres of Parkland per person by 2040. And again, if you remember back to my earlier explanation, we came at this number by looking at how many acres of land will be created if we use the land you have today plus the additional land that we want to acquire for community parks and for neighborhood parks. We then use the census American Community Survey to establish the number of people per household, and we did differentiate it between single-family dwellings and how many people per household typically in Farmington are in single-family dwellings versus apartments versus medium density. So we have kind of three categories to try and be more... to be able to demonstrate that we had a thought process behind it, and we were trying to make adjustments for the differences. Then this establishes a formula for the park dedication based on the dwelling units proposed in the project. So I'll move on to the next. In this case, if we assume 0.02 acres of land dedicated per person and the number of persons per household, then for every dwelling unit in a project, you have a multiplier. So if there's 150 dwelling units, you take the number of dwelling units by that multiplier. So in that case, it's somewhat nice for developers because they can do the multiplication, they can do the math, they know what it is. It isn't something that's of question. It doesn't do the percentage based on the density; it more looks at "This is the standard amount we want for everybody." If you have a denser project, you have a lower multiplier because there's more people that are there that can be served and there's fewer people per household. So I did provide some examples and I can walk through those. It's the existing and proposed. So the rate existing, if we have 150 dwelling units on 50 acres or about three units per acre, currently today it's a 12% dedication. That actual formula would do the 0.058 per unit. The acres required by dedication—you can see they are different. There would be more acres required for dedication with the proposed formula. The estimated cash in lieu—if there's no land dedication, we estimated using a 70,000 per acre value; that was just based on kind of the recent numbers you've been seeing. You can see the difference in terms of the amount you would collect in fee. However, the park development fee, you will see in the ordinance, has gone away. That was something the City Attorney was very uncomfortable with, we were uncomfortable with—it's not based in statute. But in the end, with this adjustment, we will offset that difference through a slightly different formula, and then we would have a little bit more. So the fee is similar; we don't want to be too far out one direction or another. People are comfortable. We also need to be recognizing that we need to be based on fair market value, so we need to be cognizant of kind of what the final fee structure is. We did a similar analysis for more of a low-medium density product: 150 units on 25 acres, six units per acre. I'm not going to walk through it all because we did it the last time, but you can see the end result again is a formula that's similar in terms of how much it collects—not exactly the same, but seems like it was in a comfortable range. And then same for high density. The one note and caveat is there is a way for the amount that they need to dedicate in terms of land is greater than the actual project if you put a lot of units on a small site. So there is a provision specifically in the ordinance to account for that, so that we can make sure that it's clear that we will acquire... intend that it would be cash in lieu. But that is something that we feel like can address that concern. The code revisions: the code was restructured for clarity. We did work with the city attorney and with staff on restructuring and making any adjustments to the code. You had a lot of great provisions in there; it was just sometimes things were really big paragraphs and hard to follow. So we broke things up, we moved things around. In our minds, the order that you would be using the code or thinking through Park dedication is always kind of the order we try and do a code. There is a new provision requiring a survey for the property prior to dedication; that's just to protect you so that you actually know the property you're receiving in park dedication and you have a survey that you can refer to. We revised the dedication formula to match what we just talked through today. We do have a provision addressing mixed-use specifically and how you handle with mixed-use. You had a provision previously, but with the way that we've gone to units, we have to look at units and the 5% differently, and so that is something that we have included. We removed the park development fee. The proposed changes are consistent with state statute requirements; City Attorney has reviewed it and signed off on it, and she did that after the recent court case was finished. We did hold a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and Parks Commission; that was to review it and make sure that we were headed in the direction that made sense. They felt very comfortable with it. So, two days later, Parks and Recreation Commission reviewed it and recommended approval of the draft ordinance, and then there was a Planning Commission public hearing on July 9th. At that Planning Commission meeting, my understanding was there were no comments received during the public hearing process, and the Planning Commission felt comfortable with what had been created. So tonight, the request this evening is to approve and pass Ordinance 2024-008 to amend it and establish the new park dedication ordinance. With that, I can answer questions, and I do have more details if you have very detailed questions. I will try my best to answer those. Thank you. [27:06] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Appreciate it. Nick, question? [27:06] **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Um, I guess nothing in in the actual ordinance specifies what type of dedication you'll take—land versus cash, right? Is that basically determined by how you've gone through and actually designated where the future neighborhood parks and community parks will be? [27:51] **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: Right. So I believe that the ordinance says that the City Council has the ability to choose how they want to handle a dedication, and that's very similar language to statute where it says the city "may at its own discretion or choice" accept the cash in lieu. So you have the ability to have that conversation, but we don't have specific rules about when we will do it and when not. There is reference in the ordinance to the comprehensive plan, though, and what it says. [28:36] **Councilmember Nick Lien**: It just makes me very happy to kind of see how we've laid out where the future parks should be, so we don't end up with this situation where we have three parks within a quarter-mile of each other, and we just because we mandated that when you build a development, you had to build a park. So yeah, that is going away; that's the intention we solved that problem, so the net result is all positive to me, I think on that. So that's all. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Holly? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: No questions, just a deep appreciation for the amount of time, energy, and work that went into this by all involved. Very well done, thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Katie? [29:22] **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Yeah, um, I guess my question is really related to... this came about because developers were giving us feedback about our Park dedication fees. So how does this stack up against our neighboring communities in terms of competitiveness from a development standpoint? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: So I'll answer part of it, and Kelly may have some thoughts too. I believe—and this is where Kelly can correct me—my understanding when I came into the process was that some of it had to do with the park development fee, not necessarily Park dedication, which in developers' minds they're very used to, and so that's something that folks are comfortable with. Apple Valley and Burnsville use a similar—not exactly the same, but a similar—thought process of acres of land to be dedicated per person, and so that should be fairly familiar to folks. It's always a little bit challenging to do actual like fee comparisons because it's based on fair market value of land, and so your land may have a different value than Lakeville's or Rosemount's. So that part I can't answer as well because of the nature of how Park dedication has to be collected, but from a formula standpoint, we're much more comparable to our neighboring cities—two of them, I think. A couple of them look at kind of more the traditional method. I also pulled up just to remind myself—we, meaning HKGI, does a park dedication study every once in a while—so the last time we did it, there are a few cities that were doing it more this method, so like Rochester... who else did I see? Arden Hills. There's a couple. I think people haven't totally gone this route; I feel more comfortable because I feel like that percentage was just picked out of the air, whereas at least this feels like a basis that we're using the comp plans. We know how many acres you want, we know how many people are in those households. So I feel more comfortable, but it isn't—I will not say it's a common method, I would say people have been starting to move towards it. [30:53] **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Does the ordinance address timeline to collect this? So land's purchased, developer sits on it for a long period of time before development... does the ordinance address when that collection would occur if they delay development for any reason? **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Yeah, when the development contract is sent out, we would collect it at that time with any other fees that are due to the city. Yeah, so the developers had questions definitely on the park development fee, and it wasn't necessarily about the dedication fees; it was more about the language in the ordinance and not understanding what they were to give and not give. And then also the percentages—nobody could answer where the percentages came from or why. So there's more confusion on that instead of the park dedication fees themselves. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Steve? [31:40] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Um, in terms of time frame to use and kind of auditing that piece of it—so, you know, we get cash in lieu, is there a certain time period that we have to use it or could it theoretically be kind of in that special revenue fund for 10 years to build up for a larger park, for example? **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Yeah, so Kim provides me with a detailed spreadsheet of where the restricted funds are, where the unrestricted funds are, and there's funds in there from probably several decades ago and then funds in there that are more new like Sapphire Lake. So we know exactly what's in that fund at a given time and what we can spend on which park and not. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Okay. Would you mind going back to the slide where you showed the comparison under existing versus proposed, please? Do you have a certain... high, low? No, that one's... that one's fine. Okay. Yeah, low density is fine. So to extend on your question, if the verbiage of the park development fee had some ambiguity to it versus the park dedication fee, and we've simply removed the development fee and adjusted the dollars to align, knowing that there's going to be a gap anyway... our rates have increased. It's going to be more expensive for developers. There's a higher—whether it's land or whether it's cash in lieu—it's going to cost developers more under this proposed ordinance, probably? [33:12] **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: Probably. And the only reason I say probably is it's going to be based on the fair market value of the land. So we don't know, we just used an estimate for it. I think it's probably reflective of what you are doing. Obviously, we have a system that's more expensive, so yes, there is a slight increase, but it's based on what we know—you have a system that you're trying to create, we know that there are costs associated with it. And the formula—we could make adjustments to the formula. We looked at different rates, slightly different, like more land/less land per person, but this felt like the most comfortable of the options that we had because it's based on something we can point back to. [33:59] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Okay. Um, my second question is a little bit of an extension of that. So when we had to establish the nexus and we know that there's going to be a gap between whether we get land or we get cash in lieu, what we get over time to total build-out based on our Park Master Plan... there's still a gap between actual cost, not factoring for inflation, all the things. Do we know that that gap, with any amount of certainty, has been reduced with this new proposal, or is that completely... there's no way to know that? I'm just trying to figure like, if we came up with $44 million, have we bettered our position? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: I think I'm struggling only because it depends on the combination of in what order things happen from the standpoint of whether you're going to take a park and take the land or you're going to take the cash. And so, somewhat the order matters, and the... how it works with the commercial and industrial. This was just the residential, and we kept the commercial/industrial the same; there's not as much foundation for another formula for that. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Okay. **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: I'm hoping you bettered your position. That's always my goal, because you now have actual numbers and we know what we're aiming for. [34:44] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: And I guess where I'm coming from with that is, I mean, we're 46% undeveloped, right? We're not going to continue to build residential in any capacity outside of high density at the same rate in which we have over the last two decades. Right? So most of the commercial properties are going—high percentage if not all are going to end up being cash in lieu, which moves us into a better position. Where my question was leading was, if we're using even Burnsville or Apple Valley as potential comparisons of, you know, communities that are essentially built out, we already had previous plats that were presented that had to be amended and density changed or request changed because of affordability. What is our "out"? Do we come back and re-amend or recalculate our formula if we find that this proposal is an obstacle to prospective development? [36:17] **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: You can. You can revise it at any time. And the challenge... there is a couple of places where it would be amended. One would be every once in a while looking at the American Community Survey to see if there's more or fewer people per household, because that's based on the last American Community Survey—how they do it is like the last five years' number. That's one element. You could adjust and say, "Well, we don't want to have as much land per person in the end," and so we adjust that number down. That would adjust the formula. I mean, one element is we were looking at Burnsville and Apple Valley just to say their formula is similar, not necessarily that their numbers are the exact same, because they have a different amount of land that they're looking for in their systems. It's more about looking at "Is the methodology similar?" And so the methodology is similar; the numbers would be different than what numbers you are using. And you always have the ability to, as the council—there's some flexibility in figuring things out as you work through a development process for various reasons. [37:04] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Okay. Let me think of one question. I guess you talked about the order in which you build things. If you were to do something like the bond for the Rambling River Center, can you demonstrate then that the cash in lieu—you said it had to be for an improvement—but can it be for a past improvement? I mean, is that kind of... if you have taken on some sort of debt to finance an improvement, can you use the cash in lieu to pay that debt down? Does that make sense? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: It does. I was working through the sequencing question. You have a master plan where you're going to build 10 things, and if you've been taking kind of cash in lieu along the way, but you want to build one of those things sooner and you're doing bonded to take it because you think cash in lieu will come later... probably a better person for... [37:50] **Staff Member (Leah)**: I can answer that real quick. Initial reaction: no. Because the idea of the cash in lieu and the Park Development Fund is that this new development is the thing that we're preparing for and preparing the parks for. So if you've already made a decision that doesn't have to do with that added population, that wouldn't be considered like an expansion because of that development. So the nexus would be twisted there. **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: There's also restrictions on the funds by proximity. **Staff Member (Leah)**: So this development—any funds we take off of development A has to be spent within a defined—I believe by statute—distance of... **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: It's not. That's more of a city policy usually. I mean, I recommend it wholeheartedly because that'll be easier to justify and ensure the nexus, but it's technically not in the statute. [38:35] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Okay, that's kind of what I wonder. If we wanted to build like a Jim Bell type thing and you were just expecting to finance it by any development that may occur in that area—I mean, that may not happen for a long time, right? So you have to wait for the development to build your major parks. Do you hamstring yourself with the policy as written? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: But the improvements have to be tied to growth, right? That's the key. And so it has to show future growth as part of... Yeah, what I was struggling with with your example—and I was trying to work through—was if you're using past Park Dedication that is in the fund... This is what I was trying to figure out. If the funds are already there and then you build this feature, can you use the funds for that new feature? Potentially you could, because they're getting created. But if you're talking about something retroactively, that gets a little bit more problematic, I think. And that's where I was struggling with which way your example was going, backwards or forwards. [39:21] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: It was slightly like working off two different plans. You have a park master plan of what you know you should look like in 2040, and you have a comp plan that says what your residential should have developed in dedication fees by that time. And can you just make the reasonable assumption on a projection of growth? I know it's very dangerous to do, right? I just don't know... Could you bond for future and assign those future Park dedication fees to the bonding that you do today and use those for that purpose? Am I hearing that right? **Staff Member (Leah)**: That's kind of also what you're asking—like, we bond today for something, can we use that future Park dedication? And I'm waiting because Leah is looking up... and the attorney is signing right now. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: I understand the question now. Do I have an answer that's very specific? I think that's something... I think there's definitely something there to look at. I'm not advocating going down that road; we saw where that did it in other areas in our history that suggest that's a bad idea, but I'm going to take it as a good sign that we're asking very technical details. [40:09] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: My only follow-up, and this question is more for Leah. As we've gone down this path of identifying larger community parks, if past continues to kind of dictate the cost of land acquisition, the cost of site readiness and building... if we see developers—I'm going to use Flagstaff Meadows as an example, right? It was a four-quadrant development, four separate parcels. The idea was a centralized larger community park. If our plan is to build that out into the next two parcels to the west, but the developers come in and say, "We're going to give you cash instead," that then causes us to go back and look at, okay, well now we can't make it a community park, it's not going to fit the need of the residents. Well, by the way, there's no more development in that area. Is there verbiage that's in the ordinance amendment to help us protect, quote-unquote, our master plan to ensure that we're not under-built and over-cash-in-lieued, if I say that? [40:56] **Staff Member (Leah)**: Yes. Rita mentioned earlier that there is some say-so that the city has over how it accepts, whether cash or land, and especially because of the plans, which is kind of the underpinning of this whole thing, we actually have the proof that here's where the trails are or here's where the parkland is and this is where we need it to be. So yes, we do have that. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Anything else? Okay. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Can I try to rephrase Councilmember Lien's question? Because I think now I've had a chance to process it for a second. So we have the land at Jim Bell Park, we know we want to develop it at some point with infrastructure on-site. If our fund balance from cash in lieu reaches a certain point—say it's a million dollars that we've collected of cash in lieu—can we allocate those dollars to Jim Bell Park to use to build that out? [42:29] **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Not all of them. We have dollars right now obviously tied to Sapphire Lake, we have dollars tied to Middle Creek. Um, we do have dollars tied to Jim Bell, but we have several restricted funds that we couldn't do that. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: And they're restricted though based on our own direction to the ordinance as a city, though? So if we removed that as part of the ordinance, that we could collect those funds and put them towards any future development of a park that we've identified, is that possible? **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: I don't know if you could backtrack... could you, Leah? Because right now we've said... **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: But if, say, it's a go-forward? So like say we changed the ordinance today, we start collecting these fees over the next six months. There's no restriction on them being allocated to the development zone. Can they be used for something like building out Jim Bell Park? [43:14] **Staff Member (Leah)**: Yeah, these are all really good questions. I would say... **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Am I getting at what you were trying? **Councilmember Nick Lien**: A little bit, yes. But I was literally talking about future development too. Can you pay back a GO bond early with future Park dedication fees? Same question, but just in the future tense whereas [Steve's was] past tense. **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: But just to make sure, what you were referencing is not in the ordinance. It must be a policy that the city has, because there's not a specific thing in the ordinance that says, "Right when you dedicate it, we're going to tell you exactly which park it's going to and this is the park." So we would have to amend a policy that... I don't believe we have a policy. It's just been what we've done—past practices. **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: So that's something that we could address on a go-forward, though. If we wanted to, if a development comes in, we are not going to keep those Park dedication fees to that development; we could [apply] them to existing that we want to do. **Staff Member (Leah)**: Development A, we have funds from that, we could take that right now and put towards Rambling River Park. **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Okay. **Staff Member (Leah)**: We could put it to Jim Bell, we could put it to a community park or neighborhood park that's... **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Yep, answered my question. [43:59] **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Yeah, I mean that's... I've got two thoughts here. And Mayor, you asked a good question, because clearly the proposed number is higher. So I mean, realistically, if a developer is coming in and they want to build 150 units and we—you know, whatever—we say, "You know, we need this amount of land dedicated," that's going to take away from the buildable units. Ultimately, if the new formula comes out—I mean, it looks like in this example about $110,000 difference—that cost is going to be essentially borne by the... **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: But the $323,000—the last... we're removing the park developers... If you look at the... **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Oh, true, true, true. Okay. Yeah. But either way, if there's higher cost, it is going to be passed on to homeowners, and developers are going to say, "Well, Farmington's become more expensive to build in." So I think that may have been part of your thought with that, Mayor—you know, are we creating a situation like that? The other part that I am worried about is, based on all the questions up here, I think we're confused about the application of how this is going to look potentially. And also the reality that, you know, are we borrowing dollars [from] one park to pay for another? And you know, then we've got a situation in the future where would a council or with the Park and Rec Commission or Planning Commission say, "You know, be evaluating and saying, 'Well, we can get more benefit by doing the cash in lieu versus the amount of acreage, so let's pick the cash in lieu'"? And then I think it just creates inconsistency for developers, right? Because if we have the flexibility to say, "Well, in this development we'd rather take cash in lieu versus that development we'd rather actually have park dedication or land dedication." [45:35] **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: I think that what I'm struggling with is I don't think it's changed with this ordinance; it's just how the formula is calculated. So just to clarify, from my understanding, unless I'm wrong, that this is just changing how we calculate the land and the fee, and it's not changing the process you've been using historically. It's getting at the number in a slightly different method. And I know that there's a difference in the acres shown—I recognize that—but in essence, the methodology is the same, where you've always had the choice of cash, land, or a combination of cash and land. That part's not changing. And I don't think—I mean, I feel like from Tony and my perspective, that difference of $30,000 is noticeable but not a significant amount of difference between the two. **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Steve, in most developments, we're probably going to have to take a combination of land and cash in lieu, because with the park development fee going away, we wouldn't be able to build the park. Right? So our goal is four acres per park, but if it's just over that, we're going to have to compromise and take some cash too. [47:08] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: And where I was going, I'm going to kind of extend that and then I think I'll make my point here. Go up one more slide to the low density. Okay. So where I... again, we always defer to the smart people, right? You guys are the ones working with developers, you're getting the feedback all the time. My gut tells me when we have a low-density development, knowing what the costs in the market already are, and we've changed our dedication from 6 acres on a proposed 50-acre site to now 8.7... a developer is going to say, "I'm going to give you cash every time because I'm not giving you an extra three acres because I just gave you nine units. I'm going to make way more than the 609,000." I'm going to send you... What I'm asking is: are we setting ourselves up for a pretty nasty predicament that we cannot fulfill our master plan just based on the calculations? Like, am I seeing something here, or am I completely in left field? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: But it's our choice. It's our choice to say, "You can do this, or not develop." And they'll say, "Okay." **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: I also think to note, we're doing—I think, wasn't it... didn't we... **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: 17? **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: Yeah, it used to be 17 parks, and now we're only talking eight neighborhood parks. So the amount of neighborhood parkland you're trying to acquire has reduced by half, which means if you can center the park amongst a variety of developments and get a little from each, then you can probably put together the neighborhood park, or maybe you can get most from each. So yes, I understand what you're saying about the acreage having gone up, but we've also reduced the number we're trying to do that with. We have a very specific location that we want. I think in the past it's been a little bit more in conversation, whereas here we're saying we want it kind of centered here. So yes, it might move, but it's not quite as frequent, and it's a little bit fewer times that you have to have those conversations. [49:26] **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Okay. In this example, we would definitely want land and cash in lieu. You know, this would be a neighborhood park that... we wouldn't want 8.7 acres for a neighborhood park, right? So... Right. **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: Okay, anything else? I don't... I mean, that slide for example—I think it just makes it confusing, because if you have a developer that comes in and says we have to give up 2.7—or yeah, 2.7 acres—and we'll just give you cash, then we have an area where we don't have a larger neighborhood/smaller community park that we had essentially planned for in that circle, right? **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: No, but what they're saying is we would actually only want four of those 8.7 acres, and for the other 4.7, we would ask for cash. Correct. **Rita Trap (HKGI Consultant)**: And this chart is really only for you, and I even hesitated to include it in the slides, because this is just to explain how the change happened. It's not in the ordinance. People are just going to take the ordinance and the formula and apply it—not even... they're not going to go retroactively. Maybe a few of yours, but I doubt most people will go retroactively and figure out what it was. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Any other comments? Okay, we'll take a motion to approve the ordinance amending the Farmington City Code regarding public park trails and open space dedication. **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Motion to approve. **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Motion by Katie, second by Nick. Call the roll, please. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Buron? **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Bernatz? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Lien? **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Wilson? **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Mayor Hoyt? **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Yes. Thank you. Next item is 12.1, authorizing issuance and awarding sale of General Obligation Bonds, Series 2024A. Kim? [51:00] **Finance Director Kim Sommerland**: Good evening. At the June 3rd Council meeting, the City Council authorized the city's financial advisor, Northland Securities, to solicit proposals for the Series 2024A General Obligation Bonds. And this morning we received five bids. Jessica Green from Northland Securities is here to share the results. **Jessica Green (Northland Securities)**: Mayor, Council, good evening. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Welcome back. **Jessica Green (Northland Securities)**: Thank you. Um, as Kim just shared with you, we did have that bond sale this morning and things went very well. Um, we received five bids, with Baird out of Milwaukee being the low bid. Um, so you do have a bond sale summary um that Kim would have shared with you this afternoon after the sale wrapped up and all the final numbers were compiled. So I'll go through that information pretty quickly. Um, we won't dive into most of the schedules, but I'm happy to take any questions as we go. Okay, so we have a bond size of $3,115,000 General Obligation Bonds. These will be considered Series 2024A for the city. And as you know, the bonds will be funding street reconstruction activities and then also improvements to the Rambling River Center. So the tax abatement portion is covering that Rambling River Center improvement portion, and then, of course, the street reconstruction is covered under a different borrowing authority. We also have a few different terms in here. So with the tax abatement portion—so again, Rambling River Center—this is going to be structured over 15 years, and then the street reconstruction portion being structured over 10 years. The bonds will be General Obligations of the city and then payable from those tax abatement levies and then also debt service levies related to the street reconstruction portion. Competitive sale today—again, five bids came in—and we did seek a rating for this bond issuance. So these bonds received that Double-A Plus rating. So that's a rating that's been affirmed for the city for this series of bonds. The city generally just continues to score very well against S&P rating methodology. Um, some remarks from that report are that the city has a very strong financial position, so both in budgetary flexibility and your liquidity. And then also some nice remarks about the growth that the city's been seeing, so that your estimated market value for the total for the city has been increasing quite nicely over the past few years. So some nice remarks there. Final maturity here will be February 1 of 2040. We do have a call date, February 1 of 2032; so at that point, the Council is able to call in bonds if you'd like to for restructuring, paying down the bonds in whole or in part on that date or any after. Again, par amount here is 3,115,000. So this is a reduction from what we discussed last month. When we last visited, we had a par amount of 3,360,000 planned. Due to premium being received on the bonds, we were able to reduce the size of the bonds. So the par is reduced, and then also we saw a nice reduction on the interest rate as well. So the true interest cost that we had anticipated was about 3.73%. Um, today we came away with 3.46%. And I realize that those numbers don't really mean anything, so that's about an $83,000 difference over the life of the bonds. So some nice interest savings there. On the second page of your bond sale summary, you've got the bid tab. So this just shows Baird's winning bid here, the low bid at 3.46%. The cover bid came from BNY Mellon, and you can see that as opposed to the 3.46% that Baird offered, BNY offered 3.465%, so a very, very close cover bid. And the remaining bids were nicely stacked as well. And then from there, we've got some information related to sources and uses, breaking down the sort of the coupon versus the yield on the next page. And then you've got your individual debt service schedule, both on a combined basis and then breaking that out with the tax abatement portion and the street reconstruction portion. And then finally, just kind of rounding things out here, you've got some graphs at the very final pages of your sales summary just to kind of give you a little bit of a snapshot of kind of what's been going on in the market. Um, 2024 is that black line, which shows that we're kind of in a little bit of a dip right now. Um, we've seen some nice corrections in the market over the past few weeks, so good time to sell bonds is the short story there. With that, the Council does have a resolution for your consideration for the award and sale of $3,115,000 in General Obligation Bonds, and I am happy to take any questions that you may have. [55:40] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Thank you, ma'am. Steve? **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: So we had five bids, and is that a good number? **Jessica Green (Northland Securities)**: It is a good number for the size of a bond. It is. Um, so if we were looking at... if you get above 10-15 million, you start to get a little bit more national attention. So maybe you're looking at six, seven, eight bids. Five bids is very good, though. Um, as of last week, we had three bidders that were signed up. It's sort of commonplace that you may see one or two squeak in there at the last minute, and that's what happened today. So we came away with five. Um, I would tell you that three bids is also very good, but five is great. Yep. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: And I would just also make a comment too. I mean, we as a city are kind of putting ourselves at risk a little bit of asking for a rating, and the affirmation of the Double-A Plus, I think, is really good. And I think residents should be happy about that because that's essentially affirming our financial management, which reflects how the Council and our team are doing in terms of managing taxpayer dollars. So I... you know, that's... I was really happy to see that. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: All good. Yep. Thank you, sir. Katie? **Councilmember Katie Buron**: I don't have any questions. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Holly? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: No questions. [57:11] **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: I don't think the Council deserves much credit for the [financial management]—we say "yes" to everything they tell us, but that's a testament to Kim and Chris before that. So, great job. Yeah, I don't have any comments beyond what my peers have said. It's a good call and worked out in our favor this time. So I would seek a motion to approve the adoption of Resolution 2024-063 awarding sale of General Obligation Bond Series 2024A to the low bidder as presented by Northland Securities. **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Motion. **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Motion by Katie, second by Steve. Call the roll, please. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Bernatz? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Lien? **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Wilson? **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Mayor Hoyt? **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Yes. **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Councilmember Buron? **Councilmember Katie Buron**: Yes. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kim. All right, round table. Leah? [57:59] **Staff Member (Leah)**: Great. I have no bison news. I have no judge news. But the Dakota County Fair is coming up August 5th through the 11th. So that's what I have. Thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Nick? **Councilmember Nick Lien**: I just got back from vacation, so I'm too tired to have anything creative today—not that I really have. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Holly? **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Uh, Relay for Life is at Bachman's on Friday. So, um, I think that, you know, this is an area where, whether we want to say... whether we want to admit it or not, we all know far too many people that are affected by cancer. And um, if you are moved in that direction, I would encourage you to join the people that are going to be there. Um, I'll be stopping by for a little bit on Friday night, but that is happening. Thank you, ma'am. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Katie? **Councilmember Katie Buron**: I don't have anything tonight. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Steve? [58:45] **Councilmember Steve Wilson**: Um, on our consent agenda, we approved 14 new individuals that are going to be election judges. So thank you, all 14, for stepping up. It actually, um, obviously makes our elections go more smoothly, helps out Shirley and the team. So just want to thank you, in addition to all those that have previously stepped up to volunteer. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Thank you. Staff Member Lynn? **Staff Member (Lynn)**: I'd like to welcome Heidi Welsh to the Dakota County Manager position. We're excited to work with her, and we look forward to seeing her here in Farmington. And also, we have Open Door coming to Rambling River Center tomorrow from 3:00 to 4:30. Thank you, ma'am. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: City Clerk Shirley? [59:33] **City Clerk Shirley Buecksler**: Candidate filing for Mayor and two Councilmember seats will open on Tuesday, July 30th through Tuesday, August 13th at 5:00 p.m. The—excuse me, my voice—Affidavit of Candidacy and $5 fee can be filed at City Hall with the City Clerk. And if you have any questions on filing or elections or voting, please let me know. Thank you, ma'am. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Staff Member Julie? **Staff Member (Julie)**: Consent agenda tonight, we approved the Public Works Superintendent. If you recall, this is a position we had retooled—staff had changed—so we are really excited to have found a qualified candidate. It's a really critical role for Public Works, so we're happy that we got that one through. Thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Staff Member Dan? [1:00:18] **Staff Member (Dan)**: Um, today we had our EDA meeting, and so I appreciate the EDA and their input. We'll be putting together budgets—we're in that season. I also want to give the final reminder that tomorrow from 8:00 to 10:30 is our Small Business Resource Fair here at City Hall, and we encourage all small businesses to participate. Thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Thank you. John? **Public Works Director John Powell**: Thank you, Mayor. Uh, we found out this week or late last week that we received a grant as part of the Watershed Based Implementation Funding that comes from the Board of Water and Soil Resources at a state level. A certain amount is allocated to Dakota County, or specifically to the Vermillion River Watershed JPO, and then it's a competitive process to score potential projects. In early 2023, we did a study of various projects we could do to improve the storm water quality being discharged into the Vermillion River, and we had one project at 4th and Willow. The estimated cost is $117,000 and the grant amount is about $71,000 to cover that cost. This would be next year, and the balance is split between the city, the county, and the Watershed JPO, with most of it coming from the Watershed JPO. So we really appreciate those partnerships we have and the JPO advocating on behalf of the city of Farmington. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Nice. Thank you, sir. Kelly? [1:01:53] **Parks & Recreation Director Kelly Klos**: Just want to [provide] a final reminder that Party in the Park is Friday, July 26th at Lake Julia Park. 7:00 p.m. is kids' dance to start the night off, and then about 8:40 we'll be showing the movie *Shrek*. It's free for all to join, so come on out on that night. Thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Kim? **Finance Director Kim Sommerland**: We are busy reviewing the budget or putting that together for 2025. So Lynn, Julie, and I have met with all the departments to discuss their budget requests in a little bit of detail, and we will be reviewing those, refining budgets, and meeting with you at a work session early August to hopefully bring to you a viable and fiscally responsible budget. Thank you. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Chief? [1:02:42] **Fire Chief Matthew Price**: This evening, our four paid-on-call firefighters just started their onboarding process, so after this, I'll be running up to the station to see how that's all going. Um, we are still working on the tender. We're waiting on our drop tanks still, but we will be doing a ceremony for the tender. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Any idea? I mean, are we talking weeks, months yet? **Fire Chief Matthew Price**: No comment. Um, a lot of stuff had happened in the... we would have had it right in the beginning. A lot of miscommunication with the vendor that we were dealing with. Um, they put a rush order on it, but again, it's one of those things—we're at the mercy of when they actually make the product. Again, we're... it's a blue tarp, so they don't have blue, so we have to wait for them to make it. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: All right, fair. Thank you, sir. Chief? [1:03:28] **Police Chief Nate Siem**: Tuesday, August 6th: National Night Out. If you'd like to register your neighborhood event, you can do that through the city's website. Thank you, sir. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: I don't have anything to add, so at that, we look for a motion to adjourn. **Councilmember Holly Bernatz**: Motion to adjourn. **Councilmember Nick Lien**: Second. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: Motion by Holly, second by Nick. All in favor say aye. **All**: Aye. **Mayor Joshua Hoyt**: We're adjourned at 8:02. [1:04:22] [Music] [Applause] [Music]