Call the meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Any changes to the agenda? No, Mr. Mayor. Motion to Motion to approve the agenda. Motion by Josh. Second. Second by Kate. All in favor? I. Anyone here for public comment? Got anything? Nothing. All right. Move on to consent. Anyone have anything? Motion to approve consent agenda. Second. Motion by Kate. Second by Gina. All in favor? I. No public hearings, no general business. So, we'll jump to reports. Um, at a previous city council meeting, uh, the council had discussed whether or not, um, they wanted to take a look at what we should be doing ultimately with regards to the old PD building. And during that conversation, the council had indicated that it was supportive of establishing a committee to take a look at it um staff and directed staff to bring the item back to council at a future meeting. So, we've come back with a recommendation for a committee uh made up of city officials, one to two council members, a planning commission rep, a parks commission rep because it's facilities, um representatives from the two organizations that we currently have lease agreements with for the property. Uh possibly representatives from interest groups um that might use the space such as fire relief, Lions, etc. and then up to one one to three additional atlarge citizens and then the group would be staffed by one to two staff members who would facilitate the work group activities and provide technical input and support. That's a big group. That's a huge group. Is that too many people? It could be. In my experience with these more ad hoc groups, um a few more people isn't a bad idea, especially if you're looking for stakeholder input. Um, also you tend not to get full attendance at every meeting. True. Um, so it is a little on the larger side. I wouldn't go any larger than this. And you could rather than, you know, one to two representatives of local organizations, you could go with one. You could go with one at large citizen. You could go with no at large citizens. There's things you could do with the composition to um shrink it up a little bit. It all depends on how much broader input the council would like. What um like do you have any vision for the like the structure of this group like how it would actually function or is that are you just kind of giving us a general update or what do we do from here? So if the council wants to pursue this um we would go through the process of basically recruiting individuals the council would need to point their representative or representatives to the group. Um we would go and approach the planning commission and parks commission uh seeking volunteers. We already have one parks commissioner who has indicated they would be highly interested. We would approach hope for the community and the Elco Express to see if they have or willing and want to provide somebody to participate in the process. Um with regards to local organizations, I think we'd be looking for some input from the council who you think might be a good idea. And then I think you need to let us know if you want at large citizens or not. that in addition if you don't feel those individuals sufficiently represent the community if we want additional at large citizens um then I think what we do is do the old Facebook approach to seek interested individuals somebody's already heard about it we had a call earlier this week from somebody who had a level of interesting I like it so I think we should open it up to the community I agree okay so we're so direct Ed, um the council can decide who it's going to be when we bring back everybody else for ratification. So, we'll move forward with the recruitment process. Sounds good. All right, police. Good morning, mayor and councel. So nice to be here with coffee. Um just a little staffing update. We have our newest candidate is scheduled for testing next week. uh the 8th and 9th he'll do his psychological testing, medical and drug testing, and occupational testing. And he's indicated that once we have the positive results, I get those back from Linda. If we get those, then um we'll establish a start date, but he could be starting by the end of the month, which is very exciting news. He is so excited to get here. He wants to get here as soon as he can. um initially he will be living in the community which is also very cool with family friends. So um that's exciting to um get them up and going as soon as possible. So by summer we could have that person on their own. He does have almost 10 years of police experience with the Air Force and uh the police department in North Dakota. uh school resource officer, uh child investigations experience, which is huge. That's what he does there. Child protection, um all juvenile investigations. So, that's very exciting because we don't have anybody um with that level of training. So, very excited about that. Yesterday, some news last night until I was testifying till about 9:00 at night at the Capitol in front of the Pension and Finance Commission reference um the Minnesota Chiefs of Police were pushing for a pension change to try to stop um almost emergency level evacuation of police officers out of the profession. Um, so just uh trying to retain our law enforcement. Little little history lesson. I was one of these. 30 years ago, Bill Clinton had a huge initiative in the early to mid 90s of a 100,000 police officers across America to stem the crime that was epidemic that was happening across the country. So myself, I am known as a Clinton cop because I was hired under the grants, massive grants nationwide. That nickname is gonna stick. Clinton cop. Yep. Uh my whole career, that's what uh my chief and other people would say. So just my department alone hired four police officers chased in in the mid to late 90s under that that grant program. Well, fast forward 30 years, we're all at that age where we're hitting 50s and 55. I started at 23. So, um, we're seeing a mass exodus of police officers across the state. As you have seen in the media and everything, if you think of law enforcement or any job as a pipeline, you want to keep the people coming into the profession equal to the people going out. Well, right now there's 200 as of yesterday, 279 job postings on the post board with many of those multiple officers. Uh Minneapolis last night, someone testified is down up to 300 officers. If every single student in law enforcement programs all went to Minneapolis, they still wouldn't fill their openings alone. So in order to try to slow that down, the people leaving on the one side were trying to get a pension program that would incentivize officers to stay past 55, work in your current law enforcement, and then start getting your pension while you're working. It's uh like retired on duty type deal. So to incentivize the officers to stay in their positions longer. So we're pushing for that and we had people testifying. There's approximately maybe onetenth of the people coming into the schools in the criminal justice programs that are leaving. So in the next three years, the estimates are up to 2400 law enforcement officers are going to be retiring. There's only 10 to 11,000 officers in Minnesota. So if you can imagine and with only every year a hundred maybe entering into that system, you can see where it could be catastrophic. So I was there testifying on why we need um a pension program to incentivize law enforcement to stay because right now our current pension is once you turn 55 it incentivizes you to leave. Yeah. And just leave the profession and take your pension. So uh went really well. New experience for me. never done that. Um, so more to come on that. Uh, it's not funded right now, so we're looking at lobbying for funding. How much I'm sorry, I was just curious how much was uh I don't I don't understand and I don't necessarily agree with the actuarials, but they're saying um about 16 million a year. And I the director of PAR the pension board was there as well testifying and um the numbers as he described them I just doesn't make sense to me because if we all retire and I'm getting towards that age if we just left our pension isn't funded anymore. We don't pay in. The city doesn't pay in to our pension. So and you're drawing your full benefit. I don't see how staying and getting your pension while you're working would make that huge of a pension deficit, but that's the numbers they're using is $16 million annually. So, what are they doing about reaching out to outstate officers to draw them to Minnesota? Anything? So postboard um like North Dakota, this officer that we're hopefully hiring is coming from North Dakota. So there are people that are coming in, but what we're also seeing as officers leaving to go to states that don't have income tax or don't h pensions. Um, it's really hard because just our partners to the south and Iowa have this pension program and that's why I brought this forward to the through the chiefs of police because I see them down there staying from 55 to 60 as almost the norm in the fire and the police departments. I have friends that are doing that. So, I tried to model that program, but also the state of Iowa um three years ago passed a plan where they don't tax state pensions. So, to keep people in their state as opposed to going to South Dakota, Florida, Texas where there is no income tax. So, they have the that program down there and it really works to keep people in the profession longer. And so, that's the push for it. Um, Postboard will put ads out, individual agencies that have large enough budgets. They'll send their representatives to other state job fairs, if you will, to try to attract people here because Minnesota really does have uh amongst the nation some of the highest pay. And so that is um attracting a lot of people. Um, but it is uh it's a nationwide epidemic. It's not just in Minnesota. We're seeing this across the country. Numbers are going down. Um, there's regions that have upticks, but um those tend to be in very very pro police environments um where they just feel like they're backed from their government. So um yeah, it's it's tough. So there is no concerted effort. We are as the post board and as the chiefs of police, there are grants and programs to get education paid for um by the cities and and by the state to get people into law enforcement. Um they're just very time consuming grants that we can't even take advantage of because we don't have the capability to just hire people whenever we want. So um there's a lot of different initiatives. So, the state's trying to get people into the pipeline. Um, our program is just trying to keep them from diving out the other end so quick. What is the state's um plan for followup on the pension plan? Because I feel like it's a great idea and it should have happened like yesterday. Uh, so I'm not super I know Tom's way better and probably the other Tom is way better at the uh um logistically how a bill goes to become a law, but it was laid over and to continue on. It wasn't just killed. So more work needs to be done on it. Okay. So, I think it was, if I remember correctly, pushed laid over and pushed to further discussion. Okay. Um, right now there's only $31 million that has been allotted to the pension um commission to use. And right now, it sounds like that's going to go towards a teachers pension program. There's a dilemma there where there's two pension programs they're trying to fix. And so that money's kind of been earmarked for that. So there is no money on the docket for our program. But if it doesn't go this year, we're just trying to lay the groundwork for next year. So little bit longer update, but uh very important stuff kind of hitting the law enforcement profession. Anyone else have questions for the chief? Thank you for the detailed update. Uh engineering, I see Rich is online. He is muted though. There you go. All right. Just uh quickly um the uh old new market reconstruction project is scheduled to begin next week. They will start setting up erod control and temporary water service and bringing in materials and equipment and reclaiming. They'll reclaim just the first four blocks. Uh that would be St. Joseph Church, the east block of St. Mary, and the north block of Williams. Um we expect a couple days of activity and then um they have to wait and do some testing on the temp water and then they'll start digging on the 15th, the following week. So that project's taking off and we expect it to move fairly rapidly. Um hopefully done maybe August sometime. The uh 2024 pavement rehab project is scheduled to start on April 15th and that will move very quickly. They expect to be done with that based on their schedule by the end of May. And those are my updates. Thank you, Rich. Community development. Um uh we have a upcoming uh planning commission meeting at the end of the month and we uh are currently or we're tenatively scheduled in um a public hearing for a preliminary plat north of city hall here of property at the end of James Parkway approximately uh 90 lots in that development and also a a public hearing regarding an application for comprehensive plan amendment that was submitted by RNF Properties for redevelopment of the Alco Speedway and the um alco marketplace plat that I think you provided feedback on at the last council meeting. So um moving forward with those as well as um planning commission is working on updating the zoning ordinance regarding detached accessory structures. Sounds like a busy planning commission meeting. Yeah. Wow. All right. CC um 20 217 kids um came to the egg hunt and we have our meeting in a couple of weeks. So, is that number up or down? Um it's a little bit down. Um it fluctuates a little bit too with spring break. I I it always happens at the same time, but how schools have their spring break whether we're going to have a bigger turnout or not. So, it looked big. I mean, you guys did a great job. Thanks. From what I saw, it was fun. Uh other reports I I don't have a scale update. Scale exec is Friday and the scale general membership is a week from there. So unless you have anything for service delivery. No. I35. No, that must be I'm trying to think next week I think got cancelled but I'll check. It hasn't been since last meeting anyway. discussion by council. I have one thing. Um, if you all go into Facebook and the fire find the fire rescue days Facebook page and like it and try to start sharing, we have out there a list of all of the activities and the timing so we get that shared. We're trying to get as much promotion going for that as possible so people save the date. Um, and then also, I don't know if you guys noticed, but it is the what's it called? The owl, the movie that was filmed here. The downtown owl. Yeah, that's coming out April 23rd. But if you watch the trailer, it's got little snippets of area around town, which is pretty cool. So, heads up to keep your eyes open for that. It's kind of cool to see. It shows that car that was driving downtown as they were filming with drones. I don't know if you remember how the city was shut down for that little bit. It's kind of cool to see that on. Yeah. So, it's pretty fun. Pretty cool. Exciting. We're on the map again. Exactly. All right. That's all I got. Sorry. No, just a quick little update too on the cannabis stuff. So, um been working with Senator Port on getting an amendment to her bill that she's moving through. to Senator Port and Representative Stevenson um are doing some updates to the cannabis stuff. Uh Senator, I met with Senator Port on Monday um and she's open to the amendment. So, she sent it over to Senate Council to look at tweak uh offer suggestions and then um potentially get it included in the Senate version, which uh we won't get it in the House version, but the House basically said if the Senate accepts it, we'll accept it and there will be no push back. So Tom and and Brandon have been super helpful getting information, reaching out to cities support and all that stuff. So we got things moving. What is the amendment? Is it just going to be a lottery or Well, so the the way that the bills are currently written is to change the entire thing because as they found out the 2023 version isn't completely operational or functional or well developed. Uh so there was some fixes needed. So that is looking to change it to a lottery system. Now there's opponents against that as well and there's a whole bunch of concerns related to that but are the the amendment we're proposing is just to give cities equal at least equal footing to SEA applicants, the soio economic applicants um and or you know be right there at the top and not get thrown into the lottery like all the other applicants. Um so that cities could choose to um participate if they want to. Right. Okay. Thank you. Any other items? Just if you didn't see the Facebook post last night, uh we were again named the fourth safest city in Minnesota. So that's six out of the last seven years we've been in the top four in Minnesota. So just glad we beat Corkran. Um what do you got against? They beat us. They've edged us out the last few times. Where is that? What's that? Where is that? It's not far from Plymouth Grove up northwest corner. Okay, I've already sent their chief. Anything else? Motion to adjurnn. Motion by Josh. Second. Second by K. All in favor? I journed. Thank you.