This transcript involves the Lake Elmo City Council meeting. Based on the official list and the context of the dialogue, I have identified the speakers and formatted the transcript accordingly. [0:00] **Unidentified Speaker:** I will email you there. [0:01] **Unidentified Speaker:** I will. [0:02] **Unidentified Speaker:** Okay. Thank you. [0:03] **Unidentified Speaker:** Yeah, I know. But I thought we would get an email from the website, right? [0:13] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** 7:01 will uh call the Lake Elmo City Council meeting for Tuesday, September 2nd to order. Please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. [0:22] **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. [0:35] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. Item B on the agenda is approval of the agenda. I understand that council member Hirn would like to pull something. [0:40] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Yeah, I'd like to pull item number nine uh to the regular agenda, please. [0:46] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay, we'll pull item number nine and make that regular agenda item number three. [0:49] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Sounds good. Thank you. [0:51] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. Anything else? Or I'll entertain a motion to uh approve the amended agenda. [0:55] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** So moved. [0:57] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Support. [1:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Have a motion and a second to approve an amended agenda with the consent agenda number nine being moved to number three on the regular agenda. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. [1:10] **All Council Members:** I. [1:13] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Agenda uh amended agenda is approved. Uh Julie, do we have any public comments or inquiries not pertaining to the agenda this evening? [1:25] **City Clerk Julie Johnson:** Okay. [Shakes head/No] [1:27] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, item D is we have approval of the minutes from the 8/19/25 city council meetings. Unless somebody has something that's incorrect in there, would like something changed, I'll entertain a motion on approval of the uh meeting minutes from 8/19. [1:45] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** So moved. [1:46] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** Support. [1:48] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay, we have a motion in a second for approval of the minutes from 8/19. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. [1:55] **All Council Members:** I. [1:58] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right, moving right along. We have the consent agenda, which is approve payments and disbursements. Approve release of warranty security for public improvements at Northstar third edition. Approve well number two PFAS water treatment plant pay request. Approve well PFAS water treatment plant change order. Accept bids and award contract for the 2025 seal quote project. Accept quotes and award contract for the 2025 striping project. Number seven, approve water meter purchase. Number eight, approve public works shop floor resurfacing. 10, approve financial analyst and utility billing clerk job description. Number 11, approve financial analyst and utility billing clerk wage increase. If everybody's copacetic with that, I'll entertain a motion on approval of the consent agenda. [2:55] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Move to approve consent agenda. [2:57] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Second. [3:00] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We have a motion and second to approve the consent agenda as read. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. [3:06] **All Council Members:** I. [3:08] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Those opposed, same sign, hearing none. Consent agenda is approved. Our regular agenda. Um, notably most people are here for item number two. However, we do have somebody online that was told they'd be on at 7:10. So, we're going to go ahead with the public works operational assessment as we turn this over to Mr. Kersh. You're going to present this. [3:25] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** Good evening. Can you can you hear me? Okay. [3:28] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We can. [3:29] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** Yeah. [3:30] **City Administrator Nicole Miller:** Hold on, Brian. Um we would just wanted to introduce this um mayor and council. We've been working with Rafelis since the beginning of the year about um on this public works operational assessment and as you'll recall in May they did present to you the draft report and have taken um feedback from the council and incorporated that into the final report. And so, um, we spent a lot of hours meeting with them as a team, going over, um, learning more about the department and going through the recommendations. And so, we are excited to be here and we all thoroughly support the recommendations that have been presented. Um, and so, you're right, um, Brian from Rafelis is online to run us through a presentation, but then the rest of us are here to help answer any questions as well. [4:18] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** Thank you, Nicole. And can you see my presentation on your end? [4:22] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Yes, sir. [4:24] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** Okay. Fantastic. Excellent. Uh, unfortunately, you guys are on a tiny little two-inch box, so I won't be able to see who who is speaking, but I'm happy to engage in conversation uh as we go along. Um, as you know, we were there in in May. We took some feedback. I'm going to focus more of the time on uh the benchmarking today. [Presenting data on peers: North St. Paul, Hugo, Stillwater, New Brighton, Oakdale, Forest Lake, and Mounds View. Discussing staffing levels, growth, and infrastructure density.] ...So given the growth in workload and workload needs uh that we've seen, a recommendation is that the city increase staffing by two FTEs in 2025 and one in 2026. Goal for 2025 should be to aim to add one operator and one lead operator. [10:55] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Questions for Mr. Kersh. Thank you for that. Anyone? [11:03] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** No. [11:05] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** More so for staff, and thank you Mr. Kersh for all that, for coming back with the change presentation based upon the last meeting. Appreciate it. For beehive—because I know we've talked about this before as to it is being implemented, but obviously I'm not aware of what's going on in the field as of today—where do you see things are at at this moment in terms of that implementation? How how much is it being used right now? [11:22] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** Um yeah, so when I started in 2019 it was there and nobody had used it. Um we started working immediately with engineering... All the guys are using it for sure daily to navigate our system. When we do our hydrant flushing or valve exercising or jetting, we're populating what gets completed each day. As far as the work order portion of it, Adam and I are currently the ones that are entering that information and in all honesty, we are struggling to find the time to get that information in there. [12:15] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Would you anticipate as it as it does expand more that would the accuracy of our data for utility cost be improved? [12:25] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** Each snow event, they know almost precisely on what each snow event costs... it's super strong. Um it just we got a little time to get there is what we need. [12:44] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Gotcha. And then in terms of... I mean I have my preference for service contract over continuing to use staff myself, but what do we know from other cities generally what it what is expected for that type of service contract? [12:55] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** I've reached out to a couple of our service providers... neither does service contracts, but we are what they call a preferred customer. We're investigating an internal ASE certification for light vehicles. All our heavy equipment stuff would still be sent out until we determine that a need is there where we would hire somebody inside. [13:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Does Beehive uh the Beehive subscription uh offer training to subscribers? Let’s say you bring on the new FTEs or the admin person, somebody like that could probably take care of work orders. [13:42] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** I'll let Adam expert on the beehive. So, maybe he can— [13:46] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** Yeah, beehive was just bought out by Cedric Plus, which is also another firm that we use for our website. So yes, they do have background information for training as well. So it wouldn't be hard to put that person into place to be trained on how to use the asset management part of it as well as the work order part. [14:05] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Brian, in the benchmarking um comparisons, did we factor in services that other cities in our city contract out? For instance, we contract out cleaning our buildings. We contract out a lot of mowing. Or do we just take information from their ACFRs and use that without consideration of services that are contracted out? [14:26] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** There are different things that are not the same as us. Um they're not all apples to apples by any means. [14:34] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** So, basically the information what was in the back of the ACFR? [14:38] **Brian Kersh (Rafelis):** Right. Okay. [14:39] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Thank you. [14:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** So, just to piggyback on that, the mowing for instance, um, as we go through time and increase FTEs, is that something that that we would look to take care of ourselves as a city or? [14:52] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** We had a we struggled finding seasonals, right? And paying a full-time operator what they're paid and did not justify what you know what we could contract it out for. We can definitely relook at that. [15:15] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** I'm just wondering, I was trying to look with the budget here. How is this reflected in the 2026 budget? Was there any positions that we added into the budget based off the presentation tonight? [15:26] **City Administrator Nicole Miller:** Yeah. So, we we did budget for one FTE. [15:30] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** I'm sorry, where was that in the budget? [15:33] **Finance Director Clarissa Hadler:** I believe it ended up it would have been split similar to all the other positions. All of our public works positions are allocated across multiple uh departments. [15:45] **Public Works Director Pete Tholen:** Yeah, one FTE for '26, right? Without knowing exactly what we are going to propose. It's a little tough to decide if we're going to be budgeting for a supervisor role or just an operator. [16:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Well, if that's all I'll entertain a motion. [16:08] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Move to accept the public works operational assessment conducted by Rafelis. [16:12] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** Second. [16:15] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** We have a motion and a second. Who won that? Nick gets it. It's close. He's louder voice. All those in favor of the motion to accept the public works operational assessment conducted by Rafelis, please signify by saying I. [16:26] **All Council Members:** I. [16:28] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Those opposed, same sign hearing none. It's accepted as delivered. Thank you, Mr. Kersh. Item number two. This is brought upon from some comments that we've had and uh in our public comments and inquiries wanted to address uh some of the noise issues we're hearing about from the pickle ball courts. Is this Adam's item? [16:55] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** Thank you, mayor, council. Um, in 2023, I was in front of you and we worked on putting together the new pickle ball courts at Pavlin and Pebble Park. [Discusses complaints from neighboring homes which are less than the recommended 600 ft setback. Discusses sound study results (47-53 dB) and options for sound barriers or hours changes.] ...The commission is recommending to change the playing hours at Lions and Pebble Park from dawn to dusk starting in 2026. [19:40] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Thanks, Adam. Any questions for assistant director? [19:44] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Yeah, thanks for the presentation. Have you had a chance since the parks commission meeting to maybe reach out to Stillwater, Oakdale, or other communities, how they've went about mitigating the noise issues? [19:58] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** Yeah. So, Burnsville use a sound mitigation form called a "Quiet-Stick." It does mitigate the sound, but it does direct it in a different area. Our current fence would not hold those products. They are about 100 pounds per section. Redoing that fence would be needed. [21:10] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** With the 600 foot distance that was in the uh the parks plan, do we even have a park where we could put a pickle ball court that's beyond the 600 foot mark of the nearest house? [21:25] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** No, we don't unless you're going to put it in the middle of Sunfish Lake Park. [21:40] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Obviously, another strategy is the material itself that you're playing on. Do we know of others who have used that as a strategy? [21:55] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** The product is out there, but I think the noise comes from the ball and the paddle. It's not the surface. [22:15] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Okay. We've got a number of people that would like to talk on this issue. [Instructions for public comment: 6 minutes, state name and address.] First person here is Paul Boltman. [22:35] **Paul Boltman (Resident):** Paul Boltman, 8243 Deer Pond Court. I'm here to speak in favor of the report's recommendation to change playing hours. [Discusses "impulsive sound" and health issues. Asks for courts to be moved eventually.] [24:50] **John Howley (Resident):** John Howley, 8190 Lake Jane Trail North. I live 30 feet from Pebble Park pickle ball court. It's noisy, dusty. Your lights are shining on about half my yard at night till 10:00. I can't sleep. [Discusses the yelling, screams, and amplified music. Requests a complaint line and the removal of the practice board.] [27:10] **Jennifer Waters (Resident):** Jennifer Waters, 4180 Urban Circle North. I am one of the coordinators for Lake Elmo pickle ball. We play Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. till 10:00 a.m. We have about 110 members. We spoke against putting these courts in Pebble and Tablin back in 2023 because they were too close to houses. We support having no lights and removing the practice board. [28:30] **John Hammerly (Resident):** John Hammerly, 9429 Jane Road North. [Discusses experience in Florida. Explains decibels and acoustic science. Suggests sound mats can reduce noise by 50-80%. Recommends landscaping, moving the practice board, and setting hours from 8 to 8.] [31:10] **Lori Hammerly (Resident):** Lori Hammerly, 9429 Jane Road North. I've hit against that board. I'm really sorry. The board should come down. Why not start with one wall of barriers? [31:50] **Josh Godbout (Resident):** Josh Godbout, 8100 Lake Jane Trail. I agree with all points. It's almost shocking when we walk outside and don't hear the constant noise. We are not here to ruin people's fun, I just wish it wasn't as close. [32:50] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All right. Thank you very much for everyone's statements. [33:00] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Question for staff. What happened with that $40,000 for sound blankets? [33:10] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** After that meeting, we had zero complaints for a couple months, so the last two nets were installed instead based on player requests. The funds are from park dedication. [34:10] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** So I'm gonna do a multi-piece motion. Part one: amend hours for pickle ball at all courts except Lions to 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Direct staff to install up to $50,000 of sound absorbing materials on the east and south side of Pebble Park. [35:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** I think nine's too late. Eight o'clock would be better. I think we should run it till 8 o'clock. Light should just be shut off. I think we should have a sign that bans radios and other noise making. Our public works said the fences will not support the weight. We have to find a happy median. [37:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** I agree with quite a bit. Getting rid of the lights gets rid of the "dusk to dawn" confusion. I think we just need to get rid of the practice wall. I'm on the side of 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. because families should be able to enjoy a burger on their deck. [38:40] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** I was thinking 8:00 a.m. because most people get their days started then. I'd like to seepine trees and signs asking people to be respectful. [39:45] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Would your intent be to change hours for all sites? Because we have not received a single complaint from Lions. [40:10] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** Mayor, I would suggest we apply these universally so we don't move players from one park to the next. [40:50] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** I am rescinding my earlier motion. New motion: At all sites, hours from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. No longer using lights for pickle ball starting as soon as able. Remove practice wall at Pebble. Direct staff to determine materials for noise mitigation and vegetation at Pebble Park. [41:15] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Second. [41:55] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** All those in favor of the motion as council member Holtz presented, please signify by saying I. [42:15] **All Council Members:** I. [42:20] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Those opposed, same sign. Hearing none, motion passes. Lions Park playground replacement. [42:35] **Public Works Assistant Director Adam Swanepoel:** This playground was installed in 2000. It is slated for replacement in 2026. The parks commission did recommend option number four. Total cost not to exceed $317,000. [44:10] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Motion to purchase and install a new playground set... with expenses not to exceed $317,000. [44:20] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** I'll support that. [44:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Discussion. I think we need to talk about park consolidation. Do we want to be spending $300,000 every single year replacing these parks as they age, or should we consolidate into larger, better hubs? I'd like to table this until after the workshop with the parks commission next week. [45:50] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I think it would be good to have that conversation about park consolidation. [46:15] **Council Member Nick Kragness:** I agree, further discussion with them is fine. [46:20] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I'll make a motion to table this until after the discussion with the parks commission. [46:25] **Council Member Matt Hirn:** Support. [46:30] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** Motion and a second to table. All in favor? [All say I]. Motion passes. Council reports. [47:05] **Council Member Nick Dragisich:** I have one item. Discussion about storm water ordinance changes. [47:20] **Council Member Jeff Holtz:** Lake Elmo Airport Advisory Committee met. Noise complaints are down. We are looking at creating an airport club at the high school. [48:15] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** I'm excited about the 100th year anniversary celebration on the 13th. Fireworks, food trucks, and a flyover. [49:05] **Assistant City Engineer Chad Isakson:** Engineering will be having pre-construction meetings this week for the I-94 lift station. Also, demolition of the water tower at Flangley Court will happen later this month. Piece by piece with a crane. [50:05] **Mayor Charles Cadenhead:** With that we will adjourn this evening's meeting at 9:09.