[0:37] [music] [0:46] [music] [1:01] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: All right, good evening everyone. We'll call this meeting to order for the December 23rd, 2025 Apple Valley City Council meeting. Uh, welcome everyone this evening. Um, for any members of the audience who have signed up to speak, when your item is called, we'd ask you to approach the podium to address the council. The very first item on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance. And I'd ask everyone to rise and join us in the pledge 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. [1:42] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: All right. Thank you. And our next item is to approve the agenda. And Tom, I know we have one item to discuss tonight. [1:49] Tom Lawell: Yes, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, members of the council. Uh, we do have under the agenda, uh, we wish to acknowledge the receipt of additional information on this particular item. This being item 5B, 2040 comprehensive plan regarding the mixed business campus. Uh included in that material is a uh letter that we received this afternoon from the applicant asking for an extension of the time on this particular item that would go out to January 31st, 2026. And we can certainly discuss that when we get to item 5B on the agenda. [2:22] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: So we'll uh we'll we'll adjust our agenda to when we get to 5B to first uh have the council take action on the continuance and then we can move on if we need to to the other items thereafter. So just that's kind of how that will flow this evening. You know, normally that's a relatively administrative change, but given how late in the day this came in and the time the council's prepared, not to mention uh we knew we'd have people here this evening who've given up a little of their holiday time to come hear it. So we wanted to at least let council discuss uh continuance here um this evening. So with that change, do we have a motion to approve the agenda? [2:55] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: So moved. [2:57] Councilmember Tom Melander: Second. [2:58] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Motion from council member Grendahl, a second from council member Melander. All those in favor indicate by saying I. [3:04] Councilmembers: I. [3:05] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Opposed. The agenda is approved. The next item is our audience participation portion of the meeting for items that are not on our agenda. I didn't see anyone on the signup sheet for this. Did you Christina? [3:15] Christina Scipioni: No, I did not, Mayor. [3:17] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Got you. Uh, again, for items not on the agenda. Um, anyone who like to— [3:24] Unidentified Speaker: There's one right by the door as you walk in, sir. [3:26] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Yep. Uh, is there is there an item on the agenda that you'd like not—that's not on the agenda you'd like to address at this time? Anyone else? Okay. So, I thank you and and uh let's let's refrain from lobbing comments from the audience if we can. I'd appreciate that. It make it a lot easier to run the meeting this evening. Thank you. Um, seeing no one to speak for this item, we will close this section of the meeting and we will move on to the consent agenda. These items are considered routine and will be enacted with a single motion unless a council member or citizen request to pull an item. On the consent agenda, is there any items council members would like to pull and discuss separately? All right, seeing none, audience members of the audience, are there any items to pull and discuss separately? All right, seeing none, we'll take a motion for the consent agenda. [4:20] Councilmember Lisa Hiebert: So moved. [4:21] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Second. [4:22] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Motion from council member Hiebert, second from council member Grendahl. All those in favor indicate by saying I. [4:26] Councilmembers: I. [4:26] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Opposed. All right, that agenda items, uh, consent agenda items, excuse me. I'll carry. And we'll move on to our regular agenda, starting with 5A. And this is an ordinance adding chapter 124 to the city code regulating virtual financial currency kiosks. And Chief Francis has this item. [4:48] Police Chief Nick Francis: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I come before you tonight with a proposed ordinance addition um into our city code. Um the action that I will request at the end of the presentation is to pass the ordinance adding chapter 124 which regulates virtual currency kiosks uh and waving the second reading. Um our police department we have um very skilled, very forward-looking individuals who deal with a lot of fraud these days. Um and what we are seeing is a trend with these virtual currency kiosks that um some other departments and uh communities have um limited within their community. And we are we think it's wise for Apple Valley. So we think Apple Valley uh our police department believes it's um it's necessary to prohibit these machines in Apple Valley um to protect our residents, to prevent crime, uh promote safety and welfare of all the the residents and general public. I'll get into some of the statistics in a little bit here, but um the benefits of prohibiting this um you know far exceed any benefit that the kiosk are providing to the the public. Um, and so what is a virtual currency kiosk? You may ask yourself. I still um am not 100% convinced that everybody understands, including myself, what virtual currency is. Uh, but virtual currency uh they allow customers to exchange real cash um uh currency for virtual currency and vice versa. Uh virtual or cryptocurrency, it's a digital or virtual currency. So, it doesn't really exist. Um, it's not controlled by a uh by a government, not controlled by any type of authority. It's it's a virtual currency um that's kind of lives in in a network of computers. Virtual currency has become an emerging method of financial exploitation, especially of the elderly. You may have seen some videos um around of um people being summoned, police being summoned to the to um these machines in their community and there's an elderly person taking putting just putting feeding cash into these things uh because someone's got them on the phone and has them convinced that they need to take all their money out of the bank and put it into this uh machine. Um, so criminals engage in fraud schemes, usually directing victims to use this virtual currency kiosk and they take cash out, put it in here, and then it turns it into a virtual currency. Uh, and and um it's typically related to some of these romance or business scams that we see. Um, in 2024, so the last current year of um of uh research, there was more than 10,000 complaints um across the country. uh victims reported um about 246 million was lost through these different types of scams. Um the complaints of fraudulent transactions in 2024 represent a 99% increase. We can only believe that the 2025 stats when they're out is another large increase uh because it's it's a scam that works and people get onto it pretty quickly. um locally in 2024 and 25 um just our residents in Apple Valley have lost approximately a half a million dollars to these scams uh from the virtual currency related cyber crime. Um and over half was lost via these kiosks. So a couple hundred thousand that doesn't take into effect the people there's a lot of people that are embarrassed by this that don't report it that just I kind of cut uh cut it out as a loss. Uh so we're sure there are some other additional victims and losses out there. Um and from our own um perspective, we try to we do what we can for these victims. We meet them. We get all the information. Uh we try to do a uh a thorough investigation, but um virtually all the time it leads outside of Minnesota, outside the country, which makes it um very cumbersome for us to to actually investigate. [8:30] Police Chief Nick Francis: Um so the proposed ordinance um basically uh states it shall be unlawful for any person or legal entity to operate, place, permit, host, allow or allow to be placed a virtual currency kiosk at any location within the city. Uh this was pretty um common with the other cities that have adopted this. Um I'll get to some of those cities in a minute here, but it's basically saying these machines don't uh serve a purpose in Apple Valley and uh we are not allowing them to be placed in Apple Valley. Um, currently there's, uh, six in Apple Valley right now, uh, that are registered with the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Um, a couple different Kwik Trip locations. Uh, and you see there, AV Tobacco, uh, Cub Foods, and, uh, a market. Um, some of the ATMs are multi-purpose. I'll talk about that in a little bit about, um, coming into compliance, but there are some there's some dedicated virtual cryptocurrency machines and there are some cash crypto machines. Um other communities, St. Paul recently within the last couple weeks um had um enacted their ordinance uh prohibiting these from in the city. Stillwater was the first. Uh that was in earlier in 2025. Uh but checking with partners, virtually everybody's at least talking about it at their council level in their uh police departments. Um including many here in Dakota County. We would be the first in Dakota County if um if you so choose to pass this. But uh I do know many of our other uh communities around us are learning about it and considering. Fortunately for us, we have someone that's kind of been become a virtual cryptocurrency fraud guru within our detective unit um and and has taken uh a lot of the um responsibility to kind of research, propose the language, work with the city attorney, and come up with um the ordinance that we have proposed. [10:21] Police Chief Nick Francis: Um so in terms of compliance if approved the vendors would have uh until March 31st to remove the dedicated um cryptocurrency ATMs and then um from what I understand the multi-purpose ATMs they can simply uh be updated to disable that crypto feature. So um there again there's six in town. Anyone that is a a um a combination machine they wouldn't have to remove that machine. They would just have to um kind of turn that feature off. Um, and so visits will be made by our our folks to those current businesses to let them know about the new uh the new ordinance and give them um kind of ample notice about the ordinance and ability to to come into compliance later in 2026. And then um we'll also work with the city clerk's office to um to notify the places that we think would likely entertain these in the future, probably places with a tobacco or fuel license um or off-sale beer liquor license holders. That's that's when you looked at that list of where they're at. That's typically um the types of facilities that are hosting these machines. Uh with that, the action requested is to uh pass ordinance adding chapter 124 to the city code regulating virtual currency uh kiosks and waving the second reading. And I'll stand for any questions that you have. [11:38] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Thank you, Chief. Uh council member Melander has a question first. [11:46] Councilmember Tom Melander: I uh I was advised an awful long time ago not to invest in anything I didn't understand. And uh I'm not sure a lot of people understand this cryptocurrency at all. The one thing I do understand, well, two things. First off, it's completely untraceable. So once they feed that dollar into the whatever it is into the machine, there's no way. I mean, when that gets stolen, it disappears completely. So there's no tracing, no tracking. It's it's goodbye. Uh, the other thing I know is it's a it's a sad commentary on human nature that hardly anything can happen without somebody trying to weasle away to figure out how to take advantage of it. And we've seen numerous examples of this. And every time I do, I just shake my head because there's folks out there that just delight in trying to figure out a way to gain the system. And it's uh there's going to be a a special comeuppance to them at some point in the future. and um it's it's it's a terrible thing. So, I'm completely in support of this. [12:50] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Thank you, Council Member Melander. Council Member Hiebert. [12:51] Councilmember Lisa Hiebert: Thank you, Mayor. Uh thank you, Chief. Um I I agree that the the purpose of these machines is to make people's money disappear as well. And I appreciate you saying that the scams are probably underrepresented and $500,000 in two years for our residents is completely unacceptable. Um, so I I do appreciate this ordinance to protect our our residents and the most vulnerable in our community. I'm just kind of curious, uh, what what if any penalties are there if you come by and somebody is offering cryptocurrency with any of these machines? Is there a is there a penalty of some sort? [13:32] Police Chief Nick Francis: Uh, a violation would be a misdemeanor. Yep. And so something that's arrestable, whether or not uh they would spend time in jail or anything else, but uh, under city ordinance, it would be a misdemeanor. Uh, and then again, we would work with the city attorney's office if if that machine remained um seizing it, other ways to at least um prevent that from remaining in in our community. [13:54] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Chief, just to uh [clears throat] to piggyback on that one, right, most of these locations are also licensed for tobacco or other things. I would imagine that would come up. I you guys do a check. City clerk asks you, "Are there any reasons not to renew the license?" And I would say non-compliance with this might be a reason to consider not renewing. Sorry, that illegal activity might be a reason to consider not renewing other licenses as well. [14:15] Police Chief Nick Francis: Right. And from what I understand, usually these machines aren't owned by the people that own that business. They are allowed to uh remain there for some type of service fee or some type of agreement. But um for the most part, we are not uh affecting the business owner's ability to to conduct their business. We are just regulating these machines that they allow to operate in their facilities. [14:38] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Council member Grendahl. [14:40] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm not speaking against this, but we have some very credible companies. I mean, we have three Kwik Trips in town and a Cub. Um, why do they offer it? I mean, if if if there's such a negative to this [cough] [clears throat] and we've had obviously had conversations with them. [14:59] Police Chief Nick Francis: Yes. So, our uh detective has gone around and just and and spoken with them about um some of them um have to their defense have uh notices posted on there that we have kind of distributed out to say, you know, beware of scams. This is typically used for scams, but um I don't think they're they're particularly tied to them. I think they bring in they may bring in additional traffic and that's good for the business, but um the the folks the the businesses that our detective has spoken with um have not really um voiced a a big concern about the likelihood that they'll be removed. [15:34] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Okay. Thank you. [15:35] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Um you know, one of uh one of our retailers many years ago also we stumbled into them having a gold buying machine, right, that was purchasing gold from anybody who walked in. So, it's hard to say why a reputable retailer would would allow those, but um also a fairly suspect uh machine. Uh you know, generally speaking, an all-out ban's kind of a blunt instrument when we think about it. You know, usually we're going to look to a way to regulate or put some safety around it. I just don't know how to do that in this case. uh in the last you know my non-elected career right has been in financial institutions and I will tell you that just about every scam that I see involves the use of these—I shouldn't say everyone does—right, the common is a green dot card or go buy a card that puts you face to face with somebody to sell the card. You know, this is a completely nameless faceless transaction. We have no idea who's on the back end and there is an unlimited amount of cash you can feed into these. I just don't know how to regulate that to [snorts] protect the few people who might want to legitimately use them. Uh, this is also not the only place you can buy crypto. You can buy crypto a lot more affordably through reputable online crypto places, right? And you're doing it a way that's not having you take cash out of your bank and walk in. So, I support this as well. My question to you is if have we had any comments from anybody since we're considering— [16:55] Christina Scipioni: It's been posted as statute requires and I have not received any. [17:01] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Because I think waving the second reading, right? If we haven't had any comments, I'm more comfortable with that if we haven't had comments. So, I think everybody's had a chance to speak. Do we have a motion or any further discussion? [17:15] Councilmember Tom Melander: So, moved. [17:16] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: We have a motion from Council Member Melander. Uh, Council Member Melander, does that also include waving the second reading? [17:21] Councilmember Tom Melander: Yes. [17:22] Councilmember John Bergman: Second. [17:23] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: And we have a second from Council Member Bergman. All those in favor indicate by saying I. [17:27] Councilmembers: I. [17:28] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Opposed. I think we're done. Thank you. [17:32] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: All right. The next item on our excuse me on our agenda is in is 5B which is the amendment to the 2040 comprehensive plan regarding the mixed business campus land use guidance and related text. And Tim I think you're going to walk us through this one. I'll get us started just here a little bit. Um as we mentioned when we approve the agenda um we had a request to come in this afternoon for continuance. Before I even jump into that, I just want to say we've got a lot of people here this evening uh related to this item. And one, just genuinely thank you all for coming out. We're two days before Christmas. The weather's not fantastic. Uh you all made some effort to get here. Um as we were talking before the meeting, right? Uh we're most effective when we get to have some good conversations and kind of get to do them in this forum. So, thank you all for being here uh this evening. For those who have shared comments, I just want everybody to know we have them. Um right, and we've I'm assuming everybody has reviewed them. I've seen everything that's come in up until about 5 this afternoon along with everything historically. Thanks for sending those in. Right. You're always welcome to come here, but it's great to get them in writing and be able to have a little exchange and be able to kind of get those thoughts fully out. Uh the hardest place to think is often while you're standing in front of kind of a room like this. So, thank you for taking the time to send them. It also helps us make sure we can get them distributed to um right all of the council and that kind of thing. So, everybody has a chance to see them and take them in. So just I appreciate you getting your time the time for that. Um overall uh this item has uh been for in front of us for nearly a year. So this has not been a short process kind of for anybody. Um there are a bunch of approval actions and steps that we need for the project that's been discussed to go forward. And I'm gonna ask Tim to kind of walk us through that uh this evening before we even jump into the kind of actions before us. uh just so we kind of get to redraw the the baseline and understand what the actions are. [19:36] Tim Benetti: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh members of the council, uh as we as was indicated and introduced, this is a a comp plan amendment request from Rockport. Uh so what they're asking for is a certain change or changes to their area that they what they refer to as the Orchard Place development area. Uh just real quick going back. So you're hopefully you're familiar with our 2040 comprehensive plan map. Again, this is just a a general land use guidance map that we have for the community. We have our our our residentials, our retail areas, our industrial areas, institutionals, public schools, and the area that we're going to be talking about tonight potentially is this area around the the Orchard Place. So again, the official land use map just shows this as uh the areas that we would uh highlight that are consistent with that underlying land use. Tonight we're talking about the mixed business campus guidance area around what we again referred to as the gravel pit, the orchard place area as well. So highlighted here is the area in question that Rockport has requested. Uh under the comp plan, we also have this orchard place concept map which was referred to in the packet as figure 4.2. Again, this is uh a mixture of uses. Hence the reason why we refer to it as a mixed business campus. Uh this area A and B uh contains our office, hotel, medical and commercial retail uses. Our area C is the office, hotel, medical areas potentially. Area F is office industrial medical and area G is our medical corporate campus office industrial commercial retail. So, what we've what the applicant is requesting is to allow for the removal basically of these what we refer to as blob plans or blob areas and uh essentially allow for industrial uses up in this area of C and also through A up here. Again that there's a [clears throat] lot more to this if you want me to go into a thorough review or I can just set the table for a later— [22:05] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: No Tim that helps and and I do that just because we have we have people here I want everybody to understand what the current condition is. Um and I just want to kind of pivot to the first item which is the request for continuance. um not unusual as we get into these kind of complex issues, right? We're we're we're balancing land owners right to apply and change the use of their their land with what's right for the community. And that's kind of the stage we're at here, right? Um new information comes forward quite often. It's not unusual as they get that. It's not unusual to request a continuance. Usually, we get them and let's just talk about continuance a little bit, right? The reason we're calling it a continuance is under state statute, we have a a statutory amount of time we have to react to these applications. Um because of the time and the new information, the applicant has kind of granted that extension for us, right? Multiple times and we appreciate that, right? Because you're kind of forced to make a decision based on that. Um, I also just say when I look at the history of what Fischer Family has developed in other areas of town, I'm willing to give them some latitude to come up with the right plan for the area and to not kind of force a decision based on that as long as they're willing to to give us the extension so we match with that. So, that's why I wanted to put the continuance on on first. Um, because I did want council to also have a chance to weigh in on this because this isn't my decision alone. And so the request for continuance came in this afternoon, I believe. Uh, right, we don't know all the information yet. I wouldn't expect it. They had some new information that was relevant to the application. They just got it. They wanted some time to work through it. Um, doesn't impact any of our ability or rights. I think as I talked to our city attorney earlier, right, we're still the continuance. Bob, maybe you can clear me up on this and just for everyone in the room, the we're not impacted by this other than allowing some more time to review the information that may come forth. [24:00] City Attorney: Yes, that's correct. Correct, Mr. Mayor. You'll have your right to hold the hearing and and uh take action. We want to have it to a date certain if we can, though, Mr. Mayor. [24:09] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Perfect. And because we're up against this kind of statutory deadline, should the council not choose to grant the continuance, we then need to either approve or deny the application that's in front of us. Um, so I feel like that order makes the most sense. Let's first talk about the continuance. Are we willing to to grant some more time? Um, and then yes or no, we kind of move on from there. Council member Bergman, you have a question. [24:40] Councilmember John Bergman: I have a question to staff. They've asked for an extension now—and I guess this will come forward from them or from you staff—is how long is that extension and is it going to be enough for staff to come up with the information they want? Because in the past it just it just it's a continuation of question after question. [25:05] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: And council, we we've not seen the information yet so I think right the the—we can we can continue to a January date, right? I think the extension was asking end of January. That would effectively put us at the 22nd or 23rd. Somebody's got to check a calendar for me, whatever that Thursday is. Um, that would be the date we would push it to. I don't think staff's prepared to say, is that enough time or not until we actually see the information. And I think that's also uh I think that's the best we're going to get right now at this point, not knowing what it is. [25:42] Tim Benetti: Mr. Mr. Mayor, members of council. So, we did receive the letter requesting extension to the end of January of 2026. So, January 31st, 2026. The expectation is that we have two meetings in January on the 8th and the 22nd. Um, the information according to the applicant or the owner was just arrived in their hands, I think last night, and they were trying to absorb it and analyze it and were trying to make a a a quick review or analysis of it for tonight's meeting, but they they they came to conclusion that they were not prepared or ready to make that presentation, which is fair. It's it's a lot [clears throat] probably a lot of information that they said uh was given to them by by one of their consultants. Be that as it may, what we'd like to do is once they have the chance to review it, the expectation is we're going to receive it and then we usually typically have a period of time to analyze and assess. Can we do this internally or do we have to send this out to one of our consultants to review or analyze? If so, requested by the applicant or if it's just for informational purposes, then we can make that just for informational purposes, present it to you at the next council meeting as an addendum to a very large packet of information. But, you know, knowledge is power. We want you to have that information and be able to make a uh a fully informed decision. And if we decide staff that we request more additional time, uh we did ask the applicant, the owner, if we determine we need more time, would you be willing to do that? And she said, "We would be willing to entertain that once you had a chance to review it." Right now, they want to review it and get back to us. I think it's a fair it's a fair answer to all the variables. [27:32] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Fair. It is. Council member Melander. [27:35] Councilmember Tom Melander: Yeah. A point of information for somebody that might not be familiar. Once an application is made, it starts a clock running. [27:44] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Correct. [27:45] Councilmember Tom Melander: So, if if action is not taken by the time the dinger goes off, it's automatically granted. [27:50] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: That's correct. If we just we can't just sit on our hands uh without you know it becoming an automatic yes. So that's where the uh extensions come in. Uh it's kind of a back and forth who gets to ask for an extension whether the other party says yes or no. [28:16] Councilmember Tom Melander: Correct. So the you mentioned the fat pack of stuff and I in fairness to the applicant I don't want to dig deep into the application in front of us because if this new information modifies changes that we don't know what's coming I'd rather have us all be able to react to the correct new updated information than dig deep into half-prepared stuff um and then have to come back and do it again in two weeks um in that packet and I I know many of the folks in the room read the packet because we got some really good comments based on what was in there. So again, want to thank you for reading the packet. Um that makes the comments all that much better. U we spent we've spent a lot of time internally because it's complex talking about water and sewer use and that's one issue, but we also have this uh issue of kind of vision for the land as well. We'll we'll discuss both of those. This while this action is a precursor to another application that is in um you know this action is not the data center approval itself. This is a reguiding of the land that would allow for ultimately some rezoning to additional industrial use which could then for there and then be used for data center or any other type of industrial use. So, this uh I just want to make that clear because I think it's this is incredibly complex and probably the most complex series of of changes, especially the way they're coming together that we've dealt with in quite some time. And if you haven't followed that, it gets it's easy to kind of miss those and kind of mix the pieces up. So, did I misspeak on that or is that generally the conversation? So, I think my question for council is let's start with um a desire to consider the continuance uh this evening and then we'll kind of go from there. Council member Grendahl. [30:06] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. How many extensions have we had on this in the last year and who requested them, the city or the applicant? [30:20] Tim Benetti: Uh Mr. Mayor, members of the council, most of the extensions have come from the applicant. Uh and that's and sometimes in a in a situation or a very complicated case like this uh it was expected that there were going to be some extensions. It's just and most of those extensions were granted as part of uh a communication that they were working on some information or trying to or working on submitting some more information for staff to review. So the extension also works for us because it gives us an opportunity to review that information and not make snap judgments or snap analysis uh especially for today. If they had dropped that information off today, we never would have had a chance to review that adequately. So the extensions have always always uh uh any beyond the 60-day or the 120-day rule, all extensions have to come from the applicant and they have been. [31:10] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: So Mr. Mayor, I mean, I was prepared to vote on this tonight. We have a lot of people here obviously put a lot of time into this and um like I say, I was I was prepared to vote on this tonight. So, if we give the continuance, this had better be some huge significant information that came in at the last minute. I'm disappointed. [31:32] Councilmember John Bergman: Tim, explain because right now tonight we were basically doing the comp plan. It had nothing to do with what was going on this piece of parcel. It was basically we were voting to change the comp plan for this area. Correct. [31:51] Tim Benetti: The the request tonight was to amend the area that is highlighted in this yellow boundary line. Basically, it would also take out uh uh a lot of the language that was dedicated towards this. Again, we refer to us as a priority planning area. And this is something that was a important vision in our our 2040 comp plan, which some of you were probably very familiar with and worked on and adopted a few years ago. And ever since then, you know, and the plan is not absolute. It can be amended. We have a process. This is one of those chances where we can adopt it or amend a change. But this area is just to reflect a request by the applicant to remove some of these limitations on their land use or their their their own property. [32:50] Councilmember Tom Melander: Yeah, I've uh during my time on the planning commission, I was involved in several uh comp plan preparations and that's not a uh simple or short process. There's a lot that goes into it and even after we've wrestled through it usually with the help of a consultant, then it has to pass muster with the Met Council. [33:10] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Correct. [33:11] Councilmember Tom Melander: This is this is not a simple document and and not something that that we uh that we want to fiddle with capriciously. Um from time to time some of these comments uh that we receive uh not just tonight but over the course of my years associated with the city uh there's implication of smoke filled rooms and and little plots going on and and we're in cahoots. I even looked up cahoots one time. It's a town in France. [laughter] We're not in cahoots, I can tell you. And none of that has gone on. We take uh we take this really seriously and there's been a lot of work that's gone into this. Um, I'd be I'd be shocked if whatever this new information is materially affects the way that uh at least I I intend to to vote on this thing, but it's not just my decision as said, so we're we're talking about it. But I wanted to be clear that that, you know, we can't just say, well, fine, let's we just we'll just change the comp plan. Matter of fact, if we did, the Met Council might say, "No, you can't." I don't know. I mean, um, it's a good point— [34:32] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: That's a good point, Council Member Melander. Our approval, even if we were to approve this this evening, Met Council still has to weigh in and approve as well. So, we would still be sending it to them. Is correct. [34:40] Councilmember Tom Melander: Yeah. So, it's it's it's a lot more complicated than it might appear. [34:44] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: It is. Um, council has any other comments or thoughts on on the continuance? [34:55] Councilmember John Bergman: I don't like the extension. I don't uh I I believe Tim when we get whatever they want to present to us, we're going to go through the same process we have. Question one would be, are we going to amend the comp plan for that area? Is that correct? And and then after that, we go into the next step of what's going what they want to put in there. Correct. And that that stays the same potentially. [35:28] Tim Benetti: Potentially. [35:29] Councilmember John Bergman: Yes. That—we don't know that, but it's— [35:36] Councilmember Lisa Hiebert: Yeah. I would just uh like to echo um council member Grendahl that um I was prepared to vote on this as well this evening and really going over these documents thoroughly and everybody's comments and uh the complexity that we have before us um echoing everything that's been said here. I do want to acknowledge that I do think that the Fischer family and Rockport that they again have a strong history and have been good partners with the city and I I think while this is disappointing to get this at the last minute if there is data there um I think it's um in our we need to look at that and I think one of the things in all the emails and comments that we've gotten is that people are looking for more data and um and I think there's a level of understanding and transparency and we need to to to look at that and then do our due diligence. So, um if it if it means another extension, I think I think that makes sense. Um again, the material of it, we don't know and what the next steps will be, but >> um I I think that it's important to continue the process. [36:43] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: So, I've heard a couple questions around nature of the extension and I I or nature of the data and the applicants here. I don't want to talk about this without giving them a chance to at least address what's in the extensions should they choose to do so. Um, but as I mentioned, we have two different kind of topics here. If you look through that memo, one is really around vision for land use and one is around resources such as water and sewer. Um, I feel like this decision is a mix of both of those things. And so I don't know, Matt, do you want to make any comments on reason for the the extension or what might be in there that might help people? Um, get to this. [37:30] Matt Duffy (Rockport Representative): Uh, good evening, uh, mayor and members of the council. Matt Duffy for Rockport. Um, I think the nature of it revolves around the city's uh request for additional information surrounding the um the idea of the private well consideration. Um, this is a this is as everybody has alluded to a very complicated complex thing. Part of it is is there's no bright line in the sand about where the operative proposed use and our requests for comp guide plan amendments sort of where that those two kind of separate and one takes over. So part of it's been sort of coordinating that. Part of it's been trying to keep uh you know the city staff's desire to keep those sort of unconflated and and sort of separate which is a you know very effective strategy because they are independent. uh but also at the same time recognizing there are crossovers with some of the information that needs to be gathered and how much information we can gather without having you know specifics associated with it or for example—I mean as the council's well aware under the mixed-use business campus ordinance there is the data center is a conditional use so part of that is the council and the staff's recommendations for conditional uses going forward and without having some of that information complicates [clears throat] sort of this analysis. So part of it is our reliance on that but part of it also is reliance on state agencies and as we know state agencies tend to um prefer not to give advisory opinions about things. So it's a matter of trying to get them to give us enough information where we can answer questions that are you know very good thoughtful questions from city staff so so that we can provide answers to them so that we can satisfy some of the comments. Uh I have not read all the comments so I don't know all the questions that you guys have been asked but certainly data does help with that. So my my goal is trying to gather as much of that data as I can and as much as the state agencies are willing to provide to us. Uh and that that's been kind of the part of coordinating it. Um if it were entirely within our control, I think the information would have been gathered a long time ago. Um but it isn't within our control and we have to rely on others to provide it to us. So the information that we received last night um from our consultant uh has come from one of those state agencies. It's a matter of analyzing it. There's um and I'm not even going to pretend to understand what well data is or how it works or what it means, but that's what came in and we're trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, our one of our consultants is on vacation this week and the other one is unavailable tonight. So, it makes it very complicated for me to try to pinch hit for engineers when I don't understand the science behind it. [40:02] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: And I wouldn't expect someone to on a on a last minute notice. I I just since we had some discussion about what the data was I thought at least that helps people understand whether it's land use related data or resource related data and that probably helps resource. We do have a redact with contact information pulled out redacted comments of all if you need them we can absolutely get them to you um right because you should be able to respond to those uh as well and we'll give you that opportunity. [40:34] Matt Duffy: Yeah, absolutely. And the and the goal is just for to make sure that we have everything that we can. And there was this the agenda memo references the Minnesota statute. It references some additional details that the city staff would like to see. That's what we're responding to. And we didn't get and as uh the agenda memo was published on Friday and we submitted it to our consultants and they were working furiously trying to get it to— [40:55] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Yes. The the 60 and 120-day requirements don't necessarily contemplate something this incredibly complex and the time takes to study those and so we appreciate the extensions to have time to get through them and not have to force staff right to to push a recommendation that's only half worked through and same with you guys as well so— [41:15] Matt Duffy: Well and it was the idea of working cooperatively so that's what we're trying to do so if there's any other questions for me happy to answer them to the extent I can but other than that I got— [41:26] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Since you're up there I'll just ask that question to council. Any other questions of Mr. Duffy before we let him take a seat for the info? Okay, I think we're covered. Thanks, Matt. Uh, so the the piece kind of before us to decide on first is is uh would be a motion, excuse me, uh to grant the continuance or to continue this item to the January 22nd, is that date correct? uh January 22nd, 2026 council meeting, which is the second council meeting in January. That would be we have a motion. [42:10] Councilmember John Bergman: Mr. Mayor, I just want to point out, you know, there's a lot of holidays between now and the 22nd. I mean, is that long enough to review stuff? We got New Year's. We got the right day. I mean, there's a lot of holidays coming up. [42:25] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Since we have the um statutory requirements to act by a certain date, that's an applicant question if they're willing to extend the date beyond that. I think in the conversation, and Tim, I'd speak for I think as we quickly caught up this afternoon, right, the the uh conversation was it's hard to say how long this will take to look at until we see the stuff. I know the applicant kind of want to keep wants to keep the pressure on to get a decision done, which is kind of their right. Um, but you thought as soon as you had that, you would be able to give us a pretty good indication if that's enough time. Then we either need to go to the applicant and continue this further or they need to make a decision to have us come forward with a decision maybe half analyzed or not analyzed at all depending on how deep the file is. You get am I on base there? [43:10] Tim Benetti: You you Mr. Mayor, members council, you're on base. Uh I I believe until we get our hands or see our eyes on the information, we can uh at least determine is this—does this need to be analyzed in-house or can it be sent to our consultants? And even then when it gets sent to our consultants, it could be a period of time that we just can't make it work within the time frame that they've established in their extension. So, we would have to go back and ask for a possible another extension or if if that's rejected, then we will have to place it on either the 8th or the 22nd depending on what we review or what we receive. [43:58] Councilmember John Bergman: Could we somehow marry permission that we could extend it if— [44:02] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: No. No, we can't at this point. Got to come from them. So then we're up against the wall if we grant this extension. [44:11] City Attorney: We're up against a deadline that they've established by a written consent. So uh and because we only have two meetings in in the month of January, we either have to take it on one of those meeting dates or set a special meeting date before the 31st or they grant another extension. they being the applicant. [44:30] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: So, do I have a—we we can always continue discussion. Do we have a a motion on the continuance? [44:38] Councilmember John Bergman: I'll make the motion. I'm not happy about it, but this is got to come to a conclusion soon. Don't like to do it, but— [44:52] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: So, is your motion for the continuance or— [44:54] Councilmember John Bergman: For the continuance. For the continuance. [44:58] City Attorney: We do need this to be to a date certain. So please include in the motion a date. [45:05] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: We'll get there. So we have a motion from council member Bergman to continue this item to the January 22nd. Am I interpreting that correctly? Council meeting. All right. Do we have a second to that motion? [45:20] Councilmember Lisa Hiebert: I'll second it. [45:21] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Have a second from council member Hiebert. Do we have any further discussion or are we ready to call a vote? Right. Hearing no further discussion, I'll go ahead and just call the call the item. All those in favor of continuing this to the January 22nd, 2026 council meeting indicate by saying I. [45:51] Councilmembers: I. [45:51] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Opposed. [45:51] Councilmember John Bergman: I. [45:52] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: All right. So, with that, we're continued until the January meeting. Um, we're going to give folks plenty of time to come back and make comments at that time. Please continue to get them to us in email, phone, however you choose to push them to us is fine. Um, again, nothing more can happen on this until we take action. So, we're kind of right at the spot we were before. Um, I think that's all we have for this evening on this item. All right, we'll move on to uh staff communications. And folks, feel free to stick around or not. I should have said that earlier. You uh there is no obligation to sit around till the end and we adjourn the meeting if you have other places to be, but you're absolutely always welcome to uh stick around as well. Minnesota nice uh occasionally causes people to sit in the audience to the end of a very boring meeting just because they don't want to stand up and leave. And uh trust me, we will not be offended. I'll just give everybody a couple minutes to shift out so that we uh we don't get interrupted. All right, let's move on to uh where where are staff and council items? And Tom, do we have any staff items this even? [47:53] Tom Lawell: Mr. Mayor, just one uh just a reminder that uh our municipal center building does serve as a drop off location for the Open Door food pantry. Uh this will run through the end of this month and actually a few days into into the next month. So, if you have something that you'd like to drop off to get to the food pantry, we would be glad to have it here. Our city hours, of course, are 8 to 4:30 Monday through Friday. [48:08] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: And the the bin looks full, but there's room for more is what I observed this evening as I walked in. So, um council, any items this evening? Council Melander, I know you mentioned something earlier in the week. [48:26] Councilmember Tom Melander: Yes, I uh I'd like to commend our police chief for the great work that was done over the course of that emergency at the at the city. And I know it was difficult and it was a swiftly dealt with and and just terrific job. I'm I'm proud of you and the city. Thank you so much. [48:39] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Thank you, Nick, and thank you, Tom. Uh any other council member comments this evening. Um I would just like if you looked at the personnel report in here, you would note that our very own Sydney Strowing has uh been noted as promotion to planner. Sydney's not here tonight, so we can't publicly embarrass her, but I would say she did a fantastic job while we were short staffed in there and kind of took anything that got thrown at her, really good quality memos, made it really easy for us to make decisions. And so, a promotion well-deserved, and let's just thank her for uh for her service and getting an awful lot of projects through, kind of short-handed. We appreciate it and look forward to continuing to do that. So, uh, if there are no other council member comments, we'll move on to our calendar of events. And our next informal council meeting is on Thursday, January 8th at 5:30. And our next regular council meeting is Thursday, January 8th at 7. Just a reminder that our city offices are closed December 25th and 26th in observance of the Christmas holiday and January 1st in observance of the New Year's holiday. With that, do I have a motion to approve the calendar? [49:40] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Move. [49:42] Councilmember John Bergman: Second. [49:43] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Motion from council member Grendahl, second from council member Bergman. All those in favor indicate by saying I. [49:50] Councilmembers: I. [49:51] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: And oppose. The calendar is approved. Item eight on our agenda is to convene in a closed session. Um we have two items actually for the closed session. Should we take these as separate motion items? Uh Mr. Attorney, do you have a preference? [50:07] City Attorney: No. No preference. one item to close to a um to go to a close session, not adjourn the meeting to discuss item A and B. [50:20] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Perfect. So, we'll we'll look for a motion to convene in close session to discuss a purchase agreement with Northland Real Estate and also to discuss the appraisal of the city's former city hall property at 14200 Cedar Avenue. Do we have that? [50:35] Councilmember Ruth Grendahl: Motion. [50:37] Councilmember Lisa Hiebert: Second. [50:38] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Motion from council member Grendahl, second from council member Hiebert. All those in favor indicate by saying I. [50:44] Councilmembers: I. [50:45] Mayor Clint Hooppaw: Opposed. That item carries. We will adjourn from across the hall after we're done with the close session and we'll give everybody three or four minutes to get reconvened over there. Thank you all. Have a have a great Christmas. [50:53] [music]