Welcome to the Mountain City Council. It's Tuesday, April 22nd. At 6 o'clock, can we do the Pledge of Allegiance? 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. All right, we got our agenda. Do we have any amendments? No amendments. Okay. Uh, can I get a uh motion to approve the agenda as is? I make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Okay, got a motion. Can I get a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed. All right, that passes. Uh, number four, we got the consent agenda. Does someone want to go through those items? I can do that. Okay. Um, agenda items A through E. A. Approve payment of claims. B. Approve minutes for the April 28 for the April 8th meeting. C. Pay request number five in the amount of $17,469.50 to create construction for project PW2408. and D pay request number four in the amount of $11,83542 to Whidmer Construction for city project number PW24-03 and E 2025 aquatic invasive species ambassador program waiver of trespass agreement. All right, cut A through E. Does anybody want to pull any of those or talk about it? All right. Hearing none. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. All right. Can I get a second? Second. Roll call, please. Council member Heric. I. Council member Mcanini. I. Council member Pew. I. Council member Kascalano. Hi. Mayor Holt. I. All right. If all that pass, so you're here for that, it's good to go. All right. Number five, we got comments and suggestions from citizens present that the item is not on the agenda today. Uh if you want to bring your item up, give you three minutes. Hey, give us your name and address. Sure. Can I give you a hand out? Can I give a hand out? Sure. Thank you. Thank you. QR codes on this so it's okay. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Ed Rockwell. I live at 488 Edgewater Drive in Mound on Harrison's Bay. I'm 57 years old and have lived on min Minnesota lakes for over 50 years. 24 of them right here in mound on Harrison Bay. I had several concerns about the Harrison Bay Association plan to form a governmentbacked lake improvement district that may sound helpful but in idea but it creates a structure similar to an HOA and in many ways worse. If formed, the lid would have the power to tax over 230 Lakeshore homes, deed access properties in one business, whether they agree with the lid actions or not. It also shifts legal responsibility and liability away from the DNR and the state of Minnesota and instead puts that liability on the Harrison Bay lid, the city of Mound, and the Lakeshore owners being taxed. Whether they agree or not, they will be liable for their actions. The HBA also is planning to ask the city to impose an additional tax on the 90 Commons docks in the bay. This liability shift is spelled out in the official Minnesota DNR rules on lake improvement districts. Once it is formed, the DNR is no longer responsible and liable. Uh that is in your packet. This is a huge shift in responsibility and one that deserves a lot more city community input than it is currently getting. The city should never take on this type of responsibility. But if you vote on this, the city of Mound will take on that liability. And then there's the tax itself. Once the lid is approved, the board has the power to raise taxes with very insufficient notification on resident participation. What I mean is Carmen's Bay Lid had a meeting and only had 10 lakeshore owners attend the meeting and vote out of 112 people voting in a tax increase. Harrison Bay is a public water owned by the state of Minnesota. And yet this lid puts the cost, liability, and long-term impact squarely on the city of Mound and the residents who own Lake Lakeshore in the Bay while it's a public resource that anybody can use and enjoy. I've been against HBA using herbicides in the lake since they decided to form this this association with no input from the majority of the lakeshore owners. In other words, they just decided to do it. Now, we are being told that we will be taxed like an HOA to fund their projects because, and I quote, "It's too hard to fund raise." I vowed I would never ever live in a neighborhood that has anything like an HOA and I will continue to fight this along with over 100 signatures that we have received from people in our bay to stop this lid from forming and that's to date. Um, now let's talk about chemicals they are using and let's talk about the chemicals they are using and why they choose chemicals instead of manual removal of the weeds that they don't like in front of their homes. The HBA has indicated that it's easier and they see it's more cost effective than manual removal. This is at the expense of harming the natural ecosystem of the lake so they don't have to look at the weeds. But the DNR recommends manual or mechanical removal and is preferred and using chemicals should be used as a last resort. But the HBA is getting the recommendations from the companies that are selling them the herbicides and the companies that they pay to perform the surveys, the companies that our tax dollars will be going to, the companies that benefit. Killing the weeds with herbicide chemicals causes the weed structures to decompose rapidly, releasing concentrations of phosphorus into the lake, contributing to the green color and possibly more algae blooms. This is this potentially harms water quality more than if weeds were left alone or manually removed. Herbicides like daquat aren't selective. It kills the native plants like cotail, which they should not be removing. Daquad is highly persistent and can last in the lake from applications up to 160 days in the sediments due to its low bioavailability. This means that it stays in the lake that long. This means that the families and their pets that swim are exposed. The birds and animals that eat the weeds are exposed. Boers from other bays that are not notified about the treatments will be harmed. What are the effects on birds that eat the weeds? Daquat ranges from slightly moderate, slightly to moderately toxic to birds that feed on the weeds and the fish. Perch and possibly walleye suffer significantly respiratory stress during the treatment and maybe for that 160 days. The weeds are where the fish hang out. The European Union has also banned the use of daquat, but we're just going to put it in our lake year after year. Pcellor is another chemical they use. It's a PAS or a forever chemical. Calls for pause on on pilor use. Cause for pause on pilor use have emerged due to concerns over its safety. Uh there are links in your handout about that. This is a new synthetic hormone herbicide. Do we really want this in our lake? Studies show purselicar harms native aquatic ve vegetation such as cotail and water liies not just invasive species. This is also a potential for weed populations to develop a resistance to pilicore especially if used repeatedly in the same area which they are doing. So long-term health and environmental effects remain largely unknown and I think it's extremely unsafe to allow these chemicals to be used in our beloved lake while we are the tear cake caretakers for our time of the lakes's existence due to time constraints today I have enclosed the data sheets from Carmen's Bay lid which shows that repeated treatments isn't reducing their invasive weeds and is actually increasing the kill of native plants like coonail their resident tax increase is $200 to $300 a year for chemical treatments. According to the data, it's increasing the invasive weeds and reducing the native plants. That's um one of the sheets in your page. Due to its ability to absorb nutrients from water, coail does provide water quality water quality benefits and may help improve water clarity. Coonail has tremendous value as a year-round habitat plant for young fish such as bluegill, perch, largemouth, largemouth bass, and as well as small aquatic insects. Some fish and waterfall eat its shoots and seeds. Uneducated residents also mistake coonail for mil foil most of the time. I spoke to James Johnson from the survey company that they use. over the phone. He indicated that Harrison Bay has very little mil foil and curly leaf pondweed and also told me that the fish will leave the bay when the weeds are killed. What's very important to understand is if the HBA is successful at removing the weeds, the fish will move on. This is already being reported by the fishermen that have been fishing here for years. There is already fewer fish. Once the fish move on, do you think there will be less food for the animals? This possibly means that the beautiful loons that we see in here out in the bay, the amazing eagles that have come back could decide to go to lakes lakes that have more weeds, more fish, which is their natural food. What I'm explaining to you is the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect shows that small changes to the ecosystem can have disproportionately large unpredictable consequences. Also, out of the 11,800 lakes in Minnesota, there are only 54 lake improvement districts. This is an unpopular program, and I'll let you just think about why. Orno in the past has mentioned that they would like to see at least 70% approval rate for the bay to adopt LA. I'd say we should have at least 80% or more for Harrison Bay. There is an ongoing effort and opposition in or oro to stop the formation of lids for the lakes and bays in the city as well. If anyone here I can skip that because we're out of time. In your packet supporting documentation that links to other communities that have expressed opposition for chemicals in their lakes. To recap, there are many residents that oppose formation of the taxable lid and we have over 100 signatures. We don't want these chemicals in our lake where we swim and play with our children and our pets. We don't want horrible liability moved to the city of Mound, the Lakeshore owners like myself, deed access owners and businesses. Do you have any questions? All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm sorry I ran long. Yeah. No, that's all right. We'll look over this and we'll see what we can do. I have Can I ask one question? We'll keep it super quick. Do you know, and maybe it's in here and I'll we'll go through it, but um do you know off the top of your head because I know there's more than a couple lids on Minnotonka and I'm sure surrounding lakes too, but of any that do the manual weed removal? I do not think so. Okay. I mean, I can I'll find that info, too. But I have opinions on why, but I I I everything that I've talked about is is documentation I've found on the web and I've done research and I want to provide you with all the information. So, I'm I'm not blowing smoke. Um, this really really concerns me and I've lived on this bay for 24 years. And um they're the companies that are producing the chemicals and selling the chemicals are are helping them out. That's why they're going to chemicals first. And that's my opinion. Just straight out straight out say that. Okay. I appreciate all the research you've done. I've since it was presented to us have done a lot of research on this and I look forward to reading through okay what you've come up with and can you repeat your name? I'm sorry I know you're Edgewater Drive. Uh Edward Rockwell 488 Edgewater Drive. Perfect. Thanks. And my email address is Eddie Rockwellgmail.com. Is it in the packet anywhere? It is not. Okay. E d i e r o c k we l. Feel free to ask me any questions. Shoot me an email. Perfect. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Orno, please. Do you want to come up quick? Oh, I think someone else Oh, sorry. Oh, uh, yeah. Come on. Come on up if you have a Sorry, I was moving on. All right. Give us your name and address. Pamela Jananish, 1591 Eagle Lane. Okay. There is a property at the corner of Wood uh Woodland and Heron that has been an eyesore, mouseinfested eyesore for a couple years. I contacted the city a couple years ago. Nothing happened. Several of the other neighbors contacted the city and nothing happened. There is new, fairly new homeowners next door. They have contacted the city repeatedly and just recently when they finally told the city they were moving, the city said, "Oh, we're going to escalate it." Well, it's too late. This is a nice couple. The house is pristine. And I know that if any of you lived around this house, you would have done something a long time ago. It wouldn't have taken years. There's no reason for it to take years. I in fact I'd like to see a show of hands from the city. How long would you wait? Months, year, two years before you did something. It's It's ridiculous. And And like I said, now we're going to lose a nice couple who keep their property well tended. And this is ridiculous. And there's other houses along this route that could use some work. And I see city trucks driving around all the time. I don't know why these people can't make notes of properties that need attention, but I'm assuming they don't. So, I have a suggestion. I think that there should be a log created for the complaints that come in and I think that it should list what the complaint is and what is going to be done to mitigate it and when that's going to start and I think the city council should have to look at it every week because there is no reason for something to sit for years and this is why mound is known as the slum of Lake Minnetonka. Yeah, because nothing happens. You don't see it, so you don't do anything. So, Pamela, is the address is that 1643? I think so. The one right on the corner on the north side. Yep. Okay. When's the last time you talk to the city about It's been several months now. Okay. But it was Well, no, it's been maybe a month. Okay. you want to say anything about it? Uh, no. Other than that, it's one of several properties that are in process right now. Um, escal I don't know remember exactly what the escalation was. I'm assuming it's one of the several that we've referred to the city attorney or possibly a prosecuting attorney, but um I can't speak for any other ones or why or if ones are being written down by staff. Um, but I think they should be I think that there should be a list and I think that it should be reviewed periodically because this shouldn't h it shouldn't take years. There's no reason for it to take at least two years and maybe longer before anything has happened. So, that is something that we have looked into and I don't know if our attorney wants to say anything kind of level on that, but um we're trying to uh fix the blight in in our communities, right? Part of it is in the past, this is probably before most of us were on here, is that you get a complaint, we'd send them a letter, maybe send them another letter, maybe another one, and then we just give up. And again, that's just that was that was the practice. So, we've we're trying to put a little bit more teeth into it. Partly that's why this guy is sitting next to me. Uh because we're trying to trying to do that. And again, I don't know if you want to say something quick, but it's pretty hard to just fix a problem overnight. I mean, it does take some time. So, even a month, that's not long enough, unfortunately. And I understand that. But when nothing happens, nothing happens for years. That's so even in the worst scenarios that we've seen even on council the last couple years. Um and a lot of you guys have probably driven by them. um properties that we abaded and everything and we have to go through the whole rigomeroll with attorneys and back and forth and the county and it's it's it's a process unfortunately and we're trying to dig a little bit of our teeth into it to say we're not stopping. So if either fix it or we're going to figure it out or bait it or fix it for you and that's what we're we're doing. So do you want to say something quick? Yeah. I mean the typical process is for um staff to take steps and measures to try to work with the property owner to um come to some resolution with the goal of self self compliance so that they'll work towards it. Um, if that doesn't work, either it's going to be I'll be brought into to try to come up with a way to help push him along. It may go to this the prosecuting attorney, which is a different attorney. Um, um, if it gets to that point, this property doesn't sound familiar to me. So, it hasn't made its way to me. It could have made it to the prosecutor. Usually, typically, it's right. I I think that's where it is. Okay. So what happens with when it gets to the prosecutor? Um then the typically if it is something that's going to be going through the prosecute first of all the the prosecutor has pro prosecutor prosecutorial discretion. Um but it would be a criminal complaint and then would go through the process of that trying to either you know if they're found guilty then it would be um a court order to take care of it. Okay. But even in the best case scenario, if they they're non-compliant, how long does that take if it has to go through this whole system? Well, I mean, let's talk about example of what we just did on commerce that that took. Yeah, that's a little bit different. It's an extreme example. Extreme example, but that was years upon years. Three years probably. It could have been three years at least and probably longer than that. But I got involved and it still was even though we had a had a court case against them, it still took what a year or more to get that we baited the first few months when I was on council in 21. Okay. And we just wrapped it up this fall. Yeah. The so that's three years. But I I do I mean the direction from the council has been to I mean first part is that we work on a the city works on a complaint basis because if complaints come in and then do investigation it sounds like that that has happened already and then um the council has stated their desire to have more teeth into what they do. So that that's there too. So if it's if it's in I would say it sounds like it's in process. Um it's been set up to the prosecutor and whatever that time frame is it depends on uh really the courts. Yeah. And that's been the problem in the past especially be even after CO was long over. It's still the courts. It just takes forever. Um but how long does it take to start the process? Well you first of all and again some people don't know this. You got to make a complaint. I know you did but some people don't even know that. They just drive by a property that they hate for years and years and years and they're uh blatantly violating code, but then no one ever calls about it. Nobody ever does anything about it. But this had multiple phone calls, right? So again, if it's, you know, in the recently here, um we Jesse refers it to um our uh field inspector, which is Andy Drilling, and then he takes care of it. again, if it gets, you know, if they're non-compliant, it gets out of hand, then it goes to the attorney or the other attorney. So, once it's in the system, unfortunately, sometimes it just takes a little bit of time. And that and even if they're just don't want to do it, they're like, "Too bad. We don't want to do it." Again, then that whole process takes a long time for us to actually for you to see anything different. Most people just say, "Yes, oh, my lawn's long. I'll go mow the lawn. I was out of town for a month." You know, whatever. Well, this is a health concern and Pam, is this a rental property or is it owner occupied? It's owner occuper occupied. And Jesse, we have it on the list, you believe? And yes, and and I will say too, I mean, sometimes they get referred other places. I mean, one of our first calls is usually to Orno PD because sometimes they might be involved in one way or another. I mean, there's a lot of trying not to step on each other's toes in that, too. But, um, I can assure you there is a log because uh complaints are part of our it's a data retention thing. So it may not be organized in the way that could be easily digested but they are kept track of too. So and we're trying to sort of ramp things up too try and get creative and like the mayor said ideally people you know get the letter or something and they just fix it. I I know this one. There's some others we're working on too that are just um I would say stubborn property owners, but um the process can take Would this be a health department issue though if we've got rodents running around? It can be. I mean that that's another one. I mean, so another good example was the um the Dove one that actually came to council six weeks ago or two two months ago. um that was we included uh the Henipin County Health Department and they were they actually just lifted their order and that's been a really successful one. That was a property owner that was more compliant. So yeah, so we we would refer to either either prosecuting attorney or city attorney, health department. Um it's it's it's it's I'm making it sound more complicated than it is, I think, just because there's you it sounds there's a lot of moving parts, but um yeah, we we try to cover as many bases as we can. So, I've talked to Andy Drilling many times about this about just communicating with especially the people that do make the complaints to make sure that they're involved and hey, we got it. We're working on it. If it's been a couple weeks, been a month, hey, shoot me an email. Hey, we're still working on it. is this, this, and this. Um, I know I've specifically talked to him, so can we just make sure you reach out and just make sure she's kept involved with, you know, what we can obviously disclose, right? That's a good point. Sometimes there are things that especially if attorneys are involved, you can imagine it gets a little bit more private, but in general, I think we try to keep the processes public, so we can do more of that, too. Okay. So, can just maybe by the end of the week, can you have him follow up with her? Yeah. Thank you. And I, you know, I understand that time is a thing that's going to happen, but it just seemed like nothing happened for years and that that was the problem that if we have to go through all this rigoral and we wait two years to start it, that's two years that that are lost and we're we're sitting there looking at it day after day after day. Yeah. I mean, this is the first time I'm hearing about it, so clock starts today. Thank you. Yep. Thanks. We can appreciate your frustration, especially in a complaint based city when you make a complaint and you have no followup. Um, so I know that Jesse and the team have been making really great strides and trying to reach out to everybody. So, we appreciate your frustration. Thank you. Part of my concern is too, this may have occurred, I don't know, Jesse, before you got here. a possibility for the delay. Yeah. Okay. It did. So, you just follow up with our place. That would go a long way, I think. Thanks, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, give us your uh name and address. My name is Jim Tyson. I live at 1295 Elwood Avenue. I'm in that crossover between Orno and Mound. My mailing address is Mound. My school district is Mound. I'm a proud graduate of Mound West Tonka High School 1974. What What city are you in? We're I'm in Orno. Orno. Okay. I am here to speak on behalf of what Ed spoke to before me. I did not know Ed prior to a month ago, but we are like-minded. I am working on the same issue in opposition in Orno. Okay. It has been a long ongoing battle. I think people have been well intended. Uh I think sometimes they want swimming pools in front of their homes, but they have to realize this is a lake and that weeds are a natural thing that are going to happen there. Um, there are many things I didn't come scripted, so I'm going to probably regret not saying some of the things I wished I would have, but a key point that came across on Monday's meeting, I was at city council and I would encourage you to look at their archives. There's a lot of information there regarding the lid process. Um, Eric Evston is with Lake Minnatonka Association. He is the one who is spearheading this with different resident groups. Eric was speaking in front of council on Monday night and when they learned that there was a petition significant to stop it in Forest Lake. The council asked Eric what happened in Forest Lake and he said I think they just lost interest. I don't believe that is a factual statement. What in reality I believe happened is very similar to what Ed is presenting to this council. There's a lot of information that is not being presented by those people when they're trying to get this enacted, the liabilities, what the county can do with your money, the chemicals that are being used, on and on and on. So what happened in Forest Lake in reality is the counter petetition in opposition when people realize those extra facts nearly 50% 46% of the people that signed that petition flipped from signing the original petition in favor of. So my point is is that given all the facts, people have a different mindset and I hope all of you looking at those facts objectively helps you to make that decision in an objective form. It's not an easy issue. So I I know you're going to be faced with here again in the future. I listened in when Harrison's Bay Association presented this to its council, this council, and that's the same message that I've heard over and over. I've been to two similar presentations in Horo just like you heard and Ed brought to you different information and I hope you take it to heart. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Got anybody else want to come come up? All right. Hear none. Orno, please. You want to come up quick? Thank you, Mayor Council. Uh, not a lot to pass along the um going through our uh crime reports and stuff. Uh, nothing has really peaked at this point. uh activity is picking up because the weather's getting better, but everything's still on the straight line. So, other than that, there's just some things that I was asked to make sure you guys are aware of is uh Spirit of the Lakes committees are starting to work now in conjunction with our officer Schultz uh to start planning and get things rolling. So, that's on its way. Excuse me. Um, Our Lady of the Lake and Officer Schultz asked me, she's going to be sending you an email, mayor. Um, 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, uh, dear graduation at Our Lady of the Lake Church or school. So, she'll be sending an email this Friday. Yeah, she'll be sending you an email to remind you. She wanted me to apologize that she forgot to tell you. So, yeah. All right. I'm out of town, but All right, I'll let her know. Appreciate it. So, um, speed trailers are out in full force now. Um, they are spread out throughout the area. They what we typically do is um at the request we put them on a list and we keep moving them around as much as we can. We don't have the resources. We don't have a bunch of them to put out. Um and uh they have to get spread out and used. So they will be out and about in different areas. If there's an area that you guys have an issue with, you let us know as soon as possible so we can get you into that rotation so that we can get them back out. and uh cuz that they won't we won't see them in the garage till probably September again because they're out there even being used. So uh and then other than that uh our PD started our training season. So today was our annual qualification for firearms. So we're going to be busy now for the next few months uh with all our training and getting everybody up to speed. So other than that, there hasn't been much else going on for now. So Okay. Does council have any questions? Uh, thanks for coming out to coffee with a cop. Yeah. Um, not you specifically, but you're you guys. Um, how many cops do we have? Like 10. Maybe eight to 10. Yeah. Seven or eight. Something like that. So anyway, appreciate the caribou. Um, so they all look forward to it. Um, you probably won't see our night guys, but you'll definitely see our day guys pop in and say hi at least. So that. All right. Thanks again. Thanks. All right. We got uh Henipin County Commissioner Heather He Heather Eden presentation. You found us. Uh good evening everyone. It's good to see you all. You too. Um yes, I I was uh I was across the street and I was calling the mayor and I'm texting him and I'm like where is I don't understand where the chamber is. So um one of those moments. Uh great and hello to everyone here. Um my name's Heather Eden. I am the Henipin County Commissioner. was elected. Um I had three elections over the last year um to get this job, which no one knows what I do, but hopefully today my boy my whole goal is I'm going to all the different cities. I represent 16 of them. Um so hopefully like let you know a little bit about me. Uh tell you a little bit about what Hettipan County does and let you know that I'm your partner at the county and that I have your back. Um and to the point that the resident that was up just up here and you had mentioned Henipin Health um or a Henipin environmental services just make sure like loop me in if there is an issue you need help with if you feel like you're not getting a response from the county too. I want to make sure our residents are I'm having your backs um as well. So um just a little bit about me before I go into this. I'm going to be quick. I'm going to try to be quick but just prepare. It's about 15 minutes. Um so I three boys. I live in Edina. Don't be mad at me. I know it's far. It's not It's just this like competitive thing. Um I live in Nine. I have three sons. I have twins that are 15. I'm teaching them how to drive, which is a whole another feat in parenting, right? Very stressful. Um they're not doing that bad though. Uh and then I have a 12-year-old who is um super competitive. I also represent Hopkins. He's a basketball player and he is like I cannot believe like I've I' I've like harmed him in this process. So, um All right. This is the district. All right, here we go. So, um each each commissioner in Henipin County, we have 1.3 million residents and each um of us, Kevin Anderson and I both represent Mound. Um Commissioner Anderson had a conflict tonight. Um so I'm covering for both of us. Um unfortunately, we don't have I don't know if we have his picture next or not, but we'll see. Um but so both Kevin and I of the seven commissioners on the board, we both have 16 cities. So that's 16 city councils, way more than all of our other lovely colleagues. So um we once a year you'll hopefully be seeing me. Um we all represent about 182,000 people and you can see right here a little bit about this and I was just looking at some things that are close to mound and just thinking um and I'll talk a little bit about this more but I know the West Honka Library um is closed and up for renovations. We're really doing a lot of work there. the North Arm project which is Spring Park um our public access to the lake. Um that one is we're undergoing feedback and process. So if you have feedback on that, please let us know. Um and my email is right there at the bottom. Um, the other thing I just want to mention as I'm looking um at at just where we where Mound is is just thinking about I've been telling all our Lake communities, one of the things that Kevin and I just worked on is adding another water patrol. Um, so the sheriff's department, LMCD, um, the conservation district was having to fund raise about 72,000 annually to have an extra water patrol and we were able to figure out a way to pick that up. Um, so we reduced that significantly. They'll just be paying for overtime, which is about $20,000. All right. So, let's go to the next slide. So, you'll see that Henipin County has seven lines of business, health, income, justice, education, employment, housing, and connectivity. You can go to the next slide. You can see our budget is 3.1 uh billion. And we had a levy increase just this past year of 5.5%. We tried to keep that as small as possible. Um I think counties and cities ac across the state of Minnesota. Um all 87 counties were struggling with trying to keep it low. But I just want to give uh residents and and the council a little bit of a a picture of what other counties were did for their levy increase. Ramsey County was at 4.75. They were the only one I think that was lower than we were. Anoka was at 16.9% levy increase. That was a big one. Um, Dakona County was at 9.9% levy increase and Washington County was at a 5.9. So, just for uh reference, people have said, "Well, why for the increase?" We did have labor negotiations. We Henipin County has 10,000 employees. It's a lot of employees. We do a lot of work. We're very big, whether it's transportation, human services, um, or other projects. Um, Henipin County is a large county and so we looked at negotiations for wages. Henipe County is a good employer and we also wanted to make sure that we were paying a a livable wage and also covering costs for healthcare. Um and we also had an issue where HCMC hospital um uncompensated care is rising across the country. This is not just in Minnesota, but our county hospital is struggling and and they are a wing of us and we had to pick up some of the costs there. So, uh with that said, you can go to the next slide. You can see a little bit of the pie here. It's broken out. Um, I just like to note that uh if you look at human services and health, the 42% of our budget uh is health and human services. It's actually why I decided to run for this job. Prior to this role, I was in the House of Representatives for six years. And then prior to that, I was an outpatient mental health therapist and I was in clinic and and seeing how things just were not working and that's what led me to run for office. Um, but you can see how the other things are broken down. Capital improvements uh is where West Taco Library is. Public works is where you're seeing all our transit projects, resident services, most of the libraries are in there. Um, human services, health, which is a bulk of our budget, disparity reduction, and then law, safety, justice. Uh, next slide. So, human services, uh, the one thing I just want to point out with this slide, I think is the biggest issue right now as we're in the legislative session coming from the legislature, uh, there are huge cuts being proposed to waivers. So waivers are something that the county uh everybody has to come through us. It's an entitlement service. Everybody if you have a disability is screened once a year. Now imagine that once a year you're screened. Every year you might have a disability into perpetuity. It is not going away. But every single year you have to go through a min choices screener where the county says okay we verify that you are disabled. And um that is a federal law. the state then we once in the county has to administer and say yes we've done this we've done the screening this person qualifies and then we go to the state so this is why people get so frustrated with government right bureaucracy but the issue is is right now the state of Minnesota is saying they're going to make some cuts whether it's the governor's budget the senate budget or the house budget they're all bad for henipin county and they're all bad for taxpayers and henipin county so I just would ask you as you're thinking about the next four four weeks I'll be I have a newsletter I'll be doing a call to action. Um if they pass the cost on to the county, we have to somehow figure out how they people with disabilities have to be covered. It's a federal law. So then the only way that if we cannot cover it, it gets covered. It gets passed to uh property taxes, which is one of the most regressive taxes by the way. So um I just would say sorry, I'm going to highlight that one and we can focus on the other things later. Um but mental health services, we also do child support um and child abuse calls, vulnerable adult calls. Uh and I worked actually as a guardian light up the Henipin County Juvenile Courts when I was just in my early 20s. Another way that I first got involved with government, um economic supports, those are cash benefits, SNAP, EBT, um food assistance, childcare assistance, housing support, all of those you've seen that have grown. I don't have the 2024 number on there, but it actually finally has leveled out. So, we're not seeing growth anymore, which is a positive. We've been doing a lot of preventative work and trying to figure out how we can stabilize the numbers. You can go to the next slide. So, Hipin County does a lot around public safety that people don't really think about. We uh supervise, if you just go to the bottom of the the slide, 22,000 uh adults and juveniles every single day. Henipin County probation is in our building, the big H downtown. I don't know if you've been there, been called for jury duty. courts are on one side. We pay for it because by state law, we have to provide a space for the courts. The county pays for it though. Just making sure everybody knows that. Um so county liaison, we're working with law enforcement. Um we one of the things that we have is the embedded social worker up the top. I know uh Orno who's providing um policing for Mound, but also I think uh oh gosh, there's like two other cities they do it. I apologize you guys. It's been a long day. I'm not going to be able to remember. Tonka Bay, Minnetonka Beach, I think. Um so but COPE is our our crisis response team and then we also are building um a 24 um sevenh hour uh crisis facility in our 1800 Chicago building. So kids that were going through our system I think you've heard the news stories over the last maybe year and a half two years especially when uh youth crime was going up um the kids just cycling through our system. We need to have spaces and places for the kids. And so we're partnering with other counties, but Hennean County is in the process of building a crisis unit, which will only have about 15 beds, but we need them. Uh, but the embedded social worker is at Orno and, uh, it sounds like it's working out really well. So, next slide. And, and I didn't say it, but PAP, uh, we have that that building in, uh, Plymouth, and it's our 911 call center, which does all when you're calling 911, nobody thinks about who's answering the call. That's actually a county worker on the other line with the sheriff's department, county funded, um answering your 911 calls, diverting you to either um your EMS service or uh or to to the Orno Police Department. Um okay, so these the sheriff and county attorney are both duly elected on their own. I just wanted to highlight a few of the programs that I think are really good that both of them have. Um the partnership with the water patrol. Today we just um we just approved funding for um the drug task force with Orno as a part of that. Uh and the crime lab which I just saw last week with our interns for a day. We had uh one Orno student. Um I need to really build out by the way I have an intern for a day program. I did it at the cap. Um I brought 600 youth from high school to the capitol. Uh over my six years at the cap. Um, I started that at the government center and this year I've had about I think it's 53 students. It's wrapped up for this year, but if you could tell if you know West Tonka high schoolers about this program, they spend one day with me. They get it to put it. It's a nonpartisan internship on their resume and I will write them a letter of recommendation for university. I honestly can't I can't I literally think I've written almost 300 letters of letters of wreck. So nonpartisan looks good on their uh so share the word on that one. um be at school program is looking at truency. We know that truency if a child is truent they're probably also committing a crime that just correlations there. I was on public safety at the capital are really high. Um and victim services today it was really fun. We had um a dog a service dog come in uh not connected to our counties uh county attorney's department but we also do have a service dog in our county attorney's department which I met and he's very nice. So uh next slide and I'll just highlight on this one we have a shelter all policy. So, no child sleeps outside in Henipin County. If you do ever see anyone and there's a family and you're not sure, sometimes there's signs people asking for money. Um, if you want, ask them if they have a place to sleep at night and I will give you my cell phone number. You can call me. I will, if you don't, if they say, "I do not have a place to sleep at night," call me genuinely. I don't care what time of night. Um, I it's really important that we enforce the policies that we have and that they're not just feel-good sound good things. Let's make sure kids actually have a place to sleep. It helps our community as a whole. Um, we have the repair and grow program which is the result of a metro sales tax which we passed at the legislature when I was there. That's about 20 million annually for Hipant County and we're able to invest in things like the repair and grow program which will help with affordable housing. Right now the um affordable housing developers are very instable. Uh the market's obviously unstable. Getting investors is is not the best time. And so trying to think about ways that we can be supportive is work that we're doing with the repair and uh grow program. Developers like AON I know have participated. Next slide. And Henipin County we have health highlights there. Um the board just agreed with me. I was the only vote that actually wait hold on maybe it was it was actually Kevin Anderson and I we disagreed that we wanted to keep the ballpark sales tax extension the top um of right now the the again I told you about uncompensated care at the hospital so we're putting the board brought forth a resolution to try to do directed payments um which is a Medicaid increase uh agree but the federal government I don't think is going to approve that right now and the ballpark sales tax would have been pretty much guarantee if we could have got it passed this year. I don't I I still hold doubt the last four weeks of the Minnesota legislative session. Anything can happen. Um so we'll see what happens there. Um we have an EMS working group which I know you're not really necessarily impacted by because you guys don't have Henipin EMS services, but if you haven't, we're offering to all council members hopefully. Did you all receive um I offered we're offering a tour of the medical examiner's office coming up in June. If you haven't um I maybe will bump that in your email, have my assistant do that. We'd like all council members if you haven't seen the medical examiner's office to come and see uh the medical examiner's office. People don't think of it as public health, but it is. It's where when you see somebody there's a homicide on the news that's in Han Penipin County, that person's going to the medical examiner's office. When we had the pandemic and the outbreak, the people are going to the medical examiner's office. Um so just be thinking about if you'd be interested in that. I'll be sending out county tours. I would love you guys to know about some of the facilities that a lot of people just don't see on a day-to-day basis. Um, and with that, I've already talked about the mental health response. So, next slide. At the capital, I was the chief author of the read act, uh, which is, um, changing how we do literacy in the state of Minnesota based on phonetics and the science of reading. Uh, we are doing a lot of literacy interventions here in Henipang County. I'm really proud that we're in 16 different libraries. Now, my hope is that we will be at West Honko Library um doing tutoring services once it reopens. Um we also just nobody thinks about it, but we help with schools in the way of if there is a student in need, we can help provide in families push in services to the school to make sure the family is being helped. Um so if you ever know of anyone, always reach out to me and we can make sure that we're getting them help. We also help with the social social worker funding at the schools. Next slide. So, resident services, uh, libraries, I mentioned to you, we have 41 libraries. 10 are in district six. I would say some of the best. And service centers, Ridgedale, Southdale. I will tell you right now, getting Real ID, there are lines. It is terrible. It looks like one of the council members knows. I I think I've gotten multiple emails a day on this. Um, and we're trying your best. I will say if residents are experiencing a hard time getting an appointment, email me. I can help or email Commissioner Anderson. Is there any possibility of getting more service centers? At one time when they, you know, started talking about our library, we did ask could there be a service center put in the library and we were told no. Uh but some service centers are privately Yeah. operated correctly. Um or yes, council member, they are. Absolutely. Yes. that we could put a kiosk maybe like I guess we should connect on what services you would like to see at the library. Right now I have to be honest council member we're really concerned about funding. So we won't be adding a lot of anything right now outside of what we've committed to and we're looking at how we can be really cautious with our dollars um unless it's going to help people. It would just really make a difference. I mean, you know, um, like for me with limited transportation to get my real ID or a passport, you know, getting to Ridgedale is not. Now, I think there is something in Weisetta that we can go to, but um, it would be nice if on this end of the lake we had something. I that's a really good point and um I will mention and this as we kind of look at what we're doing in the future if there's a way to do some sort of partnership. Um it's it is expensive to operate them but I I do see your point in terms of accessibility and it's well noted. Well, okay. Um all right. So we also people don't think often of counties as helping with elections but we do. We provide when you vote while your lovely city provides the staff. Um we are als we are providing the machines that you vote on and we are also picking up the ballots. We certify the election. Uh election integrity is really important to us. We are doing assessment services. So um if there is an assessment on your property, how much property taxes you pay for um and you'll be assessed um for the city uh in the the school and the county. Those assessment services are done through our office through Henipin County. And so, um, come to us with, uh, with what it will look like if there's an appeal or if you have a question to what that assessment looks like. Um, and with that, you can go ahead to the next slide. Trying to keep on time here, you guys. I'm sorry. It's a the county does a lot. So, public works and transportation. I um, there are multiple projects that I know um, Mount has uh, coming up. I have just some notes here. Um I know West Edge Boulevard uh we have that project. There is also another uh transportation project where it is where is it here? Uh Lotus Drive to Bartlett Boulevard as well as Auditor's Road to Sunnybrook. Um there might be more but that's what I have on my notes. Um we also Mound's trash goes to the Herk as last time I checked. Is that still correct? uh city manager, right? I think that's right. You're Yeah, you're just I'm pretty I'm pretty sure I'm right just now. Just works right. Yeah. So, Herk is the the um it's the the center downtown. It's the recovery where we all your trash. It's the incinerator um where your trash goes. Now, we're trying to figure out a plan to close that. Um and we have a lot of different variable moving parts to what that's going to look like. Um what I potentially would like to see us is is phasing it out and what that looks like more as just as somebody that's worked in public policy. I don't see the clear vision of what it looks like yet. And so we'll be following up more with that. We also have uh actually we'll go to the next slide. We also have community grants. So tree canopy is something that is um an environmental goal that the county has in terms of climate change making sure that we're doing work there. Um so please apply for those. the more trees that we can have. I really would love to see District 6 get as many of these grants as possible as and we have the youth activity grants, business recycling grants. So, I'll be um my office will be on a tour this summer of meeting trying to go to some of the cities and some of the senior living facilities working on some of the business recycling grants. I've seen that that's a good place, but if you also know of others that that could apply, please do. And that is it, council members. That is the end and I'm happy to take any questions. Does council have any questions? I have one. You just spoke about the her the garbage? Yes. Why Why are you wanting to phase that out and where will our garbage go? That is a great question, council member. Um there was a vote that was taken before I was on the council or be excuse me, we don't call it the council, we call it a board. Um that we would be closing it by 2040. Uh, and what I will say to that is I don't know where the trash is going to go, which is the problem that we have. I will say that I get a lot of pressure to make a vote to close it now, but I've been in public policy long enough to know that creating a crisis is not a good idea around trash. I mean, you look at what's happening in New York and and and they have their own like struggles, right, in terms of rats and we don't need that. So, how the amount of that people are consuming is going up. So the amount of trash is going up. So how do we increase um work with the the um the state to increase composting, work with um local cities to do that as well, try to increase recycling, but the reality is is we have to figure out places for trashes and they'll go to landfills is where they'll go. And none of them, by the way, we have not one landfill in Henipin County. So the answer to that would be to close it down alto together. that seems illogical. The answer the answer is to close it down and that's what that's what the vote has been. It's it's the process of how do we get there. I will say objectively coming in from this as a policy perspective that I do care about the environment. I would just um I I find it hard to believe that a a lot of us would want an incinerator in our backyard either. Right. So I do have compassion there. I do struggle with where the trash is going to go though, and that's that's the problem that we're in right now. So, there's there's pressure points of I want it close now, but there's 360,000 tons of trash that are burned in that incinerator every year. It was a bad location for it, quite frankly, when they first built it. And in fact, it impacts the people who live in North Minneapolis who have high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases. So it's it's yes it doesn't make sense to close it down just but right now it's impacting the health of people who live in the nearby community and actually every time you go to a twin state you're subjecting yourself to that air. So would the plan be to like to that's absolutely right acknowledge that like an incinerator be elsewhere in Henipin County or just not have one? I don't know where we I council member think that's a great question. I honestly think that we need to have conversations about I mean some of the climate leaders I mean I was on environment when I was on the capital. I mean I think I think it's going to be complicated that it can't just go to a landfill. We have to figure out ways like there's anorobic digesttors. Um so what that is essentially is this big machine that we would send trash to and then it would compost it in down. But that's again assuming that we can compost some of that material. So we're trying to solve on it. I don't maybe the answer is another incinerator, but who wants an incinerator in their backyard, right? I know I live in Edina and if you're in mound, would you would residents here be opposed to building one, you know, right over here? I I'm pretty sure they would be because of exactly what the council member said is is the what does that do to the air? So, we're it is a it is a very challenging policy problem that we're dealing with. Another challenge I'm curious is to what is the county has the county looked at the cost and staffing for all the elections? You know, in the last two years, we've had sort of ongoing elections. We're finishing one and getting ready for a primary and then a primary and then another election. Um which means our staff um and in our staff it's one person really who gets the help from some of the other staff uh really gets burdened with a lot of of time and the prep work and then setting up the voting booths and monitoring the voting. So what are we going to do because it doesn't look like we're going to have less elections. Uh we can't they Thank you, council member. There's there's nothing the county can really do to that point about elections. I mean, for my seat specifically where voters had to go and vote three times. Um, it was really expensive. That election cost a lot of money. So, it cost the taxpayers, I think it was like the rough estimate was like 350,000. So, we probably should have people when you're when you're in your term, when you've been elected, serve your term because when you don't, especially for 16 cities, it was really expensive. Nonetheless, it was not fun for me. I'm just going to say it wasn't fun. Um, but it was it was hard and it was a you know that's a challenging for every single city. I've heard the same thing. It was they had to staff it and it was challenging. I wish I could say that won't happen, but it's that's how the the election process. There's no one sort of looking and reflecting and thinking about is there something else we could do. Uh the only thing I would say is to try to have when people want to resign from their seats is have them resign on an election year so that we don't have to re double staff because that was really unfortunate because it was a special election and then there was um yeah there was yes it was it was not fun. I there's nothing honestly that we could do about that though. So go ahead. Sorry. Oh, so I will say uh you put put together these breakfast uh meetings and or just even meetings with the mayors in the in your area and I've been to a couple of them. So, I appreciate you doing that. Um that was one of the the topics that we talked about is that our staff is getting burnt out with elections and and that that kind of thing. Now, again, I was speaking for a mountain and what I thought we would want is that we want to keep it local. like we don't want the county doing our elections. We want to do it, but we want money from you from you guys to help to hire other people. So, and you knew that and and and I think that was most of us agreed on that. There's a few cities that said just outsource it to the county, you know, as you know, but um we were not in favor of that. So, and again, it sounds like you don't have a lot of money going around, but if you can find money that we can help, you know, find other people to pay that would that would help us. Yeah, I think to that's a good for mayor and council member. I think it's a good point in terms we can't reduce probably elections. There's just no control over that. But in terms of the funding, um potentially at some point I know that several of the cities have brought that up. Um potentially we could look at that in the future, but I have to be honest with you, we are facing a lot of instability in terms of funding. Yeah. Um and just what we can expect over the next year to two years. and so I just can't commit to that. But that is something for the long term I absolutely will look at with you. Okay. And just a couple other comments. Uh so I went over to Ridgale to get my real ID, right? So I'm flying May, early May, you know, right after the deadline or whatever. And I know this has been a thing for like two years. You know, you should get your real ID. Of course, I didn't, but I'm have a July birthday. So I do got to get, you know, my ID coming up. So you know, I walk in, right? And I wait in a little line. It wasn't too bad to just talk to the clerk, you know, to, you know, see where my number was. And, you know, she she was nice and, you know, she's probably getting pounded by, you know, all the different people in line. But, um, she she's like, "Well, it's 3 hours, you know, three-hour wait." I was like, "Okay, I got my computer in the car. I guess I could work from here, I guess." Then she and I said, "So, okay." So, like it was like 10 or I was like, "Okay, 1:30 or whatever." She said, "Well, a minimum three hours." She's like, "I can't guarantee you three." you know, three to could be six, you know, but it's like for sure you're going to be three. So I'm like, okay, great. I for whatever reason, I think I have my passport with me because that's one of the qualifications, passport and a bill and blah blah blah to be able to get it. And then so she goes, "Well, you can fly with a passport. It's better than a real ID." And so I was like, "Oh, great. Didn't know that." Now, I still need to get my ID for July. Yeah. But just so the public knows, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you can fly with a passport. You don't not you do not need a real ID. Now, obviously, if you got to renew your We can be like the rest of the world and fly with your passports. Yeah. So, I guess I'm that's what I'm going to do, but it's correct. As long as your passport's today and it's with it. Yeah. You can use your passport. But then there's me who has an expired passport. Well, so then I went online and she gave me a little card and said, "Hey, go book an appointment." And she's like, you know, good luck, but try, right? And it's pretty far out. Yeah. And so then I I booked it and uh I I had to go downtown Minneapolis. There's the only one available. Maple Grove, Plymouth, by the way, Wisetta, you can't do Real ID. They don't have Real ID. So again, for us around here, we have to go to Ridgale, I think, is the closest or Maple Grove. Um I'm I mean I work over in Wisetta, so it's fine. But um I can't remember is it May or June is my appointment. So somehow I got in a little, you know, but I I even said, "Well, am I going to actually get this thing by like you absolutely will not get it by, you know, your deadline or whatever." So anyway, you use a passport, so that's good. And then if you haven't done it, you should probably make appointment or figure it out if you can find an appointment. So it's a mess. And if you can't get an appointment, email me. I'm genuinely serious. Um and I can maybe help with that. Uh but it is the lines are it's horrendous, you know. Yeah. Um, uh, can you give us a quick update on the library? So, I was just, you know, it's so funny as I was looking for the date because I'm like, where where we we we figured out the date when it's supposed to be estimated to be done and I I'm going to follow up with you cuz I couldn't find it right now. Um, and so I do not know. It's literally I that's so funny that you I don't know. I apologize, but it's going to be great, right? Geothermal, solar. It's going to be lovely. But yeah, we need to I thought it was going to be 2027, but I might be getting that one in Southdale confused. I I mean, I think it was was it 2026? We're working on it next year. Maybe opening 27. Yeah, that's Well, that's what I was saying. Yes. 2027 of completion cuz it was supposed to be working on it this year. Open next year. Push back. I always tell my sons, don't speak authoritative about things you don't remember. So, I don't remember. And I need to look. I need to look. Okay. Water patrol. Thank you for adding the the other boat. That's great. I think that was one of the things we talked about in that meeting as well, if I remember right. Yes. Yes. Um, send them to cooks. Oh, right. Cooks Bay. There's a lot of jet skiis and there's little cars that look like jet skiis that cause trouble. People that they don't know how to drive a jet ski or run a jet ski at all. Yes. And they just fly around and hit people. So, tell them to stop over to cook. Those are electric bikes, right? Oh my gosh. Oh, that's a whole another electric bikes. That's uh And then the last thing is the striping. We're we're doing all these resurfacing. You just said that. Um I don't know if we're doing anything on West Edge, but we're doing it up to West Edge. So, it's I don't think West Edge is from West Edge, not Shoreline to West Edge. Oh, okay. Okay. But anyway, all this uh resurfacing is is great, you know, and and that's going to be in our newsletter, by the way, uh for this, you know, it's going to be a little little fun this summer again. Um we're going to have some It's just going to be a lot of work. it. But the nice thing, and correct me if I'm wrong again, I heard from Bolton the Mink that once this is done all, you know, all this uh piping that we're doing under underground and this and that, once we're done, you guys resurface, we can't touch it for 5 years. I don't plan construction projects for five years. Yeah. So, in other words, according to So, we're going to we're going to go through a little bit of problems here this summer. We're going to get it done. You guys are going to come over. We're going to resurface it. Everything's going to be great. And then for hopefully for five years you won't see any roads being so can get our bike lane striped. Um okay yeah we can check into that. So and on the striping thing so like if you're going down like uh from from our main you know stop light and you're going to Caribou Coffee right? Yeah. So you know hardware store to Caribou Coffee. And again this is maybe temporary but this is you know engineer brain probably not mine yours. Um there's a straight stripe straight line. It's not striped. So for whatever reason, we're not striping lines to turn anymore. And so it looks like you're breaking the law to get over, you know, how they say don't cross this line. And again, maybe he can say something about this, but um we've reached out and I think Jesse on my behalf has reached out to the county or I don't know if it's your your group or his connections, but um when we actually do restripe this for for good, we need to do it the right the first time and not do solid lines if unless I'm wrong and that's a new standard for roads. So what road is it just so I know that's just one example. There's many of those, but uh it's shoreline. Shoreline. Okay. Right. So, and as you're heading east from just our main stoplight right in town, there's well, there's two of them, but that's one of them. Two caribou coffee. If you're going taking a ride into Caribou, it it looks like you're breaking the rules because you're going over the solid line. And I think that's just going to confuse people. Okay. That's just one. There's I mean, I'm just saying like the whole while we're striping all this, let's make sure we put turn lanes in. Okay. Mayor, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow up with you on an email on that probably tomorrow just to make sure that I I understand what you um what it is and then what we would prefer the result to be. Um good. And then and then um Commissioner or sorry, Commissioner Council member, I'm going to follow up and see if there's a way that we could put Real ID at Weisetta. Yes. Would that be better? Oh my god. Yes. Because maybe maybe that is closer and and that won't require too much um so let me let me look um and see into that. Um, that would help the whole West, your whole West community. Okay. Okay, good. Yep, I got those quickly. Brian, were you going to say something? How about Are you still trying to find somebody from the county to join you for ribbon cutting at the small crosswalk? Oh, yes. Uh, we'll get we'll get we'll connect with you. We're going to do a ribbon cutting at the our new crosswalk. That took us a long time to get done. And so, I was like, we're celebrating this thing. It was just finished finish like when it was really cold in the fall. So I want to like officiate. So we'd like to invite you. Oh, I want to come. Um, are you going to wait till the lights are up? The lights are I just stopped for it today. The really if you push it they were on there since the fall, but Okay. Okay. I haven't noticed. We're not doing the blinkers. They're blink because I've never seen them. Of course, no one's ever been there. Not in summer. You you'll see you'll see them cuz they're going to hit the button. Not on 110 but on 15. So we appreciate all the you know help that you guys did on that one. Um Okay. Two years of that was before you obviously but Okay. Anyway, thanks for I'll still come to the ribbon. Yeah, please come and we'll we'll figure out what day it is. Your help when we put in our bike lane. Yeah. Oh, and bike lane. That's what I'm sorry. Thank you, council member. You said bike lane. And then where um bike lane just on we want it to go around Lost Lake. Okay. So, continuing um from our little league field, what is that? Wilshire Bartlett Commerce. Okay. I'm going to I'm going to email about that as well. Okay. All right. Go. Uh did you have one last thing? I I cut you off earlier. No, no, no. Uh well, you covered the West Edge thing. Um I know you mentioned the waiver services and that issue and I know it has been covered briefly on media but in a very limited fashion which is very confusing. Um I think it would be helpful if we could kind of communicate that a little bit more in detail. Um because I see a sense that that is going to cut your budget dramatically or increase your your liability. Um and what other areas are we considering that we're going to have to cut? How do we be realistic about this? Because I know the taxpayers and I'm sure everyone in this crowd is pretty much sick and tired of our taxes going up, which I realize is not all you, but what else is on the chopping block? What are we going to cut? Council member, I think that's such a good question if I had the answer to that. Right now, we are looking at everything and quite frankly, um, we just don't know. We don't know. and we're trying to I I guess there's four four weeks of the legislative session. So, I'm hopeful still there that we can come. We have um Jody Wentland who is one of our county assistant county administrators um working with the governor's team and the house and the senate trying to figure out and let them know just what that impact looks like. I mean, for Henipin County, it's big. It's really big. I think the Senate version sends us 8 million in the first year, but then um the House's version, the governor's version, I know puts uh 33 million to Hannipan County alone, just us, right? We're one of 87 counties. Um so people aren't going to that's not acceptable, right? It's it's a federal law also with state requirements that the county has to administer. Um, and it's interesting as a lawmaker, I used to always hate like unfunded when people said unfunded mandates. And now I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is like really unfunded mandate. You guys cannot do this to us." But also, it's just it's not it's not right for the people for people that that count on those funds. We've got to figure it out and they shouldn't be the enemy in making sure that they're taken care of. So, it is I don't I if you're not a if you don't get my newsletter, please sign up. I know I live in Edina, but I have everybody's back in mound in West Honka and Taka Bay. Um, please think of me as your like surrogate member. Um, because I do want to get to know people. Please invite me to parties. I I that way I can I can make sure you're reading my newsletter so that I can make sure I'm doing a call to action. This isn't about partisan politics. It's about what we can do for people. And I'm really um so sign up for that. I'm going to be putting lots of info, but we'll also I'll be at the capital bugging my former colleagues like please don't do this. I'm I'm hopeful that we have a another solution coming, but other cuts I do not know and I'm worried. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any last questions? All right. Thanks. Thank you for coming out. Thank you. Good to see you. Oh, and really quick, just my cell phone number if you don't mind me giving it to you. And that's for everybody here if anybody wants my cell phone. They're like, I don't want a county commissioner cell phone number. Um it helps when you're in the wrong building. It it does help when you're in the wrong building. Um my cell phone number is 651 785 8696 and um and please do sign up for the medical examiner's tour. Um Jesse, I don't know if you would want to send it. Did you get that? I got it. Okay, good. Sign up for that. I think it will be interesting. It's on I think June 2nd. So um it's an I've toured it. It's good. And if members from the public would like to see some of the county facilities also email and reach out to me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Number seven, we got public hearing mid code. I'm going to let Scott jump in right away and set us up and then we have a presentation for uh Thank you, uh, mayor and members of the council. I just want to give a quick kind of framework of what how what we're doing here tonight. Yeah. Um so the city received an application from Midco for a it's for a franchise for cable communications. Um and once that application came in um and I think it's and the materials provided to the city the the city with worked um and negotiating with Mid Code the franchise ordinance that you saw is that's in the packet. And just so you know what a franchise is, it's a means to allow a utility such as a cable TV to be citywide in our rightway and in our uh public grounds that we can think of it. So there's like um instead of somebody who's in front of a house and wants to get into the rightway maybe to connect to water and sewer, this is being within our right away throughout the city. Again, this helps create a unified plan and procedure for both the city and for the franchisee um to work through issues of where's, you know, plans of where it's going to be, how you going to put it in, and then fees and cost and those kind of things. So, what we're now that we have worked through the ordinance, what we're having tonight is the public hearing on the franchise itself. Um, and then under state statute, it we have to wait at least 7 days for the council then to to adopt the ordinance. Um, which would bring it back to two weeks to the next meeting. So, tonight is the public hearing phase of it. So, with that in mind, so we do have a representative from MidCo. I I don't know if you want to see that first and then open up the public hearing and uh we'll just close it. I will fire that up for you here. All right. Can you give us your name and address? Great. Yes, absolutely. Um excuse me. My name is Ellie Burroughs. I am the government relations manager for Midco. I cover the state of Minnesota. Um would you like my my home address? Just your work address. Work address. Yeah. So, we have a corporate office based out of Edina, Minnesota. And then our um main headquarters is Souf Falls, South Dakota. Um so Mound and Midco, I am here to introduce Midco. I'm not sure if any of you have heard of us. Um we are going through a very large expansion into the West Henipin area and Mound is on our list and we're very excited to be here. I have to say on a personal note, I've been able to spend a little bit of time out here. I've been um become a member and been going to meetings at the Mount West Taka Commerce Club and um getting involved with a few other groups and um I have to say it is quite impressive to see the folks of Mount. They appear very tight-knit. Um I've enjoyed my meetings at the Commerce Club. It's been really fun to see the speakers come in and everything you guys have going on here. So um Midco is certainly excited to be a part of it. Um I wanted to introduce my colleague Jason Saxs. Um he is with me as well. He is the general manager of our field operations. Excuse me. So, if you have um individuals come out to your home from Midco to help hook you up or you have issues, um he is the man in charge of that. Uh so, Midco, we will skip the video. We'll just keep on keep on going. But, uh we are a cable broadband provider. We are looking to expand uh fiber services to every location in mound. Um so, we are planning to do fiber. Um, we offer cable television, um, fiber internet and telephone services. Um, you can kind of see some notes on there. 247 support, no data caps, um, all that fun stuff. We can go to the next slide. So, just a little background on Midco. We were actually started in Minneapolis. Um, our founders in 1931 created the Wellorth Theater Company. They wanted to the dime that it costs to go to a movie to be well worth it. And that is something that we continue as a company today. Um kind of moving through the timeline, they opened the first television station in South Dakota in 1953. And then from there, technology has taken off and um they got into the cable television and internet game. Um starting in the '9s, they started to use fiber to hook up um cable services and kind of took off from there. In 2021, um our company leadership announced $500 million fiber forward investment and that is um in our existing and growth footprint um to invest and upgrade our network um with the the fiber and just um continue to grow and expand into our footprint. Uh so currently the M uh Midco fiber network you'll see 17,000 fiber miles. um wonderful uh guaranteed stats and all sorts of 247 monitoring for our customers. Um just a few of our service awards that we've received um service operator of the year and fast speeds and reliability um employer awards and and things that we're just really proud of and we we like to share with others. Um, so with our Midco customer support, as I mentioned, Jason um is our general manager and there's a stat that we like to talk about. So, um, we provide, if you're one of our customers, we provide a 15minute window, um, for a tech to come out to your location, hook you up if you have an issue. Um, and we are within that 15 minute 15minute window 97% of the time. And that's something that Jason is very proud of and of course our whole company is. So, something we like to share. Um, as I mentioned, Midco community involvement is a is a large ethos in our company. Um, I've personally been able to get involved in your area here. And then we have the MidCo Foundation. Um, and through the foundation, we're able to pro provide awards to local um nonprofits, schools, um, things like that in in the areas that we serve. So, um, I know we gave a large donation to the We Can Group out here and they do some wonderful work out here. So, we're happy to do that. Go ahead. Next one. All right. So, a little more details about what we're looking to do for Mound. So, um proposed service area is all of Mound. Um that is hopefully kind of encompassed on the map there. Um right now our estimates are 2,196 locations, um 133,121 ft of fiber, and our estimated completion is by early 2027. We are hoping to have that actually be the end of 2026. As soon as we can get started, we would like to um our construction um will definitely be done in 2026 and then working on lighting up. Quick question. Yes, of course. Uh that's not all the houses. Is there a reason why? Um well, half. Oh, the 21 the 2100 passings. I will dig into that because we are certainly planning to serve. Okay. all of Mount. I will dig into that and make sure we have our numbers. I mean, some of them might be apartments, but households there's 42 to 4,500. Okay. Um, I think single family houses there's at least 3,500. Okay. If not. Let me let me dig into that. We are certainly planning on surveying. Okay. So, you're the whole thing. Yes, definitely. The map. Yes, the map is where it's at. Um, all right. So, a little bit about our construction process. Uh, surveying the area is of course how we start. That is something that our team has been busy out um in this area doing for the past couple of months um designing it and and walking it out and and getting a sense of the area and where where placements of things will go, putting the plan into action. Um that is kind of where we're at now. Um, our construction teams have had conversations with your wonderful public per uh public works departments and um we are trying to open you know avenues of communication and make sure everybody is um got questions answered and and those communication lines are open. Um and then we would hopefully plan to begin construction. Um and with that process, our notification system from our construction team, um we want to be of course open with the city and um anybody who has questions regarding our construction process, but with the residents as well, of course that we understand that it can be disruptive to neighborhoods and homes and we want to minimize that as much as possible. Um, so we have notification systems through mailers, um, advertising, trying to notify residents as much as possible. And then a couple days before construction will actually begin, we will have our teams go by and actually do door hangers, um, on each location. And, and on all of those notification items, there will be a phone number that actually goes directly to one of our construction leaders that's on the ground in that neighborhood. so that if somebody has a question, has a concern, there's somebody on the ground um that can remedy that very soon. Um that's something that we of course want to um do as much as possible. Uh splicing and activation. Um that's to the part where we're lighting it up and and people can start getting service. Um so we're excited about that. Next one. And then installing midcode. You know, part of our notification system is we do encourage folks if they are interested in getting our service, they can go to our website. Um we will have um a special website for this area um in our fiber expansion area and they can sign up for pre-berry services so that when our construction teams are initially going by, if they know that they want our service um we will get them hooked up and ready to go so that as soon as the service is live, they will be able to um have our service. All right. and kind of went into our notification strategy, but um that is um key of course to our construction process. So I mentioned kind of the construction notification and then as well as we do have um midco.com/hello um that is our fiber expansion area. folks can go in. Um there's a lot of FAQs regarding the construction process, what to expect, pictures, um and then they can enter their address and get an idea of timeline of when services will be available, when they can expect to see folks in their neighborhood. Um and then of course contact information. And that's something that um we would be happy to work with the city on to make sure that you guys have the answers that you need. um if you want to post it on websites or newsletters, we would love to provide that for you to just make sure that you feel like um your residents are getting that timely information from us. Um so in our construction areas, you will see those yard signs up. Um our our contractor trucks and yard signs, we want folks to know that it's Midco. We don't want people wondering who are these people in our neighborhood. So we try to make sure we're labeling as much as possible so people are aware. Um just an example of the website that I mentioned. I'd be happy to share that with the city. Um we do have operations in Minatrista and um as a close neighbor I I wanted to share that. I I think it's been a positive relationship there. So we're happy to share that. All right. And that kind of wraps it up. If there's any questions. Does council have any questions for Helen? Yes. when you're laying the fiber, are you laying that in the uh piece of the your property that's, you know, sort of the city? And how disruptive will that be, you know, for people's gardens and things like that? Yep. So, yes. So, it will be underground. It will be um it it will be slightly disruptive as we're getting the fiber into the ground. Um, but our our job and and something that we take pride in is kind of that that fixing it process. Making sure that homeowners feel that the yard is in the same shape that we came to it in is our goal. Thank you. Yeah. Do you tie into the box that's already in most of our yards? We would, if you want to come up, you can come up. Give us your name. a tech a technical expert. Hi, my name is Jason Saxs. Um, no, because that is property of either Mediacom, Frontier, Central Link, not sure who's all in your area. Um, we have to install our own pedestal or ground vault. So, it depends on the neighborhood. Some of them are vaults that are, you know, low to the ground or whatever. We use both types of construction depending on the neighborhood. So I think they're doing this over in Mitros now if I'm Yes. Yeah. So they they're most of it's under the ground trend. Yep. And then it kind of comes up. So does it and it hits everybody's yard. It's a lot of directional boring is what you're referring to. So instead of a plow coming through and leaving a big plow mark all the way. You're digging a hole on in one spot and another hole on another spot and you're shooting it under the ground. So you're not seeing the disturbance except for the two holes where it comes back out. Yep. Yep. Are you going to be letting residents know if your yard is going to be one that's going to have one of those vaults in it? Um, yes. They'll be staked and flagged. They may not know if it's a vault versus a ped or whatever because it's in the rightway. It's actually the city's property that we're putting it in. But, you know, a lot of those vaults, if you drive around the city, they're crooked and they don't look very neat. That's one thing that we pride ourselves on is when we're doing that, we try to do that as straight as possible. Of course, in time, I'll defend Mediacom or the other companies here. Ground settles, things shift, and they do get crooked. Um, obviously, if that's something that becomes an eyesore or is an issue, we'll absolutely come out and fix that. So, as a city, can we request a vault version rather than any of those towers? Um, yeah. Is that not feasible? I mean, it depends on what we're putting in. Some of it has to be above. Um, we can, you know, take into consideration vaults in certain areas. As you know, we live in the frozen north, though, so my team's not a huge fan of vaults because they're not as easy to find when there's they're not. Although, we didn't get any snow this year, so it wasn't too bad. But, we will do vaults and and if someone has a concern, we can definitely do do vaults. So, okay. Uh, and then do you tie into every single person's yard or only as they sign up? So, we are in front of the homes or business and once they sign up, then we bring it to their house. So, we don't actually bury into their property until they've signed up with us or as LA pointed out earlier, they can pre-register um using that website and they can ask to have a pre-berry and we'll bury it before we activate services. So then it's already ready to go at the side of the house. So if I don't sign up, but my neighbor signs up. I I mean, how do you tie into like your main system? It's out at the curb in the rightway. So if if you guys split, say a property, it's we're going to bury from the rightway into her property and not yours. Each one's going to get its own individual drop from the rightway. Okay. So you're going to kind of hit all the main corners. Yeah. The whole town and then as people sign up, you're going to correct push it right into their property. Yep. Got it. Okay. Um Yeah. Oh. Uh fiber versus cable. Is that a thing? Uh that is a thing. And we we have we actually have both throughout our company because historically we were a fiber coax company. When we build new, which is what we're going to be doing in mound, we build 100% fiber. And why is that better? um longevity and the the um what fiber can do is still it's um still it's the best. Okay. So like for me like I have Mediacom uh for my internet. Yep. So that's come from from a cable. I see it right. It's coming into my house through cable. So the fiber could potentially be faster. So So cable has come a long way and we'll I'm not going to do talk down on cable because we provide it in many of our cities. But one of the hindrances is the upload speeds. So even though it's come a long way, right now the most you might see is a gig symmetrical on a cable plant like a mediacom. Um they're probably not quite there yet on theirs. Um with our fiber that we would install in mound, 10 gig symmetrical right out of the gate. um and scalable to 25 gig symmetrical which is unheard of numbers I never thought I would have heard in my 25 year career but it's it's something that fiber has the capacity to go much much faster and as you know as we consume more every day um those speeds are so so I I see your your pricing sheet here if there's all different levels anywhere from like 30 to you know 200 bucks but Like if if if I just want to like stream Netflix and you know do what most families probably do, right? Yep. Watch some TV, do this and that. I mean what number like 50, 100, 250, 500, one gig. What what do you recommend usually people get? So each on our website, we actually kind of go through that based on like it'll say, you know, what size is your family, right? What do you use it for? Is you do you have kids that are gamers? are you, you know, streaming multiple things at the same time? Um, you know, typically for the average household, the 500 by 500 or the gig by gig is a very common package. Okay. But can people get by with our 250 x 250 package? I know the internet provider I have, which isn't us unfortunately where I live, um, I do 250 x 250, but I it's just my wife and I. So, um, we we're not using quite as much speed. So, but there's the scalability and you know, we do actually have people in Minatrista Greenfield as a city we did not long ago um with our 2 and 1/2 gig package that they are utilizing it because it's not necessarily you sitting at your computer needing 2 and 1/2 gig. That's most most devices don't even have the capability of that right now. But it might be you sitting at your computer, three kids and a wife, and you're all using devices. You're now splitting up that two and a half. Got it. Okay. So, all right. That's all I have for questions. I guess you guys have questions for um Mr. Lansman, but Okay. Well, I think we're good for you guys and then we're going to do open meeting here. Wonderful. Thank you. Thanks. My brother works for um Mid Coat down Well, he lives in Oatana, but out of the Rochester. Oh, really? Great. And he thinks it's a great company. Uh do you want to do your question? Oh, was there anything on the franchise agreement that just caught your eye or not knowing a lot about that? Well, I I it's been heavily negotiated. Um, but the it's I mean just kind of I I guess I could summarize it real quick. Yeah, I'm just I know there Trista. That's great. I was just wondering if there was anything that you saw. Yeah, it's basically it's right now it's a 20-year agreement. Um there's an ability that that have, you know, that we can um if we get to a point where um after that 20 years we want to extend it, we can. If not, that's fine, too. Um the the rates that are the way it works out too, the rates really are are charged by a company are subject to to the FCC. The city can if we want to can regulate those rates, but we're still going to be subject to those FCC rules. So it's I don't know if we want to be in the business of it, but there is that ability if it becomes an issue that we can the city can get involved. Um the so the way it works out too is that the city has the ability once they're up and operating to obtain a franchise fee up to about up to I believe it's 5% of I think I don't know if it's revenue or what they charge. I don't have that in front of me but the idea is that that franch they're going to be they're going to probably be coming in um during this 20-year period to disturb right away and do other work. um they're still going to have to get permits, but that franchise fee will take the place of once it's up and running of any permit fee. So, there's there is that revenue stream coming in. Um interesting is that they have to commence their construction within 200 240 days once the ordinance is effective, but it sounds like that's not going to be an issue, but there's a time frame. And then there's also a in here about they have to construct at least I think it's called 50 plant miles per year. So there's so there's actually benchmarks of what they have to meet at as they're doing this initial construction. Um we're going to be providing insurance to the city identifying the city for the work they're doing. That's part of it. Um there's also something called a security fund. The security fund is a letter of credit provided to the city. And so if they are violating if there's violations of the of the ordinance, I'm sorry, the ordinance. Um there's there's penalties are involved and we could draw from that letter of credit to pay for that for those penalties and then they have to um replenish that amount. Um I talked about the franchise fee. Um, about early termination, h early termination or they call it transference. Well, I what we have instead of that because similar to I would say similar to like when uh teleunation telecommunication company comes in, they build a tenant on top of a water tower. You know, they they look at these long-term leases really to recoup their cost. So, I figure it's the same way. Okay. What they that's why they put this liquidated damages or this letter of credit in. So if there are violations, there's an ability to provide a penalty to them um um in there. So I don't I don't remember offh hand really termination, but I think that's there's a 30-day. Yeah. Okay. I think I I and I think that that that you know if there are a point where there and I and I feel like this is what I don't want to speak out of terms because I don't have that information in front of me. Um and then let's see there is requirements and they do this that they have to have a company will maintain a local toll-free or collect call telephone access line which is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Somebody's going to either answer or be available to respond. Um and it's it does say a trained company representative. um how significant of a revenue stream if it's waving permit fees and I don't have that information but this is standard throughout like I I was say part of the start of this was the looking at other materials that I was able to provide to put this help put this franchise ordinance together and that is a typical the 5% it may be it must be required but under the FCC rules or the state statute has that 5% in there But, you know, I just don't have information, okay, on it. But I don't think our permit fees are that high either um enough on it. And then they're also have a requirement to to provide us the ability for we can have local programming too. So, that's kind of a hope taking uh 20 p 21 pages and trying to summarize it. But it's uh it has it has protections. I mean, I will tell you this is this agreement is pretty similar to what you're going to find in the other cities, too. These are pretty uh pretty standardized. Um it does provide the city with c certain rights, but it think of it this way. It's it's similar to like a lease where the tenants going to have their rights, but the landlord has certain rights, too, to make sure that they're complying with the rules and regulations. And that's kind of the situation they were in here. Thanks. Yeah. And is a 20-year agreement pretty standard? Um, that seems really long. Well, I I the the the idea behind it is so that is the recouping of cost and similar like said like telecommunications those sometimes are 20 plus optional tens. There's this one doesn't even have that option after it has to come to an agreement. Okay. But to do to do it. So I I didn't see 20 as something with with with the amount of investment being made. I didn't see 20 as being out of bounds. All right. Any other questions for Mr. Lansman? All right. I'm going to open it up to a uh public hearing. You want to come up and say anything about this subject? Come on up. Give us your uh name and address. My name is Helen Candy. at 5926B Road. Y um I know Comcast owns 49% of the company and I'm just wondering if this is a way to get Comcast in just a genuine question. I'm all for competition, but my personal experience with Comcast and their customer service ranks really at the bottom level underneath no airline service. So that's one of my questions is that okay, we'll we'll ask them when they come back up. Thank you. just to what we get 20 years of that it's like um and then the second is today my yard got ripped up for fiber so I didn't know about it at all I've got the punch holes all around my yard at the top of my driveway for fiber uh on beachwood uh they're just flagging for No they're digging they're laying fiber and I didn't know about it so in two years am I going to get another punch to Jesse is that fiber or is that the pipe there is somebody is that water if it was fiber then it would have been another provider That's what I'm So every time a franchise comes in, am I going to get a yard ripped up? And I don't know, just something to consider from a good question, household perspective. I know they're doing the water mans on Beachwood. I know, but these are No, these are fiber. Yeah, I mean they've been up on Ranger doing it, too. That would probably be Frontier then doing work. Um, they've had permits pulled, but they should have done that when the water was I mean, it just seems like my yard is going to be ripped up several times. Anyways, that's that's not the point. My point is Comcast is really what I'm worried about owning 49% of Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anybody else want to come up? All right. Hearing none, I'm going to close the public hearing. Do you guys want to come back up and tell us about your Is it 50/50 or is it 49? 49. 49. Comcast is strictly a financial backer. Okay. Um they have no controlling interest. Um we are privately owned, not publicly traded. Okay. Operate we operate solely separately. Um so yeah. Okay. All right. So if that were the case though too that they would Comcast would need a separate franchise agreement anyway and all that stuff. I mean, this is just I mean, I guess technically they could they could buy you out, you know, but that's happening. You're correct. Comcast would have to get their franchise. They are a separate company for us. Okay. All right. Thanks. Yep. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Back to council. Um, do we have to we have to do or do we have to Well, there Yeah, there is. Oh, no, there's nothing to do at this point. So, but um I just want to It was brought to my attention and I should note this because I drafted 1064. Yeah. So section 11 which is on page 1064 of your materials deals with transfer of the of this of the franchise and it's just says the company shall not voluntarily or involuntarily sell, assign, transfer, lease, sublet or otherwise dispose of and hold or part the cable system or the franchise uh without the prior written consent of the city. Um but it does say cannot be unreasonably withheld or delayed. Um but there's no consent for transferring if they get a mortgage um transfer directly to or indirectly owned or controlled by the company. So there are some caveats but basically um if there's going to be a transfer the city is going to be able it has a they can't do it unless the city approves it. Okay. um franchise and I and if and if for some reason Comcast or Expinity wanted to come into the city separately from Midco that would be a separate franchise. Okay. All right. So, is there anything else that we have to do on this or is that that's it? Oh, sorry. Um the answer is no because this was a public hearing to gather information and then this will come back before the council within two weeks for um another for a not public hearing on the ordinance um where motions and discussions can be made. Got it. Okay. And at that time too, we'll provide a uh I I gave it to Maggie already. I already drafted a resolution for summary publication, too. All right. Thanks, Ellie and Jason. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. So, we'll go to the next one. We got number eight. Council introduction review discussion with Colin Charleston, owner of 5581 Old Shoreline Drive, regarding interest in purchase purchasing Outlaw Via Mount Harbor. We got Jesse up. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I'll be very brief. Yep. This is a council introduction. I just wanted to remind this the city council that there's been no technical review of this. This is simply an introduction of a project that Mr. Charleston is going to present to you in uh probably about 10 seconds. And um if you're familiar with the area, that's at the corner of Old Shoreline and Commerce. I think we're all very familiar with Colin and his uh property, but I'll get out of the way. Just wanted to get on camera. Thanks. Thanks. Welcome. Can you give us your name and address? Yes. Uh Colin Charleston, the home address 5749 Sunny Brook Lane. Um, I own the State Farm Agency, excuse me, on Three Points Boulevard in 110, 5560 3 Points Boulevard. Uh, councelor, councel and, uh, mayor, thank you for having me tonight again. Um, I wanted to be here two weeks ago. Um, I said in my letter that I was somewhere way more fun and I was. So, but thank you so much for having me tonight. Um, I just want to give you a little bit of background. Um, and then can you share the documents that I provided on the screen for those in the room as well? Um, so I've been a State Farm agent here in town for 15 years. So those of you that don't know, I'm a small business owner. Um, speaking of franchises, I'm not a franchisee of State Farm, but I'm an independent contractor. Um, I have eight full-time employees. Six of them live um in our communities. Um, I have two remote employees, one in Hawaii. Um, he recently moved. Um, but we've been we've been calling Mound home for almost 16 years. Um, I've been in the same office location that entire time. Uh, as you know, I've been looking at this property for quite some time and what to do with it. Um, it kind of fell into my hands, um, with the prior developer who I was involved with as a user tenant. Um, and they offered it for sale to me at that point. Um, that was about two years ago, uh, summer of 2023. It's hard to believe. Um, after much deliberation, um, I wanted to try and preserve the building. That's why I bought it. Um it turned out to be very expensive to remediate um things like lead, asbestous and mercury from the building. Um I did not know the dollars personally um but I wanted to try and preserve its heritage and history for the community. Unfortunately, the remodeling costs were in excess of $1 million for that property. Um ADA access became an issue at that time. I presented to the council to acquire a portion of allowed beat uh for ADA access. Um, thankfully due to the long process that council put me through, it gave me enough time to really think about what I was doing. Um, and it allowed me to get final bids on all the projects for the for the property. And it became really evident to me that it was a very poor financial decision to move forward with the remodel. Um, the city of Mount had made an offer uh to me for the property. Um, I decided to decline the offer because it was only a portion of Outlaw B, albeit a very good offer, one that I wasn't comfortable with for the future of Mound. Uh, my wife and I are very bullish on the community. Um, this is our our home. Um, we live in Menita, but Mound is really what I say where where I'm from. I say I'm from Mound. Um, I live in Nine Iron from Mound. We've been involved in our community. Um, I was part of starting the West Hockey Community and Commerce, uh, which is kind of our local chamber. Um, and we've done a ton of things in our community and our staff is also very involved. Um, I'm not a real estate developer. I'm just a dude that doesn't know a lot about real estate. Um, but I see a huge opportunity in our community. Um, I'm bullish on the future of Mound for several reasons. We have worldclass education here. Weston um, schools always ranked some of the best in the state. We have some of the best private schools in the state. Um, we're improving our facilities at the West Public Schools. They're now underway. If you haven't driven by the high school, the North End looks very different. Um, they've already begun tearing the portion of that building down to remodel it. We have a premier recreational lake in all of the world. Um, and it's a really awesome asset for us. We have amenities like recreation, the Dakota Trail, Three Rivers Park, Surfside Beach, our parks in our community. Um, we really love our community. We've also had recent explosive growth in our habitational uh, arenas as we call it in my business. Um, homes, developments like our Tessa, Lake Minnetonka Flats, Woodland Cove, which is in Minatrista, but they do business in our community often. I want to give those people more reason to come to our town that maybe don't already. And finally, our downtown district could be even more walkable than it already is if we had the amenities to provide for it. Um, I wanted to try and do something to kind of keep the history and legacy of that site intact. Um, with the mixeduse district requirements. Um, so this is an overlay of the site. Um, this is a proposed 8,500 foot building. Uh, 15 uh parking spots in the rear of the building, 10 on street parking spots, and keep in mind the public parking close by as well. Um, this is designed to be a class A retail office space. Um, I would personally love for one of the tenants to be a a restaurant, coffee shop, cafe user. Um, but it's a challenging business environment for that type of an exposure right now. Um, this uh location would house my office as well, about 3,000 square ft. Um, in the announcement, um, I pointed out to Jesse there was a typo. Um, it was said 3,000t building. 30,000 is my footprint. I'm out of space in my office. Um, I have a couple of employees working from home because I'm out of space. Um, I'm here tonight really for feedback. Um, and I want to know what you guys want. Um, and that's for people both for and against any project there. Um, and I guess I'll open it up for questions. If you want to flip forward, the next slide has a rendering. Um, so this is an L-shaped building. It's not perfect because it doesn't really show 110, but it utilizes the minimum and maximum setbacks 10 and 20 feet. Um, in the prior slide, you can see it's kind of set right in the middle. Um, and that's a rendering of something that we've been working on. So, open up for questions, feedback, and comment. Thank you. Thank you. Does council have any questions for Colin? I do. Um, is this, unless I missed it somewhere, is this 110 or is this um old shoreline? 110 is uh 110 would run here and this is old shoreline. Got it. So, Lost Lake crearyy to on the end of that building basically. Correct. Okay. All right. Yep. What's the um the the like black is that just like an aesthetic break? Um yeah, correct. Yep. Okay. Same one building. Yeah. It's uh in that design is actually a um evis panel like a concrete panel. And then so your space, you know, is like the 3,000 foot kind of on the corner. How many other spaces are you envisioning would be in there? One on either end. So a total of three uses. Total of three. Yep. And then the parking is So like the building it's like like the parking is right behind there. Um parking would be accessed on Marin and then there's 10 on street parking spots. on old shorine. Oh, yeah. Like the the front would be like those diagonal spots that were put in last year. Yep. Okay. Exactly. Why did you choose the like layout that you did? Um to best utilize the space. Um to be quite honest, it's a financial puzzle. Um I need to get about 8,500 square feet rented to make the project work. Um it is very expensive to build a building today. Um, and to make the rents justify the investment in the project, I need about 8,000 to 9,000 square ft. And so that's the best way to get the layout on the lot while utilizing still the frontage for visibility for the business uses is part of the um I'm asking because I don't know because part of the financial puzzle like the reason why you didn't envision like a second story as well. Yeah. To go up is is also expensive. Yep. Okay. Um, and there's also some additional setbacks at at the third level. Um, you know, in a perfect world, I envision that entire block being redeveloped um, as one unit, but right now that's not an option. Um, and then that would change, I think, the outcome of what we would do with that project. Um, but right now it's that's the project I'm comfortable with from an investment standpoint. There's just a lot more risk the more square footage you put into a building from a tenant standpoint. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Do you have a timeline in mind of when you would like to do this? Yeah, I mean I'm I'm ready to roll. Um I'm working on some final estimates and build costs with some subcontractors working with my general contractor. Um I'm also doing some additional site survey work. Um, this falls in the Minih High Creek wershed district. Um, so there's some hardcover things that we have to work on as well. Um, we have a lot of that data from prior work I've done. Um, and our engineers have looked at it and we're working through that as well. Okay. Um, but there's a lot of upfront cost just to get started and a lot of process. Oh yeah. Jesse, can you go back the slide to the I guess I'm a little curious on what the intention is on the back up where it backs up to 5575 shoreline the crearyy. Mhm. That looks like a very strange strip there. What What's going on there? So the the lot itself is not exactly square, right? So it's kind of deceiving and it's not perfect. This is just an overlay on an overhead shot. Um the the building that was there um was the craziest thing. It actually touched the Yeah, the garage was really It literally touched it. Um and so, you know, there's and I've been in communication with with the neighbor there. Um and he's supportive of it. You know, he's got a unique situation, too, because he doesn't have any lot outside of the footprint of his building, right? Um so he uses our parking lot for a dumpster and it's fine. Um, but yeah, and again it's where do we fit the building and you know where there's some work that would have to do on on the setting of the foundation itself. That's why I'm just curious because I know he just recently painted that building. Um, and I did speak with him this afternoon because I was curious what kind of setback or rightway we need to allow that. I'm not sure. I'm not a developer either, but what the terminology is, but how do we make sure that your building isn't too tight on his building? I realize that's your land. I understand that. But um how's he going to get to his gas meter and how is he going to paint the building when he needs to paint it here? Yeah. No, there would be absolutely be room for that. Yes. I don't know what requirements or ordinances we have around that. There's setbacks for that. Like I don't know what they are, but they're different than residential. Yeah. Sometimes it's like zero lot line, but like I mean you make sure that there has to be room to access stuff. That's what I'm asking. And you know what what does that look like? you know, for the planning commission, you know, what can they dictate there that allows that to be feasible for the crearyy as well as, you know, your building? Yeah, it's a great idea. Like maybe a future concept would be a walkway, like a sidewalk through there or something. Um, right. But yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point. I mean, I don't know how you solve it, but I'm just saying, yeah, I think we could have an issue. I mean this is long term so we don't want to you know impose on either one of you but if we can come to an amicable agreement to make that workable for both entities that would be I recognize that you know this is just a preliminary drawing but um all your street presence is on shoreline commerce is our main street. What would you do with those those um sides of the building? In this one, you have just one window and a blank wall. What do you mean by street presence, Sherry? Sorry. Well, I'm saying the right hand side of the the right hand side. How how does it appear as you're walking down the street? I often go to what used to be the Dakota and sit there and look across at this site and say, "Okay, what is what does this look like?" So, are you saying like signage or access signage? Um, the attractiveness of the building back to, you know, I would 100% agree that that is going to be the most visible side of the building. Absolutely. Y Yeah. Um, and so it would appear just as it does on the left. You just It's not as good of an angle, but yeah, there'll be signage um and visibility on on commerce as well. Absolutely. I guess part of my concern is um I was always disagreed with um the way we allowed the drugstore Walgreens to build, right? You know, because basically it's the back of their building facing our 100% commercial corner. And so I, you know, I don't want that same mistake happening at Shoreline, which used to be our 100% corner back in the old days when you had to do the sort of Z through downtown. Well, keep in mind that's a county road. Yeah, I know. To so there's not any on street parking and so it's a tough place to access the building from the front and Walgreens has a similar issue because they have county road 15 and 110. So the access really has to be behind the building. Um there's no question it's a challenging site. Um and Outlap B itself is very strange in the way it's shaped. Um and you put these two together and you just get this kind of funny square shape that's not really square. Um but yeah, I mean that the the frontage on 110 is critical I think for a user. Those of us that own a business want to have signage um you know relevant or not to walk in traffic. It's a good visibility thing. So absolutely. But access off of 110 for a commercial use like this is going to be challenging just because they're not parking there. They'd have to park around the building to walk around front to go in. I mean, you actually have like with the parking behind it and then the on street off on street parking right there. I mean, there's plenty of parking. Yeah. You know how far back? This might be a question for you guys too, but like the setback like just looking at the overlay like you said the aerial view of the side of the building facing 110. How many how many feet is that? Uh this is set back at about 15 currently. So that would just be I mean I know it's a county road like right away would just be green space. Yeah. I realize yours are in gray but you can pass this around. The red lines are the setback minimum and maximums. Oh, okay. Okay. So, 10 is the minimum set back. Um 20 is the maximum. Currently, you've got it drawn at the 10 foot minimum. Right. The white. Um so, the white part represents the again it's not exactly square. So, at one uh point it might be closer to 10 and the other point it might be closer to 20. So, it depends how that really got laid out. But yeah, because 110 and and old shoreline don't meet at a 45 degree angle, you get this kind of weird shape. Also, I assume in this access to your parking will be off of Shoreline. Will there be an access to my parking will not be off of Shoreline? It will be off of Marian. Okay. So, where drive right past the crearyy and turn in? Oh, okay. Just past the cremary. Turn in right across from our Tessa. Okay. Could you I mean I'm certainly not a design expert, but to Sherry's point, aesthetically, can you put a window or something or open that atrium kind of area from your front door to make it appear more open to the street side? This is like because I agree with her. Walgreens, it's it's you pull up and you're looking at nothing. A faded mural. Yep. Yeah. So, he actually has a lot of anyone would have park. I'm just trying to think through things that we could address here before you get to planning. Yeah, thank you for that. Did you think about rotating it so the parking is in the front or No. No, you don't have parking. I don't think he has room to get the sidewalk around there. I think is part of kind of the reason like why is What's your point then? Well, like how Walgreens is the way it is like that is kind of the same way. It's like yeah, you get the most and best use out of the space. I mean, it's kind of designed to be put the parking behind it so you don't just like see a parking lot and your business is set back. So, you know, well, you also run into issues with the crearyy when you do that as I just think out loud. Um, because as the building runs north and south, you end up with that shorter lot line on the far east side of the property if you set it back in the southeast corner. What was your comment with Walgreens? I guess I don't know. Well, with Walgreens, it's you you come into Mount You're at that stoplight. Yeah. And you're looking on one side, you see the restaurant and the patios. You look at Walgreens, you see a commercial building with blacked out windows. Just Okay. So, it's more about the windows versus it's more about the presence of you know your commercial corridor. Okay. I thought you wanted the parking in the front. No, no, I didn't want the parking. Okay. Good. No. Does this in this picture there's three windows down old shoreline. Is that actually the crearyy and then your building or is that all your building? It's all your building. Yep. That's all one building and the other side would look identical to it. Okay. So, this drawing on the right side. Yep. Technically, it looks like there's one thing there, but you're actually going to have it'll be L. Yep. Exactly. Equidistant on each side. And then the creamer, you'll see that building on there and then our test in the back. Correct. Yep. I was hoping to get feedback from you. This is a first iteration. Um, and my architect wanted additional funds to add the additional square footage to the south. So, I said, "Well, we'll start with this." I mean, like the feedback I was just asking questions before just to learn about how you got to this. I mean, I like it, but it'd be cool to see, you know, I don't know, like other iterations or maybe just like the layout is good. like the building there, parking in the back, and then um I mean it was on our priorities list as like a few of the sites that we were like, we want, you know, residents said they want something built here, you know. Yeah. And I I have some uh larger developers in my pocket that are super interested in doing something, but they can't do it without all of the assembled properties. It just doesn't make sense for them. And the height requirements and density requirements make it really hard to do anything else. um you know and it this is a a highest and best use of the two parcels together in my opinion. Um I think it's hard to go much more vertical than that. Um so when you said you have other you know other parties interested with you and stuff but like this is like the best use that you found for these two parcels. Yeah, absolutely. it gets really hard to do any habitational type of risk there or exposure there. Um just from a dollars and cents standpoint. I mean you slam some condos, town homes or Lord help us an apartment there, you know. Um it would it would just be really challenging site for that expensive residents and other businesses would like more businesses in town. So I mean this is and that's just it. Like literally, tell me another class A office space in town. I can tell you there isn't one cuz I've been looking for 15 years and they haven't shown up. We have no user friendly office space in town. And these would be, you know, specialized users, attorneys, accountants, financial planner, um my agency, um you know, those are the type of users that are going to use the office space. And I have this wild hair that I'd love to see another breakfast place there or a place to eat. Um I think that's a bit of a pipe dream still, but I would love to see it personally. Coffee shop next to the ice cream shop would be sweet. Well, and I've talked to the restaurant tours in town and they look at me and they're like, I'm not telling you this cuz it's a competing business. It just doesn't work. Um I had an interested party that wanted to do a restaurant there that I know personally. We did the math on it. It just doesn't work for them as the owner of the property. It's so expensive to run a restaurant. Yeah. Chipotle in there. You'll It'll be a slam dunk. You and my son, Jason. It's not me. I just hear everybody wants Mexican theme restaurant, man. It's like all the time. My son is uh homesick today from school and my wife was at soccer practice. So, I literally ordered Chipotle during the county commissioner presentations. Hopefully, she doesn't watch this. Um but yeah, I mean a fast casual restaurant. Um, I think that the challenge we have with fast casuals, in my opinion, as a business owner in town, knowing how the economics work, we just don't have the rooftop count. And we're not really a drive-through city. We're a destination city. And without a larger scale development project, I think it's hard. Um, just because of what we have in town from a community standpoint. I would love it, but could they make money? Could they make a business work? I hope they would, but there's a reason they haven't, right? Even if it's not that, it's just that there's room for three other, you know, for three businesses there. That's Absolutely. And I I mean, it's it's interesting when you think about it of that I know of. The McDonald's in Spring Park is the only McDonald's I've ever known of that went out of business. No, I I know a second one. Hardies, too. You know, a second one. Okay. There's two. Hardies and a Hardies. And a Hardies. And Hardies and a Country Kitchen, right? So, but anyway, I So, yes, there's lots of uses that could go in there, and I'm really excited about the project. Um, and I want to make sure it's right for the community first and foremost. I was more like honestly most curious about just the, you know, because there was talk about something that was two stories like a long time ago. And I mean, I think this looks great and we want to see something develop there. I don't know. I had a lot more feedback. back. I had mostly questions, but I was sitting here thinking that the gal talking about the distressed property might be coming to complain about the way my building looked for 6 months. Um, thankfully I don't think there was ever a complaint filed. If there was, um, thank you for not telling me, but um, I want to clean this space up. Um, it needs to be something. I think truly as a concerned community member and business owner, if we get this side of 110 right, the west side of 110 is going to get right. Mhm. Um and it'll happen kind of organically and it's already started like Minnetonka Flats, Art Tessa, right? Um lots of traction on the west side, too. So, you know, I think it's this is a step in the right direction. Um is the development perfect? Probably not. Um they never are. Um but I want to try and get it as close to that as I can. All right. So, this is our chance uh to give him advice on what we want to see in the future. And then if you want to move forward, you can, you know, go to go with your planning and come back and see us. So, you know, let's talk now. So, he is guided the right way. I guess I don't have it's not even a feedback or more more questions. I mean, I would love to see something like this there, but like what was the runnerup design? Like what was your second, you know, second best choice? So, this is actually the second best choice that you're looking at. Um, it involves only a portion of outlot B. Um it eliminated um use of the far southern probably 15 feet or so. Um this is actually designed to fit on the portion of outlot B that the city was um willing to part ways with with my original project. Um and that was the alternative project that came from it. Um the the first alternative is to extend that and that's because of the financing agreements I have in place. I need to get 8,500 square feet between eight and nine, but really 8,500 is a magic number to make the math work. I guess one other question. I mean, I'm sure there's the amount of parking spaces that are there for a reason. So, if you had it would be yourself and and two other tenants, not three, just three total. Three total like that meets your, you know, for what businesses would or you know. Yeah. So on the right hand side the parking metrics are actually calculated on this space um at 8497 square ft. Um I need one parking spot per 400 square f feet. So it's 21 minimum parking spots to park the building. Okay. And I don't know if that made it on your printout. It did. I I got readers last week. So Okay, no worries. I'm assuming we're going to add some landscaping. Yep. Absolutely. Um I realize it's not in the drawing, but can we have some trees back, please? Yep. Absolutely. Or like along 110. Probably not along 110 because we want that to be frontage. Okay. Right. Um, you know, there may be one in front, you know, somewhere, but most of the trees that would be planted would be in the landscaping in the rear of the building and to provide some separation between my property and the neighbor to the south. Kind of a natural barrier, if you will. I think there were several people in the community were very sad to see all the trees come down. I was sad to take them down. I had to write the check to cut him down. Um, yeah. So, can you put them back? Just kidding. No, unfortunately. Um, and it was a really tough decision, honestly. Oh, I know. Um, and I had to run it by city to make sure it was okay. The sidewalk was all torn up. I know. I saw it. It was bad. Yeah, that um se several of them were honestly diseased and coming apart. The big one in front, the big oak tree, when we cut it down, we cut it down on a Saturday when there wasn't a lot of traffic early in the morning. It was actually wired together. Oh, wow. and it had totally split apart. Um, it was ready to kill somebody. But it was one of the biggest, most beautiful trees you've ever seen. Um, I have pictures of my children when they were young and Lost Lake had just opened and we were sitting in that tree eating ice cream. Um, so we had a personal connection to a lot of those trees. Um, and in several of them were so dangerously close to the building that they had to come down and there was two dead ones. So, but yeah, I like trees. I would love to have them. Well, I want to say on behalf of me and maybe the council, thank you for even just taking the building down. I mean, it was getting to the point where it needed to happen. Yeah. And I know that wasn't cheap. Um, so I I appreciate just all of us driving by. You know, if you obviously you couldn't remodel it, it wasn't going to happen. I'm I'm glad you took it down and didn't wait for all this to to go through. That was very uh commendable. Thank you for that. So again, I think I think let's kind of wrap it up and then I'm going to open up to to the public. Um see if anybody else wants to say anything quick about that and then if depend on what if anybody wants to say anything, we might have you come back up. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Um if anybody wants to come up and talk about this at all, come on up. Give us your uh name and address, please. Josh Gayen. I'm with Minnesota Lakes Bank, 2290 Commerce Boulevard here in Mound. Um, as you may be aware, uh, we are located directly across Old Shoreline Drive from Mr. Charleston's proposed project. Uh, I'm here tonight to state our support for Mr. Charleston's concept plan. Feel the project would be an improvement to the site, uh, to the neighborhood and to the city of Mount. The project will provide a positive development of the current vacant lot as well as outlot B, which will enhance the aesthetics of the neighborhood and provide positive economic growth for the city of Mount. We feel that the proposed building uh fits well in the surrounding neighborhoods and fits in with the other properties and is the highest and best use for that lot. Uh due to those factors, we are in support of Mr. Charleston's uh acquiring outlot B and proceeding forward with his proposed project. So, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anybody else? You want to come up? Just give us your name and address. Okay. Osman Sax, 2350 Harbor Place, number 307. Oh, welcome. Um, I've lived in Mound for 40 years. Yeah. And so I can picture all of what we've talked about or old Shoreline Drive and the the dentist office. I just uh would like business on the corner. It's as simple as that. We are going to have a park, a green space that is in the process of being developed, you know, with our Tessa. Um, I just think we need a business there and um, Colin has been in the community for a long time. I think his uh, research, his planning, um, goes deep and we need it. That's it. Good. Well, thanks for coming to Mount or Artessa. She lived here 14 years. Yeah, I met downtown Mound now. New Artessa. All right. Anybody else? No. All right, I'll close that. Uh, did you take that email that you received? Oh. Um, Jesse, um, did you forward that email? Did you Did you want me to just forward it or did you want me to enter it into the record? I can do whatever. Um, just Can you read it or I assume so? Yeah. I mean, I I would say read it and then have it entered into. Okay. Yeah. So, just what we're talking about here is we had a uh one of our I guess residents, she didn't give us our address, but uh so anyway, if you want just want to read it. Yeah, just a comment about it. Yeah, I will be Yep. It's a couple paragraphs. Dear Mayor Holt, I would like to provide comment related to tonight's city council meeting, but I'm unable to attend in person. My comment is related to agenda item 8 regarding the potential construction of a new building near 5581 Shoreline Drive. I believe that there are many other suitable office spaces for an insurance company and buildings that are already constructed have empty space. For example, RPG Marketplace at Mound 5439 Shoreline and 4581 Shoreline all seem to have vacant office space that insurance company may well be may be well suited to. I would much rather see these empty spaces utilized instead of construction yet another building. I would urge Mr. Charleston to explore one of these existing buildings as an option for his insurance business and reserve his space in the heart of Mound for more for more community focused amenity that will draw people to the area. It would be great to see a parcel that this close to the lake and a new park be used for a restaurant, coffee shop or similar to encourage foot traffic. Um an office building will not do this respectfully. Rachel Funk. Okay. Thank you. So he'll uh forward that to all council in case you guys want to read it. So, um anyway, so any other last comments on this project? Um I just responded to her just said, "Thanks for sending it. I just literally just got it tonight." So, um and and I think we already kind of rebuttled a lot of that. I mean, remember, uh he owns the the property. um you know kind of right where the words are there big chunk of that we own kind of the L-shaped to the left and then to the south there. So um we would have to enter in to a contract for him to buy from the city if this you know worked out. Um you know there's only so many options you can do to build. So um like we just talked about restaurants and I mean we all would love that obviously we just talked about that. So, I mean, he's got to do what he can with with the property and um it's up to us as owning the other part of it if we like this concept and want to see this moving forward. So, um any last comments between council before we let this one move on? I think so. Okay. Just first step and uh thanks again for coming out and I think you you've heard us. So, good luck in planning if you go forward. Thanks. Yep. All right. Number nine, we got authorized to award bid construction for the county road 15 sidewalk replacement project city project number PW-205, sorry, 25-08 and PW25-09. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Brian Simmons, senior city engineer at Bolton Bank. Uh, I previously presented this to you prior to going out for bids and we had a a lengthy discussion on cost splits because this project includes some committed funding from Henipin County. Uh, I have some good news tonight and some bad news. The good news is the lowest bid is less than 50% of what the engineers estimate was. Okay. Uh, so concrete contractors are hungry. We apparently hit a sweet spot in the market here for them. Uh, and so we got some wonderful bids. Uh the bad news is actually stay here for a second Jesse. So the low bidder, the apparent low is concrete idea at $514,300 and they are a responsive and responsible bidder which means should we choose to move forward, we feel they're fully capable of doing the work. Jesse, would you scroll to the next page, please? So it once we get bid numbers, then we redo the calcs on the county participation. Uh and these things are based on the actual line items. Uh and what this means is that uh uh just in very brief terms uh the county is kind of skating away on this and we are still using the basically the full amount of dollars that were allocated in the capital improvement plan on the city side. So I just want to make sure we're upfront about that that even though we got really good bids, the county work is coming in cheaper essentially. Like they're not covering as much. They they're not changing their their participation was always percentage based. Yeah. So we got cheaper bids. They're still saying we'll pay certain percentage of your soft costs and those kind of things. So we get a really low number. They're only going to cover so much of the engineering and then they're going to cover so much of the construction. So we are still close to spending all of what we had allocated. So that's what we were expecting to sorry that's what we're expecting to pay in the first place. Yep. So it's not bad news. It's just a percentage. Well, so to my mind I say bad news because I one might interpret this as we have left county money on the table. And my message back to that would be we are unable to utilize those dollars and then the county just you know won't spend them with us but they did commit to more but also the fixes that we asked the county to participate in are still going to get fixed and we are still we are still leading that charge. So we're getting the same amount of sidewalk fixed for way cheaper. It's just not going to cost us a whole lot less. Okay. So, hypothetically, if we chose a higher like the one in the middle, they would have paid more, but we would have paid more, too, right? Yeah. Correct. Is there percentages? You make this sound so bad, but actually it's not as bad as forgive me. Forgive me. I I come in here wanting to make wanting to make sure I'm being fully transparent. Okay. Ratio. So, in other words, we're still spending what we were originally more or less what we were really going to spend. Yes. And and you all have been so kind when we come in here and I say the little bit is less than 50% of the engineers estimate. When I lead with that, right, I want to make sure that I'm fully transparent on how much city money we are still investing into this project. Okay, that's that's why I made it sound bad. If you think that's where I was at. Good. So anyway, we've got bids. We've got a responsible bidder. Uh I will open it up to questions, but if there are none, there is a resolution awarding this after that. Okay. Um does council have any questions for Brian? I do not. Okay, we got a motion or a resolution if someone wants to make a motion. Page 1078 can do that. Um, I would like to make a motion uh for a resolution accepting bid for CA CSH15 sidewalk projects, Belmont to Fair View and Fair View to Seatin. project PW2508 and 259. All right, got a motion. Can I get a second? Second. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed. All right, that passes. All right. Number 10, we got authorized to advertise for bids for the 2025 street and utilities improvement project city project PW-25-01 and PW-25-2. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Brian Simmons, senior study engineer. Uh what you have in front of you is the next step in the process for uh 2025. Uh we're calling this the street and utility improvements. Uh technically we are finished with those sort of large projects. So I don't want anyone who may have PTSD from long construction in the past or assessments to think that that's what we're doing here again. But we have lumped together a handful of pavement things. There's some streets and three points that have not been addressed in terms of pavement rehab. There's also the sugar mill area that is included in this project and some uh sewer work. So, we're lump it all together, call it the 2025 project. Uh there's an update here on the uh engineers estimate, uh which is like $2,000 over the feasibility study cost estimate. So, um now that we've got the project all designed, we have an idea of what we think it's going to cost. And we always want to make sure in the interest of transparency, we come back to you when we are also asking for permission to solicit for bids. Jesse, I think there's a map on the next page if there's any. Yeah. So, a chunk of trail in Wilshshire Boulevard out on the island and then accompanying and there's a link to the full plans too in the the packet detailed cost estimates. Um, if there are no questions, this one is also accompanied with a resolution receiving plans inspect and ordering bits. All right. Does council have any questions for Brian on this one? So these roads are being improved and they will not residents will not be assessed anything. Correct. Okay. They're also not being fully reconstructed if that's a that's a technicality you're interested in. Most of this is what I would call pavement treatments. Okay. Especially like Sugar Mill. Sugar Mill was originally constructed by a developer. Uh and the proposed improvement here is a mill and overlay, I believe. Okay. So, we're going to refresh the top, but we are not digging down because we don't have to replace sand and gravel and all that below. All right. Thank you. All right. I got a resolution on page 1084. Someone wants to do that. I can do it. I would make a motion. I would like to make a motion for a resolution receiving plans and specifications ordering advertisement for bids for 2025 street improvement project and the 2025 mill and overlay project. Okay, got a motion. Can I get a second? Second. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Those opposed. All right, that passes, too. All right. Number 11, we got MSA system revisions. Mr. for Mayor, members of the council, Brian Simmons, senior city engineer. I'm sorry, I know I'm repeating myself, but also I know the video skips to the different topics. So, yeah, trying to be procedural. Uh, this I wouldn't have thought about that. This is procedural. Uh, and uh, as as you may or may not know, due to a number of factors, mound is considered for the state's purposes a municipal state aid community or uh, you will one of those you just read off Cass Cah. Uh, some of these designations are really for engineers only. Uh MSAS is municipal state aid system. It's a system by which the state of Minnesota allocates dollars for pavement maintenance and pavement reconstruction. Uh and so we have a handful of streets that are in mound that we have designated as MSA routes. Uh you might not hear anybody other than me, Matt, Jesse, sometimes Ryan refer to those, but we do get money from the state to maintain. Uh sometimes we get money from the state to reconstruct those but there are also a set of standards we have to follow if we use state funds to reconstruct MSA streets. Auditor's road prior to its vacation and now being partially under our Tessa was one of our MSA routes. Uh and so our funding from the state is based off of the number of miles that we have in our MSA system. So, what you have in front of you, uh, a letter from Matt explaining all of this, as well as an accompanying resolution that strikes auditor's road designation from our MSA system, uh, prior to auditor's road being removed, um, I forget what the exact number is. It's like 8.39 miles or something based on the number of lane miles and the population of mound. But we have an allocation and we were still about 4 miles short in that allocation of reporting MSA we of our designated MSA routes because there was no point4 miles of street for us to add to the MSA system. Now that we have removed auditors, it also makes sense for us to try and capture the rest of that. And so what Matt and I have done is we've taken out auditors and Cottonwood, the dead end Cottonwood that comes towards the Dakota Rail Trail and we've redesated some other streets to be part of the MSA system. Jesse, I think there's a map. It just shows what we're flip-flopping here as well as Matt's letter to the uh state engineer making the request. Annual certification mileage. Here we go. So, we're adding Alder, Belair, small chunk of Eden Road, Maywood Road. We're switching some things around to make sure that we have captured as much of that as possible while we are correcting the record that Auditor's Road is not only no longer a street, but no longer an MSA street. So, a lot of this is is purely procedural. Uh trying to make sure that we're capturing those dollars. This does lead to some certain designations, but most of these are routes that are likely already being used for trucks and heavy commercial vehicles anyway because they are primary routes. I don't think I have anything to add there unless there are any questions. Council have any questions? No, I can tell it's just procedural. The resolution that accompanies this uh is required by the state as part of their procedure to make sure that you all have ratified which streets are part of our truck routes and in the MSA system so we can continue to request those dollars for Is this like an annual thing? Uh MSA they renew every year but you have to I mean like how do we is just incumbent on us to like make sure we're keeping up on Okay. It's one of the things that we that we do sort of in the background. I guess it's it's real boring, but every year we get an email from the state engineer that says, "Please update your MSA routes." And for the last however many 20 years, it's been copy paste, right? Probably 15 because I think we had a big refresh about 15 years ago where we changed some of them around. Cool. Right after auditors road was built. All right. Uh we got a resolution on 1091. Someone wants to make that. I can make that. Um, I make a resolution approving revisions. Make a motion for a resolution approving revisions to municipal, state, and route designations. Got for 2025. All right. Got a motion. Can I get a second? Second. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say I. Those opposed. All right. that. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask a quick question on um then I don't know whose bucket this would even fall into, but has anybody we were talking like the first road stuff topic for the the sidewalks like where those barriers go up. Oh yeah. If it hasn't been mentioned like the one right at right in front of Metro storage. Yeah. Where the sidewalk landing is. It is like super tight. Those semis are going to get through there. That's what So that's what I was wondering if it can be looked at or is it that tight because it has to be. Matt called me five minutes in a car. Matt called me five minutes before the meeting started. He said you're probably going to get this question and he wanted to talk about specifically that it is our intention right now that trucks that have low turning radius or semis are going to run onto some of the sidewalk aprons and onto some of the median aprons in the interim to make sure that we can get past the water main construction. Um, it'll look a little goofy for a second, but also I promise you it's temporary. That doesn't mean that u there isn't feedback that we could do something better with the water mean. I just wanted you to know that we are planning for some things that might look a little weird because they're temporary. Well, don't tell Matt I was so predictable. It It just means we're doing our jobs. Thanks. Thanks. All right. Uh, Council Member Pew, do you have any anything report? Well, um, Friday morning from 8 to 10, I think it is, um, Gillespie Center is having a recognition for their volunteers. So, some of the council members might want to just stop in and help celebrate the volunteers at Gillespie. Um, other than that, I've been at the Capitol quite a bit. Mhm. Um and so, uh, Representative Meyers has signed on to the age friendly bill, so that's good. Um, and, um, we'll see what happens at the capital. And that's all I have. Okay. Sure. Oh, I went to the S 8 to 10. Pardon me. Did you say Friday 8 to 10? Yeah. For that, I think it's 9 to 10. Okay. But you know what? call them to make sure it's uh this Friday and I did go to the SRA which is um the collaboration we belong to with about 30 other cities that negotiate lawsuits against XL which we still have a pending one. Um, and the big thing in the meeting this time was people talking about um that when you're negotiating new contracts with Excel or especially your franchise fees to be careful because have your attorneys check because there is a little glitch in um in the contracts that salesman doing where they can get out of paying late fees and you don't want them to be able to do that. So, and that case that we've been waiting for, they think will be up this fall with Excel on the right. So, all right. Council member Mackey, I have nothing. All right. Council member Kalano. Um, I just have one question. Um, do we have like a agenda or a tenative one to review for the upcoming joint parks meeting like on the 6th? It isn't the sixth, right? Yeah, it is the sixth. I don't have one yet. I'll talk to Cool. You have all the items that we talked about. Yeah, our workshop. Maybe there isn't anything additional. I don't know. Unless you wanted to add more things, but I mean, yeah, that was the idea, I suppose, what we've talked about. All right, Council Member Heric. I don't really have anything. Apologize. I missed the caribou event with the cops. I had a conf look like it was well attended. Commission fire. You want to say something? No, you can say fire. That was interesting at the end. Um well, yeah, just just a couple quick things. Um first of all, ribbon cutting on the trail. Does you know, it'd be nice if we can get us all to come. I know it's not going to be perfect if all five of us could show up hypothetically, but what I was thinking is if we do it before one of our next meetings at like 5 and then during the rush hour rush minute. Well, we don't have to actually stop traffic, but stop traffic. We could just do it right now. Traffic could break the ribbon, but I'm just saying like because we're going to have to be here anyway. Um I think 5:30 be a little pushing it, but it's just right here. So yeah, if we all park over at the park and are you guys open to that or park at the I don't know what enough time is, but you know, we should probably plan for an hour just to be safe. A half an hour might be a little tight. So I would say like if we if we say five and then just see like we got to get in our cars at 45 and get over here. With an alternate rain date, I don't want to stand out in the rain. No, no, no. Um so again, I'm going to be gone this next one, but do we want to do the next one after? Are so are you going the you're going the May 13th meeting? Yeah. Okay. So not then. So the 20 whatever 26th 26. Should we do that? Yeah. Sure. Okay. 26th at 5. It'll be 27th or 27th. Memorial day and the 26th. Oh, okay. So it's the day after Memorial. So Oh, 27th. Hopefully people get Tuesday. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Tuesday. I'm assuming Jesse could send us a reminder. We would appreciate that. Okay. Tuesday, uh May 27th at 5 and then Jesse, could you reach out to obviously commissioner both are commissioners actually. Um can you reach out to Marge Beard at Three Rivers? And even if them they can't come, maybe they their staff could come. um you know it'd be nice to have the county three rivers obviously and then of course us because the three majors um mech council I know we gave him a tour uh Dr. Carter, if you want to invite him, I would invite our senator and our uh state rep Myers, right? All the both those people, but then also just throw it on Facebook and all the all the other items. Um, you know, we maybe maybe we should even throw that in the newsletter. We can. Yeah. Just put a little blurb or a little picture of it again. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know when does the next one go out again? Well, by then it we're hopefully like Yeah, Monday. Okay. Um yeah, our fire partnership meeting. Um the two of us went to that. Uh we had some good discussions. Uh we're we spent a lot of time kind of talking about, you know, the budget or like how, you know, we're going to come together. Um, so we're going to try to fine-tune that, per se. Uh, the contract part, we didn't spend a ton of time doing that, but I feel like that part's going to be a little easier now. Yeah. I thought it was going to be the harder part, but um, it's that fee structure. Yeah. Um, we're still looking at a JPA, not a district. Um, there's only two districts in the whole state. uh fire district. So it's like a school district new taxing authority. The good thing about if they did that down the road would be it takes it off the city's you know dollar and it just goes right to you know your pro it's like a school district basically but um technically it's not that much different. It's just my whole thing and tell me you guys if you guys disagree but is I don't want anything to do with the district. I want a JPA and um I've really made that known that I want to do a JPA only. Um and uh I think we have consensus on that that we're we're we're only looking at JPA. So um and then the finance committee we met uh last week or the week before, whatever it was. Um, again, just kind of looking at like plan B for like, you know, how are we going to fund this water treatment plan if we want to move forward or not? Um, uh, I know we kind of talked about this last time, but I think we're going to set a date of July 22nd, and it's going to be six o'clock, our council meeting, and we're going to throw it in the newsletter to invite people out and say we're we're basically just going to say we're going to, you know, provide an update and then next steps and that kind of thing. Um, so not a true like open house because it'll be during a council meeting, but we definitely are going to have an open forum, you know, if people want to come up and say stuff and stuff. So, and is that to present some options that you've come up with? Well, we're hoping by then we'll know did we get funding this year, right? And if I mean, even if we do, we're not going to get enough, right? So, let's just say if we or don't, you know, doesn't matter. we want to start, you know, having a discussion with us and then of course if the public wants to join in, uh, what do we want to do? You know, are we gonna do this and we're are we gonna take it on the rest of it? Do we want to wait another year? Do you want to wait for mom and dad at the, you know, state to pay pay for it or I think we got to we got to make a decision one way. And I love that you're putting it out to the residents, too. That's a great opportunity for them to show their Well, and see what the reality is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most of them think they're going to turn the water on. It's going to be crystal clear in UVIA and it's only going to cost me $20 more a month. Yeah. So, there was a community that had a meeting last night. It was in the news about an alternative to their water system. One of the ones we were talking about. Okay. People went against it. You mean like each having your own getting your own? Yeah. And I can't remember which community it was because I only caught the end of it. It was on the news last night for some reason. I think it was in St. Paul. Be fun to watch the meeting. They didn't. Yeah. Um so and and on that again the finance committee is we're trying to with Noah and Maggie and then of course Ellers as you know before we finalize anything we're looking at you know is there different ways that we can do this um you want to say something about that? Yeah, I mean you were getting there, so apologies if you were, but I think I'm accurate in saying that we so we met on it like two weeks ago. we were going to wait to find out funding and then meet on it again to kind of iron out like uh with Noah like you know good, better, best or like you know a few options and then we going to even have like a workshop prior to deciding what we're going to kind of go over a workshop with all of us after our next finance committee meeting to kind of decide what we want to bring before in July. Yeah. So we're kind of all in the same, you know, the good, better, best or whatever. So if we do what we're doing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. I forgot the workshop part. So we'll do that before obviously July 22nd. And the reason partly why I like July 22nd is that's right after spirit so we can, you know, talk to people about, you know, the project and have some charts. And I mean we won't know you know probably have all the financials because that that'll be brought on the 22nd but um if anybody wants to be a part of or you know let us know. So we're going to throw that in the the paper or the newsletter um that's going out. So hope you all agree with that. I think it's great. Um, [Music] and I think that's it. Do we did you fix the resolution numbers yet or no? Uh, no. These were all I think pre pre before that discussion done already. Yeah. Okay. Just this is just a clerical thing. Um, you know when we do like a a motion, right, and it's like resolution 25-lb blank, right? It's just bugged me. So, I'm like, why don't we have why do we need to not have the number, right, the date or something? Well, it's like, you know, what happens is after they'll put a number on it, right? And now, hypothetically, you know, if if there's any issues, you'll have to just modify the number, right? But, I don't know. It's just a pet peeve of mine. So, I said, "Well, can vote for it if we put the actual number in there?" like as long as I've been here 25- It's like we're voting on something that's not even like final. So, and I think other cities do that, right? Well, a couple of things. One, if there's a m if you have it in there, there's a mistake, it can be treated as scrutinous error, it can just be modified administratively and then probably the best part is all you have to do is say I have motion to approve resolution number 25-01 and stop right there. Yeah. Because Okay. Because that's the title. So, you don't have to go through the whole litany of what? Oh, so there you go. That's even better. That'll save us all because it's not because you have the the record and the agenda that provides it. And if anybody needs to go back, there it is. Okay. So, next meeting that you're going to run. Hopefully, we can we can do that then. And the same thing would be with any ordinance, too. Perfect. That would be great. Good. Uh and then again this is just clerical backroom stuff but uh I've also asked to um to sign the documents after. So again, this is inside baseball, but you know, it's kind of like auto sign, right? And I don't want to auto sign. You know, all the checks, you know, the how many checks that we do, those will be auto signed uh per what we already approved. We have, you know, the budget we approved, right? Um so anyway, I've asked Jesse after that. I'm just going to sit here for 20 minutes, just sign. So um I just I just feel better about that. So cool. That's all I got. Any other last things? Cool. I'll take a motion to uh adjourn. Motion to adjurnn. All right. Can I get a second? Second. All right. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Those opposed? All right. We're adjourned.