Here is the transcribed townhall meeting with speaker names added based on the context of the discussion. **Transcript:** [0:28] **[Background Noise]** [0:58] **[Background Noise]** [1:28] **[Background Noise]** [2:07] **Mayor:** We're going to call the meeting to order. Will the clerk please note those in attendance be noted? Thank you. Will you please rise and join me in 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, item 2A: minutes of the regular city council meeting on January 28, 2025. I would entertain a motion to approve those minutes. Have a motion, a second. All those in favor say aye. (Chorus of ayes). Any opposed? Motion carries, minutes are approved. Item three: adoption of the agenda. We have one addition; we're going to add an item 8B which is the police Sergeant's Union agreement. [2:54] **Mayor:** If there are no other changes or corrections/amendments to the agenda, I entertain a motion to adopt the agenda. I have a motion, a second. All those in favor say aye. (Chorus of ayes). Any opposed? We have an agenda. Item four: consent agenda. I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion, a second. All those in favor say aye. (Chorus of ayes). Any opposed? Motion carries, the consent agenda is approved. Item five: visitors and presentations. We have the Community Development biannual report. Mr. Lindahl, when you're ready. [3:41] **Jason Lindahl (Community Development Director):** Members of the city council, so tonight is the Community Development biannual report. There's twice a year we check in with the city council to report back on activities in the Community Development Department. In August, I believe you saw the first half of the year and now what we've done annually is in January—or now in February, I guess—here we present to you the full activity report for the last year. Just by way of reminder, the primary duties of the Community Development Department include long-range planning, short-range planning, different special projects, zoning administration, housing work, economic development, and then the building department includes the plan review, inspections, rental inspections, and code enforcement. Some of the bigger projects the Council may remember Community Development working on in 2024 include the updates to the city's zoning regulations related to cannabis use or new cannabis regulations from the state, the County Road E branding and marketing strategy, assisting the engineering department with the downtown mobility study, and then, of course, a lot of our time has been spent on the update of the zoning code, which is an ongoing project. Looking first at information from the building division, again by way of background, the building department reviews building permits and does inspections related to those permits. Just a small side note: much like cities across the state of our size, we do contract our electrical inspections out as a special service, but otherwise, we do all commercial, residential, and institutional construction projects review and inspections in both White Bear Lake and Mahtomedi. And so—sorry, typo here, that should be 2024—the department reviewed 3,537 permits with a valuation of just over $110 million and $1.2 million in permit fees. What you see here on this slide, you might remember from last year as well, shows an overall trend line of building permit activity in the building division since 2010. What you see, a couple of notable things, is we certainly saw a spike in an upward trend in 2021 and 2022 with the school district's projects throughout the community—and not to mention just the north campus, but then the projects throughout the community—and then the Lochner residential development also accounted for a lot of this activity. What you'll see here I think in the next couple slides I show you is, while we had a spike a few years ago and we are seeing a bit of a downward trend, it is a return to more of what you see as kind of the normal level of activity over the long term before this. And as I mentioned before, the valuations correspondingly show a downward trend related to the number of permits also being down, but you also see that leveling out to the area that was more of the traditional levels of the past. Moving on to code enforcement, you'll see again here the trend line of cases through the last several years. We average over 2019-2024 just under 600 code enforcement cases a year. In 2023, we were closer to that 600 level, or down to about 500 I think in 23. We'll see here in a second on the slide. So we're down a little bit this year but again in line with the levels that we've seen in the past several years. Just as a summary, you can kind of see the percentage of activities related to code enforcement. You may remember in the halfway through the year we reported that our code enforcement issues were up especially this year because of the wet spring that we had, so they represented a larger proportion than in past years. Usually, the largest proportion is in that refuse and exterior storage category. We also just show you, as kind of a point of reference here, the distribution of code enforcement cases across the city based on the five wards throughout the community. Generally, they're pretty evenly distributed; this particular year there was a slightly higher rate in ward 3. Moving on to planning department activities, again you see recent activity levels here. What jumps out on this slide is 2020; the reason for that is it's COVID-related. What you'll see here in a second is a lot of the activity that happened in the planning department slowed down even though there were still some projects and building permit activity going on. But generally in 2024, we're in the kind of normal range for the past several years. The biggest category in the planning department is this "questions and inquiry," so that's phone calls, meetings, talking with people about different projects and things that they're doing. And that, again, kind of coming back to that 2020 year with COVID, is when those conversations—that biggest level of activity—really dropped off. Taking a look more specifically at the data for 2024, you'll see this distributed about the number of cases that we have. We had 724 in the first half of the year, down slightly to 681 in the second half of the year overall, but cases are trending in kind of the normal level for the past several years. That really summarizes the data from the Community Development department, but I'd be happy to take any questions. [9:53] **Mayor:** Thank you for the report, Mr. Lindahl. Sounds like even though things are down, staying busy and there's a lot going on as usual. Council, any questions for Mr. Lindahl? All right, thank you very much. All right, item 5B: Sports Center annual report. Mr. Juba. [10:14] **Rick Juba (Assistant City Manager):** Thank you, Mayor and Council members. Good evening. Tonight we have the annual Sports Center report for you. 2024 was another solid year of operations at the Sports Center. The Sports Center is the proud home of White Bear Lake Area High School girls' hockey, the White Bear Lake Area Hockey Association, the city's learn-to-skate program, and figure skating program. 2024 event highlights include three spring ice shows which were very well attended. I think I attended the Friday night show—they usually do a Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday matinee. And the fun, if you've never experienced one, I'd encourage you to attend. 2025, just a quick plug, the dates for those shows are April 25th through the 27th and the theme is "Blades on Broadway," so should be a fun one. Other events in 2024 were the winter holiday show, the 31st annual skating competition, 10 high school girls games, nearly 100 youth games and scrimmages, and nine youth tournaments which, if you've ever been through there on a weekend during a youth tournament, is a very busy place and brings a lot of activity to the area. And then, of course, there's countless hours of practice, training, things going on at that facility leading up to all of those events. Maintenance-wise in 2024 was a bit different year than we've experienced lately just because we removed the ice sheet for the first time since the renovation. So that used to be an annual thing when the equipment was really old and things were failing; we'd have to tear out the ice, do all the necessary repairs, check everything, and then reinstall it. That usually takes place in May, and we hadn't done that since the remodel in 2018. Some power outages really is what led to that was, obviously, when the power goes out, it's harder to maintain that sheet, so there was enough degradation that they decided to do that last year and that was successful. Also, now the solar array that's on the Sports Center, if you recall, had some installation issues so it went up, came back down, but has now been fully operational for quite some time. This resulted in over $23,000 in energy savings since that's been up and operational, so that's good to see. New improvements: you can see on the pictures here, these are kind of fun things—the wall of recognition for the figure skaters. That's a partnership project with the parents of the figure skating folks celebrating their involvement at the Sports Center. And just to note, we have three skaters from our figure skating program that skate for Disney On Ice and tour all over the world to do that, so that's a fun point of pride for the figure skating program. And then also the "Wall of Tradition," which was put up this year by the Hockey Association, celebrating their heritage and a lot of the players that have gone on to do big things in the hockey program. And then on the revenue side, just for operations, very much business as usual in 2024. There's an uptick in the Skate School program which is notable, and then a continued reduction in the revenue from LiveBarn. LiveBarn peaked during the pandemic; that's the streaming service that's installed at the rink so people can subscribe to that and watch games from anywhere. Obviously, that was a big deal when nobody could go anywhere, and it still generates significant revenue but not nearly what it did during those challenging times during the pandemic. So outside of those two things, everything else was fairly consistent on the revenue side. Obviously, we'll get a full picture of the financials, including the expenditures, when the audit is done here in the near future. So that's what I have for you for a report. If there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer. [13:43] **Mayor:** Thank you, Mr. Juba. Do you recall what the total cost of the solar panels was on that project? [13:43] **Rick Juba:** I'm sorry, Mayor, I do not recall just because that was part of the larger project that had a lot of different components throughout the city. [14:15] **Mayor:** No worries. All right, Council, any questions? Councilmember Edberg. [14:30] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Juba, at various times, though not recent, we've had conversation about how our Sports Center generates off-site revenue for the city, for businesses in the city. We bring in a lot of guests and visitors; some have to travel a distance, stay overnight, etc. I'm not expecting that you have this on the top of your head, but if you have any insight or have there been any conversations in the past year about do we have any sense of what that larger impact is, who feels it, that kind of stuff? [15:16] **Rick Juba:** Thank you, Mayor and Councilmember Edberg. Good question. I do not have that off the top of my head. [15:23] **Councilmember Edberg:** Didn't expect it. [15:24] **Rick Juba:** But, you know, I think depending on where you're at, it's quite evident obviously right in that area. If you swing by a Carbone's, for example, even just during a weeknight, I think they feel the impact of all the activity that's going on there. It would be interesting to try and start to quantify foot traffic to begin with and then kind of build that discussion out from there. [16:02] **Councilmember Edberg:** It's not a mandatory part; you, Mr. Bates, and the whole staff have lots of other things to do, but that might be an interesting—there's an ROI conversation in there somewhere about we have paid to invest to maintain the facility, we've had other partners do it. Are we getting what we thought we would? Are we getting more? Whatever. And I'd welcome whatever thinking you can do over time and we can check in at some point in time. Thank you. [16:29] **Mayor:** Any other questions from the council? All right, Mr. Juba, thank you for the report. Item six: public hearings—we have nothing scheduled. Item seven: unfinished business—nothing scheduled. Item 8A: concept plan review for 2263 Third Street. Mr. Lindahl. [16:49] **Jason Lindahl:** Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. The item before you tonight is a concept plan review. Just by way of background, concept plan reviews are really a discussion and feedback item. They're designed for the applicant to have the opportunity to go directly to a neighborhood meeting, the Planning Commission, and the city council to get general feedback on their proposal. As part of this process, they, like any other application, have meetings with staff to go over the zoning standards and how their project fits in or doesn't fit in with those standards. Based on the anticipated review process that could take place for the project, there are certain categories that are required to go through the concept plan review process. In this case, the anticipated next step in the review process for this proposal would be a Planned Unit Development (PUD), and so those applications are required to take this initial first step to have this concept plan review for comment and discussion. The subject property is at 2263 Third Street; it's the Agape Church. They're proposing a 3,300 square foot addition to the property which really basically doubles the size of the footprint of the existing church. This would include increasing the capacity to 300 seats from around 200 right now. The report that's on your desk goes through the typical review standards that would be part of an actual application, gives you the information related to those and how it meets or doesn't meet the standards related to the zoning that it's in, but it doesn't include a recommendation. Again, this is really just a discussion and feedback kind of application. But that analysis does identify three areas where this application doesn't meet the city standards. The first is in the interior sideyard setback. With this property located in a corner, it has one neighbor to its west, and so that would be 20 feet, and the concept plan proposes 10. The height of the church is listed on here but is conforming with that. The second area that's a challenge for this application is the parking requirements. The applicant would be required to have 102 stalls based on the proposed addition and seating capacity of the addition to the main sanctuary and is proposing zero as part of their application. And then lot coverage in this area, because it is in the Shoreland area, would be limited to 30%, and with the addition, they're up to 40.2%. Just as a point of reference, in the history of the church, in 1986, the church was issued a conditional use permit for the property and went also at that point through a variance process for parking reduction at that time as well. The neighborhood meeting took place in January 16th at the church. As part of neighborhood meetings, these are hosted by the applicant; staff attends to just provide process answers to any questions, but really it's the applicant's meeting to have a conversation with the neighbors. Approximately 15 people attended that meeting and concerns were raised about the parking, potential noise and lighting issues, impervious surface coverage, and just the overall intensification of the site. Then this concept plan went to the Planning Commission back on January 27th. The notification for that is—it's not a public hearing, so the city didn't send out notification, but that invitation to the neighborhood meeting listed both the Planning Commission meeting and the City Council meetings, and then those dates were reiterated to the people in attendance at the neighborhood meeting. We had five attendees at the Planning Commission meeting; three were church members that also live in White Bear Lake and stated their general support for the project. There were two attendees that were generally opposed to the project for similar issues that were brought up during the neighborhood meeting, and they were neighbors to the church site. Overall, the Planning Commission, I would say, had a general desire to support the church in the fact that it wants to invest in the community, but did have concerns that it may be just too much for the site that they have to work with. The lack of parking raised a significant challenge and impact to the surrounding neighborhood, and generally, they recommended considering some redesigns that could lessen the impact on the neighborhood. As I mentioned, we look at the potential review process for a concept plan, and that outlines again the three-step discussion process: the neighborhood meeting, the Planning Commission discussion, and then now review and consideration and comment from the city council tonight. In the future, really the only path forward for this particular application would be to consider a Planned Unit Development. The Planned Unit Development, again the Council may remember, allows for flexibility under some of the zoning standards in exchange for a higher quality development. The applicant is really—it's really on the applicant to detail how they intend to provide that higher quality development. So kind of reaching to our typical last slide in the presentation which would include a staff recommendation: again, as a concept plan, we don't offer a particular recommendation at this stage. We just really wanted to note the three issues raised initially here in the analysis relate to a reduction in setback, an increase in impervious surface coverage, and then basically a waiver of the off-street parking standards and moving that need for this site to accommodate into the public right-of-way and the city's neighboring public surface lot. So really the key questions for the council to consider as part of their discussion tonight would be: should the city consider the use of a PUD to allow deviations from that sideyard setback, impervious surface, and/or the off-street parking requirements? And if you think a PUD could be used for those things, how should the applicant consider revising their application to offer a higher quality development in exchange for that PUD, or is there something in particular the council would be looking for? Just to note, in your packet, there's a few things that staff typically lists as part of an exchange for a PUD—generalized categories. None of them fit very well with this particular application. The other thing is that generally staff tries to discuss things the applicant could offer that generally relate to the deviations and addressing those issues as they come along. It's not always a perfect fit, but it's a good place to start. And again, in conversations with the applicant, we were struggling a little bit to find connections as to how they could address parking, for example. So with that, I'd take questions from the city council. [25:19] **Mayor:** Mr. Lindahl, point of clarification: your staff recommendation says "take public comment." Are you saying at some point later on in the process, or tonight? [25:27] **Jason Lindahl:** The intention generally for concept plans is that the Council does take comment during the meeting. And I'm sorry, I should have mentioned we did receive one additional public comment—I'm glad you mentioned this, Mayor—that was distributed on your seats tonight. That was from one additional neighbor just down the street at 2040 Third Street, Bruce Shay. I'll let you know Mr. Shay has about a page long of comments here. I would summarize it to say, much like the Planning Commission, I think Mr. Shay acknowledges churches as an important community use and that generally he feels that they think they've been a good neighbor, but he raises several concerns about the intensification for the site and that they just may be at a point where they've reached the capacity of the activities the site can accommodate. Again, I'm sorry, with that I'd take questions. [26:19] **Mayor:** Thank you. Okay, well there was a gentleman that talked to me before the meeting and I said we weren't going to do public comment because I was not aware that we had done that in the past, but we will do that. So anyone who would like to speak to this issue is welcome to come forward at this time. If you could please state your name and address for the record, even if we know who you are, that'd be helpful. [26:52] **Ed Cox:** Name's Ed Cox, I live at 2258 Third Street, so I'm directly across from the church. I'm a local builder in town, so I do a lot of remodeling downtown. I wouldn't say I'm up on all the zoning but I know a little bit about it. I've lived there for eight years; my parents lived on Stewart and Lake Avenue since '87. I didn't grow up in that house but I hung out there a lot and the church has been there obviously forever. When it was running prior to the current group having it, it's pretty low impact on the neighborhood. You really didn't know what was going on; they had few gatherings and a few cars parked and things like that—low impact. And then it went up for sale and these guys acquired it and pretty much kind of the same thing for a while. Over the last year, year and a half, you can see more pressure on the neighborhood. Me being directly across the street, my Sundays are kind of designed around their activities—me getting out of my driveway with my boat, maybe me inviting people over, nowhere to park for my group. Just the general activity. And then it's been increasingly more in the evening. We've been seeing more and more cars parked there for whatever's going on—I don't know—but there's an incredible amount of pressure as you guys know because you're studying it with the downtown area and the parking and everything that happens and the spillover into the neighborhood. Now, I knew I moved downtown and I moved next to the neighborhood, but it's not been like this where it's like every day. I look at this as a builder—even though it's a church and churches are important—it's a commercial operation. It has to meet all the ADA laws, all the lighting plans, deal with all their external HVAC—all those different things all impact the neighborhood and they will be very impactful. The fact that it's taking up twice the amount of space on their property as they currently take up—so it's going to be a relatively large building on a small residential area. It's getting to be to the point where they're a growing, wonderful business and it needs to go find more space. They're in the residential area 100%. If you read Bruce's letter, a lot of that—Bruce and I are neighbors and I've talked to him a lot about this. I've also talked to a former client who lives on Fourth Street that couldn't make it tonight, and the Coopers, and they're on board with Bruce's letter. My concern is that if we add 300 more seats—well, allow them to build it—they're getting rid of the minuscule amount of parking they have right now, 12-14 cars or whatever it is, so they're going to zero. Whenever I have a commercial job, parking's critical and we're battling parking in all kinds of communities, not just White Bear, and that usually is the driver of what happens with the business. You know, if they never grow anymore that would be great, but the church's main reason is to grow, most churches I guess. What are we going to do when they come back in again and ask for something more? We were kind of tapped out. There's a new build going in there; people are investing a substantial amount of money to the tax base of downtown—I do that on a regular basis down there—and to have this be towering over them next to them is really going to change what they're doing to their house. So it's affecting a lot of people all the way around it. I think we need to look at the rules that we have in place, the zoning we have in place—it's all there, it's all important, it's all the rules that staff and everybody put together. It's worked well for me; I follow all the rules all the time and try not to come in for variances. This one seems to be over the top. Plus, when they bought the place, they were already under a conditional use permit and now we're going to stack another one on top of it and I think that starts to get a little redundant. I appreciate you guys' time, thanks. [33:26] **Scott Bus:** Good evening. Scott Bus, live at 2255 Third Street. So my wife Stephanie and I just bought that house and moved in or took possession in August and we've been remodeling it. Certainly, the reputation of the church coming in has been that they were a good neighbor and that took that into calculus as we moved in, so happy to have them as a neighbor. But the concerns with the proposed expansion and the proposed concept that they've shared is the size and the location, which referred to as the sideyard setback. Me being immediately west of it, we would feel that. The current proposal has a 10-foot setback instead of what should be 20 feet, as I understand is what code would allow for. And also considering with the drawing they have, it's a large flat wall potentially 30-35 feet high at its highest point, you know, right up immediately against my yard line. So that's a concern visually for sightlines and a change. But along with the size of that and the proximity comes light pollution which today isn't really an issue, noise from additional mechanicals—it's a bigger structure, it's going to require more air handling, etc.—and then rainwater management because that size of that structure and its shift over again to the west lot line towards me. Now there's a rainwater potential issue or something that has to be mitigated that I don't want to have to encounter and deal with on my side of the yard. Hopefully, we can take those things into account as you consider what's appropriate for this area and residential area. And just an additional note: I appreciate the process that the city's put forth and the chance that the church had to share their concept publicly and go through these steps. So thank you for hearing me. [35:30] **Tom Boer:** My name is Tom Boer, representing 2263 Third Street. I'm the senior pastor at that church and I do just want to thank you guys for the opportunity to talk. When you have a chance to speak back, really invite your bluntness toward us. This process, as Mr. Lindahl explained, is to offer us some help. We are open to changing our drawings and reconsidering what might work if you see a way forward for this. I do want to address a few misconceptions or misrepresentations that have been shared at prior meetings or even already tonight just to help clarify a few things. The first comment is that this building, if mapped out to what we've proposed and drawn, it would become something like an eyesore in the city or in the neighborhood; it would be unseemly for the space. If we expanded in such a way, it would put the building at about 7,000 feet, which is larger than it is now, but we would still be one of the smallest church buildings in all of White Bear Lake. Just to give that a little bit of context—even walking around Lake Street, the neighborhood, I mean there are single-family homes that are bigger than this. So it would not be a monstrosity by any means. A second misconception—just somewhat unhelpful, this showed up in Mr. Shay's letter but it's shown up elsewhere—is this comparison with us and Eagle Brook. I mean, nothing against Eagle Brook, but I just want to be very clear: we are not Eagle Brook. We have no intention of being Eagle Brook, and even if we wanted to be, it's unlikely we could. A more helpful comparison is a neighborhood church like St. John in the Wilderness or just down the street, First Presbyterian Church—a neighborhood church that does good in the neighborhood, has been around, relies on some street parking, and yet have been good neighbors for a long time. The mental connection to Eagle Brook I think is something of fear-mongering; you're going to have this massive, massive church in a neighborhood. That's by no means our plan or stated goal. Also stated in Mr. Shay's letter and elsewhere is the issue of parking. We totally understand that this is a big ask. We are not foolish here. We understand that we are in need of approvals from you all, and yet at the same time, to make the assumption that this would be Marketfest 2.0 every Sunday is rather ludicrous. The drawing as is—I think Ed misspoke and I think you know you misspoke, not intentionally just accidentally—that we would be adding about 70 seats to the sanctuary. Not 300 new seats. It would be bringing us to 300 total, which would, with the loss of the parking lot, add approximately 40 to 45 more cars that would need street parking every Sunday. To my understanding, there's about 1,500 cars that come and park down here every Thursday for Marketfest. Again, we're talking about 45 cars additional to the street. Four digits versus two digits. The 45 cars—I'm not pretending that's small, but within about a two-block walking radius, there's about 400 spots available including street parking and City Lots. There are places for these cars to park. The last misconception that I want to address—I think this is the most important one—is the comparison that we are a business and that you all should be thinking about this proposal the same way you would be a Papa John's or a boutique shop coming downtown. We are not a business in that same way. Last year I had three members of our church express with me deep suicidal thoughts that are recurring. I met with them regularly throughout the year, offered counseling that would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars if they went to a private firm. The church received from them zero dollars and zero cents. Similarly, we had about two dozen folks that pastors of the church met with on a regular basis dealing with severe depression, anxiety, and addiction. These meetings, this counseling, this care—this would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars if done at a practice. Again, the financial benefit to the church was zero dollars and zero cents. We are not a business. And I—you guys have a hard job, thank you for doing it. You have hard decisions to make. You have to take into account so many different needs—I'm understanding of that. You have to think about taxable income, think about the budget, think about zoning. And yet, it is also your responsibility—the responsibility of the city—to consider the needs of its citizens. I just encourage you as you consider this proposal, even at this stage of it, consider the needs of those who are suffering. Consider the emotional needs, not just the economic needs of the people here. Again, I'm understanding that this is a big ask, so we're very open to hearing your guys's thoughts and recommendations for how this plan might be able to work for the city with changes. Thank you guys. [41:24] **Jay Renle:** My name is Jay Renle. I live on 4740 Stewart Avenue, right across the street on the east side of the church. Like others have said, we have gotten along well with the church—we don't have any problem with them. But there are several issues with this that I'm concerned about, and I think other neighbors that aren't here because they're skiing in Colorado or somewhere might have too. Also, I want to mention I do think this is a good idea for you to have these hearings before things get rolling and then there's investment in drawings and everything that are detailed. I think that's good. I was on the Planning Commission decades ago and so I understand how this all works. I guess one of the main points I wanted to make is that there are ordinances that are there and they're there for a reason. I think the city should follow those and I'm disappointed when I see things where the City might be trying to—that's why I'm glad we got to talk today before you discuss this—consider a PUD. Why? I don't know why the PUD thing comes up. You know, what's in the Shoreland District? It can only have a certain level of impervious surface and those things are set by state law and they should be followed. We're just watching all the shoreland around the lake just get consumed in development, and it's a little bit, little bit, little bit. So I think those things are important and I hope that you'll follow the code and we won't have to get into issues about that. It seems to me like this is a little bit like trying to fit a big round peg in a small square hole. It's not that big a lot, and when you saw the picture of how much bigger it's going to be—go all the way over 10 feet to the new neighbors—it would create a wall for me looking out to the west. The sunset will be a thing of the past. The wind, other things—everything gets affected. We've had it going around on the east side of me; there's a huge house there now and it just goes from one end to the other. I think we need to keep things small. This is the old downtown or old White Bear Lake residential area and I just think that it's not appropriate. There is a solution which some people might like and some might not, but they have one service a week. One! How many churches have one service? All they need to do if they want 300 people is they have two services and don't have to spend all the money and ruin our views and affect our properties. So those are my thoughts. Thank you. [44:30] **Bonnie Somerville:** My name is Bonnie Somerville and I live next to Eddie and across from you guys—which, nice to meet you. I just want to say as a Christian, I love the idea of a church there. I think they've done a nice job making it very presentable; they have a bench, they have a little library thinger. But I do agree with Jay that—have two services if you need to expand the amount of the number of people that you want to attend your church. And I think I paid a ton of money to do the impervious rigamarole when we built our house; it cost us well over $30,000 to do what the city wanted. And so I believe that that should be respected—that people have abided by the city and paid money to make it proper. And as far as parking goes, I think that if you have a church, you have to have parking. I know their parking lot is very small, but it still covers 10-12 cars, and that's 10-12 cars that don't have to be on our street during the service or hopefully services. So that's just what I want to say because they've been good neighbors. I have to say they've been very lovely neighbors. One thing is the kids do run around a lot and I'm a little—one of my neighbors who's not here, but they're concerned that the kids might run in the street when they're pulling out of their driveway or whatever. But other than that, they've been good neighbors. But I don't think they have to have—they could definitely do two services or whatever. Since we did our part to do what was required by the city, I think the church should have to do that as well even though I think they're good neighbors. Anyway, thank you. [47:36] **Tom Hipkins:** Good evening everyone. My name is Tom Hipkins. I'm at 1875 Orchard Lane and I am the chair of the Elder Council at Agape Church. As everyone has said, very grateful for the opportunity to speak with you and eager to hear any feedback that you're willing to offer. A couple of points of clarification that go to maybe some unique elements of the way we do things at Agape Church. It was our stated goal at the time to meet all together each week. When we meet together and we worship together and we partake in communion together, we do that as a family meeting and a family meal. Yes, it's a common thing to have multiple services, but it's been really important to us and I think will continue to be really important to us that we stick with one service. That's why multiple services would solve some problems but it would run contrary to the mission that we've established. Another is related to that, kind of goes to the Eagle Brook point that Tom made earlier. We don't have a desire to continue to add more and more and more people to our body because you get to a point and it's really difficult to know one another. So we wouldn't have any interest, as part of how we do things, of continuing to grow. This would—we wouldn't anticipate a building expansion here and another building expansion at a later time to try to accommodate additional growth. We do have plans and thoughts on how if people continue to come—we're not going to say no, you can't come—but we do have plans to deal with that apart from adding a service and apart from growing bigger in that building. It seems to me from all the conversations—and you'll correct me if I'm wrong—but there would be a way to thread the needle on the space, the size of the building on the space of the lot. There would be a way to deal with the requirements and accommodate some of the neighbors' concerns. The building on the space seems like there might be some room. But the parking thing—it would be helpful to us to get some feedback on that parking question. We're at the early stages of talking with our congregation and we need more guidance from you all so that we can take those next steps. Thank you for your time. [51:27] **Stephanie Bus:** Hi, thank you for letting me speak. I'm Stephanie Bus; Scott is my husband. We just purchased the house next door, so we haven't had a chance to live there yet. I just wanted to clarify that a church doesn't have to be as large as an Eagle Brook church to completely change how the space is experienced. Doubling the size of the building next door to us is going to change how we experience that house, how we experience the neighborhood, and it's not something we even knew about when we bought the house. I guess I would just ask you as you go forward to just consider 20 feet instead of 10 feet. They want to come within 10 feet of the property line. Just consider what it would be like if you were living next door—that's all I'm asking. I really appreciate it, thank you. [52:14] **Craig Somerville:** Sorry about that. I'm Bonnie's husband, Craig. I live at 2254 Third Street and I live next to these guys and live next to those guys. First of all, the church has been a good neighbor—I admit that—and we are pleased to see them there. My first reaction is the building is just flat out too big for the space. I mean, it just looks huge on that small footprint. And again, my wife pointed out that when we built our place 13 years ago, we had to do a lot to get that to fit into the space; didn't fit into the property line, so I think everyone else should have to do the same thing. Mostly, I think when we were told that we couldn't do something that we wanted to do, it wasn't because we said we wouldn't do it in the future. The City said, "Well, what if you sell the house? What about those people who buy your house in the future? What are they going to do?" So the church says, "Yes, we're not going to expand, we're not going to be Eagle Brook," and I respect that and I like the church, but I don't know—in 10 years they sell to somebody else, what are they going to do? So we have to look at what they're going to do going down the road in the future and I'd like to see something that would be more appropriate to the scale of the property. So that's my point, thank you. [53:47] **Caleb Bergie (Architect/Designer):** Good evening. My name is Caleb Bergie, I'm responsible for the plans, so I thought it's just best to come up and share my thoughts and how we arrived at this solution. We've been meeting as a church in the backyard of one of the elders' houses when we first formed, and we're tickled pink that a building came available back in 2020. I think everybody in the congregation kind of fell in love with the property, the place, the town. You can hear the emotion in the neighbors' voices as they talk about it because I think it is just a beautiful place. But as we started to understand that we were growing, we felt very constrained by the existing building. It's a two-level—there's a sanctuary and there's a basement—so we would meet and have a Soup Sunday and right after the church was over, half of the chairs were moved aside and tables were set up. There were people downstairs and people upstairs and there was really nowhere to go. And so we started to cast a vision of what could this space look like and in an ideal world, what kind of space would we need to accommodate 300 people? So the plans, when we started to put pen to paper—it seemed to make sense that based on the roofline and trying to keep with the aesthetic of the residential area, that we could kind of match that and started to pencil out the plan. It became very apparent, though, that there really is no expansion discussion without eliminating the parking lot. I mean, it is a small residential site; there are constraints inherent with that. So when mapping out all of the setbacks and the constraints, we knew that parking was going to be a big ask. You can kind of see on the screen our parking study of what it would take to accommodate 100 vehicles utilizing some of the city infrastructure as well as the on-street parking that we currently utilize. Without eliminating the parking lot, there really is no even discussion of building in general. And so that was kind of issue number one. Number two was impervious. And impervious—ironically enough, when we were studying that, the addition creates less impervious on the site by eliminating the parking lot just from the sheer size of the asphalt. I realize that there's a different way to treat that—it is a different type of runoff than building runoff—but when we're talking about impervious surface, what we're showing actually decreases what is there currently in terms of impervious surface. Now it is still above the requirement, but I just wanted to note that it is a reduction in impervious. The third point is the setback. That one kind of came out in the 11th hour and we were talking to Jason and Ashton and Shay—and really fruitful conversations, so I appreciate that. We overlooked the 20-foot—the doubling of the setback—that was required based on the conditional use of the site. In a traditional residential R4, we were under the impression that the 10-foot setback was our constraint. I realize the encroachment given the church use, but it is a little bit—when trying to analyze a residential use versus the church use and understanding how we went about treating that facade, it was very intentional to keep all fenestration away from the neighbors' property. Our effort was really to align with the public-facing streets and put majority of our window openings fronting those public ways and really trying to keep the private aspect of the west facade, intentionally so. Now that does have the potential to create maybe more of a blank facade, and so I understand the concern. The images that we've produced are just that—they're just rough images. These are our way of studying what the floor plan could be extrapolated three-dimensionally, but this is by no means a final design. So I just wanted to be noted that this is really our attempt to understand the constraints and try to address them in such a way that is appropriate. If the setback is the problem, we can go back to the drawing board. It is—I just want it noted—rather difficult; we're only working with a small piece of property so it is trying to accommodate the use and trying to be, I guess, do it in a thoughtful way. There will still need to be some provisions or conditions that deviate from the zoning code, and that's why we were intent on seeking a PUD and trying to create a level of design and articulation that could enhance the neighborhood. So I just wanted to convey those thoughts and kind of tell you how we arrived at this solution. So thank you. [1:01:30] **Mayor:** Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak to this issue? All right, well thank you everyone who did offer your comments. Mr. Boer, first off, congratulations—if you're even entertaining a project like this, it means your congregation's growing and you have the financial wherewithal to take on a project like this. So that's something to be proud of. It's your success that is causing me the concern for what this will ultimately be, because it seems like the more successful it is, the bigger these issues—these legitimate concerns that folks are raising—have. We're not making any official decisions tonight, but you invited our bluntness, which I think is exactly what this process is supposed to do, which is to have an early conversation before you have tens of thousands of dollars into due diligence and we're far enough along and then suddenly the neighbors go, "Whoa, you've been planning this for two years, where'd this come from?" So that's why we're having this conversation. I'm going to try and offer my bluntness and we'll engage in a dialogue. I see two separate issues that on their own cause me a lot of concern, and then individually maybe we'd find a solution, but when you bring them together, as you said, it's a big ask. The building itself—some of you have talked about how you're going to take it seriously, it's going to look very nice, it'll be a good finished product—I have no doubt about that. It's not that you'll do a good job; it's really, really big on a very small property in what is a quaint neighborhood. I realize people have built larger houses recently, but I haven't seen many 7,000 square foot houses go up. The big ones are like 4,500. So this is in and of itself a big structure on a small property. And I think it will fundamentally change the characteristic of the neighborhood. Some people might think that's a good thing; I don't. I like quaint downtown White Bear—that's what I grew up experiencing and that's what I want to preserve. I also want to keep quaint churches in downtown White Bear because I see significant benefit to that too. So I don't know how we try and marry those two. I want to be blunt because I don't want to give you false hope and say let's water down the project so much that you're basically putting a little bump-out of 1,000 square feet and that doesn't accomplish what your general congregational goals are. So that in and of itself I have significant concerns about. And even if we go back and forth and play with it and scale it down to 1,500 square feet and we comply with the setbacks, we're still left with the situation where your congregation appears to be growing and successful, and that will cause more people to show up and, like any good church, rightfully so, you're not going to turn people away. The church that I go to, I would never want to see them say, "Well, we're at capacity." This isn't a country club where we cap the membership; we're going to keep as many people as we can coming and that's how it should be. But that's the problem. So parking—I mean, we've spent a lot of time talking with other projects, whether they're business whatever it might be, about parking because we take it seriously. It's one of those things that you can't just gloss right past because it's the day-in and day-out things that we have to deal with—police have to deal with it, neighbors have to deal with it, we have to enforce it. So to go to literally zero parking and just say well it's the street or it's City parking lots that are already an issue—and get use, maybe not as much on Sunday mornings, but it still gets used. And that is a block away and it's just not realistic to think when we're having weather like this you just can tell your congregation just go park in the lot two blocks away. So realistically, I think it's going to just continue to be an issue with parking—there's no way to solve that, you just don't have the space to say well we'll just put up a bigger lot over here; there's no more room left. So I don't see how the continued trajectory of what your congregation and church are doing works for this space, and I'm not trying to drive you out, but it seems like it's a decision that you folks need to make: what are our long-term goals and is this lot, this location, what's right for us? And I don't like having to tell anybody that when you want to put money and invest in the community and do a good project, but the point of us having a zoning code and setbacks is to set the rules of the game. And the PUDs have a role, particularly when it comes to housing, which is a great need, but this is a little bit different. So I can't imagine being wild about this project and ever supporting it for those reasons that I've just laid out. That's not to say that there isn't a solution somehow—I don't see it, but I don't think this is it. That's where I stand today based on everything I've heard. Council, this is our opportunity to offer feedback. [1:06:55] **Councilmember Edberg:** Jason, could I ask you a couple questions about the things that don't fit? We've been talking about the impervious situation—I had an impervious situation previous... it sucked. But in a residential lot, you can get an administrative variance—is that what it's called? Up to 50% with trenching in my case, or rain gardens. I'm assuming this is—we haven't been talking about that at all. Can you do that on commercial lots? [1:07:41] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the city council, it's just slightly a different process. In this case, it would be assumed here that the PUD would work with the applicant and their designers to maybe allow potentially allow additional coverage in exchange for something else, which could be similar to what residential homeowners have done, similar to your project, where you would provide some additional stormwater mitigation in some way. There's a lot of different ways to do that and that's where I think where we would try to work with the applicant and their designers and consultants to come up with some suggestions that could generally meet the spirit and intent of the stormwater management issue while allowing them some additional coverage. [1:08:28] **Councilmember Edberg:** So they could just trench the entire yard, capture all that water, and then not have a sloughing a rainwater issue is basically what I'm thinking in my head. [1:09:05] **Jason Lindahl:** Well, I'll just be—we haven't done that analysis, but the general idea of what you're proposing I would agree with. There would be additional rain gardens, stormwater mitigation, stormwater ponding that maybe becomes more of a design feature on the site. [1:09:13] **Councilmember Edberg:** So when we talk about having a variance on this issue, we're not saying you don't have to deal with it; we're saying you're going to deal with it in these specific manners and this will be dealt with? [1:09:23] **Jason Lindahl:** Yes. [1:09:24] **Councilmember Edberg:** So we're not talking about just saying you were going to ignore it—that would be staff's intention? [1:09:30] **Jason Lindahl:** Right. [1:09:31] **Councilmember Edberg:** Okay. The 20-foot sideyard setback—I'm looking at the plans and I am just not an architect—could they move the building bump-out toward the street instead, or are they right up against the Stewart side setback? [1:10:00] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the Council, I believe they're also up against the setback on the street side, the Stewart side. However, I think I would agree with what I think I've been hearing from the applicant, that they believe that there are ways they could redesign the site to less—if not meet the setback requirement—if that's important to the Council on the 20-foot side for the neighbor. [1:10:27] **Councilmember Edberg:** And then they'd be left with a building that is—what is the height of that wall on that side of the building for the neighbor? I mean is that within code or is that extra? [1:10:47] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the Council, the building height meets the code requirements. I'm sorry, I don't know off the top of my head what that specific height on that side of the building is. Generally, I think the measurement of the site—if we go back here to the notes—allowed height is 35 feet, which is a very standard height in the residential neighborhoods. The measurement to the peak in this case, it looks like, is 32 feet. Just as a note, you may remember in your staff report, the spire is higher than that—existing, not proposed to be changed—and code allows those spire architectural features to be higher. [1:11:32] **Councilmember Edberg:** So it's within the residential height requirement? It doesn't have some kind of special requirement because it's quasi-commercial? [1:11:39] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the Council, yes, it is. If a person was going to build a house there, they could build it that tall. [1:11:46] **Councilmember Edberg:** That's correct? [1:11:47] **Jason Lindahl:** That's correct. [1:11:48] **Councilmember Edberg:** Okay. And then we get to parking. I can't remember—and I don't know that you were here—how big, how many people could go into Lakeshore Theater and Lakeshore Players? That's a lot, and they had no parking lot and they would meet Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday all the time. Of course, they weren't really close to downtown, but—I'm not saying that I would say, "Oh, you don't have a parking problem because somebody else did the exact same thing." They were there forever, but it did work. I guess I would say I'm not exactly sure what I would say if a proposal came in that fit the 20-yard setback and had a lot of trees; frankly, it's just kind of obnoxious to look at a 32-foot wall, but you know, again, my neighbor's probably got one. I'm trying to think if they do—I don't know if they do, though. But parking is going to be an issue. Can we put in the PUD, "you have to have busing"? Is that something the city can do? [1:13:06] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the city council—and the City Attorney can also chime in at any point here—generally, the PUD is designed to be a good faith effort on both parts to come up with a better development. If there's something in the code that is just a sticking point, and to get a higher quality, better development for the community, you can do things a little bit differently. Certainly, different ways of bringing people to the site—I think that's generally your point here—that could be one of the conditions that could be part of the exchange, in theory. [1:13:46] **Councilmember Edberg:** The only reason I mentioned the other ones is because you guys could design a plan that was 35 feet high, met the setback, and worked through the stormwater mitigation issues and we would really not be able to say anything about it one way or the other. And so the bigger issue is again this parking. I guess I would encourage you—I mean, I don't know what anybody else would say, I don't know how this would go forward—but it sure would be a good great, you know, a good faith effort going forward if you did want to consider busing, that you started it before the project to show that that was something you were willing to do. If it's something you'd be willing to do, I don't know. Or that whatever you are planning to do to mitigate that, that you start it before the project. But again, that doesn't mean that me or anybody else wouldn't say, "Still not enough." But at least that would be one part of the conversation I would have. And again, I would just encourage you as you go forward with this plan to make it look—as I like trees—but as residential as possible, because they're going to be looking at it for a really long time. But that's my initial feedback. [1:14:37] **Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, a couple of positives: I really like hearing that the church is a good neighbor and the neighbors sort of keep saying that over and over—that's just really a good vibe and that's a credit to the neighborhood and the church. I also love all the comments about this new process. I think it's still a relatively new process we're doing with this planned review, so that's kudos to staff and Jason in particular for shepherding that through. We're really hitting our groove, I think, with this process where we start early and it's just a drawing and we're getting some really initial feedback. So it was addressed in the memo or maybe it was addressed in the applicant's letter that White Bear Lake is fully developed and there's just no other place to go. But have we really spent more time on that? That's my first thought: it's a great use for the city, this lot is small, the parking's an issue—have we really explored other spots in the city that this church could move to? I know that's asking a lot to say move, but it's a high-value lot in a great neighborhood. They obviously have some money to expand. So between selling the lot, maybe it's not completely unreasonable, and I just wonder if we have looked at properties that we control as a city. There's lots of open space and other churches, lots of open space in the school district. Just thinking outside the box early in the process: have we really considered that? And I just want to encourage that kind of activity because I think it's a great use and I don't want them to leave, I don't want them to fail, but this is a difficult application, obviously. I don't know if Mr. Lindahl has any comments on that or if it's even our job necessarily, but I think it could be our job to at least help with the search or look at an inventory. [1:16:47] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the Council, we haven't discussed specifically the property that the city owns, but we'd be happy to have that. The applicant really hasn't expressed a desire to consider other sites at this point, but certainly, we'd be happy to have that conversation for to the extent that the city owns any property that may be a good fit for them. But beyond that, staff at least hasn't worked on behalf of the applicant in the private sector to help them find a site. [1:17:23] **Councilmember Walsh:** Yeah, and I don't know that it's necessarily our job, but it could be something we could do. Your team knows more about the property management and what's going on in the city than anybody in the city, so maybe we spend some time on that—not a lot of time because you guys are busy—but that was just one of my overriding thoughts is: well, how do we do this well? Maybe if this isn't the site, but keep them in White Bear Lake some other way. That's just my initial reaction. The parking is a really big issue—to go from already way over variance to zero. When I was reading the memo, I thought, "Oh wow, okay, so we're going to put a lot of cars in the neighborhood." The map that we had up earlier with the yellow spots for cars is compelling—you got our City Lot just a block away full of cars, and certainly on Sundays at least that's not going to be a difficult thing to do, there's not going to be anybody else there. I would say in the busing, I thought of busing too—or you know, a golf cart or things like that—but we have some experience with that in other properties in the city on Boat Works over there. It didn't really work. We had a lot and we were going to bus everybody over, but there just wasn't compliance. Especially if there's just spots on the street to park, people are just going to do that; they're not going to go to the lot and get a ride from the golf cart or the bus. So, good idea, but... those are my initial thoughts. Like I said, this is really early. [1:18:29] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I think there are worse problems for communities than to have growing congregations and community-based ministries. I applaud you for the work that your community is doing, the way that your congregation is working and acting—that's a tribute and good things are happening. Whether this is the right place, I don't know. I'm going to push back on Mr. Cox's comment about it being a commercial building; I don't view it that way at all. This is not commerce, doesn't have any of those same attributes in that regard. So the issues that do concern me: 20-foot setback. I'm open to hearing about parking solutions—I'm not confident that there are any—but I'm open to listening to what that might look like. Again, I think member Walsh is accurate in the other experience that we had in trying to use that to alleviate parking issues was not successful. So I don't know what to do with that. I would be curious, Mr. Lindahl—so roll this forward. If the congregation were to say, as opposed to framing it as "what can we do with our ministry in this place?"—"what can our ministry do in a well-resourced different place?" okay? And as Mr. Walsh mentions, it's property that has some value. What are the conditions on somebody else? I'm thinking of the other neighbors—it's like you don't get to necessarily control what somebody else is going to do so long as they meet code, sideyards and height and so forth. In this situation, because of the previous CUPs and other things, what might be possible that would be within our code and could go on that lot as a successor? Can you speak in any kind of generalities about what that might look like? [1:20:48] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, councilmember Edberg, I just want to make sure I understand your question. Are you asking in the context of assuming the site is as it is now or assuming the site was... [1:21:05] **Councilmember Edberg:** If somebody—I live in the neighborhood—tore down the building and put up something really new and big for whatever that site might bear, what might that look like? [1:21:20] **Jason Lindahl:** Mayor, members of the Council, really under the current zoning in the residential category that's allowed here (R4), it would be entitled to a single-family or two-family use. Under our current code, they could seek a conditional use permit to add an accessory dwelling unit. Quite honestly, the most intense thing really in the residential zone that they're in would be a conditional use for a religious institution like they have, and then that's subject to the standards that we've outlined. [1:22:30] **Councilmember Edberg:** I guess my only point is that to think about this as a single turn of the screw, when in fact there's going to be more coming down the road if the congregation should move—it's like you have other issues to think about as well and compare which you might like better. But be cleareyed about what might be able to be built there that you also might not like. That's kind of the way some of the development happens and that's okay. In general, I'm going to say I think it's really hard to see this development on that site, but I remain open to listening and thinking. Nothing easy has come to my mind. Congratulate you on the work that you are doing and thank you for the work in our community. [1:23:18] **Tom Boer:** May I make one comment, please? [1:23:21] **Mayor:** Step up to the podium if you would. [1:23:23] **Tom Boer:** Thank you all, this is incredibly helpful and what we're aiming for. Can I just address a few of the comments you guys have made? Member Walsh, we have spent about two years looking at other places in the area. We love White Bear, we don't want to leave White Bear. We're very invested in White Bear—both the businesses and the people. I've reached out to a handful of different churches that are seeing maybe attendance going the opposite direction of us to see if potentially they'd be interested in trading. It'd make a lot of sense for some churches to have less overhead and less building to care for, but as of right now, there's no interest in that. We've had our eye on other creative opportunities. Actually, member Joe Erickson—real part of the Building Commission—we were working with her about two years ago, so she can attest to that. And I love the idea of considering if there's other things that we are unable to see; we would be grateful for that. We were actually renting the Armory before there was a shift in things, which would have been a wonderful home. Thank you also for pointing out the use of the theater down the street; that's about two blocks away from where we are. You've got the theater down the street, you have another block away—I'm spacing on the Event Center downtown—understand that that's in downtown zoning. Again, it's a block away in terms of parking. And then St. John in the Wilderness is in a similar situation to us where they don't have their own parking—they just happen to be connected to the city lot connected to the library. St. Mary's, I know, has a fairly large parking lot, but to my understanding, they're expanding. Parking on the street—and it's neat, we're glad that that's there. It sounds like you guys are all aware—I don't have to pitch it to you to drive around the streets on a Sunday afternoon; they're delightfully quiet. And I think there's clearly space there, and at the same time, I understand the tension you all are feeling. So thank you for the thoughts. Member Edberg, I do want to just address your point: someone could buy this space if we were to sell it and build a very large house or a daycare facility that is used 5 to 7 days a week, and they would have different, lesser obstacles potentially than we would in doing that. I appreciate you pointing that out. We're, even with this going trying to maintain one service, attempting to do a community good instead of taking up this space from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM every Sunday. Having that volume be much shorter is part of our goal here. Thank you all. [1:26:58] **Mayor:** Thank you. Okay, anyone else have any final comments on that? All right, we're going to move on to item 8B: Police Sergeant labor agreement. Mr. Juba. [1:27:09] **Rick Juba:** Thank you, Mayor and Council members. Staff and the Law Enforcement Labor Services (LELS), who represent the police sergeants, have reached an agreement on a 2-year labor contract covering 2025 and '26. Highlights of that agreement include changes for wages: a 3% cost of living adjustment (COLA) in 2025 on January 1, then also a step increase on January 1 for all four members, and then regular step increases on their anniversary dates for the rest of 2025. 2026 would be another 3% COLA on January 1 and then regular step increases. Other highlights include the same health insurance contribution that we've done for other groups for 2025—if you recall, that's the city picking up 90% of the health insurance premium increase and adding an additional $100 into the HSA contributions. Holiday hours increasing from 96 to 112; this was also included in the patrol contract that was approved at your last meeting and is consistent with the non-bargaining staff. Increase in uniform allowance from $950 to $1,000. And then renewing the hiring and referral incentive. Staff recommends approval of the 2-year contract. Just a note: if Council were to approve that tonight, that will be our last open contract for 2025. [1:29:16] **Mayor:** Thank you, Mr. Juba. I don't have any questions; congratulations on reaching an agreement. Councilmember Walsh. [1:29:22] **Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to support the resolution and the approval of the contract. Question on holiday hours—and this was in the last one too and I didn't ask it. Holiday hours increased from 96 to 112. So is my math right—112 hours of holidays is 14 holidays? Is the city recognizing 14 holidays? And I know City staff is not taking 14 holidays off all year because we wouldn't be able to function. Is it kind of a "bank the holiday hours and use them as PTO" or how's that all work? [1:30:03] **Rick Juba:** Thank you, Mayor and Councilmember Walsh. For the patrol staff and for the sergeants, those officers are banked. Because of their schedules and how they work, they get that bank and then they use those throughout the year on their own schedule. [1:30:26] **Councilmember Walsh:** That's a lot of holiday hours. I mean, that's more than the private sector. This is one of these areas where we're doing better here than we do in the private sector. I don't have 14 paid holidays—that's two weeks before you even get to vacation or any other kind of PTO. But like I said, I'm going to support the contract, I'm glad we're all done with the contracts, but that's a lot of holiday hours. [1:30:49] **Mayor:** Any other thoughts? I would entertain a motion to approve the labor agreement. [1:30:57] **Councilmember Walsh:** So moved. [1:30:58] **Councilmember Edberg:** Second. [1:30:59] **Mayor:** I have a motion, second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. (Chorus of ayes). Any opposed? Motion carries, that CBA is approved. Thank you again, Mr. Juba. All right, item nine: discussion, White Bear Lake Area North Campus neighborhood parking. Mr. Copy. [1:31:18] **Paul Copy (City Engineer):** More parking. Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. Chief Hager and I are here tonight to give Council an update on our review of the ongoing parking around the North Campus expansion area. Interesting, in talking with the school district, they are now trying to market—or at least make sure that we're calling it—the "White Bear Area High School." So we will try our best to keep it to that, though I may make some reference to North Campus just because we're all familiar with it. What we want to do tonight is go over our observations after school started, some draft recommendations, and next steps. During the approval processes in 2021 and 2023 for the expansion project and stadium expansion, traffic and parking studies were reviewed. In general, the parking provided on-site met or exceeded requirements within city code. The only true parking recommendation that came out was to restrict parking on the east side of Bald Eagle Avenue adjacent to the school, more so to help with pickup issues. If you recall, staff had recommended that we wait until the campus is fully occupied and we see how things actually operate, including events, so that we can make a true recommendation on what we need for any further parking restrictions—similar to what had been done at South Campus in the past. Starting in the fall of 2024 when school started—and actually, I think there was one football game prior to school opening—engineering staff and police staff monitored the area. I'll go through what engineering saw and then I'll turn it over to Chief Hager for the neighborhood and event summary. Engineering tried to drive around at different times of the day and days of the week. Really, the only issue that we saw was 10th Street immediately west of Bald Eagle Avenue. We saw 5 to 15 cars that consistently parked along that roadway; we got a few calls from those residents about inability to get out of driveways. Things got a little bit worse during weekend tournaments and events, and then obviously the football games were a whole different type of event. The new stadium seats up to 5,000 people. I'll turn it over to Chief Hager. [1:36:09] **Dale Hager (Police Chief):** Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Yeah, we noticed pockets of problems. We would field complaints from citizens now and again—not as much as we had anticipated before this school year started. Most of those were just growing pains: "I'm not used to somebody parking in front of my house and now there's somebody parking in front of my house." We didn't notice any real concentrated levels of parking except for on 10th Street, and it was clear that they were just students during the day. As far as the events go, I attended the football games this fall. Just like the small problems at the school, they increasingly got worse with each game. The first few games maybe weren't that well attended, but when it came down to the last couple, there was quite a potential for a problem in that neighborhood just to the west off of Garden and 10th and Campbell. I drove around a lot the night of the last football game; Garden was pretty packed on both sides all the way to the west from Bald Eagle. That area could use some work for this upcoming year. I'm also cognizant of the fact that here we are in the middle of the school year and there'll just be more and more cars as the school year goes on because all of our sophomores will start getting their driver's license. [1:38:33] **Paul Copy:** Thank you, Chief Hager. I want to run through what we currently have today. On the east border of campus is Division Avenue, which is currently no-parking on both sides along the entire length; works very well. We do have restrictions on 12th Street which were more timed for pickup and drop-off with the old configuration. 12th Street is one street that we are working on with the 2025 Street Rehabilitation project, so once we finalize a design, we'll look at adding parking back in. We also have "no parking" on the north side of 9th Street and the west side of Central Avenue. What Chief Hager and I had noticed out there is Garden Lane—we really need to do something out there. That was reconstructed in 2019, but due to right-of-way constraints, the roadway ended up very narrow—24 feet wide. Now that campus is very close to it, especially during events—the bigger football games but also weekend tournaments—a lot of that traffic is congregated on the Bald Eagle side and has a tendency to migrate into that neighborhood. In addition, we would recommend that the west side of Bald Eagle also be "no parking." Reason being is it really pushes a lot of parking on that side and you have people exiting vehicles just running across at random along that entire length, creating potential hazards with motorists coming down Bald Eagle and not seeing people exiting between cars. People aren't going to walk down to the nearest intersection to cross. Similar to what we have at South Campus, we would recommend looking at permit parking in some of the adjacent neighborhoods to the high school. It gets out far enough where it's too far to walk, so they're forced to park back in the parking lots. There's over twice as much parking provided on-site than the existing South Campus—over 1,300 stalls. People are just figuring out where parking is. Some people think they can park in the neighborhood and get out quicker than getting stuck in a parking lot. Education is needed. Permit parking at South Campus has worked well for the last decade. As Chief Hager mentioned, the district has asked us to remove those permit parking areas at South Campus because they are no longer needed there. That would require an ordinance revision. As far as the permit parking goes in the new area, we may look at different timing—it might be 24/7 or 365 days a year because it's really the weekend and event parking that causes the issues in this neighborhood. As far as next steps go, we feel it's beneficial to reach out to the neighborhood. We recommend sending a letter soliciting public comment so that we can confirm or refine our recommendations. I guess our ask tonight is that we would look for Council direction to direct staff to send that correspondence out. Happy to answer any questions. [1:47:49] **Mayor:** Question regarding the permit parking: how does that relate to the residents that live right there? Is it bracketed hours of the day? Provide some color on that. [1:48:02] **Paul Copy:** It's very detailed within the ordinance. [1:48:06] **Dale Hager:** Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, yeah—the permits are free to residents there and they're allowed to park on the city streets. You have to be a resident to have a permit to park on those streets. [1:48:47] **Paul Copy:** Currently, South Campus restrictions follow the school year and school day. Here we may look at different timing. [1:49:22] **Mayor:** Well, for purposes of tonight, general feedback is: yeah, I want to hear from all the people that have to live and deal with this. This strikes me as, because this is all brand new—the super high school on the north side—kids are going to find ways around, so it's going to be a little bit of whack-a-mole for a period of time. But the best people that are going to give us the intel are the residents. I'm all for that and I want to invite the public to weigh in. Councilmember Edberg. [1:50:08] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I like the idea of free permit parking available for residents. I'd be particularly curious to see if the folks who live on Bald Eagle might also desire to have access to permit parking for their guests and others who are coming to visit. I know it might be some issues about how do you tell on a Friday night who's got a permit and who's not, but inconveniencing all of the homeowners on both sides of that street deserves some thought. The 12th Street, Garden Lane, etc.—that makes perfect sense to me. So I would support soliciting that input. [1:51:27] **Councilmember Hughes:** You know, there's that little parking lot there by the tennis court. Does the school own that or the county? Like, will that be "no parking"? What is going to happen with those five precious spots? [1:51:42] **Paul Copy:** Mayor, members of the Council, that is actually parking that just kind of appeared over time within County right-of-way. It's not inside "no parking" so it's allowed. Under this proposal, we would remove that parking or work with the county to have it removed, sod or grass that area, because it's dangerous for people to back out into traffic on Bald Eagle Avenue. [1:52:50] **Councilmember Hughes:** I don't know if it's worth making that clear, but I think you might want to because it is used a lot on the weekend. And is there anything we can do on the intersections there, 6th and 9th, to really call out pedestrians walking? Especially at 6th—I can't tell you how many times I've driven by there and watched a kid dart or stop and wait and not have someone stop for them. Ninth especially is terrible. I'd love to see something there that would actually cause people to think that there's kids walking across that intersection. [1:53:38] **Paul Copy:** We are looking at other pedestrian or vehicle improvements. The focus tonight was to really look at the parking. Ninth Street we will have to work with Ramsey County to look at some of that. As far as calling out above and beyond ordinary, I actually just at a conference here over the winter and there's some pretty tight restrictions on what you can do within intersections and marking on pavements. There's some movement the state is looking at. In the future that might be an option, but for now we'll look at what is currently available to us. [1:54:45] **Councilmember Hughes:** I think not having parking on both sides of that street will definitely help the sightline. Can I add on? Could stop signs be considered at 9th? You already have one on 9th, but would that help slow people down going north and south? [1:55:18] **Paul Copy:** Bald Eagle as well as 9th Street is under County jurisdiction. Typically T-intersections are not three-way or all-way stops, but I will definitely have conversations with the County's traffic engineer. [1:56:18] **Mayor:** Okay, well sounds like we want to hear from the residents. Item 10: communications from the city manager. Ms. Crawford, do you have anything? [1:56:32] **Lindsey Crawford (City Manager):** I do, just a couple of things tonight. It is winter, it's freezing out, but some reminders: during a snowstorm, please help Public Works and not park on the streets. It creates for a better opportunity for us to plow better. The police department is very happy to write tickets—I actually received a couple text messages from some residents saying, "Thank you for giving my kid a ticket, really thank you." They will enforce our ordinance. Secondly, our body-worn camera program was audited recently. We're required to have that audited every two years. I did send the council notice on this, but we did pass our body-worn camera audit with no issues or concerns. And then lastly, the city council and department heads have a work session next Tuesday where we will do an annual check-in on our strategic plan as well as talk about some street projects. That's what I have for tonight. [1:57:50] **Mayor:** Thank you, Ms. Crawford. Any questions for the city manager? [1:57:58] **Councilmember Walsh:** Do we have some business to attend to? No? Good try. Second! (Laughter). [1:58:29] **Mayor:** Tell you what, I'm going to run the meeting now so everybody sit quiet. Item 11: closed session. For those in the audience, this is the rare time where we continue to do business but outside of the earshot of the public for certain things. With that, I would entertain a motion to go into closed session to evaluate the performance of the city manager as permitted by Minnesota statute section 13D.05 subdivision 3A. [1:59:12] **Councilmember Walsh:** So moved. [1:59:13] **Councilmember Edberg:** Second. [1:59:14] **Mayor:** I have a motion, second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. (Chorus of ayes). Any opposed? All right, we're entering into closed session to finish this meeting. Will not be video recorded. [1:59:21] **[END]**