Good evening everyone. I call this meeting of the public safety commission meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge 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. >> Thank you everybody. Carrie, did you call? Did you get the roll? >> Yep. >> Excellent. Thank you. Okay, so I'll call to order. Um I call this meeting to order. We did that. I got my little checklist here. Um, first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? >> A motion to approve. >> Yes. >> Second. >> First by Nate, second by Jenny. Thank you. Um, all in favor? >> I. Motion carries. >> Thank you. Second item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? If none, can I get a motion to approve? >> I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. >> Thank you. >> I'll second. >> Thank you. Um, there's no opposition. So, we'll go ahead and motion carries. All right. Next on the item of the agenda is open forum. This is the open forum portion of the meeting. Members of the public may speak on items that are not on today's agenda. Please state your name for the record. Seeing none, um we will then consider the open forum portion closed. Next, we're whipping right through this. [laughter] Next item on the agenda is presentations. So, our next item would be the year review with the police department presented by Brad Brad Peterson. Good evening, commission. Good evening. >> So, we're going to take a few minutes and wrap up 2025. Um, highlight some of our achievements, go over some of our statistics, and uh just give it a good wrap-up and set the stage for what's coming in 2026. So, I'm going to try to run through this a pretty fast clip and highlight the uh the major highlights, but if you see something that you want to take a little deeper dive into, by all means, holler or throw something at me. Um, so I could I could spend, you know, quite a bit of time talking about all of our accomplishments in 2025. Um, but I won't do that for the sake of time. I'll just highlight a couple of our major accomplishments. Uh so last year uh we successfully launched our new cso cadet program uh which was highly successful in recruiting and uh developing talent. Um and so we have our first two cadetses on the street as solo police officers now. Um so very proud to announce that as you know uh everybody's very proud of our new K9 our therapy K9 rigs doing amazing work out there. Um our new DWI traffic safety officer, which was grant funded, was highly successful. We'll talk a little bit more about that here in a few minutes. We have a new crime scene team that hit the streets and uh um was functional throughout the majority of the year. And then we launched a bunch of new technology including uh automated license plate readers. And then um another thing I'll touch on with in a little bit is we were recognized as a model agency for our officer wellness programming. So those are just a couple couple of major highlights. Um, the other thing that I'm also proud to announce, and I I know I've told you this before, but um, our community sat satisfaction rating, um, as measured a couple different ways is extremely high. Um, and so our pole study showed above average satisfaction in our overall public safety services. And then our own internal polling is showing about a 93 to 95% satisfaction rating. So, our officers are delivering great customer service. the community is largely very uh uh very pleased with the way we're delivering public safety services. And so I'm sure you've had a chance to to to review this whole packet. I'm not going to dig um dig into this line by line. Um but we did open this this um year-end review up with a summary uh because a lot of the statistics and graphs can be a little bit overwhelming. So, we kind of put the the summary up front for our readers. Uh, couple of the highlights. Um, our community is extremely safe as compared to most other communities locally and across the country. Uh, despite our our rapid growth um crime is is very, very low. It's been trending down since 2019. Um, there's a a little caveat to the to that um, crime trend that I'll get to in a moment. Uh our call volume is dramatically increasing for a number of different reasons. Um one of those being the growth in our community. Of course, there'll be an increase in in demand for police services. Uh but that doesn't equate to increasing crime, right? A lot of this because we're doing more traffic stops. We're doing more proactive police services, things of that nature. Um because of the low crime rates, our investigative division is uh not oversaturated with um tasks in their queue. So on average, they're each detective has about nine cases that they're actively investigating in comparison to detectives in other communities who often times have 20, 30, 40 or more active cases that they're investigating. So what that means is our investigators and detectives have the ability uh to spend a lot of time on those cases and really bring them to closure. So they have a extremely high closure and prosecution rate. So and then um gives us a lot of time to uh focus on proactive problem solving, communication, things like that rather than just being completely reactive to crime. Uh our use of force very very low. So, we did over 50,000 calls for service and out of that um only 91 uses of force. Um and we'll talk more about this in a minute. Um but majority of those uses of force are very very low level where it's either a threat or a display of use of force or very low level of use of force. Um and all that use of force was deemed reasonable within policy. So, we're not seeing any issues that we need to address there. So by all metrics and comparisons um our department's highly professional, high performing, very efficient and um a lot of people consider us a model agency. So makes us pretty proud. So as we start taking a deeper dive, you know, you can see that um over year to year um we're we're growing in call volume. Last year we took a almost um 10,000 calls for service more than the previous year. As I said, a lot of that is due to more traffic stops, more practice patrols, um more livability issues, but not um not crime and uh we're making fewer arrests as compared to past years. So, one thing to note is we started out or I should say we ended 2024 about six officers down and that those were mostly anticipated departures. uh we don't have a retention uh issue. Um however, that kind of put us in the hole to start 2025. And so we recruited heavily and hired and trained those six officers, but that takes time. And so you can see in our average response time, we had a little increase from quarter 1. Um but by the time we finished the year in 2025, we're back down to five and a half minutes response time, which exceeds um the benchmark average across the country. We had more community service officers. That was because of the cso cadet program, right? That takes time, money, time, money, and training to get those officers on the street as solo officers. Uh, one thing that I'm also really excited to announce is that our reserve officers um, uh, put in a lot more hours last year and that's because that program has seen a lot of growth and uh, that program has been restored to its once great robust and very active state that we used to see pre-COVID. We took a hit during the COVID years, but we're right back to um, um, where we need to be with that program. So you can see how many proactive checks we're doing, right? In excess of 20,000 checks per year where we're checking schools, parks, businesses, things like that to try and detect and prevent crime. Uh we're seeing more medical calls. Um as our community ages and grows, obviously we're going to see more medical calls. The overdose calls have remained relatively stable. Um that's a trend that we're seeing everywhere, not just here. The good news is we're seeing fewer overdose deaths. uh mental health calls are still occupying a lot of our time and focus. Um the good news is I can report that they're being effect they're being managed very very effectively and we'll get into the details on that here in a moment but the takeaway from that is that um that is a major focus and a major draw on our resources. Uh as I said crime is very low when we compare Cottage Grove to the other benchmark cities across the country. And so if you look at um that graph on the left, the blue shows your person crimes, the green shows your property crimes, Cottage Grove is on the left, and the benchmark cities are on the right. And you can see by comparison how much fewer crimes we have than the other comparable cities. And then that chart on the right shows the actual count of those various types of crimes. Um by looking at that, you can see how truly safe Cottage Grove is. So, here's another way of looking at crime. Um, in that top left, it reports part one and part two crimes. Part one is generally your most serious crimes. Part two is a little bit less severe. And from 24 to 25, you can see for the most part, our crime has reduced. Um, and here's that caveat that I was talking about. You can see that the part two crime increased from 24 to 25. And that is largely due to two factors. one being um the significant increase in DWI arrest, right? U by being deliberate about targeting and arresting more DWI drivers, which keeps keeps our streets safe, um we inflated that number from past years to this year. And then the second reason is that we implemented that online crime reporting. So we're capturing more of that unreport unreported crime factor. Um which is a good thing. Um so as the community reports more of those um crimes to us that gives us the ability to track trend and take action to prevent more of that crime. Um and so while you might look at that surface it looks like that crime [cough] rate increased at least the part two crime that's actually a good thing in this case. Uh but when you look down at that bottom uh trend line, you can see that over the last six years, our overall crime rate has dramatically decreased, which goes to the overall safety of our community. Let's take a minute to talk about traffic safety. You can see that uh over the last year um did about 2,000 more traffic stops. That's due to [cough] um our DWI traffic safety officer and just an overall focus on traffic safety across our whole patrol division. Um that translates to more traffic stops, more citations, and more arrests. Um and that also will impact our um overall traffic safety, which one way to measure that is crashes. As our community grows, we can expect to see more crashes. Um so we did see uh a subtle increase in crashes uh from 24 to 25. Um a pretty significant increase in fatalities, right? Increase from two in 2024 to four in 2025. Um however, three of those four crashes occurred on on Highway 61 where we don't have primary jurisdiction. U but we do have to record those numbers in our statistics. So, um, so although we did see an increase in crime, I'm sorry, in traffic crashes and fatalities, when we compare Cottage Grove to the benchmark cities, um, uh, our traffic safety is significantly safer than those other benchmark cities. So, we'll spend a minute talking about our investigative division. Um, less cases were referred to them, which is largely due to the decrease in crime rate. Um, however, they're still charging about the same number of cases. Again, that's because they have the time to invest and investigate those cases, which leads to successful charging. Um, so you can see that they're maintaining about 80% clearance rate, which is, um, I don't know of another agency that's maintaining that level of a clearance rate. Um sometimes you'll see um cities who um you know they have a u violent crime pro problem or a um vehicle theft program and they'll invest a lot of energy on that one area and they'll they'll manage to maintain a very high clearance rate you know such as 80% but then you'll see uh a decrease in clearance in those other crimes because they just don't have the bandwidth to investigate all types of crime. whereas um when we average it across the board, we're maintaining 80% clearance rate. And then bottom right, you can see our community impact team um some of the work they're doing. Um they're spending a lot of time and energy um planning and maintaining safety in all of our community events, which continues to grow and draw more of our bandwidth. And then our case management um unit is m is managing a very very high workload. Um and so our case management unit is are are those staff that deal with um clients who would otherwise generate a lot of call volume and draw a lot of public safety resources because they they're people who are dealing with uh mental health issues, substance abuse issues, other things like that. Um, and so, uh, this is probably the the slide that I'm most proud of. Um, so our case management unit, um, we measured our success by, uh, the [snorts] number of calls, number of arrests, and the number of emergency hospitalizations in that clientele before they were enrolled in CMU versus after. And you can see that after they are enrolled in CMU, there's an 89% reduction in overall call volume, uh 65% reduction in arrest and 81% reduction in hospitalizations. Um and so that's just absolute proof of um the uh the good work that they're doing and how that goes to make our community safer and improves the lives of those of those clients and their families as well. Um, and I'll and I'll say that they they average about 47 active cases, right? There's a lot of people on their books, but there's about 47 active cases that they're managing. And that number es and flows, but throughout the year, they average about 47 cases. And so, when you think about that, that's uh Detective Shaver, our embedded social worker, and then a couple part-time people when they have time, they're contributing. And so, those two people are really trying to manage 47 people. Um, you can only imagine if we had another social worker or another detective to to uh throw at this problem, it'd only be uh more effective. All right, so let's talk about use of force for a minute. So, as I said, 91 reportable uses of force. Um, Cosg Grove is unique in that uh we require our officers to report even very low levels of force. um if our officer displays a weapon or threatens to use force that requires them to report uh because we want to capture all of that. We want to make sure that we all those incidents are reviewed thoroughly and that we take away every possible lesson from those incidents so we can use the the least amount of force um and be most responsive to our community. And so although you can see that number is slightly increasing, keep in mind that our call volume is going up dramatically over that s same time period. So proportionately according or in comparison to our our calls for service, we're using less force from year to year. Um and when you think about that in terms of just pure percentages, right? I don't know what 91 divided by 51,000 is, but it's a very very small number that we're actually using force. That's contrary to the narrative out there, right? If you watch TV or read the news, um people might think that that we're police in general are heavy-handed or we use force very commonly. Well, that's just factually untrue. And so, every use of force is reviewed by a use of force review use of force review panel. Um all 91 of those incidents were deemed reasonable within policy. Uh we did take away three opportunities to improve our training tactics, uh equipment policy, things like that. So, and then bottom left, you can see how many times we actually used the force versus just the threat or display of force. Most of that force was very low level, right? We're going hands-on to do an escort hold or grappling with somebody, right? We're not tasing people or using canines to bite people or um using pepper ball with very high frequency at all. Um most of those higher levels of force I could count on one hand last year. And then another thing that I'm proud to announce is that our our pursuits keep trending down. Um, and we've accomplished that not by being restrictive in our approach and policy regarding pursuits, right? We could easily accomplish that reduction by creating a very restrictive policy and and telling our officers they can't pursue. Uh but we accomplish that through um allowing our officers to use their own discretion to decide when it's reasonable and safe to pursue. Uh and our officers are making great decisions, right? They're not out there endangering the public, unnecessarily banging up our squad cars. Um they're just making good sound decisions about when it's safe and and feasible and practical to pursue. And uh that's translating to fewer pursuits. And that's a good thing because pursuits are highly dangerous to our community at times. So, [sighs and gasps] um, as I said, we closed out 2025 at full staff. Um, if you compare Cottage Grove to other communities, we tend to be we tend to have fewer sworn officers than other communities. Um but we off operate at a very high efficiency level and our officers are cross trainined in a number of different uh disciplines and so we accomplish a lot with those fewer officers. Uh you can also see that we have uh pretty low sick and injured hours which speaks to our culture of safety and our high morale here and the fact that we're we're full staffed. Right? When we're full staffed, our officers have the luxury of taking time off when they need it or want it versus having to call in sick. Um, speaking of efficiency, you can see our operating budget and our overtime budget in comparison to other communities. Um, shows how well we're how efficiently we're operating. [sighs] Um, and then that bottom left, that actual overtime hours. You can see that even starting the year at six officers down, we closed out the year with fewer overtime hours versus um the previous year. Um giving credit to some of our officers that deserve some credit because they uh got special awards. Uh and here's the second slide that I'm very proud of is that overall satisfaction rating from our community. And then I get the the the ability to screen these surveys as they come in. And day after day, I'm seeing um quotes like you see on the bottom of the screen where the community is praising our our officers in our department. Um and it just goes to show that we're doing everything that we can right and the community appreciates what we're doing. So that was a lot. Um, and I'll I'll stop, take a breath, give you opportunity to ask questions before we move on into our focus for 2026. >> Well, thank you, Officer Peterson. Are there any questions from the commission for officer Peterson? >> Nope. >> I don't have any questions, but I want to say it's very, very impressive. Um, the city of Cottage Grove every year has been impressive when I see these reports and it just is continuing to trend in that positive. So, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. All right. Um, so >> Brad, before you go on, I also want to comment on the number of calls. >> That is insanity for calls for service >> considering what's there's 45,000 people in Cottage Grove, give or take. >> Yeah. >> So that's like more than one per person. >> And keep in mind, we're also tracking things like park checks, business checks, school checks. So that those aren't all 911 calls, but each of those are interaction with the community and an opportunity for things to go right or things to go wrong. Um, and so that's why we track it in that way. >> Yeah, I love it. Uh, I remember when I first got on the commission, you had mentioned I think you were just taking maybe over the program for the the metrics and building out this this summary of the year. Um, this is incredible. By the way, the the number of metrics and the story that it can tell is is amazing. Um, you don't even have to literally talk to this stuff. I can page through here and understand the things. So like if you think about community members that aren't here to listen to this, I mean you could literally send this out and they would be able to understand a lot of the things. So bravo. Fantastic work. It's it's amazing to see and it's it's awesome to be able to compare it uh you know year-over-year. So thank you. >> Thank you. Um so that's the goal. Um so we're going to present this to council on Wednesday and then after that it'll be made available for public consumption. So I'm looking forward to hearing the community's feedback and uh um I appreciate your feedback as well. If there's anything else that you would like to see in terms of metrics, um, definitely let us know. So, it's a it's a working document, living document. Continue to strive for improvement. So, >> excellent. Thank you. >> All right. So, let's take just a a brief moment to um talk about our 2026 strategic priorities. So, our five-year strategic plan is still alive and well, fully relevant and uh still in effect. Um but we [sighs] took a minute uh we meaning our command staff took a minute to um digest 2024 2025 annual reports um evaluate where we're at in that strategic plan and look into 2026 and uh look at what we expect to to happen. For example, we know that we're going to have some retirements in our command staff in this coming year. And so, one of the priorities that we identified is uh we need to accelerate our succession planning, right? So, we took that minute to look at what issues are we having, what do we foresee happening? So, what do our our priorities really need to be uh this year? And so, uh when we did that analysis, the four things that we identified are the need to continue to focus on our core function was providing safety and security for our community. Right? We need to continue to to manage that that crime rate. U and just as importantly, our community members need to feel safe, right? Um and so second thing is we've heard it loud and loud and clear for our community. Traffic safety is a major concern for our community. So we're going to continue to focus on that. Uh so one of the things that we've done is we've added two additional traffic safety officers whose sole focus throughout this whole year will be uh managing traffic safety. So, um maybe in a a future meeting, I'll be able to report how how they're doing. And then, um lastly, um in order for our officers to serve their community at their uh highest potential, we need to invest in their their training and their wellness and uh maintain that culture of excellence. And so, we're going to invest in that wellness and and culture. So, um you can read for yourself um how we plan to accomplish that. Uh but again um love to hear your feedback on that and uh take that in consideration as we dive into 2026. So >> depending your questions, >> any questions or comments from the group? >> Is there a specific number of uh officers you're looking to hire in 2026? Have you identified that at all? >> So currently um we're at full strength. We're expecting some retirements to happen this year and so any hiring we do will be back file backfire backfilling um those people who leave through retirement or for other reasons. So >> I was just going to comment on how awesome that that uh public service announcement of roundabouts was the other day. I forget where I saw it was on social media. It was in the newsletter the the roundabouts and which lane to be in and >> right [clears throat] Yeah. Uh I think people perceive roundabouts the wrong way. They seem to speed up going into them. So it was fantastic to see like you need to slow down. They're meant to calm traffic and not increase the speed. So yeah, it was good. [laughter] >> And don't stop when you're in the middle of it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. That too. >> All right. Thank you everybody. So our next item in the business is the ebike diversion program. >> Yep. So, um, for about the last year or so, we've been talking about, um, ebike and scooter safety and, um, it's kind of culminated into this presentation and I'll be doing a presentation to council in a workshop on Wednesday and hopefully, um, pending their their approval be taking some pretty significant steps forward to address this issue. I'd hoped to give you some more specific information on the new juvenile diversion program uh related to ebike safety. Um however, that meeting got cancelled today. So um it I'll be meeting with you ser youth service bureau on Wednesday and so at a future date I'll give you some actual details on the nuts and bolts of that program. Um but we've been working very closely with them and uh we're excited to launch that program later this month. So more to come on that. So, in lie of that, I'm just going to take a minute to talk about our strategy for addressing um the our new safety plan and uh action that we're going to take to address this this year. So, uh if you remember back to a past presentation, we spent quite a bit of time talking about all the different categories of recreational vehicles and mobility devices and ebikes. And I know I got everybody thoroughly confused. Um it's a challenge to to understand that. Um I think the more time I spend on it sometimes the more confused I get. So I understand I can empathize with our community that this is a really tough issue to get their to wrap their hands around. So um I'm just going to give you a real quick quick refresher. So when I say recreational vehicles, think side by sides, ATVs, neighborhood electric vehicles are those mini electric vehicles, right? Um, micro mobility devices can really be a lot of things. It can be ebikes, it can be scooters, segways, those little one- wheeled hoverboard type things. Um, micro mobility devices is really a catch-all for a lot of different things. Some of which are defined by statute and some are not. And then we get um to motorc motorized bicycles. Um, so think about a traditional bicycle that has a gasoline engine bolted onto it or an ebike that has either no pedals or it's over 1500 watts. And then uh you've got electric motorcycles which can come in all shapes and sizes. Then you've got pocket motorcycles. And then you've got your traditional uh class one, two, and three ebikes. So statute um is all over the map different rules for each each of these types of of transportation devices and our current ordinance um doesn't address a lot of those. So, our aim is to uh amend our ordinance um and and then educate our public accordingly and then um pending council approval amend our amend our statute with a couple common sense rules to u make our community and our writers safer. So, our five-step plan is first to launch an awareness and education campaign. Uh we started that a little bit last year, but we've got a very robust plan in place and it's ready to launch later this month. We we've been working with the youth youth service bureau and district 833 to get the safety um planning and awareness training into our schools and uh educate our youth because a lot of times what we see a lot of our complaints come from the kids on these um ebikes and scooters. And then um the youth service bureau has developed a safety program and a diversion uh program. And so that can function in two ways, right? Um a rider or a parent might say, "Hey, I want my my child to go to a program proactively to learn more about the rules of the road and how to ride safer." Or we could catch them doing something wrong and send them to a diversion program u versus giving them a citation, right? We know it's not going to be very effective um and it's not going to solve the problem writing citation to kids, right? We need to educate them, train them better. And so that's our goal with that program. Um, the other thing that's pretty cool is, uh, we sold our outdated and aging four-wheelers, traded them in for ebikes. And so, you're going to see our officers out there modeling good riding behavior and interacting with the public, having these discussions uh, as as common or as frequently as possible about safe ridership. And when necessary, we'll take enforcement action as well. And hopefully in most cases, that enforcement action will be diversion rather than writing citations. But if we need to, we will write citations. And then lastly, um we have some common sense suggestions that are going before council for improving our ordinance. And I'm going to spend a minute talking about that now. Um so I really struggled with do we create a separate ordinance for ebikes and and scooters and things like that or do we try to um amend our recreational our current recreational vehicle ordinance? And I decided with the latter approach, right? So, let's clean up the language in our recreational vehicle. Let's add to it. Make sure that there aren't any holes in it. And so, um, what I'm proposing is that we change the title and then add a bunch of the, um, statutory definitions for all the missing components that that are derived directly from statute. So, there should be no contradictions between our ordinance and statute. Um, and so our statute will will um ask our residents to comply with with statute versus them having to learn ordinance says this, but statute says something completely different. And there's a couple couple very um specific occasions where our ordinance would be more restrictive or require something addition in addition to statute. Um [clears throat] one of those areas is that um I'm suggesting that we allow um riders on foot scooters to operate on mixed use paths. So think about our bike trails and our walking trails throughout town. I'm proposing that we let uh motorized scooters ride on those. The alternative is we force them into the roadway u because by statute they cannot ride on sidewalks. So um a 12-year-old rider is allowed to ride a side I'm sorry a 12y old 12-year-old rider is allowed to ride a motorized scooter um but not on a sidewalk. So if we don't let them ride the paths and bike trails, we're pushing them into the traffic lane, which I don't think is a very good idea. So, um, we're gonna I propose that we're going to let them ride on those biking trails and walking trails. Um, we're going we're going to u suggest that uh we impose a reasonable speed limit knowing that this is going to be difficult to to enforce, right? Especially if we put a number on it, right? If I said um nobody can ride at greater than 25 miles per hour, that's going to be very difficult to enforce. Um, [clears throat] a I'm going to have to have officers out there with radars and lasers and um I think it a better approach would be to say um our riders need to maintain a reasonable speed. You can't endanger the public. They can't be a nuisance, right? That gives the officers the ability to make a judgment call um and use their best judgment given all the the factors, the totality of the circumstances. Was there speed reasonable or not? And we'll let the courts sort it out. Ideally, it'll never go to the courts. um you'll end up in a a YSP diversion and the uh rider will go there, learn more and uh that'll translate to um more safe ridership. Um riders need to yield the rightway to pedestrians, right? A lot of our complaints come from walkers or joggers and they get buzzed by a F-16 going past them, right? Uh that's never fun or safe. So, our riders need to yield to those pedestrians. Um [sighs] and then I would ban those neighborhood electric vehicles from sidewalks. We've seen that in very um few occasions, but as they become more and more popular, I expect that we would see more of those if we didn't take some action to ban them from our sidewalks and trails. [sighs] Um, probably the biggest recommendation here that uh I would want to emphasize and see past is that everybody under 18, regardless of what you're riding, has to wear a helmet. I don't think anybody can argue that's just good common sense safety. And then um all of these violations potentially could be charged out as a misdemeanor, but like I've already said um that's not our goal to have these result citations. Most of these will result in a conversation and andor diversion. So, um there are a couple other minor tweaks here and there, but those are the 10 big uh recommendations that I'll bring it before council on Wednesday. Um I would love to get your feedback on this and be able to go to council and say that u the PSC has reviewed this and approved it. Um but I won't put the the horse in front of the cart. So, I should say the cart in front of the horse. So, I'll give you the opportunity to give feedback on that. Thank you. >> Any questions or comments for discussion? >> I was just going to comment on this. This is legitimately the best all of the best things from all of those other examples that you presented to us a few months back. These are all the things that I was literally hoping that were going to be in here. Um I think it highlights the the ability to still use your brain and logic while putting some guardrails on it. Um, and then you know that anything anybody under 18 to wear a helmet. I mean, you've seen instances where kids don't have helmets on and it ends poorly, >> right? >> As have I. And it's it's like, you know, if there's a place that I can donate money, uh, I feel free to send that my way. >> Like it. >> So, for the for [snorts] the uh the USB or YSB >> Youth Services Bureau. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So for those watching and and Nate for you, um the YSB is going to be our primary and only source of diversion and that that preventative safety training and so I know [cough] they gladly accept your donations. So feel free to donate to the YSB. Their gal is coming up. So >> I love it. >> Yep. >> Oh, nice. >> I'm in. >> Could you talk to number eight? Um please permitting or going to admit permitting vehicles to be left unattended. >> Right. And so our current recreational vehicle ordinance has a line in it that basically says you can't leave any recreational um or blah blah blah on a sidewalk in front of a business um in a public space. And so as we thought about that, right, how often you go to a park and you see a ebike or a bike or a scooter um >> parked at the playground or in, you know, all over um or somebody rides their ebike to the store and they leave it on the sidewalk in front of of Target, right? It just didn't it didn't make sense to us anymore, right? So, I know the goal way back when was to prevent um those targets of opportunity and and and mitigate the the opportunity for theft and and the nuisance factor of just having those bikes and and other um other transportation devices like dumped on a sidewalk in front of a store and things like that. Uh it it just didn't make sense to enforce that anymore, right? idea. At the end of the day, if somebody um doesn't care enough about their ebike and they leave it unattended and gets stolen, that's kind of their problem versus us to try and regulate that. >> That's kind of how we approached it. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Yeah, >> I would imagine that would be uh probably targeted towards like lime scooters or whatever the the scooters are that people would just leave randomly uh everywhere or throw them off a bridge, >> right? Um, so yeah, I think that would probably be like the the direct uh the direct target of that type of thing. But yeah, otherwise, like you said, it's common practice now. If if somebody's going to use that as their primary means of transportation, where where else are they supposed to park it? >> Right. >> Right. >> So, just a point of clarification. And this talks about the requirement of the operator to yield the rightaway to pedestrians. If they are choosing to ride in the street, which I see a lot driving my bus, especially up in Woodbury, they're treated the same as any other vehicle as far as yielding, not yielding. How are can you clarify that a little bit? >> The answer is it depends. So, you really need to dig into all the different statutes. Um, for the most part, um, if you look at the statute governing bicycles, um, ebikes, scooters, things like that will pretty closely mirror the the rules of the road as it pertains to bicycles. And so, um, I wish I could say a bike versus an ebike versus a scooter is equal to a car when they're all in the lane of traffic, but that's not necessarily the case all the time. I know it's a not a very good answer, but um the question is it depends. [snorts] Do you have a specific Maybe if you had a specific scenario, I could answer that one. That might be a >> Well, I just know we were down south and we were in a community that had golf carts and I know down there they do not have the right away over vehicles. >> Sure. So, I'm just kind of trying to piece that all together like and we we obviously don't have golf carts riding around like they do down there, but >> just the sheer safety. I mean, I see these kids going 30, 40 miles around, you know, on scooters, ebikes, these mini bikes, if you will. And yeah, [snorts] just trying to give you some generalities. Um, and there may be some exceptions to this depending on, you know, some some circumstances, but for the most part, um, a bicycle, an ebike, a scooter, uh, could travel in the lane of traffic. They should stay towards the right of the lane or closest to the curb possible. Um, they need to slow down when they come to an intersection and be capable of stopping. They need to yield to any any traffic that's crossing or any pedestrian traffic that's in the crosswalk. Um, they need to signal their turns. Um, they need to yield like you would if you were driving a car, right? Um, you need to yield if you're making a left-hand turn. Uh, things like that. Um, you can't just blindly blast through intersections like we see a lot of times. Generally, when we see those tragic outcomes or those near misses, it generally happens at an intersection where somebody on a on a ebike or a scooter um didn't yield at an intersection um or in some cases um the they were crossing an intersection, the drivers didn't see them for a variety of reasons. So, um we really need to emphasize additional caution and uh um extra caution for everybody whether whether or not you have the rightway or not, right? Um drivers need to be looking out for people on on bikes and scooters and the scooters need to be yielding the cars. So, everybody needs to take some ownership and responsibility to help us mitigate this this risk. >> Yeah. And hopefully the education piece will really help because I I don't think a lot of that by these young people is they're they're just don't they're doing what they want, how they want, when they want. Um and so definitely a real safety concern there, but hopefully getting that education out there will really help. >> Yep. That's the plan. >> Any other comments or discussion? Questions? No, I think you've done a nice job of trying to make it as simple as possible, even though I know there's a lot of complexity with the type of vehicles and kind of classifying, but I think this is easy to understand and um I like the the helmet requirement for under 18. So, it's a it's a good proposal in my mind. So, good job. >> Appreciate your feedback. Thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. >> All right. Well, then that takes us to moving forward towards commissioner comments. Any comments from the commission? >> All right. About staff reports. >> I can go first. >> Thank you. [clears throat] >> First, I want to mention just obviously our snowstorm we had. I know it wasn't as big as they were predicting. The heavier snow went a little south of us which was just fine cuz we got about 10 11 inches of heavy snow and that was plenty. But like I always say, I want to say thanks to the whole crew and not just the whole crew but the whole team. There's others in the audience who maybe don't do the plowing, but they deal with the uh the aftermath and all the calls. So, um it is a whole team effort to deal with these big snowstorms and our whole crew was in at 1:00 a.m. um just planning for the potential for the heavier snow and did two full passes of the city and had the the roads looking awesome by 400 p.m. that day. So, it was a long day and then they were backing at 4 this morning to clean up. So, just a big thank you to everyone on the team uh who works on that and also the it's the parks team as well. I think we always mention our great public works plow team, but the parks guys are also part of that plow team as well. Um, another big [clears throat] one before we have our next meeting is our spring cleanup for 2026. So that's May 2nd, Saturday, May 2nd, same time, 7 to 3. Um, down to public works. It will be one change this year. Um, when we had electronics recycling, that was something the county actually took care of. Um they're trying to get more folks to use the uh recycling center in Woodbury because you can go there. I believe it's 5 days a week that it's open. So there will not be electronics recycling this year. Um just because they really want folks to just use that year round which is a little more effective. So that'll be one change. We're trying to communicate that to the public. Um I think um which is a obviously a challenge when we've make a change like that, but hopefully we can get the message out so um folks know they can go up to that recycling center. um our 80th Street reconstruction project we take bids on tomorrow. So that's an exciting day for us. That's the um reconstruction of 80th from 61 all the way down to Ideal Avenue and then also East Point Douglas Road from 80th down to Lake Arby's and then MDOT is also reconstructing the ramps and the signals at the interchange as well. So it's a huge project this summer. Uh we're working a lot with our communications team to get the message out and what that project will look like. Um it'll be a big tough project kind of like East Point in Jamaica was. This is a one-year project, not a two-year project. So um we'll get it done and uh everything will be much better in that whole corridor. Uh one other thing we'll be working on in April will be hydrant flushing. I'll let Gary touch on um uh sweeping, but uh tentatively April 13th we'll start hydrant flushing. Um it all kind of depends um what the snow and how long it takes to melt. We always get that street sweeping done first and then start hydrogen flushing. Uh we'll also have all of our Arbor Day uh celebration during that week uh before our next meeting that we have in May. Arbor Day is on Friday, April 24th. Uh similar to past years, we're doing the Buckthornne pickup um for residents. Uh the tree giveaway and also the community tree planting event. So there's information should be on our website. It's in the newsletter, I know, for March. And then I'm sure there'll be Facebook posts on it as well. Um, and that's what I've got. So, I think I'll turn it over to Gary now if he wants to cover a few more items. Can >> I ask you a quick >> Oh, yeah. >> Um, have you had any feedback on the the new light kind of by Kohl's um 80th and [clears throat] I think it's hardwood? >> Uh, nothing specific yet, but anything? Yeah, I'm happy to have it if there's any. >> No, I just didn't know if there was any traffic, you know, impacts or anything. >> Uh, nothing yet that we've heard of. Um, but, um, yeah, I guess there's any concerns. Yeah, we can take a look at them. So, >> all right. Thank you. >> Hi. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Um, Ryan did mention the plowing. I want to throw throw a big thanks to everybody. I mean, behind the scenes to the whole public works. It takes a group of 50 plus people at some times to make that happen. It went smooth. Um, public did cooperate and keep most of the vehicles off the street and people stayed home and that helps us really a big time get the roads clean safely and quickly. Um, we've been out pothole patching. This has been a tough year for us with the, you know, freeze thaw. Um, I'm sure everybody's witnessed them on 80th Street and hardwood. We just spent a good amount of time last week filling them up with more of a permanent patch. But even with you get weather like this and plowing a lot of that did come out, so we'll keep after them until the reconstruct. Um, we finished taking down 100 uh dead or diseased boulevard trees. We're still in the process of trimming trees and probably the big announcement for us is our spring sweeping uh which starts April 6, weather permitting. Hopefully all the snow melts and gives times for the boulevards to dry off. Um we typically run 7 in the morning to 7 at night. Um if we don't get any rain days along, we can usually complete it in five to six days. Uh we bring in four contracted out sweepers and we use two of ourselves. Plus, we do hit all the trails, sidewalks with the little machines. Um, so that's a big one. If again during that week of April 6, if residents can keep vehicles off the road, it helps us get by in one pass. And just kind of remind everybody, we see a lot of people wanting to blow all their debris and leaves and everything into the street. Um, that's not permitted. So, um, other than that, that's that's about it. Hopefully one to two inches more tomorrow night and hopefully we can put winter behind us. Oh wow. >> Any questions for me? >> No. Just want to say thank you and a shout out to things you mentioned already regarding the snow plows and how well you keep the Highway 61 and all of the streets that are in the area. Well, I know all of the streets within Cottage Grove. Yes. It's it's super impressive and and I hear it from family and friends and Facebook and everything else about how impressive it is to have the city of Cottage Grove be so on top of it. >> Yeah, I do know that. I noticed there's a lot of positives about how well it went this time. >> Um, and I know every situation is different and not having school probably helped cuz people stayed off the roads, but um, >> there was definitely a lot of positive feedback. >> A lot of positive that I'm hearing around the city. >> That's our goal. >> All right. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Nice job uh patching those roads last week, too. I noticed that the day that it must have been hours after you guys had done it. and I drove down the same road that I drive down every day and I was like, man, something's different. >> Yeah, that's definitely one of our busy intersections, so it's challenging for us to to patch [laughter] under traffic. >> Yeah, it was fantastic. It was uh I was like, man, they are really early. This is incredible. >> Mhm. >> So, yeah, nice work. >> All right, thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, Richard. >> All right, a couple things on the fire department side. um for us this year. Um so as you know we uh just finished up our standards of cover study which was um extremely complex and covered a lot of things. One of the big things though that it covered was staffing. So um while I'm happy to say that um very soon we will be fully staffed again with our 17 um full-time firefighter paramedics and or some are still EMTs but they're going through paramedic school right now. Um we've proven that to be very successful for us. Um, but we will be applying, we've gotten, um, council approval to apply for the safer grant. Uh, and what that would get us is seven more full-time firefighter EMTs or firefighter paramedics. Again, if they're EMTs, um, we have the ability to put them through paramedic school. Uh, and we would that would be a tenative start date of January of 27. So, um, that's, uh, hopefully we will get that grant. we are hiring um a grant writer for that. Um the good news there is that uh specific grant writer has been successful in the metro as well. So the big the big part of the safer grant is it gives us federal money to help pay the salaries for for three years um and allows the city um you know to get ready to take over those salaries. So um that's the the big one there. Another couple big things this year, um, one thing that we're really proud of is our our kind we're kind of building out our special operations, um, teams, if you will. So, some things that take a lot of bandwidth um, and and it can be a lot of money as well is um, we recently sent uh, a handful of people through a low angle and high angle ropes rescue class. Um, we just recently completed confined space rescue with refinery. We're having another um class uh later this summer and also we're sending people through ropes rescue and swiftwater training. So um while we we understand that Cottage Grove will not you know not we will not likely have the big trailer with all the things in it, what we recognized as part of our 5year strategic plan is um we had very little capacity to start mitigating the problems uh when they arise. And while they are low frequency, they're extremely high risk. Um, and we have a lot of places throughout the city where these these things can happen. So, um, super proud of our our firefighters that are are taking this on. It's it's a very heavy ask. It takes a lot of training to stay proficient in things like this. So, um, a lot of that is coming back off shift um to make sure that they're staying proficient in that. Um, a few other things staffing wise, we have, uh, two more people going through our community paramedic programs right now. that will get us up to about five community paramedics. Um, and we we partner very close with Detective Schaefer and Jen uh in our communities to to go out and the the big overarching thing with the community paramedic program is uh reducing hospitalization. So, it could be for your mental health population, but it also could be uh for somebody that needs help with their medications or and it's it's sometimes it's as easy as just putting it in their pill counter for them to make sure that they're not doubling up or not taking something at all or your your diabetic uh patient that needs a little bit um more help. So, um we're we're definitely seeing the impact um that that has in our community. Um we've started our fire cadet um which has been proven very successful. So the goal of the fire cadet program is is to bring somebody in that either has no or um you know very little certifications or schooling but they have interest in the fire service and then the ultimate goal is to uh end up hiring them full-time with us when when spots open. So um our fire cadet has started and she's doing absolutely fantastic. So, she's she's going through uh excuse me, fire school right now. Um and we'll hopefully be finishing that up here um going into spring and then um she works with the crew as well. And then she'll play a big role in our community outreach programs as well. Um couple other things, our new ambulance has arrived is is in service. Um this ambulance that we got was part of just the general replacement plan. Um we try and stay into that 7 to 9year window. Um, this one was replaced at 8 years. Uh, we do also have another ambulance on order that we'll be getting in, um, January of 27. Um, we got council approval for that. That that was another big win for us as if we cuz if we didn't take advantage of getting this ambulance, which um, our vendor was kind of holding a chassis for us, we would have um, held on to an ambulance that was almost 11 or 12 years old by the time it was able to be replaced. So obviously we do our best to avoid that. Um and we made some I will call significant changes um in this last build to to allow us to better use it in for our patients and our our medics. Um we also have a fire tender that will be arriving here in the spring. Um the fire tender is what carries a lot more water, 2,000 gallons instead of 750 or 500 to allow us to um fight fires and better to respond in our areas that um don't have hydrants, which is still um a decent chunk of our community. Uh that will be replacing a 30-year-old truck. So that one was um well overdue for replacement. Um, one thing we're really proud there of, uh, is kind of how we we approach this is we were able to put ourselves into a quote unquote stock truck. Um, so instead of making a bunch of customizations to the truck, we identified that the stock truck more than fits our needs and we're able to sell save over $100,000 um, in that purchase. So, uh, last thing I have, one um, another big thing we're doing here this year is we're kind of revamping our whole QAQI process. So, um, for a number of years, um, we look at every chest pain, uh, call, every stroke call, and every time we give a narcotic, um, I I pull that report every month. We have a lot of metrics to make sure, you know, we're doing an EKG under 10 minutes. Um, you know, if it's a narcotic that we gave, was it the right patient at the right dose, things like that. Um, we wanted to revamp it. So, we put a lot of bandwidth in what does that look like for us? So, we've added um recently we've added our BiPAP, which is off of our ventilators for so if somebody's having difficulty breathing. Um we're digging a lot further into our cardiac arrest calls um and adding a lot of metrics to that. And then also every time we have a trauma team activation at region. So, if there's a significant trauma in our city, whether it's a a car crash, a bike accident, gunshot wounds, um you know, all sorts of injuries that we see, um are we providing the right care? And I assure you we are and we have been, but it really allows us to dig a lot deeper into uh the weeds, if you will, on that. So if we we're looking more for the small tweaks and specifically on the cardiac arrest and the trauma team activations, we'll be working closely with our medical direction on that. So barring any questions, that's some of the updates I have for the fire department. >> Thank you. That's a lot of great news. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Any questions or comments? >> No. Well done. Thank you very much. All right, Mr. Peterson, I know that you've already presented. Yes. Did Did you have more or >> I think I took up enough of your time, so no, I don't have anything else to add. >> Okay. All right. Council comments. >> Thank you. Uh Dave Thei rotated to a different commission. So now you have the other Dave, Dave Clawson here today. I think you met I met you at some meetings last year. Um a couple things I uh just want to highlight. Um Nick and Brad gave you some great news on things that are going going very well in the city. I want to highlight a couple things. U one is the case management unit, the case management officer, Detective Shaver, um and our um embedded social worker, the the embedded social worker, if I have the number right, uh 50% of that salary position is paid by the county and 50% by the city. when I was retiring, transitioning out of the police department, uh that unit was just getting started and um if we had a mental health call or a behavioral health sort of call, the only thing we could do back back in the day, I hate saying that, but uh we could just take him to the hospital. And that used up a lot of officer time, a lot of ambulance time, a lot of ER time, and the ERs are very very full. So this unit has been able to deal with a lot of the simple more simple things keeping keeping the patients in our community um and uh forgoing this ambulance transport. So we found some great tools to try and keep people at home uh spend some more time with them, make phone calls to them, ask them how their day is going and um it's just these uh numbers that I'm seeing are just amazing. So, the council is in full support of the uh um the um paramedics, the community paramedics are helping a lot and um I think this program is just going to go nowhere but up and uh hopefully we can get some recognition at a much higher level at state level because it's it's just amazing. I can't talk enough about it. Um my other comment was the standards of cover from the fire department. The uh council dove deep into that and one of the big things that came out of that was um the amount of the amount of uh police and fire calls that were that we're getting the increase over the years and I'm my numbers probably low but was about uh 10% year-over-year with some with some changes. So the calls with our growing community with aging our community, the calls are going up and we really didn't add a lot of staff to help with that. So um we allowed the fire department of course obviously to apply for a grant to help um back not back fill but add to the fire department because I think it's it's definitely needed and hopefully this grant will come through and we can hire some people and they can get them going next year. So we look forward to that. Uh the ebike on the ebikes, we're looking for a lot of feedback on that. I took some a lot of feedback from you which I'll bring back to the council. Um it's a nice updated ordinance and of course you can always reach out to me anytime uh via email. Be glad to answer any questions that you have. Thanks. >> Excellent. Well, thank you. >> Any questions or comments for anybody on the on staff? No. >> All right. Any other topics? Okay. Well, if there's no further business, then I'll entertain a motion for adjournment. >> Motion. >> Motion. We're here. Second. >> I'll second it. [laughter] >> Second. All right. Uh motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you.