good evening ladies and gentlemen it is now 5 30 and i will call the special work session of the burnsville city council to order the clerk would note that all council members are present and as we continue to find solutions uh during this global pandemic tonight's meeting is being conducted both in person and online all of our city council members and staff are in the council chambers and practicing social distances you can see we're all far apart members of the public may attend in person if you like otherwise the public can watch this meeting online at burnsville.gov meetings or comcast channel 16 or 859 the public can also still participate through zoom by joining us at zoom dot us slash join or by calling 651 372 more information is available on our meeting webpage and in the council agenda packet please note that there is an audio delay if you are watching us on tv or online so if you speak please mute your video broadcast first if zoom meetings attendees experience audio issues we ask you to leave the meeting and then log back in this usually resolves the issue so our work sessions are very informal and we go directly to the agenda the first item on the agenda is the discussion on city council belonging and inclusion efforts and um our uh city manager ms khali is going to be are you presenting this i am adam mayer yeah thank you good evening everyone um you've all seen this before this has been a goal and initiative of the council to explore um a belonging or an inclusivity initiative um about a month or so ago you along with the rest of the burnsville leaders reviewed a proposal developed by the ymca that was a multi-step proposal that would include both work done by the council by the burnsville leaders and then reaching out and partnering with our community for that first step the wise also created a proposal for the city council to work through including a two 90-minute sessions focusing on self and social awareness and learn leading into the future as it relates to belonging and inclusion so you've within your packet there's a summary of the proposal and happy to answer any questions but also get any feedback from you as far as the next steps we certainly can go forward with this first initiative and then revisit with the council on what their goals and objectives are and how we may want to envision going forward with this this initiative so um happy to stand for any questions but looking for council affirmation that you're interested in pursuing this members of the council i mean we've had the discussion and so there's two two sessions self and social awareness and the second one is leading into the future any concerns any thoughts shall we um direct the city manager to move forward with the plan in place i think we should okay so thank you madam mayor okay so we continue to move forward and the plan is set the next item is uh on sale liquor license fee structure from comparison cities our city clerk mrs michelle collins is going to be presenting and you did quite a thorough job in your background switch from minute taker to presenter really quickly here yeah well good evening everybody i want to let you know i'm sure i gotta stay close enough to the microphone i suppose i should remove this that um i did uh try to do kind of a comprehensive typically in the years past we kind of look at our what we call our market cities for comparisons and i thought you know we've been doing that for years and what does that mean how does that compare now to the larger scale of other suburban cities so i did take a look at uh 19 cities between the population of 35 000 and like 90 000 which seemed to be a natural cutoff like 30 less and 30 more than burnsville and i found that uh of those burnsville and 12 other cities were single fee structure cities and they ranged with fees anywhere from 5800 to 15 000 and the average fee was 8 forty eight i'm going to switch this over to this real quick you can see here if you take off blaine at the lowest and richfield at the highest you still end up with a very similar we still fall right smack dab right there below the middle of the range so even with those two that kind of you would think would skew it off a little bit because they kind of skew it off equally we still end up at the middle of the range even if i took the high and the low off up there um burnsville's fee is set at eighty one hundred dollars for right now and that's just for the regular full on sale liquor license that doesn't include the sunday on sale that's an additional two hundred dollars that fee is set by the state the city does not set that we also found three uh six cities that uh had a tiered fee structure um less popular structure but there was a couple that um based it on actual alcohol sales and then found one city that based it on their percentage of alcohol sales to their comparison of non-alcohol sales and i even found one that had base it on the size of the customer space in the building the last structure i found which was in a diner they had like a kind of a discount structure they have a single fee structure but if the applicant does not have any violations from one year they knock off 500 for the fee and if they don't have any violations for two years they knock off a thousand dollars two or more so that's for their restaurants and their bars right because it's a municipal that this is this is all for on sale on sale and we're not talking about offices so this is all on sale right this is just the full on sale looker license okay so this does not include information about uh beer and wine licenses that type of thing we're looking at that full on sale which is i believe what the council was specifically interested in so um here's a copy of the survey all of this in survey information was in your background and kind of put burnsville on the list there and then the second page showed us all the different tiered structured cities and the discount structure looking into the tiered fee structure i asked the cities you know what do you require from your applicants you know what what what extra do you need to to comply with this and basically they said they either need sales tax information they have these sales tax forms that they have to file with the department of revenue they need to submit these to the cities and then some ass said that they could use a certified letter from an accountant and i had one city that told me they wanted both businesses that did not provide documentation not all cities said this but most of them said that if they did not provide any documentation at all they were required to pay the highest amount to get it now um some city so like when you go back one step here some cities require new applicants to start at the top some cities require them to start at the bottom and why i have one study that had it in the middle where the new applicants was because there was no sales or any other information to base that off of i'm sorry did you have a question i do yeah um go back to edina councilmember gossip with the way they structure that with the kind of a good behavior clause i guess you'd put in it how many how many other restaurants and bars actually qualify for those discounts do you know she said that she had quite a few that had the the two-year discount but she didn't give me she didn't have the actual numbers for me okay it's kind of kind of like when we first started the rental licensing if you're a good property you didn't pay much anything and if you weren't you didn't the star program the star program in the same way it weeded out your bad players correctly and so that we can focus on the bad players and not focus on everybody else's just trying to do that job to make a living you remember the star program yeah i do no i know that you and and dan do yeah yeah both dance because we go back away yeah okay do you want me to ask what the star program is yeah would you what's the story those who comply and do the right thing benefit yeah they benefit all i can say is your family was part of that claims free discounts okay michelle okay so as i was talking to these cities i thought this would be a good idea to find out from them what they're doing um about covet 19 are they giving refunds are they doing reduced fee amounts for future for the few you know the upcoming renewal process or what are they doing so that we could kind of get a good comparison of of how we compare with that and we found that 13 of the city surveyed did issue refunds or reduced fees amounts to varying degrees some said they based it on the number of days they were closed and gave them a refund for those days some said uh 20 across the board you know whatever the fee is some said 25 percent it was very there's no rhyme or reason to it um just whatever that city decided to do but what i did notice is for the cities that said they had done nothing in regard to covet like reduced fees or anything they um said well their renewal fees hadn't come up yet so they renewed like january 1st or february 1st or something like that and so their renewal period hadn't come up yet so the issue hadn't just risen to the top and they felt that their councils would probably address that at some time later this year when that renewal process was kicked off okay and did you share with them what we did yes okay um the fee policy uh for our financial management plan includes the guidelines for establishing fees right now we use uh for these types of fees we use market comparison which we talk about those market cities and our goal to be in that upper quartile is typically where we like to set the top quarter um 2019 analysis of our fees realized that we were below the middle of the market and so that was raised from 78.75 to 8100 at that time um 2020 that's the analysis that i just did it uh now that we are in the we were in the middle of the market then in 2019 this analysis proves that that is still consistent with our 2019 findings so after looking at this information i thought there were some options that the council could consider you could consider implementing a tier fee structure this would mean we would need to establish specific criteria about are we going to base it on alcohol sales are we going to base it on a percentage of alcohol sales compared to non-alcohol cells or some other different specific amount that we could base it on and then we're also going to need to say where's our breaking points you know are we going to have two tiers are we going to have three tiers is it going to be based on you know how how many sales dollars or what have you in that fact and when we looked at the list of fees i saw you know some of them were fairly skewed where most of them were in one category and maybe one in this category or something like that so that might take some actual real analysis of finding out what our businesses are at and where we would need to structure those fees to kind of put them where we proportionately would want them to be if we were to adopt a tiered piece structure the there would be additional course staff time we're going to need to deal with programming for you know right now we have this license is set at this fee and in this case we'd have to have separate those out so that this license that this criteria is set at this fee so there'd be some programming changes involved in that applicants would need to provide us with their sales documentation and then of course there'd be more documents and staff time involved into maintaining that information the benefits though is when we have an unforeseen drop in sales like we did because of covid then their fee is automatically going to go down prospectively or we would hope that that would be the case i'm not positive because i don't because we've never gathered any sales information from our licensees i can't say anything for certain about what what it was and what it will be because i don't have anything to base it off of but um but um that so it could but one of the things i did notice that was that um even the cities that had these tiered license fees they still gave them a reduction so that wasn't a fix for this type of a situation to other cities they they didn't say well it'll work itself out because then they'll pay less in the renewal period so maybe that's not a fix for that um one of the arguments that we've also heard you know when i was talking to some of these people out there was that businesses that have less sale alcohol sales also require less like police resources you know our fees are supposed to be based off of administrative costs and and police and enforcement costs right and if you say that maybe somebody who has less sales requires less police enforcement or or code enforcement or that type of thing then then that argument could be true that they should be paying less for a fee but then i talked to some other cities who said that is not our experience at all we definitely have some cities that you know make less than other uh have some licensees that that have sale alcohol sales less than others but the enforcement issues are there so it they i couldn't confirm that correlation at all the second option would be do nothing right maintain the single fee structure as it is of course this is predictable model we know we you know we know how many liquor licences we have we can budget for it if we do a reduction on 27 liquor license fees of a thousand dollars then we know that's going to affect our budget revenue by twenty seven thousand dollars so it's pretty um easy to maintain but it maybe it doesn't represent a need for public safety but i'm not really sure how we could accurately encapture that need it's also not responsive to any special circumstances like when the um when their sales drop significantly during a pandemic all right so then i thought well there's another option we could do we could maintain our single fee structure and adjust for a a covet 19 pandemic period if the council wanted to say knock off and i don't know what your appetite is for considering any further reductions at this point but if you are interested in that i would say that you could consider a set flat fee of a reduction that goes forward through any pandemic period that in restrictions are imposed on our liquor licensees we would be able to easily estimate that amount for the budget and one other thing came up that i thought was very interesting when i was talking to woodbury they said they also changed their city code so that in the future if any disaster pandemic or something like that were to happen there was a closeted staff could administratively make and i haven't looked at their code yet so don't ask me the specifics but they set it up so that their staff could administratively make those decisions without having to go through a full council discussion on on how and what that should look like and i thought that was very had a lot of forethought any reduction to the liquor license fees would obviously be corresponding to if you if you increase them will have more revenue if you decrease them we'll have less when it comes to the tiered fee structures we don't know how that would affect it and that's all i have for you did you have any questions on any questions yes stan when we first started this i think it's been about a year now yeah you start talking about this this was really a whole lot about the small little restaurant paying the same fee the very large restaurant paid and somehow that just didn't seem like fair and so when i'm listening to what you're talking about all the different measurements why couldn't we just make it simple it's just based on capacity if you got a capacity of 30 people your license is this if you've got a capacity of 500 your license is that i mean i think that'd be very simple to administer and we certainly know from our fire department what the capacities are in every building out here so yeah i don't think that'd be information that's hard to find and it wouldn't be invasive and saying to the business you know give us your email give us your information so that's that was my my thoughts about when we first started this was how do we make it a little more fair first from some of the smaller little restaurants to actually open up and sell liquor and and bring some nice restaurants out to burnsville okay vince thank you i was kind of going in the same path as dan that you could feasibly break this into two tiers um because when i was thinking about this you've got what used to be jojo's um olivia's smaller restaurants that offer beer and wine kind of incidental to the food versus your carbonis jail beers clives those types where you know those are beer bars um so if there was a way to create a dividing line between incidental versus primary whether it be square footage although carbone's is a pretty small bar but um that that was where my head was at is if there's a restaurant that wants to offer um as part of a meal versus come for happy hour two for ones um that seems like a fairly clear dividing line we can continue to discuss how that's determined and then the last piece michelle you had mentioned that some of the cities that implemented something like this that the the businesses that you typically wouldn't expect to have violations did you could consider some type of i don't want to call it a penalty but if you've got a small establishment that continues to get uh pd out there you could feasibly just move them into that other category well i wasn't gonna name names but you could do some type of strike policy where you know we'll offer you this lower tier but if you're not gonna or they can join a star program yeah we could do a star program and then you could you know but that's where my logic was okay dan kay thank you madam mayor um i like the capacity approach because less ongoing maintenance to require reporting although we see some cities in our example that ms collins brought forth do ask for and then they get there's the incentive you're gonna pay the highest rate if you don't report your sales but uh capacity tends to maybe um be a little bit more of a neutral because if you have seating for 100 or if you're sitting for 500 then what you do as a business is really up to you how well you succeed or not um and so it's a bit of a level playing field starting point for everybody capacity um and uh to council member workman's very quotable uh point in my opinion um i'm just trying to throw a hint out to john afraid [Laughter] you know that i like that too because there are businesses and you cited some great examples where it's a very incidental versus primary to their business and so i don't know how though that to me looks a little challenging on differentiating those two but maybe there's a way to do it i would be in favor of that too but i want to also say i'm i'm highly in favor of a tiered structure going back to the discussions we had a year ago or so before covet even happened we were talking about going to a tiered system so i would like to see us do that and i think three or four tiers is probably where i favor because you otherwise you lump too many disparities within one group you know you could have a relatively small store grouped in with a relatively big store if you don't add a few more tiers so how that works out i think it's got to be based on you know staff can do the work but i think that's a great way to approach it i did see some examples um ember grove heights model was the one that impressed me the most and maybe it's because of the the the diversity their disparity from the lowest to the highest it really gave some relational respect to that small player and it went higher than our current fee for the big players for the highest performing or highest capacity we'd pay i think it was 10 000 whatever but so a pretty good range between 3 500 and 10 000 and so i don't i think that would be very fair from my perspective if we could implement something like that and and how the budget impact comes out it's hard to tell you know because you could move those those tears you know from that starting that ending but my guess is it would have um some negative impact but um i would be okay with that i don't think it'd be dramatic but who knows you got to dig into the numbers to do some modeling and see how it comes out okay kara you have any comments it's a little chancy when we're asking them to report their income that's that's right it seems a little intrusive and i understand that why like i understand why um but that seems pretty intrusive into a business um yeah if if you're talking dan to go tear in terms of how much they pay i would be okay with that and i just don't want to ask for their sales if we're doing capacity so uh a smaller um bar restaurant is different from one with a higher capacity but it's not where we're going to ask i just don't like having to ask our restaurants and and bars to send us their their revenues for the but you know if we go to the capacity level if you're going to do that the tier in terms of capacity level then we don't have to ask for their for their financials their sales so you can say somebody has a 50 capacity to somebody perhaps with a larger restaurant like the med cruise or porter creek or chianti a larger restaurants you know they would be at a different tier but we don't have to burden them with telling them to send in their financials yeah cara and if we're going to base this off capacity i would ask that we exclude outdoor capacity since that's kind of a moving target at the moment yeah and it's usually just for the summer yeah yeah because i mean summer's only three months so i would i would exclude outdoor capacity yeah i think you'll find some restaurants we're going to put some heaters up this winter and be outside anyway so yeah but apparently yeah will vince i just i see a possibility for inconsistency by going by capacity purely based on the example that you just said with nina's which was a little closet bar which had wonderful food but i don't think that was primarily why they were so busy so they you know does does a bar like that which i don't think we have many of benefit from a lower liquor license which we've the foundation of is based on our need to send our pd there do they benefit from a lower cost just purely by virtue of having a smaller space even though they might not be a food oriented primarily oriented business and i understand wanting to be sensitive to the the sales documents but i think we just spent three and a half weeks um going over tax documents for our cares grant so it's not completely unfamiliar territory that we've asked for that so i'm still [Music] not sold on squarespace base but i'm just one person so and then the other thing i wanted to mention is there a need for input from our establishments maybe there's an idea out there from our restaurants and bars that might be better than what we're talking about right now you know that's a good point uh vince you know we always bring in our the impacted whether it's residents or a business they need to tell us we did that with our with our apartments for rental they came in and they and they told us and uh so i think uh that's really probably the next step we should find out from our restaurants and bars what their thoughts are melanie madame erin council just from a point of process we would have a public hearing and notify our licensees for any liquor license changes that's required yeah but but i wonder if we could do an engagement with them prior to it um because i think they would have i i always want them to have a voice i know that that we have a public hearing and they have a voice there but we've got you know so if we have two or three different tiers of of um fees so we're just looking at fees and different capacity whether it's two or three what the what does that mean right now it's one single tier right melanie yeah madam mayor and i guess maybe it'll be helpful to understand affirm the goal of the council is the goal to recognize smaller businesses or is the goal to recognize businesses that have lower liquor sales or is it something is perhaps it's something else because that'll help us craft um craft a proposal for the council to consider exactly so council your thoughts is it sales or is it because if they're small there their sales aren't going to be as high as the others so vince you had a thought well so my guess my thought going into this was just that that we would differentiate between the incidental liquor sales to the food versus the two for one happy hour bars that were primarily getting their sales from alcohol because a smaller establishment that's selling paninis and a glass of wine in my opinion probably doesn't need to pay the same liquor license fee that a bar that's hosting you know softball tournament after parties um because they're two very different business models um that are going to require different resources depending on you know management and other things but yeah i'm going to go to michelle before i come back to you danji because yeah because i know that we have a different fee for uh beer and wine yes we do have a different thing and i don't have that number off the top of my head right now but it's a significantly reduced amount yeah for um like jojo's wine and and full uh and full strength beer fee they can have that and it's significant um yes it's very insane so this is just the hooch this is this yeah the powerful somebody like jojo's okay because they did not have that full on sale liquor license this is not going to affect many of the uh i'm thinking like restaurant and those kinds of things they do not have these full on sale licenses okay yeah india palace nasa uh a lot of our uh cultural stores restaurants just have beer and wine yeah okay olivia's has full yeah they they did get a full liquor license i think they have that specifically because they are catered yeah yeah and they need that for the catering yeah dan g aren't uh aren't bars under the minnesota statute required to serve a certain percentage of food versus liquor yeah anyways yeah so in many uh there was a percentage requirement that requirement has that they're still required to sell food but the percentage requirement my understanding is is no longer it they're not it's not a set percentage anymore you're just required to serve you just have to have fun you're required to serve meals and uh so um definitely you're still required to sell food there's not a percentage requirement anymore that i'm aware of and um sorry i lost my train of thought there it'll come back it'll come back to me yeah and i would think we need to just keep that fee structure for just beer and wine establishments i that is it's a different uh license it's a different liquor license this is a full on sale liquor license that is a completely separate liquor license yeah okay similar to how a a off sale is different than an on sale license you know it's a different type of license yeah i'm strictly talking about the ones that serve full liquor full bar and restaurant yeah and of those i don't know that we have that many small restaurants that have those full on sale licenses okay members of the council your thoughts we've had tiered in terms of capacity but we're setting aside the wine and beer that's a separate liquor license we're only dealing with the full liquor license with restaurants and bars definitely improved i do like the tiered for the smaller ones with the capacity in that but i do understand what vince is talking about because i know some of the bars that there are small bars but they're packed and they sell a lot of liquor there so i don't know where that so you're not going to find that middle for this because i don't there's never going to be a perfect solution for any of this stuff and i know that i get that so you're saying because vince is saying you know he doesn't i don't i want to make it easier for smaller restaurants to come into burnsville and have a liquor license and open up a little bistro and and serve food out here and that's really where my direction's been on this whole thing that's one of the reasons i like the igh's model because it started out at 3 500. that makes it more palatable for smaller places to come in and open up okay kara so you know i can see pluses and minuses to both of this um is there a way that we could look at both of them but because we have to have like public comment and all that kind of stuff at that point we have invite our restaurant and bar owners to come in and we just ask them here's the two on the table which do you prefer yeah and our staff can do that through our open houses because i you know i i would feel more comfortable with them getting to decide a little bit of their destiny i do that's where i always want to go melanie i always want people to have a voice yeah no i'd say no fee i i would pick that too i'm okay with that so they would have at least one vote well but we still have to you know we always say use our pay and not the rest of the community so melanie um well matt's pulling something up but while she's doing that what i think i'm hearing is that there's a desire for capacity the square footage a range but then so those smaller businesses might have a lower fee that looks to me to be the shakopee model and then the the second model um it seems is that based on liquor sales or overall sales that's what i'm i'm looking for council feedback on because the invergrove heights model is about sales maplewood talks about the ratio of liquor to non-liquor sales so if the council would help us with that that would be we would be able to run from there i don't and um because here's the three two percent off so here's the these uh here are the the just the wine beer and wine three two one wine and should go up to the full and they have a different if you have a if you have a wine on sale license with a 3-2 license you can sell strong beer can you go up to the on sale the full-on sale because that's i think what we're we're looking at and then here's all of the on sale i think we need to contact these folks on sale sunday on sale and they can be presented what michelle presented to us they can have the benefit of but melanie is right what is the goal and remember there is a cost for staff kara could you outline what staff does with these licenses so if this is a reimbursement for staff time could you walk us through what staff does with these licenses mack you want to answer that thank you thank you so um every year of course there is initial applications that come in there are reviews involved there quite a few documents that have to be submitted liquor liability insurance you know information about the owners the background information and that types of things have the backgrounds processed through the police department then the licenses once they're approved through the council have to go to the state for final approval and then back again there are some also administration do with those who don't get their information and on time or something's incomplete and that type of thing for follow-up also there's follow-up related to those who don't pay it all up front you have to keep track of which ones haven't paid yet and make sure that they you follow up with them make sure that they don't have any violations um against them that we you know that maybe you're not aware of or something like that so i think that they're for the staff administration part of it i think more involved in the our resources that's something that we kind of account for that's what we've always done this would mean a tiered structure would mean more staff resources just to keep track of everything and figure out how it's divided up and who's divided where and who switched from one to another if they added two more tables does that mean now they need to pay because they hit the limit or you know that kind of thing so a little more administrative to keep track of which businesses would be at what tiers and then any documentation if they're required to provide documentation to maintain that make sure it's you know any private information is maintained that's something that we always pay special attention to anytime we can keep from having to collect private information any non-public information that's something that we want to do we don't want it if we don't have to have it because that's something that it potential breach could happen so we always try to make sure that we're only keeping that information that we absolutely need um but more of the um costs involved probably revolve around enforcement and that could be code enforcement and that could be police enforcement it could mean a lot of different things i mean if the if the um if they're not maintaining their building properly that would be a code enforcement issue it code enforcement also gets in you know we've kind of had some blurred lines with that enforcement of licensees before especially when uh license liquor license and also massage therapy licenses those code enforcements very involved with the police department in helping out with us uh enforcement actions and then of course just your normal police enforcement of dealing with any issues that may arise at the building and that kind of thing okay uh melanie did you want to add to that uh no matter mary i think matt covered it i think i touched him okay kara okay uh so that sparked a couple ideas that i have first of all if there is a lesser fee for people who pay all at once versus paying overtime since that is less staff time that may also encourage people to pay all at once and have less processing and less staff time on that if we do go to a capacity model or if our businesses choose a capacity model rather than a sales model if you go with the fire marshal capacity and base your capacities off of that this is not something that will change from year to year unless of course they alter their building so that could make it a little more manageable easier for staff to um to work on that so those are two thoughts on that but i would reiterate i i realized that staff is looking for for council to make a decision on this but on which route we go but my my decision really is that we should be asking these businesses which they prefer and whichever one they prefer i'm fine to go forward with yeah and and using the options that you presented this evening for me it's about getting the people to have their voice days on sales sunday on sale it's not a big group and i tell you i look at all of them and they'll show up if i may one of the things i also noted was that the um some of the cities told me that there are those that don't like to provide that uh sales information to the city and they have to just pay the highest fee yeah yeah i can understand that i i do too so um council are you all right with uh having staff and contact our on sale sunday on sale restaurants and bars and have a conversation put out the three options that staff has presented to us tonight and i want them to have a voice they need to have a voice it impacts them okay our liquor store discussion i'd like to hear from them yeah still don't like capacity yeah well you know they'll tell us what they want movie theater's gonna sell far less than tavern 13. no you're right okay so everybody's okay we're going to have staff then move on and have a conversation with our restaurants and bars okay thank you thank you okay the next item then is the max tax discussion and our city manager and melanie and jenny are going to be presenting i think melanie you're going to kick it off i'd be happy to madam mayor and council tonight we have our kind of our annual discussion about getting your feedback on preliminary max tax just a reminder we need to set that max tax by end of september so we do have some time between now and then to get some feedback and to continue to revise the budget this is a highly unusual year we have more moving parts than i think we've probably ever had in any of our experiences so um what will be jenny will be walking through tonight is is a review of where we are today august 25th and uh be here to answer any questions you might have but you know again also note that we do have quite a few moving parts and we've got some time that will continue to revise the budget between now and september so with that i'll turn it over to miss jenny and and also to set the budget in december indeed yeah okay jenny thank you good evening um i'm here to go now you're going to have to um your volume needs to be up oh should i go there all right is this better much better okay great all right the first slide is just just reviewing the process we've already had our preliminary discussions early in june on the preliminary budget pressures tonight is the review of the max tax proposal it's the result of detailed review by staff over the past couple of months and fine tuning the budget at least what we know what we know today in preparation for the consideration of the max tax adoption of the max tax is scheduled for september 22nd this max tax adoption is required by state statute and is the maximum amount that may be adopted for 2021. it's used by the county to send out proposed tax statements in november after the max tax adoption the city staff will complete the proposed budget which will be provided to council on september 30th in october we have department presentations scheduled at a works at a work session on october 27th and then council work sessions on the budget there are two in november the first one on november 10th we'll review the general fund and other property tax supported funds and the second one on november 24th will be focused on the capital projects cip um and enterprise funds finally um on december 8th the council will adopt the tax levy and budget for 2021. um final distribution of that budget should be december 31st i know that's not on the calendar but i wanted to mention that too tonight the purpose of tonight's meeting is to discuss the projected max tax levy for 2021 and provide an opportunity for council to give staff in direction what we have tonight what we'll cover tonight are these four areas review the market rate and tax base for 2021 look at current service level funding projections discuss fund balance and as well as review um the heart of the city street street maintenance streetscape assessment process so over the past year the city council has spent time discussing what's important to you and has adopted an updated vision statement as well as values and strategic priorities the 2021 budget was prepared in alignment with these ideas i like this page it's very well done it's all on one yep it's all together so this slide is just a short recap of the the things we discussed um at the june work session uh 7.53 uh preliminary levy increase was uh projected for current service levels the 5.1 percent is the preliminary 2021 market value increase that we've that the county has has presented us we discussed some fund balance policy ideas and options as well as reviewed some preliminary five-year plans for the other property tax supported funds this slide just reviews how property values um will change are projected to change for 2021. uh these are the preliminary numbers uh the total increase is 5.1 percent that's on the right hand column the other valuations apartments saw the largest increase this year at 9.6 percent followed by commercial and industrial at 5.1 percent and residential at 4.3 percent this would be similar to the information i believe we had this slide at the june presentation and as to date we have not gotten any new information this would be the same information that was on that slide okay um a little over 51 million dollars in new construction was included in the valuation this year you can see that as those little green sections at the top most a big part of that is a new apartment construction for the year and you know there is a time lag between when the construction is completed and when it appears on the tax rule so we should expect um that trend to continue for a couple of years so yeah then are these figures [Music] units that have been completed and are now occupied yeah so this would be i believe the beginning of the year 2020 completed occupied um for payable 2021. so okay development issued their uh certificate of occupancy okay yeah so you know we've got a number that are under construction or scheduled you know for construction later in the year so we'll see those increases in later years okay thank you this um slide is just shows the last 10 years of new construction value added by property type and you can see it is 2021 is quite an increase over the prior years um 23 million in apartment value 20 million in commercial industrial and 8 million in residential value for 20 for preliminary 2021. okay so this um this next slide just um presents how does that translate into you know property taxes um the 51 million dollars in market value translates to about 780 000 in new tax base or tax capacity if you apply an estimated tax rate to that the estimated city tax on that new construction would be approximately 350 thousand dollars that equates to about a point eight nine percent of any any levy increase over the previous year so this year um the budget what what does the budget accomplish and what are our long-term what are our long-term challenges going forward um the city is a service organization this budget does maintain current service levels um at flat at a flat staffing level there are no fte increases incorporated into this year's budget there continues to be a consistent demand for city services especially through through the pandemic it also invests in recruiting and maintaining and developing a high quality workforce some of those things include final phase of the compensation study implementation diversity and belonging initiatives investment in organizational development and as well as an investment in sustainable health insurance plans going forward it also addresses community and organizational needs certainly ensures high quality responsive and professional service going forward leverages also leverages technology so we can maintain enhance our online presence and manage the organizational needs going forward as well as being able to pivot operations quickly as we've seen we've needed to do over the past many months so it also addresses the selected city code overhaul and maintains maintains our infrastructure and assets so construction projects are projected to continue we continue our maintenance and investment in our facilities in our parks and open spaces one thing the pandemic has i think highlighted is how important those are to the community it also includes the fleet and facility studies to help us right-size our fleet and also kind of plan for the future as far as our what our needed facility and fleet improvements are and our maintenance going forward some of the i mean one of the main obviously the main challenge is what what is the sustained economic impacts of the pandemic on the future what are the revenue impacts revenue declines and any future closures or restrictions of facilities will will have lasting impacts in 2021 and perhaps beyond also what i'm you know the impact on the cost of goods and capital that also may change and you know we'll have to we'll have to keep monitoring these things as the process goes along this this chart shows the property tax increase projections the line shows the june projection and the the green bar show where we are tonight as you can see we are we remain at the 7.5 percent level um going out 2022 is a little higher at five a little at five and a half percent i think we had shown five percent in june and four and a half uh four and a half in 20 23 and then going down a little bit under under our previous projections in those uh 24 20 2024 and 2025 years you know what are the main impacts um what are the main changes that have happened uh to get to these amounts for 2021 and one of the changes since um june this this slide goes over that uh general fund operations current the current service level um projected increase that is at a million uh 687 that's actually down a little bit from our june projection i believe our june projection was about 5.05 um i think it was a million eight a little over a million eight so as staff has refined the projections over the past couple of months those those costs those projections have come down the decrease in other revenue sources has come up a little bit and i think as we you know over the past couple of months and as staff has looked and analyzed revenues and i think you know things have become a little more long-term long-term as far as the economic impacts that number has gone up i believe that was at 1.2 percent of the increase it's now at 2.39 approximately 400 450 000 increase has changed by 450 000 planned funding for capital funds that remain the same that's the same projection we showed you in june the debt service levy we were able to reduce that to a zero percent increase there was a mature bond fund that we were able to use the remaining cash from and reduce reduce or the increase or at least it will maintain be maintained at the same level as last year um the eda level levy increase that is the same uh that has stayed the same and as a plan increased based on based on the things that the economic development types of expenditures that we've that we planned for where's the infrastructure trust fund and this that is included in the plan in the capital funds and that one is a three percent increase and that i yeah i think it's kind of background yeah but you know i'm looking at your so that project at levy and we it's usually in oh i actually have actually the next page will show oh okay good i'm glad i put this in there um this just shows the totals total projected levy and then the increase so you can see under the capital funds total that's a 91 000 increase over last year that is part of the um regular increases that we had programmed into the five-year plan at three percent a year i believe um so that that is still included parks capital as well does have a planned increase so this is the projected increase uh total should match the previous page but this also just shows the total levy by fund this slide does show our 2021 projected revenue decreases we do have we did increase our estimate for a possible uncollectible taxes or tax petitions in 2021 through the first half collections of 2020 those those have mirrored 2019 pretty closely but as we've as we've been told by the county and i think we've predicted if we do see impacts most likely will be in the second half collections so we'll find that out in december but we just want to make sure we're prepared for that and going into 2021 as well licenses and permits uh for uh building permits i think we've predicted um that we're gonna be probably in the five-year average range that's normally how we budget for those permits and so those those are actually we're not budgeting a change for that but we did a program in a license an impact on license fees possibly going down so and those will be those will be fine tuned depending on you know what what approach we take but there is a projection in there for that charges for services that includes ems revenues we have programmed a slight proposed a decline very these numbers actually get us very close to what we collected in 2019 so we're not we're not going worst case scenario but we have seen a reduction and so far in 2020 it's come back a little but not not quite yet to what we had expected so we took a you know a conservative approach um and uh proposed about what we'd collected about what we'd seen in 2019 investment income i that recognizes the continuation of probably some low interest rates for the for the near future i think we can probably see that those are are most likely going to continue into 2021 so those estimates were reduced we have a slight reduction in intergovernmental revenue that also takes into effect street maintenance ms revenue from the state of minnesota they've told us that we could possibly expect a 15 percent decline so this is a combination of some increases and decreases but it does include that 15 reduction and all other this would include antenna rental fines and fees facility rental other things we have have had seen some declines in those areas too and those will be quite those are anticipated going forward so so revenue losses are close to a million dollars yeah at this point with what we know and certainly we're going to monitor we continue to monitor this and look at these projections because things have evolved you know quite a bit even over the past couple of months but that's our that is our projection at this point okay i'm going to go to keely first and then to you vince okay thank you madam mayor just one question um of the 903 000 almost or 904 thousand what of that is would be a a one-time loss of revenue because assuming everything gets back to normal next year if we raise our levy to cover that add it into that levy increase which is the 2.39 added we've now built it into our base and we're going to collect that year after year after year because it's now part of the base revenue but if we're going to put one-time losses into that base then when those revenues come back we now have both the levy and the revenue coming in so is there a way to separate those two short term loss strictly one say one off loss due to kovid versus maybe there's some numbers in there that are long-term losses right we're never going to get that back type of thing but we don't need to levy year over year by raising our base we just need a one-time patch call it you know to offset those can you kind of talk about the difference of that levy increase boost which is a permanent increase right right what of these fees and loss revenues are probably not going to be long term right just a one year thing yeah hopefully i mean i think they will it may not bounce back immediately i think we will you know obviously this is projected for 2021 we're not sure it could be short you know it could be shorter it could be longer so we want to make sure we're you know we're not in these estimates we're certainly not taking worst case scenario but we're also not you know taking best case we're trying to be um you know come worse come somewhere in the middle certainly some of these may be one term one time more one time or may come back i do expect that it will take a little bit longer to rebound um if you know if you do raise the property tax certainly that does raise your base it does allow you you know certainly in coming years you could you would maybe not have to to raise it yeah because you address that in the background councilmember keeley and i think you're going to go through all of that because we have a 1.2 million in excess yeah so we can we can and i you know i talked to melanie about that because with everything that continues to move they're going to bring some of that information back to us and melanie if you want to speak to that then i'll go to vince um yeah madam mayor and council as i mentioned there's a lot of moving parts here as far as projections for lost revenue um how fund balance will end up at the end of the year that's why we're bringing a fund balance policy forward to you to get some feedback on so we again i wish we had a little bit more assurance um but as of as of today um i think jenny outlined in her in her memo that we've got um assuming a revised fun balance policy there's a 1.2 million dollar in excess of kind of a cap that we had talked about so these are all items for discussion and council feedback and your perspective on but we've we've got a couple different irons in the fire i'll say yeah because i understand exactly what you're talking about uh dan kay because now when you put it in now you're building that yeah yeah and so that's why we always use one time yes funds and i know that it is a it's a process this isn't a final number but we all know that when a number like 7.53 is published as a discussion that throws a big scare and a warning flag into a lot of taxpayers minds and so we have a long way to go yeah we have some additional tools we got to work through the process where i don't know that anybody up here would say okay to seven and a half percent but i certainly won't but um i think i just i just kind of wanted to get a sense at this point without getting too deep into it um how those one-time losses relate to a long-term levy increase so thank you okay vince that i mean essentially that was the trajectory i was going down is um and i i don't need to spend any more time on it that's almost exactly what i was going to ask so okay yeah because i was thinking about that when i know that we have lost revenues talked with melanie about that i know that we have set aside a fund balance so that we can look at incidents that we encounter that we didn't budget for or any of that you know whether they are natural or or health or man-made so we had put that in place and so we had 1.2 million there so we can take a look at all of that okay jenny okay back to you this next slide um we presented i believe in june this is just updating that i don't believe it changed very much i think a couple dollars actually but the median home value and an impact of the of the 7.53 levy increase what that would do um that the median value did go up three per 3.7 percent um in 24 proposed 2021 that equates to approximately 82 annually or about 680 a month okay so the increase is 683. six 6.83 a month if you yeah per month yep it is and um so yeah the median home value increased 3.7 um total residential market value increased 4.3 for comparison annually each year the council does consider the current level of fund balance and whether some items might be funded out of available fund balance the council has a policy generally fund balance uses reserved for one-time uses these one-time uses are annually identified and are routinely included in our in our planned use of fund balance the first item use of restricted for landfill that comes from restricted tipping fees that the council has on hand in fund balance that is used for sustainability and recycling activities proposed in 2021 at 151 161 the next item is uh ice center debt service about 10 years ago the council are we at the end are we getting to the end of this this is the 2021 is the last year oh good so it was a 10-year commitment of a total of 1.4 million dollars to assist in the annual debt service for the ice center debt so yes proposed 2021 that is the final year of that item elections are funded every other year obviously when uh out of fund balance development software and vehicle replacements those are paid from permit fees that restricted our permit fees on hand and monuments were initially in the plan but those have been delayed until 2023 so we had a proposed 150 000 in 2020 and 160 000 in 2021 yeah which um monuments were going to be installed in 2021 but not pushed to 2023. so along 35e north and south i believe right right is that where yeah madam mayor we're hoping uh to get the um monuments at the south porter with lakeville and eagan this year and then it was going to be the two conrod 42 ones next year and then the last frontier would be the cell phone 35 w1 so we just moved all three projects out by so we're delaying that to 2023 it's okay a long journey a very long journey with these monuments you know we say you belong here people need to know where here is that's a good point they'll be on our water tower in a few months okay um other and the last item on that list to be determined any one time any other one-time uses the council wishes to consider so right now the planned use of fund balance proposed in the 2021 budget is 677 thousand dollars approximately okay all those are all the one-time uses so then we can also then take a look at the lost revenue side of the ledger yeah and i believe the the one i think you refer to the 1.2 that is addition above and beyond what's available for the 600 that takes the 677 thousand dollars into account okay just uh current this is the current fund balance policy the main the maid items maintain a 35 maintain 35 percent of budgeted expenditures for cash flow it includes an additional 2.1 million dollar target amount for contingency and use of fund balance above the target balance limited to one-time uses as we're looking at what a proposed fund balance policy might look like this maintains a fund balance of 40 to 50 percent of budgeted expenditures for cash flow it will propose that the council would annually review amounts above 45 percent for possible one-time uses and approve you know you could approve use of fund balance above 45 percent for one-time capital and operating uses will this address our uh and our emergency contingency yes in that you know and that 45 yeah about 45 and um you know it will in the policy talk you know talk about um it's available for one-time one-time uses and what it would be available for so so if we have a natural disaster like we had the straight winds in 1998 yep yep and um you know strong financial results in 2019 did result in a healthy general fund balance i think total fund balance was 62 percent of budgeted expenditures and unassigned was uh 52 so that is that is a we are coming into we did come into 2020 with a healthy healthy fund balance why change the policy um this this proposed policy maintains a part target fund balance within the state auditor's recommendations their recommendations are approximately thirty to fifty percent of fund operating revenues or no less than five months of operating expenditures so that forty percent floor does give us a good solid space and is within their policy creates a policy that's easily explained and understood and ensures the city has adequate funds for cash flow in any contingency going forward and provides further guidance for when additional fund balance may be used and for what purpose any thoughts on this change in the fund balance policy council members want to remember keely um i don't have a problem with it i in my conversations with city manager lee i mentioned that um you know having our the 35 talking about an adjustment up there a little bit i don't really have a problem with when we when we sort of blended everything like our 2 million set aside for an emergency it became a little less trackable and identifiable and i kind of didn't like that idea um it's um you know we know it's there it is all coming from the fun valley pot but when we have that hard number we have our 35 number we have our 2 million and then we look at okay what's in excess of that and that's what we always had it was very simple and easy to track and follow and say okay that's what we have for one time what is our prayer list one time what can we afford what we want to do and we make a decision we do it so it was real clean and easy so throwing it all into one potentially um tends to make it i guess a little foggier you know than when you've got it laid out like so black and white so um you know i'm i'm open to the 35 going up i know that we're at the minimum right where it says 35 to 50 and we're right in that 35 and moving that to 40 for instance or something like that i don't have a problem with but i kind of want to i i would personally like to hang on to that clearly identified excess for a crisis that is our crisis fund it's our uh straight line wins 60 miles an hour in may of 98 that took out all those trees and it gives our ability the city the ability to pay for those cleanup and then get reimbursed from feeding over the state or whatever and uh and then the money goes back in the fund and so it's tough to give up that now the city manager lee made a good point about you know that's that was a long time ago when we set the two million and what's the cost of registering today so maybe we need to bump it up a little bit yeah um but it's it's really an arbitrary number to begin with it wasn't really scientific um we knew that we had some cost back in 98 maybe it was based on that more than anything and so the next really bad storm could do you know 3 million who knows but we don't know and so it just has to be a number that we're all comfortable with is going to get us someplace in a in a hurry and fund a cleanup even if it's not going to fund 100 it's going to get us a long way towards that i think that's really the purpose of it that's my thoughts and i agree with you because we've had this discussion and it's always nice to know what that number is but the more i had a conversation with melanie on this and i said then i will feel comfortable at the policy that we have language in the policy that addresses these emergencies and then and then it's there that we we use those that fund for those activities so as i'm i'm okay you know because i um when we had this discussion i was right on the same thinking with dan it's very clear this is 2 million and the more i think about it you know yesterday's dollar versus today's dollar having um 35 to 50 percent in contingency but then i if it's in policy that we look at the emergency then then you then then i'm comfortable with it so you can see a little bit this graph shows um the two comparisons based on the past couple years and and the projection going into 2021 it does and you can see that floor at 40 percent is that green dotted line it is it is a little bit higher than our 35 percent plus the 2 million and that also i think shows kind of that probably at some point that 2 million equated to 5 and got us to 40 but over time that 40 is is going up so that does give us a little stronger minimum yep um so in the dotted line the blue dotted line is the 50 percent it does include the 2020 uh budget does include some estimated assumptions for covid related revenues and expense impacts and the unassigned anything we talked about that 45 being available for one-time uses i didn't put that on here but we do um for these three years we have um there is you can it would be the middle in the middle of those two we do have fun balance available you have a question yes just a point of clarification um so if we switch to a a scope of a percentage and we're saying that anything over 45 percent can be used for one-time use that number could be in excess as it is this year did you say we're at 52 so that could and again this is clarification here so this is this is monument signs or um you know a post riot um cleanup and so to to put ourselves in a box at two million and say that's enough isn't um projecting out what you know could potentially happen by today's standards so this is just giving us more flexibility in the event of yeah any emergency incidents increasingly more unanticipated events in whatever fashion those might be yep okay thank you okay okay okay all right move on um just want to recap we discussed the comprehensive rate study at our at the july work session and council direction was to incorporate those into the proposed budget and finance plans which which staff will do this just recaps those rate structures the water water fixed meter charge will be based on meter size and that will pay for the fixed cost of the system a water usage rate based on conservation rate structures will be implemented sanitary has a single base charge that pays for the fixed costs of the system and that usage rate for sanitary sewer will combine the city and metro store into a single rate so that we don't have that dual rate structure anymore no over it really was designed with no overall revenue increases in mind because we were capturing we were getting enough revenue it just was kind of documenting where those were coming from and how they were being covered so they were more proportional the stormwater utility was also included in that rate study and that proposed increase was two percent uh for 2021. street lighting was not a part of that study and currently there's no rate increase proposed for street lighting for 2021 so that's just a short recap next we just have a overview of the streetscape operation and maintenance and how that works the area around nicolette avenue and burnsville parkway in the heart of the city is part of a streetscape operation and maintenance assessment area that area was redeveloped beginning in 1999 and the council approved installation of streetscape aesthetic improvements these improvements include irrigation systems concrete pavers streetlight banners boulevard meat and median turf and trees shrubs and other plantings these are above what is normal for the other city streets and so those um adjacent uh so the city council did approve this maintenance area the adjacent property owners in this area are assessed 50 of the annual operation and maintenance with the city um covering the remaining 50 percent and the people in the area both commercial and residential approved it for the higher maintenance and we're willing to pay that because it's a special district yep and in the heart of the city um they were the improvements are in two phases um phase one is more denser and more expansive than phase two so they have they have more improvements in those areas so there's two different rate structures depending on the level of improvements that you have and dan doesn't pay as much as i do i don't know mine went up quite a bit this year because i'm right across from the park um this be a good time city manager lee to bring up the discussion we had about um some of the complaints that i've received by commercial property owners about how this special assessment has grown to be such a large percentage of their total tax bill from the city yeah i think we have that in an upcoming slide so thank you for that preview [Laughter] is there a separate assessment for hoc one versus hoc2 i believe so i think that probably is the difference between the phase one and phase two so phase two has a lower i believe a lower rate because their improvements are they don't have it's not as dense or as many types of improvements that they have in that area and i've got a map that kind of shows the different phase areas too is that coming up now it is coming up yep validate why you pay less yeah i think we're in the same hotc one zone though right yeah we're in the hotc one yeah you're in one but you yeah so let's look at jenny's slide okay this just kind of reviews the timing too because there is a you know with assessments there is a timing difference so this just kind of lays this out for a a specific year actual expenses from 2018 would be 50 assessed and 50 funded by the cities by the city excuse me um that is assessed in 2019 based on frontage and once we know the full the full costs that were included for the previous year that is capped at a maximum increase of 10 percent then those would be payable on on um residence 2020 property tax statements i have a question about that okay when it's based on frontage what if your corner lot do they get like we do with the house like what you used to do with the housing i believe yeah ryan is here and he can speak to that hi ryan good evening thank you customer go some members of council yeah you get a hybrid stone a lot around a lot to stay but yeah you'd get the one frontage will be based upon the the phase one you know would be phase two and dance the previous question on do you get two separate assessments you just get one bill for um the assessment of hlc you know that's based on purposes correct yeah all right thank you yeah um i do have like i do have the totals here for the last couple years so you can kind of get a feel for where they are at um i believe in uh for the payable 2020 those are about 151 000 in total 20 which would be the 2018 expenses um the payable 2019 were approximately 141 000. i do think i i think they're a city property of about 6 000 in there so probably those assessed to actual property owners is about um do my math 145 000 or so we're payable 20 20. um and um 2018 was 132 000. so it isn't it is going up i think it's about you know eight to eight to ten thousand a year in total expenses those are the actual you know what actually was assessed so that would be fifty percent i did get my assessment letter yeah same here just like in the last couple days right yeah so guys yeah i actually i ran into dave gromish a week or so ago and we were talking about this and we've pulled a lot of the rose bushes out because with the tree growth and the shade they're not surviving as well so the turf is going is that has that created a higher amount for maintenance with turf as opposed to maintaining i don't expect you to know the difference between mowing and pruning maybe right now i would have thought that that would maybe help reduce the cost of maintenance but mowing the members of the council mulling would be less maintenance intensive than managing those bushes so if that trend continues then could you see that number go tear down then should we continue to pull those or those bushes out things like maintenance of the pavers there are really expensive um as you've seen those things they're getting um salt and all that we didn't use salt nearly the level back in 99 as we do now so we're having to do quite a bit of uh replacement of those pavers and um it's more that infrastructure aging and taking on that repair then it probably is the increase of cost of turf maintenance versus maintenance yeah okay and the other thing is that because of covet we did not hire any seasonal help and so we didn't have any of the baskets the floral baskets that'll be something but you did have five that you had out there that i asked melanie about but but you were testing some things occasionally we'll try things out to see how well they've received okay thank you yeah i just think it's it's aging today we had a lady call in and said there was water leaking by her house and she goes right by the parking lot across from um where jojo's used to be there and it was just an uh irrigation line that broke you know it's just these things have been on the ground a long time and we are just seeing more costs associated with repairs and that kind of thing that's just an example that makes sense okay okay then the next slide is is the map um the purple area you can see is the area of the phase one so those would be the more dense um improvements in the green areas um and that extends i think south south on nikola there would be the lower or phase two level assessments so you see you're in the green area dan kay it doesn't have quite the beautification that your area the higher maintenance area i'm happy to pay it because it looks nice yes okay all right um yeah any other questions on this so it's it's not split between hoc one and two then i don't know if that's exactly the spit split excuse me um it would be more of the types of improvements that are included on that on that frontage that would um i think i and ryan could correct me i believe there wasn't we did an analysis of that in 2017 where we looked at the types of assessment our types of improvements that were in each area and that's how we came up with our ratios for for funding but yeah it more looks at what is added what are the added aesthetic improvements on that frontage rather than zones yeah okay ryan there's areas where the street lights are every other tree and other areas you know we're just at the corners and then some places we have 10 foot colored sidewalks or half of its pavers half of other areas it's just gray sidewalk so the more amenity the more likely you're in the phase one of that as opposed to phase two is likely to have you know not quite as fancy on the sidewalk and the lights aren't quite as close together and that sort of thing so as as the roars building is completed then this map would likely be updated if we streetscape the area around that as well um with the bus station and everything else on that one they are actually going to maintain their own boulevard in that area we are just discussed that and it was more painful to extend the city's irrigation to theirs and that sort of thing so they will remain out of the map but the um rise on grand was what was that called one on parkway and that one is the gallery is because they're already in it as well okay so it wasn't it just wasn't quite the same situation between those two apartment buildings they still have the some of the mounties the streetlights are in there but they're just going to maintain their own boulevard and that sort of thing on the floor's building thank you okay okay um yeah that concludes the presentation for the for tonight um just um added a couple things there is there any additional information counsel like staff to provide or further direction that council has for staff at this point okay are you all comfortable with our max tax with continuing work as we can move you know i'm i'm and i listen to what melanie says in terms of and i know there's so many moving parts it's just in a meeting for the state with the workforce development board and there are so many moving parts there as well so i understand what we need to go through and we need to allow our staff to do the work as we continue to move forward and they always do such great work and they understand how we feel about being good stewards of the public's trust so any other thoughts are you okay with what staffers has provided for us to move forward we can't go above but we have some as melanie uh said earlier we still have some time between now and when we have to adopt the max tax in september okay i'll go with cara and then dan i i noticed today that saint paul announced that they were not going to raise their levy this year which was a departure from what they were signaling earlier in the year which was a fairly significant property tax levy and i i found that kind of interesting on how they they kind of did a 180 on that and i didn't know if you had heard what other cities are looking at doing and they were doing that specifically because they were concerned about the economic impact on their residents so i didn't know if you had heard so how much lga does st paul get we pay and we don't get algae how much does lga the saint paul get i don't know that we know and fiscal disparities money and we pay for all of that you know if we eliminated property tax and we just went to a franchise fee we could stop paying that you know just throwing that out there again it's an idea that will take time but it's gaining traction i think dan g uh i would say in light of all that we're facing and all the things we're not sure we're facing yet you know uh years past that great day and most of us would have passed out if somebody came to over seven percent increase um but it's a but it's it's a starting point it's not what the tax is gonna be but it's a place this place for us to start we have to have a placeholder and then from there and our staff talking with melanie and our staff works diligently every day trying to find out different ways to how do we make this thing work you know what what can we do different and i know that i feel confident that and we have a lot of discussions ahead of us going forward so i'm going to do it just starting at that rate and then we can move from there yeah and i also know that um melanie will be talking with her colleagues about what their max tax levy is going to be um sarah i'm going to go to vince first and then i'll come back to you i'm still getting used to these um and if melanie this is something that we need to maybe discuss a one-on-one just and if i'm way out of line correct me here so if we have a two million dollar contingency fund balance and we've dedicated 877 791 for planned use that would give us a balance of 1.122 million is that money eligible to cover the 903 681 dollars and anticipated decreases or the 2.39 yes that would be available so in theory we could knock out 2.4 percent of that levy with just the fund balance that we have on hand right now that is a possibility but they're working through a lot of that of course yes i just i wanted to make sure that that was something yeah because melanie and i had that discussion because when i you know just understanding what our fund balance is and how much we have done in the past with regard to one time and yeah so okay okay kara so looking at a seven and a half total levy increase that really is exceptionally high and last year when we had a discussion of levee increase plus increasing our franchise fee by i believe four times the idea of that was of course so that we wouldn't have to have higher levy increases um and my concern was no we're going to have higher levee crease increases anyway and yep here we are i also understand that we're in a little bit of challenging circumstances but all of our residents for the most part are in challenging circumstances and they can't just say i want x more money like they can't they can't just do that and so we're looking at continued levy increases at the same time we're having valuation of home and property increases um and we're also seeing that valuation hitting apartments particularly high um which i realize doesn't show up this year there's always a lag but i mean if i'm if i'm a betting person we're going to do 7.5 levy increase this year and we're going to increase her next year too so you know i have to question at what point is this just excessive that we continue to increase the levy every year and combined with that that four times increase of our franchise fee last year my view on this this is way too excessive this is way too high even looking at it as a max it's too high okay thank you um i'm going to look for consensus here to move forward so we've heard from kara she thinks it's too high dan are you okay with the max tax as is and we continue to work to bring it down well we're not making a max tax vote right now and so i would reject the 7.5 out of hand is not something that i even want to talk about uh setting or even accepting or denying i'll deny i think we have to have another meeting and work through the numbers and get closer to something that's a little bit more realistic of what we're going to work with okay danji i think we should go forward okay vince i'm not um comfortable with a seven um so i i'd wanna continue this conversation and work and um get down to a more reasonable number um with some of those things that we i just asked about and then other tools that we have okay thank you so you're going to come back and we'll get some more information before we adopt the max tax in september okay all right so staff has direction and is there anything melanie that you and jenny need from us um i don't think so okay everything is good all right uh so dan do you have we're at a point in our four reports there's nothing for roundtable dan you have any reports which damn you dan k i'm starting down at that end uh well i'm i'm uh actually um a little at a loss with notes from meetings that had happened since our last work session last month because with our new ipad i haven't been able to transfer all my notes from the notes app and i did get an email from one a gentleman in rit to for me to log into the old icloud account using our burnsville mn.gov or sorry burnsville amanda.mn.us to see if they're there a few of them did auto upload into this new one i'm still working with 28 ipads four of them from 2018 i'm like i thought i had more than that so anyway um there i would obviously um would anything that was significant would have stuck out in my head anyway so it was it was more of a general report everyone else's abreast on on what's going on with mvta there was a letter circulated about a a remodeling grant that we got which is great and we're going to talk about it at tomorrow's meeting my next meeting is tomorrow night tomorrow 4 30. and from the chamber public policy standpoint you know it's been all about the impact of covet and our city grants and so very proud again for the staff the work they did to do that in such a record short amount of time and and looking forward to those those grants being announced and awarded to the businesses chosen through the lottery and i know that we're gonna we're gonna help a lot of businesses with that um and then what's the other transportation we had an nlc transportation tis uh committee a couple weeks ago and and really that's all about the bills that are attempting to get through congress to fund transportation much like everything else so one could probably say this is an election year and that will be true okay danji uh we had the dvd meeting this this last month comcast uh presented to us along with the lobbying group for the isps uh harvard did not was not able to present because it went a little longer than we thought so harvey will be presenting next month to us and i believe dvd's coming to us at our work session in september definitely yeah okay so we'll be so we'll be getting updates from the dvd on that as well we also had our cbb board meeting a lot of discussion around marketing and staffing and what's going on they've got some presentations they've gotten ready and i think they're getting prepared to present to council in september as well um i'm sorry who the cvb i think they're october they are covered okay september they'll be ready they're not gonna delay presenting to us we're gonna be here yeah with the mask it sounded like see bibi and i was wondering which one that one well that was the cd [Laughter] so those those are the two reports i have for you kara okay i was at the league of minnesota cities policy improving service delivery uh so for that one we're going over what we're keeping and changing and getting rid of for what the cities are requesting at the state to do for policy initiatives i did ask for one of them to be removed and it appears it will be i'll find out in the next meeting but that was a policy request that we treat people in electric wheelchairs um and give them a dui if they have alcohol and i thought that was a discriminatory practice that we should not be advocating for so uh we'll see but it looks like that one is going to be stripped out so there's my report okay vince um we had lmc meetings and i'm going to lean on our city manager a little bit because i think she probably was able to take better notes than i was but we had talked about fire protection districts local option sales tax among other things i think we had two meetings between our last official meeting um would you like to you know i think it's it this policy committee was reviewing a lot of the existing policy right and there were i don't think there were very many changes in that discussion there's more discussion reviewing getting feedback but i don't recall any specific changes that we're being asked to consider off the top of my head i'd be happy to look back at my notes there was one point of interest i thought was interesting that 20 cities came forward with local options sales tax applications in the legislature did not use the new process they're putting a pause on legislative consideration for those i don't recall what the justification for that was i think there's a general reluctance to approve that regardless of the process on the legislative side yeah other than that um i want to wish my three-year-old arnie a happy birthday it's his birthday happy he'll probably be asleep when i get home but that's okay so the municipal legislative commission we've been zooming and meeting often um now we're down to every other week for the covet 19 response the um melanie has been sending all of you updates on some of the work that's been going on with mlc and so you have all of that but you know the content of things that we continue to talk about is not just covet but um the cares act this last meeting had to do with the cares act and really trying to understand what's eligible and not eligible and so we had some folks come in and talk to us about that um and then [Music] you know the minnesota public facilities authority those are some of the discussions and i think melanie did send you all that information because it's just really a lot of verbatim and all of that so um the regional council of mayors is doesn't meet in in august but we did have a meeting with the governor to continue to look at how we can work together with regard to our businesses and our restaurants and bars and also with schools it's always a very good meeting and and commissioner grove is there and we get things talked about um metro cities i'm going to go to our deputy city manager mr lindbergh i think we the work that we do there is the metropolitan agencies and last time there was not much because of the legislative session there's not much going on but there may be next session some more discussion so greg your thoughts on that madame members of the council that's the conversation that i recall as well um a couple of good presentations in those meetings for us but there is not a whole lot happening and we'll see what the future brings yeah so that's where all of that's at and the burnsville community foundation continue to move forward the sculpture is going to be placed next year you know it was supposed to happen during fire muster but everything is pushed and and we also talked about uh the lighting ceremony and all of that so that that continues to move forward and they're raising money for the um and it'll still be at around 35 thousand dollars that they'll be raising for the winter lighting and that's it councilmember uh gustafsson and then i'll go to this i have one thing i'm talking about events the uh the relief sessions start on thursday yeah we go for 12 days at civic center park oh look at that you've got the suburbs the suburbs one of our bands yeah but it's 12 days of music 48 bands food trucks tents we went through everything with our staff here in burnsville and we went through everything with the attorney general's office at the state level and everything's signed off and we kick off thursday at noon and go through labor day and it's noon to noon to 8 45 8 45. most of the stuff from noon to 5 is free so if you want to come listen to music and food truck or our tent or that come on down bring the family and enjoy yourself and then we only sell 80 parking spots we still maintain 250 people throughout the day so it's we have people out there paying attention yeah so say that again so people know it starts at noon and it's free but they have to do they have to so once you get they can just show up from noon to five so once we hit the capacity level and we stop letting people in until people leave yeah we'll have we have volunteers that will be there taking care of all of that yeah and it's cars yes yeah and so that's all yep you can drive in your car your bicycle your motorcycle yeah baby stroller whatever you want to come down with and we just social distance listen to music and it goes till 8 30. yeah we did this in july and people did a really good job of maintaining their spaces and they were able to dance and listen to music and just have a good time and i think it was appropriately named when we called it the relief sessions because we certainly can use it and it was very well attended that was it was very well attended and we already have some uh some sold out shows so pay attention all right so so when does it cost for people to come in uh five o'clock on five o'clock time and you've got to order tickets online yeah and if they're if there's some tickets left you can buy them you can buy them at the door but and so they're buying it for one band was that yes and then they if they then they leave so others can come in for the second and third they buy for both bands at night there'll be four bands every day two of them are free okay and in the evening that does pay for that's anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars a person depending on we're two bands yes okay that's good just wanna make sure that everybody gets the details thank the staff for all the work they did to help it make this happen and enjoy the group with our public television they're going to be there again they're not going to be able to do all of them this time because it's kind of a long run yeah but we're going to get a lot of the highlights and so community intelligence will be broadcasting from time to time and of course our they like to replay too so throughout the year we can this winter when we're trying to figure out what to do outside we can look at some of those and figure it out okay we'll figure it out yeah dan kay thank you madam mayor just to follow up on a fire muster activity that a group has been working on for a little while and it looks like it's coming together so the board that vince is participating in needs to i believe get together and formally vote on it but we've got um the fire truck i'm sorry the fire engine club of minnesota came forward with an idea that they had executed in hastings where it's i call it the reverse parade they display their trucks with water shooting kind of like they do here at city hall and people drive by and stay in their car and the kids get to watch see all the trucks and see the water going off and we're pursuing that now here at uh in in civic center uh they were looking at a spot on judicial as a possibility but their road construction over there said it was make it difficult so a traditional water display with a bunch of fire trucks in city hall for probably late afternoon evening and then the community can enjoy a firework show shot off the top of buck hill uh that night this is all going to happen on saturday september 12th this year of this year if everything goes well both coved respecting events the buck hill is discussing maybe some sort of uh party or dinner and cocktails and then of course a bird's eye view to the fireworks on their brand new deck for a maximum of 250 people but more details to come on that so we're trying to pull things together very quickly but um for the for the sake of the the press um getting the work helping us get the word out sooner than later i think i think i'm 90 confident it's going to happen and um it'll give us at least a little piece of normalcy and a piece of the fire muster in a very abnormal year and i think by the saturday after labor day will when schools have begun to go in session of sorts um a hybrid session uh i think i think it will be good and after a string of 12 days of some great music festivals it'll be a a nice way to maybe celebrate some better news and um and some and some better days ahead and give a chance for families to drive close to the fire trucks and and see the the water cannons shooting in the air so that's it more to come on social media and other uh advertising and the city mechanisms as everything gets pulled together very quickly now the 39th and a half anniversary of fire it's the 39th and a 39 and a half because next year that we need to have the road okay very good uh is there anything else there's nothing else we stand adjourned by acclimation thank you everybody thank you you