hereby call to order the Roseville City Council meeting for Monday, March 16th, 2026. Mr. City Manager, would you call the role, please? >> Council member Stron >> here. Council member Schwarter >> here. >> Council member Grath >> here. Council member Bower here. >> Mayor Row >> here. Uh and with us at the table here this evening we have by way of introductions our city attorney Rachel Tierney who's at the end of the table on my right uh and our city manager Pat Trojan who's on the other end of the table on my left. We have uh guests and staff who will be participating in the meeting and we'll make those introductions as those agenda items come up. Um, for people from the public, we do have, uh, a complete set of the materials for this meeting and a binder in the back of the room under the big clock by the door, uh, which is available to be shared by the public that has everything that we're considering this evening in terms of meeting materials. There are also individual copies available of the agenda, uh, so that you can follow along with your own copy if you'd like. Um, we do ask if you have a cell phone to make sure and silence it or otherwise assure that it doesn't disrupt this evening's meeting. And with that, we'll ask folks to stand if you're able for the pledge of allegiance. 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. That then brings us to uh consideration of the agenda this evening. And I'll check with staff as always to see if there are any changes that need to be made to the agenda. >> Uh Mr. Mayor, no changes uh to the agenda. Although I would note that we did flip the items 7A and 7B from the original agenda published last week uh for scheduling uh purposes. So 7A discuss broadband franchising be the first one taken up followed by the presentation about visit Roseville. Otherwise, the agenda there's no changes. >> Thank you, Mr. Tre. Are there any uh changes that council members would like to make to the agenda or items that council members would like removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration? If not appear to be the case, uh then we will check with uh the audience, members of the public. Uh as noted uh in the previous request, uh we have uh section 10 of our agenda which is known as the consent agenda. These are in this case five items which are rather administrative in nature and are usually taken up at the end of the meeting as a single motion with limited opportunity for input. But if anybody is here this evening to either ask a question or make a comment about one of those items in section 10, this would be the time to let us know and we can move that item forward in the meeting for your participation. Is there anyone here for an item in section 10 of tonight's agenda? does not appear to be the case. Uh that being the case, then it would be appropriate to uh have a motion to approve the agenda as presented. So >> second, it's been moved by council member Sher, seconded by council member Grath to approve the agenda as presented. All any discussion on that motion? Uh hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I opposed. That passes unanimously. We have our agenda for this evening. Uh next would be our first opportunity for public comment. This is an opportunity for general public comment that isn't related to items on this evening's agenda, uh, but may be related to city business or of interest to people in the community. Uh, we will provide opportunities for public comment during agenda items as those come up. Uh, is there anyone here this evening to speak under general public comment? All right, feel free to come up and have a seat at at the chair. And just a note for folks following along that uh, as usual, the rules of the road for public comment are uh, a three-minute time limit per speaker. We do ask that you introduce yourself at the beginning of your comment and indicate either your address or your street for the record. Uh and then also address uh comments or questions to the council. Uh and we may not be able to answer all questions or respond to all comments this evening, but we will certainly attempt to direct follow-up effort in that regard. With that, we have our uh first speaker under general public comment. >> You're so close. Hi, I'm I'm Andy. I live over by Acorn Park. Um I I one question it's kind of unrelated to my account. What what gets the table down in front out? Is it the follow-up meeting? It's interesting. It's exciting. Uh anyway, I am here to talk about drones. There are so many drones everywhere. I uh have been talking to lots of people and there is a lot of concern about it. And we talked a long time ago and I know it's not you guys. I know you are not the FAA, but I feel like you are an avenue to kind of bubble up littleer voices and some more voices. And then I was thinking you could talk to maybe sort of coalition of cities, commissions of cities. I don't remember what the format is called, but sort of the other cities which are also full of people that I suspect are worried about drones and then maybe bubble up from there. I don't know what's reasonable to expect, but I'm here with a concern about that. Um, they're launching them just all over the place. Out of the Roseville Public Library, just out of communities, trailer parks everywhere. And I mean, uh, sort of explicitly it's surveillance, right? I mean, this is sort of an uneasy time for that. They're putting together lists of sort of residents who aren't doing anything wrong, but we're sort of calling domestic terrorists and the given political climate and these sorts of things. So, I think there's like a big concern about it. Again, understand you're not the FAA FAA. Not sure what exactly I expect you to do, but I think you know talking more broadly. I mean, we wrote the letter or y'all wrote the letter to the state about sort of rent or eviction moratorium. These sorts of things, right? Just something in that arena I think would be cool. I want to just, you know, sort of highlight it and make sure that like people know about it, which I imagine you might. You could have looked up any night and seen them in the sky. They're quite popular. Uh, and that's uh that's the point there. Thank you so much. >> Thank you for your kind. Is there anyone else for general public comment? >> Hello. Hi. Okay. So, like I don't need to have a mic in front of me then, right at this small table. >> Yes. >> Hi. So, I'm Carrie Gelli. I live near Highway 36 and Dale Street. Um, and I'm going to echo the concern of the my neighbor community member um about the drones. And just really just to reiterate or, you know, add emphasis to that. Um, shoot. I was going to start my little timer here, but I know you guys all keep me going. Um, so I was really concerned to to hear that a drone launched from the Roseville Public Library during library hours when families, kids, other folks could be there um as a safety concern as well as a surveillance concern. And then um a community member reported to me some more details of the surveillance of the mobile home parks that were going on. So reporting that drones were kind of just regularly going up and down the railroad tracks that are just right adjacent to Roseville Estates. So having close proximity to Roseville Estates. So um yeah, I'm concerned about surveillance, safety, any of that. And so if there's something the city could do, you know, write a letter, um, advocate, put it on legislative priorities, some type of regulation or permitting required. And we're knowing that some of these drones are operating without having their transponders on, understand it, they're not identifying themselves as as they are supposed to be according to FAA rules. And um so anyway, they're operating just not, you know, just outside of how they were supposed to. So anything that you could do on that note, I would appreciate. Um and then my second concern is about the potential for bounty hunters. Um and you've maybe seen some articles about that and some video um in our nearby cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. So um I would just ask that the Roseville Police does not uh collaborate with or contract with bounty hunters. Um, if the city could pass some kind of resolution or ordinance to prohibit bounty hunters from operating within city limits, that's something I would ask for. Um, and my concern is um that they may be operating illegally. They're less trained even than some of the federal agents have been. So there's a significant um discrimination risk, a liability risk for the city, um safety risk for any of us citizenry um if some type of bounty hunter incident got out of hand. So those are my two concerns that I'd ask for uh staff and council to help with. And lastly, which I meant to start out with, I really do want to thank the city and the staff and the managers for a lot of the work you have done in responsive to community input these last couple couple of months supporting our immigrant neighbors and trying to create safety and equity for all of us in Roseville. So, I do appreciate the work that's been done. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments this evening. Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to speak under general public comment this evening? All right, then we'll go ahead and close the opportunity for general public comment. Uh, and we'll move uh right into our business items. I don't believe we've got any other intervening items, so we can uh proceed right to our first business item, which is item 7A, and that is to hear information about and have discussion about broadband franchising in this area. Uh and with us this evening, we have uh the attorney for uh the cable commission of the nine cities that um Roseville participates in, Michael Bradley. Uh and he's here to give us some information and perhaps help us with some questions we may have uh and maybe steer us in the right direction if we want to look into this uh this activity. >> Hello, welcome. >> Well, thank you, mayor, and good evening, council members. It's a pleasure to be in front of you. Um like Mayor Rose said, my name is Mike Bradley. I'm with the law firm of Bradley Warner. Uh I've had the privilege of representing the north suburban uh cable communications commission for um many many years now. Um, and really I'm here to let you know of a a new development in um in franchising law, which is an unusual topic, I know, but um uh we had the the opportunity to negotiate the first uh broadband franchise in the state of Minnesota just recently. Um I I represent the South Washington County Telecommunications Commission and the city of Woodbury is a member city in in that jurisdiction and um and they asked the commission to uh franchise um the broadband companies in that area. Um just just so you know, you're uh one of uh nine member cities in the North Suburban um communications commission. Um, you have all all nine member cities have agreed in a joint powers agreement to have the commission be the franchising authority for the area, meaning they they negotiate the franchises for the city and they manage all the franchises for the cities. The cities themselves actually grant the franchises. Okay. Um, just wanted to point out, um, I don't know who's running the show, but >> I can we go to the next slide of course running the show. I just wanted to share some uh very high level uh benefits of of this franchise which we're really excited about. I won't go over all of them. Um but there are a number of of benefits and you'll see that they benefit your city. It benefits the residents uh and it benefits the um the cable communications commission that you have. First one is uh the franchise requires equal access to broadband for all residents. So what that means is that every every citizen or every resident in your community is going to have access to the same quality of service of broadband throughout the city. Okay? So there may be different levels that you can subscribe to, but everybody's going to have access to the same type of service. Um secondly, reasonable buildout of your city. And what that means is with the franchise, you make sure that every single resident is served with service over a reasonable period of time. The state statute says over 5 years. Okay? So um and that's exactly what we negotiated in South Washington is a um a 5-year buildout. There's an exception if it causes um undue economic harm to the company. We don't want the company to go out of business, but we do want all of our residents served and we want them to all have the same quality of service, okay, of internet service. Um, lastly on this page is the annual meetings and Mayor Ro will probably remember this when we negotiated the Century Link franchise for cable television service um back about 10 or 12 years ago. Um we required actually quarterly meetings then to make sure that the companies uh were meeting the um equitable buildout that were built into those franchises. And when we reflected back on that process, we felt like quarterly meetings were maybe a little too much. Uh but we wanted to maintain annual meetings so that we're making sure that all of the benefits that are being um that are contained in the franchise are being um um um they're being met. Um we can go to the next slide. Um I wanted to go over just three things on this one. The first one is customer service. uh if if you are a broadband subscriber to some of these newer broadband companies, who do you go to if you can't get resolution through the company? And the answer is there's nobody. There's literally nobody to go to. Uh the the PUC doesn't address broadband. Department of Commerce, Attorney General takes general calls, but they're not responsible for um for customer service. Um but the with the franchise, you have a requirement that they um provide customer service and somebody at the commission will take care of those customer service complaints if it's not resolved with the company. So you have somebody to to uh talk to. We negotiated a discount for seniors and disabled persons of no less than 10%. We thought that was uh really beneficial to that community. Um and then finally is consideration. Um we know that these broadband companies are um occupying our public right ofway essentially permanently and in return for that they pay a franchise fee and that franchise fee is 5% of gross revenues in the franchise that we negotiated. That franchise fee uh is used by the city um as uh general revenue uh and it's also used by the commission to support their um community media function for the for um for the area. Okay. Uh we can go to the next slide. Just basics on on franchising. Franchising is kind of a unique contract. I understand that you just maybe recently went through the XL Energy uh franchising process. So you're um had that just recently in front of you. But um the franchise is a is a unique thing where you you have an ordinance which is also a grant of a privilege to use the public rights of way to provide services to your residents. Why is franchising better than permitting? With permitting, um a company can get a permit and and serve just a small portion of your city. With franchising, you get all those other benefits that I'm talking about. With permitting, you um you may get a a permit fee, a onetime permit fee typically. Um and with franchising, you get a long-term essentially rental of your public right of way. Hopefully that makes sense. Um why are we reassessing uh broadband now? Um the reason is um last year a case came out called Ohio Telecom versus FCC. And what happened there was the FCC um attempted to reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service. And for the first time, we have a judicial decision that's not based on any deference to the FCC. It's based on judicial precedent. Um and and that case, the court held that broadband is not a telecommunications service. It's a information service under federal law. So when that case came out, it really made us step back and and ask ourselves, well, if it's if broadband is not a telecommunication service under federal law, what is it under state law? Um is it a telecommunication service under state law? If it is, we're prohibited from franchising that there's a um we're preempted, but maybe it's something else. And um and as we looked at the law, we we thought that well uh cable communication systems are the basically the other type of communications uh service that is um addressed in state law. And when you look at the definition of cable communication system, it means a system that provides data and other communications content services. And when you when you look at that definition, that sounds and looks and feels like a lot like broadband. And so that was uh the argument that was put forward at South Washington and Woodbury. Um and um and it resulted in a franchise in uh in that area. Um there's also um a history of judicial precedent just in the eth circuit and um that that relates to voice over IP and I'm sorry to be so technical and use these terms. I just know I'm boring people to death. Sorry about that, but it's my life. But um uh you you might think a voice over IP is telephone service and um under the judicial president it's not. It's an information service. So, it's not a telecommunication service. And that's been held consistently um over the years uh since the early 2000s. So, that's why we um why why we reassess. So, we looked at is it a cable communication system or is it a telecommunication service? And we determined that it's a cable communication system. And under state law, we're we as cities are required to uh franchise those those um companies. Um let me go to the next slide. You know, for decision making on franchising, um you just need to uh you know, look at your city charter if you have one. I don't think you do have one. You're a statutory city. So uh that makes it easy. Woodbury is also a statutory city. Um, so we're just basing it purely on the statutory analysis of whether it's a comm cable communication system or a telecommunications service. Um, and so when you review that authority and you make your determination of what you think it is, um, if you think it's a cable communications system, then you've already made the decision. And that's the nice thing about this is you've already signed a joint powers agreement with your with your nine other uh partner cities to franchise uh through the North Suburban Communications Commission. Um and so then you can direct staff to, you know, send these uh broadband companies to the commission to be franchised. Um and let's see. I think that's it. That's my uh that's my update. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Great. >> Uh thank you, Mr. Bradley. Uh questions from the council for the attorney. >> Thanks for coming. How would you how do you define broadband in this sense specifically? I'm looking for how you distinguish broadband in the sense of something say like a a Comcast or a quantum or something like that versus a tier one, two or three like a Zo, Lumen or those service providers those are also on the redway. So how do you differentiate? >> Yes. Yeah, that's a great question. So, the um the the simplest answer is is broadband is a um a way of bringing of high speeded internet access to residents and businesses. Um so, you're right that Comcast provides broadband service. Um uh Lumen provides broadband service through um quantum fiber. Um and um I forget the other one that you >> Oh, you have Zo. >> Zo. Yeah. And Zo um if I'm not mistaken is more of a middle mile type of a provider. >> Oh, Zo is worldwide tier one global internet global uh provider. >> Yeah. But they're not providing service to residents. Correct. It will, >> right? But I don't think they are right now. >> No, you can you can call and I can call them. I've priced it out before. You can call them. >> Well, they they would, you know, if if they are providing broadband internet access service and what I would call broadband edge services like VoIP, then um they're a cable communication system and they should get a franchise so long as there they are or will be serving over 50 customers in the area. >> So is that the triggering thing? 50 >> 50. Yes. So in this case then we already have like so in Minnesota you have ARVIG right which is a popular uh service that covers Minnesota and the couple Midwest states. Typically it's more design focused on business but they're already over 50 probably for consumer especially if you consider apartment buildings and things. So if you were to implement a franchise fee a franchise fee on them they would have to do that. Does that also trigger them to have to do a buildout in for the whole uh in the five years for all the residents? Yeah, we we'd have to look at that. I I have not dealt with Arvig or Zo yet in the Twin Cities. Um so we've really been focusing on companies that have been um expecting to build out to all residents. >> And that was the case in Woodbury, right? This works because there was a brand new service provider coming in that's looking to build out. You're not Woodbury is not actually putting a franchise fee on their existing >> uh the existing. They have notified all of their existing providers that they need to get a franchise. >> Interesting. >> Yeah, >> I feel like there's going to be some challenges with that 50 with all your middle tier service providers. There's a just a huge amount of gray area. >> It it's a it's a common question that you're asking actually is what what do we do when somebody's already in the public right of way? because in in the Woodbury example, for that particular example, um that company had not entered the right of way yet. Okay. And they're entering now, although maybe not now after the snowstorm, but now soonish. Um no, your point's well taken. I I I think that um you know, as as we look at this um you know, we'll have to address those type of issues. We I just haven't been um I haven't looked at that issue yet. Yeah. >> And I don't think you would address that till you someone would come to a tier one service provider and say no you have to serve the whole thing >> and suit would be made at that time. >> Just to follow up on that um each individual franchise is negotiated between the franchising authority and the entity. Um and so they don't all necessarily have to have the same exact terms necessarily between the >> That's true. Yeah. These are non-exclusive franchises and they can be different. >> Okay. So that might be part of the the factor that enters into it as well as as working between the franchising authority and a a provider as to whether they qualify under the criteria and then what the actual terms of a franchise might be if I understand the process. >> You're right. >> Okay. You have >> I just want to follow up. I mean following on that um another problem that what's the resolution most of these providers actually some some of them own their own lines some of them don't some of them are just leasing dark fiber some of them are just contracting for fiber for connecting points to points uh throughout so how is that dealt with it's a you know broadband providers contracting with you know someone else with those lines does that trigger then those the one that's providing those lines having to serve or how's that work >> I don't know how that works Um, all I what I do know is that we uh we will be working with with the company that owns the lines in the public right of way. Um, as far as other users of that line, um, we would need to be looking at the relationship with the with the name with the u the owner of the fiber to determine what we would do with the user. >> Yeah. network be interesting to see because in most cases the one that owns the lines the fiber is not the actually the ones that's building the resident in many many cases. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and and if that's the case um then we would be looking at the the ultimate user the company that's providing the service to the residents. >> So that's different than what you just said a little bit ago which is you're going to look at the one that actually owns the lots. Well, I mean I mean we are, but but I also said that we're going to be looking at how how it's being used and what the relationship is between the user of the fiber and the owner of the fiber. >> So in other words, if it's a fee based on gross revenue, part of their revenue may be the the payment they receive from other parties to >> certify. Yes. >> Um yes, thank you for being here. had um kind of a two-part question. Have you gotten a lot of push back from the companies before you know when you were working on this? And two, do you see that there might be some what might be legal um push back where they might try to take this to um court or how how settled is this, do you think? >> It's not settled. This is a um completely new development in the the state of Minnesota and um I do expect push back from uh providers. Um there is um some legal risk as there always is when you're dealing with um you know with new interpretations of the law and uh you know ones that you know companies typically don't want to be regulated and this regulates them. So, but at this point there is no um cases that are >> there are not >> probably still so still so still very new that they're still working on >> I think so you know it's an it's an argument um and we think it's a pretty good argument now that at least one provider has agreed to a franchise they don't just do that right >> other questions from council members council member >> so um with prov the plus seems to be it would be providing service to the entire community. Um would this in effect raise the fees or or what do you see happening with fees for the individual? >> I don't see that raising fees for the uh individual uh when there is a franchise fee that is received by um the city and the commission um that will show up on the bill. So, if there's a 5% franchise fee, just like when you purchase um Comcast cable television service, there's a fee on the bill that says franchise fee or something like that. Residents will see that and it is it is a fee for use of the right of way, but um you know, some residents will see that to look like a tax too. >> Other questions? Uh, Council Member Strong. >> Thanks. Um my understanding is that this does provide some consistent funding to our cable commission though. Is that correct? >> Does this >> Yes, it could for sure. I mean >> this could serve as a way to replace the cable uh income that we have consistently been losing over time as less and less people subscribe to cable. Is that correct? >> Yes, that is that is correct. We are seeing a decline in uh cable television subscriptions and revenue now and that's resulting in less franchise fees to the city and then less funding to the commission as well. >> So just in followup, so what that means for the citizens is less uh public access. If N North were to not have the funding in order to operate, um, we wouldn't have access to some of the community amenities we have when it comes to public access, television, and other things like that. So, there's this opportunity possibly to um fill in some of the funding gaps that are um are getting larger and larger as the cable dependence u lessens. >> Yeah, I think that's true. I think it helps uh fill a funding gap for the city as well as the commission. >> Mhm. >> And that was going to be my followup too was that at this point um the commission and the cities don't have any arrangement in place as to with this type of franchising what that split of the franchise fee would be. Um under the cable franchise there's two types of payments that the cable company makes. One is the franchise fee which under the current 9 north arrangement or um North Suburban Communications Commission arrangement uh that entire franchise fee goes to the city. Um and then the public education government access fee which is I think a 3% gross revenue fee that goes directly to the commission for the commission's functions um primarily for their um video capabilities and video production. Um, and then the cities then pay a portion of the franchise fees we get, the 5% to the commission to help fund the regulatory work that the commission does in terms of dealing with customer service and and the negotiation of franchises and things like that. So, it's probably fair to say that that needs to be settled among the nine cities as the cities either collectively or individual cities are looking to put in place franchises for broadband services. Um, and does it make sense to have those conversations among the nine cities like now to start making those those arrangements so that then as more and more uh entities look to do buildout in Shore View and Ardan Hills and Roseville that there's sort of consistency across this this commission area. >> Yeah. Well, I think it makes sense for the uh you know, the nice thing about the the commission. One of the many nice things about the commission is um uh every quarter the city administrators and managers get together and talk about the issues that are affecting the the commission. I would imagine this would be one of them that they would talk about and probably work out amongst themselves, then bring it forward to the commission and to the cities. >> Great. I had a question about um proportional contribution um seeing as how you know we're a fairly fully built uh city and maybe there are portions of you know some other cities that have a lot more buildout potential. So um how would that impact um that funding mechanism you know and the expectation of the city in that situation? Gosh, I don't I'm not sure I really know that. Um, you know, that's the benefit of having the city administrators and managers getting together and kind of talking about that. They're going to know those issues really, frankly, better than I do as far as what all the different cities bring. Um, and then I I help write with what they all decide. Well, if I can add to that, you know, one of the one of the parts of I believe it is the joint powers agreement. Yes. >> Is an agreement among the cities as to how those revenues are divided under the cable franchises and it tends to be related on how much revenue comes in from each city to the the cable. >> Yeah, that's true. And um >> so I can imagine that's the precedent we might be looking >> Yeah. Well, and yeah, and voting is decided on you know the size of the cities too. So So that is taken into consideration for sure. It's pretty much a revenue based thing. And so the size of the cities is the amount of revenue that each city has from cable subscribers, which stands to reason that in fully built out systems, it's very population based. >> So yeah, so assuming that you know all nine cities um did this and they they all started franchising and receiving revenue um you know maybe the decisions already been made basically. Um but maybe not. So, you know, we'll we can go down that road when we get there. >> Other questions. All right. So, we're probably the ask here is to provide some guidance, I think, to staff as to how we might look at moving forward on this. Uh I do also want to provide an opportunity for public comment if there is any too. So, uh maybe Mr. Bradley, if you can take a seat away from the table for just a moment, we'll see if there is any public comment. Uh and then based on that we'll uh talk to the council about how we might want to proceed. >> Thank you all. >> So we'll open it up uh for public comment on this uh uh concept this idea of looking at the uh uh broadband franchising uh based on the understanding and the interpretation of uh state and federal law based on the courts as well as how we've looked at state law. >> Hello and welcome back. >> Hello. It's Andy again. Um just some quick Googling on the phone so far from an expert. Um, but I don't think you can convince me it's not a tax, right? I mean, it might be a justifiable tax. >> Nobody I don't think is arguing that it is. >> Yeah. Right. Just like so like this would be another tax and then you're paying the management fee to this commission. So I mean I guess that would be the reservation is like I and you you guys maybe there are spots in Roseville that don't have internet out to them yet. I would be shocked, right? So like the buildout aspect I suspect something has been out there. I mean I hate my internet provider to be fair. So, I mean, maybe there's some quality of life coming there, but I mean, I just like in terms of like dollars spent on broadband internet in the city of Roseville, current state, and then that future state, I suspect the difference is probably about that 5 plus 3%, right? Like at least, you know, who's paying it. Maybe there's some elasticity of demand. Maybe the company needs some. But I guess I'm just skeptical that I my prices don't go up. Maybe it's worthwhile, right? I could be intrigued to hear more about the benefits, but I I think buildouts are done. Um, you know, I guess maybe the angle is like the city needs revenue to replace the sort of declining cable revenue thing. So, all right, fair enough. I don't pay any of those cable fees sort of in the same way that like electric cars are rough for the roads to the gas tax. Like, I mean, I think I think I I get that, but I guess I don't know. I I would like to hear more about like the particular benefit and like what I as like some dude who has internet is getting. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to speak to the item this evening? All right. All right, we'll go ahead and uh close the public comment then and we can move to council consideration. I did have another question for Mr. Bradley, so I'm going to make him get up and come back up to the table here. Um, and it relates to actually to the question from the public. Um, and you know that that is uh well, first of all, just to clarify, I don't think we're talking about 3% plus 5%. that's sort of unique to the cable the cable provider arrangement under federal law and everything like that. I don't think that same requirement exists for public educational and government uh portion of of franchising under the broadband side of things if I understand it because they're not a cable TV provider. >> Yeah. Um and then the other thing is so for Comcast or Xfinity who is an existing provider in the city and certainly provides a lot of broadband to residents in the city >> they are they are uh already under a franchise agreement for cable television. >> That's true. >> Uh under I think it's federal law if I remember from my days on the commission uh we can't regulate um um you know the broadband part of their service under the cable. >> I'm impressed that you remembered that. >> Yes. So I'm presuming that in the case of an existing provider who also already has a franchise with the cities for cable services, we're not going to try to double charge and have a separate franchise for the broadband. Uh and then I also wanted to talk about sort of you know this notion of the exist of the equity in terms of how we treat different providers who are all using our right of way. And I think that might be one of the arguments in terms of the franchising is that if gas and electric is using our our right of way for their services and cable television under current franchises is using it. Does it from a policy point of view make sense to uh have the same requirement on other users of the rightway? And maybe that's not a question for you but one for us but at least I wanted to put that out there. I'm not sure if I got to >> a lot of questions or a lot of a lot of comments maybe correct me if I'm wrong in any of that. >> Yeah. So I I think your your first point was um how do we treat cable television operators and and are they different than broadband providers and uh the answer is cable television providers like Xfinity in this area already has a franchise to build a cable communication system. Okay, under state law that's the same law that we use for broadband. Okay. Now, under federal law, and I really am really impressed that you remembered this, but um >> took me 20 years. >> Um there there uh the FCC issued a rule called the mixeduse rule. And they said with cable television operators that are regulated as a cable service or cable system under federal law, which is different than a cable communication system, can get a little confusing, but cable um television is under title six of the federal cable communications act. Um the FCC made a rule called the mixeduse rule that says local governments essentially can't regulate non-cable services, non-cable television services. So um and then that went on appeal actually we litigated part of this thing and we lost on this particular issue. We won on other things but we lost on this particular issue that you um that you can't regulate the um the non-cable service part and they specifically said that you can't receive uh franchise fees on the non-cable part. So um so your points u is a good one. Would would we be looking for a separate broadband franchise from a company like Xfinity? The answer is no. They have a cable communication system franchise already and there would be no real benefit to address cable television uh or broadband uh with the cable television operators. >> Maybe that's all you need to answer. I >> I think that's that was the main >> the rest is kind of observations on my mind. Uh and the only other thing related to that specifically is I suppose there is theoretically at some point in the future a a situation where there are so few cable subscribers and so many broadband subscribers that maybe there needs to be a re-evaluation of how we're dealing with with Xfinity or Comcast. But I imagine you know depending if we have you know some small number but still have some we may not be in a position until that's zero to do anything different. So, and you don't have to >> necessarily the mayor, it's tricky because they the cable operator has rights under federal law for renewing their cable television franchise and right now they have a lot of benefits for being under title six of of the federal cable act. Um, and so my guess is that they're not going to walk away from that anytime soon. >> Thank you, Council. combining what you said and what the mayor said. Um, so I would assume telephone lines, those would be part of the telecom. Is that correct? Would that be and so that wouldn't be regulated in this way? Because >> think of the legacy, it's a good it's a really good question. So think of your legacy phone. >> Okay. So I >> I visualize um most of us can remember having a telephone on the wall. >> So think of that. That's the old phone system, the old copper phone system. Yes, we are preempted from franchising those companies. >> I think what brought to mind was then the mayor saying, you know, if we're looking at regulating um right ofways and you know, who's up then it seems like outside of that then there's like you know, our landlines um and traditional phone systems would they also be considered on something that we would consider as a city? And I just wanted to make sure that people in the public are aware that maybe you don't partake in public access television that you think, but if you're watching this meeting, you are taking advantage of the services of the cable commission. So this and when we get a new firetruck, that's something that happens. So, I think it's just really important that >> the video coverage of the firetruck, not the payment for >> just to be clear, >> the special grand opening of different things, you know, and obviously it's not every idea and the parade and it's not everything that happens in the city. We would love it, but we have nine other cities to share these staff members with. But I just think it's really important if you think, well, that doesn't apply to me and you happen to be watching this or you watch it down the road, it does apply to you because it is how we get that information. And I think there in the equity piece, not everyone is utilizing the interwebs in the same way that people are utilizing this for different reason and different um information sources and when we don't have um some of the newspaper and other sources that people had traditionally relied upon, I just want to make sure we kind of look at it bigger than just, you know, well, I don't watch XYZ, but maybe you don't watch that basketball game until it's your next door neighbor and you can't make it or you know so I I just want to make sure we think about at some point if we don't have funding sources those go away or the city takes it on completely and I'm not advocating specifically for franchising but I just think people have to remember that it is a tax but there's a way to pay for a service that you're getting as a member of our community um and unfortunately we are all here by taxes that's how it works And the one thing I would note too is that uh for the city of Roseville specifically um the lion share of the 5% dollars from cable franchises that the city gets right now goes to fund our other communications activities which includes some of the upgrades to the council chambers the as well as the the bonthly newsletter and things like that. And so any you know and the salaries of all the people doing the communications work in in the city all couple of them. Um and so that's that's a factor too is that you know as cable subscribership goes down our revenues to pay for the newsletter and pay for all of the other communication work that the city does and and hopefully does a good job at um you know can can decrease as well. And that's been a pressure I think that we've seen as a budget pressure for a few years now. Uh, and so we just need to, you know, I think we're trying to be proactive to try to make sure that that, you know, the work we do can be sustainable. And I suppose theoretically for the average homeowner, it may be a trade-off. And I haven't had a cable subscription for years, but I may be willing to pay for the the franchise fee on a broadband because I know what the benefit is. And we just we have to have those conversations as a community. That's the direction we want to go. Um, so from the council, actually, Mr. Trojan as the staff that will be directed on something to do with this. Uh you know my thought is as we were kind of having the conversation with Mr. Bradley that the cities may need to provide some kind of guidance to the commission as to we want to see some policy developed. We want to see some negotiations about how this might look as we start to think about entering into it. Or the cities may say we don't want anything to do with broadband franchising. I suppose that's you know one of the outcomes as well. So, um, is that what you're kind of looking for from from the council? >> Yeah, I think, uh, Mr. Mayor, just a baseline, uh, is this something that we should continue to explore with no commitment? Obviously, we've had very general discussions as city managers and administrators knowing this is coming and seen similar presentation and trying to understand that and trying to understand what that would mean for us. um either there's some interest in continuing to look at it and there could be some back and forth um with the council and staff as as far as we learn stuff or if there's like heck no, we don't want to do it at all. Uh that's something I can take forward uh to them as well. I think it's so early in the process it's maybe hard to maybe land definitively no but uh certainly we can't say yes at this point till we learn a little bit more. >> Great. Thank you. Uh so council um thoughts and direction that we might be able to provide or conversation towards a direction >> council say uh framer stay on the sidelines in this one. I would like to see it's working in Woodbury right now because they had a provider come to them and say I want to do franchise fees until I would like to see them you know require a existing broadband provider to have do franchise fees figure out what the lawsuits are there wait for more case law to happen there uh and see what that falls out I don't know I think being first on one of the on this is could be very expensive standpoint especially as you know I have a lot of experience working with these companies and the tier bars and running contracts and you know paying for these things it will be litigated quite hard and uh and intensely and I don't feel like it's worth I think there's as we pointed out there's so many questions that aren't answered um and I didn't even get into more more of the technical uh problems that will happen in existing such as we're talking about lines that are owned but those lines are actually used by multiple providers at the same time there's ways around that you can get around this with the last mile I think it makes sense just to wait until Woodbury decides to try to push us on to other broadband providers. See what happens there and then we can decide again at that point. >> Other thoughts from council members? Council member Strong. >> So if others in the 9 north um commission choose to move forward and we were to say no, what does that happen to our what happens to our partnership as a 9 north cable commission? I don't know exactly uh to be completely candid. Um again, I think it's something that the city administrators and managers will work out with the management of the of the communications commission. Um you know, I think if if one doesn't go and others do go, then there has to be some sort of discussion on, you know, what do you do with the the revenues there? Um, but you know, the the the way we handled it in in the Woodbury instance is there was a commission similar to the North Suburban Communications Commission. Um, and really for the first time we we granted a franchise um specifically for Woodbury and not the other cities. Uh, their commission is a little bit different that they're the franchising authority for the whole area. they grant the franchise uh rather than the city. Um so we I guess we'd have to see how that plays out. >> I guess with that in mind, I would like to keep talking. I not saying we I'm not u promising, but I think I'd like to know more so we know how as a city we would fit into that um equation as we were to move forward if we were to say we're not going to join in. I think I think it's really I I can understand standing back, but I also want to make sure that we're part of the conversation and that we get to to be have a voice in it. Um so we don't wait till the end and not have anything because we've we've excluded ourselves. >> Thoughts from council members? Council member uh Gra. >> I would agree with that. I think it never hurts to collect more information. I think just saying no because there's something down the road that could happen or there could be a lawsuit. If we did that all the time here, we would never move forward. So, I would move forward, get more information. Any thoughts? Council member Sher, >> I think there's a difference between getting some information and moving forward. I think maybe that's where the clarification needs to be. Um I and again, as you heard me earlier, I'm concerned about litigation and the how expensive that couldn't be if that comes up. So, I wouldn't want to be jumping in and saying, "Yep, we're going to do it." And try to be >> let's be the test case. >> Yeah. let's let's let's write this and all that. Um and you know and the other piece is do we even know so say basically it sounded like Xfinity Comcast is off the board for franchise fees at this point. I wonder they I think they must be a big chunk of Roseville I would assume. >> I think Comcast has built out from the cable's point of view they're done with their buildout and all those customers can have broadband through Comcast which we can't regulate. >> Right. Right. And so that's the other piece is if the majority and I don't know but the chunk of people in Roseville are with Comcast, we can't get anything off of that anyways. Correct. >> So correct because because they're a cable provider. So you know I'm aware that in my neighborhood anyway there has been a fairly aggressive effort to build out from the people that market themselves as Quantum Fiber. Um and you know so they're to a certain degree into the community. I have no idea what their percentage of coverage is or anything like that or um you know or how they would respond to somebody saying that well actually you need to have a franchise. Um obviously Excel has cities that charge franchise on their utilities and don't charge franchise so they're kind of used to that depending on which cities they're dealing with. So I guess the you know the question is we don't know for sure but I that's one that would be potentially >> somebody who's seems to be in this marketplace and would be affected by a decision in that regard. >> But that's that. So I guess and I'm really I mean how much revenue are we really talking at this point? I guess, you know, since um um you know, um Council Member Strong's going to be talking to these people at 9 North, you know, I think it's a good idea for her to keep her ear to the ground and hear what other people are doing and um you know, just to hear because I it'd be curious if again I I would really not want to be the first to jump in, but obviously we have to um hear what other cities are going to do. And you know, it's like everything we you know, the conversations continue, I think, but again, I would wouldn't want to start drafting something or or putting something together at this point and and in incurring, I guess, um expense, but again, that doesn't mean we don't um keep our ears open. So I guess I know that's pretty vague for you on that, but I think it's more on in a way and see what other people are going to do so we don't leap into it but still hear what's going on is kind of how I'm I'm looking at that. >> I don't think I'm hearing from the council that we don't want to do it. I think that the hard no is not >> part of the guidance, right? >> Um my because of the structure as Mr. Bradley talked about the the quarterly or periodic meetings between all the city managers and the staff at 9 North. That's a way to keep that communication going. Um I can say and uh Mr. Treon, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but uh from my interactions with the city administrators and mayors anyway and some council members of other cities, I don't think any of the cities in the in the nine city consortium are necessarily interested in being sort of on the the bleeding edge or cutting edge of this themselves necessarily, just kind of by their natures. I could be wrong. Obviously, they could they could prove me wrong, but I I've I've had some experience with them over the years. So, um so I can't I'm imagining that many of the other cities are sort of in the same same place. Um we probably would be expecting something to happen in Woodbury with some of those other legacy providers that are already in the ground as they've been asked to meet the requirements of franchising. So, I think we may hear more things sooner than than later anyway on that. Uh but yeah, I think over the course of this next several months, I think we should continue to pay attention. Uh and you know, to the extent that the managers and administrators want to have conversations about what it might look like going forward and start preliminary discussions about you know what might be the parameters as to how you know revenues are divided. I mean like right now I can imagine a situation where if if a provider isn't doing much buildout in pick a city you know Lauderdale um and they don't get a lot of revenue from the broadband provider but they're still getting cable subscription revenue you know the overall mix just changes a little bit in terms of you know votes on the commission and and that that may be the way it it goes forward with the the broadband franchising I don't know but that's ultimately part of the negotiation. So, um, I think it just makes sense to keep the the staff, you know, appraised of what's going on. Mr. Bradley's excellent about keeping the commission and keeping the the N North staff that way as well as the managers and administrators and maybe that's where we just need to be right now. Council member Strong. >> Um, thanks um, Council Member Schroeder. I appreciate your vote of confidence. However, I'm going to defer to the city manager as the expert in um the area being that this is what you do in your day job um and not me. Um but I just think the opportunity to be amongst others in the city manager role with the staff and in intent in intending to be in that role is a better fit on um making some type of plans. But I I think we should continue to be part of the conversation. And again, I I don't foresee I don't think any of our cities in this area have been known to be the the cutting edge um of every last thing and that it's not enough funds or or a negative thing. It's just um we all have our taxpayers um funding in mind and the goal is to find the most advantageous arrangement for our citizens and for our taxpayers and for all of us. And so, um, yes, I think it's I think it's wise that we continue to have the conversation and be part of it so we know and I'm not saying that we're making a 100% commitment. I think but we need to keep asking questions. I think >> and I was just going to say just may wrap it up uh that um I know a lot of other city councils are talking and receiving presentations from Mr. Bradley. Uh city managers we haven't regrouped again to see kind of where everybody's at. that I think will be an ongoing conversation. The questions and u thoughts expressed tonight are ones that I share as well uh because there's so much unknown here. So I think there's a lot more we have to understand how it works uh before I would see us as a group coming back and saying this is something we should absolutely do or absolutely not do. So I think we're still in the exploratory stages. So, I don't think it hurts to um uh keep looking into it a little bit more and learning more about it. And certainly when there is important information to share or maybe some some points where we may need to get some more direction, we can certainly bring that back for the council. I see evolving over the next year or two. To be quite honest, I'm not sure this is a great rush into going into this uh until we learn a lot more and see how it all shakes out in the end with the litigation and other cities. And just in terms of the the commission members role, um, as I recall, the the commission may uh provide direction to commission staff as to how to proceed on some of these things, you know, as representatives of the cities that that the commission members represent. Uh, and then like with the case of the cable franchises, I know the the commission sort of deferred to staff and the attorney to do the negotiation of the details of the franchise agreement, but then ultimately I think the commission took a vote to recommend the cities adopt the ultimate franchise that came forward. So many many many steps down the road for that kind of thing in this case, but but it's uh it's certainly not a situation where you want to 100% defer. So, but there'll be an educational process through the whole thing for the commission members as well. So, that's something to look forward to. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Bradley, and hopefully we haven't made you late for your second commitment this evening or sixth or whichever one of the Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. >> All right. All right. With that, then we will move to our second item this evening, which is to receive the annual presentation from Liz Noak, who is the president CEO of Visit Roseville. As uh Miss Noak is coming up, I'll just note that Visit Roseville is the um sort of, for lack of a better word, convention and visitors bureau for the city of Roseville. or there's probably a destination marketing organization. Maybe that's the more term of art these days. Um, and receives their funding, virtually 100% of their funding from the uh hotel lodging taxes that are collected in the city of Roseville under under both state law and city ordinance. Uh, and one of the requirements in our ordinance is that uh a representative is at Roseville comes before the council each year just to provide an update uh of activities and where things kind of stand in the community. And so Miss Noak is here this evening to do that and we welcome you for that presentation. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Do I flip the slides or do All right. Well, I shortened um you're in luck because I shortened the presentation that I gave to our board. So, I'll do a a quick recap of 2025 since we're already in the middle of March. Uh, but 2025 is when I took over when Julie Wern retired and there's a staff of three of us and we got a lot of exciting things happening and we did a lot of exciting things in 2025. So, just a few things. We did a citywide sticker quest um that I'll be touching on. We also held our first Earth Day cleanup with uh the local hotels. Then we also did um a Lori and Julia girls getaway weekend. It was our first time trying to do a ladies event in December and we just have a lot of good things coming ahead. So just click this is on this screen. This is our digital efforts. So based on we do SEO, SEM, digital retargeting and that sort of thing if you want to get into all the details. Uh but we received over 5 million impressions and these numbers were based from April to December of last year. 84,000 interactions and then 8,200 conversions. And what that means is the conversions they actually clicked for lodging or attraction attraction information. So, one of the things um if you haven't liked our social media, make sure you log on because there's a lot of fun things. We did a hidden gem video. We featured PityQ barbecue par 365 and then the beastro which is inside the courtyard by Marriott. That was actually our number one video. It got the most views. So we also do things focusing on the metro micro the new service that r rolled out the metro transit game center of course activate and ecoclaw just showcasing what there is to do in the city of Roseville. And then on the next slide just talks about website and over 178,000 views. Again this is from April through December and what they did once they were on our site and how often they engaged and per session. the new users was down but we're seeing that as a trend overall as AI you can start to as you've seen when you go on to Google you don't even sometimes have to go to the website so that's why we're trying to show up on our digital advertising more than just the website because people are getting the information they need sooner and faster um stats we had over 120,000 views we did state fair giveaways we focused we did a whole post on all of our great local coffee shops from Happy Monday, Showtime as well as Mqua, um just different things showcasing the new parks. There's just so much to see and do once you're in Roseville. The next slide, Facebook stats. So, um again, you can look at how many views we had, things that we focused on. National Travel and Tourism Week takes place every May. And for 2025, we thought we'd do something a little bit different and showcase some of our Roseville landmarks or locations close to Roseville since we highlighted also the fair and the Bell Museum. And if you didn't get I was going to bring them and I forgot them, so I'll have to drop them off to your office, Pat, but we still have some left over from 2025. And we featured um as you can see, one of the Roseville Roses, the infamous rocket slide in Central Park, a nod to MacGyver of course with the rubber band and paperclip. Um, and our most controversial, I like to say, is the um, Pronto pup from the state fair because the ketchup on the Pronto pup. Got a lot of heat for that one. >> Uh, there. And then on the next slide, you can just see some of the the stickers. Uh, we actually get requests for people asking u some people were looking to purchase them, so we're like, okay, we'll just send them to you. But now we include them in our visitor when they request a visitor guide, we just throw stickers right in there. So, next slide just shows some of our blogs and things we feature. We want to show, you know, why we're perfectly positioned, why you want to stay in Roseville and you can do all of these activities. Attend back to the 50s, go to the state fair, come for a weekend to go shopping at Rosedale, all the things we have to offer. Just more blog highlights as well. Everything likes to be in numbers. So, it's like the 12 best patios, the five must sees. So, there's a lot of numbers when you're looking at blogs. And then just the final slide, it just shows some lodging insights. Um, again, April through December using some of our Zardico data and just showing how we ended the year at 68% occupancy with an average daily rate of $128. And overall, it was a it was a very successful year. Ended on a positive note within budget. >> How did those numbers compare to prior year? >> It was up just slightly by 1%. So, yeah. and we we did lose a hotel as you know for 2025 but we were able to still maintain and hit our budget numbers. Yeah. So 2026 even though we're already in March, we'll we'll jump right to that. Um I did put in here and I think if you had a chance to review just kind of some of our strategy and tactics and how we want to tell the Roseville story, drive our visitation and make an economic impact, build our relationships and then strengthen Visit Roseville. And we actually I hope you guys had a chance to partake in our first ever Roseville restaurant week. It took place March 1st through the 7th. And this was actually something first time ever we did it and we opened it up to every Roseville restaurant free of charge. So like the Minneapolis magazines, they charge a fee for the restaurants to participate. We opened it up completely free and we did all the marketing on the back end. So we worked we did radio promotions with my talk. Um Stephanie Hansen, the local foodie, we partnered with her. She did see. >> Did you see the videos? Yeah. Yeah. She did uh six different videos and then we actually partnered with Every Meal. So, it was a it was a great opportunity to, you know, food brings everyone together. So, Every Meal providing food for children experiencing food insecurities. We thought it was a perfect way to to partner with them. And then we're proud to we're actually our social post tomorrow. We're going to announce we're giving $2,500 to every meal from Visit Roseville as a thank you. And some of the restaurants I know um Pizza Luche gave their own donation as well. So >> um how many restaurants? >> 21 21 participated and some of those that didn't, they actually told me they couldn't they didn't have the bandwidth to to bring in more customers. So I I personally went to like Carter Thai, one of my favorites, and they just said we are tapped out with the customers we have. So maybe next year they will, but 21 I thought was a really good number. Did the restaurants feel that especially after sort of January and February of this year that that was a good time to try to get people Yes. >> back into the restaurants subject to their event their bandwidth certainly with staffing and things like that. >> Exactly. It was originally slated for the first week in February but we moved it with everything going on. We gave it a pause kind of changed the messaging from get out to se celebrate to get out and support. So it had a real come together message. So I think next year hopefully that will be in guess right better times and but February is a downtime for restaurants. So February March is a perfect time. >> So and we're waiting on um based on the early numbers we we also partnered with influencers. We had over 100,000 views. If you saw a lot of the influencers we did a kickoff party at Crave. So a lot of influencers were out posting and then going to the different restaurants. So that's a little bit more on that on restaurant week. Tony Coup though did not if he's watching the city council meeting Tony Coup returned my call. So if you've seen him he's a huge food influencer and he has Roseville ties. He used to work at the Rosetown Legion and >> he has he has done uh uh Phil City Pizza. Yes. >> And he eats barbecue too. So >> and both of those were restaurant week participants as well. >> Apparently all I see online and videos have >> a different algorithm and everyone I meet I say you have to try Villa City's um mozzarella sticks. They are the best. Um, and backed by popular demand 2.0 for the sticker promotion. Um, just a sneak peek, we uh have an Louis uh or excuse me, Lonnie Anderson um nod to her. We feature the largest butternut tree in Minnesota if you have not seen it in Reservoir Woods. Uh shopping sticker. We also um have a fun one for the 45th parallel which runs through Roseville as well as the Nature Center and also McDonald's, the first McDonald's in Minnesota. So, we have so many first to feature, it's not hard to come up with some stickers. So, we'll be rolling those out in May. So, stay tuned. Uh the Roseville in Bloom, as you may remember, 2020, 20 roses rolled out right as CO was rolling out with it. Um, but 18 statues still remain in Roseville. Uh, there's a few that are in need of some repair. So, this one, we're really excited to roll it out in the summer, but it might be it might have to be half and half depending on what repairs need to be made. So, I know the one at the library I'm working with Tivoli too on how we can get that one structurally repaired, but we want to relaunch it and reintroduce it as a free activity for families, repaint the bases and then do a QR code or something where people can, you know, definitely log in, see what the deals are, or just get out and take a free photo and get out and enjoy the parks. So, stay tuned on that one. >> Who is the company that constructed? >> Yes, they did the peanuts originally if you remember the St. Paul >> St. Paul. Just a a question on that. Is there going to be an opportunity if any local businesses or entities want to have a rose that didn't have one the first time around? >> No, because they're at the locations that purchased them. So given >> I meant like new location purchase a new one. I don't know what sort of the overhead is to do something like that. But I was thinking if there were entities that missed the boat the first time around >> and would love to have a rose. Maybe that's an opportunity. >> That's a possibility. Maybe for 2027 we can put something in there. Um, I know that uh when kids in need moved, they >> took >> Nope. They graciously gave it to every meal. It's still there. It's still there. So, and then we moved the one from Rosedale to the community center. So, we've we moved some around. So, I thought it'd be fun to do a relaunch and a new map. Um, we did lose Bent. He took his with him. So, Bartley has the rose maybe in his backyard. >> In the backyard in front of you, right? >> And then Goodman Construction. They moved just slightly outside the border. So, that's the other one we lost. But the rest, I mean, remarkably, are in great condition. If you've been out to see them, people people still post on them. They still comment. So, and then just a little bit of information on who we target in terms of leisure travelers and who we're looking to attract. Focusing on the drive market, especially, you know, as the economy, so we see things, we're really looking for that convenience, the budget traveler. So, it's going to be more people coming from Duth, Northwest Minnesota, Fargo, Morehead, Oaklair, Iowa, and then also um still focusing on business travelers. It it has it's slowly coming back, but we have Shannon in our office able to work with event planners and different teams and things like that. So, it's of course overflow from the National Sports Center. We're always getting and we're waiting for Canadians to return, anxiously waiting for the Canadians. So, just a little bit about our main messaging. Um, perfectly positioned, where we're located, we have such a reasonable price point, and then free parking, which a lot of cities cannot stand, you know, they don't have that same messaging. And then just a little bit on what we focus on. Again, spring break, summer travel, back to the 50s is a huge time for our hotels as well as the Minnesota State Fair. Lots of concerts coming up, any um games with the Gophers, of course, and then the holiday and winter activities with the Oval and skating center. We did roll out a skate and stay package at the Oval and hotels um in January, but everything going on, we only saw a few reductions. So, we hope that'll be something we can do again because we have such a great gem in our backyard. And then just just listed again additional marketing efforts and strategies and we're doing everything from print advertising. We have elevator wraps down in Rochester mail like the top five things you want to see that has a QR code and we changed that out seasonally and the state fair commented um Lara Hughes sits on our board that she's actually seen an increase coming from the Rochester market to the state fair. So we like to think we're playing our part in that. So, um, anything from print advertising, a lot of digital, a lot of online stuff, but a lot of, um, influencer marketing as well. And then we're still doing a couple trade shows here and there. So, I think, did I cover everything? I did. >> All right. Well, thank you for presentation. We really do appreciate it. uh you know it's it's in the law that you have to do it but I think it's really helpful uh for both the council and maybe the public as well to understand how those those um lodging taxes are used and what the benefit to the community is in terms of our local businesses restaurants as well as our hotels. So um we do appreciate those activities and all the work that's being done by a very lean organization. So we do do appreciate that. And I see I think there was a question from council member >> I just had a comment. Um, I was impressed when I went to Spirit Mountain Information Center. They had a brochure and it was the most recent from Roseville. Um, and the woman who was staffing the booth um, just said, "Oh, these are very popular, very they're well done." So, kudos to you. She and there was a lot of things behind her, but a lot of them um, weren't necessarily most recent. And then again, at the airport, there was um, the same. So, thank you for that. I don't see the Minnesota Yacht Club event uh on your list of target market. I think you should and um and I just got wrong. >> We actually did and we didn't receive any. They had blocks at the hotels. They put out room blocks and we didn't see much of it and it's a busy summer time so they removed the blocks. >> Maybe this year though they're adding a country fest. Wow. So, and then um I just have noticed some cross pollination between the Roseville reader some of the things that they had about min uh Rosedville's first you know businesses all Dutch and some of the things. So, I do see a lot of the um things between them. So, I really appreciate that. I hope you guys continue to tap into some of the other communications um resources in town because um it's just anything we can do to help people. They swear we don't tell them anything. So, we appreciate anything we can do to help get the word out. Thank you. Definitely >> comments, questions. Um, and just sort of tying into to some of the comments. Just to clarify, the airport was MSP or Okay, good, good, good. Because I know that's a place that that typically is focused on by this group. Um, I had a question on the revenue side. Have you been able to track or has it even been more than a blip uh any of the revenues from lodging tax from our um um uh residential stays that people operate? >> It's very low. I think what did we say $500 700 maybe? >> Yeah, I'm not sure what the >> amount. It was a very small amount. >> They have about a dozen or so that register with the city. So >> So I suppose it's it's a question too of how much do you spend to enforce it versus what you're getting in revenue too. So, >> but I was just curious because I know we made sure as part of putting in the licensing of those specific entities that we wanted to make sure they were paying a lodging tax. So, maybe they are either an indication of their level of activity or we need to make sure they are paying. So, but I was curious >> both. But yeah, it's a it's a it was a small amount in 2025. >> We don't have a huge number that >> and and we don't that's true because I if I remember right we don't license the ones that are lived in by the the proprietors. So, it's just the ones that are sort of absentee. So, that is a smaller number. That's a good point. All right. Anything else from council? All right. Well, we look forward to all those opportunities. I'll keep uh keep noticing all the videos and liking them as well. >> Right. And look for the stickers and I'll make sure if you didn't get the first run from 2025 that Pat has a good office maybe can bring next time. >> Rocket slide. >> Oh, absolutely. Thank you. >> The rocket slide was the most popular one. So, >> thank you for having me. >> Thank you again. All right. Uh, the next item on our agenda this evening is item 7C, uh, which is to receive >> gets to comment. >> Oh, >> oh, certainly. No, go ahead. I I we're receiving a report, so I kind of didn't wasn't in the mindset of receiving comment, but yes, if members of the public wish to speak to this, feel free. >> Thank you, Carrie Gy again. Um, and thank you for sharing the presentation. Easy to follow and really exciting to see what's going on and how our city's being promoted. Um, so a couple of thanks and a couple of questions. Thank you for the restaurant week and the um savvy to postpone that and to support our local businesses. And I'm just curious um if there's opportunity to continue to support our immigrant-owned businesses, restaurant, retail, whatever that might be through the year of 2026. That might be a request I would make. um you know, if there's just a little bit of extra, whether it's the promotion or maybe a couple of extra events that possibly could be thrown in. Um and then I'm curious if there are figures uh for during the Operation Metro Surge time um for those months comparing the hotel revenues to the same time frame a year ago. And I'm curious if there was an increase in revenue or a decrease, like what impact did that have? Um, and then if there by chance was an increase and the ICE reservations resulted in additional tax revenue for the city, would the city consider diverting or assigning that incremental dollar amount that might have been gained toward community services? For example, um, toward the rental or mortgage assistance fund. Um, for example, I'm aware that some retailers in the Twin Cities when they were made aware that a customer was ICE, um, they may have taken a stance to then devote that revenue toward mutual aid within their community. So, I'm just, you know, if if it if we did get a little bit of a bump in sales tax or lodging tax, if that might be um something the city would consider. Thank you. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to comment on this item this evening? >> All right. And I I think I can probably provide a little bit of information in regard to the revenue to the city. Um unfortunately, both the hotel tax and the sales tax that's collected by the city are statutoily required to be used for certain purposes and so we don't have the ability to sort of use them for other purposes as I understand it. And I certainly would be corrected if I'm wrong in that, but that's that's my understanding of it. So, it's it's a great idea and appreciate the thoughtfulness and and creativity and the suggestion of it, but I think we do have some limitations there. And please staff if if we're wrong about that, let let us know and we can we can that would be my understanding as well. Yes. >> All right. Uh with that then if there's uh nothing else on this particular item, we're ready for our uh item on the cash reserve fund report and we have uh Sam Magaranu, our finance director here uh to bring this item before the council. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, member of council. Um, thank you for having me this evening. Uh, and thank you again for your flexibility this afternoon. I've sent an email with some updates last minute. I do appreciate your flexibility with that. All right, let's see. Okay, small that's a little bit bigger. Okay, >> you should have a paper copy. >> Is the one in the electronic packet also up to date? >> Yeah, it should be. Um, >> see if it matches. >> So, first of all, this um item is driven by our kind of internal policy the city has. I think uh it's good practice especially now getting up for the budget season to uh to kind of take a take a look at how we ended uh 2025 fiscal year uh for the city kind of looking at our cash reserves again going into the budget process here at the end of March is kind of when we begin to look at our budget. Um so uh with that um I'm just going to kind of get into this quick analysis here. Uh but before we get started, if there's any questions um prior to this, otherwise I can go ahead and kind of walk us through uh this presentation. Again, this is kind of good practice in following our policy. Um per city policy, you're probably familiar with this, but uh any reserves above above the maximum reserve levels for a specific fund that is driven by its policy shall be placed into the cash reserve fund. So the city operates a casual reserve fund or has been operating casual reserve fund where this excess of funds are transferred and being utilized in at a future time for uh maybe making whole other funds or using it in the in the budget process. Uh with that uh just to remind everyone these are preliminary numbers. We are not going to be making any recommendations to to do any of this transfer this evenings. I think at a later time probably uh towards the end of April um we will come back to you with a recommendation to to kind of move some of this money around through some transfers. Uh the reason for that is that I've just uh just like this afternoon I was reviewing the fund balances again. Uh, and we're in the middle of closing our books, getting audited the week of December 23rd to April 3rd. And things kind of keep changing with journal entries and kind of trying to uh to wrap everything up. Uh, we made some other adjustments and I realized, oh, things have changed. Maybe it would be best to kind of wait to make a recommendation this evening. With that, I'm going to want to draw your attention towards the general fund, which is our main chief operating fund for the city. Uh this fund is projected to have a fund balance approximately $ 8.9 million at the end of 2025. Again uh and the fund balance uh reserve target for this fund is between 35% to 50%. Over the next years which is 2026 budgeted expenditures. So the budgeted expenditures for 2026 are about $30 million. So when looking at that $8.9 million we lended we're projected to end the year about 29.61%. Which is below our low target of 35% or about $1.6 million short. Uh so with that that kind of identifies the need the projected need for this fund to be made whole I guess to meet this low target uh based on the fund fund balance policy for this fund. Uh with that there are a few other funds that are driven by this policy. One of them is the parks and recreation fund 200. This fund is kind of unique uh here for the city because even though it's a governmental fund who operates uh with two main revenue sources. One is its fee and revenues from charges of services but also it has a levy. Right? So typically you would see this fund combined with a general fund. However, here we're showing it separately or we're tracking this activity for this uh parks and recreation a little bit different. Uh however uh the policy for this fund is to keep a target level between 20 and 30%. As you can see here in this chart at the end of 2025 is projected to end the year approximately $2.1 million about $2 million uh which is above its high target of 30% ending ending projecting at 31.03%. With that, we can see we have some surplus in this fund that we have to address. And again, I'll be making a recommendation sometimes towards the end of April uh to move some of this money into the cash reserve fund. Our next fund is the communication fund, fund 110. Uh that fund is projected at a deficit um 4.22% 22% fund balance uh where the target low and high is between 10 and 30. Uh so to bring this fund at its low target, we would need about $40,000 of a transfer into this fund. Um so that's something again we'll be looking at once we close our books to know exactly how much money we need to move around. And >> if I can just quickly interrupt, this is the fund we were talking about earlier that is actually funded through a large part through those cable revenues. So that's that kind of helps us to see how the picture comes together. >> Yeah, it's kind of going down. Um as is projected uh again this has been a uh if I had to concur many cities are kind of seeing this type of revenue stream. And lastly we have our license center passport center which is our fund 265 for those who follow our financials. Uh and this fund balance is projected to be close to $900,000. uh which is about 34.17% of next year's uh budget expenditures. Uh again the target for this fund is to keep anywhere between 10 and 15 again 34 it's significantly over uh a variance of 636,000 for from its lowest point to 500,000 from the 50%. And those notes there at the bottom of this uh sheet is kind of explaining um what I just pointed out. Um with that I guess uh for this evening we don't have necessarily requesting you for any uh motions. Uh the only thing we're requesting is for you to kind of review it. Again it's a it's a great starting point for our budgeting process to kind of see where we at with these things. We'll be closing the books uh probably by the end of April and we'll be able to get kind of get an idea of the auditor's input if anything of this revenue have to be moved around. Um but uh I think the biggest need for us is to address this $1.6 million deficit projected deficit in the general fund and try to propose a um solution for making this fund whole at least to bring it back to that 35%. Um, obviously the cash reserve fund is projected at this point to be at 924,000 and depending how much we decide to move into this fund, we might be able to get to that point of 1.6, which at this point it's about $700,000 short uh to even if we we we would utilize all the fund balance in the cash reserve fund, we still did about 700,000. So, uh we'll play with the numbers. uh we'll get some actual numbers of the fund balances and we'll bring back to you uh a staff recommendation um towards the end of April. >> It's probably worth uh clarifying to members of the public when we talk about a deficit, we're talking about a deficit relative to a target fund balance level. Um the the fund itself uh double check here. Our expenditures and revenues uh our revenues were slightly above expenditures for the year. So it it technically wasn't a a a an annual deficit in operating >> and maybe I'll bring a little bit more context to this process of having a a low uh and at high target of a fine balance reserves. So these are reserves. So below our target reserves which are recommended by the state auditor. Um the reason for this high reserves somebody's like well why do you need uh you know $10 million uh in reserves in a general fund? Well, because uh most sources of revenues for the general fund come from property taxes and those revenues are remitted to the cities twice a year. So, we have to have sufficient funds to operate the city from January 1 of 2026 till June or July when we actually start getting money. So most cities operate under this process where you have a cash reserve balance in your main operating fund to meet obligations from the for the first six months of the year. So six months if you look at about $30 million of budget expenditures if you do that math it's about that 35% uh target fund balance or reserves we call it. So, we're not at a deficit. You know, we actually have $8.9 million projected in the fund uh in cash reserves. However, is recommended to have a little bit more. So, the deficit is between the fund fund balance targets, not between a city being at a deficit. So, thank you for clarifying that. >> And Mr. Mayor, if I could add that um as you mentioned that you know took in more revenue than we spended but we are comparing that percentage now to the 2026 budget which >> grows considerably. So even even if we save a lot of money invariably if we're close to that line of 35% we're most likely going to go below because the numbers have changed here a little bit. So it's a function of just basic math in the end here. So >> no I just want to make sure folks understand that we weren't operating in a deficit for 2025. Not not that sometimes funds don't do that, just depending on what's going on. Sometimes, for instance, on capital funds, it's not unusual to intentionally operate on a deficit because you're actually using money out of the fund that you've saved up for a particular capital expenditure. Um, and that's the purpose of that fund. So, it's okay to do that, especially on the capital side. But generally, as a practice on the operating side, we don't like to do deficit spending because we're trying to make sure that we balance our budget. And that is the legal requirement when we set a budget that we have to balance it. and certainly we work hard to make sure that that's what we achieve over the course of the year. >> So, >> uh, questions from the council. Council member Sher, >> um, again, um, for bringing up what that it's based on the 26 year and and because what that is is that's the money we need to spend in 26. So, so if it was based on 25, the budget uh, reserve would look good, but it's not covering what we need. So, so it it's it looks daunting, but but that's why we all, you know, make sure people understand it's for the the next year. And I'm very supportive that we're waiting for the adjustments to come through um that, you know, having the audit look at because that could, you know, be small, could be big, but it's good to have a better number. But I'm glad we do have this now because we have an idea about what we're walking into. So when you bring it back, we won't be surprised at some of these numbers. And this um the cash reserve fund is something that I had worked on years ago when I was on the finance commission because for exactly this having some money when we do have this problem and and and try to make sure that um if a fund one fund's over and another fund is under that we could move it in and not just rise the levy to cover the short in the one fund. So we could be able to then, you know, net it versus just dealing with ones that are over. So it's important people understand, you know, how that the mechanics of that works. So um and and then to the mayor's point about um we're not we're not worried that we're going to run out of money before we hit April to, you know, once we have the number, there is a cash reserve that so that the city will pay their bills and we will be fine. It's just making sure we have enough um reserve going into later in the year, too. So, I just wanted to emphasize that it's not a um panic situation. It's just one of these things that we want to make sure that we are somewhat conservative in making sure that we have cash set aside to pay bills as they come along. So, >> absolutely. So, again, if you look at this column here, um it's the budget of 2026. So that's that's the point you know so in those numbers every year if we compare ourselves to how we ended the year with the 2025 budget expansion we're probably looking a lot better um you know every year we have at least you know 7% or 6% I believe last year close to 8% uh levy increase so that's kind of the budget change um so that's absolutely correct >> so thank you >> um and again the other thing is to think about some of these funds even though we're breaking it out in this way is probably has been done for our internal tracking for those funds but ultimately you could probably combine all these funds into one fund and look at the fund balance as a whole. Um so the cash reserve fund it's it's a tool that we have but in a sense it's kind of it's kind of taking money from here moving in here but it's helpful to kind of see look at this maybe next time I come and I pro look maybe have another line item see as a whole how would that look like we don't if we look here we're probably at a break even point right now it looks like we'll be utilizing the entire cash reserve fund this year uh to bring that general fund uh by itself to that uh desired U target of 35% uh we can bring it higher if we wanted to but that would require a little bit more effort I guess. >> Well a lot of again that's based because the amount of budget that from 25 to 26 did go up >> and that's exactly what is triggering it. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Well >> I think we've got a couple more questions. >> I just wanted to comment. Thank you for this very clear and concise and succinct uh vision of what's going on here. It's really nice to see it all in one place and it's very easy to to see. Thank you. >> If you like to see this data in a different format, feel free to email me, meet with me. This was kind of how I vision it was. >> The history was nice to have so people could see history. >> Yes. >> Sure. Council member Grath, >> I just appreciated the uh the analysis of what the ranges are, why those ranges are the way they are because people don't understand why is this 10% and 15%, you know, in this range. So, that was helpful to have that explained on the general what it is. Just gives people understand other questions or comments from the council. The only other thing I was going to note is I think historically as as uh Mr. Magano noted uh other cities don't break out their parks and rec necessarily into separate funds and track them separately. And actually this isn't even as broken down as the city does it. We do have two funds for parks and recreation. We have the parks and recreation program fund and the parks and recreation maintenance fund. And so >> sheet has all the detail recommendation for city manager to to kind of >> uh but I do have the data if you're anybody >> no the reason I just wanted to point out I think there that that historically there's a reason for that which is because two things one is that parks and recreation is kind of unique across city services in that it does have that significant portion of its funding coming from the recreation fees and charges for services um something on the order of magnitude of around 50% of of the of the fee the revenue venue. Um, and so that's unique and I think that was part of why prior councils decided to do that that segregation of that fund. Uh, and then also there is a great deal of interest in the community in parks and recreation uh, services programs and infrastructure. Uh, and so I believe that may have been somewhat influential in past decisions to to segregate that fund as well to make sure that a lot of attention is paid to that. Uh but just for the benefit of the public, much of what the rest of the city does is covered by the general fund. The general fund uh covers us, the city council, and it it covers the administration department, finance department, uh it covers police, fire, um it covers a certain amount of public works, although uh a signate part of public works is covered by our utility fees for water and sewer uh which largely pay for the water we purchase wholesale from St. all in the sewer services that Metro Council provides to the city, but also uh some of the staffing costs related to maintaining those that infrastructure etc. So um you know something like once again about half of our overall budget is those utility things and the rest is police, fire, other public su public uh um um works functions and then local the the general government functions. So hopefully that helps people. And then we've got this separate fund for for parks and recreation uh just to kind of put the big picture together for folks that may have wondered why we we do it that way. I did have a question um on the license center fund. Uh significant surplus there. Um how does that compare to say typical past years maybe non-COVID past years? Um, and then also, you know, is that because we've seen a surge in revenue and will part of the recommendation potentially consider how those funds are used and how much is swept to the cash carry forward based on some of the other things we're doing related to the license. I think that's going to be part of our recommendation and discussion is to look at how much of the reserves from uh from license and especially looking forward to what's coming for this u department call it this way uh you know with a new building and uh what we want to do. So we're probably not going to be moving uh a lot of these funds uh and just kind of planning on that meeting and having some conversation and that's going to be part of that recommendation. So initially I had that analysis if you got to read the previous report that I had on Friday that was included analysis and I was noting that just a portion of this and why what the amount was uh now that things have changed but for this fund things haven't changed much it's mostly the general fund that things have changed uh so I think that recommendation is going to be within those lines probably the parks would be um might have a might be a mix between the high and the low but we'll have to talk about it But yes, that will be something we'll be considering when we make a recommendation for our transfer. >> Yeah. And in 2025, it was a very good productive year. One of our high higher years in a long long time. So, and I know January and February very busy. So, that trend is is pretty good right now. Uh on that, could could staff follow up maybe with the council with a just a summary of kind of comparing some of the typical past year non-COVID with what we saw in revenues this past year? I can make sure we have I have a slide kind of showing historical data at least for the last three or four years. Okay, I already have the data. I can put it in a second here if you want to, but I'll bring I'll be back. >> Fine. Follow up is fine. We want to make sure we get it right. >> At the end of April, I'll bring that data. It's already I already have three years of data in the budget process that I'm setting up. But uh I wasn't prepared for this this evening, but I will bring that up on the April meeting. >> Didn't didn't we purposely keep a larger amount of funds in that account because of this going? So decision comparing and we should take that into account as well. >> Yes. >> And just on on that note, I think you said three years uh historical information for the budget process. I think don't we look at a little more than three years back? It's like the forecasted year for next year, the current year's budget because we haven't finished the year >> and then maybe four prior years or something. >> Yeah, I have I have three years and I can add more. That's not a problem. >> No, I just would want to be make sure we're not changing from what we've already had. three years of actuals plus three years of budgeted. >> Okay. I'd like to show for a tool for us city staff internally to use to kind of set up the process if there's a need for the staff. Uh I'll be using the same data for council in the past if needed. Um >> yeah. Okay. That's I just wanted to be clear about that process. U you know some tools that we had. So that's >> perfect. All right. Well maybe that's unless there's anyone from the public who wishes to speak to this item. Um then we can segue to our second or part two of our uh budget discussion which is to look at the budget calendar for 2026 going for 27 budget. Okay. >> I got it for you. There you go. >> Have access to this. >> Yeah. That's kind of cool. >> I can see a mouse here. I wasn't sure who was city manager, right? >> All right. Uh again, this is uh also driven by internal processes. Uh and I think it's good practice to really uh set up a a budget process that's going to help guide the council, guide the staff in setting up the budget and the ley for next next fiscal year. Uh this this budget is calendar is intended again to set up the budget for the 2027 budget, not the 2026 budget. Uh even though so those are uh kind of a sometimes people are like, well, don't we already have the 2026 budget? But this is for the 2027 and this this is a year- round process for for city staff and city council. So it begins very early. Uh we finally feel like we're done with the 2026 budget, but we're already facing the 2027 budget because it takes time. it takes a lot of planning. So having a tool like this I think is important. Um in the first part of uh of this uh budget calendar we can note that there are uh significant dates that are uh mostly council dates where is expected to have council participate. Some of the dates in red here are uh dates that where we'll be adopting various resolutions to pass or to adopt the budget and the levy. Uh the the first step would be to set up a preliminary tax levy which happens has to happen no later than September 30th. Uh so for us it's going to be on September 28th. Uh but prior to that you can see there's there's a process that begins today. We had the discussion on preliminary cash reserve levels. I already had that in green. So check that off the books. Um and we're going to be bringing back uh again a request for for kind of moving those funds around. uh but then we're going to be conducting uh uh department and budget levy drivers and uh with council priorities in April uh we can see some important uh uh usually in in August we have the the city manager recommended budget so all those meetings are are happening with the council participation so it's a tool that we have in place to help us drive the budget process and again the dates in red are dates where we're going to be on approving the preliminary levy and then the budget hearing uh must be after November 24th per Minnesota statute. Uh we set it up for November 30th. Uh and typically the budget hearing and the adoption of the final levy are two different dates here. Some cities do have those on the same date. I think it's great to have this separate because we, you know, here's here's the the um the residents input will give us a chance to maybe make some changes if we want to. Um but and again, the adoption of the final budget uh it's on is set up for December 7th, which that also has to happen no later on December 30th. Um so, uh again, that's the first first part where the city council is heavily involved in this budget process. So, uh, it's important that you kind of, uh, put those on your calendar and, uh, uh, try your best to be part of, uh, of that process. We really are looking, uh, for a lot of you guys. >> Yeah, if if I could just jump in, Mr. Mayor. Um what you see there is pretty reflective what we've done in the past as far as the process of the date's changed a little bit. But the new thing is the uh April 20th meeting where we're going to come together uh as staff to talk about some general budget drivers that we're seeing based on decisions made in the 26 budget and what that means for the 27 budget and some um some um um um projections on what we u would think some other cost drivers might be kind of uh in the budget process. We also do want to talk a little bit about strategic plan any strategic plan priorities. I know it's going to be a challenge given the pressure we are facing on increasing levies to do something new. But, you know, this is an opportunity for us to talk through some of those strategic plan priorities if there's something that we think we can do uh should should be doing uh whether that's got a cost or not and we want to kind of try to identify those cuz this is how we would build it into the budget process and we want to do it earlier uh on in the process. Right now, we have it scheduled for April 20th, which is a regularly scheduled meeting. We can always do that as a special meeting. We would like to have all department heads participate and the council um um in a work session maybe in a much more informal way. So u whether it's in this room um uh or offsite um is is for for you all to to discuss here. Um but we do want to kind of just have the conversation. It's really no hard and fast decisions can be made at that point. is just more of a conversation and get some some priorities from you and give give you some understanding of kind of what we're looking at kind of a sneak peak of some of the things that might be popping up as the budget process as you know I don't formally present it back to you till August so there's some time in between there but it's really good to try to do that early on so I just wanted to call that out and you may want to come back and chat about that a little bit more >> okay and and I think to that point it may make sense to to do a sort of a two-phase approach there especially if we want to do more informal off-site is maybe still reserve the 20th for some kind of report out of that process if that makes sense so that we're both you know have it because I could see where we might might benefit from some of the types of meetings that we had in our strategic planning process where we had department heads we had uh you know Pat's leadership team as well as the council um you know having much more informal conversations obviously it's still a public meeting open to the public it's posted and notified just might might not necessarily be on camera might not necessarily be here um but then, you know, still have some kind of and maybe the 20th isn't the exact right date for it depending on the timing of of the other discussion, but to have that sort of more formalized report out uh at a council meeting so that it's in the regular format. That's my thought about looking at informal versus formal. Um, I would actually think that it might make sense if we do the informal off-site sort of, you know, more more casual thing that we allow a fair amount of time for it, too. I mean, I might might suggest, you know, it could be like some of our strategic planning sessions were maybe 3 4 hours long. We just throwing it out there and certainly that's something the council can can feed back on. And then I would also say that that would probably be something we'd want to I don't know like what the participation might be from the finance commission members, but maybe the finance commission members may want to be invited to be there for sure to to at least witness the process on that informal discussion and the council could have conversations if we if we really want them part of the conversation as well. So just throwing out some thoughts there. I I hope I don't know if we interrupted the flow. >> No, I I did want to >> presentation or not, but this is starting to get into some of the feedback part of it as well. So, I'll try to throttle back a little bit. >> Thank you uh Sturgeon for bringing that up. Um definitely that's a new item that hasn't been done. I I think it's great to have uh dedicated time to really come together and discuss about uh some of the priorities and um you know, strategic initiatives that we want to implement in the budget process. So, I think that meeting is going to be very beneficial for us. I would just say if we're going to do that though, that's like a month away. So, we need to get it on the calendar ASAP so that people can make arrangements with day jobs and other things like that so we can accommodate that. My suggestion and you know certainly you could uh have a special meeting, but I think we should dedicate that meeting on the April 20th. uh to the mayor's point, then we can look to uh report back at a future council meeting, whether that's the 27th or the first meeting in May, kind of what was discussed and obviously we'll have minutes of of that particular meeting. But um at the same time, you know, we want more consolidated report on that. Since it's already on your calendar and assuming that you all were able to make it, uh I think to keep it simple, maybe just keep it on the 20th. >> I would be okay with keeping on the 20th. I mean, I would be also okay since this is going to be a long meeting. I do think it should be a longer meeting. um moving the time up as well. You know, we strategic ones I think earlier as well. >> Get like a five o'clock start time or something >> or even earlier. I mean just thinking like the quality of discussion kind of will go be going downhill at like 8 9:00 >> and so doing it earlier I think when we're fresh, staff is fresh um may make sense. So >> look at that. >> Yeah, I'm not proposing >> right and we certainly have some time between now and then to finalize a start time. >> Other thoughts from council members just on that that notion and the the sort of the pseudo plan we've started to come up with. >> Oh, we're gonna discuss it now. >> We are diving right in. >> All right. Well, I I like the idea of the um um meeting on the 20th since it's on our calendar with getting um because I I felt that when we did the strategic plan, having that format was very productive and it gave the department heads opportunity um to speak and for us to hear directly from them. So I think it's a great idea to do it and then um then report back after that. I think it's is a good idea. >> Thoughts couns um again I note on the future meeting the ethics meeting on April 8th is not listed. So just keeping all of the things we have in April on the agenda and in our mind's eye. >> Right. >> Maybe all the worry is not to add another meeting. >> Correct. >> Other thoughts from council members staff. Okay. So, we'll plan on the 20th. We'll get back to you on the start time. >> Anything else on the schedule that you have questions about or suggestions related to >> I was going to add a couple more things if I may. Uh >> we're not the schedule is not only focusing on the levy and the budget, but also on the utility rates, uh the cap. So there's different dates here that kind of we're going to have discussion about other items that kind of part of the budget process but not you know typically relating to a levy necessarily. U so the water utility rates will be also reviewed in November. U and then we're going to be getting the finance commission involved as well. Um prior to to September 21st will probably be our August 26th meeting where we're going to do the CIP review. August 26 meeting, we're going to be doing the city manager budget and levy review um with with the finance commission and then also September 15th, we're going to have the recommendation of the budget and levy with the finance commission prior to bringing it for adoption on September 21st with the city council. Um and then September 21st uh that's the CABM budget levy final recommendation u prior to about the same time. So um It's gonna um >> so I note on the on the in the packet information the second finance commission meeting in September that you've got listed as the 21st is actually the 15th on that list. So did staff look at making an adjustment there or having two meetings in September for the finance? >> No, I think it was just one. So they get it in end of August I present to them and then they come back and I think we had a >> whichever date is the date is the one date for >> it's the 15th, right? It has to be the >> I think it's the 15th. Okay. >> And then they'll come on the 21st to the council meeting to to talk about it. That's a to come to you both entities at the same meeting. Now then the 28th is when you make the final decision. >> Attention was on this spread. I think I did it on the packet but not here. So I apologize for that. >> That's all right. I just that clarification helps me understand it. Yeah. >> From a from a front perspective, we want to commission first and then something like that. Okay. >> So, the commission is going to be busy on the 26th of August. >> Yeah. Although, they'll we'll have looked at the CIP once already in July. So, >> so I think we're just asking for you to adopt this budget calendar as as presented. >> I move to adopt as presented. >> Maybe before we get to a motion, I just want to do do a quick double check since I missed it the last on one of the previous items. Is there anyone from the public who wishes to comment on the proposed budget schedule for 202? >> Yeah, I I I promise at the beginning of every meeting that speak on every item, so to make sure I don't uh don't reig on my promise. All right, with that, uh I think we had a motion from council member GR second >> and a second from council member Stron to adopt the budget calendar as uh presented here. I don't think we made any changes to it. other than the report out on the 27th, which I mean that's I think that's >> still on the calendar. >> Okay. >> All right. With that, we've got that motion. Uh Council Member Graph is the maker of the motion. >> No. No. >> All right. Council member Strong. Seconder. Other discussion on the motion. All right. Hearing none. All those in favor of adopting that schedule signify by saying I. I opposed. That passes unanimously. That schedule is approved. Uh that brings us then uh thank you uh to staff and everyone on our business items this evening. Uh we do have a couple of or three sets of meeting minutes uh to consider this evening and council has had a chance to receive those uh and provide feedback to staff. Uh and this would be the opportunity if there are any further changes or corrections that need to be made uh we can bring those forward. Otherwise, a motion to approve uh one or multiple ones of those would be appropriate depending on council's desire to develop. We need some abstain action >> because that wasn't Yeah. >> March 23rd. >> Got it. Okay. You want to take the 23rd minutes as a motion? >> I can move the approval of those. >> Second. >> Council graph. Second by council member Bower uh to approve the minutes of the 23rd both the city council and EDA. I'm assuming there were no other changes or corrections then were brought forward. All right. Uh hearing none then all uh discussion on the motion hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I opposed. Uh extensions. >> All right. Uh that's four to zero. Uh with uh shorter abstaining those minutes pass. All right. Then we have the minutes of our March 2nd council meeting. I'd move to >> second. >> Second by uh Councilman Bower. Discussion on that motion or additional changes or corrections. >> All right. Uh hearing none. The only thing I will just note is that it did seem like these this last few sets of minutes were a little more detailed than we have been getting from our our service. Uh and I think that was that was appreciated although it took longer than stages on the one of them. But uh but they were struggled through fewer >> corrections to >> corrections. We we won't we won't say if there was any correlation as to the timing of the review, the length of the minutes and >> moving on. We have a motion before us to approve minutes of the our March 3rd council meeting as presented. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> Opposed. That passes unanimously. Those minutes are approved. Uh that then brings us to uh our consent agendum. We still have the five items uh on that and I'll turn it over to Mr. treasure to give us a description of those items. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Item 10 A approves payments in the amount of $614,465.84. Item 10B approves a temporary gambling permit for Friends of Roseville Parks for bingo at the Cedar Home Community Building on April 18th and November 7th and a temporary gambling permit to Camp Odan for a raffle at Midland Hills Country Club on June 1st, 2026. Agenda item 10 C approves the purchase of nine encrypted radios for the police department and a replacement brush chipper for public works. Item 10D approves applying for a pathways to policing grant with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. The application is requesting for three cost reimbursement grants to support schooling costs for three police officer candidates for a total of $60,000 or $20,000 each. The city has received this grant in the past and has been very successful in filling our vacancies. Then finally, item 10E approves an amendmented contract with with the Roseville area schools regarding school resource officers. This amendment is being made to comply with the recently adopted police officer standard training or postboard model U regarding data practices. And that is the consent agenda. >> Thank you, Mr. Ch. Second. >> We have a motion from Council Member Strong, second from Council Member Schroer, uh quicker than I could write them down. Uh discussion on the motion. Um I did want to just note on the uh the uh school leaison officer uh contract that is something that had a lot of intense discussion during uh the the 2020 2021 time frame after the George Floyd shooting. Um and I think the conclusion at that time while it it it you know certainly uh school resources officers can be controversial especially are in other parts of the country. I think the the relationship we've had with the Roseville schools and the approach that our officers take um is that is different than you know our officers are not involved in school disciplinary matters. Our officers are often times not even in uniform necessarily but in a softer yellow shirt and things like that. And so I think it's a much more proactive and and interactive relationship with the students. So I just wanted to note that for folks who may not be familiar with that uh that program and how it has worked in Roseville. Uh so uh thanks for the indulgent indulgence to make that point. Couns >> just to add to that I happen to talk with our SRO who's at Rams the middle school whose wife is a special ed teacher during the day. Um quite a different perspective on doing the work and um they can only be in that school for a year or two. Um and he just really told me about how much he's appreciated the experience. So, I think we are, yes, they can be a rough situation and um going in I think I was much more skeptical, but I it was really nice to have that perspective. >> Once again, we're doing things differently in Roseville. Um and the only other thing I would note just in that regard is it's a great path to leadership in the police department in Roseville because I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, I think our chief was a former school resource officer and I think many of our uh commanders uh and lieutenants have also had that role. So, uh that if it means anything, uh I think that's that tells how it rounds out the individuals. Uh with that, um uh we have the motion before us to approve the consent items. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> Opposed. Passes unanimously. And then finally, future agenda review. Mr. Treasure. >> Uh yes, our next meeting is next Monday. We have a couple items regarding the state patrol headquarters project. Um a comprehensive plan amendment and resoning and an encroachment agreement. uh and also a public improvement contract uh with them as well. And we have a bunch of uh hotel license renewals. We're just wrapping up the final conversations about a couple. But uh for the most part, everything is going well. A lot of them will be on the consent agenda, if not all of them. Uh for that meeting on April 6, we'll uh have a little bit more of a workshop like tonight. Uh the climate equity action plan update. Uh there is a land use um request to cancel the PUD at Centerpoint to allow for a different use, but I I off the top of my head I'm not recalling the history, but we had modified that and and now there's some uses that um uh would be different from what the PUB uh would be. I think it would be like a restaurant and a daycare is my understanding. So anyway, we'll bring that forward for discussion. There's a minor plat on 2816 uh Oxford Street and then we have a short-term rental renewal for 419th Judith. On April 13th, we'll have a special EDA meeting. We do have development agreement with High Development and U Ramsey County for that project for the environmental response fund. We originally maybe targeted that here in it earlier March. Uh we had to push that off a little bit. So, wanted to do that. Um don't have anything necessarily scheduled for the 13th. uh on April 20th, as you can see, is what we just talked about. So, uh we'll I'll plan that meeting exclusively for that item. And that's what I have for our future agenda. And as was noted by Council Member Strong, the um commission member training and ethics training and chair and vice chair training all happen on April 8th. >> So, and the evening begins, I believe I believe it begins at 5:30 with the the the meal and then >> Yeah. Yeah. 6 o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, more >> we'll get the details out on that one. >> Uh and I did just want to note so on the PUD cancellation, is that an action item for the sixth? >> I believe so. >> Okay. And so that's a workshop session and I wonder if we're sort of disobeying the spirit of the workshop, but I also know that sometimes those land use things have have time constraints. And so I'm wondering since we don't seem to have anything on the 13th for the council meeting if there's some some thought to swapping either. >> I think we can certainly look at that. I'll check >> stick to workshop on the 6th and move business to the 13th or if there's timesensitive business on the 6th, move the workshop to the 13th. We'll take a look at that. >> All right. Uh anything from council members as far as uh council member initiated items, reports, announcements, um or anything like that, communications? Council member uh Schroeder. >> Uh yes. Um Council Member Bower and I were down at the um Capitol and down with the League of Minnesota Cities organization. um last week and we met with our representative and ST senator and good conversations. We presented our um legislative priorities, went over it line by line to continually um push to support the ideas that uh we want here in Roseville. And then I also have the um last year there was the missing middle bill that um for housing that we had written a letter that we were against and uh now it's coming back but now they're calling it starter home act and they have actually worked more with the league to um make it more palatable to cities. There's still work to be done, but there looks like they're making some movement. And um one of the things I I wanted to, you know, there's many things, but the one thing I did want to print uh point out was part of this is they said they would cities would receive credit for housing policies and zoning changes already adopted. And I think that was one of the things we kept seeing here at Roseville that we have done so much in this area that we didn't want to have more put upon us. And so they to be able to have them recognize we've already done a lot of the work. So therefore um that that way it wouldn't be what we did and more. What we would do is we'd get credit for what we we have already done. So that's something that was important. And there's a there's a number of areas there. There's still it's a work in process, but the one thing was good at least it's starting to move towards uh making it more palatable for cities. Um the the league said they're still not happy with it, but um they're still having conversations. So at least there seems to be some movement and and the rest of the stuff went uh very well. >> Just confirming you said representative and Senator was that Gotfrieded and and Marty then okay. >> Yep. Not representing all of them. >> We have another representative and another representatives. >> Your representative. Okay. We have two two in Roseville. One was sick. Got it. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, yep. >> One was sick and or her child was sick so she could make it. But so yeah. So maybe to reach out to >> sick oneyear-old >> exactly it. And uh >> we'll note that we also had conversations at the Ramsey County League of Local Governments that took place too. So Oh, good. This was a a second, if you will. >> Yeah, this is really the second goound. We continued to uh remind them of what we told them. >> There we go. Yes, that's a good way to tell say something three times before. >> We're working on that definitely. >> All right. Um other reports or announcements from council members. Um, I did want to note that, um, just in specific to that, we had our last, uh, mayor and city administrator meeting earlier in the month. Um, and this topic did come up, that starter home act. Um, and there was some some concern and angst on the part of other cities who maybe haven't done as much as Roseville. Um, and you know, one of the things I've noted in sort of their summary of the act and the information that's been provided here, it still talks about cities uh dedicating a certain percentage of their single family to higher density types. And I'm just wondering, you know, to the point of us getting credit, a lot of the things that we've done are by having a certain percentage of our housing zoning as higher density types and not single family. And so I think that's something that needs to be worked out in the legislation. So I wanted to make that point. Um and then there and then the other thing is is that I don't think we should uh um uh fool ourselves that we're done or have done everything we need to do in terms of uh affordability of housing in Roseville. And I think we all know that we need to continue those efforts. And so despite having done a lot of things that would get credit in this legislation, that doesn't mean that we're we're not talking about affordability and how we can impact that as we go forward. So I just wanted to make those couple of points in that regard. Um other communications reports announcements. >> I just follow up on that because my concern with that that they have into that or some way or other is that other metro cities need to bear part of this too. Roseville has been in my opinion pretty proactive. Not that we're done mayor. I agree with you on that. But some cities have been very hesitant to have any affordable housing and I think they need to pull their own weight. So that's my for sure. I think that's why they want to give that's I think those of us who have they want to make sure we get credit and I think that's exactly it because what they were doing is >> you know those that weren't doing much they wanted to penalize all cities >> and so that that didn't seem >> needs to be balanced out >> right >> probably ventured too far away from updates and announcements and communications but anyway uh more to come on that later uh as we follow on track but I did want to provide some of that feedback as council member Croft did Um, with that then the only other thing I see on our agenda this evening is a motion to adjurnn. >> Second move by council member Straw, seconded by council member Grath. Um, any no discussion on a motion to adjurnn. I was almost going to ask for it. Uh, with that all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> That passes unanimously at 8:07 p.m. We are journ.