Here is the townhall transcript with speaker names and timestamps added based on the context provided. [00:00:00] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Since we have a full compliment, I will call this meeting to order. The clerk will please call the roll. [00:00:05] **Clerk:** Council members: Jones? [00:00:06] **Councilmember Jones:** Here. [00:00:07] **Clerk:** Angstran? [00:00:07] **Councilmember Angstran:** Here. [00:00:08] **Clerk:** Edberg? [00:00:08] **Councilmember Edberg:** Here. [00:00:09] **Clerk:** Walsh? [00:00:09] **Councilmember Walsh:** Here. [00:00:10] **Clerk:** And Bean? [00:00:11] **Councilmember Bean:** Here. [00:00:12] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Next is approval of the minutes of the February 23rd, 2021 meeting. Any uh corrections to the minutes? [00:00:20] **Councilmember Bean:** Bean will move to approve. [00:00:21] **Councilmember:** Second. [00:00:22] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I have a motion and a second. The clerk will call the roll. [00:00:25] **Clerk:** Council members: Edberg? [00:00:26] **Councilmember Edberg:** Aye. [00:00:27] **Clerk:** Bean? [00:00:27] **Councilmember Bean:** Aye. [00:00:28] **Clerk:** Walsh? [00:00:28] **Councilmember Walsh:** Aye. [00:00:29] **Clerk:** Jones? [00:00:30] **Councilmember Jones:** Aye. [00:00:31] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Moving on to approval of the agenda. Any additions or a deletions to the agenda? If not, do I have a motion to approve? [00:00:38] **Councilmember Jones:** Move to approve, Madam Mayor. Jones. [00:00:40] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. [00:00:41] **Councilmember Walsh:** Walsh seconds. [00:00:42] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Perfect. Clerk will call the roll. [00:00:44] **Clerk:** Council members: Angstran? [00:00:45] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [00:00:46] **Clerk:** Jones? [00:00:47] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [00:00:48] **Clerk:** Walsh? [00:00:48] **Councilmember Walsh:** I. [00:00:49] **Clerk:** Bean? [00:00:49] **Councilmember Bean:** I. [00:00:50] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Moving on to visit presentations. It's my distinct pleasure to to introduce Chief Julie Swanson, our Police Chief, who is going to update us on the Police Department. Chief Swanson? [00:01:03] **Chief Julie Swanson:** I am... I'm just going to get my PowerPoint going here only because it's uh keeps me on track. So Madam Mayor, thank you for having me, and members of the Council. It's been about a year since we were last here and it's been a very stressful year with COVID and the civil unrest, and then now we're into a new stress of the uncertainty of the next um few months, but we are certainly ready for that. So I just have a couple of different topics to cover today, but certainly if there's additional questions or comments, I'm fine if you stop me on a slide that I'm on if it makes more sense, otherwise certainly ask away when I'm done with it. So um, like I said, the year's been challenging for us because we have uh not been able to do all of our community events. You know, in a typical year we do 20 to 30 very significant community events and unfortunately we weren't able to do that. And I think for us that that's a big part of what we got into law enforcement for is to work with our community. So to not have them is disappointing and you know when you have all this other stress challenging us, this doesn't help it. So hopefully in the um next few months things will sort of get back to normal. It feels like it's getting back to normal, but I'm not so sure how fast we'll be able to do these events. But certainly by the end of summer I hope that we can be out doing them and I... we look forward to summer because I think it's going to be a lot busier and more people that we're able to connect with over the summer. But again, like I said, it's been disappointing to not have that. So the one question that often comes up is, you know, what are like the calls for service like particularly in this past year and then just in general um given you know you keep hearing that there's an increase in police calls or that there's an increase in severity of crime. And ironically, when I pulled the stats for 2020, our calls for service have gone down a little bit. Um well, actually by a couple of thousand in the last year, but I can attribute that to a couple of different things. First, our businesses were shut down for quite a while and our bars and restaurants are at a limited capacity, so that probably accounted for a chunk of calls. And then I also think with people at home in the spring or not working, you know, they're not driving as much, so less accidents, less traffic um was another probably big factor. And um and again when they were home things were shut down so they uh were not able to go places. So I I just think that's probably what it is attributed to and I see that we are picking up calls as as the year already gets into spring with this early spring. So um, like I said, it's just there's a large large part is due to less opportunity for the traffic stops things like that. But in 2020 we did have roughly 4,600 traffic stops and there were roughly 1,800 citations issued and there were 2,800 warnings for various by um traffic violations. And a good portion of our traffic tickets are written on state administrative tickets so um, you know, a lot of times they don't go on a record, they're less than half the cost of a full ticket. So if somebody has a good you know uh a good record or um it's just a rare event for them, you know, a lot of times they will be released with just a warning or with that administrative citation. So um some of the calls that uh I know of our interest to the council is um the domestic calls. We in 2020 had 175 domestic calls and that's just slightly down from 2019 like it's down maybe 10 calls. And the domestic calls are tricky because it doesn't necessarily mean that there was an arrest made, it just means that we categorized it or the dispatcher categorized it as a domestic and typically that's a disagreement within a home or between two people with a significant relationship. And I put the disorderly and disturbance calls on this slide because they typically fall within one of those two categories. If they're um if they get called in as a domestic but it doesn't necessarily meet the threshold of a domestic, then it gets titled a disturbance or a disorderly call and so that may or may not be domestic related and that um number is actually within five um I think we had 405 disorderlies in 2019. But again they can be domestics, disorderly's can be domestics, they might be a bar issue, it might be even just um two people yelling at each other on the street things like that. So they're not all um the domestic related, but we still stay very committed to pursuing you know domestic charges when warranted. And our City Prosecutor and the County Attorney's office are still very committed to getting those charged and getting convictions on people's records. And if you recall from previous presentations by John Choi's office and Rob Olson's office, the purpose for that is to make sure that we get convictions on the offender's record so that when there's a future domestic, or if there's a future domestic whether it be with that partner or another partner, we have the ability to charge them at a higher level. So I'm just hoping to to continue that trend so that um we do justice for our victims in these cases and um again like I said, we want to ensure that even if it's a future victim that was not in this previous call, we want to make sure that there's some leverage to make sure that they're charged. The big one that most are asking about are the thefts from auto. We had 200 theft from autos in 2020 and there were about 164 in 2019. But the biggest biggest increase is the catalytic converters and so we had 23 of them in 2020 and then and there were only five in 2019, but already in this year there's... we've had 29 in the first um two months. The good news is is last night the night shift arrested three people on uh um on the north end of town coming out of a parking lot and they were in possession of saws and burglary tools and a catalytic converter. So they were arrested um there's just not one person doing this crime unfortunately. So there have been a lot of arrests. It's not unique to White Bear as you've read in the paper, you know, it's all throughout the metro area and there's been a lot of arrests. It's just not solving the problem. You know, there was a big decrease when it was 20 below zero that when the weather got nicer we started seeing them again. There's um as we talked about in a previous council work session, there's some legislation to make that um you know illegal for somebody to purchase them and let's just hope it happens. I I really hope that that happens because that will reduce the number of those thefts. Um and then go back to the the thefts. I thought I had it on the slide, but the auto thefts remains pretty consistent and I know there's been a lot of fear and just media attention to the carjackings that have taken place. We have not seen that in White Bear, knock on wood. We certainly have our share of auto thefts and it's typically in the winter when there are cars running and warming up. Unfortunately we had a business broken into over the weekend that had five of their vehicles stolen, five of their work vehicles. We we've recovered at least one of them. I'm not sure if another city has recovered more, but again that one is just it's an unfortunate crime and the carjackings I hope never makes it to White Bear. Uh you know, we they're just dangerous, a lot of them were committed by youth and it's just it's kind of a scary and sad situation. So hopefully we can remain where we're at with that. We have put given a lot of attention to the person in crisis calls or mental health calls. They've remained very consistent in the last two years. I was actually kind of surprised because I would have thought with the stress of 2020 that that would have gone up. Again it's another call that can occasionally be coded improperly either at the dispatch end or we might just title it an assist depending on what the call was. You know these calls are so fluid, they might start as a person in crisis but turn out to be just something that we need to assist somebody with. Maybe they're just they've hit a bump in the road for that day and it's not an ongoing issue but um as you can see from the slide, 2018 we had 54 incidents and then in 2019 we had roughly 140 and then we had 150 in 2020. And the good news is is in 2020 and this year we've partnered with Northeast Youth and Family Services to employ the mental health caseworker and we have a new caseworker that started a few months ago and she's been a great resource. She's a resource for the subject and their family and a lot of times they are able to obtain information that we are not able to obtain and we don't necessarily need to know that information, we just don't have access to it. We don't necessarily want the person who needs the help to feel like we are intruding. So having that goal between with the caseworker is very very helpful. We have a couple of people that we deal with on a regular basis and you've probably seen articles in the White Bear Press or letters to editor over the last few years about certain people and you know their families have tried to help them, their case workers try to help them and we go on call after call for them and there's just there's not enough resources out there or help. And we're very fortunate because the City Prosecutor's office has come up with some very innovative approaches where if somebody does end up in jail, but yet they're a frequent person that we deal with, they might really lobby the judge for a civil commitment or for a civil evaluation of their mental health. And it's all done because we we don't want there to be an injury or we don't want to hurt them and we don't want their families hurt. And we involve the families with that. There's a lot of times um I've called parents before, I know the captains have dealt with family members just so that we can try to do what we can to get them help because once they hit adulthood it's a little bit harder to sometimes get them to help if they don't want that. So it's been a very successful program to date and we still the partnership is still with the other police departments um within the county. Maplewood has their own program but the rest of us partner with Northeast Youth and Family Service and share that mental health mental health caseworker. And one thing we've you know we knew it but we um this partnership reinforces it is that we're not the only people who sometimes deal with one individual. So having that shared resource is great because they don't if they move or they have um a crisis in another city, there's not that communication breakdown so that we can get them the appropriate help. And then um overdoses has been very significant this year. The department has seen an increase in the overdoses and overdose deaths since 2020. We started logging and mapping them beginning in May on an overdose map which is a statewide tool that we can use. But in 2020 we had 11 overdose deaths and 36 incidents where Narcan was administered. And prior to 2020 the officers did not carry Narcan so it's that's been very very effective for us to have that tool and it's saved a lot of lives. We have one particular residence where we've had actually two overdose deaths. It's not a it's not a family, it's a individual owns the house has people stay with them and we have used Narcan more than once at that residence and we've had two overdose deaths in the last six months. But uh the City Prosecutor has charged that resident with operating a disorderly house so that's been helpful as well because it's you know we can't keep having that happen but if somebody owns a home sometimes it's a challenge for us to to uh take action against them. And then training. You know you've read a lot in the paper, you've heard a lot especially with the trial going on about your police officer training and I'm proud of the training that we have. We've always done a good job with training and we continue to evaluate it um so we continue to review all of the requirements by the Post Board. When we've been audited, we get audited every four years by the Post Board and have to submit our training records and we have always succeeded in passing that audit. And the Post Board remains very active with our policies and our training by frequently requesting copies of our policy or providing us with training that needs to take place. All training that we have that is Post eligible, we submit the training plan and the attendance sheet to the Post Board so we have always been very compliant with those needs. We train several times a year um even through COVID, I mean it's been a challenge because a lot of our training like fire is hands on and so we have to um be creative with that. But we train several times a year with an emphasis on de-escalation strategies and mental health awareness, you know underscoring all training topics that we have. And officers are mandated to train annually in use of force and then once every five years in emergency vehicle operations and pursuit driving, although as you may or may not know, we do have a relatively restrictive pursuit policy, however you still have to go to pursuit driving um and it's the officer's discretion. They take 48 hours of credits every three years for their license renewal and so they have some discretion about which additional law enforcement courses they can go to, but they do have to obviously participate in the mandated training. And you know I just did the renewal for those whose license is due this year, it mean it it varies every year whose is due and the majority of officers have over 120 hours in that three year period. So we our officers stay very on top of training and the topics related to their their career path. Oh so and then in 2018 along the lines of training the Post Board required that the Chief Law Enforcement Officer has to provide in-service training in the following three areas. So um it's crisis intervention and mental health crisis, conflict management and mediation and then recognizing and valuing community diversity in cultural um differences to include implicit bias. And I don't know if you remember, but several of our members of the department participated in a refugee and asylee education seminar that was put on by the Victims of Torture and the Basilica and that was very very helpful for us to have some understanding of what immigrants go through and what asylees and refugees go through and what services they're provided because it's not as much as you'd think. But just raising awareness by having different types of training such as that and our training um has to consist of a combination of 16 um credits within the three a year cycle of those three topics that I just talked about. So you get those every three years or and we we're working to do them more frequently just so that we stay on top of that. And then lastly, the White Bear Lake Police Department's established a policy review committee. So we have an internal policy review committee and the committee is designed to facilitate the communication and cooperation and coordination between White Bear Lake Police and then the community that we serve. Once the policies have been reviewed internally by the committee, they'll be presented to a community policy review committee and through these review processes we hope to collaborate on issues of importance to law enforcement and to the community in a timely and focused manner and with some flexibility. And we'll present that to the community policy review committee which has yet to be step... the members have yet to be established. But they will be established with input from the Mayor and Ms. Heinecker. The reason that we haven't established them yet is I don't want there to be frustration because we have a lot of policies and it takes a lot of time to review them and so we're almost there but I didn't want to establish that committee and then have them wonder what in the world we've been doing for the last six eight months. So um once we get them completed internally then we will work externally to make sure. And the the you know there's a lot of reasons for it but for me the biggest one is we write you know we start our job that's the first thing they do with our officers when they're in training is tell them to review the policies and they're you know they're embedded in everything that we do but they make sense to us and I don't know that they always make sense to the outside population. So having that external review is very helpful to understand what we're mandated by the state and you know what flexibility we have and what we really do allow. I think that there's a lot of people that just have a misconception about what um our training is or maybe not a misconception but a misunderstanding or we just don't communicate it well enough so um that's the idea behind that process. I believe that's my life... that's not my last slide. The majority like I said include state language and um as I said with the chase policy, ours is a little bit more restrictive than maybe a neighboring agency um and it's just it's what our comfort level is. You know we we evaluate the the community that we live in and we have a very quaint downtown. We don't have highways and freeways. We have a lot of side streets. Our streets um some of them are one ways, a lot of them are 30 miles an hour and it's just not feasible to chase nor is it necessarily worth the risk. And so um our policy might be very different of Ramsey County's or Maplewood's. And so even though these policies are mandated, we are allowed to make them more restrictive just as it is with the use of force. You know you know you've seen um different people say that they don't you know they want us to quit using chokeholds. Well we didn't allow them to start with, but we also didn't indicate that in our policy. So it's just helpful to have this time to reflect on what we have in place. So with that I'm happy to take any questions. [00:18:24] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well thank you very much. I mean I I I'm not sure if the council has any questions or not but this is this is worthwhile because people need the public needs to know what our department does. Which, and I think that you all do it very well and I think it's important because people want to just "oh oh we have to change the police department" you know that whole thing from last you know and it's like no, you need to know what we do and so thank you for bringing this forward. So Council, does anybody have any uh questions, comments for the Chief? Councilmember Walsh. [00:19:00] **Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you Madam Mayor. Um on the on the mental health support person, we share them with a number of other suburbs. What what percentage do we get? That's my first question. A day a week or what are we getting out of that person? [00:19:15] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Mayor and members of the council, the it's um not a real strict uh guideline. We are one... us and Roseville and Mounds View are the larger contributors to this and so we you know when we started it they said an average caseload for a mental health caseworker was 25 um cases. And so they said like White Bear can have five, Roseville can have five, Mounds View can have five and then you know New Brighton and North St. Paul and Saint Anthony would split the other 10 or you know like that. We've never been turned away and we've been able to give every case we've ever needed to and have it be the center focus for her. So um as time goes on maybe that'll have to be more restrictive but we've never been turned away on a case. And on on an average we do have about five ongoing cases at any time. You know they might be you know like one from last summer we had or two summers ago we had an elderly male who was um confused. He would walk up to City Hall, he'd come to the police department because I think his family took his keys away and uh they told him the cops had his keys and so he would come here then he would walk home or I we would drive him home. I've driven him home a few times and it just you know it came to be the question does he need some inside services at home or is he okay to even be at home? So even cases like that. And so that particular case only took her maybe two phone calls or three phone calls but then we have somebody that when it's risen to the level of the city prosecutor trying to get a civil commitment, those calls take a lot more. So it's very fluid and ongoing but we've never been turned away. [00:20:53] **Councilmember Walsh:** So she doesn't like come to White Bear for a day a week or anything? She's just sort of home based and then we refer cases to her sort of after the fact? So she's not like on the scene or anything? I guess I had my head that she's like on the scene. [00:21:05] **Chief Julie Swanson:** She's just managing cases. We could certainly use her on scene if need be um but because it was a shared resource, we never wanted her to be at any one police or housed at any one police department because then it would feel like it's unfair. And also we didn't want her necessarily affiliated with the police department. We want her to be affiliated with Northeast Youth and Family Services because it just has a better tone to it I think and it feels you know less like they're in trouble and more like a resource. So what happens is we have uh a cat... one of the captains and one of our officers, Officer Allen, actually has her degree in uh her master's degree in counseling and so she is... she'll work with the captain and refer these cases to the caseworker and provide the appropriate police reports or whatever can be provided to her. And again she'll come here if need be. COVID hasn't really allowed that but certainly she would come here more often when somebody's in crisis and we need an on-scene thing. We use Ramsey County Crisis. [00:22:04] **Councilmember Walsh:** Is this my last question. Is this a... you kind of answered it because the affiliation with NYFS is important but is this a is this a growth area? Is this is this eventually down the road would you see a full-time person on your team that that does this work and maybe could be on site a more or on scene? Is is that is that where we're headed do you think? [00:22:25] **Chief Julie Swanson:** For sure. I do think we're headed that way. I don't know at what point but um I do think so. And I you know it's probably good that we've started it with the route that we have because it gives us that sure you know that chance to learn about it and see what we need. But I do expect down the road it would be important and um you know the more that we learn from it and the more the community learns from it then maybe having that person on staff in the building won't seem so police related. [00:22:54] **Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you. Yep. [00:22:56] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Anybody else? Councilmember Edberg. [00:22:59] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you Madam Mayor. Hello Chief. [00:23:01] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Hello. [00:23:02] **Councilmember Edberg:** Um so I've been um this past year provided me and I suspect a lot of us a lot of opportunities to talk with our residents about the nature of policing in our community and um uh I've been pleased with what all the stuff that I have learned. So uh as reflected in the uh uh White Bear Press article this last week, uh the number of things that we were already doing well or doing right before the civil unrest of this past summer I felt really good about. We instituted body cams, we had already started a relationship to bring mental health service, we have done I've been focusing on de-escalation training and incorporating that into our regular way of being and a lot of other stuff. Um best of my knowledge I think I've asked this: we've never had an insurance settlement for police brutality or uh violence. Um I'm not even sure if we've had an alley... you know anyway, point is we've done a lot of things well. I consider that a real tribute to you and your predecessors so thank you for that. Um if you were if we were looking forward you know five years um I know that we have been seeing a turnover in staff, kind of a natural aging process. We've been... we certainly have had some new officers in the past couple of years. Uh I appreciate those pinning ceremonies that we get to participate in. What are some of the things that you would want on our radar screen as we look forward and think about how do we remain in a good place and continue the experience that our residents have uh with our police department? Thank you. [00:24:32] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Um Mayor and Councilmember Edberg and Council, that's a great question and I really appreciate the question so thank you. I um you know in thinking about it, we we were able to um upgrade to having 31 police officers this last two years which was awesome because we actually had one person deployed for the past year and he starts back to work on Saturday. So he's been in Africa for a year and we're very excited to have him back. He was our newest officer so he had not quite finished field training and we'll finish that up this year but at that point then we're going to be full strength and we're very lucky we have not had um turnover as you said other than for people who retire. And you know I don't know if we'll see that in the next year or not but other agencies have started to implement different um like community action teams where they address uh like Roseville for example has a community action team where they're going to be that team is specifically going to be dealing with um human trafficking or the carjackings or um like thefts, auto thefts and theft for mottos. Um and it's just a community action team of like a sergeant and two to four officers. I think that those are things that we'll have to consider in the future or maybe that community action team that can focus on hot spots of things and then also work in the mental health capacity. You know they you can have people trained in a variety of different tasks but I think we the one thing we do not have is any dedicated task force that we can draw upon when um things escalate. We just have some very adaptable people which is great, so because that might be the need to add compliment more compliment to our department you know just so that we're not taking it from patrol. So I think that that's probably the biggest um thing you know to think about maybe focusing our efforts more and then again into the mental health um crisis that we are seeing in the community and just in the state and the United States as a whole and um consider adding some staffing for that. And I don't know if Ms. Heinecker has anything additional that we've talked about that maybe I'm missing. [00:26:45] **Ellen Heinecker (City Manager):** No, I think you covered it well, Julie, and I guess we've had a lot of conversations about the mental health piece and certainly um I think we've always been very supportive of that effort and like to see us put our resources there as we can. [00:26:58] **Chief Julie Swanson:** I think my dream if you know if I had a dream for a day it would be to add a few more people just so that we have a focus team that we could shift when need be because as I said we have just so much talent. There's people that have a lot of um experience you know with volunteering or in the religious um areas or we and you know we have somebody like I said that's a counselor and um we have a lot of people with uh military background so they can specialize with vet services. So just putting those all into one dedicated team would be helpful. [00:27:35] **Councilmember Edberg:** So if I had one request for you... I really appreciate the numbers um that you've uh that you've given us. It certainly for me is a different story than the than the chatter that I get in the community about you know a rampant increase in carjackings or whatever. Well okay so yes they're I'm not saying that it's not happening but the numbers that you're sharing with us don't suggest you know an L-shaped hockey stick curve with the exception of catalytic converters. So I think anything that you might do that I could share those numbers in a in a kind of longitudinal way helping people see multi-year trends in the various categories that you had... if there are some other categories that's great... but um uh helping to get that factual information and then the community can have smarter conversations about what is or is not the the things that we should be thinking about talking about uh working on etc. So anyway just that would be my my encouragement. [00:28:31] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Great, thank you. You know we share some statistics on the website but not these statistics that I gave you today. We on our police website we do have our traffic stop data and our um use of force data, but I think it would be helpful to share the rest of it um and showcase what's going well. You know it's a good community. I have friends that follow the the media stories and they're afraid to go to Saint Paul in Minneapolis. I I don't think we need to be completely afraid to go to our our you know metro cities but certainly White Bear is not there. [00:29:05] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well I I can say the mental health piece has been a very important component as someone who gets 2 AM phone calls from people that probably need some help. I can say I appreciate having that person on board and I appreciate the department for um helping me through these phone calls because sometimes they can be quite disturbing. Is there anyone else that has a question? Council? [00:29:31] **Councilmember Jones:** No question Madam Mayor that's been asked for me. Just wanted to say thanks Chief in a tough nine months. Yeah, I don't think it's over but it's passed I think the most but I just want to sincerely thank you. [00:29:43] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I don't think we probably showcase our successes enough and I and you know there's always room for improvement, I understand that. But um I appreciate the chance to be able to come here because first you guys are you hear it first. You know people are going to come to you first with um things that they're not happy with about the police department and so certainly we like to hear it so that we can improve upon it, but there are some good things being done as well. And a lot of that is also attributed back to the council um and the city manager just because you allow us to do it and you give us the resources to do it. So it's a great place to work and we have great cops and it's um nice to be able to share that. [00:30:26] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Councilmember Bean, you had a question? [00:30:28] **Councilmember Bean:** Well thank you ma'am. Not a question also, it's just a comment. Again, I mean with my uh my law enforcement background and my working with uh with the police labor union, I um I've got a lot of experience with this obviously and I've always been very impressed with the way that our department is run and the way we do things and I I wanted to wanted to thank you also. [00:30:52] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Thank you. [00:30:54] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well if there's no other questions, I think we'll spring you you're off the hot seat. Thank you for coming with us. [00:30:58] **Chief Julie Swanson:** Thank you for having me and I hope the public was listening because we are lucky to have such a good department. [00:31:05] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** We are, but it's through hard work and your leadership so thank you for that. Well thank you for that. All right, we will move on to Land Use 6A the consent agenda. [00:31:18] **Councilmember Edberg:** Edberg's approval. [00:31:19] **Councilmember Bean:** Bean seconds. [00:31:20] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I have a motion and a second. The clerk will call the roll. [00:31:23] **Clerk:** Council members: Bean? [00:31:24] **Councilmember Bean:** I. [00:31:25] **Clerk:** Jones? [00:31:25] **Councilmember Jones:** Councilmember Jones, hi. Thank you. [00:31:27] **Clerk:** Angstran? [00:31:28] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [00:31:29] **Clerk:** Walsh? [00:31:29] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [00:31:30] **Clerk:** Edberg? [00:31:31] **Councilmember Edberg:** Aye. [00:31:32] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to 6B the agenda: Consideration of a Planning Commission recommendation for re-approval of a request by Heartland TC Gun Club for a conditional use permit and variances at 4350 Centerville Road. Okay thank you... oh Sam you're doing it, Miss Crosby, go ahead. [00:31:52] **Sam Crosby (Planning Department):** Um can everybody hear me? Because yeah okay... I haven't done this before so um and I've been getting spotty uh video so I I apologize if it goes in and out. But um the uh Heartland Twin Cities Gun Club is before us this evening um in regards to 4350 Centerville Road, which is located on the east side of Centerville. It's tucked behind 4330 and it is zoned BW, which is Business Warehouse. The site contains a 4,000 square foot building which was the automotive emissions testing facility until 1999 and most recently has been operating as BNB Industrial Coatings. The Twin Cities Gun Club and range is proposing a roughly four-fold increase to the size of the building in order to convert it into a shooting range, which is a permitted use in this district. However, they would also like a retail sales component. Therefore they are requesting a conditional use permit for enclosed retail sales in the BW zoning district in order to sell sporting goods including firearms out of the permitted indoor facility. And they're requesting a 10-foot variance from the 15 foot setback required from a street right away in order to locate the parking five feet from the east property line. I'll discuss both of these in turn. This is the existing conditions plan with the building... the existing building highlighted in purple. And this is the layout for the proposed building expansion. The retail area covered colored in yellow would be 2,200 square feet in size. The code lists four parameters for accessory retail and I could go into each one of them in turn but the short uh synopsis is that the proposal either does comply or will be finalized to comply with all four parameters. The 10 foot variance from the 15 foot setback required along the eastern property line is shown here in orange. This will allow the parking lot to be five feet from the property line. Because of the difference in grade between I-35E and the subject site, the loss of setback will not be noticed. Also the regional pond that encroaches onto the property in the southwest corner of the site is a unique characteristic not created by the applicant or a predecessor in title and is a true practical difficulty. It's a physical condition of the land. The proposed expansion is attractive building with high quality materials that will be a nice addition to the area. And again I've highlighted the existing building in purple that will remain. The top rendering is a view from the west, the below is from the south. The top on this slide is from the east or I-35E and finally the bottom is from the north or the adjacent White Bear Business Park. These are some additional renderings at the building corners. And during the public hearing, the neighboring property owner to the north raised concerns about parking, maintenance of the shared access drive, and functionality of the existing overhead doors in relation to parking. The two entrances to the building are on the southwest corner and on the east side, therefore customers are not likely to park in the neighboring lot unless the gun club lot is completely full, which is not anticipated. In relation to the maintenance of the shared access drive, that is a civil matter that the property owners will need to work out between them. Finally, the overhead doors on the west side of the existing building may remain functional but given the sidewalk and the landscaping in front of them, they will not be accessible by vehicles. Since the retail area will meet the parameters of the code and given the unique physical characteristics of the site including regional pond and adjacent steep topography, staff recommends approval of both the conditional use permit and the variance subject to the conditions listed in the staff report. Thank you. [00:35:15] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Council, any questions for Ms. Crosby? Okay since this is... Madam? [00:35:22] **Councilmember Jones:** Councilman Jones. I can't say... I mean, you know, when you get a packet this thick and you hear "guns" applied to it, it's always crazy time. But is it really just this straightforward? I mean this is just a business, they want to sell stuff. It just... it's straightforward? [00:35:36] **Sam Crosby:** Right um Mayor and and Member Jones um it pretty much it's uh we want to preserve the nature of the BW district and not um allow just the amount of retail is limited to a certain percentage and that's the the crux of this request. It's and a very minor setback. It really is pretty straightforward. [00:35:58] **Councilmember Jones:** Okay thank you. [00:36:00] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay um anyone else? Since this is a public... this is a land use um there is a public hearing. So with that, I would open it up if there's anyone from the public. Kara, is there anybody that's signed up to speak? [00:36:12] **Clerk (Kara):** Mayor Emerson, nobody has expressly signed up to speak. If there's anybody who is in attendance here tonight who wishes to speak, please do so at this time. [00:36:20] **Mark Smith (Property Owner):** Um Madam Mayor, hi, this is Mark Smith. I can... if you... I don't want a picture of me or not, but um I can flip that... yeah let's see a picture but come on Mark, scare you now. And I need your address for the record. My... is the address of the property next door sufficient or you need home address? Um... [Music] I guess the property next door since you're at the... joinston property owner, right? Yep, I am. I'm at 4444 Centerville Road okay um in White Bear. I've been there... that building I built 15 years ago and I think it's been a great amenity to the city, it's a big asset to your tax base that we pay over 220,000 dollars a year in property taxes for the city and schools. So it's definitely been a good thing for the city. My biggest issue, as Sam had mentioned, has been the um parking probably is the biggest issue there. My concern is that it's not an insurance company or a beauty salon or that's going in there, but it's a gun shop. And I'm I'm a gun owner and I I in favor of this use, but it does concern me even though she... they say there's enough parking spots, the location of the parking spots in my mind is gonna... I have... they have 18 spots at their front door, which is the east door. I have 52 spots that are closer um than their front door. And all I've asked them to do is have a fence that runs from the interstate line, interstate fence on our property line to the west to keep people from parking on my parking lot closest to my tenants. I don't want to have my tenants sitting there with their windows and office windows facing my parking lot see people open up their trunk and pull out guns and be bothered by that. So I I mean, I have a big investment, I have over 10 million dollars sitting next door, tenants, and I do not want to have tenants being scared and call me there's someone with guns in the park in my parking lot. So I felt by putting a fence, which it can be a cycling fence for all that, it would keep people from cutting across from my closest spot. If you look at the drawing you see that one closest parking spot is only nine spots away from their front door or um and so people, if that front area is filled, they will cut across there. In addition to that, there was a six foot drop from my parking lot to their spot. So carrying a gun again could fall especially at night and um and get injured. So it's more of a safety concern. I don't again I'm happy with their business being here, I just want to make sure that my tenants don't get bothered by the fact that there's people in my parking lot carrying guns in during business hours. So that's all. Thank you. [00:39:10] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Ms. Crosby, didn't you say that that the entrances for this proposed business... the parking would be... the doors are not next to his property but over on the other side? Or did I misunderstand that? [00:39:24] **Sam Crosby:** There that is correct. I can show the slide again if you'd like please. Okay... oh so sorry it's okay take your time. There we go. The uh so the star stars are those the entrances? [00:39:46] **Sam Crosby:** Correct. [00:39:47] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay and so where's the parking that Mr. Smith is concerned about? [00:39:51] **Sam Crosby:** It's the um oval um... are you able to see my my poker? Yeah... okay so this area oh he'd be to the north okay there is a um where's my uh there is a door right here but it's more of a internal service door for employees public would not be coming in and out of there so i don't even know considering that this goes into a storage area and just the hallway i don't even know that how much that door would be used they don't have a lot of employees um the um property owner or the applicants could speak to that better than i could but the the blue stars are the main entrances for the public. [00:40:33] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay so but I still don't... point me where Mr. Smith's property is that he's concerned about. [00:40:38] **Sam Crosby:** It's the one to the north red circle around. [00:40:41] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay but then the doors are nowhere near his property, correct? [00:40:45] **Mark Smith:** Is that... Mayor I'm sorry... I do who's talking? Smith again. Yeah, if you look at my prop... if that property... like she mentioned that red oval on the north side, the parking goes all the way farther to the east than she's showing. But people that could park on the far east of that oval or you know say... I can... farther to keep going to the east... [00:41:09] **Sam Crosby:** No east not west... keep going right here... [00:41:12] **Mark Smith:** Yeah right right here in the south there that area there people can walk from there and go straight down to that first star to the south of there where they have their entrance. As you can see, they only have spots on this whole section um if they expect up to 50 or 60 people there, they'll park instead of parking on the south very south part of their building, it's closer to my parking lot on the north there. My parking spots in the north than it is to their parking spot. Someone's not going to want to walk all the way around the building to those spots, that's all. It's it's way convenient. There's only nine spots between that and my spots are right... and they also have a door, the porch area on the north you're not even putting down, but there's a porch area on the north east part of their building too where you can walk right in right there. So people can walk from my parking lot into there closer than they can walk from the parking lot to that location. So I'm concerned that's going to be just too easy of a temptation and um I'm not asking for some big invisible fence. I had mentioned to them a cyclone fence would be fine just to keep people from making that cut across there. [00:42:20] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay thank you. Uh Council, any questions or is there anybody else that wishes to speak on this issue? Anybody else from the public? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and bring it back to the Council for deliberation. Council? Thoughts? Questions? Councilmember Walsh. [00:42:43] **Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you Madam Mayor. Um I I drove the I drove the property last night and I guess my first of all let me just say the the the um I tuned in for the Planning Commission meeting on this on this topic. I like to just watch one Planning Commission meeting a year and this was the one I kind of picked. But somebody in the Planning Commission made a pretty good comment I thought and it just as the as to the use of the of the the gun club use. Of all the places in the city of White Bear Lake to put a facility like this, this has got to be number one or her top five um in terms of the location. So I just think... and somebody in the Planning Commission pointed that out and I thought that was a really good good comment and I agree with that. Um so they use and people haven't uh been worried about the use. In terms of the parking, I guess I'm I'm I'm sympathetic I'm open I'm listening. I guess I guess I think about the drive in though. The drive in on the driveway in order to park in Mr. Smith's lot, you got to make a decision sooner. You got to veer off left you know and get into his lot kind of as you're just getting to the the fork in the road kind of and I'm not sure people are going to do that unless the unless the lot is completely full then we'd have a different different uh uh I mean people would have to drive the first lot find it full and then go find your lot. I think that's the logic people will use. And so I think our only fear is if the if the gun club lot actually fills up. And I think signage might be better than a fence at least in the beginning and I you know maybe we see how this goes and revisit. I mean a lot of times there's there's worry on the front end of these projects and then things things don't materialize. It's a it's a reasonable thing to worry about um I'm lit and I I see it but I think maybe signage is better maybe sign is coming in that says you know you know gun club to the right and so we're the traffic is coming in the right place and not veering off left and going into your parking lot. So I think it's a decent project and I think that they planned it right um but I'm sympathetic I think we should just watch and see how it goes. [00:44:54] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay thank you. Anybody else on the Council? Councilmember Bean. [00:44:59] **Councilmember Bean:** Thank you Mayor. Um I also support the project but I am sympathetic to the parking concerns. Uh my question is would we be able to revisit this if that if the parking concerns end up materializing? Would we be able to revisit this and require fencing at that point if necessary? [00:45:19] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Ms. Crosby? Oh Mr. Gilchrist our attorney is going to speak. Please join us. [00:45:26] **City Attorney Gilchrist:** Thank you Madam Mayor and Council. I mean generally once once you've issued a conditional use permit, uh there really isn't an opportunity to add conditions later. So what one thing you could do if this was a concern but you wanted to wait and see how things developed, I mean you could add language saying uh if in the uh opinion of the uh Planning Director uh this is an issue then they're required to put uh a fence up or you know some condition where it's evaluated or even it could come back to the council I suppose. I mean you could have a condition that says this has to be reviewed in 12 months or six months and and if if it's an issue uh then the fence is going to be required. So you could do do something like that, but not to have anything now and say we want to add it later that's legally speaking that's problematic. [00:46:17] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well would may I ask this question then. As as Councilman Walsh suggested, some signage... could that be part of the conditions now? [00:46:25] **City Attorney Gilchrist:** Absolutely. [00:46:26] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** And then also with the phrase that if there is an issue we could review it later is I mean is that what you're suggesting that we do something like that Council? How does that work for all of you that work? Councilmember Edberg. [00:46:38] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you Madam Mayor. I guess I'm a smidgen beyond sympathetic. Um I think the the request from the property owner on the north is not unreasonable. I thought that his uh concern about his tenants um seeing the potential of people with guns... I I don't think adding a requirement for a fence is an unreasonable expectation for a project of this size. The the cost of the fence is is minimal compared to the overall investment that's being made. Um so I'm beyond I'm more than sympathetic um I don't know where the rest of the Council sits. [00:47:18] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well I'm thinking uh signage with the caveat that if that doesn't work then the fencing would have to be step two. Number one would be a signage, if that proves not to work then we would the signage would be part of the conditional use permit. Anybody's thoughts? Councilmember Walsh. [00:47:35] **Councilmember Walsh:** Well I guess I wasn't thinking about us putting this into the conditional use permit. I was thinking between neighbors. I was thinking start with signs and do a fence later. I didn't have the city involved in any of that and I I don't think it's necessary. Um [Music] but I mean you have to if it's a conditional... I mean it's a conditional use permission, if you don't do it now you can't do it later, right? I just I guess I didn't want to do it... I guess I was saying sometimes these things work out and if it doesn't then you revisit and you put your own fence up or your own signage up. So I guess I don't have the city involved, but if that's the others want to do that that's I mean that's that's fine. [00:48:19] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay. Councilmember Bean. [00:48:21] **Councilmember Bean:** Thank you Mayor. Mayor I would like to do something, whether it be uh Mr. Edberg's... uh I would be okay with that. I would also be okay with uh uh conditions put in that the the developer will I mean the owner will will ensure that there is no parking and take whatever steps necessary that there's no parking on the uh on the neighboring uh business. [00:48:45] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay. Councilmember Jones. [00:48:47] **Councilmember Jones:** I get it, but I'm also like every time I don't want to see something let's put up a fence? I don't want a funeral home near me, I don't want a gun... you know they've got to carry it in a case. I mean it's a regulated business, they're free to carry guns in parking lots within our case and things like... I mean it's I just don't... that happens. I I just I mean it's like I can't sit there and say regulate every single business because I don't like what I'm seeing. But um yeah, signage is fine. [00:49:13] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well don't you think if we put signage... if you did signage and with the caveat if this doesn't work then there would have to be fencing? I mean I think the signage should probably take care of it. [00:49:23] **Councilmember Jones:** Well yeah I mean it's it's just what if we don't like smoking? You're smoking outside, I don't like to see the cigarette smokers. [00:49:28] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well nobody's made cigarette smoking outside in designated areas illegal yet. [00:49:33] **Councilmember Jones:** No, I don't want to see them so put a fence on. Well and the people coming with their weapons are are people with permits, so they're they're legally allowed to carry them in. It's just it's I don't know. [00:49:46] **Councilmember Bean:** Uh Madam Mayor? [00:49:47] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Sure, go ahead. [00:49:48] **Councilmember Bean:** What's the fence gonna do to restrict parking? Well they can't get to the parking if there's a fence up, right? I'm assuming there's got to be other ways I I don't know. The neighbor doesn't want to see me mowing my lawn in a speedo, I'm not going to put up a fence. No I'm not going to do that, they can pay for that. You want a fence, you pay for it when we're talking about something that's not illegal, that it's a problem that we don't know yet. And I understand the concerns but I wonder if it's more about I don't want to see the guns and I I want to see the park parking. [00:50:23] **Councilmember Bean:** Uh I think one of the big differences here is we were talking about the neighbor's property. I I don't care if the uh uh users of the gun club you know carry their weapons cased or encased, um that's you know you have to carry okay. I'm not proposing that we do that you know for for for the gun club's uh property, but in order to ensure that uh someone is not using someone else's property I'm you depart to park and I I can see the concern. I'm I'm again fine with the uh with restriction. [00:50:57] **Councilmember Jones:** Well Madam Mayor? A response to that. A cyclone fence is not going to prevent viewing the guns, but you're still going to see him, right? The purpose of the fence is to keep people from parking on the neighboring property and then going over to the gun club. And I have no problem with that, I understand that concern. But Mr. Smith said he didn't want that... he didn't want his tenants to see guns. So they're going to see the guns if we put up a fence. So I don't know... [00:51:24] **Councilmember Bean:** But what I heard is that they didn't want he he didn't want to see the uh... I don't know who's ringing... what I heard is that they didn't want he he didn't want to see the uh the gun club users carrying guns on his property where his tenants are. [00:51:38] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay I may have misunderstood. Okay so where are we gentlemen? Councilmember Edberg. [00:51:44] **Councilmember Edberg:** Oh Madam Mayor, the only thing I'd point out to Mr. Jones is that in my ward we did make a business put up a fence. We've got precedent and it's been done so this isn't exactly new news. [00:51:56] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay thank you. Councilmember Bean. [00:51:58] **Councilmember Bean:** Uh a question for uh city staff. Is there a problem with putting a fence there as far as uh for any reason? Would there be a problem uh putting a fence? [00:52:08] **Sam Crosby:** Um Mayor Member Bean uh I don't foresee any reason why there would be a problem. There's a little bit of changing grade and some existing landscaping, but uh nothing that can't be easily worked around. [00:52:19] **Councilmember Bean:** Okay thank you. [00:52:21] **Councilmember Walsh:** Well I mean absent anything else, I mean I'd move approval of the resolution as presented to us. I I still think the signage in the fence is something that neighbors can work out and uh I I think it's I think it's I don't think it's going to be a problem, but I mean I'm just predicting that I don't know that obviously. And I I just move the resolution the way it is. [00:52:43] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Do I have a second to that? [00:52:45] **Councilmember Edberg:** I'll second for discussion. [00:52:46] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. I have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Councilmember Edberg. [00:52:51] **Councilmember Edberg:** So Mr. Walsh, the the the downfall that I see in your approach is that if there is a problem that can't be worked out, we've granted a conditional use to the person who created the issue and whose business creates the issue, but we're foisting the cost on the uh aggrieved party whose property is being used inappropriately. And that strikes me as being unfair and we don't have a capacity for going back and uh adding that condition later as per the the guidance of our City Attorney. So I don't see you're placing a faith in two parties and it might very well work out, but if it doesn't we're placing the burden on the wrong party. Thank you. [00:53:36] **Councilmember Bean:** I would like to amend the uh uh proposal that the uh gun club would be required to ensure that their patrons do not park on the neighboring property. [00:53:49] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** And how are they going to do that? I mean how how can they assure that? I mean that if we require that um... [00:53:57] **Councilmember Bean:** It could be up... if we could do it if we require that they insure it and they don't insure it, then at that point we can require fencing. So they could put up a signage and they could have put up a fence if they wanted to assure it is what you're saying, right? [00:54:12] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay so you're proposing an amendment. [00:54:15] **Councilmember Edberg:** Well I'll second the motion uh to amend and I'd welcome uh the City Attorney to provide some guidance or language or you know some specific options to to make effective what we're trying to do here. [00:54:30] **City Attorney Gilchrist:** Thank you. Uh yeah I may not have the exact wording, but from what I understand from uh Councilmember Bean's uh explanation, it would be can... it would be adding a condition to the resolution indicating that uh the applicant's responsible for ensuring parking remains with related to its business on its parking lot. If in the determination of the city the applicant fails to comply with that requirement, the city may require the installation of a fence. Something to that effect. [00:55:00] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Or could you do signage and or a fence or I mean... [00:55:04] **City Attorney Gilchrist:** Yep. [00:55:05] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Does that work for you? [00:55:07] **Councilmember Bean:** All right. [00:55:08] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** So I have a motion and a second on this amendment. So we need to vote on this amendment, so unless there's any further discussion. [00:55:15] **Councilmember Jones:** Obviously the same animator... it sounds reasonable to me I mean I like this a reasonable uh amendment. [00:55:20] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay so with that I would um have the clerk call the roll on this amendment. [00:55:25] **Clerk:** Council members: Jones? [00:55:26] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [00:55:27] **Clerk:** Bean? [00:55:27] **Councilmember Bean:** Hi. [00:55:28] **Clerk:** Thank you. That passes. [00:55:29] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** So now I have the original motion and second on on this conditional use permit with now with the additional uh verbiage to go into it. So is there any further discussion on that? If not, I will have the clerk call the roll. [00:55:42] **Clerk:** Council members: Bean? [00:55:43] **Councilmember Bean:** Hi. [00:55:44] **Clerk:** Jones? [00:55:44] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [00:55:45] **Clerk:** Edberg? [00:55:45] **Councilmember Edberg:** Hi. [00:55:46] **Clerk:** Walsh? [00:55:46] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [00:55:47] **Clerk:** Angstran? [00:55:47] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [00:55:48] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. The motion passes. Mr. Smith, thank you for coming tonight and stating your case and we will move forward with this and Ms. Crosby, you have you and Mr. Gilchrist can work out the the precise words for the uh for the conditional use permit. So thank you very much. Moving on to ordinances 8A: First reading of an ordinance adopting a 10-year cable franchise agreement with Comcast. Ms. Heinecker. [00:56:15] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, thank you Mayor, members of the Council. Real briefly um and then I'll introduce we have two guests here to speak to the details of the franchise agreement or the proposed um ordinance. Um as council's aware, White Bear Lake were one among now where it's currently at I believe nine municipalities of the Ramsey Washington Counties Suburban Cable Communications um community question. And there have been a few years uh most recently with the um I think North St. Paul was the most recent city to drop out of the joint powers agreement um so I'll get to that in a moment. And I want to just remind Council that what we're going to be talking about tonight is the franchise agreement and not the joint powers structure. So through that joint powers agreement, we do have um administration and Tim Finnerty as the Executive Director of the SEC, along with the attorney John Baker who has represented this franchise um the franchise negotiations um as they've been moving forward to that they have been working on behalf of all of these communities to renew a franchise with Comcast that would then as proposed move forward for an additional 10 years. What I want to remind council of is that the adoption of this ordinance, which will be provided a second reading at our next meeting on the 23rd, does not um play into any decision the council might have in the future about re-looking at any joint powers agreement as as it relates to the structure of our existing commission. So those are conversations that we'll we'll continue to have. This is very specific to the franchise itself with Comcast and um whether or not the City of White Bear Lake is part of SEC next year, five years from now, seven years from now, whenever that is, this franchise will be in place um on our behalf. So that was a clarification I thought was important to make it this time um but then with that I'm really going to turn this over to Tim Finnerty and to John Baker who will provide a summary of the ordinance that we are going to be considering for adoption at our next meeting. [00:58:13] **Tim Finnerty (Executive Director, SEC):** Mayor Emerson, council members, thank you. It's great to see all of you again. I think it was about a year ago uh that I was before you to convey the commission's recommendation to um preliminarily deny that the cable franchise. Tonight we're here to uh convey the recommendation that the the commission um is uh recommending renewal of the cable franchise with Comcast uh by adopting as Ellen said uh the franchise document that's been negotiated by the parties. We actually have a PowerPoint uh presentation that we'd like to go through and to do that, I'd recommend recognizing John Baker of Greene Espel who helped us through the negotiation and um we're prepared to go through that and look at uh share some of the details and background uh to get started if that's okay. [00:58:56] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Please go ahead. [00:58:58] **John Baker (Attorney):** Okay thank you. Uh let me see if I can get this going here. I've got so many windows open uh gotta get them in the right sequence here and I'll be fine. Let's see if I can um try this and then I guess I've gotta share the screen here. So let's see... try this... um hopefully this works... let's see... uh share... okay. All right now I'll I'll try and proceed through this then. Um uh first I want to thank the Council and the City Staff for their patience with this process and the flexibility that they've shown in getting us on the agenda in a timely manner. As Tim mentioned, I'm John Baker of the Greene Espel firm and along with my partner Kate Swenson, who is also on, we have been appointed by the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust to represent the Commission with regard to administrative proceedings with Comcast that went that evolved into a mediation and into this resolution. My as I understand it your packet included the um PowerPoint, which was as much of an executive summary of the agreement plus the agreement, and so my plan is to just hit some high points um for that reason. But please feel free to interrupt if you've got questions on the topic uh when I get to it or save your questions for the end, whatever your your preference is. Now what we're here to consider is... uh let's see... okay... um this is your first reading on whether to adopt the proposed draft cable franchise ordinance. Last Thursday night the Commission Board recommended unanimously that the member cities uh adopt it. Um each of the member cities is considering it at a council meeting, it's the same franchise for all of them. Our goal is to have a fully adopted franchise ordinances in the member cities by its April 1st, 2021 effective date. The second reading as I understand it is planned for two weeks from tonight, March 23rd. Um let me emphasize a couple of things on this. Um you know, in October of last year we started mediating with Comcast using a mediator who had had success in the past in resolving cable franchise disputes and who was not perceived as being either pro cable company or pro franchising authority. He happened to be based in Vermont but um in this world of Zoom that made no difference at all. And I mention that in part because the mediation is confidential so I'm somewhat limited perhaps in my ability to to answer certain kinds of questions depending on how they're framed. But I think what's important is that um the mediation enabled us to reach this point. Now one of the things that helps put in um context what's different about this franchise was um a curveball that all franchising authorities got from the FCC back in 2019... that's this 621 order. Now what the FCC ruled was that cable companies should have a right to recoup the fair market value of satisfying many of the things that cable franchising authorities, cities commissions, traditionally have been able to just require that they do as a condition to getting the franchise. And they're able to get that fair market value, barring a separate agreement, by offsetting its franchise fee obligations by the value of those services. They didn't do it with regard to every kind of condition, but they did it with regard to a lot of important ones. We'll get into to those details in a little bit. So the practical effect of what the FCC said is that cities now are forced to choose in a lot of different circumstances between getting fewer discounted or fewer free services and compelling the cable company to continue to provide them but having it taken out of your franchise fee checks when the value of those services is offset. So um that's I think useful to to focus on that. So let me go into the um particular high points of the term starting with the the franchise fee. You're capped out by federal law at being able to charge a franchise fee of five percent of gross revenues and so everybody charges a franchise fee of five percent of gross revenues for the most part. But the definition of gross revenues is where the area for negotiation and dispute is. One of the nice things as part of negotiations not only with your commission but also with Northern Dakota County Cable Commission was that Comcast agreed to a more encompassing definition of gross revenues than they had been willing to agree to in the past. And you know to give an example um you know they get revenue from things like advertising, that's part of gross revenues. There are big consequences to the way in which Comcast decides to separate or not separate revenue from triple caps. When when Comcast sells a package of things, some but not all of which is the cable part, the way in which they decide to allocate those revenues can make a huge difference. And so we've got some specifics and useful specifics along those lines that we think will end up causing the pie from which the five percent is taken to be greater. We can't be completely sure... I mean a lot of this also depends upon customers and whether customers stay the same or decline or things like that... but nevertheless we're we're happy to see that. So let me jump ahead here... let me mention one other thing here. Um one of the things we pushed really hard for was to have a provision in the franchise agreement itself that told them: we want you folks to upgrade our system, we don't want to be the last to get things. Um we found some middle ground with Comcast on that and under that middle ground um uh when any other Comcast system in Ramsey County or Washington County receives a system upgrade, your system gets upgraded too. I'm going to talk a little bit now about the PEG channels. PEG course stands for public educational and government channels and I'll focus on the high definition aspect of that. Um you know instead of your city council meetings and other PEG channels sticking out uh as like a sore thumb when people are channel surfing because they're not in high definition and look fuzzy on a really large screen that most people have... um in one year all four of the commission's PEG channels are going to be in HD. That's more PEG channels in HD than your friends in nearby suburbs are going to have. We pushed hard for more hearing, we ended up as a result of this getting more. Um so let me talk about PEG funding. Um I'm going to try and boil three slides down to about three points here. First, you know to nobody's surprise Comcast isn't going along with the um PEG funding rates that they inherited that were negotiated back in 1995. Um and so we knew that they were going to you know require that those go down. The question was how far they could go down and we still get an agreement and that's one of the things that the um the previous meetings a year ago were about when we started this process. Um so here it's going to be a transition, there's not going to be a sharp drop off. Um but there it gets phased you know it's 325 for the next year then it goes down to 3 of gross revenue then to 275 and it stays there for the whole time. But to compare it to what neighboring and other jurisdictions have been able to get from Comcast in the last um since 2019, which is a useful year to pick because that's also the year of the 621 order... your line for PEG funding is the gold one at the top, the orange one at the top. You can see the transition that's there um at um you know for the first two years but it still stays noticeably higher than the level of PEG funding for North St. Paul, Burnsville, Northern Dakota County, Maplewood, Vadnais Heights which are reflected there. So again that's that's we think that's beneficial. We recognize of course that there are there's an alternative viewpoint that there are people who would like PEG funding to be less uh so that subscribers are charged less. And so the fact that this is now down to this level, um which is probably by my count and it's hard to estimate but depending on how big you view the pie... this is probably about 57 of the PEG funding that we were getting under the old arrangement. Um that's going to mean that you're going to have some some subscribers who are paying less for PEG now than they have for the last few years. So for those who are uh in the group that viewed that as an objective, this you know that's that's also reflected in this as well. So let me jump ahead here I think to the topic of line extension just briefly and again this is not this is a bigger issue for those member cities that are not completely built out by Comcast. The bottom line is that Comcast agreed in four different ways to make modifications to their formula and to their approach for uh a residential build out. Um you know we're we're we still wish it were more uh but nevertheless you know we we spent a lot of time trying to keep those communities happy who were looking for this and so this was I'm sure the best we could get along those lines. Now let me jump to these kinds of special lines and this is at one level sort of the height of of of abstraction and geekiness when it comes to the lingo of cable um franchising. Nevertheless let me sort of explain what some of these terms mean. Um when we call refer to dark fiber connections, one of those things is what's been called the INet. Um some member cities, less so White Bear Lake I believe, rely upon the INet for sharing for IT and telephone support and things like that. Complementary accounts are things that include some conditions that were required in past cable franchise terms that required for example free service to the school buildings, free service to other public buildings as a condition of the franchise. [Music] The FCC's 621 order was most disruptive to the past approaches to funding INets and to funding complementary accounts. So you're going to see a different approach for those. PEG return lines... that's the um transmission route from your City Hall to the um playback facility for the Commission and that's something that um you know has a different um term here that we'll get to in a minute. And then Prisma lines are things that are currently used to share programming between different commissions um so that essentially enable for example that if there's a hockey game between that's taking place in Oakdale and Hastings high school is the other side, it would allow that game to be transmitted by our commission so that Hastings area viewers could watch it or vice versa. So with those sort of explanations of terminology, let me go through how this went. First for dark fiber, the way I let me sort of use an analogy here uh for this: the INet that connects cities um through this way is kind of like a free highway right now. Um Comcast was required to provide it and maintain it under the previous franchise agreements. It under this agreement, it's going to be a free highway for two more years and then it becomes a toll way. They will start charging 330 dollars per site per month to those who are still hooked up. So in other words, even though after it becomes a toll way you always have the ability to take an exit and to drive on gravel roads for free. Um you know, so that's one of the compromises. It's you know we had to negotiate to get it because otherwise the FCC basically took our power away to get any of this for free. Um with regard to the complementary accounts um you know this is one where um consistent with what the FCC required um those the choice really was: unless they they were able to start charging for this and no longer make it complementary, they had the right to deduct it from your franchise fees. So here's the way it's going to work now um [Music] Comcast after giving 60 days notice um can then start to charge for what was previously complementary service at each location, and the rates are set forth on this slide because those come straight from the agreement. And again for this, the recipients can decline or drop the service or avoid those charges. So if under the old franchise you had a TV set in the lobby of City Hall um that was operating while people were waiting, you can pull the plug on that and avoid this cost if you don't pull the plug on it this is the rates that we're doing. It's possible that over the course of this 10-year franchise the law might become more favorable than the FCC said two years ago, and if it does, then under the terms of this agreement we've got the right to go back and try and negotiate a more favorable one. With regard to PEG return lines, this is one where our leverage was greater under the law and so as a result of that, Comcast is still going to provide that routing. They are not going to impose an additional charge or offsets for just the connection itself. Um they do in theory have the ability to charge the real cost of maintenance. We actually don't think the real cost of maintenance is significant at all but even if it were we've got a cap under the agreement for it at 10,000 per year. Um so and finally with regard to these intra commission transfers of programming sharing things like that, the current way in which a lot of that is shared called a Prisma ring um is on its last legs. The people who made it are essentially stopping to you know refusing to maintain it or just to support it. And so a lot of the negotiations of these are about "okay, what happens after the Prisma ring is gone?" And the solution here is that Comcast has its own network called the CRAN (Converged Regional Area Network) and they under this agreement so long as the CRAN continues to exist have agreed to allow the transmission of programming from any of these six specified places. So um a few other odds and ends here, one of which I will I want to focus on because it relates to um uh to White Bear Lake and that's the um the last one. Now this is one I think your folks are probably familiar with from a recent this meeting that you had, but Comcast had requested to use the renewal process as the moment to change the relationship relating to shared studio space in the commercial space that the city actually owns and is their landlord for. So until now, the commission has basically been a guest of Comcast in space that Comcast paid the rent to the city for, and going forward the understanding is that the commission is going to be a direct tenant of the city. The motion that uh where we'd be recommending here, again recognizing this is just the first reading and the ordinance itself uh isn't numbered yet... um but when the time comes uh our recommendation is that if the Council concurs with the recommendation from the Commission, um it should adopt uh it should approve the ordinance uh using words to this effect. So let me uh stop sharing here if I can and I'd be glad to uh to field questions if people have them. [01:13:58] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you Mr. Baker. Council, any questions? [01:14:02] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you Madam Mayor. So Mr. Baker, as I was reviewing the screens two things kind of popped out at me. One is that in um numerous ways this agreement provides a um greater set of net benefits... okay speaking from the perspective of a city in the franchisor... we have uh negotiated a an agreement that is superior to that that has been obtained in the past under previous negotiations for a number of our other suburban counterparts, some of whom have been members of our commission as well. Is that a correct interpretation? [01:14:47] **John Baker:** Um it is. Um if if um assumes that things like more HD channels rather than fewer HD channels is a value that you have... um that that better terms for residential build out rather than stingier terms is also a value. But um yeah, under these circumstances we were pleasantly surprised to look back when we were all done and had everything together and then compare where we ended up with where um other commissions had been. Um and uh you know one of the things I'll also add is that Kate and I were also assigned by the League to represent Northern Dakota County [Music] Cable Communications Commission called NDC 4, which was a few months ahead of this commission in the negotiating process. So you know we were seeing things being negotiated in that process during the spring that were then negotiated as part of this process in the fall. And there were um Comcast was willing to offer more uh perhaps in part because of the mediation, perhaps for other reasons... I don't really care why they did, I like the fact that they did. But um you know on a number of the points um that were important to us, uh we were able to get more and better concessions from Comcast as part of this negotiation. [01:16:03] **Councilmember Edberg:** Okay so the second thing that jumped out has to do with the action taken by the FCC with the 621 ruling, which is currently remains under appeal. Uh clearly they received a favorable interpretation favorable to the cable companies in rulemaking before the FCC under the previous administration. What's the status of that? Where does that go? On what happens if the appeal is successful? [01:16:32] **John Baker:** Sure, let me let me try and answer all of those right now. Um it's fully briefed and has been fully briefed for a while and is waiting oral argument in front of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Um a attempt was made to get that court to order the FCC to stay the order pending the outcome of the appeal. And the Sixth Circuit not only said "we're not going to stay it," but part of their reason was "we're not going to stay it because we think the FCC is going to win." And so that wasn't good news for purposes of this negotiation. But recognizing that there's a number of things that can cause the law to get more favorable including the last election, which means new FCC Chair, new SEC appointees probably... um we rewrote some of the language that essentially allowed us to go up and down as the law went up and down. So if for example a new FCC is more open to things like INets and doesn't like the idea of having the fair market value of an INet be whatever the cable company says it is... um then through the language that we've put into this, we think we have the ability if the law gets better to have our latitude in regulating Comcast get better as well. Um those were those sort of you know flexibilities were pretty hard to negotiate. Um some language and some provisions are better than others, but at least we think we have been able to avoid getting locked in for the next 10 years to an agreement that reflects what may be the high water mark for Comcast of their legal rights. Is that helpful? [01:18:03] **Councilmember Edberg:** Yep, I I just uh expressed appreciation that uh the Commission and its agents were able to do a fine job of negotiating on our behalf. Thank you very much. [01:18:14] **John Baker:** Thank you sir. Thank you. [01:18:16] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Anybody else have any questions or concerns? If not, then on the 23rd we will be voting on this proposal and so with that um we'll move on. Thank you very much for being here tonight. We appreciate it and all you've done and we will take this up at the March 23rd meeting. [01:18:33] **Tim Finnerty:** Thank you Madam Mayor and Council members. We appreciate your time. [01:18:36] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** No problem. Moving on to New Business: Resolution authorizing annual business license renewals. [01:18:42] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, Madam Mayor members of the Council. Real briefly um and then I think that the memo itself is fairly straightforward. And this again is our annual opportunity to review our business license renewals. Um I just want to point out um and remind the Council that our police department continues to conduct tobacco compliance checks as part of this process to do it twice a year. Um they did have two failures in the spring but all passed in the fall. Um so you know those that hadn't hadn't passed, they certainly took some measures to make sure that didn't happen again. So with that I have no further information really at this point I feel like I should be providing unless you have any questions. I'd be happy to answer them, otherwise we recommend approval via cash resolution. [01:19:33] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Council? [01:19:35] **Councilmember:** I'll move approval Madam Mayor. [01:19:36] **Councilmember:** Thank you. Do I have a second? [01:19:38] **Councilmember:** Second. [01:19:39] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** All right. I have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? If not, the clerk will call the roll. [01:19:44] **Clerk:** Council members: Jones? [01:19:45] **Councilmember Jones:** Don't... you're muted... hi. [01:19:46] **Clerk:** Bean? [01:19:47] **Councilmember Bean:** Hi. [01:19:48] **Clerk:** Walsh? [01:19:48] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:19:49] **Clerk:** Angstrom? [01:19:49] **Councilmember Angstrom:** I. [01:19:50] **Clerk:** Edberg? [01:19:51] **Councilmember Edberg:** Aye. [01:19:52] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Motion passes. Moving on to 9B: Resolution improving annual liquor license renewals. [01:19:59] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, thank you members of the Council. Again I'll be very brief. I think with this memorandum what I wanted to call out again was our definition of calls for service. Each year we talk about that and it's an important marker for us to evaluate as we look at reviewing our liquor licenses sort of how they've been monitored over the previous year. Our department continues to monitor those calls. You can imagine that with COVID um in place and you know there was very few calls for service in these establishments in 2020. Um but um any any of those any of those calls that have been made... I think it's important to highlight that over the past uh several years we've developed some really good relationships with our liquor establishments. And while these any calls for service do mark um as a kind of a mark against them as we tally it up for interview reporting, uh they recognize that we're just trying to work with them to see what we can do in those establishments for either better training or just to minimize any disruptions. And so the cooperation between our department and the establishments continues to be uh quite positive. And that's something that our chief has been reinforcing as well. Um with that I have nothing more I guess I'd like to add at this time. Certainly I can try to respond to any questions you might have, otherwise we recommend approval of the attached resolution. [01:21:20] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Council? Any questions? [01:21:23] **Councilmember:** Move to approve Madam Mayor. [01:21:25] **Councilmember:** Seconds. [01:21:26] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? If not, the clerk will call the roll. [01:21:30] **Clerk:** Council members: Angstran? [01:21:32] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [01:21:33] **Clerk:** Bean? [01:21:33] **Councilmember Bean:** Hi. [01:21:34] **Clerk:** Walsh? [01:21:34] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:21:35] **Clerk:** Jones? [01:21:35] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [01:21:36] **Clerk:** Edberg? [01:21:36] **Councilmember Edberg:** Hi. [01:21:37] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Moving on to 9C: Resolution authorizing a road closure and approving a community event at Railroad Park. [01:21:44] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, thank you Mayor, members of the Council. This is a very fun one to be able to talk about and I want to thank... we have two people on here I think listening... Corey Roberts and Danielle Rhode. Both very active in the in Main Street um who are taking the lead on getting this project organized, which is no small undertaking I can only imagine. Cara has been working with them primarily but I'm here to report that uh they are requesting that on April 2nd to 4th during that weekend, that we allow for closure of Washington Avenue. And they have spoken with the businesses along Washington Avenue and so they're aware of this and have not raised any objections to the city at this point. So that's um that's great. And this is also an event that is endorsed by the Main Street Board. Um I think I'll just very shortly indicate that they're hoping that this can be a real fun celebration for members of our community that want to come out and be part of the State High School Hockey Tournament viewing. So I understand that they're working to getting a big screen in the park. I'm not sure where those plans are at, but that I think that sounds really exciting. Um and among a few other things... and I think if there's anything more that comes that we need formal council approval for... I know at one point they had hoped that perhaps there could be um an extension of some liquor service from some of the restaurants that abut Washington. I don't know that that is going to be part of it anymore, but if it is we'll come to council at the next meeting to discuss that. But at this time, they are asking um if we could we could extend that concept of picnic in the park that we had throughout the summer last year where consumption of alcohol was permitted. People would just bring their own or if they did purchase from a local establishment, it would be purchased under the rules that were allowed by from the Governor where you buy something and it would be considered a closed container until they got to their um to their place. I have to say that despite some of our trepidations last summer, we had um that was open and available that all summer long in the park. We never had any issues. This is a celebration of sorts we recognize but the police department is comfortable with the event as proposed. And we have talked to the event organizers and reminded them that we it will have to be blocked off with barricades on the street sides and they'll need to um ensure that they have volunteers monitoring so there isn't movement in and out. We won't be requiring wristbands because it's not going to be service of alcohol... this is if anybody decides to bring their own. Um once again, it's an it's a it's a slight departure from some of the things that we've done downtown but we are really excited at the staff level to be working with Main Street. Um looking for some unique opportunities to um revitalize um after a really long and painful year for the downtown. So I don't know, Mayor, if I have permission to ask if there's anything further either Corey or Danielle wanted to add um that's as much as I'm able to report it this time unless the council has questions. [01:25:01] **Corey Roberts (Main Street):** Okay yeah, I just have uh vacation. First of all, I want to thank city staff and members of the Mayor tonight for consideration of this event. And the one thing I did want to clarify was that the closure of Washington would just be on that Saturday the third from 1 PM until 10 PM and not the three days. [01:25:21] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay thank you. Council, do you have any questions for the applicants or Ms. Heinecker? Concerns? Questions? Anything? [01:25:31] **Councilmember Bean:** Councilmember Bean will move approval. [01:25:33] **Councilmember:** Second. [01:25:34] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? If not, the clerk will call the roll. [01:25:40] **Clerk:** Council members: Walsh? [01:25:41] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:25:41] **Clerk:** Angstran? [01:25:42] **Councilmember Angstran:** Aye. [01:25:43] **Clerk:** Edberg? [01:25:43] **Councilmember Edberg:** Aye. [01:25:44] **Clerk:** Bean? [01:25:44] **Councilmember Bean:** Aye. [01:25:45] **Clerk:** And Jones? [01:25:46] **Councilmember Jones:** Aye. [01:25:47] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Motion passes. We look forward to this. Thank you for your hard work. [01:25:52] **Corey Roberts:** Yeah, thank you. Thank you. [01:25:54] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Successful event. Moving on to 9B: Resolution accepting your note... a donation for renovation of the guy's Gazebo. [01:26:02] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, this is another fun one to be able to talk about. So the council's aware I think at this point that we had... there was an anonymous donation that was provided um on behalf of uh renovation of our beloved gazebo at Matoska Park. Um the donation um gift was in the amount of 150,000 dollars. It was actually given to the Greater White Bear Lake Community Foundation for safekeeping and then we will be drawing from that as this project moves forward. So this... because we'll be drawing from that donation, we do um need to have council formally accept that donation and as part of our process and that's what this resolution does do. What I can also tell you as a brief update: our public works director, Paul Copy, is staffing this committee so and he is on a well-deserved family vacation during spring break so he's unable to report to this project. But um he has assured me that it's going quite well. I know um Councilmember Jones is serving on that as our council rep and they're going to do as much as they can to preserve what they can, otherwise it will be um new materials. And they're now currently working to finalize some architectural plans so that we can get some specifications um ready for for securing quotes. And we'll get some a few quotes to make sure that we have a solid number that we feel comfortable with. We do expect estimates are to be around 140, 150,000 dollars for this to happen um so we're again grateful for the donation. Um if it does for whatever reason exceed that money... or excuse me... that amount, um we'll know more once we get the quotes. We would then request um uh that we would use some of our park funds to make up that difference. But at this time we don't anticipate that, we'll have to see what happens with the quotes. But um so I guess with that, I am asking council to approve the attached resolution accepting the donation and authorizing staff to seek quotes for this work. [01:28:13] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. This is one of those happy ones to do. So Councilmember Edberg, you got your hand up. [01:28:18] **Councilmember Edberg:** Yeah so just a clarification. Technically, I from what I'm reading we are not accepting a donation from an individual. We are accepting a partnership or a grant from the foundation because the individual donated the dollars to the foundation, received their tax benefit from the foundation, the resources now belong to the foundation. So we're not acknowledging an anonymous gift, we are acknowledging a partnership with the foundation. Am I misreading this uh the situation? [01:28:50] **Ellen Heinecker:** No... thank you Councilmember... Madam Mayor. No, that's that would be correct. But it doesn't dilute the importance of the donation and the donor that was so generous so um... [01:29:04] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Yeah, but yeah no... so it's a pretty straightforward uh you know I would certainly encourage that we accept it. So do I have a motion to that effect? [01:29:12] **Councilmember Edberg:** I'm willing to move but I'm also curious: so are we accepting a grant or are we accepting their partnership in the deal? What's the proper way to describe the relationship? [01:29:21] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I think it's a donation don't you? I mean I take it as a donation. Yeah that's the money. [01:29:27] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, members of the Council. So yeah, the donation was made for use for the gazebo and it was provided given to the as you had indicated with uh Councilmember Edberg, it was given to the foundation to be held there um until we decided how we were going to be um moving forward with this project. So we are accepting and that's important. It's an important legal and tax distinction and I'm just saying I'm not second fine whatever. Perhaps um Councilmember Edberg and the Mayor if I could turn to um the Detroit and ask him what he heard the language to be that would be whatever he would recommend. [01:30:15] **City Attorney Gilchrist:** Well Mr. Mayor uh I'm sorry Madam Mayor and council members... the um I guess I have to admit I'm not understanding the distinction because as I understand it there is not a separate agreement that the city has with the entity that's transferring the money. So even though it was it was a um a donation from the individual to that organization, now that organization is making a donation to this... was a restricted donation, right? [01:30:46] **Councilmember Edberg:** My point is that it's a restricted donation which requires which creates a fiduciary obligation on the part of the foundation to use the funds to support the project. That's clear. If we are if they're going to write us a check that we put in our account and spend that money down, then we are receiving a donation. If we are doing the project and sending them a bill, then we have a partnership and it there there's so the the legal question involves who has control of the resource and on whose books is being accounted. [01:31:18] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well Madam Mayor, we have a resolution in front of us that says donation. It does. It says "Great White Bear Lake Community Foundation desires to contribute up to 150,000 dollars." Yes, donation. "Resolved by the City City White Bear Lake that the donation of up to a donation of up to 150,000 dollars is accepted and shall be allocated to the gazebo project." So I think the resolution is drafted pretty clear. I it's a donation from the foundation, they have been given the money by a donor who has restricted the funds to this and so they are then in turn doing it. I I think it's I think it reads clearly. But Councilman Edberg, if you think differently then we'll have to rewrite it. [01:32:02] **Councilmember Edberg:** It it just gets into the question of how the how the funding is being handled. If it's coming... if we're going to... if we spend the money and we seek reimbursement, fine, then the language works. [01:32:15] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Yes and that is... I'm telling you the way it is. That's that's my understanding as well and working with Paul, that's how I understood it was going to work. Okay. All right any more questions? Do I have a motion to accept this? [01:32:29] **Councilmember Jones:** Jones, move to approve. [01:32:31] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. Join a second? [01:32:32] **Councilmember Angstran:** Councilmember Angston, thank you. [01:32:34] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Is there any further discussion? If not, the clerk will call the role. [01:32:38] **Clerk:** Council members: Edberg? [01:32:39] **Councilmember Edberg:** Aye. [01:32:40] **Clerk:** Angstran? [01:32:41] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [01:32:42] **Clerk:** Walsh? [01:32:42] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:32:43] **Clerk:** Bean? [01:32:43] **Councilmember Bean:** Hi. [01:32:44] **Clerk:** Jones? [01:32:45] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [01:32:46] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. The motion passes. And once again we thank the donor for their generosity because this gazebo is near and dear to many of us. So we thank you very much for that. And Councilmember Jones, thanks for representing us on the committee. So moving on to the consent agenda. [01:33:04] **Councilmember:** Move to approve Madam Mayor. [01:33:06] **Councilmember Bean:** Bean seconds. [01:33:07] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** I have a motion and a second. Clerk will call the roll. [01:33:10] **Clerk:** Council members: Jones? [01:33:11] **Councilmember Jones:** Aye. [01:33:11] **Clerk:** Bean? [01:33:12] **Councilmember Bean:** Aye. [01:33:13] **Clerk:** Angstran? [01:33:13] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [01:33:14] **Clerk:** Walsh? [01:33:14] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:33:15] **Clerk:** Edberg? [01:33:15] **Councilmember Edberg:** Hi. [01:33:16] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to discussion. All right... Housing Policy. Ms. Heinecker, do you want to do this or... [01:33:24] **Ellen Heinecker:** Sure. Yeah Madam Mayor, members of the council. Um and uh there wasn't a memo that accompanied this and that I apologize. Um it it primarily it's a play saver for us to have an opportunity to talk a little bit about um the Housing Policy Initiative, where it's at um today and and how we um... and we're excited about where it's at actually. The application process is now closed and and I can talk about that in a moment. But then to combine that discussion with um uh what I would propose to be uh expand an expanded scope of what we had talked about originally with the consultants. Um there is within our project right now we have two larger community forums that would be part of this project. And I think that given um more recent development proposals... you know we had the one in the downtown and Third and Cook, we had one on Linden and County Road E, and we also had the development proposal at Ian Bel Air about a year and a half or so ago... and with each of them, there was considerable community engagement. A lot of questions and concerns were raised by people that felt more directly impacted by it. And um in consultation with our consultant, I thought this would might be an opportunity. We had planned to do some of that engagement when we move forward with our Counter County Road Equator project, but because it's very specific to some housing proposals, we thought that perhaps we migrate some of that work into this Housing Policy Initiative. I don't have a proposal at this point to share with Council and but um if council's interested, I would like to continue those conversations with the consultant. And um in short, what um what we've begun to talk about was to... I don't want to say quite simply... but in part it would be something like uh perhaps additional focus groups uh that would involve uh some stakeholders um interested in each of these projects to go back and reflect on uh project process, vision. Just you know, it it it's not going to be a long process for each of them, but to gather and try to capture and harness some of that which we learned... lessons learned from each of those processes... and also um gain um some insight into how we might be able to move forward from them in putting that into that broader work that we're doing with our housing policy process. So um if we do um if we are comfortable uh moving forward and in broadening that scope of work, I will have further conversation with the two consultants that are working on this housing policy process. I can tell you tell you that it wouldn't probably be until the summer that we would really want to engage in some of those conversations because it would be our hope that we can invite people to do something in person. Um we think that that dialogue and that um community building and all of that... it's just so much is lost via Zoom. So we're going to do our best to stretch it out so we can do some more in-person um meetings relative to that if in fact the council supports the general concept. Without, again, I need to have more conversation with consultants but I wanted to touch on that. And then before I finish my... before I finish and see what the council has to say about that... just to let you know that we um have received all of the applications now. And just today we met with the consultants and we'll be distributing to the Mayor and also to our Council members by ward the applicants with our recommendations. You know so ultimately the council can look at it as a whole at the meeting on the 23rd for final consideration as we continue to move forward in this um this process. But excited to be at this point um we received 44 applicants... so that's great applications... so really excited about the interest and enthusiasm. Um so with that I just wanted to get some feedback from council on that idea. [01:37:34] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Council? Councilmember Jones. [01:37:37] **Councilmember Jones:** Oh Ellen clarified this for me a little bit. So we've got the Housing Policy Initiative, which we we've been doing, right? That's been great. But so not now we're going to add to that specific projects or discussions from specific projects? See clarify that for me please. [01:37:55] **Ellen Heinecker:** Sure. Thank you Mayor. Um Councilmember Jones. So what uh what I would propose, and again um having some more specific dialogue about what this would look like with the consultants, then we bring this back to you right for consideration... but would be to engage in um some conversation with um going back to looking at those three proposals that had come out in recent months and maybe a year and a half ago. Looking at lessons learned from um as we look at process and as also as we look at um as we did... you know one of the components of developing this housing policy was to uh look at how do we engage community in these conversations. And I think that that going back and speaking with those that had been involved in those conversations um this was an opportune time to really harness that um that that experience from those that that we've heard from and and get it and put that into the work that we're doing with this um housing policy process. [01:38:59] **Councilmember Jones:** So so now right about specific development? Here here's the hypothetically. So another apartment complex... by the way, I'm just disappointed that the developer went away. I don't I don't blame them or put it on pause or whatever they did, I can't blame them for the way they were mistreated by our community. Um they were there to give a presentation, to give ideas, no formal application and pitchforks and torches were all they were met with. And that was at our request, you know. Um we agreed to move forward and say have this meeting and we didn't even get the chance to further... I still think it's a good proposal, but didn't even have the chance to say yay nay, financing tight, any of that looks nothing. It just stopped. And that that's disappointing to me. But so if we put this same project over on the other side... let's say White Bear Bar... no offense to White... I'm not wiping out White Bear Bar... are these same neighbors going to care? Are they going to be over there with their pitchforks and torches? Oh it's not in my backyard anymore so I don't care. You know I I no I mean I'm gonna say no to one more committee, one more conversation. I mean that's why I wanted to say the Housing Policy Initiative is really important to me because I think that sets standards for us that will help set standards for us. But not when it's not in my backyard people all day long. The difference to me on the County Road E in Bel Air, right? You know we have it it didn't go that great. But you know what? It was such widespread neighborhood. We had people from seven eight blocks away and that's what woke me up to that. And then we said we took their feedback, went to the developer if I'm not mistaken anybody else correct me and said "Hey could you do this or this?" He's like "No." We're like "Okay." And I think as council members as council, we said "Okay this is what our community wanted... were you willing?" We didn't even get that chance with this. We've got nothing. So to have pitchforks and torches running roughshod over our Planning Commission, over our staff... I don't even know why I'm elected. Um I don't I don't understand it and but I I do think the policy initiative and having these meetings I think is fantastic. I wish we could get better at these pre let's call them pre-application meetings. I think the feedback we get is valuable um and just FYI there was no feedback that I heard that wouldn't make me take another step. And I'm not saying I would approve the project as they put it out there in very plain simple terms, I don't think I would to be honest. There was questions on what the city was getting back, the financial terms, uh how it you know "quote unquote" looked even though it was a big block put on there. But so that's that's where I'm kind of are we letting the cart you know steer the horse? I don't know. [01:42:07] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** So what you're suggesting is that the initial housing policy task force etcetera, we were going to have not deviate and pull this in? Stay with that original premise? [01:42:17] **Councilmember Jones:** I fully support that. Yeah fully support that. But not to say that we don't hear anything either. [01:42:24] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** No but focus on that piece first and make sure that we've got we've got you know what are the policies going to be and then look at this is it are you saying go back to what our original premise was and then we can look at this other piece once we've got that sort of... [01:42:37] **Councilmember Jones:** Well yes and no Madam Mayor. I just it's more of a warning it's more of a... [01:42:43] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Yeah I know what you're saying. [01:42:44] **Councilmember Jones:** Yeah I mean we can't put blinders on. I'm not saying well we're just going to stay in this tunnel. I'm not saying no. So anyways I'll defer to Councilmember Edberg. [01:42:55] **Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you Madam Mayor. Um so I'm not going to dive into a discussion about the about the most recent project. Um I do want to clarify Ellen, did you say Ian Linden or did you mean E and Rolling View... the Level Up Academy site... at the third site now? [01:43:16] **Ellen Heinecker:** Lyndon, my apologies. [01:43:18] **Councilmember Edberg:** Yes, thank you. Yeah so um two of those have been in my ward. I've had lots of opportunity to have those conversations that Mr. Jones is referring to. Um so I think what I um... I think one of the ways of addressing the concerns that Mr. Jones is raising is that we embark in a broad in this broader education piece about what are our housing needs, what did our housing study say and what process do we use so that people can so that our citizens can understand the process more clearly. Um that we actually take uh perhaps receive some recommendations on how we can improve the communications around the process so that the roles of each step in the process can be better understood. I have a suspicion that that might result in fewer torches and pitchforks, if that's the imagery that Mr. Jones wishes to use um good to be there. It will improve the quality of our conversation because folks will understand what that process is. But right now our historic process... we don't have it written down in our website. We communicate it verbally every time this process comes up and I think there is room for that discussion. What I've heard the City Manager ask is that some of that work it was envisioned in the original contract with the with the consultants. And it occurs to her that there may be some new nuances that have come up as a result of this most recent experience that might require a different framing. And so what I'm what I'm hearing you say Ellen is that you would like to have our support or at least willingness to listen to um a an amendment, an expansion of that work to add specific work tasks that are not already included in that uh task. But that you want to have the our blessing to have the conversation about: is there one or two or X new activities or new topics that should be included in that contract um that have come that have arisen as a result of our most recent experience? Is that am I capturing your your accurately or am I missing that? [01:45:51] **Ellen Heinecker:** No, Madam Mayor Councilmember... thank you. No, that is um... yep that would be accurate description of what I guess I'm trying to describe. I think um yeah I don't know if uh and I'd like to speak maybe um if I could Mayor um to Councilmember Jones's question. Um you know I think it would be it's an opportunity um I think to, as Councilmember Edberg had indicated, really to expand on our our you know building our toolbox really. So that as we move out into the community and additional our future development proposals come before us, you know our goal is to have um good information and do it in a way that it can be re... you know what are there ways that it can be received differently or better or... you know I I and and I think that it's it's important that we listen to perhaps suggestions on not just not the proposals themselves because we don't have a proposal in front of us at this time. Which is why we have an opportunity... we have people who have experienced a process that I think I I feel like we can learn from. Not about any particular proposal itself, and then we can take those learnings and incorporate into the work that we're doing with this um broader project. [01:47:11] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay. Councilmember Jones. [01:47:13] **Councilmember Jones:** Appreciate sincerely both Ellen and Kevin. Thank you. Mine's just the warning flare. We never got to the process. I don't want to dwell on this last one in particular. Bel Air and County was different, that was us going back. Here's some communication with... at least the didn't even get to an application. Yes obviously we can say what the process is and spell that out website whatever it is, yes improve improvement proof. Um just I'm just careful about yeah yeah it's working. I know what we've done... two major projects that weren't the funnest things in the world to go through as far as Boat Works in the waters that weren't everything. And that it just seems strange that uh yeah I'm just concerned that the torches and pitchforks are going to run the you know... My biggest concern, and I really am not trying to dwell on this last project... my biggest concern is that that we're going to scare other developers. Because you know what you do? This this is how you fight the "Not in My Backyard." This is how you fight "You're from Ward Four, Five, Three, you don't matter, you shouldn't have a say over here." Well they didn't even know that we don't all live in the same ward. That's just a huge concern for me um and it's it's cautionary. I'm not saying what Councilmember Edberg or Ellen said is is good it's I'm just dipping my toe in so... [01:48:42] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well I think what Ellen is suggesting makes sense to to... but I mean I don't think it I think we need to still go back to our original premise, which was getting a concrete policy in place. Yes these these meetings can come into play, but we still need a basic foundation of what are our policies going to look like. That what they've done is not going to change our policy... if we set a housing policy that this is boom boom boom boom you know pitchforks and torches are not going to change that policy. But you know I think we just need to look at all of it I mean and take it from there. So are you all in agreement that she should go ahead and pursue it with... [01:49:18] **Councilmember Jones:** I'm sorry no I I'm just I'm yes I mean I cannot argue about I'm not arguing no you're not. I'm listening to City Manager and Kevin and really it's good stuff. I'm I'm just... you probably guys know my ears are burning because we didn't even get a process. This process didn't even happen, it just got snuffed out. So um and I think it really was different than the Bel Air and County Road E one. That one was probably just as contentious but I think there was some reasonable things and just like there was the other night there were some reasonable things that were brought up and I guess you know what now that's those are the reasons how do people channel that that they know that we are hearing those requests? I don't want to hear a request that you know "Will the sanitary sewer pump up Bel Air Avenue and get uphill?" Um you know the reasonable requests should be heard that we just didn't even get that chance in our process. So I would say fight for the process that we have and certainly it can improve. [01:50:23] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay. Well then I I think we're kind of all in agreement. You go ahead and talk with a consultant because this is I mean this is their their strong suit. They know what they're do you know get they give maybe they'll have some ideas that we haven't thought about. [01:50:37] **Ellen Heinecker:** Absolutely. Yeah. [01:50:38] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay well then let's go on to plans for reopening the License Bureau. That sounds like that sounds like something positive. [01:50:45] **Ellen Heinecker:** It is! Oh it was easier to shut down than it is to open up. We are um and as council knows we have been so we've been operating since the shutdown back in March right? It's just been operating differently. And um and I won't review the reasons we had to lock our doors um primarily again with the whole um way that we're set up with like one entry we had Licensed Beer with the lines that were forever and just a lot of different dynamics. But um that being said, we're really really excited that the doors are open. The on the agenda it said March 22nd... I even things changed within three days even... so last week we had kind of did this light opening with the License Bureau and that's been our biggest challenge again as I as I had indicated. But um since then now we we have them coming you know it's open. Let's just say we have people coming in and are able to access everyone on that main lobby floor at this point. What I do want to emphasize though um is that until uh probably mid-summer... I mean at the point where we're all feeling like you know we can be doing everything like we did... we are still minimizing the number of staff in the building. So the behind the counter staff um we're having you know some people do their work from home on a given day while others are in and they'll always go you know kind of swapping that back and forth. And quite honestly people are anxious to get back and see everyone so I know that um we're all looking forward to that. But that will mean that if someone is coming in... I think I speak specifically to our Community Development Department because those are the ones that people really like to um be able to talk to... is that for some of those staff, they might want to call ahead and make sure that they're actually in the building doing their work that particular day. But um certainly there's there'll be there's people there to help and we're really glad to have the the noise in the lobby again. I'm not very busy yet right now at all but um nevertheless um it's nice to hear the voices of our residents. [01:53:11] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Well on the License Bureau um do you want people if they've got appointments for their their driver's license to keep those appointments and not come in and swarm everybody? I mean should we and I'm sorry... [01:53:23] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes because I like I'm one of them no thank you Mayor um and thank you for saying that because actually I want to emphasize that all but our driver's licenses to the to um are our is open. Driver's license we will still have to have appointments for the simple future um that is a function of two things um you know blogs everyone has booked out at least a couple months um and um again as we talked about that that lights that feed that we receive right now... you're freezing up on us we're losing you difficult for us to hire an additional fan now... but try again... okay can you hear me now? [01:54:14] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Yeah now you're good. [01:54:15] **Ellen Heinecker:** I will just say keep your appointments for driver's licenses and um those will continue to be required. Everything else is available by walking. [01:54:26] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay but don't all come the same day. Councilmember Bean. [01:54:30] **Councilmember Bean:** No thank you. I I just want to confirm that the drop box is still going to remain in place? [01:54:36] **Ellen Heinecker:** Yes, that works nice. It will yes that will be in place we won't be taking that away at all. That's great for 24-hour service, something we're able to learn through the COVID experience. [01:54:50] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay that's good to know. All right good and I'm keeping it brief because I'm afraid I'm going to lose you all again. [01:54:57] **Ellen Heinecker:** So I'll just say real two other things real quickly. One is um that uh we are starting to work with the Main Street um businesses again as they look forward to the warm season and sitting outside. And last year Council gave staff the flexibility to work through some administrative approvals of outdoor patios... we're asking for that to continue on this year. We still have businesses are struggling and there's still restrictions on the numbers of people inside so um uh we are beginning to work with them and we'll you know bring back an update to Council at its next meeting. But those conversations have already started so which is exciting. Um we'll also bring back something formal to the Council at the next meeting to allow for continued picnic in the park like we had last summer um not unlike what's happening over the weekend of April um with the downtown celebration. So that's forthcoming. And then lastly just to let Council know that we um I've been working... I haven't heard as much about it for a few months... but we continue to work toward a final contract with MnDOT for that AV pilot project. Um the good news actually the contract will now be directly with AECOM, which is our project manager. It takes us out of a lot of administrative stuff. Really excited that that is a that's going to be structured in that manner. I spoke today along with Daryl from AECOM at the Transportation Conference and there were there is a ton of enthusiasm around this project statewide. I have to say a lot of people in the field of transportation and automated vehicles are excited to see this happen. I'll be inviting back um Daryl from AECOM and some others involved with the partnerships council meeting in the next um over the next month or so so that we can get a refresher on what this should involve. Um we expect it to be get to go to get going um as soon as this fall um in time for to coordinate with the the school's calendar so we can incorporate uh the education component with the school district. So more more to come on that but with that uh that's all I have for updates at this time. [01:57:15] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** You can what about the deer survival you had? [01:57:18] **Ellen Heinecker:** Deer survey! Yeah, I'm sorry, we have a deer survey. Yes, we have a deer survey in your packet. We do this every year. You can see that White Bear Lake we don't have big populations of deer, or at least noted on the survey that was done by Ramsey County. Um we'll continue to do this annually because there are years where that spikes and we've had more conversation with Council during those times to decide whether or not we want to cooperate with Ramsey County and deer management. But we haven't had to do that um today that because we do get questions occasionally we continue to participate in those surveys but it's been a quieter year with deer even. They were quiet, right? Everybody was staying close quiet. [01:58:07] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay um let's see. Paul's not here, Ann's not here so does Sam have anything she wants to regale us with? [01:58:15] **Ellen Heinecker:** If not I didn't I did not ask Sam to prepare anything. [01:58:19] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Okay well then we're pretty much ready to uh I would entertain a motion to adjourn. [01:58:24] **Councilmember:** So moved. [01:58:25] **Councilmember:** Second. [01:58:26] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Clerk will call the roll. [01:58:28] **Clerk:** Council members: Jones? [01:58:29] **Councilmember Jones:** Hi. [01:58:30] **Clerk:** Walsh? [01:58:30] **Councilmember Walsh:** Hi. [01:58:31] **Clerk:** Edberg? [01:58:31] **Councilmember Edberg:** [Aye] [01:58:32] **Clerk:** Angstran? [01:58:32] **Councilmember Angstran:** Hi. [01:58:33] **Clerk:** And Bean? [01:58:33] **Councilmember Bean:** Aye. [01:58:34] **Mayor Jo Emerson:** Thank you. We are adjourned. See you on the 23rd if not before. Good night guys. Everybody you.