Based on the context provided and the flow of the meeting, here is the transcribed text with speaker names and formatted timestamps. [00:00:00] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I'd like to call to order the January 9th, 2023 meeting of the Oakdale Environmental Management Commission. We'll start our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance, so if everyone would please stand and face the flag. [00:00:15] **All:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [00:00:30] **Keith Miller (Chair):** So we'll start with the roll call of those who are present. First off, Commissioner Gerding? [00:00:35] **Commissioner Gerding:** Present. [00:00:37] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Commissioner Wilson? [00:00:38] **Commissioner Wilson:** Here. [00:00:40] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Commissioner Brown is absent this evening, but we do have with us Kevin Zabel as our liaison, and we also have Shannon Reidlinger as our staff liaison. The first item this evening is our approval of our meeting minutes from November 21st of last year. Do I have any changes or corrections to those meeting minutes? Hearing none, I would look for a motion to approve the November 21st, 2022 meeting minutes as written. [00:01:05] **Commissioner Gerding:** So moved. [00:01:07] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Do I have a second? [00:01:08] **Commissioner Wilson:** Second. [00:01:10] **Keith Miller (Chair):** All in favor of approval of the November 21st, 2022 meeting minutes say aye. [00:01:15] **All:** Aye. [00:01:17] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Opposed? Meeting minutes are approved. So we'll start this evening our agenda with our old business. The first thing we have is the Adopt a Drain schedule for 2023. The Environmental Management Commission has adopted three drains near Walton Park or near Walton Park, and we have been cleaning those drains and we've been doing it for two or three years now. We have a new schedule here, and we have decided that in the winter months where there's not a need to clean the drains—nothing is draining down into the storm sewer this time of year too much. I don't know if we have any questions about that new schedule or any comments? [00:02:00] **Commissioner Wilson:** No questions about the schedule, but just a question about the process for us when we do our monthly cleanups. Is there something we should be filling out? Because when I track my own drain at home, it asks you for like, what was the sediment, pounds of stuff you clean up. Should we be telling you that or reporting back to the city somehow? What should that process look like for us? [00:02:20] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Yeah, I mean I think it would certainly be relevant for us to be able to provide that data to the Adopt a Drain folks if we so decided, so that's one way that collecting that information would be helpful. The other thing I'm thinking of is that when we get to the conversation about our communication strategy, there's a lot that we can do as far as promoting Adopt a Drain goes—with pictures that you take, or if you do have information about the type of things that are captured in the drain. That would be helpful when we're posting about this on social media or explaining it to other people. So, I don't know that that's something that you have to do every single time, but if there is at least one month that you're cleaning the drain where you're able to provide information about what's captured and maybe take a picture or two, that would be very helpful. [00:03:00] **Commissioner Wilson:** Okay. Okay, thank you. [00:03:05] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Okay, and it looks like we start the year in March with our cleanup with Commissioner Wilson. [00:03:10] **Commissioner Wilson:** Yep, I'll be ready. [00:03:12] **Keith Miller (Chair):** All right. If no other questions or comments, we'll move on. Next, we have a review of the initial community engagement results for our bike and pedestrian plan and an update on this project. I will turn it over to Shannon Reidlinger to provide us with an update on this. [00:03:30] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Thank you, Chair. So this is going to be a very brief update. In the past, we've had our consultant from Tool Design Group, who is helping us out with this project, Sean Murphy Lopez, join the commission to go through a couple of engagement exercises. So you all are probably pretty familiar with the type of community engagement that we've done because you've been our guinea pigs for at least a portion of it. I just wanted to give you a very brief update about how that process has gone with our community in general. In front of you, you do have a memo that provides many more details than I will probably cover today. To go over that at a very high level, I do have a PowerPoint presentation that Sean gave to our City Council members. I'm just going to give you a brief overview of what they saw at the December 13th workshop. Where we are in the bike and pedestrian plan process: we have completed a vast majority of our community engagement to date. Our consultant has put together a draft community engagement report for us just to give us the general understanding of what kind of findings we're receiving. This community engagement report will help the consultant create plan recommendations, so that includes both goals and strategies and also a network map that will help the city understand where there are prioritized bike and pedestrian projects. This is just a review of what we've done for community engagement. You'll see here our numbers are in the hundreds as far as the number of interactions we received. As a reminder, there probably are some of these folks that we've talked to who we've spoken with at a number of different engagement opportunities, so we're not necessarily counting people, but we are counting interactions. We are hovering right around that one percent level as far as community engagement is concerned. What we're doing right now is trying to up that level a little bit by getting our WikiMap survey in front of more people. We sent a reminder out through social media recently just to have people continuing to fill out the WikiMap. I'm working to see if we can't get that in front of more students—so not just individuals at Tartan High School, but also potentially some elementary and middle schoolers as well. That's the goal, but we are looking to wrap up community engagement here pretty quickly because we'd like to get to the point where we're starting to draft up these goals and strategies and get a draft plan in front of both our City Council and the public. This is just an example of the type of things that we're looking forward to receiving in the finalized community engagement report. You can see here that our consultant is taking the information that we receive from the questionnaire, from our conversations with the focus groups and the open house, and from the WikiMap to really start to understand what are the major themes in Oakdale when it comes to biking and walking. You'll see here that we have a key takeaway about the fact that most people who we have engaged with so far have indicated that they bike and walk for exercise, health, and enjoyment, not necessarily to get to primary destinations. This one is about the type of facilities that are needed in the future network, and then this is a key takeaway about how most respondents would like some sort of a separation in their biking and walking paths from traffic. Again, these types of data analyses are used to create goals and strategies. You'll see here and in the memo that you were provided, there's a whole list of draft goals and strategies. This list was presented to City Council at the December 13th workshop, and we basically said, "Does this look correct? Are we going in the right direction?" We received the feedback that, yep, things at least from a draft perspective look okay and we're kind of continuing down this roadmap. I don't foresee this changing a whole lot with any remaining community feedback that we receive, but it could, and that's why these are draft at this point. Like I mentioned, we're still kind of wrapping up that community engagement. We will be receiving a more finalized community engagement report that will be shared with Council, and it's probably something that we can put in front of the commission as well. I anticipate that Sean will have more to share with the commission. There might be other opportunities for engagement with some of the draft content later on down the line. So the EMC may be asked to provide more feedback on the content that's being created—potentially on the network map, potentially on those goals and strategies. So more to come with that, but I just want to let you know that we are moving along in the process and we're starting to get some pretty cool content created for us. If there are any questions, I'm happy to try and answer them. [00:07:30] **Keith Miller (Chair):** One question that I have is I'm wondering if, while they're also gathering this data for Oakdale, are they talking to neighboring communities like Woodbury and Lake Elmo and others that border Oakdale to make sure that there isn't a big difference in the type and the approach to the bike and pedestrian paths? [00:07:45] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Yeah, so neither our consultant nor myself are talking directly to those neighboring cities, but what we are doing, and what we have done at the very initial stages of this project, is go through and look at all of those different communities' bike and pedestrian systems. So there's an understanding of what the trail system looks like in our neighborhood communities and then what sort of goals and strategies they have when it comes to the future of their own bike and pedestrian network. There was a system map that was created in Phase One of this project that kind of outlines all of those different facilities from neighboring communities. That's probably as deep as we'll go into that portion of it. It's important to realize that this is not a plan that's created in a vacuum, but we're kind of prioritizing what the needs of the community are. [00:08:30] **Keith Miller (Chair):** One other comment: I saw that in this, it looked like there was an interest in having the bike and pedestrian paths separate from traffic, rather than having bike lanes on the roads and that sort of thing. I'm wondering if they will be also looking at the current bike paths that we have to make sure that they'll handle both bikes and pedestrians if the bikes are going to be taken mainly off the road and onto pathways. [00:08:50] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Yeah, I would assume so as well. So if what we're hearing is that our residents would like separation, then the job of the consultant is to come back to us to say, "These are all the different ways that we can make separation happen." It could be two different paths, it could be just a path with some bolsters, it could be a variety of different things. But we need those recommendations put into the plan, and that's what Tool Design will do for us. They're not going to tell us what we should do per se, but they will give us those options, they'll help us prioritize those options, and then we take it to City Council for more immediate action steps after that. [00:09:20] **Commissioner Wilson:** Would that include the path in the Nature Center, or is that deemed separate potentially? [00:09:25] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** So if Tool hears from a number of people that the Nature Center trails in specific need to be looked at in a different way, then they'll provide a more specific recommendation for the Nature Center. If they're not necessarily hearing the Nature Center targeted in the feedback, then they may not provide that sort of specialized recommendation. It just depends on the analysis and what they hear. [00:09:45] **Keith Miller (Chair):** And I imagine that although the reason people use the bike—well it sounds like it's mainly used for recreation, both bicycling and walking is more recreational enjoyment type thing—with the Gold Line going in, that could possibly change. I mean, that is also something that will be taken into consideration, I imagine. [00:10:05] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Yeah, I think it's important to note that we're hearing these responses from the people that we've engaged with so far. There could be a whole section of the population that does actually use the trails for transportation; we just haven't gotten the chance to be able to speak to those individuals. So a lot of what the recommendations will be is going to be direct feedback from our community engagement, but I think that it's important for us to overlay Oakdale's existing transit system on top of that, which is again one of the things that we did in the first phase: to think through where all of our bus stops were, our crossings, how could we potentially think through where people are likely to be moving towards even if they're not reflected in our community engagement. So that'll be overlaid; it's just we'll have to do a little bit of assuming on the consultant's part. [00:10:45] **Keith Miller (Chair):** It'd be good to have that infrastructure in place for biking and walking to the Gold Line to encourage use of the rapid transit. [00:10:55] **Commissioner Gerding:** I appreciate the update and I also appreciate that the numbers in terms of engagement data were centered on actual engagements and not like duplicated or unduplicated individuals, so I think it seems to be more holistic. In that same lens, do we have a good understanding of the business pulse on all of this? It kind of relates to what Chair Miller was saying about Gold Line and different ways of thinking about access. But in terms of the engagement that's been done thus far, is it fair to assume that the business community has also been equally as engaged in this? [00:11:20] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** I don't know that the business community was targeted in quite the same way. I will say that the Community Development team has been doing a lot of business expansion and retention conversations with businesses in Oakdale, and when they go, they make mention of the bike and pedestrian plan. So, for example, I think that the Animal Emergency Referral Center has given us a couple of thoughts on what sort of paths they'd like to see around their business. But that's a lot of kind of one-off ad hoc conversations. I'm not sure that we've had the chance to really target our business community quite as much as just residents. [00:11:55] **Commissioner Gerding:** Okay, thanks. [00:11:57] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Any other comments or questions for Shannon? All right, well thank you, Shannon. Thanks for the update and looks like this is coming along very nicely. Good engagement with the community and we look forward to the next update on this. It's an important part of our work for this year. All right, on to new business. We now have our annual election of Commission Chair and Vice Chair. This is in accordance with Chapter 6 of the city code of ordinances, that we shall elect a Chair and Vice Chair each year at our first meeting. This process would start with the Chair and the nominations for Chair. I will say they're now open, and the nominations do not require a second. [00:12:45] **Commissioner Gerding:** Can I nominate Keith Miller for Chair? I'll get that out of my mouth. [00:12:50] **Keith Miller (Chair):** All right, there's a motion to nominate Commissioner Miller for the chair position. Are there any other nominations? I would invite a motion then to close nominations for the position of Chair. [00:13:00] **Commissioner Gerding:** I will make a motion to close nominations for the position of Chair. [00:13:05] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I don't think we need to use the ballots in this case, so there will just be a voice vote at this point. All in favor of passing the nomination of Chair and electing Commissioner Miller to the chair position, say aye. [00:13:15] **All:** Aye. [00:13:17] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Opposed? All right, I guess I'm Chair now for another year. Now look to the position of Vice Chair and again, we will not require a second for a nomination for Vice Chair. [00:13:30] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I nominate Commissioner Gerding. [00:13:33] **Commissioner Wilson:** I'll second that nomination and also make a motion to close nominations for the position of Vice Chair. [00:13:40] **Keith Miller (Chair):** And also enter a motion to elect Commissioner Gerding for the position of Vice Chair of the Environmental Management Commission for 2023. [00:13:45] **Commissioner Wilson:** I second. [00:13:47] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Thank you. And again, a voice vote will suffice here. All in favor of Commissioner Gerding for Vice Chair, say aye. [00:13:55] **All:** Aye. [00:13:57] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Opposed? Congratulations, Commissioner, another year as Vice Chair. [00:14:00] **Commissioner Gerding:** Thank you, Chair Miller. Do I need to go back and actually get a motion for the Chair? [00:14:05] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I think you're fine, we're good. So now that we have that taken care of for another year, we have as a major new item of business something that we discussed at our November meeting to some degree, but we'd like to dive in even deeper this month: looking at our communication strategy for the Environmental Management Commission, developing an editorial calendar for the year and using this as a communications tool to inform the citizens of Oakdale, and also how we can use this to promote various events and programs throughout the year. I think I'll turn this over to you, Shannon, to kind of walk us through this. [00:14:45] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Thank you. So a lot of this will be content that you probably have already seen before. This will be our third time going through an annual calendar. As far as the strategy is concerned, I think we're old hat; the specifics are what I would like to talk with the commission about tonight. You'll see here at the very top of the memo that I tried to identify some bullet points of things that I'm hoping the commission can talk about. So when you're going through the calendar, be thinking about whether or not there are themes that are maybe repetitive or things that are missing entirely that you would like to see added into the calendar. Be cognizant of whether or not the calendar reflects the priorities of the 2023 EMC work plan, which as a reminder is focused pretty hard this year on education and amping up the water conservation side of the plan. The other thing that I would really like the commission to discuss in more detail is this idea of commissioner engagement. One of the major differences in the editorial calendar this year is that I added a third column to try and get us to start thinking through whether or not there are specific types of engagement that you would like to see each month based on the theme. That surfaced because in our conversation about the 2023 work plan, the commission threw out ideas like hosting an environmental fair or doing a ride and drive or even doing a fix-it clinic. Those are the types of things where if we know that we want to do them in advance, we can work through to have the commission participate on a deeper level than just coming to the meetings. And last thing too—if there are specific types of communication outlets that you would like to see us taking advantage of. We know the traditional ones: social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn). We have the Oakdale Update newsletter, our website, but there may be other communication channels like Nextdoor or email listservs. If there are specific channels you'd like to see highlighted, let me know. [00:16:30] **Commissioner Wilson:** I think that the sharing pictures idea is really good. Do we send them to you or to someone else? [00:16:35] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Yeah, everything you do, if you want to get a message out to somebody else in the city, just send it to me first. That's just easier so that you don't have to remember who to talk to. [00:16:45] **Commissioner Gerding:** I would just say for the record that I love the third column. This is very much a draft, I think honestly a living draft throughout the year, and the third column can change at any point. [00:17:00] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Yes, and I also like the addition of that commission engagement as well as staff engagement and the various activities. Starting in January with Energy Efficiency—everyone got their first big energy bill at the beginning of the month here. I know my wife was very shocked; I wasn't too shocked, but costs have gone up. I think that this is a good time to help people cut their energy costs. I see that actually tomorrow is National Cut Your Energy Cost day. What we can do to stress that—it's been a while since we've had a home energy audit, and I will make a point to try to do that this month and if I can, to share that experience as well. [00:17:40] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** I will say our commission is one of a number of commissions at the city. Our communication staff have a number of things that they get out every single day on social media, so we don't have unlimited time on social media for these messages. We usually get maybe two or three posts a month. So if this is something where we still want to push out a message, we can share, for example, your experience, Keith, with the home energy audit on our website. That's a place where if people go to the website for these resources, they see a story of a resident from Oakdale having experienced this for themselves. [00:18:15] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Yeah, okay. Well I really like the initial draft of this, and like I say, this will be a living document so as we each month take a look, if things come up, we can edit it or add to it. One thing that I did notice was in October you have "Renewable Energy," and I think you probably wanted to have "Energy Efficiency" again, as we already have Renewable Energy in June. I like having it in October before we get into the home heating season, so that people can possibly take some action if they need to boost their insulation in the attic or get an audit before it gets really cold. [00:18:50] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Sure. [00:18:52] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Otherwise I think the monthly themes are good. And for water conservation in August, I think having a person from a Watershed District—and I would recommend the Ramsey-Washington Watershed District because they are the largest serving Oakdale. I think it'd be good to have them back in talking to us. I noticed that it says something about March having a representative during the regular meeting, and I'm wondering if that is a typo or would it be for the next March? [00:19:20] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Under commission community... Oh yes. Yep, that should be August. I see what you're saying. [00:19:25] **Commissioner Gerding:** It's a lot of water and environmental stuff, but the topic leading into this is reuse and recycle. I'm thinking maybe there's a different theme for March that we can have that fits, because our other watershed education was water conservation for August. Maybe we just either repurpose that as things are starting to thaw? [00:19:45] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Actually, water conservation in the springtime might be a good time to have them talk about that because people can act on it yet in 2023 if it's done in the springtime. If it's done in August, they may not be able to do anything. [00:20:00] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** So you're saying move the whole "Staff coordinate a guest presentation" to March? [00:20:05] **Commissioner Gerding:** Not necessarily. In March we anticipate sharing rain barrels, rain gardens, and the Environmental Center. In August we've got the Adopt a Drain and Adopt a Wetland consultation. Because it is an education year specifically within water conservation, I don't think there's any harm in having it twice. [00:20:25] **Keith Miller (Chair):** So should we add it to the March list then? [00:20:28] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** I think what I'm hearing is just to refocus March a little bit more specifically around water conservation rather than including all the rest of the stuff. Lead with that theme. [00:20:35] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Yeah, that's fine. That's right around the time that the rain barrel and compost bin sale happens with the county anyway. I think people are thinking about watering their gardens and cleaning out beds. [00:20:50] **Shannon Reidlinger (Staff Liaison):** Sure. [00:20:52] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Yeah, I think that would work well because then we would be doubling up on the water conservation theme, and we have reuse and recycling in November, so we will still be covering that. [00:21:05] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I also like the idea of incorporating an environmental fair. The energy fair that was conducted in the past has gone away and we really have had a kind of a gap in community engagement. Adding that at the Oakdale Discovery Center would be a good thing to do this year. I see that's in June—it sounds like a good month to host to get more people out. That's when we'll be kicking off the Grow Solar Twin Cities program, and it would be a chance to engage in person. [00:21:35] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Any other comments or questions for Shannon? All right, well that's the end of our new business, but we do have time for commissioner updates. Any updates from you? [00:21:45] **Commissioner Gerding:** I have one, yes. As you know, there's a team called Oakdale Wellness 50 Plus and we have events all year long. We're starting a new series in February called "Reducing Your Waste Stream." It's a three-part series on February 16th from 6:00 to 7:30 at the Discovery Center with a Washington County Environmental Specialist. Then on Tuesday, February 28th, there will be a guided tour of the Washington County Environmental Center in Cottage Grove, and on Thursday, March 2nd, there will be a guided tour of the Recycling and Energy Center in Newport. You can find this information by Googling "Oakdale Wellness 50 Plus" or on the Oakdale Discovery Center website. It's good to make a reservation for those tours because they are limited in size. I personally have done the tour in Newport—it is fascinating. [00:22:45] **Commissioner Wilson:** I'll do a couple of homeowner plugs here. Even though there may not be drains to clean, drains still can drain, albeit a little slower in the wintertime with all these snowplow mounds we have. Just a reminder if you can to get out there and make sure that your drain grates can breathe; chop the ice away if you can. And then in other news, my planning for rain gardens and work with the Watershed continues. They've been wonderful, so another plug for the Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District. We expect to do some projects at our residence this summer. [00:23:15] **Keith Miller (Chair):** I'll just mention that the environmental commissioners have been having an annual meeting, and I believe it's scheduled for April this year. If you haven't received a note on that, I can forward you the "Save the Date" notice. It invites all the environmental commission members throughout the Twin Cities area to attend. It's quite valuable for making connections and finding out what's being done by other cities. Any other updates? [00:23:45] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Kevin Zabel, our new Mayor, thank you very much for being here this evening. [00:23:50] **Kevin Zabel (Mayor):** Absolutely, always happy to come hang out with the EMC. Only a couple updates: it's a quiet time of the year for us, knock on wood, but we wrapped up 2022 with the adoption of the property tax levy and finalizing the 2023 budget. That's always a very heavy lift for the city, the City Council, and the City Staff, so we just want to offer a tremendous thank you to all of our staff who work so hard. My other update is tomorrow will be the first meeting of the year for the City Council. We are kicking things off right away with the swearing-in of Andy Morcomb, our new City Council member, swearing in Susan Olsen to her second term, and I'll be sworn in as Mayor. We have a few development items that came from the Planning Commission, otherwise it's a nice light agenda this time. [00:24:45] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Love it. Thanks, everybody. Our next regular meeting of our commission will be held on February 13th at 7:00 PM here in the Council Chambers at City Hall. With that, I would look for a motion to adjourn the meeting. [00:25:00] **Commissioner Gerding:** So moved. [00:25:01] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Do I have a second? [00:25:02] **Commissioner Wilson:** Second. [00:25:03] **Keith Miller (Chair):** All in favor of adjourning our January 9th, 2023 meeting of the Oakdale Environmental Management Commission say aye. [00:25:08] **All:** Aye. [00:25:10] **Keith Miller (Chair):** Opposed? Meeting is adjourned.