This transcript features the Lake Elmo City Council meeting from January 21, 2025. Based on the dialogue, **Mayor Cadenhead** appears to be absent, and **Council Member Jeff Holtz** is serving as **Acting Mayor**. The "Jack" referred to in the engineering discussion is a consultant or staff engineer (likely Jack Griffin, as identified at the end of the meeting). [00:00] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Okay, I’d like to call to order the Lake Elmo City Council meeting on January 21st, 2025. It is 7:01. If you could all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. [00:10] **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. [00:25] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Thank you for that. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. And I think at this point, we can move number nine—the plans and specs for Village Parkway railroad crossing—move that to essentially number 12 at this point. I'll make that change. Does anyone else want to make any changes to the agenda? Seeing none, I will hear any motions. [00:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Motion to approve the agenda. [00:47] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: Second. [00:48] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: We have a motion from Council Member Dragisich and a second from Council Member Hirn. All those in favor please say aye. [00:55] **Council Members**: Aye. [00:56] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: None opposed, motion passes. Next item is the approval of minutes from January 7th, the special and regular meeting. Does anyone have any changes they would like to see? Otherwise, I will hear a motion. [01:05] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Motion to approve the minutes from January 7th special and regular meetings. [01:10] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: I'll second. [01:12] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: There has been a motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the minutes from January 7th for both the special and regular meetings, please say aye. [01:18] **Council Members**: Aye. [01:19] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: None opposed, the motion passes. Do we have any public comments or inquiries tonight? [01:25] **City Clerk Julie Johnson**: We do not. [01:27] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: No presentations. Then we're all here and present. We are very present even though we are cold and cold coming in, now we are warm. For item F for the consent agenda, it is pretty quick. I can run through it: 2) approve of payments and disbursements, 3) approve of massage therapy licenses, 4) approve pay request three (the final) for 30th Street North Gap segment improvements, 5) approve the release of warranty security for Wildflower 4th edition, 6) approve security reduction for Easton Village 7th edition, 7) approve MPCA Grant agreement Amendment for well to Water Treatment Plant, 8) approve Crossroads East Fifth Amendment to the development agreement resolution 2025-009. I’d like to move to approve the consent agenda. [02:10] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: So moved to approve the consent agenda. [02:12] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Second. [02:14] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: There's been a motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda as amended? [02:18] **Council Members**: Aye. [02:19] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: None opposed, motion passes. First up on the regular agenda: Lake Elmo Airport Advisory Commission appointment. So Administrator Miller, I don't know if you want to go through that or if I should just make a quick motion since this was tabled from last week. [02:35] **City Administrator Nicole Miller**: You can go ahead, I don't have anything else to add to it. [02:38] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Okay, I would like to make a motion. So, we traditionally have had a primary and a secondary. I would like to make a motion to appoint myself as primary and appoint our newest member [Kragness] as our secondary backup, however we want to phrase it. I know we had discussed this previously—you know, there might be possible time commitment issues—but we can move forward from there and maybe change over time. But I think that would be my motion for now. [03:05] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Second. [03:06] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye. [03:12] **Council Members**: Aye. [03:13] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: None opposed, the motion passes. Moving of consent number nine to the regular agenda: This was to approve the plans and specs for Village Parkway railroad crossing. I had requested to move this, but I know others had interest as well. I can say on my end, my goal was to hear from staff, potentially from Jack, because this is a public meeting and I know this item, especially in the East neck of the woods, is a pretty big item. So, you know, it served as a good place to just give an update: long-term goals, possible time frame. Council Member Dragisich, I believe, had questions as well. But if you could just—I know this is just for the possible plans and specs to go out for bid—timeline-wise, going out for bid, what does that look like? If we go out for bid and accept it, when would we be looking at construction, and what does that actually look like for the end goal? [04:10] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: Yeah, thank you, Council. So, I did put it on consent generally because I did a full presentation in November on this when we approved the UP Railroad Grant agreement. We did a presentation; the plans and specs had been completed at that time. We presented the improvements, the costs, the agreement with UP Railroad, the coordination efforts. At this time, we're just asking to go out for bids, and then we present it again in March when we bring the award back so that's on the regular agenda and then we have actual costs. So we can provide an updated cost at this time—we don't have anything more updated than we did from November. But this is a project the City’s been working on since before I was the City Engineer in 2006. By the time I came on in 2006, this crossing had been identified through old Village work plans and things like that. So it’s been something and conversations with UP Railroad had even been initiated before I came on. It’s been a long-lasting planning effort. We began to go forward with implementation of this several years ago and ran into an immediate roadblock with UP Railroad basically denying the permit submittal within 15 minutes of submitting it and telling us they were no longer interested in allowing it. We actually had to go find a process—a legal proceeding through MnDOT administrative hearing. We had to basically make an argument and get the Commissioner of MnDOT to rule in our favor and mandate that the crossing can go in based on our justification for the need. And even with that, it’s been three years to get it permitted through UP Railroad because they are just that slow and dragging their feet in everything that you have to go through. Our plans were essentially done three years ago. It’s not been a lot more work on the project; it’s been getting through permit processes with UP. In November, we presented those agreements, got them approved from the Council, and we've executed those agreements. We’ve had several coordination meetings with UP. This project gets implemented where the City begins to build the roadway on either side of the railroad tracks, we get our project to a certain level and we have to stop and we have to wait for UP Railroad crews to come in and do surface improvements. Then we come and we pave and match into those improvements, and then they come back and they do signal arm improvements. So this will be a crossing with signal arms; it’ll have a trail on one side, a sidewalk on the other side. It’s the continuation of the Village Parkway roadway across. One of the justifications that we were able to prevail in the MnDOT proceeding was the pedestrian movements into downtown to make safe pedestrian improvements. Right now, you're getting cut-through traffic in a crossing that's not safe, that doesn't have as good visibility. One of the things you'll see out there when construction starts is there's a lot of very—there’s trees, but it’s a lot of overgrown vegetation. So a lot of that's going to have to get cleared and taken down, and that's to provide sight lines because this is a trail and a sidewalk crossing of a railroad where a train can be approaching. So, they’ll be taking a lot of that vegetation down and making sure it meets the standards for sight lines. [07:45] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Will some of that be on city land or in the railroad land? [07:48] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: It’s mostly in the right-of-way. The city land has been pretty much, I think most of it's clear-cut on the city side of it as it stands today. So those are the scope of the improvements in the project. It also includes a water main crossing. So we’ll be directional drilling a water main underneath the railroad as part of this improvement. Of the total project scope, we’ve broken it down into a component that's street-related and a component that's paid for out of the Water Enterprise Fund to get a trunk water main underneath to create a loop in there. Sewer will not be going under there; sewer’s already gone underneath further to the east. That was a previous project when the developments—when we were extending sewer up to Wildflower and Village Preserve. So the sewer crossing’s already been completed. [08:45] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Have we had any indication—as much as it goes onto one property, it will cross onto a different property owner—has there been any recent discussions as to their plans to then start to move on that and to potentially then need to build all the way out to County 14? [09:00] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: I have not been party to any future development applications. I mean, we had a couple of applicants come in north of the railroad tracks and pursue projects and then discontinue pursuing them—that was the one right adjacent to the downtown, for instance. So it’s not that it hasn't happened yet, but I’m not aware of anything that's actively going on right now. [09:20] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Director Stopa, do we know of things? Because essentially it crosses over two different, potentially three parcels as it’s crossing over. [09:30] **Director Stopa (Staff)**: Not currently. The Easton Village owner is also the owner of the parcel to the north, but I want to say that that area is phased—not in the current phase. So let me look that up. The section just north is not in the current phase. The section to the west is in the current phase in which, as it's going diagonally, it's literally like 5% of that parcel for the future phase, whereas it's hitting the 42-acre and then the 31-acre pretty hard in the middle. And then the owner of the western parcel, I believe, is At Home Apartments. [10:15] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I have asked enough of my questions. Council Member Dragisich? [10:18] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yeah, this—I don't think it's a bad project. Although I thought we were looking to put it in because there's future development on the north side of the tracks that this would serve, but I'm not hearing that, unless I misheard. But what concerns me about it is the fiscal impact analysis was not particularly detailed. So I went back to the Capital Improvement Plan we adopted last month, and this project's in there with $1,065,100 coming from the infrastructure fund (409) and the water portion ($352,800) coming from the water fund. But if you look at the financial situation in the infrastructure fund at the end of 2023, it had $185,000 in cash. It had assets of about $600,000, but $450,000 is receivables from other non-major governmental funds which have no cash in them. So basically, we have $185,000 in cash in a fund that's supposed to pay for a million-one project. Now, we may have collected a million dollars in 2024; I don't know because we don't get detailed information on the minor funds as members of the Council. So I don't know what's in there. But my concern is we're approving a project to go to bid for a project which we don't know how we’re going to pay for it. And the other thing that concerns me, of course, is if we adopted a CIP and identified a million dollars in funding that doesn't exist, why would we do that? I’m not sure. Unfortunately, Clarissa [Hadler] is not here to answer those questions. The other thing is we have two development agreements with Easton Village. Easton Village 2 and 3 indicated that they were going to pay for this crossing. And the money in the amount total among those agreements was $500,000, but there was a clause that said if it was greater than that, that And/Or the City could fund it. Well, given who’s going to benefit from this, I’m not sure I’d be willing as a city councilor to put $500,000 to a crossing where we have no proposed development, don't know what the future holds, to benefit whoever buys the property there. And so I just think it’d be prudent to wait until Clarissa gets back and find out how we’re going to pay for this. I know we’re just going out for bids, but we go out for bids and we ask these engineering firms to spend time and money putting together a bid for a project we don't know how we’re going to fund yet. To me, there’s no harm in waiting two weeks and finding out how we’re going to pay for this first and then going out for bids. [12:55] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Is that an introduction to a motion or a question? [12:58] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Well, it's part of the discussion. I don't know how my fellow councilors feel about that because, because of the Open Meeting Law, we can't discuss that before the meeting privately. But I bring that up and don't—I don't want anyone to misunderstand: I’m not pointing fingers. I think the project is probably a good project, we should do it. I just want to make sure that we have funding in place to do it. And if the infrastructure fund doesn't have the cash, maybe we can do some juggling around with other projects and find a way to fund it. But I don't think we should increase our debt by another million dollars in 2025 above the couple million we already planned for the 25th Street Improvement project. So I just want to get my handle around the financial impacts and the funding for this project before we start going out for advertisements. [13:55] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Jack, is there any concern if we don't move forward with this with the engineers that we're looking for bids, and with the process that you've gone through with all the permitting? [14:05] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: We're not looking for bids from engineers; we're looking for bids from contractors. [14:10] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: From contractors, excuse me. Is there any concern with—I mean, like you said, this has been a process for years—if we don't move forward, because of the history of the project? [14:15] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: I guess I don't know. It’s more because of the close coordination with UP Railroad and the fact that they’ve ordered materials, they’ve scheduled their improvements, and they take years to schedule their improvements. We’ve been waiting for two and a half years for them to get to this point. I don't know if two weeks is the trigger or a month is a trigger. You don't deal with UP very often, but UP is very onerous. You do things on their time, not your time. So I’m not—you know, two weeks might be a fine delay, a month could be a fine delay. It also could be a problem. It’s hard to predict. [14:50] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Are you using the word "fine" as in monetary or acceptable? [14:55] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: It could be okay. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I think in my view, if you were talking longer delay than two weeks, I would say the costs are only going up on this project. Part of the thing was to get bids early in the spring; it’s pretty good practice to get them earlier than later. Again, two weeks is probably not a trigger, but we want to be careful about delaying this because it's been years, right down to suing UP Railroad to get to this point. Unless the Council’s literally thinking about not doing the project ever, then I would say sure, you should pause and take a step back and look at whether you're going to do this project or not. But the way it's teed up right now, you're not doing it cheaper than what it is right now, and you can actually get it done this year. Any delay could be out of your control as to what that delay looks like. There were discussions about waiting till developers on the North side, but because again, you operate on UP’s schedule and not your schedule, if you wait for developers to go there, you might wait three years for them to get in line with you, and you have no crossing for all that time. [16:10] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I apologize, Jack. I thought we were going for bid for contractors, not for engineers. I misspoke. But you know, I guess the question would be if we go out for bids and we don't have the money, we just—I guess we just don't award the bid, or we find a way to fund it by reducing other potential capital projects in 2025. I don't know. I mean, I'm not opposed if the other council members want to go out for bid. [16:40] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Well, maybe a question for Sarah. If we go out for bid and we also in the same motion ask to clarify in two weeks the financials on this, is the bid being proposed in a way where we are saying no matter what we will accept someone, or do we have the ability to say turns out the bids are great, however, the finances—we need more time to figure out? [17:05] **Sarah (City Attorney)**: Mr. Acting Mayor, members of the Council. I think you could go out for bids and, I mean, you can always reject the bids basically for any reason. So if you decide you don't want to do the project because you can't finance it, I think that's fine. At this point, you could go out for bids. I don't know if there's a timing issue... so you could hold the bids for 60 days. That would have the same delay depending on UP's schedule as well, but you would get the bids in at least at an earlier date and you can hold them up to 60 days if you don't want to award it right away. But your standard contract documents always allow you to reject any and all bids. So you have that right. You want to take that seriously, too; you wouldn't want to just throw out bids and go right out for bids again because then contractors lose interest. When I've seen that happen in the past, generally they all come in higher, not lower. [18:05] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: The other thing I would ask: if we decide to go out for bids, that we ask our staff and Sarah to look at those development agreements and see if that money should come from the developer in Easton Village 2 and 3 under our development agreements. [18:25] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Would you like to make an amendment to the motion? [18:28] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Well, there's no motion yet, is there? [18:30] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: True. Would you like to make a—well first of all, would anyone like to make a motion? Because it sounds like we might have a possible way forward. I don’t have the item in front of me which is lovely, I was looking for it... [18:40] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: So move to approve resolution number 2025-010 approving the plans and specifications and ordering the advertisement for bids for the Village Parkway UPRR Crossing improvements. [18:55] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: And I will second that, but I will make a possible friendly amendment to that to ask that staff clarify for our next meeting the specific finances of this, and specifically how it is in relationship to the previous development agreements that have been signed with Easton Village. Because I do recall that aspect, but yes, that language needs to be looked into. What do we—I guess just a question: do we need that for—do we need to make an amendment? Can we just ask for that information to be brought? [19:25] **City Administrator Nicole Miller**: I mean, I think staff is aware that we would like to know the finances by the next meeting. [19:30] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: It’s been discussed and informed. The other thing I would point out to the members of the City Council is that when I first saw this one about the funding, I had sent Jack an email and he got back to me and mentioned that there was some talk about "RECs" [Regional Equivalent Connections]—it was in the back of his mind years ago. And that little bit of information he remembered prompted me to go back and look for those agreements, which I found. But had you not said that, I don't think anyone would have known that there's something in Easton 2 and Easton 3 that provided some form of payment for this. I really appreciate you remembering that, Jack. [20:05] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: Yeah, the railroad crossing fees are mentioned in the financing portion here too. I only reported—I don't know what the number is that we've collected, so I was unable to report the number. But it was my recollection that some portion of the project was negotiated with the developers and I think it's all seven phases of Easton Village and the three phases of Northport. I think it's supposed to apply. And so this would require someone—it was negotiated by Administrator Zulliger at the time. I think it also will apply to the properties north of the railroad too. So I don't know what the exact boundaries were that this was to apply to and how many overall RECs that is, but I think the intent was to probably calculate some portion of the project funding. In [Easton Village] 2 and 3, it talks about a contribution—it was like $193,000 cash or $16,000 cash—then has a list of parcels, a table with a list of parcels, and says that there would be these costs of $500,000 collected from this list of parcels. It says if the project’s more than 500, then the developer could pay or the City could pay. It's kind of ambiguous at that point, but there may be other development agreements that include some costs for this. I just looked at Easton Village 2 and 3 because they seemed like they were the logical ones when I clicked on the county map and saw the plats. Those are the two I chased down; it was a long and arduous process because this was done in 2017 and the Planning and Zoning minutes don't go back that far. The Council ones do, but you gotta go meeting by meeting by meeting to find them. [21:50] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Well, and the original—I mean, for the first edition and the original preliminary plat would be back in 2014, 2015. [22:00] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: It happened well before that, I think. So, I would guess that somewhere in our files we have those development agreements that we can look through and see what's each person's obligation. I did send to Nicole the ones from 2 and 3. I just think as we go through—maybe Clarissa is going to come back and say we collected a million dollars into the infrastructure fund in 2024 and we have enough money to pay for it. That would be lovely. [22:30] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: That would be lovely. Yep. So, I’m lost—where are we at with the motion? [22:35] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Motion to approve. The motion right now is just for going out for bid. [22:40] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: So the original one. And then I guess my comment is, you know, I make this motion—I would be totally fine too if we did want to wait two weeks, as long as that's not a concern. At the same time, I also feel comfortable moving forward just with the understanding of like, we're going to get this information. It's going to be really important to get this information at the next meeting or when the bids return, for if we'd actually approve it. But if someone feels like we should wait two weeks, I'd be happy to go that direction as well. [23:10] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I think based on what Jack told us—that you know, whatever the development agreements don't provide for coverage—I think we can go through our CIP and say, "If we gotta spend a million dollars for this, what are we NOT going to spend a million dollars on in 2025 to get this done?" given all the stress that they've gone through to get us to this point. [23:30] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Yeah, I don't—it's been pushing a train uphill. I don't know if we don't do it this year, I don't know what that means. I just don't know. Do we ever have to take it back to MnDOT at some point? There's probably some type of deadline under the ruling. [23:45] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: So it sounds like this is a project we need to find funding for; it's just a question of what do we have available and if we don't have enough, how do we plug the gap? [23:55] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I'm really glad you brought that up because I mean, I think that is going to be very important. Like you said, if this is necessary that we do this because of all the effort that's been put into it—the fact that if we don't do it, we don't know what we're looking at—the possibility maybe we have to reconsider what else we're looking at doing in 2025. [24:15] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: And I didn't know the background about all the work you went through to get the crossing approved, and that changes my perspective. I think we find a way to get this done. It's just there's some things we won't do. We have to look at the financial... [24:30] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: There was a time when it was not looking good, especially when we had to go to MnDOT and it was not clear if they were going to listen to a state agency on a regulatory framework when railroads have a lot of federal protection. So it was not clear that that route was going to work. [24:45] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I number one, I appreciate recalling and bringing back some of that. And I also thank you, Council Member Dragisich, for bringing this up. I fully agree; to me this is a project we do need to get done. And when we come back in two weeks, my viewpoint would be hopefully we have some of those answers from the finances, and if we don't yet have the answers but we're starting to dig, we can reconvene and discuss that there. Council Member Kragness, any thoughts on this? [25:15] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: Yeah, I mean I think it would be smart to go out for bid and then confirm with Clarissa when she gets back about the financials. But I don't think there's any harm in going out for bid right now. [25:25] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Sounds good. I would concur and I will—that was a very good discussion on something that, again, we brought this up because I think it's worthy for the public to see this as well because this is a pretty big project. It's been in the Comp Plan, it's been in the works, and there’s been a lot of sweat put into it. I will call the question. All those in favor of the motion, the motion as originally written for resolution 2025-010, please signify by saying aye. [25:55] **Council Members**: Aye. [25:56] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: All those opposed? None. Motion passes. Council reports. Council Member Dragisich? [26:02] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: No report. Thank you. [26:04] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I do not have one. I look forward to our next airport meeting. Council Member Kragness, I'm looking forward to going to those with yourself as well and we can get to see the committee in action. Above and beyond that, please stay warm everyone. The cold is getting better, but hopefully everyone was able to do what was necessary for their own safety over the last couple days. And that is that. Council Member Hirn? [26:35] **Council Member Matt Hirn**: I’ll let everyone know I finished the training for the taxation... I'm blinking on the words right now. So at least—I don't know if anyone else has done that, but I'm planning on being here for that meeting. [26:50] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I am trained as well. [26:52] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: We got it covered. I’m trained as well. All right, very good. We’ll have a great time. This will be great. Excellent. Council Member Kragness? [27:00] **Council Member Nick Kragness**: No report here. Looking forward to joining the Lake Elmo Airport Commission. [27:05] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Sounds good. Administrator Miller? [27:08] **City Administrator Nicole Miller**: I just wanted to thank everyone for participating in goal setting last week—two evenings. Myself and Phil are working on bringing back a draft strategic plan for the Council to review. [27:20] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: When can we look forward to that? [27:22] **City Administrator Nicole Miller**: Soon. [27:23] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Right after with the railroad crossing done! Yes. Ms. Johnson? [27:28] **City Clerk Julie Johnson**: No report, thank you. [27:30] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Director Stopa? [27:32] **Director Stopa (Staff)**: No report. [27:34] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Mr. Griffin? [27:36] **Jack Griffin (City Engineer/Consultant)**: Yeah, I just want to let the Council know for the 2025 Street Improvement project, we do have property owner meetings scheduled for January 28th and 29th. So there’s three different neighborhood meetings we’ll be having: one at 5 o’clock on the 28th, one at 6 o’clock, and then the third one on the 29th at 5 o’clock. They're all virtual meetings. The residents have been notified and we’ll just be introducing them that their streets are being considered for improvement this year. And then there's three areas where we are looking into what the costs of water are and would be soliciting input from those property owners of whether they're interested in water or not. So when we bring the feasibility report forward to the Council, we have cost numbers to present and we have feedback from the property owners for your consideration. [28:30] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Thank you for that. Ms. Insala? [28:34] **Ms. Insala (Staff)**: No report. [28:36] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Sounds good. Staff reports regarding fourth quarter dashboards. Did anyone have any questions or comments about the fourth quarter 2024 dashboards? I can say for one, I appreciate that they are in there. They are good and useful. I don't have any comments per se about any specific item, but thank you for putting those together; I know they do take work to get those and to be consistent from quarter to quarter on what is in there. Future agenda items. Financing railroad crossing—we're just including the future agenda items now in every packet. So if you have any specific questions we can answer them, otherwise it's just kind of a preview and it's our working document, so things do shift around. [29:20] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I do have a future agenda item I'd like to take a look at in our workshop, and that is a definition of trail and sidewalk. We had a number of emails from residents about plowing of them and cleaning of them, and our interpretation now is if it's concrete it's a sidewalk, if it's bituminous it's a trail, even if it functions as a sidewalk. And so I think we should define what is a trail and what is a sidewalk. So we can look at our ordinance and say, you know, if it's a sidewalk the adjoining property owner has to clear it, and if it's a trail they don't. I don't have any problem with that, it's just it's ambiguous right now and it's a little bit arbitrary. For instance, in our neighborhood, you go up Palmer Drive from 10th up to wherever it tees in—I forget what the name of that street actually is, Palmer Court or whatever. You walk on a concrete sidewalk all the way up almost to King's Court, and then there's a bituminous trail coming from 10th Street going back behind some of the homes, and that joins in just to the south of King's Court. It's bituminous all the way to Lake Elmo Avenue. So no one has to clear that section because it's a "trail," but there is no other sidewalk; that IS the sidewalk in our neighborhood in that section. And so I think if we carefully define it, we don't impose on people to clear trails behind their house, but we have a system of sidewalks that you can move around the neighborhood that are cleared. My house is on a corner so I have to clear 250 feet of sidewalk when it snows—I don't mind it, that's the price you pay for being on the corner—but I think it would make it more consistent and provide for pedestrian movement around the neighborhoods in the winter months in some way that's more logical than just "it's bituminous so it's not a sidewalk." It’ll be a future workshop item if nobody objects. [31:15] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I personally don't object. I mean, in looking at the schedule on March 11, we have one item currently: Utility Financial Management Plan updates. Is this something that would give enough time between now and March from the Planning department, from Administrator Miller? Either way, it sounds like you're thinking it's code definitions, it's also likely a code enforcement aspect as well. [31:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: We already have a code provision that says you have to clear the sidewalk; we just never define what a sidewalk is anywhere in our code, or what a trail is. And I shared my email with our attorney and she suggested that we adopt a definition. I’m sure she has one right in the back of her mind. [32:00] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: If Nick says it's a sidewalk, it's a sidewalk! Would this also be the time to have that discussion about the other requests that do come in about the role of the City, or should we keep that as a separate item because that's a financial one and that is a much larger topic? [32:15] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I think we should put it on the same agenda. I mean, how do you decide what you're going to call what, absent discussion? If we call it a sidewalk, then who's going to clean it is part of the discussion. What if it's in a certain location? I don't know. I’d like to just clarify: I’m not suggesting that we would as a City take over cleaning sidewalks, but there may be areas where we would decide to do it because we spent a lot of time talking about a city with pedestrian movement and accessibility, and then we say well, four months of the year we're not going to worry about it. [32:50] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: Thoughts? Did we have a workshop on this—I believe last year—from the perspective of snow removal? At that time it was concrete sidewalks. [33:05] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: Yeah, but—and I guess I didn't realize this—there are spots where bituminous is functionally acting like someone's front sidewalk and there is not a sidewalk on the street. [33:15] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: I guess I did not realize that; that is a curiosity actually on my part. When I look in our neighborhood, the trail—the fact that they have the trail makes some sense because it connects Lake Elmo Avenue all the way to 10th Street. Where the side of the street the sidewalk is on, the trail only logically belongs on that side. So it's not that there was poor planning or illogic; it's just our definition of "sidewalk" is nowhere in the code. We've just made an arbitrary decision based on what it's constructed of rather than what its function is. Is this something that between now and then, if staff had questions for Council Member Dragisich about the ideas for this, they can reach out to him and get feedback? I will say, for Council Member Kragness as well, something that I do—and I try to make sure—is I speak with staff weekly for some of these conversations. Some of it's things that are coming up, questions that have arisen, but just to get a feel for things—both feedback from staff and to provide my feedback as well. Those are very good opportunities so that everyone's on the same page. I would highly recommend reaching out with Administrator Miller... see if there's a half-hour time slot a week. I know I have a chat for a half-hour week and the Mayor does as well. I don't know if you two do. [34:40] **Council Member Nick Dragisich**: I assume I just email it... I send emails to the Administrator and if there's a legal part to it, I'll copy Sarah or copy Jack or Jason. I try to keep it to the minimum number, assuming that if I send everything the CA [City Administrator] is copied on. If I only sent it to Jason and she thought it should have gone to Clarissa, I know she forwards it on and coordinates that. I try to minimize the number of staff I'm pinging to those who would obviously need to be involved and trust their judgment in sharing with the other staff. [35:15] **Acting Mayor Jeff Holtz**: It sounds like we have a possible addition for the March 11th workshop. Above and beyond that, I didn't hear any other comments for upcoming items. With that, I will adjourn the meeting at 7:38. Thank you all for coming.