This transcript features Acting Mayor Kathy Weier presiding over the meeting in Mayor Arsenault’s absence. Key speakers include Councilmembers Ryan Hankins (focused on legal and data specifics), Ryan Eisele (discussing family-related impacts and paternity leave), and Bridget Sperl (focused on financial reporting), along with city staff and guest speakers. [0:36] **Kathy Weier:** Are you all ready? >> **Staff:** Yeah, you're on time now. If you want. >> **Kathy Weier:** I don't think we're broadcasting. I think we're recording. Is that right? >> **Staff:** We're live on YouTube. >> **Kathy Weier:** Woohoo. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Oh, well, YouTube. >> **Staff:** We're live >> **Ryan Hankins:** for the millions of adoring fans. >> **Kathy Weier:** Hey, Marcus. All right, I'm going to call the meeting to order. Can you hear me? Okay. Or do I need to move my microphone? [1:01] **Kathy Weier:** All right. Um, call to order here. Uh, I am Kathy Weier. I'm acting as deputy mayor in the absence of our mayor, Jennifer Arsenault, who is not available this evening. Um, can we put a motion to approve the agenda or have any additions or changes? I do have one addition. [1:35] **Kathy Weier:** Um, we had a cooperative agreement between the city of Birchwood and Washington County for construction costs of crack sealing. You were wanting to talk about that one a little bit or no? I'm just adding it to the agenda right now. [1:55] **Alan:** We snuck it in. >> **Kathy Weier:** I can add it here. Or do you want to save it? >> **Alan:** No, it's not. >> **Kathy Weier:** Okay. >> **Alan:** I'm going to put it as number four then for under city business. >> **Alan:** It would be F under consent if you want. Or you can put it in. >> **Kathy Weier:** Oh, okay. [2:11] **Alan:** Did everyone get a chance to peek at that where they're okay with it going under consent agenda? It's only to be consistent. So if you wanted to make it part of B, which is discussion of the road and approval. >> **Kathy Weier:** Oh, we'll do that. [2:26] **Alan:** Marcus can just highlight it there. >> **Kathy Weier:** Perfect. We'll put it under B then. >> **Alan:** Okay. >> **Kathy Weier:** Any other additions, changes, things to pull out? >> **Ryan Hankins:** Can we pull the variance out of the consent agenda? >> **Alan:** I don't you know. Yeah. Okay. [2:45] **Alan:** That's what we would do is just approve it and then when you get the consent we can pull it. >> **Ryan Hankins:** We don't do that right now. >> **Alan:** You don't have to. I mean, unless you want to just move it into city business, but it would be technically pulled and discussed anyway if we pull it from consent. [3:00] **Ryan Hankins:** Okay. Pull it from consent. Do we wait to the consent agenda? Voting on the consent agenda, then do it. >> **Alan:** You discuss it and you can take action on it specifically. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Perfect. >> **Kathy Weier:** All right. Any other changes to the agenda? [3:16] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. So, can I have a motion to approve as edited? >> **Ryan Eisele:** So moved. >> **Bridget Sperl:** Second. >> **Kathy Weier:** All in favor. >> **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Moved. All right. Uh let's see. We have a presentation. We have Paul Burr here from the Department of Natural Resources. Um just do that right over there. Perfect. Uh he is a DNR big game specialist. We had asked him to come to discuss the DNR's recommendations for large game after our um deer mitigation contract has expired with the um Missouri or Missouri bow hunting as from 10 years ago for sure um from our bow hunting uh contract and we wanted to discuss um the DNR's recommendations for controlling deer population. [4:03] **Kathy Weier:** Hello, Paul. Welcome. [4:05] **Paul Burr:** Thank you for having me. I'm glad to finally make it. Um, I work with the Minnesota DNR and the big game program and we are tasked with managing the state's big game species and that mostly involves deer management. Um, how we do that is through regulations and bag limits. Um, so we assess habitat, populations, social acceptance, environmental acceptance of deer population, herds, and then we set bag limits based on those and what what people and stakeholders want to see. Um, we don't manage within municipal boundaries. We leave that to the municipal um entities, whether it's, you know, city governments. Um, but we do offer recommendations and we do work with with you folks um if deer management is an issue. So, uh, it sounds like you guys have had a pretty successful, um, five years of hunting with the Metro Bow Hunters Resource Base. Um, uh, I think they're like a seven or 20 county within the the metro area. They do all sorts of hunting, um, deer management. They're a great resource. Uh, a lot of folks outside the metro area, when I say folks, I mean other cities, don't have a group like this to fall back on. usually it it rests on their shoulders as a city government to manage um organize get people to to hunt. Um so having this group in your pocket and do all the the work for you is great. I just want to emphasize that as um as a great tool. So it takes a lot of work um time and logistics off the city. Um it sounds like you're not sure if you want to continue to do the city hunt. um for one reason or another. Uh but also it sounds like I've heard there's some issues with too many deer in the area. Is that kind of true what you guys are hearing? [6:02] **Kathy Weier:** Yep. [6:03] **Paul Burr:** Okay. So, as a DNR, if your goal or if your issues if you're having issues with too many deer, um whether that be vehicle strikes, property damage, garden damage, um the best tool that we have to manage populations is through hunting. Um now in a crowded area like this where you have homes and and issues and parks and people walking dogs um bow hunting is going to be your primary um season and obviously for a safety standpoint too. So you know from a DNR perspective from for me personally I would recommend you keep doing this um especially if deer management is an issue. Um populations go unchecked for long enough deer become habituated to people. A lot of these issues that you're probably facing now are just going to get worse. Deer are going to get overpopulated. Um, and it could lead to other things like habitat degradation, deer health issues, things like that. So, I'll be happy to take any questions that you have um for me. Um, but just overall, I would recommend you continue hunting. [7:10] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah. Uh, I'll give you my email address in a second. Um, but I was wondering if you could send me a summary of all relevant research stating that a town similar to Birchwood of a third of an acre of size with neighbors on both sides that don't um um conduct a deer hunt anywhere near our borders. Um, I would just like to get a summary of a handful of papers that basically state that a deer hunt in Birchwood is makes more than a marginal impact um, visa v the negative impacts of deer in the city. [7:55] **Paul Burr:** Okay, I can try digging some of those up. I don't know if there's going to be much for the scientific literature out there. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Okay. >> **Paul Burr:** A lot of it's probably anecdotal. Um, but the fact that if you're removing antlerless deer off the landscape, you're just well, you're one removing mouths off the landscape, but also the potential down the line for them to reproduce as well. [8:14] **Ryan Hankins:** I'm not particularly interested in anecdotal data. I want to see specific scientific data applicable to Birchwood. So whatever you can send so I can review and then I think when we evaluate this in the spring we can either say there aren't studies supporting um effective deer management in Birchwood and if there are then we can you know baseline our metrics and the management going forward based on those studies. I'd appreciate that and it's just it's real simple. It's ryan.hankins at cityofbirchwood.com. I'd appreciate it very much. [8:39] **Paul Burr:** I can see what I can dig up. Um the specifics you're asking for like town size in relation to not hunting on the outside. I doubt I'll be able to find something that specific, but I'm sure there's studies out there just dealing in general with city hunts and this impact. [9:01] **Ryan Hankins:** I think what we need and what we're trying to understand is it's a third of an acre and does it work? [9:08] **Paul Burr:** Okay. Yeah. I'll dig into the research and see what I can find for you. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Okay. [9:16] **Paul Burr:** I do know when you're talking about densely populated areas like this, you're looking at something like deer home ranges, they're pretty condensed into small areas, but obviously they can move around. So, if you're worried about, hey, we remove 10 deer here. What's from keeping more deer from coming in from areas that don't harvest deer? Um, I understand that concern and I'll see what I can dig up from the research. [9:39] **Ryan Eisele:** What is the metropolitan deer population? So, like where would I find the information for I guess the greater White Bear Lake area? What's the deer population? And how do you guys calculate that? Because I'll tell you the truth, this is I I find myself kind of, you know, 50/50 on this issue. Um, makes me uncomfortable with bow hunters in the neighborhood with kids running around, but I also don't want to see deer starve to death in the neighborhood as well. I think that's cruel. So, it's hard for me like I don't even really know the problem per se because I I don't know how many deer there are. Like when's a deer population become a nuisance or when's it become to the point where these deer are going to starve because there's not enough resources for them to sustain themselves? [10:35] **Paul Burr:** Sure. Great question. Um to start off with the deer population as a whole, um we I can't tell you a number what the density deer per square mile is in the area. Um especially in the Twin Cities area. Um we have flown surveys in the past, so that's probably going to be your best estimate, but those are few and far between. They're expensive um and difficult to do and the deer are always changing. So we don't have a good grasp on, hey, this is the number of deer in this area. Um we use a variety of other tools. Um a lot of public input, harvest data, um hunter success, things like that that we can track on an annual basis. We also have a mathematical model that our research group takes care of. So it actually it at least tracks the trend over time. Is it increasing, decreasing, staying the same? Um and then of course we have a lot of boots on the grounds, local area experts that we rely on. um even if we get reports on a lot of vehicle collisions or a lot of deer damage if that's if those cases are increasing or decreasing. So overall we look at trends because that's the best we can do really um with such a large area. Um and as far as when does it become a problem that's going to be a lot more reliant probably on you guys and what you're hearing from from the citizens. If complaints are going up with damage to property or vehicle collisions are going up, that's going to be indicative of an issue for you. Um, and the citizens financially. Um, and then you're talking about carrying capacity of the environment. When's the population going to hit a point where they're run out of food and they're starving to death? That is a very loaded question. You have to do a pretty big assessment of, you know, what do they have to eat in the area? um how many mouths are needing to be fed, what kind of forage, what kind of nutrition's on the landscape. So, um in a place like this that's pretty small. I don't know exactly what you have as far as green space. Other than looking on the map, it looks like there's quite a bit of green space. So, um getting a good grasp on how many deer you have and and matching that to what's in the environment that they can utilize. Um that's a whole another question. [12:50] **Ryan Eisele:** In your experience, is there any other viable options other than a hunt to control the population like deterrence or I know I know when we had a bear here, we just yanked the bird feeders and the bear went away. You know what I mean? So, is it something like that an educational thing where it's like, okay, well, deer don't like these plants. Don't plant these in your yard. [13:12] **Paul Burr:** Yeah, there are plants that um I guess you would say deer resistant um that I've heard very conflicting results about. I've I've seen pictures of people saying, "Hey, I planted this and they're gone the next day." Um it all kind of depends on the deer and especially if it's a hard winter, there's not much to eat. They'll they'll eat just about anything. Um you can build fences around your gardens, but that it's you know if you have an ordinance against over overly high fences, which some cities do, that's not an option. Um you know, there's always hazing. There's motion activated sprinklers that kind of work, I guess, at first. Uh but overall deer become habituated. They become used to all sorts of scare tactics and there are sprays that are supposed to smell bad to them that might be effective for a little bit but generally um are less effective the longer you use them. So education is a good one. Um I think I'm not trying to think we have deer feeding and attractant bands in some counties. I'm not sure. Are we what are we in? What county are we in? Washington. We're in Washington. Um I have to look. But um that's another thing. It's related to disease concerns about... we're not supposed to feed the deer. [14:28] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. [14:30] **Paul Burr:** So that's an education one. Um but a lot of folks do with with uh unintentionally with bird feeders. So um unfortunately if there's deer in the neighborhood and they've got good habitat and they feel safe, they're going to kind of be a problem. There's been larger studies done where uh folks have come in, darted deer, put them to sleep, um actually fix them so they can't reproduce to hopefully keep the population down. Uh they found that that's not a long-term viable option. It doesn't... it might work in the very very short term, but it usually just causes problems down the line and it's very expensive. If deer become a big enough problem where hunting doesn't work, um the next step would be culling, so sharp shooting. Um some cities in the in the greater Twin Cities area, uh they contract with the USDA wildlife services folks um who deal with wildlife damage and conflict. And so they'll I don't know how much they pay them, but they'll come in and they'll actually sharpshoot them at night with thermal scopes. They'll bait them. Um because if your deer population becomes such an issue where hunting can't work, that's kind of the next huge step where you know this is pretty drastic, but this is what is next essentially. [16:03] **Kathy Weier:** Any other questions for Paul while he's here? [16:05] **Paul Burr:** We do have a number of of cities... I So when cities do hunts within their boundaries as long as they're within the larger confines of the deer season, like the DNR doesn't need to get involved per se. We we offer technical guidance and assistance. Um, but some cities do what we call special hunts where it's might be a different bag limit, you know, or allow different weapon types, stuff like that. And those are what we call special hunts. We track those because we have to. With these types of hunts where you guys go to a third party like Metro Bow Hunters, um, we don't necessarily know all those that have happened, but it is very common, especially in the Twin Cities. Um, just so you're aware, it's not like you guys are one of maybe a handful. That's pretty much every city has got deer damage to a certain extent that vary in all sorts of size from really tiny to really big um and varying levels of success. [17:10] **Bridget Sperl:** Is there a target number for deer in this area and do we know where we are against that target number? [17:16] **Paul Burr:** That's a great question. Um, I I can tell you we don't know where you are as far as density um just because that would require some kind of survey um either aerial or maybe using cameras. But there is um and I forgive me I can look this up but there is um a density that that we would recommend that would be kind of be ideal and it just can't come to me at the moment but I can send that to Kathy when I find it that we if you can shoot for this many deer per square mile or per acre that's kind of the golden spot to be. [17:54] **Kathy Weier:** But correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no way for us to really tell where we are. [17:58] **Paul Burr:** Yeah, you can do um you can do your own surveys that don't have to be very rigorous. That can be kind of um just observational even. So you are a pretty small community um land land size at least and um I'm sure you have a good idea where the deer are. So even doing something like driving routes at the same time of day um for a few weeks, you could probably get a very good understanding of just how many deer are in the area, you know, plus or minus. Um you know, when we work with cities developing hunt plans, we ask that they they try to estimate deer um in some way. And so something very um simple like that will suffice even if you have like vehicle collisions can be kind of a a way to estimate in a roundabout way. But doing something like just driving surveys or if you if you guys have people working out in the parks having them kind of mark down how many deer they see while they're out there. [19:03] **Bridget Sperl:** This might be a dumb question, but do you guys have training on how to perform a survey? [19:07] **Paul Burr:** We don't have training, but we do... the local um area wildlife staff, her name, well, the manager, her name's Ally. Um unfortunately, she couldn't be here today and she's she's only been here about a year, so she's relatively new to the process. Um, but we do offer that kind of guidance and it's it's kind of situational based on the city you're in and how big it is. So something like a city like this, I think doing a very simple survey would be pretty easy. [19:40] **Kathy Weier:** And you could give us a target number for number of deer that would be appropriate for our city. [19:45] **Paul Burr:** Yeah, based on the green space that is available um and just kind of the layout. [19:50] **Kathy Weier:** Okay, could be helpful. Thank you. [19:52] **Paul Burr:** Could give you a definitely... I know it's... I can see it in my head. It's something like per acre of green space you want this many deer. Um I just can't recall it. Yeah, we can we can provide you something like that to shoot for. [20:05] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay, thanks. I do know when uh the prior year to when the deer hunt started, I had on my Ring camera 22 in my yard. [20:15] **Paul Burr:** That's insane. Yeah, there's a lot more... or a lot fewer now that I have seen there. But I I do know that deer tend to avoid places that get hunted over time. Yes, that's another thing is they don't become... there's that mortality risk that they associate with humans so they don't get too comfortable with the area that they were hunted so they avoid that area. [20:45] **Kathy Weier:** Any other questions, comments, details? Thanks for coming on. [20:48] **Paul Burr:** Absolutely. I think you got my email or at least my phone number um so feel free to reach out to Kathy and or Kathy can give you my contact info if you have any questions and um yeah, happy to be here. So, thanks for the time. [21:10] **Kathy Weier:** Thank you. Okay, next on our city business. Actually, I'm going to open... Do we have anyone here for public comments? [21:24] **Staff:** No. [21:26] **Kathy Weier:** All right. I'm going to close comments then. Okay. I don't see that on here, but I think we were supposed to do it, right? Okay. Well, there's nobody. We can hear Joe. I assume you're just here for your variance, Joe. [21:31] **Joe Goladitz:** Yeah. [21:33] **Kathy Weier:** Yes, he is here for the variance. All right. Then we have the Halls Marsh MOA discussion and suggested edits. Good grief. Sorry. Okay. So, I don't know why it's doing that. [21:49] **Alan:** I'm not sure if I need to tee that up, but uh just to bring us up to today. Last week we had agreed that uh we would make some amendments known to Rice Creek and Member Hankins was going to send in his suggestions. So I've cut them um whole cloth and appended them to the agenda and so those are how I got them. And I don't know, Ryan, do you want... those are basically... [22:11] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah, I mean the one and two were mine. I think number three was what was Kathy's suggestion. Um, and I think, you know, I think the goal is before we move forward with discussions with Rice Creek so that the council is kind of speaking with one voice that we adopt some suggestions that are hopefully kind of agreeable to most or all of the council. And if they are non-controversial, um, Mayor and Council, I just put a motion in here approving and directing staff to send a letter with those edits to Rice Creek and just say this is what we'd like to see and that would form the basis of any discussion. [23:01] **Kathy Weier:** So, I will move the motion that as printed in the agenda and direct staff to send a letter. It says present the following to Rice Creek. Okay. [23:18] **Alan:** So, yeah. Does anyone want to second that? Is it um... would you like some discussion quick? [23:26] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah. Discuss just real quick. Kathy, this is... I know you're the one that worked on this. We talked last week. Yep. This is what you understand these changes to be. We're all good. [23:36] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah. Um if if they agree to it, that'd be great. Um... [23:42] **Bridget Sperl:** Second. [23:44] **Kathy Weier:** All right. Well, I'm glad. It's nice to... I think this is... Thank you for your work, Kathy. You know, I know we got a little contentious. Um and we all want the the best for the city, so it works out. [23:55] **Ryan Hankins:** So, all right. Well, I appreciate that. I'm I thought this might be more contentious than it was tonight. So, um Okay. Glad I'm glad to hear that. So, okay. [24:02] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah. Sorry. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but Okay. The only thing I'm wondering if they will push back is uh because we had requested an annual report, I'm wondering if we would need to tell them that anytime someone's doing something in the marsh, we would like to be notified. But I think that was kind of implied. [24:11] **Alan:** I think they would have to anyway. So, okay. So, then as we'll hammer that out. I mean, we're a long way. I mean, we're at the point of making sure that perfect doesn't get in the way of good enough. And so, that's where we're at. And so, this is going to start the next discussion. It's not the end of the discussion. [24:26] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. Marcus, did you have a chance to look at those edits and was there? [24:34] **Marcus Johnson:** Yeah. >> **Kathy Weier:** Okay. And they looked fine to you. Okay. >> **Bridget Sperl:** Does that Marcus seem to you like something Rice Creek might accept? [24:42] **Marcus Johnson:** You don't know. Okay. I don't know. >> **Bridget Sperl:** Well, we'll see. We'll just do our best. Okay. >> **Alan:** I mean, at this point, I mean, they've been very reasonable, and so if it is reasonable, I don't see what they would say, but um... we'll get there. [24:57] **Kathy Weier:** Good. We'll see. All right. Um all in favor? [25:03] **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. Motion passes. Thanks, guys. All right. Um let's see. The next thing we have on here is the consent agenda. Um, oh yes. Yes. I know we were pulling E for you. And then we were adding the cooperative agreement between the city of Birchwood and Washington County for construction costs of crack sealing. Because that's not in the packet. I'd like to pull B as well just to have a quick overview for that. Um, anything else for A, C, or D? [25:47] **Kathy Weier:** Can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda then? Or A, C, and D? [25:52] **Ryan Hankins:** So moved. [25:54] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay, just a question. Um, sorry. So for the approval of the December 2025 Treasurer's report, Marsha, are you here to give us an overview of the agenda? Is that part of this? [26:07] **Alan:** She is here and if you want we can pull the... >> **Bridget Sperl:** Should we pull that so that we can discuss? >> **Kathy Weier:** Yes. >> **Bridget Sperl:** I would like to talk to Marsha a little bit part of that or not. >> **Kathy Weier:** Okay. So, yes, I was thinking you were maybe going to discuss later, but okay, we'll pull that out as well. So, A and C we got going on for consent agenda. Can we change your... Ryan is still comfortable with that? [26:27] **Ryan Hankins:** So, moved. [26:29] **Kathy Weier:** Second for that. [26:31] **Bridget Sperl:** I'll second. [26:33] **Kathy Weier:** All right. All in favor? [26:35] **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. So moved. All right. So A and C are approved. Um first one on here is B. That is you Marcus. [26:51] **Marcus Johnson:** Thank you everyone. Uh sorry to have sprang this on last minute. I got this um two hours ago. So, in summary of what you're looking at is the county came forward with um their final quantities and they're getting ready to um send us out for bid. Um summary, it's the county, Birchwood Village, Gray Cloud Island, and Stillwater Township that's going to be involved in this. Birchwood would be 3% of the project or $21,983 is what they're expecting it to be. When they get the numbers back from the bids, um they'll reconvene and um give us updated numbers of what that is, but the final numbers won't reflect until the project's done. Okay. So out of that that number includes a police officer on standby um following the project traffic control um the street sweeping of those streets that we're working on which um for refresher is all of Cedar, Hallcourt, White Pine and both cul-de-sacs, J Street and then part of Birchwood have um like going up the hill on the right side um or north of J Street. [28:18] **Kathy Weier:** You said street sweeping. Does that include the vacuum of the storm sewers? No, that's separate right? [28:25] **Marcus Johnson:** Separate. Yeah. So, that's different from this contract. >> **Kathy Weier:** Okay. [28:33] **Marcus Johnson:** Um with the cooperative agreement um county is covering all the construction costs and admin costs. Um they're doing it themselves. So and Birchwood Village is 3% of the projects. It it doesn't even pay for them to split it up. So you'll see that in the agreement. Um and should just will have to pay 30 days within the receipt. Um that is the quick summary of it. [29:11] **Bridget Sperl:** What was the cities you said were involved again? [29:14] **Marcus Johnson:** Yeah, it's uh... Gray Cloud, I think I said. >> **Kathy Weier:** Gray Cloud Island. >> **Marcus Johnson:** Gray Cloud Island. And then um Stillwater Township. >> **Bridget Sperl:** Just us plus two more. [29:29] **Marcus Johnson:** Yep. >> **Kathy Weier:** Yep. So we are at 3%. Um Gray Cloud's at 1.5% and then Stillwater Township's at 1.7%. >> **Bridget Sperl:** Is that not in the documents I have here? I didn't see it. >> **Marcus Johnson:** I just got it. >> **Alan:** They sent me three documents. I'm not sure which one you guys... >> **Bridget Sperl:** That's fine. It's not that. I'm just kind of curious. [29:47] **Alan:** So we don't have to technically approve this. Um they're hoping to get it in in the February's meeting. It's the last... but if we want to we could tentatively approve based on where... this is similar to what it was last year too. [30:06] **Kathy Weier:** We didn't... as long as I've been in the city we haven't done this. [30:10] **Marcus Johnson:** Oh, there it is. Oh, okay. The one we did where we split up with a bunch of cities for road work. [30:18] **Alan:** Oh, yeah. >> **Kathy Weier:** We've been talking about this one for a while. Maybe seal? >> **Marcus Johnson:** Mhm. It could have been with um when they worked on like County Road E down by the lake there. Like... [30:40] **Ryan Hankins:** And I assume Marcus, your opinion is that this is a good deal. [30:43] **Marcus Johnson:** Yeah. I mean, it's going to be the cheapest we're going to see. Uh cheapest is what I like to hear. The the only downfall with the county is that you pay um prevailing wage which is a little bit more expensive but you save yourself in other ways. So because it's split up between different communities. [30:53] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. Any questions other than that on Marcus? [31:01] **Marcus Johnson:** Budget-wise I mean we're $100 less than what I expected. So that's cost savings. >> **Kathy Weier:** Yay. [31:13] **Marcus Johnson:** Yeah. Okay. So that's we're not expecting more. Um when we get bids back, we still won't be out for bid. So, if we need to pull some of our scope to account for that, I don't expect that to happen, but we have time and whatnot. [31:26] **Alan:** And this isn't a hurry. I got it while I was in court, so I added it because Marcus said, "Could you add it to the agenda?" I might have missed the February part because it came in two emails, but if you're not comfortable, we can just what was there, but it'll be here next month, too. So, it seems like a good deal for us. [31:44] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah, I'm fine with it. >> **Alan:** It's hard to beat these guys. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah, right. >> **Alan:** It's a cooperative thing. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah. >> **Kathy Weier:** Yep. Get it through before the Mayor comes back. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Well, I will move. What do I have to move? [31:59] **Alan:** Uh, are we just agreeing to the agreement? Move to adopt the corporate agreement between the city of Birchwood and Washington County for construction cost of crack sealing. >> **Alan:** And what I've done and if you want to just move this is just to move uh consent agenda item B. I've technically added that agreement to that. [32:19] **Kathy Weier:** Oh, to the revised road plan. We were good with the road plan. Yes. >> **Alan:** It's still part of your C. It's still part of your 26 plan. >> **Kathy Weier:** So, I don't have to do anything. Just you just have to move the uh consent agenda item B to approve that. >> **Ryan Hankins:** I move to approve consent agenda item B as amended. [32:41] **Kathy Weier:** Do we have a second? >> **Bridget Sperl:** Second. >> **Kathy Weier:** All in favor? >> **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. So passed. Okay. Um do we have anything else that requires... Oh, you want to stick around for the variance here? [32:56] **Marcus Johnson:** Yeah, that's fine. Yep. [32:58] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. It should be not too long here. Do you mind if we move treasurer after the variance? Okay, let's go ahead and move to E then so we can let Marcus and and Joe go. So, uh we have the approval ratification of variance as recommended by the planning commission for the building at 131 Wildwood. Um Ryan, did you have specific questions? [33:23] **Ryan Eisele:** You wanted this one. I just I need a refresher on this thing because I saw that this was on the agenda and I I—and Alan, you're going to have to help me out. I'm on paternity leave, a little sleep deprived still. [33:38] **Alan:** Okay. When we initially talked about this, we did a setback variance, right? And we granted all the variances and the garage was separate from the structure. Okay. Now you're building a breezeway or you want to build a breezeway and then now it's an attached garage and as I understand it because it's all attached it becomes an attachment to the principal structure as opposed to a truly detached structure and of course that kind of changes everything and so belt and suspenders says you go back and you get variances for the different request and so that's what's back before you and was back before the planning commission. [34:24] **Ryan Eisele:** Okay. So, we granted the variances for the home and a setback for the garage initially. [34:31] **Alan:** Mhm. [34:40] **Ryan Eisele:** And then there's a different height code for a garage in the property unless they're attached or is that... [34:45] **Alan:** Well, the principal thrust of this is to let everyone know what the variances are for. And so, sure, you can say, well, it's attached and the same thing would apply, but you know, the variances were granted for a different build. And so, this is coming back and saying, hey, we're doing it differently. So, it's essentially the same series of variances. You still can't exceed the height of the principal structure which I don't—and Mr. Goladitz is here to answer all those questions. [35:15] **Alan:** And there are some things missing out of the design elements because he's not there yet. You know, these variances are basically consistent with what you did before. It's just based on a slightly different build. And you can ask him what his intentions are, but that's what the PC considered, too. [35:31] **Ryan Eisele:** And the reason I asked this is because I get hung up on like, okay, like like you rip down a garage, you can do one to one replacement. You're going to do something different now you have to there's a different legal requirement for that and so we granted a variance for the setback of the garage but now by making it attached it now just falls in under the principal residence right? I guess I guess where I'm going at this is I don't think that there was anything when we initially reviewed this... Correct me if I'm wrong. Like if I if I'm wrong about any of this stuff. Like I said, I'm a little... [36:06] **Alan:** No worries. [36:07] **Ryan Eisele:** Saying how tall the garage was going to be, how tall the house was going to be. I know the garage there previously was pretty small, right? My only worry is now it's one property. We didn't really know what it was going to look like when we initially did it. Now it's attached. Now, instead of a small garage, you could build a big garage without us really knowing initially. So, it's not that I necessarily have a problem with any of this. It's like when we're doing this stuff initially, it's almost like we need more plans to look at. [36:47] **Alan:** Hallelujah. Grant experience. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I will say just ask for more. It was sufficient for the planning commission. So, I'm not here to do that job. [37:00] **Kathy Weier:** I don't think he's saying... I think he's saying previously and I said that previously as well. And I think we got into a meeting and we were trying to kind of get things through and it was just wasn't clear. Where are you guys tonight? I mean, hope there's enough... [37:16] **Ryan Hankins:** I can tell you where I am, but Ryan, why don't you... [37:20] **Ryan Eisele:** No, I like like all we're really doing is I think it's uh um the tried to stuff this with as much information as I could you could see everything. In fact, there's even caught that the landscaping plan wasn't in there. I mean, I I really appreciate it and I think, you know, maybe this goes a little above what we need, but I really think we actually end up doing applicants a disservice when we come in when we don't, you know, come in with enough information to give them a definitive answer on the spot because that's what they want. I mean, this is, you know, you come into the council and you want like Judge Judy there deciding your case on the spot, you know. [38:13] **Ryan Eisele:** So, so here's here's my thing and I I don't think you're trying to do this and I'm using this as just an example because I I'm okay—like to be honest, I'm okay with this variance. I I'm going to vote to pass it, but it's fine. What I worry about though is in a situation like this that someone has a garage and a house, they're saying, "Oh, we're just going to replace this." Now they're going to connect it and now like they're grandfathered in to be able to make a two-story garage. [38:25] **Alan:** Well, that doesn't do this. >> **Ryan Eisele:** I know. I know. But that's that's my worry in an instance sim like there could be an instance similar to this where that did happen. So that's why I'm saying like when we're initially granting these variances, we almost need I need to know like and I don't think you knew this at the time like how tall you going to build your garage kind of thing. And so I just think for the initial submission there needs to be a little more. I need to be able to see the house. I need to see that. [38:47] **Kathy Weier:** Agreed. Agreed. [38:48] **Bridget Sperl:** So from my perspective, having done so many additions and remodels on our house over the last 30 years, sometimes you don't know that you have to make a change until you're into it. I mean, that's that's just it. My guess is that might have happened here. But the other thing, and I've said this before, the planning commission has been all over this. If they come with their recommendation and we're saying, I don't know, then what's the point of the planning commission? [39:26] **Ryan Hankins:** Well, I I guess what I've seen with the planning commission and what happened with the last time on this was it was presented to them. They asked about the variance that got questioned at the last meeting, the one I questioned and the response was, "Oh, that's just needed. You shouldn't worry about it." Like, they questioned it and staff didn't explain it. They just said, "Oh, that's needed." And just pushed it through without—the planning commission isn't in a position and isn't comfortable. Now, what I will also say is the planning commission has had several meetings um including I think on this one with city staff and basically raised these issues that variances are coming into them woefully incomplete and they try to push him through anyway because they don't want to inconvenience applicants. [40:17] **Bridget Sperl:** But this isn't an incomplete this one in front of us right now. >> **Ryan Hankins:** No, no, not saying not saying that. No, but like um but in the in the past that's the case and I don't think Ryan is necessarily saying it's incomplete what's in front of us either. [40:28] **Ryan Eisele:** I I what what I'm saying is that I almost want to see this as the initial submission. Like it would have been really nice and and I get it. You didn't have it there. That's fine. [40:40] **Joe Goladitz:** But it's just we weren't that smart and like and I understand you did a good job for somebody who's the wrong kind of engineer. [40:46] **Ryan Eisele:** Thank you. >> **Joe Goladitz:** What's that? You said that last time I bring up that's not just... >> **Ryan Eisele:** I your envy. >> **Joe Goladitz:** Yeah. >> **Ryan Eisele:** I I just know that like I get it. Plans change sometimes. You don't know what you don't know when you're entering one of these projects, but it's like you know you're going to build some sort of house there. I need—I mean if it's just a like here's the house and here's how tall it is kind of thing. Just a a little—and this is perfect. I like this. I'm just saying for initial like submissions especially coming back to this like I have no reference point of of what we initially passed as far as is how that looked and what this looks like you know and I didn't really want to clog the packet with everything that was in the previous... [41:36] **Alan:** well two reasons first of all it doesn't matter this is a brand new application so it's easiest just to think about this as he wants a garage and he wants to attach it to his house that he's building. And so it's better to think about it that way. Um especially instead of thinking, well, gee, what are we trying to do that we didn't get away with or whatever the first time around because that's certainly not what Joe's doing. And he can explain the rationale for this. [42:04] **Ryan Hankins:** I guess I guess this isn't which variance does this take away from before because I assume that the previous um garage that we had approved... [42:12] **Alan:** pretty much the same garage. >> **Ryan Hankins:** Okay. So that well did it change the size or anything because apparently the memo was commenting how it became taller. [42:20] **Alan:** Yes, but the physical footprint and its location on the lot is identical. So the the attaching of the garage to the house allows the house height code, the attached structure height code to apply to the garage. And so, and to me in this case, that's sort of justifiable by building. How long is this? It doesn't, when I walk by it, it looks like it's 8-10 ft. [42:46] **Joe Goladitz:** Mhm. [42:47] **Alan:** You know, I don't think you'd necessarily You might It might be a bigger issue if somebody were building a 30-foot awning to to attach a house to a garage. >> **Joe Goladitz:** It's only 10. >> **Alan:** But this is fairly like it seems to me like I guess what I'm arguing here is that this seems to be fairly within the intent of the code. It's you know, you're doing what you do and you're saying I need to get this out of the code. This is the requirement. So, I'm going to go through that—I don't want to use the word loophole, but close enough. [43:24] **Joe Goladitz:** You have to get there, right? So, you know, and it and when we, you know, agreed to all this in the first place with the variances, you know, we were pushing the garage away from the right-of-way as much as we could at the time. And you know, it's like, okay, it's now 10 and 1/2 ft from the house. And of course, standing there and seeing it 10 and 1/2 ft from the house, it's like, well, wait a minute, you know. And then we got the breezeway idea and then attaching it. And, you know, then it it uh helped us as well, as Ryan pointed out, you know, with a little bit of the height because we wanted to build a loft in the garage for some uh exercise equipment and for storage. And so this all kind of dovetailed together in a way. And and I I realized that um when we talked with the planning commission, we agreed to a smaller garage height than what otherwise would be allowable with an attached garage. [44:23] **Ryan Hankins:** This time or last time? [44:25] **Joe Goladitz:** Just this last time. [44:27] **Ryan Hankins:** This last time. [44:28] **Joe Goladitz:** Yeah. So, we pushed the height of the garage down um as we were having this discussion and um you know, as just a way to... it's I think it's originally was six feet below the peak of the house. Now, I think it's more than seven feet below the peak of the house. Anyway. [44:48] **Ryan Hankins:** I have a couple questions on a slightly different subject. Um when when other people are kind of done, did you get you and Kathy? [44:54] **Kathy Weier:** I would say get what you need. [44:56] **Ryan Hankins:** My my feedback is more for our process regarding this than this actual variance. So those are that's kind of where... [45:03] **Bridget Sperl:** we need to address the the various questions from this memo regarding the trees and things like that. And I feel like to me the planning commission addressed that and I feel like we shouldn't as part of except as if somebody wants to file an appeal. That would be the process. It sounded to me and what I read in the memo was that the neighbors were kind of okay with the outcome there. [45:26] **Alan:** They like the outcome because silver maples were being removed. [45:34] **Kathy Weier:** I don't think we should address it personally. [45:36] **Ryan Hankins:** I don't either. It's really for the next phase of this anyway. And to me that was it sounded like they came to the planning commission meeting—the neighbors there—you they had a discussion and they were placated and you guys all went out to dinner and it was okay. [45:52] **Joe Goladitz:** Um... [46:00] **Kathy Weier:** I wasn't sure if we needed to address it since it was brought up as concerns. [46:05] **Alan:** And we invited that. So that's what the invitation asks and that the dinner was for. [46:12] **Ryan Hankins:** Well, okay. So, I have a couple questions here. Um, on a little different subject. When a variance is granted, there have to be—and and I guess let me kind of preface this. This looks sort of reasonable. Um, I think I'm supportive of this variance. Um, you know, I just want to ask a couple questions here. And one of the things, one of the standards that we have to meet, there's a bunch of standards when you grant a variance. Um, it has to be reasonable. There has to be practical difficulty. Um, you know, a handful more. One of the things that has to be met is that it's kind of worded funny in statute. It's "the plight of the landowner can't have been caused by the landowner." Is that something like that, Alan? I don't remember. But it's that's kind of it. [47:11] **Alan:** explain that you just I have no idea what they mean. [47:15] **Ryan Hankins:** The plight of the landowner can't have been caused by the landowner. And what it means is that you can't come in for a variance because you caused the variance, the need for the variance yourself. And so if what you do is you go and build an overly large thing... build something. Yeah. or you do a bunch of landscaping and as a result of the landscaping you need to reduce your setback somewhere else for example. That seems like a reasonable example. And so we asked the planning commission to kind of go through and answer all those questions. And there's a couple cases here they they like to give they like to spend a lot of time on the questions and that's great. But in this case it looks like they answered—if you look at page 19 in your packet um were under the question "were the special conditions or circumstances created by the applicant's action or design solution" and that's this question—it says "yes the special conditions were created by um the applicant's attempt to maximize the road roadway setback." I would just state that let's revise that a little bit because I think the intent here is to say special conditions were not created by the applicant. In fact, the special conditions and need for the variance was reduced by the attempt to maximize the roadway setback and and the other stuff in there. Is that... so um just a kind of... I don't think this variance is likely contentious but I like to make sure those questions are answered just as a matter of doing those correctly. Um then anybody have any issue with that? You're smiling, Alan. Like this is a... [49:15] **Alan:** that down or is that organic Hankins off of the cuff? [49:20] **Ryan Hankins:** That was organic Hankins off the cuff. Do you want me to... [49:24] **Alan:** if you're if you're suggesting that as edits, we'll have to be surgical and I'll have to insert that. [49:28] **Ryan Hankins:** I don't know if we need to edit it. I mean, to me, if this gets into litigation, somebody will go back and watch the meeting and hear me state that. [49:33] **Alan:** Correct. We can correct it. Yeah. Um, as long as you can remember what you said, unless you want me to take it down verbatim. [49:45] **Ryan Hankins:** No, I can. How about I just email it to you afterward? Pretty much what I said. [49:47] **Alan:** We are recording digitize the PDF and I can certainly pull up the PDF editor and add it, but right now I'm following along from what you're talking about on paper. [49:55] **Ryan Hankins:** I can just I can send you I'll just send you a summary, okay, in the morning when I'm more pleasant. um understand where you want it to go. But uh if everyone's comfortable on the council with those with that surgical amendment to the findings. I have another one too. I think it's the first of two. So the second one is—were the special conditions or—I won't read the question again. This one says—this is relating to the impervious surface variance and this says "yes the special conditions were created by the applicant's creation of impervious surfaces on the lot" and this one is a little harder to deal with. Um, I think the reason we should give in this case to approve the variance for why the special conditions were not created by the applicant is because the applicant was not aware of the—does anybody have a better reason for why the impervious surface wasn't created by the applicant than I do? Um, I guess what I was going to say was that the applicant's height was not corrected by the city at the time of variance application at the time of the previous variance application. As a result, what do you do you have a a reason we can put in there that's better? Alan? [51:25] **Alan:** which one are we looking? [51:27] **Ryan Hankins:** I'm looking Sorry, I'm looking at page 21 in the packet. That's under number three there. Number three: "were the special conditions or conditions or circumstances created I guess conditions created by the applicant's action or design solution." [51:42] **Joe Goladitz:** Can I make a suggestion please? That by pushing the garage 16 ft away from the right-of-way it created you know a a difficult passageway between the house and the garage. And what facilitated that—the solution to that required you know a small additional increase in impervious just which is a little more intellectually honest than I—again I don't like to tie this variance to something that's no longer in front of us. Right. [52:16] **Ryan Hankins:** So I mean the previous variance just pretend that didn't exist. I'm fine with whatever you—I actually Alan I'm happy to let you be a lawyer and make us a recommendation. It just seems to me like it would be good to give a reason here why this is not just—can you help us a little bit or can we can also revisit this too. We don't have to give the conditions tonight if we want to come in in a month and just ratify that or something. [52:48] **Bridget Sperl:** But but here's the thing. Anytime you go over the impervious surface the homeowner is creating that because they're asking for something larger. Correct, Alan? [52:54] **Alan:** In some cases, yeah. [52:57] **Bridget Sperl:** Yeah. But but it's also in the purview of the council to approve something above the 30%. [53:05] **Kathy Weier:** But I believe they're mitigating with other uses. So I'm I almost don't want to change this because this is their minutes from the meeting. [53:15] **Alan:** Yeah. Well, we cannot really change that, but we can change what we put out. We're ratifying it with amendments basically. That's how I've got it teed up. And Marcus might remember the exact numbers and maybe Joe does. Uh because this, you're right, it's a little vague, right? But for all of these guys, variances, you can kind of go one way or the other, right? [53:30] **Kathy Weier:** I just want to always find faults with these. [53:33] **Ryan Hankins:** I don't I I'm not trying to find a fault. I'm trying to put in the right answer so that when somebody says, "Did you follow the legal criteria?" We say yes, we did. And so if you're willing to advise me, I mean, also, Alan, you could just advise me on what to do here. Should I just vote for it or should I revise it a little bit? [53:48] **Alan:** I can't do that. So... [53:50] **Ryan Hankins:** well is having a discussion and I think you've heard a pretty cogent argument why the impervious is what it is. [53:57] **Kathy Weier:** Can we accept that? Can we accept what Joe just said as and and revise it based on that? So let's do that. [54:05] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah, that's what you like. And I mean we've got Marcus here who can talk about the impervious itself. Right. I just want to approve the variance and have it be defensible. That's all I want. Me—I think if you zoom back out and look at the intent of what Joe's doing here, the Goladitzes, they're taking basically a garage that was right at the apron of your public street and pushing it back, right? And so it's a it's a cost-benefit analysis. It's not unlike the Reeses with their deck that was in the lake. Totally different situation. But for the for the modest increase in impervious, I think is maybe what we're talking about. What is it a percent or two? 7/10 of a... [54:40] **Joe Goladitz:** Yeah. So, it's less than one. [54:42] **Ryan Hankins:** Not—that's not like I'm—it it's nearly de minimis. I I just want to—just tell me what to do. Alan, just make me a recommendation on how I make sure that like—and and I don't think we're going to get into a lot of—into a battle on this one, but I do like to just treat everybody the same and make sure we're... [55:00] **Alan:** And is every is everyone aware of what the planning commission actually put in their findings? Is everyone on that page to see that? Page 21. [55:12] **Ryan Hankins:** Page 21. Yes. "The special conditions were created by the applicant's creation of impervious surfaces on the lot and the properties approximately to the shoreline of White Bear Lake. City code requires etc etc." So what if we do this? What if we say the special conditions exist not because the applicant created impervious surface but because the lot is small and um because it's difficult to build—it's among the smallest lots in Birchwood—difficult to build on that lot without a minor adjustment to impervious surface and with the intent to pull a garage that was at the right-of-way back and—how many feet? 30? [56:15] **Joe Goladitz:** we moved it back to we moved it away 16 ft—16 that was it yeah so and this the um... [56:22] **Kathy Weier:** it's a lot safer. [56:24] **Ryan Hankins:** yeah it's a net positive for and the movement of the garage toward the property tends to bring the property into general compliance with the code or move it toward compliance. Yeah. All right. I just I just—let's just get something that's kind of defensible and good enough and I don't hear a lot of nos and vote on it and move on. [56:45] **Kathy Weier:** Agreed. [56:46] **Ryan Hankins:** So, do we just this resolution here, Alan? Is this what we're voting on? Uh if we are... um, and yeah sorry about that uh when we started talking about this uh when I was on the phone with uh your planner earlier I always have felt uncomfortable I guess that there's really no document for you guys to actually look at yeah it's not and so we used to—I don't know when that stopped but I decided to take a swing at a resolution and all it's really doing is in writing saying what we're doing tonight which is that—oh lots came here basically with um a variance in hand that they had and they've changed their design. So they've applied for a new one and the planning commission has reviewed it and um made findings of fact and recommended the passage of them and now you've reviewed those and are ratifying those findings of fact and approved the granting of the variances. So that's all that resolution says. [57:42] **Ryan Hankins:** Do we need to revoke the previous one to replace it with this one? Oh, by definition they're scratched because of the new application because it's not technically the same structure issue, right? Which is why we're here. If it was easy enough to just go X and say, okay, they're good enough for that, then I'd rather have a better record for the city than just saying, well, this is not quite what you did. So, but it's—I thought this for a long time that we needed to do this. So, you know, if—I don't know if we have—Oh, we have page numbers this month and a and a resolution. Pretty impressive. Well, I didn't get to enumerate that because I just did it. But you have page numbers on your packet. Yes. Page numbers and a resolution. And and then on the resolution, it just says there's conditions that the planning commission added. And it just says conditions on the build. Is that just kind of adopt by reference the... let's just that seems fine to me. I edit that as you like. I finished it like two hours ago. So Okay. [58:36] **Bridget Sperl:** And that's the adjustment to that. Why'd you open that door? And what were the other conditions that they had? Do we want to record that into the record? [58:45] **Alan:** You don't need to do—Oh, I mean Joe can tell you what they did, but um that's why we're adopting that's why it's in the packet. All those conditions. Okay. [58:53] **Ryan Hankins:** So, you'll reference the conditions based on resolution. Gotcha. And I'm doing this um Ryan I guess would be the most important person to run this by. So I'm still in three. And so what I've written here and I'm not changing anything um because I think it's relevant to say that the minutes and what they decided are relevant. And they did say that yes, Joe created this situation with the impervious. Uh but I have a magic but at the end and so we're finding to can be consistent with the statute. Uh but the applicant lot is small and the design actually pulled the existing garage back from the city's existing right-of-way 16 feet. [59:45] **Joe Goladitz:** Let's previous garage location 16 ft. [59:50] **Ryan Hankins:** Did it come back 16 feet from its original location? I think is what it was. Right. Pulled it back 16 ft. No. Nobody's going to question. It's very unlikely to get questioned if we went through and reasoned through it like we just did. So, right. And it makes sense and hopefully it gives you guys some, you know, gives Joe some, "this is why I did this," right? [1:00:10] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. I move to approve resolution 2605 ratifying and adopting the findings of the planning commission and approving the variance as indicated for 131 Wildwood. [1:00:23] **Bridget Sperl:** Second. [1:00:25] **Kathy Weier:** All in favor? [1:00:27] **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. So moved. [1:00:30] **Joe Goladitz:** Thank you guys. [1:00:32] **Ryan Hankins:** And that resets the clock on him for handling variance because that other variance doesn't apply anymore, right? So the time he has to actually do the build right? [1:00:43] **Alan:** He had two years from when it was at least think he's even close to running up against the deadline. [1:00:50] **Joe Goladitz:** Well, I know that, but I mean is it takes away previous one, but gives him the two years again? I know how building works. [1:00:55] **Alan:** Our clock technically starts on these new variances tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Perfect. There you go. [1:01:03] **Kathy Weier:** Welcome to Birchwood. [1:01:05] **Joe Goladitz:** Thank you. And I just want to say I mean I I I'm so excited to be here. We're we're everybody has been great in the neighborhood. We've just we've and I know we've been very disruptive. So I want to apologize, you know, for for all of that. But uh it's it's coming along well and we technically the house will be finished end of April. Congrats. And that's when we would then start on the garage, you know, after um after the freeze road freeze um warnings come off, you know, we'd probably start on that. So, thank you. [1:01:45] **Kathy Weier:** Welcome. [1:01:47] **Alan:** Yeah. And fun fact, I was helping an elderly neighbor at my house and had to go to the doctor. And so, because I became responsible for said elderly neighbor to get them home and had to go over the care plan and whatnot, I had to talk to the attending physician. and super nice kid, very caring and kind and his name was Dr. Galaditz. And so of course I said any chance and sure enough that would be uh Joe's son who works in medicine, runs in the family. [1:02:08] **Kathy Weier:** Excellent. Excellent. Okay, so that was E. And then we wanted to discuss the Treasurer's report which was D. And we have Marsha here to help. Thank you, Marsha. Thanks, Marcus. um go through that. You need a break quick. [1:02:18] **Marcus Johnson:** Oh, since I never leave. [1:02:40] **Kathy Weier:** All right. Treasurer's report. [1:02:44] **Alan:** Uh treasurer's report, I believe, starts on page eight, I think. Looks like. [1:02:50] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah. Yeah, and this otherwise wouldn't be controversial, guys. Um, I did ask Marca to stay because we've been trying to get her for a couple of months to uh do some explanations on the budget. So, she's agreed to come in and help sort it all out. Otherwise, it's just another—not coming last month. There just was a lot of snow. [1:03:02] **Marsha Olson:** There was a lot of snow. [1:03:10] **Bridget Sperl:** We didn't want to come either. I was kind of starting to freak out. Um so essentially um over a small overview is um the budget—the financial statements are in front of you. This was a format that was um asked of me to make by Scott Hildebrandt. So if this isn't a format that's appeasing to your eyes, I have no problem changing it um to what's easier to read. But do you want to... did you guys want to start with some questions? [1:03:45] **Bridget Sperl:** Where did we end up for the year? So my issue, Marsha, is I can't tell if we if we did a good job on our budget. I can't tell if we met budget, if we overspent, if we underspent, and I can't tell um sort of what the run rate is during the year. So, I don't I don't know to be worried about the budget or not. It it just it's a puzzle to me. [1:04:10] **Marsha Olson:** So, um on the disbursement side, we ended up um under budget, we had spent $644,683 year-to-date in the general fund. Um, if you get rid of the the um lift station, yeah, the lift station, that would bring um our budget to $811,260. So, we did come in under budget on those expenses. [1:04:41] **Bridget Sperl:** I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow. Can you just give me a 1,000-level statement of what we spent and what our budget was? [1:04:54] **Marsha Olson:** Sure. So, in the general fund, we spent 644,000. 644. Yeah. Um and if you take away the 600,000 for the lift station, that would bring our general fund budgeted expenses to 811,000. [1:05:07] **Bridget Sperl:** So, we budgeted 150,000 more than we spent. We did... in... so does that mean we're taxing and feeing higher than we necessarily need to be? [1:05:21] **Marsha Olson:** No, not necessarily. Like I think, you know, we went a long time without an administrator. So we had like... Oh, yeah. We had some things that were budgeting. Yeah. All right. So fine. Um I guess we're not we're not overt taxing. [1:05:40] **Bridget Sperl:** If we were 150 to the good, what happens to that 150? Does it roll over into 2026? [1:05:42] **Marsha Olson:** Yeah, it will be in our fund balances in for 2026 to spend if we overspend in that in that year. Um, now that we've already put in for 2026, we can't really write the budget down by that 150. Um, I feel a little bit better about the snow plow thing. In the event that we end up hitting that 30 inches, we're pretty close. [1:06:05] **Bridget Sperl:** We're hitting that. [1:06:07] **Marsha Olson:** Yeah. So, we should be okay. Well, and this year we went quite a bit over and still plowing. So, that's why I would do it again, but we might be close to our max is... um and part of it too is if you look at our street and road maintenance line, uh we budgeted $100,000 for that and we spent $10,670. So, I think that was kind of we talked about kind of trying to build it up just a little bit every year. So, that was kind of built into that 100,000. [1:06:45] **Ryan Eisele:** And this like this is just my rudimentary accounting knowledge from college and the two classes I took, which is two more than I took. Yeah, actually have a finance degree, but um I almost need like like the big line items, you know what I mean? Like like our staff is like one line item, our general expenses like electricity or accounts payable essentially, you know, like those type of things. And then what's coming out like what we have budgeted and what's coming out of those individual funds or accounts—and in my head all I see is T-accounts too. I need the T-accounts. [1:07:22] **Marsha Olson:** Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about one of those in years. [1:07:33] **Ryan Eisele:** I need the debits to equal the credits. You know what I mean, right? Um so it's it's like almost like that where I have like accounts payable and this is what we're we're paying every month. And because with Bridget, it's like hard for me to follow exactly where we're at. [1:07:54] **Bridget Sperl:** Well, and in addition to this, would it be nice to have like a memo that comes out with it that says, you know, these are the places we really went over budget. [1:07:57] **Marsha Olson:** Yes. [1:08:00] **Bridget Sperl:** Yes. Very much so. Kind of the anomalies, right? Because if we had known that we would be that much in the green, we might have made different decisions. Sure. Or we might have acted more aggressively on some things like trees or, you know, name it. Um, and and that's my point about—I I just sort of feel like we're blind and if we if we had a better handle on this, I think we could be making better decisions for the city. [1:08:29] **Marsha Olson:** So, so are are you okay, Bridget, of like having some of these like lumped together as like things? [1:08:34] **Bridget Sperl:** Yeah, I'm fine with that. You know, absolutely. I'm trying and I can't think of the financial statement like businesses use that kind of has that information in it. Is it the balance sheet? [1:08:48] **Marsha Olson:** Well, it sounds like what you want is something of a shareholder point of view. [1:08:53] **Bridget Sperl:** Absolutely. Something that says here's where you should be. Yeah. Quarter of the way through the year. Yes. Where have we spent? Where do we overspend? Yes. [1:09:05] **Alan:** I agree with you. I mean, when we're all stressing about what we're going to pay for snow and wondering how we're going to sharpen the pencil, it would have changed things a lot. It would have changed things a lot. Right. That's the right think. It's now October and November and we've got to start paying snow in November. [1:09:25] **Marsha Olson:** Right. So, do you would you like something like that maybe on a quarterly basis? [1:09:30] **Ryan Eisele:** Can I feel like—like Bridget and I are the ones that are like—I have trouble with this. Do you—can we set up a time just to come hang out with you to like— [1:09:40] **Marsha Olson:** Absolutely. [1:09:42] **Kathy Weier:** I think there was a... Do you need another review of your book because that was super helpful when I had done that. Did you— [1:09:50] **Marsha Olson:** There was... Well, technically our internal uh controls says every like six months we're supposed to send me numbers and I think um I don't think we've done one in a lot more than six months. I mean Margaret did the last one. [1:10:06] **Alan:** Yeah. And then it was you, Margaret, and myself. [1:10:10] **Ryan Hankins:** I think what what are you talking about, dude? [1:10:15] **Alan:** So, um every six months we're supposed to have a member of the council. Two members. Two members of the council. So, it was myself and Margaret last time that—didn't you do one with me, too? [1:10:21] **Ryan Hankins:** I did one at one point and it was actually pretty interesting just to... So, it was a walking through the... here's it's a binder and it was flipping through and going through the here's what this is and this is all the debits and this is all the expenses—that that's great but but still I think mechanism. [1:10:38] **Ryan Eisele:** So, so Bridget and I are going to do that with you and also we'll do we'll figure out the forecasting how we want that laid out. Is that okay? Okay. [1:11:00] **Alan:** Yeah. I think if we had told you look at a little bit more road and I believe that was kind of what the plan with with the 100,000 because we thought well we were going to do the 80 but then when we had the um the change for the they're not gutters the trenches that got dug the the amount was almost to the hundred. So I was like, well, we got rid of that 20,000, so I guess I didn't. [1:11:17] **Bridget Sperl:** I just used to in business every month, you knew where you stood. You knew where your issues were. You knew where your overspend, your underspend. And you had a forecast actually based on that month to what you were going to hit at the end of the year. [1:11:32] **Alan:** So I guess I don't know if we can be that precise, but boy, that would be nice to move in that direction. [1:11:38] **Ryan Hankins:** We can get pretty close. Can I? Yeah. Well, a lot of what you do is contracts, and so it should be very predictable. Yes. They And so the money should be put in the month that is going to be spent. A lot of that because law enforcement, fire to a certain extent, personnel, all those are predictable expenses monthly. Right. So you've got some lawn care. You've got some overruns on on projects and snow are some of your big variables. [1:12:06] **Bridget Sperl:** But if you don't know where you're at in October, it's going to be pretty tough to choose what you're going to do for the next four months, right? I don't know. Like if we were able to simplify this enough, I think it might be something we put on the website, too. Absolutely. So people could see it. Residents can see, right. Agree with that. [1:12:30] **Ryan Hankins:** Yep. So, another question on the general funds receipts. So, year to date, we're not anywhere close to our budget. [1:12:40] **Marsha Olson:** Um, and that is because of the fact that I... this state grants and aid, that's the lift station stuff. We stuck it in here so it wasn't in and out in the general fund, but when the money actually came in, it went into the um capital projects fund. [1:12:53] **Bridget Sperl:** So, if we could find a way to segregate those and not have them muddying up the waters, right? Because it it's very muddy when I mean, you know, the internal ins and outs, but your regular person like me doesn't. Um, so if we could find a way to segregate those, still track them obviously, but yep, that would be really good, too. [1:13:14] **Ryan Hankins:** I mean, I will just say I don't need to be part of a discussion on this, but I also would like to—I trust you guys to come up with something that's generally understandable, but I also would really appreciate that. So, um, because I I look at the stuff. I have a question, too, if I can. Of course. Nope. I just don't like to change the subject when people are still talking about the old subject. I think we're... I'm okay. Um I had asked you a year or so ago um I said we have X dollars in the bank and I think it was I don't know and I and I said is there a benchmark for reserves we should have and how are we in relationship to that benchmark and you you said we should have roughly 18 months of reserves and you said we were approximately at that benchmark. Um, is that—do I remember that right? [1:14:24] **Marsha Olson:** Yes. [1:14:25] **Ryan Hankins:** Okay. And I was just wondering if you could—you obviously know the follow-up here is—you could give me a little update on on where we're at at this point on that. [1:14:32] **Marsha Olson:** Um, to be honest with you, let's... if you don't know, maybe we just get a follow-up. [1:14:38] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah, I don't need to I would just Yeah, if you if you wouldn't mind, I'd be... I I do kind of That's an interesting point. I'd appreciate it. So, okay. Um, and I think I think it's, you know, like they want the current year expenses, but then also like another six months just because of the way that taxes come in. They come in twice a year and you have to your expenses for six months. Yep. [1:15:05] **Bridget Sperl:** I assume we include the um additional administrative people and everyone in that cushion, right? [1:15:10] **Marsha Olson:** Yes. And um in January or February, you probably don't have them yet, but we should be seeing annual financial statements for the city. [1:15:28] **Bridget Sperl:** Yes, they have... we are just going through and closing out 25. [1:15:36] **Alan:** I assume it's not done. It's not quite done yet. It's still pretty early, but yeah. Okay. That's always... Yeah, I think it's usually due to the state auditor by March 1st. [1:15:47] **Ryan Hankins:** Yeah. Okay. So, you'll see in March. Did we do those last year? We did. I probably just didn't know enough to bring them to you. Yeah. [1:16:03] **Bridget Sperl:** What were our court fines? [1:16:07] **Marsha Olson:** Those are um they come from the Minnesota management and budget and so they take like all the road traffic tickets and stuff and they— [1:16:15] **Bridget Sperl:** Oh, so that's all the stop sign tickets. [1:16:17] **Marsha Olson:** Yeah. Yeah. That's an aggregation of basically HP, county, whoever's citations. [1:16:40] **Kathy Weier:** something occurred to me that we had wanted to budget for that we had held out on last year or the year before. I don't remember which. Uh, Mr. Hankins had wanted us to do an audit since we have extra funds. Is that something we could bump up in our... [1:16:54] **Ryan Hankins:** Well, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. [1:17:00] **Kathy Weier:** Wanted to budgeting for three years, but so can we do that now because we haven't uh... I think it was—was it 15,000? I don't remember it was... [1:17:15] **Alan:** be something like that. 15 and 18-ish. That's what we were I think we were doing like five-ish thousand. [1:17:21] **Kathy Weier:** So if we can move some of that fund to do that sooner and in which case we wouldn't have to submit the financial statements to the state auditor by copy um it'd be under audit because we'd be under audit. So we would have until June to submit them to the state auditor. Is that a very painful I guess I'm you can I'll I guess I'll just go ahead. Um, is there anything we should be doing to prepare for an audit or just call them in? I mean, [1:18:04] **Marsha Olson:** um, technically you normally would just call them in. Okay. Right now, we're still kind of going through the aftermath of the fraud protection setup going on. So, there are a lot of fees flying in different directions that we're still trying to sort out. Would that be something we'd want to maybe plan for later in the year because of that? It would be really helpful. Um, I just got notification today from PAR that our bank has rejected a September payment. So, yeah, we thought it went through and it apparently did not. [1:18:37] **Bridget Sperl:** Can we turn the fraud thing off? [1:18:39] **Marsha Olson:** It's off now. It's off, but now they have started charging us like $50 a month for Evolve charges. So we've got to call and get that taken out too. [1:18:50] **Kathy Weier:** I saw that in there. Yeah. [1:18:52] **Alan:** There's a whole lot of residual going on from that yet. So... [1:18:55] **Ryan Hankins:** So I would say that this has been an unmitigated disaster with the fraud protection and it seems like this vendor has been very difficult to work with. When do we have the discussion of changing vendors? [1:19:02] **Alan:** I had it in the office last week saying basically we've got to find a better mousetrap. Period. I just can't believe that this is reality. So yeah, we're working on it, right? Same thing with the audit. Um I've worked with ABDO, which is a group that does them for small cities, and so is Marsha. So that's who I'll be reaching out to get a quote for us. So, but we do have to solve some of these problems. Otherwise, the auditors are just going to flag that stuff and say what's going on. [1:19:35] **Bridget Sperl:** Best to get it sorted out. We don't want to be written up in the paper for for this. [1:19:40] **Kathy Weier:** Well, not—I was going to say not for that. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I mean, we have been in the past sort of year of getting everything—I just mean to add to the budget for the planning of doing that as far as like uh we I I think it was 15,000 when you originally were looking at it. So, we were like $5,000 per per year would get us every three years or whatever it was, but if we can bump it up to... [1:20:06] **Ryan Eisele:** calendar. I don't think we should do it next year or 2026. [1:20:10] **Kathy Weier:** I don't know that it needs to be every Three years seems sufficient, but... [1:20:15] **Ryan Hankins:** it's been a long time. It's been 2010 was the last year we had... it's been a while. [1:20:20] **Bridget Sperl:** Yeah. So, it's—no, we need to do it. Absolutely. I just don't think 2026 is the year. [1:20:29] **Kathy Weier:** That's fine. We can get the... why why wouldn't we do 2026? [1:20:34] **Bridget Sperl:** Because I still think this is sort of a young administration. We're— [1:20:38] **Kathy Weier:** Well, we're we're going out as well, though, and so are we as far as there's another voting cycle. So, I don't think our city ever has an old administration because it's every two years we change. That's true. [1:20:50] **Bridget Sperl:** Once we get this sorted out, the the fraud business. Yeah. Let's just... [1:20:55] **Kathy Weier:** You're a veteran now. [1:20:57] **Alan:** And if they if they look all right overall, which I think they do, there's no reason to put it off either. [1:21:05] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay. So, so I'm thinking about all of the boxes that need to be imaged. It just seems like there's work to be done to sort of get ready and there's a backlog of stuff that we haven't been doing is my understanding. So because we don't have an administrator—that's right we do now but I'm just saying let 2026 be the year that we clean everything up and then we audit in 27. [1:21:35] **Alan:** We'll see how it goes. But if we're not ready, we're not going to come back to you guys and say, "Let's do it." So, bottom line, because we want a good audit. [1:21:42] **Bridget Sperl:** Absolutely. We want a clean one for sure. [1:21:45] **Alan:** We want a clean audit. We got work to do and we're getting the money for it. So, I mean, the timing is not everything. Right. So, right. Yeah. [1:21:55] **Kathy Weier:** If we can move some of the budget to cover whatever that is, so we're able to... so at least we have it in the bank. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then it can't change. Be good. Thank you, Marsha. And do you want to see that schedule? [1:22:10] **Alan:** Should we see that as a recommendation to move that on the budget for 26 then? [1:22:15] **Kathy Weier:** Um we budget for it. I feel like we pulled some funds for it. I don't remember what we had done. [1:22:18] **Marsha Olson:** It was budgeted for for some for some—for some but not a lot. [1:22:19] **Kathy Weier:** I don't know what's in that account now but there should be enough to pull that over in what's left over in the personnel probably. [1:22:30] **Alan:** Yeah. But I think you should vote on it and see what's happening. That's all. Okay. As a recommendation. [1:22:38] **Kathy Weier:** So yeah, if you can get a quote for how much it would be now-ish, then we can... [1:22:42] **Alan:** Well, I just meant for terms for purposes of the approved budget, we should probably just show that that's been one pot to another pot and just vote on that. A very surgical change to the actual budget. [1:22:50] **Kathy Weier:** Would you like to make that motion? [1:22:55] **Ryan Hankins:** Sure. Uh, I would move to adjust the budgets appropriately to support an audit. Um, ASAP. [1:23:05] **Kathy Weier:** ASAP. Fine. Okay. I don't know what's in that budget right now. Do you have anything that surgical right now you can jump to? [1:23:13] **Alan:** You know, we have so much more money left over in the Clerk and Treasurer. Why don't we just stick it in there? [1:23:22] **Kathy Weier:** All right. Well, I'll get an estimate and we'll make sure the money's in there for at least what the snapshot estimate is now. [1:23:22] **Ryan Hankins:** Fair. Fair. [1:23:25] **Alan:** And ABDO doesn't generally increase that much year over year. They might be a little bit more because they haven't worked with us before. So the initial—because I don't think we've gotten a different invoice. We've used those guys in Landfall for 10 years something like that. So yeah, it's always the same. [1:23:45] **Bridget Sperl:** Do they have to go back to the last audit that they did or that was done? So 2010 is a bit... [1:23:55] **Alan:** probably won't but they'll probably do some like random testing from previous years. Sure. Okay. [1:24:05] **Kathy Weier:** So we'll re—So Ryan and I and Marsha, the three of us will sit down and we'll probably restructure the actual report. And then we also would need to um uh change how we um put expenses in so they aren't straight line so they are in the months that are going to happen. Is that a big deal to do those two things? [1:24:30] **Marsha Olson:** There aren't a ton of them that are like that. So, we would we should be okay doing that. I think um I think CPS handles that. Okay. [1:24:38] **Bridget Sperl:** And what about restructuring the format? [1:24:41] **Marsha Olson:** The format's totally fine. [1:24:43] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay. [1:24:43] **Marsha Olson:** It's just an Excel spreadsheet. We can— [1:24:45] **Bridget Sperl:** Excellent. [1:24:46] **Kathy Weier:** This is just something Scott told her to do. [1:24:48] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay. [1:24:48] **Kathy Weier:** We can do whatever. [1:24:49] **Marsha Olson:** Okay. [1:24:50] **Bridget Sperl:** Yeah. This is—I didn't know if it's running off a program. I didn't know. [1:24:54] **Marsha Olson:** No. I pull out of the program and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. [1:24:59] **Bridget Sperl:** Oh, great. Excellent. And then we'll do that and what's the administrative function we have to um complete—let's go through this high view. [1:25:15] **Alan:** it's a like a high-level financial review that's supposed to happen and do we just sign something it's just another set of eyeballs so it's just making sure you guys are watching the baby yeah it's a big binder and it has all of the seats you're supposed to be making sure the books balance. Well I mean and this was put in place because the books didn't balance for a while and now I'm less worried right at this point, but that's still in our internal controls. So, it would probably be wise to do it. [1:25:35] **Bridget Sperl:** Yes. And then tell me again what's going to happen with the 150 excess. [1:25:40] **Marsha Olson:** It will stay like in our funds um for use in the in next year. [1:25:45] **Bridget Sperl:** But could we reallocate it to a line or a number? [1:25:50] **Marsha Olson:** This is unallocated funds going into 26. [1:25:54] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay. So, if we needed to have a road repair or extend that road repair to make it more cost effective, since our capital improvement fund is zero, it's good to put some money in there. Bump that up. Maybe bump that. [1:26:05] **Marsha Olson:** That's—I was going to say because I think the um capital improvement fund actually has a negative balance right now. So, we could move some over there to negative to bring it to zero. [1:26:20] **Ryan Hankins:** Do we want to just ask you guys to next month put in recommend adjustments and just put them in next month like a... Yeah, that's what I'm suggesting. Just a bullet of "we're going to move this and we're going to move that" and then we'll just throw it in the consent agenda and you'll see it. [1:26:35] **Kathy Weier:** Yeah. Okay. That seems... [1:26:40] **Alan:** I put in the one for the audit, but uh we can make other adjustments like that to certainly get to zero when we've got some negative balances. Yes, please. Okay. [1:26:50] **Marsha Olson:** Well, and you know, we've got a decent balance in water, but a negative in sewer so there's for improvement. We'll make some recommendations. [1:26:56] **Bridget Sperl:** That sounds great. [1:27:00] **Kathy Weier:** We'll make some recommendations. Perfect. Thank you. [1:27:05] **Alan:** Ryan had made a motion to do the audit funds. Does someone like to second that? Do we want to? [1:27:11] **Alan:** What I've done is I've added it to the overall motion approving the treasures—that I didn't hear a motion. Did you? [1:27:17] **Bridget Sperl:** I did, but I'll just withdraw it if it's... [1:27:21] **Alan:** Why don't you just—I'm combining them. So, okay. Do you want to... are you—any other questions on the treasury report? [1:27:27] **Bridget Sperl:** No. No. [1:27:30] **Kathy Weier:** Do you guys just want to throw out some dates of when you want to meet? [1:27:32] **Bridget Sperl:** Um—I got to check with the boss and then I can get back to you. [1:27:37] **Marsha Olson:** Yeah, we'll just do an email. Doesn't have to be. No, my schedule's good. So, whatever works for you guys. Yep. [1:27:43] **Bridget Sperl:** Okay. Next is—anytime next week good? [1:27:47] **Marsha Olson:** Actually have an audit in the township next week. So, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I can't do next week's looking good. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the week after. I think that sounds great. [1:28:03] **Bridget Sperl:** The week after is perfect. Yeah. It'd be nice if we could bring back a different format at least to the February council. [1:28:10] **Alan:** Right. Yeah. Okay. And Alan, do you want to be a part of this at all? [1:28:15] **Alan:** I can be invited to the party. So, I have other things going on. And so, if uh we're trying to get four people in a room, it's usually easy when three agree this way. So, if I can, I'll be there. But, um, I'm like a toddler with a flamethrower when it comes to this stuff, so it's best left to... [1:28:30] **Kathy Weier:** Sounds good. Did we get a second on that? [1:28:33] **Bridget Sperl:** Um, not yet. [1:28:35] **Kathy Weier:** Okay, good. I didn't miss that. [1:28:37] **Bridget Sperl:** Second. [1:28:39] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. All in favor? [1:28:41] **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. Hearing none. Thanks, Marsha. Okay. Um, I think we finished our consent agenda. [1:28:50] **Alan:** We did. All right. Then we have announcements which are in the packet. Yeah, those are just very brief. Your usual Sheriff's newsletter. I just thought, you know, as now I'm sitting here, um, if I see things that come across my transom that I think might be interesting, I'm just going to dump them in here, not only for you, but for whoever at home sees these things. And the XL rate adjustments been talked about for a while. They kind of teed it up over the summer. Um, and then obviously last fall they started talking in earnest. And so what you're seeing there is uh that adjustment now that it's kind of fully formed. And of course Washington County sent something about a um event about street cars. And so it's just something fun to throw in there as uh something that they're up to and uh obviously free events and something fun to take the kids to or someone else. So if that's too much and too silly, then tell me not to do it. [1:29:40] **Bridget Sperl:** That's fun to see. Um any other announcements, updates, etc. needed? [1:29:45] **Kathy Weier:** I have one um for the February council meeting um that I sent you a document from the parks association where they uh uh the new—let's see two of the members are up for renewal renewal. Both of them are interested in continuing that. So I would like that put before the council for consent fine. [1:30:10] **Alan:** Consent fine. I would think so. Oh, and then Alan, I had sent you and Therese and Chris just a draft of a um uh strategy for the website. [1:30:18] **Alan:** You noted. Yep. [1:30:20] **Kathy Weier:** Okay. And if you want that to be on the agenda, we can. [1:30:25] **Alan:** Yes. If we—Yeah. But I want to make Yes. But I want to make sure that you and Chris are comfortable with it. Yeah. I saw it. So, we haven't had a chance to talk. Okay. I got it. He likes it. [1:30:38] **Kathy Weier:** Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris. And then the last thing I wanted to say was uh thank you to the community club for the winter party we had um a gosh a couple weeks ago now at this point. Um it was a really fun event and the musicians were really enjoyable. It was fun to visit with a bunch of neighbors and just a nice party. So thank you for that. [1:30:57] **Bridget Sperl:** Thank you for being a part of that. That was super fun. The cookies were delicious. [1:31:05] **Kathy Weier:** Um, any other announcements, details, anything? Otherwise, can I have a motion to adjourn? [1:31:08] **Ryan Eisele:** So moved. [1:31:11] **Bridget Sperl:** I'll second. [1:31:13] **Kathy Weier:** All in favor? [1:31:14] **Council:** Aye. >> **Kathy Weier:** Opposed. Hearing none. I'm getting closed. I want you. [1:31:46] [Meeting Concluded]