the area that you live in is zoned industrial hotels good evening everyone it is now 5 30 and i will call our work session to order this is the burnsville city council work session and our work sessions are very informal we do have some folks on zoo and we have folks in the audience so let's go around the table and introduce everyone so i'm going to start with jenny hi everyone i'm jenny faulconer the community development director for the city okay hi chris bartholomew human resources director and peterson public works director dan keeley city council cara schultz city council elizabeth coutts mayor michelle collins city clerk dan gustafson city council greg lindberg interim city manager and we'll go uh to the and lynn seats lockridge grendel now and one of the lobbyists for the city of burnsville i am jeff mcminiman with damon farber landscape architects here tonight to talk about the heart of the city okay regina dean assistant community development director for the city very good jen city engineer dave hutton elliott hendrickson well welcome everybody uh our first item um our work sessions are informal and we go directly to our agenda and just to let everybody know our meetings are both in person and online so you can access our meetings by going to burnsville burnsvillemnn.gov meetings or watch us on comcast 16 or 859. you can also participate on zoom and that is by joining us on zoom.us slash join or by calling 651-372-8299 so welcome everyone and the first item on the agenda is our legislative update uh and that uh jenny i'm going to have you uh introduce and lynch thank you madam mayor members of the council um as you know we engaged lgn two and a half years ago maybe three years ago now and they've done some wonderful things for us down at the capitol we've had some wins so we're very appreciative of their work anne lincheski is our main lobbyist and then we have um cullen joining us via zoom and um the two of them are going to kick off kind of where we're at right now with the legislative session i've put in the background our your legislative priorities and so they're going to just highlight how that folds into what's going on at the capitol and then answer any general questions that you have so with that um i'll ask ann to join us and then we'll get started thank you thank you and welcome anne and colin it's good to see you both in color good to see you great to see you there so welcome okay and the floor is yours well thank you madam mayor and council it's really great to be with you in person and mr manager and jenny and the whole crew so um yes cullen's there and i think he's actually going to start us off but i wanted to say it's been such an honor to work with all of you it was great to see the um our work on the tiff district actually get a little press too and i can tell you i had a recent meeting with senator ann rest and she couldn't stop crowing about how great that tif district was and i think the mayor knows well that's not where we started with that particular project so as jenny said it's been really an honor to work with jenny and your team to um have some successes at the capitol so we're thrilled to be here with you tonight and i think cullen was going to cover this session if that's okay with you madam mayor yeah but first of all i want to just let everybody know how much of a privilege it is to be working with you and cullen i mean if people don't know anne lancey is well respected at the legislature the work that she has done in the house and she has always been appointed and elected to chair the tax committee and we really went through some things but we did get minnesota river quadrant and then helped us with the with the shopping center and uh also the work i have known cullen for a long time with senator coleman and before that with when he was at st paul as mayor so it's been a long journey and i have just admired the work that you two have done and you two have brought great wins to burnsville since we engaged you so thank you so much and the other thing is that you're respected at the at the capitol they all know that you know their side of the work behind the scenes well you're so kind we are so honored to work with you and the mayor is very kindly not letting me forget that we started out on the opposite sides of the issue and she wore me down so it's been great and and really honestly colin and i love that we're a bipartisan team and we think that's a huge strength for all of you that we have access to everyone in all four caucuses in the governor's office so we bring who we really are but we understand the process and we work in a non-partisan way so that local governments can succeed at the capitol so but even before all of that when she was at the bloomington city council ann and i and greg and others were at nlc and where we met dr john carver and so we teamed up together and brought john carver to help uh us and bloomington and others and we went straight ahead and they sort of grabbed their feet she beat me there too madame mayor she got burnsville city council to go much further than i got bloomington city council to go my uh my city at the time wasn't as as brave as burnsville was so but it was an honor well thank you for everything i will jump in thank you mayor thank you council uh and ann uh at the capitol we are in the thick of what we call deadline weeks last friday was first deadline so all legislative policy related bills needed to be heard in either the house or the senate and make it to the floor or we don't can't hear something we can hear you just not that long yeah i don't know if the control room can give us some more volume so we can hear colin he's switching the earbuds i think it's turned up now okay cullen does that help at all yeah does that help much better technology we love it so as i was saying uh mayor and council members uh we are in the thick of deadline weeks at the capitol it is i would say the second busiest time of any legislative session arguably the first but last friday was first deadline so policy related bills needed to be heard and passed to the floor of either the house or the senate to stay alive and or make it to a finance committee ways and means or finance or another finance related committee this week is second deadline and so the opposite is true if you made it in the house you also need to move forward in the senate or vice versa and so there is a quite intense committee hearings occurring from you know 8 am until sometimes 8 pm in the evening and beyond and then next next week is third deadline and that's where all finance bills need to make it either to ways and means or the finance committee in the senate or to the floor and as we speak committees are putting together their omnibus bills we've seen the first few get rolled out yesterday and today and we'll see more rolled out as we get into the week public safety transportation etc the committees are putting together their giant omnibus bills uh in in hopes of moving forward and passing something coming to some resolution at the end of session uh the biggest issue unresolved and i think will remain the biggest issue until the end of session is uh the the debate about unemployment insurance uh benefit repayment by the state uh versus frontline worker pay the governor and the senate republicans are in agreement on repaying the unemployment insurance trust fund so businesses do not have to foot that bill that is to the tune of over 2 billion house democrats also agree that we should pay repay at least a portion of that but they are unwilling to move that bill forward if senate republicans do not uh pass a bill to give bonuses to line workers the people nurses etc who had to work all throughout the covid shutdown phase for of the past two years and they have not been able to come to an agreement either on a dollar amount senate republicans would like that to be about 250 million the house democrats would like that to be a billion or more but they also can't agree on who should receive frontline worker pay senate republicans would like to see that pool be much smaller and that people received larger bonuses of roughly a thousand dollars or more house democrats have been advocating for a much larger pool of people that would receive a smaller amounts of money but of course they want a billion dollars senate republicans want 250 million dollars so all of that has to be worked out they did not meet their march 15th deadline to resolve that issue house democrats believe that the deadline is april 30th i suspect that they won't meet that deadline either and that that will shape up to be an end of session uh that third week of may debate in in order to resolve a plethora of issues and see if they can get out of here with any sort of a deal other issues that are going to come up beyond those two a bonding bill it is a bonding year although every year seems to be a bonding year it's their way of getting out by going out projects and transportation projects to to districts the governor has introduced a bonding bill of over two billion dollars which by far and away would be the largest one in state history i suspect the house and the senate will both have bonding bills uh somewhere in the billion to a billion and a half dollar range and if they come to an agree a global agreement at the end and if they're able to close out session with anything i do believe there will be a bonding bill as a part of that other issues will percolate but i would i would say that the third probably issue on this list in terms of priority for legislators is the public safety debate and much like unemployment insurance and the front line worker pay there is a vast divide between what house democrats would like to see happen they've introduced a 150 million dollar package that they rolled out or updated last week senate republicans are in the range of about 60 million dollars but when you dig into the details of both they're not even close on on policy related provisions the governor did announce earlier in the year a 300 million dollar package but i think is waiting to see what ultimately comes out from the house in the senate so as we head into second deadline this friday third deadline next friday and then legislators will head into easter passover recess things will die down a bit but when they come back in april it's going to be a lot of behind the scenes negotiations with the four leaders and the governor and the committee chairs of respective committees with the hope of trying to finalize a deal by their mandated deadline of may 23rd and because it's an election year and because there have been new districts drawn and many many new voters that legislators have to meet i don't expect that there will be a consequential or significant special session if there is it's because they didn't get a deal done until midnight on the 22nd and they need an extra day to process everything but i do expect that they will finish on time and that there will be some level of a deal i would be surprised if they spent all nine billion dollars in surplus but i won't be surprised if they if they end up spending a significant amount of that uh in in in addition to a relatively significant bonding bill as well and with that i'll turn it over to ann to talk specific details thank you very much great thank you madam mayor i think we just talking to the manager lindbergh and to jenny we wanted to just cover some of the things that you've had us working on and just give you an update on where we're at with those things and so um you know i thought i'd start with landfills obviously this is a huge issue for us really quiet you know i think you all recall that last year the mpca was not willing to forward what your legislators carried which really was money not for burnsville which we constantly remind people yeah it's money for the mpca to do dig and haul and so you know i think your legislators did a great job of carrying that legislation forward but mpca was not ready to pursue it and instead wanted legislation to gain access which they received and they have said this is their last thing they need and are beginning that process and i think you are all aware of things that are happening in litigation all kinds of things related to this so we're in a holding pattern in 22 on that issue but preparing for 23 when we can actually really make the play to governor walls or another governor it depends what happens that they really need to come forward and fight for that money for that facility for the mpca for the first time ever i think it's because of our good work here we saw the mpca actually asked for it in their agency request which they've never done before and they didn't ask for 15 million or 60 million or 90 million they asked for i think 165. so they're actually putting a real number on the price and that is big progress i mean i feel like it's yes but it is huge it really is so it's really acknowledging that a future legislature is going to have to solve this and it's going to be expensive and it's the state's responsibility so i think those are all really good signs and they come from lots of conversations that all of us have had here with various people there's been a few other pieces of landfill legislation that we monitored and turned out to be nothing one was a senator howe was looking for a cleanup for an area in his district but also i had reached out to your team and asked them about a landfill bill that representative detmer was carrying that said you can't have a school within a quarter mile and that turn you know wanted to make sure it worked for you guys and it doesn't affect you guys so that was good but those small landfills unrelated to you bills are moving through the process one of the other things that was queued up for us to talk about tonight and your chief here he knows this much better than anybody in the room which is the ems primacy or prime primary service area and just a little background on that so chief and the fire service went to the office of the legislative auditor and asked that uh the auditor took a look at this issue and they did and it was a pretty damning study that came out the legislature is chewing through it right now and many many problems are emerging because of that review by the by the objective independent state auditor not state dollar legislative auditor there's two um and so now we're going to see what legislators are going to do about that i mean they've really been you can see now that not only is the organization not being run very well and there's been a lot of problems but you really can't make sense of who's getting what service why and when and how and so um chief jungman and his allies are all in the thick of that and so lots of great things are happening there in the house and senate and lots of legislators very eager to work on that um cullen i think covered you know the public safety debate fairly well which i think is relevant for you are you going to have any movement then the uh uh primary service area any movement this year i don't think so i think we have some legislators on both sides who want to help as soon as they can but i think people don't know what the answer is yet and so i think until people like chief jungmen are brought to the table to help solve this um i think people there's just not enough time to get a great solution and i think folks are going to need to need to work on that with experts who who you know begin to unpack it i mean that i think these the office of the legislative auditor said it was one of the were studies they've that's not the word they use but they said it had the most objections that they've seen in in many many things they've reviewed so it sort of calls all legislators to do something about it on both sides of the aisle so it's been a non-partisan issue but now people are paying attention so i think that'll be next year cullen covered public safety a bit we can go more into that but i think it does matter to all of you because if there's a deal somehow i think you're going to get some money from that like do we know what that is i don't know i mean the governor is saying 300 million and he has a hundred like in a like in a local government aid program that every city would get it wouldn't be like burnsville would be let out left it would be anybody with one police officer or more would be a recipient and then of course the democrats colin was being nice the democrats have a proposal but they actually have a couple proposals instead they're not really speaking with one voice so the house and senate democrats are kind of pushing different things and so there's just a lot of discussion about what that'll all be and then of course the senate has you know reforms in with their 60 million too so i think i think we're going to see a lot of discussion if i had to predict on that one i don't know how they're going to get to a resolution because it's just such a political issue right now particularly in the suburbs i think people kind of feel that both sides of the aisle are trying to win on that issue so not sure and um then you know also wanted to mention just just the local um control issue as it relates to housing yeah i think you're all following this it's sort of housing first which is now um they're formerly the builders but now kind of housing first versus the cities you know these are broad ways to sketch out what's going on but you know relatively it's kind of lining up like that and so you're seeing um representative elkins in bloomington as one of the legislators who's working with the senate housing chair senator drayheim to sort of cut the baby in half between the two entities by saying hey cities we'll give you some tools over here that you wanted for a long time but we're going to take away your zoning powers and some other things that you want and of course the cities are very upset about this and there's been many hearings on both sides i i don't think that one's going to go anywhere either i think in a bipartisan way local governments have come together to say like hey you know we we know you have the authority to take these powers away from us but we're doing just fine and here's why and i feel that for a while there was a lot of momentum but it seems like it's going down and the house um housing chair does not has not been supportive and and she's really the one in charge senator drayheim who has been the author on the senate side who is the housing chair um if he really thought this was going to happen it would have been his omnibus bill that was re released last night and it's not in there so i think that is a huge success for communities trying to stop some of these efforts to cut you know cut a line between the two groups i think it's it's probably not going to happen anything this this year which i think is what burnsville will want so mlc mayors met with the governor yesterday on this issue great and housing and he's with us because he says cities know uh best what to do and the local control should stay with cities and so he he was with cities well good yeah it feels like the steam has started to let out of it um and then the last thing i'd say and i hope we can just talk about anything you want to um any of the things i've raised or anything else is um you know it is a big bonding year as colin said we're probably going to if there's a bill we're going to break a record we broke a record last time and i think we're going to break a new record and you know it occurs to colin and i as people who you know we feel like we we should advise you on this you know that you should be in that arena and you're not and and we just kind of want to put that out there not for 22 because that the chip has really sailed we're two weeks to adjournment or two months to adjournment there's a bonding process whereby you know you go through the local government process then you apply through mmb you fill out your stuff then what we do is your lobbyist is we want to get the house and senate to tour your thing and we want to convince those and there's going to be in for sure one new bonding chair next year because center box retiring this will be a new senate bonding chair and then there's going to be you know maybe representative fully but maybe somebody new we don't know and we want to get them out here to learn what you're looking for and kind of get that whole process happening before a bonnie bill happens again so it's a longer process some people realize and and i think you're one of the biggest cities in the state of minnesota who doesn't have a bonding project before the legislature saw you know we just encourage you to think about that um people who are very conservative will say you know i don't want to add to the spending over there but the problem is your constituents are paying for the bill anyhow yeah for everybody else right so um if you look at your peer communities about your size you know they have pretty big ass in front of the minnesota legislature and just something to think about um you know we can certainly help you think through that i mean it you know it's you you're generally looking for regional facilities um things that you know you don't get to just say hey builder build our things that we're supposed to do as a city council but you have all kinds of things in this community that are used by a lot more people than the people of burnsville that need to be restored or renewed or you know it can be regional park systems it can be renewing your facilities community centers you know regional training facilities like thinking through and we've had some discussions with manager about your capital improvement list in front of yourself you know it's not like creating things to spend money but if you have to do things that you say hey you know 50 of the people use this stuff don't even live here you really should be asking the legislature to contribute to that um because it they really should these are regional facilities that are used you know like when you visit all the places you go in your life you know you don't just stay in burnsville i'm certain you go to other communities and do things so we just we just wish you would think about that a little bit because um to miss the next cycle i think with a city with this population and and contributing this much i mean you're a giver to fiscal disparities you don't get local government aid you know you're kind of on the losing end yeah you know and to not kind of get something coming back you know we always try to tell legislators it's okay to give the suburbs something every once in a while since they pay for it year after year after year so just hope you will think about that yes um going forward and just making a pitch on that so that's kind of what we had for you and open to talk about anything you want okay dan kay well thanks for bringing that up uh miss lunches and appreciate mr sheehan presenting tonight giving us an update when i think of bonding going back to when i was elected in 07 we have wanted a pedestrian bridge over a state highway for the safety of our high school kids and i'm a little shocked to think that you presented why aren't you or you should be thinking of things that other people use this in this case people within the city of burnsville use it but it's crossing a highway that the state controls and is made fairly large and it's a very high-speed highway and there's a to me on the safety merits alone of our kids going to school across the state highway that bridge should have been on a bonding list years ago yep like years ago now we have another one that we would like that we've always asked for across 13 at nicolette but that's being resolved with uh a new intersection uh project that will provide a safe safe crossing but at the high school across 13 i live in that area and i see kids all the time clustered on one side trying to get across and yes there's a crosswalk but when you're trying to cross a highway with cars traveling at 50. much better than the speed limit most of the time i mean more like i don't know what the speed limit is 50. yeah 55 yeah it's more like 65 and 70 mile per hour cars flying by it's really intimidating and i so that would be one that i think we should have advocated for a long time ago with a bo through a bonding bill is across the state highway which we don't have control of right the council was never open to that to to go into the state and getting a bonding but i think we are at a place where we need to utilize uh a tool and methodology that is available to us and that we have never used and to ann's point we're paying for it anyway so we might as well have money come back to us uh and again and it's a bridge over a state highway it's not over one of our streets right we would be responsible for that this is going over a very large highway with very fast cars and trucks it's a huge truck route it's really to me surprising that today we sit here and we have nothing in place and we've known about it for a long time i don't remember ever voting against it if i did on record it's beyond i i honestly don't remember i don't know that we've ever talked in context about going after a bonding bill to put a bridge there but we should have been we had um ann and you can remind me when we had the legislators come down to burnsville when we were doing the heart of the city and you came with that and we were looking to get some help with all with the heart of the city and also the performing arts center because it was a regional asset it's not it was going to serve the region right and i think i think it helps you to think of something that's a regional asset to your area that isn't the landfill because what happens is legislators think that that 180 or whatever we end up asking for is for you that's not accurate it's for the mpca yeah and and we want to delineate that all the time so for you know i can give you a parallel city as an example the city of blaine yeah does have um legislative bonding requests in front of the in from the legislature and they are constantly fighting that when people give the national sports center money for soccer fields they think that's for blaine and they have to go back and say that's great thank you for giving them that that wasn't for blaine the city of blaine needs a different thing and i think that's something that gets harder if you don't have something in play people feel that the landfill money is for you when it's really it will never be received by the city as well because i think if we talk to jenny and and ryan and uh and greg our city manager about projects that we could uh go after is the uh tunnel from uh the west the south side to the north side on aldrich at the shopping center center village that's that's a regional project and that's a capital project but i think uh there's other things that we can be looking at brian no one asked me but if you were to ask me uh of course you know we all agreed that we're all in this together right that's true okay uh mndot's been replacing 13 bridge in the cliff bridge over 35 and 20 25. they don't have the money in there for the burnsville parkway bridge that's right to be expanded for the better blocking paths and um and in transit to we'll be talking about heart of city framework coming up here a little bit that's a major blockage to expanding to the west the heart of the city into that part of the city or tod district 3. so members of the council i'd like for us to direct staff to work with our legislative lobbyists to look at what is there within our capital projects and other projects that will help us with a bonding uh ask for 23. do i have yeah jenny madam mayor i was going to um throw out one of my ideas too as we're sitting here um i go back to the water treatment plant and recall that the state did help pay for half of that partnership with kmm yes and if we're looking at doing improvements to that or expansions that was 2009 i believe when we did kmm savage and us might even been prior to that but i think of that where we did get some state money and maybe they would be willing to reinvest or continue that investment with some improvements as an idea but this is why i'm asking the council if there is no objection i would like for us to direct staff to begin that work with uh ann and cullen absolutely i would i was i think i was operating on the assumption that the city staff going back years and years and years worked with our lobbyists on we can have a lobbyist well we did sort of we had somebody we did sort of after with regard to what happened with the landfill and all of that then we got a lobbyist and so we haven't had anybody as talented as the two that's the dynamic that we have today clearly yes so if if without objection i would like their success history last year alone of course we expect them to hit two out of three every year from now on because you you set the bar yourself they want to yeah okay okay so dan you're in in in directing staff absolutely and i i like miss faulkner's idea a water treatment plant really falls into that federal infrastructure bill as well but the state you know who knows where that's all going to come out and go but a bonding request for water treatment plant seems logical as well as some transportation and a bridge and a few other things and we can work however with you know greg and jenny to think through and ryan because another thing to to councilman keeley's plan federal money is going to be coming in for transportation too and it's rolling in over five years so some of the like the burnsville parkway issue you know there's this the legislature this year needs to pass the match which is 20 which is 300 million just for the transpo bill and we're going to see that money rolling mndot doesn't have it yet but when it does more of these transportation projects are going to clear through which will allow for more and sometimes they're carried in the bonnie bill and sometimes they're carried in the transportation bill but it's the same thing you're they're asking for trunk highway bonds or geo bonds or both yeah and and that's certainly another piece to look at and i was on a meeting a zoom meeting uh with the epa and some of the grants that's coming out on water and um and sewer and all of that so all of that kind of money that's going to be that's coming out the uh infrastructure innovation jobs bill okay cara you okay i am and regarding the water treatment plant um we have been investigating what and if type of upgrade we need to do on that um decide if there's like is it taste or is it oh that's that study yes ryan residents will be seen in their water bill this month uh i'm the link to go to a survey so we're going to reach out to our residents this month stays open all the way through the mma and then we're trying to figure out what is what is the complaint that's we've been hearing so it's going to be like 12 or 13 questions dialing into what we've had then we'll have a much better idea of what type of improvement correction may be necessary yeah so yeah especially once we get that information that seems like an appropriate i agree with you one percent appropriate thing to look at yeah okay and you're okay and i think what i'd like is for us to let uh tell staff direct staff to take a look at all of what is possible working with ann and cullen and say what will go through the legislature for 23 and then come back and tell us which ones are going to be the projects that ann and colin are going to work on okay is there anything else greg that i've missed in terms of direction uh no madam mayor council actually already asked leadership team to think creatively about what capital projects might be might be ideas to put on the table and we'll work with with anne get back to the council with more discussion okay all right there is no objection so proceed and and thank you so much to you and colin for bringing that to the table tonight and uh and educate everybody about the value of going to the state for bonding bill well thank you and of course it's your you will ultimately decide um with the list that manage if you want to do that and then we'll work to engage your legislators to make it their number one goal that they have to get done and we'll work on the you know to do that whether it's with transportation chairs bonding chairs whoever but you know it's it's always worth a try and the state should partner with a city like burnsville with all that burnsville's bringing to the state yeah okay good okay thank you is there anything else i don't well ann cullen and jenny thank you so much i mean let's go get them again it's an honor to work for you we really appreciate it thank you so much and thank you for coming in this evening and thank you colin always good to see you all yeah thank you mayor yeah bye-bye the next item is the hoc framework update and presenting this evening is jan desroud our city engineer and regina dean our assistant communications development director so um regina are you two taking the lead on this i'll take the lead on this one okay my background says that on the design framework it's you and jen so but you're taking the lead yep good evening mayor members of the council um so i will kick things off but jen deseret is behind me to help answer any questions that that may possibly come up throughout this agenda item um with me to my right my right is uh jeff mcminiman he is the consultant with damon farber they've been leading the project for for the city and we've been working a great partnership with them as you remember this kicked off in june of 2021 with some main project goals in mind to conduct community engagement complete a site inventory review existing policies and maps and plans that we have on file and to develop an updated framework and then the next agenda item will go further and to talk about a special assessment policy and recommendations which are kind of a result of this framework plan um and again this is a refresh of the 1999 heart of the city design framework a lot of changes have happened since then so we're really excited to showcase what we've been working on we're certainly nearing the finish line this is our third time before u.s council and what we're looking for at this meeting is direction from council to incorporate any feedback and any changes into a final document which we hope to bring before you at an upcoming city council meeting with that i'll turn it over to jeff he'll run through the presentation certainly if there's any questions uh we can answer those along the way or at the end okay welcome jeff good to see you again council members good to be here tonight yeah in person jeff in person yeah so um what i'm going to do let's see oh there we go i'm going to talk through get provide an overview of what we've been doing to date on the project and i think the last time we had met was probably last fall and at that time we had talked about you know the importance of engaging with the community and i'll give an overview of some of the work that we've been doing with the community um and i'll provide just kind of an overview on existing conditions and the needs evaluation as well we've pulled together a mission statement and updated that mission statement for the framework plan and provided a new set of guiding principles that reflect some of the input we've received from the community along with the the needs evaluation and then an overview two of recommendations and i can pause at each one of those stages of the presentation and if somebody wants to provide a comment or ask a question so the last time we had met we had talked about the importance of community engagement we've really been working with staff to conduct an inclusive and meaningful engagement process which has included some community events we attended the fire muster in september we've also attended an open house on niklet commons in september we've conducted an online survey and we've got some of the input we've received from that that also included a geographic comment mapping exercise we've conducted listening sessions with seniors in the community with students and we've conducted stakeholder interviews with local agencies and businesses and and um and residences and we've also recently submitted surveys to people who live in the district and and and received input from them as well on really the public spaces in the district so just this is a long document um the summary of it but i'm just going to provide you with a few slides of it so you can see sort of a snapshot of some of the things we've been hearing from the community the feedback we've received so from the pop-up events you can see that people really love living in burnsville they love nicolet commons that for them i think is kind of the center the heart of the heart of the city um and so um we've received a lot of great comments from folks there um through the online survey we've started to develop you know some some of the the the key input we've received from the community are things like improving the pedestrian network making things safer for folks in the district providing um you know additional events community events like you do now at the nicolette commons increasing and enhancing walkability and bikability in the district the online survey also provided this mapping exercise so people could provide comments about geographic locations specific places that are in the district and this is just sort of a snapshot of of some of the input we've received from folks things like nikola commons should have a farmer's market in it or things like that or upgrade the parking lots along travelers trail and add more lighting and trees so things like that some of the general comments we've received through the entire engagement process are things like how can we slow down traffic make it more safer people focus on walkability provide better way finding and orientation in the district so i know where the parking supplies are at things like that um and so these are some of the things that we have been hearing from people and and these are things that also have influenced the needs evaluation so with that i can stop if anyone has questions or comments on the engagement process any thoughts uh council member dan key can you go back a couple slides i think it's your second slide maybe there was a uh there um it says the top three activities or features for drawing more people is that from like because they saw sidewalk cafes but the one that i took note is 74 percent street plaza festivals is that 74 of people felt that's what drew them there or wanted more of that or wanted more of that yeah this is there were probably a dozen and a half questions in the survey that we had online this is just a couple of the questions and some of the feedback we've got um the summary document from the community engagement process will be included in full in the final report just given the time constraints tonight we decided and all the material we have to go through to just provide you with a few snapshots of that kind of are those the top three the 80 70. those are the top three for that question like what kinds of activities or features would draw more people to the district so in this case they said sidewalk cafes street and plaza festivals and increased walkability or bike ability you know what's interesting those are the top three back in 1997 right did you see the the original design framework sidewalk cafe that's the reason why a jensen's put their cafe on the sidewalk and we made it bigger and we had them do all different signs um street plaza fest and festivals that's why we started putting more and more festivals and plaza and then um walkability those are the people are really interested in in enhancing the walkability in the district there are some gaps in the sidewalk system that we'll look at tonight um that we need to complete there's also um you know some non-compliant non-ada compliant you know sidewalks in the districts and trails that we need to look at improving things like that well i i took note of the this is current right and this isn't the 1997 or if it's current so it's this is current that's what i'm saying it's still the same from back then sometimes i hear uh well i hear a lot of folks love the festivals and things that we have today and i also hear you know geez how many do we have to have and i think those are the people who are comparing to the benchmark of we hardly had any maybe 10 15 years ago but now we have grown it to a lot and some people aren't connecting with maybe the why right and that there is a lot of people that like it and want it but are asking why do we have so many or do we need so many yeah so not not surprising there's always going to be some that look through the lens of well i've lived here for 30 years and we didn't have anything and now you've got way too many but what's the point of reference and are they enjoying any of them right are they coming out and enjoying them so people love them yeah yeah i mean that's those are the kinds of things that we heard i'll go back to this one here these are the you know we can we attended a couple of the pop-up events we saw you there with your grandson um last september and um people really love the niklet comments and they love the events that are held there and so they really in fact they associate niclette comments and those events with heart of the city and what's interesting about nicolette commons park it's once a month we start out with i love burnsville in june then we go to the international festival we go to art and all that jazz and then now the community festival which used to be the fire muster but that's here and then we have a lot of um just pop-up like movies in the park and parties on a plaza and uh those are smaller events but yeah people love them and they pack the pup the park and it's geared to families any other questions or comments on community engagement no it would i thought it was very interesting those were a surprise yeah that what was high in priority in the 90s is still high in prior but this is what people want yeah yeah and i don't know if they wanted a dog park back then but they want one now yeah so um in addition to all of the community engagement we've been conducting um we've been on site and um we have uh we've we've been meeting with the project management team which is staff on a monthly basis we meet with regina and jen every other week and talk through this we have been um we conducted an existing conditions evaluation um uh at on all three of the different character districts and you know character district number one is sort of where the heart of the city is the heart of the heart of the city um character district two is just to the west and then we've added this character district 3 to the west side of 35 and that is in keeping with the goal of the t your new tod ordinance of trying to join them all together and provide good access to the new transit facilities that you have there for the orange line so we with each one of those different character districts we met on site we dug really into it and did photo analysis i had notes we toured the site with your project management team on a couple of different occasions and we evaluated it from sort of a systems wide perspective looking at transportation systems your parking systems your roadways your pedestrian and bicycle systems things like that and as well you can see here we looked at all of the details right the pavement details the ada ramp details the mixes of concretes the colors of concrete your street trees your site furnishings your street lighting everything out there in the public realm we have evaluated photographed it and had many discussions with staff about those things through that process we did meet with your maintenance staff and a listening session with them to get a much better feel for the kinds of things that um they're interested in making better and easier for maintenance purposes and so um these are the kinds of things that have influenced our thinking about the district today the needs evaluation is informed by that existing conditions analysis but also by the input we receive from the community and so this diagram you're seeing here is sort of a summary diagram that addresses the public improvements that are the outcome from that analysis and the input so identifies places for public identity and gateway opportunities in the district where pedestrian improvements could be made where bicycle improvements could be made public parking way finding public art opportunities bus stop improvements street lights street tree plantings those kinds of things future roadways are coming out of your new tmd ordinance new or improved trails or new improved sidewalks are identified in this diagram so this is the kind of thing that really provides us with a foundation then for the recommendations which will come up in a little bit any thoughts on the existing conditions or the needs evaluation any i think you all have done a very thorough analysis and and walking through and identifying and taking the photographs that would inform and look to the future what works and what i like that you're working with public works to really identify what are the best materials and we've had some discussion with ryan about what those sidewalks would look like and how the width and what kind of materials yeah your staff has been instrumental in all of this work that we've been doing today so you're identifying two future roadways future roadways are those um wide blue lines so there's more than two i can take my cursor over this i think and see three on the west side of 35 you can see this north-south sort of spine that runs through here and then these east-west connectors over to the frontage road along 35 and then to the east in districts one and two um you can see just to the south of real life there's a future road that was proposed as part of your tod ordinance that runs east and west here another one that runs just to the south of the new gateway housing proposal here one that runs through this business park here gateway and then a couple of smaller ones here just to the east of of nicola commons and the the goal with those and we'll explain it further in the recommendations again those came out of your tod ordinance and so we're putting them on here the goal i imagine for those is to create smaller block patterns enhance accessibility and walkability in the district because some of those blocks are a quarter of a mile or longer today which makes it difficult for pedestrians and bicycle movement in the district so having these smaller block patterns will make it a more walkable and bikable neighborhood so just a comment i i'm not particularly interested in splitting up blocks for the sake of splitting up blocks if there is a reason to split the block that's fine if you're talking about walkability you do not need a road which is for cars for walkability you may need a path which is different so i will be interested to talk further about proposed roads sure because putting in roads requires purchasing of property and right-of-way and it's an expensive proposition and so i i am interested in finding out exactly why some of those are proposed as roads rather than a walkway yeah again you know we're not proposing these these were approved as part of your tod ordinance i i do get that and and i think um the suggestion is when you put a new road in it also has sidewalks on it so it enhances the walkability that way other ways that it does enhance walkability is it creates another intersection in the block which causes automobiles to slow down and if they're controlled intersections with stop signs it causes them to stop so there are other opportunities to calm traffic by creating smaller block patterns ryan my opinion of the matter is there's only one or two trails in here that we would be actively looking at i think the rest is not a road well the rest of it could occur with redevelopment but i don't foresee this being a blueprint where we're going to start putting cap in the capital improvement plan building roads down there by southern lights or something like that i think if it were to get redeveloped then we'd take a look at this and it may not look exactly like this it might be more schematic in nature than the how it's laid out here i'd so that's how i wouldn't interpret the usage of this would be okay someone wants to come in and maybe someone wants to redevelop that whole thing and hoc3 over there west at 35. this is what the vision is let's try and make some shorter blocks in there but i don't foresee us going and trying to build a road between the vet clinic and holiday and then yeah you know going up that way actively i would agree with ryan um this plays off of uh some of the work that we did in our 2040 comprehensive plan and looking at how the heart of the city could redevelop over time and and it like brian said it's it's just a way to look way into the future that we wouldn't actively be um seeking to implement these streets it's when redevelopment happens especially on that that west side of 35w and that's how we've been working it in the document as redevelopment occurs that you would make some of these changes and i mean there is one place where a road is proposed where i think moving forward with a with a trail does not need to wait for redevelopment um which one is that well it's where some of our apartment persons are because we have a new apartment the new one developments yeah yeah um this one right here yes because like they need to get to like all the shops and all that all that kind of stuff yeah um i you know but there again that's one where i'm like do you need a road i don't think you need a road do you need a trail sure yeah like a trail totally makes sense but do you need a road because i mean if you're in a car just go around the block i mean just literally go around the block but for a pedestrian on that area they're going to cut across anyway so whether we put a trail in or not there's going to be a trail there yeah exactly you know i mean that's you know that's just how it goes which also is an interesting thing to watch where do we see people make walk patterns because people will make their own trails where they need a trail and sometimes if you watch for that like that's the best study you could ever have because that's a behavior people are are already doing so um but that's just my comments on that because you know um i and i i realized this with the tod i realize it's being proposed with you know in the future if there is redevelopment and you know like all of those all those caveats i just don't want the horse to think it's galloping so far down these proposed roads that it's a done deal because it's not yeah and for me and um we all had this conversation with ryan and greg when we saw this plan and i said i also cara talked about you know i'd rather see trails than trying to uh create a road because it is about a walkable community and there's areas that make sense for a road but there are some that i don't think it makes sense to have a road you need you need a trail to get from the new development that's going to be in that used to be the ka property and over that i think is a trail rather than a road but and it's an area that i walk a lot and that frontage road is really long and i'd really like to see um because it can also be dangerous because there's no uh sidewalk and so you're walking on this on the road you're talking about travelers trail uh yeah yeah it because it's one of my walking patterns and that's long and it doesn't have sidewalks so you walk on the road yeah we've identified it for future sidewalks street trees and pedestrian pedestrian-scaled lights or yeah just to make it pedestrian and yeah but i can see that that can yeah because it's two lanes right we've got much bigger needs than transportation needs um almost all the way down there i get it ryan i'm just saying that yeah yeah i'm just trying to set you at ease that we're not gonna go start actively running around trying to you know get all this built and bonding yeah yeah that would be a tough sell except for maybe the bridge we talked about yeah no i i'm just saying that there are places that more common sense than others i agree yeah any other comments no okay um so also um uh as an outcome of the um the community engagement input and the needs evaluation we've developed an updated mission statement your old plan had a mission statement this one has been updated and vetted with staff with the project management team the mission of the heart of the city of burnsville is to create an attractive vibrant and welcoming district where residents employees and visitors can come together to live work shop and recreate it will be pedestrian friendly and multimodal providing multiple ways for people to move throughout the district the heart of the city combines well-designed public spaces with economically viable local businesses that together provide a true sense of community and partnership it hits the uh vision you're creating a vibrant city and you're boldly leading and you're being inclusive yeah okay and then the the mission statement is then also supported by these 12 guiding principles yeah and i'll go through those and um and then we can take comment on that so number one a place to live work and play promote a broad mix of complementary land uses throughout the district that provides opportunities for living working shopping entertainment and recreation diverse housing mix promote a diverse mix of housing types that welcome residents of all ages incomes household types and cultural backgrounds high quality architecture buildings should be well designed and located to support a pedestrian friendly multi-modal environment active ground level enhance district vitality and safety by encouraging ground level uses in buildings that activate the street front and sidewalk activity pedestrian friendly support and urban block and street pattern consistent with the transit oriented district ordinance that provides urban scale development active and walkable public streetscapes and increased connectivity for all transportation modes a connected public realm create prominent public spaces that link district destinations homes and businesses with parks open spaces plazas and streets provide places for community gatherings and public art and connect to nichollet commons and the broader system of city and regional parks open spaces and trails environmental sustainability emphasize environmental sustainability incorporating best practices for storm water management and water and energy conservation strong sense of identity create a strong sense of identity and arrival at key locations through the use of public space design features such as special landscaping public art district identity signage banners and other gateway elements memorable place making energize shared spaces by providing a safe attractive and comfortable public realm and community gathering places incorporating pocket parks plazas and public art district approach to parking utilize a district approach to parking to leverage underutilized space make it convenient for people arriving by car to get out of their vehicles by distributing parking throughout the district enhanced wayfinding incorporate a comprehensive and identifiable way finding and signage system throughout the district to enhance orientation and connectivity for residents transit users visitors and employees low maintenance incorporate low maintenance and durable materials to reduce maintenance costs and enhance accessibility any thoughts on those i think they all are very good and it meets what we are saying where we want to take the city and the way finding scientists yeah i like the way finding we've been talking about that for so long and we have something to say it doesn't exist today it needs to have its own unique okay colors and design all right go on to the recommendations then so these are um what you're seeing is still pretty high level we do get down into some of the weeds in the document but i'm going to keep it at a high level here tonight um so on district character really it's working towards bringing the hoc 2 and hoc 3 districts up to the hoc 1 standards that you see out on the site today some of the site amenities um that are in hoc one are at a higher level than you find in hoc2 or hlc3 so it's you know meeting the tod tod district requirements promoting mixed use infill and redevelopment in the district street fronted buildings smaller block patterns walkable neighborhood bike friendly high quality public spaces public realm amenities vibrant safe and welcoming and a strong identity for the district which we think needs some improvement today streets meet the tod district requirements smaller block patterns implementing complete street policies as redevelopment occurs making walk and bike friendly enhanced connectivity provide safe pedestrian crossings this is something we heard a lot from from your seniors in the community you have a lot of seniors that walk in the heart of the city and they talked a lot about making safer pedestrian crossings upgrading the i-35 bridge crossing to make it safer and more convenient for people to move from one district to the other and to access your new transit facilities and there was a desire from the community to look at reducing speed limits in the district and i know that you're looking at that for burnsville parkway right now parking [Music] really the the key recommendation here is to create an hoc district parking management plan that would look at opportunities for shared parking policies look at way finding and mapping for better utilization to your existing parking supplies and future parking supplies there was a study done as part of this process looking at your existing parking supplies parking demand and as it turns out you have plenty of parking in the district today although the perception is not consistent with that there are a lot of underutilized parking supplies that you can see here for instance in the green ramp here right here you see on a busy day in october when parking data was collected well there was an event going on at the aim center there are 353 parking spaces supplied in that ramp only 127 of those were used whereas in the parking ramp to the north all but 10 spaces were used so i think people know about that ramp more clearly they're not as familiar with the ramp to the south so there there are plenty of spaces today but you know as redevelopment occurs you should continue to evaluate your parking needs in the district um uh one of the other comments that we heard from some of the uh uh developers in your community in fact some from some of the new developers is this idea of allowing overnight on-street parking in the district which isn't allowed today so we we also are looking at this idea of maybe in the parking management plan addressing that overnight on street parking policy we did meet with your maintenance folks they're not necessarily in favor of it it makes snow removal more difficult so um it does need further study um so those are some of the recommendations for the parking issues in the district i think when you're also going to be doing that you need to also talk to police for public safety with cars being stolen right now and although those catalytic converters being removed from automobiles because i've heard from residents whose automobiles are parked in open spaces on surface parking uh in the heart of the city uh that some catalytic converters were stolen and this is not just in burnsville matter of fact ours is not as prevalent as what's happening in edina and and some of the other suburbs that are north of us so i think when you're talking about overnight parking you need to also consider the environment that we find ourselves in today um developers might new developers might want something like that but i think we need to take into consideration the safety of the community and the people that we have here today yep we did meet with public safety officials in february and we talked about that issue with them the on-street parking issue they didn't seem to think that there was [Music] an extraordinary issue with catalytic converter crime here in burnsville that was prevalent but it has happened yeah happened to one of our neighbors right in their driveway yeah which i saw that hello business opportunity for our businesses that repair cars or put the cages on the cages yeah there people are looking for places to do that and there are not enough places that are prepared to do that and i think those are some of the things i know that edina is doing a lot of that but we need to also be looking at some of that well in this in this we're going to recommend that a further planning study needs to occur to evaluate the pros and cons of all of those issues related to parking and remember developers come and they leave and we have to live with the results position because she knows i'm going to anyway because i'm in favor of on street parking we can declare snow emergency so that's really not an issue just like downtown so in the winter when there is a snowfall event that's coming we can declare snow emergency and cars have to be cleared off the streets that's pretty common in bigger cities anyway the other thing is especially in the summer time which is what i was advocating for really not so much the winter time but spring and summer and fall is on street parking to make it more really user friendly for people that live there come down there whatever what our our problem my problem today is uh with parking is commercial vehicles semis and big trucks parking it's you know to me on street parking is residential vehicles not putting 18 wheelers on the street and leaving them there for a day or two and you're using city streets as your commercial parking lot right yeah yeah that's not the the the concept behind on street parking from my perspective anyway we did hear about that during the community engagement process it is also another subject we talked about with your public safety officials they didn't see it as big an issue as it appeared coming from some of the community um members them usually they talk to them and they move on you know and then they come back somewhere else yeah but i think it is another one of the issues that you do need to address in the parking management plan yeah we need a spot for them you know i think that uh the old yeah there is the um the old um that used to be the ames property and it's now metro what's the name of the business that bought it because they do in the back side you won't see it but they do have places for the semis to park yeah yeah in the metro there have been a couple of recently approved conditional use permits to allow semi-truck parking and it works and it works real well yeah and it works real well and you can't see because what ames did when they had is they screened it so well with so many trees that when you have all those semis come in and go and park in the back it really is nice because i've worked with the owners and it was approved for that kind of activity so you did it administratively right it came through you conditional use permit i believe yeah yes probably not the time place to debate the parking overnight too much i'll just make more comment certainly would increase the complexity of snow removal if we were to try and do a snowy snow emergency and i think our service likely would go down with more more cars and they're just not getting there so i i think the appropriate time probably would be when we uh evaluate and get a policy out there but it certainly was told about three or four hundred cars every snow emergency i don't know it probably depends how close you are to the to the area so it um it would create some more challenges and more administrative work for certain along with the people out there but i'll hold off on any other comments until okay good okay yeah to pay for it pedestrian and bike connections so enhance the pedestrian and bike connectivity there are some gaps in the sidewalk system as we just talked about there are streets that don't have sidewalks today so completing those gaps in the sidewalk and trail system providing ada compliant paving systems uh today you're in in the more urban parts of the district you're using concrete unit pavers the technology on those is a lot better today that a lot of them are being eaten away by the salts and things like that some of the settling of them makes them also non-ada compliant so looking at at upgrading those systems improving pedestrian crossings at some of your key intersections through things like markings signage countdown lights things like that providing bike facilities parking bike more bike parking in the district certainly one of the things that we did here through the community process with the they like to see more bike bike share facilities in the district where you can rent a bike and bicycle around and then and then park it back there and providing enhanced way finding and signage will also help with connectivity in the district streetscape amenities these are things like your site furnishings councilmember schultz and i are on the same page with this that right lower visual of the walking sidewalk and the bike with a center dotted line yep uh you know from the median and then the road that is like the perfect scenario for this area and really a lot of the areas in the city that we're talking about when we had a recent uh conversation about road reconstruction on buck hill road i believe it is it's like that is exactly and is that generally is that an example of what would be maybe that 14 foot wide type of path where it's got that um separated lane for bike and and either a colored or in this case concrete or asphalt yeah different material for sure really helps having the striped line also helps for directional purposes today you do have you do have on your trails you have two different materials you have concrete and you have the pavers they're pretty similar in color but there's no signage to let me know what one is for bicycling on and one's for walking on so with different materials directional kinds of signage the kind of signage that would let me know you know which is for which exactly um would really be helpful i agree that's yeah that's exactly the picture that we added and these are not complete yet these are still in process you know you guys are seeing a little bit of the sausage making here in this presentation so we'll be working through these in the next month or so with staff streetscape amenities these are things like everything from the paving systems to the site furnishings to the street trees to the site lighting these are the things that make your streetscape a special place right and typically the amenities occur closer to the curb you can see here in this diagram to the right here you've got signage you've got street trees you've got your street lights typically benches things like that so that the pedestrian zone here can remain clear for movement of pedestrians that kind of thing so the things that we see here are really updating your sidewalk paving system we talked about that updating some of the site furnishings and adding new site furnishings adding benches at bus stops a lot of your bus stops don't have any benches today you probably need to partner with your your transit providers to talk about things like that but adding some site furnishings and planters at key locations in the district we talked about adding bike parking and bike share facilities pedestrian scaled lighting and that diagram we saw earlier there are several streets that don't have that in your district as you add new developments like the new gateway development you'll want to provide an upgraded streetscape environment out on the street where that where those new people are going to be living so make sure that the sidewalk is ada compliant add some street trees where there don't exist today or add you know street lights those kinds of things trash and recycling receptacles wayfinding and signage your seasonal lighting that you do in the district is one of the also came up high on the community input survey people love that yeah they'd like to see that expanded so we've been talking about that yeah i've heard from quite a few because they say the trees are bigger you should put more lights on the trees it is beautiful when you drive down burnsville parkway in the winter it really is nice it was beautiful year round yeah then those are some of the comments we've heard um public spaces and landscaping so on the public schools all right on the public spaces side of this you know new parks and plazas we're going to suggest that you consider those through redevelopment you know you're sort of landlocked there's not a lot of opportunities for new places the two public spaces that we did hear from folks in the community were dog park and play areas so if and when you decide to add any new public parks or plazas in the area consider those two things we are going to suggest that you know just enhancing connections to the existing parks because on both sides of the district east and west you've got nearby public parks just to the south you have all of this and really just to the north you have this great regional system along the minnesota river so enhancing connections to those kinds of things is something we'll suggest in this gateway landscaping adding street trees and plantings planters where people gather things like that and incorporating native plant materials and green infrastructure to handle storm water but the native materials also help reduce the amount of water that's used and the maintenance that's required on those we talked about uh dan if i stop you real quick i apologize this is something i just learned um we we've got a dog park in alley magnet that has been there for a long time and it's been talked about a lot and it's been always my focus of attention is we have a dog park right um and i was over at paris oaks east this weekend and talking with some neighbors that had a dog and they noted that when the ice skating rink is removed for the spring right that that area is fenced off and it becomes a dog park where the where the ice skating rink was is that something we're doing or is that the neighborhood doing it on their own it sounds like repurposing i think people are making their own path yeah i i and then it was brought up that uh they thought it was being done at another part where there's a nice catering so the ice skating rink grass grassy area yeah it essentially becomes a dog park in the spring summer and fall and in an ice skating rink in the winter that was a great idea but i'd never heard that before we did we just did the minnetonka's park system master plan and that's one of the things we heard there that a lot of the ice rinks in the summer become dog problems they leave the fence not official dog park the hockey fencing stays up yeah and you put a gate on it and then it's a fencing area for dogs to run yeah there's all kinds of people down there just if you're doing that yeah yeah and do do we take those panels down then no circle though no they don't up here they stay up perfect dog park solution that's a great idea do you want to lock bags this is just a observation about when he brought up you know enhanced connections and uh or add dog parks like consider new park and put a dog park in i didn't realize we had dog parks seasonal dog parks along with our seasonal hockey in existing parks when i i just have to add this sorry when i moved from california almost 20 years ago i had no idea what those were i came to a park in the summer and i was like what the heck is this i'm sure others have those the same observation but it could be multi-purpose absolutely well staff that's something that you can explore it's on ryan's domain it seems like it's something that's happening by itself i think it is yeah we don't have to put all that much thought into yeah you never know yeah i think we got to play the card it's good to go like let's deliberately do it because we have a lot of ice rinks okay all right district identity and wayfinding this is something that you know we saw right away that it's really lacking in the district and it would really help um orient people and direct them to where they need to get in the district so we're suggesting that you develop a wayfinding signage system for the district we are we have looked at that in plan form and also you can see we're developing a kind of a kit of parts a family of signage elements that could be looked at and further explored as you move forward we think that you know you should incorporate some district branding identity for that and i understand that that is happening now in the city so we think that's a great idea but um and you know it really is instrumental to you know direct people to some of those public parking supplies include maps of the district destination so people know where they're at i'm here now and this is where i need to get and it's really important to help orient and direct people in the district so um we think that's an important element here especially that brings people from out of the district that aren't familiar with it that's first timers to aim center border white park they catch the deck if that's full where do they go now exactly and you know we met with the aim center and you get people from all around the state and the region coming to events there so it's important for them to understand how to move about in the district yeah and perhaps uh city manager lindbergh maybe an app that'll help people also not only with wayfinders but everybody has their phone so when they get to the parking deck at the aim center and it's full you can pull up the app and look and see what all is available that's a great idea digital signs at the parking ramps to let people know whether or not they're full things like that i mean you can do that through google maps very very simple solution madame uh councilman um we are in the process of developing a my burnsville kind of independent app that will be downloadable um you all have seen that just by way of consent agenda and a few routine items that project by large should be completed by the end of the year and will provide direct access to some of the gis mapping features that are currently available on our website parking resources could very well be one of those as we work to develop that out yeah and we have a great gis staff because they present it to us and we can a great way to uh direct people and wayfind we gotta tell you how many parking spaces are left in a ramp like the part of the city ramps full and the one down the street has 10 spots in it and stuff like that i've been in cities where that happens and that'd be the next level of sophistication we aren't there right now yeah yeah we are i would say by mid april we'll have a online gis based map that will show you how many parking spaces in the each facility are available and stuff that's close by that should be a great enhancement but it won't be real-time information yeah um another suggestion that's a little cheaper than building an app even though it's already being built um put a qr code on signs around there so people could just scan it it would automatically open up their google maps and pinpoint right where they're at and the map itself would show you know aim center another major attraction so actually put them on the wayfinder signs um and that was very helpful when we were doing a lot of this work and we had those way finders in uh in the sidewalks around the heart of the city and areas so that you can also there were surveys on them do you remember that you guys put it out hey i walk i see them i pull them up so and you had them all over all right moving forward yep sustainability and storm water management so um looking at recommendations for incorporating green infrastructure where it's feasible you have a pretty healthy tree canopy in parts of your district today that'll make it difficult to add new rain gardens or green infrastructure but as new development occurs and you're upgrading your streetscape you can you can do that explore agency partnerships with the watershed districts that are here in the area to see if there are opportunities for funding some of those improvements utilize native plant materials and drought tolerant plant materials and incorporate energy conservation practices and then operations and maintenance as i mentioned we did meet with your maintenance crews talked with them about some of the issues there these are some of the recommendations that came out of those conversations so again replace the concrete paver system um use native drought tolerant plants replace the irrigation system and update it as that is as that gets phased out utilize durable low maintenance site furnishings clean up the power supply for seasonal site lighting continue to maintain the landscaped areas and provide space for snow storage through any updates or redesigns of streetscapes so next steps staff will continue to work with us to review the final draft document incorporate changes that we've heard tonight and incorporate those into the final document the ask tonight is to direct staff to incorporate feedback and changes from this meeting into the final document and recommend that the final heart of the city design framework update document be approved at a future city council regular meeting okay members of the council any other comments or are you ready to direct staff to bring it back with the uh additional information that was shared tonight yeah i'm i mean if if again i understand that the ask or the the plan on the streets is only if there's redevelopment in the area and there's all those caveats but i also know how these things go and then it's like nope you voted for it um so that that needs to be changed before that would get a vote for me so here's what we do with that uh cara because that was part of the original design framework also that it is a guide plan i get it and only when and when development comes up it's going to be with regard to a zoning and ordinance again but i you know i i am now no longer in my first year on city council and so i have seen how these things go and it is oh no no no it's just a slight suggestion for 10 years in the future and all of a sudden it's like oh and we're doing it so like that's my feedback like i'm i'm just giving you my feedback on that what i will then suggest uh with if there is no objection is that staff you put language in the design framework that will address the ordinance and any development agreements that move forward okay does that help qualifying language to clarify yeah yes can i ask a question what are you objecting to so what i'm objecting to is that i don't want the impression that those streets are just going to happen oh no whether it's a trailer that's and i think that's where i'm at right like i think that needs a lot a lot closer of a look and an evaluation and so i what i don't want it what i don't want to happen is we're like yes this seems reasonable in the future we'll take a look at this and you know but then you know it goes and it's like oh no no that was the plan and somehow things get into oh no no this is now the plan and i i don't want that to happen i think early on in the heart of the city and correct me if i'm wrong but that one between real life and the school district that was always planned to be a road anyways was it not that was always envisioned in some of the original plans in the heart of the city it never got created and we're not saying we should build a road i should start with a path there because what we're really trying to do is get our pedestrians and bicycles and easier access to the other to the park and to the performing arts center and to the shopping and all that other stuff and you're right if you have a car i can drive an extra block that's yeah right yeah and so it's yeah it's just things like that right yeah yeah i'm just trying to clarify kind of get why you're objecting and yes but from what i'm understanding right now the plans seem to be more for a trail type thing between the buildings and and i'm okay with you want to change it to a trail and i think we can massage the language so maybe it says access way and it gives examples of what could be an access way and and just keep it kind of higher level yeah yeah and the other thing is that um you know i've seen the heart of the city develop and the plan says one thing but what the developers brought in and what we have is not necessarily what it looked like in the design framework if you look at the old page it still addressed the essence of what we wanted so you know and it all has to do with the tools that we have we have planning tools we have zoning tools we have an ordinance we have all of these things that are available to us to make sure that it it results in the vision for it so if you can make sure that the language then allows for that common sense flexibility okay i say change the language let's move forward yeah yep i'm confident i'll be happier than you plus it'll come up for review with you all and you can yeah so if you're if you put the language in that we discussed that kara is being a pain about would like to see then that would be good okay staff has direction okay is there anything else okay all right thank you thank you thank you jeff okay and then the next item here is uh the update of the street escape operations and maintenance assessment and uh our uh city engineer jen desroud and our guest from this is dave hutton from uch okay good evening thank you members of the council it's a pleasure to be here yeah thank you for coming jen you have the floor thank you um so um dave has helped the city a great deal with putting together some concepts for updating our streetscape maintenance assessment and so go through it and if you have any questions along the way just let us know so you're all very familiar with the existing policy streetscape operation and maintenance assessment policy that was established in 1999 it's based on two tiers um of assessment and it's all based on a front footage the tiers are based on the density of amenities so the purpley color is a higher density of amenities and that's a higher assessment rate and then the green color is more spread out amenities so a lower assessment rate 50 percent of the funding for the operation and maintenance is from the general fund and then 50 is from a special assessment and this is a list of the things that we include in the assessment so we have two full-time park maintenance employees and one seasonal we don't include overtime in those costs mostly because those park maintenance employees are also doing snow plowing um in the winter and they're not necessarily doing it here so we don't include the or their overtime there's contracted services for things that we we aren't able to do in-house or we wanted to have help with which is like boulevard mowing we can do that in-house but we get help from that an electrician we have vehicles that are devoted to the area and their maintenance and fuel costs are assessed or part of the accessible costs then there's just general supplies equipment landscaping supplies the irrigation parts and then electricity and all of that are the accessible costs and then 50 is assessed and 50 percent is from the general fund and the reason that we are before you and evaluating the assessment today is just that idea that there was a concern about is the assessment equitable as it is today so i have these two properties side by side that are different but have some similarities so the one on the left is 201 burnsville parkway and they have a very long frontage a triangle triangular shaped property and their building square footage is about 21 600 square feet the property on the left is 12601 nicolette avenue and i think it's also called the nick byrne plaza or strip center and they have a much smaller front edge on nicolette but a similar sized building both properties have similar taxable values for their land but you can see that their buildings are valued at drastically different amounts so the burnsville tax for the property on the left is 5400 and the burnsville tax for the property on the right is 15 000. so three times as much yet the assessment on the left property was greater than their burnsville tax almost six thousand dollars and the one on the right was about 2500. so there isn't a discrepancy in how we've been doing assessments and so we're looking at different ways to maybe smooth over some of those drastically different assessments so we looked at with methodology reviewed our current policy which i just kind of showed you an example of we looked at what would it be to have no assessment and then what we're going to land on as a recommendation is this combination of a linear foot rate and a building square foot rate we also looked at expanding expanding the number of properties that are included in the assessment and then adding in benefited properties that are adjacent to the streetscape but have never been included in the assessment and then another idea of expansion is potentially including some additional costs that are directly associated with the maintenance so i already went through our current policy this is the same map same two tiers it's a front foot adjacent uh type of assessment if we were to not assess um our accessible costs this is our 2021 cost the increase to the general fund would be about half a percent per year and the reason in bold is the staff does not recommend this approach is that the heart of the city is a higher maintenance higher level of service that other places in the city do not have and so splitting the cost of maintenance seemed like a fair and reasonable approach there's plenty of people from outside of part of the city that come in so that's our 50 and there's a lot of people within the district who stay there and enjoy all the amenities so then the there are two i'm gonna there's a lot of slides here with a lot of detail so i'm going to try and go through it it's a lot of numbers the first method that we looked at was keeping the same assessment area so not expanding but changing the calculation keeping the two tiers assessing based on half front footage and half on the building square foot and really what this does is it redistributes the assessment there's no new places to assess it's just moving it around here are our two initial sample properties with this new method the property the triangle shaped property goes from an assessment of almost 6000 down to about 3 600. so a pretty significant decrease the property on the right also decreases just not as significantly so it's about an eight hundred dollar decrease i have a few more samples of the biggest reductions by doing this method are our 201 burnsville parkway they have the one of the bigger reductions that the 2200 dollar reduction from their initial assessment and then another um biggest reduction is we assess ourselves for all of our own properties and nicola commons is one of those properties since it has no building it doesn't get that portion so it's almost like the assessment is just chopped in half and so in that case we have a big reduction when you're reducing it by these amounts then it's going to someone else so there's going to be someone else who's going to get an increase and these are the biggest increases by doing this so the new gallery on nikola has three sides three frontages and using their new square foot building square footage their assessment goes from about 8 500 to about 12 700 so an increase of 4 100 per year and then the other property that has a bigger increase is sky oaks elementary and nicolette middle school they have a big building they also have a big front edge this is a tier two frontage so it's um it's not as much of an assessment on that rate but because of the building it's it's a bigger increase for them and then we have a bunch of townhomes and condos that are assessed based on their per unit so these are all um each individual owns their own unit and from nikola plaza town homes the new method doesn't really have much of an effect an increase of four dollars per unit but um the others nicholas plaza condos park crest and uptown landing all have about a 22 to 23 dollar increase per unit and the hoc villas which is a town home theirs would go down 46 dollars per unit and you can see that they have already an assessment that's over 200 dollars per unit and it goes down to 192. any questions on on that approach which is just changing the changing the methodology changing the calculation but keeping it all in the same area so the assessment stays the same it's just redistributed to different properties okay i can go on to the next okay so the next idea is to expand the district so then you have the same assessment amount but you're distributing it on amongst more properties the areas in blue are properties right now that are assessed and they are directly adjacent to the streetscape and they are having two tiers and we're recommending that frontage and square front square footage combination the ones in yellow in hoc one and two we're not suggesting moving to hoc3 yet but as the district expands we would consider that but hoc1 and hoc2 they're not directly adjacent they have an indirect benefit and so we would recommend using that building square footage only calculation and then the ones in pink are directly adjacent and from the 1999 policy were just not included and so we would recommend putting them into the same as the blue where they're getting the direct assessment um in the in the two tiers with the square footage so i have several examples here's our two properties that i keep going back to with this new method of and expanding the um the boundary of where you assess 201 burnsell parkway goes from almost 6 000 down to just about 3 200. and then on 12601 nickel it goes from about 2 900 down to about 1700. and again biggest reductions 201 brunswill parkway does receive one of the bigger reductions from their original assessment about 2700 less than their original assessment with this new method another bigger reduction is the cda hoc townhomes so they have a lot of frontage and they have a lot of building square footage and so their reduction is almost 3 300. the county will like that um these are the biggest increases within the area so i'll show you some places where they weren't assessed before so they obviously have an increase but these are ones where um they were already being assessed and with this new methodology they will be assessed more the hsc parking deck again [Music] the building fills the whole lot so it's a bigger building and it has a bigger assessment and then the elementary school middle school much less of an increase so the last one was a pretty major this is now a 785 dollar increase so on par just about i wouldn't say equal but it's it's um it's not as drastic when we expand the area as far as those existing townhomes and condos most see a decrease or about the same so the town homes where they have fewer units to spread it around but they are bigger buildings they see a bigger decrease and then the condos are just like slight increase three dollars or six dollars or park crest was i think 81 cents so we just called it same um with the expansion then we're expanding into new areas where we haven't seen an assessment before so that impact would be at places like real life co-op they would have an assessment of 20 per unit they have 119 units so that would be a collection of 23 76 that we would be taking off of someone else's assessment and and would be allocated towards them there's a small little office condo 14 per unit and the ridgeview condos would be 19 per unit using this method but even though it's 19 400 units it does take about 7 500 of assessment question on how will this formula change when the development that's going on gateway be built when the units are there and the square footage does that just here it is next slide she's coming up she's a really good question she has a really good question i just think well she's very she's very thorough nice nice when you already have the answer i know it's perfect so these are another of the bigger assessments within the new area so maven apartments was not assessed before and because their apartments they aren't going they're going to be assessed per unit they'll get one assessment to the owner they can choose to however they want to distribute it amongst the units i have both there so mavens assessment be about 3 400 with about 25 per unit um these here are the new apartments that you're talking about there's two um the senior apartments would be about 3 500 or 28 per unit and concord flats is the market rate and that would be about 40 to 4 300 and that's 26 per unit the gateway business center they have um each of them about a thousand dollars plus or minus would be their new assessment based on this is just based on the building square footage oh socialize the whole thing and then these are the expanded assessment area still these two cda apartments had never been included before yeah eastern region park ridge and those ones would have new assessments of um about 3 000 or 3 300 and the unit is um eagle ridge had a lower number of units so it would be more per unit about 51 per unit parkridge about 20 dollars per unit and this church also had never been assessed before and their new assessment would be about 2 300 per year so that was with the expanded areas any questions on on that yeah uh not i like what you're showing us here um can i get a little clarification on how we deal with the heart of the city during snowfalls and sidewalks and you know what priority they take down there they have us customer gusts and they have some specific employees who are dedicated to it along with equipment stored down there so they're in line with the very first things we do very first thing we do so yeah there is a added service because that gets cleared out right away i mean yeah so they're going at the same exact time in the morning right in front of your house you and the other thing is that it's because of the bus service the bus service and there are a lot of i'm just saying but i'm just saying that we give extra care to that part of the city oh yeah i think it's it's got to be the first spot in the whole city there it is yeah three o'clock when you start 3 30 to 4 in the morning they yeah you can hear the scraping and the beeping and you know they're they're very quick it's it's premium service that's a good question about it i'll pay an extra 20 a year to have my streets done at three in the morning we'll think long and hard just saying that was nicely done okay good job ryan thank you one thing to know i think each of you got a memo from one of the town home associations they came in before the meeting and i just talked with them in the hallway their issue was not necessarily with this but with our street improvement assessment so we are redoing their street and there will be a special assessment that's right because when i read the letter it had to do with that the street is wear and tear is not because of them and it's because of the new gallery and so we're we're repaving that street yes yeah and that was on the improvement plan right so the public hearing for that will be april 19th and i let them know that there'll be a public hearing and so that will those gentlemen will likely be coming back because i looked at that and i saw that they were had a reduction a pretty big reduction on the hoc um so and they had an 89 decrease so and then in reading their letter it was mostly about the street assessment which street is getting done was it first 125th yeah 125th yeah okay so could we list out whether whether we consider we're assessing for them or not what are the amenities for being in the heart of the city because i i do know that there are some things that are considered amenities but we never considered like we don't assess for them or put them in the bucket of this is why you're being assessed um so those are the things that are not included in the assessment which is the community landscaping the tree lighting the banners right um the park maintenance which is completely understandable park parking ramp parking deck okay you know um so those are the things that are not included in the assessment so what are the things that we include in the assessment to say this is why you are being assessed yeah the benefit so could you clarify community yeah so that's just in the heart of the city it's like they spend about half time in the heart of the city and then the other half in just a variety of other parks but is is the that bullet point the top one community landscaping is it community landscaping throughout the whole cities or community landscaping only in the hoc district there are other locations in the city but they spend the entire city's community landscaping there's a person and she does about spends about half of her time plus a seasonal devoted to heart of the city and the rest of her time is scattered everywhere else okay so this is it's really intense here in the heart of the center and the reason i ask is there is a lot of landscaping yeah so i thought that's what the statement was about not beyond the city other areas yeah what percentage is rough what percentage of community landscaping acreage or however you want to call it is in the hotc versus the rest of the city i think it's just a lot more dense in the heart of the city um we have rain gardens that for instance they're out in the um roundabouts in the center meetings there the planter signs um and like you know from the city hall here oh yeah and all that kind of stuff 60 70 percent of the community landscaping is sort of falling within our the city area like man hours and the rest is she said about half her time so 50 of her time maybe it's 50 right yeah is it okay and that's probably what it works out to and so what you had asked initially was what do what are we assessing for that's this list here we have people devoted to being out there and just operating and maintaining all of the extra features that are out there so the streetscape the landscaping the trees the lighting and all of that stuff as well as the planters there's the the maintenance of the pavers that takes about a lot of time too they're going in and systematically replacing pavers as they are becoming poor so with our framework we're gonna start phasing those out as we've talked about and putting in concrete and then that just supplies an equipment that is needed irrigation repairs and so some things probably look like they go unseen but it's just that time it takes to have it look the way it does and look as good as it does as far as the community landscape person i one of the things that i'm asking the council to consider is half of her time which should then be half assessed so like 25 assessed works out to be about a 17 increase to those assessments that i was just showing you if we were to include her time in and frankly um the surprising thing i think for people is that the the lighting is not included in that assessment because that is frequently talked about as an amenity just in that area [Music] and therefore why not included in a portion of what the people that live in that area just like all the other amenities there well i i think that's probably like that that's probably like a big amenity that people look at for in that area and i realize that it's seasonal but so is landscaping yeah from part of the season you can't well one of the things one of the things that we continue to communicate it is a partnership uh between the city and the burnsville community foundation um who helped raise the money for the the seasonal lighting and the snowflakes and banner so last year was around 85 000 total for hoc tree lighting and the snowflakes and the banners the first 35 was covered by them and the other fifty thousand it used to be more in dave ground which is area forestry so we'll be moving that into the parks but that's independent of yeah the what we consider for assessments yeah and i can understand why you're saying right why isn't that clear it's right along the front end of the road it's kind of it's like right there you count the plants you count the tree light or the light posts and all these other things but we don't count that yeah i mean a big part of it isn't too but what i'm understanding and listening to kara and uh is that uh on the things that are being assessed is part of the the lighting and because i think we not the snowflakes because they purchase they pay for all of that complete completely right the easiest way to think about it is the total cost yeah of 85 yeah they contribute the first 35 yeah and then we just fill in the gap whatever cost more or less that year some years we have good luck other years we're about a hundred uh yeah because i look at it and i pay for two because you pay for two years for the snowflake and every year i contribute to the to the seasonal lighting your snowflake might last five years someone else's might last one for some reason yeah but whatever you're trying to come around and ask for it every two years oh yeah yeah that's when they they fundraise they fundraise and i yeah so you contribute yeah and the former dave grammer says the world he just goes out and trying to make it all work yes yes and so whether it's year one or two or whatever he just wants it all to be working yeah so yeah well i would confer with councilmember schultz on the lighting should be part of it which would be the net 50 or whatever is left over it's not coming it could be part of the asset plus half the community landscape i think actually thinking through all this since our last discussion both of those make yeah make sense and i i agree because that's coming out of the general fund but it's also part of the assessed value in europe and it's and we're not paying yeah the folks that live down there are paying a hundred percent you're just paying half fifty percent yeah yeah and in this case your recommendation on the community landscape they'd be paying a quarter court right yeah yeah because the half that's in the hearth of the city we're paying half of you know the residents paying half that city gotcha yeah ryan some quick and hopefully not incorrect math i think the 25 percent that of the heart of the city community landscape person equivalent to that seventy percent inc in two assessments if we're to do fifty percent of the street light and snowflake banners that would basically be adding another 20 25 percent i think until you'd be up in the um 30 by 40 percent range of an increase so that would be an increase over all the numbers you saw from general so if your number was 2 000 it would go up by 800 600 700 right or 20 40 on two or 800 you'll go by 800 bucks that's ryan matthew might need some you need some review we probably need to revisit this with some new input and math because we're making some modifications to the formula and we don't really know if ryan's math is closing so and the other thing that i'm hearing is that on the assessment what are you getting for the assessment is to add the lighting and all of that because that that is a value and i would like to see that number if it was spread throughout the entire city because if if we are hearing from burnsville residents that they like the lighting they light when it expanded they want you know all these other amenities they're also taking part in those i i don't see this as an amenity that is only for the the businesses and the persons that live there i do see this as something as an amenity for the entire city so you know in my caveat is if this is something that the city is doing and we are doing it um then then i see this as something that is assessed throughout i don't see it as restricted and and i i know your suggestion is to go another way and perhaps counsel will say no we like your idea and that and that's fine but that's how i'm i'm looking at so we are we are assessing everyone kara with the fifty percent i want like all of it like when we're looking at the assessment um rather than well these are the businesses and the people no all of it everything all of the assignments socialize all of the costs in general so that's a half a percent increase to the general fund so if i understand councilmember schultz your suggestion would be to simply take the entire cost of part of the city maintenance and fund it through the general fund oh boy that should be one of the options in the list of things yes yeah i want to see that it is an option so that is what i listed here oh yeah she did i want to see it per person what like what is a person going to pay like what would a resident pay you want to know what the households are paying yeah yeah yeah i want to know what is what is a resident going to pay for that because what i want our residents to be able to look and see is if this is because we're doing that for these businesses and persons who live right there if you live here you pay this and you get this right so i would like to see that same formula for our residents and businesses throughout the city residents and businesses throughout the city that to get this which is our amenities that we have there you pay x so that's what i would like to see and then that i also think is something that our residents and businesses then can weigh weigh in on is it worth it i'm trying to get my head around yeah i am looking at our budget and that's a half a percent and a budget and this is designed to be a special district and so the people who work there who own business there and also live there realize that this is a higher service area and therefore they get certain privileges with the kind of amenities that are in that area yeah but other than snow removal every one of those benefits are benefits that every resident in this city receives because they are going there and they are traveling there and they're shopping there and they're working there and they're they're you know enjoying the plants and they're yeah so for just a good example of where that could be in conflict is i mean this is only area where we're maintaining an irrigation system in front of the property mowing it um that type of everyone else is mowing their own so from a direct benefit of a property owner adjacent to it i would say they are getting an extra benefit is the whole city receiving a benefit of the city that could be a definite argument but they are getting some enhanced services that we aren't doing elsewhere from that perspective of what we're actually doing that may benefit a property owner i think since we're already taxing the whole city for half of it anyways they're already contributing to the enjoyment they get as opposed to the direct benefit that the people in the heart of the city get from it i get that and council may decide to go a different direction but i i would like to see that calculation laid out for our residents because to say oh it changes the general fund it's like a half a percent that means absolutely nothing to our residents listening at home like what does that mean to their daily life that's what i want to know so how would how would we spread that 150 thousand dollars out yes basically the question okay yes yeah just so that they know right and then it's mcmahon council the the most apples to apple's way of doing that is likely to take that half percent and apply it to a median valued home beyond that we can start running some more complex scenarios no that's fine okay that's how we usually do it it just it just gives people an idea because if you're like it would be a dollar it would be 20 what does half a percent mean to them right those are numbers that we can run we don't have them now but we certainly can do that yeah okay i appreciate that thank you very much well and i commend um jen and her team in putting out that there is that one option no assessment and the cost is half a percent so what i'm hearing uh cara asking for is bring it down to what does it mean for an individual home and an individual business throughout our community what would that mean so right now we have a an infrastructure trust fund and you might want to take a look at how that gets incorporated into it if we're going to go if that's one of the direction with your no assessment piece because right now with all of that our infrastructure uh trust fund pays for quite a bit and then of course the sewer and water also pays for the other and then we only we only bond mostly for the assessed value to property owners am i correct right the special assessment for the special assessment yeah for are you talking about for straight improvements yeah because i'm looking at you know what that is and then i'm also saying if we use the same methodology with regard to the this you know what does that mean if it's yeah ryan i'm not saying it's i'm supporting it or it's the best choice but from a reducing complexity uh of staff operations if we didn't do the assessment process i mean it would it's it's a lot of letters it's a lot of things extending over to dakota county and all that so um there would be a benefit of reduction in in our operation but i'm ryan saying that they're not getting an extra benefit because i do believe they are but it wouldn't be a reduction in things that we do if there was no assessment i just want to bring that up yeah and i get it and what you're saying is that it just give staff a lot more work with less people that you're working with on the administrative hlc assessment is a complex thing for 152 000 a year yeah it is yeah i mean this is complicated and to ryan's point those administrative costs would be greatly reduced and it's a half percent impact to the already robust level of consideration that you all are going to have to be talking about the the general fund levy so yes um just eyes wide open on both sides of that yeah there certainly is some reduced administrative costs potentially some efficiencies it is quote unquote just 150 000 and 150 000 is a half percent levy increase so context is important on both sides yeah okay i like that staff is talking to us about things like this you know and uh greg ryan and jen i really appreciate that your voices at the table are being heard on all of this you know what you're doing on a daily basis on all of these things and what those pressures are and you need to let us know yeah then okay sorry to the control room and the listeners about the crackling paper i know the mics are picking that up really loudly my wife can hear you quite well when you're doing that now yeah i realized they need to do it under the table these are very good mics um back to your three options were you looking for us to maybe net that down to one of those three plus councilmember schultz's new option for the next four options because i think of those three i think we should be able to provide some direction on which ones we may like to consider further which ones we don't like yeah so yeah i'll go first personally i'd like number three i like the biggest area in the most properties involved i do think that the properties that are a budding are not being assessed enough by using your formula of just square footage i think there's still too much burden on the existing properties and not enough on those that are benefiting by being abutting those properties so i would like to hopefully we can move that up a little but generally speaking that last one to me was the only logical viable one other than pulling and pulling the plug on it all together uh ryan sorry okay if the city attorney were here he would tell you that putting as much of the assessment on the frontage is the safest legal way to do it because they're receiving the most benefit so just keep that in mind when if you're saying to remove more of the linear footage and more into the bigger area you're we are moving into less legally friendly ground right well less solid ground right yes thank you mayor members of the council again dave hutton with sch a little bit on the formula since i came up with it for 4gen is and a little background i had 16 years of government predominantly with savage and shakopee some of you probably maybe recalled me from those days and 20 years on the consultant side also working with the league of minnesota cities on special assessments and funding for over 10 years as a chair of the legislative district i've done a lot of special assessment uh formulas and calculations in my 35-year career especially in downtown businesses streetscape elements front foot i'm going to disagree with ryan and the city attorney front foot is is not a very equitable way the state law does not tell you how to calculate assessments you can use whatever method you want front foot is usually not very equitable as jen showed in her first kind of two comparisons long skinny parts especially with lateral improvements like sidewalks and streetscape um and so in my career i've been very successful you use a combination of square foot because that way you re the density of people is based on square footage of building not the length of your frontage you can have a long building long frontage with a very small building and they're getting really nailed with the assessment so i think a 50 50 50 front foot and 50 square foot really spreads out the assessments as you saw you don't have the highs and lows yeah people are losers and i should say losers there's some that go up and some that go down uh but it spreads it out makes it more even and so i think using the 50 is that the number three yes yeah that's the one that i like square foot for those properties that have but the improvements yeah seems more equitable but then bring in the larger areas because they do have access but they don't have direct furniture use the 50 square foot on those properties and that's what we arrived at for the the recommendation can you go 60 40 or 70 30 you could go crazy with trying to figure out the formula but 50 50 seems to be the more equitable and you don't have to worry about those high assessments on low value where you have to put a 25 arbitrary cap on their on their taxes so it just seemed to level it out a little better um and that's really the ultimate test of a special assessment is it is equal to everybody so that was my rationale and recommending that to to you to the city well thank you because one of the things that we talked about when we were going down this road is to assess more of the people in the heart of the city not just hoc one but hoc two and then staff said we should bring in hoc3 because they're all benefiting and so we should even though they're not right on the street where the streetscapes are and all of the the landscaping but they're all benefiting by being in this special district and by bringing in the square foot component and then expanding the area now almost everybody's it's reduced does go down do some go up yes you have to do that especially the ones that didn't get assessed ever yeah they're obviously going up but um it does help uh alleviate the higher assessment amounts yes yeah i do like number three as well but i think and i think i shared this with you jen and and ryan is that there has to be conversation with the church and also with the school because they were not assessed and now they're going to be assessed so we need to engage those property owners because i liked number three and i hear that uh councilmember kaylee likes number three also uh councilmember gustafsson um actually if we're gonna continue to assess in the heart of the city number three would be where i could go yeah if we're going to put it into our general fund then we'll that's the direction we'll go but that's to be determined here but if yeah if we're going to continue to assess number three and ryan you brought up a good point about the administrative part of assessments yeah it could be a pain yeah and i know why you're always talking about trying to get the streets off of it too but how do you do it so number three is the direction but take a look at what is the individual cost for residents and and businesses throughout the whole city yes when we when you bring it back for a future look um and you then we talk about that fourth option i think we i would like to understand because i do feel that living in the area there's certain benefits that i feel i'm getting that the rest of the city is and i need to pay for it so there's a certain obligation there yeah but i but i don't and i and i think it's you know snow plowing is one the irrigation is another and there may be others so i hate to say this but maybe there's options because fourth is just pull the plug on the whole thing but the fifth option is okay we'll socialize all of it but this is tied directly to the properties down there snowplowing being one maybe irrigation i don't know if there's there's something else there right the beautification stuff everybody enjoys but the snow plowing i'm enjoying the irrigation and in the in the easement in front of our property i'm enjoying right that's that's making a difference on property that i use every day and you know it's almost it's not not our property but it's the easement area and it's been irrigated and you know et cetera et cetera so i think those i i couldn't defend that to anybody um saying you all should pay for my irrigation and my my four in the morning snow applying before when you have to wait till the end of the day because the city's big and they can't do it all at once right so there's an argument there that that i want to find a path to that is justifiable for what we socialize and what we still keep in the special assessment and i don't know the only way to get to that is break it down which is i realize it's more work but if we're going to do this i want to do it right so it'll last another 20 years without being changed or challenged i get i got to say something i've never thought i'd hear you say socialize five times in a week i've actually been enjoying it i mean i'm sitting here and i'm almost going through my chair but i didn't say anything don't isn't that what we're doing oh yes it is exactly oh yeah yes when when you put a cost through the entire system you're essentially operationalizing it yeah but that's a whole different discussion than what we've been talking about over here i i got the term from yes uh question for the council actually question for staff um so i'm hearing general consensus of the council that option three would be preferable yes and the council is interesting in considering the potential of moving the entire cost to the general fund right well we just because i i i wouldn't vote for a hundred percent yeah i wouldn't do that there are some things that are just not uh that that i i can't say it's okay for somebody else to pay for my there's no way i could go door knock this fall and say hey by the way i just want to remind you that you might have to wait until 7 00 p.m at night to get your street plowed but mine's not at 4am and i don't pay for it you do yep and then i'll do respect to where the council's at into council member schultz's question um i'm without a finance director at the table right now anyway but my question to ryan and to jen would be when do we need direction from the council in order to move any of this along in our in our budget process and prepare for any sort of special assessment in 2023. so for the the special assessment we have until the end of the summer before we'd have to levy that special assessment have the public hearing we are trying to shift all the special assessment hearings to be in the spring but we did it last year i think in october so september october is when we'd have to be ready to commit to if we're going with a special assessment for 2023 assessments as far as the budget i think that's more um the finance director and the schedule that he's working with so what i'm hearing summary version is we can get some information back to the council we're going to have to do that ahead of the summer yeah and what you're hearing is three of us who want who like number three but in a collaborative way kara wants to take a look at what this would cost if it was to everybody but i agree with dan for those of us who live in the heart of the city we do get a higher service level than anybody else and to make it easier i i will amend what i am looking for and say go with the idea that councilmember keeley proposed but please do when you're presenting that information show what the average homeowner then would incur and then those couple amenities separated out on the assessment so you can erase the one thing i added and all i'm asking is just put a dollar amount per resident into the proposal that council member keeley has asked for does that work oh it comes in i guess what you guys are saying over there as i'm listening to all this i'm i'm feared that we're going to complicate this even more than it already is with what the assessments they have now we're going to start splitting out this is going to go here what's going to go there we already got it complicated yeah i mean what we're doing with number three is uncomplicating it or if we're going to do it in the general fund it uncomplicates it but what you guys are talking about a hybrid it's going to well no it doesn't understand i don't think it complicates how complicated it is and quite frankly the fact that interim city manager uh lindbergh doesn't have a deputy city manager on the administrative side doesn't have a chief financial officer other than an interim part-time one you know if this can get done great if it can't then we may go another year with the system that we have before we are able to address it in the right way i don't want to rush it and fumble it short-handed just to get it done this year we'd like to get it done but there's a there's a resource issue that is very obvious uh that hasn't been addressed by this council with some position open positions so but what yes jen so is the council looking to come back to another work session have another discussion or have just a staff memo sent to you with the information you're looking for well see i like number three and i'm not looking for putting this on the levee so um councilmember schultz do you want a memo or for staff to come back i think staff needs to come back on this for for one thing we have a council member not present so okay did he just well let me just do it again because we are asking for additional information well he can't vote yeah he can't vote because it's not medical uh ryan yeah i'm not asking him tonight so that's why it would be good to have him yeah [Music] amenities that we think is above and beyond then we wouldn't be including the expanded effort you would truly only be assessing the people who it's in front of we wouldn't i couldn't see a way to expand that out right so just so as long as you got that in your mind yeah this wouldn't be our regional right uh wouldn't be socialized any longer it would be micro socialized yeah okay i can see ryan uh specifically choosing not to use that word but yeah i'm gonna start using it a lot okay all right so the direction to staff is that we all like three yeah i don't know about that i think i think three of us like three three of us likes three which is which which is the consensus which is the majority of who's here um so this is three in a nutshell would be the direct benefit and indirect benefit concept 50 50 on the direct benefit with the frontage and the square footage and the indirect benefit would be the building square footage only with the expanded district and then the community landscape position was something to consider adding in to the assessment which would be that and i think we actually went with that plus the lighting we were enhancing your suggestion with adding lighting yeah which brings it to a different monetary calculation right that we need to look at we don't know what that is we're not going to use ryan's math yet yeah yeah not trust in your not trust how good you can go so i what i'm hearing is to come back before the council had a future work session with two options the one that is sort of the stripped down what are the direct benefits that are just really unique to the heart of the city services service levels and then this with the enhanced 17 increase plus the lighting is that okay yes um what i had proposed was that i we would engage with property owners but i'd like to wait until you have a solid direction that i can then reach out and not have multiple options to present i agree no assessment agreed jen i'm so glad that uh you know you're saying your your voice is being heard agreed okay question on snow plowing of adjacent properties um if if a road is being plowed in the sidewalks and one side of the street is in the hoc and the other side is not didn't both properties benefit from that street being plowed i would say it's the more of the enhancement is the sidewalks it's the plowing or the stomach plowing yes the more the the street the street plowing we have some pickups down there but you know nicklet is with our standard because it's a thoroughfare you know what i'm saying yeah and you're single there's a street that separates the maven from the city deck and that street gets plowed early in the morning residents of the main pull out of their parking lot onto a very early morning plowed street which is exactly what i'm experiencing so shouldn't they be included in the assessment because they're benefiting from that enhanced snow plowing and clearing maybe not the sidewalk but the street and they do have all new sidewalks around their building that they installed that we now plow so they are getting that benefit and so there's a a case to be made that portion of their frontage should be put into this but it hadn't historically been so we're keeping with our tiers but as properties like the the new gateway housing if we go in and we put in new street lights and new street trees then that pulls them into that direct benefit so we aren't saying that this um indirect and direct benefit is forever it's as we're expanding those amenities we bring them into that level i was just trying to think of those properties that are across the street from so this side of the street gets assessed but the other side doesn't but they both are in front of the same street the other side of the street needs to be assessed even if they're not currently assessed today they still need to be included because they are and i think that's what we learned when you first brought the star attention we're like how did they not get how did that property for instance that's the most obvious example not get included how was it carved out somehow and it should have always been included so i think we have to fix those circumstances when we look at this by looking at the map and going all right we're going to plow the street then both sides of the street are assessed whether they're in or out today it doesn't matter i think you're talking about i think though everyone gets plowed that's starting with plowing and bleed starts at 2 a.m concludes by generally 6 or 7 am right ryan i mean light snow on a light snow i mean i don't know that the street plowing is really the benefit it's as ryan was saying the sidewalks get plowed right away that's more of the benefit it's more of the pedestrian not the vehicle okay so snow plowing may not be calculated in the but one thing we do in the heart of the city is that we haul the snow away so you don't see a lot of snow and that's a direct benefit that you might see in the desert you don't see those big mountains of snow on the side so you don't step out of your front door and have a big pile of snow bike your life shovels the sidewalk even though it's been plowed because she shovels the whole sidewalk in front of her to get it clean to the concrete that's just your preference for the dog option five i i really think we're gonna look and figure out where we're irrigating and where we're mowing and that's gonna be that's gonna be that's gonna be that's gonna be the sum total of the value right that's going to be the you know if we're looking to try and reduce the number of parcels that get it and then really truly just that direction okay because i when you mentioned earlier um like street lights and this kind of stuff a fancy street fight light versus a non-fancy streetlight doesn't really have any material value to the people living down there it's just is there a light there or not right and if there is a light there and it's out of the heart of the city the folks on those streets are actually paying for those correct there's street light assessments in neighborhoods yeah because i remember paying mine in my old neighborhood and it was a long way from the city so i wouldn't consider a fancy street like part of the amenity i you know i think the irrigation and the mowing because that's really a maintenance thing right that a person would have to pay or do themselves that the city's doing i thought snow plowing it that early in the morning was the benefit that the heart of the city was getting but it sounds like unless it's a really heavy snow the whole city is getting done early in the morning before they might leave for work in many cases on a light snow on a light snow we can do that but just clarify that we bring the whole works in at 2 a.m a few people mobilize straight down to the heart of the city are working on the sidewalks and pickup plowing type of thing and then all the trucks just disperse out at that time and then you know but we get through nikla quickly because that's one of the major roads whether it's in the city or not yeah so to ryan's point of heavier snow we would focus on the mains and then get into the neighborhood or particularly the other groups okay so i think we have it right i mean i feel like we've got some better clarity now on that option five type of thing and we're revised for so i'll come back with both options and just the impacts of those costs at a future work session yeah thank you yeah i appreciate that we'll also make sure that ryan dan and i connect with jen to to council member keeley's point if this has a 2023 budget impact we'll make sure that it's started it'll be starting to be factored into the numbers that that you're all talking about in the budget process and jen and dave thank you so much i this has been a big project and i really am grateful for the number of years of experience that you've had with all of these assessments and the different methodologies that you brought to the table thank you and to jen thank you for your leadership okay really appreciate it and ryan thank you for your we'll thank them [Laughter] yeah but all of you and greg thank you so much also so staff you got everything then for this okay it's great okay okay and the next one is human resource strategic plan and we have our our human resource director carissa bartholomew is presenting and it's good to see you and thank you thank you i know you're trying to be safe to deliver that baby safe thank you thank you and so this is informational item only and you're not looking for any any any direction you want us to know what you're doing thank you carissa thank you good evening madam mayor and council yes this is purely informational um in late 2021 the human resources team completed their strategic plan this is something we're really excited about and just something i wanted to share with the council we worked hard to create it and really listen to employee feedback that we received and also align it with our strategic priorities of making sure we're creating great experiences for our employees so that they can create great experiences for our community so with that i'm just going to cruise through this at a very high level and just give you the the the big hitters here i'll talk a little bit about our goals and priorities as a department and that's really the heart of this strategic plan and everything that's put into it you know it came from listening to to staff in the organization on what what do they want hr service to look like what do they need um doing a little bit of a market analysis just checking in on how other you know hr departments are doing what benefits they're offering things like that and again of course aligning it with our strategic priorities and then just looking how do how do we make this happen right where do we want to go and how do we get there so that's really our strategic plan in a nutshell and what i'll be reviewing with you so again the heart of this plan are goals and priorities so we created five goals as an hr team that we want to work to accomplish so goal one becoming a trusted partner focusing on employee and people manager service developing our people and teams to be their best creating clear processes and systems rooted in best best practices being an employer of choice and then continuing to hand to enhance service and efficiency by leveraging advanced technology i just wanted to give you a little bit of background on some of the summary feedback that we received from our staff in the organization we asked three simple questions you know what's going well what can be improved and what do we want and what we heard from them you know established programs relationships creativity innovation expertise leadership organizational development we heard all of these things and we saw three primary themes emerging from that they're looking for partnership they're looking for practices and they're looking for development they really want trusted hr experts they want our expertise they want us to champion employees and serve the organization they want innovative and creative hr solutions and practices and then they want to continue to have individuals teams people managers and our organization develop to make sure we're we're ensuring all of our employees can be the best that they can be in creating the best organization that we can create for ourselves internally and then externally for the community as well this is just a fun slide i figured i'd throw in there this is just a little snapshot at you know what are what are other hr departments doing what what's their fte count this is sorted um it's our market cities sorted by budget so you can see it's it's budget that's sorting the filter down you can just see just where burnsville sits we're really proud of what we're doing in hr we are the only city within our market that's doing organizational development that's something we're really proud of and then you can kind of just see different hrft counts depending on the city and then of course some some hr departments do take on payroll some don't we as a department do have payroll we also did a quick check within the market with our cities to see you know where are we sitting with benefits that we're offering employees right now so just at a high level deductibles we're below average on deductibles out-of-pocket max and co-insurance but i do have a little note the caveat on co-insurances for 2022 we have hit a competitive marker there so really just deductibles and out of pocket max we're still sitting at below average when we're looking against our market cities co-insurance we're there now in 2022 employer premium contributions competitive hsa contributions above average so that's always helpful when it comes to recruiting and selling our benefits package dental we aren't competitive we do have many agencies that offer dental at some level to employees we don't provide any kind of paid contribution to dental at all here short-term disability same thing some of the market cities do offer short-term disability i've seen it through allowing employees to take some form of leave and funnel it into short-term disability as a bank or providing some type of bank of short-term disability for them so not sitting at competitive there the rest of them are though long-term disability competitive tuition reimbursement competitive life insurance competitive so we have a lot of good things going but just kind of wanted to highlight at a snapshot what that looked like with our total benefits package against our market and then our alignment with strategic priorities really our objective for the hr team is simple we want to take care of our employees so they can take care of the community and that's done through a variety of ways right employee engagement inclusion and belonging inclusion and belonging efforts developing our people managers to create high functioning teams in a supportive environment for all progressive policies best practices in place to help us recruit and retain staff training and development for our employees making sure we give them everything that we can to help them be their best here best in class recruitment onboarding off-boarding attractive and affordable benefits and then accurate and timely payment of wages and so with that we we kind of took you know what we were hearing from staff where we want to go as an organization our strategic priorities and we created our five goals that i had mentioned earlier right so becoming a trusted service partner developing our people and teams to be their best clear processes and systems being an employer of choice and technology and vast advancements so we just broke them out as a department and said okay what are we working on and we've we've broken them out into years one and two and then years three our strategic plan just goes for three years but we highlight we're at a granular level what are we going to focus on when and how so you know becoming a trusted service partner some examples would be making sure we're getting our employees the training that they need so they have the expertise that they need to help be a true consultant and service partner to our employees also looking at cross training to make sure no matter which hr partner you're dealing with your service is consistent across the organization whether you're working with myself beth janae anyone within the department developing our people and teams to be their best continuing to hard charge organizational development employee engagement growth development we're really proud of our burnsville university our organizational university for employees continuing to create more experiences there continue to grow and develop our employees processes and systems making sure they're clear making sure they're documented we don't have all of our systems documented yet so really working through that and then also going through process improvement is this the best process for our employees is this the best experience um continuing to look to be an employer of choice and what does that mean in terms of the policies we're offering the benefits we're offering the pay just continuing to look at that year over year and make sure we're just understanding where we are within the market and then making recommendations as we find appropriate and then continuing to advance our department in in technology and making sure the technology we are using works as best as it can for us and is a great experience for our employees and then moving forward are there other things that we can use to help create better experiences for our employees or make more efficient processes for the department and that is the hr strategic plan in a nutshell thank you yeah yeah dan you don't need to get into specifics but i'm curious uh the dental and the short-term disability where we were like not in competitive not competitive yeah um i haven't heard of too many in betweens of where we are right we offer it and it's usually a it's like pre-paying for services because dental insurance is quite dramatically different than health insurance um or in some cases um it's completely paid for by the employee and maybe a good portion by uh you know if they're family members by the employer right it's sort of like either here it is take advantage of it or here it is and it's mostly all paid for not a lot in between where what were the other cities offering for dental for example would i yeah what we were seeing is a lot of agencies providing the cost for single dental coverage and then the rest of it if you had single plus one or family that was something that the employee is paying for whereas we as an organization where we we offer it but the employee has to pay the full cost of it that's right whether they're single exactly or partial cost or whatever yep yes yeah okay and is are we unique in that i mean are there other cities that that just offer it or were we an outlier um i would have to double check but i feel like we're more leaning towards the outlier i feel like more agencies are offering dental yeah than are not at some type of percentage likely just the single coverage or even i would have to double check our data but even a percentage of single you know some type of contribution towards it and just just to close out this is all part of i mean much like salaries like benefits this is all part of the pressure that we're under today to attract good employees because there's such a shortage of employees available in the workforce everybody's upping their game they are so i think the timing of this is really good so so we understand where we're short um but it's it's it is just it's part of the market forces that we're not in control of that are demanding us like every employer out there to make sure we offer you know good benefits good environment good everything right to be able to attract the best employees exactly so yeah i appreciate it thank you yeah yeah thank you and i have to say thank you we've never had the hr director present the strategic plan before us you're welcome in the past so i really appreciate carissa that you're saying here's what we're doing and here's how we're continuing to improve and to make sure that we're giving our employees what they need so that they can do a great job for the residents and businesses of burnsville so thank you and thank you for your leadership thank you yeah great work okay thank you thank you okay uh we are at round table and the first item on round table is the dakota broadband board karen okay uh so i i gave an update previously on the dakota broadband board that it's that it was not going well and specifically uh they were not looking to address some of the concerns that we had expressed the county had expressed lakeville also had expressed and at this point they were looking for because we are the three cities that have not signed the iru and so they were looking at sign it or don't sign it but just make up make up your mind on that we had hoped that we would be able to split the inet and the c net into two parts and keep them a little more discreet and that might be a solution going forward that would work for all of the partners that that are within so we did receive the iru yes and so they had you either mark what you want or right which made it more complicated but didn't actually solve the base issues and there are also there are also challenges just looking at at the jpa itself and the exit terms and things like that uh so we had looked at could we open the jpa to redefine a couple of the terms and um then then we would be able to proceed forward and it was decided no we cannot no i should rephrase that no we will not open the jpa because that would require the cities that had already signed to take the jpa back and re-sign it and i you know worked worked to convey this lakeville did county did as well so the last meeting uh became even more challenging than the one before and in that meeting uh it it got very stark of just do this like you need to just do this or you need to just not and this is the way forward and we're all good with it so you need to be good with it and go forward with it the other unfortunate thing was in the executive meeting that was held before the meeting for the board the the discussion was centered around how do we get around or push burnsville lakeville and the county to do this and if we can't how do we replace their representatives on our board and that gets into a question of are you a group acting in good faith can you work together as partners on this and that also makes that a little more difficult the meeting got to the point where there was questions to county staff intimating that they were not doing their jobs that they were not presenting information to the county commissioners and that that needed to be overseen um so to say that the discussions have disintegrated uh that's that's where we're at it looks strongly and the the county commission that is working with this they're looking at pulling out that's the appearance that it is and frankly if the county does they're going to take a final vote on that but you know we'll see this is a process and nothing moves quickly i i do not see how the dbb exists as an organization so i'm bringing that to all of you and i think we need to have staff start exploring what do we do and what are our options without the dbb because i think i think that's where we're at and that's not the information i wanted to report that's not where i wanted us to be this was just an unexpected turn from january and it just it's it's not it's not gotten better it's gotten worse yeah i was to say the least surprised at your last report i was too and so i went and watched the meeting and read the minutes because i'm thinking how is it that it disintegrated to this place and so um i understand the committee of the whole greg is at the committee of the government whole for the county that got together to talk about the uh broadband uh i believe to council member schultz's point it was it's the county's general committee you're proving how much of a novice i am the the general government committee or general uh the general government i believe the acronym yeah and from my understanding that that group gave uh staff gave staff direction to to really narrow down the scenario to uh to county staff to start considering um just an exit of the dbb um and as i understand it council member schultz feel free to correct me if i'm if i'm wrong um that decision will go back for an april 5th board vote of some sort just by way of process yeah and i understand that they probably have votes to exit so from my perspective um this was an initiative that the county brought to the table to bring all of us together and they had the largest asset base and so if they exit the dbb no longer exists yes because they have the largest asset base and the next largest asset base is the city of burnsville right so from my perspective and we're right in the midst of budgets and all of that and greg i don't know i know that tom venables is probably aware of what's going on at the county and i know he's short staffed and if this comes back in house for us um we need to understand what our pressures are going to be and what you need because this is something that's going to affect the budget as we move forward so mayor to your point uh in council the discussion at roundtable when cara brought this in the february work session it was part of her reports the council did ask that staff start to consider scenarios we are steep in that work some of that work is dependent on a formal decision at the county level and we're still waiting on some pieces of information to make that assessment whole for lack of a better way of putting it so tom has been very deeply involved in considering scenarios um and and really pulling together not only the options but what the what the cost impacts of those options might be um and there are there are a number of creative ways to to think about this so we've been putting the work into that over the course of the past four weeks my concern is that you know we're looking at this 10-year outlook um and we've already gotten the first view of that 10-year outlook and this is going to add more pressure to all of that so i don't see us doing anything with the dbb let the county play it out they brought this initiative to all of us they brought the jpa and said let's do this so yeah i don't i don't want to act on anything tonight with the with the dbb but i want to be proactive yes and that's that's exactly why i'm bringing this forward is that we you know i i i want to protect uh our staff i want to protect the citizens of burnsville and the businesses of burnsville so this is where i'm at but we do nothing let the let this let the county the county brought this to the table to all of us let the county go through their process and it it may be that the county ends up with a different proposal yeah and yeah that could be one of the options and we we just don't know that yet yeah i don't want to speculate on what i want i'm only thinking about burnfield and i'm thinking about our staff and what they're challenged with right now absolutely and and i don't you know even if even if there's an exit or a move to dissolve this is not something that will happen overnight so we will have time to plan and it it may be that okay this this particular configuration did not work but there may be a different cost-sharing configuration that could be entered because i i do think we found value in it and i do believe that others found value in that we'll see but i do know right now my trust level my trust level and that you know let's find out why can i ask a question about this oh yes vince okay can you get your volume to go higher on your side i'll talk closer to the screen that usually helps okay can you hear me better yeah better um just as we're exploring this i would be curious to know if there's any scenario where maybe if dbb disbands or dissolves if there's a potential partnership with burnsville the county and potentially lakeville that offset you know costs and maintenance and things like that that the dbb would have otherwise provided so i know that's a little bit of a ways out but just planting a seed now is maybe a potential partnership if if dvd should go away greg mayor councilmember workman thank you for the suggestion it is something that tom and i have discussed and that tom is working on i'm going to take no credit for the work that tom is putting into this um so it is it is a scenario that we're considering we don't have all of the information from the county and our other partners that we would need to put any any sort of well thought out ready for policy decision looking for anything right now i want to protect burnsville our staff those speculations and those opportunities are out there and there's time to really look into it and right now um you know i want us to you don't have the staff available so focus on what we need to do right now so absolutely mayor vince to your question we are working on that and that will be a scenario that we'll put back in front of the council uh i will say uh i made a couple of commitments to tom tonight number one that i wouldn't speak for him when he wasn't available to be here yeah so i'm going to try hard not to do that but but we do generally agree with each other that partnership is at the top of our priority list should something change here right so that's the kind of the general philosophy and approach that that we'll take to all of our assessment um and give us give us the amount of time to that we're going to need to work through with our partners with some of those i think the jpa there's no expectation that we would have a solution tonight of any kind um i just mentioned that to plant a seed and kind of start thinking about potential um you know pathways forward so no i i there's no expectation that we would have that even remotely close to ready as a viable solution right now um council members uh councilmember gustafsson you you wanted to yeah um this is very disturbing for me as you can well imagine i'm sure i did watch the meeting after you gave your report as well i have a different opinion of than you had of how terrible it got what i saw was a lot of leaders throughout the county were trying to figure out a way to keep this thing together yes and they keep tr they keep changing wording and they did add the verbiage in there you could opt out of a c net yeah that didn't get brought back to us we never got to talk about that they talked about doing community outreach and in talking to our businesses and our residents that never came back to us if we're going to operate as a council we've got to share information we're going to have different opinions on things and i get that but we've got to share that information so that we can explore every avenue as we go along and i agree with madame mayor i the county d is i can't trust them they brought us into this they signed a jpa as well as we did as well as lakeville did and now they're going to turn around and turn their backs on us we have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in this we have again countless man hours invested in this i mean tom bennables half his time was doing all this stuff over there i mean there's so much that that we're losing in this and quite frankly we have spent the last five six years in this city taking down barriers for businesses to come into this city and by stopping that cnet you're putting a barrier up and that's that's my opinion i think i think our citizens want choices i think our residents want choices and we're not going to allow them to have that choice by not having that cnet and ironically enough next week we're going to vote on someone putting another antenna on one of our city properties again i mean i don't the two are the same thing as far as i'm concerned we don't we don't do content we don't build out the nodes we don't do any of that all we do is lease out existing infrastructure in our city that the taxpayers have already paid for and it's a way to recoup some of that and make it work so this is very disturbing to me um nothing and i i trust a jpa from that county right now period period they they drug us down this road they we spent hundreds of thousand dollars of taxpayer money and now it's like oh we're gonna change course you can't trust them there is nothing you can't trust lakeville i would never do something with lakeville if burnsville wishes to lease that fiber to businesses there is absolutely nothing stopping us from doing that we can do that left why are you sold against the cnet then because the contract that's attached to it is a bad deal for the city period the jpa was fine the jpa was clean and it was good the inet was what we wanted right was there from the very beginning dan and you know it that was under a different arrangement when the iru came to us that's what turned everything south because it was not a good deal it's not different than the jpa oh it's very different there's lots of reliability in there oh i've i've spoken with our lawyer many times about this contract yeah i got i got a full scoop on how bad it was and it's all i needed to say to see right where was it that this isn't a discussion we needed yeah it is a discussion we need to have well then pull out the contract do you have the eye out are you in front of you but you're telling me there's things that are bad so you must know what they are then have a discussion with the experts that tear apart contracts and let them explain it to you okay because and our lawyer said that that was a bad contract you saying our lawyer our city attorney told us that's a bad contract attorney-client privilege what okay i have a conversation with the lawyer i'm not going to show oh you have a different lawyer you talked to okay so i don't remember anybody questioning dan gustafsson's viewpoints on thinking this was a good thing the way he's questioning people's opinions about thinking this is a bad thing yeah i mean the bottom line positions and not getting attacked about it the contract was a good thing ten years ago eight years ago the iru soured it it was a bad deal for us we didn't want to be a part of it we wanted to be a part of the iru we made that clear for the last two years split it and we will sign up for that making changes and they your last meeting you were asked to come back and ask what verbiage they needed for us to sign a contract we are asked to bring that information back however and we haven't asked that either however if the county is leaving the point is moot yeah and that's what i am letting you know okay so it sounds like the deal is went south for the county too i mean what this started out as what's happening with the gpa staff was a wholly different deal than what it turned into i don't know where this is going to take us and i did give the information back to them and i have done that repeatedly and it was a vote on this council of what we were looking for and they said that was not possible now in the last meeting they said well come up with your things and bring it back we have and that has been presented to them okay so we have tried to go back with them and work with them but this is where we're at on this and i'm letting people know i don't think the dbb is going to be in existence so we do need to plan for that i'm just going to end with this in my opinion i think our citizens of this city and our business of this city just lost and it's setting us back yeah well can you provide me a quick point clarification our opinions about this and i thank you to dan uh for um voicing because this had been something that you have been passionate about from the very beginning and you have been our liaison there so you've seen this throughout and i understand where dan kay you're coming from and the iru is what made you change your mind from the beginning because you were very much in favor of uh of uh partnerships and the broadband because it has been very good for the city of burnsville when we look at the communications center and how we leverage all of that cost throughout all of the cities and the county so right now my concern is the city of burnsville my concern is our staff my concern is making sure that our staff understand that we're going to support them and the pressures that we have so greg i think you're already in contact since we got information about the um meeting of the government of the whole apollo so just to let you know with the recommendation on the county it's on their consent agenda that's where it's at for them well we yeah i i think in what i read the votes are there they have the votes that's what can i ask a quick clarification question certainly yeah vince one of the points of contention as i understand it is that if a city chooses to opt out after this is signed they have an obligation and this is where i'm failing to remember to either replace the it was either the funds or the actual infrastructure of fiber itself it was some very unattainable feat that essentially ties these communities to the dbv indefinitely cara do you know what i'm talking about well this is why vince uh because with regard to the jpa the county brought us to this party and if the county chooses to exit the dbb is dissolved i understand that but there was a there was a wording in the contract that yeah the exit clause yeah caused concern and i'm i'm just trying to remember what that i think so we'll just have our staff take a look at all of that for me right now i stand in protection of this city and in protection of the taxpayers of this city and uh that's our residence and our business so greg i think the direction is and you're already working on it to look at the scenarios but i also want to make sure that you take into consideration your needs with regard to the pressures and the challenges that you now face and we do nothing let the county exit then then that exit clause comes out of the county and my hope is that we don't suffer as much and we'll we'll see on the next dbb meeting coming up and well because it is it is fair for them it is absolutely fair and the chair is asking this to ask cities and the county are we moving forward or are we dissolving and and that is a fair question after this length of time i'm going to just leave it to the county the county brought us to this party county acts and it appears to me uh that they have the votes you said it's going to be on their consent agenda then the exit clause and everything else rolls out of that yeah so that's so that's i'm sure that's what we'll be going over and discussing at the yeah so at the next meeting yeah so greg is there anything else that you need from us on this particular subject mayor council members it would be my plan to bring those scenarios back to the council for a work session discussion i think timing on that is dependent on right now it seems clear that from the general government and policy committee my apologies to the county for my lack of ability to remember their committee names um that when the board takes action to council member schultz's point on april 5th uh that should free us up to have a bit more information about next steps uh in anticipation of a future dbb board meeting um we could bring this back at your april work session i would look for direction from you as to what information you want and when okay in april or do you want it now because right now i want to make sure you have the ability to to get the information you tom is short staffed you're short staffed you know your finance department you have an interim finance director i believe it's reasonable for us to bring some scenarios back to you uh your april work session if memory serves michelle help me out is that april 15th 12th dates are hard um i think we could bring some information back to you it's highly dependent on on what happens between now and then as to how complete that information is right so the risk uh of bringing that discussion back would be uh i have to sit with you again and say we need more time you know and that's okay for me right now i don't want to put so much pressure uh on you and tom and the rest of the staff i mean good lord just earlier tonight you know you're having challenges with the finance department and we have a budget coming up and we're starting working on it so um members of the council i'm going to ask you this is not going to happen overnight no but i'm going to ask you to give our staff the ability to move through this at a pace that allows them to get the work done and not challenge what they're experiencing right now no absolutely that's all we're looking for i'm just praising so that that we can be ready yeah so he needs to are you okay with the direction to just give them the time to do this work absolutely yeah you need the time yeah okay we appreciate that i know that that tom appreciates that and uh yeah we'll be back in front of you when we feel that we have the right information for you to have an informed discussion yeah do it do it well i thank you so much okay the next one is also yours uh kara i think this has to do with winter lighting yes it does uh so in talking about in this branched off the assessment of heart of the city discussion looking at the the lighting that we do holiday lighting that type of thing also coming into a discussion of are we are we going to be looking at some unified branding in the city you know what what does that look like i thought this would be a good time to look at how we do our holiday lighting what that consists of and is that something we want to change update modify do differently expand contract what does that look like and i think that this is a good time to do that because it it fits in with some of the other things that we're doing so that's what i want to bring to council there are there are different things we could do for example like you're talking about year-round lighting okay well what about you know we have the snowflakes but what if there are other things that we could put up through the year or you know what does that look like when we when we wrap the trees we're starting to get some trees that we're not reaching the top and then we got like little trees kind of near them and you know so is this the time to to reevaluate how we light those areas i would say that if to to address that particular item let's make sure we bring our partner into this discussion and that it's not just us the burnsville community foundation have been a great partner from the very beginning and they're the ones who raised the money from the very beginning for us to illuminate our city so whatever we're going to do with the lighting i would submit to all of you that we have that discussion with the burnsville community foundation and we're coming up at our next meeting and we're going to be going through our vision and strategic plan with the community foundation and so that will come up but one of the things that's very clear from the community foundation is that they will this is a project that is very dear to them yes raising the money so they are saying that they will continue to raise the money and get to 30 or 35 but they also wanted to say if we fall short you know it's about covering themselves that uh but that's always been there if you fall short but can they if they can raise the 35 or even more they're going to do that we're going to be discussing do they ask for more money since the trees are big and people want more so that's a discussion that's going to be coming up uh at the meeting so it seems like it's good timing then yeah and but yeah let let's and i don't know if there's some indications involved and all of that i don't know if that's something that you are looking to do right away but so what i'm hearing you say is it's time it's time for us to take a look at that and i would say we can have that discussion but bring the burnsville community foundation to the table and greg perhaps our community engagement people can be a part of all of that because that's what we're trying to do here is engaging the community and our partners on you know well i think it's good timing because like we made a decision about the the tree in the park right so it has a different look so maybe it's time that yes and we do want to involve our partners as well we definitely want to involve your department we want to involve um communications no we're going to keep you guys out you are not allowed because the math is very the other thing that i've wanted that i want us to look at is um there's the design aspect and how it looks and then there is also the functionality aspect of how do you make it work right and the man hours and all that kind of stuff so you know i want to make sure that we're not making it more complex or more time involved you know you know what i'm saying like i know because uh garrett didn't you bring some lighting animated lighting for the holidays to us at one point and that uh also to light up nicolette commons park and you had different animated metamator and council ryan and i get the pleasure to work a lot together and when we were looking at the replacement of the tree in the park we wanted to look at different options of is it a tree that we want to put back in the park or do we want to have tunnels or create some type of different experience so yes we did do yeah you brought temptation a couple years ago as we were getting closer to that replacement and ultimately it was decided upon that the tree um was the the right decision at the time so a very nice treat yeah perhaps it is a nice focal point perhaps this is the time to give you that that you might want to resurrect with cara's uh ideas here resurrect uh the ideas that you brought the concept that you had with the vendor that you were working with and say here are some other ideas i just want to remind everybody the cost is going to be there there's a cost because we went with the tree i think because it was cheaper than all the other lighting fixtures that you had there is but yeah you know it's and it's not just in the park area what i'm also talking about is on our streets as well how how do we want that to look how do we want it to function and because i do know that like putting the lights up taking the lights down that kind of thing is that still the look that we want and coupled with the effort and the maintenance and all that type of thing or are there other options that we could look at on our street well ryan i'm going to come to you but you also had an option where you hide you lit the tree you had a purple light uplift it up lit it yeah yeah okay go something i would we're up we're up with the three-year contract so our current three contractors came up we got to go out for one this year what i would recommend is we do a one-year contract with the current lighting and difference i would recommend we do a outside work session in the middle of winter of all things and we go look at it and see what we like and we don't like um i'm afraid of trying to figure this out now yes and let's just see what it looks like for one year and then point out because i agree i see some of the trees the lights get halfway up and then they don't look at the top as i said earlier the trees have gotten so big can't we put more lights up there and we just have to have a lift for every tree and then of course so i like the up lighting because it'll take the whole thing yeah you know i am on board with that and again this is nothing that like i'm we need to decide in a month i like that idea of extending that contract for a year i like the idea of us looking at the lighting this winter and really taking a fresh eye as to the functionality of it and the design okay so uh what garrett and i will do is bring that to our community foundation board strategy meeting and uh and then ryan and greg um so what what i'm hearing from ryan is that this winter uh we'll start looking at i like it great great field trip suggestion thank you really appreciate it and having that meeting and having that meeting outside i'll bring the hand warmers yeah so i got i got hot pockets oh perfect okay so at least we all know the timing of all of this so okay so it's not until this coming winter that we'll be doing anything and then uh with all of your permission will just direct staff to decide when we do that it will be after it'll be probably december or january i'll i'll take your idea but i'll see if we can just extend the current contract one year with people yeah instead of going out just as opposed to trying to vote for new orleans let's see if they can do that yeah yeah save some okay yeah that's okay that doesn't work okay very good greg is that thank you for very clear direction and the flexibility to to follow ryan's lead ryan thank you very much and i i'm going to take the opportunity just to point out that both ryan and garrett are here and i appreciate our senior leaders choosing to spend their evenings talking about important things with you so thank you they didn't have anything better to do clearly so yeah so greg i think when we have the only thing that i would ask that when we're going to have this work session outside in the co maybe we have some some of our folks from communication and community engagement so depending on how that engagement spreads out if it goes absolutely ryan will be our staff's favorite person in suggesting a 20 below outdoor work session so we'll make that happen can we have it in one of our warming houses we'll work on it we don't have a warming house in the heart of the city when i have a community engagement vehicle though yeah that's true oh that's true that's true yeah we'll just we will jump in and get warm and jump back we have the med cruise oh okay we will uh we will make it happen to your point and and yes we'll make sure that the right staff are involved too that's a great secret yeah because that's what we you know it's you know we talk about you know making sure we engage our partners because they're going to help us raise the money engage our community in in all of this so yeah they too are are enjoying and benefiting from the lights so and they like it yes garrett i just want to say in addition to this particular item i have been listening to the meeting and i just want to affirm that all of our outdoor warming or ice rinks are also off leash spaces so oh they are or when did the citizens start leading the charge to do it for because that's what we thought happened is no garrett and his team garrett also is the one who who brought the dog park to us uh madam mayor council members i worked with a community group in 2002 to create the alamo dog and at that time the only and then we set aside how many acres did we set aside the outdoor rink so yeah this has been before my time it was something that uh was allowed in burnsville so yeah right so there there it is you learn something every day but the thing is a magnet how many acres is that it is seven acres seven acres and i remember when you brought it to us and it was a great idea and we had no pushback but all the other cities had pushback but no pushback yeah so that and and that that's yours and uh we've gotten lots of phone calls from people around the country wanting to know more about our story so good work good work and i think um greg and garrett and ryan we should have it in one of our briefs that goes out and let people know that it's our our ice rinks are off leash areas because and they're and they're protected back to put in the bulletin that we sent out yeah that's that's the one it's our bulletin briefs i will leave it in garrett's capable hands to talk with our communications folks and get some information out there chris has got plans yeah it's great you can do that okay very good okay i don't know if vince has anything if he's still here madam mayor he had to step away for just a few minutes so he might not be online okay um dan g oh are we doing board reports now yeah because we're done with um with the round table tomorrow night the task force meets again and we'll be just we'll be finalizing the liquor ordinance tomorrow night which will be coming back thank you ryan thank you garrett next month have a good night huh so we'll be finalizing what the suggestions are in the liquor ordinance which will be coming to us as a council next month okay uh cdb we haven't met this month so there's nothing to report on that okay that's gonna be a big meeting tomorrow night and i think it's gonna be a split note on a few things yeah that's that one's going to be interesting cbb no no no task force yeah the citizen task force very passionate people on that thing so yeah the thing is the review of the of some other pieces of the um code including massage which maybe also want to cure so the liquor license that vote has already been taken so the prop the owners are not going to be back um i mean there was a divided vote amongst the task force members but there is there was a majority and it was what what the owners to keep it the same so it was what they wanted so i expect that there will also be a divided vote on the final approval of this tomorrow night um so it will not come would not have come to you on consent no matter what but um yeah um i feel that um yeah no because i've heard from the owners that the i mean the recommendation from the majority of the task force members is to leave the those additional requirements in the owners left happy huh the owners are left happy yeah but they said so well but the other thing is that they wanted to make sure you know i get that part and i i fully expect they may be at the council meeting for final adoption um because the council of course has the option to make any changes to the recommendations from the task force at that time okay all right you okay you sure you want me to go next well because i i don't know if cara has anything else she already reported on dbb i have a different update but that's okay i can wait okay okay um so this is not strictly an update on a task force but i thought it was something that our council would appreciate because it's good news always good to bring good news so when we had several meetings on whether we were going to take the settlement money from the opioid lawsuits and we talked about the issues surrounding that and some of the language of the agreement on there and we highlighted how that language and and some of the ways that the state could continue to enforce restrictions on patients being able to receive their pain medication and we highlighted a a bill that has been proposed year after year in minnesota to correct some of those excesses and ease ease some of the challenges that some of our most vulnerable patients are receiving and and it's those that are specifically within a category of intractable pain right it's pain that's not not responding to any other anything else so all they have is opioids like that's it that's all they got and yet they were they were being restricted and and doctors were in fear of prescribing and they were dumping patients and so on and so forth that we heard my good news is um true to his word true to his word representative baker did sign on to that bill he did he did and i so he did sign on to that bill the status of that right now the very for the very first time year after year session after session these bills have received a hearing nice in the senate it did pass through the health and human services finance and policy committee hearing we do have senator claussen has championed this and i thank him for that abler signed on dram signed on eaton signed on and rose and signed on in the house biermann who also apple valley apple valley has been championing this was really pushing forward on that bill and as i said representative baker did sign on holland signed on representative munson signed on and representative vang also signed on that one seems a little stalled in committee we are hopeful that because the senate is taking firmer quicker action on this that it will become unstalled and i'm also still hopeful that our representatives here in burnsville will sign on i know during that during that time we were having that conversation in our in our special session they were really looking at it and our representatives and our our senator in this area was really looking at it and so i'm still hopeful that they can sign on to it and kind of put their shoulder behind it as well the minnesota medical association is coming out strong in favor of it we have had activists working on this for years and we have had clawson and biermann working on this for years but i would like to thank this council i would like to thank everyone that spoke at that council meeting i would like to thank staff and i would really like to thank our residents as well because this would not be going forward without that so that is something that no matter what happens you all can feel really good about that because if if this passes this could have a really good impact on people's lives the cdc is redoing its standards they have those up and you can comment on them until i believe april 11th and in response they have removed the thresholds and caps on prescriptions because they have seen what's happened across this country and i'm hopeful that when that happens the the bureaucratic arm in minnesota will likewise alter the administrative guidelines as well um but i i want to thank all of you for i'm glad we're going to be receiving some of the money that came out of that uh lawsuit we will but the thing is what what what you're saying is that because we held two hearings it highlighted it and brought people uh even the attorney general and the guy that an assistant attorney general will show up for a city council meeting so believe me that meeting was noticed and it was noticed and it it was talked about and continues to be talked about at the stake and and they are true to their word they were going to make those adjustments representative baker is a a man of his word and he i trusted him and what because he was passionate about that because he suffered his he lost a child yes so okay yes so good thanks to all of you and and um you know you don't get an opportunity at this level of government to have that big of an impact but this was one of those times where you guys did so thank you yeah well i i would turn that all back around to you council member schultz you were the one that brought the expertise in at a meeting where we had four council members there this was an item that was being waived on a consent and not even debated or discussed at every city council meeting across the state and probably across the country but because of your subject matter expertise and the comments that you made you caused us to take a different direction which then triggered the debate or the hearing that we had and brought in all those folks which ended up drawing all that attention it all started with you and your expertise otherwise it would have been a waving of a consent agenda item and it never would have happened which means mr baker and the assistant attorney general would never have appeared in burnsville chambers and had their opportunity to speak and hear all of the comments and the governor weighed in and [Music] told me that he would send the people from the uh the attorney general's office and that's why those two gentlemen were here so good okay dan kay um that then yeah i'm not going to be able to do that that was uh incredible work and and so glad to hear all of those positive things coming out of that um i'm going to cover tab uh first there's something that in my first year on tap representing the suburban transit providers the suburban transit association which is mbta the second largest transit provider in the state of minnesota behind metro transit larger than duluth even just by a smidgen and southwest transit plymouth and maple grove after sitting on that board for a year and feeling as though um maybe there was going to be an opportunity for the sta to present and that opportunity never came but i heard week month after month updates from met transit my council the mac mndot mpca i thought something's not right here so i think i've shared that with you in the past so at year end they sent out a survey and i took that opportunity to make my opinion known that i felt sta was being shortchanged and that the sta should have an opportunity to provide an update and or present maybe once a quarter and the the idea the survey results weren't talked about at our january meeting so i pushed again and said when are we going to talk about these i submitted some well thought out comments and suggestions and i really want a chance to have a have time with the rest of tab and air it out and they said we're going to talk about that in the february meeting so we did and leading up to that february meeting there was some comments by some met council staff trying to minimize what it would be and i want to personally thank chair hublin for stepping up and he was in that circle of emails and agreeing with me that the sta needed to provide an update every meeting and also have a chance to do presentations once a quarter i couldn't have been happier with chair hovland he has been a great champion he is going to receive an acrylic bus as a champion of of suburban transit from the sta i don't know if he's gotten it yet uh but um he will receive one uh as will uh our mayor uh kautz who is also a champion of suburban transit providers from the very beginning the governor's blue ribbon commission which they both served on along with some other folks the mayor of savage who received one went to bat for us and protected the interests of sta um sta is about um we have 15 percent of the population of the of the metro area but we have a much smaller percent of the total transit operations compared to met transit but all of the growth in population is in the sta areas it's not in the central core and we have been shortchanged on funding over and over again by a multitude of different ways one quick example we used to be at six point seven four percent of uh of emvest funding for in infrastructure for buildings facilities et cetera maintenance and upkeep uh and capital improvements and that has dwindled to a little more than half of that over the last 20 years in 1991 i believe was uh the um or 2001 oh no maybe 1991 was it was set at that 6.7 and it over the last three decades little by little it was just shrunk and chipped into by the met council because that transit had more financial needs they were greater in debt and so it was and they were the bigger you know they bought inc by the barrel we didn't in the sda and they they basically took control of more and more funds which has made it more and more difficult for not only the sta members to provide service to their trade area to support the growth and the transit needs but also even to maintain our facilities and so um i was thrilled to get an update from all four providers in two pages of notes and after uh deb barber who is the met uh council representative who provides a transit update i provided an update for the very first time in the history of tab from the sda and it was great the notes i got from the from the executive directors and it came through mbta was fantastic they organized it in a great way and i relate it and embellished uh on items that i i knew some greater depth in and i got tons of compliments in the chat string of members across metro inner city and suburban members of tab saying it's about time thank you that was a great update i was very impressed there's so many things i had no idea about sta that i now know about and so looking forward to the next month so that was a big win after kind of a long push and a lot of questions and trying to find a path i finally used that survey to really bring it to highlight and then i just wasn't going to let up until i got what i wanted and and uh i just again thank you chair hublin the mayor of edina for stepping up and supporting sta he was he was great and he came in right at the right time to just sort of push it over the edge there was a couple of big presentations at our last meeting mobility hub planning mobility hub planning um was about where people can you know transportation hubs or transit hubs like bike walk scooter whatever it might be similar to think of the these the hubs that come out of our light rail system and our bus rapid transit now think about that more more for pedestrians people that are not in a motor vehicle or not riding a bus how are the how can how can we map out transit up apparently this was something that the met council met transit was putting on their initial evaluation of the whole state i'm sorry of the the whole um metro area was 7 000 hubs which seemed almost uh impossible but after a massive amount of evaluation they got it down to 50 to start with in this this pilot program that they're pursuing so the planning is um uh just guiding outcomes using their thrive 2040 transportation policy plan hub objectives and then they're getting input from stakeholders groups planning timelines so it's a very beginning of a very long uh very massive project to really do a better job of planning transit hubs for i'm sorry mobility hubs all of the focus prior to this has always been you know brt hubs light rail hubs etc this is the first major one that's really focused on mobility uh which includes pedestrians which obviously is a we talk a lot about as we were just earlier about uh organizing a sidewalk uh path that's wide enough to handle both people walking and people in wheelchairs and scooters and bicycles etc so uh and then uh mndot did a quick presentation not quick but a fairly long presentation on the iija funding scenario um and that was something that i'm sure ryan would be interested in uh let's see sta um we had our legislative breakfast and unfortunately our three representatives uh berg hansen and senator port were not able to make the original one it had great attendance from across our suburban area with senators representatives so we just recently had a follow-up and senator port and representative berg were able to make it representative hanson was unable to on that day usually held in the morning and that's a challenge in some cases but we had great dialogue we had the sda members the chair uh myself and others and the executive directors of mvta of course and we had some other members and and kind of went through the whole presentation that presentation the powerpoint is suited perfectly to bring forward at the legislature for bills that we are advocating for uh to shore up the funding uh formulas and ensure that the sta providers get the funding they're supposed to get i'll just leave it at that um let's see i i have an update on behalf of of because he's not back vince sent me a note saying i might not get back in time go ahead burnsville festival and fire muster we have 13 board members and 25 volunteer event committee uh members and we also have two liaisons from the city thank you see uh manager lindbergh for uh giving us amber jacobson and uh jj we have a new student a non-voting board member who is joining us at our april meeting thanks to abigail we talked about it as a board about getting a youth involved from the high school it is a junior student and look forward to meeting her and uh and having her involved in our discussions at the board meetings and it's going to be great we also have a new international stage from 1 to 7 p.m on saturday it's using the civic center amphitheater there are going to be four performances on that stage during that period of time and abigail alt is heading up a subcommittee task force to vet the four performers and they're doing that as we speak and have for the last few weeks very excited about that she's really just something else if you're listening abigail you rock we also have a deal with mbta um for a park and ride shuttle we've mapped that all out it's all in our brand new burnsville festival and fire muster website which launched a couple weeks back um and just got some updates today so are you still calling it pharmaceutical i thought it was a community festival it's the burnsville france no it's a burnsville festival yeah and fire mustard we didn't completely cut out fire mustard because there's 41 years of people who know what it is branding what we are doing going forward we're marketing it as the burnsville festival and fire mustard because we want everybody coming in yeah well everybody knew moving into burnsville when they hear fire muster they're confused what's a muster and they don't come yeah so going forward we're going to brand it as the burnsville festival and firemonster and burnsville festival is very predominant in the new logo which you'll see on the website i encourage you all to go to it and we'll be able to i believe the folks coming into our community will see burnsville festival and instantly understand what it is everybody that's here that has gone to the festival understand it and know it as a firemaster and it's okay because they've already come we're i want to make sure that everybody knew coming into our city knows it's a festival and we'll attend we also have a new youth area we're calling it the zombie garage zone it's the zombie board shop and the youth garage and sean and jack are teaming up and we're creating a really exciting area on the west side next to the well the skate park and and the grass area in front of it and that's going to start at four o'clock on saturday and run until they're done but basically four to seven will be very highly organized events uh and we're getting all kinds of vendors involved and contests and all kinds of stuff so we there was something incubated the last year we're gonna blow it up into something really big bring in some celebrities some signing some demos and and make it and we're putting food trucks down there so it's going to have its own sorry so the 20-somethings and 30-somethings and teens that are skateboarders or into the youth music they'll have they'll have a nice area to really enjoy and interact down there and then uh finally we're also bringing in some new international merchants and food options so the lines this year will not be 50 minutes to an hour no matter where you're trying to get food it was uh it was a in my opinion a poor guest experience last year the crowds were heavy the supply side was way too tight so we're going to open that up and make sure that we have plenty of options for folks so the theme is is more diverse and inclusive and so the international stage the international food the international merchants and we're also designating we're working on an area right now within the ice center for our muslim friends to have a place to prayer because the 1-7 international stage will cover a prayer period and we want to make sure that they have an opportunity to go somewhere private and and worship so all kinds of new things and we're we've completely relayed out the whole grounds we just completed that process uh moving things around because the gate coming in off of 134th the mobile command and the blockade will be after the horseshoe at the ice center and so all the vendors can now pull in everyone with mobility issues that want to drop people off can drop them off right in the heart of the festival and pull out and go right on back out 134th and that's also where our transit buses are going to pull into and they'll loop around from the transit station at 13 and nicolette and come down nicolette they'll make a pickup if you park your car at the church and you want to ride instead of walking all that way you'll be able to jump on the bus and take it all away and they'll drop you off in the center so a lot of exciting things going on we also have the last new thing is we're adding music for the craft beer tasting and car show we have enlisted the old school 191 faculty band to come play uh on nuclear coast yeah i've watched a lot of their stuff lately so they're going to play for the first time we'll have music and then we also have music wednesday night for the block party on the plaza and jj and amber are taking the lead on organizing that for us we've brought music vendors uh some other things and they're going to take it from there and bring in their connections and vendors and and displays and and we're going to make sure it is a city of burnsville block party in nicollet commons park and i found a 10-piece latin uh it's called the chico uh chavez orchestra it's a 10-piece latin groove band that i can't wait to get out on that stage because it's kind of music that everybody will love and listen to so a lot of exciting things going on on the festival front nice that's it thank you good okay a lot of exciting partnerships i'm sorry i i forgot to say that the city our partnership with the city is is better than ever we're embracing we're working together uh appreciate uh city manager uh interim city manager sorry uh freudian slip um uh lindbergh and his approach working with this entire board with vince and i has been fantastic and uh we are we're really just opening up all kinds of doors of opportunity to collaborate and make this what i believe everyone believes when they walk in the door that this is a city festival it's not some private groups festival this is the city of burnsville's festival and we're going to make sure that we live f501c3 run by now a new 501c3 yes we applied for our 51c3 and we're now fundraising under a bonafide c3 nonprofit which the the foundations are now very happy about it's easier to get there yeah well weren't you a 501c3 before c4 a c4 yeah it was a few thousand bucks and a lot of time with the liars to get her done but we got her done so new website new c3 new stuff it's pretty exciting we got we've been working a lot well can't wait i'm so excited for i don't want to say the saturday night band because i promised that we would hold back until after the um rotary concert for caring and then we'll make the big reveal but we have johnny homeband friday night and he rocks a big crowd every friday night when he's there so and then saturday night you won't want to miss that either so plan on coming both thanks i will be in town for this this year so all right we'll do it you'll be there good okay so the international festival is fast on its way and we are working with well margot is working with different cultural groups and especially when i think st paul no longer has their international festival i don't think they're doing that yeah so a lot of uh connections have been made difficult for a lot of festivals lately yeah yes they have and i don't know why yeah the uh did you mention cinco de mayo pardon me no the the saint paul international festival is no longer yeah this the cinco de mayo which i believe is under the same roof of the organization is not going to happen this year for the third year in a row and uh i've been talking with some uh hispanic leaders in that community they're saying that may not ever come back which it was huge we were there every year our company had some parades and all of that yeah so i hope they find a way to bring it back yeah it was it was all people are working with um some of the organizations that were part of the international singapore international festival so our virtual international festival could be bigger than ever yeah so working with all of that and uh continuing to raise money and doing well in that regard and you know we're working well with our staff this is a group of uh men and women who are passionate about what's going on and they're doing a good job about putting the festival together and then i already reported that the community foundation is going to have its strategic planning session uh coming up here um we don't we only meet quarterly for savage burnsville so we don't have a report there and with the mlc i reported earlier that we went and we visited with the governor and that was good because the things that are important to us is local control and the whole issue that has to do with housing so the governor stands with us on both those issues i also brought up the issue of the funding that is coming from the infrastructure innovation and jobs act that has to do with the broadband and how that's going to be distributed throughout the state and to not let [Music] suburban cities not get any of that funding because a lot of that they talk about areas that don't have broadband but made the point that we in the metro area this the suburban cities drive the economy and the uh of the met of the uh of the metropolitan area so he said no that's going to be very much a part of his agenda is to make sure that because we are we drive the gdp of minnesota so and he gets that so that was good um greg we don't have anything else those are the two big things with regard to the mlc um every like everybody else they're busy working working on the legislative agenda so you heard from ann and so i'm not going to belabor all of that so that's where we're at okay greg anything from staff side i don't have anything metamer okay michelle okay very good we stand adjourned by acclimation thank you everybody for a good meeting and uh greg i think uh you you have uh you