Based on the context provided for the City of Lakeville, here is the transcribed text with speaker names assigned. [0:01] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Good evening and welcome to the November 4th city council meeting. If you'd join me for a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. [0:21] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** [Pledging] ...to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, please. [0:29] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Here. [0:30] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Here. [0:31] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Here. [0:32] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Here. [0:33] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Here. [0:36] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, very good. Moving on to item number three: citizens' comments. This is an opportunity for anybody to address Council for up to three minutes about an issue that's not on the agenda. Okay, seeing none, we'll now move on to additional agenda information. Mr. Miller? [1:04] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Nothing tonight, Mayor. [1:06] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All right, very good. And our first presentation tonight is our Fire Department quarterly report, and I'll turn it over to Chief Meyer. [1:09] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Good evening. [1:17] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Good evening, Mayor and council members. I'd like to present the third quarter Fire Department report for 2024. And a little bit different view this time is, uh, normally I start with our mission statement, but I want to include what our vision is also: to be the best innovative all-risk provider in our region by providing a predictable, reliable, and professional response. Looking at a call comparison for the third quarter, so 2024 was 990 calls in the third quarter. And you can see '22, '23, and then a breakdown on the right side of the screen is by month. If you look at July, we had 359 calls in July—so a very busy month. The other two months, August and September, were both over 300, but fairly in line with the previous years. But obviously, July was a pretty big spike in that call volume. And then just looking at—there's a couple things I'll highlight on the left-hand side—so year to date, as of about noon today, we're at 2,900, almost 3,000 calls for the year. Comparatively to third quarter 2023, 2,450 calls roughly, and then '24 we ended the third quarter with 2,700 calls, which is about a 9% increase. And what I included is a picture of just a heat map of the city, so you can kind of see where our call volume is. Obviously, the shade of red is a higher volume area. The one thing to look at as far as some of those highlights, that top one you see top left which has the orange middle, is Kingsley Shores—so that's a care home. So we tend to go there quite frequently. So that's kind of some things that we look at from a data perspective, and we're working with Allina, our partner, on how we can reduce some of those. But I just want to show you a view of what the city looks like as far as where those calls are occurring. Typically, Stations 1 and 2 are higher volume calls compared to the rest of the city. Then a breakdown of those 990 calls by type—and just for a note, year to date, that percentage or that call volume doesn't change much from what you see there by a quarter. So obviously, EMS rescue calls are our top percentage—roughly overall is about 65% of the calls that we respond to are medical EMS—followed by good intent, false alarm, hazards condition, fires, and so on that you can see. And just kind of a note, the good intent calls are including "canceled in route," but they also include if we respond to a smoke alarm that we find no hazard or a call where it's considered a hazardous material but we find no hazard. So that's a catch-all category, so to speak. On the right side, you see the overlapping incidents. So from second quarter to the third quarter, that number continues to climb. So if you remember in the first quarter of the year, we were about 180 calls that were overlapping; currently, third quarter were 312. And what does that mean? It means that we have multiple calls occurring within roughly an hour or within minutes. So a good example today: we had four calls that occurred within 10 minutes. So not only was our staff engine out, then we're paging out additional resources to respond to that. So you can see three incidents occurred 14 times in the third quarter out of that 312, and then we had four incidents occurring three times in the third quarter. So one thing that we look at and utilize is how we can utilize our staffing for that. And just a couple calls to highlight as far as those incidents: a vehicle fire on I-35—fortunately, the family got out of the vehicle, but it was on the off-ramp at County Road 50 and not on the freeway, but it still causes quite a bit of traffic delay. And then the two-vehicle—there’s two different vehicle accidents on Cedar Avenue. Obviously, the top one was pretty significant injuries to the party; the second one, actually the car ended up out in the cornfield, and the person was able to—I'll say walk away—but we brought them to the ambulance from that accident. And I'm giving you a different view from response time: these are the 90th percentile for third quarter, and these are strictly emergent incidents. The top line that you see is by station, and I'll work across kind of the keys that I look for as far as data-wise. The PSAP to alarm—so that's the time that the phone rings at our Dispatch Center to the time that they dispatch us—we're looking for them to be at that under 2 minutes; 1:30 would be the goal that we're looking for, but we're right in that range. The next one over is that dispatch-to-en-route time—so that's the time that we're alerted until we put the truck on the road or the engine on the road. And I should draw out the difference: the top line is a station, so that's an overall for every station (Station 1, 2, 3, and 4), and then the bottom line is a staffed engine, our Engine 5 so to speak. So you can see the difference in when they're dispatched as far as getting in route; they're obviously much faster because they're at the station or they're potentially in the truck. And then you jump over from the en route to arrival—both columns are a matter of drive time. So the stations are going to be faster to a scene than the staffed engine because they're coming from Station 4 going to wherever that call is. Example: our highest volume areas are 1 and 2, so they're traveling to that area for the response. And then I look to the far right, the PSAP to alarm—the overall time from the time that the phone rings until we put a unit on scene. You can see the stations are about 13 minutes and our staffed engine is at 10:40 roughly. And again, that just deals with how far they're covering the entire city versus one area of the city. Speaking in just a little more detail on the staffed engine: since April 15th is when we started staffing that engine 24/7. One of some of the statistics we're looking at: so 58% of the time on a medical, our engine is arriving prior to the ambulance and starting care. Some of the highlights is that they have 72 hours of training in the third quarter, 30 hours of prevention education talks, and then we did start the child seat education installation—so they've done five of those in the third quarter. Obviously, they're doing daily and weekly equipment checks, they're doing station cleaning. And one thing I highlight—so the picture that you see is our staffing schedule. So that's actually October 31st, Halloween. All the blue lines that you see are highlighted blue are staffing by pay-on-call firefighters. So the one thing I like to really highlight is 99% of our shifts that we've filled with four firefighters are due to our pay-on-call staff. So there's always two full-time firefighters, but the rest of those blue are pay-on-call firefighters filling that shift. So we've gone 99% of the time that we've had four firefighters on that truck. Training completed in the third quarter: just over 2,000 hours, and you can see to the right there some of the training topics that we went through. We did do training out at Airlake Airport; we went through some training with them as far as the facilities that they have, refueling operations, and just familiarization of the airport and their operations. We started our recruit training in August for our seven new pay-on-call, which I have on the next slide here. Inspections for the third quarter: we had 266 inspections completed. Of those 266, 72 were found with violations (about 26%). Out of that, 30 of those still have open violations that we are working with the business owners to correct those. And then you can see the pie chart there of a breakout of those inspections that we complete—our annual inspection or general, that's what we do for every business; burn permit inspections; fireworks. Obviously, mobile food units are one of our bigger ones; we do a lot of those throughout the year. Residential childcare—we actually are discontinuing that because the state is taking that over for a change in how they are accomplishing that, so those will become no longer part of us. Fire prevention community events: some of the things that we were part of in the third quarter—we were partnered with the Red Cross at Ardmore Village, we visited 33 homes and installed 50 smoke detectors. The middle picture, we did quite a few fire extinguisher training at community events. Kind of a cool picture, the second one from the right: we went to a daycare and they were all dressed as firefighters waiting for us there for a visit. So we do daycare events, safety camp, Dakota County Fair. And then obviously October was Fire Prevention Month, so we had 14 elementaries, public and private, with about 1,000 plus kindergarteners and fourth graders that we visited. And just to highlight July and August as far as Pan-O-Prog and National Night Out: as I mentioned, we did 50 food truck inspections that were just strictly for Pan-O-Prog. We had extra crews on covering downtown events, so we had a medical crew and a golf cart basically that was assigned to respond to any calls just because we know that we're limited as far as response into the area. During the waffle breakfast, we served just over 2,000 plates of waffles. Recruitment, as I mentioned: August 13th, we started the class of 2024 for pay-on-call; we hired seven of those. They are currently in training, they completed their EMR, and they are now in their first phase of Firefighter 1 training. And then they'll start doing live burns actually next month and complete Firefighter 2 and Hazardous Material Operations in March of '25. And as obviously you're aware, in September we were notified that we received the SAFER Grant to hire 15 full-time firefighters. To kind of give you an update on that: the application process is open until tomorrow—it does close tomorrow. We plan to do interviews later this month with the second round in December and hopefully have them started mid-February or early March to start academy training with them, and hopefully have them start covering trucks late April or early May. And then to give you an update on Station 1: we will be remodeling Station 1. That should be starting hopefully this week or early next week for basically converting the offices that are in that station right now into bedrooms and then adding a little bit of laundry room equipment, but that should be complete early January of 2025. Some Public Safety events: some of you were there, but the 10th year of the 9/11 Ball, which was a great event. And then the picture that you see there is the Public Safety Foundation provided a family picnic and softball game. This was our second annual, I think, that we played a softball game: Police against Fire. Who won? Yeah... oh, sorry... confirm or deny who... okay. And then we had a crew that did the 9/11 stair climb. Lifetime Fitness has been a great partner that allows us to come in and use their stair mills for roughly about 2 to 3 hours; we have firefighters that come and go and climb 110 floors. And you can see some are in full gear, some are carrying hose—it all varies on what they want to do. And just to give you an idea of some upcoming events: on Thanksgiving Day, we are doing a joint venture Turkey Trot with Police and Fire at Station 1. In the 1st of December, we're doing "Cupcakes with Santa" which is sponsored by our Fire Relief, and then later in the month with the Public Safety Foundation, we'll be doing "Shop with a Hero." That concludes my third quarter report, and I want to thank you for your support of the Fire Department and our firefighters. I'll stand for any questions. [13:21] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, thank you. Any questions? John? [13:24] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Just real quick: you had the picture of the paid-on-call going through training. Are you still doing that training jointly with other departments? [13:30] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Yep, so our pay-on-call, yep, we still do with Apple Valley and Farmington. So that's where they will be tomorrow night. Every Tuesday night we're at training, and we shift cities as far as once one week Lakeville hosts, then Farmington or Apple Valley. It all depends on what that topic is and who has a better facility for that. So example: right now we use old Public Works to do ladder training and search and rescue because we have some mezzanine walls and stuff that we use up there. [14:08] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Mhm. [14:09] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Questions? I had a quick question about the foster home and the daycare. But the state—can you just give me a... what's the state doing? Because it always seems like when we're having conversations about those facilities that the state's always stretched thin, so why would they be taking on more? I'm just very curious about that. [14:17] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** It comes down to a billing piece. If you're applying for your daycare license, you pay the state and then we go and do the inspection, and then we have to apply for that money to come to us. Versus in the past, we would get the application for that, the check would come right to the city through the county as far as that, then we would get the check and take care of that. The state's made this change that they want the monies first. And they're the ones that want to take it over; they're pushing that. So a lot of cities are stepping away from it. They still have a website so that we are tracking the daycare facilities that we do have in town as far as those that are residential versus commercial. Commercials—nothing's changed. These are just strictly residential. [15:03] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, appreciate it. Yep, thank you, Chief. [15:04] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer:** Yep. [15:05] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, moving on to item six: our consent agenda. Anything you'd like to highlight, Mr. Miller? [15:10] **City Administrator Justin Miller:** Thank you, Mayor. One item tonight, 6E, is a grant between the city and the Police Department and the Department of Public Safety. This is a $100,000 grant that aims to help us reimburse the cost of training for potential police officers who are coming from a non-traditional career path or possibly a second career path. And so we've already had one in training, and we got a grant for a second, and so we're appreciative of that. [15:42] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, very good. Council, any item you'd like to pull for further discussion? If not, I will take a motion to approve the consent agenda. [15:48] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** I move to approve the consent agenda. [15:51] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, is there a second? [15:53] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Second. [15:54] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any further discussion about the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor say "aye." [15:58] **City Council:** Aye. [15:59] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Consent agenda passes. We'll now move on to item seven: imposing a special or service charge for Special Service District Number One for taxes payable 2025. And I'll turn it over to our Finance Director, Ms. Stahl. Welcome. [16:11] **Finance Director Julie Stahl:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. In 1998, the Council passed an ordinance establishing our Special Service District, and it's been in place since then. We do have to follow the Minnesota Statute 428A with this Special Service District. Part of that is holding a public hearing and offering up if there is to be a special service charge levied on the district that it goes through the whole process. We did publish the public hearing notice in the October 11th and October 25th *Sun Thisweek*, and letters were also sent out on October 18th to all of the business owners that this affects. The Special Service District Advisory Board is recommending again that the service charge remains at zero for this next budget year. The last time that a service charge was levied was in 2018; that was when the year was collected and it was $13,750 then. So since there is no service charge, there's no minimum charge that's applicable to any of the properties. There's no further notice that needs to be mailed out, but we do need to go through this public hearing process. The budget was included as part of the packet so you could see what the costs are that the Advisory Board is saying we will pay for with a Special Service District. And if you noticed, the fund balance for the district gets down to $2,600 roughly in June of 2026. And with an annual budget of roughly $6,000, they will have to decide next year at the same time about implementing a service charge if they want to continue this district. With that, I will offer any questions. [18:04] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** When the letter goes to the business owners for notification of the public hearing, are they also notified that it would be a zero increase? [18:11] **Finance Director Julie Stahl:** They're notified with an amount. [18:13] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** So as you're nodding your head yes, that means if they decide to charge for 2026, they'll be notified with an amount? [18:22] **Finance Director Julie Stahl:** Correct. [18:24] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Okay. [18:25] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Any questions? Okay, this is a public hearing, right? So I will open the public hearing. If there's any comments... seeing none, I'll take a motion to close the public hearing. [18:34] **Councilmember John Bermel:** I move to close the public hearing. [18:36] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Is there a second? [18:37] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Second. [18:38] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All those in favor say "aye." [18:41] **City Council:** Aye. [18:43] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? Special hearing is closed. Any further discussion? Or do we adopt it now, is that the process? If Council has no other discussion points, then I'll take a motion to accept. [18:56] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** I move to approve the resolution imposing a service charge for Special Service District Number One. [19:04] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, is there a second? [19:06] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Second. [19:07] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, any further discussion? Okay, roll call please. [19:14] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Aye. [19:15] **Councilmember John Bermel:** Aye. [19:16] **Councilmember Dan Wolter:** Aye. [19:17] **Councilmember Joshua Lee:** Aye. [19:18] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Aye. [19:26] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Okay, thank you. Moving on—any unfinished or new business? Okay, seeing none, our announcements: our next city council meeting is November 18th here at City Hall. Our next work session is November 25th in the Marian Conference Room. And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. [20:00] **Councilmember John Bermel:** I move to adjourn. [20:01] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Is there a second? [20:02] **Councilmember Michelle Volk:** Second. [20:03] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** All those in favor say "aye." [20:06] **City Council:** Aye. [20:07] **Mayor Luke Hellier:** Opposed? We're adjourned.