This transcript features a presentation on broadband franchising by attorney Mike Bradley, a municipal training session by City Attorney Sarah Sonsalla, a Planning Commission update from Sophia Jensen, and a Parks update from Adam Swanepoel, with active discussion from Mayor Charles Cadenhead and the City Council. [00:00:00] **Mike Bradley**: members. Um, good evening. Um, my name is Mike Bradley. I am an attorney in um, in Woodbury and, um, I have a practice that, um, involves working with cities on telecommunications matters. So that means cable television franchising, uh, telecommunications permitting, and now broadband franchising. I represent um cable commissions and cities all across the metro and throughout the United States actually. And um and I've had the privilege of working with the Ramsey Washington County uh cable communications commission for shoot over 20 years, 25 years. Um we have some really exciting news I think to share with you all. Um, and you probably saw in your packet, we um we represent the South Washington County Telecommunications Commission. That’s a commission that um includes the city of Woodbury and the city of Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, Newport, Great Cloud Island. The city of Woodbury was approached by numerous broadband companies and um they were wondering, you know, well, what can we do to make sure that all of our residents are being served? we have customer service obligations and the like. Um, and they they approached the commission to visit about that. So when we when we got together with them, we told them that there was an an opportunity to to uh franchise these broadband companies and the city of Woodbury was interested in that. And so they like um like the city of Lake Elmo has done, they've delegated that authority to their local commission. And so for Woodbury, it's the South Washington County Commission. For you all, it's the Ramsey Washington Commission. And um I I I go over some of the background in the materials with you just very briefly though. for um for many years um broad broadband's been kind of in a weird place as far as how do we regulate broadband as cities and it's kind of vascillated between um different classifications. For the first time in in 2025, we had a court case decision come out that clearly said that broadband is not a telecommunication service. And when that happened that that required us as city attorneys to go back and look to see well where does broadband fall if it's not a telecommunication service telecommunication service we know we can only uh regulate through permitting cable television cable communication systems we can regulate through franchising. So when we look back at okay well what is broadband we looked at the state law. The state law says cable communication systems are systems that provide among other things data and other communication services. And we felt like that's where broadband fell. And so we the city of Woodbury notified all of their providers. They said, "You need to get a franchise." They approached the commission. We started the process for franchising. We negotiated the state's first franchise. And I think the reason why it's so exciting really for cities and residents is that you really can provide a lot of benefits to your residents through franchising, much like through the cable television franchise that we have with Comcast. So, some of those things include requiring buildout of your entire city, making sure that all of your residents have access to the same quality of service throughout the footprint, having a place for people to call with customer service issues. Um, I have clients across the metro that have had a lot of issues with especially with Lumen. There's no place for somebody to get relief really when you have a problem with Lumen. Um, so strong customer service standards, good buildout provisions, um, and franchise fees and some additional public benefits. So, such as building out fiber to government buildings and the like. So, when when you weigh the benefits of franchising versus permitting, I think it overwhelmingly falls on franchising. Is it a rockolid argument that um all broadband companies have to get a franchise from cities? No, it's not a rock solid argument. We think it's a very good argument. We think that's bolstered by the fact that the broadband companies are agreeing to get franchises from cities like Woodbury. Uh we also think it's bolstered by the fact that many cities across the metro are now looking at franchising the broadband companies in their areas. Um, with that, I'm I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have, uh, mayor and and council members and commission directors. Um, yeah, I open up questions. [00:04:15] **Nick Dragisich**: So, would you be installing the infrastructure as the franchise or would the franchise person be installing the systems? [00:04:22] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, it would be the company that the city franchises. [00:04:25] **Nick Dragisich**: Okay. So, um, there's a number of of new broadband companies that are coming into the area such as Gateway and Intrepid Fiber. [00:04:32] **Mike Bradley**: It's a good question. [00:04:34] **Nick Kragness**: What would be the expectation of the city in terms of administrative costs? [00:04:38] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. Uh, that's another really good question. So uh all you have already delegated as a city you've already delegated your franchising authority to the commission. So the commission would be responsible for doing everything for you. Um and then it would it would come back the franchise would come back and the city would act on it. So the commission would have all the costs. Um, and just so you know, the way we at least the way we did it in South Washington County is we have an application. As part of the application, we make sure that there's an adequate uh application fee to cover the commission's costs to review and negotiate the franchise. [00:05:12] **Jeff Holtz**: So, how's the fr So, suppose someone came in and we gave them a franchise to put, you know, broadband throughout the city. How does that interface with we currently have with Comcast? [00:05:22] **Mike Bradley**: It would actually be very similar. Uh, council member, uh, Comcast has a franchise to use all of our public rights of way to provide services and build its cable system out to residents. A broadband franchise would be very similar. It would give the broadband company the uh, right to uh, build out the entire city. [00:05:41] **Nick Dragisich**: So, as a broadband companies build out, are they sold providers or do they put the fiber in and then sell capacity and the fiber to people who actually provide services? [00:05:51] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, that's a really good question. And in Woodbury, the first franchise, the first franchisee is the latter actually. It was it's a company called an open access system. So it it comes in, it builds fiber throughout the city, and then it has a client or clients that it will essentially rent the system out to, and then that provider like T-Mobile will provide the services directly to the residents. [00:06:14] **Nick Dragisich**: Okay. [00:06:15] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. [00:06:16] **Nick Kragness**: that's kind of how I interpret the information, but I want to confirm that. [00:06:20] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. Is that generally the model that would be used if it wasn't a franchise? they they did just a permit where somebody comes kind of it's the the wholesale provider. [00:06:33] **Mike Bradley**: Uh that's another super question. The answer is no. There's there's uh from what I see a couple different models. One is this open access system that Intrepid provides. There's another company called Gateway Fiber and they come in and they build out your city and they will also uh be the service provider. [00:06:49] **Matt Hirn**: What about in a case where so maybe like the third alternative would be there isn't a wholesale developer of the the um uh the of the network? Then in that case would multiple different companies that want to provide it have to lay down their own lines? Would they all have to come in and apply for permitting for that? [00:07:07] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, I'm not really sure exactly what that model looks like. [00:07:11] **Matt Hirn**: Okay. So, and as I think through, I mean, it doesn't seem like it would really work as a model, right? [00:07:17] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. I'm I'm not really seeing that, but I but I am seeing the a system that's being built like I was talking with the other council member here um about um building a system essentially building a highway and then having multiple cars on the highway. [00:07:33] **Nick Dragisich**: In the past there was this 5% limit on franchise fees for cable TV people or whatever. Is that limit still in place or are you free to charge whatever you want now? [00:07:42] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, that's that's kind of a fun question actually because um when you look at broadband and how broadband is uh regulated at the federal level, cable cable television has a cap of 5% on franchise fees. With broadband, there is no federal regulation of broadband and so there is no there's technically no cap. Now, what we did in South Washington and Woodbury is we worked with the city, we worked with the commission and the provider to determine what a fair amount would be. We we fell on 5%. We wanted to keep it um you know, as similar as possible so that there wasn't any sticker shock to any of the residents. [00:08:19] **Nick Dragisich**: It does my next question. If you have one with Comcast that provides for 5%, is there does it say you have to can't go over 5% for other providers? [00:08:29] **Mike Bradley**: Um the franchises usually do have a um what they call a competitive equity provision in them. Now that typically relates only to the cable television service and not to the broadband service. So it gets a little sticky there. Um but it's another reason why we tried to keep it similar. Just know too that the cable television franchises the franchise fee is paid on the cable television service and it's limited to that. the broadband companies would be paying on the broadband service. The companies like Comcast, um there's federal regulations in place that prohibit cities from char from uh charging franchise fees on the broadband revenue from Comcast. [00:09:12] **Nick Dragisich**: Thank you. [00:09:13] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. [00:09:14] **Charles Cadenhead**: Yes, sir. when it comes to the buildout, especially in places that exist already but may not have broadband and then also build out for places that aren't developed whatsoever. How have cities done that in the past in terms of negotiating with the provider time frames where to go first? How literally how quickly? I mean, I assume it's I assume it's a negotiation because if they can't do it, they can't do it. But I assume the city still has leverage in that regard. [00:09:44] **Mike Bradley**: Um, it does. Um when you say how how is it normally done? We just negotiated the first one and they haven't started construction because we we granted it, we signed it and then construction season ended immediately. Right? So um but it is a negotiation. Uh I can tell you that state law is very favorable. If if broadband is a cable communication system, if a broadband system is a cable communication system, like we argue it is, there's really good state law in place that says that a provider has to build out uh their entire system within five years. And so that's that's what I fell back on. And so we do have provisions in the franchise that require a five-year buildout. [00:10:24] **Matt Hirn**: might be an elementary question, but is broadband and fiber optics, are they the same? [00:10:30] **Mike Bradley**: Basically, I think it's fair to to equate the two as being essentially the same. [00:10:35] **Matt Hirn**: Okay. Why does the broadband be fiber optic as part of the franchise agreement? [00:10:41] **Mike Bradley**: Um, that wasn't that didn't come up in our conversations. Um I think mainly because they said in their applications that their system was going to be all fiber optic. [00:10:52] **Matt Hirn**: Okay. [00:10:54] **Jeff Holtz**: So if there's exist there's existing broadband systems in res in neighborhoods in the city now. So does this then become an additional line run? Um, so that you know if I've already got cable or fiber to my house, are we going to come in and run a second line through everybody's neighborhoods that already where it already exists or is that become a sales negotiating point with the providers to say I either want to rent what you've got or I'm going to do it on my own so we're going to be putting in all this infrastructure that already exists. [00:11:30] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. what you're talking about is called an overbuild, meaning you're putting wires essentially next to each other going through neighborhoods. And that's really what you would be talking about. You would be adding another overbuild to your to your city unless Comcast is willing to rent their the space on their fiber line that already existed, aluminum warehouse. Yeah. Yeah. Comcast will not do that. But yes, they don't they don't rent to competitors. [00:12:02] **Charles Cadenhead**: um when it comes to their rights in the right of way and we talk about construction projects that come up. What are their rights as far as having to move? And then within a city kind of tied to that, are they also allowed then to use the Washington County rightway and the mindot right away if you have that in your city? [00:12:21] **Mike Bradley**: uh they'll they will be required uh to get permission from the state to use state right of way. Um our franchise will control the the city of Lake Elmo public right of way. I think you me did you mention relocation is that what you're talking about? [00:12:35] **Charles Cadenhead**: Let's say let's say you're widening a road and they're they're in the ditch and you're w you got to get they got to move [00:12:40] **Mike Bradley**: um relocation at their cost the uh first relocation. That's a great question. And so what we would what we would uh do is we would follow the existing city code as it relates to relocations. So assuming that your city right-of-way code addresses relocation in that way, that's exactly how it would go. But it, you know, it is something good to to review with your city attorney periodically is your right of way, your code. The way I'll the way I'll negotiate a cable tele or a cable communications franchise, a broadband franchise, we'll make it so that it it works seamlessly with your city code. [00:13:20] **Nick Dragisich**: So, it sounds like with the franchise, if you don't have Comcast now, you're not going to get Comcast with the franchise. You're going to get one of these other two, the Gateway or the uh other Intrepid or whatever it was. [00:13:31] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. Um, no, that's a really good question. I um the answer is no. You'll be able to get all of these services. You'll be able to get Comcast. You'll be able to get the new franchisees services if you want. Um the old telephone system, you know, probably provides like a DSL type of service. You might still be able to get that. Um so, you know, you'll have a number of options in your city. [00:13:58] **Jeff Holtz**: because it made you made it sound like that the Comcast would not be they would not be a part of the franchise. [00:14:03] **Mike Bradley**: They won't get a new broadband franchise, but they already have a cable television franchise. [00:14:08] **Jeff Holtz**: They're not in our area like where I live right now. Uh Comcast is on the other side of the street and I can't get it on my side. [00:14:14] **Mike Bradley**: Oh. Oh, that's Yeah, that's that's a whole another issue. We take it up at the cable commission. [00:14:21] **Matt Hirn**: Was that kind of the part of the point of this, right, is for situations like that? making sure that this service is provided so that we don't get these situations where you have it on one side of the street and not the other. [00:14:33] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a big part of it. And I think I think the confusion too, right, is when they're with like Intrepid, they're the the wholesaler. So, they're they're building out the infrastructure, but then they're renting, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're renting that uh infrastructure to other pro providers for their services except Comcast. So, it sounds like Comcast chooses not because they want to have their own lines. They don't want to negotiate any of the franchise fees. So then Comcast would have to make the decision of, well, do we want to compete against this franchise that was set up in Lake Elmo and go to the other side of the street or do we just stick with with where we're at? [00:15:15] **Mike Bradley**: I that's my take on it. I don't know. Yeah, I I think that's, you know, generally correct. Um Yeah. and you know getting service to to everybody in the city that's that's something that the city can work with the commission and the franchisee which would in this instance would be Comcast and making sure that you know everybody's getting served. I I think there's been an issue maybe in the past with um how far away houses are from the cable system and there's a there's a buildout requirement there. Um that's probably at play and getting some of those houses served. But um I know Judge um Judge Armstrong, anybody know Judge Armstrong here? [00:15:58] **Charles Cadenhead**: So Judge Armstrong has a farm in I think it's Lake Elmo. I'm pretty sure it is. And um now this is going back several years ago, but he he comes to the commission and says, "Hey, the system is going right by my farm. You know, we want service." And and so then the commission um you know, notified Comcast and said, "Hey, the system is right here. You know, splice it, send it up to Judge Armstrong's farm or farms." and um ultimately they agreed to do that. So there there are ways of of making sure that the operator is abiding by the terms of its franchise with the city of Lake. [00:16:34] **Jeff Holtz**: So I need to put judge in front of my name in order to get it from my but isn't part of the reason we would do something to to ensure we provide those broadband services to some of the rural AS obviously Lake Elmo is made some rural entities right isn't that part of why we would do that right to [00:16:53] **Mike Bradley**: Well that's exactly right we have the ability to connect in to your stream no it's exactly right and that's exactly why you have buildout provisions and making sure that there isn't somebody across the street that's not getting the service. You want everybody to get service uh throughout your entire footprint and you want everybody to have the same quality of service. [00:17:13] **Nick Dragisich**: Bringing the plumbing to the house, but you got to connect into the plumbing. [00:17:16] **Mike Bradley**: Yes. [00:17:18] **Nick Dragisich**: Well, the other thing is that Comcast still has a lot of copper fiber. I mean copper and not fiber to house. [00:17:24] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, you're absolutely right. [00:17:26] **Nick Dragisich**: And you know, if we had a fiber provider, you could fiber to your house and increase your speeds significantly. [00:17:33] **Mike Bradley**: Yes. Yeah, you would put this up and down fiber. [00:17:36] **Matt Hirn**: Maybe it would incentivize Comcast to put fiber. [00:17:40] **Mike Bradley**: Well, you know, I think it probably would, right? I do. I think it probably would. [00:17:45] **Nick Kragness**: So, another um So, as a developing city, we have areas that are in the process of of having new developments. So, how would that work with the agreement? Would that be stubbed in or just they tap into it when a new development comes? [00:17:58] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, I mean they they would I think all the providers on new developments are, you know, they they work with the city and they work with the developers on making sure the facilities get in. So, but it wouldn't it wouldn't the franchise wouldn't necessarily require them to, but it makes the most financial sense when the when the development is going in to be putting in your facilities at that time. [00:18:22] **Nick Kragness**: But is that a part of their original agreement that's that's negotiated that they continue to build out? [00:18:27] **Mike Bradley**: Not well the buildout will be for sure. We don't tell them how to build out specifically. What other questions? [00:18:36] **Matt Hirn**: Little change topic. So, I know there's still some legal discussion about this and I I think from the packet it sounds like you feel pretty confident that even if um broadband does get reclassified as as a telecommunications that you think state law and probably saying this incorrectly, but state law would preempt that and we still would be okay with this agreement. I guess if you could just speak to that a little bit as far as you know what if the legal groundwork changes here a little bit and all of a sudden it doesn't have the same classification. Do we do we lose these franchise fees? What happens with the agreement? [00:19:10] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, the fun the fun thing uh about practicing in this space is that it's fluid. It's always changing. Um the the good news I think for us is that with with this decision that came out um in 2025 that ruled that that broadband is not a telecommunications um service. The reason why I think it's such a strong opinion now is because another Supreme Court decision had come out that said courts no longer give agencies deference when it comes to interpreting statutes. Okay. Um and so now we have a court decision that came after that decision that that other decision is called Lerbrite. Um and so now we have uh a decision that is not really subject to the FCC changing how um broadband is defined. So I think we have some regulatory certainty maybe for the first time that broadband is not a telecommunication service. It's another information service. That leads us to the state law. Where does broadband fall under state law? state law is really there isn't really a at least in municipal law context there isn't a there isn't a specific mention of broadband anywhere literally anywhere in state law. So, you're deciding is it a telecommunication service or is it a cable communication system? Those are essentially our choices right now. Um, could the law change? Um, of course, right? I mean, the telecommunicate or the the broadband companies could go to the legislature and ask for a change. We're prepared for that, by the way. Um, so that that could happen. They could take a city to court and and get a court to say that broadband is not a cable communication system. It's something else. It's possible, you know, and and what does that do? You know, it may terminate our franchises, you know, by law, but it's it's hard to know exactly what'll happen. But that's true. That's true with anything, though, right? I mean, let let me give you the example of of in in the cable television context. I'm old enough now to to remember when broadband wasn't really a thing and and the cable operators started um doing high-speed um cable internet service. Okay, this is in the late 90s, early 2000s. Initially, the cable operators called that a cable service and they paid franchise fees on it. So there was a couple of years where it was, you know, the cities did quite well on franchise fees. Um, but then in in 2002, they changed their mind, you know, just like that. There are no more franchise fees on on cabled internet services. Um, so that can happen and it's happened in the past, but there wouldn't really be any financial downside to the city outside if we would then lose that franchisee. It's not that we'd be on the I mean, they the Intrepid or a company like that for the buildout, right? [00:22:04] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. I don't I don't think so. I mean there is you know if let's say the city were to be sued right and along with the cable commission um you know then there would be some legal exposure there um we're um insured by the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust we would tender the defense to League of Minnesota city's insurance trust there would be some exposure at least with our deductible there again that's That's the risk. That's the risk. You get a lot of reward with franchising that we kind of went over. Um, but there is that risk for sure. What other questions? [00:22:42] **Nick Dragisich**: You had utilities on your list as well. We we don't even have utilities in the right of way in some of our areas of town. Can you talk to Excel? [00:22:52] **Mike Bradley**: Well, I I do Excel I do Excel franchising, too. So, yeah. keep us in mind. Yes. [00:23:01] **Matt Hirn**: Guess one more little topic on this. So I and again I know this is an end of one right now with Woodberry, but just going off of other franchised utilities. What is typically the um the downstream effect for the citizens as far as for the cost of the service? How does requiring the buildout across the whole city versus companies, you know, picking and choosing where they want to do this, what kind of impacts, if any, have you seen or, you know, from the the Comcast as they're fighting this and they're giving their counterarguments? You know, what are they saying as far as for the downstream financial costs to the the consumers? [00:23:41] **Mike Bradley**: Um, it's hard to know right now with the broadband franchising, but I'll give you another example of of where the city of North St. Paul decided to build out a fiber system on of their own. Um, that was met with significant um um competitive offers by Comcast and Century Link. at that time it was I don't know Quest or US West um and they came in and gave really good deals to the residents to not switch over to the city. So I think one of the results is that you get competitive benefits between the providers trying to get um customers that are leasing from the wholesale infrastructure whatever they're however they're doing it. [00:24:26] **Matt Hirn**: Okay. They're they're competing they start to compete on price. Sure. Right. Um you know and so you'll see competition on price. You'll also see competition on service. So the new companies coming in with fiber to the home will have a very very strong um upload and download speeds that you know a century link DSL won't be able to touch. Comcast won't even be able to touch it. Comcast has you know really pretty good internet service you know generally but it's nothing really compared to the fiber to the home. Yeah. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. I think it's a little baby off of what I was looking for. You know, again, sometimes I can see these types of things, they kind of end up being attacks in a sense, right? In the sense of, you know, if we ask a a company to make something above and beyond what the you know, their market analysis says they should do. Well, then what's what's their response to that? All right, I'm going to charge more to make up for these costs. Now, I don't know if that pertains to this situation because I do know there's a lot of grant money. So, I mean, maybe their financials work out when they're they're doing this where that's not the result of it. Um, that's just that is a really common complaint that will that I'll hear as well if you know whenever we do talk about franchise fees is, well, that's just a tax. It's a hidden tax, you know. [00:25:48] **Mike Bradley**: Yes. And again, I I counter argument there is, you know, if we say, hey, you know, where is this being directed to as far as funds? It's not the slush fund that, you know, it talks about in the the reading here, but it is a tax. No, no, it's it's not a tax, but [laughter] I hear I hear what you're saying. It's it's it's it is perceived to be a tax, right? It's perceived tax and um and that is legitimate. That's a policy decision that you know you and your man city management will you know work with the commission about what you know what is your tolerance level there because you're right when you charge a franchise fee it'll be perceived as a tax and if you charge a franchise fee it will be added on to a consumer's bill there's just no question about that that's but that's part of the reason why we kept the franchise fee at least in in the Woodbury area we kept it to be essentially the same as um what the cable operator pays which is 5%. [00:26:48] **Charles Cadenhead**: So the other communities in that in the south Washington adopted this franchise as well. Cottage Grove, Newport, they're all part of that. [00:26:57] **Mike Bradley**: The the answer to that question, mayor, is no. That this franchise uh was granted by the South Washington County Telecommunications Commission. Their commission is a little bit different than the Ramsey Washington Commission. Ram in Ramsey, Washington, the member cities approve the franchises. In South Washington, South Washington County, the telecommunications commission passes the franchise. So, it's just a little bit different there. Um, but the service area in the franchise is limited to the city of Woodbury in that instance. [00:27:32] **Charles Cadenhead**: So, everybody in Woodbury is on this new franchise system. Everybody has an opportunity to get broadband from [00:27:38] **Mike Bradley**: Well, we'll know in five years. [00:27:40] **Charles Cadenhead**: Oh, okay. [00:27:41] **Mike Bradley**: We'll know in five years, but yes, the the it's granted for the entire city of Woodbury. [00:27:46] **Charles Cadenhead**: Okay. [00:27:47] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. Yeah. Just and and members, mayor, just to kind of wrap things up, there really isn't any specific action that the council has to take. Um, I think if you want to give city management guidance on where you want to move, where you want to go moving forward with franchising, I think you give that guidance to your city management to say, "Yes, we think this um is a cable communication system. Yes, work with the with the commission. We'll of course work with your city attorney uh to make sure that everybody's on the same page, you know, moving forward." Um, but I think just to kind of wrap things up that if you're looking for some, you know, action or guidance, that's what you would want to do tonight, I think. [00:28:28] **Charles Cadenhead**: All right. Thank you. [00:28:30] **Mike Bradley**: Thank you, Mayor. [00:28:31] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Yes. Um, I just like to add I'm the city attorney and I just wanted to add some additional guidance that you should be aware of. I don't practice in this area. my colleague Bob Foes does and um I did ask him what he thought of it and um he has some serious concerns about this given that there's no statutory basis for a franchise for broadband and um obviously you know the city could get sued. Um it's covered by the league. I don't know if we want to be the test case for this. Maybe Woodbury will be. Um, and then the other thing is, okay, what if we tell people we have this franchise, you have to do it. There's no recourse for the city if the company refuses to obtain the franchise. So, they could just say, no, we're not going to do it. And then at that point, what do we do? You know, we could refuse the rightway permit, but we really don't have any statutory basis to do that because we didn't have any statutory basis to make them require a franchise. um we could bring a lawsuit to compel them to obtain the franchise. But once again, you know, we have no statutory authority. So, we don't have a lot of recourse. So, we might go ahead with all of this and then somebody might just ignore us and say we're not going to do it and you don't have the authority to to tell us to do it. And I guess that's kind of one of the other additional risks to the city that I just wanted to bring out. Um you know, it's and it's also I mean it is a claim on our insurance. I mean, we don't pay the full bill, but we do, you know, our premiums will go up and, you know, it's not just free representation to be the test case. [00:30:11] **Nick Dragisich**: Sarah, what if we approach as a cost recovery? We can prove there's a cost to accommodating utilities in the right of way and we can quantify what that cost is. And so, it's not a franchise fee. It's not a rightway permit. is we're covering the cost of allowing to be in our right of way in terms of that's our authority to require the franchise. [00:30:35] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Well, I mean I mean we'd have to make the broadband company wants to put you know fiber in our right of way because it's cheaper than negotiating with every land owner. We can say we we would allow you to do that but there's a cost to us for allowing you to be in the right of way and we want to recover that cost. Not a franchise fee, not a tax. We're recovering a cost. we can legitimately prove we will incur because that utility is in the rightway. I mean, I guess that's possible. It's a different way about it or maybe Mike can speak to that. I'm not the expert in this area. [00:31:18] **Mike Bradley**: Well, you you can you can recover that cost through permitting um to be honest. But then an annual cost, correct? Yeah. And and you can recover that depending on what your city code says. Um but you don't get any of the benefits of franchising and Right. Yeah. And I think that's where the the rubber hits the road. I think you're you're looking at franchising because of all these other benefits that um that come about. And the franchise fee isn't designed to be cost recovery. It's designed to be um rental for the public right ofway. And you know, it benefits the city and that it helps the general fund uh and it helps community media um through the um through the Ramsey Washington Commission. So, there are a lot of benefits. Um, and I'm sorry that we're I'm taking way too much time, so I apologize, mayor, but um, you know, there is a statutory basis for this. There's a reason why, um, a broadband company has agreed to get a franchise in the city of Woodbury. They wouldn't just do it otherwise. I've always said, you know, you know, either I'm on to something or I'm on something. And, what's the statutory basis? uh 238.02 subdivision 3 and subdivision 31, the definition of a cable communication system. [00:32:41] **Nick Dragisich**: I think you'd be surprised how how much those costs actually are. Back in 2008, I was expert witness for the city of De Mo in a $70 million lawsuit involving franchise fees. Yes. And at that time the cost of accommodating utilities in their right ofway was 17 excuse me $17 million a year for all the utilities. Uh we did the follow-up study for St. Paul and it was $11 million a year and so it's more than most people think. Um you know that was those were 10 15 years ago. [00:33:18] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. mayor and council members, you're so lucky to have him on your council because he has such a wealth of experience in this particular area. Um, I mean, you're absolutely right. And, um, it is worth looking at how you're recovering from all the providers because with franchising, you you know, depending on what your franchise says, of course, but with your franchise, you can recover all those right-of-way costs and receive the franchise fee. In addition to that, in the absence of authority for a franchise fee, you could turn to cost recovery. Yes. Yeah. That that was just my point. Yep. [00:33:59] **Charles Cadenhead**: All right. Thank you. Duly noted. Going to move into our commissioner council training with uh Miss Sonsalla. [00:34:07] **Mike Bradley**: Thanks for having me. Really nice to meet you. Yeah. I don't want to have that door behind. You have to get the train. Yeah. Something I [laughter] know what you're talking about. [00:34:21] **Nicole Miller**: Before Sarah starts, can I ask uh mayor and council, is there any more information on this topic that you would like or um should we bring it back again or do you have any direction to give me to con to continue talking to the cable commission about this or to stop or anything? [00:34:39] **Jeff Holtz**: I think gathering information is fine in in in my opinion it is. Um I think we got to do some more due diligence on it you know to make sure there's a little more firm understanding of some of the legal liability or you know what what could happen what the risks involved are uh before you you go head sail into it. [00:34:58] **Nick Dragisich**: Um I I think it'd be interesting to know if we'd find some place where they've done this, how has that affected the provision of services? So for instance, you know, we're here, we're pretty much Comcast and if we had another provider, another provider came in, I don't know, the city of XYZ did that. And what was the impact to their residents as a result of that competition? Did they get better service? that they get lower prices. Um, you know, I mean that makes it an informed decision because right now we're you pretty much you got Comcast or you can go satellite, I guess. [00:35:36] **Charles Cadenhead**: Yeah. But those are your two choices and fiber to the home would be the, you know, the ultimate, right? There is quantum fiber. I just checked my address through quantum and I could get it. At least they say I can. [00:35:50] **Nick Dragisich**: Lumen runs across the street from me. Yeah. through link. Century link. That's all I can get is Century Link. Is it fiber? No. Mine is It says 20. You get 20 speed or whatever. You get two. It's really slow and it's unpredictable. [00:36:11] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah, Quantum Fiber would be one of those companies that it's a broadband company that would need to get a franchise. [00:36:18] **Nick Dragisich**: That’ just be a good piece of information to have. There's no point going down the path if you can't quantify that there's this benefit to your residents from the competition and you know there's people who have done it. So yeah, correct. [00:36:34] **Matt Hirn**: I'm on board that just from the opposite perspective is I hope it goes that direction but just to give that information that says no the price doesn't go the opposite way because they're having to provide additional infrastructure than what would have been originally planned for. [00:36:47] **Nick Dragisich**: Well, there's two things. There's a price and and the service. You know, maybe you'd be willing to pay more if you doubled your internet speed or tripled your internet speed so you could download things faster. I mean, everyone has their own way of putting a value on things, but it would be interesting to know what those options were. What happens to the cost to the consumer as a result of multiple providers? You know, typically in capitalist systems, that's a good thing. But if we're forcing a buildout larger than what the companies would have otherwise done, I don't know if that's the case. And maybe we have to quantify the cost too and say the cost for a megabyte of speed or something. You know, I mean, again, some people would be willing to pay more if you got, you know, a copper telephone line. Uh, you might be willing to pay more if you have fiber optics that could, you know, can increase your speed by a factor of 20. [00:37:33] **Jeff Holtz**: For sure. I'll pay for it. might know some of those places like to see some electricity with that. [00:37:43] **Charles Cadenhead**: I see it from a backward planning standpoint. If the intended outcome is more access, then you determine what is the best path. And if it is franchising, if that's the only way to expand access, then we look to see what it is. But if there are other alternatives that don't involve that, fine. But I find it unacceptable that we have any properties in the city that don't have access to broadband. Correct. I I find that unacceptable. It's the year 2025. Grants exist at the state. We have commission. It's just the process of how do we get there? So I I whatever that process is, I don't care. To me, the first priority is access for everyone. [00:38:24] **Nick Dragisich**: The part that's bitter about that is if you go out in the rural parts of Minnesota where the state has provided grants, you got a cabin on a 40 acre parcel of land in the middle of nowhere that got fiber up to the cabin because the state has provided grant funding to do that in greater Minnesota. All right, I talked enough. I'm sorry. [00:38:43] **Charles Cadenhead**: Thanks everybody. [00:38:44] **Mike Bradley**: Thank you. Thanks much. [00:38:46] **Charles Cadenhead**: But we're lucky to have you. [00:38:48] **Mike Bradley**: Yeah. [00:38:49] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Yeah. I was waiting for the camera. We appreciate it. I've I've been uh worked with Mike in the past on these issues. Expert witness. Yeah. So, you know each other. Well, the Iowa the one went all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, too. and my testimony was upheld. So I memorialize an Iowa Supreme Court decision on the cost of utilities in the right. Did Nick tell the truth? It's not always tell the truth or not where they can prove you whether the opposition can prove you didn't. We'll go with it. They have you on the witness stand for 12 hours. Oh god. That's like eight cups of water. It was a piece of cake. I know what I was talking about. Right. Yeah. Okay. I pretended I wasn't hanging. No, I think that's a really good idea to put that on. seven years. You think they got it? I guess broadband is getting back at us. We can't get the internet up. They must have heard about franchise deal. [00:40:02] **Sarah Sonsalla**: But anyway, um I'm going to give the presentation. I'm Sarah Sonsalla, city attorney. You had in your packet a um PowerPoint presentation. Some of you might have it with you either on your device, which would be on it be on the city's website under the agenda center. you can pull it up that way. Um or if maybe you printed it out. I don't know. I don't think the city printed it out. So, if you don't have it on your device, just kind of try to follow along here. But, um basically, um I'm just going to give a it's a city council commissioner training and it's on a number of events, a number of issues. Um I'm the city attorney for the city of Lake Elmo and I've been the city attorney for 10 years. And when I started in 2016, the city was a very different place and um it's come a long way since then. And that's kind of one one of the reasons I'm doing this training is to keep things going well in Lake Elmo and we don't want to have any of these issues that we encountered in 2016. So, um most of these issues aren't things that we encountered in 2016, but I just wanted to to point out the reason for the training. Um now I'm on slide two for those of you that are following along. Um we're going to cover a number of topics in this presentation. Um one being the open mean law and then data practices and then the GIF law, conflicts of interest, meeting procedures, social media, city code requirements, evaluating applications, ordinance enforcement, and tips for effective participation. So, and then we'll have a question and answer period at the end, but feel free to ask questions as we go along the way. And I think most of these I think this is parks and planning commission and the council. So I think all these things do apply to all of you. So make sure you're paying attention to all the different topics. Um the introduction is that um there is a role of commissions in city government. Um you are appointed by the by the city council and your job is to advise and recommend direction to the city council. So they're looking at you to provide them with direction and give guidance to city staff and commissions and task forces on on various issues and then also assist in setting city policy. So you might want you know there's things you might want to work on in terms of an ordinance or whatnot reviewing that and giving recommendations to the council and then also serving as ambassadors to the city. So, you are an ambassador to the city. Say, I'm on the planning commission. I'm on the parks commission. You know, that's important and you represent the city and that's important to keep that in mind when you're out there on social media and whatnot. Um, the first topic we're going to cover is the open meeting law. And, um, this basically applies to all of you. And um it basically says that all meetings of a of a body, so it’ be the planning commission, parks commission, city council have to be open to the public. And there are certain provisions under the mean law where you can close the meeting. They're very nuanced like for the sale or purchase of real estate or to determine the price. Um another one would be certain personnel issues. Um probably not a lot that the commissions will encounter that they need to close the meeting, more so for the council. And um so the meetings have to be open to the public and we have to notice the meeting 3 days ahead of time. So we can't just say tomorrow we're going to have a meeting. We have to actually have three days notice. And the way we do that is we count that on our fingers. So it's basically the day you post the notice and then one, two, three in between and then the day that you have the meeting. So that's that's how the open mean law notice is is supposed to be determined. And then um the meeting should be held in city limits. Usually it's held here at city hall and it should be in an accessible room and did you get up? Okay, we're here. I'm just going to switch computers. And then the public must have access to the agenda materials, which I think they do in the back here. It's always in the back table. And um one one thing I will note there is a new change to the law that um talks about um allowing you this before you couldn't attend a meeting remotely. You could do that during COVID. Um we had certain pandemic exception to the open law that allowed people to conduct meetings remotely. But now they actually added an exception to open law that allows you to Is it up? Yep. Scroll up. Scroll up. Okay. Got it. Yep. Thank you. So, um this is probably a little more interesting. So, um basically it used to be that if you wanted to attend the meeting remotely, you could, but you had to have your camera on and the public needed to be able to see and hear you and the other members of the board or commission needed to see and hear you and then you had to be able to see and hear them, which usually wasn't an issue, especially now with technology today. But then the issue came up that you had to give notice to the public of where you were going to be and then also make that location accessible to the public. So if you were on vacation in Orlando, you had to say, "I'm at the Hilton in Orlando and here's my here I'll be in the lobby there. Come to my meeting." And most people just didn't feel comfortable giving that information and just said, "I'd just rather not participate in the meeting. It's not worth it." So, um, the legislature did away with that location requirement. So, that makes it a lot easier now to participate remotely because you can just say, "I'm not going to be there." And as long as you have, you know, you know, Zoom or Teams working and you have your camera on and the public can see and hear you and the board board of the council can see or hear you, you can participate in the meeting. So, that that's a big change and it's very nice to allow that and you count towards the quorum and everything. So, um, that's that's a change to the law that just happened this past year. So, you don't have to give your location, which is good. There are some other additional exceptions for remote attendance, but they don't really apply at this point with that one being the main the main exception. So, as I said, the open meeting law applies to city council and all city commissions. And I think it's important to talk about what a meeting is because I know you know this is obviously a meeting. Um, it's a formal meeting. we noticed it and you all came and you know but there are meetings where you don't even know you're in a meeting and that would be um a gathering of a quorum of your commission or the council where you meet up somewhere and you're all talking about city business is usually that that's the kicker is if you're talking about city business then you could be having a meeting and that's if you receive decide or discuss information on issues related to city business. So, you can all get together at a party and talk about, you know, what kind of drink you're having or the food or whatnot. That's fine. That's not city business. But once you start talking about, oh, did you watch the planning commission mean? What did you think, you know, did you what were your thoughts on that? What are you going to do when it comes before us? Then that is city business and you are, you know, basically discussing information and you're creating a meeting. But that's only if there's a quorum of you. So, if you're just talking with one other person, that's not a quorum. So, if it's a five member body, you need three people to be talking at at the same time. And um it's not necessary that there be any action. So, you can just be chatting about it and you're not doing anything, taking any formal action, making motions, whatnot for it to be considered a meeting. And like I said, it's not chance or social gathering. So, if you all happen to meet up at a restaurant or a bar and start talking, as long as you're not talking about city business, that's okay. even if there's three of you there. Um, and then also same with seminars and conferences. If you just all happen to be at the same like the League of Minnesota Cities conference listening to information, then you know that's also not city business. It's city general city business, but it's not like Elmo business. So that gets into serial meetings which um get kind of interesting and that's when um you start talking usually it can be on social media or it can be on by text or um by email. So that's less than a quorum. It's like if you and one other member are talking about something city business and then you bring in another then you talk to another member that's outside of that conversation and talk about the same thing and then you go back to the first person and say well I talked to so and so and this is what they told me. Then then you're having a serial meeting even though all three of you aren't talking together but by kind of having this chain conversation. It's it's a serial meeting because you're kind of trying to avoid the mean lab by saying well only two of us are talking about it. Well actually three of you are because one of you is going off and asking the opinion of one a third person and then bringing that back to the second person too so that they know what's going on in terms of the the issue. So, um that that can be caught up a lot in like text messages, social media, and then also by email. Um if you can kind of follow the chain, you can can kind of figure out who who was talking to who. And uh that can be a serious issue. And um you know, basically it comes down to what the you know, the purpose of the meeting was. You know, was it about city business or was it something else like we're just going to lunch? You know, that that's okay. And then you know, what was the intent of the officials participating in the meeting? Were they trying to circumvent the open meeting law by going around and pulling people about their opinions on a particular matter so that they would kind of know ahead of time what was going on before they had the meeting or was it just that you know they they had no intent of of doing that. So that can play into whether it's a a serial meeting but a serial meeting is a violation of the open mean law. Uh the next slide is uh the is um basically kind of what I already talked about that um email and social media communications can violate the open mean law when a quorum is involved in the topic of city business. So this can also happen on social media if somebody posts something on Facebook about how they don't like a particular project in the city and then you chime in and say, you know, I don't like it because of this. And then one of your co cohorts on the board chimes in and says, well, I don't like it because of that. And then then there's three of you on there and you're going back and forth with the residents about, you know, what what the pros and cons are about the project. then you know you're you're creating a a meeting right there. So it's important not to be engaging in social media um conversations about that kind of stuff. Um also state statute allows the use of social media for exchanges with the public. So you you can talk to people on social media. It's just that you have to be careful if there's others in the I guess you could say the room that are on your board commission or council. You don't want to um you know have a quorum issue where they're all all three of you are talking and responding and basically having a meeting right there on Facebook or Instagram. And then also with email, it's important to not reply all. So if the city administrator sends you an email about, you know, oh this application got postponed to the next month, and then somebody writes back, good. I'm glad I I hated that application. and I didn't want to talk about it, you know, and you hit reply all. That's going to everybody. So now all the members of the commission or the council know that you know you're upset about this application and you're happy that it got pulled and you know that could that could be a meeting issue too. So you don't want to hit reply all. And I think a lot of times communications from the city will say do not reply all. I know I do that when I send out um communications to the city council. I'll say do not reply all because I don't want them just doing that and then all of a sudden they they've created a meeting. And um just like email, the text texting can be a problem similar to email where you're texting one person and then texting another and it kind of collects into a into a serial meeting. And then um the best practice is to use city staff. So if you have a question, just go to city staff with it and try to get it answered that way instead of trying to figure out amongst yourselves and city staff can direct you to the the answer to that question. So that that's usually the best way to do it. And then they'll know too if somebody else has asked the same question and then they can just get back to everybody and say, "I've gotten a lot of questions on this. Here's the answer. And then, you know, that can be the end of the conversation. So, best practices for open meeting law, unless you're at a meeting, just basically avoid discussions with other council members and commissioners on city matters outside of a public meeting. So, not at social events, you know, not not on texting, not on social media, and not by email. I would just, you know, keep it with, you know, when you're at the meeting talking about city business. Especially too, we have issues where sometimes after there's always this little after meeting where the meeting's over, it's been adjourned, the public leaves, and then everybody sits around and talks about the meeting [laughter] and how it went. And you know, that that can be an issue, too. If there's a quorum of you there and you're saying, "Oh, we should have done this and we should have done that." You know, that that also can be a meeting. You know, you noticed it, you had everybody there, everybody thought it was over and they left and now you're still having a meeting. So, it's careful just to to get out of there when the time is done and not sit around and talk to people about the meeting. And then, um, basically, if you have questions about this, it's always good to reach out to city staff or myself and just say, "Here's here's what, you know, I'm having a graduation party. I want to invite the, you know, two other council members. Is that okay?" You know, and we'll say, "Yes, it is, but make sure you're not talking about city business and it's, you know, it's a social event. We don't need to notice it." I think we had one come up not that long ago with the that was the it was like a social event somewhere. Oh, was it the lakeside or Yeah. So, we talked it through to determine whether or not it needed to be noticed as a meeting because I mean that's the default. You can we can just notice it as a meeting and if you all go and don't talk about city business that's just fine and then you know we're covered. So, that's kind of the the default way to handle it. But obviously we don't want to do that for like a private private event. There are some penalties for violating the open mean law. One of them is personal liability. It's a $300 fine for intentional violations and the League of Minnesota cities, the city does have insurance through them. Um but the they can't pay that and the city can't pay that for you. So you that'll come out of your own pocket. So that's important to note. It's not a whole lot of money, but it's still not, you know, for something that you're doing where you're not getting paid. It's still, you know, a significant amount. Um, if there's more than three or more separate actions, then you forfeit office. That, you know, that has to be actually separate violations of the open mean law. And then the court may award reasonable cost dispersements and attorneys fees up to 13,000 for violations. um that may come out of the league's pocket or the city's pocket. Um I don't think it's anything you'd be personally liable for, but the city would have to pay that. And then and like I said before, you know, the city does pay a premium and its premium would go up for insurance because of that. And then um the city can go to the data practices office and get a an opinion on open mean law issues and also data practices issues. And that doesn't cost anything, which is very nice and it's good protection for the city because if we just really don't know the answer, it's better just to ask. And then we have that protection going forward. If they say yes, you know, it it would be a violation, then we say, okay, you know, thank you. I'm glad we know that we won't do it. But then if we go ahead and do it anyway, um even though they said that we should have not done that, then um there would be mandatory attorney fees if we did not comply with that data practices office. So that's important to note too. And that puts us right into data practices. And data practices um that applies to all all government data. So, if you're talking about your about city business on your phone and the communication concerning the city business is government data, even though it's on your private phone, it doesn't matter where you put it. Because I have people say, well, that's on my personal computer or that's on my phone. It doesn't matter and it's not a city phone or it's not a city computer. It doesn't matter. It's the data. Is it about the city? Is it city business? Then it's government data. So, um and same with personal email accounts. Those are also anything in there would be government data. That's city business. And um so you can't just hide it by sticking it in a certain account. Um it doesn't mean that the um so that means that if there's a data request that comes in, we have to get that data. If you have a city email account, which I know some of you do, that's easy because the city can just automatically pull that data right from your account and we don't have to ask you to search it. Um, I know some of you don't have city email accounts and that can, you know, then we're going to have to have you search it or worst case scenario, we get involved in litigation and we have to have somebody else search it and, you know, that that can get kind of time consuming for you and and the city. So best practice in that case would be to have a separate folder in your email account where you're saving the city emails so that if somebody says I want all of so and so's emails, you can say here they are. They're all in this folder. And don't self-edit the emails. So, don't sit there and go through them yourself and say, "Well, this email is not responsive to the request or or oh, I'm going to take out this person's name or I don't like this is embarrassing that I said that, so I'm going to redact that." Um, leave that all up to the city. So, just hand over the emails and the city will go through them and we'll we'll determine what needs to be produced and if it's responsive to the request, we'll we'll produce it. If we need to redact things, we will. But that you know that's something for the city to decide and not and not you which I know can be hard. [01:02:12] **Jeff Holtz**: So sir what is city data? So if I send an email to councelor holes and say you want to go grab a beer at the twin points is that city data? [01:02:22] **Sarah Sonsalla**: I would say that's transitory city data. So it's it's like it under the the city also has a records retention schedule. So you have the city has to hang on to data for a certain amount of time. And I don't think we have a email retention policy right now, do we? [01:02:40] **Nicole Miller**: No. [01:02:41] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Yeah. So, some cities have email retention policies where they say all emails that are 90 days old get wiped out because that way if a data request comes in, then we can say, you know, because I actually had this in another city. She wants all it's a former council member and she wants all data about her going back to 2020. Well, actually, even be beyond that, I guess. And it's like the city probably has all that and they don't have a data, you know, they don't have an email retention policy. So, um, you know, we're gonna have to produce all that that data, which is a lot. So, it'd be nice to be able to say to her, we only retain emails for 90 days and here's your 90 days of emails. [laughter] And, you know, and then with that, there's certain emails that you wouldn't under the retention policy, you wouldn't even need to retain. And that would be like the lunch emails. Those would could get thrown out right away, but I think they are city data. [01:03:38] **Jeff Holtz**: But you think that would be city data? [01:03:40] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Yeah. [01:03:41] **Jeff Holtz**: Interesting. [01:03:42] **Sarah Sonsalla**: You could try texting them instead. [01:03:43] **Jeff Holtz**: Would that be city data, too? [01:03:45] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Doesn't matter what form you use. [01:03:47] **Jeff Holtz**: What if it's to go to the dog park? [01:03:49] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Yeah. [laughter] City data. That's a really nice dog park. [01:03:55] **Nicole Miller**: So I since you're pausing right now um we had talked about this a little bit with the council and I was going to investigate to find out how much it is um for email only users um if we can you know we want to consider commissioners having city email and right now it is $400 a year per user and our metroet is investigating um starting in 27 a cheaper alternative so there is a price to it so [01:04:22] **Sarah Sonsalla**: And I should just go over the classifications of [laughter] of data. So under the data practices act, there's data that's always public and then there's data that's private, non-public like personnel data like you know basically there's like for like for personnel data like the employes name is public and how much they make is public. But then you know you get into disciplinary action you know those types of things. Those are are private. And then there's confidential protected non-public data. And that's data. So private data is some data that some people can have. Public data is data that everybody can have. And then confidential non-public data is data that nobody can have. And I guess the example that I always use for that is that um if you complain about your neighbor's property because their yard is a mess and the neighbor wants to know who complained about their property, they the city can't release that information to the neighbor. They can say we got a complaint, it's about this, but they can't say who made the complaint under any circumstances. So um that that's an example of confidential protected nonpublic data. So, I mean, you may come across some of that cuz some of you may have access to it for certain reasons. And it's important to make sure that you are aware of that so you're not sharing it with people that shouldn't have it. And then on you there there's um certain data that is public and that would be your name and home address and then a phone number or email address. So, it's whatever you prefer to be contacted by. You know, if you'd prefer to be contacted by email, that's fine. And then you don't have your phone number on there. Or if you want to have both, that's fine. Or if you just want to have the the email, that's fine, too. But it has to be one or the other. It can't be I don't want to be contacted. And then also your first and last states of service on the on the body. And I know the city probably doesn't necessarily collect all this information, but we'll have to provide it if there is a a data request. And then I don't know if any of you have ever received a data request, but in the event that you have, it's important to turn that over to the city, notify either the city administrator or the city clerk of the data request because the city is obligated to respond to that data request, even if it came in to you. Um, sometimes people just don't know who to direct things to. So, um, it's best that you hand it over to the city administrator or the city clerk, say, I got this data request, and they will work on responding to it. you you don't have to do that and um it's best that you don't do that because you might miss something and then get the city in trouble with that. So, um the city will decide, you know, what what they're requesting if it's public and then what information that it has that's responsive to that. And, you know, at that point they might if it does involve you, then they might, you know, that's when they might ask for emails or whatever that you might have on the subject matter. So the next topic is the gift law and there there's a statute on this and basically you're a local official under the gift law and since you are a local official you can only receive gifts of $5 or less in value. So, that's not a lot of money. And that's why when you go to the league conference, you don't see a lot of fancy items at the little exhibit hall because they they can only give out things that cost $5 or less. Um, and um it has to be something that are not something from not an interested person. So, um basically if you know a developer comes to you and says, "Would you like to go to the Vikings game? I have tickets." you know, and they're doing development in the city, then they're considered to be an interested person and it's a gift that has value because the tickets are expensive and you can't accept that gift because you're a local official and they're an interested person. So, that would violate the gift law. So, that that's basically the gift law. It's pretty straightforward. Um the city may accept donations. I know this happened with the with the anniversary. Um, we've received some donations from certain businesses and whatnot and the city can can do that. The council needs to accept those donations by resolution and that takes a four-fifth vote. So, there is a process for that. So, I mean, I had a council member in another city going around saying that they were going to be building a park and she was collecting donations and the city wasn't building a park. So, don't do that. Um, so, um, you know, it it's important that we go through the formal process with donations and and that they get actually given to the city and the city accepts them and the council accepts them by resolution and and they the council can most certainly do that. Um, we don't want to spend a lot of time or money or resources, you know, soliciting donations. So, um, I think at one point we had the council members doing that, not city staff. So, um, you know, there are some exceptions to the gift law and, um, basically insignificant monetary value, so something less than $5. And then plaques or momentos recognizing work, um, you know, if you get a plaque saying thank you for your service on the planning commission from some business, that that's fine. Um, and then all the little trinkets that you get at the league conference are fine, even though they're from businesses that may want the city's business, like engineering firms and law firms. And then the next statute is the conflicts of interest. Um, there's there's a statute on that and there's also a city code provision and this applies to the council and commission members. And this basically talks about do not participate in matters where you have a personal financial interest. And um if you think you might have a personal financial interest or a conflict of interest, it's really important because I get this all the I got it last night where you notify us ahead of time with your potential conflict so we can sort it out ahead of the meeting because it's really hard to do these analysis at the meeting when we don't have all the facts and these things are very fact specific. So for example, if you're a realtor and the city's considering buying property from one of your clients, we'd want to know are you going to receive a commission for that sale or not? And then is the brokerage is your brokerage, your employer going to receive compensation? And then if you are, if they are, then are you going to get a part of that too? Um, so those are the kind of things we're going to ask and we don't really want to be doing that at a public meeting. And then it's just a very fact specific analysis that needs to happen and that's why we ask that you just contact us ahead of time even if you're just wondering. And then um you know there are certain things that aren't conflicts and that's kind of what bothers me too is people will try to there's like a difficult vote on something and they don't want to vote on it and they will say well I have a conflict and it's like well what's your conflict and then they're like well that you know that's not you know that that's my church and you know my church is getting a cup and I I'm a member of that church and it's like well yeah but you don't have a financial interest in the church. You're just a member of the church. You can vote on it. Well, I you know, I don't I don't want to be mean to the church. I don't want to vote against it. And I just, you know, so that that's a, you know, not a conflict. [laughter] And you should be voting then. And, you know, that that's when you want to kind of bring things to us ahead of time so that we can figure it out before the meeting so we're not having these conversations at the meeting. And um, and the same goes for like a neighbor situation. If you have a neighbor coming in asking for something, you don't want to say, "Well, I have a conflict." Because you just don't want to tick off the neighbor. It's, you know, it really is most of the time it's a it's a personal financial interest. Although, there can be a public perception issue, too. If you're just way too involved in something and it's going to look really bad if you do vote on it, even though you don't technically have a a conflict, then you know, we might decide it's better just from a public perspective issue to not have you have you vote on it. So anyway, it takes a lot of analysis and it's something we should know about ahead of time if possible. So, I had this come up last night in a meeting where right at the meeting the council members there was a contract for a tourism bureau and she said, "Well, I I think I have a conflict." And like, "Well, what would that be?" And then she said, "Well, I'm on the board of the tourism bureau." And then, you know, then we're asking her, "Well, did you get compensated for that?" Well, no. Well, then that's fine, you know, but why didn't you ask us that ahead of time? So, um, and then also you do need to disclose your your conflicts. You can't just not vote and not tell people why. The next one is uh meeting procedures and the city uses um Robert's rules of order and um there's also some rules of or I don't know if they're order or what they are in the city code that we put in place in 2016 um that kind of go on like curfew which is how long a meeting can go on and how many times a member of the body can speak on a certain subject and these were needed when the city council meetings were going really long like till 3:00 in the morning and um they're not really necessary anymore, but we we have them if they're needed. They haven't really been needed in quite some time. So, um the typical meeting process is at least for city council is that you know first do the roll call and make sure everybody's there and we have a quorum and then you know reviewing and approving the agenda, approving the minutes and then going into the regular business and any public hearings that go along with that and then any other business um announcements from council members, staff members and then the future agenda items, upcoming meetings and then adjournment. So, it's pretty straightforward and you know, it's good to have a an outline for the meeting. And then now we're into social media. And the city the city has a presence on social media. Um it it does allow comments to be posted. I checked today to see if that was true. And um the city does have a social media policy for its social media pages. And that's important because people can post all kinds of bad things on social media and there are some times where the city is going to have to take them down. Like if they're very vulgar or very sexually explicit, they need to come down. And we need to be able to have a basis to say, you know, not that, oh, we didn't like you. We don't like you. We're taking it down. It's it's a violation of our policy. That's why we're taking it down. So that's why the city has a social media policy. then they can take it down without somebody claiming we're violating their first amendment rights. And the city does have a communications coordinator and that's Kathy Smith and she manages the city's social media pages and there are a number of social media pages Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube and Next Door. And I think the city mainly uses them for announcements and connecting with with residents. And then of course there's the city the city website. And as far as with the city goes, um obviously we want to make sure we comply with laws and that's where we don't want to get people posting stuff on social media that violates open law or we wouldn't want you to post private data that would violate the data practices act. And then um basically everybody being polite on social media which I don't know isn't happening elsewhere but should happen here. And then um the city's you know monitoring and controlling these these social media pages. So um keep that in mind and you know they are subject to review and deletion with in accordance with the city's social media policy. And then, you know, if there's something you think should be posted on there, like a big announcement, it might be best just to contact city staff Kathy Smith about, you know, what you think should be posted instead of I don't even know if anybody can post anybody else can post on behalf of the city. I don't think they can. So, you'll have to contact city staff to do that. And then, of course, your own personal social media, which is gets a little more complicated. um this is your personal social media sites expressing personal opinions. I think the one thing to always keep in mind is you do represent the city and you know people know that and you you can't be posting on things that will come before you on the commission or the council. So you can't say well I really hate this project and I'm not going to vote for it even though you haven't you know had the public hearing on it or whatnot. So you have to save those those opinions and the discussion for when you have the meeting and have that at the meeting happen just so you don't violate any open mean law issues. And then there's a bias issue I'll talk about later related to that. And then um it's important to make sure that you let people know that you represent the city. Um, I know some council members have their own separate social media account for um for their city business and then they have their personal account. Um, sometimes that can be a good practice because then you don't have everybody looking at your, you know, vacation pictures or whatnot. Um, so it's just, you know, what you know about the city and they know you're that it's clear that you're speaking on behalf of the city and and in your capacity as a council member or a commission member. Um, so that that can be one way to to go around to to kind of use that issue. And then if there's a like a data request, which social media pages are subject to the data practices law, then we would know where to it's similar to a separate email account. We would know where to find that information that would be responsive to the request. So it's kind of good practice maybe to have a separate social media account for your city business and then one for your personal business. And then there are some city code requirements for commissioners and one of them is residency in the city. That should be kind of self-explanatory. And then there are three-year terms and there are attendance requirements. I think they're a little bit different for parks versus planning commission. And then there is a removal requirement. Um, so commissioners are appointed, as you know, by the council. They can also be removed by the council. So, it doesn't mean you get to serve out your three-year term. If there becomes an issue, the council can remove you. Um, there is a provision in the city code regarding planning commissioners and when they can be removed, and they can be removed for exhibiting behavior disruptive to the good order and efficiency of the planning commission. That's kind of broad. [01:17:28] **Matt Hirn**: Why doesn't the parks commission have that? Why don't the planning commission? [01:17:34] **Sarah Sonsalla**: It must have been an issue with them. [laughter] because of Utah. Look in the mirror. Look at I'm well aware and you know I mean I actually I've helped a couple cities remove planning commissioners and you know it has to be done by the council and it has to be done in a public meeting and it it's not fun. So, so don't get yourself in that position, but you know, and then the next thing, this what might get you in this position would be um when you're evaluating applications. So, when you're evaluating applications, that's considered a quasi judicial act. And um when you're doing that, you're examining facts and then you're applying a legal standard to the facts and then rendering the decision. So basically, you know, if somebody comes in for a conditional use permit, you're, you know, looking at the facts, you know, does this meet the, you know, does this type of use, is it a conditional use in this zoning district? And then, you know, what what are those requirements that they have to meet in order to get the conditional use permit? That's a legal standard. And then if they meet those requirements, then saying yes, they should get the conditional use permit because they meet all the requirements that are in the code. And um this so quasi judicial decisions include a number of things not just conditional use permits but um interim use permits whether to grant a variance and then whether to approve like a preliminary plat or a subdivision. So a lot of land use decisions and it could also include like liquor licenses those kind of things that come to licenses that come before the council. So before making a quasi judicial decision, the city must provide the public with notice of the proposed action along with an opportunity for the public to be heard. So you have to have a public hearing and I think the planning commission bears the brunt of that most of the time. And the quasi judicial decision must be made by an impartial decision maker. And that's the key is you want to be impartial when you're having the public hearing and you're listening to the applicant talk about their application. and you shouldn't have any predisposed opinions about the the application at that point. And if you're writing on social media about it and how you hate it and you're organizing people to come to the meeting to speak against it, then it's clear that you're not impartial and you're making a quasi judicial decision. And this came up in a case that I bring up a lot. This is the Continental Property case in Minneapolis. And in this case, there was a very controversial conditional use permit variances that were needed for a mixeduse housing tower. And the city council denied the applications. And the developer ended up suing the city claiming that its due process rights were violated. And that was basically relying on the contact conduct of a single council member. and she was going around kind of organizing people to come and speak against the the project and mobilizing neighborhood opposition and also talking to her former her fellow council members about the project and how they shouldn't vote for it. And so the court found that she's taken a position in opposition and she exhibited a closed mind before the council even heard the matter and then she also adopted an advocacy role in opposition to the proposed project. So in in that case they said the city should not have denied the project because of that council member's behavior. So that that's important to keep in mind that you know your your activity can you know cause legal liability for the city and you know it can be by as simple as doing that on social media or actually going physically going around and asking people to attend the council meeting and speak against it. you know, you really need to avoid advocating a position until all the information is presented at the council or the commission meeting. And you know, you just need to be neutral and listen to both sides and then make your decision. And you know, be careful of any exparte communications either with the applicant or supporters opponents. I know these people like to contact you and you know I mean I think you can hear them out and hear what they have to say but you shouldn't be saying oh yeah yeah based on what you're saying I'm not going to vote for this you know I I think you just have to say thanks for your information I'll note it and move on and just you know disclose that when you're at the meeting and say you know the applicant called me and they wanted me to know this about the project and I thought you should all know that because they told me about it. So just be you know air on the side of disclosure to the entire body. Yes. [01:23:44] **Charles Cadenhead**: So to that point when an applicant because this and this happens when an applicant whether it's for a cup IUP whether it's for a variance and they think well I'm going to talk to the council before I talk to staff. I'm going to make sure this gets through staff. I'm not going to pay for my variance until I know council approves it. Well they can't and they shouldn't but they do. So do do we as a city inform them certain things to be like look you can but it's not worth your while or council has been trained they can listen but they're not going to give you opinion so it's not worth your time. Because there are instances where they invite us out to say come out when city staff is here so you can hear my case when it's not before the chamber. I mean, I think you can go out there and look at it or or collect information on it if they want to contact you and tell you about their project, but I don't think you can say you have my support, you know, just that that you have have the information and I think you should share it with at the meeting, you should share it with the other council members and say, "They provided me with this information and it's, this is what it was and I wanted to make sure everybody had it and but then I wouldn't I wouldn't and take a side with them." [01:24:54] **Nick Dragisich**: Sarah, that's been going on for many, many years. And often times they would call and say, "you know, come out and look at the sites and so on." And we just direct I just direct them right back to city staff. There was nothing that was ever gone. [01:25:08] **Sarah Sonsalla**: That's fine. You don't need to waste your time on it. [laughter] But if somebody's asking for a variance or they want to do something, it's okay to go out and look at the properties. Yes, it is. I mean, sometimes it can help if you can see it physically. I mean, I know I've had that where I've driven by just to see what it is that they're talking about. But you certainly don't commit to anything. [01:25:32] **Nick Dragisich**: No. And then that's a hard part. If you're out there standing there talking to them, it's going to be hard to say, "I didn't say that." [laughter] [01:25:39] **Sarah Sonsalla**: And don't don't reply all. Exactly. Yeah. Or so. Yeah. It it can it can get a little dicey, I think, if you're out there meeting with them. Um, the next subject is ordinance enforcement. Um, and I just like to say that city council members and commissioners don't have any authority to enforce the city's ordinances. And so if you encounter an ordinance violation, you should report that to the appropriate city staff person. And then they'll determine if there's been a violation and whether any enforcement action should be taken by the city. If enforcement action is to be taken, then they'll ensure that it gets taken. And that's important because I mean sometimes I mean I get questions even from city staff where they say we think there's a violation here but we're not sure you know can you look at it here's the code provision we think they're violating can you take a look at it and then we have to kind of do an analysis to figure out if they are in fact violating it and you know that's not something you need to be doing and you know usually don't have the expertise to do that anyway. That's city staff and the city attorney trying to figure that out. Um otherwise, if you take it upon yourself to try to figure all that out, you could subject the city to liability if it's found that there's not a violation of the ordinance and the violator um suffers damages. We actually had this in another city where I think it was a city council member that was going around and like with the building official and saying that their their garages that these people were building were not meeting code and he was reporting it to their insurance and and one of them made a claim against the city for him doing that and it got to be pretty pretty dicey. So, um, it's just, you know, that's what city staff is here for. So, just just like anybody else, just report it and say, "I think there might be a violation here, and here's what here's what I know and here's the information. Can you look into it for me?" And I'm sure they'd be happy to look into it and get back to you with what they decide to do about it. And, um, the next one is tips for effective meeting participation. Um, come to the meeting with a positive attitude. I know these aren't fun, but [laughter] it's important to kind of have a positive att attitude and an open mind. And then be on time. It doesn't help too if you're coming in 20 minutes, an hour late. And then also be prepared for the meeting. Read your packet in advance. I always read the packet in advance. And you know, it can be a lot to read, but it's important to read that ahead of time. There's a lot of important information in that. And then you're not asking questions that have probably already been as answered in the packet. Um, and then think about what's best for the entire city. So, you may not like the project because you don't, you know, let's say it was, you know, the Dairy Queen and you don't like Dairy Queens because you had a bad experience there. Well, you know, what do other people think about Dairy Queen? You know, I think they would like that. So, you have to think about what's best for the entire city, not just yourself. And then, um, as we were just talking about, you know, you can visit the location in advance. that can be helpful in certain situations to see um you know what's going on with the property and what it is exactly that they're asking for and what the layout of it is. Um but you can't really go on people's property unless they invite you. So don't go um you know walking on people's property. As I say, you can go where the Girl Scouts can go. um you can't go into their backyard and start digging around without their permission. So, so kind of keep that in mind when you're, you know, and usually it's more of a you contact the applicant or they contact you and say, "Do you want to see this?" And you can look at it that way. And then, um in the meeting, make sure that you're allowing group participation. So, make sure you get kind of a weighin from everybody on the commission or the council so that everybody participates. And then just be a good listener. That was a problem back in 2016. [laughter] It's not really a problem now, but you know, make sure you're taking other people's opinions into into account. And then if you do have questions, this is important, I think. Um, make sure you contact city staff ahead of time because it's a lot easier to answer the questions ahead of time than at the meeting if we're having to dig up information last minute um or we have to contact somebody. um it just makes more sense to know about that ahead of time and not be caught off guard. So, and then also make sure you contact city staff if you can't attend. Um, as I said, there are remote attendance ways. So, I mean, there might be a way to make it work if you're willing to put in the time while you're on vacation or whatnot, but it's also for quorum. I mean, I would hate it if, you know, there's a a big snowstorm and people come and we don't have a quorum and everybody made an effort to get here and, you know, put their lives in danger and all drove here and then find out we don't have a quorum and then we find out later that somebody had some event they had to go to and that's why they're not here and that's why we don't have a quorum if we would have known that we would have just canceled the meeting. And then also just for you know public hearings and whatnot, we need to know if we have a quorum. we need to we need to schedule all that stuff. So, it's important to let people know if you're not going to be there and you know, we can either make a way for you to attend remotely or just know in advance that we're not going to have that particular member there and we may not have a quorum if we don't have a certain number. So, with that, I am ready for any questions you have. It's kind of a lot of information. What are the thoughts on commission members using a city email versus their own email for business? Just curious [01:31:37] **Matt Hirn**: that my thoughts or what their thoughts are? [01:31:41] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Their thoughts. My thoughts thoughts on that really don't matter right now. [01:31:46] **Matt Hirn**: I know. I know. I'm not paying for it. [laughter] yearly. It is, but if it's important to the members, you're volunteers, right? And so, I guess my adage and my opinion would be if that's important to you to make sure that you I don't want people rooting around in my personal email account for information that I'm volunteering to do for the city, then that's important. I to me anyway. Maybe it's not important to everybody, but I just, you know, [01:32:15] **Nick Dragisich**: I think, but I don't like my personal email. I'll Yeah. I think the key is too is Yeah. I mean, we could do it as an option if that's what you want to do, right? Um, just something we we'd budget for. I think you'd want to make sure that they're going to use it. You know, I wouldn't want to, you know, have this email account I'm not going to use and then we pay for it and then [01:32:41] **Matt Hirn**: Micah, how you know, Micah, I'm listening. All right. I mean, how often do you do we have emails? I don't want No, I I don't think the I don't think the volume is there to be a I understand the premise of it, but I don't I don't know what I don't need I don't need another email. I'm not going to check it. [01:33:05] **Nick Dragisich**: Well, that's the issue. if you're not going to check it. You know, I actually I actually set up one. It was Peter Castler Lake Elmo Parks or something like that at Gmail and I just never used it. Because I don't want another email. [01:33:23] **Matt Hirn**: All right. Just want to be sensitive to your privacy and what you want or don't feel you need. Certainly, if that's something you want. [01:33:31] **Nick Dragisich**: If you're talking city vehicle, you know, I think we could all use one of those. Tom had some car issues recently. That's I don't know if the hass will be worth it. Right. Drew noted. Put a little tracker on it. Know where you're at all the time. And Tom's going 80 and a 60. [01:33:51] **Charles Cadenhead**: So I I guess if you know I'd leave it up to you. If it's Nepson, cool. If you're fine with the way things are, if you think that's something you'd like to talk to, talk to either um Adam or Jason and they can work with Nicole or whoever Nicole assigns to to set that up for you. I guess I'll just I'll leave it to that. And I should note as planning commissioners, Charles and I got multiple data requests. [01:34:16] **Sarah Sonsalla**: Oh, really? [01:34:19] **Charles Cadenhead**: Yes. You guys must have been doing some bad things, huh? [laughter] And it was a pain because it was now I had done the same thing where I created a separate Gmail just for that. [01:34:31] **Sarah Sonsalla**: But it's still a pain. Yeah. [01:34:33] **Charles Cadenhead**: And it like there's pressure. It's like you're a volunteer. Oh my god, there's data requests. Like like there's over something. I'm not even going to comment, but yeah, we had data requests multiple as as commissioners. I mean, it was a couple of times. I don't I don't remember how many times it was, but it's just some another something to deal with. And you know, maybe you just like some people say, just keep everything in one folder and say, "Oh, here here's all my stuff that I've had for planning commission or parts commission." So, interesting. about that $5 gift. Any other questions for Msala? [01:35:19] **Nick Dragisich**: I've got a quick question, Sarah. Um, this is back a while, but there was a person who on the council years and years ago and their aunt was an in LLC, but nobody really knew it and they were purchasing land here in Lake Elmo for future development type thing. is how does that as long as he doesn't finan didn't financially benefit [01:35:41] **Sarah Sonsalla**: yeah I mean that would be the question I guess you know [01:35:45] **Nick Dragisich**: it's kind of weird [01:35:47] **Sarah Sonsalla**: yeah you would have to ask that question to them to determine if there is a financial interest but just you know a family member that's probably okay especially if it's an aunt I mean seems pretty far removed but um yeah it did but like I said it was just something that came out but That's, you know, something we'd want to look at ahead of time and not at the meeting. Well, it wasn't that it [01:36:13] **Charles Cadenhead**: all right. Call a point of privilege for you've been here for hour and a half. Get up, stretch your legs. Five minutes. We'll come back. Use the restroom if you need to get up the stretch. All right. Well, we're back. Thank you everybody for taking care of that. Now, we're going to talk about or have our joint planning commission and city council workshop. [01:36:39] **Sophia Jensen**: Miss Jensen. Um, so first I wanted to start off by reviewing what the planning commission accomplished in 2025. In 2025, the planning commission either completely checked off the list or at least started all items on the work plan. So this is one of the first times I've seen that get done. So that is impressive. Um, I'm not going to go line item by line item, but if there's any questions, we can circle back to it. And looking at 2026, so staff use the same format as 2025. Um, there are some carryover annual items. The items with the blue circles are new for 2026 and so I will go item by item, but we can stop if there's any questions. So the first is processing housekeeping amendments identified in 2025. This is a standard item that's been on every work plan. Next is reviewing short-term rental registration and regulation ordinance. This was started in 2025 and will be carried through 2026. Reviewing the CIP is an annual item. Uh we added preparing for the 2050 comp plan process. So, we're in the early planning stages. I expect this to pick up as we near 2029. Um provide training to the planning commission. This is an annual item. The next three items are related to city projects or city property. The first is land use applications for the old fireh hall and parks building. Land use applications then for the 76 acre park and land use applications for the 180 acre 3M property. Moving on to the next item is holding the Janu the annual joint planning commission and city council work session which is being held tonight. Um next item is reviewing AURs. The city has a handful of AU au that are expiring soon. So reviewing those and determining if those need updates. Um continuing our sustainability efforts through gold leaf B3 and green steps. in a new item that was recommended by the planning commission promoting open space developments and wildlife habitat corridors. And I think the last one is cut off, but it's processing land use applications um as they're requested by developers or property owners. So, um, here for feedback if there's any comments or changes to the 2026 plan or if there's any other items council or commissioner would like to discuss since we are at a joint session. Um, and just this is slated for city council on 23 for final adoption. So, I'll open it up to the commission and council. [01:39:41] **Nick Dragisich**: Uh, we're not going to be able to meet on. Is that correct? [01:39:44] **Sophia Jensen**: That is correct. We are looking at alternative date. There's a Republican caucus and I guess cities can't be caucus. Okay. Sometime early February. Yeah. February 3rd, right? [01:39:56] **Matt Hirn**: Question. So what does prepare for the 2050 comp plan encompass? [01:40:02] **Sophia Jensen**: I think at this stage it's it's very high level mostly on city staff. um hiring a consultant and figuring out that community engagement. But as we create an engagement plan, sharing that through the planning commission, getting their feedback, um I expect this to be on the work plan through comp plan adoption. [01:40:24] **Nick Dragisich**: Sure. Can somebody provide some information on the promote open space developments and wild life habitat corridors? I guess I missed that previously. [01:40:34] **Sophia Jensen**: Yeah, that was something we um just added in our last meeting. But with the open space uh developments um just like to take into consideration the corridors for the wildlife coming through the city as well. Migration of the birds. We've got we've had black bears and coyotes and you name it, they're all here. Just we need to share our space with them. I think that's a whole different I'd like to add add a few things. Um, number one, the city of Lake Elmo has always been historically environmentally friendly and very sensitive to things. That's one of the reasons many people came here to moved here. And many years ago supposedly I when I was on the council and sitting up there the Wheeler dealers came and said we can give you Bloomington and the res we we went out to the residents said do you want to be like Bloomington and they said no. So how can Lake Elmo retain its identity and still its protection of our and of our sensitive environmental areas that we do have left? We've lost a lot of them as you well know through some of the development. But what can we do to sustain it? Because it's Lake Elmo Parks and that was always a strong thing. And those of you that are relatively new to the area, you might not know that the regional park reserve was going to be a garbage dump. It was going to be a a municipal garbage dump for the city of Lake Elmo. Not Lake Elmo, the the Twin Cities. And we successfully fought it. Fought it. So whenever people think I get really excited about our preserving some of our natural amenities that we do have left, that's one of the reasons why is that that that tends to be part of the comp plan, does it not? Right. the comp plan is coming up and and Gail Cedarberg is our district 11 council member that we're supposed to be working with with Met Council and as I recall I think they're projecting for 2050 18,000 like 800 population total. [01:42:38] **Nick Dragisich**: Well, the old comp plan you look at it and the 18,000 was calculated to be in 2030 and that was 2030. Now they're pushing it to 2050. Yep. So, you know, that's like 4,000 people different from where we were 5,000 where we are now. So, that's 2050, which is I'll be dead and gone by then. But but hopefully somebody else will be still fighting. I would like Lake Elmo to retain some kind of its own identity and and one of the things that's really bothered me when I quick saw when I saw this, you know, process of land for the old fire hall and parks building. That's going to be exciting to work on that one. uh process the land use for the 76 acre park. I have a big problem with that when it's a number three on ours and it's a number one on the parks commission. And um I I think there's some issues there. We have the 180 acres that is sitting up by what is it ideal whatever whatever up by target I guess I'll say and um and I concern about that because some of the background material I read which the city provided you know some of these venues will bring in you know a 100 teams a weekend and I kind of think of that between two environmental parks as being very unsustainable. That's a lot of people. And the cost, too. They're talking what, 25 million? That's a lot of money. And it would be nice if our city would go to the residents, the taxpayers, and put something on the ballot. I know you discussed it, but I think it was put off for until next year or this year now. [01:44:24] **Charles Cadenhead**: Process is just starting. So, yeah, there will be a lot of community involvement in in that. That's certainly one of the because I think it's $60,000 plus expenses that's been projected for a consultant to come and kind of talk. And to those of us that kind of had the depression era, that's a lot of money, right? Or something that when our water system is really where they should be putting our focus for we have clean, good, fresh drinking water that's safe. The other thing we talked about may be was community involvement process and then doing a scientific valid survey to check what people really want in that recreation area. Yep. [01:45:10] **Charles Cadenhead**: Question for Sophia for Jason. When it comes to wildlife corridors I mean I like the concept as well. I'm wondering from a planning standpoint what does that look like? So I know we don't necessarily that's not a required chapter for the 2040 comp plan. No, wildlife. Well, wild wildlife corridors are like what was went between Well, I used to live Taran Park and the regional park reserves that used to be a big wildlife corridor and then it would go the whole way down or along the railroad tracks kind of near where you live, you know, Reed Park and that thing that area. So, it's not a part of the comp plan directly, but there's parts with in terms of open space and how we zone. What does it look like from a planning standpoint? Because it there are ways to help integrate it, but there are also things that Well, I'm just curious like what what do staff see for how this looks? Is it something where it's a code update where it's something that's part of the 2050 plan? Is it something for certain areas to make sure that this this is an opportunity that exists in this part of town? So that means maybe a different zoning like what does that look like? And I you don't have an idea. [01:46:22] **Sophia Jensen**: Yeah, I mean, so what we talked about is with open space developments, being able to leave, you know, 50% open space for these corridors, if it was a bigger plan and understanding how this would affect the entire city, that's something we want to look at through the comp plan and making sure because we have this like designation, I think it's like public parks, B, public, semi-public, PSP. Yeah. So, that that is there in parts of the code. So, we would have to be really evaluating like where they're necessary or useful and then seeing if it's a combination of open space developments or just setting aside land to be public. [01:47:04] **Jeff Holtz**: I believe there's a map that was generated by the Washington Conservation District that shows the wildlife corridors right now. Right. I feel like it's sim some somewhat like the um the trail system. It needs to be tied and strung together and so they can move from one area of the city through through the city. Like right now, if you look at where the the lakes are um the triil lakes and how they kind of wind down and then they you got the open space in between there that gets to Sunfish Lake and then you cross over the road and you get on into the park reserve and they go on down to to the river or wherever they're going from there. But yeah, Washington County Soil and Conservation, there's a there's just a group of people there that would just love to help come out and give talks or talk to people and it and that's where I got the that map originally, the the the u the wildlife corridors. And that's what kind of sp kind of hit me the other well, it was last year. I said, "Hey, this is a good idea." And it's better to incorporate something like that now rather than try to retrofit something. So perhaps we could I if you want me to contact soil and water conservation again and get the map or you can probably pull it up on the computer staff can do but yes uh but curiosity then is because we are starting to come up with a 2050 plan. Yes. Legally have to have zoning that can accommodate a certain population. So 4,000 more. Correct. Correct. So I I fully get it. It's it's going to have to be a balancing act. That's why I'm curious from a process standpoint what that because it's obviously there's going to be certain areas where it's not possible. And if there are certain areas where it is, absolutely. I account for it as well. Like we have conservation in town. So those could qualify for corridors. And if we can find a way to maybe engage the community to participate in that. I know that my neighbor right now is considering a conservation easement. It's a big piece of property. I'm willing to throw some of my property in. My two neighbors already have it, so there's already the start to a corridor. Gotcha. Thank you. [01:49:12] **Matt Hirn**: I think the other thing on this list that I just wanted to just see if we could just talk about a little bit more are the short-term rentals. Um, we have the the bed and breakfast right now that are owner occupied and and and that's fine, but the the statistics out there of the ones that we have, um, eight of them of the 11 are not registered. Some of them are owner occupied, some of them are not. So before I feel like before we can move forward and take on short-term rentals anywhere, we should manage the 11 that we currently have, they either need to be licensed or told that they can no longer exist. [01:49:48] **Jeff Holtz**: Agree. I agree with that. Thank you so much. We got emails from uh the VBO people or at least I did on my city council email about um the importance of them and they want to come and talk to us and you know I think that's a local decision. Do we want to allow these or not first and if we decide that we think short-term rentals are are appropriate in certain districts or whatever then we might be I might be able to listen to something else. First, we have to make that decision because they're currently not. [01:50:23] **Matt Hirn**: We just I just want to make sure we're all talking about the same thing because the the bed and breakfast right now is an owner occupant only. Yep. And they they own the property, they're homesteaded, and so whether they're in the house at the same time as the renters, I don't think that really matters as long as they're the the homestead. The short-term rentals are investorowned. And the last three that are, and I don't think any of them are registered, that were purchased and are currently being used are um one in 2023 and two in 2024, but they were purchased just for short-term rentals. And so, they're not following city code. And so, I think we need to be able to do or um ordinance enforcement first before we can take on something even bigger. That's And do we want in investors owning our homes? I mean, we have a housing shortage. So, I mean, I'd rather see res a family purchase that home than to have an outside investor that's with a revolving door of people coming through. And as far as property rights go, I think we should take into consideration more the citizens and what their property rights are that are next to the house that an investor is looking at purchasing. I might be wrong, but I don't think we've received any complaints or ordinance checks on any of these properties. That would that would necessitate a a uh a check on that and an enforcement of the code really. Um but to date, my knowledge is that has not happened. [01:51:56] **Matt Hirn**: I'm kind of confused. I a short-term rental wouldn't necessarily have to be investorowned. I mean, it could be a a family that has a property that they rent out and it could be long-term or it could be short-term, but it could certainly be Yep. It's It's not their primary residence then though. It could be then their than their then their bed and breakfast. The city allows it. We don't have a code or an ordinance for that right now is what I think you're getting at. We do have one for just and we also have hotels, motel, and ins that are in our code that are considered short-term rentals. They're they're the same type of transient um consumers that are using those spaces. So, I I guess I just feel like I don't think it's fair to open it up to the bring in short-term rentals into existing neighborhoods. Now, HOA might not not allow it. So those people are taken care of. But what about the people in the city that that aren't in an HOA? Then then if we're going to do a cop for those, then every time one of those come up, the homeowners have to go down to the city and take their time and coordinate and go through a lot of work to try to prevent that from moving in next door to them. And if I recall, we were uh we did meet on this is that November December correct? City council had a workshop in November. Planning Commission discussed it in December. And so last was the community development group was doing some research and getting some more information together on that topic. I do think coming to a decision about it would be a good thing for 2026. Let's decide what, you know, if we're if we're going to allow them on our conditions and or if we're not, but whatever. We should have something in our code that addresses them, either legal, illegal, or would any of you anticipate doing long-term rental licensing, which Lake Elmo doesn't do now? Is that something of a concern? [01:54:15] **Charles Cadenhead**: I would highly, my initial thought is the cost for licensing and for inspections. It it was my gut because right now the reason why there are instances that are out of compliance is we have limited staff and we operate based upon complaints. No one has substantiated a complaint to staff to go and investigate. If that occurred, they would. In the case of long term, the at least the feedback I've heard from other cities is if you do that, beware because you're the cost for staff is massive and you're hiring a massive amount of FTEEs and there might might be a value gain for Woodbury or Still Water. I don't know if there's a a value gain for us, but at least that's where I I stay. [01:54:57] **Matt Hirn**: So, I guess I I'm just I'm confused as to whether long-term long-term rental isn't allowed by ordinance. So, uh, so is that should there be complaints by for people renting their house long term? [01:55:09] **Charles Cadenhead**: I don't think a long-term rental is as big of a problem because the neighbors know who's living there. They know that that person has a lease for a month. Long-term rental is protected by fair housing. So, anything over 30 days, you can't discriminate. So, Sure. But you could require a license for You could. You could. Yep. When is the timeline for the next discussions and processing of any recommendations? [01:55:40] **Sophia Jensen**: It could be fairly soon. We just have to look at the schedule. One of the questions that we're going to ask is just working with the county because the county permits bed and breakfast also. So, could this all be done through the county? And then we talked about what happens if you have people that are in violation or of the noise ordinance that we discussed like who enforces that you know cuz that's can be difficult if it's at night during the weekend. So we're going to talk to them and just see eight of the 11 that we currently have in town are not registered. They're not in compliance. So, oh, eight of 11, what of the people that are calling them that are on Airbnb or Verbbo as a short-term rental? So, three of them are in there's three of them that are How are they in compliance? I'll get you the exact. Seven are registered. Um, seven are registered. four are not registered. Five of the seven are non-homesteaded. Three of the four are nonhomesteaded. So, eight of them are non-homestead. So they're not they're not registered with bed and with the city. There's only seven of them that are registered with the city. So some are registered as bed and breakfast and then they will place those on Airbnb. So they could be owner occupied, right? But they're not all owner occupied. So they're not in compliance with the signed. They're saying they're owner occupant and they're really not. Gotcha. I mean, it's really easy to see when you go out and look at the public record. Um, you can look them up. You can look up their homestead status. You can look at when they purchased it. They're necessary and I don't think we should have them everywhere in town. If if you want them, put them in a new new development somewhere where the neighbors are expecting it versus somebody to be surprised by them moving in next door. I mean, I don't have kids, but if I had kids, I for sure wouldn't want one of these next to my house. It's kind of like the pickle ball guy. He's got the pickle ball court now and his kids and trying to figure out how to solve that problem. Well, the thing is I that we should discuss in 2026, which is what this is saying, right? It's not a decision that has to be made. is saying we need to figure it out. Correct. Dial up, but I think that's it's obviously there needs to be more discussion. [01:58:35] **Charles Cadenhead**: Okay. All right. It'll be out on city council consent sometime early February. got nothing going on in February 14th. I mean, we have a meeting then. No. Maybe we should just be thankful that ICE hasn't found out about those eight. I don't think any of them are non US citizens, but I can look at my list. I just meant as a place to stay. Oh, yeah. They need a place to stay. Yeah. Yeah. Parks, the one that we can't remove people from. [01:59:17] **Adam Swanepoel**: So, yes, just to quickly go over the parks uh 2026 parks commission work plan. Um a couple years ago, we actually worked on the priority level. Um and we'll talk about that in just a little bit. um where we went handinand with the planning commission. So things did kind of correlate with one another. So as for the parks, uh one of the our items on for 2026 is to review the Washington County Central Greenway Trail Plan and other county CIP projects near Lake Elmo. That's uh that's just in general to uh bring more insight to our parks commission of you know how we can look further down the road of our current projects projects they have in line and really align some of our our our trail projects uh as that goes forward. Our second one is review uh future neighborhood playground replacements and schedule priority. This actually come from a prior um workshop that the council and parks commission had together um and just in general of looking at different amenities for some of these neighborhood parks and really prioritizing what playgrounds need to be replaced um and maybe eliminating some of those throughout the our system. Um so we're not on this continuous uh 26-year replacement policy over the years. Our third item is uh pave the dog park um and parking trails or sorry the dog parking lot and trails in that area. Uh it's just a small portion of that trail just the entrance of of the uh the de dlatching area. Um I'll work directly with our our engineering department with that. The uh as far as the status and timing of that will come with our construction projects. um they'll work with uh the the contractor to uh apply that throughout the season. So, we're probably looking at midsummer to late um to late summer for that project. Court resurfacing in Dematraville, Carriage, and Tablin. We do have three basketball courts in those areas. U projects with that is to just kind of protect our current investments of our amenities um and just increase our our you know the longevity of those uh of those court services. So, um you'll see kind of at a Dematro that's really starting to deteriorate a little bit. So, if we can get on top of those things just to um to help help the longevity of those to keep our assets up. Um select a location, install a park pavilion. So, a couple years ago, we did put in our parks master plan or CIP, I should say, is to install five pavilions throughout the our parks. And the biggest part of that was to just bring some additional shade to our parks. I think we were having um some requests from our citizens just to have a place to sit um place for uh maybe parents to watch their kid play on the playground and things like that. So um we did put in their CIP we'll work on locations throughout those throughout this year uh where we'd like to prioritize where to place those, but also select where that first one might go and what those pavilions will look like in the in the years to come. Uh Ridge Park playground replacement. Again, um some of these things will come before this. I think are not only our priorities and our playground but also our selection of where these are going to be. So um so probably later on we're probably looking at late 2026 with that one. Again, that also goes right in line with our Tablein Park playground replacement. After that priority list, we'll get a better idea of where that lines up um in a replacement policy or in a replacement for 2026. Review and mitigate the pickleball noise at Pebble Park. I did bring this up um with our parks commission in our December meeting and they did there's a couple members that are here tonight that would like to talk a little bit more may get some other information uh from city council uh in regards to that. It is pretty costly in order to do two sides of that but we do want to um um discuss that if if people are willing to. So uh develop a Lions Park master plan. This was an idea that was brought up again uh late fall last year. Uh this idea was generated uh not only from our 2024 parks master plan, but also with some imple implementations we plan to do with that park with our concession stand, with our pickle ball courts, ice arena, uh our parking lots. How do we generate that into um what's the future of that? What does that really look like with our updates to our playground this year? um what's the future of that park from, you know, in possibly that 2050 comp plan, right? So as we look ahead, where does that baseball field lie? What are uh what do those other amenities apply to that park? So we are looking at a parksmaster small Lions parkm plan for that. Um one thing that was added by the parks commission at our November meeting was to review the park use policy. Uh we did review that last year and updated it from not being looked at for probably about five years. So we did review that. uh they'd like to come back and just kind of maybe put that on the agenda every year just to review that, update that, see what's working, see what's not working, um and keep that updated. Uh onto our maintenance side, just our continuous park needs assessment, reviewing those on a yearly basis, what's needed, what's being asked by our our citizens to apply to our parks. asphalt trailer maintenance. We do do inspections including crack filling um and additional inspections as far as with our engineering department to fulfill our crack filling or sorry our crack filling and seal coating. Our staff does do playground and park inspections on a weekly basis and monthly basis as far as playgrounds and our park trail winter maintenance. That was something that's been brought up a couple times in city council, but also um through our parks commission and where does that lie? um you know, um how does public works get involved, the cost and effectiveness of that? Additional park incentives. Um again, tonight we'll hold our parks commission and city council workshop. Plan for a multis-port complex and park land use. Um this came up late last fall, November, December. Again, um parks commission really wants to be involved with that. I think one of their comments was is that they possibly weren't being had the information up in hand. So, you know, in regards to that, they just want to make sure that someone's at the table with conversations with that. So, that's why they put that as a priority one versus separate from um um the planning commission being at a three. So, they just want to make sure that, you know, those things are being brought back to those ideas are being presented as well. Park tree planting has always been on our um our our work plan uh just to implement trees throughout our park system. Uh continue that shade structure that's there. Uh but also just um with our projects when we are removing trees to just to make sure that we're replanting them as well. Oversee the efforts of the buckthorn removal at Sally Menzera Center. Um that's kind of been ongoing not only with their grant process but also as with public works staff is just to continue continue to keep an update with the parks commission of their efforts, some of the things that they're doing and any changes that they do as well. Um adding Schilkins Park to the ski grant application. Um that's just a a thing that we would add those those additional footage or those miles to the grant application um and groom those in the winter months. Another thing added by the parks commission at our last meeting was park invasive species identification and plan. This was actually put in our 2024 parks master plan is just um a better better idea of what invasive species are in the community. But this is kind of getting down that area, starting to identify it, have a plan to attack it, and how we can prevent um the spread of any invasive species within our community. Uh and finally on finance is just continuing to provide um the capital improvement plan. Um giving getting their input on that and providing budget updates as needed to to the commission. With that, um, I'll open that up if, uh, there's any other comments or changes that we'd like to see in the 2026 plan. [02:08:44] **Matt Hirn**: Question for the Lions Park master plan being that funding was already appropriated for the playground replacement. How does that fit in timelinewise? Is that playground something where if a year from now, two years from now, needs to be moved 20 feet or changed 90 degrees because the new master plan says it needs to be over there instead. I assume playground that can happen with playgrounds. Correct. [02:09:12] **Adam Swanepoel**: So it probably be a little bit difficult to just pick them up and move them. But are they movable? Are they tear down or removable? Yes, they are. Oh, sorry. [02:09:22] **Matt Hirn**: Just one of the sequencing things is the new playground is going to use the existing cement border around it. And so there are infrastructure elements that are were advantageous to keep it where it is. And so it's like it not totally random that like that piece we felt comfortable moving forward with. Does that include uh the concessions building and the restrooms and things like that? [02:09:47] **Adam Swanepoel**: It would. Yep. [02:09:49] **Charles Cadenhead**: You mentioned there was a conversation to be had with the pickle ball noise mitigation. Yes. Well, there aren't too many houses close to it to the pickle ball that's in Lion's Park. And I'm I'm up there almost every day during the summer. [02:10:04] **Adam Swanepoel**: We have gotten feedback that there's problems in Lions, too. There has the primary suspect has been Pebble Park. [02:10:11] **Matt Hirn**: Interesting. And I think some of the discussion was do we make any changes to Pebble? knowing, not understanding what might happen or not happen with a sports complex. And there's been residents that have come and suggested we'll move all of our pickle ball courts to that sports complex and take them out of neighborhood parks. Again, not saying that we would do that, but we have to figure out again the sequencing so we don't spend $150,000 on sound barriers and two years later it's it's gone. And that could still happen, but just trying to figure out kind of again timeline and and what may or may not happen. So we're making an appropriate decision and not a short, in a responsible one and not being shortsighted and trying to address the problem currently, but also then long term. I mean, my initial thought is with the sports complex, any potential asset put there, whether it's the centralized playground that we've discussed, changing location of pickle ball, it's four, five, six, seven years out, for that. So I I and given the the very strong feedback especially at Pebble for for pickle ball. I mean I mean my and it's a I that's a very fair question and I I'm glad it was brought up. My my two cents would be sound mitigation at this point. [02:11:32] **Charles Cadenhead**: But my two cents is also that we put a a hold on any new pickle ball throughout the city moratorum. like that's just because I don't see well that's my then and there's a reason for it but yes I I think we focus on what we have and the sound mitigation but that that's my two cents it might not be right might be wrong but [02:11:58] **Jeff Holtz**: so Adam if I may ask I don't remember I know what was the cost to resurface like I know we did both tablin and pebble at the same time but I'm not asking for exact number ballpark. What was that resurfacing? [02:12:15] **Adam Swanepoel**: So to do them both, that was about half million dollars, right? [02:12:20] **Jeff Holtz**: You got about $250,000 per park invested. Anything that get gets built somewhere else that probably has more distance to it is is probably a number of years out. I would think that um given the noise in particularly I don't I don't know that I've heard anything from Tablin Park. Maybe somebody has but um Pebble Park there is a a house that's right by there and you know I think tennis was okay. It's a different sound. But then there's even some residences that are to the northeast just a titch and and they they they be got fairly vocal. If you watch that council meeting, I think it's worth even if you invest it and you put something on those fences to try and deaden the sound. Um, if that has to be, you know, let's say the courts get repurposed, they go back to tennis or whatever, some invents a new game that's not as loud and call it whatever you want. Hibbidity Dibbidity Ball or whatever, right? [02:13:17] **Nick Dragisich**: Ken head. [02:13:19] **Jeff Holtz**: Yeah. So, I mean, those those sound barriers, I think, can be removed and put somewhere else and be used. So, I don't think it's a dead investment. Maybe I'm wrong, but um I a couple things. One, you're talking about when we started presenting this, they're talking all four sides. We had public there, all four sides, and they even were proposing putting something on top. Still not happy with this. And there was feedback from the group, there was only two people there, so it's not a lot of people that they would prefer tax money be spent on the centralized location than on the sound mitigation. So these are the people that are saying and the other thing is to pick apart the complaints about the sound. It's a lot of it is the people because of the increased use of the facility. Loud noises, late playing. Yeah. Profanity. The sound of the pickle ball I think was mentioned in the big meeting about once or twice. But when they talk about it, when they think about the sound, the loud sound of the pickle ball, it's all of that. Okay. Okay. [02:14:38] **Nick Dragisich**: That's interesting. So, the feedback at the council meeting was not that at all. Yeah. I don't know that I would I think from my perspective, there was certainly discussion about profanity and yelling, but I do believe that the ping of the ball is central to this. I I I mean, that's what we heard in council. Yeah. Just tell what we heard. [02:15:08] **Matt Hirn**: When was that park? When was the pickle ball put in that park? [02:15:13] **Charles Cadenhead**: Two years ago. Two. Could it just be removed? Could the times be shortened? Could the days of the week be all of that? Okay. Well, we didn't remove. We didn't remove significant investment on the city for to do that. There's obviously demand if people want [02:15:32] **Nick Dragisich**: been alluded to a little bit, but part of discussion with our new park sports complex is would there be an opportunity to put them there where it be away from we in the back corner be away from people and noise would be you know such an problem and then repurpose the current ones for tennis or something less um objectionable. I don't know that. But you mean it'd be a good discussion to have and we could determine what makes the most sense both economically and from keeping everybody happy because of pickle ball people want to have pickle ball courts and we gave it to them, encourage them to play. We didn't anticipate the noise problem that would come with it. And so recognize that, you know, we look for alternatives and we're doing this big complex development may not fit in there, but in the worst case, we find out it doesn't fit with everything else that needs to go there and we have to plan something different. Maybe down by the railroad tracks on the 180 acres. That spot that would be up by the public works right behind the target where all the lights and all the activity is. I don't think when you look at the various noise mitigation products they have, they don't get rid of the noise. It still goes up. It's still there. And I think it's a lot of money with a lot the results aren't [02:16:55] **Charles Cadenhead**: well you guys can make that determination and agree that's fine and that's why we sent it back to staff because we really did not have a lot of information. They had well it kind of works over here and well this we could try this. So that's what we want to do, but we want to go through that process. Understand it's much like a noise wall along a highway. The house right next to the highway gets used. The house is 400 yards 400 ft deep. The sound waves go over and come down. So understood. [02:17:34] **Nicole Miller**: I think one thing that we were um you know we thought needed further discussion too is it's not just talking about putting up sound mitigation blankets or something like that. the actual since that's a really heavy weight that entire infrastructure of the courts need to be upgraded with deeper like deeper footings for the fences and things like that. So it's um there's both a permanent aspect as well as this uh more consumable type aspect. Got it. So it catches the wind and loading’s more. Maybe the lines can change from review and mitigate pickle ball noise at Pebble Park to review pickle ball courts and um for the long term community definitely want to support physical activity here for recreation. [02:18:24] **Matt Hirn**: This is completely out of left field, but technically the city also has an agreement with the school district for the whole northeast corner of Oakland Middle School all the way on Tenth and Manning. And once the septic is removed from there, there's a large flat area. But that's a whole other story. How many acres? It is Sorry, it is thousand. No, it's like in the 10 to 15 range. Two acres. But their their courts are have tennis nets to the north of that the all the land that has trees and flat new ones. So as a complete out of left field but that's nice. Someone sent me a map of that. [02:19:22] **Adam Swanepoel**: Try to find something that's the conversation came from is like initially when we did start talking about pickle ball and we approved the courts at the half million dollars is that city council did direct the city administrator at that time to set aside $75,000 for sale mitigation. Um and so that's why that conversation is coming back. And what we are finding is that yeah, we do have to replace the fence there because the fence will not hold the weight of our product. And then the ne then we did have conversation of the neighbors on the back side of it saying, "Well, you're going to block the sound from him, but you're not going to block the sound from me." Right? So now you're now it really made the commission start to think it's like, "Well, now now we're going to quadruple the price by doing all [02:20:11] **Charles Cadenhead**: I didn't really hear that there were complaints to the west of the court. It was mostly from the east. evaluation. Well, this is a unified problem is we don't we went out ahead of all this when we did it and surveyed people and we got very little feedback, right? Then when it happens, everybody's got feedback, but then the feedback is kind of all over the place, right? I think that's why just studying the pickle ball future pickle ball courts in in Lake Elmo is would be the thing to do. And as long as this complex, we have an opportunity to maybe move them. It may not work, but if that doesn't work, well, maybe it's the school, you know, but I think long term, we're we're not going to get away from the complaints that we currently have. I don't believe the sound curtains are going to solve it either. No, I think it'll it'll make it softer, but it's not going to do away with it. It'll [02:21:14] **Nick Dragisich**: Well, I think it'll change the problem, right? Like now you'll have problems about oh there's black fence on everything. We can't see what's happening inside the courts. It's only a little quieter. I just think finding a long-term solution in the pickle ball course is where we should put our energy and and once we determine what the best long-term solution is, we can look at how do we, you know, how do we accomplish it financially? [02:21:40] **Charles Cadenhead**: I think right next to Jeff Holt's house would be a perfect place for Airbnb on the other side. An Airbnb on the other side. [laughter] Yes. There's a there's a there's a long-term rental Anybody [laughter] remembers what those were? Oh yeah. Launchards. Yeah, I think we have established with our with the master plan that none should be more than six or less than 600. 600, which isn't something unfortunately that existed at the time we made the decisions. But I think that gives us some pretty solid framework going forward as a [02:22:24] **Matt Hirn**: Well, and it eliminates basically every park. Would you say Adam? For sure. Oh, yeah. It does restrict a lot of our parks like you know Jason with the 180 the very high level rough sketch that came to us because it had some housing to the north and we had the discussion about what's better for tax capacity and also for the cost that comes with renew residence. None of the plans inherently had any park dedication. Correct. Correct. That's correct. There was trail access to go elsewhere, but we never focused on a park dedication at and it's so high level anyways that that's not usually part of it, but they didn't even include it. It was open space, so that's what they considered for open space buffers, but not open space buffer for the neighborhood to the east, kind of north and east. And it stinks because the places where you would want to put it where it's noisier are along the road and those are the most valuable spots for commercial. Correct. And the spots where you would that's are the least valuable are the ones that are closest to homes. Railroad tracks. Yeah. We got a whole strip of them. We do. We do. We have 180 acres we own. City should keep that, not sell it all. I don't think we should be selling all that property off. Only going to go up in value. But some of it could be used for pickle ball, sports complex, all kinds of things. I thought the YMCA would be up great up there. Is it sight? Okay. [02:24:12] **Nick Dragisich**: I I'd like to ask our our parks commission to consider a pavilion in Lion's Park for sure. This is one of the first ones. Please, at least consider that. I mean, they did put the big ball field in there and I think that was like a h 100,000 or whatever. And people are there with little kids. I mean, there people there in the summertime always with, you know, just taking their babies over and going sitting there and watching their other kids play. And we used to have quite a few trees there and they got taken out. And uh they did replace a few when they're they're surviving, but I think a pavilion would be nice. And one pavilion that I always liked was the one over by Baytown Township. If anybody ever goes that direction past the the the fairgrounds, they have a nice a nice one there. It's just kind of I looked at it and it can't be, you know, that much, but it's it's more than adequate. I would think something to at least look at. And number two, uh, our city does take donation for trees. They still do that or not. Okay. All right. I will think of you in Arbor Day. Our D group always we've been putting them out in at at Sunfish Lake the last five or so years, but maybe there's somewhere else in the city. We could donate one this year. I'll contact you. Yeah. Leftover trees from our arbor day event normally go on send fishing. Yeah, we're talking big trees. Yeah, real trees, not twigs. [laughter] What else was there? [02:25:52] **Charles Cadenhead**: Thank you. More discussion that [02:25:54] **Adam Swanepoel**: just one more thing. This on their plan. Yeah, the Washington County Soil and Water Conservation is another good area for our parks commission to get in touch with or at least involved with on that invasive species identification and so on. I mean, they are a wealth of information if you just tap into them when they're more than pleased to come out and help people. Thanks for that. Were there other things that the parks commission wanted to bring up that's in the plan? Yeah, I'll bring it up. The elimination of playground equipment. So, we're going to take that on this year. In in what context? It's in the plan right now, but we have how many playground sets? um 14 and they were neglected for years and then all of a sudden we have decided to come and start replacing those because they run to the end of the life which there's a lot there. We have put in a lot of playground equipment. So we are going to do an assessment of some sort and we're going to talk about it tomorrow night um about how that's going to happen. Okay. All right. Yeah. Until it's in your neighborhood, [laughter] in your playground that your kids played on for the last 20 years. We don't have any in our neighborhood. Okay. We got one big one. Well, maybe we need to add another in the pickle ball court. There's no land left. Pickle ball court. We have We have a tot HOA in the Royal. That's it. Don't talk. Just put in the commons area right behind uh Council Member Dragoich's house. Okay, I'd like that. So noted, [02:27:36] **Jeff Holtz**: I did read through that 2024 parks plan and one of the things that I saw in there that came up a lot about the parks is the ugly um portaotties that are sitting in them. I don't know if you guys have that on your plan to address. [02:27:54] **Adam Swanepoel**: So in the in the U public works um budget this year is to create like shape not shapes but borders around them. Um, we are test plotting that this year on two of them. So, we'll we'll create like a smith pad and then a screen around it which I think like a cedar. Oh, you still get to use a porta potty. Just a just either that or nothing. [02:28:18] **Jeff Holtz**: Are they large enough that people can go in with their children together and change a diaper? I mean, are they the big ones? [02:28:25] **Adam Swanepoel**: Most of them are all single in your but you should think about that maybe if you're going to do it a bigger in our ADA parks. We do have 88. That was another thing. [02:28:38] **Charles Cadenhead**: And I think we'll have to review our portaol potty policy, right? Didn't we develop a portaotti port? [laughter] They shall not stink. Well, everybody, the part of it was every park in every neighborhood wants a board. Oh, they do. Okay. We don't want one in ours. Tell them to go home. Fireflies. Find a tree. Pick a ball court for you. That's fine. [laughter] It apparently it was supposed to be with the developer. It was supposed to be a splash pad and then he turned it over to the city building. But that was before I moved in. So we went from port switch. Was that supposed to be initially with the development talking to our neighbors who bought homes when it was all being laid out right back here? Yeah, Firefly Park is supposed to be a splash pad when the developer laid it all out. Don't try to walk through there. No crosswalks. [02:29:41] **Nicole Miller**: We covered all the items. No, no, we have one last one. So, last month um at our workshop, we discuss um if the council wanted to develop some legislative policies that we can talk to our representatives about. Um council decided to focus on Lake Elmo specific. And so we have um created a document to aid in our um meetings with our representatives. We do have a meeting with um Commissioner Johnson this Friday and then um a Representative Seabberger next week. So in the online agenda was a draft a legislative policies document that gives a summary of each of the topics that council wanted. Um, and then we were trying to put what our ask was um, of our legislators in there. So, we're looking for some feedback on this draft document that we could edit. And it's again, it's just a handout so we have something for when we meet with them this week and next week. [02:30:40] **Charles Cadenhead**: Okay. Did you want feedback now? Um, yeah. or or prior to Friday. Yeah, cuz I haven't reviewed it. I like it. It aligns with what the discussion was. Does it matter the order? Because technically they're all of our priorities, right? But the first one they read is the one that's probably going to get the most discussion during a one-hour meeting. Correct. Good point. I know how much Charles talks. So with that being the case, I mean to me the White Bear Lake language is the first one. Clark will be in attendance as well. Okay. So we're going to need three hours. So we have one hour. But to me that that is far and away the number one and then every everything else is a funding issue. Everything else is long-term funding for for PAS funding on roads, funding on roads. But the White Bear Lake one is the hardest one, but it's the thing that affects everything. And tell Clark he has 10 minutes. You have 10 minutes. No, I need 20. That's why he gets 10. You get 10. We will re reorder them. You're right that we cut it to five. I'm I didn't want I didn't want to come heavy-handed on it. That's your job. because I think it I it looks awesome. It is efficient. It is to the point. It's easily understandable. It's plain language. It's straightforward. And it's something they can take to their LA who then can talk to the committee chairs. So, I I like it. [02:32:38] **Nicole Miller**: If you do want to look at it after this, we can um you know do edits up until Friday as well. So, I don't know if this would be a place, but I'm concerned about having pedestrian crosswalks out here and on I don't know what you would call it now, Highway 14. [02:32:55] **Nick Dragisich**: Yeah. I've never brought that up. Well, we we've brought that up with Washington County staff, right? because they're both Washington County roadways. And simply put, there's no there's not a willingness on their part to put something like that in on their county roads until someone gets killed. Even then, it would depend on what kind of traffic they've got, movements they have, and what the ax is seen if it were to happen. um was um that's coming from the traffic engineer Joe Gustoson. So I I've been biking on 17 here and nearly been hit from people crossing in front of the volleyball place not looking you know and they're not looking. Yep. And I' I've been both in the street on the you know on the meet in the side shoulder and on the sidewalk. Yeah. Tom, did you want to attend that meeting on Friday and talk about crosswalks? No, I've I've You've said your piece. Yeah, I've said my piece multiple times and had direct emails with Joe Gustoson back and forth along with an outside group of citizens that want to push for crosswalks. Northstar probably going over to coffee on Saturday morning with buggies and kids on bikes. You can't get there's no way to cross. Is it is it possibility to put a a pedestrian bridge over the over for about $5 million? Well, I mean, I'm just who knows? I mean, I don't know where the money would come from, but just is it even a possibility? What's the timeline, Jason, for when the county is doing 14 through there? It's a long time. I mean, it's still in it's in their CIP, but I mean, it still could be four or five years. It's out there ways along along with Manning and and and yeah, 14 and 17 as it comes into 14. They ask though when um a project comes in for platting if we could have rightway dedicated to look at expanding that section like right across from Lake Elmo Avenue. Yeah. Yeah. Because Pat, you are not alone. That topic is I I I can speak for counsel. Speeding. That is something that infuriates me as well. It probably it might infuriate Matt. I don't know. But it does. I mean, and it's something we hear all the time. Yep. And it's frustrating because we want to do something but I I think the next step when the county does do 14 and because they're they're starting to talk about where the gateway corridor goes. Does it go on the north side or the south side? Other than that decision point, I don't know what other leverage there is for getting that crosswalk in. And that again, that still might be could be a decade. I don't know about that, but Yeah, because what what exists in the west painting party is what we do at midnight painting. I mean, literally other than pounding on the commissioner's doors. I mean, we have a commissioner. She's responsive. Like that. That's the other alternative. If if if the civil servants who do their job based upon the data, like that is their job, but they they all answer to a commission. We can go that route, too. Do we have a trail that's going along that new development uh along 17 on the west side? It goes all the way down the corner. Just to the corner. So, it just goes to the corner, right? Northstar. Yeah. It goes to the corner. Doesn't even run all the way to But it starts at 39th, right? Yeah, I believe so. And then it's supposed to go east and west eventually. 39th, right? So then to the corner and then the signal light there at Still Water Boulevard can be utilized, right? I believe so. Yeah. Where does that get you? Oh, if you come down here, then you can go if you go down the trail. Yeah. You come to here. At least you have a crosswalk and then there's another trail that goes into the old village from this parking lot. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah. What about the old school? I mean, what are they going to do? Really? It takes care of course, but there's no way on this side. Yeah. No, there's no that doesn't solve the north south. The wildflower village preserve the whole neck of the woods. There's no way to get to the old village, right? I mean, should we just pursue a different route of going through our electeds instead at the county level because the efforts have been made. I I know for a fact the mayor has pressed on this many times. I know others have. Yeah. May we go through the elected route to see what pressure we can get on. See if we can put 50 people on a county board meeting demanding a crosswalk. Yeah. I'll show up. Rally. I'll go out and rally people. Get enough people. Just talk about rally. And if you don't get an answer the first time, you show up the second time because because it is a valid concern. It's brought up by many. If if Fury gets redeveloped and that site does, then you at least have the opportunity to force a hand or a requirement to have a sidewalk to bring you to the intersection. One one thing that is a possibility I worked in this field a little bit is when I was looking at the map pedestrian bridge probably not happen but I have had opportunities where we put in pedestrian tunnels to get people to the other side. So because you don't need as much right away. It doesn't take as much space. You're using infrastructure there if you're doing it as as the construction capital. Can there be a porta potty unit graffiti down there? Right. Is that wide enough? All right. Is that covered, Nicole? That's it. [02:44:21] **Charles Cadenhead**: All right. I'm going to adjourn this evening's meeting. Thank you all for your time this evening and good conversation. Have a nice night.