This transcript has been processed to identify speakers based on the provided context of the June 2024 Lakeville Work Session. [0:06] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: I will call the June 23rd work session to order. You join me for a moment. Sounds of the allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Move on to citizens comments. Think we have anybody here online? Okay. Public safety projects update. Mr. Kuennen. [0:50] **Assistant City Administrator Allyn Kuennen**: Yeah. Get started here. We're using a new process here for our presentations. So, I'm trying to here. [1:07] **Allyn Kuennen**: Okay. You should be able to just bring this chair. [1:22] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: You guys have great pictures. Yeah, they all look very nice. [1:35] **Allyn Kuennen**: Okay, so couple updates here on some public safety projects that we have in works. This first one is for the FIRST Center. Um so we uh have started with the membership drive and trying to um uh push this out to some cities. Um, we have we have um I didn't bring my reading glasses. [1:59] **Allyn Kuennen**: Yeah, there. That's better. There we go. Um, so we finalized the flyers in May. You guys took a look at the the dough draft of those and then we sent those out in early June. We've so far have received responses back from three cities that are looking at the capital level: Apple Valley, Farmington, and Northfield. Um we're also getting some interest in some other cities as well. So we're going to keep moving forward with that. Um this is the final version of the flyer. Um it basically consists of general information regarding the site. Um it outlines the two membership benefit levels that we had talked about previously at a work session and what the that means the potential memberships. [2:44] **Allyn Kuennen**: Uh it also included the general facility pricing. This is kind of the a-la-carte. If a city doesn't want to become a member, they still have the opportunity to um buy into the space with this kind of a-la-carte a-la-carte pricing. [2:59] **Allyn Kuennen**: Then we also added kind of that same pricing concept for fire uh departments as well for them to reserve space and to use the area for fire department training. And the flyer just has the general layout of the facility that has been included with have our memberships and advertisements for the facility. [3:20] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um so we also since now that we've got uh the membership starting we've started looking at membership agreements. So this is just a rough draft first page of a membership agreement that working with through with Campbell Knutson, police department staff but working with that. um just trying to come up with a boilerplate that we can then send out to each of the cities and then work through that with them individually on on what that agreement means for them. [3:48] **City Administrator Justin Miller**: Real quick before Allyn goes on from that, just one note, Farmington um has expressed interest tensibly in prepaying their entire 10 years. Um they have their public safety aid that the state gave a couple years ago. I think they're still sitting on theirs and they need to use it. Um, so if that's the case, that would be a very good thing from a cash flow perspective standpoint. Um, um, one of the things that we're investigating, I know Lieutenant Hansen and our IT department are working through, we're trying to find a way to maybe have an online facility scheduling process. We're not sure if we're going to make that possible, but we're investigating that. Again, this is just a snapshot of a screen grab that shows the very first rough draft of that. So, [4:35] **Allyn Kuennen**: That's how some of the works. Um, website, uh, this is the website. I was going to click on this, but I'm not going to do that because I don't want to screw up the presentation here. But, we also have a website out there that's live and active. It's very similar to the flyer that I just went through. It pretty much mirrors that. It just is a place where we can send everybody that has general information on the FIRST Center, but they can grab that and share that with their individual cities or facilities that are looking at it. [5:01] **Allyn Kuennen**: Members, staffing. So, we're looking at having this operational by this time next year. So, we have to look at um trying to come up with some staffing concepts. All right. So far, we're looking at um putting together job description and duties for a FIRST Center manager. We're going to model it similar to the HERO Center. Um we're actually meeting this police department staff and or my HR staff are meeting with um HERO Center manager later this week just to kind of pick his brain on how we set up the staffing, what's that mean for them, what are their duties, how many part-time people, that kind of stuff. So um that'll be very helpful for us and forward with um budgeting for 2026 putting together staff in the site. [5:48] **Allyn Kuennen**: Construction construction started in May. So we designed and built the stormwater basin in May. That went very well and very quick. We had some good weather for that. Um you may have seen some of that construction. That basin reaches all the way down to Cedar Avenue. So if you were driving on Cedar Avenue right before um in May, you would have seen some construction going on there along the creek. and that was the construction of stormwater basin. So that's been built, constructed and stabilized. Um we also started demolition of the old public works site in May and as you remember uh uh that was the old previous public works site. Um we did some re after we started doing some demo out there. I started doing some research. We acquired that property like late 60s, '68 or so. We built the initial public works building in early 70s. So that was a public works site for 50 years. So keep that in mind as we go through this next part of the presentation. [6:33] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um so during during this uh demo, we did run across uh the seven buried tanks uh that we found out there at the site. Um they all were in good shape, oddly enough, except for one, of course. Um which we it did leak about 5 gallons of diesel fuel that was in it. Um we had that mitigated the site cleaned up. Um we reported that to MPCA just went through the process of completely cleaning up the site and mitigating that. So it was a little bit unexpected. [7:18] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um but we worked through it and we're okay. Um so that was the first surprise. Um, and then as part of the building came down, we found a buried pipe, a couple buried pipes underneath the building that were wrapped in asbestos insulation. So, these were old ventilation pipes for who knows what um from the old building. Again, this part of the site had to be mitigated, disposed of properly and cleaned up. [7:42] **Allyn Kuennen**: So, that again was also fixed and they repaired for for cleaning up the soil. So, we moved into constructing the warehouse uh portion of the project. Uh the foundation of that was being dug. We started running into a couple piles of buried debris. Um and then we ran into a couple more. And then we ran into a couple more. So, we um had that all tested. We've had WSB and um Braun on site continuously testing the stuff, making sure it's it's clean stuff. It it ended up thankfully being um just old construction debris. Um some tires uh just stuff from the 70s unfortunately that got buried out there as as the site was developed as a public works project. [8:27] **Allyn Kuennen**: These are some pictures showing kind of what we found out there. Um some buried pipes. So there was a water heater that was buried out there. So it's just junk. Um but again it was tested. It's been clean. Um and we mitigated and cleaned up the site and brought in clean. [8:44] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um, this picture is unentertaining for some people. Um, so if you look real closely on this, you'll see a track or tread there. If you look really closely, you'll see a 1973 Ski-Doo snowmobile. Wow. So, there's just like a giant hole. [9:01] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Everybody working the project threw their stuff in and then covered up. Could be. Or it was a place whenever the city picked up stuff around the the city, you dump it, just dump it. Yeah. Again, thankfully it wasn't anything too crazy. It was clean debris and we were able to mitigate and kind of clean it up. So, um unfortunately because of that clean up and some of the mitigation we had to do with Braun and WSB, the testing just takes time to do that. Just takes a little bit more. Um we probably lost about 30 days of the project, but um RJM, our construction manager, feels that we can probably make that up still within the time frame. So we always build some cushion in that project schedule so that that when instances like this come up, we've got we got some space to fit it in. So it's all good. [9:47] **Allyn Kuennen**: It's on it's uh been moving forward this week and end of last week and first part well first couple days of this week they've been um fixing the pad for the main building. Um they've been digging foundation for that and it's been clean. So keep your fingers crossed that keeps going for them. So the main foundation of the new building is primarily in the same space as the old building. So we think we're we're in good shape. So we'll see as the week goes on. Um just some miscellaneous items on this project. Uh the police department is in the process of they're evaluating the VR system. That's like a three screen VR electronic system where they can go in and it's a virtual reality. They've been in the process of digging into that and finding out what's the best system for the best bang for our buck on that. [10:32] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um we're also um getting ready to purchase the movable or advertise for purchasing the movable wall system. So that's the area that's the reality-based section of the training center where it's a movable wall system. So different scenarios can be set up um for fire and police both. It's an area that can be pumped in with smoke. So it can be a confidence course for fire department um that will have sound and lights to have multiple different scenarios that the police department can run through. So um that movable wall system will be going up for a bid here in the next um couple weeks. [11:14] **Allyn Kuennen**: And then also the fire department confidence course. It's on the second story of the the second uh floor of the portion of the FIRST Center. Um, that's a confidence course that the fire department in the old facility had built themselves out of plywood lumber. Um, we're going to do it a little bit better this time. And, uh, Mike is working with RJM and with, uh, Leo Daily to design it and have the construction crew build it for them to their spec. So, that'll be a great upgrade for the fire department and that's in the process of being designed out too. [11:50] **Allyn Kuennen**: And then the last thing uh for this project is the fiber extension. Uh we're working with the county. We just have one little section that we need to work with the county to do kind of a fiber swap to be able to extend fiber to this site. So um that's in the works with it. Um that hopefully will be move forward. So that's the FIRST Center. Are there any questions on that before I jump in? [12:08] **Councilmember John Bermel**: So the Apple Valley Farmington drill field are they thinking police and fire or just police? [12:14] **Allyn Kuennen**: Just police. Okay. Have we had any interest from any other fire departments? Most of the departments that I've talked to would be more of a rental hole. Okay. The dollar amount to to invest in that for the use wouldn't be worth their investment if that makes sense. Yep. Makes sense. This one good thing in spring of '26. [12:42] **Allyn Kuennen**: Yes. Yeah. Hopefully by June of 2026 be operational. [12:46] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: My another question about the FIRST Center was uh we had the federal update on money potentially coming our way. There were two different numbers on the top there. Does that mean the lower one is the one we're looking at or are they both separate? [13:09] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yeah. So between Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Angie Craig, they all submitted different amounts to go through their various processes. So they'll have to get rectified. It'll become one number. [13:25] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: It's not that these are separate to come together, it would be Yeah. It's not three separate pools. We get one. Got it. Okay. I have been hearing that it's more likely than not that there will be a CR this year with stuff better today than I did 10 days ago. [13:48] **Allyn Kuennen**: Uh the next project is the fire station, the new fire station uh being proposed. So right now we've just been working with CNH Architects and um looking at multiple designs and stuff that I'll show you today is is very rough. It's very preliminary. It's not going to be what it's probably going to end up looking like. I just... but this is kind of one of the sketches that we've been looking at. So, just take it with a little bit of grain salt that this is not um set in stone by any means. But so, we've been meeting with them for about eight weeks. We're going through multiple building layouts. Uh we toured some fire stations in the area, Plymouth, Burnsville, and Apple Valley. [14:24] **Allyn Kuennen**: That kind of gave us a good idea of what the you know the spatial areas can look like and what different sizes of building of offices and bays and all that and um that was very helpful probably more for us novice people than it would be for the fire department personnel but um it was helpful for us to kind of look through all that. So, um this is again a sketch of the building. Um if you and just as a reminder, this not only will be a new fire station with the professional fire station staff working and living here, but it also will be the headquarters for um the fire department. So, this will be the new administrative areas of the fire department. So, um the portion kind of in the green and the darker gray will be uh the administrative section. areas kind of in the lighter gray and the blue are going to be more of the staffing for the department themselves and the stuff you see in the orange that's the the bays of the fire station. [15:11] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um it is it will be uh two stories at least a section of will be two stories. Um this is the second story area. This is the dormitories that were are being proposed right now. living quarters, the kitchenette, a workout room, um just basically everything they need to live there 24/7 if needed. And then the area in the orange is the second story of the of the bay. Below this is kind of the decontamination area. When the uh fire department staff comes back from a call they go in decontamination area, clean off their stuff, hang their things up. There's equipment or repair area down there. Mike can always talk much better about this than I can, but um this second story area is part of that center bay. It'll be a hose tower in the upper top area as well as some training space and then some mechanical space that's kind of towards the bottom part of the picture. [16:29] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: So when it's a second story, it's just like narrow. It's not a full second story. I I'm a little confused. [16:34] **Allyn Kuennen**: Yeah. So that orange area would be the same height as the as the bays for the trucks. Between two bays, the ceiling for the bays will go up two stories basically. Oh. Oh, okay. Thank you. But internally there'll be two floors internally in that section. Okay. [17:00] **Councilmember John Bermel**: No basement level. That's it. There's no basement. This is all on slab on grade. Yes. No basement. I'm not architect. Will you go back for a second? Is there any value in being able to have like be able to walk between those floors on like a bridge or does it not matter? [17:17] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um, no. There would be no need for that. Okay. Um, so the next is, uh, so a couple weeks ago, the council directed staff to move forward with purchasing the Pfister property. That's a 12-acre site in the northeast corner of Grandview and 179th. Um, the closing the tentative closing date for that, it will be this Friday. Um, so we're moving forward with that. Uh as part of that then we have hired HKGI to do some site planning for that to work with um CNH Architects as we move forward with designing the the building. [17:56] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um as part of this we're also looking at potentially locating a satellite water treatment facility on the site. So uh we've hired Black & Veatch as part of their skill set to be able to design that. So, there's multiple consultants that are going to be helping us lay out the site to make sure that we fit everything on there that we want to and still have a goal of preserving a portion of the property. Potentially something else in the future. [18:25] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yeah. So, to that like on the southern closer to the water tower, we can try to maximize that use rate so that we're... talk about access real quick. [18:36] **Allyn Kuennen**: Yeah, I'll get in that here in a second. Yeah, that's perfect. It's good. [18:41] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um, so that's what I was mentioning. So, some of the hardest maybe one of the the most defining things on this site is going to be the access and how we get access from the fire department onto the site or from the site. 179th Street is is a little tougher than what we had anticipated. So, um, as you move east or west on 179th Street, the westbound lane is at a lower elevation than the eastbound lane. So, we're like this in the lanes. So, that middle concrete median is at a slope and that slope doesn't flatten out going towards the west until right about and you're getting in the turn lanes for Granby. [19:23] **Allyn Kuennen**: So, right around to this area that shows up there. Um, well, you can see where our access point needs to be. So, we've got a meeting set up with the county to talk to them about what we can do on 179th Street. Kind of an internal discussion as well with the fire department about is it safe even to go out on 179th Street. We've got turn lane for Granby, we got turn lane for 179 street. 179 street itself is very busy street. So, um, we're still looking at concepts of having some kind of access on the 179th Street, but it's probably going to be pretty tough for us to get there, but we're still looking at it. [20:00] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um, in relation to the mayor, your question of trying to maximize the use of that southern portion, southern portion of the property next to the water tower. Um, we're still looking at doing something there. No matter if it's on 179th Street or if we push it all to Granby, we're going to try to maximize that property probably stormwater basin because everything slopes to the south. This is just one concept as I mentioned access on 179, but then I have a secondary one on Granby. [20:30] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um, this is a concept where it's on Granby as you can see. and this is again this is very sketch. Um, don't get too critical about this because it's not going to look like this at the end of the day. Um, but this is a sketch that we're working with with CNH. Um, this takes up probably the western half of the 12 acres. Um, some of the basin is pushed down to the southwest corner next to the water tower and it preserves that western half of the property for the water treatment facility and hopefully eventual future marketable parcel if you want to go that way. [21:13] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: So, is the idea to basically site the fire station then worry about water treatment? [21:18] **Allyn Kuennen**: I think so. Once we were meeting with um HKGI, Black & Veatch and CNH Architecture and all the staff to kind of talk about that. Okay. Access isn't as important obviously, right? [21:35] **Allyn Kuennen**: That's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Access is the killer for us on 179. Um right now on the street we've got the RFQ for construction manager. This went out a couple weeks ago. This is just the image of the first page of that. So, just like we did for the FIRST Center, we're looking at hiring a construction manager for this project. Um, it's good to bring them on now because they're the ones that do all the construction cost estimating. So, as we get more refined in our design, um the construction manager will also be able to tune into that number of where we're going to land on the construction costs and we can adjust from there up or down um from that cost depending upon what the construction manager comes up with. So, um the deadline for that is Monday. So, we'll be looking at interviewing a couple firms there and hiring construction manager in the next few weeks. [22:33] **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: That'll be pretty critical to get them on, get them up to speed on the project. Is there a lot of firms out there that do this or is it pretty? [22:39] **Allyn Kuennen**: Yeah, we've got five right now that are probably going to submit. Okay. Which is great. I mean, that's good interest. So, hopefully they'll be sharpening their pencils on that. There's some that are more experienced in public safety facilities um and fire stations, which will be a plus as well. [22:56] **Allyn Kuennen**: Um so moving forward um as I mentioned, we'll close on the property. hopefully this Friday might be Monday or Tuesday before we do that. Make sure all the paperwork is in order. Um but it's scheduled for for Friday for now. Um after we close, we're going to demo the existing buildings on the site. We've already done a Phase I and a Phase II evaluation out there. Um there was two septic systems found and an underground fuel tank. We were aware of all of that when we were negotiating the price of the property. So, um, that just confirmed that they were where we thought they were, and, um, preliminary results show that they're clean, that the the tank is not leaking and it's we're okay. So, um, we'll know more when we dig into it, but, it looks the the read is also good so far. Um, so we'll demo the site and get it cleaned up later this year and again, the project will bid it hopefully at the end of this year, beginning of next year, with spring construction and operational by 2027. [24:10] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: So when you say clean, that just means it's not leaking. It could have residual fuel in those tanks and still be considered clean as long as it's not leeching out. [24:19] **Allyn Kuennen**: Correct. Yeah. As long as there's no leak in that tank, we're good. [24:25] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: So, how old was the diesel fuel do you think in the tanks that we found at the center site? That's a great question. '70s, I guess, is what he's saying. Yeah. I wonder, were we using that to fuel trucks and then we just capped them? [24:40] **Allyn Kuennen**: There was a floor of concrete over those tanks. So, nobody knew they were there. [24:46] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Okay. Interesting. [24:58] **Councilmember John Bermel**: the map that you show. So, so there's a little like a triangular plot right next to Granby at the northwest corner. Yep. For the... Yeah. Yeah. So, so is that... did we already own that? [25:12] **Allyn Kuennen**: That's already city. Yes. Okay. Yep. This little corner. Yeah. So, we're just kind of reuniting all this with that acquisition. [25:25] **Councilmember John Bermel**: Why did we own a sliver of a bike...? [25:28] **Allyn Kuennen**: Uh, it was left over from I think the construction of Granby. [25:32] **Justin Miller**: Oh, okay. I think it was a portion of the town homes and Granby was sliced off by the town homes. [25:41] **Councilmember John Bermel**: Do we own slivers all over the city like this? [25:46] **Justin Miller**: Yes. Gotcha. It's an example of the green space. Lots of green space. Yeah. In fact, you know, if you were another city enterprise you could probably put a sign up there, "neighborhood park." [26:06] **Justin Miller**: Yeah, we'll need it. We need access. Uh, other questions. Okay. An update on that, too. Thank you. [26:25] **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: Yeah, that looks like a hat. [26:36] **Justin Miller**: Don't look ahead. Yeah. Mayor, um council, before we turn over to kick it off, um this was identified as part of your retreat this year as an item and we just thought be a good time now before Pan-O-Prog and before the summer. And you know, we have a couple goals out of this. One, it's to be sure that you are comfortable with the preparedness and our plans and how we handle emergencies when they come up. It's also a chance to talk about what your roles would be in emergencies, communications, operations, things like that. So, um, sorry, I'll just turn it over to Chief Paulson and he'll kick us off. [27:26] **Police Chief Brad Paulson**: Yeah, I'll get it started here. Um, so you know, when we look at the why, why we're here, and Justin touched on it a little bit, but we want to just provide a little bit of a snapshot of how this could look, you know, we've got an hour or whatever it is. We're not going to be diving in super deep on on logistical details, but we want to just kind of provide a a tabletop that we work through together, have some dialogue on, prompt some questions, um maybe identify some issues that we need to work through, work out um outside of this space if we're stuck on a few things. [27:56] **Brad Paulson**: Um you know, the emergency operations plan with the city—which is also the same as our national incident management system—lists five key goals out of any catastrophic event. Um, we talk about pooling all these resources together, which is our city resources, but also most likely external resources that are pouring into help. Our priorities are maximizing the protection of life and property, stabilizing the incident or incidents, effectively responding to any emergency or disaster, ensuring the continuity of government and continuity of services as we still have the rest of the city to take care of and run. And then kind of the final stage is providing the recovery and restoration of services. So those are kind of the goals to keep in mind. That's what our function is as a city during these events. [28:43] **Brad Paulson**: And just touching on kind of who's here and their role and their connection to this. Um you all know most of us are these folks but a couple maybe new faces—but obviously Tierney Elmer and the communication team would be very involved in any event. Communication is a key aspect which can greatly assist us through something or hamper us if it's done poorly. So her role is key. Chief Meyer is our city's emergency management director. Each city by statute has to have a designate and that's his position. So he's got a crucial role as well. He's got some help, but he's in that kind of point person's role. Lieutenant Jeff Hansen is um... he sits on our domestic preparedness committee, a countywide team that um tries to get ahead of these issues, puts some of those partnerships in place ahead of time, works through some exercises of their own. And then Lieutenant Thor How has done a number of tabletops and exercises with community partners that have asked for just some guidance with some active threat things. And so he's used to facilitating these and working through these. So that's who's in the room. [30:16] **Brad Paulson**: Uh and just three kind of ground rules we want to lay out to help us maybe be as efficient as we can be tonight. Give Councilmember Bermel credit. I stole these from him after sitting through a presentation he did at the Fountains last week. But I think these really helped. Um, number one, there's no right or wrong. This we're not here to try to trick anybody. We're not going to throw some crazy questions at you. That's not the goal. It's to just provide some information. Um, maybe interject some twists or some challenges along the way. It's just to provoke thought and have some of that dialogue. if we get stuck on an issue rather than getting hung up, we've got kind of a digital parking lot designed that we can just kind of shove that and maybe identify that as something we need to work through as a group or or certain parts of our team need to work through that later. And then don't fight the scenario. Um we're not trying to create some, you know, crazy thing that could never possibly happen, but part of this is interjecting things that we need to try to work through. So, um, try not to get too hung up on, well, that's impossible and that doesn't make sense. There probably might very well be things that aren't perfectly making sense, but in a general sense, it's certainly a plausible scenario. So, with that, I'll turn it over to I think Chief Meyer and work through the next step. [31:19] **Fire Chief Mike Meyer**: Uh, so take the sheets for your whole packet. Okay. on the back page just to give you a high level view of your role and your responsibility to be Council. All right, mine's printing front to back. Sorry. Page two. [31:35] **Mike Meyer**: Get back to page. Okay. So, we just want to make sure from for your your role in an emergency as far as what are those key spots that you know you as Council and Mayor are going to be playing. Uh obviously public communication is that we're going to be looking to provide that public message to our community in a timely fashion. Uh resource allocation and that that means more of approving, you know, the funding that's going to be needed potentially for that. Ensuring that we have those systems in place to make that things happen. Similar, you know, having water, electricity, transportation, community support just because you have a a strong connection within the community as elected officials to be out there. policy decisions. Obviously, these are going to be the kind of the bigger topics of if there's a change in our current city policy of how we manage or look at something on implementing those from a temporary regulation or emergency measure. [32:44] **Mike Meyer**: And the same kind of follows back to that decision-making authorizing the emergency measures, curfewing, road closures on such and kind of I touched on that the policy keeps coming back up, but policy adjustment. So in the past we've had the whole the debris management of do we stick with that policy or do we need to adjust it for this instance. And then longer term is that recovery relief effort—how are we going to provide that funding, rebuilding effort and such for our residents and our businesses. So that's kind of a very high level view on that. Take it over to Lieutenant Hansen. [33:03] **Lieutenant Jeff Hansen**: Thank you. Um, so I will be laying out the scenario. Uh, if you looked ahead, the scenario's changed a little bit. So that's what it is. That's when it happens. Um, so after I read the scenario or lay out the scenario to you, I'll pause, answer any questions. Then I'll talk about what law enforcement, fire, and EMS's initial response would be. After that, we'll provide you with essentially a 24-hour post impact briefing. So, as if we were sitting in this room 24 hours post-incident, what do we have going on the ground? What do we know as of right now? Um, and then we'll work through it from there. [33:51] **Jeff Hansen**: So, to get started, on Sunday, June 22nd at 4:42 p.m., the city of Lakeville is struck by a powerful EF5 tornado during a highly populated evening time frame. The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm watch earlier yesterday afternoon, followed by a tornado warning just 10 minutes before touchdown. Although outdoor warning sirens were activated, the rapid development and path of the storm caught many residents off guard. The tornado carved a 10-mile path through the southwestern quadrant of Lakeville, lasting nearly 18 minutes. It first touched down in a semi-rural area, but quickly moved into a dense residential subdivision, then through a retail corridor and directly impacted two public schools, including Lakeville Elementary, where approximately 80 children and 12 staff members were present for summer school programs and sporting practices. [34:55] **Jeff Hansen**: The damage was catastrophic in several areas. Over 1,200 homes we believed are damaged or destroyed. A two-story apartment complex suffered a partial collapse, trapping residents under debris. An industrial warehouse was flattened with four employees being confirmed killed. A big box retail store—for scenario purposes, think about Walmart—is severely damaged during peak shopping hours, resulting in numerous injuries and multiple deaths. Emergency responders faced dangerous conditions with down power lines, overwhelmed 911 systems, and significant road obstructions. As a result of this, and despite their efforts, the initial impact and secondary hazards led to significant loss of life and many people injured. So, that's the scenario that we're going to be working with. [36:04] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: I know this sounds really stupid, but what does that mean? "secondary hazards lead to significant loss of life." [36:11] **Jeff Hansen**: So the initial impact was the tornado. The secondary hazards that responders face were your downed power lines, your trees. So our inability to even get there to get into... Okay. [36:17] **Jeff Hansen**: So then moving on from that, obviously police, fire, and EMS would be responding immediately after the tornado touches down at 4:42 p.m. 911 call volume surged with reports of collapsed structures, missing persons, and injured residents. Within minutes, police, fire, and EMS units deployed to the most heavily affected areas based on preliminary damage assessments and the call data that we're receiving from citizens. First arriving officers began clearing roadways of the debris to allow access for more emergency vehicles while also trying to perform rapid triage, rendering basic first aid, and searching for survivors that are still in danger. [37:04] **Jeff Hansen**: Simultaneously, first responders are also establishing an initial perimeter around high-risk areas to maintain scene safety and to prevent public from getting into there and possibly becoming one of the injured. Fire and rescue crews focus on high priority life-saving operations. So, they're at the apartment complex and Lakeville Elementary, which are both heavily damaged. Firefighters initiate search and rescue operations. They call in mutual aid for structural collapse response and heavy rescue equipment. Fire command establishes a forward operating base near the school with triage zones, generated power lighting, and coordination points for incoming mutual aid. Again, down power lines, gas leaks, and small fires complicate their efforts, requiring coordination with utility providers and hazard mitigation teams. [38:02] **Jeff Hansen**: Emergency medical personnel are also facing a mass casualty incident. As a result of this, they establish triage tags and staging areas near each major damage site. Allina ambulance units are quickly overwhelmed, prompting automatic mutual aid requests in coordination with nearby hospitals for transport distribution. Medical triage officers prioritize transport based on injury severity while mobile field units administer care to less critical patients at shelters. So throughout these first few hours, coordination between agencies occurs through our 800 MHz radio system and our city's emergency operations center which was fully activated by 8:00 p.m. post-storm. So about three hours later, unified command is then established to manage the citywide response, allocate resources, and begin organizing shelter and family reunification operations. [39:08] **Jeff Hansen**: And for context, unified command is simply just a structure that is used in emergency incident management when multiple agencies and jurisdictions are responding. And it allows all of these agencies to work together under one roof so that communication isn't stifled and that resources are getting to where they need to go as quickly as possible. [39:48] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Do we as a city already have ideas where they would be at where we would be at in an instant like this where a unified command structure would be held? [39:53] **Jeff Hansen**: Yeah. So our primary location would be at the police department is where we would set up an emergency operations center. Oh, I see. Okay. And in that center all of the stakeholders in whatever response there would be—so fire personnel, EMS personnel, police personnel, um any responders—would be in there so we can all collaborate and move those resources to where they need to be. [40:13] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Does anyone have any questions thus far? [40:15] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: I only had one more. Um, and I hope I'm not violating the third rule. Um, so, the tornado hits our city, but it's going to move to other cities, and you said that we would be, um, asking for help or whatever. Um, how far can we go to ask for that help in case let's just say Lakeville gets hit, so does Farmington and Apple Valley, you know what I mean? Because it's, you said it was a five, so it's not going to just type of thing. So, how far can we gather resources? [41:00] **Jeff Hansen**: So, in an incident like this, we would be probably receiving mutual aid from literally all over the metro, probably all over the state of Minnesota. Okay. And for this scenario, tornadoes can act funny and this one does lift up. So, it is just Lakeville. [41:19] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. See, I violated the number three. Sorry. [41:22] **Councilmember John Bermel**: Can you describe the difference between the unified command and the emergency operations center? [41:26] **Jeff Hansen**: So an emergency operations center would just be say an area where we're maybe just Lakeville is conducting business. Unified command is where we're bringing in multiple agencies from different jurisdictions and we're all able to communicate. So we can communicate effectively with medical personnel. We can communicate effectively with fire and police all at once all under one roof. [42:01] **Justin Miller**: One thing I'll add is like the EOC consider that as... unified command is closer to the scene or that piece and any request like "we need more X, Y and Z," whatever that request is, that resource request flows to the EOC and then the EOC figures out how we're going to get that resource there to them if that makes sense. [42:22] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Is there uh ongoing communication? So you said like a retail location. A lot of retail big ones have their own command centers and how much how much interaction usually happens between the city and their targets corporate command center on making sure that they're supplying the resources and stuff like that. [42:42] **Mike Meyer**: Mayor, I'll jump on it. So from a kind of falling back to that unified command: so if Walmart is our example, we find their store manager or a manager for them. We bring them into the unified command portion and then start asking questions regarding what resources can they help with their store or what do they need to get them back online so to speak and account for people and so on and so forth. So they would be our resource to use to go to their command piece for their company or their business. Same with school personnel. They would be likely in this incident brought in as well. [43:15] **Councilmember John Bermel**: Okay. Do you tabletop? This is aside from this. Do you tabletop with the school district? [43:23] **Brad Paulson**: We have... um not specific on storms but more active type things. So there's like protocol on how you engage with each other. Yeah. Yeah. And it's important that um I mean you're you're coordinating resources but you also want everybody hearing and sharing the same information. That can be a challenge when you have all these stakeholders. I mean, fortunately, like the school district, we have a really good ongoing, we have a natural working relationship. You don't always know in these things who will be impacted and, you know, is there already something set up? So, that that can be a challenge at the outset, but some of, you know, national retailers have access to a lot of resources and so trying to tap into those and steering those in the right place is important. [44:20] **Jeff Hansen**: Okay, so we have the incident and we have EMS, fire, and law enforcement's initial response. Um, so now we're post-incident, say 12, 24 hours, and uh we're giving Mayor and City Council a briefing and a post-impact update. So right now, we know that we have 26 confirmed fatalities. Eight of them are children and two adults that were at Lakeview Elementary. We have four residents that were killed in the collapse apartment complex, four workers that were killed in the warehouse, three shoppers and two employees at the retail center. And three individuals that were trapped in their vehicles on city roadways. [45:06] **Jeff Hansen**: We also on top of that have an injury estimate for you of between 175 and 225 residents. Out of those approximately 40 of them are in critical condition that were transported to trauma centers throughout the metro. We have dozens that were treated for blunt force trauma, lacerations, and crush injuries. And then just to add context to the scenario for you, the main city facilities including City Hall are all currently operating on backup power. Cell service is severely limited as two towers were destroyed, making family reunification and emergency coordination even more difficult. We have over 500 residents that are displaced or without shelter and hotels are at capacity within hours of the storm. [46:12] **Jeff Hansen**: The city has activated its emergency operations center with unified command. Social media posts are going around and local news is amplifying community fears, raising questions about the city's preparedness, its siren timing, and school safety protocols. And we have family members of missing and/or deceased that are using social media to try to locate family and they're demanding city officials tell them if their family members have died. This tornado has become Lakeville's most devastating natural disaster in modern history, triggering a full-scale emergency response. And so that's the information we're going to give you. Obviously, there's going to be challenges that come your guys' way and I'll hold for any questions and then Thor and Mike are going to facilitate that conversation. [47:14] **Lieutenant Thor How**: Okay. Uh so for the Council's consideration, using this question to generate a conversation between you: what are the key issues that the city council will be facing in this first 24 hours of the disaster? [47:34] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: People are going to be asking us for information that we either don't have or shouldn't be speaking about. Um so it's going to be basically keeping people patient but yeah there's going to be a lot of questions to which they're starting... they're going to be micro questions when you got this whole big thing. It's an enormous scenario. Um when I attended a training years ago, and it's simplistic but has helped me a lot especially when I was a supervisor, the acronym "WIN": What's Important Now. And that changes based on where you are in your scenario but that is something that has helped me substantially. [48:22] **Michelle Volk**: WIN: What's Important Now? So within four hours... you might even be getting phone calls with the city council member. What's important now to calm the citizen, to let them know that we are using all our resources that we have available to get to them, you know, to areas as fast as we can. I mean, I'm I'm trying to figure out what what is important now when... I mean you are or how you want us to communicate it as... my thought process is you want to try to be as calming and caring as you possibly can be. But the unfortunate part is that I'm not doing your job. So I really in some ways I'm kind of out of the loop. I I have trust and faith in what you're doing and I have to relay that but I have no knowledge of what you're doing. Does that make sense? [49:50] **Thor How**: That makes absolute sense. The what you're referring to is the people on the ground. You're trusting that they will be handling the situation and that is not the minutia that you would want to get involved in. Correct. Right. And that's accurate. You're at a much higher level. So it I think Mr. Lee was about to comment, but one of the keys would be communications. It seems like you were hitting communications, right? [50:18] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: So we would need to facilitate communication and we would need to decide what we need to decide facilitating communication. Well, we want to probably schedule some planned comms whether and how those are going to go out, whether that's the TV, social media, uh whatever. And then what do we know right now and how are we uh planning for the next 24 hours? So things like clearing roads to get to people, restoring electricity, essential services like that because we can't get to everyone or rescue do the recovery operations without some of the basic essentials. So communicating what we know now and what our plan is in the near future is probably what I think we would want to know if we're in a 24-hour meeting right now. [51:17] **Thor How**: Larger from the Mayor's perspective, what's one of the key things that you need to do in your position? [51:24] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Well, I think there needs to be a unified voice on behalf of the city and then act as, you know, an MC—that we have the expert from emergency management, go to electric or Xcel or whoever, right? They're be able to answer the nuts and bolts questions related to each of those things. Have we talked to the Red Cross? Have we talked to the governor? make sure that we've got all of our ducks in a row. I think that's probably the most important and not straying away from from that. [51:55] **Mike Meyer**: Right on. But from the emergency manager, I'm going to be coming to the Mayor saying we need to declare emergency or a city emergency. Just from a background from from the operations plan is the Mayor can declare that but it's only for three days and then you have to formally declare it as a city council and then in turn that turns on the spot if you will for the county to get engaged and the state to get engaged because ultimately it becomes a funding mechanism if it's a federal disaster and state as part of supplying that. Uh and who would be... and I'm just acting so if it's not you then the Acting Mayor can do that. So there is a reason beyond just who's the Acting Mayor in place of you too, right? Of not just running the meeting, but there is a formality for that piece of it. [52:45] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: That's just a sign declaration, right? [52:47] **Mike Meyer**: Yep. It's built into the EOP (emergency operation plan). So really we would just print that out and if you remember, Mayor Anderson did during COVID—like a lot of every other cities did—and then you held a meeting to do that. [53:02] **Justin Miller**: Besides the one of the things that does is it allows us to do some things outside of the normal bidding requirements. So if we have an urgent need for workload or whatever, we can go do that without... [53:15] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Is that a state thing the three days? [53:18] **Mike Meyer**: Yep. And as I mentioned earlier like curfew. So while we're in that if we need to set a curfew so that we don't have people out whatever that time set is. Um, also it opens or helps with the the financing as far as the cost of what we're going to have to do to recover from this. [53:37] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Okay. So, when do we get notified? I live on the other side of the city. You know, sirens have gone up, but I have no idea what the damage is over here. When do we get notified? And if cell service is an issue, how how do we get notified that the process is that it was bigger than we thought and we're going to go into this emergency situation. So how do I get notified then? [54:05] **Mike Meyer**: Through... well, it'd be through cell service through Everbridge is one means that we're going to alert you through an Everbridge if there's an event and we need you to report to the police department, to the EOC to be there for that piece of it. Oh okay. So that that is one method that we'll probably use versus you know and it could be that Justin is making those phone calls saying we've experienced this whether whether you are aware of it or not from you know the siren piece of it and "can you please come to the police station?" [54:39] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: One of the reasons I set up that group chat, you know, it's notice I don't use that except yeah important stuff, right? One because it's probably just from an open meeting reason why, but that's one reason I can just get in touch with you really fast. And so it'd be through that or through a phone call. [54:54] **Brad Paulson**: Cell phones are down. That's going to be an issue, right? Um so we'll have to start to send people out. House calls house calls or people coming knock at your door. somebody. Yeah, I mean we start with the Mayor obviously um or we got if we need to have a meeting. Absolutely. That's how we would handle it as far as first responders as well. I mean all of our alert paging systems could be impacted and and we would be sending people off to pound doors and that's a worst case scenario, but it's it's possible you could lose some of those connections. [55:30] **Justin Miller**: Public Works does have radios still. Um I don't know if your radios work 800 MHz off the cell. Yeah. So I mean there's some redundancy there. Obviously we don't have those. They could be discharged if it was something like that. [55:49] **Brad Paulson**: And one of the things to consider when we talked about like if the Mayor was one of the houses directly affected, he'd be not available for 24 hours to to sign that declaration. So something else to consider—redundancy there in this scenario by... Yeah. That's a drag you personally. I mean on a it wouldn't even have to be this big, but there's a good chance just people in the room could have an impact maybe directly or indirectly. That's you know their life might be steered a different direction. Their role as a Mayor, council member, of us or our team. So it's a very real problem to have to work around. [56:36] **Justin Miller**: One of the things that I always talk about is you have to take care of your family first, right? And part of that's being prepared so that if something were to happen, you felt comfortable that they're fine and you can come do this job obviously. So, you know, have that emergency kit or you go full prepper if you want, but um you know, just being sure that obviously we wouldn't expect anybody to leave an emergency at your house. That's priority number one. Just like some of our first responders might be in the same situation. [57:21] **Thor How**: Okay. Sure. So the the followup question: we've covered on what would what would you be facing as challenges for the first 24 hours. So we'll move we'll move forward and ask you to consider what your challenges would be in the days after the disaster. What do you feel your primary challenges as a council would be the following days? [57:42] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yeah, I mean I think it's ensuring that we have the resources, right? So whether it's county or state—in this case probably state and even federal, it's a pretty big disaster as things go. um and whether those are private or public and making sure that's all engaged, trying to get all the other partners that I mentioned before, the utilities and everything and probably in this scenario either partnering with churches or the school district to get housing for those who are displaced, right? So, making sure that all that's covered. Um, and then figuring out, you know, what's the the long-term plan for the next, you know, 72 hours and figuring out how you get to that next position before you even think about, you know, everything else. And federal declarations can take a long time. So, you know, putting in those requests, making sure we talk to our members of Congress on stuff if we need extra support. And at the same time then we have to have a meeting to actually officially declare the emergency. [58:50] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: How soon does Red Cross get involved in something like this? [58:54] **Mike Meyer**: Fairly quickly. So I mean we use them frequently on a house fire. So we determine, you know, using that as the example. So if the homeowner needs that assistance, we call we get Red Cross started and they're within hours. Now something on a larger scale, I don't know what that would look like from an activation. They'll get people here rather quickly, but what level of support, I don't know how deep that would look. [59:20] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Are they the organization that um if a family were to call that you would say, you know, contact Red Cross? I mean, where do people are going to want to know where to get some immediate help? Where do you where do we send them for this help? [59:38] **Mike Meyer**: Well I'd say, you know, using this as the example, so kind of a bigger picture is initially we had to put them in some type of emergency shelters. Uh we have agreements within the the emergency operation plan with the schools right now. So that you know, Lakeville South is the example. Maybe they're not a good example where the storm hit, but Century or McGuire might be that resource that we send people to for temporary until we can find something a little bit longer term. Now, Red Cross would show up there and help start providing some of that assistance. Um, so that's kind of where that goes. It's not, you know, it's not the city of Lakeville doing this. It's us as a community. So, there is that partnership already built in with the schools that's there for that shelter use. Uh, Red Cross to be listed as a shelter. Red Cross has a parameter or parameters that allows us that they have to go through and do a checklist of does the school or our shelter that we've identified meet those criteria for them. [1:00:38] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: And does FEMA get involved in something this big? [1:00:41] **Mike Meyer**: They will, but it's going to be much later. Much later. I mean, you got to think of any disaster that happens, whether it's here or anywhere, is initially it's going to be us as a city running it. quickly we'll pull in the county and bring in their resources to bear. Then state and then federal is going to be sometime further down the road, but we're going to be called "on our own" so to speak with just what we have within the state. [1:01:07] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: And so what you would give us as part of the communication is where to send people to get resources and a timeline of um because electricity utilities aren't going to be up right away and a kind of a timeline given from let's say Dakota Electric and the other company is um when they think that they're going to have power restored or you know those types of things. So we would have that information if somebody were to contact us. So we would be able to convey it to correct. [1:01:43] **Tierney Elmer (Communications)**: Yes, that would be part of part of my my section. Oh, I jumping ahead. No, that's okay. I mean a good segue right to... Yeah. Yeah, I mean clearly based on the scenario we have a lot of questions to your point about we'd have to be very clear on answering the questions on how the process works and why things happen the way they did when we get into it in addition to then offering that information on where to go from there. Clearly if we don't have a good answer on when the siren went off for instance it's not going to solve any of the other issues that people are having. It only creates more mistrust. [1:02:31] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Can I just ask one more question? The reason I bring this up is because it seems like in my experience as a city council person and formerly of a school board person, they seem to think we have all these... and um and you never want to leave them with any, how do I want to say this, doubts so that they don't feel so that they're not uncomfortable. But you want to be able... do you kind of get what I'm trying to say? And so that I guess that's why I'm asking these questions is because in my mind I'm trying to figure out how to service the citizens of Lakeville because they're going to come to me and expect me to actually narrow in and try to fix their immediate problem, which I can't. But I have to make them feel as though I'm trying to and make it broader as I'm trying to help them. If that makes sense. [1:03:27] **Mike Meyer**: That's where Tierney and her staff will come in and we'll, you know, and I'll let her kind of run through that, but coming up with what is what is our messaging and how does that look and I'll turn that over to Tierney. Did you Council...? Yes. [1:03:39] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Thanks. Before we go into comms, can I ask one more question about from a council action standpoint? Are besides the state of emergency, are there any other formal actions that are required to activate staff and funding or does that cover everything? [1:03:54] **Mike Meyer**: Yeah, curfew that's an issue. Does that have to be... have to be a council decision? Um but under your under your state of emergency that's kind of where the the second page if you will, the role of responsibilities, of coming back and saying we need Council to formally declare the emergency, but then we want to implement a curfew and the resource for the funding allocations and stuff like that. So it's not not all hitting you at once. as those things develop, we'll probably come back and start asking questions or looking for we need to add this into that piece and then we would need Council's formal actions for that. [1:04:39] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: And do we have the ability to bypass public notice laws and stuff to do emergency meeting stuff? [1:04:45] **Justin Miller**: Yes, I've never... Yeah, I think it's 24 hours now just for emergency meeting. [1:04:49] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: What is it for a regular meeting? I thought three days. [1:04:52] **Justin Miller**: Hope we don't get any... one of the reasons because we've all been in various emergencies of different sizes. One of the frustrations we've always seen is that the Council wants to do more than what they need to be doing or what they should be doing. You feel like "I'm not doing anything, I need to be doing something" and communication is going to be the biggest thing that you need to be doing. Um and Tierney's going to get into that as you're doing that. If there's one thing to remember, saying "I don't know" is a perfectly good answer when you're asked something at this point, right? Because it's much better to say "I don't know, I can find out" than to say something that is wrong or is too fast to be put out there and gets out of head. [1:05:45] **Justin Miller**: It's also okay to say there will be information coming out at our next press release. And we're going to talk about kind of that cadence and the sketch. One other quick thing to for the EOC... I mean it's a really the EOC isn't going to just stop after this. It's going to go on for quite... the EOC will be active for days if not weeks. [1:06:11] **Councilmember John Bermel**: and can you just describe really briefly some of the stuff that goes on the different roles... in terms of what's happening in the EOC in terms of planning in terms of communications in terms of resources in terms of all those things and what people are getting... [1:06:33] **Mike Meyer**: So maybe I'll start high level for like the EOC and its operational periods. But typically, you're going to do an eight or a 12 hour window. More than likely—and I'll say from like the civil unrest—we were doing 12-hour operational periods. So, there is... it's not always the police chief or the fire chief that is in charge of the EOC. It's an operational manager. That person's kind of the high level coordinating everything that goes on. And then it starts breaking down into—to kind of keep it simple—a finance area. So, somebody that's tracking what are the cost of doing whatever that is that the resources that are out there. anything from equipment that we're renting to the staff that's being used to mitigate that situation. [1:07:22] **Mike Meyer**: Uh then you're going to start working into the communications. You'll have law enforcement, a fire, EMS players in there, but then also bringing in we mentioned like the school district or if you got utilities that are affected. So you probably have Dakota Electric, Centerpoint, the gas companies are all going to have um representatives within the EOC that we can pull information so they can give us a timeline of "hey, we're going to get power back up in the next 24 hours" or that. So it's not... it's a pretty big umbrella of what's going on in there. Not everybody's always in an active role. Um, so I've done I'll say multiple drills with the Co-op's EOC where you have multiple people playing roles in there. Finance, media, kind of the first responders, Public Works will be a huge role of what they're going to be doing. Then the outside world—Community Development as an example gets pulled in to help do donations and organizing with the churches of kind of who's going to be our center point for that. Which church or group can we use? So every department in the city is going to have a role within the EOC that determines... probably the heaviest ones that you're going to rely on is the operational side of things and the finance side of things because we have to track that cost because ultimately to get reimbursed from the state and such and just so that we know as a city how much it's costing us for that business. Does that kind of give you a...? [1:08:47] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yeah. And then it'll be different people with different operates almost shifts. [1:08:52] **Mike Meyer**: Oh, 100%. So, so we may assume you or or any of you know something and you haven't been in the EOC for 12 hours. Yep. And it might be somebody from the state of Minnesota's joint task force that's running the show. Correct. [1:09:12] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: And so it's it's just for me it's the communication is such an important thing that we don't get out message and that we have realized too that if we ask Mike or Brad they may go "I can find out for you." [1:09:27] **Mike Meyer**: like that's the job of the EOC and communications you know at the at the end of it is say "you can expect a briefing from the EOC on what the current status is of that operation." It'll come, you know, from Tierney to Justin to you potentially. Probably at the end of an operation, correct? Sorry. [1:10:04] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Question. So like as an example, Perham had a big, you know, I don't think anyone was really injured as far as I know. Does that require the same kind of level of, you know, declaration that quickly even though it's more just like...? [1:10:20] **Brad Paulson**: Yeah. Because it frees up your resources. Yeah. You can start to do things. And even in those there's that initial period of the unknown, right? You get collapse structure things. So that just takes time to work through to determine if there's casualties. And that's a big piece of... we've seen some examples for information, incorrect information getting out on casualties is very problematic as you can imagine. [1:10:53] **Mike Meyer**: I think to your question Mayor, you know, obviously Perham is much smaller than Lakeville so what can they... what's their capacity to handle that right you know so something a storm event where you know minor high winds or something that hits Lakeville is probably a pretty insignificant event that we handle within a short amount of time versus alco market gets hit right it's a whole different story for them where they have to go through a process. [1:11:07] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Well I just think of like when that night we had flash floods and five fires, right? But because we originally were able to then become a computer. Correct. Yep. Okay. [1:11:49] **Tierney Elmer**: Um so a lot of the questions you had I hope um some of this helps a little bit. I took some of this... I have two pieces to this. Um some of this I took directly from some lessons learned um as I worked in the joint information center or the JIC um during Burnsville last year. Um so there are some little um things that I put in here that were related to kind of a different situation. So, I tried to sort of turn it a little bit and then at the end, Councilmember Volk, I I found some interesting communications data about how to talk to residents in a different way um that I thought was really clever and important and it can be used in any situation, whether it's crisis or not. That um I thought it's very simple, very straightforward and I put it in context of sort of what you'll typically hear us say in a situation but maybe what we should be sort of saying. [1:12:47] **Tierney Elmer**: Um so it looks like I have a lot of slides but I do not. Very fast I promise. Um and hopefully this answers some questions. Um and it's just again some lessons learned um from situational things that I've been through. Uh so one thing that we learned I think was just to stand up that JIC immediately. Um, and I think with the EOC, if there's an incident, um, is getting that, uh, communication center set up as absolutely fast as possible and asking the neighboring cities—which is what we did in Burnsville—for help immediately and to get those resources to that location. Um, and then to assign tasks and everything that we're going to need. Um, and that's important, uh, because we want to create that centralized communications hub. [1:13:50] **Tierney Elmer**: So, um, we want... these are things that we put in place, but it took a couple of days. Set up a crisis communications inbox. There's one inbox for all inquiries. Everything comes to that one inbox. So, if you guys are receiving things, if city staff is receiving things that's from the media or anywhere else, it goes to one inbox. That way, um, we can kind of parse through it and all of our responses that have been developed—we'll get to that in a second—but those pre-written responses that have already been reapproved, then we can use those as the answers to media. And um we know that we are going to get a tremendous amount of media in a very short amount of time. They're going to want to know what's going on. How are things going to be handled? Um so we want those pre-written responses that have gone through the approval. Um and getting the approval set up, whoever makes those approvals, getting that set up ahead of time is absolutely critical. And that took us a little while too. Um, lesson learned there. [1:15:02] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yes. So, we get an email from the media, forwarded to that. [1:15:05] **Tierney Elmer**: Absolutely. They're not even going to respond. It's forwarded. Exactly. That's the best way to do that. Um, one thing that we learned is the media went to every single council member and they poked constantly. Well, they called me. They were calling people. Absolutely. and they just wanted a comment from anyone and I get it. Everybody wants to make some sort... especially in that case you want to make some sort of statement. Um but the best thing to do in any situation at that point, you don't have the information at hand and it's just to to forward it especially in the early beginnings when you don't have a statement in your in your hands. is just to make sure that you forward that. Um once we, you know, get the JIC set up and you've got approvals, that's why it's important to get it set up very, very quickly is that we can get those responses out and we can get them out to you. Um and that way you've got something to say. [1:16:15] **Tierney Elmer**: um setting up press conferences with one or multiple spokespersons determined by the situation. Um, so if it's a natural disaster, it might be multiple people as you said, Mayor. It might be, you know, the electric company, it might be yourself, it might be the police chief, it might be the fire chief, depending on the situation. And then over time, it will morph. Um, we may not have you on next time or we may have... it might be Paul Oehme at some point when it gets further down the line and we're just talking about cleanup. Um so there's different situations and then we'll determine that and we'll be flexible as we go. [1:17:10] **Tierney Elmer**: Consistency in messaging. We've kind of already talked about that. Uh we stick to those approved messages. We used the canned messages... I hate to say canned, but the pre-written approved messages for media public. Of course, you don't have to read them exactly as is, but to keep close to those messages, that is critically important. Um, and just designating those clear spokespersons ahead of time. Um, this is also important for city staff. Um, in Burnsville, media was coming up to city staff as they were coming and going. That could happen in any situation for even Lakeville staff. and to remind staff that we should not be having even informal press contact with city staff either. They don't need to be making contact or they don't need to be making statements and they don't need to feel the pressure. They can just say "um you know contact our communications department" and they can handle it. [1:18:18] **Tierney Elmer**: Um I did put this up here um with the other scenario in mind that there should be assigned family liaison if if there is a case where a city employee is a part of the incident. Um that is critically important and in the case of Burnsville the fire and street that were the only people that spoke to the families—no one else. um no city council members or anything were to speak to them because they were inundated obviously with price and people that wanted to speak for them. So I just put that up there just to as a kind of reminder for everyone. [1:19:08] **Brad Paulson**: So, nobody wants community source that has withhold their name because it can't authorize. Exactly. [1:19:18] **Justin Miller**: You know, something I thought about on that too is um we'll we'll give you the um the material to put out and a lot of you have pretty wide reaches. Something I was thinking about... everybody who has a Facebook account or a Twitter account is going to be the media, right? Because even if you don't think you're talking to media, you're just talking to your neighbor. How many times do you see it? They go onto Lakeville Happenings and say, "I just spoke with X, right?" And that's just as powerful as giving it to WCCO or anybody like that. So message discipline is the most important. [1:19:47] **Tierney Elmer**: Um, this I wanted to put up there. Um, in terms of keeping you in the loop, this is critically important to make sure that either you're getting email updates or that you're a part of a briefing um that we are keeping you in the loop. We're explaining next steps um and the reasoning um that we're providing you statements to share um these that we are giving you pre-written statements that are approved for social media. Um but not to go any further than that. Um uh we already talked about that media inquiries for those. Um and then uh we'll talk about the rules um in just a second. And then um another critical role though that is very important is if you do hear misinformation to report that back to the JIC. Um, that's another thing that uh was really helpful is when we in Burnsville when we did hear things, we were able to go and deal with it right away. Um, that was critically important and you all could help in that realm as well because it's hard to have your ears to the ground when you're sitting there trying to write messaging. Um and so making sure that we are dealing with rumors immediately is the best thing that we can do. [1:21:20] **Tierney Elmer**: And then um and that's the best way to um ensure that we're keeping um the public informed. Um another thing that we learned was having um a really good web presence. um not putting out obviously any other information from the city at that time. Um some this has happened not in Burnsville but in other cities where they just had social media scheduled in their social media programs and it just continually kept going out and they forgot to unschedule it. Um it's very embarrassing. So there, you know, it's things like that that you want to make sure people just... and maybe things that we might have on our web page that might be, you know, not appropriate or that type of thing to be sensitive to all those type of things. Um but to have also a web presence, start with a clean, very focused web page. Don't add to it. That's one thing that we started to do in Burnsville was keep adding you know, building on the events and things like that. Um, and then it was like, "this is kind of silly, let's take the stuff that's done down" because it was starting to confuse people. So, don't build on that information. Just keep putting up information that's clean and clear. [1:22:33] **Tierney Elmer**: Um, and then that's where you want to put information like here's um helpful information, phone numbers, updates. um have a media specific page where they could have a packet of information. If um my team went out and actually took like B-roll maybe with a drone. I don't know if it was appropriate. Maybe that's where we put some images so that it keeps the media out of the actual sites we don't want them at. I don't know. Um and then we we are pre-approving those images. It's just an idea, but um and then it's um um post information um and I've got a little information on this as well, but the amount of community assistance from outside organizations that starts to come in is absolutely overwhelming. Um and so maybe there's information out there of how to help Lakeville. Um because that becomes completely unruly. Um, and it's all very very good, but you got to have a way to organize that. [1:23:53] **Tierney Elmer**: This talks a little bit about that. Um, specifically in Burnsville, they appointed one church as like the faith hub and then they coordinated all the other churches. So that was one idea that worked really well. Otherwise, they had all the churches trying to talk to the city and nobody could handle that. There wasn't one person that could do that. Um, so they had a good relationship which um, you know, police and fire department have. So maybe there's a church that can help coordinate that. Um, they were collecting money. People of course are going to want to send money. Um, so, uh, we didn't, the city doesn't want to handle that piece obviously. Um, so they found a way to have the churches collect money, but then they picked it up every day so that churches weren't handling big gobs of cash and money, um, that they were depositing it and putting it into it. This happened to be the memorial fund, um, but they were picking that money up quickly. [1:24:41] **Tierney Elmer**: um in the case of um again this is more specific to um the employee incident but they needed um they actually needed a PIO for the fund itself. They didn't have an information officer to help that fund and they got overwhelmed extremely quickly and they didn't um they didn't have good IT support. So their lines became completely bogged down because people soon as that memorial fund went live um they broke their system broke. Um which is not surprising but to think all that kind of thing through. Same thing could happen here. If it was tornado people would just probably clamor to help. That's just a Minnesota thing and probably you know a American thing. Um and then just use all of our resources that we have. In this case, Public Works was huge in Burnsville. It would obviously be huge here too in a tornado. Um they would be terribly busy. Um and then to use reputable organizations to help herd all of the help that comes in um and to corral that. and you guys can be very central in helping organize that as well. Um and making sure that that is taken care of. The bottom line on all of this: move quickly on whatever is decided to do. Do it really really fast. um make a decision and move on it very quickly. [1:27:00] **Tierney Elmer**: And um this is kind of my last slide before um just the last piece on messaging. Um timely operational decisions are really important. I know that you guys probably would be involved in a lot of this piece of it, but there's some influence here. And part of this is just, you know, does city hall... are we open? Are we operational? Are we closed? Um, this was not made quickly in in Burnsville. Um, and for good reason. It's not something you planned for. It was in the middle of a primary election. Um, and they couldn't decide what to do—to be open, to be closed. Um, they had to call the Secretary of State. Those are things that, you know, have to be dealt with, but you know, plan for those type of things. Um, so if you're going to be uh if you're going to keep continuity of services, could we do it online? Those type of things. Those are things that all need to be brought up. Any questions up to that? Not boring you. [1:28:38] **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: No. you know, snoring at all. Okay. [1:28:44] **Justin Miller**: Um, can you just real quick... Yeah. You know, so going back to the to the day of the incident or, you know, immediate aftermath, we've all seen the press conferences, right? And I think our view is probably that initial one, the Mayor or whoever's the head at that time is going to be the person that probably starts that, right? They're going to be the face of that crisis. um answer any immediate questions, express the concerns and the prayers, all of that and then crisis dependent will turn over to the practitioners, right? Um that would be what happens in that case. What also happens in some cases depending on the scale of it is you get outside people wanting to be there too, right? state officials, federal officials, that's something that we all have to coordinate and what's appropriate at the time. After that though, the daily briefings or the twice daily briefings most likely going to be operational in nature, right? So, it's probably going to be people around. [1:29:36] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: How do we um communicate with our state reps since they're the ones that cover this community? [1:29:43] **Justin Miller**: Well, that I would think I mean we're fortunate that we have good relationships with ours, right? You all have good contact information. That's probably a good spot for you to be sharing information with them. That's something we would be talking with our state and federal partners at the emergency management level. Um, but from an elected official standpoint, that's probably a good resource to... [1:30:14] **Tierney Elmer**: um this was something that I thought was terribly interesting actually. Um, this is a little bit based on neuroscience. Um, and I think um, this is nothing groundbreaking, but in a crisis, people are emotional, not logical. Um, and we tend to in crisis comms hit people with facts and policies. Um, and this is obviously it's not the way everyone else is thinking, which is going to cause that distrust and the confusion and, you know, not the connection. uh because that's obviously not how we're wired. Uh so there's um kind of this process that is called "Validate, Relate, and Prove." Um they could be named a hundred different things, but it's really just to help people feel understood, seen, and heard. [1:31:18] **Tierney Elmer**: How many times have you heard though in a press conference: "The city is following all our emergency response protocols and coordinating with state and local partners." I mean, that's such a typical response. I can see myself actually typing that probably. Um, so, but to, you know, to really kind of spin that around, it is it is an important thing to say. Um, but to start with... um and I could see you guys naturally just saying this, we've got a great council, but just to start with, you know, "it's devastating" to all of us to talk about lives were lost, homes were destroyed. This is an overwhelming time. And then what, you know, we're going to be with you step by step. and then say "then you say we're coordinating with state and federal partners." But to just kind of make sure that you're check yourself when you're talking even when you're talking with people on the phone even if it isn't a tornado if it's something else just to say "hey I hear you I know what you're talking about." Um, and just make sure that you're hearing the constituents. [1:32:35] **Tierney Elmer**: Um, relate—connect what people care about most. Um, again, I can probably see myself typing this: "We're working to support impacted neighborhoods across the city." That's a really easy thing to say. Uh but maybe to connect a little bit more is, you know, "It didn't just damage homes, it disrupted daily life. A lot of you might be figuring out where you're going to sleep tonight. You're trying to help your neighbors. You're also probably trying to explain it to your kids. And that's what matters most here." And so you're trying to kind of connect with them. Again, just keep self-checking. um those are things that are kind of important and it's easy to get pulled into jargon especially if it's something very emotional for us as well. Um because you just want to push yourself away from it as well. Um and we saw a lot of that in in Burnsville obviously. Um, and that's why it was good to bring in other fresh communicators that could help distance a little bit. Um, and try to write some of these more relatable statements. [1:33:55] **Tierney Elmer**: And then um, prove. Um, again, it's easy to say "we're doing everything we can to help." Um, it's it's much better to be able to say "here's the next steps." Um, you know, "we're posting recovery updates every day at 10 on the city website"—and then of course we need to follow through with that and make sure they're up there at 9:58. Um, and on social media, "if you need immediate help"—I just kind of made this up—"Call 211. I don't know." Or visit the Heritage Center... that's also made up, which is staffed 24/7 with volunteers that will help you with support services. Maybe that's something we come up with. And maybe that's where Red Cross or other organizations have tables set up and that's where the volunteers are and all these organizations that can help you get connected with insurance and all kinds of other um or just be able to use a cell phone if you've lost your cell phone in the tornado. Um that type of thing so that people can actually see real action. they can go someplace, they can get help, but that you're showing them. The city's doing something more. [1:35:14] **Tierney Elmer**: Um, here's, you know, we may not be able to personally help, but there's obviously other services and, you know, we can give you water and food and blanket. Um, and again, why this works: people can't absorb obviously logic until they feel safe, emotionally safe. Um, and that's nothing that um, we don't all already know. It's just hard when you're a situation like this because you just want to cut to the chase. These guys (Public Safety) are going to be busy doing what they do best. Um, and then for the rest of us, we got to be able to connect the dots for people and get the information out there, but we have to do it in such a way that we can connect with people and do a good job doing that piece of it. And that's where we got to tamp down the misinformation and Lakeville Happenings... I wish we could just... but, you know, just say, "Hey guys, work with us on this." You know, maybe that's the relationship we need to have with them and say, "Help us put out good information. Let's let's take down the stuff that doesn't work." [1:36:20] **Tierney Elmer**: Um, and then, my final thoughts. Um, so plan for a layered response. um empower a small very skilled team. Um we found the right communicators that you know worked really well together up in Burnsville. So there are really really good communicators in case I get taken out. Um, and then, um, just protect public trust through the different ways that we know how to do that. That's all I have. And I appreciate, um, you guys letting me be a part of this scenario. And thank you. [1:37:13] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: It's awesome. Is there any way we could get a copy of that? Yeah, for sure. [1:37:16] **Councilmember John Bermel**: Do you think you would be pulling other cities communications people to help in a scenario like this too? [1:37:22] **Tierney Elmer**: Absolutely. So you'd be taking, you know, shifts on how and writing content... more than I just can't imagine trying to do that. Yeah. There's no way efficient team that you have. Yeah. Um, and I already I already told Chief Paulson that, you know, if something happens to me, God forbid, but you know, I'm going to be in my basement, so that's good. So, if something happens to the house, it can fly away, but I'll be here with my dog. Uh but um you know there are really good communicators that I was sharing names with that you know there's Edina in Bloomington and those are the people that I would call and and say "can you be here" and I know they would be. um those are the people that we counted on in in in Burnsville and there was just so... and you just have one person that's worked in media and you have one person being a writer and you have one person that's, you know, and you set up desks like that and it just works like a dream and you have one person that's sending out information to city staff, one person that's working with you guys directly. Um so that's kind of how it works, but you definitely need... [1:38:57] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: No, none from us. Do you guys have any questions for us about stereo or any responses? [1:39:10] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Um, well, just do we have let's say the police department's destroyed? We have what's the next what's our redundancies in some situations? [1:39:16] **Mike Meyer**: I'd say the nice thing in today's technology... you know, we used to have boxes of computers sitting at PD, but the way that we are today is that we can literally say central maintenance as the example is will be in the conference room there or fire station one or you know the biggest piece is going to be does that building have backup power if we're running generators. Can we can we sustain there? Uh I think we've made some some very good moves to do that, you know. So any call it city facility is going to work well for an EOC. It's just a matter of making sure that we can fit our needs there. Or it might be multiple places that one function of the EOC might be in central maintenance and one might be at the water treatment. It's all all what's going to work for that. [1:40:02] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Do we have any pre-existing contracts with like debris companies? Like okay that's the first one we're going to call so that we know... [1:40:11] **Mike Meyer**: That would be more of a Paul Oehme question. I'm pretty sure that we do. I know within the the call the backbone of the EOP is that there are some listings of "here's the the vendors that we've used in the past." Okay. Um, I mean we have, you know, the the free-G, the South... I mean, we have those. Yeah. Good relations. Tom Breimann, our building guy, he has relations with HVAC contractors like that. So, I think we'd be able to... call list would be good. [1:40:48] **Brad Paulson**: You know, one thing I was thinking about, you talking a lot about the donations. Um, just going back to an incident I was with, it was law enforcement related. I wonder if it made sense to talk to the Public Safety Foundation about when something like this were to happen for them to be the central point because it would be tax-deductible, they could probably set up a sub-file pretty quickly. Um that would probably be a good spot. We should probably talk with them and see have that on... Yeah, I think they'd be willing certainly anything public safety related. [1:41:24] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: other resources that we haven't pre-allocated that we need to think about, you know, from a... is there stuff out there that we need to have on hand that we don't I don't even know. I'm just throwing... [1:41:35] **Brad Paulson**: Well, the one that we just worked through post-civil unrest is fencing, which became an issue metrowide and we have that in place now countywide for anybody that needs ready to go and people are trained being trained to construct that. [1:41:57] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Well, we feel like we got all the equipment for people rescue between us and neighboring and drones. [1:42:04] **Mike Meyer**: And I think some of, you know, keep it keep it simple in some of my mind is like if we have to have staff that's working around the clock, what are the, you know, what are the necessities they're going to need? You know, water, food, that simple stuff is making sure that supply of water on hand and so you're not going to have a meal so to speak with granola bars as an easy example. But having those things and I'll say you know we joke about a go-bag but if you're called into work and you don't know when you're coming back you have your phone charger computer charger those things that you can readily grab and bring with you. So I'll say you know I carry a backpack that carries my computer charger, phone charger, and I threw some food snacks in. So if I need it, I've got it. [1:42:38] **Justin Miller**: And one of the things that Tierney touched on a little bit is the continuity of the services. So city hall may not be maybe close to the public, but we're still all here trying to keep it operational. So some of my director boards—IT, Communications, I mean HR big role in some of the stuff too—but involves staff and whatever issues. But so we've got contingencies for a lot of that. we've got duplicate servers for one that are duplicated at PD, we've got the one main one here um so we've built some of that redundancy into the system already but it's the hard part of if you close city hall it's to continue doing everything else keep operating while everything else is going on. [1:43:25] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: yeah my only my only concern is we've become so reliant on fiber networks and cellular that... go or we just saw the little radio in the basement because information. [1:43:51] **Mike Meyer**: I'll go a little to Michelle's question earlier. You know, you guys get informed. We can get to you guys, but how do you tell the other half of the city? And if the 911 system down or the call center that we use, what came... Robo-call Everbridge. Yeah. Everbridge. You know, if that's down or if that can't reach people, then what do you do? [1:44:11] **Brad Paulson**: Yeah, I think most of you... Code 911 has contingency. I think it's Ramsey County, right? So, if something were to happen there, a fire line's cut or something, they switched over there pretty quickly. So, they have contingencies built into that system. [1:44:30] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Tonight's scenario was about natural disaster, but I'm sure there are other buckets of things that these similar um steps would be applicable to. I think we know some of them, but I mean, have you seen other emergencies that um not thinking of? I mean, social unrest is one. We had the COVID stuff that required some response there. But I mean, what are some of the other scenarios we should be thinking about applying this to? [1:44:59] **Mike Meyer**: The one that you know, Pan-O-Prog's coming up, a parade, you know, if somebody were to drive a truck for the Pan-O-Prog parade, you know, that would be bad, right? But the good thing about this system is it's the the command structure is the same, right? So how you implement it is different, but you have to sync roles and responsibilities. Your role as key communicators are going to change depending on if it's a tornado or a shooting. We're still going to ask you to be those communication pieces just like we're going to ask them to do their jobs. [1:45:44] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: What are you guys thinking? I mean, I'm just there's a shooting, national something related to the railroad, you know, that that transports hazardous chemicals. Um, there could certainly be some sort of disaster related to that, airport related. [1:46:05] **Brad Paulson**: Just from Pan-O-Prog perspective, you know, in the background, we do run a command post for that running roughly from Wednesday to Saturday. So, there is police, fire, EMS. We're kind of all partnered together overseeing what's happening and communicating with each other as far as "we need more resources" or "what does that look like?" So, that we've done, this will be our third or fourth year of doing that as as it's continually gotten bigger on us. [1:46:34] **Thor How**: And interestingly, when you think of any crisis or any disaster or any emergency event, all of the same systems are leveraged just in different ways. Communications, police, fire, public works—they're all getting utilized almost no matter what scenario you're plugging in. [1:46:45] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Sure. And there's the world ending one, the EMP... best laid plans there. You are on your own. [1:47:15] **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: a multi-day blizzard. We know that that's not unlikely here. Sure. More likely. [1:47:20] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Well, was this helpful? Yeah. Thank you very much. [1:47:24] **Councilmember Joshua Lee**: Yeah. And I think I you know I think it's important that we do this every 18 months or if there's a turnover election, you know, just to refresh certainly with new people. [1:47:35] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: Well, especially because look at all that information she got from Burnsville. you know, just going through these different scenarios and gaining that knowledge from somebody else's crisis will improve our crisis response and learning. [1:48:15] **Brad Paulson**: I mean, to that point, learning from from other people is huge. We do it all the time and most if not all of you probably do that things happening across the nation, but you may see a mayor address the community and think, "Wow, that was awesome. That was a really good job" or or vice versa. Uh and we see what law enforcement can we learn tactically, we wouldn't do that. And so I think just having an eye open for those things and if that prompts questions of of any of us of hey, how would we handle that? We're to answer those best we can too. [1:48:47] **Councilmember Michelle Volk**: But you're right, Luke, any turnover in a council, you know, for sure is going to change the whole dynamic of a council. I mean, we're we're a great group right now, but um you know, but one different person changes the whole dynamic and it's really important to be on the same page after that. So guess, you know, my thought process is that we're really lucky right now because we're fortunate um that we've gone through this and if something comes up, I have all the faith in my fellow council members in the fact that they will adhere to this guideline and not decide to become the media spokesperson because they want the limelight or something, you know, or try to fix a problem that they shouldn't be fixing, you know. Um, but I think it's really important for the new people to realize, especially anybody really new to an elected position, there's a lot of things just because you're an elected person, you can't fix it. [1:49:55] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: And I can't remember does the League just do basics on this when they do the new elected. [1:49:58] **Mike Meyer**: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The county periodically does some elected official and emergency management. I went to the last one but it's been a couple years. Yeah. Has one recently but I think they end up canceling because there was no turnout for it. So if that pops up again we'll be able to share that. [1:50:12] **Brad Paulson**: Yeah. There's also some basic online training for how this whole system looks. Yeah. At one point was requiring councils to take that... you had to have certain staff too, 100, 200, 700, 800 people would put it in sequence of why would you do one two three four... it's a 300 and 400 series being offered but that's more high level hurricane something like this that you wouldn't want to go to. [1:50:57] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Yeah. And I'll, you know, I'll just share that one... we had a long conversation as mayors about this in Tampa over the weekend. Mayor of New Orleans and Mayor of Tampa both spoke about how she went from having a terrorist attack to Sugar Bowl to Super Bowl all within six weeks. And her biggest takeaway was like leaning on other regional partners but making sure the feds are involved, the state is involved. It's locally managed, right? Federally funded, state supported, but locally managed. Not a Super Bowl. The World Series or Gumball World Series for sure. Sure. [1:51:41] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Uh committee update and I-35 it... this is going to be closed. [1:51:56] **Councilmember Dan Wolter**: Yeah 494 be closed the alliance take I think July and August off too. So yeah it'll be closed alternative city. Yep. [1:52:16] **Justin Miller**: Reason to go any further. Um there's some turnover in Carrie Callahan resigned from her position. So who you met up there in the interim will be taking over. Okay. [1:52:28] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: I'm just going to leave others. I'll just one other thing I just want to share with everybody. Um at the US Conference of Mayor's meeting on Thursday afternoon, we spent about 200 of us spent about two hours talking about personal safety. Um after it's kind of added to the agenda after what happened to Alderman Hoffman and they had the police chief from Tampa kind of give some talks, a lot of stuff that had Brad they talked about, but a few things that they just, you know, highlighted. One was thinking about engaging with some sort of online system to have your address and stuff removed. There's all these websites that have your home address and phone numbers out there. And so there's couple different opt-out websites, easy-opt-out and "Delete Me." There's a fee associated, but they will try to scrub your personal information off websites. So they said they should definitely do that. [1:53:30] **Mayor Luke Hellier**: But then the other thing is they just said if you're going to an event you're not used to going to or invited to something just you know let your PD know if you know whatever. So that was kind of their their two big takeaways that would apply I think to us. some of it was other like executive detail and those type of things I don't think it really applies to us but they said for events specifically to think about that and then for you and I to have conversations with our kids about who you talk to at school and also letting your school know where your kids go to school and you and I can talk about a bit. Okay, then I'll take a motion to adjourn so... All those in favor say Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.