you you you you good evening ladies and gentlemen it is 5:30 and I will call this regular meeting of the Burnsville City Council to order it is our tradition to stand for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and we invite you to join us I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have announcements for our upcoming meetings council regular meetings are scheduled for Tuesday January 7th and Tuesday January 21st at 5:30 p.m. we have a work schedule work sessions scheduled for Tuesday January 14th at 5:30 p.m. and our all-day work session is scheduled for Friday January 31st at 9:00 a.m. and that meeting will be at the Nicollet in in their board room all meetings are held here in the council chambers the next item on the agenda is citizens comments this is the opportunity for anyone in the audience to address the council on an item that is not on the printed agenda and not an application form that will be coming before us at a future date is there anyone who wishes to address the council anyone seeing no one we will move on the next item is emergency items only and this is additions to the final agenda ms Muscovy no madam mayor okay thank you thank you we now move on to the consent agenda the consent agenda is a group of items that's considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion however an item on a consent agenda can be removed for a separate discussion and vote I do know that we have residents in the audience who wishes item four are to be pulled and I'll pull that item for a separate discussion and vote miss McCauley are there any items from my staff to be pulled no madam mayor members of the council okay may I have a motion to adopt balance please go proof second there's a motion and a second all in favor please say aye opposed say nay in the motion carries thank you we now move on to our and item R is an update to the ends and outcome to remove the proactive property maintenance program from our priorities and mr. and mrs. Huddleston and then you can yeah when you do other thing no right here yeah so this is where the priority goals for our ends and outcomes for neighborhoods and at a work session the City Council some the majority of the council as that the city removes the this priority and you objected to it so and I am and he you've written a lot of emails to this has seen some of those yes say it ain't so well thank you yeah and if you'll give me your name and address for the record okay it's Mike Huddleston and my wife Nancy and we live at one one six two five raivo Avenue Burnsville Minnesota it's the same as dress Vince where we've been there for many years you don't wear red and so and what else would you need not and now speaking to the item okay yep then the reason why we're here is we've lived in Burnsville for since 1993 so and those of you that follow us on Facebook we just for us it was very important we just paid off her house and so that was a great feat they tried to get us to do a second mortgage and we said no but so it's a great feat and so we've been we've been in Burnsville for quite a long time we've seen a lot of things a lot of growth and we've seen a lot of good goodness come out of Burnsville and so we just are concerned that that that motion that you guys wanted to work with and and vote on wasn't what we thought should be for the city because we're all we're all in this together and and and we go through a lot of neighborhoods and we know we know personally every person on our block there's 20 houses on our block and we know every person on our block and they know us and yeah we got the cement pond so the National Night Out they come and visit us kind of thing and so we have we have a lot of institutional knowledge in the neighborhoods and what what we wanted to do is just talk about and I I told them here when we first got here it's called a broke broken window syndrome when you have a broken window and nobody does anything about it then it becomes the norm especially ones that see it and and if we walk by it and we've just set a new standard and and now we're concerned that if we're relying on just citizens of Burnsville to make concern or complaints or whatever we want to call it there's a lot of them that I call it the Minnesota nice or passive-aggressive and they don't wanna what I call rock the boat and and they're they're probably not gonna say anything even though they know what they're looking at is wrong and and I'm concerned that a lot of things will get missed and they'll get missed to the point that it would be too late now it's in a different league different ballpark and how do will you react in to it those of you that know and I'll give you example there was a veteran that we helped he was a hoarder and he was in Burnsville and I can just only imagine if we go to like 6-year or go to a place where somebody can only make a complaint and the only way we caught this individual the system caught this individual is because he had a BA in home care look at and if you've ever seen a hoarder house and Nancy and I have never seen a hoarder house it was trails up to our waist and all he was doing was trails to the bathroom everything and the moral of the story is that thing got to the point where the neighbors were complaining because they were getting rat infested and they were complaining that they didn't know what was going on at that house and and I just and I was talking to BJ and I was saying BJ can you imagine waiting a few years for something like that to even you know how do you how do you react to a fire to that when you got all that tinder and that and that and that house so anyways I know Nancy has got a couple things I don't know if this is working but yeah it is it is and so why don't you say a couple things that you wanted to say I want to say that I want my tax dollars to go for a proactive housing inspection program exactly like we have right now and the reason is many of the things that Mike is saying I think that it is provides a safety net for everyone in the city it's very even-handed every part of the city gets a look at every three years no one is being targeted because of the type of housing they live in it is uniformly applied throughout the city yes there are more complaints being coming from the staff because that's their job that's the nature of your housing stock you don't have five hundred new permits being pulled every year for new housing new projects burn cells at aging community I don't know how many permits you have but it's not for a new housing so their job flips to maintenance and maintaining the housing helps Burnsville grow it helps burns will be a very welcoming community it helps neighbors want to help each other it's it's as simple as that and I don't think taking that part of this ordinance out I liken it to throw in the baby out with the bathwater it's working well these people do a hard job I don't know if any of you have ever gone out on affections with city staff I happen as a resident I have as a reporter when I worked for the savage Pacer they started a code enforcement program as a story I went out with this young lady and it was an eye-opener they deal with a lot of different things every day all sorts of things from somebody's parked in their RV in the driveway all the way to Mike's example of a hoarder and what it all comes down to for me is just a very basic thing that I believe a city should do is watch out for the safety of our residents and it starts with something like this it's something that goes on in the background that we can rely on those residents as it's a safety nut just like Mike said people don't wanna I don't want to be that guy I don't want to be that gal and call and say this is going on and most people won't do it it's our nature as Minnesotans we're not gonna do that so the services this provides being proactive versus reactive is very valuable and it's a good investment because the other side of it you guys have been there with that with the apartments over by the savage Burnsville border where you had the huge problem people had to be displaced because there were all sorts of problems there that cost more money to fix that to send city staff in there to get the fire department in there what if a fire starts what if to me the investment you're making in this program is well worth it and I'm just here to urge you to keep it because I think it's very worthwhile thank you all right well thanks for letting us take some of your valuable time well and thank you for caring so much about the community and your neighborhood and and also for writing to us about some of the things that you've seen and that you're concerned about because from your perspective it's going the other direction if we're not paying attention to it so thank you for the photographs thank you for hearing enough to write every morning at 4:30 I'm jogging through South River Hills I see everything you know that nobody wants to see okay thank you members of the council and when we had this discussion this is one of the items that I wasn't in favor of but I know that the majority of the council wanted for us to just respond to the complaints rather than to have a proactive program for property maintenance councilmember Vince thank you I don't know if this was in our language previously but if there was a way that we could do an annual review of this policy change to kind of keep an eye on potential issues that might be arising did we have any plans of revisiting this that would be a council directive yeah okay I don't think it would hurt to just keep an eye on this similar to what we've done with our solar ordinance to catch anything that might be of unintended circumstance or consequence so I would propose that we just keep this on an annual review and tell either a changes made or it doesn't seem necessary so what you mean I had to just go with the respond to complaints or do you want to reestablish the language the original language the city proactively canvasses neighborhood checking home I'm comfortable proceeding as we've already discussed but with the review to make sure that this is an ongoing that we're keeping an eye on this that we're not just making this change they're putting it on a shelf that we're staying conscious of this decision annually with whether it be staff reports or otherwise just to see if things are trending in a negative direction or not like I said just to say conscious of this so if it's not a goal how will staff do that thank you I think that was your question I missed my button mix yeah and ask that question if the directive is to not do proactive we won't have anything to monitor and report back so we just will be responding to complaints and so I'm not quite sure where your expectation would be when you want to bring it back amongst yourselves but we won't have any data to report because we won't be in the field we would have the reactive data that would be submitted through the website and if we're seeing significant spikes of that we're seeing maybe neighbor major life safety issues things like that they're popping up that maybe weren't before we can see trends I guess I would just rely on the reactive data that we would compile over the next 12 months thank you so staff isn't so you're not expecting staff to do anything you're just gonna no you just want to see the data yeah spot out anything that might be of interest or of larger concern that we may be previously not seen as a result of this does that make sense to you miss Fulton Manor mayor members of the council we certainly can report annually on what our complaint activity is again you're relying on others to complain so it's going to be hard to track from a state staff standpoint it won't maybe be as objective as maybe you're thinking we can just report the work that we're doing because that's what that's what we have and I'm not quite sure in the bigger picture how the ends and outcomes will be changing or framed up for how this would fit into a reporting mechanism to you but that's a whole other question I'll go to council member hschultz I perhaps to clarify and perhaps maybe this would be what council member workman was aiming for if at each year we have in that report when you have complaints that come in if from year to year we start to see annex a growth in the severity of what is being seen that is something that council would like to know rather than numbers we realize that you would be responding to complaints but if the complaints that you're responding to are escalating in safety and a higher percentage of them now are severe in safety that would be something to draw our attention to so if we start to see homes where a roof is falling in and this becomes normal that would be something that we would want to know about is that helped clarify or does that sound reasonable mm-hmm closer to what you were going to have essentially that's what okay miss McCauley madam mayor and council if that's the direction I think what I would suggest is we would go back on a staff level put some criteria in place and bring it back to the council to make sure that we are reporting back information that you will find helpful so just we can make we can make it happen but we'd want to put some thought to it councilmember Keely thank you madam mayor a question for staff and staff that's been around a while I'm curious how many years did we operate on complain only before six years ago we changed to proactive Oh madam mayor members of the council I this it predates me the complaint system somebody told me today I've been around a long time so I'm an old-timer apparently that's where I fall into but I'm not that old right I haven't been here that long but it's my understanding this program was in place at least since 1998 yeah so I got I started here in 2000 and this was something that was already in place in our building department at the time so 30 years - 6 23 years 23 years thank you so ok we operated and clearly we we discovered a a very serious problem with a large apartment complex I don't know of any cases but staff could correct me on homes condition of homes property maintenance that rose to the level of what ended up being our trigger for putting this in place which was which was a large apartment complex that was I could we none of us could believe even existed in our city it was that bad and so you know that was a real trigger that I guess it was the straw that broke the camel's back we decided to go from an idea that I think councilmember Gustafson proposed years before of a rewarding those good players who kept their rental properties in good shape and to one that was proactive and looking for those that were not so good I think you know it it has to be said that we're going from complaint based to proactive and back to complete base because we've gotten ourselves to a certain point this is separate from the discussion on rental properties completely separate those are a different animal altogether and my opinion and so this is going from someone driving around in a city car looking for property maintenance violations that could be two-foot grass it could be garbage cans it could be citing falling off it could be a number of things and so I think we have a mechanism we have the app where we have the request tracker which is not really an app but it's sort of an app that a person can anonymously report what they see so if you see something that is not normal is not up to the standards and that you want to report you're completely anonymous in doing so I've used it in the past and I've always done it anonymously and I've shared it with many friends too to report things and so I think I really like councilmember workman's suggestion because this is a change from where we've been now and gotten comfortable with and and I I think we have to try this and we have to monitor what happens and so the data of what is reported should be provided to us you know in a year from now so we can look at and we can even compare it well this is when we were proactive this is how many issues we dealt with and when we went complaint for the last year this is how many calls we got and and request trackers and these are the things that we dealt with and I think that should also include what what staff stumbles on because when they are out doing the annual proportionate inspection of all the rental properties they're gonna be driving through a lot of neighborhoods so there's still gonna be some visibility of noticing things and there's no reason because we're going complaint based that a city employee who sees something that is not right is gonna just drive by awhile nobody complained about us I'm just gonna go right there going to enforce our policies when they see it so they're still going to be a as both going on and I think we'll find out in a year how well we're doing in this pre six year proactive change that we made and we made that really for it wasn't because there was long grass and and there was garbage cans showing we made that decision to go proactive on a completely separate and far more serious issue and it was country view apartments that's what caused us to go proactive more than anything else there may have been some council members at the time who said well that's good we'll be able to collect the long grass and the garbage cans and the in the bad siting in this new initiative with more people being put behind it but that wasn't why I made that decision it was because of country view and a horrible just Skid Row kind of apartment condition for people that were living in and we were not going to allow that to go forward and we were gonna make sure that there wasn't any more of those in the city and we have achieved that goal mission accomplished so I'm okay with moving forward with the policy has stated and with the desire by the council if the majority does so to track the data and let's take a look at it here councilmember Gustafson i have a different perspective on this I was of course here when we started our first rental licensing which took us a long time to figure out how to put it together and I agree Country Village loose of something that cap and that caused us to start charging for rental licenses because we realized that there were a lot of things we don't know what we don't know and if we're not out there looking we don't know what we're not seeing and that becomes a problem and I know the long grass seems kind of silly in the siting sometimes is intrusive in a way but if I'm in a neighborhood when I all the houses around me are looking that way and I just paid off in my house I want to sell it my property value is not near as much that people drive into that neighborhood and they don't think it's being kept up I I feel sometimes when we've gone through this because I was on the other side of this for a while and I and I think when it happened is we got very good at our inspections and I think we got pretty hardcore about it at a while till we sent out some letters that people didn't protect like they didn't respond nicely they felt like they were being attacked by the city and but since then I know that we've made a lot of changes we've discovered issues of the manufacturer at home we've changed how we expect our manufactured homes today because we've discovered that issue we've discovered issues with our letters we've softened our letters I think a softer approach to our inspections is good it's going to people and saying you got it an issue we need you to fix this issue if you can't fix it if you're having trouble fixing to get a hold of us let's see how we can help you get through this problem so that we can keep our city quality up and so I'm not I'm not really particularly you know interested in going back to that complaint base because I agree with our citizens out here I don't think a lot of people are gonna call and complain and also all the report we're gonna see is the complaints we got that we're not gonna see any reports on what we didn't see out there you can remember in the beginning this whole thing started we had we concede neighborhoods in our city we'd had police substations in our apartment buildings there were there were a lot of different things that were going on in this city that we had to address and these were all the steps slowly but surely because as a council we took things in a slow pace to fix things we found different remedies to do that and right now I think the system works good for us I believe I believe if we continue to work on that how can we help you approach on our inspections our citizens will appreciate it that that have the problems and the citizens that don't have the problems are going to really appreciate it because we're taking care of the business that means it's done in the city and so for that reason I can't support this going back to a complaint basis I really I'm not comfortable just telling our citizen to tell on each other all the time and that's okay Thank You councilmember Gustafson councilman bikini thank you madam Erin I just wanted to point out because councilman Gosselin did mention apartments and and and reference to that I want to make sure everybody understands that property maintenance proactive in the residential sense our neighborhoods is a completely separate issue than our apartment inspections which are currently every three years and we're proposing that it goes to every six years and and I think I need to restate that because that gives you the impression that oh they're only going to come around once every six years well I can hide all kinds of stuff in that five-year gap right they're coming to every apartment complex every year they're doing 1/6 of the units instead of 1/3 of the unit's correct miss popular many members of the council get this proposal that's on the regular job yeah that's correct yeah thank you so I want to keep this in the right context apartment complexes multi-unit apartment complexes are visited every single year they're just seeing a sixth of the rooms or the units instead of a third of the unit so you know there's a there's an impact on an owner and a manager when an inspector from the city is coming every year how many units they do as an isn't going to determine whether they're going to be a good player a bad player I think it actually motivates them to be a good player because we're going to visit them every year these this this other proactive property maintenance has to do with residential neighborhoods and I think we need to do a good job just like we did up until six years ago of letting people know that there's an anonymous way to say hey my neighbor has excessive weeds hey my neighbor's got sighting that's falling off and he doesn't seem to be taken care of it could the city come out point it out to them and help and handle it there's no reason for people to hold back when they can speak and honestly and there's no reason for city staff not to address those calls go talk to those folks and point out the fact that they've got a situation that is not compliant with our organized I do not believe by any stretch that moving to this complaint base is going to make this city go backward or deteriorate or have any kind of major property issues because I believe this community it always has and we've talked about this at every meeting all day work session all tile all situations Burnsville is filled with residents who care about their city they care about their property and they care about their neighborhood and they don't have a problem calling when they see something wrong and letting PD know hey something's going on in the neighborhood there's car showing up hey we've got a house that seems to have all kinds of foreign cars coming and going not sure what's going on there but can you look into it there's no reason why that would stop just because we're not proactively paying city staff to get in a car and drive around the neighborhood's once every three years so I believe in the community I believe in the number of voices we have our PDS set up many times we have 75 sworn officers that correct patrolling our city we have 62,000 sets of eyes that help PD do their job better that's no different when it comes to inspections thank you consummate Schultz I'm glad that there was differentiated differentiation voiced in between single-family homes owner homes and properties that are rental properties and that there is a difference on the proposal in how inspections are done and so that everyone is very clear on on how that's done looking at the numbers although just looking from the tracker they don't have it absolutely delineated between what is this staff initiated complaint from driving around and what is a citizen oriented complaint but looking at the tracker itself it's fairly clear that Burnsville residents don't have a problem using the tracker to contact the city it does appear that most people know how to do that and avail themselves of doing that as well when they see a problem but what I'm particularly pleased about is the number of residents that when you speak with them what they talk about is instead is if they see an issue or something going on at a neighbor's house and I have had several residents talk to me about how they had seen something happening at a residence house one resident told me they noticed their like their path up to their house and their driveway was not taken care of not shoveled not taken care of what they did was they contacted their neighbor and checked in on him their neighbor is having a pretty rough health issue that they're facing and so now the neighbors are able to assist them so it makes me really happy is hearing how often our residents step up and contact each other and say are you okay can I help when they see something out of character and I think that speaks well of our city and and our residents but if it is a situation that residents can't resolve amongst one another that's what we're here for so contact us and then you know we will send out code enforcement or a city employee and then that person is going to take the approach of it looks like something's going on here how can we help in this situation you know what's going on and I think that that's a much better approach to take for our city but you know we'll keep monitoring it and we'll look at it over the year and like all city policies nothing is ever set in stone we take a look at it when we've made changes in things usually it comes back we check into it a year from then two years that type of thing and say how are we doing what way should this be changed or should it be kept and that's what we'll do which is what we do on most every situation so I will be in favor of this and yep we'll take councilmember workman I am also in favor of that that like most things we're gonna take a look at it and see where we're at Miss Palmer on the proactive program can you just help us understand how that happens so is there do you have someone who is identified and their function is to drive around the city and and identify code property maintenance codes that are being violated because I know some of the letters that I've received have to do with debris piled up on the side of the house fences that are broken and they need someone to take a look at it and is it a code violation can you please help us understand how the proactive function takes place madam mayor members of the council we have two folks and mr. forzen can correct me if I'm wrong but we've had two staff people that have worked on it we've used our consultant to help us out with this and also one city employee that does this part of their job so between those two resources they canvass a third of the city every year and see what they can see from the road and as councilmember Schultz noted those violations are bundled in with the rental inspection violations on their reports I wish we had a way to separate that out but we don't so and then procedural wise how we deal with a code complaint they have to document it depending on severity they may take a picture if it was trash cans we would note it and send out a friendly reminder that that we have a little bit different process for and then we send out our our letter or code correction letter and we always put on our letters that they can call us if they've got questions and as you know we work with a lot of our residents it's winter right so we were talking today about a boat parked on grass that we've got a complaint about well we we are reasonable and that boat is not going to move until spring or summer likely right so we give people extensions and work with them and so our our map was posted on the website of what neighborhoods that will be in so people know when we're coming or not those that are in true in in that and then we summarized it at the end of the year we've been behind at times and then we've had ability to get caught up again when it's not so busy in the spring and summer with all the weeds and outdoor storage types of things but that's just a general overview of what we do we have a pretty well set process for how we deal with complaints and proactive that process is the same it just depends on what the source is where it comes from okay and when you look at the data that you receive from the proactive program versus complaints where do you see the numbers I'll have to let mr. Forrest want to address that he supervises this area we don't have the data broken down so just because I've seen me for the regular agenda item which is for the rental which is right different data I need to defer to mr. force Landon on what his thoughts are on that Raytown ma'am miracle it's members I'm going to try to answer that right now one of the frustrations we had is when we originally started this program we were parsing out all this data so first off for technological reasons we're not I'm a I'm not a data master database master by any means and we really didn't know that we were gonna need these this date in the future and so we couldn't quite separate some of this stuff all it I think your question here if I understood it correctly is because you only do 1/3 each year of the city and so how many when you're out how many do you identify through the proactive program and how many come in is complaint based that would be hard to quantify we do see a lot when we drive out and here's a point of clarification here we have trained inspectors and that makes a huge difference and every day I get calls from folks that want to complain about something well it's not a violation mm-hmm and I have to remind them that I know you've seen the emails that it's outside our realm of authority to enforce and that takes time so when we see a lot of the request tracker requests come in it main really reflect the number of violations and code issues that we see as well and just to summarize this 1/3 is City we broke it up into 36 sections and we do 1/3 of those every year so I think it might be useful because I'm with councilmember Gustafson we've made progress with what we're doing throughout all of the neighborhoods within a community I remember there was a time when there were exits from different neighborhoods because of the quality of the of the properties around there because they're starting to show age and deterioration and people weren't taking care of their homes or there was debris and junk just piled up around the houses and you can see it from the road so those are things that I believe the inspectors are able to see because the policy is it's what you see from the road and whether it's going to have health or safety impacts exactly and so those are the things that you can see from the road but there are other things that we get complaints about that's the neighbor can see to their neighbor's backyard and where there's a lot of property to deterioration request traffic data is somewhat misleading sometimes too because I I get calls on parking on the city streets that's a police issue especially after dollars so we have to refer them to there we may receive it but it's something that we don't have the authority to answer another thing with I think it's important with the proactive program too when we first formulated this in our mind we made this plan is that we wanted first off to treat everybody fairly we wanted to impact the entire city yeah and complaint calls we get our sometimes from a lot of the same people and some things I appreciate that they're calling these in like those are just get a lot of focus dan what we really wanted to do is get on every street and see everything we can from the roller that was important that we did that yeah and and I get that because that's what the discussion was and how we got into the proactive maintenance program so like kind of Samara Gustafson I'm going to vote against this change you know yeah I think they're going to be a split vote of three two so I will want to see how this all plays out but I understand because it is about seeing things from the street so that we're looking at the properties and making sure that they are not violating any of the codes that have a health and safety impact to the neighborhood and so for me it's I don't want to see a slide we're only doing a third every year so that's every three years you're going through the whole city and you have a method of doing that so what we're really concerned about sliding backwards and going in the wrong direction yes mr. Ford look we really wanted to was for folks who take ownership in it and it's often times and lot of experiences I explain to people well you know if you talk to him you may set the results you can get and we pride ourselves on working with everybody to try to resolve their issues we don't always know the whole story yeah and try you know and I like the fact that we have a more gentler and kinder letter that goes out that is in everyday layman's speak and you've taken away all of the government speak out of that so that's nice it's gentler it's kinder and so I thank you for all of that because that helps but we'll see where all of this goes councilmember Gustafson this may be for the next subject we're going to talk about but we did talk about rental housing which specific aid a lot of things that happen but we have over a thousand single-family rentals dispersed throughout our community as well how do we deal with that inspection mr. purnsley you should have said yeah yeah actually I think I can answer that when we talk about this it might have been premature yeah yeah that'll come up as a regular agenda okay so council we've heard from everybody and everyone's thoughts somebody wants to make a motion councilmember burger come in I do want to ask if we're gonna ask for a one-year review are you comfortable with that recommendation tonight or do you want to you had mentioned you needed to compile what that looks like madam mayor and councilmembers I'd want to work with our staff to kind of break it down into maybe more severe violations versus more aesthetic my terms nobody else's and then bring it back to a work session I'm sure we can do that yeah so so that that process will come to a work session okay so if we make that motion tonight then that's well if you make the motion tonight to remove the proactive property maintenance and add direct staff to bring back a process to evaluate process pardon me is that a good motion that is a fine motion okay are you wanting to make that motion I make that motion I will second that motion councilmember sho seconds the motion to remove the proactive property maintenance a priority goal from the neighborhood outcomes and there is a motion in a second all in favor please say aye aye opposed say nay nay nay and the clerk has a division of the house okay thank you now we move on to the regular agenda and the first item on the regular agenda is a public hearing and this is to approve an on sale Sunday on sale liquor license for los grandes LLC doing business as los grandes located at 251 Burnsville parkway reporting this evening is our city clerk mrs. Collins we did get an application from los grandes LLC for a non sale liquor license this would be for a traditional Mexican restaurant in the former JC's sports bar location the issuance of the license will be contingent upon all fees being paid reviews and inspections being and completed necessary permits and approvals being submitted an investigation on the principle involved has been completed and no reason was founded on issuance of the license the applicant mr. John Soto is here if you would like to speak to him this is a public hearing I stand for any questions any questions for mr. Collins councilmember workman did you I was gonna ask the applicant to come on boys when I get to the other no question miss Cole okay okay I have no questions so this is a public hearing but I'm going to ask missus order to please come forward and tell us about your restaurant your menu when you will open and tell us about what we're going to experience Jonathan thank you for welcoming to your city yes I'm proud to be the owner of this is the third location a third location so your other location to where our Minneapolis okay I also have a candy store I am pretending from Mexico one and robber straightened out in Minneapolis as well okay my my first business when I was 19 years old Mexican food it's been popular in the last ten years am I being followed my grandma's recipe and it's been accepted for my other places so when I found about this opportunity it's because um this ambassador hear about my place and then he went to my restaurant oh he wants to know me and offered me this opportunity to be here and when I came to see it it was like my dream right in front of me that I've been working all for this thank you tell us about your menu my menu we serve like I said I follow my grandma's recipe yeah with the seasonings and we prepared everything or like authentic Miguel take the taste okay and we're gonna be serving it's a mix of Mexican and American food okay great councilmember workman welcome to birdsall thank you for choosing today killed your business here am I heard complaints about safety I want you guys know that I like to follow the rules and my other places criminal securities and my head of security he served 30 years the police minneapolis department and he's retired and he's being charged on these plays as well hmm thank you thank you thank you go to member key while echo that congratulations and very impressive to be in your first business at 19 and a multiple multiple a chain basically operation with multiple locations is not an easy business to run and you I'm sure you rely on some really good people that are very loyal and and work at your other locations when you're not able to be there every day right so 83 fantastic that's a big building it's a it's got a long storied history and I think the design of the exterior of the building lends itself extremely well to your cuisine coming in again it's like a dream Pam we look forward to an opening and coming to visit you there and next experience your grandmother's recipes thank you and congratulations for the yeah just let us know when you're going to open and and when you don't have a ribbon-cutting and we'll be there to celebrate with you because los grandes belongs in Burnsville thank you yeah so do you when are you going to open up Oh quickly yeah I'm thinking about the first before dinner first or second okay you're gonna keep those blue lights no way the blue lights I see under your audience right now it was kind of for the type of business oh yeah great thank you very much yeah and welcome to Burnsville okay members of the council your pleasure I will now close the public hearing okay Costas yeah councilmember Gustafson makes a motion second by councilmember Keely all in favor please say aye aye opposed say nay and emotion carries congratulations look forward to your grand opening the next item is the ordinance amendment to title 3 chapter 20 30 and 32 related to mobile food vending and the amendment to the fee schedule Regina Dean our assistant Community Development Director is presenting miss Dean welcome members members of the council you may remember this item was before you at round table I'm on August further direction was to bring it to a council work session which we did and city staff went over what our current requirements were and there was some feedback from the chamber that they wanted maybe some additional outreach which we did do and another comment was to hold a public input session at our city council meeting in case anybody wanted to provide you with additional feedback so just in general our current rate requirements for food trucks we do consider them transient merchants we do require a background for your 100 dollars that's a 1 year annual fee it will be increasing with the fee schedule we do allow food trucks currently in heart of the city on designated streets within parks with the specific park permit that's a $50 daily fee in 2019 it goes up to $55 in 2020 and then a $500 annual fee someone would have to pass the background check and license to be in addition to that also if someone wanted to let's say rent a a pavilion for a special event like a wedding they would have to pay the fee for the park shelter and then also the fee for the food truck should they use it should they have that as part of catering for example know that once that food truck is licensed in Burnsville they can take that anywhere within the boundaries of Burnsville for that year period as long as they have their background check be passed we do allow food trucks currently within any of our industrial business districts and mixed districts with the approval of a conditional use permit in our industrial and commercial districts if catering a private party a private event and then we do have exemptions for non profit profit civic type uses religious and charitable organizations you brought back some information about Market City is what they do and their range range for fees and process and where they're allowed that was presented to you at your work session and then at your work session we presented the proposed code changes in the draft format and there was direction from Council at that meeting that there was support for those changes basically to allow food mobile food vendors and all of our zoning districts and to change our mobile vending fee from for food truck type businesses from 1 year to 3 years and then also with that because we want to differentiate between kinnear door-to-door peddlers and solicitors we're proposing to change the fee schedule to designate mobile food vendors to have a three year license and that would be $100 so we did do public outreach after that work session well one we would consider this public outreach or input I don't see a lot of people in the audience we did outreach to the mobile food truck Association they have over a hundred members and they pushed out information for us we contacted our Burnsville restaurants we reached out to experienced Burnsville and they have information on their website but they only have phone numbers so what we did was we reached we went into our building permit data our alcohol licensing data and pulled out those contacts and we were able to reach about 3/4 of the restaurants via email no response we reached out to the chamber through this process we also reached out to our current license vendors and our Parks and Recreation contacts and then we published in the Pioneer Press Anson this week we did have opportunity to talk with experienced Birdsville with their executive committee they did express some concerns with our brick-and-mortar restaurants stating that they they pay property taxes and that they're generally great supporters of our our schools our nonprofits and they're really engaged with the community so they had some concerns about just food trucks in general not being I would say connected with Burnsville necessarily just in general of course there are some food trucks that are in Burnsville there Burnsville businesses maybe they're incubators for future restaurants so they did acknowledge that but there was that concern but in general they are supportive of the ordinance that's proposed they see this as an attractor for visitors and a great opportunity to help bolster Burnsville in general so with that staff does recommend approval of the ordinance as presented to title 3 and to the fee schedule certainly if there's any questions I'm sure to answer councilmember Gustafson this will eliminate the need for any council member key thank you madam mayor thank you this is great work I'm glad we were able to reach out to everybody generally speaking based on the feedback and the number of people who didn't apparently object to it and didn't feel they needed to come tonight to speak to us or write about it I think we're on the right track with really opening up in this market providing what the market is wanting what people are asking for and and hopefully this will lead to some more activity with food trucks in Burnsville at our events and at places of business who want to have one and I think it's all good so thanks very much great great work yeah but mrs. Dean I really appreciate that we reached out to our community because that's how we do things here in Burnsville we want everybody to to be engaged and to understand what we're doing because it has an impact on them and we didn't hear from them so that says something one of the things that in this change because in all of our events the ones we have in heart of the city all have food trucks the international festival a hundred and twenty one hundred and twenty-fifth Street thank you 125 or 124 right there by the part is always lined up with with food trucks and for the International Festival for the Jazz Fest for and then also when we have flicks on a brick or any of those others there are always food trucks in the heart of the city but now it's opened up but someone has a picnic in one of our parks they can get a food truck if that's how they're going to cater their event so all of that but for me my concern was that we reach out so that our businesses who pay taxes and all of that to the point that experience have a voice know that they have a voice so that also signals to the Chamber of Commerce that we did that it was transparent so I'm satisfied that we've done all of those things and councilmember Gustafson well I may be premature but now that I no longer have a food truck and I have a voice in this yes I would happy to make a motion to pass this ordinance okay there was a motion in a second all in favor please say aye aye opposed say nay and motion carries thank you so much nice work mrs. Dean yeah yeah okay the next item on the agenda is the ordinance amending Title three chapter 28 of the Burnsville city code regarding rental licensing inspection and mr. Christopher Fordland our licensing and code enforcement coordinator is presenting mr. fors 'ln good evening madam mayor and councilmembers again I I think it's a prudent right now to just you know because I some of the conversation sooner just clarifies our rental inspections our licensed activity it's a business regulation versus any other type of proactive enforcement just so the viewing audience also understood that so we have some set parameters are setting forward that we need to follow and then I think it's important to remember to it we've kind of segue in into some of this we had some previous discussion that inspections are a core function for our rental licensing program and they are truly focused on life safety issues the basis for our code that we use is international property maintenance quality which is one of a family of codes that also dovetail with fire and building color so very much the same language but is focus on those particular issues they provide a standard for livability and this is a minimal standard we're not asking people that you know what color their walls are we want a basic standard and this standard that set with the property maintenance colors used in 40 states and many many municipalities so it's it's been altered for a long time and it's been recognized and I think I'm think we passed with this council group here we did adopt this in 2015 the goal here is also to help maintain a vibrant and thriving community and I hear these words coming up again these are a lot of the same words that we have in our hands and all comes and also maintain some of that stability and quality of the rental dwelling units themself and obviously preserve the value of land and buildings this is as I've been reminding is another form of Economic Development so people come here they want to live here they want to work here they want to do all these things so they are related country village I I have this in here because I think it really behooves some further discussion on this this predates me by about two years and in fact it was pretty much the first discussion I had when I walked into that the building after being hired was well what are we gonna do with this we put this ordinance in place we need to do these things and just looking at what I could see in this big stack of Records that I got here and then oh my god what'd I get myself into so we had concerns right off the bat on how we're gonna resolve it I think it's important to remind people what those conditions were like if you didn't see these at the time we had all sorts of problems that border on people could have died there and was very frustrating when I looked through some of these and realize that these just didn't happen overnight these were something that it takes some time either through neglect by the landlords but also tenants not reporting it just some really grewal conditions there the rental license ordinance that was put in place required a three two year in spectrum frequency for all rental properties three years is actually pretty typical and I'll go through that later it did include single families rentals back to a question on that same frequency it did require a $500 conversion fee for any new rentals that occurred after that date anybody up to that time would be grandfathered in as being licensed and it's also subject to a inspection fees any adverse license action or citation we we had the tools that we had at the time for non compliant operators to get the job done they must attend the crime free training program and inspected and this is a key point here inspected by the fire department annually very very important to note that our rental properties just put some numbers in perspective we've got many units in complexes as you can see they're approaching 8,000 a total of 8,000 591 at last column this fluctuates I think it peaked during the housing crisis actually because people were renting their houses more trying to make up for some of that but right now that's about it it's not including any other additional units that we should be seeing coming into the city so thinking ahead on that our first couple years and I got to be real honest with us we're really difficult yeah I want to emphasize this strongly I put this in your country village was a symptom it wasn't a one-off er it wasn't that we this wasn't we weren't seeing things in the other structures we've seen some very serious things - it just didn't get really publicly announced as as country village debt examples of this parking decks garages you know that were falling down you know damaging cars and quite a bit of problem a lot of water mold issues going on non reported yeah I think the most frightening thing that we noticed when we got here was missing smoke alarms in the units in the bedrooms thousands of them and this was not necessarily a code requirement time nobody didn't knew that same with carbon monoxide detection which was a statutory requirement so we had a lot of different life safety things that nobody knew were an issue they really didn't cuz occult had changed we also noted a lot of faulty construction on permitted uninspected work and these are all life safety things doors windows missing hardware if you got an escape your apartment in a hurry last thing you want to do is have to fumble with the wrong locks and latches we went through a lot of that in the first couple years and certainly damaged in you know disable fire control systems and chief might touch upon that just a little bit of it as we go through here overall though we had a lot of work ahead of us and we put a lot of hard time into it one of the comments these are comments that we received from people as we started the program up we were out doing the inspections is that the program levels the playing field so the one bad apple that you had in top end of town levels it out for everybody else no because they're held to the same standard and that was a comment I had guess I hadn't really thought about tenants are more likely to rent Pullman's affected structures they get asked you know they asked a lot if it's licensed tennis feels safer I think that's the goal of the whole program the apartment and our safer landlords reinvest back to their properties and made them more desirable and this one I really enjoyed because he was also a rental landlord was it's easy to sell a home that's been inspected regularly - they don't have the problems that we see so if it was a rental and they wanted to sell it they had that documentation that take a look at that the I think it's important to know that despite our efforts a lot of these concerns continue to today and I think my background I'm paraphrasing a lot of the information that I gave providing the background in here housing rentals in particular are like a living being I mean once the last nails pounded they're gonna slowly decline and just like us we need regular maintenance we need to go the doctor we need to do those kind of things to keep them so they're safe and healthy turnover tenants and property managers compounds a situation just when we think we've got a property managers that we with for the last year on yep you can't walk by the missing fire exit sign or disabled fire door and we have to teach them over again this is what we need to fire department runs into that we run into it with the same with the managers when they go in with us to check the units and take a look the managers actually do like to do these inspections because that gives them some separation from coming in and being the bad guy it's the city doing this and they do like to get a lot of them done at once because then they could order all the same supplies and set time aside to do it so for my past effectiveness they like the inspections that's what we've heard some of the other problems many of the multifamily structures are in sprinkler so we have to really we're also eyes as as well for the fire department when we're in the units that they don't disable them they don't do a lot of different things or block them for example the unspring cleared but let say it's still a problem for all of us for the safety perspective and maybe the structures here are nearly 50 years old now so time like all of us is creeping up on the structures - and they're showing it and to emphasize this over and over fires a highest hazard for residents to multi families I do not want to read about Burnsville yeah I want to take the burn out of Burnsville just like chief does and don't want to read about it like Minneapolis and New Brighton we can do better than that Chiefs gonna talk a little bit about the data he's collected welcome chief and thank you thank you very background and from your perspective and your vantage point okay thank you madam mayor members of council thanks for the opportunity night to give kind of a fire perspective of this this issue and unfortunately I was here for country village I was new as the fire chief here if you recall and country village really opened her eyes we actually had a fire there and that's kind of what started the ball rolling on some of this is we had a a kitchen fire where the family couldn't get out and I remember arriving on that scene and watching our crews pull a mother and a child out of the window because they couldn't get out because the the door had a double keyed lock and there was no working smoke alarm in that entire building and so as much as Country Village was an issue back in 2011 we have a lot of the same challenges today that we continue to try to stay up on multifamily dwellings are definitely our highest hazard in this town from a life safety perspective from a fire perspective I worry most about the multifamily dwellings we have the infrastructure is old the majority of them do not have fire sprinkler systems they were built under a code that did not require them most of their fire alarm systems are not required to be monitored so until their fire alarm system breaks to the point they can't find parts it does not have to be monitored by a central monitoring system so if the alarm goes off we are not notified until someone on that premise calls 911 so there's a delay in the fire department getting notified in many of these cases we continue to have issues with exit doors and other fire features mr. forzen talked about us sending fire inspectors into the common areas every year and it's amazing what you'd find in the common areas with just exit doors exit pathways maintain fire corridors utility rooms things that that are important to the life safety and exit of those occupants in the event there is a fire so you piled that with with the lien staffing model that we operate and the experience that we have you know we've experienced significant fires and these in these types of facilities and we've displaced a number of people and I've been on the majority of these fires at two o'clock in the morning when we're moving 36 units out you know and unfortunately in this case one's actions of that building affect many others you know unlike a single family there's a kitchen fire and a building in one unit that if that affects that entire building you know usually can get it down to the one wing that's displaced but you're still affecting more than just one occupancy when we have these so the data you see in front of you is some research that I did and actually our case example is used as a teaching example at the National Fire Academy of how we've implemented the five ease of Risk Reduction as I pointed out in the background so we've hit all five of those e's as a very strategic and comprehensive approach to risk reduction so here it shows prior to when we implemented the rental housing and we got the FEMA grant for the stovetop fire stops the DVDs and the smoking blood containers so from 2004 to 2011 is the bottom bars you see there the blue is the civilian fatalities you know knock on wood those are few and far between so it's tough to really compare apples to apples there but the yellow is the civilian injuries so from 20 2004 to 2011 we were averaging 3.25 civilian injuries just in multifamily dwellings per year and 1.25 firefighter injuries per year so not only we're injuring civilians we're injuring our own staff many of those being debilitating and career-ending then you look from 2012 to 2016 on average civilian injuries went down to one per year and firefighter injuries went down to 0.4 a dramatic decrease in just injuries to both civilians and firefighters so I'm proud of the work we've done I think it's significant and it's very impactful and we continue to see a similar trend today because of the work that we do on this then if you want to look at it from a pre and post grant the fire dollar loss so 2004 to 2011 on average we had the yellow bar down there is property loss so close to a 1.4 million dollars per year in property loss and just over six hundred thousand dollars in contents loss per year so on average we were roughly two million dollars of fire damage losses is only from fire damage estimated loss and then 2012 to 2016 you're looking at significantly less about four hundred fifty thousand dollars in property and about seventy five thousand dollars of Contents loss so again you're looking at less than six hundred thousand dollar loss so you know a three-fold decrease in in dollar value loss to these properties like I said it's been a very straight TJ and planful approached to make sure that we approach this from many angles we work very closely with code enforcement and pleased to to make this work well today I hate to say it but we still have one to two complexes always on our radar that are taking up a lot of staff time to keep them up-to-date that aren't far from country village but don't make the paper like country village significant issues that one the two complexes all the time from from a fire perspective there's their significant issues and unfortunately it seems like when we get one or two hundred control the next one or two pop up and there one after another and until we get to the point where we're ready to to you know take license actions they won't make any changes so we continue this this cycle of trying to keep these older properties maintain that so that they're safe for the residents there and you know mr. forzen talked about not only the tenants changeover but the maintenance and the managers for us the maintenance is just as important as the managers because they're the ones that need to fix it and see the doorways and see all those things that that are important so it's important and we rely on the code enforcement folks to get in those units because that's where the majority of those fires start the fire department works on the exit corridors and the technical building features that were worried about to make sure it's a safe building for these people code enforcement lots of times we'll recognize things like the smoke alarms are not working or that we have a heavy fire content load or or things that are dangerous in the unit's themselves so this proactive approach in multifamily who between fire and code has been very effective and I would hate to see us slide backwards and experience what we were experiencing when I got here as fire chief and I want to make sure that we stay on a path to keeping the community and our firefighters safe so thanks for out here taking my comments and I'll turn it back over I think just stayed there for both you and mr. Foley councilmember Schultz I have a question do you believe that the proposal that we are discussing is eliminating proactive inspections for rental properties is that your impression madam Ellis accountable Council I know it does not eliminate proactive it elongates the the inspections of those units which I concerns me that of the efficacy of the program if we go that far out here's my concern councilmember Gustafson you missed that we have a couple buildings that are on the fridge right now and I remember because I was here at during country lice as well and one of the one of the things we had an issue with the owners was they weren't cooperating with us in any way whatsoever in fact they fought us pretty much every step of the way how are these other buildings reacting to us when we go in and talk to them about the issues that they have madamme remembers that council I'll speak from our perspective mr. fors and let's talk to to what I can tell you is that we write up violations we end up going back reinfecting writing up second violations until we get to the point where we get the regional manager and generally the regional manager doesn't get a fixed some point you're flying people in from the investment firm that actually owns it and it takes till that point that you get some action but I would tell you that that that seems to be very limited and it's this constant process when you have these properties that are just barely making it it seems like they do just enough so that that they fix a couple of things and then you got you got to go through the same process to get them to fix the rest of the stuff and it's this consistent process of pulling teeth with these folks to invest enough money in their property to get it up to the the expectation of the code and to make it safe so it's unfortunately until you get up to the higher levels most of these managers and regional managers don't have the authority and our our hamstrung until it gets to the point where there's almost licensed action before they take it before the the ownership will take it seriously license accidents where you write well another phenomena related to that - as we've had a lot of the larger complexes also change hands yeah and we find ourselves almost starting over again with re-educating and saying hey here's how we do things here this is our expectations we're reeducate instead of ana Jers whether it be the new owners or all the related parties so we do have setbacks a lot of the problems that cheeps referring to - are those that can be sometimes immediately corrected and my one of my favorite ones is accumulating combustible is that the garbage chutes which just you know one day it'll be fine the next day it's not reoccur and we do have problems with things like that we have to constantly monitor that they're doing their safe things with what resources we have in time it's it's a battle it hasn't ended yet it didn't just end with the end with the country village it's continuous councilmember titi thank you madam a couple questions both of you sort of I noted in your report that the fire department only inspects common areas so currently the fire department does not inspect individual units and there's the council that's correct we inspect the common areas which includes the hallways utility rooms the trash this trash rooms all those kinds of things that generate a little more technical in nature and then code enforcement gets into the units before and this is another one of those historical questions for proactive rental inspections were any rental units inspected by the city staff or the fire department prior to six years ago were they ever inside madam mayor I'm just like help so I would have to go look I know I know there was some fire inspection component on the regularity some of it might have been complaint base I don't know for sure I know we were in those buildings as needed but I don't think there was a program per se it would be safe to say that prior to our proactive ordinance going into place the reason that a country village happened is we didn't know internal inspections unless there was a complaint or a fire drew you in which as you noted country village was a fire that caused the Pandora's Box to open up and we found all kinds of horrible conditions inside I can't imagine if we were doing any kind of inspections country village would have never gotten to the point that it was yeah so for decades we did no inspections then we went to inspections every three years of every unit right it's quite a dramatic shift from nothing to every three years I'm curious mr. farlan you mentioned that multi-tenant structure owners who really like us to come in and do their job for them do we charge those those owners to do the work that they should have done on their own to maintain the properties to the Ocoee we charge a license fee and necessary a rien spec ssin fee but it's also important to remember that the codes have change we're trained inspectors all my folks are certified we see things they may not know about that's our opportunity to teach them yeah you got to check those smokes so those are a priority that means people are gonna get out that means firefighters aren't gonna burn up in a fire they're fighting kids it's important and I think that's really hit home with water sure that your comment was interesting to me because it's you know I don't respect a property owner or manager who basically doesn't do their job maintaining their property to the local ordinances and actually welcomes the city coming in playing the bad guy to help them do their job sir I think they ought to be charged for I don't think they should be get off scot-free for us to come in and do their job for him I think we ought to charge them upfront for it and not just the reinfection fee because they're the ones who are delinquent in their responsibility and we're in them we end up coming in and helping them point out the fact that they weren't doing their job they were responsible property and sometimes they don't know that that would be the only cancer that's some latter pleading ignorance there is but I'm certainly not in a position to sort of who's pleading ignorance and who's not know one other question for chief if we had a stronger enforcement leverage to get the owners to respond and fixed more promptly would you spend a lot less time on those for example the two properties that you brought up where it's you know they'll do a little and then you have to keep going it does imply that our staff spends an excessive amount of time trying to get somebody to do what they were supposed to do the first time we came through and said this is what is wrong fix it and it seems to me like in those situations maybe we're a little too nice and too patient and we're dragging it out and we're spending an inordinate amount of staff time which is costing us a lot of money right the staff on these poor performers and they're dragging their feet and they're just doing the minimum and they're only doing a few things and I mean it's almost like Country Village only on a different scale where Country Village just flat-out didn't do anything and then drug their feet and then did a few band-aids and then you know but I just wonder if we have an an inadequate enforcement policy and position and that we should be flexing our or shortening our time line and putting out that you're gonna lose your license and everybody's going to get deferred if you don't get these things done because this is if it's life-threatening why are we working with them over a long period of time trying to encourage them nicely to do their job I mean this is a little bit of what I think put us in the position with the country village weight in that case we weren't even doing any inspections and now we're doing inspections every three years and we still got some bad players and they're sucking up way too much staff time because alternatively we have some very good players we have great property owners that take pride in their property if you find something they're almost embarrassed about it they get it fixed right away those are the ones that should be rewarded in these others I think we need to be a little more aggressive in bringing the hammer down because they are the ones that are giving us a bad name when people come and live there and there's problems and they just never seem to get resolved right even with the city coming in and you coming in and inspections they still drag out for what several months I don't know how long some of these have been going on but it seems to me like we got an enforcement policy problem that needs to help you do your job more and less about maybe not less about I understand your perspective on trying to maintain the three years and that is that seems to be the norm as I've done some research in other cities around the country just looking through their their fire inspections or building inspections such a thing so I'm I think there's a something we need to take on is maybe we need to strengthen and shorten the time that we are getting these bad players to fix clean up their act right before we bring down a little heavier enforcement because there like I said there there's no excuse for it once you go in and you bring out these issues they need to be resolved great these people that own these large complan complexes aren't poor people they have no financial excuse whatsoever these things should be resolved right away period end to the safety of their own occupants thank you okay chief I think you there were two or three questions that were asked guys madam mayor members that counts I'm not sure I'll capture all that uh try to what I would tell you is that if it's an immediate danger to the occupants we will deal with it right there in there so for instance if the fire alarm system does not work they get put on fire watch right away and you see it fixed immediately if uh if an exit door does not work it needs to get fixed immediately there's some things that that are absolute life safety if it's exit signs or the they get time on some of those sites it's trying to to base it based on the risk and work with people I I don't know of a place that has an effective tool otherwise I'd be I'd be suggesting that to us you know I think we could do some more research I just I know speaking to my peers in other communities that have similar aged buildings like ours have a lot of the same challenges with the turnover of ownership and management I mean frankly some of these managers are turned over as fast as these occupants are and aren't given the authority to fix some of these while it would be nice if they had the authority and they took you know we're able to fix these things more rapidly it would it would definitely help the efficiency of our staff and allow them time to to get some of the other things done that we have prioritized for them I just don't know of a much better effective enforcement tool not saying there's not one out there I'm just not aware of one you know I think we've taken some steps forward we could you know we continue to look for some of those things but I think even having the across-the-board licensing program we had compared to eight years ago it is a night and day difference to because was a voluntary although we had a handful of good actors that were that we're really engaged in the community there were a lot of sleeping ducks that we didn't necessarily know about and those are the ones that are peddling mold a little water that we're finding now that continues to kind of be that repetition so unfortunately is more than a few if it was just a few I think I would have a different stance and we'd probably take a different approach but I would say given the age of our infrastructure it's actually quite a few in the community so there are two others but I just want some clarification because right after Country Village the property north of Vista view school we needed to dislocate some of those occupants as well so that the building could be or did we just moved a few out but it needed to be renovated and also because it was infested if you remember there were all kinds of infestation in the villa members council I think you're talking about River woods it used to be Charles wood yes I know they were remodeling I don't remember the the reason they were remodeling I can't recall that but I do remember that they were remodeling and I know there was a timing piece that we were hoping they'd be able to relocate yeah there's a there are a lot of moving parts to that oh yeah just placing kids from schools and you know being able to have first and last month's rent and we worked with nonprofits in the county and a lot of people to try to to help these folks gracefully get land somewhere and it took a lot to do that but but it's a nice looking property now but for the work that we did and what they were doing helped in that regard I'm gonna go around but I also have questions for you both comes my results I also was interested in their comments that were by either rental managers or owners I and my question is if we went to whatever year that is because these are all units I the buildings aren't going to be inspected yearly regardless it's just weather 1/6 of them are inspected by code enforcement yearly or 1/3 of them are inspected by code enforcement on the interior yearly so my question is well we can make a a bottom number mandatory we can make any number voluntary for a fee so if an apartment manager wishes to have a yearly inspection of all of their units is that something that we could make available for a fee you make anything available for fee well we really offer some of that too we've got some of the smaller complexes where initially we said hey do you want to do this all in one shot and some choose to do that absolutely we still get to meet that inspection frequency at once every three years mm-hmm but the vast majority of them would prefer that we do 1/3 it just helps them also keep track do one for a year or something similar if an apartment building wish to use that say as a competitive edge since you say tenants also prefer this they'd like to know that it's inspected then that might be something that is offered that way no matter what we said as a minimum people can absolutely go above and beyond on that anything's possible would that work though for your workload I don't want to propose something as we've tried to I guess educate a little bit here on this fluctuate greatly honestly depending from the manager we have managers out there that take this to heart they've been in other cities they know what we're looking for they're prepared before they get there my pet peeve is not having your keys ready yeah yeah and those are the kind of things that we we don't have issues with that person leaves I get somebody who's never done it before has not done their pre inspections I mean it that ultimately drives how much time we spend on things back to the prior question about enforcement process we've got several large issues in town not only are they huge in capital it's one of those we're getting to the point in some of these structures where how much longer do we keep them standing we can click band-aids on we can plaster a mob we can do all these different things our issue is at that point their code compliant we can't make them tear them down unless they're creating a imminent life safety issue so we run into this wall where at this date and time your code compliant next week when something else cracks and falls into the parking lot we have another issue ich so it's kind of a you're chasing your tail what's sambal where do we go from there good question I guess it's you know how much money does the city want to spend litigating it thank you okay councilmember workman can you speak to single-family home rentals were you going to talk about things I know yes I was so then I'm I can wait until you get to that and I'll ask my questions after that yeah I'm trying to remember what I have in the rest of here I may not address that specifically the single family homes are even more difficult there seems to be this perception out there that they're easier plus they're smaller but they have to meet the same criterion what we've got here normally property owners who've never been involved in a property being managing the business who have never done it before and unfortunately we've had some really tough examples of literally that oh my god people are living in earth type things where we've had to literally no you're not gonna get licensed and nobody will be living here right now until you get these repairs done we have more problems on a smaller level with the single families they are and they change as well we've had and I think everybody's where there's pre an influx of a lot of rental management companies that are buying up a lot of the small ones so they may be corporate but they're single family sometimes that's hit and miss to they don't do their own repairs they've got a contract out my frustration more is from the building code side where homeowners will not or have installed over the years inherently dangerous things when we look at it and it's quite a challenge so that's my answer on face single families um how many single family households do you think ur in Burnsville that are being rented but aren't licensed yeah we will go that's a hard question man that's a lot China I'm gonna go by what my other other cities that worked in experience we'd probably get about 80% okay and sometimes it's we get a call from a tenant hey my landlord is not doing this and little address are you where you don't have a rental address or have rental license oh no because people don't think that ask that and then we end up with a whole nother situation it happens more often than you think so that actually leads me to my next question is what is our procedure when we find single-family homes that are being used as rental rentals but aren't licensed I mean what is the procedure there well we'll send them are a friendly 30-day letter because I've provided in college that they need to get property license if it's been unlicensed it's probably gonna be a conversion for your $500 yeah subject to inspection most people comply it's generally speaking a lot of your single-family homes are just people that have purchased property and are using this as an investment or something else and if the less they have to invest in it too well nice you know the more profit that's what I thought too but a lot of them are buying up being bought up by professional rental companies as well but there's still a lot of single families that are being rented out there by in order that lives on y'all are too tolerant Jason I believe we even have one who rented from Guam yeah go figure that one but we do see a military but the the rental escape has somewhat shifted especially with the housing crisis will be wrong yeah okay so are the rental company is typically more of the problem than the individual in your experience have you seen I don't think so because they they they get it and they've some some do have resources hey I'll have my handyman come over he's a lot easy contractor you'll repair the ductwork on a hot water heater great pull the permit will be looking for it those kind of things now mom and pops oh do I need a permit for that well I put this in ten years ago isn't it grandfathered in well it's not it's dangerous and that's what kind of things difference it means everyone is different you open up the door well then the dog might be coming on it yeah open up the door you don't know what you're gonna expect to get inside okay and the reason I asked all this is because it kind of relates back to the proactive versus reactive and and what I have noticed is that a lot of the you obviously have a lot more knowledge on this one I do but it seems like the homes that are have the most violations tend to be tenant occupied homes as opposed to owner occupied homes well that's part of our licensing they can occupy they don't need a license great I think but but to the code enforcement and the the things that we've talked about previous to this from what I have seen it seems like a lot of those problem homes aren't all the majority are not owner occupied and again I don't have the data that you have but just have to look at that they give it any answer on that and we're in the regulation Thank You councilmember ki may get mad America I think part of this discussion we need to recognize that there are a lot of good property owners out there that have very little to no violations and I think what I'm trying to get to is you know lay off of the good property owners and focus our attention on those that are problems which it sounds like a spending up in our amount of time on already to my point about enforcement I'm wondering if we instead of making everybody the same by having a every three years everybody whether you're literally error free or violation free or you get one you know oops this this battery need to be changed versus the ones that are significantly worse could we go to a longer cycle but when you are inside a building and inspecting units and you find multiple violations that that triggers a netted additional units in other words if you're going in to do one six you end up doing maybe half because you continue to find more and more violations and so your attention and time is invested in the buildings with the problems and not with the bill not having to go through buildings that really don't have hardly any problems well I'll try hard to answer that we're gonna look at multi families it's a rare day we're gonna find anything that has no violations in it that's just like I said our infrastructure our housing is aging here it's it's like my body as we age we're gonna have more things wrong with us we're seeing the same things for what we didn't see last week maybe there again next week special there's a lot of the player stuff we're obviously concerned for imminent life safety issues with my parents the I hate the same good owners because all good they just may not recognize things that in the same sense that we would sees things too or place emphasis on emphasis on it my it's not my pet peeve it's important to me is that when staff walk in if at all possible when they leave that unit that smoke alarm is working whether we hand them a battery yeah whether we hand them a smoke detector which we do carry extras whether I want to go home at night and no gravity people are gonna be safe there and that my buddies in the fire department aren't gonna have to go in there any more than they have to that could happen with the best I mean people are people and that's you know that's what happens in reality is some days you have good days some days you have bad days same with good owners we don't know could you follow it man okay sure could we see the data I'd really like to make a decision based on and you've provided a lot of data I certainly get the fire part I think we're dealing with a sort of a you know a fuzzy picture of what is the total inventory and what is the spectrum of good and bad players because I'm I don't really know and you know the discussion clearly focuses around the problem the Aged that are chronic problems that you have you go into and there's always lots of stuff right it's hard for me to accept that that's the case a hundred percent of our rental you have multi-unit rental properties and that I mean I I guess I'd like to see and I'm okay even suggesting since I brought this up delaying this to gather more data to make a decision but I really what I'm really trying to find is a scale of inspections that is heavier on the problem units and less frequent on the ones that aren't a problem because again we're saying everybody gets 3-year inspection well if we have units or owners that rarely have any problems why are we going every three years and doing a third of their their units maybe we should be going in every year on the really bad units I mean the really bad players the bad bellies maybe we should be going in there more frequent than ever three years of a third of their unit I'm not we're going in every year but doing a third maybe it should be more aggressive there and less old indirectly maybe because we're more likely to get complaints on y'alls sure but again those are complaint based we're gonna go to a single unit we don't get a full reading of how this is operating until we do the entire thing right and we're looking at component systems too we're looking at heating for example that affect multiple people sometimes so it there's no one set size it how did you find good well there's probably I'm yeah that there's probably some wide disparity between how many a particular complex over the last six years how many violations they've had versus your worst situation yeah that'd be interesting to look at that's the data I think we need because I and this is a we're trying to make this three or one size fit all and I think it's penalizing the good players is probably not aggressive enough for the balance yeah okay I'm gonna go to come to Miami Gustafson when we do the inspections are those scheduled yes are the tenants notified you'll be going into their apartments to inspect absolutely if they're not so if you get there and you find some other problems you just can't go into another department we don't we have the landlord when we try as best we can to keep track of which ones we've been in and oftentimes they call us up because they can't remember which ones we did okay so we have a record of that so we can ensure that we get as close to one third as we can I think tonight's conversation has been a really good conversation it's been a interesting conversation of some of the things that we do for the owners of these buildings and I know that we have our multi tenant associations and our police departments and well everybody's involved in a lot of different things working with that's it's a team effort and and I believe that we could probably sit down and take a part of a work session and really kind of hone in how can we do a better policy for you guys to kind of get get to the word of this thing but but the main core issue here in my mind is the safety of 20,000 registers that we have in this city and what what are they living in are they are they in safety issues do they have problems that we don't know about yet and and I hear what you're saying but to go to apartment one year and then five six years later go back in that apartment especially that apartment was on the fringe but not enough for a violation five years that could be in pretty bad shape mm-hmm I think we watch we watch the building's transition pretty quickly around here and I mean I I'm in the business so I get around as well as I think I see things happen that mm-hmm I mean even even even the the country village is not exactly totally up to what we were hoping it was good we got a lot of emphasis from us right I think there was some data that generated or we we found where the average turnover of renting in the United States is like a tenant will be there 23 years yeah and then there will be a the managers about every two and a half years so you know these are all confounding factors and when we start working behavioural issues in that makes it even more difficult some people's standard is not my standard and it certainly isn't the code standard and that can vary I mean we don't know Thank You councilmember Schultz uh yeah I'm also more interested in more information on that because towards the beginning of the presentation it was talked about a couple are nearing you know where they have serious problems and it's taken quite a bit of staff time and they may be dragging their feet on that but then later it it sounded like there was quite a few buildings that are in that situation so I feel less clear after the conversation than at the beginning so so I'm hoping we can get some more information on where are our apartment buildings at so yeah I would I would be in favor of getting more information on that for sure and it is an interesting choice of words to say what we're doing for our managers and our owners because this is something and I also agree with councilmember Keely that this it appears that we are doing we are taking over some of the workload that a manager should be taking which is inspecting their own units and understanding what is going on there I understand the challenges of it and I understand the educational component of it I also like that we would be a partner with that I see you I see you're going in this note there will be instances where we walk in in fact it happened just a few weeks ago we send staff all we we assign we we give notice we have them you know at least one maintenance person because we always go a company we'd never go along with us they for the most part had not done their pre inspections which we asked everybody do this is their opportunity to show us you're a good operator yeah we're unprepared mm-hmm we we're not gonna work we're done at that point if you're not ready for us let us know when you're ready right we're not gonna waste any more staff time here until you're ready this is your opportunity to show us what you can do so that does happen yeah and I am sure it does sure so my question is one nice that the average turnover is that 2.5 or 3 years for a tenant the information I would be looking for as well is the feasibility of inspection at turnover I know right that's the reason why I ask that is that is the that is the point in time when a landlord is most likely to make significant changes in a unit is at that point and yep and I I understand on the workload and that type of thing actually I don't understand the workload which is why I'm asking but is that something that we could take a look at because if it's completely unfeasible its completely unfeasible if it's something where it's feasible and a landlord wants to do that and they're willing to pay for that type of service and they're maybe painting actually this is a good opportunity for us this is a good opportunity to say right hey where's your permit probably plumbing you're replacing for one thing yes this is important stuff to do it to make sure we do this this is the what the code will say no this is what you need to have it's actually an opportunity yeah and we do look at those as part of the regular just through serendipity it's open we'll look at it cuz it would be yeah somewhat somewhat because if we're inspecting 130 the apartments each year we could still inspect one-third of the apartments each year if the turnover is if the turnover is every three years the thing would just be coordinating the efforts between how we would coordinate the efforts between scheduled times that they're leaving the apartments between the different buildings that sounds like more of an IT issue yeah then in a man our issue I'm gonna go to chief you I'd be a little concerned about just doing it on turnover the majority of our fires are caused by unintentional and accidental fires and a lot of that you know catching the smoke alarm not working lots of times they can be a tenant issue of taking that down or running extension cords through the wall out to their deck or things like that yeah doing things like that that if we only did it at turnover every can certainly be missing some of those things that the occupants are actually doing to that space not just the management so so ah chief and mr. Forsman first of all I want to thank you for a well-written background report that got to a lot of issues and when you identify all of the work that goes into this and all of the stakeholders and the partners that we have with police and also with the management group that works with police the community the multi housing community a group that comes together my sense is that that might be a group that we could utilize to get at some of the issues that has been raised so getting people involved because that's how we also got to our rental licensing fee and the tunning and those owners that engaged with us we're here to do all of that so first I want to thank you for that and also that the data that you presented helps us to understand what's been going on before we had the rental licensing program and how many civilian injuries we had and firefighter injuries and also there were fatalities and then when we got to the rental license in 2012 to 2016 we didn't have any fatalities and I do know some of the the multi housing fires that we've had one on Aldridge that was very difficult and also some of the buildings that have had ceilings in their garages underground garages falling down and damaging cars within those facilities so and then just looking at your concern and I really appreciate that you're saying relaxing the standards to a multi-family housing licensing has a risk to D of decreasing the effectiveness of the current program and then I look at all of the data that you presented to us with regard to the market city rental program and that you tell us that our program has been a model that others have looked to and asked to duplicate it Dyna follows our model and that's but you look at all of the other markets city rental programs and some of the ones that don't have one is because they're pretty new there their housing stock is pretty new and and just going through all of this and I appreciate that you as staff have said that you don't recommend the change to the six years that what we're going well the change to six because what we're doing here as the chief said the effectiveness of the program is working and we're getting at it tonight there were more issues raised by council members with regard to how can we do this better how much enforcement tools do you need if that's the case but one of the things that I really appreciate is that you really identify not only the safety factors but the social factors and the cultural influence the economic factors the environmental elements and so on so you've done a very comprehensive look at all of this but and I appreciate that because this talked to us about a lot of things but there are some areas that council members have raised with regard to how can we add more tools into your toolbox to make it work even better and not punish those who are doing well because I know there are some that do very well and there are some because of changeovers a lot of wreaths a lot our absentee landlords and to your point you have to find them and then who is the decision-maker and how do you really get them I just remember Willow Pond and how difficult that was and then you still have another one that's just within well it used to be Connelly estates and it isn't but it's in this little pocket townhouses and it's still a problem and it has an absentee owner and the landlord changes often you know it's behind the gas station and I better pocket you guys know which one I'm talking about and and I've gone through that and I've seen how difficult that is for some of the tenants so I thank you I thank you for your recommendation and it appears to me that there are some things that we will continue to work on probably but I would you're the professionals you know they're all of this what's the best way working with a with the managers in that multi-family housing group that meets and I don't know do they still meet quarterly and chief are you a part of that I know it's police the community we're doing it twice a year no and most of the folks who show up our regular attendees and they're the ones who are engaged and are well informed yeah but it's the ones who don't engage in our only in our community two to three years and then they leave and again a lot of them are new managers yeah and they're not invested that's the turnover and we want certain you know they're there we expect them to be here yeah okay cause remember workmen thank you I I'm speaking for myself but I'm not prepared to make a decision tonight on this I think there's a lot of things that we need to figure out and listening to everything I've heard it sounds like there's some desire here to be more favorable to our property owners that participate that don't drain city services and maintain safe buildings in reading our background there was a newspaper article and there was a quote from the Municipal Affairs Office from the Minnesota multi Housing Association and they reference a tiered inspection system and so in doing a little bit of research with some help there's a city of Minneapolis tiered and rental license renewal billing and I'm sure this probably exists in many other communities and I'm not saying we copy one but maybe we look at finding something tear like councilmember Keeley is kind of searching for and councilmember Schultz where we figure out a way to kind of accomplish both goals of getting after our bad problems and then maybe not I don't want to say rewarding our good property owners but maybe lessening the burden there so I don't know if it makes sense to kick this to an all-day so we can do some work it yeah I think there's more to be done here councilmember Kaley motion to reject item 5c ordinance amending Title 3 chapter 20 of the personal report and please send it back to staff too so keep it keep the ordinance as it right now yep reject the proposal I'll second there's a motion in a second staff are you understanding the motion yes okay very good so there is a motion in a second all in favor please say aye opposed say nay and the motion carries we continue to operate with what we have with the ordinance that is on the books right now okay thank you members of the council there are no other items to come before us this evening and a motion to adjourn is in order motion to adjourn to eat the Christmas cookies that were gifted to us by our city manager yeah there is a motion and a second all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed say nay and emotion carries Merry Christmas everybody happy holidays and thank you for being with us we'll see you in the new year