As an expert transcriptionist, I have reviewed the provided context and the audio transcript. Below is the formatted transcript with speaker identifications based on the names of officials, staff, and the flow of the town hall proceedings. **Note on Council Names:** Several Councilmembers mentioned in the dialogue (Vaughn, Lund, Fox, Folch, and Brocks) were not in your provided list, but based on the transcript's internal references and mayoral address, they are the active representatives participating in this session. *** **[0:08] Kyle Linscheid:** thank you mayor fassbender council members and city leaders tonight the hastings police department is proud to recognize three citizens from our area that performed heroic actions it is always an honor to recognize citizens in the community when they go above and beyond to make our city safer our first award is for mr munoz ramos and mr lemay and this award was recommended by sergeant matt hedrick who unfortunately could not be here tonight so gentlemen if you could please step forward and stand next to me while i read the incident details **[0:49] Kyle Linscheid:** thank you on august 1st 2020 at 12 30 a.m a male suspect attempted a strong armed robbery at the m h gas station in town the suspect walked into the employee area and attempted to steal cash and was confronted by one of the employees the suspect attempted to push past the employee and flee when mr silvellio munoz ramos observed what was occurring and intervened by taking the suspect to the ground mr samuel lemay observed what was occurring while driving past the store stopped and assisted mr munoz ramos in keeping the suspect on the ground until hastings police officers arrived to take the suspect mail into custody the suspect was booked into dakota county jail for robbery for the swift and courageous actions of both mr munoz **[1:36] Kyle Linscheid:** ramos and mr lemay hpd is presenting them with the citizens award of commendation please assist me in congratulating both men for their heroic actions [Applause] thank you for your assistance the second award is for is for mr lingle and this award was recommended by sergeant dave bauer who is with us today in the back of the room sergeant power if you could raise your hand so mr lingle if you could please step forward **[2:25] Kyle Linscheid:** on april 27 2022 at approximately 3 30 pm mr lingle was fueling his vehicle at the holiday gas station when he observed a house fire at the corner of 13th street west and eddie street mr lingle ran to this location and put himself in harm's way to attempt to alert neighboring homeowners of the fire being cognizant of his child who was also with at the time mr lingle was able to attract the attention of the neighbors and they successfully evacuated the area the smoke was very dense and officers arriving on scene reported the heat was extreme due to the house fire mr lingle was escorted out of the dangerous situation and was treated by medics due to smoke inhalation mr lingle never hesitated when he observed the fire and potential danger it presented to others his actions are **[3:11] Kyle Linscheid:** commendable and for these reasons hastings police department is presenting him with the citizens award of commendation please assist me in congratulating mr lingle **[3:32] Kyle Linscheid:** and if i could have all the award recipients come to the front for a picture opportunity and city council would also like to have a picture with the award recipients **[3:50] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** absolutely **[4:11] Kyle Linscheid:** okay myself **[4:35] Kyle Linscheid:** can i give one more **[4:43] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you [Applause] [Music] **[5:23] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** talk to you **[5:38] Dan Wietecha:** yep **[5:59] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** all right tonight we will be hearing a presentation mdh presentation by jim kelly welcome jim **[6:10] Jim Kelly:** mayor fassbender council members thank you for having us here tonight my name is jim kelly i'm the manager of the environmental surveillance and assessment section at the minnesota department of health and with me this evening is dr helen goeden who's our senior toxicologist who will be we're here tonight to present to you kind of a pfas 101 what are these chemicals why are we concerned about them what are some of the recent developments that have brought them to your attention as well as others and we've worked with your city engineer ryan stemsky and the city staff to prepare this presentation so we'll go ahead and run through it i'm **[6:45] Jim Kelly:** going to turn it over to dr goeden to do the bulk of the presentation i'll talk a little bit and then we'll turn it over to ryan we're open to questions at any time during the presentation or if you want to save them it's totally up to you but we appreciate the invitation and the time to be here and look forward to hearing your questions so i'm going to turn it over to dr goeden **[7:10] Dr. Helen Goeden:** hello happy to be here and i want to reiterate what jim said so we're going to be throwing a lot of information at you so at any time if you have any questions um please just feel free to interrupt me good that's that so i'm starting out with somewhat of a disclaimer so um the pfos science is an extremely active area of research when we first started **[7:30] Dr. Helen Goeden:** looking at these chemicals 20 years ago there wasn't a single published scientific paper on them now there's over 100 every single month so it's an extremely active area of research and so the information we're presenting you today is based on our current understanding but as there's more information that's coming out all the time so our understanding could change um so i just want to make sure and i that's going to be a theme somewhat through through this presentation so and when that new information has come available to us and we've incorporated it into our work we have gone back out repeatedly to communities to to explain to them what has changed because that is something that is very um can be very concerning when the story keeps changing **[8:16] Dr. Helen Goeden:** um and that is very much the case with these chemicals as we learn more so this is sort of the topics i we're hoping to cover so per and polyfluorinated substances we call them pfos for short so first of all just yeah basics on what they are what the potential human health effects are why we're concerned about these chemicals how the department of health's guidance has is developed and why that guidance has changed over time and it will continue to change and then jim is also going to talk about some recently released epa health advisory values as well because that is part of this bigger picture and again feel free to interrupt with with clarifying questions at any time **[9:02] Dr. Helen Goeden:** so pfas are a very large group of chemicals surfactants there's over 5000 in the in this group and they have very unique chemical and physical properties that make them or their breakdown products extremely resistant but these same characteristics make them very useful um to incorporate into things as well so they've been used since the 1940s in an extremely wide range of consumer and industrial applications so they um are put on coatings to be to to impart stain water grease resistant so you can imagine all the different types of uses for that there are surfactants they make things slippery they make things layer and coat really nicely so they are **[9:47] Dr. Helen Goeden:** they are incorporated in countless applications and the pictures that are there just are some of the products that we are now aware of that they have actually been incorporated into so it's everything from you know waterproof mascara to um firefighting foam they're extremely stable so they can exist in really harsh conditions so they're used in chrome plating acid baths for example so they are very interesting in chemicals so those characteristics make them very useful for those applications but they're not really good properties for environmental contaminants so this is a slide that i like to start with because it kind of helps ground me too every time i give one of these **[10:32] Dr. Helen Goeden:** presentations so you will see a lot of acronyms being used with these this group of chemicals so the perfluoro alkyl acid which are the ones that we are typically dealing with they're those sort of terminal breakdown products that that just are extremely resistant to break for the breakdown in the environment so they they're very um persistent so those are fully fluorinated um and there's a carbon chain i've got sort of a schematic of two of the most commonly studied pfos so there's a chain of carbon atoms um and when they're fully fluorinated they're called peripheral alkyl and when they are partially fluorinated they're polyfluorinated so in the naming convention **[11:20] Dr. Helen Goeden:** is related to how many carbons you have in that chain and they use sort of greek nomenclature so if there's five it's called penta if it's eight it's called octa so for the two that i have there so perfluoro octane sulfonate so that's fully fluorinated eight carbons and then there is a sulfonate at the head and perfluorooctane carboxylate or pfoa pifoa again eight carbons fully fluorinated but it has a carboxylate at the head and those chain lengths and what's at the head of these compounds impacts how they behave so for the shorter chains or the carboxylates they **[12:06] Dr. Helen Goeden:** are relatively more water soluble and less bio-cumulative in our bodies so they tend to be found in surface water groundwater drinking water there can also be found in plants because they're so soluble in water as the plant takes up water they can move up into the plant as well so for the longer chain or the sulfonates those tend to be a little bit less water-soluble and more bio-cumulative so they tend to be found more in soils and sediment they can also build up in animals and that includes human beings **[12:43] Dr. Helen Goeden:** so it's not surprising since they're so widely used that they're in almost virtually everybody in this room probably the center for disease control conducts national biomonitoring they've done this for many decades this is where they take urine and blood samples and they do a health survey of individuals across the country this focuses on individuals 12 years and older and they first started looking for a small group of phos compounds in this bio monitoring program back in 1999 and the longer chain pfas that were in this group they literally found in every single person they sampled but that again is not surprising given **[13:30] Dr. Helen Goeden:** that they are very widely used in different products and applications so as you can see from this chart um levels have gone down over time again i'm only showing pfoa and p foss both of those were phased out from production within the united states in the early 2000s so the solid line is sort of the average concentration in that biomonitoring study and then the dotted line is the 95th percentile so the higher end of the range but you can also see that those curves are starting to flatten out as well so on to the potential health effects i'm first showing here some of the health effects that are seen in laboratory animal studies that is where **[14:15] Dr. Helen Goeden:** we get typically most of our toxicity information because obviously we cannot conduct studies on human beings so it's done in laboratory animals so these controlled studies you know exactly the age of the animal they're usually very homogeneous genetically and you know exactly how much you give that animal and when you give it to them so it's a very controlled study so as you increase dose and you see health effects you can have a fairly high confidence that what you're seeing is caused by that chemical that you've been administering to these animals so there's a i'm not going to read the list to you there are a couple things i i want you to know is most chemicals at least in my career that i've studied um the list there's usually a couple of target organs that are chemical effects **[15:02] Dr. Helen Goeden:** one thing that's unusual about pfas is there's a fairly long list of of health effects here so it's a wide variety of health effects and that's a bit unusual and this information is also for a fairly short list of pfos compounds and again the ones that we have the most data on are pfo and pfloss so moving oh sorry i forgot i have this little animation here um so the ones that are in that blue box are the ones that we i have identified as the most sensitive endpoints that means you see those first at the lowest doses that you're exposing those animals to obviously as you give more and more of a chemical to the animal you'll see more and more health effects but the ones that we tend to focus on are the ones **[15:47] Dr. Helen Goeden:** that are observed at the at the lower levels the most sensitive health effects so we also have some human health effect information this comes from epidemiology studies most of those have been conducted in occupational workers who've been exposed to high concentrations as part of their work some of these are also in contaminated communities there was a whole series of health studies that were done in west virginia as part of a legal settlement so that was specifically in that community they were mainly exposed to p-fola but that cdc biomonitoring information that i mentioned since they also collect health information individuals have also been looking at that data to see if they **[16:33] Dr. Helen Goeden:** can see associations between exposure to these chemicals and health effects if there's a consistent picture there so you can see by this list there's a lot of familiarity with this list than the previous slide i mean there's a lot of commonality between these two so that gives us greater confidence that these effects may actually be linked to exposure because those were also seen in laboratory animals that were very controlled studies so the ones that have been most consistently observed so we consider that they have a i guess a greater weight of evidence if you want to put it that way are the immune effects particularly in children several types of liver effects developmental effects in particular decreased birth weight or small **[17:19] Dr. Helen Goeden:** progestation age and then also kidney cancer specific to exposure for with pfoa so those are the ones that have most consistently been observed as you can imagine it's very challenging to try to identify cause and effect in human studies because people are exposed to many different environments many different chemicals different things can cause some of these same effects like increased cholesterol a lot of that can be impacted by the diet what you're eating as well so it's these are those are some of the challenges of trying to get a clear picture from human studies so why are these exposures of concern so one of the the things um in some ways that is somewhat beneficial typically we have a very **[18:05] Dr. Helen Goeden:** difficulty having a good measurement of exposure in humans but for these chemicals particularly the longer chain ones um they can be easily found in serum in our blood so it's a direct measure of exposure now again levels of concern historically that we have used and actually our current guidance is still based on those controlled laboratory animal studies but the consistency and quality of the human data is we now feel is getting to the point where we can actually start moving to using human data so that will lead to a change in the future so i also wanted to share a recent national academy of science report actually that was released on the end of july the national academy of science was **[18:50] Dr. Helen Goeden:** funded and requested by the center for disease control to come up with guidelines on pfa's exposure testing and clinical follow-up to help advise communities where there was contaminated water so the national academy of science had three recommended pfos serum levels now this is first group of seven p-files that i have identified um in sort of a footnote there so their recommended um sort of tiered approach is serum concentrations that are less than two nanograms per milliliter of serum you would not expect adverse effects to be associated with those between two to twenty they feel there is a potential for adverse effects in sensitive populations **[19:37] Dr. Helen Goeden:** now if you looked at those health effects that we identified some of the sensitive populations would be infants developing young children etc and then over 20 nanograms per ml they feel there could be an increased risk for adverse effects in the general population **[19:58] Dr. Helen Goeden:** so i've already hinted that phos behave differently than other chemicals these are the first and at least in my career that are very water soluble that bioaccumulate normally if something's really bio um highly soluble we're able to eliminate it pretty easily from our bodies but these chemicals are different um something that we refer to is called half-lifes what a half-life is is the amount of time it takes for half of the exposure on one day to be eliminated from your body so a half-life for the shorter chain pfas are measured in days and weeks but for the longer chain ones those have half-lives measured in years multiple years so you can imagine if you're exposed **[20:44] Dr. Helen Goeden:** every day or on a regular basis to these compounds and it takes years to eliminate half of an exposure from one day these are going to build up in your body and that's what they do so depending on how much and for how long you're exposed the concentrations in your your blood can be much higher than let's say if you're drinking contaminated water we've also learned that these accumulated levels particularly in women can be passed on to their children so the placenta is not a very effective barrier for these compounds they can pretty easily cross the placenta so there are multiple studies showing that infants can be born with very similar blood levels than their mothers who have been exposed for a long period of time it's also now been shown that these **[21:31] Dr. Helen Goeden:** chemicals enter breast milk and so they that's another pathway of exposure to infants and again depending on how much and for how long that woman has been exposed the concentrations in her breast milk can be higher than the water that she was drinking if it was contaminated so again this is very unique for chemicals that are water contaminants so the subgroup that's of most concern to us because they are most sensitive and because they tend to be the most highly exposed is an infant that's born to a mother and is breastfed by a mother who's been exposed for a long period of time this these graphs are sort of schematics of sort of contrasting a formula-fed infant **[22:17] Dr. Helen Goeden:** to a breastfed infant from a mother who's been exposed for a long period of time so you can see they both start out at the same point because there was placental transfer but breast milk results in a much higher exposure to these infants and then because of the long half-life it takes a long time for those serum concentrations to come down but they do eventually flatten out in that sort of flat sort of state of constant exposure it's something we refer to as steady state but it takes a long time for those breastfed infants to their levels to to come down so i've already indicated that our guidance is based on that most susceptible and highly exposed group of individuals so for the short chains those that really **[23:03] Dr. Helen Goeden:** have little to no bioaccumulation we focus on that formula fed infant who's directly drinking the water because they drink much more water on a per body weight basis than pretty much every anybody else and then for the long chain those that do accumulate in the body our focus is that breastfed infant who's born to a mother who's been exposed for a long period of time so i want to be very clear though that even though breastfeeding can be a significant pathway we know that breastfeeding has many many health benefits to both the mother and the infant and so here in minnesota we are recommending that women who are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed they should still plan to do that so the other thing i want to point out is since our guidance is based on the most susceptible most highly exposed if **[23:50] Dr. Helen Goeden:** you're not in that subpopulation our guidance is in essence overprotective for you your risks will be much lower so so for the general population older children adults etc the exposure risk is is lower because we're targeting those really high exposure individuals so this is just sort of a schematic that kind of steps through how we develop our guidance so for those short chain ones we again start out looking at those most sensitive health effects and then what we look for is what exposure or dose and right now our guidance is based on laboratory animal data then we look for the exposure level that does not result in health effects **[24:35] Dr. Helen Goeden:** we then take that exposure and divide it by safety factors to lower it even further those safety factors the number and magnitude of them depend on how complete we think the information is that we have on that chemical so for example we know that these chemicals often affect the immune system but if we have a chemical that we don't have an immune study on it but we know that is an area of concern we will add a safety factor because we don't have that study for example so we bring that that concentration down and that results in something referred to as a reference exposure level and that's a concentration or exposure that should not cause any adverse health effects to the population **[25:22] Dr. Helen Goeden:** now we combine that with like i indicated formula fed infants because they drink so much more on a per body weight basis but we don't take the average formula fed infant we take a high consuming formula fed infant so we take some an infant who's drinking a lot of water and use that intake rate and since we also know there are other exposure sources we only allow a portion of that reference exposure level to come from water so that we allow a buffer for other sources because we don't want to go over that reference exposure level we want to keep exposures below that and so that's how the short chain values have been developed now for the longer chain ones **[26:07] Dr. Helen Goeden:** we go through the same process to identify that reference exposure level but our focus now is on the mother and keeping the accumulated levels in the mother low enough so that those peak concentrations in her breast-fed infant are going to be below those reference exposure levels and again we use a mother who consumes a lot of water not an average amount of water but a high amount of water and actually for the breastfed infant we also assume a high end of breast milk intake as well so all of those things are sort of conservative assumptions and again because there are other sources of exposure we only allow fraction of that reference exposure level to come from water **[26:53] Dr. Helen Goeden:** so our guidance has actually changed significantly over time um i actually developed the first numbers back in 2002 which is like 20 years ago it's kind of scary but it is a very active area of research and we have updated our guidance values as you can see by all the numbers multiple times we've gone back and and revised them when new information has come out and when there's information on additional pfas chemicals we have developed guidance for those as well so two of the really um just key examples for information that changed our guidance values the first one was that slow elimination of humans 20 years ago there was a suggestion that humans might have longer half-lives than laboratory animals but **[27:39] Dr. Helen Goeden:** we really didn't have much data by 2006 2007 it was very clear that the elimination in humans was a lot lower and what that means is you can give the same amount to a laboratory animal on a per body weight basis as a human and the human is going to have much higher internal concentrations because we eliminate it so much more slowly than those animals do the other major sort of piece of information that resulted in us lowering our values significantly in 2017 in particular was that magnitude of that maternal transfer to infants then we had enough information at that point to actually put numbers and make those calculations and we were the first state and actually i think we might be the first in the **[28:26] Dr. Helen Goeden:** world actually to actually incorporate those exposure pathways into our guidance so what's now in the works um changes the constant with these chemicals um is that for at least pfo and pfas we think there is sufficient health information now to move to using human-based data to develop guidance values and not surprisingly those sensitive effects are being seen at lower serum concentrations in humans than they are in the animals but given the fact that we eliminate these things so much more slowly that kind of makes sense so i also want to talk about mixtures um because these chemicals never i don't think there's any place that we've come across **[29:11] Dr. Helen Goeden:** where there's only one pfas they always occur in mixtures and when you're exposed to multiple chemicals at one time that can have a different effect or result in a different effect than if you're just exposed to one so the department of health we use what is referred to as an additivity approach we've actually had this approach since the early 1990s and so it's not specific to pfas it really applies to any water contaminants so if you have a mixture of contaminants and they tend to have the same health effects we look at the cumulative effect the mix of the entire mixture and this is what's referred to as that health risk index which i think you're going to be hearing more about a little bit later and that basically is calculated in a very simple way so you would take the concentration of each **[29:56] Dr. Helen Goeden:** pfas divide it by our health based guidance and then you would add all of those ratios together and if that sum exceeds one then we in our opinion there is an exceedance of a health risk so i think at this point i'm turning it over to jim **[30:23] Jim Kelly:** thank you helen helen's just uh in about 20 minutes or so summarize literally 20 years of research and effort at the department of health and and elsewhere that's kind of brought us to this point there's been a lot that's gone on over that time period i think what much of what brings us here tonight are some recent developments on the on the part of the united states environmental protection agency that we're all kind of in the process of responding to um in on june 15th uh epa announced new what they called interim lifetime health advisory values for two of the the pfast chemicals that are recognized to be uh the more toxic more concerning ones pfoa and pfos that dr goeden described they really came out without much notice none of us had seen them epa gave us a **[31:10] Jim Kelly:** week's notice they were coming out but we didn't see the technical information behind them until the day or just before they were released so it's been a scramble on the part of not only minnesota but every other state and territory who has to respond to these new information from epa to try to understand what they're based on what they mean and what their implications are epa has spent a lot of time trying to explain that but i think there's still a fair amount of uncertainty around that around what they're actually going to mean they released what i said is interim health advisories for four pfas the two interim ones are for pfoa and pfos as i just said they're extremely low **[31:55] Jim Kelly:** as as as helen just showed you our current guidance values for pfoa are 35 parts per trillion and for pfos they're at 15 parts per trillion these values are much much lower 0.004 parts per trillion or another way to say it would be four parts per quadrillion it's a very tiny number and 0.02 for p foss they are below our ability to even measure these chemicals currently by a significant order of magnitude so they they represent what epa is saying are the potential for for health risks to be present at or above these levels even though we at the current time can't measure them with our current **[32:40] Jim Kelly:** technology their interim values they've been under review for a great deal of time but what is an interim health advisory this is according to epa they're simply meant to provide information about what levels of contaminants could cause health effects if they're found in drinking water they're not enforceable they're not regulatory there's they're simply guidance that's coming from the the federal government they talk they have these for a number of different contaminants this was somewhat unique that they issued these interim health advisories and i'll get to that in a minute so it caught a lot of us by surprise we were not aware of exactly what they were up to until they in fact released these new documents but they're intended much as our values are to protect all americans including **[33:27] Jim Kelly:** sensitive populations and life stages such as a developing fetus or infant from adverse health effects throughout their lives why are they so much lower we have been able to review the technical documentation and as as helen alluded to epa has based these new guidance values on human epidemiological studies so there's a much better resolution in terms of the amount of exposure and then the sensitivity of effects that they're able to measure their key studies that they've used are again human studies that show a decline in vaccine effectiveness related to the level of pfos or pfoa in blood i wanted to be transparent though to say that the department of health and many other entities around the state around the country have expressed significant **[34:14] Jim Kelly:** concerns about a lack of transparency and how epa developed these guidance values they haven't really shown their work to the to the satisfaction of many of us who've been engaged in these activities for several decades now a science advisory board that was convened issued a report uh just a couple of weeks ago that contained as well many recommendations similar to some of the recommendations and concerns we expressed in order for the apa to improve their draft toxicological guidance that these interim health values are based on they're in the process of revising that their their toxicological assessments and they've indicated there will be substantial changes we anticipate seeing another draft guidance at around the end of this year **[34:59] Jim Kelly:** or early 23. so epa is committed through this process to releasing draft maximum contaminant level goals and maximum contaminant levels by late 22 early 23. an mcl is a is a federal drinking water standard if a chemical is found in a community water supply above an mcl the operator is required under law to take action to reduce exposure to those to those chemicals above those levels so that's what epa is planning it to propose late 22 early 23 is a federal drinking water standard that will be likely different than the interim health advisors but also likely to be very low where they're going to land exactly we [35:44] don't know um so but they do intend to finalize that and then finalize that regulation by late 23 which is at that point it would become the law of the land so what are we doing in addition to epa california and other entities have conducted analyses of these human epidemiological studies we're working with dr goeden and her colleagues in our area are working to review those very carefully along with our environmental epidemiologists who are bringing into this process for the first time so we're reviewing those documents and our objective as as again as dr goeden said we feel there's enough information that we're likely going to have to reduce or change our state guidelines as well similar to what the federal government **[36:29] Jim Kelly:** is proposing and our goal is to complete that by early 23 so we'll have new state guidelines for pfoa and pfos which up to this point have driven much of the actions in the east metro where other communities have been dealing with this for a number of years so we have two two kind of converging processes the epa's process to develop a federal drinking water standard as well as our state process to develop groundwater guidance values that are used to guide drinking water actions as well as we said we've been at this for a long time and we we've developed a lot of resources for communities for citizens for anyone who has questions about or concerned about a potential exposure to pfas whether it's in drinking water or **[37:15] Jim Kelly:** other avenues as we've discussed there's information on our website and this was this has been the top level but you can get to all these things from there kind of what's going on across the state um the health information that helen presented here this evening including resources for clinicians so that someone is concerned about their potential exposure to pfas we have information they can use to talk to their physicians about it and and kind of review their own personal health situation we have lots of information about treatment these chemicals are treatable and removable from from drinking water with some fairly inexpensive technology and that's good news for those who are wish to take an extra step they're also present in fish we have fished consumption advisories for the **[38:01] Jim Kelly:** mississippi river in this pool as a result of the presence of these chemicals in the river water and the fish in the river so we have lots of information about that as well and then links to other agency resources so a lot of information is there and we expect you know this will be helpful for your citizens who might have questions based on this information because if you said it it's a little as you've seen it's kind of complex there's a lot to it i'm going to stop there and and see if there are questions for either helen or i before turning it over to ryan or if you'd prefer we can turn it over to ryan and then save questions till the end so either one is fine with us **[38:43] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you council your wish would you like to speak to or have ryan speak or we will listen to ryan thank you **[38:47] Councilmember Vaughn:** sounds good **[38:52] Ryan Stempski:** thanks jim and helen um i was probably about 15 years ago when i started working with pfas so to have it come around into hastings now and be presented to the council's is kind of odd where i started working with jim was in lake elmo years ago so back then we called the formula the cocktail so you guys have changed that a little bit now so um anyway i just want to talk a little bit about bringing this to hastings specific you heard a little bit about the the why the department health has reached out to us um and we're starting to have these conversations because of these epa studies and new levels we've always had pfas and hastings it's it's not something new to our groundwater it's been here um it's just as the levels are starting to lower from **[39:40] Ryan Stempski:** the scientific evidence it brings it into discussion of our water system so i just wanted to i don't know how good you can see that but this is our wellhead protection plan um excerpt it's it's just a map of city of hastings and you can see our six wells in this map so we have we have six wells currently those are the green dots on the map those six wells are spread out throughout town so basically we have quite a spread of our well field in the welfield you'll see a red circle that's the one-year capture zone so it draws groundwater in one year from the circle around our well the blue lines that extend quite a bit further **[40:27] Ryan Stempski:** even beyond our city boundaries is a 10-year capture zone so it's just how we report how we're drawing water from our well field you can tell we generally have a large uh draw in our well field if you combine all of our six together that's what put all these circles together so we do have a large draw of groundwater when we're pulling water uh into our well field so i just wanted to get people a general lay of the the wells that we manage here in hastings and we do have six of them and then the the back end of that of kind of bringing it all together is for all six wells and we do have our treatment plan on here now the treatment plan treats currently for nitrates and nitrates only so it's just another testing site that that **[41:12] Ryan Stempski:** we've we've accumulated over the years but for the six wells we do have several different pfas chains as as was alluded to by the department of health we do have the pfos and the pfoa that really drives your health risk index having the p p foss and p fola in your drinking water supply our health risk index index really ranges from uh 0.16 all the way up to 0.84 so currently this just kind of reiterates what i was saying at the beginning is with a health index of one we are below that health guidance from the department so we we currently are below it's kind **[42:00] Ryan Stempski:** why you haven't heard about this in the past it's it's we've operated in that level we track that just like any other contaminant in our and our drinking water supply but with the new information that we heard just this year that's been growing we wanted to get out to the council early and start doing some things to brace ourselves for the next steps as we anticipated so this is really kind of a proactive approach to try to get the information out first and foremost and i want i wanted people to to see what we have for a well field and and the testing limits that we have in there is is jessie here i don't yeah oh jess you are here okay uh jesse can if you want to just speak a little bit about the **[42:45] Ryan Stempski:** testing parameters you can come up um we do test for pfas and we do it on a quarterly basis but i'm gonna let jesse is with the department of health and she does that testing for us and i just if you could just maybe speak about your plan going forward and the testing you've done **[42:58] Jesse (MDH):** yeah um so i am the district engineer uh for this area so i worked closely with ryan mark and joe um in the public works i last year we did quarterly testing on all of the wells in hastings and we kind of took a break from that for quarter one and quarter two of this year because of none of the wells were were changing none of them were above the the **[43:31] Jesse (MDH):** hr hri of one um with the epa changes the proposed mcls and mdh lowering their hri we are starting to go back to quarterly sampling so these were taken just in july and then i'll be out again sometime between october and december i'm taking another set of samples and seeing where they're at from there so we haven't seen it change too much but we do want at least a four quarters together of data to see kind of what's happening and where things are at so yeah **[44:14] Ryan Stempski:** thank you so that kind of rolls into our next slide here just uh the next steps for us **[44:18] Ryan Stempski:** here in hastings as jesse alluded to testing a pfast will continue here in hastings and and will continue to coordinate and facilitate that testing and be transparent about those results not much has changed so it's just kind of slowly upticked and stayed fairly level over time so we're going to continue to monitor that what i've learned and listen to the hydrogeologist pfas is kind of a tricky substance in the ground water such that it gloms onto an aquifer and it might stay there and then it slowly passes through and then it gloms onto another area and it stays there so that's why it's kind of it's not what we're taught in engineering school of you know dilutionist solution to pollution right where it'll just pass its way through um these are tricky not only on the medical side but also on the **[45:05] Ryan Stempski:** groundwater science as well they're challenging in our environment so that's why they stick here that's why they don't stay that's why they're called the forever chemicals it hits us from all angles so testing will continue so that's that's a huge resource and benefit to us at the city to have that expertise so we appreciate that um and i just wanted to be transparent about we do anticipate the guidance from the state to change and fairly soon you heard you heard from jim and helen uh as early as early 2023 well summer's over so that's coming quickly guys so we've already started to lay the groundwork to work with the state agencies so not just the department of health but the minnesota pollution control agency the minnesota dnr all the **[45:50] Ryan Stempski:** folks at the state agencies that are involved in this they're hearing from dan and i and they're hearing from us very loudly that we want to talk about where's the contamination coming from we want to talk about where is it moving we want to talk about funding we want to get those answers but i'm here tonight to say it's too early i don't have those you got to let us get the facts in the background here and and just know that we're beginning to start those those conversations um and i have already had some of them the city is also setting up our website so we'll have a website it'll be front page news i think tonight or tomorrow and it'll link to a section where this presentation so sorry if i didn't get all enough hard copies i we must ran out **[46:35] Ryan Stempski:** of print our paper at public works today i don't know but anyway um this will be on our website the the video of this should be on our website uh the department health links will be on there so people don't have to go you know back playing minutes it'll all be up on that website and we'll continue to upload that information and new news will come front so people can click on that and get to the public works area where we talk about this this water quality component so we are doing that another big piece again with our partnership with department of health which we we are very appreciative of they'll be hosting a pfas open house um to be determined in hastings for our public and this will be a you know probably a presentation in a question **[47:22] Ryan Stempski:** comment format so so our public can review this information think about how it impacts them come to this this open house or submit questions we'll figure it out um we'll we'll get it out to our public very loud and clear the date and location of this meeting it'll be yet this fall just don't know exactly when we're gonna we're gonna nail on that but one thing i've learned for doing these in the past is during that we'll take good notes and see what our public has on their minds specific to questions and develop an faq for hastings so i don't want to take another community's faq and just slap it on here the department health has a good faq for general pfas questions but i'm sure there's going to be questions tailored to hastings that that's it's **[48:08] Ryan Stempski:** amazing how many of the same questions i tend to get for a water system and so we can put it out there that'll be a great reference document for our staff and and and for our public to to refer to and then finally we'll issue a press release i think again tonight tomorrow to our local media just so what we know now is properly put in in a little bit of a story line and and put out as the same message for the city as is really kind of step one of just knowing what we know get information out and then putting it out to the public so i'm going to stop there we've got our partners in the room so it's not just me **[48:54] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** but any questions you have we'll take at this time thank you thank you ryan council councilmember vaughn **[49:00] Councilmember Vaughn:** thank you ryan mr kelly mentioned that this is a treatable product any investments that we've made recently to our water system will we be able to utilize those to help treat this when it does escalate to that point **[49:15] Ryan Stempski:** unfortunately no the the treatment techniques for pfas are a little bit different so some of the we potentially could look at modeling of our system where we have a nitrate treatment plant for example and add on to it and treat that water that **[49:40] Ryan Stempski:** particular way but just from a high level again without digging into this yet it may be something where we'd have to add treatment potentially at each individual well pump house and **[49:52] Councilmember Vaughn:** i think that's what i was getting at did didn't we make investments at each individual well house ready for our last water issue that we had **[50:03] Ryan Stempski:** we we did for the chlorination right um yes but but the vessels and the if it's whether we use ion exchange or granular activated carbon whatever the treatment technology is it's going to need its own brick and mortar expansion housing of those vessels and units and water is going to have to be brought through and treated that way so unfortunately this is an add-on to **[50:26] Ryan Stempski:** however we decide to do it we can bring distribution lines to one central location or we could treat individually be a cost-benefit analysis **[50:36] Councilmember Vaughn:** that's all i'm getting i i just think we're going to have an expense someday how we how we funded our last treatment facility is probably not the right math method but i think we got our work cut out for us of making uh brick and mortar investments let along we had partners in knowledge but i think we are setting ourselves up here and hopefully there's going to be some resources that's going to help with this but currently i think our our last investment on that investment was our cost the hastings residents paid for that and i'm worried about if we don't get some support we're going to have some **[51:11] Councilmember Vaughn:** heavy expenses in front of us thank you **[51:14] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember vaughn councilmember lund **[51:17] Councilmember Lund:** thank you honor question on uh the translation between different different metrics here the the ppt equals what hri is that the are they the same because i've got two charts here but they don't i don't have the translation **[51:38] Jim Kelly:** thank you council member that it's a it's admittedly a complex issue the the health risk index that we're referring to that kind of serves as the benchmark for a mixture of pfast chemicals the concentrations of the chemicals are in parts per trillion but what we do is we take a ratio **[51:57] Jim Kelly:** of the concentration of the chemical over its respective guidance value so those part per trillions essentially cancel out and what we're left is a ratio that doesn't have a unit to it it's just a number between zero and some number so it just represents that if it's above one it means that either alone or in combination that health the health risk index is above one alone or in combination one or more of the pfas are above their guidance values and we think actions should be taken **[52:32] Councilmember Lund:** okay so just to follow up um the crystal ball from what you're looking at through the epa they're they're just putting a ppt out **[52:42] Councilmember Lund:** there they don't have the hri is that true and and so we we know what the ppt levels look like but not what the coordinate corresponding hri might look like in the future **[52:56] Jim Kelly:** that's that's correct we don't know yet what those are values are going to be that will that will then be used to calculate that hri **[53:07] Councilmember Lund:** okay so i can't just look at the ppt and use the same discount okay thank you **[53:18] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** council member line council member fulch **[53:29] Councilmember Folch:** thank you your honor i used to live on the north side of the river um in south washington county and um and i had well water there um i used to live in pine **[53:40] Councilmember Folch:** coulee it's uh at the intersection of uh county road 95 and 61. and uh and so there is i mean there's a lot there's a lot of public information that was uh going on around god it was what 2013-14 when it really became more of a more of a problem and awareness was happening among the amongst the residents there and so i partook in the in the community education forums and i had gone to one and there was a something that stood out in my mind and actually one of the leading reasons that i moved out of that neighborhood was that there was a there's a plume of uh the forever chemicals the pfas that um is is on the north side of the river and at **[54:15] Councilmember Folch:** what i was at they were telling us that that plume was going to eventually migrate underneath the mississippi river and and come in to the hastings aquaphores and and so that so since i've been on the council i've been asking this question about hey where are we with that and how come we're not getting involved in the 3m settlement and and all of that and and so and i know that right now that on the north side of the river and cottage grove the elected officials are very worried about um this particular issue and the impacts that it's going to have to the water infrastructure and so um so i i i'm no expert but at least i was paying attention as a citizen and and uh and and i was very nervous about uh what my my children were drinking uh **[55:01] Councilmember Folch:** what they were bathing in and so so i am concerned i am i'm concerned about this plume that's supposed to be coming this way and and i'd like to know more about you know what are we anticipating because as we began to have the the problems a few years ago now before covet um when we had the problems with uh with the bacteria being in the water and then we needed to move to the chlorination and such i i kept bringing this up and and then finally nick said our previous uh public works engineer said yeah it's finally showed up in one of our wells and now and now it's in all of our wells that you're showing that there's data there and so i'm just curious as to you know what are the projections as we're moving forward you say that you're not sure but it i mean **[55:46] Councilmember Folch:** again i no expert but at least as a resident i mean that was the information that was provided to us that there was this concentration that's you know under south washington county as a result you know as a result as a result of uh the contamination that 3m you know had uh provided you know the at the chemolate plant there and so um so i i mean if there is information that we should be knowing about you know about how that water may be migrating this way and then you know furthermore if there's discussions about uh the lowering of the accepted values and perhaps if there is an effort to go back you know again for more uh funds you know to help uh the communities like as for instance in cottage grove where um if **[56:31] Councilmember Folch:** the lower if the values are lowered again they have to make more investments you know into their water infrastructure potentially because it's my understanding that they do have to dilute the water somehow to be able to get it low enough to have values that are acceptable and so um so i i think that this really is an emerging issue that we should all be really aware of and in what the potential impacts are you know maybe it's not in the next couple of years but you know what are the potential impacts of the next 10 years if you know if the levels of concentration are going to be getting worse and so what our impacts would be to water infrastructure and so i know that we we had um and i know this is probably way ahead of the game but you know we did have you know a study that was done when i first got on the council to look **[57:17] Councilmember Folch:** at you know like what investments we needed to make you know within our water infrastructure i mean if we need to start thinking about those kinds of huge dollar figures again i just think that we should be really ahead of this because we all know about how we have a backlog of road you know roadway infrastructure parks infrastructure costs that are are hanging over our heads and if this is something that we need to get ahead of and start planning for that it might be a pretty big impact maybe not to us but a future city council thank you **[57:55] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember folch any other discussion council thank you for being here tonight and for **[58:02] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** your update for us and we'll be looking forward to seeing you again **[58:14] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** okay council members are there any corrections to the minutes from the workshop and regular meeting of august 15th all right comments from the audience for public comments we have options for comments to be emailed prior to the meeting as well as interactive feature during the meeting for the email comments they have been forwarded to city council and their receipt is acknowledged please recognize that items not on the agenda will not be discussed this evening for live comments there may be either through zoom or in person we ask that attendees either raise their hand in person and use the raised hand feature in zoom and they will be invited to speak one at a time i also want to remind everyone **[59:01] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** that public comment period is not intended for extended dialogue is there anyone who would like to speak to the council at this time okay council members are there any council items to be considered okay a consent agenda i would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda **[59:28] Councilmember Brocks:** [Inaudible motion] **[59:30] Councilmember Leifeld:** [Inaudible second] **[59:34] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** any discussion counsel okay all those in favor of the motion state by saying i i posted that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails tonight we have a discussion for county crossroads fourth edition **[59:48] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** on the enclave apartments and a public hearing vacation of easement and we welcome john hinzman tonight and we will listen to john have a followed by a public hearing and a potential action by city council welcome john **[1:00:10] John Hinzman:** thank you mayor city council members i'm having a little bit of difficulty here with the presentation i got the old spiral of death swirling around here on the computer so we may have to go without images tonight so first item we have before us is enclave development which is the apartment project down by 33rd street and highway 61. council recall that a little bit ago we did approve the plat in the site plan for the development which includes 211 apartment units **[1:00:34] John Hinzman:** we've got a couple of actions tonight related to that development one of them is a public hearing to consider a vacation of easements so there's public easements that were dedicated on that property with the original plat years ago as we went through the engineering for the new platt these easements were not necessary and so we made contact with public utility companies and reviewed those the city staff and found that these public easements can be vacated these are easements dealing with utilities that are will be moved or no longer will be needed in those locations or drainage areas bottom line is the the plat that we have for the development contemplates these new easements that are needed and we're racing the ones that are not so that that's the first item before us tonight is the public **[1:01:20] John Hinzman:** hearing related to that and our review of that is that we are recommending approval of the vacation the other item related to that is a amendment to the final plan itself you may recall that when we saw the original final plat that there was one single lot of record that we had two apartment buildings both the apartment buildings were on a single lot the developer now wishes to have each apartment building on its own lot so the only thing that's changed on the subdivision is a line has been added to it subdividing the two properties the number of apartment units and everything else that you approved previously is still the same so those are the two actions that we have before you you tonight we do have a **[1:02:06] John Hinzman:** representation here from enclave development from their engineering if you have any questions for them this is a public hearing and you may open that now or i can stand for any questions thank you **[1:02:22] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you at this time i will open the public hearing is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak at this time is there anyone on zoom no one on zoom okay at this time i will close the public hearing and counsel discussion council member lund **[1:02:44] Councilmember Lund:** thank you thank you john can you give the highlight of why it matters to divide the property into two **[1:02:52] John Hinzman:** sure there's going to be phasing of the development and so they'll have an **[1:02:56] John Hinzman:** initial apartment building that'll be constructed now which would be the northern one along 33rd street the the second building to the south will be constructed at a later date what will be occurring at the initial phase of construction will be the construction of the entire utilities for the site so it'll be set up for the construction of that second building in the future but there will be a uh a phase development approach which is different than what we were originally presented **[1:03:26] Councilmember Lund:** and i'm just curious what the function of separating the the property into two versus just building on part of one **[1:03:34] John Hinzman:** yeah i think from our standpoint it the ownership of having each building on its own lot is is easier from our standpoint it's preferable frankly from **[1:03:39] John Hinzman:** our standpoint to have it that way uh looking down the road you know perhaps there's a sale of the development and uh apartments are sold separately the buildings i mean are sold separately so that would ease that in the future it just provides better record keeping from my selfish standpoint **[1:04:02] Councilmember Lund:** i understood thank you **[1:04:05] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** council member lund any additional discussion council okay then i would be accepting a motion to approve a a resolution vacating public easement located within the city of hastings minnesota and b a resolution of the city council amending the final plaid approval of county crossroads center fourth edition **[1:04:25] Councilmember Fox:** [So moved] **[1:04:26] Councilmember Brocks:** [Second] **[1:04:30] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** additional discussion council all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye aye opposed to that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails thank you thanks john tonight we also have another public hearing and a vacation of a right-of-way at 520 7th street east **[1:04:55] John Hinzman:** thank you mayor city council members similar type of request a little bit different use for this this is 520 east 7th street which is the portion of 7th street that is beyond the railroad spur that leads up to the main cp line if you can picture that without my image in front of you here this area of town was part of the original plant there are many right-of-ways that were planted in the **[1:05:12] John Hinzman:** 1850s that have no use today one of these being the right-of-way that is being proposed to be vacated by mr and that is uh leah street which is different than what it says in your report in your report we inadvertently put down clay street but it's leah street between between 7th street and 8th street that entire right-of-way there would be proposed to be vacated when you take a look at the physically that area there is quite a drop-off in topography there are no utilities within that area right now and the likelihood for our necessary use for that is is not there we would be retaining an easement over that in case we would need it but the right-of-way itself will be **[1:05:59] John Hinzman:** vacated back to the adjoining property owners the other would be a mid-block alleyway that is adjacent to this property as well that stretches from leah street to the railroad spur itself so both of those would be up for consideration tonight this is subject to a public hearing we did do notification of this both to residents adjacent to the property within the area as well as utility companies did not identify any concerns for this vacation so we have this before us tonight we also have the applicant here as well jeffrey kuhn if you have any questions for him so i can stand for questions at this moment or you can open the public hearing thank you **[1:06:44] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you john at this time i will open the public hearing anyone in the audience that would wish **[1:06:48] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** to speak okay please come to the podium and state your name and address **[1:06:58] Jeffrey Kuhn:** okay sorry no mr and i was the one that bought that property that john's talking about on fifth street it's it's actually it's the end of fifth street on the east side if you go across railroad tracks and right off of bailey i don't you guys all know bayley they turn it into a one-way and uh we bought the lots uh what is it two and three which is across there and we end that street **[1:07:30] Jeffrey Kuhn:** it would be on the south side of fifth street and they're supposed to be he's talking about leah street that they never put in there but the reason for that is the railroad is dividing from the railroad company and then there's a ravine that goes there and that's that's leah street is where the ravine is and i wrote up a vacate to vacate that because and then the alleyway is the one that was supposed to be between 7th and 8th street and that's never been there in i talked to all my neighbors and they says it's just a collection of basically **[1:08:15] Jeffrey Kuhn:** buckthorn garbage and you know weeds that grow in there and i just want to get accessible to because the city doesn't have access to it and there's uh power poles there and uh the cable company is running off the power poles and they're all overhead and that the power poles go right along leah street and then they go where the uh i want the alley vacated and it's basically the backside between 7th and 8th street there's an alleyway that is basically a junk collecting and just something that that needs to be cleaned up and i could benefit from the property and at the same time i could keep that **[1:09:04] Jeffrey Kuhn:** end of that block all taking care of you know where the the city don't have to worry about it and at the same time i uh proposed to uh taking i got the city gave me an option two options either i could not i i toured on the house that is there was there now and i got one of two options i could put two single family homes there and it's not really that big of a property and not not that good for two single family homes where i could uh be more benefit if i put a twin home there and then it's good access to that and you don't have all the the what would you call it the easements **[1:09:50] Jeffrey Kuhn:** and you get more home value square footage if you put a twin home there for single family homes instead of a small house i don't know if you understand what i'm saying and it would uh it would improve the whole the block it would take care of that the rest of that block and you know everything else would uh it would be it would be a lot better for the community too because it would you get rid of all the garbage you get rid of all the buck done and you'll be able to look out the windows and you can see something that you would like to look at you know it just just improved the neighborhood basically because it's basically a dead end street anyways **[1:10:35] Jeffrey Kuhn:** and i'm on the south side of the on 5th street i don't know if you got a picture of the property there now okay and it's all trees there and it's just there's nothing it's got to be i guess i'm a believer and i'll with the old in with the new because we it could be a lot better than what it is that's why i like to take access to that the roadway in the alleyway and clean it up **[1:11:15] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you for your comments okay thank you for listening i appreciate that sure and i see no one's on zoom huh oh i was talking to council oh okay no one is on zoom and i see no one else **[1:11:22] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** in the audience to speak on the public hearing so at this time i will close the public hearing and open up discussion for council council member leifeld **[1:11:32] Councilmember Leifeld:** just to confirm sir you keep referring to fifth street john we're looking at seven seventh street yeah okay the fifth right 520 7th street okay so there's a house to the west and there's a house to the east on that dead end road that would lead to the trucks **[1:11:58] Jeffrey Kuhn:** yeah there's a there's a house that's i was gonna bring that up to you the the house next to the railroad tracks that uh we buy ugly houses they bought that and uh the guys sold it to weebly houses and they supposedly fixed it up the realtor sold it to the **[1:12:09] Jeffrey Kuhn:** this young couple that moved in you got that in front of you appears to be a duplex it appears to be a duplex no that's uh we're talking the west side your west side okay yep yeah that's on railroad property that the one that you're talking about it's a it's a side-by-side twin home with no uh basically no parking and no garages and i would do the opposite i'd have parking and i'd have attached garages to the twin home you know just something you drive in and but the the house i'm talking about is a small little white house between my house and the railroad tracks anyways there's a young couple that bought that and it's they're going you **[1:12:55] Jeffrey Kuhn:** guys probably don't know about this but they're going with the lawsuit now because the realtor miss latim and the this young couple bought it for 250 000 and they moved into it and here the basement the foundation is all crumbling so the house needs to be tore down and it's going to be it's going to get foreclosed on because the realtor that sold a young couple of property is is going to take them to court and they're not going to pay for it it's just going to go into foreclosure so it's going to be a vacant property before before long i mean **[1:13:30] John Hinzman:** so council the issue we've got here at hand here is looking at the vacation of those public right-of-ways that are here we're taking a look at future **[1:13:42] John Hinzman:** construction on the sites itself presumably a single family or duplex home is something that we would consider through our building permit process here would not likely need action by the city council so the action that we're looking for you tonight is the the right-of-way on leah street between 7th and 8th street as well as that that alleyway to the south between 7th and 8th whether you would be amenable to those being vacated through our review of it there's not any existing utilities that would be necessary there's no existing need that we have now we're into the future for it so okay thank you john for clarification **[1:14:21] Councilmember Brocks:** councilmember brooks my question is just if we make a motion do we need to make an amendment to the street name or will that be just corrected administration **[1:14:26] John Hinzman:** yes i would ask for that to be corrected the legal description is correct but plea please uh let the motion note that that should be leah street and not clay street thank you **[1:14:38] Councilmember Brocks:** yeah thank you thank you **[1:14:41] Councilmember Leifeld:** council member brox councilmember your honor i'd like to make a motion to approve the vacation as recommended with the conditions listed in the resolution with the correction to the name of leah not clay **[1:14:58] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you council member lifeville second by council member of fox traditional discussion council council member brock's i'm sorry council member lund **[1:15:08] Councilmember Lund:** thank you clarifying we're just we're just voting on the right away in the vacates i just want to make sure the applicant understands the whole **[1:15:14] Councilmember Lund:** future housing option is going to go through staff it's not a not a guarantee all we're doing today is vacating the easements here **[1:15:22] John Hinzman:** that's correct **[1:15:23] Councilmember Lund:** okay thank you yes **[1:15:26] Councilmember Folch:** councilmember fulch i don't understand john that so currently mr kuhn actually owns that land but we have an easement on it and so when we release the easement then he still he owns the property and then he can develop it moving forward **[1:15:43] John Hinzman:** a little bit different uh this is right-of-way not easement so the city physically owns the the street and the alloy that was alleyway that was dedicated to us back in the 1850s so we were releasing our rights to that public right-of-way and then that would **[1:15:59] John Hinzman:** revert back to the adjoining property owners so it's currently not his property it's our property technically and so the leak so the legal plat will be then re-drawn to incorporate so it'll actually his plat will actually grow his land holdings would grow yes there would be the vacation of right of way where it would be recorded at the county so his land uh square footage would increase because now it wouldn't it would not only have the land he owns today but also that portion of the right-of-way that's being vacated **[1:16:38] Councilmember Folch:** okay and so the city isn't technically selling the land that additional land to him at all we're giving it to him right **[1:16:45] John Hinzman:** yeah we're unable to sell land uh public **[1:16:47] John Hinzman:** land in this fashion where our options are we can we can vacate it to adjoining property owners but we not in the position to sell it really **[1:16:56] Councilmember Folch:** yeah that's interesting it was given to us as a public dedication so we can't make money off of that wow okay all right thank you john sure thank you guys for watching **[1:17:15] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** there is a motion and a second any additional discussion all those in favor of the motion state by saying i opposed to that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails thank you okay **[1:17:42] Jeffrey Kuhn:** sorry i another **[1:17:56] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** day thank you mr kuhn you're welcome thank you okay tonight under public safety we have a first reading of interim ordinance on cannabis and cannabinoids for this item we will have an introduction from our city administrator dan wietecha **[1:18:23] Dan Wietecha:** thank you mayor a couple of meetings ago in reaction to recent changes in state law the city council referred to the public safety advisory commission psac to investigate what might be appropriate regulations for **[1:18:42] Dan Wietecha:** marijuana establishments under the the new law psac had a lengthy discussion as well as a lot of input from city attorney corey land psac's recommendation was boy this is an awful lot of material and we need some time to digest and figure it out we can't do it in a meeting we can't do it in two meetings so they they actually asked for uh basically a 12-month pause and that's what the interim ordinance is it says if if an establishment is existing it can continue but nothing new and no expansion of anything that's existing we **[1:19:28] Dan Wietecha:** don't want something problematic getting ahead of us and looking at what might be appropriate regulations psac's recommendation went to the public safety committee of city council their discussion last week was uh yes we we should look at this we want to look at all sides of it we want to make sure that we have safe and effective regulations in place but we don't want to overburden something that under state law is legal so their recommendation was let's shorten up the interim ordinance to six months if if that turns out not enough time we can always extend it but really want to be diligent move on it **[1:20:14] Dan Wietecha:** promptly so that's the recommendation before you tonight is first reading of the six month interim ordinance um you would assuming you do first reading tonight it would be back in two weeks for second reading and adoption but with that i can certainly stand for any questions thank you **[1:20:41] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** dan any questions council council member life **[1:21:00] Councilmember Leifeld:** thank you honor just to add a couple things to that just to reiterate what dan is speaking to when we met with the public safety of council we had a pretty lengthy discussion about making sure that we're looking at the safety aspect we **[1:21:00] Councilmember Leifeld:** kind of compared it to tobacco 21 a few years ago and the state we knew it was happening well this has happened this is now legal but the state hasn't given us much if any direction and it's not just us as a community it's all communities in the state of minnesota and i talked to two separate merchants in town and they too are like um boy we really don't know what we can do and what we can't do so as a result of that you know we felt that that sixth month would one possibly give the state the time after the first of the year to bring it back before legislation see what they can come up with and we don't want to make it harder for businesses to do business in hastings so we didn't really feel too comfortable with the 12-month term **[1:21:46] Councilmember Leifeld:** but understanding that you know we want to make sure that we're taking care of our community and specifically the minors in our community and making sure that we've got all the checks and balances in place to make sure that this doesn't fall into the hands of you know of our teenagers so that was really where we were coming from i don't know if councilmember brock says anything to add in regards to that but understanding that you know as dan indicated it is a legal item we will continue to do what we're doing while we figure out how we're going to i think police it is a good word but how we're going to regulate it and make it safe for our community thank you **[1:22:28] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember lightfield councilmember brocks just to add to that **[1:22:33] Councilmember Brocks:** what part of our discussion was about talking to the community and having community stakeholders come together to discuss the law change anybody from somebody who is a recovery group like rise up recovery to people who are lobbying for cannabinoid use to understanding that our law enforcement will have to enforce whatever regulations that we put in place and we need to understand um what it looks like to know and to test materials and all there's just a lot to it so we talked about having a series of community conversations and making it available to to be a discussion in the community so that as we look at what is going to work for our community we have maybe different groups of people who would **[1:23:19] Councilmember Brocks:** have different perspectives on the issue talking about it so that when we do put our regulations in place it reflects all of those perspectives and i think that was the communication and involving the community were big pieces of our conversation as well as our law enforcement partners um so that is kind of i i agree with what with council member life elda said and just add to it that we want it to be a community process and not just a council process thank you **[1:23:58] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember brock's councilmember fulch **[1:24:06] Councilmember Folch:** thank you your honor i uh a few weeks ago i was at a league of minnesota city's legislative policy meeting and we had had the board of pharmacy i believe is the is the group that actually has **[1:24:18] Councilmember Folch:** oversight over this and uh and so the um an individual from that group she had provided uh background information and and there is pretty scripted uh information about what are legitimate legal products and it's all about reading the labels you know and having the cheat sheet reading the label right to know you know what's legal and what's not legal um and so um i know i'm kind of on the fence about having a six-month moratorium uh just because it's already been legal since july and so i i don't really have any sense as to how eager any of our local establishments are in um wanting to get the jump on this or **[1:24:52] Councilmember Folch:** who's selling it i mean honestly i don't know who's selling it and so no idea but um i just i just kind of worry about okay does it does it hurt our local businesses if we if we have a six-month moratorium on this so that they can't proceed in or is it better to wait and then um have something in place so that they can move forward because there you know it is there are there are regulations around it that you have to be at least you know 21 to buy and so you would have to have some kind of karting procedure as an establishment i know that we're not probably as a city you know in the position yet you know to **[1:25:38] Councilmember Folch:** do enforcement and figure out how it is that we go about doing that um i know that and we all know here sitting here how how the process can go at a snail's pace right and and so i i just kind of worry about how long it it might take for us to get you know to keep moving on this and so um i like the fact that at least that the moratorium has been defined i'm not sure if six months is the right answer or if it should be a shorter duration of time i'm just to expedite it and keep things moving so i just throw all of that out there because i'm really on the fence about how it is that we should be proceeding with this and so i'd love to hear others thoughts thanks thank you **[1:26:19] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** council member folks council member lund **[1:26:23] Councilmember Lund:** thank you runner just to confirm any any business that's currently operating and offering there is no impact they they are they do get to continue on so to your question of does it harm any of the businesses so long as they're already doing it no effectively right so it's just any additional vending of it at this point would be paused until further notice so the the six m i could i understand six months you know sounds like you're dragging your feet but if we think about the fact that uh council member lifeveld brings up an excellent **[1:27:08] Councilmember Lund:** element there which is um the wild card of the legislation that may come through which won't hit us until minimally three months from now right so that that's at the earliest or no yeah well yeah okay and then we need to be able to react to that somehow too so within that and that's if they're at light speed on their end too so i think six months because we're we have dependencies it's not just on us like there's outside factors that we need to take into consideration six months seems reasonable otherwise i would i would say you know let's get it done before the end of the year or something like that but **[1:27:53] Councilmember Lund:** that's one part but then also well anyway that's good enough okay thank you **[1:28:03] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember lind councilor **[1:28:07] Councilmember Fox:** thank you your honor um council just a point of clarification the interim ordinance is not for six months it's for six months or until you've established new ordinances or until you rescind so um it's not quite accurate to say it's a blanket six months it would be presuming that you come up with a regulating structure in the next couple of months for example stillwater is passing theirs tonight so they were able to turn that around relatively quickly um so that could be as quickly as you know a couple of months um or in the event that the state does come up with a regulatory system that you feel is adequate for what the city wants then you could also **[1:28:40] Councilmember Fox:** rescind it at that time so it isn't a hard fast has to be out there for six months just wanted to clarify thank you **[1:28:56] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember fox thank you for your honor i come from the industry that is very much regulated similar to how tobacco and cannabinoids are regulated it can be very frustrating and i will say it can be incredibly limiting to the business that you're able to do so we you all know because we recently voted on an ordinance change in my industry that gave us new options for business and i just as a point of clarification in the middle of this the moratorium is **[1:29:27] Councilmember Fox:** on expanding the business that the business is doing as well correct okay thank you um so whatever they're selling right now is not necessarily the newest product it's not going to be growing business it's not going to be expanding any offerings i want this to be regulated and safe for our community i also don't want to see this harming our businesses that do do good business by not getting it done so i would like to see expert or some expediency in the conversation because as we know now we can rescind this moratorium whenever so i appreciate that fact thank you i just also wanted to say that this can be **[1:30:14] Councilmember Fox:** very frustrating and very limiting to business so thank you **[1:30:23] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember fox councilmember brocks **[1:30:30] Councilmember Brocks:** i want to note that we specifically did not use the moratorium word because we did not want it to appear or the public to perceive that we were banning it city-wide because i think that word comes with a connotation that's not correct and that's why i just want to clarify and then several people have already said it an interim ordinance is in place just to pause so that we can collect data so that we understand who's selling it what they're selling it for where it's being sold i've heard in other communities we haven't really even seen communities around us develop that many ordinances yet so we don't have a lot of data to pull from in terms of what other people around us are doing because at **[1:31:00] Councilmember Brocks:** the community level we talked about considering what's happening in you know cottage grove rose mount redwing cities that are around us because what they choose to do may impact us as well so there's a lot of data that we want to gather and information that we want to get that we just don't have yet so i don't think it's a matter of we're trying to kick the can or drag our feet i think honestly the public safety committee when we met had a very very good conversation about just wanting to get that information so when we have that information we have a full picture of what we are what we're going to regulate and try to minimize the amount of obstacles that we put in front of business owners but we have to first understand where is it you know what's being sold and and then just to understand if there's **[1:31:45] Councilmember Brocks:** changes in the future how that's going to impact the ordinance we write today so if there is future medical marijuana legalization that also impacts where you're able to sell it and all kinds of other things that we haven't yet considered so i i think that our motivation as a committee and i think public safety advisory commission as well is not to just slow down the process and dry our feet but to write an interim ordinance and then a more permanent ordinance that is good and considers what is not only happening now but what could happen and be a little bit anticipatory so that we're writing something that's valid and we'll probably have to change but just to consider complicated topic that frankly i didn't know much about until i started looking into this so i've learned a lot and i **[1:32:32] Councilmember Brocks:** think there's just a lot more that individual citizens and we as a council have to learn so that we can write a solid policy and that was our motivation behind the time period it wasn't necessarily of trying to like drag it out or kick the can but since the public safety advisory commission proposed 12 months and we shortened it to six months i think that's a little bit of a compromise in that area because we want them to be involved in the process so we don't want them to feel rushed either we want them to be part of it so that's just a little more about the motivation behind the time period thank you **[1:33:14] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you councilmember brock's council member lifebelt **[1:33:18] Councilmember Leifeld:** one piece that we've not touched on everyone's making valid points is revenue what we have right now in front of us is so vague and when council member fox talks about **[1:33:30] Councilmember Leifeld:** highly regulated industries tobacco alcohol pharmacy those are places that have specialists i go to a pharmacy i ask my pharmacist questions i've got two different products on the counter that are going to relieve my headaches i can go to my pharmacist and ask them what do i take i go to the bar or the liquor store i can ask them what is this what is this that's all they sell that's their specialty i don't want someone to be able to walk into a gas station and next to the sour patch kids they can buy cannabinoids at you know edible marijuana that doesn't make sense to me they're not specialists these things do different things to different people and depending on what's **[1:34:05] Councilmember Leifeld:** in them will affect how it will react in your body do you have a backache do you need help sleeping do you want more energy what is it you are taking these for and to me we're down you know we're talking dispensaries in the future and this interim ordinance pauses that for these because that's what snacks you guys it's the dispensaries that come in but that's what they sell they're literally specialists in this industry it's highly regulated they know where it was grown at they know where it was manufactured at they know how it got there these are highly regulated industries in other states right here we don't have any of that yet so to me it's a matter of **[1:34:52] Councilmember Leifeld:** saying okay let's figure out what the state wants to do because there's money to be made here don't be ridiculous the money the state the city the government makes money off of tobacco alcohol you know this isn't going to be any different so as a as a community i think it's only fair that we figure out how do we do that right does it come out to special licensing you know that's legal pieces that we're not aware of right now so looking at from a revenue standpoint alone and as a parent definitely looking at it from the regulation piece you know the synthetic has been in the tobacco stores for a number of years now you can buy synthetic thc it's synthetic edibles it's made in **[1:35:38] Councilmember Leifeld:** a laboratory so this is just a natural version of that um so we did look at a lot of different areas and i just really am concerned that we don't know enough about the regulations you know like councilmember fox the regulations in the brewery industry are intense right of you know knowing where everything came from and how it's made and this shouldn't be any different and right now it's just too vague you know from a state level so i think the um the peace act um did an excellent job at talking to our you know council cory lands putting together the information that really got us started and as council member barack points out **[1:36:24] Councilmember Leifeld:** this isn't in no way meant to stop anything it's really let's figure out how we can make this work for the community so thank you **[1:36:40] Councilmember Fox:** thank you your honor just not having not being on the committee and not obviously not being a part of pisac um i would really love to see a business member or a few on the discussion as well that makes sense makes sense **[1:37:05] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you okay council i would accept a motion for the first reading of an interim ordinance prohibiting the establishment of new users or the expansion of existing uses relating to **[1:37:10] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** cannabis and intoxicating cannabinoids cbd sales and testing manufacturing or distribution **[1:37:35] Councilmember Vaughn:** [So moved] **[1:37:37] Councilmember Brocks:** [Second] **[1:37:40] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** new additional discussion council councilmember fulch **[1:37:44] Councilmember Folch:** um thank you runner i would i just would like again to reiterate that i think that we should expedite this um and uh and make it a priority so they're moving ahead and i really appreciated something that councilmember brock said is that also thinking ahead for when it when it does become more of a holistic adult use for cannabis because **[1:37:55] Councilmember Folch:** i when i was at that one presentation i had asked okay stupid question here what's the difference between what we just passed here in minnesota and what was passed in colorado and it is but it isn't it's just how it is that they're chemically altering the the product and so it had me scratching my head like what in god's name is going on so it is kind of confusing to be quite honest because it's i think a lot of us are kind of unaware about you know can avoid use and it and uh and and what all goes into that and and so i i think that uh i think that other states have such as colorado they had learning pains right **[1:38:41] Councilmember Folch:** and uh and so i i think that it's really wise to look at what others have been doing but at the same time i think that it it provides a safe legal alternative to other illegal drugs and so i i think that that there are public safety implications that it does provide a legal regulated alternative to alcohol because you know unfortunately we all know about overdoses and the impacts that's been happening having disproportionately to our younger people in our community and so i just think that uh it that it it does make sense to make sure that we're doing the best job that we possibly can in regulation but um again i just would like to see it expedited so it's not getting bogged down in the system of **[1:39:26] Councilmember Folch:** government so thank you thank you **[1:39:34] Councilmember Leifeld:** councilmember fletch there is a motion council member life in response council member so the state of colorado requires a marijuana retailer's license so there is red tape and they're it's all regulated by the government so i get that we don't want to get it bogged down but their government is regulating them by their licensing so okay thank you thank you **[1:40:02] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember lightfield all right all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye aye hi posted that motion state by saying nay okay and that motion prevails under administration we have friends of players until library crafter noon request and dan you may continue **[1:40:13] Dan Wietecha:** yes uh the city is a trustee for some funds that are to support the library here in hastings we have guidelines that were adopted about a dozen years ago that talk about the funds are to be used for books computers reading programs it also contains some somewhat ambiguous language about for things that are not in the normal budget uh it also explicitly says that the process is that the friends of the library uh would make a request of the city council for uh use **[1:40:59] Dan Wietecha:** of the funds the the friends have requested five 500 to be used for a crafter noon event actually i think it's an expansion of an existing event it's been popular and they want to have more days of it and 500 would enable that so they they have made that request okay thank you **[1:41:30] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** dan discussion council council member out **[1:41:35] Councilmember Lund:** i make a motion to approve your honor okay thank you and **[1:41:38] Councilmember Fox:** council member fox seconds new any discussion council okay all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye aye opposed to that motion state by **[1:41:46] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** saying me and that motion prevails and also under administration we have classification and compensation study implementation and you may continue **[1:42:04] Dan Wietecha:** sure thank you mayor something that started a discussion a year or over a year ago and ran through administration committee earlier this year we hired abdo solutions to conduct a compensation and classification study they presented that to city council in mid-july it was then referred back to administration committee which met a couple of times and then even a city council workshop in mid-august this is consist this proposal tonight **[1:42:32] Dan Wietecha:** recommendation tonight is consistent and essentially identical to what was discussed at that city council workshop on august 15th there i'll run through it but there's essentially two recommendations one is to adopt the formally adopt the step and grade scale for non-non-union employees and then the second is to adjust wages for non-union employees retroactive to july 4th i think that this balances several priorities making sure that the city is paying wages competitive with neighboring communities providing a formalized structure **[1:43:18] Dan Wietecha:** that's consistent internally within the city as an organization as well as maintaining legal compliance and also balancing all this with a payroll that we can afford within the city's budget so although there's a lot here it actually is is phased in it's it's not jumping in with everything that might have been done under the the compensation study briefly it ensures that all positions non-union positions would be put into their respective competitive market ranges so a high and a low and we make sure people are transitioned into that range **[1:44:03] Dan Wietecha:** with doing that transition that no employee would be getting a cut and pay a few would be held where they're at and most would be getting a modest increase that those increases be retroactive back to july 4th of this year that's one roughly the time that the study was completed and presented to council and two it matches up with a pay period so why not july 1st because it was the middle of a pay period so july 4th i do want to emphasize that this allows opportunities for many or most employees to have **[1:44:49] Dan Wietecha:** additional steps and growth going forward and that is something aside from just commenting on that that is something that at management team we will be discussing as updating our annual performance review process as well as making sure that we're as supervisors uh we're coaching and encouraging employees throughout the year not just an annual review process do need to point out two uh specific positions or classifications of positions um **[1:45:34] Dan Wietecha:** back before i came here in michigan uh accountants and building inspectors are in short supply it's just there's not enough of these individuals to fill all the jobs out there so in recommendation is for those positions when we put them into the new range make sure that none of those employees are below a step six so it's basically sort of make sure that they're in the top third of their range make sure that we're a little extra competitive with those positions um the other note is this recommendation is for the non-union positions for the five unions we have and about two-thirds **[1:46:21] Dan Wietecha:** close to two-thirds of our employees the union contracts would need to be negotiated separately uh we have met with three of the five unions so far uh and those conversations have been positive i expect that over the next meeting or a couple of meetings will be bringing recommendations for the union contracts that are similar and consistent with the overall plan here but with that i can take any questions thank you **[1:47:04] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you dan any questions council council member vaughn **[1:47:07] Councilmember Vaughn:** thank you right i support this i appreciate everybody doing what we did to get this far that the only hiccup i had is what city administrator just talked about with two positions today they are hard to get today we're **[1:47:20] Councilmember Vaughn:** having a hard time filling them i don't want to highlight that i mean staff does what they have to do to get these people hired i i am glad that we did not increase anybody's wages until the study was done i don't want to be a reactive counsel that you know this one this position that position we should give someone a raise we did a study to make sure it was done the right way wage isn't the only reason people work here and i want this to be completed it's really expensive on the taxpayers i think we should make it go forward but after that i encourage staff to really focus on other items besides wage is why they work for the city of hastings so i appreciate everything i support it as is and actually make a motion to approve what is in front of us today but uh i'll leave it at that thank you thank you **[1:48:15] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember vaughn councilmember lund **[1:48:21] Councilmember Lund:** take a second didn't have a comment okay there's a second in council discussion thank you councilmember vaughn i i don't know if um kelly wants to speak to it or anything but i mean there has been conversations of other types of ways to you know enhance the employee experience you know through a variety of different mechanisms that aren't just wage related or cost related at all for that matter and um you know that's something that was was emphasized in our meetings as well so you know maybe more to come i just jumped out of the bushes at her on that one but you know maybe more maybe more to come instead of putting you on the spot but that definitely is something **[1:48:40] Councilmember Lund:** that that needs to be pointed out because um certainly um there are more than than just financial reasons why someone chooses to stay somewhere um and and so we want to make sure that we're providing that as well i'm sorry thank you **[1:49:12] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember len additional discussion okay all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye and those opposed to that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails tonight we also have a resolution to approve the preliminary 2023 city property tax levy preliminary budget and setting truth and taxation hearing and dan **[1:49:26] Dan Wietecha:** you may continue thank you um as you know uh we we started this evening with a uh budget workshop uh which actually uh was just the latest of a series of conversations the city council had two budget workshops earlier this summer the finance committee had a half day meeting with the department heads reviewing their um so this is you know although the resolution itself seems like it's momentous it's one step in in a longer process uh with that uh the resolution would set the preliminary approve the preliminary budget and set **[1:50:12] Dan Wietecha:** the preliminary property tax levy for 2023 the preliminary budget is just over 38 million dollars the preliminary tax levy is 17 million 373 405 that is about a 6.6 percent increase in the levy the resolution also sets a public hearing a truth and taxation hearing for the council meeting on december 5th that's the real short version of a lot of information and obviously will be pushing a lot of information out for our residents and taxpayers to understand what's in the budget and **[1:50:59] Dan Wietecha:** how the it would impact them but with that i can stand for any questions thank you **[1:51:10] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** thank you dan counseling a discussion okay councilmember folch **[1:51:17] Councilmember Folch:** i think your honor before we had our council meeting we did have a workshop and we had a great deal of discussion about this and so um if i always i always get nervous when we're quiet during when we're here on the ds and it's usually just because we've talked it out to death right you know and uh and so that the public realizes that uh the finance committee of the council uh which is myself councilman vaughan and councilmember fox we did have also a half-day conversation about uh the budget and a lot of these issues and and talked uh **[1:51:44] Councilmember Folch:** closely with department heads about it and so um although you know it is a six six point six percent increase in the overall uh levy i think it's important to note that inflation this last year was actually nine point one percent uh for the nation and so um essentially we are getting less for our dollar with our with the budget that we are passing and i think uh something that we're all proud of is our commitment to uh our first responders and we are looking at moving ahead with uh funding of firefighters four possibly six depending on if we get uh grants coming into the city and then additionally we're being very supportive of uh the the police chief **[1:52:32] Councilmember Folch:** and debolsky has requested an additional investigator which could possibly also be a school resource officer depending on how it is he feels that those resources are best used and so we'll have more conversation about that but i just think that it's important for the commitment that we have to our emergency responders that both our fire and our police chief feel uh very supported and when i'm out on the doors and i'm talking to community members there's a lot of folks who are you know very concerned about public safety so i think it's it's a timely investment at present and and i'm hoping that the public also uh feels that an investment in in our first responders is **[1:53:18] Councilmember Folch:** is uh well needed and and and really a wise decision for use of our public taxpayer funds thanks thank you **[1:53:29] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember folch any other discussion council i would look for a motion so moved your honor **[1:53:35] Councilmember Fox:** [Inaudible motion] **[1:53:36] Councilmember Leifeld:** [Inaudible second] **[1:53:40] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** okay thank you and council member lightfield new discussion council council member vaughn **[1:53:45] Councilmember Vaughn:** thank you honor the public needs to know though this is a rate that we're setting tonight it can't go up it can only go down and i think it's important that we let the residents know that that if they don't agree with this they need to let us know so we can have those discussions before we hit december um with that so councilmember folks makes good points about **[1:54:04] Councilmember Vaughn:** what we need in the community but we also understand that everyone has to pay for this so i just want as the chair of the finance committee i struggle with these because it's the need but also there's an expense that's going to come with these needs and we have to be ready to pay for that so i just want to make sure that's noted and i want the community to i think we had good discussion at the workshop that we're going to do some good communications of what's going to get in this budget and i think the community needs to educate themselves and look at it and we've got to do a consistent message of what's approved because i think the consistency is what the community wants to hear and then bring those comments back to us so we can bring a message back to our colleagues thank you thank you **[1:54:50] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** councilmember vine there is a motion and second additional discussion **[1:54:55] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye aye opposed to that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails okay we have a resolution to approve the proposed 2023 hedra hra special levy tax levy and dan **[1:55:18] Dan Wietecha:** yeah this is um sort of the sibling to what to what you just did we also do levy a hedra and housing redevelopment authority levy under state law state law allows that to be up to 0.0185 of taxable market value which historically is the **[1:55:36] Dan Wietecha:** the amount that we have levied for hedger purposes and that is the recommendation this evening as resolution for that that hedra hra levy okay thank you **[1:56:02] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** dan discussion **[1:56:05] Councilmember Lund:** council member lund makes a motion to accept and **[1:56:06] Councilmember Leifeld:** council member life felt seconds all right any new discussion all those in favor of the motion state by saying aye i oppose that motion state by saying nay and that motion prevails as well council members and do you have any announcements okay i have a couple uh summer wreck programs at levy park tuesday september 13th performance in the park with collide **[1:56:22] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** theatrical dance sponsored by smead manufacturing company friday september 16th movies in the park with the mitchells versus the machines sponsored by ardent mills please bring a non-perishable food item for the hastings family service wednesday september 21st story time in the park is transportation recommended for ages 10 and under a partnership with pleasant hill library friday september 23rd to sundays september 25th a story walk will be on the trail between levee park and jc park a partnership with pleasant hill library the fire relief association annual **[1:57:08] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** booyah is this saturday september 10th building remembrance for reconciliation b r 4r is holding a conversation about the early black community in hastings next week tuesday september 13th happy birthday coming to council member brock's in the near future meetings coming up thursday september 8th 6 p.m hedra monday september 12 7 pm planning commission tuesday september 13 7 pm parks and recreation commission wednesday september 14th 6 pm arts task force thursdays september 15 **[1:57:54] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** 6 30 pm public safety advisory commission monday september 19th 7 p.m city council regular meeting council would accept a motion to adjourn **[1:58:11] Councilmember Vaughn:** your honor can i get a back pass real quick **[1:58:13] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** yes i just want to give an update quickly on the part of the committee assignments i'm on the great river rail commission representing us as a city council and it also includes the red rock corridor i bring it up because it recently i got to go to take the train from here to milwaukee and back we had some great we did with other policy makers from st paul all the way to la crosse and we met our friends in wisconsin to discuss the second train it is happening we got the approval to get the second train funded so now we'll have more options to do it and there's already a lot of momentum to get potentially a **[1:58:40] Councilmember Vaughn:** third i bring it up is as i leave the council i think it's important that we continue to have representation on this commission along with redrock as you may know dakota county has left both of those and it's uh discouraging i think we need to get them back at it because one of the funding that just got happened was winona for example gets an upgrade to their stop we have to worry about safety and that's what i like about it here we have a voice at that table that train comes through our community as is an example and we could get we could be up in line we need to have a voice to say make sure that we get some safety improvements here and potentially maybe we get a stop someday in dakota county it's ran by amtrak it's a private enterprise so for us to say we will never get a stop that's not true we don't we don't own those rights to it so i think it's important that we continue **[1:59:27] Councilmember Vaughn:** as this council to keep that voice on both of those commissions once trained redrock today is bus it's all part of the transit thing that i think we just don't see about it we don't hear about it but we need to keep talking about transportation for our residents and uh it's important that we stand though so that's that's the number one point that i make i didn't make the last meeting i had a work commitment but i see there was a train talk and i brought that to my last meeting on the great river rail and i tell you those relationships help because there is many communities between here and all the way to lacrosse that have gone through the same thing that you all heard last week there's a process there's a way to do that and we can help those residents but we need to know that these those other communities saint paul park has won said we've done it we can go through it you got to go through the price **[2:00:12] Councilmember Vaughn:** proper procedure but we can get those horns silenced a little bit there's other ways to do it but there might be an expense and i didn't know that that comes to us on protecting those crossways so there's going to be some balancing act in there by the time it gets back to us i won't be here so i want someone to make sure that we stay on that as much as we can appreciate you thank you **[2:00:44] Dan Wietecha:** dan just to correct a typo in the notes the br 4r talk is next tuesday the 13th thanks **[2:00:55] Mayor Mary Fasbender:** oh okay thank you ready to adjourn okay **[2:01:00] Councilmember Leifeld:** council member lightfield we'll sit here councilmember brock's all right all those are for in on favor of the motion state by saying aye aye opposed to the motion