Based on the context provided and the dialogue within the transcript, here is the formatted transcript with speaker names assigned. [0:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: 13d .021 and no in-person meeting will be conducted in the city council chambers i think it is important to recognize that using a video conference is different than in person meeting but it is necessary under the circumstances we are doing the best we can to maintain transparency and due process i would appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation as we work through the meeting please stand for the pledge of allegiance [0:38] [Music] [0:57] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: great thank you thinking that this meeting is being held remotely council when i call your name please indicate your presence council member brock's council member walsh council member fox here council member lund here council member leiffeld yeah councilmember juan here let the role reflect that council is in presence and the quorum has been established we have a presentation by our hastings prescott area art council hpac and tonight with us we have kathy o'keefe welcome kathy [1:42] **Kathy O'Keefe (HPAC)**: thank you mayor mary and thank you council members for allowing us to come today and to present to you the last installment of the hastings's art project that we've been working on for about two years before we start with that i would like um to just tell you who those of you who may not know hpac and what all we do there are many many fingers to hpac and many things that we're involved in our mission is pretty simple it's promoting arts in our community hpac is very unique in that we um we we really are two communities working together to promote arts the cities of hastings and prescott and we span two states which is really unusual and it gets a little tricky when we're applying for grants and things like that we're always they always comment on how unusual that is that we are able to work so well together um i just want to tell you a couple things about hpac uh we are an organization that is made up only of volunteers we um raise money through an annual fundraising event and then we also are pretty good grant writers and that's how we fund the things that we work on we have a huge scholarship fund and a lot of people access that when they they want to access some arts mostly we have children that are getting piano lessons or violin lessons we also have a lot of show choir students that are getting financial support from hpac for their show choir fees another pot of money that we have is we have money available to individuals who want to bring art into the community and a good example of that is the um dwayne oldham who is the band director at the middle school has accessed money from us to bring in third coast percussion which is a musical group out of chicago they happened to be in st paul for a a presentation or a show at the ordway and doing contact them and said hey can you stay an extra day and come and work in hastings so he had all of the band members spend the whole day with this group learning all about percussion and practicing and then at the end of the day had a free concert for the community he also did the same thing with the dallas brass band who is a group out of dallas he had them come and work with our band students again and had a a community event for us which was wonderful we also are strong supporters of the coffee concerts that are put on with the hastings arts center with sarah lockwood we financially support those concerts we also have been huge contributors to the grand piano that they purchased over there and they're whittling off their their expenses so we are funding that with them we also have our own um art gallery and if you haven't been to the orange dragon art gallery in prescott you'll have to make sure you go over there that is completely run by volunteers and we do have a manager who works um uh minimally there but the it gives the local artists the place to sell their their products and uh i would encourage everyone to try to get over there sometime we've got some really wonderful opportunities to buy art we are also the fiscal response uh sponsors for the river valley band that is a local band made up of a multi-generational group of people um band members in their day and they want to keep those skills going so they have a band with many concerts in non-coveted time so watch for the river valley band information we also have a writer's guild that has been operating for about eight years under the direction of diane syad and a former english teacher in our schools she recently passed the torch to another member but that's an opportunity for people who want some help with the writing process and we have many local authors that that go to those classes we support our two local theaters lecture theater and the lumen theater and one of our biggest projects that we did was getting art space here and um that was a huge project and it's been just really successful and really great place for those of you that that maybe aren't in the art world like us anytime we talk about hastings there are so many communities out there that wish they had what we have so we feel real lucky that we were able to partner with with the city to make that happen um the project that we just completed has been a real labor of love it's called the hastings's arts um project and i don't see it up on the screen so somebody must be having some difficulty with that is anyone seeing our slide presentation nobody's seeing that no okay oh i apologize for that all our hard work to get that there um some people were seeing and some people weren't so is everybody seeing it now yeah yes okay um so that that is what the booklet looks like and those of you that don't have a copy i am more than happy to get you one it really lays out all the work that we did to um show what what's available in hastings um and can you get it to our vision okay i'm going to just go ahead and read it real quick to you guys our vision is to encourage a future filled with collaborative efforts between arts organizations artists creative workers the local government institutions businesses and residents a future aimed at achieving robust and accessible arts and cultural experiences and richer more creative business and workforce prospects for all members of the hastings community regardless of age gender household income level racial or ethnic background or ability the community this community-driven arts and cultural plan celebrates the initiative and the creative assets of the community of hastings with insight and input from the community our plan offers guidance for the future sustainability and growth of the city's many arts and cultural artifacts and activities and creative economic opportunities i wanted to tell you a little bit about how this all came to be in 2008 hpac was invited by arts midwest to attend a class a series of discussions that were held all around the state with a few number of um communities being invited to just talk about how you can promote the arts and and continue to make that a an important feature of your city and how to work with local government so the takeaway from that is the group kind of thought boy arts is really important to hastings and really to the life of our community and so we secured funding from st paul um foundation xl energy and using our own money we hired dr brenda casar who is an urban um geographer and also a um professor at the university of minnesota on on that subject and she came in and worked for a long time um through uh well first she worked with you guys to find out what's kind of happening in in hastings and where we need to go from here she met with the council members and then her research began she used surveys community meetings and she did a lot of in-depth studies working with the current artists and art opportunities and now hastings is arts was created with all of the information that um oh we already did those slides with the um once all that information was gathered then it was the brainchild of brian who's with us today he said um graphic artist he put together all the information into that book form and um i am very very excited to announce that brian is our newest board member and um so we are uh feel like we're very well-rounded group of volunteers passionate about providing art so brian do you want to take us through uh kind of the highlights of what's in the document [10:50] **Brian (HPAC Board Member)**: sure thank you as cathy said i'm the newest member to h-pac i came here by way of my grandfather dick graham not my actual grandpa but as i got to know him in the neighborhood he kind of became a grandpa to me and as anyone who knows dick graham knows um they really know he represents kind of the the hustle the dedication the passion and really the love of this community um that all of the hpac members have come to represent to me in the in the few days and weeks that i've kind of met with them and it's been great so i'm thankful to be a part of the group and we as a group are all thankful to the council for hearing us out and letting us take a few a few minutes of your time tonight to make our ask so what we're really asking for from the city um and from you is to we invite the city of hastings to join us in our commitment to creating an artistically rich and vibrant community by incorporating our arts and culture component to the existing 2040 comprehensive plan and as kathy said in support of our proposal the following pages is we've pulled out a few of the higher level bits from our findings and the subsequent report which you can all view the full report but these are kind of just some things that rose to the top for us that support our proposal so i'll just jump right in first and foremost the findings showed a 2.4 million dollar economic impact from arts and cultural organizations and audiences in the city of hastings 57 million impact from artist spending in dakota county which is pretty impressive um pretty impressive numbers additionally county creative businesses generated more than 3.3 billion in revenue in 2018 alone so that's some of the financial impact as far as the job aspects go 4 615 creative workers in dakota county in 2018 with a pretty healthy average median salary of 20 just under 25 dollars which is fairly impressive so all of those numbers in addition to this one pardon me we also identified 166 organizations in the creative sector and hastings um with 45 non-profit arts and cultural organizations and venues additionally also pretty impressive so those are some of the more positive aspects of the surveys and the research that brenda and the team did on the other hand we did realize that there are areas for improvement so we wanted to highlight just a couple of those as well ways we can do a little bit better so for example when asked about the value of arts and cultural experiences for youth under 18 respondents offered a host of reasons to sustain and grow this type of programming yet the levels of satisfaction among parents indicated there is more room for improvement as only 12 percent were very satisfied 56 were somewhat satisfied and 32 percent were not two or not at all satisfied raising a real big red flag that there is you know that definite room for improvement and that's where we want to kind of start taking a look um with our team as two ways to maybe solve some of those issues maybe so to wrap up we also part of the survey was to get some actual community member feedback so that's what you're going to see here one of those was to offer opportunities that can't be found anywhere else there's a growing presence of millennials and gen zers who are looking for these sorts of unique experiences to create opportunities that are equitable and feasible for various populations in our community and instead of charging for everything have people give a free will offering for the activity i would love to go to many more things but can't afford them so again just to show that there's a disconnect in the community that want to attend some arts and cultural things and they just there's not quite a way for them to do it and you'll see in the report that there's many more examples of those things i don't have to read this as well but you can see that there's more comments from our community and we just think we could um look at addressing some of those so i'll wrap up and hand it over to orthard to wrap it up [15:35] **Scott Northard (HPAC Board Member)**: i have to go off mute thank you um i'm gonna wrap up and just uh kind of summarize uh what we've covered and what and what the reason we're here today um i'm scott northart i'm an hpac board member and i'm also the treasurer for the organization uh hpac created the hastings's arts plan for the local community it's our gift to the city of hastings you may recall several years ago we did a study that looked whether or not there was a need for artists housing in hastings and that was the genesis of the art space building downtown in downtown hastings and so we found that doing studies and and doing research really lays out a compelling case for for change and that's really what this hastings's arts plan is the report recognizes that hastings is already an arts community whether it's the visual arts music theater writing dance photography or other forms of individual and special expression we have many different groups and individuals who are practicing their their creative interests uh every day we certainly live in a very creative and talented area if you look at the saint croix and mississippi river valleys it turns out there's many artsy communities you think of stillwater hudson afton prescott redwing stockholm pepin you can just go up and down the river and many of those communities have uh bustling arts communities and hastings is no different we have many great organizations here and while we have many organizations that are in the arts we could do so much more with specific focus and support so that's really why we're here today so why support the arts well i think it's clear that art enriches our lives and helps our bottom line at the same time uh arts got a lot of people through the covet pandemic by practicing their creative interests and a lot of organizations had to innovate for instance hpac created virtual programming uh for people to practice the arts during the pandemic the hastings arts center created online uh streaming of the tuesday coffee concerts the free concerts that we uh provide so the organizat the different organizations have pivoted during covid and uh continue to offer arts opportunities this study clearly outlines the significant benefits the arts brings to the hastings area both social and economic it also creates an opportunity to build on our successes by having a formal plan for the arts that's really what this report is and when you get a copy of the full report you'll see we have specific actions in a number of different areas on how to cont how to promote the arts how to how to grow the arts and culture within our community in a very very constructive way that rewards the community not only uh from a social method but also from a economic method other minnesota cities have arts and cultural plans used to promote the arts and many have included those in their 2040 comprehensive plans recently red wing added an arts and cultural section to their plan just for example a close neighbor amending the 2040 hastings comprehensive plan to include the arts and culture would make a strong statement in support of the arts and we really would like to see that happening we're asking for your commitment to include the arts and culture in the 2040 plan and let's embrace the arts and make hastings a cultural destination we've got a lot to offer and we think that we can grow that and and make this community much much stronger and and make it a a destination for people uh travel to to enjoy the arts so really thanks for listening tonight and for your support of the arts and considering our requests and just one more note on the comprehensive plan the 2040 comprehensive plan it was always envisioned that cities would have to amend their comprehensive plans a 20-year plan is never set in stone as we recognize that things change you know who knew we would be here uh today a year ago uh with colvin 19. so a lot of things have changed and it's and it's appropriate for the city to consider amending or revising the comprehensive plan and it makes sense to pause and adjust your plans as you go forward and we did some research and we found that the met councils indeed has a process and procedure for amending the comprehensive plan it's not that complicated it turns out if you just if you go into the met council's policies and procedures there's a statement in there that says after your plan is adopted it's common for there to be amendments to the planned over time as a result of new development projects completion of planning studies changes in policy direction or routine updates with new information it this clearly falls into that category so we think there's a great case for considering an amendment to the plan and i don't think it would be that difficult to uh to achieve so i want to thank all of you for listening tonight uh we're excited uh to be a part of hpac in hastings at this time we think uh we've accomplished a lot so far but there's so much more we can do to make to put hastings on the map uh in the arts and cultural world so with that we're open to any questions you might have [21:05] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you scott and brian and kathy council any questions for a hvac tonight uh councilmember fox [21:12] **Councilmember Fox**: um i guess it is no secret that i am a big fan of this plan i've been in front of council with hpac by their side uh many years ago talking about its inception when we first went to the midwest yeah that's midwest yeah thank you and um within the last couple years john and i have both seen similar presentations uh through hedra so um i'm just curious madame mayor and and potentially dan or john is it possible for us to consider this as an amendment to the 2040 plan because this was the conversation last year as well if i remember correctly john [22:01] **Kathy O'Keefe (HPAC)**: we've presented twice to the council as we've been working on our plan and we always felt there was so much enthusiasm for the project and we were always encouraged to continue with the plan [22:15] **Councilmember Fox**: okay i am continuing that encouragement and i i'm so grateful to see it in its full completion and brian it's just stunning thank you for doing that but i i would um be curious about staff response to potentially having this conversation [22:40] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay uh city administrator dan [22:43] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: the quick response to the immediate question of is it possible yes there is a procedure for amending the comprehensive plan i would really advise that the city council have a chance to read digest and know what it might be considering instead of just saying i do want to also review the procedure as well as more importantly the implications of something formally included into the comp plan rather than being a separate guiding document for example we have the vermilion corridor plan is a separate guiding document not formally part of our our comprehensive plan uh the other part i have to point out is we're on the cusp of kicking off our strategic planning and uh that really should i would i would think guide a little bit where we start putting some priorities or potential changes to the comprehensive plan that's two months old since we finally got it adopted and and appreciate the comment earlier about it's a simple process with met council it took us over two years to get the plan adopt approved by mech council in the first place so just a couple of quick responses i i think it definitely support art and like to see it in the community but i think that council needs to be deliberate at how it goes forward with this [24:14] **Councilmember Fox**: as a point of clarification your honor not i'm not offering to adopt it tonight i just i'm curious about the appetite for it thank you [24:20] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember fox uh scott northard [24:21] **Scott Northard (HPAC Board Member)**: thank you madam chair and uh thank you uh mr administrator um i guess the uh that it's not maybe i don't want to downplay it make it sound like it's simpler than it is there's three basic steps to submit an amendment to the met council the first is the recommendation recommendation of the local planning body and we have me as uh council member fox mentioned we have met with hedra we met with the city council we did community surveys we did workshops in the community so we got a lot of local input on this plan i think that may help our case the local governing body authorization for the amendment has to be submitted to the mets council for review and that clearly would be uh this body and then adjacent governmental units affected special districts and affected school districts need to review it so i know that process doesn't happen overnight but again we don't believe there would be significant dispute that this is something that is uh a positive addition to the plan and would not conflict with neighboring jurisdictions so that's all i meant to uh uh add when we were talking about the process itself so thank you for the opportunity to respond [25:54] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: sure thank you uh councilmember leifeld [25:57] **Councilmember Leifeld**: great presentation on the part of hpac so some things that i heard that they started in 2008 and i think it was 2017 i had participated as well in going to a number of events in other communities where i sat and listened and participated with other government officials in other communities our size you know we weren't talking the edinas and and those big communities we were talking these you know cute quaint communities um that don't have the money that those big cities have to um put out into the you know out into the public and out into advertising to get people here and i was really in love with the idea of everything we were doing at that time and i just kept saying and literally scratching my head and going what can we do what can the city do and i kept saying okay i'm on board i get this i love this but what can i do so we talked about it and i look at all the faces here and most of them are new since then um and it was a matter of how do we move this forward you know i kept saying what does hpac need from the city what does the city want from hvac and i think you've finally told us what that is and that's that's this and um dan i agree with you that this isn't something we're going to make a decision on right now but i absolutely don't want to see another year go by where this is not being addressed and this is not where it needs to be because this isn't new and i know we always say boy we're just trying to push stuff through fast there's been nothing fast about this you know i've been doing this now for five years and it's been on the radar i got here it was big and um in our face but we didn't know what to do with it um as a council and i kept saying that i remember saying that to dick over and over it's like what can what can what do you need me to say to them what do you want me to ask for so um i'm all in favor of whatever it takes for us to get this conversation in front of us i don't know if that's a workshop or what exactly that is that's where um dan comes in with his you know excellence and how we um how do we earmark this how do we start talking about it and again i just want to say i i don't want to wait another year sitting around going well gee we'll talk about that later because we're in a rush right now to get started with the next thing so i would like to see us start moving this forward right now and show the city because i think we've proven over and over for years that this is a positive addition and the money involved in the arts in the community i don't think a lot of people pay attention to and when you see these numbers and they're hard to they're hard to deny and that is something that we should be working with so i'm strongly in support of what you guys have going and i appreciate what you've presented tonight thank you [28:56] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you very much um and kathy [29:00] **Kathy O'Keefe (HPAC)**: um i i think i mentioned this before i know that you each got a pdf of the complete booklet but those of you that are like me and it doesn't exist unless it's in your hands i'm happy to get a copy to each of you if you want to somehow get in touch with me or raise your hand and i will hand deliver them to your door [29:21] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you i did receive mine and it is beautifully put together i haven't been able to read it all but it's it's kind of a wowzer it's like wow this is in hastings so i commend you all for all the works you've been doing and we will put it on for discussion with with dan and whenever a workshop or whatever so thank you for your efforts and we'll see you soon probably thank you thank you everybody you're welcome council members are there any corrections to the minutes of the regular meeting of march 1st seeing none they are approved and comments from the audience for public comments we have options for comments to be mailed prior to the meeting as well as interaction featured during the meeting for the email comments they have been forwarded to the city council and their read receipt has been acknowledged please recognize that items not on the agenda will not be discussed this evening we ask the attendees to use the raised hand feature and they will be invited to speak one at a time i also want to remind everyone that the public comment period is not intended for an extended dialogue please note that there are no public hearings later this evening is there anyone that would like to there is one public hearing i'm sorry i misread that um i'll go into the audience and see if there's every anyone who has a raised hand i do have one person tom day would you let john john would you let tom in [31:31] **City Staff**: okay mayor tom day should be in the meeting he is on mute right now [31:38] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: welcome mr dave there he is [31:44] **Tom Day**: sorry i didn't know i was controlling it there you go i just want to make sure is this the appropriate time to talk about the no wake zone um yes okay um i'll i'll try and be quick here good evening mayor and council members my name is tom day i'm an owner of a slip at hubs marina and serve on their no way committee uh i'd really appreciate that i really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today about this important matter um we all remember the funny scene in caddyshack where the inexperienced rodney dangerfield while driving his oversized and overpowered boat wreaks havoc on the water by throwing a big wake dumping people out of their smaller vessels disrupting fishermen knocking people off one dock and ultimately doing damage to the book to a boat that is tied to another duck i hate to tell you but this happens almost every day in hastings during boating season i've witnessed children and elderly people being knocked down on the dock from a violent wake my wife and i have teetered on the edge of her boat as we feel the repercussions of a large high-speed boat that passed by several minutes before only to turn around at the dam and come back and throw us around again there's no speed limit on the river um i've watched kids fishing from the shore near the public dock get thrown down on the rocks by these man-made waves uh we've come to our boat to find that everything inside has been tossed i have friends that have twisted knees bruised bodies pulled muscles to the point of needing surgery um i've heard of others with broken bones or pets being knocked in the water and pinned between boats um not to mention and this is just one example of one slip owner on the river out of the 750 in hastings public safety is the primary reason for establishing no wake areas and that is why nearly every city in the city in the area has placed no wake zones near unprotected boat launches docks and residential areas these cities include minneapolis st paul hudson afton prescott redwing wabasha winona i was interested to hear the commentary from the arts group citing the same cities for being great arts communities and it could be in part because of the opportunity for boaters to enjoy the city while public safety is the reason many of these zones are established the reduction of wakes in these areas also has benefits for the waterfront property owners and to the environment there is a great untapped potential of boating tourism dollars that motor passed hastings headed to those other communities with safe public docks once boaters start to use a hastings dock as an entry point to downtown hastings the financial impact is limitless the parklets on the street will have more patrons and the noise level of boats screaming by will be eliminated making dining downtown much more enjoyable this is in part why the hastings downtown business association also supports such a measure we implore you to create a safe boating environment for your citizens and guests that use the public landing and public dock as well as the thousands and thousands of boats that pass by your city every year uh i've got more but i've taken enough your time i appreciate it i stand for any questions [34:52] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you mr day any questions for mr day council i see none thank you thank you i'm just checking in the audience for any other raised hands yes i have a matthew francis okay mayor mr francis is in the meeting he is on mute okay welcome mr francis if you'd wish to unmute you can speak [35:33] **Matthew Francis**: hi um my name is matt francis uh i have a home at 817 first street in hastings right on the river the house was built in um 1870 i'm going to turn my video on too sorry about that the house was built in 1870 and my wife and i are in the process of working with the city to tear the house down it's really old house and build a new you know long-term retirement house there one of our biggest dish at the river is awesome being out there and everything but i would really like to invite all of the council people over to my house to see the actual damage that is done in one year from the river um uh by these and it's not all because of the boats the boats don't cause all of the damage when the river comes up and um the shoreline is eroded away but when the boats are cruising up and down the river and it's beautiful to see them and i've got a boat i like boaters um there's just a lot of damage that occurs on the shoreline all the way up and down from uh the hastings marina all the way up to where the um the water treatment plant is right there you could see damage on the shore there that the city owns uh all the way around the corner to the landing the big landing and i've got first hand i haven't got it fixed yet so it would be a good time to come and see what one year's damage does to uh shoreline and i've got some pictures that i could submit to you guys but pictures are one thing but actually seeing it as another so i would just invite the city to if anybody would ever want to come down there or you can go at your leisure and look at it and you'll see um what not having or having wakes in not having a no wake zone has done to our property and you know there's not a lot of private owners along there there's i don't know what there is maybe uh 15 of us maybe or so between the city of hastings in the marina there's not a lot and a lot of people just don't say anything but i wanted to bring it to your attention i would be in favor of a no wake zone and i'd like to offer you guys to come down and see it so really that's all i had unless anybody else had a question of me i'll just uh go on the sideline here thank you for having this discussion [38:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you mr francis anyone else in the audience wishing to speak to the council i'm not seeing any more raised hands okay with that uh council members are there any council items to be considered okay seeing none council i would accept a motion to approve the consent i'll second thank you volts thank you and councilmember lyfeld thank you any discussion at this time clerk henderson please call the roll oh i'm sorry councilmember fox i missed you sorry [39:18] **Councilmember Fox**: he's just a little slow to the uptick i'm just gonna clarify ahead of time i'm abstaining due to the sidewalk cafe vote within the consent agenda just for the record [39:35] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you councilmember flex uh clerk henderson now please take the role [39:41] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: member bond yes council member folch yes council member fox abstain council member leifeld yes council member lund yes councilmember broks yes mayor fassbender yes [40:02] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that motion prevails okay public clearing tonight we have a 2021 neighborhood infrastructure improvements projects scope and features 15th street uh phase number two and tonight with us we have city engineer ryan stemsky followed by a public hearing and action by the city council [40:20] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: great uh can everybody see my screen yes yes getting a thumbs up all right okay so tonight as as the mayor thank you mayor has introduced this topic we are here to talk about the 2021 one city project that is the second phase of 15th street tonight we are just going to go through the project scope and features so uh tonight will be a presentation um talking about uh let's see if i can get you on slide mode um so tonight we'll first cover the presentation on the scope and features uh followed by conducting a public hearing and then after the public hearing there will be a resolution um consideration to order the improvements approve the plans and authorize the project for ad for bids so um just to kind of remind everybody what we're talking about here street phase 2 is from pine street over to pleasant drive you may recall from last year we completed the first phase of 15th street that was from vermillion street down to pine and so we're picking up the same project scope and features at pine and continuing the project to pleasant existing condition photos um if anybody's recently driven fit this portion of 15th street um i think it speaks for itself the pavement is severely distressed uneven cracked up brittle beyond its useful life so this has been on our capital improvement project program for quite some time and this is the year we programmed to address the failing pavement out there the sidewalks along the longness portion of 15th street are less than four feet in width they're directly behind the curb and gutter so that represents really no space from pedestrian movement to the vehicle movements we'll talk about a little bit more about that later also here just kind of a unique feature existing condition of this portion of 15th street from hillside this is this is kind of at the crest of the hill um between hillside and oak ridge you can see on the north side of the street um homes are in a much higher elevation versus on the south side of the street we have a little more flat grade in homes that are lower elevations so we need to work with this existing topography um it is nice and we did set up the corridor to have sidewalk improvements done to the south side you can see there's a much flatter slope to work with and so it fits in a lot nicer versus having that you could imagine trying to have a sidewalk cut in on the north side with those steeper slopes would be very challenging plus obviously we're always trying to avoid impacts to existing trees along the corridor so these are some of the constraints we have to work through during the design of the project our goals out here completing the improvements to 15th street first and foremost as i um showed in the photos we're out addressing the failing pavement this is is is up for reconstruction and it's beyond its useful light when when we're replacing and reconstructing the pavement we have the opportunity to also address the concrete curving gutter improving the drainage along the corridor and really giving a hard edge protection with new concrete curb and gutter to support that blacktop surface as we're doing the improvements as well try to collect that stormwater drainage and carry it away from the roadway to really save in the longevity of the new project so we're looking to improve the drainage out there this tearing up the new tearing up the road also is a nice opportunity for us to addre address our aging utilities out there so this project we're looking to replace our h water main pipe we have had we've experienced uh brakes along this corridor um so this is this is the time to replace that aged pipe with new pipe technology also it's our opportunity to either line or replace our aging sanitary sewer pipe as well during the same process and then also the individual services that serve each property would also get their individual services replaced within the right way so up to the property lines we know it's really important to also maintain the vehicle operations um along this corridor but keep speeds low and so we looked at this in the first phase really extensively we know 15th street is a major collector road on our system it's part of our municipal state aid street program um there's 4 800 vehicles per day that travel along this segment and that's east discount was taken east of west view and lastly we're looking to improve walkability for pedestrians so along this corridor as i showed you in the photo narrow sidewalks the lack of 88 ramps and features um it's located directly behind the curb not allowing that boulevard space for comfort and safety and then also we will get into this a little bit later but take into account um a previously done safe route to school study and deal with a crossing at that location so the three improvement improvements taking all of these uh concerns and goals into consideration this is really an extension of the first phase of the project so you can see in here um we've we've taken the existing width of the street which is ranges from 40 to 44 feet in width and we've narrowed it down to 36 feet in width so this is our our uh it's it's state aid compliant so we're eligible at this width of roadway to re receive state aid money um we've narrowed the lanes to 11 foot travel lanes and then we have parking on both sides of the street as well accommodated with this section as well we have a five-foot boulevard so that's that boulevard space that gap from the curb to the sidewalk um presents some nice separation for our pedestrian experience and then we have our standard five foot with sidewalk programmed in as well here you can kind of see the photo version of it as well from a graphical standpoint moving on to the utility improvements this is starting at the west end of the project at pleasant so from pleasant to hillside what we have here you'll see an orange we have several storm sewer up sizing and extensions along the corridor we also have in blue the complete water main replacement and then the magenta color here is where we begin our sewer lining so that's where we'll line the sewer pipe in place from hillside over to lynnway uh again some additional storm sewer improvements you'll see there in orange with upsizing and extensions uh we continue with our sewer lining program as well uh along this segment and then the full water main replacement of that particular utility when we get east of lynnway the sewer really was in a condition where we couldn't continue the lining program because of the televised condition of that pipe that will be a full replacement so that is shown in kind of the bright green there we start a full sanitary sewer main replacement which means new manholes and pipe and then finally from lynn over to pine we continue the sanitary sewer pipe replacement and you'll see again the full water main replacement and some additional storms so improvements are quite extensive to get proper drainage uh throughout this corridor here's a snippet from uh safe routes to school study on the on file here that was done back in 2010 identifying key locations across the city at school routes and really one one item here identified directly out of the plan was a crossing treatment necessary at 15th street so as we're looking at improving the roadway you can see that crossing treatment called out along 15th street so we wanted to take the opportunity to see what we could do with the design to put in the proper enhancements to make that a safer pedestrian crossing what we came up with is a bump out so along this corridor the bump out or curb extension at prairie street um would be a reduction in the street width from the 36 feet wide down to 26 feet so that's a 10 foot reduction we also are aligning the trail segment on the south so that folks are crossing perpendic perpendicular to the street right now um the trail sends folks right out to the center of prairie street so they kind of don't know where to cross right they're crossing at an angle that's lengthening the time in their crossing this this squares up the trail crossing and makes it much shorter so that we have a safer crossing experience through such a high vehicle count corridor we also with the bump out improve sight distance so not only can the pedestrians see beyond car parked cars and see beyond canopy of trees vehicles can also see that pedestrian starting to make their movement so this kind of gives them a head start while still be being protected by the curve so you'll see with the curb extensions we have tapers back on either side of the crossing and those would be kind of eating up that seven foot park lane on either side and so we would sign that no parking so it'd be no parking sign plus you would it would be pretty obvious with the with the curb taking most of that parking aisle as well okay moving on uh water main replacements uh like i said we're we're going to be removing the old cast iron pipe and replacing it with newer plastic pipe technology and hydrants and valves and services sanitary sewer where we have the full replacement you'll see um activities such as this uh sanitary sewer tends to be a little bit deeper than our water main and so uh this is a trench box that gets installed what that allows the contractor to do is have less disturbance up into yards it keeps the the trench cutting to to a minimum here's the sanitary sewer lining program or a liner is pulled through the sanitary sewer pipe and then it's heat cured and you'll see steam coming out the far end of the manhole when it's applied to the resin and hardening and once it cools it hardens up that material becomes just as good as a newly installed plastic pipe and then also here we have the individual sewer service replacement sewer and water service replacement so this is kind of where you see the crew ending there that's at the property line of of that particular home um new pipe materials copper services for the water main plastic for the sanitary sewer get replaced up to that property line and then as you saw in the orange highlights on the previous map the there's kind of quite a bit of storm sewer improvements as well we model the area and we make sure that for the new larger and more intense rainfalls we have um in our community as gauged over the last several years of climate we can accommodate those storm events and drain the water properly away from the roadway we really have learned over time that this is a huge uh key into extending the life of the new street improvement so it's very important to get this right and then invest in a proper storm sewer system uh comment on boulevard trees again as is our character and our commitment to design we we tried to avoid tree removal at all costs if possible um here's kind of that this photo i've shown you guys over the years um i got to get one with some some leaf cover on there but uh this one is kind of just showing you if we came through and and um just took down and was sloppy with construction what not um and i took down these mature trees you can see the difference the streetscape view has these mature trees also have in addition to the narrowing of the streak the other effect is these these large trees with the multiple driveways they all contribute to folks tending to want to drive slower along the corridor when you have these these impacts on in these these obstructions that um kind of alert you to being in a neighborhood versus a wide open drive if you will so here's kind of that final look um where we're really trying to preserve the character of the neighborhood once we're done with the project and we're out of there with the new infrastructure um you know being careful around the trees uh and and letting that those boulevard boulevards restore you know to their next natural condition is is really a key goal so that we get this final look and feel for the project so these improvements cost um a total project cost of 3.8 million dollars so that's the construction plus the soft cost so the illegal fiscal and admin costs um total the 3.8 million dollars that's really broken down by about 1.1 million in bonded debt um 580 call it but nearly 582 000 in assessments for the project uh the wastewater fund is about 530 000 water fund 800 000 and then our municipal state aid account um would be contributing 750 000 so that's kind of the breakdown of funding proposed for the project just a note on assessments uh we will be talking about assessments uh next month um at our april 19th public hearing and at that meeting is when we will um have an opportunity to go into further depth on the assessments and hear from the residents on any comments they may have um related to the assessment amounts uh a note on that is the statements uh for each individual assessment amount will be mailed out by the end of march so that's just a note that property owners can look for that at the end of the month here so currently where we're at here's the project timeline tonight we're here discussing the project scope and the consideration will be a resolution to adopt the project as presented or with any modifications also the authorization to go out to advertise for bids then in a month from now on april 19th we will conduct the assessment hearing for the project that will allow us to open bids in early may uh which would bring construction contract award to the second meeting in may may 17th that would get construction going maybe end of may or early june and we would conclude construction in october just a note here for the residents listening uh we sort of had a unique year um with our design process uh you've probably heard from us uh through several letters and and uh postcards uh during the design phase we had to do something a little unique and that um we couldn't conduct our normal neighborhood meeting uh as an open house and so rather than do it that way what we did is sort of beef up our project website we put presentations on there describing the improvement project process we also put resources and handouts that we typically would provide at the open houses we encourage folks to meet with our staff one on one either over the phone over zoom calls or even to meet in person at our offices in the public works building i think that went pretty well you'll see in your your packets uh city council members that we did have about 25 percent of the impacted properties did take us on for those one-on-one meetings and we provided the comments and summary of those comments in your packet typically we get anywhere from 20 to 30 turnout so this is this is pretty standard for for folks that um engage us with questions and comment uh so just kind of rolling that into this this summer and in construction we will continue to keep communication at the forefront we commit to a pretty rigorous weekly construction update we'll tell folks what has been done that particular week we also will forecast what the contractor will be doing the following week so folks know what to expect we did have a request out for people to respond to us already with a resident communications survey that really tells us how they would like us to communicate with them whether that's via text via email or if neither of those we we centrally locate a mailbox and and people can on their walks go out and grab a flyer as well so we feel like we have all methods of delivery covered and we will continue again this year with that commitment to let folks know what's going on and give them contact numbers for questions during critical activities people will also get specific door hanger notices to let them know if water is going to be shut down for a short period of time or uh if we were pouring concrete and they can't cross their driveway for a number of days those those critical activities will be informed to the residents on a one-on-one basis as well another resource is our project website we'll continue to post these types of presentations and information so if your neighbors missed this tonight please remind them to go check it out on the website and then also please don't hesitate to contact city staff the engineering department number is here in this presentation it's also available on our website um you can get to any one of us staff members and we can we can get your answers to your questions and then when the project's going on we do have city vehicles on site daily as the contractor is working so please look for the city logos on on the trucks and bring your questions and comments to those folks not the contractor our folks are there as your representatives in the neighborhood and we'll be ready to to answer questions or listen to your comments and with that uh that ends the presentation i'll turn it over for any questions the council may have and then the public hearing [1:01:48] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you ryan stemsky councilmember broxs [1:01:54] **Councilmember Brocks**: thank you mayor thank you ryan for your presentation i think it looks great i just have a question about the residents that live at that 15th street and hillside intersection where the bump out's gonna be i didn't see any comments from them um i just wonder if there's a way or a reason we could reach out to them extra and make sure that they're aware that there will be no parking in front of their houses because that seems like a fairly major change for them um have have we heard from most residents those two residents that would be affected by that bump out and if if not is there a reason or possibility that we could reach out to them and just ensure that they know that's happening [1:02:40] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: yeah that's a great question councilmember broxs we have talked to all property owners that would be impacted by the no parking i'd say three out of the four directly adjacent to the bump out proposed had strong support of the bump out they live there every day and they see the number of people that use that crossing as we have learned as staff every time we're out there meeting with these folks or looking at the project corridor there's always several folks crossing at that location and and to give them a defined shortened path um is just it it's re it's it's supporting that that move and and like i said three out of four residents um strongly um encouraged that that we continue on um there was a conversation with one gentleman with our staff regarding the loss of some parking um that that we're working that we work through some comments with but i'd say at the end of that conversation really um you know it's it's a push and a pull right you know lose some parking we've heard that comment but we do need adequate safe site triangles um you know to to designate an enhancement such as this um so you know we take the crossing time and the speed of the corridor into consideration and draw outside triangles and we really need to meet those um distances and move those obstacles being the parked cars and so we've explained that position and like i said mostly positive feedback but there's some concern about the loss of parking [1:04:21] **Councilmember Brocks**: thank you i appreciate that and i agree that the safety is the primary goal and that intersection does need some safety enhancements so i'm glad that you looked at that and that hasn't been incorporated into the plan i appreciate your communication with the residents as well thank you [1:04:47] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you thank you councilmember brax councilmember vaughn [1:04:58] **Councilmember Vaughn**: thank you your honor brian you've mentioned this is a steady project again can you give us a threshold of what what makes it a state aid project to get the funding but it goes to a counselor box talk about with safety i i noticed that due recently one of the residents talked to us about their mailbox location if we have a bump up for pedestrians crossing a path but all the mailboxes on this street which is considered a busy street in my opinion are on the north side how come is that is that common in a lot of our streets or is it their mailbox are we always having residents across the street to get their mail i'd be curious that you may not know that but uh might be a question for us to check with the u.s post office thanks [1:05:45] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: council member vaughn um i heard two questions there so the first one what makes it a state aid street um we get to designate 20 of our mileage in the city of hastings um to be on a state aid route the municipal state aid system that has some rules with it they've got to be collector roads and they've got to connect up to collector roads so there's some rules of the game we make we um we get the most money from the state aid system if we designate routes with the highest traffic volumes so that's kind of the the trick to the game if you will um so that's that's sort of the eligibility uh you'd stay within that 20 percent and meet some of those uh connection of collector rule road rules and then you've you've got to do counts on them um every so often and uh build those roads to a state aid standard so it's important that um our whips our grades etc all meet state aid standards and that makes those road improvements eligible to get the state aid funding so hopefully that answers your question on the funding eligibility and then uh second question the mailbox yeah you know we we did notice that to council member vaughn and we've we've called we've contacted the postmaster to actually talk about this and it really doesn't make sense to send our residents across a road with this high of an adt to go get the mail and then cross back right um so i thought that you're spot on with your comments our concerns were there as well i think we actually got pretty positive feedback from the pulse master to be able to bring those mailboxes um back onto the south side of the street so that they could be split so i haven't heard final word on that so don't quote me on that but we actually got a return phone call and we've got some positivity there that the mail care the mail provider has to go both ways so it wouldn't really shorten their or wouldn't really lengthen their time of delivery so i think we might have a win-win here um and i'll keep i'll keep the council updated on on that final decision by the postmaster [1:08:00] **Councilmember Vaughn**: thank you i appreciate it and your honor i would i would recommend maybe we write a letter on behalf of the city to represent those residents to the postmasters and that we would encourage that i would think the residents would want that so that off the cross [1:08:14] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: sure thank you thank you councilmember vaughn any other discussion council council member leifeld [1:08:16] **Councilmember Leifeld**: just a real quick site now ryan do you know how many streets in town we have that have now and only one side oh i i don't think we've ever taken that inventory uh i know i'm i think i saw a nick shaking his head we don't know either so that's something that you're looking into i i would throw in my hat for pine street i have a hard enough time backing out of my driveway i would hate to i would hate to have to walk across the street to get my mail it's on my side of the street so but i do know we have a high number of older residents in the area older than myself even and yes that's something that you guys are looking into i'd be curious to hear more about it just a side note thanks ryan excellent uh presentation tonight for anyone who drives daily on 15th street and i drive from pine down to vermillion it's awesome that new road there is just awesome i'm still getting used to that bump out when i turn from pine street onto 15. i might have hit it once or twice but i'm getting used to it so it'll be fixed with this project [1:09:44] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: sounds good ryan i just have i'm just curious when was the last time this project was done on 15th street like how many years ago i'm just curious do you know i could defer to nick [1:10:02] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: i believe it was around 1988 so we're you know 30 plus years okay is that a typical time frame well um yes and no i mean i i think a lot of streets would have a similar interval but it's all going to depend on how they wear and uh with when it comes to 15th street i'll use the code because i don't think ryan did but there's not a whole lot of effort we have to do to sell it based on road condition with this one it's been waiting for yeah i've had it list for years i'll just say that because it's been in pretty rough shape and so we look to the road conditions as is one of the primary guiding factors there [1:10:33] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you further discussion council council member folch [1:10:35] **Councilmember Folch**: i had a quick question um nick i i was wondering or ryan um i was wondering if there was going to be crosswalks actually marked better at the intersection of 15th and pine now that the roadway is going to be done and then also if you go up like a block from there what would that be west um there's also where a trail comes out from behind the augustana nursing home area and then people can cut out across there and go over to the middle school and like you see a lot of kiddos walking that way in the morning um before and after school so i was just wondering what were the intentions for the crosswalks for pedestrians [1:11:37] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: yeah we will council member folks we we will complete the crosswalk marking at pine in 15th street to your first point um and then uh the the only other mark crosswalk is going to be at that prairie so i don't believe we have any other mark crosswalks i identified at this time so the other locations lack proper site distance or whatnot so you know we want we want people we want to encourage people to be crossing at those safe intersections which is always legal or um you know at the at the enhancement there at the bump hole [1:12:18] **Councilmember Folch**: okay well um i i'm sorry i can't recall where prairie is along 15th street so i'm not exactly sure where that is but um do emerge out of that trail that's right behind augustana and um i and i'm sorry i don't know what the cross street is but it's right across from the middle school it's this side street it's on 15th west is that prairie [1:12:44] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: that is great it is prairie [1:12:47] **Councilmember Folch**: oh good okay that's what they're talking about all right okay thank you and then my last question is um that stop sign that's at the bottom of um 15th on the hill there you know so that would be again just lynnway thank you someone knows all the roads um is that going to be removed if you're narrowing the street to help slow down traffic because i mean we've all stopped at it literally a thousand times and there's never any any traffic at it you're just stopping to stop and so i'm just wondering if there's still justification for leaving that stop sign there [1:13:30] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: we we looked into that um we we actually did a study about stop sign compliance a few years ago and this is one of those locations that we thought was pretty unique we've got an off-center cross street right um and so we we looked at compliance there and it it actually it wasn't too bad folks we didn't have the rolling stops and whatnot right um but but it wasn't so egregious that we decided to take it out we looked at options during this design to better align the north and south portions of lynnway there and it just it was too impactful to the existing homes and front yards inside yards so and it didn't really get us much so yeah the proposal on this project is to keep the the geometrics the same way and then to leave the stop signs in place just one of the big reasons is because they are off-centered and so we don't we want folks stopping and realizing um the right-of-way all around them before they proceed on through especially when they're not lined up with with the car on cars on either side of 15th street the north and south side so we decided to leave the stop signs they'll be replaced new but they'll be the stop signs will still be there [1:14:42] **Councilmember Folch**: i never realized that there was something different about the street there with it coming together um and that would being the reason shoot i would have loved to have seen that stop sign go so i gotta vote for letting it if you really want to get rid of it here's one vote so thank you [1:14:58] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember falch any other discussion council okay at now at this time i will open the public hearing for the discussion on 15th street please use the raised hand feature i have one mark john would you let mark in all right whether he comes all right welcome mark if you want to unmute you can speak to the council at this time mark you can unmute and speak at this time there you go okay welcome [1:16:04] **Mark Kuenster**: no problem uh i didn't see the drawings from pleasant uh west view maybe i missed him or you know but whatever uh is there gonna i'm wondering is there gonna be more lost the street on the south side of the street or on the north side of the street [1:16:38] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: yeah that's a good question um really we're holding the north side the north curb line the same approximately the same as we did in the first phase and then the loss of street will occur on the south side so we'll pull in on the south side and then place sidewalk off of the south side curb as well [1:17:15] **Mark Kuenster**: uh sounds reasonable how much and one other question how much of tree roots that are damaged during either the gas or the water or the main or whatever how many parts of the roots of a tree they have that are damaged where a tree would have to come down that's just another thought that i was having [1:17:37] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: yeah that's a good question as well um we we work closely with our city forester um if there's some questions or concern about a particular tree but usually if we're cutting one face or one one side of the tree um it'll recover if if if the contractor follows um protection of those routes and severs them cleanly et cetera um so we can we can kind of gauge by that you know if we have to start taking two sides or more um that tree is probably not going to make it so we will work with folks where their existing services come out of their homes and to tie in that's usually where we get the most impact so we we feel that it'll be quite minimal but there will be some um that we'll have to discuss with folks one-on-one [1:18:22] **Mark Kuenster**: okay thank you for answering my questions you're welcome [1:18:24] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: if i can interject quick yes dan uh mark are you still there [1:18:32] **Mark Kuenster**: yes i am [1:18:33] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: great with this being a public hearing and for our record keeping we need to catch names and addresses if you don't mind [1:18:41] **Mark Kuenster**: sure uh mark kenster k-u-e-n-s-t-e-r 1348. [1:18:57] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: thank you much [1:18:58] **Mark Kuenster**: you're welcome okay i'm going to mute [1:19:04] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay any other one in the audience that would like to speak to this project at this time during this open hearing open public hearing sorry at this time i see no raised hands may or i just let dave and lisa foster [1:19:28] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay all right hi thank you uh mayor and council members um my name is david foster i live at 944 15th street well so i am right at the corner of 15th and prairie and uh first of all i want to thank you for doing something about the crosswalk there uh because it is horrible um i've almost been hit by a few vehicles a couple of questions i have about it is the signage currently is not very noticeable for uh for motorists apparently um i'm wondering is there going to be some sort of enhancements to the signage marking that area and also the bump out with uh the curb uh i didn't see a a a sidewalk or anything it's just kind of a landing on side on the north side of 15th street i'm wondering who's going to what's going to be connected to that is it just going to remain a landing and who is going to remove the snow from it [1:20:45] **Ryan Stempski (City Engineer)**: yeah so the the first question uh was regarding to the sign enhancements um and correct uh new new signage will be placed um with with proper retro reflectivity um positioned to work with our new bump out locations so they'll be more visible we're also working with excel on enhancing lighting and directional lighting as well with the led technologies so that nighttime crossing will complement the signage etc so um this will be a pretty uh enhanced crossing um on all aspects so thanks for bringing up the signs uh second question the landing on the north side i believe you're asking about and yes that will just be a landing um that doesn't prevent some day for a sidewalk to go and fill in gaps along prairie uh to the north um that could happen someday uh that wasn't in the scope of of these particular improved improvements so that landing will just um stay the way it is now as far as far as um as far as snow removal um i believe we did talk to that residents the on the corner and i you know i honestly don't remember the conclusion we came to on that um so i'm drawing a blank on who would uh clear that snow nick do we have similar areas in town that we've dealt with snow clear agenda at ramp uh that doesn't really continue on ryan excuse me council members [1:22:42] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: the city's policy would be that snow removal on any sidewalk segment is the adjacent property owners to clear um i i'm sure we have a couple of scenarios where there's a ramp kind of by itself but we we have not treated those differently from that policy so in this case that would be the adjacent property owners to shovel that one off and then ultimately if there were ever a sidewalk extended through there would be the same [1:23:24] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you david foster did you have more questions [1:23:28] **David Foster**: no that's it [1:23:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you looking for you raised hands in the audience it's time raised hands to speak to the public hearing for the 15th street project none unless john you're seeing any we'll close the public hearing the council would accept a motion to approve a resolution for the improvements approving the plans and the authorizing advertisements for bids for project 2021 dash one the 15th street infrastructure improvements phase two [1:24:14] **Councilmember Brocks**: slow motion to approve your honor [1:24:18] **Councilmember Lund**: i second [1:24:20] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member brox the member lund discussion council listen please call the role [1:24:37] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: go to member bond yes council member folch yes council member fox yes councilmember lifeveld yes councilmember lund yes councilmember brox yes mayor fassbender yes [1:25:05] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that russian prevails tonight with public works we have a resolution to approve project scope and feature and authorize advertisements for bids for the 2021 neighborhood infrastructure improvements we already handled that so resolution minnesota mndot municipal cooperative construction agreement number 1045012 for highway 316 projects for this item we have an introduction by public works director nick egger [1:25:47] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: thank you mayor uh good evening council members this is one of three agreement type documents that we'll be asking for uh your blessing on this evening and they all tie into the highway 316 project which we're just a couple months away from construction now uh this first one is for as the mayor alluded to a municipal cooperative agreement these are pretty standard types of documents that mndot will have with the local municipality when they have a big highway project coming through the city and 316 is no different in that respect what they really do is lay out the cost share responsibilities as well as some of the future maintenance responsibilities of the parties that are the primary elements as everybody here knows we've been working with mndot for the better part of the last three years actually probably closer to four years now on moving through and getting public engagement and feedback and lots of analysis that all fed into formulating a scope of the the most prudent things to do with respect to the transformation of the roadway and the main features that this project will have when all is said and done are three compact roundabouts and some key intersections uh some pedestrian trail enhancements we've got a full urbanization of the corridor with curb and gutter and medians coming to the roadway and a lot of drainage and other utility improvements so it is a complete reconstruction and there are a lot of project elements mndot has a cost sharing policy where municipalities are expected to pay for certain components and percentages of the overall improvement when it comes to their legs of the intersections that are involved and so forth so we have that we obviously have some of our own municipal utilities that we have to address as this project presents that opportunity so the city will have costs in that as well and then ultimately the city will have some maintenance responsibilities again not anything that's too out of the ordinary for these sorts of projects we do have routine uh minor maintenance duties on a lot of the storm sewer system elements uh we've got to clear snow and do pavement maintenance on the trails that'll come eventually and and for that that's incorporated here snow and ice control on city intersection elements the legs that come into the roundabouts as well as some of the central island snow clearing on the roundabout whatever mndot may miss or leave as the remnant as they move through shouldn't be much of an imposition on our front because we'll have to utilize those intersections anyhow to turn around and do our own streets so we're kind of going through them anyhow but then also our own utilities clearly would be among the things that we need to maintain in perpetuity just as we have all this time the total project cost uh for this is about seven and a half million dollars and of that the city will have about a one in 1.6 million dollar contribution the bulk of that will be funded by our state aid account uh we've talked about that in the past we've got about 750 000 of state aid funds that will go into this we have sewer and water funds that'll contribute as well to the tune of a little over three hundred thousand dollars total and then we through the bonding bill from 2020 uh the city was granted uh funds to allow for the trail to be built continuously along the east side of the road and that's uh comes to about 525 000 so uh the totality of all of these sums adds up to about just shy of 1.6 million dollars and uh as for the the trail component uh the city does have the responsibility to front the funding for all of these things but we do get a reimbursement back once that trail is being built we can start to make claims and requests for reimbursement funding on that so in the end once that reimbursement occurs we'll have a little over one million dollars in total out-of-pocket city funding that's put into the project the agreement is attached in your packet we do have to adopt to this with a resolution city attorney land as well as ryan and myself have all spent extensive time reviewing the documents and going back and forth with ben not to iron things out as best we felt we can um we we have been able to make some gains on things and for other things mndot holds pretty fast to their standard operating procedures i've been through these before and and feel we've uh exhausted our efforts but uh we're comfortable with where it has landed so our recommendation is for the council to adopt the resolution that would approve the entry into this municipal cooperative construction agreement and uh and get that back in mndot's hands [1:31:11] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you nick any discussion council okay no discussion then i would accept a motion to approve a resolution for approval of mndot municipal cooperative construction agreement number one zero four five zero one two highway 316 improvement projects [1:31:28] **Councilmember Folch**: so moved [1:31:31] **Councilmember Fox**: i second [1:31:33] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: councilmember bulge with a second by council member fox discussion council listen please call the role [1:31:47] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member bond yes council member folch yes council member fox yes council member leifeld yes council member lund yes councilmember brox yes a mayor fassbender yes [1:32:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that motion prevails we have a resolution for to approve the mndot limited use number permit number 1926 1926-0108 for multi-use trail alongside highway 316. nick a little up to here [1:32:37] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: i'll i'll be a little more a bit more brief with this one because we've already kind of covered the main features of the project as i mentioned a moment ago one of the big things with the improvements will be the extension of a trail system alongside the highway and we will have a continuous route all the way down the east side for that and because it will be considered the city's uh property or city's facility within mndot's right-of-way we must have a what's called a limited use permit in order for that to exist and uh so the document that is included with this council packet item is that limited use permit document for a non-motorized trail to exist in trunk highway right-of-way again this was one of those standard operating procedure type of elements that mndot will have when they have these sorts of features in their own right of way owned or operated by third parties particularly municipalities again staff spent an extensive amount of time working through this one and and doing a lot of uh back and forth uh negotiating and q and a with mndot and we feel we've got it to a place that all the parties are comfortable with and i would like to recommend the adoption of the resolution that's included with that memo item to approve the limited use permit [1:34:00] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: unic council any just discussion at that point i would look for oh council member fulch [1:34:11] **Councilmember Folch**: just point of clarification from nick so nikki said the east side of the trail i know it goes all the way across but on the west side there is a portion of the trail that goes it's like um it's in front of coburn's right from maybe like where the burger king is down or did that get eliminated from the project so i was just wondering is the city going to be responsible for that second segment that's on the west side also or no [1:34:40] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: council member folks i'm sorry i didn't clarify that originally when i was describing the project features yes there is trail segments or our trail segments along the western side of the highway as well it will not be continuous all the way from north to south we will have a gap in there between tiffany drive and 37th street because there wasn't enough right of way available for that and we were at a stage in the project where acquisition would have really thrown a huge wrench into the gears of the project coming to fruition uh so we'll we'll get facilities in as long as much as we can there and provide the connectivity for that one uh mndot actually will take the responsibility ultimately to reconstruct that one down the line we would still have the minor maintenance and operational responsibilities uh clearing snow off of it doing some minor pavement crack ceiling and things of that nature but when it is at the end of its useful life mndot has indicated that they will uh reconstruct that so for that one we don't have to have the same arrangement of a limited use permit obstruct it [1:35:48] **Councilmember Folch**: so they'll eliminate the sidewalk on the west side eventually you just said in english simple terms i'm sorry [1:35:54] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: no that would not be the case when when the trail that is going to be constructed with the project that is on the west side when that one is fully degraded or in need of replacement mndot would be performing that uh function and pay the cost of the of rebuilding that trail on the east side for which the limited use permit applies is completely and totally the city's responsibility uh cradle the grave and and then uh to rebuild it in the future that is the distinction here [1:36:32] **Councilmember Folch**: okay that'll be a fun one to remember 15 20 years from now so [1:36:36] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: we we've got a calendar appointment as recommended by city attorney land for 20 some years out i i not sure if i'll be retired yet or not [1:37:05] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: i hope not no thank you welcome all right thank you a counselor i look for a motion to approve a resolution for approval of limited use permit for multi-use trail within the department of transportation right-of-way trunk highway 316 project [1:37:22] **Councilmember Vaughn**: go move driver [1:37:25] **Councilmember Folch**: i second [1:37:28] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member juan and council member fulch of the second additional discussion council henderson please call the role [1:37:41] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member vaughn yes council member folks yes councilmember fox yes council member lifebelt yes councilmember lund yes councilmember brox yes mayor fassbender yes [1:38:05] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that motion prevails the last and final resolution to approve mndot detour agreement one zero four five triple three nine for highway 316. nick you want to finish it off [1:38:20] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: i'll wrap it up here mayor thank you so this agreement again don't have to spend a lot of time describing it mndot has a policy where if they utilize any local street uh for part of a detour route is when one of their highway projects is ongoing they do have to compensate the local municipality for that for highway 316 we are having part of 10th street east designated as a local area detour it will not be the primary detour where you have traffic coming from outside of the immediate area funneled down 10th street i just want to make that clear up front it is essentially to get traffic that's from the the edges of hastings to the south and east uh up and around the project area as well as to serve for uh folks that are in the uh the southern developments to to be able to have them have an access route back up to the north uh as molly klein of mndot kind of talked about a few weeks ago in her presentation so uh this is to compensate the city for what they call some consumption of the the road life there will be added traffic compared to normal obviously when you have some some folks that have to use that route as opposed to where they normally go and for that mndot does a computation to determine how much road life is burned up as a result of that added traffic over the period of time during the project which is going to be you know six seven months eight months and uh they they put that the computation together and what it results in for the city is a a payment of about six thousand dollars so to memorialize the conditions and that payment we do have a detour agreement uh which is the item in the packet and uh for which we're recommending uh the council adopt a resolution to approve it [1:40:24] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you uh council discussion that uh council i would accept a motion to approve a resolution for approval of detour agreement trunk highway 316 improvement project [1:40:35] **Councilmember Fox**: so moved your honor [1:40:39] **Councilmember Lund**: i second [1:40:41] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member fox second in a second by council member london additional discussion for henderson please call the role [1:40:53] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member vaughn yes council member bulge yes go to member fox yes councilmember lifebelt yes councilmember lund yes going to member brox yes mayor fassbender yes [1:41:18] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that motion prevails nick outstanding work for you and your with you and your team and it's going to be exciting to see this project start thank you mayor yes thank you okay under community development tonight we have vermillion acres the headwaters development for this item we have an introduction by community community development director john hinsman by two action items for the city council john [1:41:51] **John Hinzman (Community Development Director)**: thank you mayor city council members i'm going to discuss a little bit about the action tonight we have amended the request that was in your packet we had two action items on for your consideration tonight one the platform of a million acres the second a discussion on contribution towards county road 4647 improvements we ask that that that discussion of the contribution towards improvements be delayed at this point we as staff are working through some of the requirements on the cost share agreement some questions have arisen and we would ask that we delay any discussion on that until we get some further direction on that item so we're asking for tonight simply is the approval of the final platform per million acres so i'm gonna share my screen here in a moment so this is what we're looking at here vermilion acres on county road 47 11 acre property it is a very simple plot it is one lot the lot is for a 75 unit senior housing facility the council may recall that back in november of last year we did approve the site plan preliminary plaque and variants of to allow this pers this this facility to move forward on the property here's what we're looking at tonight as far as the plat itself this over now it's not going to work that way more thing here and something like this oops you're seeing the plot or not right now so it's a one lot subdivision your preliminary plan final plaque virtually identical here really hadn't there's no public improvements within the property itself we do have some standard agreements that would come with this at a later date including a stormwater management agreement and a development agreement those will be coming forward at a later meeting so we do ask that you re that you take action to approve the resolution within your packet approving the final plot four four four million acres we did have the planning commission take a look at this at their march eighth meeting they did recommend approval on a 7-0 vote with limited discussion we have the developers mike holdberg and rob bars in attendance as well if you have any questions for them thank you [1:44:26] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you uh john any discussion if not i would accept a motion to approve a the resolution of the city council of the city of hastings granting final plant approval of vermilion acres [1:44:36] **Councilmember Leifeld**: some move johnner [1:44:38] **Councilmember Brocks**: i'll second [1:44:40] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member lightfeld councilmember brox somehow i got lost there we go sorry about that uh additional discussion council clerk anderson please call the roll [1:44:53] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member vaughn yes council member fulch yes councilmember fox yes going to memphis build yes councilmember lund yes going to member brox yes mayor fassbender yes [1:45:21] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and that motion prevails thanks john thank you uh tonight we have a authorized signature villas at pleasant site creating agreement i guess john you're you're back on sorry about that [1:45:34] **John Hinzman (Community Development Director)**: not a problem here i'll share my screen again to show the project that we are considering tonight this is the villas at pleasant you took action on this late last year as a preliminary plot for the entire development and a final plot for a first phase of development since that time the developer has submitted a revised final plat which includes everything in a single phase the short of it is this is good news the demand that the developer saw is outstripping what he saw in the fall which is great project will be done all this year to allow this project to move forward as we're considering the final plat application we are asking you to consider a signature of a site grading agreement this is for grading activities on the site only it would allow them to commence at their own risk providing they post certain escrow and letter of credit funds execution of the agreement would not obligate the city to the future final flat obligation that would be taken up at a separate time but it would allow the project to move forward here we have the the agreement drafted by attorney land nick egger and i have taken a look at the agreement as well we are in support of its adoption and i can stand for any questions thank you [1:46:46] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you john counseling discussion okay then i would look for a motion to approve authorization of signature of the site grading agreement for villas at pleasant [1:47:11] **Councilmember Vaughn**: summer journey [1:47:15] **Councilmember Lund**: second [1:47:18] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: member vaughn and a second by council member lund additional discussion clerk henderson please call the roll [1:47:28] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: sponsor member vaughn yes council member folch yes councilmember fox yes councilmember lifebelt yes councilmember lund yes councilmember brox yes mayor fassbender yes [1:47:56] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: motion prevails as well now thank you john tonight under public safety we have a no wake zone for this item i'll have we'll have an introduction by city administrator dan waticha [1:48:08] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: thank you mayor as you know uh this discussion has has come up several times over the years this most recent discussion came up last year initiated by city residents on the east side of town the public safety committee of council which is council members liefeld brock's and lund met on march 4th to discuss several options that we might have to go forward or or to not go forward with seeking limits on on wakes on the mississippi river ultimately their recommendation to council was that we should explore how to pursue a no-wake restriction between lack and dam 2 and the hastings marina recognize that really this falls on dakota county and washington county not on the city to enact and more importantly to enforce so it's easy for us to talk about because the the operational expenses are for somebody else but they felt that as you heard during the the public comments at the start of this meeting that there are definitely reasons for having no weight restrictions on the river here from a public safety standpoint from a property damage standpoint and then also from an erosion standpoint which i also point out the city has incurred eroded as an additional concern the the committee's recommendation really was a matter of is this the right direction is this the direction that the council as a body wants to go and really bring that discussion to the full board or the full city council with that i can stand for any questions i would also note that chief schaefer is in the audience and uh dakota county commissioner uh mike slavic forwarded an email late this evening and also in the audience to answer any questions from the county point of view thank you [1:50:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you dan i think commissioner slavic would like to um speak to us uh in representation of uh sheriff leslie so john can we bring commissioner there he is welcome mike [1:50:42] **Mike Slavic (Dakota County Commissioner)**: hello uh good evening mayor council members and city staff uh thank you very much it's good to at least see on zoom hopefully one of these days we'll get to see each other in person and the nice thing is our director of public health is has just officially uh shared with the county board that uh even without being vaccinated we can start meeting in person again so hopefully our county board we won't be seeing each other by zoom as well sooner than later so we haven't made a decision yet but i'm sure like many other local units of government we're getting closer um i do want to make sure i don't know if all of you did receive as a civil necessitator i'd say that i did go in and uh forward a email that the sheriff had sent to me uh later about seven o'clock this evening he does apologize he was going to try to get here but he had some other conflicts as well on this issue and i just want to share with you that the uh at the dakota county side we've been kind of having conversations throughout the day based on knowing that this topic was on your agenda today um if it's appropriate mayor mary i might um just read this just for the general public and record of what the sheriff had stated uh and then just give a couple of my own personal thoughts on that as well and this is from sheriff tim leslie: "mayor and council members i understand you will be having a discussion at your council meeting tonight on a potential no wake ordinance along the mississippi river and hastings this issue has been discussed many times over the years and the sheriff's office particularly the washington county sheriff's office continue to have concerns in an effort to seek a compromise to the situation i spoke at length with sheriff starry in washington county he has a unique perspective as he has cities along the saint croix waterway seeking no wake restrictions he has no intention of granting them for a variety of reasons unique to that county and its riverway i agree with sheriff starry's position however the circumstances in dakota county are also unique for one i would require additional staffing to enforce a no wake zone in hastings currently i have other staffing priorities that you are quite familiar with after discussing it with sheriff sarri we agreed to a no wake zone during high water the army corps of engineers declares a high water on the river including the mississippi as it travels through hastings thank you for your understanding on this perspective of the issue if you require additional conversation please let me know happy to talk with you" sheriff tim leslie. and i guess so that's just coming from perspective from the sheriff and i just want to share some of mine because uh when i was in your seat on the city council this was discussed a couple different times as county commissioner representing all of you we've had a number of conversations i think this is the third in my nine years on the county board and um i've actually been when from the public comment in the beginning i was coming back from another meeting and was able to hear some of those public comments i've been in the um backyards of some of the uh residents who share when a big boat goes by and particularly you know i think it's 2019 when we had the high water event i was also there when we just saw what was happening on the impact of that i think also the county environmental resources has some concerns particularly on shoreland however as was said by mr francis those particularly happen during the high water events um so i think that's important to note um this your efforts tonight actually move the ball forward a lot faster because as of yesterday sheriff starring was not willing to do anything um and it was a number of conversations and pressure just to move the ball this far here so i know that uh that's just a little bit of something uh we share constituents both the sheriff myself and all of you uh in this part in here but i do know that as was stated by the city administrator uh this really takes efforts of uh the county boards both washington and dakota by state law to be able to do anything and uh quite frankly you uh don't have the support of sheriffs to be able to do this who are the ones who enforce the waterway and um i i don't know if this compromise will work or if it will not be acceptable and you can as a elected officials choose to move forward which way you want but the fact of the matter is you know we've had a very good partnership in uh the city of hastings dakota county and the sheriff's office and uh we want to continue to have that and and uh this situation is not much different than what happens uh daily up at the state capitol where you have one body that is one party one body is the other party they can't agree on much so instead they pass something advocating for their constituents knowing dang well that nothing's going to happen to it and what i would love to see happen through your discussion is at least we make that step forward on finding a compromise and get both the county boards uh to do something if you choose not to and want to make that statement i understand but this is now i think the seventh time as i said that i've had this conversation in my years of elected office serving the city of hastings and we haven't done a dang thing with that and i will make one other note some of the evidence of that is speaking of not doing a dang thing we don't have any documented evidence we have hearsay in stories and maybe visual experiences but i really encourage the neighbors and residents and and the owners of the marinas to be able to when you see something that doesn't feel right we need to call that we need some 911 uh in situations that go in and say here's what we saw in that case there because that's the only way you may get to the end result of a full no awake um but at least in this part in here it's very hard to go in and spend six figures on enforcement and something uh even if you had the support of both both sheriffs uh without some documentation that proves that even though i've seen it personally so probably many of you uh so i hope that we can continue to find something to get something moving forward uh and then maybe see what happens next but either way the ball is on all of your courts and i thank you very much for your time and as with state of the sheriff is happy to have a come ba if this does get tabled or moved on to further conversation with a little more notice he's happy to come in and uh have the conversation with all of you thank you very much mayor and council [1:57:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: commissioner thank you commissioner council discussion councilmember brocks [1:57:30] **Councilmember Brocks**: thank you commissioner slavic and i appreciate your perspective and also representing the point of view of the sheriffs i guess my question is is i've heard a lot of of the residents and the people that are concerned in this area bring up the damage to the shoreline public safety concerns my question is what what level of evidence is enough because it seems like we don't have the documented in the police record evidence but we have a lot of stories of residents and and you know we have anecdotal evidence yes but i don't think that that is less important necessarily because we are talking about their personal experiences so what i hear you saying is that we need to start documenting some of these situations and making it an official record is that only mean police record or if people are writing us emails and sending us some of this stuff in email can we forward that on to sheriff leslie and sheriff starry and and show them what it is that we're hearing and seeing [1:58:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: mayor are you asking for me to respond to that you can sure thank you [1:58:35] **Mike Slavic (Dakota County Commissioner)**: okay uh thank you councilmember brox i am i don't know that answer for certain that might be a more appropriate question for the sheriff i i will give you my thought on the fact that uh if it isn't if it is and true that the uh shoreline damages because of the boats and not because of logs and flooding and that stuff in there what would be very helpful would actually be the police records that would go and say this 20 uh this 30-foot cabin cruiser just went down the river and uh swamped a small boat and being able to call um call and get that in the documents but i do not know that for certain i'm just knowing that they did go and run the not any that were 911 to that so um but a great question for the sheriff i just i'm answering the best of my knowledge [1:59:34] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member leifeld [1:59:36] **Councilmember Leifeld**: thank you um appreciate um the information commissioner can reading through the um email that we received um with comments from both sheriff starry and sheriff leslie you know everyone keeps saying that we've talked about this several times i've been doing this now for five years and this is the first conversation so the seven times previously we're looking at a while ago i would be curious to know not being i mean i love boats but i don't know anything about them it would seem to me that we're seeing an increase in boat traffic i would be curious to know if there's data where we get data on that and um i can i'll definitely say that votes are getting faster it's gonna be getting bigger so those are all pieces too that in 20 years ago when we looked at this and maybe 15 years ago and then 10 years ago except we've looked at it seven different times you know in the last 30 years um i think this is something i feel that we need to continue to talk about we need to get more data you know is it something that nobody calls the police because what's what is the point you know as council member brexit pointed out you know we've got all the anecdotal evidence but what does it mean you know for for them to call it in when when something happens um so i i would like to see this as being something that we um continue to do our research and get more data i i think there are a lot of missing pieces here and none of us sitting here are the specialists on any of this information and when we're talking about the infrastructure erosion within the city you know we've talked about the safety of what would happen if first streets were to collapse underneath the bridge then what do we do um we've got a railroad track that we have a hard time stopping you know we've we've all had set through many meetings with conversations with the you know the railroad system of how do we what do we do how can we get them to stop stopping on the track over the middle of second street well we can't even get them to do that so i would be concerned that we'd be looking at something you know something bigger here you know if we don't start looking at it and taking some you know some measures some safety measures right now so it would be you know my my opinion that this is something that we need to continue to focus on and have the conversation and and move the you know move the conversation further appreciate uh commissioner slavic you're taking the time to come in and give us some you know details of what what has happened in the past and um i get it nobody wants to spend the money um but we we it is something i think that we need to look at as a community on the river it's something we need to be watching thank you honor [2:02:12] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember lightfield councilmember folch [2:02:44] **Councilmember Folch**: thank you your honor thank you mike for joining us it's always a pleasure to have you um and um i'd just like to make a few points um though the law enforcement database is not an applicable means of record keeping in this very instance because there is no speed limit on the road on the on the river from the dam you know down to prescott and so there's no law that's being broken and so there's no need to call any law enforcement entity about when there's not any law that's being broken and so hence there's no data that would be within the law enforcement database but however several months ago the in one of our packets the city had its mitigation plan in it and so i can't remember if it was the law if it was through the police department or if it was engineering that had had they specifically updated the mitigation plan to incorporate the problems of um water the the erosion that's happening on first street underneath the railroad bridge and so um so we do have documentation and is a major priority of our city and it is causing structural damage to our infrastructure furthermore i'm the one that brought this forward last summer after one of the residents in the east side neighborhood had brought me to his house and walked me along the shoreline along all those houses and then down to the marina and i was just shocked you could just see the evidence of how the how the river is from the specifically from the wake is causing so much damage and just to stand there on one of the docks as the the the boats went by i mean this isn't rocket science i mean this is plain common sense as you stand there and you experience it and then furthermore it has a an impact on the fact that boats can't dock down by the river i mean we have that little dock that's down by the hudson sprayer building and it i'm not a boater i don't have a boat but it was explained to me that people can't dock there on their boats because um if they were to do so big cruisers that go by super fast can knock around their boats and that's why people aren't stopping at that boat at that boat dock i mean all you gotta do is you know bike over to prescott and you will see during the summer time that that place is loaded with boaters who have stopped and are as tourists and are using you know the downtown of prescott and you know the multiple restaurants that they have there that they're enjoying them as boaters and and so it really you know has an economic disadvantage as well to our downtown that no one's able to actually stop at that dock and just walk up and enjoy our downtown and so it's having um both you know an impact on the city's infrastructure it's having a huge impact on the residents of their property damage is having an economic you know impact to the marinas when people can't stop and uh and dock their boats there and then there's um damage happening to their boats you know for the individuals who are using those marinas and then and then a downtown is um at a dissident and so i think it's great that the count that the both the county sheriffs are finally you know kind of agreeing you know that something needs to be done because i think quite honestly it's so ridiculous that something hasn't been done that this concession is being made that they'll want to do it during high high water and i'm not exactly sure what that means and what that looks like and what that signage looks like and so i'm i'm open to hearing a little bit more about that but it just seems like it's a little too little i get it that law enforcement is um asked to do way too many things way too many things for the public but i mean this is something that our community really needs for all the reasons that i just noted and so i appreciate you bringing forward that that offer but it just seems to me that it's falling short so thanks [2:06:29] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember fulch councilmember fox [2:06:40] **Councilmember Fox**: it kind of uh backs up some of the things tina was saying but um sorry council member folch was saying and commissioner slavic thank you for your personal perspective as well as uh sharing the sheriffs but i also want to highlight uh tom day and kelly and matt francis's perspective from before i think it would be really valuable for us if we're gonna um bring more data into the question to take that mitigation plan that we did get to see i don't know in the fall or just a month ago i can't remember oh and it sounds like the francises are are thinking about replacing part of the rip rap that they have protecting their shore maybe looking at what a quote would look like there and and adding that into the conversation so we know if we do need a mitigation on first street what the cost for the city would be and ultimately the cost for all these residents um and if heaven forbid something does happen to first street what's the what is the cost and what is the fix and when is that gonna happen i would be interested to see all of that in the conversation um and maybe we do start with a communications plan to communicate with boaters that they can't speed through this section of river and grow into of course this is kind of like the hpac plan we're not going to have it all tomorrow but as long as we can keep the conversation moving and acknowledge that it is a problem i think we're taking steps forward in the right direction thank you your honor [2:08:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you council member fox council member vaughn [2:08:20] **Councilmember Vaughn**: thank you your honor and thanks to the committee for working on this i personally want us as a council i think the dnr has taken an easy way out on this one that's the national park in this area of that i i think that's our better route i get where the sheriffs are coming from but we need to create that conversation with the dnr to say you just can't wait um this is the water is affecting the shores of the city of hastings the city of haiti is not affecting their waterway we make we make um i just think that's our approach i think that's a better approach for us at this time the sheriffs have stated their point i actually like what they're saying at least they're starting to work with us but i think we as a city should do a better job going to talk to the dnr about this one i think that's our best draw in my opinion thank you [2:09:28] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember vaughn city administrator dan [2:09:42] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: just a quick point of clarification the uh amendment we did to the county all hazard medical hazard mitigation plan a couple of months ago really was related to flooding so although there is some erosion at first street that really is a separate matter than that mitigation plant public works is we're getting some remediation to the the damage that's there certainly look at some things more long run but um the potential um for putting in some flood wall or something with that mitigation plan really is related to flood not the not erosion [2:10:24] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: nick i have a question for you if you can answer it i don't know do you know our water levels right now and what would a high water level be at and how often do we get there if you can't if you can answer those [2:10:27] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: uh i'll try um i was just looking at that this morning actually out of curiosity because i'm used to monitoring it this time of year and uh the the good news is it it really doesn't look like we're gonna have any flooding this year unless we get a ton of rain in the next several weeks and month month and a half um we're in pretty good shape that way anyway to directly answer that question i think we were at a stage of about seven feet or so minor flood stage isn't until 15 feet so that's eight more feet above where you would see it if you walk down there tonight know what the no disrespect to the sheriff's but i'm not sure what number they have in mind or if they have a number if there's some other sort of qualitative description that they're thinking about when they say that in my mind high water would be hitting a flood stage level or above uh as for frequency um don't quote me on it i think we see a flooding event or in my time we've seen a flooding event um you know maybe once every two years did the math over the course of the last 18 plus years i've been here but that's not forever either so um a lot if we could look into those statistics and maybe find something [2:11:47] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: so then my next question to that would be last year to have any flooding but we were at close to flood stage correct [1:11:58] **Nick Egger (Public Works Director)**: i think we touched on it barely yeah well last year's when the statement was made by mr francis that a lot of um the damage was done so just trying in my head to think of uh what level would that be that high stage be at [2:12:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member fultz your hand is very still is that you still want to speak [2:12:21] **Councilmember Folch**: okay well i guess just um i'm not sure how it is that we proceed with this um because it is kind of nebulous as to what high water means and and in my mind high water is flood stage as well and so for that to be fined and then secondly i mean really how many people are boating when there is high water when i mean we've all stood on the banks of the river and seen the large logs and all the debris that's in the water it's not really boating leisurely um for enjoyment and so um i don't know i it seems like it's a it's a it's some kind of uh offer but i think that it would be um it would be difficult to know exactly when we are under high water and if you can somehow you know create the perception that that we could be having high water a lot of the time that would be one thing but if it's like so seldom that it's just in the springtime after we've had a big thaw of a snowpack um then i wouldn't be in favor of that at all [2:13:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember councilmember folch commissioner slavic [2:13:38] **Mike Slavic (Dakota County Commissioner)**: thank your honor um i'm trying to find the um with for example the county has its ordinance 128 which um is related to the uh surface use on lake billsby and there is a set of what triggers once once the water exceeds a certain level that's what um you know for example at lake billsby 858.2 feet above sea level is the trigger when goodhue county and dakota county go in and declare the no wake zone and enforce that in a wake zone so that has been in there um and i just that's maybe to answer some of that but i think that's all determined by the army corps of engineer that goes into ordinance um the only thing that i can there's a number of comments that i could say in there but this is not my discussion i do want to uh just share this text that was sent i'd ask the question after watching part of mr dave's comments on other communities that did stuff in there some of them are easier to do because for example in saint paul uh the mississippi river in st paul is actually um the part that i think they're referring to where there's the no wake zone is actually all in one county um but for example the question was along the saint croix river the sheriff starry and sheriff leslie been responding to me and they'd said that uh the only city on the saint croix river that has that the sheriff has allowed a no wake zone on is the city of afton bayport oak park heights stillwater marines on saint croix and lakeland have all asked for um a uh no wake zone and have all been turned down by the uh sheriff sheriff starry out of washington county and the only reason that afton was in there is because it's a very narrow spot the other thing that they made note of is the fact is the saint croix which you're using an example is very different than the mississippi river uh given the fact that that you don't see barges go up the saint croix and then just if i may add some you know you like i said you all can do what you want uh but the fact of the matter is you're asking for an ordinance that basically has somebody else pay for it um and and that has to be noted on there and i do think that um as somebody who is a boater and who goes out on the river um there are boaters that go during high water um there's a lot of they move very slow um quite frankly you probably see most of them will actually be abiding in no wake just because of the logs and everything else that goes in there a lot of them end up going over in this go try to get to the saint croix as quick as they can because there's not as much debris coming from the saint croix as there is from uh from the minnesota and mississippi river with that and then i um i think i'll leave it at that i don't need to say anything further because it's as i said up to your call on what you choose to do the one point that i will just end with is just that um the documents of 911 calls or not that was just one of the components the fact of the matter is that um you have one political uh unit that doesn't support this and that's just kind of the the aspect of it and and we try we on dakota county representing the interests of hastings i've tried to find some way to at least move the discussion instead of appear no thank you [2:17:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: commissioner i mean it could be a you know they're baby steps but it could be helpful it's the only way we're gonna get because uh sheriff starry is not gonna change his mind um so do we wanna dig deeper into it and take council member vaughn's recommendation and work with the dnr or try to work with the dnr or how would you like to proceed councilmember folch [2:17:38] **Councilmember Folch**: um yeah i think and thank you your honor i was going to suggest the same thing that um perhaps the um the committee that heard it last the public safety committee um reconverge for another conversation um i would hope that it would we'd be given more than just a couple days notice i missed it this last time um because of that and uh and and you know personally last summer i actually did when the when the waters were high in downtown stillwater i sat on the embankment and because this issue had been already raised to me by residents and i sat and i watched in downtown stillwater the sheriff's deputies boat go cruising right past st um downtown stillwater they were they were doing their job you know they had a nice boat and they were out there and they were doing enforcement i don't know what they're enforcing i was assuming it was no right way because any boat went by and it flooded the um it flooded the sidewalk areas and so but i know they have a really nice boat in unit because i've seen it with my own guys so um anyhow thank you [2:18:45] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you councilmember councilmember lund [2:19:10] **Councilmember Lund**: thank your honor god i think and it's all very good points uh commissioner slavic you know cities um you know we're not the only city on a river and and there's no wake there's no no wakes uh all the way up um i'm not sure i didn't you know i didn't do a a map search but i don't know how many backyards are are right now in those those areas i know i mean they're they're there's there's docks and so forth yes but i don't know how close to a person's home um actually some of those places are that that they're uh they're dealing with in stillwater or bayport or otherwise so that'd be good to know and then also um you know what does what does enforcement look like you know is it a is there just one is there just one option or what's our menu on that you know maybe there's a some creativity that that could play into it um and i think the only way to get to that is to continue the conversation and to understand you know um it's not black and white possibly there's some gray so i'd like to continue to move forward with it [2:20:45] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you council member lun councilmember fox [2:21:09] **Councilmember Fox**: um if you demon appropriate your honor i'd like to make a motion to send this conversation back to the public safety committee to be heard again in the next month so we can find a path to the right way to enforce a no wake zone [2:21:35] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you council member fox i'll need a second to that motion [2:21:42] **Councilmember Folch**: i second [2:21:45] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: second councilmember folch additional discussion council member lund [2:21:56] **Councilmember Lund**: thank you yeah um i i think it's it's it's clear we need more substantiation um you know and i can't speak to this but it was my understanding that this isn't something that would be enacted for 2021 voting season anyway so the stipulation of this month i understand that's to not drag our feet but that may put us in a situation where staff and others can't necessarily gather the information that would add value to that meeting we've already met um i think you know it seems as though there is some some information that we're going to need to look at and i don't know if the next you know two to four weeks is enough time or not i'm not saying that it's not possible but i would hate to i guess corner ourselves in on that timeline if if maybe six weeks was a better timeline i know that's being nitpicky but the motion was within the month so um i i don't know if we can if you can withdraw that part of it or we i can make an amendment to your motion [2:22:40] **Councilmember Fox**: but you want to accept a friendly amendment to my motion maybe the next two months okay [2:22:42] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: do we have a second for that motion uh councilmember brock's are you i raised my hand but i can second the motion okay second the motion by council member brax now we have discussion council member brax [2:23:10] **Councilmember Brocks**: yes thank you i was just going to make the point that trevor just made which is just that we have a lot of data holes and i want to have answers to that information but i don't want to raise the priority level of this conversation above um some other things like development and strategic planning and we have a lot on our plate so i just want to make the point that if we do call a public safety committee meeting that we allow enough time for staff to gather information to make that conversation meaningful so that was the only point i wanted to make [2:23:30] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: well said thank you councilmember brock's councilmember leifeld [2:23:35] **Councilmember Leifeld**: um excellent point um but to continue on that from councilmember alond and councilmember brooks i'm not sure that a time frame right now is what we're looking for this needs to go back to city staff for us to hold a meeting to say yes it needs to go back to city staff seems like a great waste of resources in time because it's clear that the three of us don't have that data um i you know to council members point council member vaughn's point regarding the dnr i'd also be curious to know what if any information we could get from the army corps of engineers um you know i know they have a lot to do with the mississippi river i believe they might be the people responsible for the dredging that we see near our near bridge so you know those would be something that i would like to say that yes this is definitely something where um i believe we're committed to talking about and to moving forward and i would like to see that time because as council member brooks pointed out there's a lot of things going on right now that we certainly don't want to inundate city staff i think boy you we need this data and we need this data now and to the residents down on the east side we're not kicking the can we definitely see what's going on we are concerned about it not just for your yards but for the safety and for the you know entire boating community and the city of hastings so i would prefer to see that we um send this back to staff allow them the appropriate time and when that time is done then our city administrator would be in touch with us to say you know let's go ahead and schedule that meeting you have to excuse my cat it's bedtime [2:25:02] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you councilmember life councilmember folch [2:25:05] **Councilmember Folch**: thank you your honor um i disagree about just saying okay whenever you get around to it get around to it because we had our first public safety committee meeting on this like last august or september and it took until march and so i'm sorry i'm gonna have to sit here and count that on my hands to know how many months that is but it's more than just a couple months and i most certainly do not want to see this go another six months before it's touched again and so um i think that um i know i've worked for the state for 16 years it works like molasses if you want to move things forward and so i think that if we want to have conversations with um the dnr i think we um we start moving that along because it could take a really long time to get through all these processes and and i would suggest also we do have um former uh city council member tony olanji as a resource that we can ask he is um within the commissioner's office of the dnr and i know that he's very knowledgeable about this particular issue and so we could have a side conversation with him about that as well to see what it is that he knows and what um what kinds of uh roots might be possible so um anyhow i just wanted to state no i don't want to see it wait that long thanks [2:26:33] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember bulge councilmember lund [2:26:35] **Councilmember Lund**: thank your honor afraid i'm getting down to a rabbit hole here but um if in september you met on it and in march we met on it and when we met we didn't have any real concrete evidence in that meeting that's that's the issue here so i i don't want to meet again only to go you know we don't have much to move forward with right so that's that's the conversation here is no by no means uh about how slow can we go but um you know let's let's let's when we meet let's have something to actually discuss differently than what the previous then two meetings in a calendar year had been so that was i understand your point council member folks but that's that's the rationale behind this whole conversation of timeline um that's in my opinion so i don't really know where we're even at anymore there's procedurally but um you know i guess my thought is let's meet let's have staff gather the appropriate information that that that that is deemed to you know provide a valuable insight and maybe some substantiation to uh to our efforts but um you know to say do it in you know a certain period of time i don't know if without knowing if they can do it in that period of time i don't know if that's a value [2:28:07] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member vaughn [2:28:10] **Councilmember Vaughn**: thank you your honor and that's what i was going to recommend on the wrap up of this i i recommend we we against the motion and that staff knows how to use their committee structure when staff's ready they know that it's a priority they're going to come back to the committee structure and say hey we need to get a meeting because we got some more data i think that how this should move forward we just we put some dates down and i think that is going to is clogging up a little bit staff is staff knows how to use us i think we should vote no on this so we can get the staff moving on thank you [2:28:54] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay thank you councilmember vaughn there's a motion and a second all right let's make chief shaffer like to speak oh okay chief john would you let chief in technically mayor i don't know if we voted on the friendly amendment we probably would need to do that also before we do a total vote [2:29:22] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: okay i'm sorry i'm chiefs here do we want to hear his discussion first thank you hear me yes okay good [2:29:34] **Police Chief Kyle Linscheid**: so i you know i i'm am i maybe gonna push back a little bit because when you say staff remember the river is not our jurisdiction and i have been involved in this conversation about three times since i've been here and what was presented um what was presented in the memo um i was pretty much up front because i've vetted the dnr out a few times i've reached out to our law enforcement partners uh several times and the answer has always been the same so um and and when we talk about 9-1-1 calls i can tell you that during high water the phone calls come to my office and they don't come tonight they're not 9-1-1 calls and i call the sheriff and i call i call this both both departments and i say hey can you give us some extra patrol uh during high water or when we have events and so um it it's there's not it's not that there's probably not data to collect um when i think about staff time i that that probably equals me and i'm i have the same information now as i did uh three years ago as i had six years ago so um i there has to be a different a different approach the dnr has already said we are staying out of it because it's up to the counties uh if the counties bring an ordinance to us we will we are the deciding body so um i think the citizens in our last public safety committee meeting said ask the citizens to carry you know carry and shoulder some of this because of the anecdotal information and the erosion so i just i just don't know how far you want us would want us to go in as staff tearing this apart because i i have been i have led this and it says my third time around and as already was said we are at the same point so how is it going to look different uh as we move forward so just want to be totally honest it's not my area of expertise and i i don't know i mean we have the core we have the dnr we know where the sheriff stand but there's so much more uh that we have to dive into and look for a little direction from council if you are going to have staff move forward with this chief [2:32:15] **Councilmember Vaughn**: thanks your honor and thanks chief i use staff generically there just because i think we're tied up in a motion there but i i think it's going to take some strategy with staff and listening to us council about i go back to the dnr they can say no all they want and they can say we're staying out of it that's where we need the strategy we need to start finding a way to talk to my state representative stick to our state senator that's going to call the dnr commissioner saying why won't you listen to this at least take an avenue that's what i'm looking at for staff to kind of gather the communication plan and again remember we had to listen to the rest of the residents too some may not want this i want to hear from everybody that's what i'm looking at for the next steps um i use staff generically but i'm asking staff just to say let's let's format a 4-million plan that's all i'm asking when i say that i don't think it should go on deaf ears i think dnr is taking an easy way out easy to put that in policy thanks [2:33:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you councilmember vine councilmember fulch [2:33:33] **Councilmember Folch**: thank your honor um chief schaefer was looking for clarification about um what it is that staff could do differently i for one would like to know specifically if the county sheriffs are offering a no wake during high water what specifically does that mean what specifically does the signage look like to the boaters that are on the river what would the enforcement be because you know i came from a a traffic safety background and i know that perception the the chance of getting caught has a lot to do how it is that people obey the law and so if we do a good job of casting the perception that there's the opportunity for them to get busted for zipping past a bazillion miles an hour through our downtown area um then i think people slow down if there's ample signage and and and people perceive that and so something's better than nothing at this point it's my mistake it's my understanding that the marina down at the end of the east side used to actually have signage as boaters went into the water just to kind of you know cast that doubt that they might get busted for for it and so um i just really would like to explore what does that look like and maybe it's a baby step and um it's an offering as commissioner slavic had said that we take for now and continue to try to move forward because something is better than nothing um so thanks chief schaefer for all of your effort um i do greatly appreciate you so thanks [2:34:55] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: thank you council member folks council member lund [2:35:05] **Councilmember Lund**: thank your honor i agree with council member fulto's point you know that's that's what i was trying to get at about creativity regarding enforcement right and so um you know that's where i want to know what enforcement looks like what the what the menu options are you know is it is it primarily signage um you know what's the staffing look like and so forth um you're you know for for high water or otherwise right so um i think i wouldn't even consider it a baby step i think it's possibly a very significant step what you're talking about councilmember folch and it you know it's worth exploring [2:35:50] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: councilmember len there discussion there is a motion on the floor still councilmember vulture you okay okay so there is a motion on the floor by council member fox in the second by brax rather discussion mayor fassbender the amendment is still on the floor so we need to vote on the amendment okay and then we need to vote on the main motion okay as amended uh clerk henderson could you please call the roll for the amendment to the motion [2:36:20] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: councilmember vaughn yes council member fulch yes yes councilmember lyfeld yes tons of member lund yes councilmember brox yes mayor fassbender yes [2:36:52] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: amendment to the motion has passed now if you could call the role clerk anderson for the motion [2:37:05] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member vaughn council member bulge yes for fox councilmember lifebelt yes number one no comes to member brock's no or fast bender no [2:37:38] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: so that motion prevail moving forward [2:37:48] **Councilmember Folch**: so your honor do we need a motion then for the recommendation for this to go back to um the city staff for further dialogue however you want to continue the discussion i could to continue the what uh comments or however you want to continue sorry tired your honor point of clarification here and so the the what that motion was for was to send it back to staff and then bring it back to public safety committee for further discussion and so that would have been an opportunity for chief schaefer or whoever to to further clarify as to what it is that's being proposed by the sheriff's offices and that would have been an appropriate time for the elected officials to be able to provide feedback along with residents as to that and so i guess by shooting that down i'm not exactly sure what it is that the council is suggesting that we do that we just um chief schaefer was just asking for clarification as to what it is that we would like we had a little discussion there so i guess um one of y'all who just uh who shot it down and said no should be suggesting what it is then that you think is an appropriate point of um motion because otherwise this is just gonna wither and die on the vines if you just say okay well just kick it back to staff with with no direction and no further discussion so thank you [2:39:13] **Dan Wietecha (City Administrator)**: the city administrator dan excuse me really just looking to to try to wrap this up it's had a lot of discussion and and um i think somebody mentioned a rabbit hole in the conversation too i jotted down a few things i did not jot down every comment but a few questions such as the national park service what does enforcement look like what is the definition of high water i think that comes from the the dnr there are a few things that we can fairly easily get i don't think that we're going to suddenly get data or documentation to say here's what the problem is but but we can certainly bring back some clarification to it propose that that staff bring that public safety committee sometime in the foreseeable future certainly not withering on the vine but recognize it falls in with other priorities that we've got going it might not be within two months but really just encourage council to wrap up this conversation it seems to be going circular right now [2:40:43] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and uh councilmember lund [2:40:46] **Councilmember Lund**: thank your honor god i think dan stated it quite well he he's captured the sentiment of the group i think and understands the direction uh you know with with better information to have a different conversation than we had uh you know a week ago or whatever it was you know we'll have a you know possibly a more uh successful conversation and we can bring something better to council so i think what dan has taken away from this conversation is is how i feel it should go if we need a motion for that i think it's just apparent that that's what needs to be done thank you for going to maryland [2:41:28] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: council member leifeld [2:41:30] **Councilmember Leifeld**: um continue council number one do we need a motion because i'm prepared to make one something that needs requires emotion correlation of discussion [2:41:55] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: so i'm seeing two shaking heads so this does not not require any sort of motion for them to for instead of to acquire additional data and report that back to the public safety committee thank you council and thank you staff hey uh any council member anybody have um announcements sorry okay i have a couple um the city's park and recreation department of americorps and the hastings community ed are providing an alternative spring break from fifth and eighth graders from monday to wednesday march 29th to the 31st please register at the city website the hastings spring cleanup will run april 5th to the 10th and it will include drop-offs and curbside pickup options please see the cleanup flyers for schedule calls and charge uh changes i'm sorry yeah right uh this weekend downtown is the downtown business association has an event spring into the downtown hastings there's um encouragement for a dress for summer wears colorful shirts shorts summer gear and let's hope it's spring because it's the first day of spring so with the snowfall today who knows tuesday march 16th we have a heritage preservation commission thursday at 7 p.m thursday march 18th at 6 30 p.m we have a joint meeting public safety committee and public safety advisory commission monday the 22nd 7 pm we have a planning commission meeting monday march 15th at 5 30 city council we'll have a workshop in regards to american rescue plan and that same night march 15 7 pm the city council at this point uh council i would accept a motion to adjourn [2:44:11] **Councilmember Vaughn**: someone [2:44:14] **Councilmember Brocks**: second [2:44:15] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: and council member brock's session claire henderson please call the roll [2:44:23] **Kelly Henderson (City Clerk)**: council member vaughn yes council member fulch yes council member fox yes council member leifeld yes the member lund yes council member brock's yes mayor fassbender yes [2:44:48] **Mayor Mary Fasbender**: that motion prevails thank you all have a great night