Based on the context provided in the transcript, here is the formatted version with speaker identifications. **[0:28] (Technical Audio/Silence)** **[0:58] (Technical Audio/Silence)** **[1:28] (Technical Audio/Silence)** **[1:58] (Technical Audio/Silence)** **[2:30] Mayor:** All right, the wheels are coming off already. We're going to call the meeting to order. Will the clerk please note those in attendance? All will be noted. Please rise before we say the Pledge of Allegiance. I'd like you all to join me in a moment of silence for the fallen Minneapolis police officer who lost his life in the line of duty. **[3:03] Mayor:** Thank you. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. (All): I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we'll jump right into item two. 2A: minutes of the regular city council meeting for May 28th, 2024. I’d entertain a motion to approve those minutes. [Councilmember: Motion. Councilmember: Second.] Have a motion and a second. All those in favor say Aye. [Council: Aye.] Any opposed? Motion carries; minutes are approved. Item 2B: minutes of the city council work session on May 28th, 2024. I’d entertain a motion to approve those minutes. [Councilmember: Move. Councilmember: Second.] Motion and a second. All those in favor say Aye. [Council: Aye.] Any opposed? Motion carries; the minutes are approved. Item three: adoption of the agenda. **[3:48] Mayor:** We only really have one item. Are there any changes or corrections to the agenda? Seeing none, I'd entertain a motion to adopt the agenda. [Councilmember: Motion. Councilmember: Second.] All those in favor say Aye. [Council: Aye.] Any opposed? We have an agenda. Item four: consent agenda. I’d entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. [Councilmember: Move. Councilmember: Second.] A motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say Aye. [Council: Aye.] Any opposed? Motion carries; the consent agenda is approved. All right, before we jump into the small agenda, I want to introduce our new City Attorney, Dave Anderson, who joins us from Kennedy and Graven. As you know, Mr. Gilchrist has moved on to other ventures, so we're sad to see him go, but I did have an opportunity to meet Mr. Anderson a few weeks ago and I have every confidence we will be well served with his counsel. So we want to welcome him to the dais. And Mr. Anderson, if you have a few words to say or if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, that'd be great. **[4:35] Dave Anderson (City Attorney):** Sure, thank you very much, Mayor, and thank you, Council, for having me and for everyone for being so welcoming. Like the Mayor said, my name is Dave Anderson. I'm a shareholder at Kennedy and Graven. I've been at the firm for—this is my eighth year—and prior to that, my entire career as an attorney, I've represented local governments and focused on that. But since my time at Kennedy and Graven, I've focused primarily on municipal law and helping cities. And so, I really look forward to transitioning things and handling everything that the city may need, helping out and being your new City Attorney. I know that Troy did a tremendous job; I know everyone was sad to see him move on, but I really hope there's absolutely no change in the level of services, and I don't think anyone will notice any difference other than there might be a different person sitting in this chair. And so, you know, again, I really look forward to it. I look forward to working with the Council and with your very highly skilled staff. I've met many of them and I've worked with actually many of them for a handful of years, just on different projects and things, as you know our firm likes to sort of share work and delegate things to different attorneys. And so I have a very good understanding of the city and your staff. **[6:05] Dave Anderson:** Again, I look forward to it, and if anyone ever needs anything or has questions for me, do not hesitate to reach out. Just about me personally, I live in Arden Hills, so not too far from here. I live with my wife and we have two kids. When I'm not at City Council meetings, I'm typically either at the baseball field with the boys or at the hockey rink. I coach both my sons, and so they keep me busy, as you can probably imagine. So I again look forward to it and I'm very excited and honored to be helping. **[6:30] Mayor:** Very good, thank you. Welcome, and we look forward to working with you. All right, item five: visitors and presentations. We have nothing scheduled. Item six: public hearings; nothing scheduled. Item seven: unfinished business; nothing scheduled. Item eight: new business; nothing scheduled. Item nine: a trailer park in Ward 2 neighborhoods. Mr. Copy, whenever you're ready. **[6:50] Mr. Copy (Staff/Public Works):** All right, to the Mayor and members of the Council. So in your packet tonight, we have a request for the area to review the trailer parking and parking in the Ward 2 area east of Stewart Avenue that typically gets inundated with overflow boat trailer parking out of Matoska, especially during our busy summer weekends. So, really a little bit of history—I put some of it in the memo—but in the early 2000s, it was recognized that Matoska continues to be a popular place for launching boats and enjoying the lake. That's when trailer parking was initially kind of enacted and it went through several revisions to try to perfect it, I'll call it. However, since that time—since I think 2005 was the last kind of amendment to the trailer parking and review of it—we've kind of been status quo since then. But since that time, the majority of that area has been reconstructed. We've got new streets in the area, we've gotten rid of the rural section (which we'll kind of get to a little bit in a moment), but so now they're all curb and gutter. They're defined streets; they're nice and new. **[8:25] Mr. Copy:** What the urban section with the curb and gutter brings is... back in the day, when much of the trailer parking was initially reviewed, as you know, you could kind of pull off the side of the street. We had a defined pavement width, but generally people kind of parked out on the boulevards and it worked, so there weren't too many complaints. But now over the last number of years, it has gotten worse and worse. Boat trailers continue to get bigger and bigger; trucks continue to get bigger and bigger. So it really hampers... and again, we should be proud of it, but we get a lot of use from our launch and our Memorial Beach, that whole Lake Avenue Trail. So we have a lot of parking on top of the boat trailer parking, not just the casual fisherman it was years and years ago. **[9:11] Mr. Copy:** That said, what we did was we went out and we reviewed our plans, double-checked measurements out in the field, and you'll see on the map that was both in your packet handout as well as up on the screen tonight, that's what the roads were reconstructed as. You can see 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th—kind of the northern half of that area—just due to some of the restrictions that were presented when those roads were reconstructed, where homes were located, what right-of-way we had, and what amenities we wanted to put back in there (like 11th got a sidewalk on the south side). Those areas were reconstructed narrower than the area to the south. If you look, 11th was reconstructed to 22 feet, 8th, 9th, and 10th were 24 feet, and then finally you get down to 7th down to 4th Street, as well as all the north-south streets, which were reconstructed to 30 feet wide. That being said, 24 feet wide is very difficult, and those are the safety and circulation concerns that we—the mobility concerns—that we received quite a bit over the last several seasons. **[10:44] Mr. Copy:** Cars and boat trailers parking on both sides... no one... it's like you pull up, you're in a hurry, you pull your boat trailer up, it's sticking way out in the street, it's 2 feet off the curb, and all of a sudden you can hardly get a car down the middle of the street, let alone an emergency vehicle, ambulance, fire truck, etc. So we requested... staff was requested to take a look at the existing parking resolutions and what they said. We reviewed the signage, we reviewed street width, and really came up with some recommendations. And more so, I'm going to cut to the chase here: there are four streets that really stuck out to us that are creating the issues, and that's 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. **[11:31] Mr. Copy:** I'll note one typo in the memo on page two: under 10th Street, it should have said Morehead Avenue to Johnson, not Lake Avenue, but it's shown correctly up on the map on the screen. So I'll kind of run down each street, kind of what the conditions are and then what we're recommending. So 11th Street, as a previous slide had shown, only has a restriction for Saturday and Sunday on the north side, but again, when you get parking on both sides at 22 feet, you can hardly pass a car down it. And that does get a lot of traffic from the west coming off of 61, people trying to get to Memorial Beach, so that's a pretty highly used roadway. But with the sidewalk on the south side, we still feel it's important to maintain some parking along there; people can get their kids out, park on there, step out on the sidewalk and walk to Memorial Beach. So staff would recommend for 11th Street that we sign the north side "no parking all times" just to maintain that traffic flow. The south side would be allowed parking but "no boat trailers"—not that we get a lot of boat trailers up that far, but just in the event that it does. **[13:04] Mr. Copy:** I'll kind of summarize 8th, 9th, and 10th: due to the 24-foot width, we would recommend that one side be "no parking" on the north side and "no trailer parking" on the south side, so really restricting it to passenger vehicles only. This would get rid of any overflow trailer parking that would happen to get that far north, not that it does often. There are some folks that live in the area that do have boats that oftentimes will park out on the street. You know, the city does have—I'm not going to quote the ordinances—for how long boats can park out on the street to be attached to a vehicle and so forth. So that's kind of what we boil it down to. I’d kind of open it to discussion that Council would have or questions you have of me, but again, 7th Street down to 4th, as well as the north-south streets, are fairly adequately wide enough to park on both sides even with trailers limited to just the one side; there still is generally enough room to pass two vehicles with enough driveways where there's gaps and things like that. So I'd be happy to answer any questions that Council may have. **[14:37] Mayor:** Thank you. I’ve got a couple questions to kick things off. So, is the problem trailer boat trailer parking or parking in general? Because we're talking about making a switch to just "no parking all the time," and my concern is people that live on the north side that have guests over. So is it just limited to boat trailers, or do we have a broader issue of just parking in general and therefore it's good policy to do that? **[15:06] Mr. Copy:** Broader issue. Mayor and members of the Council, the 24 feet wide... when you look at parking lanes, we typically stripe them 8 feet wide, so that leaves... if we allow parking on both sides, that leaves you 8 feet down the center. That's a challenge—Councilmember Engren, you know, former Fire—but that's a hard thing to get an ambulance, fire truck, or public safety vehicle down. That was some of the concerns during some of the events that we have in the summertime, that cars were parked so tight in there that we couldn't get anything down those roadways. So it goes broader than that. Even if you have two cars or a boat trailer and a car parked side by side, 8 feet is pretty tight. And then if it's during busy, busy times, there's not enough driveways where you can kind of weave in and out and give people gaps. So it really becomes just a general parking issue. Traffic in the area generally isn't—I get it, during the summertime it can be high—but typically people aren't crazy racing up and down the streets when it's that busy. From a safety standpoint, looking at a broad review of the area, there's not a significant history of pedestrians being struck or anything like that, so it's pretty safe overall. If somebody has to... is it a little bit inconvenient to have to walk across the street? Absolutely. But just from an overall mobility in the area and getting public safety vehicles down, it's an overall parking issue having it on both sides. **[16:44] Mayor:** Okay, one of the staff recommendations was sending out letters and then inviting folks to a public hearing. I'm all for that and I would prefer to do that, but I'd like to talk a little bit about the logistics. Is it feasible to get letters out like this week so that people can actually join us for the next council meeting? My concern being it's already mid-June, and then if we kick the can down the road and we finally come to some resolution mid-July, the season's half over and we've got a month more of problems. So talk through the timeline of getting information out and actually getting signs made and installed. What's realistic? **[17:28] Mr. Copy:** Mayor and members of the Council, Miss Crawford and I spoke about that a little bit last week as we're putting the memo together. From an enforceability standpoint, Council does have to, through resolution, adopt those "no parking" areas. From a manufacturing of the signs, fairly quickly, typically within a week or two we can have signs made and installed. Some of them obviously are stock signs (the "no parking" signs are off-the-shelf types). We’d have to add any additional "no trailer parking" signs; we do have a few in stock at the city, we might have to have some additional ones made, but I'm not too concerned with that. From actually having or inviting to a neighborhood meeting, depends on what we want to call it. If it's a true public hearing, typically we give 10 days notice; it's not required under this setting, but typically we would advertise it as such or at least treat it like a public hearing so that we would put it in the paper. Typically we like to give at least 10 days notice to residents, so it's tight to get it to the next council meeting. From a logistic standpoint, not having to have it as a public hearing could be just a "hey, we're inviting you to come express your concerns at the next council meeting." Yeah, you could send out a letter tomorrow, but depends on how the Council wants to present it—public hearing versus just "we're welcoming comment" at the next council meeting. **[18:55] Mayor:** Okay, well, just so the Council knows where my head is, at a minimum we have to do the more informal process. To the extent we can have a formal public hearing, it's the Ward 2 neighborhood. If we've got a problem, I want to do this sooner rather than later, but I want to give folks a chance to voice their opinion; they're the ones that live there, so I want to hear from them. Those are my thoughts. Council questions for Mr. Copy or discussion? **[19:13] Councilmember Walsh:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I guess my question is, where are the trailers coming from? Is this our dock or our launch, or is it the Ramsey County launch to the north? Is there enough parking for the Ramsey County parking lot north? Are they spilling out of that, or is this the City launch? **[19:28] Mr. Copy:** Mayor and members of the Council, we're generally seeing it from our launch. We have relatively few spots for boat trailers to park comparatively. Ramsey County has many more spots and we're not seeing it really widespread there. Maybe on a super warm, popular Saturday afternoon somebody might launch at Ramsey County and find out there's not a parking spot and get into the neighborhoods, but we don't see it too widespread in the area that I've highlighted up on the screen. Most of it is people leaving Matoska, going down Lake Avenue and they kind of just circulate around and find the closest spot to Matoska. We don't see a lot of it... you'll see a few that will migrate up to 8th and 9th Street. A lot of it's just from convenience, because if you look at... and I'm not here a ton on the weekends to observe a lot of this, but Morehead and Johnson are wider streets, they have plenty of room. But people tend to want to... and I'm a boat owner, and I'll park as close as I can, have my truck parked pointed in the right direction to get back to picking my boat up as easily as quickly as possible. So some of it's out of convenience versus where they should be parking. I don't know that restricting this will have trailers migrate elsewhere. **[21:11] Councilmember Walsh:** Well, that's the question—it’s sort of whack-a-mole. So if you cut off some parking up here, where are they going to go? As long as we kind of have an understanding of where they're going to go and if there's room, then we're doing it in a smart way. You know better than I do—are there trailers out on 96? Are they allowed to be there between like 11th and Ramsey County Park? **[21:33] Mr. Copy:** Mayor and members of the Council, from what I recall, it is not signed "no parking." It's a state highway, so that's under the Minnesota Department of Transportation. But as long as it's not signed "no parking," there's not really a limit out there. Again, on those really busy days, some may overflow. But yeah, to answer your question, they're mostly coming out of Matoska and they're all over. Like you said, there's 10 parking spots down there, and if you look out, there's 300 boats on the lake—where do they all come from? **[22:21] Councilmember Hughes:** I think, just briefly, I think it looks great and I'd love to get this to the public as soon as possible and find out what they think. I'm sure it's going to be a nuisance for some people to not be able to park. Especially 10th Street, there's a bunch of houses on there and we've blocked off a ton of their parking, but at the same time, I get a lot of complaints from that particular area that people can't even get out of their driveway. So I'd like to give them something as soon as possible to talk about. **[22:58] Mayor:** Council, Mr. Copy, should we also look just north of what this map is including? Is that Morehead that is connected to 11th? To Councilmember Hughes' point, is there more north that we should be looking at including 96? 11th is the end of it before you hit 96, okay. **[23:09] Mr. Copy:** Well, that little north-south stretch, I think that was Morehead, but yeah... it does go up all the way to 96, right? That little block, I'm not exactly sure how long that even is right in front of the dentist office there. **[23:25] Mayor:** Just if we're looking at it, should we expand as well? Councilmember Edberg. **[23:31] Councilmember Edberg:** Thank you, Mayor. So I'm rolling this around in my head. What is the city's interest in ensuring that there is adequate parking? The lake is a big lake; there are multiple municipalities, not all of which have boat launching facilities. To what extent is it in our interest to try and make it easier, slash convenient, slash reasonable to park trailers and boats and encourage the use of the lake with the City of White Bear Lake access as opposed to somebody else's access? Is there any ramification of that that's worth thinking about? I can imagine that there are a number of enterprises in the city that would say, "Hey, it's in our interest to have more foot traffic, more general citizen and visitor traffic," so we want to have adequate and reasonable parking facilities in the city because that creates economic activity. I don't know that that's the case, but I can picture that. Beyond that, I'm not quite sure other than the livability of our city for our residents is an overriding question. So I don't know if there's any aspect of that that's worth our consideration. And the last question, Mr. Copy, for you would be: did we screw up by making those streets so narrow when we reconstructed them? Did we have any other choices? Do we have any installer regrets? **[25:34] Mr. Copy:** Mayor and members of the Council, the first part of your question I will defer—I'm not sure from a marketing standpoint outside of my wheelhouse. As far as the reconstruction of those roadways, limitations, like I said, right-of-way things... in a very old platted area, you're trying to accommodate many different things. I'll call it grandfathered-in setbacks on garages where, had we made the road wider, you couldn't even park a car in the driveway. We're dealing with an older area, so certain things you just have to kind of deal with. Otherwise, if we would have done that, we actually would push more parking out into the street because now people can't park a car or two in a driveway. The right-of-way might not have been there. Some of it predates me, but a couple of the streets that I was involved in, that was the case—houses were placed on lots, we didn't have the setbacks that we do today. Back in the day, you platted a lot, you built where you wanted to on it from property line to property line, and we didn't have the robust inspections and zoning and code enforcement like we have today. So we fit them in to fit the conditions. I know 11th Street could have been probably done wider; the decision was at the time Council and staff recommended putting a sidewalk along there due to the proximity of Memorial Beach and the park, to safely get people off the roadway and to the park. So that limited that a little bit more than even 8th, 9th, and 10th. But there are constraints that I don't know that we would have been able to reconstruct much wider than they are. **[27:41] Mayor:** Cool, thank you. Councilmember Edberg, to your point, I'd like to kick that around. I think it's a fair point: does it spur economic activity for restaurants or other places, and do we have an interest in that? I suspect—and I'm happy to be corrected—which is why when we have a public forum it's not just the residents, it's business owners too. I suspect if the culprit is boat trailers, just being someone who spends a lot of time on the lake, you largely pack your food, go on the lake, and leave. I don't see a lot of boat trailers parked along 4th, for example, to stop at Mani's Station or things like that. But that's a fair point—Kowalski's, Freedom, where you pick up food. There might be some cross traffic that if they can't get their boat on the lake, they might turn around and that could have a negative effect. On that note, I think our primary concern should be with quality of life for the homeowners and the people that live there first and foremost, but that's a good point and I think that should be part of the discussion as we deliberate this. Any other thoughts on this? **[28:57] Mayor:** Well, I think if I'm reading the room right, then at the next council meeting we'd like to see a resolution brought back with what the city recommendation is. We'll have some discussion centered around it, and to the extent that we can facilitate a formal public hearing that'd be preferable, but at a minimum let's at least promote it and communicate. Miss Crawford? **[29:15] Lindsey Crawford (City Manager):** Thank you, Mayor. There may not be enough time for the paper deadline to publish a formal public hearing by the next council meeting date; I have to look at the dates. So if that's the case, do you want us to push it to the first July meeting, or do you want to have an informal public comment period? **[29:35] Mayor:** I think it's time sensitive, we truly do have a problem. So I'd rather it be more informal. And I'm saying here tonight, noticing the formal public hearing is the gold standard, but I'm telling the community now I want to hear from residents and we'll facilitate whatever public forum we need to hear from the relevant stakeholders so that we can deliberate this properly. Makes sense? **[29:58] Lindsey Crawford:** Yes, thank you. **[30:00] Mayor:** Perfect. Mr. Copy? **[30:03] Mr. Copy:** Mayor and members of the Council, just one last question for you: do you have a preference as far as the extent of the notice that we send out? If we send it just to those that are adjacent to the streets that would be affected, or would you like it sent to kind of the overall area east of Stewart Avenue? **[30:21] Mayor:** I think wider's better because other than just the homeowners, the people that maybe live a couple blocks south on 5th or 6th but are walking or biking and observe it, those are people that have maybe some informed opinions on this. So we don't need to blunderbuss the whole downtown area, but certainly expand outward beyond just the streets that we're talking about making changes to. And then I mean, Council can weigh in, but I would defer to staff's good discretion. Councilmember Edberg? **[31:13] Councilmember Edberg:** Would we also want to make outreach to the Chamber and to the Main Street Association for any possible business impacts? Just awareness. **[31:26] Mayor:** I think that's fair. If you can hit those two entities and then go from there, I wouldn't go much further than that. I'd allow them to communicate with their members and make whatever choices they want. All right, are we good on that topic? Our only topic. All right, item 10: communication from the City Manager. Miss Crawford, do you have anything for us this evening? **[31:36] Lindsey Crawford:** Mayor and members of the Council, thank you. My notes are in there. We have some upcoming events: Manitou Days begins this Thursday the 13th with Marketfest at 6 PM. I was going to add a note about the parade and Beach Dance which are Friday. So meet here at City Hall at 6:10 on Friday to be in the parade, and the Beach Dance is after that. But there's a lot more information that would take me all night to list, so please visit those websites. And then we have a South Shore and Lake Links Trail ribbon cutting on Thursday, June 20th at 3:30 PM at Bellaire Beach. If the City Council can please attend that—that was a significant project for staff in partnership with Ramsey County, and we're almost 100% finished with our portion of the trail, so that's exciting. And then Fridays with Firefighters: the first one for this summer is Friday, June 21st from 10 to noon at the south fire station. **[32:48] Lindsey Crawford:** I think I have one more slide. And here's what I was going to share last time: we are sharing our Hometown Pride and have these magnets and stickers available for sale with proceeds going to our flower fund. So you can buy them here at City Hall at any of our front desk counters. Cash is preferred, but we do take cards. So I have mine—here's my little sticker here and my magnet's in my office—but they're pretty cute. Former Councilmember Jones helped us get that artwork up, so please everybody go buy one and help support our flower fund. And then a reminder for the City Council: tomorrow we have a tour with the Planning Commission of the Lochner at 5:30. If we can just meet in the parking lot at the Lochner, we'll get started right away. And then I will not be at our next city council meeting; I will be out of town. I know—first council meeting missed in my so far 10 years, so feels a little odd, but Rick will do just fine. Thank you. **[33:58] Mayor:** Very good, thank you. Do we have any questions or comments from Miss Crawford? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. [Councilmember: Motion. Councilmember: Second.] I have a second. All those in favor say Aye. [Council: Aye.] We're adjourned.