[0:13] Mary Fasbender: Jo Joe came on probably the first year I was mayor [1:25] Mary Fasbender: Time being 7:00, I call the Hastings City Council meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. [Pledge of Allegiance]. Welcome, and let the role reflect we have an absent council member—Folch is not with us tonight—but we still have a quorum. So we have a couple of new promotions and new employees that actually are not with us, but we will still tell you about them. Welcome, John. [2:11] John Hinzman: Thank you, Mayor, City Council Members. It's my pleasure to announce the arrival of Lonnie Johnson, our new building official. Lonnie's been with the city now for about two months. He brings with him a tremendous amount of experience both on the practical side in construction and also on the building inspection side. He served previously in the city of Farmington as an inspector there and spent many, many years as a building contractor, so he has the practical experience along with the code experience as well. One of the things we really appreciate about Lonnie since his beginning work at the city of Hastings is just his calm, confident demeanor. He's just known to be a good subject matter expert in a lot of things related to building inspection, and that just exudes throughout the department, which is great to have. Lonnie has been serving on the Prescott Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter for almost about 40 years right now, so that's another great attribute he brings with us. He and his wife, Jeanie, live in Prescott and they have two adult kids, so we're very happy to have Lonnie on board. [3:28] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, and welcome Lonnie. Dan? [3:28] Dan Wietecha: This happens sometimes. Joe Sasy was hired on as a full-time firefighter in 2018. Previously he had been with the department on a paid-on-call basis, and a couple of months ago, earlier this year, we promoted him to Captain, which is a testament to his calm demeanor—hopefully a popular topic tonight—but as I mentioned, sometimes this happens. Joe was here and so was the Chief to give this speech and out on a call, keeping the citizens of Hastings safe. [4:14] Dan Wietecha: But it puts me on a chance to go by memory—what do I know about Joe—but definitely appreciate his leadership and the confidence that the department has in him at promoting him to Captain. So thank you much. [4:14] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, Dan. So we welcome Lonnie and we congratulate Joe. Council members, are there any corrections to the minutes from the regular meeting on November 20th? Okay, and tonight we will see if there are any comments from the audience on Zoom. No one on Zoom? Okay, we'll move forward to any Council items to be considered. Council? Okay, I would accept a motion to accept the consent agenda. [5:01] Mary Fasbender: Councilmember Leifeld, and a second by Councilmember Pemble. Any discussion, Council? All those in favor of the motion state by saying Aye. [Ayes]. Opposed to that motion state by saying Nay. And that motion prevails. Tonight under public hearing, we have a Truth in Taxation for the 2024 budget. For this item, we will have an introduction by City Administrator Dan Wietecha followed by a public hearing and several potential action items by the Council. And Chris Eitemiller is with us tonight. Let's make sure it's working here. [5:47] Chris Eitemiller: Okay, well, good evening everyone. I was going to thank them for coming; everyone just left! So, here for our annual Truth and Taxation meeting. The purpose of our meeting tonight is to present the budget to the public to receive any public comment there might be. And just as importantly to point out, the purpose is not to address market values. We have this discussion with members of the community every year. They say, "Well, taxes went up however much," and it turns out half or more sometimes is related to market value determination. That's the County that handles that, and that process is concluded in the spring, so it was quite some time ago when that would have been finished. Tonight, after the hearing, staff would be asking City Council, if comfortable, to adopt our final budget, the levies for both HEDRA and the City, as well as our '24 through '28 CIP. The focus of our budget, as always, is on providing basic city services at adequate funding levels to have reasonable revenues, as we don't want to stick our neck out too far on things that may or may not come to pass; to retain adequate reserves to protect against unknown, unknowable situations that might pop up; as well as to demonstrate strong stewardship of our infrastructure and plan for all repair and replacement in a proactive manner. We also follow our core values when creating the budget and are also keeping an eye to provide support for the strategic initiatives that were discussed last year. [7:20] Chris Eitemiller: So our budget process begins with Council direction during work sessions in June, and then staff prepares the budget to address Council goals and operational needs. Then we have meetings where the departments have meetings with the Finance Committee to discuss their budget requests. City Council workshops are also held to discuss the budget. We have to adopt the preliminary budget and levy in September. Then the County sends out notices of the estimated impact, breaking it down by taxing jurisdiction. And the Truth and Taxation hearing is tonight, and then yet this month we need to adopt the budget and the levy. A few larger changes since September 18th: we increased our cost allocation across City departments for work comp, general liability insurance, as well as heating-related expenses that hadn't been done in recent years, so we needed to get that cleaned up. We also—in September, we were talking about a 23% health insurance increase. The City HR staff worked with our co-op to come up with an option to give people a lower-cost choice from what we otherwise would have had, and based upon employees' selections in the recent open enrollment, we have been able to reduce that a bit. We are also still waiting for the workers' comp insurance premium. And in an effort to save money, we did prepay for a ladder truck in the Fire Department. We'll get into a little more detail in a couple of slides here, but it's two and a half to three years out before we will get that. So it's still a long time, but we got the process in play. [9:46] Chris Eitemiller: Property tax levy increasing 7.34%, or $1,277,000. The annual impact on a median-valued home of about $313,000 is $106. That's $8.83 per month. 39% of that is tax capacity growth. This increase is similar to what other cities in Dakota County are considering. Just today, the League of Minnesota Cities sent out an email with an article that the average tax increase across the state of Minnesota for cities was almost 8.5%. So just throwing that out there. Our tax rate will increase 1.86% from 53.3 to 55.2. Our Local Government Aid is increasing nearly $373,000—those are all ongoing revenues. And then as far as one-time revenues, we did get a Public Safety Aid allocation from the State of Minnesota of about $975,000, and we are planning some selected use of reserves in both the General Fund and two Parks funds. As far as what's in the budget for the expense side: we are adding a part-time Office Support Specialist in Parks; a part-time intern in Communications focused on social media. Public Works will be promoting the Principal Engineer to City Engineer—no additional position added, but just a promotion to that staff member. Also, we have an every-other-year expense for election judges, increasing the pay for those workers. We're also increasing City funding for the Community Engagement Officer; the COPS grant that initially paid for that position ends this year, so as we were phasing it in over the last three years, we had that last increment that the City had to take on. We mentioned health insurance—in September we were looking at nearly $350,000 of levy-supported funds increase, and that's dropped down to 215, so about a $131,000 decrease. The annual wage adjustment for staff is proposed at 4%. We're planning to continue implementation of the comp and class study. And last year for the '23 budget, we added four firefighters—two with ongoing funding and two with one-time funding. The '24 budget has funded those two firefighters that were added with one-time funding; that is now ongoing for those two positions. [12:53] Chris Eitemiller: Some other key areas: we added 1% of general inflation to services and supplies. That's in addition to the 2% general inflation that was added in '23. In addition to the general inflation, there are several areas where, on a case-by-case basis, there were increases beyond that: road salt, building maintenance, and IT maintenance and security improvements are chief among those. Some capital additions that are in this budget: we're continuing to emphasize Public Safety infrastructure and Asset Management. The biggest one is Street Maintenance—an overall increase of over a million dollars. $525,000 of that is in mill and overlay, which will bring the annual ongoing funding for that program to $1 million. Then there's $250,000 to increase work on skim patching for streets, and because of that added workload in skim patching, the City needs to buy a used paver at approximately a quarter million dollars. As mentioned earlier, the ladder truck has been ordered and prepaid at a cost of $1.6 million. We saved over $200,000 by paying for it upfront. Still looking at 30 to 36 months until we would be receiving that. As the funding package that was put together to pay for that was $900,000 of that Public Safety Aid allocation, a substantial part of that $1.6 million came from that. The Community Investment Fund will be in its third year of funding, but now we have ongoing funding for those projects. General fund reserves are targeted to transfer $393,000 to Parks Capital to do trail work. And just a note—we always have a lot of capital requests, and around $2.5 million that was requested is not included in this budget. So much of that is going to carry forward into future years. Bonding projects: we've got the annual street project, usually around $4 million—this year $4,125,000. We are expecting a higher percentage than in past years to be funded through utility revenue bonds, so about 2.3 million from GO bonds and $1,775,000 from utility revenue bonds. These amounts and this project were included in the rate study done by Northland for our utilities. The arena project continues to increase in projected cost; it's up to $5.2 million. The biggest piece of that is the refrigerant system that does need to be replaced and can't wait any longer. We're also doing some lighting upgrades, replacing the roof over the West Rink, installing solar panels on the West Rink roof, and hoping we can get about two and a quarter million of this project funded from the State in next year's bonding bill—that's one of our requests. Also, the project for the City Hall renovation—we're looking at about $1.8 million of additional costs there, and we're asking the State for half of that as well, $900,000. [16:46] Chris Eitemiller: A little more detail on a couple of those projects. We originally on the City Hall project and HVAC upgrades—we had a $2 million grant from the State bonding bill a couple years ago, as well as we used some cash reserves from the ARPA grant and we had a State Historical Society grant that paid for some other work as well. With that $1.8 million, again, we're asking for half of that to be funded by the State. If we get that, it's possible we might be able to cover the other half with City reserves and avoid having to bond. But if we do not get that, frankly, bonding is the most likely option to fund that. We did get permission from the State to bid the dome replacement out as one complete replacement. Now the Civic Center—again, $5.2 million—planning to happen in '24. We'll have to proceed with this project in '24 whether or not we get that support from the State. Now, the utility rate study was presented to Council on September 18th by Northland, and they recommended the following rate increases for the different utilities: 3.5% for water, 4.5% for sewer, and 4% for storm water. Capital maintenance and other significant projects are the reason for that. The utility portion of the neighborhood project again is a big piece in '24—$1,775,000. We also are doing rehabilitation for both sewer and water lines and water wells. We're buying a John Deere tractor with mower for storm water. There's the SCADA upgrade that impacts both water and sewer, doing sewer lift station and pump controls. And the water quality improvement project was also included in Northland's study. [18:17] Chris Eitemiller: As part of that utility rate study were SAC and WAC fee recommendations. These are fees charged to a development project to help fund the infrastructure related to that new development. An example would be a water tower, well, pump house, lift station, or pipe oversizing. Also, these recommended increases you'll see for a water availability fee: increase from $2,306 to $2,957 per residential unit—that's a $651 increase proposed. The sewer availability fee, if adopted per this recommendation, would increase from $708 to $945—an increase of $236 per unit. The chart on the next slide will illustrate that even with these increases, the Hastings SAC and WAC fees are competitive with area communities. Here you'll see that the green bar to the far left is where Hastings sits now with no increases. These proposed increases would move us to the orange location, which would place us just above Apple Valley and Cottage Grove, but still below Rosemount, Farmington, and Lakeville. Lake Elmo is included there as another example of what's going on in other places around the metro area. So, preliminary tax impact again: we've said 55.2 for our tax rate, an increase of 1.86% from '23. Increase in levy dollars of 7.34%, and our levy would total $18,649,930. This chart is something we've used every year, showing the tax capacity steady growth over the last 10 years, then along with the levy in green and the tax rate at the top, which has been on a more or less steady decline in the last decade. The next couple slides show a comparison of Hastings with area communities. This first one is focused on residential homestead properties and the average total increase. You'll see that Hastings is in the upper right-hand corner of this map, meant as a comparison with our neighbors. This next table for commercial properties, same comparison of Hastings with our neighbors and how those properties are impacted with the various proposed budgets. HEDRA—by statute we have a formula for how much we can calculate for the levy for HEDRA's operations, and this year it's at just shy of $509,000. Last year it was about $429,000. The total spending proposed is $1,035,000. Fund balance will be the funding source for those expenses that occur beyond the $509,000 of levy. So as far as next steps: we have our hearing tonight and we would ask Council to consider, if you're comfortable, possibly adopting tonight. If not, we do have to adopt in our next meeting. So I guess that's everything that we have. [22:10] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, Chris. Well, I think we'll first open the public hearing and then after that have discussion from Council. At this time I will open the public hearing. Anyone wish to speak to the Council at this time on the Truth and Taxation? Anyone? There's somebody there. If you are on Zoom, please raise your hand and Dan can bring you in. We see no raised hand on Zoom either. [22:56] Mary Fasbender: At this time I will close the public hearing and open the discussion for Council. Any discussion, Council? [23:42] Mary Fasbender: Okay. Your honor? Yes? [23:42] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: Just a point of clarification. Are you looking for resolution approval right now or are we saving that for later? [23:42] Mary Fasbender: No, we can do it all right—and we can do it in four parts: A, B, C, D. Or if you wish, because there is no discussion, we could accept the motion for all of it all at once, all together. [23:42] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: Okay, thank you. Welcome. If I may—as a member of the Finance Committee, I want to deeply thank our staff for putting together a balanced budget. Thank you, Dan, for leading all of the workshops and all of the committee meetings. This is not an easy topic. We meet all year long to make sure that we have a strong budget that deeply supports our strategic priorities that are set by Council and department heads. And it's also really rewarding to be able to meet—part of our process just to put that out to the public too—is that the Finance Committee meets with department heads to hear the needs and expectations and wants for the year ahead. And then that's part of what we had to leave out of this budget, and that's a really challenging part—the places that we can see our city going and we're not quite able to get there. So I'm really proud of the budget that we put together as our Finance Committee and our Council met many times to make this happen. And I would like to make a motion to approve the 2024 budget, all of the resolutions. [25:15] Mary Fasbender: Okay, thank you Councilmember Vihrachoff. And a second by Councilmember Leifeld. New or additional discussion, Council? Okay, all those in favor of the motion state by saying Aye. [Ayes]. Opposed to that motion state by saying Nay. And that motion prevails. I do want to extend my thanks to the Finance Department, Finance Committee, and all that goes into a budget. As Councilmember Vihrachoff says, it's a long process starting back in May. And to be able to depict what is important for the community at this point—you know, what are our needs for now and in the future—we appreciate it. So thank you. Okay, under Community Development, we have an authorization for a distribution of an environmental assessment worksheet, the EAW, and this is at the Walden at Hastings development at 316 and Michael Avenue. For this we have an introduction by Community Development Director John Hinzman. [26:02] John Hinzman: Thank you, Mayor, City Council Members. As the Mayor pointed out here tonight, the action we're asking from the Council is to authorize distribution of the EAW, which is the environmental assessment worksheet, which was included in your packet. As you can see from looking through it, it's quite an extensive document. It goes through environmental effects and also transportation effects of the proposed development itself. It is something in which we are obligated to provide because of the size of the Walden at Hastings development. As the Mayor pointed out, this is at the corner of 316 and Michael Avenue. We went through an annexation previously this year and we will have future land use applications coming forward pertaining to the development. What's being proposed at this point by the developer is about 511 housing units, which would be a combination between single-family, townhome, twin home, and apartment units within the development itself. So what the environmental assessment worksheet does is provide an assessment of that. This is something that was put together by the developer's engineer, reviewed by City staff with tweaks made, and we brought this forward to you for action tonight. Now what will happen now in the future is, upon your authorization, this will be distributed to a number of different agencies and will also be available for public review as well. So the public will be able to comment on this, and state agencies and federal agencies are obligated to be provided this document for their comment as well. So in January, after a 30-day period's over with, we'll be bringing back these comments with our reactions to them and then asking for further action by the Council at this point. So I can stand for any questions that you may have on this tonight. Thank you. [27:34] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, John. Council, any discussion? Councilmember Vihrachoff. [27:34] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: Thank you, your honor. John, sorry, can you break that stakeholder engagement down for me one more time please? [28:20] John Hinzman: Sure. Yeah, as far as what happens from here? Got it. Okay. The EAW itself will be distributed to various agencies at the State for their review and comment and will also be available—we'll have it on our website for public comment as well. And when we have all the public—it's a 30-day public comment period—when that concludes, we will provide all those comments back to the Council as well as our comments on that. The determination that we'll need to make at that point is whether the EAW is adequate and whether any other environmental investigation is necessary. That would be a "negative declaration" is what we would be asking for at that point. If it turned out that there were other questions and potentially more environmental assessment necessary, we would take actions at that point. So that would be the environmental side of it. And then from the project side of it, assuming that the EAW is adequate after public review, the developer would be submitting his land use applications for action—essentially his plat, his site plan, the nuts and bolts of what we've been seeing beyond the concept plan. And so the developer is anticipating receipt of those, or distribution of those, over the winter—so you know, towards winter/spring doing that. If things go well on that, perhaps we'd see something turning dirt later on this year in infrastructure, or next year in infrastructure. [28:20] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: Excellent, thank you. So just to be really clear, the public comments from our community will be submitted online via our website? [28:20] John Hinzman: Yeah, they could be submitted—the document itself will be available online and then they can submit the comments to us, to me directly on that one, and I'll be the arbiter of that. [28:20] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: Thank you, yep. [29:07] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, Councilmember Vihrachoff. Any other? Councilmember Leifeld. [29:07] Lisa Leifeld: Thanks, your honor. John, I've had a few conversations with a resident and I just was hoping you might be able to clarify how this overall process works when we're dealing with land on the south of town—obviously exceptional farmland. A farmer or whomever owns this property, how did we get from a farmer owning the property to where we're at today? Does that make sense? [29:53] John Hinzman: It does, Councilmember. Within our Comprehensive Plan, we'll designate property for future development. Through the designation of property, it doesn't obligate someone to develop but provides them the opportunity for development to occur. And so the land that is part of this EAW was identified within our Comprehensive Plan for future development. There was a residential density that was established on that property and now that developer is coming back with this plan on that one. So really, a decision for the owner of the property to make. If it's within our Comprehensive Plan, it's something that we will generally consider. If it's something that's not within our Comprehensive Plan, that's a more difficult decision. [29:53] Lisa Leifeld: And maybe you don't have an answer to this—when do you have an idea of when we put this on the Comprehensive Plan for that particular location? [31:27] John Hinzman: Councilmember, I remember in the 2020 plan 20 years ago this property being in the Comprehensive Plan at that point. So at least at that point. I know one of the hindrances towards development of this property was frankly access to Highway 316, and we were cognizant of not wanting to do further development on 316 until improvements were made. Once those improvements were made, the last couple of years opened up land along 316 for future development. [31:27] Lisa Leifeld: Wonderful. And wanting to just express too that development is important, right, to our community. We're a bit landlocked in regards to the rivers that surround us. And understanding how important farmland is to our community and the communities around us, but ultimately knowing that it is an owner's right to do what they wish with their land and understanding that this wasn't something that they were strong-armed into or anything along those lines. You know, but it was identified some time ago and at that point then a developer says, "Oh, this looks kind of interesting," and then they go to the property owner, I assume, and go from there. So I just—I appreciate your clarification. I know farming has a long history in our community. We certainly want to be able to promote that farming around us, but in a situation like this I just really wanted that explanation and that really helps. Thanks, John. [32:14] Mary Fasbender: Thank you, Councilmember Leifeld. Councilmember Vihrachoff. [32:14] DawnMarie Vihrachoff: I would like to move to authorize the distribution of the environmental assessment worksheet. [32:59] Mary Fasbender: Okay, thank you Councilmember Vihrachoff, and Councilmember Haus is a second. Discussion, Council? All those in favor of the motion state by saying Aye. [Ayes]. Opposed to that motion state by saying Nay. And that motion prevails. Okay, thank you. Thank you, John. Council, any announcements? Okay, I do have a few. Enjoy CPKC Holiday Train and the free holiday concert by Tenille Townes and Breland on Saturday, December 9th. Please bring food or monetary donations for the Hastings Family Service. Hastings Police Department and City Hall will have drop-off locations for Toys for Tots; please bring new and unwrapped toys by December 15th. City offices will be closed 11:00 to 1:00 on Tuesday, December 12th for the city employee holiday party and staff recognition. Recycle your old lights with the Hastings Holiday Lights drop-off collection; residents can drop off their unwanted light strands at the Joint Maintenance Facility at 920 10th Street West during the holiday season from November 13th to January 31st. Meetings: Monday, December 11th, the Planning Committee meeting has been cancelled. There is an Operations Committee meeting at 7:00 PM. Wednesday, December 13th, Arts and Culture Commission is at 6:00 PM. Thursday, December 14th, we have a HEDRA meeting at 6:00 PM. And Monday, December 18th, there is a City Council meeting at 7:00 PM. [34:33] Dan Wietecha: And one more announcement—we'd like to wish a super happy birthday to Mayor Mary Fasbender! [34:33] Mary Fasbender: Thank you! I'm so excited, it's my Medicare birthday, so I'm all on it. Yes. Retirement? Not retirement, just insurance is all good. So I would accept a motion to adjourn, please. [35:20] Mary Fasbender: Councilmember Pemble, Councilmember Haus. No discussion. All those in favor of the motion state by saying Aye. [Ayes]. Opposed to that motion state by saying Nay. We are adjourned.