all right we're we are ready to get started here um and mayor council we do have senator coleman okay so senator coleman and uh representative nash are virtually joining us terrific all right let's call this all ready awesome good evening it's now 502 and i call the workshop of the victoria city council to order our workshops are informal and this evening we do have a number of guests joining us both in person and online so with that let's go around the room and do introductions i'm going to start over here uh let's start with representative bo why don't you come on up to the podium so we can hear you and then we'll go from there very good uh state representative greg bowe uh proud to represent all of chaska a good portion of chanhassen and a good portion of victoria as well terrific you thank you commissioner utterman matt uderman district three carver county commissioner newly elected representing um chaskin victoria south of five north of uh downtown chaska and west of 41. we'll go uh we'll do the introductions here in the room first and then we'll go to the phones i'm deb mcmillan i'm the mayor of victoria let's go over here to council member roberts i'm chad roberts and i was newly elected council member in november uh judy black i'm in my third year as council derrick gunderson uh first term victoria city council yep go ahead cindy batten on city clerk melissa swanson assistant to the city manager dana hardy city manager terrific and then we also have uh online let's go to uh senator coleman hey can everyone hear me yes yes hello julia coleman representing uh senate district 47 which includes uh representative beau and representative nash's uh portions of the district so i'm really excited to be here to my first victoria council meeting thank you representative nash thank you madam mayor members of the council happy to be here jim nash district 47a just entered my fourth term here in the legislature and i serve uh geographically the largest part of carver county but i have uh victoria p3 as part of my district so happy to be here great terrific thank you very much and welcome to all of you we're delighted to have you here so we have two items on our workshop agenda this evening the first item is our legislative discussion assistant to the city manager alyssa swanson coordinates the city's legislative platform so with that ms swanson the floor is yours thank you mayor uh mayor council members representatives this evening and uh commissioners thank you for attending we are very very fortunate to be able to go through this exercise with each and every one of you just a note this is something or a process we do annually at the city of victoria although we are starting a little late this year it is still very important for us to do this i'm at a public forum like we are and it's also very important for us as staff and council as once a session starts rolling and we start receiving more requests to do things like testify or give letters of support or opposition this platform really helps us well come to the capitol with one voice for the city of victoria another thing to note is anything you see this evening is not set in stone these priorities can be changed actually we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts receiving your feedback so just to note council that anything you'd like to be changed we will bring back to you at the february 22nd city council meeting to get us rolling i'll just do a brief session highlight of what's been going on at the capitol i'll start with november the election that transpired which resulted in we have two are not two sorry uh ten new state senators that are joining us um seven of those are democrats three of those are republican and we're very fortunate to have one on the line senator coleman again thank you for participating in this discussion this evening and congratulations on your most recent election on the house side out of those elected 89 percent of them were incumbents out of the 23 newly elected 11 of those were republican 12 of those were democrat and soon after the member elects took their oath of office governor walsh released his two-year 52.4 billion dollar budget proposal for the budget proposal majority of the revenue comes from taxes that could be capital gains tax corporate tax income tax tax on tobacco products just to name a few and you may have heard this budget being termed as the minnesota covid uh relief budget and that's in part to a majority of expenses coming from uh are going to education health and human services and then 50 million being districted out toward small business relief now the state or the state senate and the house are both deliberating and revising the state budget but we're all in anticipation for that february forecast that's anticipated to come out at the end of this month once that is released by the minnesota management and budget office governor wallace has an opportunity to revise his budget once more then it will go back to the senate go through the legislative process once again and then it eventually will be revised and then approved by the legislature go back to the governor to either be passed into laws veto portions or veto the complete budget but the budget isn't the only thing on discussion during the session there are other topics that may come up during 20 or the 2021 legislative session there are election reform health care affordability job care or job care job reform economic security and that's just to name a few there with coven 19 advocacy we do anticipate to be a little difficult this session as it was in 2020 so we are going to rely on our relationship with our legislative delegation and our local elected officials we also are part of two member organizations the league of minnesota cities which represents all minnesota cities at the capitol and then metro cities which represents metropolitan cities at the capitol those organizations you know they represent cities that are large they represent cities that are small um with different needs for their residents so that's why it's important for us to have this discussion tonight we really want to figure out and hone down on what's important for the residents of victoria so with that mayor if you do not mind what we were while we were anticipating for tonight is to kind of give you a sneak peek on what we're deliberating to bring this platform to a digital age and if you don't mind i'll just share my screen please do all right one second sure and then i understand that senator coleman and representative nash will be able to see this as well once we get this screen shared good terrific it looks like that was successful by every measure awesome that was easy let's hope the rest of the night goes this way let's go so this might look familiar to you um council members as this is the same platform we use for our strategic plan dashboard my sidewalk my sidewalk is a great tool it brings in a lot of data into reports so we're really excited to be able to use this platform for more than just our strategic dashboard so with that i'm just going to give a little highlight over each of these priorities and then i'll turn it back to you mayor for discussion very good so first on our list is effective delivery of local government services this priority advocates that statutes do not limit the ability of local governments to effectively provide adequate services and it supports legislation that provides tools and resources for cities to effectively and efficiently deliver services to the community it is opposing unfunded mandates and supports revenue for unfunded mandates or amending or repealing unfunded mandates where possible it supports clear and timely notification regarding new legislation or modifications to legislation scroll down a little bit to allow for enough time for cities to fund and plan for funding for implementation it supports the amending the open meeting law requirement to allow members of the public bodies such as yourselves to participate in meetings remotely without having to make the remote location open to the public minnesota cities and victoria have proven this process to be successful and transparent during the coven 19 pandemic and we advocate that this becomes standard practice now this request does not come strictly at the state and the federal level we recognize and have identified ways to continue growing this effort locally and with that we propose as a city that we strive to rethink redesign and reinvent government services and programs to better fit the need of all victoria residents for reasonable investment and cost we will continue our efforts to engage residents from all backgrounds and interests to remove barriers and to determine what services are needed most and we will continue to examine how delivery of city services can be modified to increase efficiency transparency and to lower costs priority two is maintain local control mayor our city council members our local elected officials are able to best respond to the needs of victoria residences and businesses and in that token should maintain sufficient authority and flexibility to meet the challenges of the local community and have sufficient revenue sources available to provide adequate services and address local needs in addition this priority supports greater access to stable and reliable tax and government aid as well as dedicated funding such as local government aid or lga its support says i'll scroll down a second it supports clear laws that provide municipal franchise authority it supports legislation that gives cities greater authority and discretion as to what is allowed in the public right-of-way it supports sufficient funding to cover the cost of state mandates and it supports local authority to impose infrastructure fees so growth pays for growth priority three is transportation accessibility this was not included in our 2020 priorities however with the upcoming future roadway projects this is the 82nd street improvements and the arboretum area transportation plan we thought transportation was very important to bring to the table in 2021 and i would like to pause a moment to thank representative beau as being an author on the 82nd street bonding request thank you and also thank you to carver county for heading up that initiative we recognize through this priority that there is continued growth in victoria and all of carver county and in the region which continues to put a strain on city transportation systems now the city cost share of improvements to major state and county corridors is projected to be over 20 million dollars this is an addition to the 11 million dollars over the next 10 years needed for local road improvements with a 6 million levy in 2021 transportation represents a critical but significant budget pressure on our community specifically truck highway 5 serving as our only east-west corridor in the city faces significant traffic and safety concerns so with that we have proposed to support the arboretum area transportation plan study recommendations we support capital bonds or alternative funding to improve 82nd street which would then function as a second east and west traffic relief valve for highway 5 which couldn't coincidentally would be a safer route for our buses and our student drivers we also proposed to support municipal state aid system program funding to assist municipalities with construction and maintenance of municipal street systems and support local regulatory authority of emerging and future transportation technologies such as drones operating in the right-of-way and this is where my sidewalk gets to bring in those data collections here you can see where we've pulled information on how well what the statistic is for residents commuting to work and this is just a draft of course um attracts uh traffic proximity by volume unfortunately it's by kilometer not mile but and then we can also link to the arboretum area transportation plan through this another new priority is housing for equity and inclusion what this means is that a city we are eager to eliminate barriers by providing safe market rate and affordable homes for our residents and future residents of all stages of life and backgrounds while a number of policy and financial tools exist to support both the preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing and the construction of new affordable housing refinement and expansion of these tools is critical to address our communities housing need don't want to lock cara out perfect welcome saved you a spot up front so with that through the housing inc equity and inclusion uh our priority we propose to support state statutes that provide city authority to regulate and set local ordinance for zoning and to support local decision-making authority with regards to fees and regulations necessary to cover the cost of growth to do our parts the city of victoria will continue to conduct periodical reviews of local requirements land use regulation and ordinances to ensure that they are consistent with development and growth and we will continue to annually review our city fees as to reflect the cost of doing business the city will also co will continue to apply for affordable housing grants and other sources of funding and we'll work with developers and residents to blend diverse housing types into new and existing neighborhoods to maximize choice for people of all economic backgrounds and social circumstances and last but not least this evening is local government aid or lga this was included in our 2020 platform we do acknowledge that lga helps cities maintain affordable places to live and work while meeting the needs of our residents or residents and businesses however the last 17 years victoria has not received any lga and in the past 34 years victoria has received less than three hundred thousand dollars of lga funding so with that we support further examination of lga formula to ensure that all metropolitan cities needs are adequately addressed and metropolitan city officials have the opportunity to provide input during those discussions so with that mayor council representatives and commissioners thank you for allowing me to present our proposed 2021 legislative platform this evening again we will revise based on tonight's discussion and bring back to you at the february 22nd meeting terrific thank you so much great overview alyssa we appreciate it all right first and foremost again just a quick shout out again to representative beau for carrying that bonding request 82nd street is a major major part of the puzzle to making sure that we can get around carver county safely so we want to say thank you to that and we we certainly encourage our other legislators to sign on to that legislation and and help us get that passed as well i see that we have um have commissioner workman has joined us virtually um commissioner if you want to unmute yourself and introduce yourself briefly to the group we'd appreciate that hello there sorry i was a little bit late there uh i'm just listening um a lot of it is familiar uh of course 82nd street i thought senator coleman you had put that in on the senate side i might be wrong i try to keep track of those things but no you're correct commissioner we're we're just a little backed up at the reviser's office but that'll be introduced in the senate shortly wonderful thank you but uh good good to be here i've represented victoria a long time and i continue to enjoy it terrific thank you so much legislators any questions or feedback from uh the legislators regarding the um legislative priorities and our platform for this year madam mayor uh yes representative nash thank you madam mayor so uh one of your priorities was to allow for effectively remote hearings where the public is allowed to offer testimony i do have a bill uh on that um my colleague and friend long time friend senator benson has it in the senate i would have every expectation that it's going to move forward and will likely be merged with a bill that representative elkins has to probably take the best of each part but both for the legislature and then myself as a former mayor my drive on that one is to effectively make it so that there's nothing different for the person at home from if they were in the chambers with you there or they were on a zoom call or in our case a webex that they would still have the ability to offer um their their thoughts you know when i was mayor we had visitors petitions uh correspondents and uh we got a wide variety of input from people and then we would also allow for people to uh weigh in on on different things that's the goal of the bill is to make sure that folks have the ability to do that and there is a a well-known privacy organization called minkoji that is supporting my bill so i'm i'm hopeful that we're able to do that um so would be uh would be excited to make sure that if we have this persist or as is probably likely to happen meetings may have the ability to meet online or remotely moving forward since people have become accustomed to it and that we would afford the public the opportunity to to weigh in remotely so thank you terrific thank you other comments from our legislators senator coleman uh again thank you so much for for having me i really appreciated um being invited to participate in this uh like i said before it's my first uh victoria city council meeting so appreciate the presentation and yeah you know try to stay in touch as much as you can i'd love to have everyone in my office it's a very weird year to be uh starting off in the state senate but um to echo you know representative nash's points i'm trying to make it uh so i'm still as accessible as i would be in any other situation so um i'm easily reached uh over my email or i believe many of you have my uh cell phone number which is also listed so uh please stay in touch terrific thank you representative beau we're going to ask representative bo to come up to the podium so we can hear him better i've always been told that i don't need a microphone but i appreciate this it makes it easier for folks at home to hear as well indeed and so i would just want to echo what everyone else has already shared which is you know a big thank you for being allowed and invited to attend tonight it's a great opportunity for us to sit and listen and learn to find out what issues are important to you so that's that's really i think the primary focus for me tonight but certainly happy to be moving forward with the 82nd street bill for funding and as senator coleman has indicated it's it's in the revisers office along with several other good ideas and they have quite a backlog as i understand it but when those bills come out jacketed then she will be carrying the senate version and and and we'll try to move that forward 82nd street county road 18 lyman boulevard is really a vital east-west arterial for carver county and and i think it's very very important to get that completed before we do a lot of work on highway 5 so that it's there as a viable alternative for the detour for traffic because it's going to be used as such whether it's ready or not so we want to make sure that that's prepared and ready we're also uh spending a lot of effort on highway 212 and continuing improvements on highway 212 and that impacts kind of all of us here in eastern carver county as well as a good portion of minnesota um having been on city council for many years before in our neighboring community of chaska i certainly understand lga and the desire to to see lga being shared among all metro cities i can also share heartaches of of having the lga rug pulled out from underneath several times and suddenly having to scramble to find ways to fill those holes in the city budget and such so we want to make sure that it's not only applied fairly but also uh made uh available year after year because to become used to it and then have it not be available when unallotment would occur for example if the state has a shortfall that's a big challenge for cities so we want to make sure that doesn't happen and uh affordable housing that's also a challenge that we have dealt with in a lot of the cities and you know there is a need for that and you want to have workforce housing for people in your community who serve in a variety of of different jobs and different employment areas and so those are challenges we want to do it we want to do it right and we want to make sure that it is sustainable and and good quality housing stock too so terrific thank you so much we appreciate it county commissioners um oh representative nash please yeah thank you madam mayor and members again uh i wanted to pick up on the conversation around lga you know when we get the next budget forecast it's going to likely be quite grim and i think that cities need to be prepared for what may happen at um at the capitol and i've been asking actually every commissioner that comes into not county commissioner but uh commissioner for the governor's cabinet when they come into state government finance where i'm the minority lead what will they do if the budget is reduced and what will they do when their budget perhaps gets cut and i just wanted to set the expectation that is a distinct possibility for lga that there there may be a significant formulaic reduction for lga and you know i i just wanted to make sure that we put that on your horizon so that you are cognizant of that you know when i was mayor and every day since then i've encouraged people who are in that same role to never look at lga as something that they can depend on for their budget that it should be something that goes into the cip plan so that they they can not have to rely on it budgetarily because there have been a lot of horror stories of cities who plug it in as a reliable budget number only to have the formula changed and that creates some considerable problems like representative beau i am in favor of making sure that people have the ability to to buy their home to to create what i call their their true north and and have the ability to uh invest in their local community and most more than likely the most significant uh capital investment that they'll ever make and with the greatest rate of return you know that is one of the the things that i have been working on at the capitol for a number of years and i will continue to do so to make sure that uh that things are as as fair as possible to to make sure that cities get uh what they need taken care of and make sure that homeowners are also taken care of so um thanks again madam mayor and for those who might want to reach out regarding any issue um i do publish my cell phone and my email so i'm happy to take calls or emails from the residents there in victoria thank you madam mayor terrific well we appreciate you representing us down at the capitol we know that transportation is a big issue for us here we want people to get here and we want people to get here safely i've always said people figure out great communities long before the minnesota department of transportation knows they're here so it they always lag for several years behind us so we want to we want to make sure we get that short up and get folks here safely and you know just a just a comment um and a and a compliment to the former councils from victoria and the staff here victoria weathered the covid pandemic quite reasonably well compared to a lot of our neighboring communities and other cities across the united across the state just because of our great financial policies and our our kind of forward thinking so a big shout out to those who came before us and kind of put that framework in place so that we could weather these uncertain times and that's been really it serves up it's served us well um commissioners any any thoughts or comments from you commissioner utterman please tommy commission commissioner utterman is asking you if you want anything if you have anything to say commissioner workman he's going to cede his the floor to you and your seniority oh boy that's that's awfully gracious um madame i'll echo what representative nash said about the local government hey this is a year you're going to be glad you don't have local government aid uh because they're probably gonna take it from you anyway um carver county does get aid we did again as representative nash said we put it in our capital improvement plan it's not money we count on uh we appreciate it when we get it it's been fairly steady as of late but i see troubled waters ahead so that gonna again affect our budget and everything we do uh in carver county this year so um we got lyndon robgent always on the ball figuring out the balance sheet for the different highway construction projects everywhere so um that's about it terrific commissioner utterman so graciously the seniority yes i also want to acknowledge that linden is in the room and kudos uh one of the first meetings that i had uh before actually taking the oaf office was to jump in a car with lyndon and we drove highway 10 highway 11 82nd street and highway 5. and we physically went out and looked at everything that was going on because those were a lot of the buzzwords what's happening and what's not happening also had a chance to meet with dana and the partnership and the conversations that we've had have been really valuable you'll hear me often talk about the next 20 years we'll shape the next 200 years of carver county and victoria is right in the paramount of that it's not lost on me that victoria looks like what chan hassan did 30 years ago with about 8 000 people and victoria will be the largest city in carver county in the not so distant future and i'm encouraged by not only the road projects which i call physical infrastructure but the social infrastructure as well when it comes to housing and other things also part of that social fabric is broadband and it's not lost on us uh the the need for broadband not only in the family system but as our communities grow and the high density that will happen within victoria and with carver to be able to get that broadband and i know that you're looking in those things as well also the reality of the demographic changing uh plays into that social infrastructure as well is uh our demographics in carver county are very different than they were just 10 years ago and they will be even more different in the next 10 years and so those are some of the areas where libraries parks trails park connections lakes everything that plays right into the hand of victoria are very important as well as partnerships not just with local government entities but not for profits and i just wanted to elevate one example even within this community of victoria is greg pavitt within the humanities alliance if you haven't met greg it'd be a good opportunity to do so they just purchased a property behind the dairy queen off of highway 5 and some of the program that they have planned for food stability housing stability and path to jobs are very important and then also the impact of mental health in our community we are the most affluent city or county in car in the state of minnesota but that doesn't mean that the needs of the mental health community are not hidden they are very much here and we're excited of the opening of the mental health facility that is overlooking bavaria that will serve local residents and beyond and then also i know that you guys have reviewed the impact of the southwest transport corridor and the importance of that and just wanted to make the note that that is important to the growth not only the physical infrastructure that will come through town but also what that means to the social infrastructure i also wanted to call out that we have sheriff camerood here as well as officer wolin so thank you for having us here we appreciate the partnership and the effort for that partnership not every city does this and it's really important that we do this thank you okay thank you commissioner utterman all right council comments from council i guess i i just wanted to um thank you for all the things that you're you've said that you're working on i i'd like to hear how how you plan on achieving these things we can all have topics but there has to be groundwork laid so that we know how we're going to get there i mean like like we said we need we're going to need 20 million dollars where are we supposed to get that how are we supposed to get that we need affordable housing how are we going to do that those are the types of things that i'm kind of looking for it's like how are we going to do that any any ideas are you just is this well if i could make a comment on behalf of carver county yeah i've only been in seat for 30 days right seeing the 10 10 10 and 11 study that lyndon and his team angie's done a fantastic job darren all the outreach efforts i think there's no fewer than 500 people that have contributed efforts to what that would look like including the city of chaska city victoria and so those are tangible plans that we're just a link away from looking at that and it was eye-opening to see 123-page document and all the details that go into it and all the considerations of roundabout or a traffic signal a similar study within the arboretum transportation study with a lot of input from folks within the mini washington community with the arboretum and uh otherwise you drive down there and you're like wow on a non-covered year the backup that goes on there we worship at westwood and you see some of the backup that comes through there that's a real thing and to talk to former council member tom it's not voight gregory he said that highway 5 is carrying double the traffic that it was it was space to do and you can see it when you drive through those things so with lyndon and his team and having those studies that's the next step and i'm so encouraged when um um bo and and coleman are carrying a 10 million dollar pact that's a big question mark as to how do you get 82nd street funded yes it's not really in chaska's plan for another 20 or 30 years because development would drive that the arboretum is probably not going to throw any money at it city victoria doesn't have the money to throw at it so this looks like the the fun tidbit of that 10 million dollars that opens up those sources of funding and if you would i'm sure linden could offer a few thoughts as well for from dream to actual tactical delivery and when we see those dates and those you know what's next the two chunks of 212 and the dates are actually out there the first chunk of five planned for 2025. that goes from pie in the sky it's never going to happen we haven't heard when it's going to happen to put actual dates in there and there's so many moving factors to it but when you see those dates on paper from the plans that are coming through those are really encouraging so it's not just a pipe dream that we're used to seeing sometimes it's actual things and then i saw a slide also that linden served up right when i first came into office and 28 and a half million dollars of committed funding over the course the next five years those are big dollars right here in carver county when you're when you're competing as you know with the likes of hennepin and other places and you've got a two billion dollar light rail and that isn't where it's going to go every dollar that comes our way is just a huge effort um in the way of lyndon and his team so if you want to say a few words i've just been encouraged in the first 30 days yes thank you mr robjen welcome hi there adam mayer council thanks for having me um yeah i wasn't expecting to uh say much but what i can say is it's you guys have been great partners over the years we know the transportation challenges that we have and uh we've got we've tried to plan our way into a good solution and i know tonight you're going to be talking about cara is going to give a presentation on the arboretum area transportation plan you think about that how important that is to this community we've got a lot of work to do and i know commissioner rudeman and i and commissioner workman will be visiting with you a lot in the next few years because we have a set of 20 projects in and around the area that need to be implemented in the next 20 years good news you might say it's good news might be bad news for some folks is we do have a pretty significant revenue source with the local option sales tax that we prioritize a lot of projects with which allows us to be very competitive with grant opportunities so commissioner rudeman mentioned that 28 million that we got from the met council through the cycle every two years there's a competitive cycle and we did very well and i have to say the reason for that is probably the planning work you do to come up with real projects do the outreach which is really important these days and put a really competitive proposal together and that's by far the the most money we've been awarded since i've been at carver county 11 years so 212 is another big priority for the county where we've we've gone after grants for many many many years and we've come up with small parts of money to the point where we're gonna actually construct the first phase between carver and cologne this summer which is pretty incredible it's a county-led project even though it's a state highway just like highway 5 it's a state highway but we know that with mndot's financial situation it's tough for them to come out here and do huge investment so the county has taken the lead with your help uh we understand there's a tremendous local strain on on the on the car show and so representative beau with the the bill for 82nd street we've recognized over many years that's a budget buster for smaller communities and so we need the state's help in order to reach that goal so the county has has committed our 13 million to for our share of that project and we're seeking the 10 million from the legislature to fill that gap and if we're successful we'll make it happen hopefully before 2025 which is our goal to get highway 5 started i one of those grants we got from that 28 million was to expand highway 5 from rolling acres road to minnewash to parkway to four lanes so it'll improve the the bottleneck at rolling acres road we all know there's there's not enough capacity at that signal light so we're going to fix that so that's a 20 that's a real project in 2025 so we are moving forward i know it's not easy and we we do a lot of public outreach and again we'll be visiting with you and the public many many times between now and whenever these projects are implemented but lots of lots of challenges coming up but in a good way i think yeah thank you i there's nothing more apparent than planning for the future than transportation we are planning for roads we may never live long enough to drive on and it's it's so apparent but it does take it does take some long-term planning and long-term and patience just to get there so we're thank you for your help and i would encourage all of us to continue to elevate our needs out here and keep this forefront representative beau i just wanted to say just a brief word and a reminder of how fortunate we are to live where we do the partnerships here in carver county are phenomenal between the cities and the county and the state i think we work together very well better than most other counties do i mean the prime example is 101 and the improvements going north over the river and creating a flood proof or flood resistant river crossing at 101 the state couldn't afford to do it so carver county really stepped forward and carried the majority of that cost and then the state has reimbursed carver county for that that's a phenomenal thing that most counties would not consider doing and now you know carver county has has really taken the lead on 212 and other and highway 5 as well so we're fortunate to have a great partner in carver county and a great willingness for the county to work with the cities and the state and and that helps us a lot to really be forward thinking and to do things at a much faster schedule than we might be able to do otherwise so i think we need to continue to make sure we have those partnerships in place and to collaborate and work well together the other thought is affordable housing you would ask yeah that's a tough one as well i mean there are things you can do to think outside the box to to maybe make a lot slightly smaller by decreasing side yard setbacks and that maybe makes drives the price point down a little bit and makes it a little more affordable but there's you know looking for funding outside state and federal and as well but there are challenges and that's a big challenge but i know on the council of chaska that's one of the things we did is try to make the lots a little smaller and that would drive down the price and that made it so that it was an affordable housing stock but yet still something that the public wanted so terrific thank you partners that's the key indeed thank you final comments on this from council councilman on on the on the mayor macmillan i believe representative nash has his hand raised yes you have to be louder with your hand raising councilman gunderson is going to see to representative nash go ahead thank you madam mayor i didn't want to barge in but i did want to point out also that while it's not in the target area of victoria all three of the legislators that are here this evening are either principal authors or second authors on a funding project for highway 212 and while it feels a lot like sisyphus pushing the rock up hill i i do believe we are getting very close to being able to get that done i started that back when i first came in the legislature uh seven years ago and i i think that we're close i know that senator coleman has been talking with her transportation chair i believe that is a hopeful priority for him as well but i i do believe that the more we push on this and the more support we get from the county uh the better off we are i do believe that uh what folks have been hearing from us and the trips that people have taken out uh here to carver county to see just the how dangerous that intersection is that it's it's got to happen soon because uh i talked to a lot of folks who drive 212 and they recognize that it is not a very safe highway in the in the area that we're trying to get uh the funding for and again while it's not directly uh adjacent to you in the target area that we're trying to uh solve that the legislators here in the room are tackling that issue head-on terrific thank you for that call out i appreciate it councilman gunderson i just wanted to touch on a couple things i think coming off the finance committee i wear it as a badge of honor that we don't get lga um and that we haven't had to depend on it as a community so i think that speaks to our forward-thinking members of not only the councils but our commissions and the input that they've had impact they've had over the last 20 years um so with that said uh the other thing um it astounds me every time i talk to get into conversations with people and today and last week are no exception i had the opportunity of being on a training with other local electeds with the lmc and i introduced who i was and where i was from and i had two other elected officials saying how much they love victoria and to me that's amazing right i didn't i didn't offer that about their communities i they i said thank you very much right um so there's that uh and then today speaking with uh someone in another government agency offered up how much he appreciated victoria and love to come out here with that said we wouldn't be here if we didn't have some of the controls that we have in place we look the way we look we have the ability to create our community the way we're creating our community so it's great that we have that ability to do that and i look forward to continuing to make victoria look and feel like the community everybody tells me that it is and it's wonderful that we have the ability to do that right now so um i'm looking forward to working with all of our levels of government from our commissioners to our representatives our senators um into the future to continue to help grow this community uh you know i think on average it's 500 people a year and that's don't quote me on that but it's got to be in that ballpark some year some years less some years more so uh the projects that we're talking about aren't just impacting people here now like the mayor said these are things we're not even going to see that we're getting to decide on so i'm looking forward to the years ahead and and hopefully we can we can do make this community and this county uh the best it can be i just have a couple comments um first of all thanks uh to alyssa and the city staff for uh putting together you know this these documents so thank you for your hard work on on this stuff um thank you obviously to representative beau and senator coleman for uh championing 82nd street it's obviously as everyone said it's important right we're gonna be coming into construction on five soon and and um it's gonna take some burden off of highway five um as councilman gunderson said um you know we want you know we want to be able to see and and and influence how victoria looks and feels and and part of that is um you know making sure you know we have the authority and and the um to do that and i i guess i just had a quick question for i guess representative nash um you know you made some comments uh recently about uh and if i understood uh correctly limited wanting to limit or preempt city authority regarding zoning and i guess i just want to get your uh your you know if did i misunderstand that or i just i guess want to get your thoughts on that and if you can explain that a little bit further well thank you madam mayor council member you did indeed hear that incorrectly i am not trying to take away uh the city's ability to uh run their city at all so whoever told you that uh you got you got bad information what we're trying to do is to make sure that uh we're working with cities and that we we have cities who are not um realistically charging more for inspections and permits than uh is allowable and in the rules it says that it should be proportional and we've seen various cities around the metro sometimes charging double or more uh than that and not being able to um show their work as to how they arrive at some of the fees that they levy when it comes to inspections and permits and fees like that and you know i said this a couple years ago that i am very much in favor of local control but i am not in favor of local out of control and i think that it is important that we remember that people who move to wherever they happen to move to whether it be victoria waconia or cities around the state that the the local government uh recognizes that it's important to be cognizant of the impact of overcharging on uh the various things that they they have the ability to charge for so no council member i am not trying to to strip away your ability to uh to do as you were elected to do that would be ludicrous as a again a former city council member and mayor myself that is not what i said well thank you i appreciate your um you know your explanation and um and thank you that's all i have terrific any last thoughts seeing none i want to say thanks to everybody for your input and your feedback this evening um council adoption of our legislative platform for 2021 uh will happen at our next regular council meeting on february 22nd so on behalf of our city council i wanted to say thank you to our legislators and our commissioners for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us we appreciate it very much and we welcome you to stay for our next agenda item which is policing services in victoria if you so wish so thank you very much sheriff camerood welcome this evening thank you thank you for being here we're going to have you come up to the podium and the floor is yours sheriff well thank you madam mayor i appreciate you uh having me today and uh i was a little bit concerned that you know they were all going to just bolt on me soon as i got up it's very hurtful everyone wants to know everyone wants to hear about policing services no trust me we have a we have a wide um audience online that i'm sure is sitting on the edge of their chair for this so well no i honestly i i appreciate being here tonight and having an opportunity to to talk with you uh we have some new faces on the console and uh and i think it's it's important that you have a good understanding of how and why the police contracting works and it it circles back to the conversation you were just having about partnerships and and i think that is is why this works well in in carver county but uh um one of the questions you're going to get guaranteed is why doesn't victoria have its own police department and and hopefully i can shed some light on the history of contract policing here and and why you uh you know you don't have one and and why frankly i i don't think it's uh necessary to have one at this point i mean that's your decision to make of course but we'll we'll get through all of that so in 1968 1966 somewhere in that window uh sheriff les melker kind of had this vision for carver county that there would be one stop policing and that would be the county police and so he set out about building this contracting model throughout the county now of course the city of chaska had already had their own police department and so he knew that was going to be you know probably not going to fly in chaska but certainly for the rest of the county it was a pretty viable thing interestingly a little bit of trivia the city of chaska has had a night watchman their first cut since the late 1890s so they've been having their own police department for quite some time but but the idea was to really have this full-time coordinated coverage addressing uh all concerns from felonies down to quality of life sorts of complaints the city mayors served as he called them the law enforcement commissioners back then and we do something similar today where we call it the sheriff's contracting committee and your city manager sits on that committee and and brings the city issues forward in that same model back then there was a contract you received fine revenue to offset some of those costs and so we're still structurally very similar today fast forward to the mid-1970s sheriff bill shallow commissions an independent study uh to evaluate the costs appropriation staffing all of those things that went into the contract and and the one of the most notable comments from the consultant was carver county commissioners are providing law enforcement at the most cost effective way possible by providing county-wide system i think that's pretty significant particularly back then when contract policing was really new and it was a was a new concept i think it holds true today um but again those are things that you know other people will evaluate but what was really leading to that uh consultant in that study was the city of chaska was suing the county and the sheriff based on police contracting rates now in the mid 1970s chaska tax base provided about 40 percent of the county's tax revenue so they were a pretty big player in the the county revenue game and what they suspected and the audit concluded was that the county was not charging its contract cities uh enough money to capture the actual costs and so they had been raising taxes on all county residents including those in chaska so essentially the city of chaska was offsetting policing costs in all these other cities and and and of course chasco wasn't up for that they're saying we're already paying for our own police department we're not we have no interest in paying for police in waconia for example so um so we get through that and they settle it out of court with kind of a phase in plan uh and but notably the county agreed to capture actual costs going forward and that actual cost is a phrase you'll still hear today commander william will talk about it when he starts discussing contracts when we get into the contract renewal piece so things are going along swimmingly till the mid 1980s so we made it a decade sheriff jack hendrickson requested an audit of the contracting system conducted by then state auditor arne carlson who it was again it was a check to assure that costs associated with contracting were captured and not being subsidized by other municipalities or by townships who did not have that level of police service um and so the scope of the audit was cost allocation determining base level versus contract level and then the tracking of ours and so here we are this is mid 70s had the same conversation mid 80s having the same conversation and then um you know we'll have it again right and so anyways the the recurring theme was equitable funding uh of the sheriff's office and and carver arnie carlson writes we recommend the county identify in detail the activities of the patrol division and classify each as a base level service or contract level service now that is a really ridiculously tall order to sort that out because a lot of calls for service are not readily apparent what they are until you get there and start looking into it and uh so that portion of the work was was never wasn't done then for quite some time the two main points of that audit where that the county has to make a management decision to define base and contract level services and then we have to develop an equitable uh formula to capture actual costs now you hear you're hearing actual costs again uh in 87 then we entered into a stipulation and agreement with the city of chaska which was a permanent it was a permanent injunction whose permanence was temporary because it was eventually lifted but where we had to provide data to them and prove to them that we were capturing actual costs for the police services we were providing elsewhere and uh um the order and and the permanent judgment said that we had to require payment of the actual costs we had to uh have an hourly rate that best uh that reflects best estimates i mean so there's a recognition that you know if you have a an employee leave in the middle of the year and they were at this on the pay scale and you replace them with somebody down here it's great there's a recognition that it's an estimate but the idea was to get as close as you could to the actual costs a number of hours to be provided and then we were restrained and enjoined from providing municipal police services in excess of those outlined in the contract and that language is pretty significant uh fast forward to 2002 so in in 87 in 86 rather arnie carlson says you got to figure out which are base level and which are contract level services well that work was never really done they had just done this hourly model sort of thing and and it worked and we reported to chaska and and got all that well 2002 sheriff bud olson looks back on that study and says yeah we have to we have to sort this out we're just going to end up in litigation with our community partners again over the cost of policing and so he hires a group called maximus to come in and and do the analysis and they literally went through every call for service over i don't know if it was a three year period or two or whatever but it was you know we do 40 some thousand calls a year and so to look at each one one at a time and and categorize it as a base call or a contract call and then they created this third category that they called the overlapping calls and those are kinds of the ones where you you don't know what they are until you get there okay and uh so and and i'll get to explaining to how all that plays out but the base level calls base level services from the sheriff's office are we will provide 9-1-1 dispatching for all public safety in carver county now that's not statutorily required the county board has concluded that that is in the best interests of all county taxpayers to have one dispatch center and dispatch for police sheriff's office uh fire departments ridgeview maintains their own uh dispatch service um you know we work in tandem but they really dispatch their own stuff uh sheriff is statutorily obligated to have a jail we don't have to have our own jail but i have to have a place to take inmates most counties build their own facilities there's a couple of counties in out state where they joined and built a joint facility as a cost-saving measure which was a pretty good idea then i have to do civil process bailiff crime scene evidence and property major crime investigative assistance and basically if you look at what the sheriff is required to do under the state statute apprehend felons and keep the peace all right so keep in mind the felony piece because we'll talk about misdemeanors in a little bit so but because i'm responsible for doing apprehending felons then it makes sense that as a base level service we provide major crime scene investigative services right because those are mostly going to be felonies predatory offenders emergency call response emergency call response is all kinds of things could be you know a felony in progress or it could be a medical you know a heart well the county board here again has decided that emergency calls medicals for example we're going to call those a base level service because we have resources throughout the county deployed with training with equipment we can get there and and provide you know medical aid violent persons trying felonies death investigations and missing persons those are all things that the sheriff does by statute when we get to the contract level things those are really what i kind of call your quality of life sorts of things things that communities deal with uh it's going to be your blight right you know you have to have an enforcement arm if you're going to have an ordinance that says you can't have junk cars piled up in your yard well the sheriff is not statutorily required to do that and so you have a choice you could have a police department you could contract with the sheriff's office like you do you could contract with another existing agency or you could form up a joint powers agreement and partner with a bunch of other cities or one other city and create a police department of sorts you see that in south lake minnetonka where it's excelsior greenwood tonka bay shorewood i think that's it they all have a joint powers agreement to all those cities create that um anyways other kinds of contract levels animal complaints that's a really common one in municipalities it's dogs at large barking dogs loud parties a lot of communities look for preventive patrols and um you know here again that's all contract level and the you know the list goes on but i think you get the idea of the types of calls they are then you have these overlapping calls right uh so like alarms are are an example of an overlapping call an alarm that is triggered because a burglary is in progress is a felony and so the sheriff has a statutory obligation to investigate that if the alarm is going off because the weather trip did or because of homeowner error well the sheriff doesn't have an obligation to do that that's if you want to provide that kind of policing service to your citizens that's that would be in the contract but here again you don't know what that is until you get there and and so um some criminal investigations as i said earlier to remember we we do felonies as base level service but we do not have a statutory obligation to provide misdemeanor level of service investigations so if a city wants to have misdemeanor investigations then they have to have some mechanism to do that victoria chooses a contract and but here again sometimes the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony let's use property damage as an example the difference between a misdemeanor property damage and a felony property damage is a dollar right if they set a dollar amount and if you go over that a dollar amount it's a felony well here again we wouldn't know until we got there and kind of looked at it so that's where the overlapping calls are and then we have some of those like a driving complaint well is that a contract level call or is it a base level service well if if you have somebody who is um having a diabetic reaction it's gonna come in on dispatch as a drunk driver that's really a i don't wanna say it's a common call but it's not a unique call right well that would be a medical emergency but here again you don't know until you get the car stopped and you make contact with the driver so so now we have those three things kind of sorted out when we look um at the the data we know that roughly a third of calls for service are base level service so of all of the calls that come into victoria a third of them the sheriff would take care of those just because of statutory obligation the majority of overlapping calls are found to be contract level right so probably um you know two-thirds maybe that's what's left right of the one-third that is guaranteed sheriff uh it'll ebb and flow but somewhere half or more are going to be contract or that overlapping that turn out to be contract so um so in any event we took all of that information in 2004 and 2005 we eliminated the hourly police contracting and went to this fte model where in you contract for a whole employee and it's much like when we look at how we capture our actual costs we have a cost for having an employee and if the schedule is 2184 hours we know in that scenario between vacations sick leave training days things of that nature you get about 1800 hours worth of work so commander william looks at all the call volume he does all the data he comes up with uh and then he can he can map it out and tell you based on your call load all of this information we know you need x number of deputies to to do your thing and that's how he arrives at the the recommendations for you um what this has done though is it really simplified the uh capturing the actual costs right the the old mechanism had fractions of an fte mixed in for the support personnel who've completed time sheets somewhere in another division in the county and it was really we called it the ragu formula because people would ask that's in there it's in there right and it was everything was in there we sheriff olsen butles and that is really simplified the uh the process in this fte model and uh it also created a lot more consistency for the cities right it also made it easier for us this is where that partnership comes in to staff because we would find cities how do you staff when victoria increased their contract by two hours a week how do i hire somebody to work two hours a week and right so it it simplified all of that in 2010 we stopped providing full-service policing in places that were non-contracted which was mostly townships every city but for chaska who has her own police department stuck with the contracting model and so the townships do not get the same level of service as the city of victoria does they we tell them if they call on a barking dog in lake town township we refer them to the township supervisor and then i don't know what the township supervisor does but that is their responsibility um so if we kind of get to today here and commander william provides staffing recommendation based on all of the data in the records management system uh we have a mechanism where we like to provide um you know we have an obligated time unobligated time and then this admin time right because i have a cost every employee i have and every employee you have has to answer their emails they gotta check voicemails fill out a timesheet attend the sexual harassment training all of those things that every employee has to do well we have that so we try to break that out it's about a third of their time working and then we know that about a third of their time is spent on going to calls for service in the city then we leave another third open for directed patrols so let's say you have a problem with speeders on on thus and such street well then that deputy could allocate that one-third of unobligated time to get after those local issues um full disclosure though uh just to be transparent there is some um circular self-feeding kind of thing so if you have this uh unobligated time and the person is alex you say okay we want you to go out and stop cars on county road 11 because we got a lot of speeders and it's really dangerous with the crosswalks near the church and such okay well the deputy will make a bunch of traffic stops that codes as obligated time right so it it raises your obligated time a little bit um it's it's not a significant number but i didn't want people to think that we're trying to pull a fast one when when people drill into the data on it and and um and so that is how we get to how many employees you need and then we have a mechanism for calculating um what the employee costs are and what that amounts to is roughly we had 30 employees in contracted assignments last year just to illustrate the point we average what their costs were and then that becomes your rate for the next year so we're always looking back a year we actually look back two years ago because that's the most accurate data we do not look at what our cost was for general patrol they're not in the mix it's only those who were in the contract pool that that we use to calculate our costs this year we simplified the contract a little bit we used to have this