[0:00] [Music] um I want to welcome everyone to the

[0:06] 2025 State of the City program for uh Lakeville Minnesota my name is Matt Scott i'm an

[0:13] attorney with Docker D Melinda uh and I'm this year's chair of the Chamber board of directors and honored to serve

[0:20] in that capacity so the annual state of the city uh program is is an important part of the

[0:26] chamber's work in advocacy and access this is your opportunity to meet hear

[0:32] from uh and ask questions directly to the people who are leading and guiding our city so we're excited to welcome and

[0:39] hear from both uh Mayor Luke Helier and community development director Tina

[0:44] Goodro today tina has been with the city of Lakeville since the summer of 2022

[0:51] and brought with her years of experience with city development and planning tina oversees our economic development

[0:57] building inspections and planning departments and continues to help position Lakeville as a desired

[1:03] destination for development and growth uh she is also a sensible land use

[1:09] coalition board member and was a featured speaker during several Minnesota real estate journal summits in

[1:17] 2024 uh please help me to welcome Tina

[1:28] Dro thank you everyone get situated here um well good

[1:34] afternoon um what a great looking crowd a wonderful beautiful venue um super

[1:40] excited to be here today um this is really one of my favorite events of the year um to really be able to share all

[1:47] the wonderful things going on in the city and I'm really pleased to share some spotlights um that happened over

[1:54] the past year regarding economic development before I begin I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to

[2:00] Katie Bachmeire she's back there she is our economic development manager and her and

[2:09] I her and I work very closely together on so many of these efforts and she um

[2:14] was pivotal in getting this presentation and this day organized i do want to note that there are screens on both sides

[2:21] right and left of the stage um you might have to tweak your head a little bit to see them but um the presentation will be

[2:29] um located there so just to get things started um City of Lakeville had another

[2:34] great year in 2024 um we experienced a lot of development activity with um

[2:39] valuation of permits of over $257 million so we just edged out 2020 um,3

[2:46] as you can see from the list of the comparisons of 2022 down to 2020 um this

[2:52] year so far we've issued building permits in the value of over 53 and a half million so we're going strong

[2:58] already in our first quarter and one of the things that we love is welcoming new businesses um we love to

[3:05] see the investment in non-residential so that would be everything that would be commercial industrial and we had over

[3:11] 75.1 million um invested into those two areas last year and some of the major

[3:17] projects um to highlight the largest building permit value was 32 million that was RL Cold Storage so this is a

[3:24] unique building it's right behind Sweet Harvest Foods you've probably noticed it if you drive along Cedar so it's east of

[3:30] Cedar south of County Road 70 it's a big white building and its use is just

[3:36] warehousing but for cold storage so a lot of our grocery stores our Walmart retailers Target retailers need um this

[3:44] essential storage so that building um had a groundbreaking ceremony last May it's under construction anticipated to

[3:50] open this year and it's 276,480 square ft

[3:56] some of the other permits um to highlight from last year would include Post Foods pilot plant they purchased a

[4:03] building in our um older part of the industrial park and remodeled it post has been expanding their operations and

[4:10] had added different dog food businesses and so they created a new test pilot kitchen specifically for dog food um

[4:17] they've also u remodeled and updated their corporate headquarters um this past year some of the other permits uh

[4:24] Midwest ENT specialists broke ground last fall on their building this is located up on Buckill Road and County

[4:31] Road 46 and that had a building permit valuation of over 5.2 million this year

[4:38] we're kicking off the year well metropolitan Airports Commission um had a building permit valued at 590,000 and

[4:46] this is for upgrades to their existing maintenance facilities at Air Lake Airport

[4:53] and residential continues to be strong lakeville is a very hot market whether it's commercial or whether it's single

[4:59] family um or town homes um or apartments we continue to be strong we ranked

[5:05] number two last year just behind Woodbury in total building permit numbers um we finished the year with 285

[5:13] single family 100 detached 49 attached and 89 multifamily units and this is a

[5:20] cooperative project the Histori Lakeville that's on the Hosana campus this year um total residential

[5:29] valuation was 155.8 million so that's 60% of that overall building permit

[5:35] valuation average building permit on a single family home is a little over 310,000 and our median home value is up

[5:43] to 451,150 so we keep edging up lakeville

[5:48] is back to number one as of our first quarter this year um we have 58 single

[5:54] family and 59 town home permits issued so far and this is one of my favorite

[6:01] slides that we update every year really shows uh provides a nice reflection of

[6:06] all the new businesses that have chosen to make Lakeville their home whether it's a personal service business one of

[6:13] our industrial park businesses one of our office businesses retail or

[6:18] restaurants they're all reflected here and we are so excited um to welcome all of these new businesses every year we

[6:25] continued last year to see a lot of advancement and addition in medical office children's Medical U Minnesota

[6:33] Specialty Center expanded into a new tenant space alina Health and MNGI

[6:39] Digestive Health opened their new three-story building last summer exuberance Chiropractic opened a new

[6:45] location and expanded their operations and then that Midwest ear Nose and Throat um specialist um held their

[6:52] groundbreaking last fall and that building is currently under construction and Children's Dental Care is also

[6:57] expanding so it's not only new medical that's being provided here to serve our community and beyond but also expansion

[7:04] of our existing medical so we're really pleased to see that we're also adding new dining options this is something

[7:10] Katie and I in the chamber here all the time and we have an incredible amount of dining um and beverage types of business

[7:18] all across the city and if you need to know more information check out the chamber's website um but we did welcome

[7:24] LBC at the lake um at Antlers Park uh new Doughnut Star a new Taco Bell um KF

[7:31] Cakes which is a specialty bakery and then Farmer's Grand Sun Eatery recently opened and their speak easy soft opening

[7:39] um was held recently and I think that is going to have a full opening the end of this month which will be exciting

[7:45] addition to Lakeville and then all of those businesses can be reflected here on this

[7:51] map to see where that activity is taking place across the city um again the red

[7:57] or purple or pink however it shows up on that screen is all of the active residential permits that have been

[8:03] issued whereas the green are also reflected in different types of residential but those are final plats so

[8:11] as we continue to review plans and approve plans the council over the past

[8:16] year approved 731 new final plots and that's very important we need to

[8:21] continue having that churn of approved projects that we have available lots for

[8:26] development the yellow reflects all of the commercial development this will be not only our new businesses um that are

[8:34] building from um ground up or could be reflection of remodels and additions and

[8:40] then city permits we've had a lot of activity at our fire stations as well as in our

[8:45] parks and this year we are going to see some more new large projects lakeville

[8:51] 35 Logistics Center North Edition received final plan approval in fall um in February um and this is a new spec

[8:58] building we haven't had a new spec building for a couple of years just due to the economy but spec buildings are

[9:03] really important when you have different industries that are needing you know 30,000 50,000 square feet of space or

[9:09] even less we need to have this new spec development occur to be able to provide

[9:15] space for these businesses this project is going to break ground probably this week i think they're closing as we speak

[9:21] on the land it's a 189,678 square foot space um it's just

[9:28] north of 215th Street and south of 210th Street and then um since July the city

[9:36] has been engaged um in discussions with Dakota Electric Association they've been evaluating their space needs and have

[9:44] decided to um really look towards um expanding their facility and identifying

[9:49] property in Lakeville for this expansion and so since last summer we've been working working closely with Dakota

[9:56] Electric staff and their engineers on the various approvals that are needed for this expansion and then um which not

[10:03] only deals with platting but um in the future um building permits so just this

[10:08] past March the city council approved a preliminary plat um for DEA um addition

[10:15] and this is going to include a new facility for one that's totaling

[10:21] 176,685 ft would occupy warehouse storage as well as office for their 200

[10:28] employees we will continue to work with them as they come to their final decision making on this project but we

[10:34] are very very excited to welcome them to Lakeville and then another new retail

[10:41] project is Marketplace at Cedar this is at the southeast corner of 179th in Cedar opponent Investment received

[10:48] approvals this March for nine commercial lots some of those um do have um letter

[10:54] of interest um site signed to them um so you can see some of the new business that will be coming and then there's

[11:00] still some open space but again this is another great opportunity to expand retail opportunities across the

[11:07] city and with all of that employment continues to remain very strong in Lakeville we employ

[11:14] 21,460 people as of third quarter 2024 and this is a 37% increase over the past

[11:21] decade so all of you should be proud in terms of bringing your businesses in

[11:26] expanding your businesses here in Lakeville and some of our top employers are listed on the slide and this is

[11:34] employees with employers with over 250 people that includes Lakeville Public School District Postconumer Brands HY

[11:42] Makers Pride which was formerly Herzside Food Solutions and City of Lakeville

[11:48] just to name a few our unemployment remains low at 2.6% compared to the

[11:54] county at three and the state of Minnesota at 3.6% so Katie and I get involved in a

[12:00] lot of special projects and one of them was to update the strategic plan for economic development we did this project

[12:07] last summer with our EDC our economic development commission and this is a really important plan it identifies

[12:15] several um goals strategies actions and success measures to guide our work for

[12:21] the next four years the plan was adopted late last year by the city council and out of that one of the first

[12:28] implementation projects that we've taken on is a brand new business retention expansion program we kicked this off in

[12:35] February it is a partnership with Katie and I along with chamber staff and economic development commissioners and

[12:42] we visit businesses so if you've not been contacted yet you will be our goal is to visit all of our amazing

[12:48] businesses we've selected the first Thursday of the month for this we try we work in teams we try to hit four

[12:55] businesses every month if we can again we've just gotten started but the goal is to strengthen relationships that we

[13:02] already have with you and for new businesses that we haven't had that opportunity we want to meet you find out

[13:08] what your needs might be what the city could maybe do to help you or if there's outer forces um and assistance that you

[13:15] need bring those to you so it's a great new program and we're really excited to have kicked that off this

[13:22] year we also completed our first full year of having um implemented the

[13:28] residential rental registration program the council adopted an ordinance in 2023

[13:33] to require registration of all rental properties that are residential so

[13:39] anywhere from single family all the way up to apartments this is not the same thing as some cities do with licensing

[13:45] it's just a database to understand where our rental properties are located and to

[13:50] have some basic information on ownership and management so that we if there's an issue in the community we have the

[13:58] ability to reach out to that person this map shows uh the location of those uh we

[14:03] update this you can find this on our website currently there are over 650

[14:09] rental properties registered and 61% of those are single family homes the

[14:15] registration process is free it's very easy to do on the website the only thing

[14:20] that we ask is that if the owner doesn't live in Minnesota who is renting out that property that we have a designated

[14:27] person who is in Minnesota tied to that property and then cannabis licensing um

[14:34] we all know in 2023 the state legalized adult use cannabis in Minnesota so a few

[14:40] things have happened over the past year regarding this um the state opened an office of cannabis management that

[14:47] office is responsible for licenses these business licensing the businesses but

[14:52] also creating the rules for how these businesses will operate across the state it's been a fairly slow process but it

[15:00] has sped up a little bit and with that each city needed to adopt our own

[15:05] requirements and so the city did this last fall not only within the zoning ordinance but also in the city code as

[15:12] to how we want these businesses to operate there are several different license types that are in the state

[15:18] statute we've identified those license types and the various zoning districts that they'll be regulated within and

[15:25] with that um we are required as the city to register the businesses that are

[15:31] retail so there are several there's three different license types um that regulate the retail component and a

[15:38] retail store is going to be limited to a distance of 500 ft from schools so that

[15:44] is what that is what the map demonstrates on this um slide we also in

[15:51] the ordinance regulate a limit of six retail businesses within the city

[15:57] limits ocm did get approval for their rules just this week and so I do

[16:04] anticipate um getting some more requests and more information from businesses that are trying to locate in Lakeville

[16:10] and some of those early licenses will be issued probably throughout this

[16:16] summer one of the things we don't talk enough about is our amazing Air Lake Airport um the airport is conveniently

[16:23] located right in the industrial park and it is an important asset to this graphic

[16:28] really illustrates that point not only does the airport provide for recreational flights and flight training

[16:36] right on site but aircraft storage there's 106 hangers located there and it's ideally located and suited for

[16:43] business aviation the airport supports 104 jobs and saw

[16:50] 38,678 annual flight operations in 2024 well that caps off my part of the

[16:58] presentation and I want to introduce Christa Jack our amazing chamber

[17:08] president is now it's now my turn to to introduce the mayor so uh Mayor Helier

[17:13] has been on city council since 2016 and mayor since 2022 um in his day jobs he

[17:19] Are you talking about your day job i don't know oh so his day job he has a new day job uh the director of government affairs at Starky Hearing uh

[17:26] and he and his wife Josie both grew up here and are now raising their kids here and thank you very much uh for that he

[17:32] is on our foundation board of directors as well and um I you know something I learned about you know do you know do

[17:39] you remember what you said your goal is for 5 to 10 years back in 2023 oh you

[17:44] don't well it's in it's in the internet so it must be true okay yeah you said you want

[17:50] to be the Panog Marshall yeah I do so we'll see i mean I might be able to help that make that happen we'll see what

[17:56] happens but so without further ado I'm going to give this up for you okay

[18:01] ready actually i think what I said was it's easier to become mayor than grandma marshall

[18:06] painter park it is yeah good job that's a that's a selective group well thank

[18:13] you Christa and thanks for everybody for being here today a lot of friendly faces um I want to start with this with some a

[18:18] little bit of breaking news uh this morning I uh called council member Ethan Helier in Prior Lake to let him know I

[18:25] signed an executive order for running tariffs on the city of Prior Lake frankly they've been extremely unfair to

[18:32] the city of Lakeville and it's time for them to come through and and Mayor Costic and Credit River said he will set

[18:37] up a checkpoint to the Credit River legal border so they'll be paying tolls to get on 35W for those who live in

[18:45] broader way so we are working for you every day to make sure that we're treated fairly pretty much and um thank

[18:51] you uh just want to really thank um Tina and Katie for putting this together

[18:57] police Chief uh Brad Pollson and Fire Chief Meyer and our engineer Zach Johnson who basically put all the text

[19:03] in here i'm just reading their words but I want to thank them for for doing that as well so they they work above and

[19:10] beyond as you know uh Antlers Park opened last summer um which was closed

[19:16] for an entire year and it uh has been really a huge success for us and I

[19:21] talked about this last year before it opened how excited we were um between the the new shelters the indoor pavilion

[19:28] um sand volleyball courts uh and then one other unique feature being one of

[19:33] the first beach areas in the region that's ADA accessible so we have rubber

[19:38] mats so that are there at all times so if you have someone in a wheelchair they can actually get all the way to the water on our beach and so it's kind of a

[19:46] new feature that we're pretty proud of on other communities don't have and as as um Tina mentioned LBC and the lake

[19:53] was a big hit i think I talked to to Don i think they're opening up in a couple of weeks so that'll be we're looking

[19:59] forward to that and then finally the thing that just blows my mind is that we had 320 outdoor events last summer that had

[20:07] reservations through the parks department and another 87 in the indoor facility we had two weddings last year

[20:12] um so if you're thinking about a great place for an event think about antlers if you weren't um had not attended

[20:19] before uh the state city that's where we had last year grand Prairie Park construction is well underway so this is

[20:25] at Cedar 185th Street grant Prairie Park will be the city's largest community park when it's finished um much of

[20:33] what's happening there will not happen until next year we got to plan some things but you'll see the lights of the

[20:38] new baseball park have gone up um a lot of the other infrastructure that has gone there and this has really been a

[20:44] great effort from a lot of different community events uh community groups the we've had several sponsors to support

[20:50] Lake Baseball Association some of the added amenities to their baseball park um the Lions have been very generous in

[20:57] funding the splash pad that's there so a lot of that will open up we have to let the grass grow but um and as I mentioned

[21:03] before we have pickle ball courts there's a cricket pitch among other things so that is well on its way we're

[21:09] very excited for Grand Prairie Park um I will say one other thing just baseball related very quickly so next Wednesday

[21:16] North and South play each other Antarctic Field after the Twins game if you didn't know that so if you talked to

[21:22] Trisha from High Point raise your hand um the tickets are $20 and you get to go to the Twins game they play the Mets at

[21:28] noon and then right after that game then North and South get to play and if you are thinking about sponsorships they have different sponsor levels for

[21:34] businesses as well so I'm sure that if you want to talk to her about if your business is interested in supporting them so it's a very cool thing that

[21:40] supports um the North and South uh boosters uh last year we also finished

[21:46] all the upgrades to the Foxboro Park um which brought in some new biking and

[21:51] walking trails and then upgraded the playground equipment there as well in addition uh there's some replacements at

[21:57] the Kenmore Park included swings climbing element slide and other elements and then the Chadwick Farms

[22:04] Greenway Greenway which uh added another 3,000 ft of trail and if you remember

[22:10] back from 2021 this is part of that parks bond referendum all these are kind of projects that were in that um Grand

[22:16] Prairie Park and then East Lake uh park or East Community Park and East Lake

[22:21] we're just finishing up kind of the master plan for that the parks and wreck natural resources committee is looking

[22:27] along as along with our staff uh and the idea I think is to break ground this year next year um on on those additions

[22:35] so we we look forward to that oh you see it's right there on the side construction for 2026

[22:41] um you know as I I mentioned earlier uh you know and have public safety has been

[22:47] a top priority for me being on since being on city council mayor and has been for our our the rest of our city council

[22:54] and um you know one of the things that we actually just got to break ground for for was the first respon the first

[23:00] center which is the first responder skills training center where we are demolishing demoing the former public

[23:07] works building and building a state-of-the-art uh training facility for police fire and other public safety

[23:13] officials this is a project led by the city of Lakeville uh we got some uh

[23:20] decent funding from the legislature a few years ago representative Whitty Kasix and Senator Dougworth helped

[23:25] secure some uh $7 million for us on that congressman Craig secured another

[23:30] $800,000 for the engineering and design of that project uh but the total project is is well

[23:37] over 18 or 19 million and um but at the end of the day you know we see ourselves

[23:43] as a regional hub lakeville is and so we'll have a lot of partners we have over a dozen other agencies that have

[23:49] expressed interest in using this facility we've had I talked about this before we've had some really good conversations with ACTC about

[23:54] potentially doing some of their field training there or hills I should say they're combining it in one side i just call it ACTC but um really because we

[24:02] you know as those in law enforcement will say crime knows no borders and the more that we can work together among

[24:09] jurisdictions and training and all these things um that's really important so we look forward to that opening up um this

[24:16] next year um one other things uh just as an update we are now up to 73 sworn

[24:22] officers in the city um and with we're supported by another 20 uh staff members

[24:28] in uh in support roles and this obviously has grown over the last several years as our as our population

[24:35] continues to grow another cool project that the police department has kind of um spearheaded is last year we had one

[24:41] and this year we have two we secured grant money to basically help um people

[24:47] do career changes to leave what they're doing to get into policing as you can imagine um hiring for law enforcement

[24:54] can be difficult uh more often than not if when we swear new officers in the city of Lakeville they came from

[24:59] somewhere else and uh they came from another department um and part of that is again if we're thinking regionally uh

[25:06] to be supportive we have to you know kind of groom some of our own so we've got um some state money they're getting paid a salary to go through uh the

[25:13] certification and schooling uh so again I think we had one last year two this year and I think the plan is to continue

[25:19] to do that as long as we can uh make sure that that that grant keeps going so very excited about that um another big

[25:27] change for the police department uh our K9 Kilo retired uh and his handler

[25:32] Sergeant Danielson was promoted so we've got uh a new pup that's going to be on the road soon and that is uh Nora and

[25:40] she has officer Jolene Warden and so they're going to be on the road soon I

[25:45] would guess yeah she's just started training so a couple Okay so it's just training and be out in a couple months

[25:50] so we were thanks to Kilo for all of his years of service and I think he's probably very happy on Tom's farm down

[25:57] outside of Austin so he's doing very well in his retirement already and then one of the other things that we uh the

[26:04] department has really invested in is is thinking more broadly broadly about what policing means um besides just

[26:10] responding to emergencies um and that is you know invested in some of these kind of um social uh support services we have

[26:18] a liazison now that uh is a continued uh relationship with support with the county and 360 communities sorry my

[26:25] dad's not leaving he's mad he grabbed school bus for Schmidt he's got his afternoon route don't worry Mike he'll

[26:31] be there on time it's a great retirement job by the way if you looking for something to do

[26:37] uh being a bus driver like my dad he drives my kids route so he has he gets to pick them up at any other school good

[26:43] um white doors often and then if you think about uh in addition to police department obviously the fire department

[26:49] it uh has gone through some pretty significant changes for years we were strictly a paid on call volunteer

[26:56] department and uh the council decided a few years ago to to rethink that and to add some full-time staff and what we

[27:02] call a hybrid model we hired a few firefighters a couple of years ago I think six we actually given um money

[27:09] through FEMA to hire um some more so we will end up having up to 21 full-time

[27:14] firefighters but as you can imagine with that kind of growth and change it's going to require us to make some pretty

[27:20] big capital investments so we're that's why we talked about franchise fees last year about building a new fire station

[27:26] and that is when you go from a situation where you have all volunteers to people that are going to be sleeping and

[27:32] needing living quarters uh you know you get to that point so we're hopefully that the next few months we'll have kind

[27:38] of a location cited where we're thinking about so that new fire station and we'll kind of go through that process but the

[27:43] the goal I think is to get the ball rolling uh in this year so that we can open it up again next year

[27:50] um and as I mentioned that that way we'll have two engines staffed uh 24/7

[27:56] uh with uh full-time firefighters supported by probably another 50 or so volunteers so the volunteer component is

[28:02] not going away so if you're ever thinking about serving in the city um forget about being a volunteer firefighter so they they will work

[28:08] together uh alongside each other which is is really going to be a great model um for us obviously transportation

[28:15] improvements and changes are a big deal to all of you in the room for businesses and just for us be able to get to work and get uh get home um the 35 and 50 uh

[28:25] changes we've kind of come up with a pretty decent schematic of what we think it'll look like now we just got to find the money um so we have been continuing

[28:34] to work with our state and county and federal partners to think through that there has been substantial investment from all those levels but we don't have

[28:41] the kind of the final uh pieces to to make all that happen and we actually um

[28:46] there's a hearing tomorrow in the in the House bonding committee about further uh investment from the state but as you can

[28:53] imagine um you know you think about the area in front of Fleet Farm what kind of disaster that is uh every day um and

[29:00] then you think about County Road 50 that runs underneath 35 and all the backups and problems there ultimately we think

[29:05] this is a pretty good um change uh I will tell you the two-year project of

[29:12] closing one leg at a time on 35 is going to be awful so think about those telework uh things for your companies

[29:18] because it's going to be really terrible uh going through that quarter once it it starts but there are plenty of updates

[29:24] online um through the city's website you can kind of keep in touch with that um ideally we'd really like to focus on

[29:31] starting something at 28 29 um we'll see uh kind of how that works but again this

[29:36] is a a project that is sorely needed to the entire region another big project

[29:42] that you'll start to see is the 185th Street uh expansion again this is a partnership with the county um you know

[29:48] if you think about 185th once you get to 50 at that roundabout you got a pretty narrow road until you get to Sentry and

[29:53] it kind of opens up again so that corridor there will be widened to uh four lanes um to be able to to really

[30:01] handle a lot of the capacity that we're we're seeing and all the growth that we've had um it's just funny to think

[30:07] about that was a when I was in high school that was a four-way stop and then it was a stop light and it was a roundabout so there's been a ton of

[30:13] change uh and growth in that area um so that project will start very soon i

[30:18] think some of the infrastructure utilities are starting but you'll see some of the road uh stuff happening

[30:24] there very soon as well and I think that there's also some safe ride to school funds which is good so make it easier

[30:30] for kids to get over to Century um and those who are walking as well and oh yeah so April to

[30:36] October um last couple of things so obviously the city every year we have legislative priorities that are keen

[30:42] focus for us at the at the capital um one of those that we talked to our legislators about this year is downtown

[30:48] social districts so if you haven't followed theirs Anoka and Shaka beat are allowed to have basically open

[30:55] containers is the easiest way to describe it uh in their downtown areas they were done as kind of a pilot and so

[31:00] we had kicked around the idea from our council to have that same ability um on

[31:06] certain kind of days of the year to have uh that similar thing but unfortunately it's ran into some local politics

[31:13] from shock if he likes his monopoly of being the only city in the region to allow it so we're we're getting caught

[31:18] up in that unfortunately but we'll try again next year so we'll see kind of how that goes obviously I've talked about

[31:24] this at each one of my state of the city addresses but mandates on local authority and our our local control are

[31:31] always um something that we think about and I'll just you know highlight one that has been on my radar and that has

[31:37] to do with zoning and housing and how we're able to grow um if you if you don't know you know last month or Yeah

[31:46] last month we had a a pretty um exciting work session when we had some conversations about the property along

[31:52] Antler Park called Warwig which is uh there was conversation about a fourstory

[31:58] apartment i think the neighbors weren't super happy about it i don't think that's going to really happen right now but it was very exciting the legislature

[32:05] uh the bill that they've drafted would without public input without the city input would allow a sevenstory apartment

[32:10] building on that property so when I say that this local stuff matters um and you

[32:15] find us pushing back on four stories you can imagine what would happen if they said yeah you could put sevenstory apartment building right there uh in

[32:21] between Lakeville North and Park um and then lastly uh we continue

[32:29] to beat the drum on the post office uh I don't have anything to say about that i mean I think everybody in this

[32:35] room is pretty frustrated i'm frustrated um you know at some point Congresswoman

[32:40] Craig and I were talking about like staging a walk out from the the people who work there just because it's such an awful condition they don't even have a

[32:46] loading dock i mean think about when that post office opened to the how packages come through Amazon today like

[32:52] they can't even do their jobs effectively uh let alone do that and um for those of you who have PO boxes

[32:59] downtown um they also basically just thumbed this off when we cuz they're you're now going to charge you for your

[33:04] PO box if you didn't know that so if you had a PO box downtown if you're downtown business the post office said to take that away so you either have to pay for

[33:11] it now or apparently they didn't do any calculation that they'd have to do delivery so um if you if you don't pay

[33:18] for your PO box and they have to bring it to your house but then they don't have to drive it to your house so I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work but um I continue to be frustrated

[33:25] by the post office i'm sure you are as well i just I wish I had some answers for you in that we just we really don't

[33:31] the the postmaster general the federal level resigned last week um so hopefully

[33:36] uh that is an opportunity to potentially do that but at the end of the day it's really the regional managers that are

[33:42] ping i mean the guy in Washington doesn't mount um I said uh we continue to work on that

[33:48] and uh appreciate any feedback that you guys have about those situations but I wanted to be brief so we can get out of

[33:53] here on time but happy to open up for any questions uh if I don't have the answer we got plenty of city staff here

[33:59] on that that could do that as well but do you have an email or a phone number

[34:04] and we could just throw yes you can so thank you Beth you're welcome so my uh email and cell phone number on the

[34:10] city's website and then I also have a little I'm at the Oh the post oh I'll

[34:16] get that you want There you go yes yes okay yes I will get that for you especially downtown policies yes thank

[34:23] you uh but that Yeah so the other thing on the your table is I have a little flyer i have a a newsletter that comes

[34:28] out every Friday just kind of updating things that are happening in the city feel free to sign up for it um and then

[34:34] I also just if you have a community event for instance I like to feature those i can't find everyone i try to

[34:39] find a lot but I miss a lot so I apologize if if I haven't put your event in there in fact I just got an email

[34:46] there's an Easter egg hunt at Lakeville South on Saturday so that'll probably be the top most exciting thing in the newsletter this week so I'm telling you

[34:52] before this the newsletter comes out um any the question was any updates on the UCA United Christian Academy project uh

[34:59] not that I know um there's been some conversation about them partnering with a local church to think it to rethink

[35:05] about it i I do know that the last conversation was thinking more about just high school and not Kate Walt

[35:11] they've had a lot of success at their their um school building in Bloomington with the younger grades they then their

[35:16] big missing piece is having like the right high school so I think it's a refocus on the high school and not necessarily K12 so that's that's the

[35:23] best news I got for it name it bob I just wanted to thank the mayor mayor and

[35:28] city council city administrator staff for their extraordinary contributions so you should and I know

[35:36] some of those greens uh I also uh would ask again as the city council more

[35:43] consideration of building a new post office and leasing it back within US

[35:50] yeah um so he we have had conversations about what that would look like in fact

[35:55] at one point the mayor of Farmington and I had a conversation about what a joint post office would look like um we wrote

[36:01] a letter with Congressman Court Craig to the um postmaster general he said "Thanks but no thanks."

[36:06] Um you know they're they are other than the railroads they are one of the most difficult

[36:13] uh entities to deal with because they're quasi federal so they have some congressional oversight but not really

[36:19] uh so no I'm sorry i don't have a great answer for it we tried we just said if we want to hit there

[36:26] all right thank you so much for being here appreciate it

[36:34] [Music]