I will call to order the Tuesday, May 13th regular uh community city council. Stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we need a motion and a second for the agenda. Make a motion. Second. Um, any changes? Yes, mayor. Um, mayor, council, I have two items. I need to change one addition which I sent out earlier today. Item uh needed item to consent. Item J1 accepting the planning or the resignation of planning commission member uh Nick Pricer and approved posting for filling of the vacant planning commission seat. That' be J1. And then one item of change just didn't note with the um agenda asking to move item N before item K um based on individuals being in the audience. Try not to have them here all night. So thank you. Any more? All right. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed say no. Motion carries 5 to zero. Consent. I need a motion. Oh, wait a minute. [Music] One thing, presentation of fire post. Good evening, mayor, members of council. Um Sharon Ponita, would you come on up here for me? Council, mayor, members of council. This is Sharon. Sharon's in third grade at Dayton Elementary, and she entered the poster contest for the State Chiefs Association. Um she ended up, you can see her poster up here. Um 120 posters were um submitted um across the state and for third grade Sharon um received first place. Wow. So congratulations to Sharon. There's your poster. The other thing is is that um the state chiefs association um gave the winner of that a check for $75. So there's a check spending on good things. Um and then we also will be seeing um the state chiefs association spring magazine. Her um picture uh poster will be on the front cover. So we'll have a couple of those to get to you once they come in. Make sure we get them to you. And we sincerely appreciate your participation and an awesome job. Nicest slide we've seen all [Music] night. Okay, on to consent. Um, need a motion and a second. I'll make a motion. Okay, I'll second. And Stephanie, any discussion? I I have a question, but I think I can wait till we get to that. So, I do have a a question. Not necessarily, just a comment basically. I personally don't have a problem with the magnet deal. Uh, however, this per one event is using about 25% of the money that we allotted for these. So I guess it we just got to be cognizant of uh how much of this goes on. Yeah, that's an estimate. Um CO is a guess based on last year's numbers. I don't know if it'll be the same, less or more, but um it is good to note and I appreciate the note that yeah, it is roughly 25% of the budget that was passed for these type of items. Yep, that's all I got. Go ahead. I just minor it but go ahead. Mine as well. Um items D E and F are accepting donations um related to something we're doing in the parks and I'm wondering um dog treats and I'm not I guess this is news to me and I'm I'm not in any way opposed to it. I'm just wondering what that's all about. Yeah, I can touch on it a little bit. Yeah. our um I don't remember what her community event specialist position um decided and looked into, you know, one another ways to get people involved with the community overall and she found that it would be really good to have a treat bin essentially that would be covered for a year and they would have a treat at you know treat bins around the city and they would be sitting there and then they would be filled with dog treats. So you can go grab a dog treat and um typically there'll be a station for um a waste bag or whatever right next to it too. And so the idea was that if you sponsored that, then you're able to fill that tree um item for the year. We've had really good response from it. Overall, it was just an item kind of thrown out as a you know, kind of throw it up the wall, see if it hit CIA 6, and it seemed to be a big hit from people. Um I don't know if Marty knows any more information about it either because since she works with him directly, he'd see her every day about how it came about with I think you covered it pretty well there. Um we've got the dog treat things in six different locations. Um the the the dispensers were fabricated by public works guys as well. Um and there's a um on the the dispenser there's a place to uh put an advertisement for the per person who's sponsored the uh particular treat dispenser. Are these also um raccoon treat stations or it's equal opportunity? you know. Fair enough. I was just wondering if they're built by obviously not like bear boxes, but you know, is there something to avoid that? Um, we haven't come across that issue yet, but if that does become something, then obviously we'll look at it. It's a a flap on the top that needs to be lifted. I'm not sure how clever the raccoons are, but I'm sure they can figure it out and give us a challenge. We've got a cat that can open our doors now. When I was planning my chicken coupe, they said to assume a raccoon has the same intelligence and strength as a three-year-old. Oh, and dexterity cuz they have little fingers. So, any other um mine is more my It might be updated online now, but I found resolution 29 2025 twice and I did not see resolution 33 2022 at all. in in the packet that we got emailed. So, I don't know if the one on the website has been updated. Likely not. Okay. Twice. And like she said, it's Yeah. The other donate the other resolution's not in there. Yeah. 33 33 2022 25 isn't in there at all, but it's accepting donations. So, I I didn't assume I was going to be strongly opposed to that. I wasn't super worried about it. But just a clarity thing on that one. If you do know those those things, please let us know. Okay. Happy to adjust it and fix it if we don't. Yeah. I sometimes when the pack is put together, it's last minute and we're throwing it. And I was looking at it last minute. We're all last minute. So I think the lesson for all of us is to maybe get our stuff together a little bit sooner, myself included. So I may have done my last minute prep at around 3:00 today. So I apologize on that end. Okay. I appreciate it. Anybody else have anything? Uh item I what what is that? I mean why so it it sounds like we're saying halfime is covered under benefits and that's what I'm wondering. Yep. Um I don't Yeah. Much taken. Mr. Mayor, members of council, I don't have much information on this. I was informed that um to get parah taken out of and counted into your parah, you had to do a blanket resolution um for part-time officers to collect parah um while they're working part-time here. Yeah. So essentially, mayor, members of council, if you're part of parah in another community, that is considered your because you only get credit for one full-time work, right? And so if you don't have a blanket resolution in in a community that has part-time work, you don't get credit for those dollars towards your top five. So we mentioned earlier how you get your top $5. Um, currently we have an officer here that's um doesn't get his money put towards his top five because we don't have a blanket resolution. We've passed one in the past for an individual police officer, but not a blanket one that says any part-time officer can put that towards PAR. They can elect not to, but they can also elect to have it put into PAR. um as in towards their top five salaries. So if they're working here, that's not counted. No, I'm going to call it quote against them even though it's not against them. So this has nothing to do with us funding benefits. No, it's just simply a statement. Well, it's statement and then then they're now eligible for PAR. So we would have a contribution to PAR as well for them. For them, yes, because now they're part of PAR, which we'd have to pay their 17.7% of their um salary that they're earning here. And we've budgeted that every year we've been here for part time. Yes. What about other part-time employees? Um, what do you mean? Well, I mean, other part if they're employed in another city and then they would have No, what I'm getting at is so typically like where I work. Yep. If you don't hit the 32 hours, you don't get benefits. Yep. Is that different? Um, so they would get benefits here as in like health insurance, dental insurance. just to pay our cont just to pay our contributions and it's only based on the fact of the retirement because you're still working for a local government. Um if we had another part-time employee that worked at public works or something and they worked at public works at a different community and then they worked here, they could technically collect pay off for that as well. But it's also them paying in too. So they have to pay in their 11.7% for an officer um or 6.5 if you're another different employee, a general employee. But it's not like it's benefits as an insurance. Well, it's only PAR. It's just the retirement cost. Yes. Okay. So, if you have a public works employee that only works for for Yep. and he's they're already in PAR 30 hours a week, then they then they are not benefit eligible and they would be in PAR, but they bea based on their per month salary. So, if you're over $450 a month or something like that, you have to be enrolled in PAR. if you aren't earning a credit somewhere else. So, you can only earn one service credit per month ever. Okay. Then you obviously the the service credits are what go towards your um top five because then it counts how many service credits you have and that's your percentage that you receive. To be fair, I work part-time at Fleet Farm literally four hours a week, four hours every other week and I have a retirement account there. So like it's not unre like that's pretty standard actually that no matter how part-time you are retirement like there is retire like and that account has all of like $5 in it so I'm not banking on it for my retirement but like that's not unusual for a part-time job to have a retirement component. I don't get any benefits. Yeah. So okay from the from the part-time officer's perspective is I'm already working in a local government somewhere else. I'm not asking to earn more credit. I'm just asking to have my dollars count towards my retirement. Sure. Long-term because I'm still working for another local government essentially. Any other discussion? Okay. Um, all those in favor say I. I. I. All those opposed say no. Consent passes 5 to zero. And we are on to new business item N. Hold on. Oh, wait. I did skip. I skipped a few things. Open forum. Open forum. Anybody here for open forum? Limited to three minutes for non-aggenda items. Come on forward. State your name and address. I don't need to write a second. Just when you're done. And uh state name and address. No council action will be taken and items will be referred back to staff. Okay. Thurber spawnum and address is 11250 East French Lake Road and ready. Good. Okay. Um I don't know how many of you are aware. I had a pole barn that burned last day weekend all the way to the ground and fire department did a great job. So I just want to give them kudos and in person here they uh unfortunately is a complete loss and going through the insurance and all that has been quite challenging right to be able to get everything taken care of in the background. And now I'm kind of to the I'm am to the point where I'm looking to get permitting reapplied for to rebuild the building. Finally that proc that insurance process has gotten to that point and um I guess I have a kind of speech is what I was going to say here. they pre-wrote wrote down. Um, this is I'm here today to express my concerns regarding a meeting that was called by the planning and community development director at my house this past week involving both my contractor and myself. I said the the meeting was framed as an investigation into what they perceived as a potential storage business being run out of my future garage that I am planning to rebuild. Um the meeting was called under questionable circumstances and appears to be a bit of an overreach. Um what comes down to it is that the current permitting requirements now my old building had 16 ft sidewalls, right? I'm looking to just replace what I had simply right. Um, now the current if I was to rebuild now, there's I was saying I'm not within the 180day window to be able to be grandfathered into the old sidewall size and now the largest I can go is 14 ft. Um um so I guess going from there, I was saying that I've been a lifelong citizen of Dayton and and I'm just disheartened to as though I feel like my intentions and actions as a homeowner are being scrutinized. Uh the situation revolves around my request to rebuild the garage to the same size it was when it was lost before it was lost, including these 16ft sidewalls. And during the meeting, I was asked why I wanted the 16 ft sidewalls and whether I was it was because I was planning to run a storage business out of that garage. Um um I explained that the reason I wanted the height was to be able to have the option to install a mezzanine because then you'd have 8 ft from each end, right? Um or have a camper. If you have a camper inside there, then the air conditioner on top is generally you can't fit it in to the garage door with that shorter sidewall generally unless you tweak a few things. Um, but just so within just a few minutes of starting our conversation when they first arrived, I was it was made clear that because the 180day window to rebuild had passed by the 2 months, I would need a variance in order to proceed with my project. I was also informed that the process for securing a variance would take at least 2 and 1/2 months because they had to go through the city council. Um uh to make matters worse, I was then advised to apply for commercial zoning for my property in order to run the storage business that I had no intention of running out of that garage. Right? If I was at that point, I would re I would apply, but I'm not planning on running any storage business out of there. And I was also told that it was it would be it was suggested to do it now when I apply for these taller sidewalls because that would be easier to get the approval now than if I were caught later, right? Running a business out of it. Okay. I'm I'm frustrated and that that this I could have been informed a week earlier or more over the phone, whatever, that I had expired that 180 days and I have to start fresh again, right? Um but uh the reason we are outside of that the 180day window is because of the prolonged insurance claim process which was beyond my control. Additionally, the uncertainty surrounding m material pricing makes it even more critical to begin the rebuild process as soon as possible. Prices are constantly fluctuating as everybody knows and every day I wait, you know, it could be longer, materials could be higher which complicates this process. I'm here tonight to request approval for that. It's literally a 17in variance to go from the 14 ft to the 16 ft. From the height of my rough line of my house right now, I can only make it a 14T sidewall. I'm just looking to rebuild what I had. Um, I'm just looking for that variance so that we can get going right away. I I don't want to keep I don't want to keep waiting, especially when these delays are caused by factors that are outside of my control. Um, I don't know. The entire interaction I felt was in disingenuous and frankly unfair. the manner in which this meeting was initiated and the vice advice that was given was not only inappropriate but also seemed to be an attempt to pressure me into pursuing a commercial zoning application which I never planned on. Um I believe the situation reflects a reflects a broader pattern of overreach and I hope the city council will reconsider how situations like this are handled moving forward ensuring that citizens are treated fairly and respectfully. Um, I'm just looking for I want this daylighted so you guys know, right? They're they're assuming I'm going to run a the two that were out there assumed that I was going to be running a business out there because I have some campers and some other trailers in the back of my property, right? So, they think because I want these taller sidewalls to be able to put these inside and charge for storage, which I'm not. I never did before when this whole thing went down. When my garage burned, if I was one there, if anybody in there was paying me to store, my insurance company would have f found it. I had to pull my social security number. I had to give to them. They went through all my bank accounts and make sure I was nothing was being done. No business was being ran out of it. And there wasn't. And there isn't going to be in the future. If there is, for whatever reason, I will go back. I will apply. I will do the right thing. Right? There's some campers out back that if they're a problem, there's three of them. And there people that are in the neighborhoods around me, like in the Sundance Woods neighborhoods that have campers back that keep them at my place. They do. And if that's a problem, which I was told that day that if nobody complains about it, if my neighbors don't have issues there, I don't then there there's nothing that can be nothing that can be done really. I guess um it's not a problem. Basically, nobody complains. It's not a problem. There's three campers back there. Those I've told those people now at this point, go. They're gone. If this is going to be a problem, they're going to force me. City's going to force me to getting commercially zoned, then it's not it's not a this is not a business I'm running. This is not a profit and for profit anything, right? Most of this money goes to charity. I take in $50 per trailer, right? It goes to charity. I part of an organization. So, that's all it is. Um, but I want that daylighted and then I'm I'm asking for some just variance approval. So, at open forum, we can't do that. I I get that. You said that right away. Um, it's staff is clearly aware, so they will they will look into it. Yeah, it's it's literally if it wasn't for the insurance process, I would I didn't know even know how much money I had to rebuild with, right? I couldn't apply for something that I didn't know the size and and go into something that with the unknowns. So if if you had been able to get through the insurance and and the permitting process in that 180day window, your previous wall height would have been okay. Yes. Well, under my understanding, yes. Okay. If it was within that 180 days, then it would have been fine to rebuild at that size. If I could clarify it, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, uh, basically the way that the ordinance is written in the egg districts is that the accessory structure on the property can exceed the height of the principal home. Uh, this was a grandfathered in non-conforming U building that had 180 days to pull a permit or file for a new building permit application. that would have allowed the property owner to rebuild the structure to its ex or previous size and height. Um, but based on the non-conformity section of the zoning ordinance, it is that 180day limitation. Um, and if I could clarify just one other thing, we weren't requesting that he apply for commercial zoning or getting reszoned to commercial on this egg property. It was more of a if you're going to apply for a variance for this structure to exceed the height of the house. At the same time, it'd be beneficial if you were going to continue storing other people's items on the property to go through that interim use permit process so we wouldn't have to go through it two separate times. Business permit. Yeah. Home extended business. Home business, but it was implied. Okay. All right. Um Yeah. Okay. That's I'm just looking I if at at the least it's some common sense, right? Like I if I obviously I'm going forward with wanting that height if I can possibly get it right and do to go through the two meetings and the two and a half months later to me just there's like it's not common sense like rebuilding would have if I could have done it earlier I would have done it and I get you got to have rules and laws and all that stuff but in this situation seems a little bit like this should be a no-brainer to just go ahead and if possible right okay and approve Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You can bring it back. Anybody else open for him? Anybody online? Sorry, mayor. I'm not used to running the Yeah. Where's Emy's off? Huh? Oh, that's right. Yeah. If anybody's online that would like to speak at open forum, please use the raise your hand function. [Applause] I am not seeing any, mayor. Okay, we will move on then staff consult council updates. Zach. Yep. Mayor members council. I got a few updates for tonight. Um tonight is the rough timeline that was given by city council and park district at last week's meeting to address questions on the Mississippi trail. Did any of you have any questions that you have for staff or park district? If you have any of those, can you please send them over to us so we could try to get them off? That would be greatly appreciated. Reminder that tomorrow is the open house which will be at public works facility off of Zanzibar. I would like to close city hall at 4 so we're able to help out and get everything situated over there. Is council okay with us closing at four the doors here at city hall. I'm okay with that. Okay. Just want to make sure. And then portaotties continue to be a hot topic item across my desk. Not sure about your emails, but um Marty visited the sites two weeks ago or more maybe. I don't know. But the locations for moving them. We did move a couple of them um just in small amounts. We're still hearing from residents that they would like them to be removed. I'm just confirming that the council would like to keep them where they are or keep them in the parks. I've had people reach out and thank me that they are there. Okay. So, just I think the answer is screening. I think the problem the screening will be done. So, that that is going to be something that Martin and I work on. He's already got his guys on it that I'm aware of. So, I just want to confirm before we start putting in screening and stuff that we are not going down the wrong path. So, okay. to keep. Sounds great. I think so. Thank you, Gary. Uh, mayor and council, I have a couple of updates. Well, for rehab, the well is back in production now. Um, just in time for the irrigation season. Um, just a quick note on the water usage. Um, yesterday we pumped 1.1 and a half million gallons, 1,525,000 gallons. Um, last year on the peak consumption day, which was July 19th, we pumped 1,232,000 gallons. So, we already blew away, huh? We blew that away. Yeah, we blew that one right out of the water. Um, in March, uh, this year, we pumped 281,000 gallons. So, that's the average um, for March. So, um, we are pumping an extra 1,244,000 gallons that appears to just be on irrigation. So, I would like to put out the odd even signs at this time. Um, just because we're getting hit pretty hard here. So, um, so world five is currently scheduled for startup on Thursday. Um, so we'll have that ready to roll, but uh we'll still be waiting for the wellhead treatment plant to be completed before we can actually put that into production. Uh, wellhead treatment masonry. Uh, we're waiting for the face uh face brick to come uh to the site uh for the exterior walls. The roof decking is just about complete. Next week will be more roofing, sophet work and uh some tid tightening up on there and prep work for the masons before installing the face brick once it arrives. Parks uh the bridge construction at LC Stevens is complete. Um irrigation of parks irrigation in installation is going to start this week on two parks that already have uh power to them which is LC Stevens and Sundance uh uh Sundance Woods. uh let us park the ground prep for the prairie stuff has been completed and they've sprayed it again. Um they're letting it stand uh a little bit um so we get uh the get a pre-emerge stuff, make sure that's worked and then uh hopefully the weather will cool a bit and we can start seeding that that thing down in the ne hopefully early next week. Um and then just a little bit on the the enclosures for the portaotties. Um, we've worked through several different configurations and designs and materials. Um, uh, we finally figured out something. It's, you know, not as cheap as we were expecting it to be, but I think it's worth doing the job properly. Um, we're getting the the stuff. We'll be doing the Sundance one first. Um, that hopefully we can get started on Thursday and Friday this week and complete next week. So, that'll be the first one. And that seems to be What is not as cheap? Well, we were hoping it was going to be a couple of hundred bucks. This is going to be more like 600 bucks because we're doing a bigger structure um to conceal more of the of the uh the porta potty. And so you can only see it from one side. So it'll be a structure that goes around the three sides and then extends to the front and across. Um so it's got four walls, but it's got an extension across the front. So it's it's not you can't see it all from all four sides. What's the dimensions? How big is it? Uh, it's a handicapped um thing. I don't have the exact dimensions. Probably 5 by 10. Yeah. And that's six center box. Yeah. Okay. I don't still seems like we need them. I think we need them. Chief, mayor, members of council, last Thursday we conducted our physical agility test. Um, we had six participants. All six passed. Uh, so I'll be looking to interview them starting next Thursday. Evening, mayor, members of council. A couple years ago, I had a goal of getting all my full-time police officers through crisis intervent intervention training. Um, we have all our full-time employees except one who was under probation. So, um they have all completed the crisis 40-hour crisis intervention training. Um we also have added two negotiators um with the two that we currently have. So, we have four total negotiators within the department. Um all um of the PD participated in an 8 hour firearms training the other day. Um this was not a qualifying, but it's one of the four um firearms trainings that we are putting on per year now. Um so that went good and everything's going good. Uh Mr. Mayor, members of the council, just one update for you. The planning commission had a good discussion on exterior lighting uh for the zoning ordinance. Uh they ultimately ended up tableabling the decision or recommendation for the city council. So that'll go back to them in June and hopefully we'll have another good discussion and wrap that up for you guys to take a look at. Jamie, no report. Yeah, I got one little item to bring up to uh the entire city's attention. Everybody. Everybody. I challenge anybody in this city to be able to dunk me tomorrow. Oh. Does that mean I don't have to do it? No. I'm just giving you a little I don't want you to wrinkle up. That's it. That's it. That's all I got. That's pretty exciting news. It's very exciting news. I am not putting myself on the dunk tank. Sorry. Um I don't have anything. I have nothing. Um, well, first on that topic, I forgot to send you my name, but I'm more than happy to get uh dumped. I will add you to the list. That's too you still need a third. Oh, yeah. I got out of this. Great. Um, the other thing, just to make you aware, I will not be at the June 10th meeting. Okay. June will be somewhere in Norway. I think you know that's the goal. Not the bottom of the ocean. Fingers crossed. That's all I got. Nothing for me. Okay. Um, we are on now we're on to new business item N audit. Let's get through these here quick. We have Janelle from Burke KDB here to give the audit presentation. Come on up. All right. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Um, I've got the summary of your 2024 audit for you tonight. Um, we'll go through the the reports that we issue as part of the audit process. The first one being the independent auditor's report. This report does talk about uh management having responsibility over the financial statements as well as the internal controls over financial reporting. Um as the auditor, we're responsible to express an opinion based on the results of our testing. We did issue an unmodified opinion. Um this again is what's considered the clean opinion or the best that we can offer you. It states that your financial statements present fairly in all material respects. Um the next reports that we issue is a report in accordance with government auditing standards. These standards require us to look at internal controls over financial reporting as well as compliance with various laws, regulations, contracts, and grants. When it comes to the internal controls, we had one item to report and you've seen this in the past is the lack of segregation of accounting duties. Um just due to the limited staff that you have within the finance area, there are some um duties that are overlapping. Very common um for entities your size to have this finding. And then when it comes to compliance, we had no instances of non-compliance to report. And then the last report we issue is our report on Minnesota legal compliance. The state auditor's office gives us a list of state statutes to test compliance with each year. Um and we had no instances of non-compliance. So another clean report for the city. And then moving on, we've got some um charts and graphs that show some some trends for the city over the last five years. Um the first one here is your property tax levy and tax capacity. Um for 2024 your tax capacity increased about 26 and a half%. Um you are up about 142 thou or 142% since 2020 the first year presented here. Um in the related time frames your levy increased about 19% in 2024. um up about 51% since 2020. And so overall, your tax rate has been decreasing in the years presented here as your your tax capacity has been increasing at a much higher rate than what your levy has been increasing. This next graph shows the general fund revenues, expenditures, and fund balance for the last five years. um revenues did exceed expenditures in four of the five years presented here. Um you have been growing your fund balance in each of the years presented. For 2024, your fund balance increased uh $443,000. Um so that's about 40% or 5 months worth of expenditures. Um it's up slightly from the prior year and right in line with the state auditor's recommendation of having 35 to 50% um in your fund balance. The next graph here summarizes general fund um sources of revenue for the last five years. Um overall revenues were up about $1.9 million or 30% in 2024. Um, you did have an increase in the the taxes that were allocated to the general fund and you also saw some increases in charges for services and license and permits with the building activity that was going on during the year. Um, and you can see just kind of the overall trends of the um the dollars going up as your city continues to grow. um similar trend in the next graph, the expenditures for the general fund. Um additional activity um with the growth that your city has seen in the last years. Um so 2024 your expenditures increased about 10.8% or $779,000. Um and you did see increases in in most of the categories. um public safety, you saw um increases with the addition of officers and the the assistant fire chief. Um general government increased with additional staff in there as well and changes in the um salaries. And then public works, the largest variance in that area was the increase in the contract price for the recycling. Um the table here summarizes general fund budget to actual results. So the first column is the budgeted numbers that you as the council approved. Um kind of approved a balanced budget or no change in the overall fund balance. And as I mentioned, you had an increase of about $443,000. Um the largest variance in that was um due to your revenues being about $484,000 higher than budgeted. Um some of the the larger variances in there again are the the licenses, permits, and charges for services. Um you've historically budgeted conservatively for those areas. Um in the intergovernmental revenues, you see you um collected additional revenues that weren't budgeted for. And then also the miscellaneous revenues, you did receive a large payment from Maple Grove for some connection charges. Um on the expenditure side, you were within $45,000 of what you had budgeted. Some um plus and minus variances across the categories, but overall within 6% of the budgeted numbers. Um the next graph here is the water fund activity for the last 5 years. Um this fund also continues to see um increases in activity as you add users to the system. Um for 2020 um 4, you did have an operating income of about $361,000. This is the third year that you've had an operating income in this fund. You can see 2022 was the first year um where you um had that operating income and it has continued to grow the last couple years. And then the last graph here is the sewer fund. Um this fund also has been having the increase in activity with the new users. Um however, this fund is experiencing an operating loss um $595,000 for 2024. Um and that includes depreciation. If you don't include the depreciation, you do have an operating income of about $195,000. So overall, you were covering approximately 25% of the depreciation. and that's allowing you to set uh money aside for future repairs and replacements um when needed. So that's kind of the purpose of those depreciation dollars. So and was was uh so we talked about this a little last year that depreciation is kind of at a accelerated scale, right? Yeah, city st's best guess of how long it's going to last that item now is our best guess close probably, but it's probably conservative as in we expect it to only last 30 years for most things where they probably last 50. Yeah. At least things nowadays. But so even if we back that schedule down to say say half of what it is, would we still be negative? What what's going on here? Oh, what is the issue for it? Yeah. Um, we don't have any large purchases that we're really trying to bank up dollars for. That's really what's happening in the water fund and why you're seeing some dollars being added to the bottom line is because we have so many large items to pay for water towers, wells, well treatment plants or in the sewer fund, we don't have that stuff and this really is depreciation. It's really just depreciation. So, um, as long as we're, you know, staying consistent with dollars and able to have money in the fund, I think that's important. But the idea is that if we're, you know, if you say we have to contribute every asset and have everyone on the books, we're going to have to have a large increase in the sewer fund and we don't have any large purchases to offset those items. We're just going to hold on to the money for a conservative amount of time. 70 years, right? Got it. So that's been my prerogative with it is be appropriate, not aggressive. Right. But we feel like our charges for sewer use are in line. They're relatively in line. We may have to do some changes this year in 2026 in the future budget year to take a look at them and such. Um mostly because we do that seasonal usage average and it's very difficult to do seasonal usage average when we do um sewer because people use different sewer amounts based on the time of year. And so it's you know we we physically pay um the amount that actually goes out but we charge for an average amount based on what they have in their first two months of usage. Yeah, but ultimately most of these dollars are kind of a pass through to the Met Council for a lot of them are um this year budgets about 619 grand that goes to the Met Council for from the city here. So that's part of it. That's a pass through. The rest is state that stays here. Hopefully I addressed your question. Yes. Thank you. I'm not here to solve it. I guess we're just trying to understand the numbers tonight. Yep. Thank you. So, that's all I had for you guys tonight. Um, certainly open to any additional questions you might have. I don't One question I wanted to make sure Janelle addressed was the significant risks that were on that communications letter. Um, there's identified risks in that communications letter that just were very eye openening to myself this year and so I thought maybe touch base on that, you know, would be great. Yeah. So within the communication letter there was a section um labeled significant risks and with every audit we perform we have to identify significant risks. So it doesn't mean that we see any issues going on within the city. It's um things that we develop tests around. We always have to develop tests and um certain ones I can open this up here real quick. There's a few of them in here. Um like the revenue recognition, misappropriation of assets, management override. Those are risks that we have to consider in every audit that we do. So it it sounds alarming just by the the headings and it's required verbiage that we have to use. Um but just wanted to clarify that it's it's just um test that we have to identify for every audit. So nothing going on. if we had concerns, you'd see more findings within the reports and such like that. It's um kind of more just the standard terminology that we have to use. And this relates to the division of duties in finance that you mentioned earlier. Um not necessarily. It's it's on page five of the communication letter. So with every audit, we have to identify risks and develop different tests around that. So we'll look at what are the largest revenue streams that the city has and then we develop tests around that. You know we look at the property tax revenues coming in your utility revenues that are coming in special assessments. So it's different areas that um where we develop different audit tests. These are risks identified. Not Uh be back. Uh item K. Okay. Um so item K we tabled last time. So we will have a vote have a vote to untable it. Yeah. U mayor members calls we don't necessarily need a vote but we do need to get clear direction. That's what we need here for. So it doesn't need to be necessarily a vote unless there is something that you want us to do but necessarily just need direction and being was tabled that was our direction was to bring it back. Now I'm confused. Do you do you mean a vote to pull from to pull it from the table? Yes. You can vote procedurally to pull it from the table for discussion. So I need a and I'll make that motion. second. Um, so that's me. Um, and there's no discussion. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those opposed say no. Okay. So, discussion on Londale. Who do you have something to say? You look like you're ready to eager to go. I'm ready. I'm here if you have questions. Um I mean there was some question at the last meeting about whether the council could um meet in close session on the item um to have confidential legal advice from me and the answer to that question is no. This doesn't fall under an exception to the open meeting law. I did provide the council with a confidential memo. Um I didn't receive uh questions or comments from all of you just from a couple of you. So if there are additional questions that I can answer about um the easement document itself, the record that such as it is that the count that the city has as to how the easement was created um and uh any other questions that the council might have, I'm I'm here to try to answer as best I can. So the issue is um we can choose to leave things as as is or or not. That's really it. Yes. Um so I guess does anybody have any any comments they want to make at this point? Go ahead, Sharon. Um, I think where I'm struggling is that the easement in some ways is for a road, but there isn't a road, there's a driveway. No, the easement is for a road. Yes. And what was constructed there was constructed to the width that was the minimum width that was recited in the easement document itself. So it is considered a road under the terms of the easement that was granted to the city for a roadway. It was not granted for a driveway. It was not granted for access. It was granted for a roadway. So it is technically a roadway easement. Okay. So I guess can I just ask I'm just going to ask the question. Um, is it possible for the city to tell um the one of the part one of the grant because there's the grtors and the grantees. Correct. The city is the grantee. Yes. The grtor. There's a single grtor under the under the easement document. The way that it was written, it has both of the owners at the time were created as one single grand tour. Can we as a city in any way, shape or form separate those grantors? Not in the way that the that the easement is drafted. Okay, so that was one of my questions. Second question, can we then declare to the grtors that we would like them to build a second 12-oot road on a a specific portion of the easement? That's a difficult question to answer because it doesn't the the easement doesn't address that. Okay. Um so the the language in the easement speaks to a 12-oot batuminous surface with 2 feet of on either side of gravel for um drainage and such. Um but it is described as the improvement shall include um but not be limited to. So it does appear to contemplate a wider surface potentially but it doesn't talk about the location of where the surface would be constructed. Is it in is it one surf I mean it refers to one surface. So, I mean, I think the most reasonable reading is that it could not be two driveways, but again, it's not it doesn't specifically preclude that. So, it's it's it's um it's a difficult document to work with in some ways because of that kind of ambiguity. Okay. So, if which we don't know yet, but if we were able to say build a second 12T roadway that's not a driveway. Um, can we and it's one grantor. Can we specif we can't break them apart and say one of the grant like how do we specif can can we indicate who has to pay for that? Can we have any say in who pays for it or it just we send the bill to the grantors and leave it to them to figure out who pays for it? Um, a couple of things there, council member. Um, I don't know that this the city would not send a bill. Okay. This would be the private construction by the grand tour. Okay. Um, and how they work that out amongst themselves is is not specifically for the city to control. Okay. Um the only way that the city would be involved with any construction or maintenance is if there was a failure by the grtor to maintain at this point maintain or perhaps construct um the improvements contemplated by the easement. And at that point, if the city were involved, then there would be a bill. But right off the top, the city is not involved. This is basically [Music] um a private agreement between the two grand the two parties that consists that that the grand tour consists of if that makes sense. It doesn't fault the document the way that I'm explaining it makes sense. Sorry. The way you make the way you're explaining the nonsensical document makes sense. The document is where the nonsensical part is. It is a little challenging. Yes. Under the current easement, is there any ability for the city to require that that roadway be rebuilt and centered in the easement? Council member, the the document doesn't specify the location of where the surface would be placed, whether it would be in the 30t that's on the south side of the the underlying property line or on the north side of the underlying property line or in the center of the full 60 60 ft uh of the easement. So, it's it the easement does not specify the location of where um any improvement would be placed. And we don't have any outside of the easement. I mean, because this is a public roadway um that other rules would apply. Maybe this is more adjacent question, but when we build a road, don't we generally center it on the in the rightway? Yes. Y and is that a requirement of us or the county? It's just our practice. Uh just practice. It's not necessarily a requirement. It could be offset if you had more utilities on one side for example or other but it's it's generally done so to provide additional space on either side of the road for utilities. It's not described to us in any way. No no the under the easement the city um the the only requirement is that the that the whatever is constructed meets the city standard. So whether it's a codified standard that's in the city code or if it's a practice as the city engineer just described um that's about as much guidance as the easement document gives you questions. So, if nobody has any other questions, I don't know if I have any other questions. I guess I'm trying to understand this thing 100% correctly. Um, good luck with that. Well, no, I get it. I mean, I understand it. I think what the deal is, we don't Do we have the quillings here? Okay. I think what the deal is, we have one driveway. There is going and I personally don't like to see a shared driveway cuz if somebody's coming and somebody's going, somebody's got to back up. And a solution to that I'm just going to tell I'm going to tell it like it is. A solution to that is a is a 24 foot roadway. Can everybody live with that? Um the other issue that I see here is and I guess it's a good thing my dad never did it to me, but a a deal a a a an agreement was put down 20ome years ago and now all of a sudden it's not working. because the kids don't want it to work. Uh, correct. No, I um council member, I don't I don't know the the interpersonal dynamics of it, but I can say that in since your last meeting, I did have a conversation with um with Mr. Duke and with Mr. Bennett who were the original um owners of the property at the time that the agreement was was or the easement was drafted. And it was my understanding, and I admit I can't remember if it was when I was talking with Mr. Duke or Mr. Bennett, but one of them indicated to me, and this is not in the record. It's not in the resolution or any of the findings that the council made at the time. It's not in the in the um easement document itself, but there was some indication that there was an an expectation that at some point property to the west of these two parcels or even including these two parcels, the parcel that was is kind of L-shaped that was owned by Mr. Bennett at the or the Bennett at the time and now owned by the Willings Jacobson's Jacobson. I always want to say Peterson, but it's Jacobson's. Um that part that there would be some subdivision of those parcels as well in the future, which of course obviously hasn't happened. And that at the t and the expectation was that if that happened that the roadway within the easement that was granted the driveway to the parcel to the north that's now owned by the Jacobsons and the two Duke parcels would each have a driveway coming off of a roadway there not and they would be addressed off of a new roadway not addressed off of Lawndale. Why that's not in the record, why that's not in the easement, I don't know. But that was just kind of anecdotal information that I that I kind of that that you know one party remembered in 20 years. There's a vague reference to that. There is about addressing. Correct. So there is a but it's vague. It's not but it doesn't specify the idea that the driveways would come off of the new road in the easement area. So that's the the 20 plus year old memory of of someone, you know, one person in the in the full picture that I just for what it's worth, I I I have that information and we don't Jason, we don't have any sort of guidelines that say you you you take your driveway off of the lesser road. No, I mean general practice would be to limit connections to larger roads, but no, there's nothing specifically excluding or requiring. But there is a requirement in the subdivision code that driveways have to come off of a public street, which is why this public street area in the easement was created. And and that they wouldn't that you that the access couldn't be over that private easement um over a private easement that could have, you know, been just for a driveway from, you know, the the Westerly parcel um that's now owned by Jason Duke. And and so it's just because the way that the code was written then and the way that the code currently exists, there can't be a driveway off of an easement. It has to be off of a street. So, but now that it's a street, correct? That's why I was asking Jason if if that meant that, you know, those three driveways would have to well actually two be reoriented. Right. Correct. But at the as the as it exists that hasn't been put into practice and this easement is the only access to that back 20 acres. Correct. I don't believe that but as I understand it yes because the to get to the 20 acres that are that would be landlocked that owned by Mr. Quilling by TQ by TQ Farms. Um they h they have an easement over the Jacobson's parcel that aligns with the street easement. So that connection over the the Jacobson parcel to the 20 acres owned by TQ Farms. That's how they get their street frontage onto the street onto the the easement the roadway easement that as it exists on paper. Is he good? I'm more confused now. Are you confused now? No. That's confusing. What Amy just said. Um there's there was a shared it's a shared a private easement to this public easement. Correct. Correct. That's that's a good description. Well, the simple solution on this is to put a 24 foot roadway in there so that somebody coming and going, they can both fit. Who pays for it? Well, that's that's up to them. Yeah, but I don't know that we can they met the requirement for the they met the minimum requirement for the minimum requirement for the easement document. Yes. So, I don't know that we can I don't know. I I don't I don't know that we can adjust that. We are the grantee. So, I think we can adjust it, but we can't we can't ever adjust a minimum. Yes. Well, it sounds like the original intent was so that this could be a road into a subdivision in the future, but and that's not documented, but contemplated that that was possible hinting in there and that's not what's happening, which also leaves things fuzzy. I I don't know if it leaves it fuzzy. I mean, I think that the the intent was to have to to to use this easement area as a roadway for multiple parcels potentially. What that looked like, whether it was the the two or three that it is now or, you know, whatever it might be sub, you know, the any of the other land that might be subdivided um in the future. I mean, obviously, you can't contemplate every future possibility, but um it was it was at least contemplated perhaps at the time. That's very that's very fuzzy to use your word. Okay. So, at this point, this is a discussion. Um city staff just needs direction from council. So we either leave it lie as it is or or not. So well I mean I think specifically in the um in the in the agenda item I think there's a a pos the possibility of discussing a vacation of the easement which would kind of remove the city from the from having an ownership interest in the easement. But I don't think that truly solves the problem of who gets access from where and how do they how are they code compliant with the street frontage requirement and the no private easements for driveways requirement in the subdivision code. So, it's um you know, I mean, short of of the the current owners and the city doing some sort of reformation of the easement and kind of reaching a new agreement on what the easement would be. Um, I I can't say that there's that there are very many options for the city other than to have everybody live with what it says on the on the document that's been recorded with the county for 20 years and and try to work out a way to make it work. Is there I mean to me it sounds like what we need to do is sit down with all three parties, the city and the affected parcels, let's say, and redo the easement. If if the parties were willing, I mean, it's it could be worth the discussion. Yes. Well, there according to that map, there's only 60 ft of street frontage for the there's not enough street frontage for the 20 acre parcel. Correct. That wasn't a requirement back then. It wasn't when it was broke off when it was split off. I see. That's the kink. And apparently those requirements are only on property property splits. Correct. As I understand. Yes, that is correct. Um and and also from the resolution approving the easement and the and there was a a couple of variances granted at the same time that the easement was was created. Um there the the information in that resolution indicates that the two parcels that were originally purchased by Randy Duke were already split as far back as the 1970s. So long before Mr. Duke came into ownership of those parcels. Um so how they were split I I don't I don't have any information about that. How would we go about all coming together and renegotiating the easement? How does that process work? Uh, we would make a recommendation to staff and they would attempt it. That's right. I do say attempt. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying it's going to, but like that would be my my direction to staff would be to do that personally. Okay. Any more discussion? If that if that doesn't work, do you want to have a next step settled out or you want to just say, "Yep, that's what we're doing now." And come back to you when we have a result. I mean, I it would either. I just want to make sure I get clear direction. It sounds like for me, from what I'm hearing from everything is either we renegotiate it or we leave it as is from the city's perspective. Like those are our two like that seems to be what it sounds like to me. But that's that's the way I I read it, too. And I think it's, you know, unfortunately it's a this is playing out in a way that the two original grantors didn't envision. And um, you know, I feel like to a large degree we're kind of stuck with what it is. And I think the idea of trying to trying to get the parties and the city to renegotiate is, you know, is the best we can do. And I think we should do that if only just to have some clarity about, you know, the rights that that the underlying owners have relative to each other because I think that's where the easement really isn't is is the least clear is that it doesn't really talk about how they interact with each other from a legal perspective. Uh, sure. Maybe we can solve it now. Jason asked me to come, so I wanted to uh make it worth it. So, Will Tanzy, I'm an attorney with uh Jason for Jason for TQ Farms and Adam Judy Judy, he's he's a excavator uh contractor. So, I just wanted to talk about the the two driveway solution. It's really going to be difficult because there's a hill on one side. There's utilities already on one side and I know there's a question about whether the utilities had a permit, but um and then and then two two of them are going to be, you know, 12 feet plus two more on each side is 16 ft. You know, it's getting pretty pretty big and pretty expensive. So, Quilling's idea is just to share the driveway that's there. And I don't think it I I think it's the same intent as what everybody thought at the time. It's just that instead of having a road with um a subdivision worth of people, the Dukes are just sharing with one additional house. And Quilling's Quilling's prepared to pay for the road up to the street if it if it can be done as a gravel uh or he can leave the pavement in and just connect to it. He's going to put a privacy fence in. It's not going to be, you know, hightraic area. I don't I mean obviously somebody might have to back up once in a while but I don't think it's going to be a hightraic area. Um a private fence where uh right right at the end of the easement the property line on the property line. Oh okay. Um so we so we just you know he when he bought it he re you know he relied on that his lender relied on that. um it's the only way to you know you've got that landlock parcel that he owns now and it it's just the most direct way out to a street and then if you put if you put two of them there you end up with three driveways coming together at Lawndale like really tightly together it'd be really it'd be a mess. So, you know, we're trying to Jason wants to find a solution and so I'm sure he'll be open to to talking about it as you guys are are suggesting. The uh you know, the the problem is obviously the timing keeps dragging on and on and I I thought there had been a permit application made and I didn't realize that hadn't been been put forth. So, if if if that's the route to go, I'm sure he'll support it. We'd like to get it get it done on a somewhat okay quicker pace. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to hit the highlights. Um, did you have anything you wanted to add? Um, just for more support. Okay, you guys might have N back. So the the privacy defense would be uh going north and south on the west boundary. Correct. Correct. So basically the privacy fence is just going to shield you from the D from the Dukes is what you're saying. Kind of. Sort of. But they're up pretty high, so they're going to see right over it anyway. Yeah. So, the privacy fence is useless. Okay. Well, it might it might limit traffic in and out because people won't think there's a drive-thru or anything. I I don't I don't know. But Sure. More or less just a buffer divider anyway. Whatever. Call it what you want. Anything else we can um No. I'm I mean I think I think that's the main stuff we wanted to touch on and we're we're glad to hear you're open to talking about it because we'd like to get it going. Thank you. Thank you. Did you guys want to come up or Okay. You've been up enough times but go ahead. Just try to do your best. Stand for the mic if we can. That's it. That's all I have to say. Okay. Um, good evening, mayor and council members and staff. My name is Janna Duke. I reside at 14661 Londale Lane. Um, this is Jason Duke. He's my husband. And Randy Duke, the property owner at 14651. Um, I want to speak clearly tonight about the deeply unfair burdens this easement is proposed use has created for me and for my neighbors and for the city. In 2004, we were denied the option of using a private access agreement between our property oh sorry our property and my father-in-laws. The city required a broader easement recorded publicly and involving the neighborhood neighboring Bennett property now owned by the Jacobs's. My family honored that request, built the access and has maintained it fully for 20 years. No city maintenance, no contributions from other easement holders, and now the Quillings through a private access agreement with the Jacobsons want to do the very thing we weren't allowed to do. They want to use a private path to reach their land. and they're trying to claim access through a driveway, a driveway they haven't paid for, maintained, or respected. And let's be honest, the situation is inappropriate. Asking multiple property owners to fund and absorb the wear and tear of what amounts to a private driveway for the Quillings, and worse, to enable construction access for a developer with a long history of rule violations and disregard for city oversight. From unpermitted installations to repeated construction hour violations, they have shown a pattern of behavior that should not be rewarded with public accommodation. Both the Jacobsons and Quillings have frequent commercial traffic to their properties. For exceeding normal residential use, and these daily movements combined with construction traffic create serious safety risks, my children use this shared easement as their only way to leave our home and access their bus stop. This is not a matter of equity. It's a matter of safety. I respectfully ask the city to consider dissolving this event and restoring access to only the parties it's intended for. If the Quillings and Jacobsons wish to develop or access their land, they should be held to the same standards the city once imposed on us, not granting special access at the expense of everyone else. I don't don't allow this to become a president precedent where private development is enabled by public burden. Please uphold fairness. uphold the spirit of the original agreement and protect your residents. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I to answer your question, how how that property was split. Um my wife went down and spent almost a week at Henipin County prior to the um time frame that it was done. Henipin County. You had to apply to Henipin County, not the city of Dayton. And they had one year to deny or approve it. If they didn't do anything, it was granted. That's how those two lots were split. I had nothing to do with it. No, I understand that it was before your ownership. I just It's a piece of the puzzle I didn't have. Yeah. So, but I was told by the city of Dayton that I I never should have split that and that was the reason they It took me three years to get a variance to build on a separate piece of property. Right. And the city council in the past wasn't treated I wasn't treated very good by them, but it was none of you people. I'm your respecting us, listening to us. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can I add Can I add one? I'd just like to make note that I don't know, no one really ever specified, but there there is a a public easement. What is it? uh a private easement was granted through Quillings and Jacobson's right now by the city. Was that this? It is. There's a private easement that that is that kind of align with where the public easement is on the Jacobson's parcel. That's a completely private agreement. It's not anything that the city's a part of. It's a private easement, but it aligns with to so the to the public easement so that there's a connection there for the for a street connection. or a a spot for street connection. Is it fair to to state that they are being granted something very different than what we were allowed and that they aren't being forced into a public roadway that reaches all the way to their driveway like where we were being asked to do? I I don't know exactly. We don't touch private easements, do we? I mean, the city's not involved in a p in the private easement part of it, right? But we weren't allowed to get a private easement between us and our father. we were forced into this situation with the city and that's what I wanted to highlight is they're getting the the thing that we asked for which was just a private easement and we got stuck with whatever this easement agreement is with the city. Well, the the private easement that they that that they made is to connect to the public ement, but it's not for a house. It's not for a structure. I think what she's referring to is I'm guessing a building permit was denied on that second on that on your property. Unless there was an easement granted. That L shape is one property. And right now the private agreement crosses that L and there's a road that goes all the way out. Yep. It's a fresh road. It's a fresh road which was just paved like last week. Yeah. But as far as what you're talking about, I'm I'm guessing that you couldn't get that building permit until you got an e a public easement through them. That's what she's getting, right? She wanted a private or they I mean it theoretically it could have worked if the code had been written differently for Randy Duke to grant a driveway easement over the the the parcel that fronts onto Lawndale to the to the parcel to the west. Correct. But the code the code wouldn't allow that at the time and and the code is still written that way that it has that access can't be across a private easement and it has to be street frontage. And so this the 60 ft was created or the easement that is 60 ft wide but only contains the 12 foot surface right now was created as a roadway not as a driveway easement. So I Yes. And then but now we're allowing buildings to do technically they haven't asked the building permit has not been approved yet. That would be where this would become a sticking point there. I think the question is that that their private easement connects to technically connects to a public roadway easement. So it is a little different than what you were you would have maybe liked to have done because it wouldn't be an easement. you're trying to connect to a public street. Technically, the the easement as it's created, the 60 ft that was 30 ft from these from your two parcels and the 30 ft that came from the what was the Bennett parcel at the time that created a roadway. So even though the city never built a street, never opened it as a street, it is it is technically a street. It just feels on paperated. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let's Are we okay to move on? You got here. Okay. Item L. Good evening, Mayor, members of council. Try to hurry through this thing so we can keep moving forward. Um, general fund cash balances. Nothing major to discuss here. Um typical process is that we have a um use of dollars throughout the first half of the year until we get our tax settlement in the beginning of July. Nothing major to discuss about you know inactivity or any issues we have right now. Again mostly consistent. Um as you can see the green line is um our current cash balance that we sit today. Um general income statement um so far um nothing majorly out of but out of um of concern. The only one I do have a little concern about, and that's an oversight of myself during the budget process, is that we budgeted for $30,000 of credit card fees that I thought we'd collect and then pay out. And we aren't actually collecting any fees. So, we won't see that revenue this year. It's actually collected by the credit card companies based on the fact that we no longer um absorb those fees. We have them passed on along to the residents. So, if they do pay for anything, building permits, whatever, they are normally we would we would then absorb those fees. Now, we're not. I actually put it in as a revenue and that's my own fault during the budget process. So, um, we will have to make that up somehow some way and I'm sure we'll be able to do it somewhere. Um, and then the major things are just timing. A lot of them are either we've paid for a lot of subscriptions or, you know, payments throughout the first half, first quarter of the year for the whole year, or we haven't had something happen, parks, um, recycling, you know, we haven't a cleanup day yet, which isn't in here. It happened this recently, obviously, this past couple weekends. We haven't had, um, park work yet done by seasonals. Those are coming along. And then um again, most of it's related to timing in Q1. Any major questions on the general fund overall. I have a bunch of stupid questions because I wasn't here through the budgeting process. I I love stupid questions. Um so we collect franchise fees. Yes. They are not in this fund. But like what are fr like when I hear franchise fees, I think I would like to start a McDonald's and so I pay McDonald's a franchise fee and no one's starting a franchise of Dayton. It is a It is a small fee that's charged. I think it's $3 per resident. And it's You're talking about the You're talking about You're not talking about cable. You're talking about a utility. That's what that is. It's It's utility bill. Yeah. Utility bill. So if you have um internet, is it on internet? It's on gas. It's on electricity. You pay $3 on your bill and then that goes into the city's um technically payment management fund. It goes into pavement management for roadways. Okay. Okay. It's just another tax is what? I know. Okay. I was just curious because like I said when I hear franchise like I said I think of like you know it is not a McDonald's. We are not running McDonald's. I need Well, yes. Anyway, so that was my if we were we make a lot more money. Um and then what falls under economic development like what's all housed under that? So what would you talk about the planning and economic development area? Yeah. So that's not the EDA, that's a totally separate fund. Planning economic economic development is essentially Hayden and John and their work that they do each and every day, which that's whether that's planning work, whether that's um just general salaries, supplies, they're going to conferences, whatever that may be. But okay, I just I knew it was different than EDA, so that's why I Yes, it is not the EDA. That is a totally separate fund. Got it. Got it. Got it. Um and then this one was already kind of talked about the sewer being looking like it Yes. But that's normal and we're okay with that and we're not worried about that. I'm not concerned about that at all. Yeah. Um and then is leasing vehicles more cost effective than buying them? Yes. Okay. Um and then this is from a someone who drives a small car cuz small cars are cost effective even though I would love a truck. Trucks are not cost effective. And the police have a brand new beautiful big truck that uses more gas than the car did. Yes. Is that like are we concerned about like increasing? You're talking about the CSOS's vehicle. So that was a that was a Tahoe. So I don't think it used that much less gas on truck. Okay. Um but the reason why the truck is used is because there's a lot of bikes and a lot of um I would say animals that we typically pick up and we have to transport those and um it's much easier to do that in a truck than it is to do it inside a vehicle. Oh, trust me. as someone who had to haul hay in my car and hay once goes in your car, you never get hay back out of your car. Um so so that is the reason why it got moved to a truck and it's very common. So you'll see those in other communities as well, the CSO vehicles. Okay. Um it's a pickup truck, whatever cuz again we pick up those things. It's much easier save money because you're taking four trips to get No, I had other people deliver it for me, but I had to bring some sample bales home cuz I wasn't going to drop that cash if the girls weren't going to eat it. So any other questions? No, that those are it for my super question. Those are n those are great question. Pressure off. Okay. Cash balances by fund. Um nothing major. Anybody else asked a question? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Didn't mean to go back to general. Apologize. Go back. Mine are maybe not as broad, but we um we're way off budget again on fines and forfeitures. Yes. And I think a lot of that was built around um the patrol officer. Yes. and more ticket revenue. Yep. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different conversation, but we're we're way off of that number for the second year. We are doing more of that, I will say, than we have been before. It is lagged behind, though. So, you won't see fines and forfeitures for an extra month afterwards. So, if we started it in February or March, and let's say you started in February, the fines of forfeitures for February wouldn't come until March. And that's if they're paid right away. Um, if they're not, then they won't come till April. So March is ones would come in April. We are up quite a few incidents and some of that is related to um traffic control and so the fines will continue to increase based on those. So it is something more of a priority for us um now that we are getting more staffing. We are being able to prioritize traffic control specifically and that's yeah fines. Yeah forfeitures I I'd like to have a discussion about that at some point but fores are typically not in the I don't I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know why we call it find for because there's no forfeitures in this fund. Um they're actually in a different separate fund because it's all based on what the state allows us to do and we only get a certain percentage of it. So it's not like and it has to wait for 12 years or something before it's considered a forfeite and just it's not technically fines of it should just say fines. Sure. Yeah. I just am going back to it because you know the addition of that one of the positions in the police department was built around the idea that this one would be somewhat self-funding. Yep. And we're a long way from that right now. We are moving in the right direction though. I will say that that is the the main thing. We also are we had two new officers last year that were all brand new. So being brand new you have to follow an officer around. So FTO program field training officer. So you have to follow one of the an officer around. So that basically eats up two officers while we're trying to train somebody. The idea for training those people though is then once they're out and running then we can back off and we're good to go. So um they also get hired at a lower rate which is nice too for us temporarily. My other question was around um the EDA that is there a reason that's not included with the sort of budget and year to date and how is it going information for so we don't Yeah, we don't pass a budget for the EDA. We most certainly can in the future. That was requested by the EDA this past year and we said we don't need to pass a budget based on um the fact that they have dollars. Um we can look at passing a budget most certainly and then that can be added into this. I thought there was a budget not so much related to revenue but expenses that was not passed by the city council. Do they generate a report um itself? We tried to do one once a quarter for them just to give them an update of where they're at for dollars. I think the last one was in January or February. I feel like it it's been maybe it's been a little longer than that, but I know we've had them before. Um it needs to be more consistent though most certainly. So it should be something we send out monthly. I'm kind of waiting for to get some results on there because there has been no expenditures basically. I mean well there must be some legal fees, right? Legal fees is one. Well, now now all of a sudden over the course of the last six, eight months maybe. Yeah. It just be nice to see that number. So, if that's something the council would like to do this year for a budget for the EDA or have the EDA propose a budget? I know that they did propose one, was it last year, I believe, and then the council said, "No, we don't need a budget based on the fact that you don't have any dollars coming in. We don't need a budget. Any dollars going out?" Um, but then no budget was passed. Well, this property purchase will probably uh, you know, that some, but yes, we most certainly can. Seems like a gap to me that we should That sounds good. noted and we'll make sure we take care of that during this year's budget process. Any other questions? Perfect. Cash balances by fund. Um not a whole lot again to you know talk about here. General general fund is um changed over last year just based on our prior year's numbers as you heard from the audit. We are up in cash and up in um dollars overall which is good. EDA reduction is based on the purchase of the land. I'm up in the historic village area. They closed on that in January. um 342 fund that's slowly decreasing. We will continue to slowly decrease that. The the goal is to then not have to supplement that with tax levy by the end of it. So slowly but surely we will reduce that dollar amount. Um transfer out of fund 415 for the closure of the Dayton Parkway interchange happened. That was a transfer was approved in April by the council. Um Graco TIF started last year. Hopefully it's done in less than nine years. I don't anticipate it to last even close to 9 years, but it will started last year. And then fund 459, we got our final TED I or TED P grant, depending on how you ask, 81 parkway intersection in Q1. That project should be finished up this year, too. So, you should we should be able to close that fund as well. And then we move those Mullers for the improvements in that intersection. Yeah. So, that was at that intersection of 81 and the parkway where we redided the intersection at that point because it was supposed to go down to a narrow area and then back out to a parkway. So, we decided we're just going to redo it. That was paid by tiff dollars um from the Q's building and a few other buildings beside um behind that and also paid for West French Lake Road to be redone from the Parkway up to Graco's area and then Graco did the rest and was paid for by Tim on that. Any questions overall? Water fund. We're very healthy in the water fund. Everything seems to be going well. Hopefully, we don't continue to pump 1.5 million gallons a day. That's a lot of water. We're selling it. Uh we're selling it but we're paying for it too. So again money maker. That is good. It's a money maker. That is true. At least for the equipment. So equipment. That's true. Um everything seems to be going well in the waterfront. I don't have anything major to discuss. I mean a lot of them are negative for expenditures. We just haven't had anything going on major which is good. And we're up in revenues. The wellouses. Yes. that we that we own are the utilities and maintenance and things. Those are those are sliced out. Those are in here metered separately and yes accounted in these funds. That is correct. Cool. So that's part of that utilities number there you see in the expenditures. It's part of the utilities. So that'll be like the gas if there's any sometime there's heat in those buildings, electricity running those lights and such. Those are b both paid for put in the weld or water department. sewer department overall um operating this like it was last year. I mean this one maybe we have to look at a little more this year versus water. Um we've kind of just let sewer go through just because it we don't have any major expenditures and it has been something of a major focus. But I just got the numbers for Met Council for next year and we have another $19,000 increase in our proposed dollars or preliminary dollars for payment to Met Council. Um we cannot absorb another $109,000. So, um, trying to be cognizant of the residents overall as well. I know obviously having giant increases is never fun, but maybe something we have to talk about cuz I just got that email this week. So, and what was why is the going up? Um, that's based on usage. Okay. So, they take last year's usage and say, what is that compared to the previous year? And then based on number of residential increases as well. They take both of those in and say, well, your projection is going to be more. So, now your increase went up. And we've had $100,000 increases for the last two years and then another $100,000 next year is the plan at least proposed. When we bill it out to residents, yes. Um is it based on their own usage or do we just average it out over everybody? Um nope. So we base it on their own usage. However, it's done in January and February of each year. So whatever usage is in January and February is your max usage for the whole year that you get built by monthly. Um if you use less than that, you get you pay less. So, let's say you total maybe you had 10,000 gallons you used in those two months. You would get charged 10,000 gallons of sewer on your March bill, which would be for January and February. If you then went to May for your next two months, if you used eight, we'd only charge you for eight. If you used 14, we're going to charge you for 10. So, it's an averaging number. And we use January and February because typically that means there's no irrigation going on. And that's, you know, typically time people, you know, maybe it's snowbirds or whatever else. That just seems to be the best time to use it. We can pick a different time and I'm happy to do that, but pick November, December. Typically people are having holiday is just putting on a spreadsheet. Those numbers are really take a lot of time in the system is if we could kind of look at the data and see that January, February does make sense or doesn't. We can look at that again this year. Um we've done it in the past. We've done it two different ways. We've done an averaging period. So we did November, December, and then January, February. the average of those two is the number. Um otherwise we've done January and February and then March and April as the averaging and then the average those two numbers out and then then just January and February. Um we've heard complaints on every one of them. So pick one and that's what we're going to do. It's problem is it's a hard thing. We don't measure sewage. So it's it's hard to Yeah. We do not me measure sewer. So, we got to come up with some model that doesn't include irrigation because otherwise um some communities or other communities have some have two meters. So, they'll have one for the outside spots and then one for your inside homes. So, it's always about actual usage on your inside and then the outside only gets charged irrigation. Um but in this community we have set up we're only at one meter. So, there's only one way to do it. And I got believe that's going to be hard. That would be hard to do in some houses just the way they wrote them. We have to have plumbers in every one of the houses to reroute them. Now, it's not impossible, but it's definitely more pipe or PEX or whatever you need. We don't have a problem with meters getting meters. Are we good? Yep. For a while, no problem. Okay. So, that's something we can always do as well, but it's going to be a large undertaking. You take your 3,000 accounts and you double it. Now, we're at 6,000 meters. Yeah. It's a couple of meters. So at 380 bucks or something plus it's like $600 the install for the install plus the meter. So we're talking a couple dollars for 3,000 tons. I just want to make sure we're billing people in a way that's encourages good water usage, right? Like I want to in incentivize people making wise choices and depends on who's a guy wants to spend a thousand bucks a month on watering his lawn. That's his business. That's what I'm saying. But then he should get charged more than the person who is letting their poor lawn go. So they would be charged more. So water's charged actually for the water. The sewer is the one that's only build on the right. Okay. Winter usage. But water usage like if you're using water, you get build every every thousand gallons. That's not every stop using drinkable water on the lawns. That would be or flushing it. There's any other questions on the sewer fund overall? No. No. Okay. Overall, I don't have any major issues or concerns. I think everything else we may want to start looking out at projects further on to try to plan out them if we're going to do those projects just to plan them out a little better. Um, I know it's always difficult and it's always a back and forth with the CIP items, but start getting, you know, cash balances are healthy and we should be able to plan our projects a little better, which is which is good for us. That's all I got. Thank you. Any questions? Yep. I don't need any action. I just acceptance is all I need. We can move on. Item burn concept plan. All right, Mr. Mayor and members of the council, tonight you're asked to consider uh providing feedback, offering feedback on a residential concept plan uh provided by Jack uh and JT Bernins here. Um just a overview of the the site the properties uh east of Brockton and south of Dayton River Road and uh further west uh of Lawndale here up in this corner on this specific area is where the proposed residential lots would go. Uh the overall site is 117 12 acres. Um, however, if you include the previous easements that were dedicated to Dayton River Road and Brockton Lane over their improvements over time, the property uh total gets up to 119 12 acres. Um, both properties are zoned A2 and A1, which would require reszoning to A3, which is uh what the proposed um zoning would be for this subdivision. Um, and the entire stage is guided, the entire site is guided low density residential and in the post20 staging area. So as mentioned the the concept proposes 12 total single family lots. Uh these would be unseured lots uh and uh well and septic sites um including 11 and one existing lot. Uh the single family home that is currently on the property uh is proposed to be subdivided into a 4 acre landlock parcel. Um all new lots proposed are minimum 1 and a half net acres. Actually, the original concept plan provided all of the properties were one and a half net acres of usable land. Um, it all includes a connection to Brockton Lane and uh, Henipin County obviously will have their review authority uh, on the preliminary plat once that comes through. Um, and it also includes an outlot adjacent to the existing well site for a potential well treatment location. Um and uh in reviewing this uh plan internally with staff, the uh proposed site for the wellhouse or for the well treatment location is of sufficient size. Here's just a view of the property looking south. Uh just doing a general code review of the A3 district standards. Uh all but one lot meet minimum requirements. uh the lot width would have to get uh addressed with lot five block two um of the proposed concept. I will also note that since the planning commission's discussion, the applicants have provided a revised uh concept plan. Uh it was a pretty short turnaround. So staff looked at this original plan. Um but uh we'll get into some of the feedback that related to that change as well. So that 137 is based on the new one on the old one. Oh, it is the old one. Yep. I actually believe that the new ones are a little bit uh larger. Yeah, we have it. Cool. So, a couple of considerations that I wanted to bring forward and that the planning commission also discussed uh the two per 20 acre standard that was adopted with the A3 district. The concept does propose 12 total single family lots and uh as I mentioned before, the total site including all the easements previously dedicated um is roughly 119.5 acres. Originally staff's recommendation was that uh the plat be changed to provide direct access on the lot that is landlocked um to Dayton River Road where the current driveway is. After discussion with the planning commission uh last week or two weeks ago now, um they had uh offered their support for variance to keep the easement in place, the private easement in place. Um in the event uh they felt that leaving the easement in place rather than bringing the the lot lines all the way out to Dayton River Road would offer more flexibility in the future for when the the surrounding area gets developed, when sewer and water become available. Um and there were a couple other considerations related to that. Uh the property owner has also mentioned that the two well locations, one adjacent to Dayton River Road and one adjacent to Brockton Lane, uh were a part of the larger parcel originally and were subdivided to accommodate those uh services. So um those were a couple of things that were discussed at the planning commission. Ultimately, they said don't uh bring the lot lines out there. We will uh look at this from a varian standpoint when the preliminary plat is discussed. um staff and the applicant certainly would love to have feedback from the city council on that matter as well. Hey, yes sir. um on that um I don't remember who it was one of the commissioners brought up oh potentially an amendment to that easement language was that what no brought up so the variance normally we have a I won't say strict but a fairly strict requirement for variances but he imagine oh sure commissioner sergeant had mentioned that there was a there was some discussion whether at the state or uh federal level related to the guidelines lines that are by statute uh what we have to follow for variances. And uh it was his understanding that there could be potential nothing has been set in stone yet at this time. Um but he did mention that one of the two entities that I mentioned before were looking into whether the variance should be directly related to practical difficulties of the property to otherwise meet the code to being more so is this a reasonable use that varies from the that was what he got the impression he was saying there had been rulings saying that not that there was future because future you know um future changes don't help here, right? And we I can certainly look into that. Uh are you aware of how to satisfy variance the three test thing? I guess I'm not sure I understand what the question is. There's a new test for how you calculate a variance. It's like reasonleness essentially from that they're t they're proposing. I believe it's proposed legislation in either the federal level or the state level is it's proposed to say basically use legislation that wasn't I'm not aware of any change in the law on that and I wasn't aware of that either and from my understanding commissioner Sergeant had mentioned that they were just looking into that but we can certainly look and see if something has changed certainly the league would have provided uh an update rather quickly on that matter if that did change um but I haven't seen anything from them either. Okay. So that would essentially lower the bar. Yeah. On those three criteria and reasonleness is so hard to it's to judge. Subjective work. I hope that doesn't pass. Well, the current test is to me is also subjective. Yes. But making it more subjective doesn't seem like the the answer. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, that's all right. Um the other uh note I think I already mentioned that the the variance related to the um the parcel that is landlocked um the city council or the planning commission rather also recommended support for a variance to that as well. So these two notes on this slide had offered support from the planning commission for applying for a variance concurrently with the preliminary plat moving forward. you have language for the variance. Did you ponder that yet? The the what are you referring to for the variance? Um in terms of the landlock parcel or the uh both because we'd need both, right? Yeah. And we'll dig into that when an application is provided. But uh you know the the planning commission kind of referenced the um long-term planning for this specific area and that the easement and um No, I it made sense what they said. I'm just it's a difference between what makes sense, what looks good, and what the findings say. Yeah, that uh might be something to tackle on a staff level, but we'll certainly try and find a a way to uh get to there. Um it was a I was a little hesitant when uh Commissioner Sergeant asked if we were confident that we could get there. I think that there is uh definitely some routes that we can look into. Okay. In my personal opinion, it is very hard to um have findings of fact for approving a variance related to a preliminary plat essentially because you're starting new and it's fresh. Um but uh nevertheless, we'll we'll certainly look into that and uh it hashing up old uh old stories, but it kind of it kind of reverts back to the reasoning for a variance from the sign ordinance with a freestanding sign or a pylon sign. Yeah. Um that was a subjective reasoning and uh kind of the the existing family home that to me could you could fall back on the financial hit. Um the 190 or the the 119.5 versus 120. I mean if you're [Music] math it a math person. Yeah, that one might be a little bit more of a stretch, but I I understand I understand what their thinking was. If the council, you know, like like John has mentioned before with new zoning districts and, you know, things are going to come up that we probably didn't think about. Yes. Like this if in rather than granting a variance in this regard, um if the council was more open to establishing maybe a rounding understanding for um what meets the acreage requirements, um basic rounding rules round to the nearest acre. I don't understand why that's a challenge. Nothing that says we have to round. It's just not in the ordinance. It doesn't uh but they were I watched the meeting and there seemed to be like this idea that that was going to open some sort of can of worms. I'm like it's b it's it it's rounding rules round to the nearest acre. It's not that hard. And if it rounds up to in this case it would round to 120. Like there's no question there. And if it was 118.5 it wouldn't. Like I don't understand why this was somehow such a dangerous path to go down. There just has to be a number. This is no different than the 350 for that we talked about for sending out things or 500 or whatever the number is. You just have to pick a number and when the math doesn't work, the math doesn't work and you don't round. You just say it doesn't work. So yeah, this site with the warehouse that's on there that would have gone over the uh 120 I mean wishes were horses Beckers would ride. that my dad always used to tell me what what if wishes were horses beggars would ride. I wish I wish I wish you know there are other I've never heard that one for you put that one in the minutes ahead. There are certainly other al alternatives that we can look into. Um I mean one and I don't know if this is recommended by staff. It hasn't really been looked into too much. Um but certainly those unplatted well sites could be a part of the plat um to be platted outs for services um and that would push them over the threshold without need for a variance. Um obviously the city would be a signatory of the plat and in that regard um but again that's another thing that we'd uh we'd look into and yeah I think that seems like there's a way to get it seems like there's a way to get there. Yeah, I I I just wanted to make sure we could get there and it sounds like we're probably okay. So, go ahead. All right. Uh just a little bit of um design information, the the proposed concept. Now, this is still on the old one. Um there was a long discussion at the planning commission meeting about leaving Maria Avenue alone. Um the original proposed uh concept plan had Maria Avenue going up to the property line where the Maria Avenue right ofway to the north ends. Um staff originally recommended that Maria Avenue be extended um to connect to this new street. uh the planning commission uh decided that uh that may not be the best uh option at the time, but if area was provided in the future by easement or um establishing an outlot within uh the Maria Avenue right ofway to at least accommodate a future extension if wanted. Uh that would be something that they would have desired. And then as well as uh the planning commission also recommended that if the concept design was going to change to further east uh they recommended to do an initial connection to Shady View uh lane with an another road stub to the east to uh accommodate future subdivision uh when sewer and water become available. Um, so those were kind of the the feedback that the applicant was provided by the planning commission and uh staff had kind of amended that uh planning plan review report that uh was in your packet to um show those changes. Um little bit more information just there's no sidewalks planned on the new street was not a requirement of the A3 district when the A3 district was uh um approved. However, the 60 foot rightway does uh offer enough room for a sidewalk to be included in the future if the council chose to do so. Um and then the one comment on the street lights is uh staff doesn't generally feel that there is a need for street lights um through the Maria Avenue road that's proposed, but uh an intersection light uh would be recommended by city staff and likely Henipin County uh for that connection at Brockton Lane North. Is the county going to probably require that? Because I don't like that. Surprisingly, they typically don't. Oh, well, they'll encourage it, but they don't they they don't really have lighting standards that they follow. I don't like lights. I would recommend putting one there. Public safety recommends putting one there. Lights aren't all bad. I mean, it's okay to have one life. I don't I my my you know, I don't know that they do that they're the benefit, but people think they are at the intersection. So, but whatever. We specially install one at the end of uh Pine Parkway. Pioneer Parkway. No, Pioneer Parkway and Den Road. It was specifically requested by council last year to add one. Yep. Just moving along with the uh slideshow here. The regarding a trail easement, the comprehensive uh trails plan does show a future roadside trail along both Brockton Lane North and Dayton River Road in this area. Um staff is recommending that a 20 foot easement along both roadways. Uh the extent of the plat boundary be established uh in the event that Henipin County does not request an adequate adequate amount of rightway uh to support the trail in the future. not asking the uh developer at this time to um build the trail, but we want to offer the uh the option in the future as part of our comprehensive plan to there is sufficient room to accommodate what the comprehensive trails plan shows. Does this um a trail along Brockton line up at all with the the proposed uh Diamond Lake Trail that Three Rivers is envisioning? I think it goes up there. Uh the proposed diamond light trail would be further east than this property. Yeah, it would not. It's actually trying to It's east of Lawndale. Yeah. Okay. So, this would just be a city trail. Yes. Uh, regarding a landscape buffer, uh, the buildable lots adjacent to Brockton Lane, um, it is required by ordinance that a 35 foot landscape buffer be uh, established along those uh, collector roads and arterial roads within town. Um, general site landscaping for new lots would be subject to the general landscaping requirements of a single family development. Um and uh that would consist of eight caliber inches of trees installed per lot um except the existing home. Um typically that information is provided in and escrow for the cost of those trees to be installed are provided at the time of a building permit. Uh and then just another note on the parks and trails. There is an area designated in the um parks plan and the comprehensive plan for a community park within this area. Um being that the the proposed development is up in the west portion, um staff believes that there is uh enough room in the future to accommodate a community park if that was the route to go in the in long term uh within the area. Um with that being the case, uh the park and trail dedication fees would be required as is all park and trail fees are required for any preliminary plat. Um, and the those totals are there for you at uh $7,293 per buildable lot. Would the lot that already has a house on it have to pay this or just the new probably already has paid new? It has not been paid as it's an unplatted lot. I think that uh just based on what the ordinance reads for uh staff's recommendation would be that uh all lot and block properties pay those. Um, with that being said, the the council certainly can um discuss at at their own, but uh that would be staff's recommendation is all lot and blocks. So, they wouldn't pay for the outlots that would be created um for that future development um but those lot and block properties would be subject to that. So, it's either 11 or 12 then essentially. Yes. Um, and then there's another uh another piece of this that I'm I don't know if I addressed in the uh oh I did I did address at the end. Uh there is another lot that will have to be or is recommended by staff to be lot and blocked at this time. Um the applicants have uh discussed with staff internally and are going through the uh back the background process I guess for uh um eventually applying for an interim use permit for an event center uh adjacent to Lndale Lane North. Um kind of where you see the uh the vineyard that is along that area. Um I don't think that it's been uh I think people are pretty aware um in this room that that is something that would be coming down the line. And I think just from a looking forward standpoint, staff recommends that that be lot and blocked as well because you can't build on an outlot. So if that property gets platted, um we wouldn't be able to issue a building permit on that lot until it gets um platted. So um staff's recommendation would be to include that area as part of this project as well. So, I guess to summarize, uh, city staff and the applicant are looking for feedback on the the concept plans provided. Um and uh the uh next applications that they'd be uh looking to apply for would be the preliminary platoning uh the variance pending uh the discussion here at this point and then uh at the same time they could concurrently apply for that interim use permit all at once um for that event center. There was discussion at the planning commission about ownership of the wetland areas. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, so um just discussing at a staff level, uh it was found that in terms of maintenance and uh I guess sustainability of the existing wetlands in our community. Um the recommendation was that uh staff has a better ability to um maintain and not uh run into issues with disturbing wetlands without permits uh when they're not uh a part of a residential property under private ownership. Uh when that property line is established at the buffer, um people tend to respect those uh property lines more so than easements um whether they be private or public. But uh that was in a I guess a a question rather than a requirement or it was a question posed to the planning commission whether they felt comfortable with doing that. Um the planning commission recommended that at this point uh we should just uh maintain what we are doing currently and allowing those private easements to be uh laid over on top of the the wetlands when they're platted into private ownership. Given this isn't a PUD, this might be aimed at you, Amy. Um, how can I mean, let's I mean, how would we even do that? Take ownership of that property without purchasing it. Well, I mean, it's possible to do it through dedication. Um, I guess that would be something that could be worked out as part of the process as part of the park fee. The plat dedication, it's it's been done in others such as ponding. often done in fact that an outlot will be created for the pond and then that will be deed to the city. Yeah. No, that makes sense because they don't want those ponds those the Yeah, but in this case they I suspect they do. Um and that's my question is is how we if we were to do that it seems like there's no mechanism to take a pond take a chunk property. Well, I mean there Yeah, there would be. It would just be, you know, um, it could be through a dedication. It could be, you know, if it's part of the park fees, you know, it's possible to give to split your park dedication requirements, you know, yep, part money, part land. I mean, so I mean, it'd be something that could be worked out. Okay. And the question from staff level is would the council like to see that happen or not? just seems to be, you know, maybe it's more compliance issues, maybe it's just better ideas that we able to be so people don't think they own the wetland, so they can do whatever they like next to it. It's more or less a conservation of those natural resources than anything else from staff's perspective. I mean, they still have to comply with state and federal laws. I I my only concern is is that um yeah I mean if it could be dedicated in lie of park money or something I know that seems reasonable. I know. Yeah. I mean those could be taken out of the I mean they're already out of the buildable area I suppose. So unless you're including the buffer in there which we would further recommend you're probably not reducing their area on which the fees are based because it's a net buildable area. But that's the thought process behind it is if it's a dedicated outlot, a lot of people won't know that you can't impact not only the wetlands but the buffers. They're less likely to do so if they have to trespass to violate. If they don't have to trespass, it's more common that it'll be an occurrence that we'll see out there. So, it's a f as mentioned it's a further protection of the natural resources. And I won't say that we run into this issue on a weekly basis or anything like that, but Marty knows that uh we've had issues with uh new lots um people coming in to do sod work and not understanding where the the wetland buffer begins because they come in before whatever might happen and saw up through the buffer up to the wetland when essentially that buffer is to offer an added protection to the the wetland area. So, right, but they do that even with property we own. I know. Do they sometimes? Right. That's what I'm getting at. Okay. I don't know whether whether So our ownership might not offer additional protection is your point. No big deal. I I don't see us needing to city ownership would give you more of an ability to enforce that if there was a violation rather than if it was still a private ownership. I guess the question then is is I'm not a fan. Yeah. Is it about enforcement or prevention? It's really a both thing. But yeah, I don't we don't even have access to it, right? There's no there's no access to that. Not not yet. I mean, obviously we'd have to get it as part of this plat. It would just be an easement obviously to get through there. Drainage utility easement that were able to go down to take care of it if anything happened. Also there'd be an additional easement on the public beyond the property lines is pretty typical when you see those drainage utilities easements. Those are very common amongst all developments. You have one on the property lines that were able to get back if there's a drainage or utility issue. Um you done I did have one small question but yeah no that uh just the planning commission offered their recommendation to kind of maintain the status quo in that regard and that's the kind of feedback that we are looking for. So I appreciate that. This is probably moved, but um pageuh 604, page six, item 17, it says, "Rightway, we'll dedicate it between lots between lots four and five to accommodate a connection to Shady View." I I couldn't figure that out on either plan. I mean it like I said it's probably mode now but so this uh that comment was essentially based off the original plan where we had said well eventually the property to the east is going to be further subdivided when sewer and water becomes available. We want to have the opportunity for Maria Avenue in this area to have a road stubbed out this way um to plan for the eventual extension of Shady View. um essentially kind of having that be a tee or however it gets designed. That's what you were thinking. Yeah. So it' be whether it be through here or up up here. Um so you tee it off and hook up or or just or just stub it at the edge of the property boundary here. So then the new development that comes in in the future can have the opportunity to plan their roads and then making that connection. Okay. Any other questions? I I have Go ahead. Um is the Well, first, this is why I wanted more than 1.5 as our minimum because I think these are kind of small for what at least my goal was. Um which is why I pushed for three. Um for the record. Uh but to the point of net, if we're talking about easements for a trail, are these still meeting the 1.5 net? Do easements affect that? Easements would affect that and that would have to be incorporated at the time of the preliminary plat. So there is some tweaks that will have to be addressed um from the concept plan to the preliminary plan. Okay. Um and I think even along with this uh with this revised plan, I think staff would have some comments to offer related to um just uh the layout of it in general um related to the design. And I know that uh I don't know if the applicant has uh engaged with a with a civil engineer to offer um plans that will have to be required at the time of preliminary plat but I'm sure that they'll have some uh design changes or recommendations related to this as well. So uh when that when they come on board um they'll be able to do that. One of the things that uh just internally that we were looking at was that this proposed lot here adjacent to the well site would be bound by three different uh roadways. So that would be something that we would probably try to avoid um in terms of the preliminary plat review. So just because it's bad practice or we actually have a requirement a zoning requirement. The code does recommend to limit double frontage lots as much to the extent possible. Uh in this case it would be a triple front. So we would try to avoid that even more so I guess was kind of again like I said these would be recommendations provided by staff and okay at the council's discretion. Um, so the the the easements that we have on every lot, which I didn't didn't realize, um, are those on are those on all lots? All platted lots uh, have a dedicated boundary easements for drainage and utility. Yes. Mhm. So that being said, um typically easements aren't allowed to be touched. Yep. So where do I mean the people put fences on them all the time? Yeah. So we just note that if we have to go in there for drainage utility ement, we will have to remove your fence and it will be up to you to put it back if it's noted in their in their fence permit. That is stated in the code that fences within located within drainage and utility easements are subject to removal and everything. Yeah, I know. You put if you put something in an easement, you you almost every lot we've ever platted in this city has a drainage utility easement between them. And it's not much on either side, but the two of them share enough that we're able to get through. Yeah. Well, it's I think the plan here actually shows 30 foot easements um from the design, but uh the recommendation in the um common standard for easements on uh properties would be the sideyards would have a 5ft drainage and utility easement and the front and rear would be 10. Yep. And is the trail easement in addition to that or in combination with that? In addition. Okay. So, one thing I'm not quite following along with is that we're we're using the A3 and the two per 20 um rules here. So, the way that I had understood that was that if you know the the lot sizes overall needed to meet that standard and but not each individual lot, right? But that that if it's if it looks something like this, then the balance of it is is essentially an outlaw and not not buildable. So how does that then play with the the potential for the um event center being built there? Sure. So uh the staff was thinking about this in two different ways. Um, one the a part of the preliminary plat resolution that lot and block would be uh conditioned to not be allowed to have a single family residential building on it. Um, and in the event that sewer and water becomes available that would eventually change. And then two at the same time um the event center is under is uh allowed under an interim use permit. So, um, while it is an interim use permit, the definition of the interim use is that the intention is that it's not going to be there forever. Um, now that changes case by case. Um, but with that interim use permit, that would be the kind of that that separation of what is the residential of this project area and what is not. The one and 10 doesn't doesn't take an impact from that. That would be my understanding because it's an so when it develops that IMP is yanked effectively essentially. How that just wasn't you know it just didn't quite I don't know mesh with you can do one and and and the other. Is there a reason why, and maybe this is a question for you, but why that uh the the current home was is is going to be loted off and not just lumped in with the rest of it as one lot. So, yeah, I think that they can can answer that better than I can. So I guess is it a legal deal just to so you can own it instead of Jack or my parcel? Yeah. Yeah. The reason that we were um having that lauded off is because because I don't own the land under my home. We had to go through unconventional financing. Oh. And so we would partial it off so then I could refinance conventionally. You could own the land. Yeah. Exactly. That's right. Okay. um because under what we're doing right now, it's under a 99-year lease, right? And so that that's how we got around that, but uh we would like to take that burden away if we could. Yeah, I don't I don't have a problem with that. I just curious why. Yeah, that was the purpose. Any other comments? Um like I said, I I wish the lots were bigger. Um, and we may need to go back to the A3 and make them bigger, but that's neither here nor there cuz we're working with what we have right now. Um, I I did follow the conversation about the roads and I think that is really important to get figured out cuz um these are the things that you kind of have one chance to do it right and like this is the chance to do it right. And the neighbors were really and I think the neighbors were clear that they had no issue with the development. It was all about how like that the roads to the development. So I think that's where we need to do our due diligence. Um and it would be really interested to see this is one where I would really like to see the ghost platting. Maybe not for all of it but the like how extend the tr this little bit out. Um I I would like because I think that tells the road like the ghost platting will tell the roads which will tell where everything needs to go. I mean if it extended to the river. Yeah. Like if it just So like if you just drew um a line basically just north of your house, right? Like and that line just extended all the way out. If we could just ghost plat that to see how the mostly in my for me it would be where the roads are going to lay out. Um that would make me feel a lot better about like yes this makes sense. we're not going to be causing problems 20, 50 years down the road, maybe sooner, who knows? Um, so I'd really like to see that part goes platted. Um, but overall, like I had no issue with it as as an idea. Um, one other thought came into my head and now, oh, um, I also want to make sure we never get into more crappy easements. So, so the whole easement driveway thing makes me twitchy immediately because of what we just dealt with. I don't know if you were in the meeting for that earlier part. So, as long as that easement is somehow written in such a way that no future council is going to be sitting here cursing us the way I am constantly cursing the previous city council, um I'm fine with it. But I I would like that looked over by many a lawyer um to make sure that's all I think that's a private one, right? Well, how did they get a private one then the other that I think the problem with the other one was they got something for it and that was the way a way to develop that that west lot. Okay. I don't know that but that's my guess. Okay. Okay. Anyway, because at that point the city had a lever. Okay. the the way that the planning commission's discussion touched on this uh was that you know with the resolutions a condition of approval can be related to that private easement being amended to accommodate future subdivision um and then granting eventual right ofway to that lot when the surrounding area gets developed um and that information can be as part of the resolution or condition of approval subject to the review of the the city and I think that's also where like the ghost planning could be helpful because then it would show like how would you get access to your as the rest of it develops. Like that could be maybe part of the ghost platty and like this is how that would that would make me feel better about the whole thing. I did think of my second question which I think was answered but I just want to clarify it. Um because my initial thought was okay so this happens um these 10 10 or 11 new homes lots get created they're sold to private individuals homes are built and you're left with the remainder. what's how do we ensure that they don't come back and then do it again and they're like okay we've got this much acreage left now we want to carve off this bit and build you know five more homes and then do like what is our guarantee that that doesn't happen the zoning map amendment that designates these as an A3 district um essentially what uh if you're familiar at all with the A2 district that's in the zoning ordinance it allows for a lot split for a small property or homesteaded property um to be split off and have a larger outlot for maybe a non-conforming A1 parcel um to allow for a house to be accommodated and homestead the smaller portion have the remaining out be an outlaw and unbuildable. Um that's how they essentially track that information as well. Um so that'd be one of our mechanisms to to manage that A3 um kind of boundary. Yeah. I'm just thinking 20 years from now and none of us are here. How do like how do we make sure that that is still being should be the same way we've always done it, right? There's records kept okay. Okay. Sign the property IDs in this, you know, you know, and a lot of the times when someone first approaches the city about developing a property or redeveloping a property, we kind of go back to the previous resolutions that were attached to that um to see if there were any stipulations related to it. Um that would be a condition of approval related to the prel preliminary plat resolution that these outlots would not be allowed to be buildable until um municipal sewer and water were available and uh it was completely reszoned at that point. Exactly. Okay. We just got to make sure it's in its condition of that approval. Otherwise, if it's not a condition, it makes it very difficult to track. Okay. Thank you for that. That was the thing I couldn't think of. Anybody else? Okay. You think I don't know if we gave you anything, did we? No, I I certainly I have uh I think we have enough and uh we'll be reaching out to the applicant to establish kind of a another meeting to touch base on what was discussed and kind of the next steps moving forward. So, you have any questions? Yeah, just a couple. Um so, the road and the future ghost platting. So the intent of the the hard corner there was to allow for flexibility in the future ghost platting and there is not significant cost to ghost platting further and so the thought process there was to allow the ghost platting to be done nearer to the time that it would make more sense to do it nearer to the time to allow for flexibility in what the I guess the goal and objectives of the future development would look like is kind of the idea there just to explain that. Um the other thought that we had or questions that we had is the park fees. Um and you guys kind of touched on the dedication and some of that around the pond and some of the thought that we had was actually the outlaw for the water treatment facility. Could that I assume there would be some sort of cost around that and could that the park fees be uh that outlot be dedicated for the park fees in that way. Um I don't know if there would be an assigned cost to that outlot but you know the intent is to help make sure that we ensure that your future water treatment facility plant is put where you'd like it to be and outlot A is where any treatment facility would go, right? Yes. And we were looking at We would look at getting that. That would be the goal of this of the platting process. Yes. Yeah. And how would we how would we get that? Typically, it's done through the platting process. No, I understand that. But it's not a PUD, so we don't just take it, right? Yeah. Am I missing something? We've done that. Yeah, we've done it historically where they've just given us the lot. Doesn't mean they have to, but he's going to get a credit on the park. Yeah. It's going to be credited back somehow. Well, that's what I'm asking. and not necessarily every time, but I don't know if Jason wants to touch on just at a at a minimum. There are no fees um charged against those properties. That's what's been done in the past. Braay Trails, for example, there was two lots that were dedicated for future well sites. Yep. Um Riverwalk, there was two lots that were combined and given for another well site in in that one. Um so certainly don't go into the fee calculations. Payment above that would have to be negotiated or decided separately. We've historically not paid for those sites ever. Well, but usually we had a lever, right? It was a POD or I mean No, just through the I don't believe was Yep. Braver was an R3. Same with Riverwalk. Riverwalk was R3 PA or whatever. Did we forgive some other related fees? Um it it was just withdrawn from the calculation is my understanding at least. So there was just no fees applied. So, the making up a number, the $20,000 in fees per lot was just not charged because the lot was deed to the city instead for just that lot. You're talking for just the lot. So, just lot. Yeah. The issue is it's an outlaw, so it's not available anyways, right? So, what fees would there be on that? Well, it's still in the area. Um, so residential is usually a per lot fee. Um but often that is broken down and charged by an area. It it's simply 2.6 acres or units per acre. So it just come out of the calculation. If it is an outlot, we could just offset fees to accommodate it as well would be another way to calculate it just based on an area method which comes to the same number. Not sure on track. It sounds like there's a a different path. I guess I'm struggling a little bit with, you know, using parks fees for something completely unrelated. I'm not opposed to us doing something along the lines of what you're talking about. One thing I' I'd mention, and I'm getting well out of my wheelhouse here, but if if it's used to satisfy park fee requirements, there might be conditions that are set on that parcel. I don't really know the technical component of that. um but that restricts the potential use for it. So I think just to voice to be careful of how that is dedicated to satisfy that requirement requirements don't fall on but so let me ask you this. Let's say this is all going through per zoning request. I mean everything's hunky dory and they say I don't want to give you money. It's a straight zoning request. Mhm. How do we reject those? We don't we don't have a lot of air because he said I don't want to give it to him. Sure. Seems like I'm missing something. No, then I'm guessing at that point a price would have to be then we would say okay if you don't want to give it to us then we'll have to pay you. Like I said but historically to save the city money we have not done that to be fiscally responsible. So because we are trying to be fiscally responsible we don't have money to be able to pay for it. The calculations in the our districts are a little different right? They're not they're based on a per lot, not an acre. Yeah. Not per acre. So that's although they break down per acre if you were to do say the developer looks at and goes, "Okay, it's 2.6 units per acre isn't much it cost me." So I guess my point is that's why for them it might make more sense to give us the outlaw than to necessarily put a price on it because they have other calculations involved than this would. Mhm. Mhm. Because it sounds like you're wondering why the heck did they ever give it to us in the first place. I wouldn't ask. Well, and that's I don't think we do. And so what we're saying is is there a way that we can give you the outlot and be forgiven of the park fees or something to that nature is we want to make it work, but we would also like to help with some of the costs that we're incurring as well. That's Yeah, I I would like to see it work. I just don't like the idea of using the park fees to do it. I guess I would highly recommend not using park fees to do it because if you use it for park fees, we're going to have another lover's park. I don't I don't I don't I don't think we need to do that. I mean, let's say he said, "Sell it to us for a dollar." Yeah. Will you give him a dollar? He gives us a dollar in park fees. It's still park money. It goes in what? What? What? You can't give him You can't have him give us a dollar in trade for land. It's not trade. We bought that. So, you bought it for a dollar. We bought it for a dollar. He gives us a dollar. by the outlet. Outlet A. We want, right? I'm assuming we want it. We would like to use it for a future WH treatment plant so that we aren't buying other land to put a W. They have a piece of property that we want. Yeah. Sure. For 80,000. Am I tracking here? That's kind of Yeah, that's that's where I'm at is so I think you're I think you're struggling with your personal side of things, mayor, and then the city side of things. Like from the city side of things as staff members, I'm trying to be fiscally responsible with the city dollars and say, "Hey, we don't have to pay you." And now you're saying, why do you say that? Because we don't have to pay you for it if you're looking for development in the city. He doesn't have to. No, he doesn't. But I'm not going to tell him that. I'm not going to go out and say, "Hey, we should pay you for that." And the idea is that we're trying to help him and work with him. Now, I'm not saying he's dumb. He's going to say, "Oh, yeah." Amy's pulling her hand raising her hand. If I I don't know if this helps at all, but I mean if if outlot A if the purpose of what it's would be used for is to serve the plat then it's reasonable to dedicate for a developer to dedicate it to the city at no cost to the city and deed it over as part of the platting process. And as c as council member fashion has said, I mean it's not a good idea to use and Zach has been recommending against it too to use an outlot that's going to be used for a future wellhead or whatever as part as part of the park dedication process. You know, those things should be should be separate. Um, and so it it really would come out kind of in the in the full platting process what the the purpose of the outlot is and and you know whether it's it's reasonable to dedicate it or for the city to pay value for it. But as it is, I mean, it's very common for in in a platting process for property to be given to the city for a city purpose that for a public purpose that serves the the the development and any potential future development in the area for no cost. Exactly. I'm not saying both sides. I mean, he wants something for it. The city wants it. I want for free too. I No, that's what I say. The your personal side and the mayor. And all you got to do is not a personal side. It's doing what's right. Well, let's not confuse those. and and it is possible to to work out the the the value of you know the total costs that I mean there's a way to kind of work it out in in the in in all of the overall fees and and and costs with the plat but it's just a matter of of how it is broken down on paper. The simple matter is is if he doesn't want to give it to him, we don't have to allow the development either. That's not my understanding. If things are per zoning, yeah, I don't know. You could find a reason to deny an A3 district at any time. Street probably could. I will say at the same time, too, the development agreement is going to also have cash requirements for public improvements. in one of those public improvements. Now, there's not going to be water and sanitary sewer fees related to this because that's not going to be involved here. Um, but the storm water uh cash requirement will be a part of the development agreement that the applicant will also have to be subject to. Um, so maybe the park and trail fees is not a mechanism for accommodating that outlot, but uh there might be something uh in the storm water fees or something like that for crediting. Um, and I'm not going to deny that someday that well site or that well treatment site isn't going to um serve this property, but uh at this point based on the development that is proposed, it doesn't it's not going to it's not going to make a difference for the development. So, okay. Anything else? We done good. So, I think the applicants are going to look to us to say, are we paying for that lot now or are we not? And I'm sounding that sounds like we're paying for that lot. It's up to these guys. I at this point I I don't know that we need to make that decision. I think there's a benefit to the city there that you know although it's there's nothing specific on the table here but it sounds like there are more appropriate well there are other fees that are going to be involved in this development that we could consider forgiving or partially forgiving to sure accommodate some kind of reasonable compensation to you for that piece that we want. We appreciate that. Yeah. It's certainly no different than the apartment building. I mean, we uh gave up we gave up a lot of fees for a roadway. Mhm. So, I mean, it's workable. It's between them guys and then we'll figure it out. Yeah. Okay. clear as mud. Um, with the Oh, I think actually it' probably be fine. I was because it was it's 1.5 net acres and with the new plan cuz there's the wetlands which obviously wouldn't be part of the net, but it looks like most of those that cut into the wetland are well over 1.5. So, you're probably all lots have the 1.5 net buildable. So that was the intent of all those. Um and yeah, if you go if you look closely, it is all there. Would it be possible to put a trail like when we talk about buffers for wetlands and preserving them? Is it possible to put a trail like is putting a trailer around a wetland still like a doable thing as far as like considered protection? Um cuz is that is that a way that we can all cuz the idea from the city is if we control the wetland we have we can you know do a better job to protect it. I do get that like property lines whatever and then there's the issue of the park fees but is could part of it be like if the if giving the wetland or dedicating land for the park fee because that is an option right park fees is either land for a park or the fee or a combination. So would one option be giving us the wetland for a park and to put the trail around it to offset a part, you know, a certain proportion of that fee? That might be a way there as well. That would help the city with the we would like to have a little bit more um control over the wetland. I don't know if control is the right word. Um ability to ensure that it is protected. Um cuz it's one thing when you guys are farming it, right? But like now we're talking about possibly three, five additional homeowners who are all right next to that wetland and then having to trust all of them to do the right thing for the wetland versus the city. But that could be dedicated as a portion of as a park basically and put a little trailer on it that would serve that neighborhood directly. That could maybe offset some of the fees and give us a chance to have access to it for maintenance purposes because we could have access along that trail. Um, so that might be another when you're talking about ways that we can negotiate and find ways to ease some of the financial burden but still be a win on our end and give us something that we wanted and also help you offset the concern you had. And I think we would be open to that discussion for sure. Um, I would say that in some of these properties are, you know, kind of bought for privacy reasons and so sometimes that can hurt uh property value and you would be upping the traffic around the wetland which is not necessarily a good thing either. That's that would be my only caution to it. But we are open. I mean, we're obviously open for whatever discussion you guys would like to have. Um, but that would be I guess that would be my first reaction would be uh property values because those are the properties that are going to pay for this project, right? Yeah. And um just the increased traffic and privacy and the wetland does go into a neighbor so you couldn't really do anything all the way around it anyway. But yeah, the trail would serve five. Yeah. So just trying to find a compromise that would maybe make everybody happy. Yeah. And we're open to all ideas. We really are. So, I appreciate that. Any more concerns? Any discussion? Are we good? Sounds like we're about 45 minutes. Beat this. Okay. You're good with most things before we even talk about. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Item O. I think we need to talk about this for a good hour. I I don't We'll make a motion that we There you go. approve this. All right. More of a more of a We had a motion on the floor. Yep. Okay. We can we can still discuss it, but I mean it's And we had a second. I'll second. Dave second. Oh, second. Yep. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I was just going to note more of a formal process for property entering into the egg preserve program that is uh authorized by state statute for egg dedicated properties to um enter into. So, uh we use the SA zoning district to track these properties that are enrolled in this program. Um uh following approval tonight, uh it's expected that the applicant would take um the necessary steps at Henipin County to enroll this property within uh the program. So um that's the reason for the reasonzoning request. Should have never came up. This Yeah, this property was previously in there um and was it expired from the program in 2022. So anybody uh have any comments? Okay. All those in favor say I. All those opposed say no. I will obviously abstain. You will abstain. I would hope so. Passes four to zero. All right. On to item P. I had like a half hour more of that. Denied. 45 minutes here. An hour and a half. This is one. Mayor, members of council, um this was based on the work session tonight. Um we are before you for an approval for to post for full-time fire. Myself and Chief Hendendrickson are here to answer any questions you may have. Um is this to post for one or two? This is for both. Two. Yeah. This is the extension of the work session. The reason we had the work session is to try to limit the amount of conversation that the council meeting. I don't know if that accomplished what we were looking to do, but it did. I'm more confused now than I was when I first got here. um get her answer your question. So I didn't say a lot during the work session because I I was thinking a lot. Um I think Do you want me to go back to if any of the slides I go back to obviously and touch base on I didn't want to put them in there twice. Um, no. I was just I did some calculations based on um the comparables and I think and I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I think what I was hearing was that it there is clearly um a relationship between the amount per person a city is spending and the number of calls answered for obvious reasons. And so then the question becomes how come of the ones that we were given in the comparison four of them have much so no Champlan Maple Grove Elk River and St. Michael um are much cheaper per resident but also have a far smaller call volume right per resident like if you look at the numbers um and the highest cost is OIO and they're also the highest number of calls compared to the number of residents um followed by Rogers and us um and so then the question is you know why are we answering why do we have so many more calls per resident than some of these other communities do and is Is it um and I don't know the answers but things that pop into my head is it part of our a more aging population right like is it that we have an older population particularly when you're talking about like falls and things like that is that is that part of it um is it about the fact that we send fire to all these calls and these other communities don't send fire to all of these calls? Um that's part of it. Um, is it something to do with like the relationship some of these communities have with their neighbors and like how many you know like are they going to more like community call like is part of it that they are answering the call for neighbors more than or don't have neighbors answering their calls? Um, and I don't neessy know all the answers to that but those were some of the things that popped into my head um when I was part of that conversation. Um, secondly, I do think again, uh, mayor, you brought up this point about showing up to a call and then not doing much doesn't necessarily motivate me to like go to the next call. Um, I have I have never been a firefighter. I don't have any family who are firefighters, so I can't begin to speak to how how that but I can just for myself put myself in that picture. I got called, I rushed out, dropped everything, show up, and then I just stand there, do nothing. Would make me hesitate to go to the next one. Um, and I don't know, I don't have a clue how to address that, but I'm guessing if that is happening frequently, that might be part of why people aren't showing up. Um, I don't know what the answer to that is, though. Um, and then lastly, looking at the other cities that have paid, you know, more paid on call, I will say the Rogers thing, when I looked at their website, I only saw four. I didn't see five full-time people at Rogers. Um, but that was their 2024 report. So, that very well may have changed for 2025. They may have added someone. Um, but they all have other very very explicit duties that are like laid out in their job description. And so, that's where I'm at. Um, I I could right now today with what I have before me, I could get behind hiring one additional full-time person if there were like really clearly outlined additional duties for that person to do. Um, and this schedule really showed that those three full-time people were covering most the time. I could get behind that. Um, but I also don't know. I feel like I haven't had as much experience in this. like this is not my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination. Um so I would also defer to other people but those were the things that were going through my head as that conversation was happening. So you want us to answer the questions or you just want discussion? I I don't know if there's any answers to those questions. Right. I think that was part of it is I don't think there are clear you know this is the answer to that question. I think all of your issues or all of the is it this or is it that I think it's a combination speaking from my experience only. I think it's a combination of a lot of those things. I think you kind of hit part of it on the head. Um especially in my house it is the this is the fifth call of today and I've gone to every one of them and I feel like I haven't used any of my skills or my husband moved to station one to support the fire department. Um, we live a mile this way, but my husband travels to station one um to provide leadership at that department because he was asked to by the chief. Um, and he doesn't make calls. So, there's an issue there with um getting paged out, putting your pants on, running out the door at midnight, and you get halfway into Dayton and you're cancelled or station 2's got it or like whatever that you know may be why you got cancelled. But I think what I've heard from the firefighters is that part of the push for or support for this model, especially from station one, is exactly that. It's the want to use your skills and right now we're not getting to use them. Um especially when you get on these critical calls and practice is everything. um which I think opens up for me a broader issue which we we won't address tonight but I have an issue with um you know training has been an issue in the past um past year has been very rough um we do have a new training schedule that Kevin put out so that's great super excited about seeing that um but I have some issues with the way we do our training and so I feel like there's areas of opportunity there that may help some of that um I guess I'm already on my soap box. So, if you are okay, I will continue and then I will be quiet and sit back. Um, I addressed my station one issue, my broader issue with training. Um, the other thing is is every one of these both of these schedules, both of our chiefs are on at the exact same time. That to me raises a red flag. That raises an issue for me. Um, right now, and again, this is going to open up another can of worms that we will not address tonight. Um, but I will make a comment and then move on. Um, at this time we have two full-time chiefs Monday through Friday at the station and a paid on call firefighter there. And you're telling me that we're those three are there and we are having a hard time covering the day calls. I have an issue with that. Um, if we need an admin person, I feel like that's another conversation that we should have because some of these do have full-time chiefs and an admin. Maybe that's what we need. Maybe we need an admin that can go on calls and it then it's three people. Um, but again, those are larger issues and things that we need to be talking about where I don't know that blanket stating we're going to add two full-time is going to cover or fix those issues. Um, the other issue I brought up in the work session is that in both of these schedules, neither one of our chiefs are on at all on a weekend. Um, not one weekend. Um, and I feel like that's a missed opportunity for mentorship. I feel like we are a very young department. That was highlighted multiple times tonight. And I have come in and spoke to both chiefs about my concern about how young our department is and how we need more mentorship. Um, and I feel like that's a missed opportunity. Um, what else was there? Oh, parah. So, if the requirements for parah are just that we have a scheduled shift, I'm not seeing the correlation between needing the full time and moving our um firefighters to the parah retirement. Um if it really is that it just has to be scheduled, do we have two eight hour or two two fourhour scheduled training shifts? Do those not count towards PAR? Um no. The time spent on the at any time if you were underneath PAR would count towards your time. Um but it's not just your whole time has to be from what I understand with PAR is that you have to have the same you have to have a schedule for the whole time. You can't have okay paid on call for this portion and then um schedule out time for trainings for example because it's not um explain like you don't have the same it's a totally different benefit for show up when you can paid on call model than it is with all scheduled shifts. You either have to have all scheduled shifts or you have to have paid on call. But we in the full-time model, we have all call times as well. So, how does that factor into what you're saying now? That's what I mean. So, I saw that. I thought it was just scheduled time. That's what it was. Scheduled time, but I it's got to be more than just two. So, I can do some more I can do some more research on it. I understand. I would love that because there's more than two. That's okay. So then my next question is is I understand that we had some push back and I respect Paul's opinion because he ran the fire department for a long time, but I didn't hate as a firewife. I didn't hate response teams at night. I was fine with that. I got our whole schedule out and it said this is overnight you respond to these. Is there a way in the middle where that is a scheduled shift, right? You're on call. Could you be working elsewhere? I work a job where I work from home twice a week every other week and then I work one Friday and the next Friday from home. So could it be that you're being paid one hour Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to be at home for those overnights? You know, you're going to get paid an hour for each one of those days. It's scheduled and then you just show up from your 10 to 5:00 a.m. whatever calls above and beyond that hour you get paid for. But if you get no calls come out, you still get paid for one hour. You're scheduled, you're working elsewhere. I just I guess what I'm getting at is there's a hund ways to skin a cat here. And I feel like subbing in to full-time fire requiring these shifts, it doesn't really solve the issues that we're having. And yes, you know, I have heard that it's, you know, the predictability. I I get that piece of it. I've been doing this for 10 years. Like I understand when the pager goes off. I've painted my nails many a time in that parking lot on my way to date night because fire call came out. It was critical. we stopped right here and like I just feel like there's somewhere in between where one we can address the issue of wanting to train and wanting to be here the parah issue scheduled shift like I feel like there's something in between that we're not talking about and again maybe that is an admin because I know again like I said we're not really touching too deep on it but we are paying a paid on call firefighter right now to be at the station during today not responding to calls doing admin work I think is the answer that I got no in-depth no job description so if we need an admin let's do that maybe this one of these full-time positions is an admin position who responds to calls I would love to talk about that I would love to talk about the other options but I feel like we've been given it's this or that or pound sand and I don't I was maybe really aggressive I apologize but that's what it feels like to me seem like it's one one res yes and I don't know if that's sign up for a weekend or a holiday. We'll pay you double time for that one hour if you make any other calls. But I don't see the value in sitting here at the station. And I get we labeled all those things that they could be doing and that's all great and wonderful. But for also there is no job description here. So how do we know what these firefighters are doing? So, I would have hoped and what I was hope like I guess what I was hoping for tonight would be to be given a job description and get to look at it and say that's what we're approving these full-time firefighters for and then to say nope that's not what we want them to be doing. This is what we think they should be doing. So, for me as a blanket statement of just approve the posting, I'm sorry, but I love the fire department. I've given 10 years of my life to this thing. So is my husband. But I can't blanket statement say yes to this and I will get off my soap box. Thank you. Sorry for yelling. I think you're fine. Yeah, I I don't know. I feel like we've been down this road a whole bunch of times through the budget process and and it has been felt very much to me anyway like it's, you know, the the broken system we have now or this full time two full-time positions in a in a duty crew model. And I don't know, I feel like I spent the summer talking about this, but you know, that's that's where we still are. And I think that the duty crew model, it makes sense to me, but it's too soon. I've always felt that way and I've said that the the entire time. Um, but we put it in the budget. And so I will eat crow on that on behalf of council's past who have sat in this chair that I am directly connected to. I will eat crow on that for you. I apologize. Um, you know, is this I think that there are a bunch of different models that we could be looking at, but we we have not succeeded in being able to do that. And um you know, that's my frustration around it. Since day one when we started the budget back in April, these were all wrapped up in a package and you had to do the package or it didn't work. And it I I don't know. I mean, the the 30 versus 17, I think that's a different issue. that's a separate issue. Um, you know, how we do calls. Uh, whether they're here, whether they're here sometimes or whether they're not here at all, but they get some sort of, um, benefit to to signing up for call, that's a to me that's a that's a separate issue. Um, anybody else? Uh, let's see. I personally don't see any difference between there's 16 like I said in the work session I mean there's 168 hours out of the week for 6 hours from each firefighter everything is covered it's just a m to me it's just a matter of putting a schedule on and putting a name on that day or that time and for some reason we don't want to try it unless unless we do full-time. Um, one thing that really puzzles me about this fire department has been a mess for the last four years. I mean, it just it's it's completely completely been changed around. Uh, we're one of the most expensive fire departments there is compared to other cities. And I mean, we're not that far behind Champlain and Anoka Champlain and they're 50,000 people. Um, the other thing that really puzzles me, we have two full-timers right now and I just asked this question yesterday. There was an issue with a lawn care business on 117th about a year ago and we have um the IUP. Yes. There was supposed to be an inspection done on a couple of fuel tanks and to my knowledge that hasn't been done yet. What are we doing? I mean, it's been over a year or about a year. I mean, this is terribly mean, but I two more full-timers. I'd bring a deck of cards so you guys got something to do. Um, it's easier to play with four than it is two. I just don't get it. I mean, we're not we're not trying to do anything different other than this is what this is what I sold to him. This is what is going to work. I agree with Dave. I think it's way too early. And I know we talked about it at budget time and at that time I was willing to uh go ahead and go with the program and um I I'm just not seeing a lot of progress. Is there a world where we find something in the middle whatever that looks like right for the call um just for like the structure of the department and maybe part of that plan if you will is you know I hate to be like we're 5 years out we're t cuz I hate that um but is there a a way to look at you know like this is what we're going to try or this is what we're going to and then you know like a progression almost cuz I'm not denying that there's value in this eventually, but I just feel like there's lots of things in between that we could do. Um I'm not really sure what they ask. They said there's lots of recipes there. Yeah, there's a 100 ways to skin a cat. Um kind of like cats, do you? I love cat. I've meow capped it on my ankle. I love cats. Um maybe not so much skinning them. Um, so I guess yeah, that's kind of where I'm at where I would like to look at other options and less all the way or nothing options, maybe somewhere in between. Um, but I also will say that I think I personally I've heard from a number of firefighters and spouses, but it's really hard and I know we have Bill here today. Um, but it's hard to know what everybody wants to do when their options are they don't know what we're willing to do, right? Like so are we willing to pay for them to be at home like without the department really knowing where we're at. I feel like the back and forth I don't want to play telephone. I guess maybe that's what I'm saying. So, I don't know how we close that gap, but what I hear and what other people hear are very different. And I think that that maybe speaks more to a morale issue. Um, but that's my hesitation for, you know, the this is what the firefighters want because just because they're not saying anything out loud doesn't mean that they don't have an opinion. So, I I just wanted to like maybe like throw that caveat in there, too. I I've always thought that some sort of a and and not even just the fire department, maybe all the departments, some sort of an anonymous polling or something. I' I've over the years said that a number of times that it'd be nice to get some very direct questions and get some very direct answers anonymously because some of these people are afraid to say anything. Terrified. So, yeah. Well, unfortunately, uh, if if you chitchat with anybody, they get in trouble. Okay. So, can I ask a question before you go any further about asking for motions or anything else? Well, is there a way for whatever the I guess I guess well okay I we have to run it down. I apologize I'm talking out loud. If we are not ready to approve to post for the full-time fire, if that's the scenario we're going down, is there a way to also put in that motion, if you will, that the requirements for the firefighters right now don't change again until we figure out what the direction of the department is? Because we've had more than one change this year about call requirements. and the last thing I want to do is to walk out of this meeting if that's the road we go down and then we all of a sudden throw on a 25 or a 30% um for the volume that they have to meet cuz we have that right now where it keeps kind of moving and I would just like to pause it and say we're not changing anybody's requirements until we figure out what the model looks like and what the schedule looks like. So, as it sits now, if if this has a motion in a second and and three of us are good with it, it it's it's approved, right? If there's no motion or no second or not three, it just doesn't get it doesn't just dies. Mhm. So, what you're what you're looking at is something kind of extra. It's something separate. Um, now we do I mean it seems like we probably have a lot more questions that may need uh work session or may need I I think we will we'll need more discussion on these issues. I think so too. Would it not make sense to have fire have a work session with the whole department and council? I don't know. Can you not do that though? Well, I don't know that you're you're not going to get you're not going to get people to come forward and say I had multiple say to me tonight, I'd love to be there to support you, but I can't put myself in that situation. So, I don't know that you're going to get everyone together to be honest and get the actual feedback unless you went to them or they were allowed to come to you. They're always allowed to come to us. Not indeed. No. Okay. So, I'm going to I'll chime in. It's all is very much directed at me. Um so as employees if there is an issue with an employee um it is expected to go up the chain of command. That is always expected to go up. If it doesn't reach that chain of command then it's supposed to go to the next person above that and the next person above that. That person should eventually be me. Um if it's an issue with me then it should go to council because that is my bosses as U5. Um the problem I wouldn't say maybe it's a problem. It's just um the contradiction that we have is that Can I just say something here? Yep. You guys be very careful what you say. Yeah. Well, it's just because of the data practices, but go ahead. I know I know where it's just more or less that you know where are they at? Are they employees or are they residents? And that's the that's the contradiction that we have. Yeah. And that's and that's just where it's at just period and the story is are they employees or are they residents? And so that's where the and they're both and that's why it's a challenge. And that's why it's a challenge. Mhm. Um it's as a resident, they can always come to us as a resident to us. As an employee, there is supposed to be a chain of command, but that goes back to the other issues. It is a very much a gray line and it is very difficult. Um it is not a simple black and white. Um I it's my opinion is that if they're talking to you about something other than the department, they are a resident. a water issue, street problem, whatever, if they're, you know, I I will say though that I've had residents talk to me about the fire department. Impossible. Yeah. So, and they might know something from somebody else and then that makes it then I would like that to come to me though. It would be nice to know like what's happening that I I don't hear for many reasons. They should come to you. Yeah. And I would I would appreciate the support from the council to be able to have them redirect back to me. Um, if I have an issue, I'm most certainly willing to talk to the council about it and say, "Hey, there's an issue, something going on." And or I reach out to the city attorney and say, "I yeah, I don't know what to do here." Um, I have a suggestion for the fire department um based on the conversation tonight and my suggestion is to do a culture assessment for the department right now. Um, just based on the comments that I'm hearing tonight, um, I have been in contact with Amy over the past months about the fire department overall and I think that we've come up with a decent plan. I had a feeling this was going to come up eventually is that um, to be able to do a culture assessment of the department overall. Um, can you say more about that? So, a culture assessment is done on an individual or group basis. My plan would be to do it on a group basis very much similar to what the mayor and you had mentioned um council Henderson is that it would be done on an individual basis and then the information would be shared back in a general culture assessment of where the department is at currently. Some sort of an anonymous Yeah. Well, they'd meet with they wouldn't meet with me. They would meet with the third party. Yeah. Um and then giving the information so that we know where we're at and then it would not be shared of you know this person said this, this person said that. It would be here's the general culture that we have right now. And um it seemed to have worked in other departments very well um from what I've heard and based on the comments I'm hearing tonight. I think it would be something that we should look into other departments here. No. Right. Other departments in other cities. And again, I don't want to limit this to the fire department. I think it's healthy. Again, we do it at work. I think a lot of places do it. It's an anonymous discussion about your your your relationship with your hierarchy generally culture related about how you know feelings thoughts whatever may happen and that way it's anonymous you know it's anonymous it's third party it's not held within myself or whatever okay obviously I'd love to know what's going on so that would help me as well I will just say in general though not just for this but period if I'm being asked to approve a job a posting I need to have a job description period like not just for this but in the future any job that I'm asked to approve I will need a job description sure so noted yeah I think on the cultural culture study you know I I certainly am familiar with them the hospital used that in various departments over my time you know we called them climate studies but same thing it's the same you know just a different term for that kind of a kind of a survey and I certainly would support that. Um I think that the you know what Sarah just said about a job description I think that makes a lot of sense too for us to understand. I think ultimately although we're being asked a specific thing about um some hiring tonight, you know, I think that we should have a larger discussion about of the model and you know, and how we're going to get there, whether it's a phase thing, whether it's the one that we we currently have in front of us or or what it is. What I don't want to do is be doing staffing schedules. I don't think that's our role. I I understand where you're coming from, you know, on saying, "Well, you could you could do it better than this, right?" But I don't think that's our job in in this case. I think we we should be approving the overall model and we should be checking in to see if it's working. Um I don't know. That feels too far down in the weeds to me to be saying this, you know, this person should be here on Thursdays and and the other one should be here on Saturdays. Okay. I guess I guess we can do that if we, you know, if that's what the group wants, but I don't feel like that's our role. I'm sorry that I'm looking at you when I No, I look I stare at you too when when I talk, so it's okay. I'm not offended. I'm okay with that. All right. A motion. Okay. Are we do we need to table this until study or don't? Don't do anything cuz no motion was made in the first place. No motion's made. There's no approval. Um and if there are no objections, we will be adjourned. We're journ