going going hot here Rick oh Rick we didn't think you who's this all right the Tuesday August 20th 2024 meeting of Eden per city council is now called to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance my pledge Al of the United States of America to theivy andice for it is customary at the start of meetings that I read an open Podium invitation open Podium is an opportunity for Eden PR residents to address the city council on issues related to Eden PR city government prior to each council meeting these Council meetings are typically held the 1 and third Tuesday of each month though not during the summer months uh the meetings the open Podium part of the meeting occurs from 6:30 to 6:55 p.m. here in the council chamber if you wish to speak at open Podium please do contact the city manager's office at 95294 98412 by noon of the meeting date with your name your phone number and the subject matter so we can be better prepared for you open Podium is not recorded or televised if you have questions about open Podium please do contact the city manager's office all right we have no proclamations or presentations this evening we do have an agenda as always are there any additional items for the agenda that any council member wishes to add or city manager uh May May the one that I'm going yeah there's yeah so you cover that right the um infrastructure road construction and the uh right the events that have happened recently um so so you you got that covered good yep so that will be um under report of Public Works director is that accurate yes is that fine um yeah just um a question about with all the road construction going on right now just an informational real quick report out from um Mr Ellis about what's happening why it's happening what's next when it's all done just generically that way I'd like to add one brief uh report of council member from an educational standpoint about solar panels and neighbors not looking for any um staff action at all in fact it sounds like it's already been handled but it's more uh just the idea of this type of issue that might be arising with new technologies out in the world today so any any additional agenda items besides those two additions if not uh could I have a entertain a motion to approve the agenda move to approve the agenda sir second second any further discussion all those in favor say I I opposed moving on to whoop oh nothing is that no clear your throat okay not like not like that sorry got it no no problem just do let me know send a note down or sure for sure hit Mr um n let him hit me yeah okay you got it all right um so we do have the city council minutes to approve from July 16th any items on it that you wish to correct edit add delete if not is there a motion to approve both the workshop and the city council meeting held back on July 16 move to approve the following city council minutes Council Workshop held Tuesday July 16 2024 city council meeting held Tuesday July 16th 2024 sir second second any additional further discussion all those in favor say I I I opposed all right moving on to the consent calendar which are the items of Fairly perun nature that we Clump together into one uh motion of consent but council members any items you wish to uh question or pull uh for additional discussion if not is there a motion for approval of the consent calendar items a through L I'll move for approval of items a through l in the consent calendar sir second any further discussion all those in favor say I I opposed all right no public hearings or additional meetings payment of claims um again these are uh classically in the old days the checks that we cut uh today it's all electronic but um any items again or or expenditures that you wish to learn more about if not is there a motion to approve the payment of claims move to approve the payment of claims is submitted our second second further discussion roll call council member fryberg I council member nrian I council member Nelson I council member Tumi I mayor case I all right moving on to reports of council members um Mr Geto do you even though it's reports of council members do you want to say anything regarding this specific um award and then I'll talk maybe about we we'll pass actually no formal action tonight we'll do something else when um Senator sweni is available to actually come into the meeting but do you want to add anything here mayor what I'll just mention is maybe a little bit about the organization that awarded Senator swedzinski I'll let you talk about him and what we're going to do later on but the league of Minnesota cities of which um pretty much all 800 and some cities in the state of Minnesota are members of It's Association that provides uh training and development and also um support for cities at the uh Capital at the state and federal level um any issues related to to city government in addition to many other services including actually an insurance trust that we're in so we get our insurance uh through the league of Minnesota cities how um so what they do is each year they um award legis lators throughout the entire state of Minnesota very few they um honor them as distinctive legislators who assisted um City Statewide with um you know their assistant at the capital and Senator soinski was just one um I believe of just nine senators in the entire state of Minnesota that the leag recognized and they asked the mayor um to to publicly um mention that and talk about that and and hopefully in the American state this to have the senator and attendance and that'll be at a future meeting um because he's out of out of the state right now so yeah we're very fortunate to have a senator uh representing all of Eden Prairie um that is distinguished um and honored by the league of minol cities Great thank you um and I would like to bring him back and he's also been the recipient of um I I can think of at least one if not more uh Awards within the last year that we can acknowledge and recognize them it's nice because uh we are nonpartisan um our our state legislators do run partisan but uh senators all senators are not up for reelection this year so it's just a nice year in a nonpartisan environment to bring in our legislator um and acknowledge um as a city council all the good work this is one recognition from the league of minota cities but all the good work that he does for us day in and day out and that uh we have such a great uh relationship um with him that's not for me right now right that's another note from something else um all right um so uh we don't need an action on this tonight but um I'll we'll work on a date that he can actually come in maybe I'll work up a proclamation declaring it Senator Steve schinski day or something and um have his uh family come in we just would like to really um recognize and honor him I have chatted with him that and of course the award is not a surprise but the idea that we'll bring him in is will not be a surprise either all right second item that I would like to just real ever so briefly talk about and and I really want to raise this in in the um vein of thought that it it's an example of how residents can reach out to us anytime they have issues concerns and we can help them um Mr Geto triage is for me all the time I'll send an email and say can you get this to the right staff person uh the other uh reason this incident that I'll talk about this evening in a moment I think significant is that Technologies are changing constantly and with the changing Technologies within uh solar panels on rooftops it may inadvertently be bringing up um potential conflict pain points uh between neighbors so I had a a neighbor in Northern Eden Prairie reach out um to say that um the neighbor in um and some of the homes up in the north part of Prairie View if you know the area there's a couple neighborhoods that are literally um uh Terrace I guess is a good way of saying it there's a road that's low and another road that's high so that these houses look out on the rooftops of those houses I think there's a Third Street that's higher and they look out on the rooftops of those houses so what's happened is um neighbors down low have put solar panels facing the houses up above at the next level and and you can imagine that the sun changes its Vector its angle all the time and of course during the day and so it's only for a couple hours a day for about two months a year where it's literally like the sun is shining completely into all the windows of this house it's like this huge spot like a mirror yes it is exactly um like a mirror um and when I first heard about it I'm thinking okay that's not good I mean it's literally wrecking the quality of life I think for several of the homes on the Upper Terrace but we sitting up here tonight are total proponents of more Soler on people's homes so this is we have to be careful this is not about in any way trying to come up with some way to limit people's ability to get solar and I don't think I'd have to think of my geometry and and all the angle background but I don't think two homes sitting at the same level depending on roof sence or something could ever have this issue and in this case the home that is having the solar panels shine into their neighbor's house has solar panels on four sides of their house so we're only talking about the eastern exposure and there's only six panels so anyway this neighbor called me and and and I tried it right away to Mr Geto and it sounds like our she wanted some kind of an ordinance to prevent this it sounds like we have current ordinances in place right now that in theory prevent one neighbor from negatively impacting the quality of life of another neighbor I mean we have ordinances in place I think to begin to deal with this plus there's technologically I'm not an expert in anyway here I believe the potential capability of filters on the tops then it may it may cut um some of the electrical power part of it but it's nonetheless might make these at least the six Facing East and they could still have their other three so um point being this was a great example of a neighbor that reached out to one of us and said can you help me and we are and secondly of the changing technologies that may be creating new pain points that we as a council may or may not as we develop ordinances in the future want to address if you think about it every I think this is pretty fair to say you can nod if you agree but I think about every ordinance we have that deals with um helping neighbors get along and limiting maybe the freedom of one neighbor in order to impact positively the freedom of those around I think every one of those ordinances probably came out of solving problems you know people bring issues or problems and we come up with a solution and that then we create an ordinance so I just liked this as an example of that in our changing technology environment but I also want to make the case or point that we do not want to limit in any way um the expansion of solar across our city we just want to make sure we do it right okay Mr Geto you um heard the whole thing and you've been reacting anything else you want to add at all Mary you said it perfectly the the specifically we have a section our city code that deals with glare specifically with glare so we can we can follow up and and you're right we want to support more solar I mean we've had we've had multiple seminars where the city is bringing in people that put solar arrays on residential property and we're promoting it so but also you're right Mary you want to balance the the negative impact so we do have a a code section we're following up on this case with the glare issue and and if indeed it works out that we don't have an ordinance strong enough to directly face it evidently some of our neighboring cities do have more specificity along their solar panel and we'll we'll look at those too but we just believe right now that our city ordinances are strong enough to address this all right ah report of Public Works director so robt before you start thank you so much you you are so um uh good well all of our staff you're but you are so good at this I just want to maybe say out sorry I'm going to steal just one more moment here we um in this past week had the opportunity as a council to take the Council on the road on Thursday Thursday right we went to two senior residences um and um it's great when you go to a residence U building where seniors live because they all come out to your meeting which is actually really fun to see and uh we've done this now I don't know is that our third year I'm not sure but we generally go to two or three different buildings each year um and we went to elim Shores then we went to sum no Valley the other one Summer Valley View Cooperative Hill they're both next to each other um and had a wonderful time um but at any rate Quest we did q&as and questions would come up we had all our senior staff there and they did just uh phenomenally well they're I'm just so proud of them anytime we bring them them on the road as well but Robert got a lot of questions as as other staff did too and he handled it so well so one of the partly because those questions I we've been getting you know um not very much honestly but just a few comments here and there you know with the U Prairie Center Drive being en closed One Direction and then um sometimes you're D I was driving one day I was like no then I should have known but I did not and and suddenly your brain's going what's what's another route for me to go and then of course I plan ahead the next time right but anyway it made me think that in years past haven't we sometimes closed one side but then kept the other side one lane going both ways but this is and by the way we're not the only ones that closed the whole road down for a short amount of time that's happening in Bloomington right now uh where was I was just any dining it's happening so cities are doing this kind of a new way of thinking about that's what I talked to Rick about and I said could we have Robert report out where things at need PR why are we doing it this way uh how long will it be when will we all be done what's next Etc take it away yeah you bet so thank you mayor K city council so I'm talking specifically about that Prairie Center Drive project and there's really two Prairie Center Drive projects but I'll focus on the one that's Highway 212 to Flying Cloud Drive because I think that's the one that's most visible and it's the larger project but um when we started that project uh we talked about you know should we do one lane in each Direction and try to leave a flow of traffic uh in both directions or do we start to look at doing a partial closure where we directionally close traffic and not impact traffic flow in the other direction and it really comes down to three things it's one it's a constructibility issue we sit down with our contractor we know what the type of project that we were dealing with here it's much larger equipment we're doing a type of invasive reconstruction where it does take larger equipment we've got a stabilizer out there we've got multiple Milling machines we have large equipment that we don't traditionally see on a Mill and overlay project so we know there were constructibility issues that just takes more room for that equipment to safely maneuver within a limited work environment so we knew that we were going to be challenged trying to keep one lane in each Direction the other thing is safety is we have a responsibility to provide a safe work environment for the employees of the construction firm but also a safe environment for the motorists the pedestrians that are walking using the facility so we evaluate that as well as can we provide that safe work environment driving environment walking environment and we're a little bit concerned that maybe we couldn't provide that with the type of work that we were looking to do and then the third thing is we look at from a traffic efficiency standpoint what would work better here so we actually model the corridor we run a traffic analysis and we run the one lane in each Direction and what does that do for travel times up and down the corridor what's the level of service at each of the intersection and then you model that well what if you don't impact One Direction of traffic but you close the other direction of traffic and this is Prairie Center Drive It's Our Town Center there are multiple other arterial roadways that the driver has to choose from there's Flying Cloud Drive Prairie Center is a circular road so there are other means for the motorist to get to their destination so that worked in our advantage here and after we modeled it we actually found that there was a better level of service by leaving one lane or one direction of traffic unimpeded and the other being closed and they find alternate routes then if you were to limit both directions of traffic and give them only one lane and so there was act actually better efficiency in traffic by doing that so and looking at all three of those factors we decided that that was probably the best means for completing this project and the other thing is is we could actually finish this project probably a month quicker than if we were trying to do multiple stage is under one lane in each Direction so at the end of the day we'll get this done sooner get out of there open it up to traffic business back to normal so that's why that decision was made and maybe just an update on that project so we're about 50% done now and uh we are expecting that completion of the project will be the end of September I think it's September 30th is when that project will be completed so a little over a month from now and will be completely finished and that's pretty good it's a $2.8 million project so that is a large project a lot of work was done it's completely rebuilding all of that roadway with the exception of some curban gutter but it's all new ada8 compliant at the intersections and we're also doing some signal modifications there as well at Regional Center Drive so uh it's a big project now speaking of the second Prairie Center Drive that's from flying cloud uh towards uh preserve Boulevard and the installation of the new traffic signal at Fran low so that'll be much welcomed I know for residents that live in that uh the neighborhood there so again that project uh will be completed in early October it started a little bit later than the first project I was talking about uh some of the work that remains they've poured the footings for the traffic signal so as soon as those have cured you'll start to see the iron go up on the signal poles and the Mast arms and the signal heads and they're also doing a rebuilding of that roadway they're doing a full depth Reclamation and possibly some stabilization of the asphalt surfacing and then of course ADA compliance as well because we were not compliant at that intersection so that will make it a nice easy barrier-free access for people that live on the south side of Prairie Center wanting to go to that high traffic destination of our Eden Prairie Center mall so that'll be a nice amenity when it's completed at the end of um I guess early October and if you'd like I could hit on a couple of our other projects because this has really kind of been a landmark year for major infrastructure investment um homward Hills Road if you live in that southern part of town that's another road that has been closed for the past several weeks as we replaced a sewer line that's in the middle of homward Hills that's down at Tanglewood the Horseshoe they will actually repave that road on Monday and by Monday evening the roadway should be reopened to traffic so for those that live in the southeast part of Eden Prairie that road will be open next week um also up in the Golden Triangle 70th Street is being reconstructed that's again a total closure this is the third phase of the West 70th Street reconstru construction this is the road that will serve the Golden Triangle station um the first phase was done a number of years ago and then the middle phase was done with the Light Rail Project and this is the third and final phase that will uh be completed from Shady Oak to the station and so that will be completed in October as well and that's a total reconstruction with uh sidewalk and pedestrian facilities that will serve the Golden Triangle as well as new roadway uh and then we also um just looking at our annual pavement management project that we do each year usually those are a lot of residential roadways but in and about the city center area you notice Technology Drive was completely resurfaced also Wallace Road Venture Lane Fuller Drive and villagewood some of our major collector roads were also a part of that work this year that finished up yesterday so that project is now uh done and finished for the year that was probably our largest project of the Year $3.6 million that turned out very good and then maybe I'll I'll touch on a project not necessarily a city project but something that is happening Citywide and that's the fiber installation that's happening across the city again it's not a city project this is a privately Leed project um but it is permitted through the city and we have a company called Intrepid who is working on behalf of T-Mobile that's installing fiber across the community trying to um get fiber in front of every residential home in Eden Prairie and they've been working for about a year now and they are actually providing service now on the Eastern side of Eden Prairie they've constructed much of the Southern fiber across Southern Eden Prairie and they're working in the Central and getting permitted for the northern part of Eden Prairie so I suspect over the course of the next year year and a half they should be finished with that and they've done a pretty good job with restoration I mean this is a it's an impactful it's an invasive process getting in front of every residential home um but they've done a pretty good job compared to some of our other service um providers in Eden Prairie um as far as Restorations goes so we've been pretty satisfied with the work that they've done uh we do have a second fiber company that is working to get permited now they're providing security so it's a matter of days not necessarily weeks before they start working in Eden Prairie and they're gigas speed working on behalf of AT&T and again they're wanting to provide residential service across our community as well and it looks like they are working to start in the southeast part of Eden Prairie as well and so I just highlight that because this is um this is uh something that the city of Eden Prairie permits but we can't dictate where they go we can't tell them no they can't come here if they submit for a permit and they meet all of our uh security requirements we have to let them um provide that service so even if six come companies came completely duplica Lively laying fiber in the exact same areas across the city digging it up six times we can't have we don't have any control over that we can't deny them that permit to occupy the right away that is to Mayor three things I'll add um some of the cities around us I think they're on three if not four companies or on one maybe two I also think though in the Marketplace Robert and I have talked about this they're trying to be the first to cover um territory so they'll probably hit those areas that aren't covered but it's not to say they'll overlay into another area and third you quite frankly I'm not going to speak about any the current service provider am I going to make a comment on the current service provider other than to say I've been in many places where people are asking for competition to be able to choose um yes another internet provider without it's not making a statement to the current provider but um it's something that that we saw coming and it's happening throughout the entire metro area council member nuran yeah Robert question if they want to put fiber um who who has who had to give the right way to dig it up is that our city giving yes we we would issue a rightaway permit much like we do for EXL energy CenterPoint Energy Comcast alumin any of the other utility service providers so so they will be putting a fiber in place and the second vendor will be putting same on top of they could now they've told us that they would prefer not to install a utility where a fiber already exists but they might try to LeapFrog each other to get out in front of one another so you will see duplicative Services maybe along major collector roads as they're trying to get out in front to the next neighborhood but uh we wouldn't expect to see every cold to saac is going to have two fiber optic providers uh they've told us it just doesn't make Financial sense to do that but they do want to be the first into a neighborhood and the first company that gets there can lease that because fiber is obviously incredibly larger than usually what one company's needs are can lease that out to all their competitors and correct certainly could and and are there I mean I know even as I say this it sounds exorbitantly expensive but is is there no City out there that's laying in I'm going to make this up now but like a a 10inch pipe that goes in the ground one time and then all the other companies feed in it and we get lease payments off it or something is is that just impossible now for us to do but I think where we've seen that is Major urban areas where the the battle for available space Cas is incredibly um difficult because you don't have a lot of RightWay left they're and most of it's paved over whereas Eden Prairie we have large amounts of wide open RightWay it's easy to dig in uh it's not covered in pavement or street so probably wouldn't see that in a Suburban environment but you might in a Downtown Minneapolis St Paul council member Nelson um do we insist that they put it back like they found it or do they put it back so of you know cuz this goes in front of people's homes yep no Intrepid has done a very good job if you compare I would say the restoration work that Intrepid has done as to that of maybe Exel or Centerpoint or people that we have been working with for years I would say it's on a whole new plane when Intrepid has come in they've actually laid a tarp down they've dug their hole they've laid that dirt on the on the tarp so that it doesn't blend into the side they cut out the sod they put the dirt back after they've installed their facility and then they place that original sod right back into the hole they actually put a little extra seed on top of it and some straw and then we've never seen 13 years I've never seen anybody go to that level of restoration and eatting Prairie so I think they've done actually a very good job I I wish all of the service providers private utilities did as good of a job as Intrepid has done and I'm hoping gigas speed does as well they have but they they seem to have the same model but we will see when they get here all right Mr Geo any final thoughts on that we otherwise we are at the end of our agenda I believe Mary no there's no further business all right then if Council if nothing else is there a motion to adjourn Mo to adjourn the city council meeting tonight there second second is there any further discussion all those in favor say I I I oppose this meeting is adjourned