The Tuesday, April 15, 2025 meeting of the Eden Prairie City Council is now called to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It's customary at the start of each meeting for me to read an open podium invitation to our residents. Open podium is an opportunity for Eden Prairie residents to address the city council on issues related to Eden Prairie city government prior to each regular council meeting which typically occur the first and third Tuesday of each month. These open podium sessions occur from 6:30 to 6:55 here in the council chamber. If you wish to speak at open podium, please do contact the city manager's office at 952-9498412 by noon of the meeting date with your name, your phone number, and 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. Mr. Get we have um I it's I think it's generally exciting a presentation of uh quality of life survey results which only occur every two years. So I'll turn it over to you to introduce our speaker this evening. Thank you mayor and council members. That is correct. For almost the last 20 years we've conducted a statistically significant survey of our residents um every other year. Um this does build into our strategic plan and our budgeting process as well. And for the last almost decade, we've used uh PUL goal, also known as a N national research center. Um and you're going to hear about this when you receive the presentation, but um they provide this type of survey to hundreds of communities across the nation that are similar to Eden Prairie. So what what's really valuable about the information that we receive is we get to compare ourselves against ourselves over time. We get to see how we're doing in a snapshot in time in terms of community characteristics, city services, and city issues. And then we also have the opportunity um to see how we grade against similarsized cities throughout the United States. So you're going to hear, well, you already did hear you you've seen a lot of this as a council. you just spent the last hour um receiving this information, but it's been um a tradition to also have a presentation at the regular city council meeting. So Michelle Kobayashi, a research strategist with PCO, will present you with our most recent quality of life survey results. And I'll mention right now I can mention at the end but um the the full survey is a pretty large document and it has a lot of appendices and that will be um you know immediately after the meeting or soon after um every page of that survey will be available on our website at edenpra.org and I believe all the surveys that we've done that go back to 2006 every single one of those surveys is on that same web page. Great. Thank you Michelle. Welcome. Well, hello and thank you for having uh me here today uh to talk about your quality of life survey results. Um my name is Michelle Kobayashi and I work for PCO. We are a civic analytic uh resident engagement uh government tech firm and we specialize in bringing the voice of residents and stakeholders into decision-m as well as just helping local governments to be data driven in terms of strategic planning, budgeting, performance measurement, all the things they do to make communities more livable. And so let's get to the survey results. So, as Rick said, you have done this survey or we have done the survey. Um, Pulco National Research Center has done it since 2014, but you started in 2006 doing this. And I want to mention I myself have been doing this for more than 30 years. And so, it was much more rare in 2006 for people to do citizen surveys or resident surveys because um they cost money. they actually open yourself up for, you know, the residents telling you how to behave, how to act, how to rule. And so, um, Eden Prairie really has been a pioneer in this area, one of the first ones in the Minneapolis area to do it. And now dozens of local governments use the practice and it's considered a, you know, a performance practice of high performing governments. Um, I already talked about where I'm from. I'm from the National Research Center at Pulco and we do this for lots and lots of pe communities across the nation. Um and the reason why um we love resident surveys is basically the power of the resident voice is so important in governing. Um it addresses the bottom line in government. Residents decide who gets put in power. They decide if they're going to vote for taxes or different referendums. And we also need residents to actually uh behave in ways in communities when we have things like natural disasters or we ask them to do sustainability initiatives. So it really is important to build trust with residents in local government. Um also by doing these surveys we increase transparency. We promote accountability and we provide opportunities for civic engagement. Not all residents have time to come sit in a council meeting for three hours on a Tuesday night. So being able to spend 15 20 minutes and give your local government information is an amazing way to get your voice heard. And then finally um with done right the data can be used to make the quality of decision-m uh for the community better. The survey methodology um this is the 10th time we've conducted the survey and you'll see uh all those years and in the full report you can actually see comparisons of the data over time. Um we conducted the survey between December 2 and January 27th of this past year. Um, we used a mailing approach. We actually used probability based sampling where we sent out 2500 invitations and survey packets to households uh randomly distributed across the city. We got 483 back from the probability based part of our sample. That's a 20% response rate, which is a pretty good response rate these days. We also augmented that with a non-probability sample where we actually made it open participation. So, anyone could come to the website and answer the survey. And we got an additional 842 responses, which is great. And so we've combined that data and we end up with 1325 responses. It's increased from 2023. Um and we've statistically weighted that data so it reflects Eden Prairie as a whole based on what the census data say. So we've uh weighted it based on type of unit, detached, attached, female, male, age groups, race, ethnicity to make sure that it's more representative of the community. And the 95% confidence interval around 1300 survey responses is plus or minus 3%. And so when we talk today about changes from 2023 survey, um it will have to be more than 4% for it to be statistically significant. And again, you can see all the data in the survey report if you want to see how it's changed from 2014 on. In this presentation, I am going to talk about PCO's benchmarking database. We have been doing this, like I said, 30 years, and we also do it in many, many communities every year. And so our data set right here shows the places of where we get the data from, but we have pulled the data from more than 500 communities and they're intended to represent more than 50 million residents. And we use that data to give benchmarks back to um local governments so they can see how they're performing not only just comparing to themselves but over time how do they compare and we will talk more about the benchmarks um we are using with Eden Prairie later in this presentation. So key findings, we called through lots and lots of data and PCO researchers have kind of uh decided on some five key findings for your community and what we're seeing in your survey data. And so I'm going to present that now. So, number one, um, many of you who've actually seen these reports in the past and have paid attention, you'll know that Eden Prairie tends to do very well, um, on the quality of life survey. And once again, uh, have really fantastic ratings when it comes to the community overall, as well as we'll see, um, other types of local government service. But number one finding is Eden Prairie continues to be a highly desirable place to live. And what we know from our data is about nine and nine ten residents give the city excellent or good rating in terms of their overall quality of life. Uh Eden Prairie is a place to live. Your neighborhoods is place to live. Eden Prairie is a place to raise kids. Eden Prairie is a place to work. And you'll see we've signified when Eden Prairie is higher than the benchmark. And I might want to say I'll say something about that now. Um, basically our benchmarks, while they t we intend them to be representative of the United States as a whole, it is really more of a benchmark of higher performing communities. There are some communities across the nation who will never do a resident survey. They won't do it because they don't want to spend the resources. They're fearful of, you know, the results they might give or they feel like electeds have been elected and they feel like they now have the voice and they understand everyone in the community. So, it is actually a tool for those local governments who are higher performing. So when I say it's the national uh benchmark, it's the national benchmark of those who actually care about their residents gen put resources towards it and actually use resident opinions to make decisions. And so even being on par with the nation is already a score, but you guys have chosen to do more than that. You've chosen to compare yourself not only to the national benchmark, you've also decided to compare yourself to regional benchmarks. So that's the North Central region. And those tend to get harder to exceed because they just get higher ratings than other parts of the US. And then also you compare yourself to the state of Minnesota and Minnesota as a group the communities here actually get quite high ratings. There's a lot of good governance going on and a good quality communities that people like to live in. So in this case you'll see that in multiple places you've not only exceeded the nation but you've also exceeded all the other benchmarks. What else we know is that eight and 10 of Eden Prey residents plan to remain here for the next 5 years. Um, they would recommend conducting business here and they would recommend visiting the city. So again, other positive statements about the quality of your community. Safety is something that often comes up in your quality of life survey. One of the reasons why people choose to live here and think it's a great community. And it's something that's essential. I know from all the work I do in community livability that residents will tell you the most important thing their uh community can provide is safety. And so you guys do quite well on that. Here are the ratings of safety from Eden Prairie residents. And basically you'll see about 90% or higher is basically saying they feel safe in their neighborhoods, in the parks, at the mall, in parking lots. So that's great. And um we also have some indications on the slides if you've increased or decreased over time significantly. And so the Eden Prairie Center Mall uh showed an increase in safety ratings since the past survey. One of the other questions we ask on the survey, and this is open-ended, so it's not we don't put the choices in front of residents, but we ask them, "What is the thing you like most about living in Eden Prairie?" And because the responses are open-ended, it's really hard to actually get a high percentage of people all saying the same thing. Um but we do find some trends here. And there are about 1100,200 people who answered this question. And what we found is about 30% of those comments related to the parks, trails, recreation centers. People really love this community for those features. People also uh like Eden Prairie because its location, its proximity to jobs, friends, family. They love the open space, nature, wildlife, just being quiet, peaceful here, and low crime safety. And you'll see some of the other issues here. But again, 5% 7% may not seem like a lot, but when you're talking about,00 people, it's actually quite a few people saying this. And you can look in the appendix of our survey results if you want to see the true answers that everyone's given. And it's it is very interesting and informative. You'll see there's also not huge changes from 2023 to uh the most recent survey. Finding number two, residents praise the quality and value of city services. Part of the survey is kind of a scorecard or a report card for local government to see how the residents are rating this quality of services. And so what we find um when we ask residents to rate the overall quality of Eden Prairie Services, we found that about 90% gave the local government here an excellent or good and you can see that is higher than any of the benchmarks and really an astounding rating. It's hard to find local governments that read that receive ratings at the 90% level. We also ask residents uh to rate the value of city services considering the property taxes they pay. And that score is lower because we've obviously put in the word taxes and we talk more about um you know the value for money but we end up still with good ratings and they ratings are higher than the nation in terms of that uh stewardship for the taxes paid. People we talked about how safe people feel here but also the ratings uh predominantly for safety are very very positive. Fire services 97% giving positive ratings 95% for EMS police 94 crime prevention 89 89 emergency management you can see that the police crime prevention are exceeding all of the benchmarks. Uh numbers of 94 89% are pretty amazing and I'll show you later on in the slide deck just how amazing those are. But in this day and age to have your police and safety services scoring so high that's pretty amazing. also emergency management there and they're trending up. Also looking at non-safety services again you'll see pretty high ratings across the board. Park maintenance, water, trail maintenance, recreation, all those things getting high ratings and again seeing a lot of exceeding the benchmarks in many areas. The lowest rated services are city planning and assessing services. Also the two ratings that are showing a slight downward trend. But I need to note and we'll talk more about this with the benchmarks. Those are services that are really really hard to get an excellent and good rating in. Um the highest I mean I think you're number two in the nation right now in that but we've never seen anyone get over 80% and many communities are in 30 40% in those areas. It's just really hard to do planning in a way where residents appreciate the work that you're doing. Uh number three, residents report positive interactions with city employees. We ask on the survey um the city employees you've been in contact with and also then ask you to rate those employees on a set of characteristics and you can see um very high ratings 85 to 95% in terms of courtesy, knowledge, responsiveness, follow-up and overall customer service you see are exceeding the benchmarks. Some of the questions that are asked on the Eden Prairie survey are not their custom questions are not things we ask lots of survey cities and a lot of cities across the nation. So sometimes in those um circumstances, we don't have as much benchmark data to show if you're exceeding um those ratings, but you'll see a little bit more about that later in the presentation. Number four, residents rank items related to Eden Prairie's natural environment as top features of the city. I already showed you the chart about what people liked. Again, to remind you, about 30% or one almost one-third of your residents really appreciate the parks, trails, recreation. Um, and then also another 13% say open spaces and wildlife areas. So again, almost half of your respondents are saying this is what they really love about this city. So important uh draw and a really important um reason why people love this community. We also ask questions about sustainability as it's an initiative um your local government takes on and asking people um if about their familiarity um if they or how likely they are to do a number of these behaviors related to sustainability. And you see, and I don't know, the font's a little bit small, but talking about um curbside composting, uh energy efficient weatherization, home energy audits, purchasing electric vehicles, but you see, um close to a majority or 40 50% in many of these activities, residents reporting they're likely to actually support some of these sustainability initiatives. Number five, residents continue to list the availability of shopping and dining as a top area of improvement for the city. So, um, similar to the question we asked of what you liked best about living in Eden Prairie, we asked them what they liked least. And so, what you see again, you don't see that 30% 40% like we are seeing for the other responses, but you do see 13% of folks saying they would like to have improved activities and really if you look at these more closely, a lot of it's about new different types of restaurants. Um, also some kind of entertainment activities they like to see and you know, different kinds of shops. there is a lot of good shopping here but people saying things like high-end shopping and things such as that. Um also the second issue then by 11% of the people is traffic issues, congestion, signal timing, speeding and then the third issue is taxes, cost of living but just how the cost of living and affordability in the community um is you know an issue for some folks here. Again encourage you to look at the report and read the open-ended responses so you can get more detail into the areas um residents would like to see changed. That said, um the city started a number or they have been doing a number of events, but kind of increased the types of events they've been doing to get people involved to kind of build sense of community and get people out and around in Prairie. And what we found in the survey results when we asked them about the different events held by the city, um we see that a lot of people are uh familiar and participating in these activities, you have a high number of folks knowing they're available and um kind of attending these types of things. We also see um positive upswings in the Fourth of July celebration, the citywide open house, and the harvest to Halloween. So, people are um engaging more and learning more about the activities at least that the city is sponsoring here. We also know that the residents um use the parks and a lot of the recreation um and community buildings here and see very high numbers of folks going out getting into the environment out and using these city amenities um in the past year. and um seeing upward t trends in use of the senior center and the amphitheater. Seeing a slight decline in the observatory, but again pretty high participation rates in terms of the parks and recreation amenities put forth by the city of Eden Prairie. So now I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into those comparisons. You've seen some of the time trends and some of the benchmarks, but I want to give you a little more detail on it just so you can see um just how Eden Prairie rates. And so the first thing I want to do is show you a closer look at the comparisons to those national benchmarks, the regional benchmarks, the state benchmarks. And so there were 66 items on the survey that can be compared. And so for those for the national benchmarks, of the 66 that could be compared, in 46 areas, Eden Prairie was higher than the nation. And in 20, they were on par with the nation. For the regional, they had 31 higher, 31 on par. and for the state 22 higher and 40 on par. But in no way in no areas did the city of Eden Prairie drop below the benchmarks at any level. And again I said they're higher performing organizations. So even to be on par with these people is impressive but to exceed them is more impressive. So to give you I don't want to list all the benchmarks that you exceeded because there's lots of them but I decided to kind of take a deeper dig into some of the ones where we see you know more extreme expect exceeding of that benchmark. So the first way I wanted to look at the data was here's the area where Eden Prairie has exceeded all the benchmarks. So you exceeded the national the regional and the state benchmarks. So you score really high in those areas in terms of cleanliness, the appearance, public places, preservation of natural areas, paths, fitness, recreation, then public parking, street repair, city planning, police services, and crime prevention. So all those areas, you're exceeding all the benchmark comparisons. Another way to look at the data is to actually look at the areas where you've you're much greater than the benchmark. So we use different standards. If you're 10 points above the benchmark, you've exceeded it. If you're 20 points, which is a huge amount, then you've really exceeded the benchmark. And this is for national, but these are the areas where Eden Prairie is really exceeding the benchmark. So that's overall ease of getting the places you have to visit, education and enrichment, public parking, street repair, city planning, preservation of natural areas, street repair, and senior programs. So in those areas, you're really exceeding the benchmarks and doing a fantastic job. And one more slide, not to be overkill, but we also have the ranks of the list. So in the top list, you have more than 300 of the most high performing jurisdictions in the US. And you can see the ranks that Eden Prairie has. So number two in city planning services, number three in police services. Again, it's hard to do planning well and you're number two in the nation. Police services are suffering a lot of relationship trust issues. To be number three, again, you know, fantastic job. I also compared you some of the services we only can compare you to 20 30 different jurisdictions because your question is more unique but in those again you can see some of the areas where you're rated number one of people who've asked that question number two number three so again a lot of really strong areas for you all to be proud of the work you're doing and the community that you all live in. So my other comparison then is to past ratings. So the benchmark is yourself. And so we're looking at the data and looking at areas where you've uh increased more than four percentage points or decreased more than four percentage points. And what we found about in 40 140 of those areas, you're about the same as you were in 2023. In 22 areas, you uh were higher. And those areas tended to relate to the police and streets. We saw some of those ratings earlier as well as just familiarity and use of some of the city services and activities where the lower ratings occurred tended to focus a little bit around um traffic um in terms of speeding traffic signal violations and then also some areas a little bit related to growth like the planning the assessment services even though higher than the nation doing really well it's dropped a little bit and I would probably argue that again it has to do with the fact that you're a desirable city a lot of people are moving here as you become a more and more desirable place to live. Affordability becomes an a issue. Traffic becomes an issue. People become more critical of decisions made around growth. That's just the natural landscape of local government. The way I see it is it's hard to stay in a perfect place where you get everything perfect for everyone. So, the summary of conclusions is that like I said, Eden Prairie continues to be a highly desirable place to live. Residents praise the quality and value of the services here. They report positive interactions with the employees. They rank items in the natural environment as top features and they continue to want more shopping, dining kind of entertainment activities uh in the city. Um and with that, I will answer any questions or comments, but I know we've already discussed and I should say I've talked to the council for an hour. We debriefed and went through these um these survey results. Also spent a number of hours this morning with staff where we really spent a lot of time digging deep into the data and just making sure once we come out of this information that we're listening to the residents and trying had some great ideas on how to use these data and ways to move forward in terms of the strategic plan, the budget and just moving forward in general to improve community livability here. Great. Thank you, Michelle. um your company, you uh do an amazing job, too. And and even if we had had some less than stellar news, I think I would still be thanking you and congratulating you on this, but especially uh since our the the news is so good. Um council, I have a couple comments, but anyone else want to add anything in at the moment? Council member and Ryan. Thank you, mayor. Um, like I think mayor said, this is awesome news. It just uh very exciting to see this and I think a lot of credit goes to Rick and his staff. Um, you know, police chief sitting there and fire chief and all the staff members sitting there. You guys done an awesome job listening and listening to us and and making this happen. uh this is true reflection of how the city performing. This is the best way we can measure ourself. Are we doing good job? Are we not doing good job? Um also the great news is uh knowing that we are kind of above par with the regional and the national level that make it big deal. Um it's not just good, we're better than other people. That's important. Um it's city services you know that's all we are all about. We a service organization so all about is giving service to our residents 65 70,000 residents that we have. Um the other last one is I want to say is council strategy. You know we we come up with a strategy based on these results and we are in alignment with the residents. Um and that make us feel good because we think uh like for myself I've been here six years that we think that we are doing good job. Uh we listening and and we directing our staff to do the right thing and the staff doing performing absolutely fantastic job. So overall it's a great survey, great numbers. I hope all the residents uh look at it, go to the website and and uh analyze it and uh if there is any feedback, let us know. Thank you, Michelle. Great work. Anyone else? Council, I agree with PG. I was going to underscore a couple of his comments, too, that um this survey process gives us feedback on how we're doing from a city services perspective. um how we're doing from a city priorities perspective. And that's where we as a council, if we're listening well to our residents um and directing staff to go out and do and perform what we're directing, then that's um a priority perspective, but that's also based on our budgeting values perspective. So this is giving us feedback are the values that we hold that we got elected on if and I I believe we were all transparently pretty clear during our campaigns on this is what we'll do uh if you vote for us and elect us and we did that in the direction in the budgeting basically establishing the budget but also directing staff. So credit really does go to this council. So thank you council members. I'm honored to serve with all of you. Um it definitely goes to Rick Echo, our um stellar award-winning uh best in state city manager and his cabinet of senior um directors who you hire and they are amazing in all of our departments. We're all so proud of them. And then ultimately to our 300 or so full-time staff and 700 or so seasonal part-time, we have just a incredible group of of staff that we get feed residents reach out to us and they'll tell us good things um but they'll tell us um bad things or frustrating things or when when things don't work out so well. We hear an enormous amount of information of positive about our staff at all levels. um our street crews and our receptionists at the desk and our assessors and our um planners and I mean we just hear an amazing amount of positive um feedback. So um I agree with PG go out as a resident and peruse this document but it is a document that reflects because it's statistically probabilitywise accurate to represent a sample population that was chosen selectly correctly and selectively to represent the entire 65,000 people. So if this company, which I believe you did, did did a good job at the sampling, then this is you, you know, you as residents, you're getting this feedback loop. You know, we we got the information from you. This is what it said. It represents all of you. Go out and see if you agree with that. Give us feedback, etc. So, um, it's a good process. It is really good information for us as a city. We do hear from our residents. They love living here. It's the best city around. It's the best, you know, plowed roads. It's the um the the our liquor stores in terms of municipal liquor. Not everyone loves the idea of municipal liquor, but in terms of that, um they're the best around. We just have uh really incredible staff at all levels. Our police department, our fire department, um and our planning people in our planning department, even though 70% score doesn't seem that high, but it's the second highest in the nation of cities like us. So, uh, with that, um, very good news. Um, thank you, Michelle. Um, anyone else have anything to add? Rick, do you have anything? Uh, no. Mayor, again, it's it's a credit to, um, leadership from the council, the the work of the employees and, um, engaged residents. Um, engaged re uh, engaged residents are those that, um, are involved in their community and trusting in their community and and willing to step forward and speak and act. Um so yeah again this is something that is very important a very important part as you said earlier of our strategic planning and budgeting process um because the voice of the resident is what um kind of leads and starts that process. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations and I look forward to seeing your results in two years again. Sounds good. We look forward to seeing you. All right. Mr. Get I don't know if you want to introduce um before I read the Arbor Day proclamation. Uh Mayor, unless Amy has anything to say about Arbor Day, um I can mention that there is a celebration uh planned for April 26th and um that the city from 10 to 10:00 a.m. to 100 p.m. at Starring Lake Park. that may or may not be in your proclamation, but this is something that we've done for a number of years, if not decades. And you as a council also have asked us to um kind of continue to provide those um those seedlings and and compost that we provide at the event as well. They're not seedlings either. They're amazing. They're like six foot tall trees. So, your definition of seedling, right? But I don't know, Amy may have something to add or not, but you then can read the proclamation. Sure, Amy. Thank you, Mayor. We have a new location this year. We're going to be out at Starring Lake Park. And then the if you ordered a tree, you're going to want to pick it up at Flowing Cloud Fields Park across the street. We'll have signage out there directing residents where to get their tree. But if you come over to Starring after you get your tree, we'll have uh vendors, we'll have activities for families, food trucks. Um, it should be a wonderful day again at starting from 10:00 am to 1 pm on April 26. And um, Council Member Fryberg wants me to say this again, but um, we um believe that we have more trees in Eden Prairie today than at any time, this is true, than at any time uh, since the 10,000y old glacier when there were no trees uh, for a few months or years. Um but we are a very tre city and councils for 30 years maybe even 40 or 50 years have prioritized trees. We were the first uh city in our region in our area to have a comprehensive tree replacement tree preservation ordinance that has been copied by other cities around us. um and has um really resulted in tens of thousands of uh healthy diverse um in terms of the type of tree uh trees being planted. So um we as a city uh love our trees. Is that enough? Do you want me to add anything else to that? You can keep going on if you want. Mark was teasing me earlier about that comment, but um I do um I am proud of that that we are a very treated city. So I'll read the proclamation. Proclamation City of Eden Prairie, Henipin County, Minnesota, Arbor Day, April 26th, 2025. Whereas Arbor Day provides people in Eden Prairie the opportunity to celebrate the importance of trees and forest to our economy, health, culture, history, and future of the city. And whereas trees are of great value as they provide clean air and water, shade, energy savings, wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities. And whereas thoughtfully choosing, planting, and caring for a diverse mix of trees and caring for trees, as described in the city's urban forest management plan, makes our community more resilient into the future. And whereas trees play a major role in combating climate change by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, thereby offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. And whereas trees help Eden Prairie meet the climate action plan goal of communitywide carbon neutrality by 2050. And whereas Eden Prairie first celebrated Arbor Day in 1982. And finally, whereas Eden Prairie has been recognized as a tree city USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation and desires to continue its tree stewardship and tree planting practices. Now therefore, I Ron Casease, mayor of the city of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, do hereby proclaim April 26, 2025, as Arbor Day in the city of Eden Prairie, and urge all citizens to support efforts to protect our trees and woodlands, and to support our city's urban forestry program, and urge all citizens to plant and care for trees in order to promote the well-being of present and future generations. Ronald Case mayor on behalf of council members Kathleen Nelson, Mark Fryberg, PG Nine, and Lisa Tumi. All right, moving on. We have, unless I'm skipping over something, I'm sensitive to that from the last meeting. Um, approval of agenda and other items of business. Council, any items you wish to add to this agenda? Hearing none. Is there someone that would make a motion to approve it? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Second. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I oppose. Moving on to the minutes approval from the last uh April 1st meeting. We had two. A workshop held first and then the regular council meeting. Any questions or comments or edits on either of those minutes? If not, is there someone that would make a motion to approve both of them? I'll move to approve the following city council minutes, city council workshop held Tuesday, April 1st, 2025, and the city council meeting held April 21 April 1st, 2025. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I opposed. All right, moving on to the consent calendar for the students in the audience and anyone else uh listening on TV at home. Um, consent calendar items are very important, but they're items generally not needing further discussion. So, we clump them together into one big motion. However, council, you are invited to pull any items if you wish to learn more about them or you have a question. Anyone have a question on any of them? If not, is there a motion to approve the consent calendar A through T? Move to approve the item A to T on the consent calendar. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. All right. Moving on to payment of We have no public hearings and meetings tonight. So, payment of claims. Uh any these are the expenditures that the city in the classic oldfashioned days wrote checks. Um any questions anyone has about any of those items? It's a pages long list of expenditures over the last two weeks. If not, is there a motion to approve the payment of claims as submitted? Move to approve the payment of claim as submitted. Is there a second? Second. Roll call. Council member Friber. I. Council member Nan I. Council member Tumi. I. Mayor Casease. I. All right. Moving on. We have two um very important or actually is the fire giving a just the police and we'll have we'll have fire back in a couple months. Okay. So, first we have public um two very important reports tonight from u two of the um important cabinet position areas of um working with Rick Etcho. So, do you want to introduce um Rick um anything with Robert or just throw it over? You could we can just go straight to Robert. Robert Ellis, take it away. All right, mayor, city council. So, tonight I'm presenting on the West Metro Multi Community Wellhead Protection Plan and I've got a short presentation here. Um, but you'll find this is actually a first of its kind in the state of Minnesota. It's actually quite innovative and I'll have a few slides on that, but I want to start with um the goal of the wellhead protection plan. Uh, it's pretty simple. It's really just to gain an understanding of our aquifer to prevent contaminants from entering wells and groundwater. So, pretty simple. The reason we do it, self-preservation would be one, it's the right thing to do, but also legislatively, we're required every 10 years, all water providers are um based on the Safe Drinking Water Act of 86, the 89 Minnesota groundwater protection act, and then some administrative wellhead protection rules. We're required to do an update to our wellhead protection plan on a periodic basis. And all wellhead protection plans have two parts. Tonight I'm only focusing on part one and that's what the council will ultimately be asked to vote on. So to explain a little bit about what's in part one and then what will be coming in part two. Part one is really where we try to gain an understanding of our aquafer. We do that by developing a hydrogeeologic and groundwater flow model. that is how does the water get down to the aquifer and how does it move through the aquaer aquifer where it gets to our wells and then it gets to our customers. So that's step one. Step two is we delineate a wellhead protection and drinking water supply management area. You'll hear me call that a dwisma, the drinking water supply management area. Um but that's really what part one is founded on. It's this area of water that within 10 years you want to protect from contaminants getting into your water supply plan. And that's why we do the plan every 10 years. And then the final step of part one is conducting a vulnerability assessment. And that's where you determine where are your areas of weakness within that disma that you need to pay special attention to because that's where you're most likely to get contaminants in your groundwater. Now, part two again will be a future step. We'll deal with that a year or two down the road. But that's where you take everything from part one, but now you start to develop a contaminant source inventory. That's things like where were the landfills, the dumps, because those are high hazards, where are all these private wells? Are they abandoned? Are they sealed? Um it might be things like where are all the underground storage tanks? Where are the old fuel tanks? uh maybe known um brownfields, but those are things that we will try to identify across the wellhead or the dwisma in step two. And once that's done, you start talking about what are some management strategies to prevent those contaminants from getting into the aquifer. And then the last step of part two is contingency plan. So if it does happen, what do you do to deal with that pollution? And again, everything in part two is coming at a later date. So a little bit of history. Um, our last wellhead protection plan was done in 2013. And like I said, this is an every 10-year. You have to do an update. We were a little bit over that. We were in 2013. Um, and in 2013, our plan only considered Eden Prairie's water supply. We didn't care about Minnotonka. We weren't looking at Chanhaz and Edina. We're only looking at Eden Prairie. And the issue with that is that one much of our, if you look here at this map, this was in 2013, our dwisma, our wellhead protection area. A lot of it is outside Eden Prairie. Once you leave Eden Prairie's boundaries, you have little ability to affect a change if something negative is happening. We might not ever know about it once it leaves Eden Prairie. So that's always been the downside or the weak spot of these DWISMAS and wellhead protection plans is because a lot of our water comes from outside Eden Prairie, but we really don't know what's going on outside our city limits. Robert, why is the green area delineated and not outside it or smaller or what what is that green area? Yeah, so the green area is that that's going to be in 2013 what we delineated is our um drinking water supply management area. That's within a 10-year time period how far water travels within the aquafer to our well. So that's the that's the area of recharge for our well not we know that I mean through based on the hydrogeeologic model and the groundwater flow models that's what we are predicting our 10ear time of travel for water in the aquifer to our wells. So it doesn't mean because the prairie duchaane runs way up to St. was parking north. I mean, it's it's much larger. So, you're saying possibly in a 20 year time frame. It would just be larger and and so we need to someday and we are, I guess, as a region be really concerned about wells. I don't know if it goes up to Plymouth, but wells contaminating that could contaminate the entire aquifer and it just might take 20 years to get to us, but it's damaged. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And our, you know, we're required to look at a 10-year time horizon. Yes. You could look at a 20 if you wanted to. Um, but in this case, what you're seeing is a 10-year time horizon. And, um, again, that was 2013. And this changes slightly as you'll see in my updated slides that we have. So, just a second. You may get to this, but is water flowing a certain direction in like do we know the aquifers flow generally toward the south toward the river or do we know any of that? Are they It's flowing to the south and yes. So, everything is up north is is impacting us more. So, we're not impacting them. They're impacting us. Exactly. Robert, I have another question. Is the quality of the water that we have over a period of time, last 10 years, is the contaminant change. It is not the chemicals change higher in any sense. We have not seen that in Eden Prairie's water. No. But the potential does exist for that. And you'll see that as one of the outcomes of this study is that we're not seeing that change. But there's a possibility of that happening in the future without management and protection. But at least in the looking back the first 10 years or whatever numbers that you don't see particular chemical is going up in in small degree not from not from the pollutants that we're required to test for. No. So the end of the day if somebody did pollute up north and that 10 years ago and finally getting to us we will see that in our water different elements of the chemical right it's rising. Yep. Right. We would we would expect to do that and as you'll see in this because we're looking now beyond just Eden Prairie. Yeah. Minnotonka might see it before us. It would be kind of the canary in the coal mine. Yeah. So, and that's why I talk about this as a multi-munity wellhead protection, the first of its kind in the state of Minnesota. And that's the exact reason why is it's all we're all using the same water. So, doing this collaboratively across city limits is a good thing to do and it allow us to be more proactive in how we protect and sharing of information. But, I've got more slides on that. Thank you, Robert. Okay. Um, and then again, this is a map again back in 2013, you'll see the area in red. That was our DWISMA in 2013. Um, so as we were preparing to update the wellhead protection plan the past few years, there was this common desire by all of our neighbors that maybe we should be looking at this collectively instead of city's got our consultant and we're looking at it, Chanhassen's doing the same thing with their consultant and we're all spending a lot of money and we're studying the same area and sometimes coming up with different results. So there was this desire to get together and try to do a collective wellhead protection plan. And that's because we have overlapping drinking water supply management areas. Sometimes there's inconsistencies and delineations and plans and also because there's barriers to implementing in neighboring communities. Once we leave in Prairie city limits, there's little we can do from an authority standpoint in another city. So maybe collaborating would overcome that barrier. So in 2019 we all got together and we started talking about doing a multic community wellhead protection plan and we all agreed it was Hopkins, St. Louis Park, Richfield, Edina, Bloomington, US, Chanhazen and Minnotonk all came together and said yes this is the right thing to do. Let's do this. And fortunately we had the support of the Minnesota Department of uh health. Um and I know Abby is here today from the department of health. She's a senior uh planner for them. They came together because they are the regulator that oversees this and they said this is a great idea and even Met Council came along and said this is brilliant. We we really should all be doing this. Let's use this as a model and maybe how statewide this needs to be done in the future. So they went out and secured a clean water grant fund that actually is paying for all of the consulting work to do this. So that saves the cities all the cities that would be doing this individually. It's quite saving quite a bit of money and again I think we're going to have a much better result after. So Robert, that grant is not frozen any anyway. No, it is all state funding. Okay. Thank you. So uh Minnesota Department of Health and Met Council kind of led the effort. We agreed our collective vision was to develop a coordinated and collaborative approach to safeguard our regional drinking water sources and improve local drinking water protections and our overlapping dwismas or where our dwismas extend into neighboring cities. So that was kind of the vision that we all agreed to as we started this process. So I'm going to walk you through the three steps that we had to go through. Step one again is developing that regional hydrogeeologic and groundwater flow model. So this is kind of a cross-section of our part of the metro area. You can see all the different uh layers and aquafers that are underneath our feet. You can see um where all of our wells are. Most of us are in the Prairie Duchaane Jordan aquifer. But we started by creating that uh hydrogeeologic model. We're using updated data that we didn't have in 2013 and more thorough data from the Henipin County GE uh geologic atlas. Department of Health and DNR has done a number of studies. We've got USGS data. We've got all of our historical well log records from all the cities that gives us a tremendous amount of information about what is in the bedrock, the aquafer, all the confining layers. Um, and then there's just been a plethora of other studies and data that were used out there that help inform that model. Once that was done, we started looking at the groundwater flow model. That is how the water is flowing through the aquifer. And again, we're looking at where are the surface recharge rates. What are the PRA fracture and porous flow rates? What are the well pumping interaction from all of our wells? When we're drawing uh during the summer on our wells, we're pulling that aquafer a certain direction. Same with Chan has and Minnotonka. So that's drawing forces on how that water is moving through the aquifer. So this model helped helped us all better understand when we're all pumping, how is the water moving through the aquifer? Robert, can I ask you a quick question? Um what would be your estimate about I'm always kind of curious about how deep would you think that aquifer is. I mean just what what's kind of a depra to chain we're generally about 380 to 400 feet uh to the bottom of our wells. But if I can extrapolate on his question does it go 50 feet deep of water or 80 or 100 feet deep of water? We just are reaching wherever our well bottom is. We go to the Yeah, we go to the bottom. So, we do the aquafer that we're drawing from is above the bottom of our well. So, we go to the We go to the lowest point. We actually drop down into the the Jordan a little bit there. So, that you're pumping from the lowest point you can. That's the idea behind. And do we know then? So, I'm probably getting ahead of myself on your report here. Apologize. But is that aquaer 50t deep or 40t deep? And then do we know as all the cities are pulling during a dry season that we've taken 10 feet off but then over the winter it it recharges and we get we know all that. We do. Yeah. So the depth of the Prairie Duchain aquifer would vary. I don't know the exact depth you know I'm going to guess it's in that 80 feet something like that but that is the Prairie Duchain depth. We set our wells at the very bottom of that. And yes, during the summer, Eden Prairie, we have we have observation wells that are tracking aquafer levels. And we see when the middle of summer, July, August, and we're pumping and Chanhazen's pumping, we see that drop 30, 40, 50 feet. And then in the winter, we see it recharge. And in the summer, it goes down. And so it kind of bounces back up. If you go through a period of drought, you'll see it drop. you'll see it recharge, but a second year of a drought might not recharge, rebound as much. Third year of a drought, and then you go through wet periods where it recharges, recharges, recharges. So, but it depends on the cycle we're going through. The recharge, I thought at one point, well, at one point we thought I read 50, 60, 70 years ago that it might be a 50 or 100 year recharge. And then was it strontium or whatever the the nuclear chemical was after the bomb um experimental blasts um and they found it was like a six or seven or eight year charge but recharge. But are you saying that it's much faster than that with the prairie duchain? Well, you know, I'm not I I'm not sure what you heard, you know, several years ago, but um the aquifers recharges every year. So when we draw down in the summer, it rebounds in the winter. But is it recharging from water that took seven years to go down to recharge it or is it recharging now quicker than that? So if we had a really wet year, would we not experience that wet year inside the aquifer for another that's why I'm asking another 10 years or five years? Okay, you have to keep in mind the prairie chain aquifer is huge. So the water, most of the water that's recharging is coming laterally horizontally through the aquifer from places far much farther north. There is some water that's recharging vertically down south. Okay. But that's recharging at a lower rate than I mean it's an enormous aquifer. Interesting. All right. I didn't know that. Thank you. Okay. Step two, delineate the wellhead protection and drinking water supply management areas. So once we've done the modeling, now we're looking at two things that you'll see on this this map. We look at the emergency response area, which is a one-year horizontal time of travel in the aquafer to our city wells. So if you see the city of Eden Prairie here outlined, this is that one year. All those little orange dots are represents all of our wells, all 16 of our wells. This pink area is that one year horizontal time of travel. So you would expect the model is showing that in one year any water in that pink area will migrate to our well as we're pumping. The next thing we look at is the 10-year horizontal time of travel. And that's the larger area, the pink line that you see delineated here that goes all the way up to Lake Minnetonka. And again, that is the delineation we use to man to describe our drinking water supply management area. So it's that 10 year Robert. So do we have like a test wells to you know that one year boundary and 10 year boundary and say hey water got here it's contaminated or so how do you know? Yeah. So the everything that was done in the modeling is using all of that information from well logs in the city other cities information that's known about the aquifer the makeup of the geology all of that was done in the modeling to predict groundwater flow and time of travel. So we don't have any physical test. Well yeah there's a there's a lot of data that's has all that testing information that's used to inform the model. Okay. Now, once the 10-year horizontal time of travel is uh established, we create a drinking water supply management area, the DWISMA. And that's represented by this blocky line. And the reason the line is blocky is because these we have to manage this. And so those lines usually are following roadways, they're following property lines, they're following section lines versus a line that can't be defined might be going through the middle of somebody's living room. So that's why as we identify the disma, the area that we need to manage, it's becomes the blocky line that you see here. So now once all of the eight cities that were involved in this, so you've delineated the drinking water supply management area, instead of having just the one for Eden Prairie, we have a much larger area that we would all collectively manage. Now, so this gets us to the final the third step of part one, and that's the vulnerability assessment. So in this map, what you're seeing is uh we've now we're talking vertical time of travel. So, up to this point, I've been talking about horizontal movement of water through the aquafer. That's the water that's gotten to the aquifer and now is moving towards our wells. This is the vertical assessment. So, from the surface water down to the aquafer. So, here we're talking about um on our map, we've got very high to high vulnerability is anything that's delineated in orange. So you see a little bit of here in Minnotonka uh places north nothing in Eden Prairie is categorized as very high to high. These are defined as a vertical travel of time is hours to years. So sometime a very high is within hours it's already down to the aquafer um or a high would be in years it's down to the aquifer. So that's the travel time just to get down. Medium which is most of Eden Prairie the vertical travel time is years to decade. So that's saying it's going to take years to decade to get from the surface down to the aquafer. And then low to very low is the green area. We see a lot of that on the southern and the western boundaries of Eden Prairie. Vertical travel time now is decades to more than a century. So it it really ranges from hours to centuries how fast water travels down to the aquifer. So how does this compare to 2013 when we did it last? I would say there's more area of medium vulnerability, the yellow, than there was in 2013. Um, and I think that's because we have better data. We have more data. We have more information that informed the modeling that was done. But at the end of the day, the assessment is that the DWISMA in our Disma, the groundwater continues to be impacted by land and water use practices that may contribute to contamination. We're not seeing that, but we see there's the potential for contaminants from land use and water use practices to contaminate the aquifer. And that's consistent with what we found in 2013. So the medium my question was not on the medium uh contamination area you said in in a year or you know smaller amount is there a risk like uh farming you know the the chemicals used in the farm that particular area need and prairie that get to our aquifer you know, there's not a lot of farming, and I wouldn't say that there's a lot of risk of contaminants with farming. I think you probably see more risk with landfills, um, leakage from landfills, um, gas stations that have underground possible leaking storage tanks. Um, unsealed, abandoned wells that nobody knows are out there. There's a prime opportunity for oil or other contaminants to get quickly to the aquifer. farming we don't see as a high risk and there just isn't a lot of farmland but there are others that we do see as more high risk things that we want to pay attention to. So what's next in part two after this would be devel uh would be approved is we begin to develop the potential CA contaminant source inventory. Again that's kind of referencing what I just spoke about PG. Where are all the gas stations, historical gas station, old dump sites, the dump? Uh where are all the wells? Which ones are active? Which ones are abandoned? Which ones are sealed? Which ones aren't? So, it's starting to look at all those potential sources. Next, the cities would discuss issues, problems, opportunities, how do we manage these things? What's the best method to share information? We don't necessarily always know what's going on in Minnetonka. Bloomington doesn't know what's happening here, but what happens here affects them. Uh and then the third step is define some management strategies. Okay, now that we know these are the potential sources, what should we do about them? Should we be sending letters to owners of of wells? Hey, here are some proper steps that you can take to manage your well or if it's abandoned, here's how you can seal it and cap it and these are the reasons why you should do that. So, that's where we start talking about strategies to prevent the pollution. And then the fourth step is if we do start having problems, we're seeing contaminants. Minnotonka is starting to get hits on certain POS materials, let's say, and we're going to predict, well, that's it's a matter of time before now it gets to Eden Prairie. What are some contingency plans? Is there some additional treatment we can do? Is it sharing of water? Is it hey, it would be nice to have a connection to Chanhaz and if we ever needed to for a temporary period, get a supply of water from them. So, that's what we'll talk about. what do you do when you do have that unfortunate situation of pollution in your water? But that's all coming later. So tonight, what's being asked of the city council here and the other eight cities um approved part one of the wellhead protection plan and really that's the drinking water supply management area delineations. It's also the vulnerability assessment of the wells and aquifer within that disma. and then uh adopt the resolution which is a part of the packet uh that we would continue to participate in the development implementation of part two of the plan. And again because the grant that department of health and met council have received there would be no cost to the city other than staff time uh as we move into part two. So with that I'll stand for any additional questions. I I just had a question. Um, is is there no way of knowing how many private wells are in existence right now just based on records? Yeah, so the records aren't perfect, but they're getting better. But yes, the Henipin County, the state keep records. Uh, you're supposed to get a permit if you install a well. So, there should be a permit, a history of that. Uh, what maintenance is done? Is it abandoned? Is it not? Has it been sealed? Has it not been sealed? How deep is it? What aquifer is it in? what was the geology that was found when they drilled that well. And again, that information helped with our hydro geologic model. But yes, there's a pretty good inventory of all the public and private wells that are out there and we have that right now within the city or that's one of the plans. Oh, you have all that? Yes, we have access to that. Um, what's below the Jordan in terms of aquifers? Do we anyone at the state geologic whatever department do we know what's a thousand feet down? Yeah. So bel below the Jordan we've got St. Lawrence uh St. Lawrence formation. We've got the Lone Rock formation. We've got the Eclair. We've got Do we know that they hold water? Um Mount Simon holds water. There's some of the cities that actually have wells in the Mount Simon. Um but the the Prairie Duchain Jordan um it's it's some of the cleanest water. Um yeah, but if it got polluted um and you know, we we've we've talked about accidental or horribly intentional kind of um um pollution of of some whoops some of these aquifers. Is there is is that a solution to go deeper or would that type of contamination also contaminate down below like the prayer to Shane? You know, I don't I don't know that there's a lot of good options outside the Jordan Pregame. The the Mount Simon um I don't know that it could produce doesn't have the capacity. It's high in mineral content. Um so we don't I mean there it's super expensive, I'm sure, but that's not an option to go 1500 feet down or whatever. We just don't know that there's water down there or we No, there's there's water there. There's not enough water. If if the prairie duchain became impacted, I mean, it's gonna impact more than just Eden Prairie, um, we couldn't all go to Mount Simon. There's the wa there's not enough water. It's too deep and the quality of the water isn't the greatest. So, um, okay. I think you'd be looking at you're just doing additional treatment at your water treatment plant to try to remove whatever contaminant that is, and it's not cheap, but in most cases, it can be done. Maybe you're talking reverse osmosis, uh some type of micro filtration, um and the cost just go up, but you could treat it for most contaminants. Okay, council, any um other questions? Just just a comment. I mean, this is one of the most scariest thing could happen and hopefully we we never going to happen. So I'm so glad that we proactively looking into and analyzing it, testing it and if something bad going to happen, we know it's going to happen in 10 years. The way that you are describing Robert um it it just absolutely important. I think in my perspective water is one of the most important next to the oxygen right. So um thank you for all the work uh you're doing health department and met council and the uh neighboring cities. Uh it's a it's a amazing good good work. Um thank you. I have a quick question. Yes, please. Um do we have any ordinances right now regarding wells when when something's developed? We usually have them um abandon them and seal them. So if new development's coming in, that's one of the requirements is like filling in your septic tank. Um the state county, they also have rules as well, but generally with new development, we make them remove or abandon the well almost always. I mean, I can't think of a time that we allowed them to keep a well. Okay. But if wells on private property and it begins to experience problems, maybe potentially going dry, they're allowed to redrill on that grandfathered in well. We have no if a if a homeowner wanted to drill a well today, there's nothing in city ordinance that would prevent them from doing that for irrigation purposes. I mean, if we have requirements that um if water is available, use that for domestic purposes. But there are quite a few wells out there in Eden Prairie and private residents where it's used for irrigation. Now the state has rules that if that hasn't been used in over a year, it's declared abandoned and it needs to be abandoned properly. That's where I think there's some work to be done because who knows if it's been used within a year. I don't know that we have the best records on that. But there's nothing to prevent somebody today from drilling a well if they wanted to for their personal residence. We have no city ordinances, state ordinances, or county ordinances that would require that. Would they have to get a permit to do it? They'd have to get a permit. Yes. But so, so we know where it is then. Exactly. Yes. And and sand point wells are shallow generally. Is there a definition like a 50t or 100? What what defines that? Yeah, that that um mayor case, I don't I don't know that I could answer that question if that's classified as a well and there's a permit needed for that or not. the school district. I know at Oak Point and I'm not sure what other schools uh have their own um in many cases maybe all I'm not sure irrigation um and I believe at Oak Point it was a Sandpoint well and I don't know how deep that is but that wouldn't be as problematic vulnerable to our water system. Correct. Exactly. There's some confining layers between here and the Jordan Prairie Duchain that kind of prevent that travel of water down. Um, but the ones we're most concerned about the ones that are in the aquafer that we use. Okay, Robert, one more question. We don't have any kind of chemical plant in Edbury or neighboring cities, do we? Chemical plants. No, not not that we're aware of. Not that there aren't some industries that use some pretty toxic chemicals for part of their process, but you know, we're not aware of anybody that's manufacturing chemicals in Eden. Something Yeah. somehow getting into our waters. Thank you. All right, time to move. Um, thank you. Thank you so much. I think we have next on the agenda report of the police chief, Mr. Gro. We do. We have to make Mayor, you actually have to take action. Like I said, we have a motion. Gosh, every medium I'm making. Okay. Yes. resolution endorsing the West Metro Multic Community Wellhead Protection Plan Part One and approve an agreement to continue participation in the development and implementation of the remain remainder of the plan part two. Is there a second? Second. Any uh discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I opposed. All right. Unanimous. Thank you. Thank you again, Robert. All right, Mr. Gro. Uh, yes, Mayor. Or if you've um seen in the um some of the local city releases and city news information, um we've just put out um some of our police statistics and information for this past year within the last week. So, our police chief is here to give the council an overview of the year in review 2024. Chief, thank you for being here. Thank you. Uh, mayor, members of the council, just wanted to give a a brief update on our 2024 statistics. I know uh in front of you, you now have our 2024 annual report. Um, that will also be going online very shortly. Um, as with all of our other years of annual reports, but I wanted to give a brief highlight of kind of where we've been in 2024. Uh, as a refresher, reminder for our our department right now, we're currently authorized for 75 sworn officers, 36 civilian staff, and 51 volunteers. Again, a great group of volunteers between our chaplain, our reserves, uh even our police explorers who help out a lot of our events. Um really make our department what it is today. The department continues uh to operate in three main divisions, patrol, investigations, and support. Um font's a little bit small, but you can see under under each division um the number of different um response services and secondary assignments and programs that we have. And uh really want to give a shout out to our frontline troops because over the years they've been the ones that have come up with a lot of these initiatives, a lot of these programs that help us better serve our community. Um and it just continues to be a way that we can provide that that service to our community uh in a variety of different aspects. So in 2024, we look at uh the number of calls that we responded to um kind of highlights most of those calls coming in and generating through our our 911 dispatch center. We're very fortunate in Eden Prairie to have our own dispatch center. Um we really feel that it provides that next level of customer service uh for people calling in for a variety of issues, but uh slightly uh up from 2023 uh in our calls for service uh with just over 45,800 calls for service. Um, as you heard about tonight in the uh, citizen uh, survey, uh, again, traffic safety uh, continues to be an important part of what we do in Eden Prairie to try and um, make make the environment, make our community safe. Um, we do have a heavy uh, focus on traffic safety. um through that in 2024 conducted over 13,000 traffic stops. Uh 216 DWI arrests which was a slight decrease uh from the year before but um and you'll see the re the remainder of information regarding crashes um property damage crashes. Um, as you've definitely seen in some of our social media posts and our blogs, um, we have a DWI grant officer who operates on a grant from the state, um, Chad Strife, but he, uh, uh, continues to receive awards for his DWI enforcement, and, uh, in 24, he was recognized for his 23 arrests of 156 DWIs, which was the third highest number in the state of Minnesota. So, continue to focus on traffic safety and how we can keep our community safe. Um there's always room for improvement and we want to look for those areas where we can we can affect traffic safety and and help with that flow as well. Um when we look at uh more of the cases that may fall into the investigations realm, really wanted to highlight um the 467 social worker referrals. Um as I talked about at the last meeting, we are very excited to have a grant from the state of Minnesota that will soon enable us to get a second social worker. um should be starting actually within the next month or two. Um and really had a lot of impact on our community and being able to provide extra resources and additional resources beyond uh what the officers and other volunteers with the organization can do. Uh 302 person in crisis calls which was up a little bit from 2023. Um but again continues to be uh a connection point with our community where having that social worker or some other resources available can be a very important uh for us. What is that crisis person in crisis call means? person in crisis calls is basically what we would have considered mental health uh wellness calls. Um psychiatric medical would have been an older term that we would use. But it really envelops uh any kind of situation where someone is in crisis from a variety of reasons. Whether that's a mental health concern or if that's uh something else that's going on that's you know affecting their daily life. Uh may or may not be a criminal element to it at all. But it's just how can we best provide service to that person and connect them with the resources that they need. Um and I I think it's been well known across uh across states across the country that uh mental health and wellness calls and person crisis calls continue to rise. So utilizing and leveraging resources and our partnership with the county and the social workers uh has been very good for us. um motor vehicle theft and uh residential burgaries burglaries um did see a decrease in 2024 uh which is good to see. Um we did see a slight increase in shoplifting um but motor vehicle tampering also came down and we do believe some of that is to due to the catalytic converter legislation um from within the last couple years that kind of helped uh reduce some of the demand for that. So that really helped out. Um again, as part of our outreach in 2024, um very excited to um try and work with uh some of the different events that we can to to make that connection with the community. Um you'll see a very large number of events here. Do want to give a special shout out to our crime prevention fund. Um they often help fund a large number of these events. Um and uh council member Tumi being our crime prevention fund president uh helps uh generate excitement and and funding for a lot of these events. Um and it's really kind of the fun part of our job to be able to get out uh connect with the community um have people learn more about us for a citizens academy. Um and we're always looking for different and new ways uh to make those connections. So uh just looking forward to just real briefly in 2025. Obviously, we've talked over uh the past year plus about the building remodel. That project is well underway. Demolition's occurring uh right next door. Um as we talked about the second social worker coming in, I think will be a great benefit um to our community. Um we're looking at some more staggered hours and providing better coverage and some more alternative response where our social worker may be able to come out to the scene directly as the officers are there and be able to provide resources uh even quicker in a more timely manner. um excited to get uh a crisis negotiations van off the ground. Um this was a capital project that took a few years to come into play, but to be able to go to uh high-risisk incidents and be able to have a centralized work location for our negotiators because uh so much of bringing these high-risisk uh situations to a calm resolution uh nowadays does involve our negotiations and to be able to have that asset to to better prepare them is a great thing. We've talked about in the last year we got the federal funding for the new mobile command center uh which is currently in production. So we're looking forward to that asset being available to help us in our city with police and fire uh and our regional partners as needed. And then obviously we've we've been working and it was discussed a little bit in the survey results preparing for light rail for a number of years looking at emergency response, partnering with our fire department, partnering with uh people uh agencies along the line about how can we best be prepared for for emergency response for safety along the line and for safety around the line. So, uh, we continue to do that planning, um, preparing for training, uh, even as trains will hopefully be moving for training purposes, uh, by the end of the year into early next, um, we'll go forward with that, uh, preparation. And that's all I have. Great. Council, um, any questions or comments? Thank you for all of your hard work and we're so extremely fortunate to have um you guys in our city and what do you say all the time, Mr. Mayor? We have the best I say a lot of things. You're the best police department in the state if not the entire country. Absolutely. No, and it's um it's leadership um starts with Rick Ketro, but definitely it's your leadership. So, thank you so much for being the kind of leader you are. And I know that um from Jack Tacking to Jim Clark to leaders through from 1970 was it two three um when the police department started um the the values that they set from the beginning of of being the kind of approachable police officers and connected and and um serving the community, reaching out has uh stayed consistent through all these years. And I believe um that's why we weathered so well over the last four or five years. What many police departments have been struggling with throughout the country with the um respect, adoration um that that we've really maintained that because of the kind of people we have as officers and it's your leadership as well. So thank you so much. Appreciate that. True testament to our to our officers and our our staff in the department. Truly, they're just good people. Anything else? No. Okay. Um, am I forgetting? There's no formal action. Uh, anything else, council or Mr. GO to come before our council this evening? There is not. I will entertain a motion to adjourn this evening's council meeting. I'll make a motion city council meeting. I think he beat you to it. Do you want to second it? Okay, I'd love to second it. All those in favor say I. I I oppose. This meeting is adjourned.