[Music] i'm peg de board i'm the president of the league of women voters in south tonka welcome to our second virtual uh mayor's forum we are partnering with partnering with the lake minnetonka cable commission who will be hosting and recording this event for distribution to the cities and to the league of women voters to put on our website here's a little bit about the league of women voters the league of women voters is now in its 101 year the league of women voters is a non-partisan political organization open to all genders ages 16 and older nonpartisan to the league of women voters means we neither support nor oppose political parties or candidates the league believes that informed and engaged citizens are the cornerstone of democracy as league members we study a variety of issues and we help develop nonpartisan solutions we then advocate for these positions at the local state and national level so tonight each mayor will be able to give a state of their city i will be a short presentation and then from there we will be having league members ask questions that have been developed by league members as well as taken from community uh participants the process for tonight each mayor can take up to four minutes to give an overview of the highlights happening in their city then we will start with questions that have been developed by the league members and and or submitted to the by the public we will probably not get to all the questions that have been posed helping with questions tonight from the league of women voters south ponca are cheryl lesser who lives in sherwood and sharon murphy garber who lives in deep haven uh the mayor's with us tonight we'd like to like thank them for coming and participating so with us tonight are deb pined who is the mayor of greenwood jennifer lobotti who is the mayor of sherwood lisa whalen mayor of minnetrista todd carlson mayor of excelsior paulus greedy mayor of deep haven and adam jennings mayor of tonka bay so with that um i'd like to start with deb pined who is the mayor of greenwood to give her presentation and i've learned the quote of 2020 and 2021 is you're on mute so i had to unmute myself first uh thanks to the league of women voters for hosting tonight's uh event it's always fun a year goes by very quickly it's hard to believe that a year ago when we had this event we were at the beginning of the pandemic and and it's been a full year now so crazy crazy stuff 2021 is my 13th year as mayor of the beautiful city of greenwood councilman councilwoman christie conrad councilman bill cook and i all ran unopposed in this past election and uh it's a pleasure to serve with them and the rest of our council we really have a good group we met with our assessors on march 3rd and greenwood property values are increasing in this year so this year 2021 for taxes payable 2022 uh the average increase will be 6.3 percent for off lake properties 2.2 for lakeshore properties 10.5 for condo properties uh we will be having our local board of appeal on april 7th no april 8th april 8th and the deadline to get on the roster is april 2nd so any greenwoodians who want to appeal their property values those are your deadlines uh infrastructure-wise our roads are in pretty good shape we will partner with shorewood to rehabilitate uh saint albans bay road and we will partner with excelsior when it comes time to do the bridge those projects continue to be put off into the future which is probably a good thing along with mayor carlson mayor labadie and mayor jennings i serve on the police coordinating committee chief mian is our emergency management director for the four cities and he's been doing a great job of maintaining our critical services during this time on march 20th as i said it's hard to believe it's almost a year ago i issued a statement and determination to allow greenwood to conduct meetings electronically and we've been doing so ever since uh it looks like we'll be able to resume in-person meetings soon and i'm looking forward to that although i do like the convenience of zoom but it'll be nice to see humans in person again uh other than conducting our meetings via zoom we really haven't had much effect on city business from the pandemic our residents drop off items in a drop box at city hall and we were and do we do business by email very well phone and email so it hasn't affected our city business too much uh with the exception of the old log greenwood businesses appear to be doing okay uh during the pandemic we supported the olive by dramatically reducing their liquor license and it's exciting that the old log will be opening up in october october 2nd they are planning to open uh with a show called the play that goes wrong uh it sounds uh sounds good and i encourage everyone to support the old log and all of our local businesses as we emerge from the pandemic uh our i saw i had the 22nd marks i'll quickly sneak in that uh our biggest news is that deephaven notified us that they would no longer provide public works and planning and zoning services for greenwood effective january one of this year so we have have scrambled to i should say scramble they give us lots of notice and we are now contracting with private contractors for public works and planning and zoning in addition to direct contracts with minnetonka and then excel sure for our clerk storage and meeting space the transition has gone well but i have to say the move out of deep haven city hall was a very very sad day and we really appreciate the the wonderful service we received from deep haven over the years that's it how did i do peg you did great thank you okay mayor carlson you're up next you ready yeah everybody good evening everyone my name is todd carlson i'm the mayor for the city of excelsior i serve on council with council members jennifer carroll councilmember dale kirschner councilmember louise lou derkin and council member ann hirschman um you know my message to our residents uh coming into the spring here has been one really of trying to be positive and hopeful you know as mayor kind referenced you know it's been one year since we you know had the signs installed on water street that's a shelter in place and it's just so nice now to hopefully be coming out of that very quickly uh i'm really proud of our city and proud of the residents i've mentioned that in the recent letter that i i did to the uh the community for just i think the way we responded to each other and to our businesses in 2020 we're coming out of the the pandemic still with our aaa bond rating which is one of the highest ratings uh it is the highest rating you can get and we're one of the few communities in the state that have that rating and i'm really proud of that but what i'm proud of is the work that we've done to shore up and make sure we've had solid finances to help you know bridge with some of the other cities the chamber of commerce similar to as deb mentioned within greenwood we were able to reduce liquor licenses for some of our businesses respond by reducing eliminating parking maintenance fees in the common lots that we share and refunding a number of fees to businesses churches and some of the local organizations so i was really proud of the work that we did in 2020 uh we also were able to move the city and community forward with some major infrastructure projects we finished our project uh over in the glencoe area we also finished a major road reconstruction and sewer water infrastructure project in george street west lake in lafayette in our community and that's really i think some of the messaging that as we talked about going into 2021 that we're looking to really carry forward we've got additional road infrastructure projects in three different parts of our city uh for 2021 and again you know really a lot of great work by our public works department and our city staff to ensure that we're continuing to move forward you know the city has had uh infrastructure needs you know really over the course of the last few years and i think as a council and a community we've been trying to respond to those so i also really want to highlight and i didn't mention earlier but it relates to infrastructures the commons and we're really excited about uh the pavilion project that we have going in this year uh the pavilion broad project we broke ground on it actually back a few weeks ago it just happened to be that week when it was i think 20 below zero or 10 below zero we're all out there but uh we're excited for that project uh we're hoping to have that project completed in time for the fourth of july and you know if we're able to get past the restrictions and the emergency declarations we're hoping to be able to have some type of community event again certainly for the entire south lake uh minnetonka area uh for the fourth of july so excited about that uh we're also as it relates to the commons looking to undertake a concession stand project that's going to be the next project that we start to evaluate we're looking for additional projects having discussions around parking and our park use of our parking lots and i think the the next major discussion that we'll have really relates to our city hall and if you've been to excelsior and the city hall in the city offices you'll know that we we've got some work that we need to do there so we're excited about undertaking that uh again i just like to invite any of the residents or anybody that wants to weigh in you know our city council meets the first and third monday of every month we start at 5 30 with our work sessions and meet at uh then regular session at 6 30 and we also start are starting to hold special strategy sessions uh once a quarter and our next one will be held on saturday morning march 27th from nine until noon so again uh really proud of all the work that our community has done really proud of my council my staff and i look forward to participating with the other mayors i really want to say thank you to the other mayors uh in the south lake i think we are working well together and you always have you know an open line to me and and my commitment to try to do the best we can for the entire group here in the south lake so thank you for that uh next up is mayor whalen from um so i'm lisa whalen i'm the mayor of minnetrista i was re-elected in um this past november that it was a very contentious and contested election period so i'm glad um we're past that we have two new council members that were elected in november um anne mcgregor and kathleen mefken we have two existing council members still seated and that's pam mortensen and um john chumperlin so with i've have a lot of experience uh i've been i was on the council previously for 12 years and i've served as a city as the mayor for minitrista for six years so 18 years has given me a different perspective and a lot of knowledge and with that um i'm excited still to be serving and looking forward to the next four years we've had our challenges um in minnetrista over the last year obviously with covid we did close our city hall for a while and there was no in-person business being conducted we reopened then after we were able to implement some strategies we reopened in july i believe it was we still conduct all of our meetings via zoom or via go-to meeting so virtually and some of the things that that we've accomplished in spite of covet over the past year we had did a number of road projects major infrastructure reconstruction or reclamation projects on our roads and some mill and overlays and we also continued with our water tower so we will eventually very soon this fall we will have three water towers in minnetrista we are on track and on budget for our third one which will be up and running again like i said this fall one of the big um issues during the um elections that we kind of came across and people mentioned is minitrista has a very large area where 32 31 plus square miles in if you didn't know this already we are actually the largest city on lake minnetonka i bet some of you didn't know that um in fact we are geographically larger than minnetonka and so that does create challenges much of our area is a rural still and so we have areas that are actually what's considered unserved and areas that are underserved with broadband so that's going to be and it has been one of our top priorities for this year unfortunately because of covid we've had to cancel some of our events that we normally host but hopefully we will be able to do that again this year later on as we progress in 2021 one of the things that we've done and continue to do is keep in contact with our residents via our website our facebook and twitter and also our mayor's blog that we started last year and also our snail mail newsletter so we do still try and connect with our residents via those venues and we hope to be adding back the venues that we weren't able to do last year such as trista event possibly this september and then also our annual city bus tour the other thing that i like to encourage people to do is check in and view us on our website on youtube you can listen to the um city council meetings live or you can also check it out later at your own convenience on our youtube channel on our website that's pretty much it thank you mayor whalen next up is mayor lobotti from sherwood okay thanks for having me this evening thanks to the league of women voters for putting this on and chris for helping us out with the filming my name name is jennifer labadie and i'm the newly elected mayor of the city of shorewood um recently with the assistance of travis and chris from the lmcc i filmed a state of the city address this can be found on our city website it's a lengthy video and i won't touch on the same points here this evening tonight i'd like to highlight the following issues first the status of the construction in the minnetonka country club and building permits that were issued in the city of shorewood in 2020 second shorewood's tax levy information and third projects completed in 2020 and projects planned for 2021. status of construction in the minnetonka country club and building permits in 2020 there are currently 142 lots in the minnetonka country club and only 22 remain open in 2020 the value of new construction in the city of shorewood was 48 million four hundred thousand dollars the city of shorewood issued 44 building permits for new construction in 2020 and 24 of those permits were for homes in the minnetonka country club which means 20 were for locations elsewhere in the city shorewood's tax levy information the city council unanimously adopted the 2021 general fund operating budget and approved the property tax levy collection collectible in may and october 2021. for 2021 the city of shorewood increased its property tax levy by two percent however the tax impact to homeowners may be less than the two percent increase of the total levy this is because in recent years the overall property tax of a home located in shorewood has increased at a faster rate than the shorewood property tax levy resulting in a slower decline of the local tax rate projects completed in 2020 and projects planned for 2021 the enchanted island and shady island street mill and overlay projects were both completed in 2020 a complete overhaul of badger park located by shorewood city hall occurred in 2020 which includes a new playground shelter bathrooms and walking trails throughout the park a tennis court surface complete with pickleball striping will be completed this spring the city plans to have a grand opening ribbon-cutting ceremony in june in badger park the date is still to be determined and um could be altered based on covid restrictions the woodside road woodside lane kathleen court street reconstruction project included the installation of water mains it was started in 2020 and after a final bituminous course is installed in 2021 the project will be complete the glenn omley manitou street reconstruction will commence in 2021 the city will perform approximately two million dollars in mill and overlay work on numerous city streets and a complete list of the city streets scheduled for milan overlay in 2021 can be found on our city website in 2021 we will begin work on the smithtown stormwater pond project shorewood oaks drainage project and the grant street drainage project some of these projects are described in further detail and they're highlighted in the previously recorded statement found on the city website thank you ah thank you so next up is mayor jennings from tonka bay hi thank you good evening everybody i want to thank the league for uh putting this together i think this is an extremely important opportunity for us to come together and talk about things um and certainly i think the non-partisan aspect of it is extremely important because it allows everybody just to kind of take a a clear even view of things and uh and weigh them as they see fit based on their merits um you know i i'm really excited about this upcoming year i you know essentially uh we've got a new council i'm a new mayor i've been at it for about two months now um and then we've got a couple new council members that have just uh been elected uh kristen vigor and uh tim connolly uh and they are joining forces with uh bill labelle who's a long-time veteran and uh and jeff anderson as well who's been on for a number of years so it's kind of this good mix of like both old and new blood and i i think um i think we're gonna be able to do a lot of really good things with the city um you know certainly you know as uh todd was alluding to as well i i think uh just the general tenor of um you know working with the other cities we're in a really good spot right now and um it just makes me excited about things uh that being said uh we just recently finished up a refurbishment of our water treatment facility this past year there were a few final things that we needed to uh to take care of there was some bonding that that occurred and um that was a fairly significant project for us as a city uh we also then finished up our refurbishment of our water tower um just just in the past few months uh some of you have driven by you'll see that we have a a new logo on the side of it that looks pretty good uh but this segues into kind of the next things that we need to get done essentially uh it's imperative and i think by far the number one largest priority for the city this year is to try and replace our main water line we had a significant influx of breaks that started to occur just in these last couple of years we'd have 23 since february of 2019 and when that happens uh we have residents that lose all of their water we've heard stories you know of individuals that um you know they're trying to get ready for work in the morning and suddenly they're just completely without in some cases i think the worst case scenario we had was someone who had actually was in mid-shower with shampoo in their hair no water so we have got to do something about this i did testify with representative morrison uh this past tuesday uh in order to try and uh garner some state funding to help us with that project we're also planning on paying for half of it as a city we just need to try and get it done as soon as possible in addition to that we're starting to focus or we want to focus more largely on our parks um we really feel like we have an opportunity to kind of take them to the next level so we've had one of our council members really spearhead that for us and uh we really want to try and make it more of a center point uh centerpiece of the city um so that that's something that we're we continue to push forward and likewise um if we can do anything in conjunction with that to make county road 19 uh more walkable and pedestrian friendly that would always be great but um yeah i think uh that's pretty much everything so the the theme of the tonight for me is gonna be to try try and be be bold be brief and be gone so with that uh all residents uh you're welcome to join us every second and fourth tuesday of the month um always open to hearing uh from residents my cell phone number if you want to take it down 612-965-1488 we'd love to hear from you and uh that's it thank you and thank you um next up is uh maris greedy from deephaven i've finished 18 years when i get done with this term it'll be 20 and i think that's should be enough uh kent and steve we're also reelected so we've got some pretty good uh blood in the in the council room we've managed to get a few projects started which anything of any size is so difficult out here because in our particular city sixty percent of the council turns over theoretically every two years so to put a five or a ten year plan together you by the time you get to that point everybody's different so we feel really lucky that this year we're going to hopefully put together a project that's uh spark committee wanted bathrooms down at the beach the main beach in uh in deep haven uh resounding success when we built the warming house up in thorpe and so we thought well uh we'll just keep going on that uh we're meeting uh next week location is probably going to be down around park avenue or some of you might call that the launch over to the yacht club the other one that we're going to try to get done is the uh bridge the north home bridge we call it uh it's over near the parkway just north of the main beach uh bridges uh parkway and all of our peninsula called uh north home oldest unrepaired bridge in hennepin county so we're kind of excited about the fact that we're going to be able to get to do that last year was was uh it was good for us um we kept our beaches open we were able to have lifeguards we had a lot of people that if they didn't want to be out and among other people they stayed home but those that did want to get out and and recreate uh felt uh very lucky that we didn't uh shut any of that down uh we don't have a lot of businesses and uh so we didn't have any uh issues there that uh that some of the other people have we restricted the number of parking permits last year just because we thought that uh we might be the only spot on this side of the lake that people want to go to we're not going to have that problem again this year uh city hall has been closed uh we're going to open it as soon as the remaining staff have been vaccinated i didn't know any other way to do it to make sure that those kids be able to take care of themselves but jimmy lundberg over at the lmcc uh helped us with our zoom we now have blended meetings and so we do zoom like this but we also have people in attendance physically at city hall uh it's it's worked out very very well uh we don't have that many people visiting the chambers uh during regular times so uh the only thing that we have as a caveat is that if the crowd looks big we're trying not to have any hot issues so that we've got 150 people sitting outside and if as long as we've got that going i think we'll be we'll be fine with that um exciting stuff that happened we were letting kids play hockey at the new rink up in thorpe and when they decided that they needed to warm up they used the bathroom that we have up there and that was so nice and cozy that they actually foamed in and ordered pizza so we've had our first pizza party in the bathroom up at thorpe should have seen the delivery man trying to match the address because there's nothing else there that was kind of fun we had some residents that built a carousel out on lake minnetonka i don't know if you saw any of that but i'm going to guess it was over 50 foot in diameter the entire circle cut out of the ice put a trolling motor on one end of it and the thing just went around like a carousel and drew a whole bunch of people this is what we did to get rid of cabin fever and i think that they should be applauded for their uh ingenuity we've done over three million dollars worth of road repair and uh storm water projects in the last two years we're hoping that uh that'll continue we've already got good bids for this year and uh well there's been boring with the refs i'll live up to the fact that i'll be brief thanks a lot so next up we'll be um having questions um provided by um the league of women voters as well as community members and so first up is sharon murphy garber from um deephaven and so sharon would you like to start with the questions sure i'm going to ask some questions about pandemic what has been the impact of the pandemic on your city i'll i'll start just i'm not going to say the entire impact but one thing that um covet impacted the city of shorewood was it caused us to have to upgrade our technology we um we were basically forced to implement different methods to allow our staff to work from home effectively to be able to do zoom meetings just like the rest of you and moving forward um we're going to be doing what mayor screedy said a blended zoom in person um none of that would have ever improved or been carried out at the rate that it was had it not been for covid um and one result of this has been our regular council meetings have about double the amount of residents if not triple then it then we used to have pre-pandemic pre-zoom meetings which is why we're going to go ahead with the hybrid method um so that's one thing that impacted our city was just being forced to upgrade our technology at a faster rate than we had anticipated doing it but it was a positive result so thank you yeah if i could just weigh in too i would second those comments of uh from mayor labadie is you know i think when i look at uh covet and the pandemic and certainly there were a lot of um major impacts you know lives were turned upside down impacts to you know students and i mean i don't mean to minimize it but when i when i look at the pandemic i look at the good that came out of it and i try to put it in a positive way and i would i would second mayor labane's uh comments as well is i think it speeded up change for our city and on a couple of fronts one is the technology piece we're also going to try to incorporate some type of hybrid um you know service for the community going forward uh two i think it got us closer quite honestly to our businesses and certainly closer to the chamber of commerce i think coming out of it we've got a stronger relationship certainly with the chamber of commerce think than we've we've ever had and really appreciate the worst uh the work that jen weiss has been doing on behalf of the chamber and i would also say that it uh you know we talked about our businesses um yeah there were impacts but i think most of our businesses uh came through it pretty well and by that i mean you know we adapted uh you know we changed parking we changed ordinances to allow outdoor seating we encouraged people to shop local we tried to support however we could whether it was reducing liquor licenses as we mentioned earlier you know refunding fees um so again you know i don't mean to minimize any of the impacts because i know there was severe severe for people on a number of fronts but i'd like to focus on the good that came out and i think you know we're emerging stronger as community coming into 2021 yeah you know i would i would actually uh play off of that as well with mayor carlson was saying i think what was what was really remarkable to see was how we came together as a community uh you know truly it was nice to see people come out and support joey nova's in tonka bay but you know most of us are part of uh either a police or a fire district as well and uh it was i one i just need to commend uh the the incredible work that both our police and fire did as first responders uh adapting to what was going on i think they did they did right by us uh in in serving us as a community uh but the reciprocation of that as well i think the community really came together and they were appreciative of that support and and commended as well but they've they've done an outstanding job supporting all of us in that um how has the pandemic affected your city's budget i'll start um we don't have a lot of um businesses in minnetrista and especially we have uh virtually no retail businesses so we are affected far less than probably some cities in the state that rely heavily on sales taxes it really hasn't affected our budget very much last year we did receive about 99.5 percent of our of our levy revenues so that's uh pretty much on par uh the other thing is that we um we issued 153 new home permits last year probably more than all of the other cities that we're talking about tonight combined and what that does and what it has done for our city is we've increased our market value significantly so any budget increases that we've had have been offset by the increase in value in the new homes that have come online so that's been good for our residents it's not to say that our residents haven't been impacted i'm sure all of them in some fashion have been in some way i'll just leave it at that you know i'll say like strictly from a city perspective um you know if in for tonka bay anyway if you take uh both police and fire that represents about 51 of our overall operating budget in any given year and i think there was a lot of overtime that was being uh uh worked last spring certainly in all the uncertainty that was going on the shortages and hand sanitizer just the panic in general uh the the influx of calls that they were receiving um but the one thing i would say is we we as a city were not impacted that much uh the trump administration passed a a robust federal package and i think that made its way down to the cities and a lot of that money was able to we were able to pass that on to uh our first responders and um and that really helped kind of stabilize things for us because because it does make such a large percentage of our overall budget it it really could have hit us quite hard and it frankly it didn't uh if the city has changed with some of you have mentioned you know with your technology and some other things um with policies or practices do you envision these remaining or being reversed due to what was going on with the pandemic i think that we learned how to work a little smarter we went through uh 600 and some odd building permits of various types all the way from new construction down to electrical all done with a drop-off box at the back door the second level of city hall the ladies inside managed to get out all the utility stuff done uh we've done parking permitters people have found out that the drop box out in the parking lot actually does work you don't have to come up and tell everybody whether you're feeling good or not so i think we've become more efficient i think the the staff has uh has trimmed that part of the operation down and i am hoping that that that that stays that being said the the blended zoom meeting i think is going to be probably the thing of the future uh i don't know when this other pandemic thing is going to go away but i i think we've found that we also get a little more uh viewership during the meetings themselves not necessarily participation but i can see the names and the faces on the screen so people are turning in to see what we've done here in town uh i suppose pandemic related but uh we really didn't get affected that much by it we had 67 cases in deep haven as of uh december six deaths uh nothing in deep haven woods really at that point in time so we feel like we dodged a few bullets um i know for some that you have restaurants gyms retailers how has that affected each city and how are you have you been able to help support them yeah i'll just weigh in i think i mentioned it my opinion uh statements for the city of excelsior yeah we tried to support however we could but i also need to call out you know some of the support that we received through cares funding and the cares act uh that was absolutely critical uh to our community it was also allowed us as a council and a staff to place some bets you know as related to you know funding and um you know trying to make some policy changes you know to address what was going on with the cope and pandemic so you know for our restaurants i think you know the restaurants you know really pivoted quite quickly um with covid you know i do want to say again compliments to our staff we are one of the first communities uh to petition the governor when kobe first started to allow uh to take out and carry out of alcohol with the with the meals and you know i had one of my restaurants you know make the comment to me that just by simply doing that they were able to hire three to four people back so you know that was one example for our restaurants you know some of our retailers you know i was really encouraged you know this last year uh during you know the small business weekend you know prior to uh just after black friday and prior to cyber monday excelsior was was very very busy and i know a lot of our businesses again appreciate the local support i do know you know from talking to some of the business owners definitely there there were impacts uh but again i think we only had if i remember from my conversation with jen weiss i think we only had one business that went out of business in the city last year so really i think a lot of good work you know that was done in the community but i also really need to give credit to the residents i need to give credit to the business uh the businesses and the business owners for adapting and for changing and for doing what they did to make sure they stayed successful i agree i mean i get emails from a lot of the businesses and they were so creative which is really nice and i think jen has worked really well through the chamber with the businesses too and keeping them together and whatever so that's been nice yeah but i'm going to make one quick psa announcement because i see two of the chamber members on and what a business owner yeah jen we've called you out earlier really a terrific job uh for not only excelsior but for this entire south lake and then bill damberg you know great work at brightwater you're a continued supporter of the community and i know you've got your pulse on what's going on i appreciate the things that you've shared within the community as well so thank you um another actually pandemic related question from the faith community is um you know there's been an increased need for food assistance in the local community and an even greater increase in need for rental mortgage and utilities assistance so as the event eviction moratorium comes to an end the prevention of homelessness will be an increasing challenge do any of the cities individually or as a group have plans for helping with rental mortgage or utility assistance i'll weigh in real quick here so um what the city immunitista did is we use some of our covert relief dollars and donated to wes we can and to our local food shelf and we can as the western action anyhow they help with rental assistance and emergency funding for families so that's one of the things that we did i don't know going forward how much more we'll be doing but that's um one step in the right direction i think part of this too is you you highlight an extremely important uh issue uh i think the concern for tonka bay is that uh you know a lot of this doesn't doesn't come up to the city level and i'll be honest i i i don't i'm not aware of any plans that we have you know it i think most of what we focus on is variance requests on large homes that are being built and certainly i know one of the questions that's probably going to come up later is affordable housing and it it gets to be really tough because our our city is it's it's largely built out um and i think the way the equations are set up even both at the federal and the met council levels it's uh in order for something to be affordable quote it's it's uh a definition of if if i'm if i remember this correctly it's it's like a certain percentage of the overall mean value of the other homes in the area and the home values here are so high that even if we were to to discount those it's still an extremely expensive home so it it's hard to to to to kind of address these things um you know certainly our city has given to we can and we will continue to do so in the future um you know because one of those things about um poverty is it tends to have this way of hiding in the shadows and i was really really surprised when i shortly after i moved here in one of my first council meetings that we had i think it was either 12 or 15 families that were on assistance so it's out there and to your point i think it's probably incumbent upon me as mayor to to seek these things out and see how much of a need we actually have sharon we're probably ready to move to the next topic yep um this is more about i'm going to switch out of the pandemic thank you to uh to more political not parties or whatever but ranked choice voting i know i was a poll worker and that was a lot it was more college kids who came in were asking us about that why we didn't have that in deep haven so do you support ranked chess fighting and do you think cities should be able to do that system if they'd like to try it we don't have a need for that in the city of deephaven that was the people that asked you the question and uh it's actually more difficult to find candidates to run than it is to uh find uh how to rank them one through three if you're lucky enough to get them in so we have not looked at it whatsoever sharon to be honest with you yeah you know i i think um you find the same thing at tonka bay it's uh uh oftentimes we have have a single candidate that runs for for mayor if not at most we have two um that being said i mean philosophically i i think it's a fantastic idea i think what it helps to do is address a lot of the polarization that we find in our politics today because rather than have candidates try to address and speak to the far end extremes of either one of their parties they have to think about the fact that it's there's an opportunity for them and if anything they're incumbent to try and address a wider audience i think which helps moderate some of those voices and there's good and there's bad in that so i i can see both sides of it but i think by and large uh especially with the tenor of things over the last several years anything that we can do to try and make the conversation um more more calm would be good yeah the city of shorewood um the most interest we've had in local elections actually was when um i was elected mayor i still had two years left on my council term so my seat went vacant and we had nine applicants for that council seat but that wasn't um an election that was an application process the election for two vacant seats um which occurred the november right before this we had three applicants for the two seats um so as far as the rank choice voting we have had residents who are very involved in different organizations relating to ranked choice voting express an interest in this and what i have done is invited them to uh give a presentation to council and mayor at our council meeting on april 12th so that presentation will be happening um several residents are going to you know provide handouts provide information and then council may or may not direct staff to look into this further but we're definitely hearing an interest in it from our residents the city hasn't taken an official position on it yet though thanks i'll just quickly weigh in we're in the same boat as uh deep haven and tonka bay we're lucky if we can get three people to run for three seats which is what happened uh this past election so it seems like a silly exercise for us to go through to to do ranked choice boarding yeah we haven't addressed it yet in excels here thank you um yeah like i said it was more younger that we're asking but i think it's because they knew more residents that because someone in school live in minneapolis and so they have friends it's a bigger city so i just set out here you know ask you know the city but i can't imagine that we would do that we don't we're not big enough anyway now i'd like to move on to one other area are this and this is about redistricting since that's a big hot topic these days are the cities involved in concert in conversations regarding the census and redistricting i can just beat from excelsior not yet um we haven't had anybody reach out or uh have those discussions i do know it's you know it's in the background it is being discussed at i think a larger level you know certainly uh statewide you certainly hear the conversation nationally but nothing for locally here uh that i'm aware of in excelsior okay i'll agree with mayor carlson um the city of shorewood we haven't discussed this beyond the possibility of uh new population signs when you enter the city of shorewood um reflecting the the number beyond that it really hasn't come up yet and we're not involved at a a larger level okay that's what we didn't know we thought we'd some amount of people were asking like are the cities involved or not sure we're having a hard enough time sharing two zip codes i don't know if we won an excel shirt 391 in wayzata i think if i had to draw another line through town i other than if i were going to name it 501 c 3 i have no idea how else we could split this town up seriously but it's a good question cheryl do you want to go on to public safety how does each city assure that their law enforcement personnel are trained on the appropriate use of force i'll i'll start out if that's okay um so first of all the city of minnetrista hat we have our own police department and we also service the city of saint bonifacious and we have in our budget um over fourteen thousand dollars for training and it includes um and we have for many years our officers train for use of force implementing and how it should be done properly but we also have a lot of other training however the state of minnesota also requires officers and every police department to conduct and have certain training and we use the league of minnesota cities as one of our venues for training they have a fabulous online and also interactive training um sessions we do training for um exclusive implicit bias we do training for also mental health which is also a very important training aspect and as well as use of force so those are some of the things that we do in our police department i'm sure that other police departments do that as well i know that um keith mian uh this is this is extremely high on in his priority list and i'm sure the other cities would agree with me he's been keeping us abreast of the steps that he's been taking to follow up on the changes that have been made in the statutes over these uh uh over this past year i think one of those was implemented last fall and then the other one went into effect uh here just just recently if not uh this month last month um and and so uh use of forces is is definitely uh something that's high of mind for everyone um you know i my understanding is that we have uh we we have what's called the gold standard of uh of training in in our our district because we do more of it than what's actually required by the state statutes and you know i'll throw in as well um just just prior to this i actually was uh pursuing my post certification with the thought of possibly becoming a sheriff's deputy so just this past fall i was going through the training and i was extremely impressed with the candid and open conversations that we were having about everything that had happened in minneapolis and the use of force and the proper way to apply it and when to apply it um and i i not only uh found it refreshing that uh you know the instruction is heading that direction um but honestly all of the young men and women that are out there that are are stepping forward to to to to serve the community um i'm extremely confident that they're all doing it for the right reasons and uh that made me that made me feel very good about uh the future and i think we're making the right steps that's not to say that we haven't done things incorrectly in the past and we can't do them better now but um i think we're headed in the right direction i'll just add one other bit i've been in communication with chief me and about our upcoming coordinating committee agenda i have the honor of chairing the south lake minnetonka police department coordinating committee this year and on our agenda will be a discussion about uh sharing an embedded social worker for mental health uh calls and uh i i'm very really excited about that i think it's really really important uh aspect of of uh law enforcement to deal with mental health crises i don't know the exact statistics but it's it's at least half of the calls that our officers respond to are related to someone who's in has a mental health issue so uh really important look for that on our april agenda uh deb just so you know miniatures is also um looking or our police chief will be bringing some information back to the council regarding that as well i think if that happens we would be participating with with other area police forces on that issue which is i agree very important thank you there are seven agencies that will be cooperating on this if we are in so cool cool uh innovative stuff coming so and i'll just piggyback on what mayor jennings and mayor kind have already said shorewood is part of the jpa um south lakes police department along with it the those mayors and excelsior um i just want to highlight that like mayor jennings said we have the gold standard which means we exceed the basic amount that is required um i just want to highlight some areas conflict mediation um implicit bias training crisis intervention training those are all areas that the slmpd department receives training at the gold standard level thank you yeah and last from uh from excelsior you know just to add i i i think we've got one of the best police chiefs and best uh public safety forces whether it's police or fire in the south lake and i just wish the community you know could see some of the letters we get because there's so much negative news and press um but we get uh you know behind the scenes we get letters of examples of the work that uh the south lake minnetonka police department is doing some of the work that the fire department is doing and there's just terrific examples that unfortunately you know don't make the news or don't get shared with instances where they go above and beyond or they've defused the situation or they've helped somebody uh on a call where the it wasn't the original purpose of the call so i think really terrific work and i'm i'm pleased to be part of the coordinating committee with uh mayor jennings labbity and kind uh question on on the topic of public safety um highway 19 what are we um it so do we have any plans any discussions on handling the increased traffic on highway 19 um especially in the country club in tanki bay areas and then i think we mentioned in the introductions about uh pedestrian and and safety and i also bicycle safety what are the kinds of discussions happening right now um i'll i'll start off with that because that impacts shorewood and shorewood residents um prior to the covid pandemic when people were still traveling to work to school we didn't meet traffic counts to justify a stoplight or even a roundabout at that intersection so we have kind of we did form a traffic committee made of residents of the city of shorewood that looked at several corridors including that intersection the committee kind of went on hold after the start of the construction of the country club development and then the pandemic hit so we are discussing about possibly reinstating our traffic committee to look at this but look at it after traffic has started back to its normal flow um so it has been discussed by shorewood both at the city level and at the resident level plans were started um brainstorm level that's it and we we plan to continue on sometime you know for tonka bay as well you know it's it's something that we're going to continue to keep our eye on uh you know one of the things i forgot to mention in my intro was uh we're excited about the doran project that's going in because of the you know the 85 new units that we're getting right in that area i certainly was skirt concerned about the inflow or influx in additional traffic at the time because i have to drop my kids off at excelsior elementary every day and uh it's the traffic can get really thick one thing that i think is interesting or we should keep in mind is that um a few things one traffic's just going to get busier out here because we're growing in the west uh i think thing you know housing and things are continuing to push their way out into into victoria and beyond uh so seven's gonna start to get heavier um uh certainly with the the project specific in tonka bay uh even when the traffic study when they came back and had taken a closer look at things they had assured us that because of the additional units that are being built um because half of the the shopping center had to be torn down in order to uh create those units it's almost a break even on how much traffic we're losing because of the commercial activity that's going away um being replaced by essentially residential parking in traffic so um that's not to say that it couldn't get worse uh and i agree i think it's something that we need to keep an eye on uh as priority one we have all these breaks we've got public works individuals that are on highway or county road 19 all the time uh i get worried that they might get hit um so it's it's something that we we definitely need to keep on our radar going forward okay and then just to follow up um one final question about bicycle safety on the on highway 19 and the roads and trails um are there conversations about bicycle pedestrian safety i'll actually i'll i will jump in i'm talking a lot tonight um i would love i know there was a there was a time uh even before me that uh about putting in a bridge over county road 19. um and that's that's kind of a concerted effort i think probably between shorewood and tonka bay and three rivers and the county you know because it's a county road uh i think we got really close last time and i would love to rekindle that conversation now granted i think it's going to take some time to maybe get something like that that that put through but from my standpoint i think that's something that that we can get done um i also think as as a region we really should try and figure out a way to make county road 19 more pedestrian friendly just with the amount of traffic that's coming through the fact that it's getting busier we have a lot of cyclists and certainly i know as my children grow older i want them to be able to easily access downtown excelsior and uh in order to do that i want them to be able to get to the trails as as safely as possible and the only way to do that is to to create a safe pathway between here and you know the trail system that links into i think the city them shorewood's also concerned about bike safety and pedestrian safety uh as you know we put um our trail along smithtown road quite successfully um we will in the not in um 2021 but in the future it is slotted when we redo strawberry lane we will include a trail going all the way up right into the doors of minnewashta elementary um that won't happen in 2021 but um recently like mayor jennings i also testified in front of the capital improvement committee um kelly representative kelly morrison sponsored a bill on behalf of the city of shorewood for funding for a galpin lake trail that's kind of more over um on closer to like where minnesota inboard is on highway seven um the reason we approach the state with that is because that strip of land has a trail on the sh on the chain has an end that ends exactly where the shorewood line starts and for shorewood to connect into their trail then we're taking it up to the state highway 7 and hopefully we can get people into excelsior um to school to the excelsior businesses so we were dealing with the city of chanhassen and carver county the city of shorewood and hennepin county and a state highway 7 and connecting into county road 19. so because of all the players involved with that project um representative morrison sponsored this bill on our behalf because we do think it's appropriate for state funding so we have a lot of roads all throughout the south lake area that are simply too dangerous for pedestrians or bicyclists but all of us have to stay within our budgets and take them piece by piece at a time and at this point shorewood is focusing on that galvin lake trail yeah from excelsior if i could just weigh in real quick first of all in tamir jennings you have our support for the trail crossing at 19 regarding the bridge and i think we've had i had that conversation with your predecessor but i think it uh mayor labney brings up a good point it goes beyond 19. uh you know i highlight uh you know our county road mill we've got mill uh powers boulevard mill avenue that connects excelsior through shorewood into chanhassen and that's another uh example of you know as mayor lambie just mentioned you know getting a number of different organizations uh government agencies involved and we just had new hampton county commissioner uh chris latondras at our meeting uh this past monday and i was just very clear with him you know the expectation you know in any of these uh thoroughfares that you know uh mill powers is a gateway you know to gateway into excelsior and my expectation is the residents that live on that road should have the same expectations as those living on a residential street in terms of speed and safety and it's you know it's my hope that working uh with shorewood and certainly with chanhassen we can get some type of trail bike bicycle safety pedestrian improvements um you know that really will really limit speed and reduce pressure in that area and then ultimately connect you know have some type of trail system that does connect to the three rivers uh park trail without having to cross you know either on five corners across the busy mill boulevard um which is you know very dangerous at certain times of the day so it's an area it's an area it's a it's a concern i think for for most of us here in the area um what are you doing to ensure that you have a safe place for all races in your city such a hot topic these days i'll jump out on this one too i um again it's an extremely important topic um i i think as a nation it's something that we're we're really focusing on more closely than we have in a long time and we need to uh quite frankly uh i'll i'll also i think i'll come out and and i'll say um i've actually said this a number of times living in tonka bay is is very much like living in mayberry um it's there's not a lot that happens here um and i think to some degree uh we actually sort of embody what white privilege is uh i mean we're we're fairly homogenous um we're fairly sheltered um we don't have a whole lot that's going on and so it's very easy for us you know out of sight out of mind um so as a community certainly me personally i think it's just incumbent upon us to uh to to to to focus on these things and and and think about them just try and think outside our bounds but it's it's one of those things where we're largely as a community in this city we're shielded from a lot of these things i'm not justifying it either i'm just i understand that no i i know what you're saying so yeah we do my kids when they went off to college all said mom we live in a bubble yep we do we pay high taxes to live in the bubble we live in so yes but it is much more we have a more diverse community and our schools are getting more diverse so i think that's where some of the questions are coming anybody else [Music] i'll just jump in here real quick um i think uh diversity and and it starts kind of with our own personal philosophies and i think as leaders we need to have the right philosophy and that is inclusion and how we get there how we demonstrate that can be in many different ways but i think we need to educate ourselves about the issues and then we also need to immerse ourselves outside of our bubble and i think that's a key because we do live in a bubble out here but when i was growing up in some of my for some of my formative years i lived in a community that was a multi-racial and i think it really impacts your vision on things future in life but i also had the opportunity to do a lot of traveling around the world and when you see different countries you see different um social economic statuses and different ways of life you really come to appreciate and see things a little differently when you come back to your own community and i think for leaders in this day and age that's really important so i would encourage everybody to take a different look and take a different view either through travel through educational seminars through workshops reading whatever you can to really enlighten yourself i actually want to circle back real quickly because i know uh the question originated kind of around schools and the increasing diversity that we are seeing um the one thing i would say both of my children they go to excelsior elementary and while this isn't this is more school district driven um i have to really commend uh what the school district is doing uh based on the topics that i see my kids come home and talk about uh because they're really trying to focus on these things um and and one of our concerns frankly when we moved here was our children's interaction with diversity because frankly we were a little worried that this is a very homogeneous i mean are we going to raise someone in a bubble who doesn't comprehend the world at large and um but the school is doing a fantastic job so i'm the longer i live here the less i have that fear it's good to hear i mean i do a lot with the schools and i agree and we just talked about next year's plans for the diversity and inclusion so i i think it's interesting you know one effect of uh diversity and inclusion that sometimes gets overlooked as our lgbtq community and as i campaigned around the city i made it very known to numerous residents that i'm extremely lgbtq friendly to reach out to me if they had concerns or problems and numerous residents have reached out to me with various issues that i then assisted and pointed them in the right direction whether it was with someone with the school district or on the chief of police of the slmpd mike meehan who is extremely willing to hear people's issues to make sure that their voice is heard and to deal with um what what they may perceive as a problem um so i've i've gotten nothing but great response from our both our chief our fire and police chief as well as various individuals in the school district as these lgbtq issues have come up in our city thank you anybody else want to weigh in i know it's it can be a touchy subject i know it's kind of a powdered keg and as we have the trial in minneapolis and we don't know how that can affect us because who would have thought that ridge dale would be boarded up but you know it does come out to our near our area so you know and some of the kids do feel it you know um and it's we want everybody to feel welcome and feel okay so that's important is there um if something occurs and i think jennifer you kind of alluded to it um if there is something an incident occurs and and you involve law enforcement personnel and people of color race or gender identification i mean is there something that you guys as all the mayors may be working on something like that or do you do that individually per city you know i'll address it since you um spoke to me the specific issue i'm talking about keep in mind i've only been a mayor a couple of months right and this specific issue i felt was more appropriate to take directly to the police chief rather than include the board or other mayors and um the manner in which the chief handled it i'd just commend him and his whole department so so highly um so going ahead in the future i don't know i think it would have to be handled on a case by case or incident by incident basis yeah um we have a question from the community and this is probably for mayor carlson but they're interested in what is um being developed um where the old band shell was so yeah absolutely absolutely an update on that that'd be great yeah sure can and absolutely thank you for the question uh with the the commons are certainly our commons park 13 area park a 13 acre park that's been as part of the city since the city was founded in 1853 what i love about the commons is that depending on the day you go or the event you go the commons means different things to different people and it can be different every time you go right one night you can go you can go for fourth of july and there's 10 000 people there the next day or wednesday night you can go for concert in the commons and it transforms into a concert venue you can come back you know thursday morning and have a picnic or on saturday have a soccer game and that's the beauty about the commons i think it it just means different things to different people every time you go and what we're trying to do in our community again i talked about at the beginning you know we consider the commons park to be a treasure and a resource but it's also a key people piece of infrastructure in our community and we've partnered with a conservatory called community for the commons working with the city we're working through master plan development right now and part of that plan uh we've come up with a number of joint projects that we'd like to tackle and the first is the pavilion project and this project i referenced that we just broke ground on in february we hope to have the pavilion completed in time for the 4th of july and i really hope the community in the south lake area are going to enjoy it i think you're going to find that it's a project that's going to fit into the natural landscape of the area it's going to be unobtrusive and it's again going to mean different things to different people it's also intended to be a lot more versatile than the original bandshell was and i know you know we've had a lot of folks in the community that were are upset that we unfortunately tore that down but at the end of the day we're trying to make it accessible uh for everybody to use uh make it multi-purpose for not only concerts but movies but we're also putting because of the concept the open concept you can have events off the backside of it smaller events like weddings photo photo shoots so we're real excited about that again i mentioned as part of a broader master park improvement plan we've got additional projects that we have slated that we'll be talking about in the upcoming years certainly a concession stand by the the baseball diamond is is up for discussion we need new restrooms and infrastructure by our beach we've talked about creating a boardwalk that would actually get folks off the sidewalk off lake street and around you know getting walking them out around the entire park so i think lots of fun to come but again our intent is to try to keep it passive and try to minimize any impacts that minimize the impacts of any improvements we make in that area can i add to that please please thank you i appreciate your input on that and all your mayors for their hard work and particularly uh mayor carlson and and the city of excelsior for uh helping to save all the businesses except one so far and the idea of take out drinks i think is really helping the restaurants i do have a little complaint my barber on 2nd street says that all of a sudden these signs went up for the pay parking in front of his barber shop i've talked to your barber he told me that he wasn't notified and businesses near him were not notified before those signs went up and he would like uh perhaps some uh consideration uh before 5 p.m uh on weekdays where you know his customers could park there without cost or you know limited um parking in those in that on that street yeah absolutely i've talked i've talked to your barber i've talked to the owner of the coin shop next door um and what he's referring to is at a recent council meeting on march 1st the council approved uh temporary test for additional parking uh trying to additional parking uh measures on second uh street and third street and again you know i think it's a common knowledge in excelsior we have we're a small town we don't get a lot of state revenue so we need to try to generate revenue however we can and the method to do to do that in one way is certainly parking revenue but to your point uh anytime you you do something there are consequences and sometimes unintended consequences and that is uh from my conversation with your barber as well as you know the owner of the coin store as well as an order from one of the restaurants um with some of the impacts that that we're hearing we're going to take that conversation back up at our special strategy session on march 27th which is a saturday from nine to noon and that's uh exactly some of the things we've talked about you know do we have the ability to provide free parking for the first 30 minutes or the first hour we have the ability to on that stretch uh where your barber shop is is declare that you know a free parking zone for 30 minutes so we're looking at a number of different things uh to try to minimize the impacts to our businesses there but it is it's a difficult balance and that's simply what we're trying to do is try to find some balance i hope you will appreciate his point of view and the other business people there you bet it's good to hear too because that's the barber as well so yeah i unfortunately don't need a barber anymore [Laughter] how do you determine the criteria for approving variances that are consistently or you know that are consistently applied especially when people and developers buy lots that are too small for the homes that they want to construct does anyone want to take a whack at that one yeah i'll jump in on that one i you know especially with tonka bay we are historically we're like an old cabin community and uh we have all of these non-conforming lots i mean they're they're either extremely small or they're weird shapes um you know it's it's it's tough to frankly to kind of build anything on them uh because ultimately what drives uh kind of the the initial code anyway uh comes from the state so there are these conforming rules that we as a city have to follow and what we find is that when you apply those to virtually any one of the lots that we have in the city everybody's out of it no one's conforming like virtually it's it's just everyone has to apply for a variance of some kind or another the approach that we've taken as a city is that we have taken a closer look at things and worked with our city engineer and city planner to you know try and come up with you know setbacks that are more reasonable and we ask questions about all right if we are doing this is it still in line with the community and we take a particularly close look at hardcover because that has a lot to do with the health of the lake and things like that so generally speaking even though we don't necessarily hit the bogey hardcover's a perfect example for us what we like to see is is there some sort of improvement being made here so for example if someone has 50 hardcover and they want to rebuild a home um can they bring that down to 40 and then also put in some sort of uh remediation uh on the lot and that that's a good thing for us and it's we really have to kind of take a look at things on a case-by-case basis and it's it's it's tough but um i i i know as as a city we take a close look and i also know that um the residents oftentimes put a great deal of effort into uh you know working with their architects to find something that really really works and conforms and um there's a lot of stuff we reject and we rejected a pool just last week it was like not too close lake doesn't work not gonna happen so um yeah it's just it's there's it's it's a it's not straightforward i guess is the the punch line mayor carlson um i don't know if you want to just speak for a little bit about the the residential review process ordinance yeah i was just going to jump in on that again you know just a sec follow up on mayor jenny's comments you know we get a lot of variances of course and i you know i always wearing a council may have to remind you know folks that variances you know aren't always bad i mean there's a lot of good that comes out of variances and i think as mayor johnny's mentioned you measure each one on a case-by-case basis i think over the course of the last few years certainly excelsior has been kind of ground zero for a lot of the residential development discussion i'm really proud of the council our council this past year to try to address some of that we put in place a what we call residential review process with that we hired a city architect uh with that we established a set of good neighbor guidelines and we also established a process that any tear down or any new development that's being proposed needs to be reviewed by the city architect by the city planner and by our planning commission uh with that those those plans those proposed developments need to be held up against the good neighbor guidelines as it relates to do they provide enough green space blue space is the mass and scale right how does it fit in with the the neighborhood and the community where it's being proposed to be built and then uh then lastly it goes through the process and again it's a new process we've only i think had a couple of projects go through um i've been told it's you know a little bit clunky right now but we're trying to refine it uh what i'm just really proud of is the fact that though we have established a process and and tried to take the burden off of you know of our city staff and have you know a number of sets of eyes looking at uh projects that are being built so um you know we'll wait and see where it goes but i'm proud of the work that was done to put that in place you know i'll follow you to mayor carlson kind of rattled something in my brain that made me think um you know another thing that we try to do too is is we try to maximize uh real estate values for all the residents in the city and part of that is to also maximize the enjoyment of the lake i think the lake is uh first and foremost probably one of the primary reasons that a lot of folks live out here um you know so we've tried to tackle some some some things as well that frankly also are clunky you know with vegetation and things because we don't want we don't people moving in on the lake building a bunch of big gates putting up a lot of shrubbery and then everyone else who's on the inside is just blocked from the view so we're always trying trying to be cognizant of that as a community as a to tell you that whole are in the middle of uh evaluating this i think our r3 residential district is for lots sizes of 20 000 feet and less 20 000 square feet less and uh last week we started the first uh meeting and discussion on that uh we're going to try to come up with a footprint that that fits that makes sure that we don't deviate from side yard setbacks front yard setback very earth setback and we've already determined based on square footage of the property the maximum height that we will allow so we're starting to get a handle on it we're just working a little bit harder it does look like hardcover becomes an issue when you're looking on a 7 500 square foot lot or 10 000 square foot lots so that's the part we're working through now at this point this is kind of related and yet unrelated but the city of shorewood is um kind of going through our entire city code and reviewing the ordinances um and rather than doing that cover to cover we're reviewing them as hot topics come up and we're cleaning up language that may be um conflicting within our own code sections and cleaning up old antiquated concepts with more modern language and um i think it it will improve the way that we can treat variance requests and other requests more uniformly by cleaning up our code so that's that's one way the city of shorewood is addressing it i'll chime in one more thought a greenwood recently revised our code so properties are regulated based on lot size as opposed to a one size fits all everybody has to have a 15 foot side yard setback which doesn't work at all on our teeny tiny lots and we've got like many of the other lake cities but got a big mishmash of a lot sizes and i would say it's working pretty well to have this this uh lot size ordinance so to speak uh in reducing the amount of variances that we see or at least the severity of the variance requests question from the community regarding the lack of affordable housing there seems to be nowhere where in our seven cities for a single teacher with two children to be able to afford a home is there any movement towards more affordable housing in our area maybe i should jump in since we're the developing community here tonight like i said we we issued 153 new home new home permits um of course that's in addition to all the other permits but um having said that the problem that we have out here is our land is very expensive and to build out here is also expensive and so it's um it's difficult without some type of subsidies from the county or the state or the city to build affordable housing we do have in our city in our woodland cove development we do have some more reasonably priced townhomes that are coming that are online and so but i don't know if they would really qualify as affordable housing but if people if developers come out here to build they would need some kind of subsidies and we're just not in a position to subsidize that with our tax dollars so it would have to come from the state the med council or the county to do that we discussed this um at our for our doran project that came through and tonka bay is largely built out i mean so we're there's not a whole lot that we can do because we're not developing we're basically fully developed at this point um but this kind of gets back to the point that i i addressed briefly um and to some degree we we need to kind of put this back on uh those agencies that are pro providing the subsidies if that's that's the direction that they want to go then how do they best calculate that um you know because i i could see where um here if you have a median home value that's six hundred thousand dollars um but you want to provide an affordable purchase price and you subsidize that by 50 it's still a 300 000 home which i don't think really speaks to the spirit of what it is that we're trying to do because i think all that does is make it less expensive for a white collar you know middle management up and comer uh to live close to the lake and i don't think that's what we're going for and i it's it's a pickle i mean um i mean i i think it's something that we got to take a closer look at because it's it's affecting more than just us i mean it's it's everywhere uh prices are skyrocketing right now and we've got people living in camps uh over in the cities so um yeah it's it's it's something that is as a society we need to to embrace yeah quickly from excelsior you know i'll just weigh in you know that's been i think one of the challenges that you know we've kind of posed to staff and to the council you know internally is what can we do to help and you know it's been alluded to you know a small community less than uh you know mile uh you know a mile long and when you've got land you know just to buy the plot of land um at half a million dollars i mean you just can't you just can't play right but there are things that we can try to do and that's you know what we're exploring you know i referenced you know potential city hall project earlier on and we just had a presentation at our meeting on monday night um from an architect an organization uh we're one of the potential proposals and again we're way we're way early in the process but what they brought forward was a project that actually the city would design we would specify the spaces we need what we would like for town office city house city offices and then we would add on the back end of that the proposal that we saw was you could have 36 artist lofts and basically turn you know not only a city government office but have it run in conjunction with a kind of an art art studio artist loft type of location that would have very strict requirements in terms of people that would be able to rent those spaces uh they would need to be you know need to be artists uh they would need to have some type of of business but uh again early in the discussion but that's that's our challenge right it's that's our challenge as leaders is to try to find solutions um you know i do say in excelsior we 61 of our housing stock is apartments so you know we do have a lot of apartment living within our community but as it relates to affordable housing difficult to do and the challenge we need to try to embrace going forward i'll just make one more quick comment is that with affordable housing you also need good tran public transportation and we are sorely lacking public transportation especially out here in the very western side of hennepin county i i think it's very very difficult to have affordable housing when you don't have good public transportation that that's beside the dollar amount but that does play into the um issue as well yeah really good point so we've kind of come to the end of our questions for tonight but i guess i'll open it up is that if there's anyone um any one of the mayors who has a final um comment that they would like to make feel free to do that no all i'll say is i think tonight i failed because i was bold but i was not necessarily brief that's your first time we'll give you we'll give it to you i'd like to formally challenge all the mayors on the city of shorewood is it has entered a new contest it's called the wyland national mayor's challenge for water conservation and um the lmcc with the assistance of travis um and chris again we produced a commercial which will be posted on our city website soon it's it's a way that uh the mayors from all around the country challenge their residents to do a series of pledges to help conserve water bring awareness to water conservation and it's things as simple as like pledging to take shorter showers pledging to not water your lawn on days it's raining so it's a way that we're going to attempt to interact with our residents um and see where we stand the challenge actually occurs in the month of april so you want your residents to sign up in the month of april and then the city that has the most residents per capita sign up wins and they're divided into different categories so the the link to that will be on our website or wyland national mayor challenge i'll just make the my final comment is you know i want to say thank you to the league and again thank you to each of the mayors that are participating uh this evening it's a pleasure to serve with you for any residents that are watching or have tuned in tonight you know just that the invitation is always to reach out right i mean we're all public servants i'm not going to speak for everybody here but certainly for the city of excelsior if you have an issue if you have a concern reach out uh we're always happy to listen you know we're trying to do our best uh maybe you know as you heard earlier tonight with the parking do we get everything right you know maybe not but uh you have our commitment to listen and and try to do what's what's right for the community so again thank you for allowing uh certainly the city of excelsior participate and again thank you to my fellow mayors uh for all your support in the south lake i'll just say thank you as well and um this is a good demonstration as to how diverse all of our communities are and yet we have a lot in common and that commonality can help us be better mayors and i've learned a lot this evening um some wonderful great ideas that you've shared and i really appreciate it so thank you for doing that thank you again for all of um all of your participation i know you kind of get the same questions over and over again sometimes but you know um i think that um the answers you're coming up with are like way better on point and they're in the more collaborative so i think that's really uh what really impresses me about all of you um and um how you represent your city so um the collaboration i think is really outstanding and i think that you're all really trying to do the best you can for the people that you serve thanks again um it was apprecia i appreciate always appreciate seeing all of you i think it's really fun to you know even though it's once a year it's always fun to see see everybody and what you're up to so thank you again from the league