you know at first I I was taken a little back by the large corporate businesses but and you know I reflected on it a lot and thinking about um Opus and office space and the major impact of losing something you know even just the UHD building being vacated is such a substantial Financial impact that then trickles down significantly so I really um I think this is good and I think it helps us meet all of the other goals in the plan.

it that kind of stood out to me um focusing on large corporate businesses um just was curious about the word does that leave small smaller businesses um is why could it be more of inclusive for all businesses versus large businesses it singles out to me it singles out large businesses.

this specific issue again trying to be very focused on what we were talking about here that's not like we don't have programming for smaller businesses or have uh any kind of efforts for smaller businesses is that continues uh to be done doesn't mean we're not doing the business survey we're going to be doing that we're going to be hearing from people uh all the Outreach is the same but what is different here is you have a strategic uh plan to pay attention to what's happening with your larger Corporation so you don't end up with some of this this large office space being vacant.

I work in downtown St Paul that is in desperate need of revitalization and you really see what happens when large companies um leave and um you know watching the tax capacity of different sectors in our in our taxes start sucking up the burden of um you know losing commercial value and so forth in within City boundaries and so to you know to remain a strong vital city um that's something that I specifically brought up in the group.

I think this is somewhat unique to see a focus on large corporate businesses but I think given where we've been and um you know the last five years um um having focus on this not at the expense of our entire business Community but to say you know what these large businesses in minaka and and we are fortunate to have a number of you know um you know some of the largest companies in the country are headquartered in minaka and uh that's fortunate but then when you think about um all of the employees that live in the region... it would have a huge impact on our community and so I think it's kind of unique to specifically highlight um large businesses.

My only concern is is that I've heard from residents who are between 80 maybe 115% Ami you know kind of that little housing range and um so just see if there's way keep Ane on we have a couple 15 so just um I don't know if it has to be a specific goal or something here I know we're trying to limit but just would like to you know kind of be mindful that as well difficult for our young professionals.

I want to make sure that we don't forget about deeply affordable housing as well 30% yeah yeah yeah thank you both extremes yeah exactly exactly well got it.

I mean it was about how do you measure that it wasn't measurable and we weren't we were struggling with how to gain Clarity on how to deal with that as a desired outcome I think people feel that way I'm not saying that I'm not discounting that as an issue I think there's a lot of balancing that you all do as decision makers and it's hard and maybe you would like a path that leads you to an easy answer sometimes but I I just not sure that's measurable.

I think I totally hear you know what Dub's saying I thinking back to kind of what Craig talked to us about and having something very quantifiable um that balance piece I think is harder to you know if we look at that the original language I think it's pretty difficult to um really be able to check that box you know if we're really looking at how our report's going to come out when we're we're looking at how we're doing on this progress I think it be tough.

we've used diverse housing types is my recollection and we use that terminology not because we wanted such diverse housing types we felt that that was a tool to help move us toward getting more affordable housing and you know varying price points and things like that so I'm comfortable with this because I think by putting the metrics against um delivery of preservation of um um increasing affordable housing units it it says it more explicitly and I think that um we're we're still interested in diverse housing types but that is really a tool to get to the end and the end is laid out in the in the Target here.

I hear what everyone's saying and I do agree that this is more measurable and I just you know it was just an observ that certain things go silent and so then the onus is on staff and us to you know pay attention to the things that are implied and not spelled out.

the idea is we have these recommendations from Zone Co and there's more conversation to have about that and there a number of things that this Council may have an appetite may come from the public process to say we not only we're not just doing this to get it better organized we're doing it to determine what we need what changes we need to make to advance it get it better organized and more user friendly that would kind of be the purp am am I analyzing that correctly.

I'm wondering when is it where Council will be able to give input about like the specific recommendations that zono made and things that maybe we would like to see that they didn't include or vice versa.

I was hoping you could help me understand understand some of the timing in this and I'm sure there's a good reason but I'm just as a new member um hoping to understand um we have a comp plan rewrite that's coming in a few years and so can you explain or help me understand the logic of having the zoning before that versus after that or concurrently.

the 2050 plan of the Met council is actually not even out for digestion yet so um the the population projections just came out um employment uh projections just came out and until that gets adopted and solidified by the Met Council cities don't write their comp plan because we don't know what we're abiding by there's no Regional guidance at this point for the next evolution of plans that will come and by 2027 we'll have that I think though what's happening is there's a pressure to update your zoning codes to kind of prepare for some of those changes that might be inevitable maybe it's the lot size issue it's density it's whatever whatever issue you're you know kind of hearing about so I think that's I would say yeah it would make more sense to do the comp plan first and then do a Zing ordinance later but it pressures are such that we need to move forward sooner.

so if if we do all these things for $200,000 over the next couple of years and then they come out with you know then we're going to start doing a comp plan um can we change the zoning then absolutely yep so then that seems to me to be redundant and that would go that would go that would mean we would do option one and then after we um when we're doing the comp plan we would go to option three because then that would chop it up right.

if we wait I mean let's be clear the comp plan process starts in 2017 we will not approve it until close to I mean 2027 close to 2030 we whoever the Wii is that's here at that time so then we're we're talking if we wait right so to me that's that's not going to cut it I don't think um so my inclination one is to go with option one because I think it's cleaner I think there's um I think if you do option three what you're doing is creating a lot of tension repeatedly.

if you need to have um something different or enhanced for the Southwest Light Rail remember that that is supposed to start operating in 20127 so you don't want uses to start developing a lot Ong the line which they already are um and then be coming in after the fact because then you're just dealing with lawful non-conforming uses you want to get ahead of the game on the things that you know need to be addressed...if you go through this process now and you have it completely Rewritten when you come to your comprehensive plan everybody that's on staff is going to be very familiar with everything in the code and they bring that into the comprehensive plan process.

I do feel like the do redoing our zoning it sort of provides definitions for things that I think um if there's Clarity in our code that's applied to the comp plan not necessarily the other way around and so I you know just I think there can be a lot of clarity provided that will help guide the comp plan and we've always been able to change zoning no matter we can always change zoning no matter when we do our cop plan.

this is a new approach for a sub suburban community to be kind of venturing into this realm it's generally held by the county and um we're leading these efforts in terms of suburban communities so um I think that's something to be proud of as a community.

by having an ordinance that would allow us instead of you know know just immediate criminalization it would allow us to in ordinance Place uh Outreach as a stepbystep process rather than perhaps later in the future tiket an immediate citation or jail or fine right and so by doing this I just wanted to clarify that right that's we're looking to avoid criminalizing or some future iteration of a council criminalizing um homelessness or people experiencing homelessness right without having the Outreach measures that we already put in place as policy we want to put them formally into ordinance is that correct.

I would say it makes sense to have written policy I don't know if it necessarily needs to be an ordinance but I mean I could be convinced... full disclosure I signed on to an amicus brief in the grants Grants Pass case um so supporting the plaintiff so not thrilled with the Supreme Court decision and um because I mean I understand the the reason that the Supreme Court gave but this is criminalization of homelessness they didn't pass this ordinance because residents were camping in the Parks it was passed specifically to to make to not have homelessness in their city and rather than addressing the root causes of homelessness it's just we don't want to see it we don't want to deal with it go somewhere else I cannot get on board with that so I would not support any sort of policy where that's what we do.

for me um I would support a policy but not an ordinance um far as the criminalization of um being homeless um I think that's barking up the wrong tree for me um if you get a call that someone's homeless whether it's ordinance in place or a policy in place we wouldn't we do the same steps or we wouldn't.

you only approved a pilot program with his house it's not a permanent program... while we have internal ways of handling things you haven't publicly kind of come out and said how you're as a city wanting to handle this and so it's really kind of that public facing this is the way we're going to handle this in the city and everybody understands what the council wants.

this is a real dilemma and those of you that haven't had it happen in your ward don't I mean we don't have an encampment but I've had some homeless issues and it is it's really a dilemma um and the City Works really hard to get services and sometimes people and and and this is not you know an excuse I mean it's a real thing that people decline the services and you are left in a little bit of a conundrum and you know I will tell you that bwell Park is this close I think to having this issue.

I work in downtown St Paul in City Hall in the belly of the beast in the middle of our capital city and um homelessness has so many um just brings so many challenges the challenges that the mayor talked about and also real challenges about keeping a city vital and trying to attract people to engage in Commerce and Daily Business and the things they need to do because when you go when I walk to my office from my car or as I drive you know to where I park my car you know there really are encampments there are a lot of tents along the the sidewalk and it it right by Excel Center and I understand why the people are there but to the mayor's Point um you can't run a city with homeless people in tents on your sidewalks and if they refuse help... we need we need those tools in the tool box and I think that we need at least a written policy.

I think we all agree that we don't want to criminalize homelessness homelessness is homelessness is a tragedy and we want to we want to work at solving homelessness not not criminalizing it but at the same time we need tools in the toolbox... when those Solutions are are refused and there is a risk to the public and a risk to the people in that encampment we need the ability to do something that's my personal personal belief it's not turn you into a criminal first it's you are choosing to be criminalized because you've refused all other interventions to me that's a type of ordinance that I could support.

the intention of the dashboard is not it wasn't really made to be like public on the website or whatever it's really for you all to understand all of the work that's going on in housing in one place and and I'll tell you keep this link handy we'll keep updating it we'll keep improving it we'll add different tabs that sort of things so you can always have access to this I know you're asked housing questions constantly.

we had a lot of success so we have about 266 registered and we've been sending out uh various Communications to our landlords and also just recently started a newsletter that goes out to all multifam buildings for their tenants so it's kind of like informing the the landlords of things that we're offering in the community so that's been great we had a great open rate right did you see that yes incredible is that crazy 65% I think it was and then click click through click they actually read it or looked at it yeah that was pretty incredible.

I'm wondering so so with the rental registry are you getting a lot of um like Airbnb and verbo type um registrations and can and is there a way to tell if it's like owner occupied or if someone is like has bought a building and is just doing Airbnb around.

I had a question on how many folks got permanent housing from his house I know that um you know you served them but how many folks actually um went into permanent housing after like hotel stay.

I wanted to know I had mentioned this to um Mike too about how do we um increase the number of um bipac um folks getting into those um homes purchasing homes through the pathway program and then is there is there a way we could try to look at making sure that people are Weare maybe... they said KY $75,000 is not really enough um how about $100,000.

we put it on this is an interesting way that people find out about it it's on every lender's um I don't know module I guess when they look at programming for certain cities it actually comes up on their module um that they type into you know first-time home buyer uh you know what kind of programming what city what city what income level what's this and it pops out what every city has it falls into those parameters wherever they're they're looking for a home so that's automatic now.

there is this perception problem that we have and and to your point that might have to do with the race issue so so are people of color looking for minetonka as one of their choices of places to live probably not because they think it's unattainable and so then they're not applying they're not looking here that sort of thing so that's a kind of a problem I think we have just on a basic LEL there's just a perceptual challenge.

the challenge that poses a little bit for me and staff is when we go to those conferences and we get those ideas that are being generated just when those come back how do we process those because really I think from a staff perspective and I I say staff more so myself because I chat with you all about kind of post conference debrief and and you're sharing with me some of the things the sessions you've attended some of the things you've learned some of the things that might benefit motanka and it starts to become kind of a bigger list of things that we could be doing and should be considering.

I'm just wondering if there is you know because because we all send you th those things separately is there a system or a process that that you felt would be H helpful for you or staff for us to share are there sort of recurring you know like are there sort of recurring challenges the way people are expressing it or patterns things that happen over and over that um specifically you want to us to try to problem solve a little bit tonight.

if we each came back with 10 ideas U and five of us went to the conference that's 50 ideas that's that's overwhelming and unfair for staff but I I'm wondering if maybe we could have a a bit of a discipline and say okay I'm going to share things with staff that I think they should know about that I got to the conference but I'm only going to the most I will share is three I might have 10 good ideas the most I'm gonna the most I'm going to share is three and then I think if Mike wanted to take that list no more than three from each of us and share it with us because then it's a then it's public then then we you know we could say okay well let's rate these and you know maybe create fodder for a a um we could either provide feedback to Mike via email or we could um but not not reply all but but um or or we could say okay now we've got some direction given to Mike from some of these good ideas.

I would be excited to hear because we all go to different sessions and there is an opportunity to get some information I would say kind of that information you know get it to Mike Mike can collate you know somebody can collate it and if we have interest so say there's a list of 10 ideas we can vote yeah right in Charter on but let's show some restraint let's not pick our top three if we only like one then let's only pick one and say I would like to consider this and that can go on our study session list unless there's something Mike says should we consider escalating this but then it can go on our study session list and in in December or January we can decide is this still a good idea do we want to talk about it this year so I think some being deliberate I'd like to get the information I love to hear ideas and then seeing if there's a general consensus to want to hear more talk about it more and then filtering it through the other things we've asked staff to address on an annual basis I think helps us keep focused on not just like a whacka moole of ideas.

I think if we're going to continue to go to the count um conferences I've know since I've been on a council I've been to a lot of conferences and my phone is full of information I don't always give it you know I don't always give the information over I'm guilty of that but I I think if we're going to be I started thinking about this I'm like we are really spending taxpayer money going to these conferences and I don't hear us to I I know I BR it up I don't hear us talking about it enough and if we're going to continue to do this like we probably should be putting it out there in public that we are discussing and we are trying to do something with the information that we're y getting so.

I like the idea of having a template I think that we discussed that something that goes out either in advance or right after um conferences... I liked I think I heard mention of is that having uh maybe not holding everything till the end of the year um somehow having discussion whether it's at study sessions like these were things that Rose you know that are being talked about whether at conferences or are just coming in from our residents that were're passing along and then maybe some of us are having the same ideas that you know we can go but it would be helpful for Me Maybe as a as a newer uh member also to understand you know that I'm not in isolation and some of my things that I'm thinking of that other people are having these ideas or hearing these things from residents as well and in a form like this this is maybe a 15 20 minute discussion on in our study sessions where some of that can rise to the top so it's not like a hurry up at the end in December and and try to you know put this all together.