I just was so excited. My my mother was director of a school for uh children with autism when I was growing up. Um and my daughter was an inclusion specialist for many years and my mother-in-law Many of the members of my husband's family worked with adults and children with special needs. And I have friends uh with children with autism. And this is just the most exciting thing ever. And I know that there are so many families that will benefit from this...

division staff associated with the specific type of assessment have notified or worked with property owner owners regarding the associated work to be financed by the city. Notices were mailed after the August 10th council meeting which set the public hearing for tonight. And then property owners will be given 30 days to pay for their or partially pay for assessments interest free as of tonight.

So a jewelry store itself does not require any special permitting as long as it's located in a retail uh zoned area. So that's not the part that requires your permission. Your permission is to have uh kind of a secondhand transaction. So they're buying gold or other precious metals and being uh paying the customer for trading those um different metals into the business.

My name is Aaron Walla. I'm here with my wife Liz and my mother Jill. We're all uh Minnesota natives. I grew up in Lynen Hills. I'm an army veteran, an engineer, a tool and die maker, and uh and a craftsman. And I I love working on new new and old jewelry. And so part of the reason for this license is so I can restore and and bring back to life old antique jewelry.

Uh that actually reduces the levy from last year from 300 to 225. So that is a reduction.

Reinvestment and replacement, maintenance and increased efficiency of existing of exist existing systems will have priority over expansion of of existing systems or provision of new facilities and services.

I just want to thank staff for aggressively going after money to help keep our um capital improvement um costs down to the taxpayer here in Minnetonka. and um all of the hard work that went into um really keeping our capital improvement um program uh very steady and without any sharp increases.

while it seems like we don't have a lot of questions or comments about it, we have flushed through a lot of this um by rolling up our sleeves and working with staff to make sure that our priorities are aligned with what we see here on these documents tonight.

health insurance uh as noted in a previous study session that was estimated to be at 24%. Uh we I think as noted staff uh did go out for bids on that... We had favorable bids uh at around 12%. So while 12% is still double digits, um we're excited that uh where we were 2 months ago at 24% is now at 12%.

Honestly, this is not the time to be expanding. This is not the time to take on new initiatives when your citizens I am struggling with increased fuel costs, grocery costs, and cutting in every aspect of our lives... Last year in December, I stood before you and the recommendation from one of our council members was for me to get a second job or to get a higher paying job to live in the city. Well, all right. I went out. I got a second job. I make$,575 at my second job. That doesn't even come close to covering the property increase levy for this next year.

I think you know your the comments about you know 3% plus uh being for ongoing you know kind of maintenance of of current services. Um but that the understanding of the need for things like facilities improvements and public safety. Indeed, the bulk of the remaining um levy increase up to that 6.4 were was indeed for public safety master plan and for the facilities um improvement. We don't have big initiatives going on right now.

our public safety master plan um did point out that because we are a city of culde-sacs and we don't have through streets, no matter how fast our paid on call firefighters could get to the station, the only way that we could improve our response times was by hiring full-time fire staff and keeping my residents alive is kind of like the floor for me.

This is a preliminary levy. This we cannot go higher. We can go lower. We're always looking to sharpen our pencils. I I'm uncomfortable with raising the levy every year. It's a very difficult decision... I'm not satisfied until December when we pass this final levy.

preemption is, uh, a legal principle that holds that a higher level of government can pass a law that either restricts or prohibits lower levels of government from regulating in that area.

Minnesota statute 471.633 633 states...that the legislature, the state legislature, preempts all authority of a home rule charter city...to regulate firearms, ammunition, or their respective components to the complete exclusion of any order, ordinance, or regulation by them, except that a city can adopt the same regulations as a state, identical regulations.

I think the resolution uh path um allows the city or a city to advocate for specific policy positions. It can function as a policy statement to um the state and federal government and um does not carry the same risk of of uh a legal challenge.

If the state isn't going to take action and there is preeemption in terms of what the cities can do a resolution seems like uh an important thing to do. um because it does make a statement about what the city is looking for. Um and that is important. Um I've worked in the field of prevention and if you look back in the field of prevention, we have a state law now that uh for tobacco use uh you need to be 21 years old rather than 18. But that started by cities taking action.