[Music] Heat. Heat. Good evening. Are we ready? No. Y Okay. Well, we're going to we're going to we're going to get we're going to start we're going to get done with this as quickly as we can. So, uh welcome. Tonight is Monday, May 19th, 2025. This is a special study session of the Minnitonka City Council. Um we're here to talk about um uh the the genesis of this meeting was our previous meeting when we considered um um off leash dogs and Purgatory Park and other things. And so, uh, we agreed at the suggestion of one or more council members that we would, uh, come together to, um, review some alternatives. This is a study session, so there's a couple things that will and will not happen. Uh, we will discuss things tonight as a council. We will hear from the staff. Um, in study sessions, there is no public comment. So, if you are planning to comment to the council, that will not happen tonight. Um, the second thing is no decisions will be be made tonight. We will review these and um um we will um indicate preferences and direction but no decisions because that can't be made in a study session that has to happen in a regular council meeting. So just to set that tone um and uh indic set expectations. I want to share that with you and then with that I will call this meeting to order and um I will uh we will do um should we do roll call or should we just go around and do introductions? I I think we do introductions, Mayor. That's kind our standard practice. All right. I'll tell you what. We're going to We'll start on my right with Council Member Kley Ky. And then we'll go around and then staff will introduce themselves. All right. Good evening, Council Member Member Kley. Ward four. Rebecca Shack. W two. Paty Foster Bolton. Ward One. Brad Wam. Mayor Paula. W three. Kimberly Wilbur at large. Deb Calbertt at large. Scott Borman, police chief. Mike Funk, city manager. Eric Nelson, city attorney. Leslie Etka, natural resources manager, public works. Matt Kuma, park and trail project manager. Will Manchester, public works director. Rachel Man, patrol captain, police. Thank you very much. And if this were being held in the mini haha room, normally we'd go around and ask all the audience for their names. We're going to save um time and not do that tonight. So, uh, welcome everyone. So, um, the one business item we have on our agenda tonight is, um, off leash dog strategy and guidance plan. And, uh, we're going to hear from Mr. Funk, Mike Funk. We're going to hear from Matt Kuma, and then, um, we've got some other, um, facts that we'll go through and then, uh, we will bring it back to council for discussion. So, Mike, take it away. Yeah, thank you, Brad and council. Good evening. I I know for our audience, uh, we are less formal, so I know we call each other by first name, so thank you, Brad. Uh just to tee it up, uh I'm going to turn it over to Matt Ka here in a second. He has a presentation that he'll go through many of the the information you've seen before, but it does incorporate some things that um that we've talked about in the last well since our last meeting and then gotten feedback from council. So hopefully in our presentation and then in the staff report, you um were able to see that some of that newer information that was assembled. And I think from a staff perspective and as council I've talked to you throughout today that our goal tonight is really to try to build some consensus around some of these next steps. And so I you'll see that woven into Matt's presentation and really by the end of tonight uh as we build consensus layout then what some next steps could look like. And so depending on how far we get with building consensus we can we can move pretty quickly. Uh there's also some options in uh later on the as we close things out to then look even further out. Um if we aren't able to get quite to where we need to get be um hopefully staff and council as a team will work through some of that and and get to a pretty good landing spot tonight. Um and then mayor I think one of the things that we had talked about that um tonight again is a study session. We do not have any uh anything built into the regular meeting. So, there's nothing that we're anticipating coming by way of action for the council in tonight's 6:00 regular meeting. So, whatever happens tonight will be direction for staff and then uh hopefully we'll end today with some of that next steps and timelines regarding that. So, with that, I'd like to turn over to Matt and we'll jump right into tonight's presentation. Thank you, Matt. Good evening. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council. Hold on. Turning the mic on. Good evening. We can hear you better now. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council. So, for tonight, I'm going to skip uh stick to the script as much as possible. So, some options for next steps regarding the off leash dog areas in the city of Minnitonka. Um this was in the staff report packet. So, does the council have a preference on any of the following options. Option one, adopt the current strategy plan, including the Purgatory Park recommendations. That would be the staff recommendation. Option B, adopt the current strategy plan, including park purgatory park recommendations as amended by the park board recommendation. And I'll get into more particulars there. Option C, adopt a strategy plan as determined by you, the council discussion tonight on preferred size and locations in Purgatory Park. or an option D, hire a consultant to develop a comprehensive offle strategy, including re-evaluating Purgatory Park and all other city parks with additional public engagement and park planning efforts as needed. This would be approximately an 18-month effort. Also, some next steps, potential next steps for ordinance enforcement. How should the city proceed with the next steps for the amended ordinance? Option A, law enforcement declared that they will temporarily not issue citations for a violation of section 1135.020 subdivision 1D. Recognizing the complexity of this issue, one option is to pause issuing citations for this particular ordinance. This temporary pause applies only to subdivision 1D. Citations will still be issued for other parts of the new ordinance, including, but not limited to, allowing a dog under your control to h park park visitors or employees or to interfere with a visitor's property or failure to clean up and dispose of dog feces in a sanitary manner. Option B would be set a new effective date requiring two meeting cycles or at least 7 days apart, example, June 9th, June 23rd. or option C, enforce the ordinances in effect on May 19th, 2025 tonight, which prohibited off leash dogs entirely within the city. So, in advance of this study session, we sent to the council a mentter survey. This is a brief summary of those results. We'll get into more specifics at the end of the presentation. Um, off leash dogs, according to the council responding to the mentometer, we got seven responses. off leash dogs should be allowed in Purgatory Park. That there was an 11 to 20 acre preferred option, at least 6 to 10 acres as a minimum, and up to 40 plus acres allowed. That no dogs should be in areas of highquality habitat, leashed or unleashed. Both hard and soft barriers are appropriate to separate off leash dogs from other park users. Most preferred a mix of both, and I'll get into more particulars again. If other parks are considered in the future, most want more acreages in purgatory initially and that would be 11 to 20 acres or more preferred and at least 6 to 10 acres as a minimum. So that would be initially in Purgatory Park with an evolution in the future potentially. So a little background um Purgatory Park was identified as the best location for immediate consideration of development of off leash areas. This is following the Purgatory Park master planning process and those ordinance kick in uh today, May 19th, 2025. The staff recommendation included two areas using some established criteria and input from a community workg group. We acknowledge that there are impacts to highquality natural areas in our proposed areas and that it does deviate from the guidance in the natural resources master plan, the post plan and purgatory park master plans. We attempt to incorporate the areas in the park that are existing high use of the dog community based on feedback and we acknowledge that this is much less of the park than has been used in the past for off leash dogs in purgatory in particular. So the staff recommendation for purgatory is 13 to 18 acres in total. It uses both hard and soft barriers to separate off leash dogs from other park users. It is not generally adjacent to residential property. there is a trail or significant topography in between. Um we would as roll out of this process um identify locations and appropriate signage and updated amenities for dog waste and trash and that it's limited mostly to lower quality or degraded habitat but it is as I acknowledge in some highquality areas. So, according to the NRMP, and I'll get into more particulars later, um the area one and area two in the staff recommendation contains approximately 3 acres of NRMP identified highquality area. And you can see on that figure there, the red um dense line is the high quality area. We also have um habitat quality B on there, but really we'd like for you to focus on habitat quality A, which is three acres here. Um we took this um off leash strategy to the park board and they had some updated amended and um further refined recommendations. So using the purgatory park master plan they had us update a figure based on this master plan concept that was adopted by the council last fall. And um essentially the map on the right with those red areas is where dogs were not allowed off leash last year when the plan was adopted. We've taken that figure and and created a new one, the one on the left with the pink areas and set aside those areas 1 to five and the various acreages that um were recommended by the park board. The park board recommends 92 to 124 acres of purgatory. Um, it generally follows this one particular page in the Purgatory Park master plan. It would require primarily hard barriers along the main trails and it is adjacent to some residential properties. Um, the total highquality habitat in the parkboard recommendation is approximately 11 acres. Some additional considerations. Um, keep in mind that Purgatory Park is 155 acres in total. Um the staff recommended size is 13.3 to 18 acres and it's uh 8.5 to 11.6% of the park. The park board recommend um which is essentially the map from the park purgatory park master plan is 92 to 124 acres. It's 59.4 to 80% of the park. Um 47 acres within Purgatory Park are city inventoried wetlands. That's about 30% of the park. Area four, which is in the northeast corner, includes uh what we call the red barn site. And area five in the northwest corner, is heavily dense with invasive species and brush. Both of those areas are 8 to 11 acres or so, um 5 to 7% of the park. Some additional considerations that came out of the workg group was how would we identify additional park areas moving forward that there would be large community parks and smaller neighborhood parks that could potentially um be used to accommodate off leash areas that we would ideally um distribute off leash areas throughout the city. Um, we have a park master planning effort in place where we we go through and we identify a list of parks and apply master planning standards to them and coordinate community outreach. Um, we did the community work group did identify potential off leash areas in some of the parks to be included in the in the master planning process. Those being Big Willow, Lone Lake, Civic Center, and Grotona. They also identified a variety of parks that are not scheduled for master plans, but the park board did request that staff come with three additional park concepts at an upcoming meeting. So, we we will be developing concepts for additional off leash areas and delivering those to the park board. In the staff report packet, we created this matrix. There's a lot going on on this slide. Apologies for that. But what we did was we selected the top criteria out of the work group. So there was a variety of criteria. These were sorted through voting in the community workg group to be um some of the most important ones. Um and we generally ranked the areas as identified in the park board recommendation areas one to five from left to right. Um areas to our staff area um had ended up meeting four of those particular criteria. The park board's area two met four of those criteria and area one recommended by the staff met four of those criteria as well. Um in the report and in previous presentations we've um compiled comparable city data. Um overall surrounding comparable communities have a 7.9 acre average of off leash areas. This excludes the seasonal hockey rinks that are used as dog parks and the Woodberry site which is 70 plus acres and a bit of an outlier. Um the average of the Three Rivers off leash areas is 19.1 and these come with a partnership between that city and Three Rivers that owns and operates those particular off leash areas. So some useful surrounding information. Um a little bit more particulars about the hard and soft barrier concept for the conversation. So hard barriers are true fencing. I included this picture. That's my in-laws dog there. Um this is the Bryant Lake off leash dog park. Um owned and operated by the Three Rivers Parks District. That particular fence I find um sort of disappears in the landscape to some degree. Um through Mr. Manchester's help, we identified some costing through the Three River Park District staff at about $30 to $40 a linear foot. So to full fully enclose the staff recommended area one would be 90,000 to $130,000 to fully enclose that with a fence shown in this picture here. Soft barriers would be a way to keep dogs away from other park users. So these would include natural barriers such as a far sight line, a wetland, uh topography or general screening vegetation. And these, I want to stress, would rely on the park user understanding and respect for the rules of that park and appropriate signage to establish those sign those soft barriers. So, I'd like to turn it back over to Mr. Funk. Mike. All right. Thank you, Brad. Uh uh as uh Matt mentioned earlier, I just want to go back to the more of the details of the mentometer because I think what I'm going to try to do is I close out the last remaining slides is then turn it back over to you for conversation and to really try to build some consensus around I think these questions which will help frame up what some of those future net next steps could look like. Um so first off going back to uh the first question on the mentter, should off leash dogs be allowed in Purgatory Park? I know that sounds like a softball question, but I think it's just a good starting point just to make sure that you as a council all agree that yes, we want to have off leash dogs at Purgatory. So, seven of you said yes. Uh that that is correct. That yes, they should be. And by the way, these are anonymous. So, when we ask the council for their input, we don't know uh in the next questions who who's on answering these. Uh next question, please. And this is I'm going to turn this over to the mayor here in a second because I think this is the one question that probably needs a little more um um time for you as a council to provide clarity. And that is based on question one uh if yes, how many acres should be designated for off leash use? One council member said 6 to 10, three said 11 to 20, one 21 to 40, and two at 40 plus. Um, and so for I think for in staff's opinion for for the city to get really honed in on Purgatory Park, you as a council should provide some clear direction, do some consensus discussion around what is that acreage at Purgatory. And so at this point, Mayor or Brad, before I go through the next part of the slides or maybe I go through the next slides and we can come back to this one. Yeah, let's do that. Right. Um, if yes, dogs either leased, leashed, or unleashed should be allowed in highquality habitat areas. Well, seven of you said no, that's you shouldn't do that. And so, I think again that's very clear direction uh for these next steps as we look to hone in on acres. And I think Brad, you had mentioned even at one of the last study sessions on this, it's really tonight's exercise is how many acres and where. And so this does help with that wear part is if we're saying you as a council are saying from a matter of public policy, we do not want leashed or unleashed dogs in high quality habitat areas. That goes back to Matt's presentation on identifying those high priority areas. How many acres are there and where are they in the park? So then we can start to again filter down on some of those lower quality areas. Next slide please. If yes, what is the preferred fencing? So again question to the council is do you prefer soft fencing, hard fencing or perhaps a combination of both? Uh majority have said both and I would assume that probably also depends on circumstances uh of what should or shouldn't be considered for hard or soft. I would submit that the next steps of this would further identify that and flush that out and I'll come back to you on what those next next steps look like. But at least for today's discussion right now, uh there is a um a willingness to look at both hard and soft fencing. Next question please. So then as Matt talked about, there is um a recommendation that came from the park board asking staff to look at other areas in the city and council, you've said the same. And so the the kind of the question to you was if other areas are identified in the next 6 12 18 months. Again it'll take some time for that to get um again flushed out between our staff and working with the park board. We hope it's closer to 6 months than 18 months but kind of giving you a sense of in the next time frame should there be more acreage initially allowed in purgatory until a transition plan is adopted? Um again majority have said yes that yes that's a possibility and and let's take a look at that. So that feeds us into the next slide which is if so then how many acres beyond those should be designated for off leash uh 6 to 10 2 11 to 23 council 21 to 40 and 40 + 1 um there was an NA because the previous question was if you go back to the previous question if five said yes two said no ideally then the two nos wouldn't have voted in this or provided feedback back one did and someone um provided a comment or picked picked a selection. So that's why there's a discrepancy in there. Um I think that's the end of the slides. So that gives you council a sense of where kind of all of you landed in that maybe then to go back uh Brad to the previous slide or if we go back to that previous slide. I'm sorry the second question. Keep going. Keep going. There we go. There we are. It would seem from staff's perspective this is one that maybe uh warrants a little conversation on your part on where where you as a council uh feel or what you think I should say feel what you think it would be appropriate number of acres for purgatory and maybe turn it back over to you to start there and then I'll finish out with a couple other slides. All right. Well, we um looking at the staff report, we have some discussion questions here and um I mean the first one was a softball question. And I think we we all agree we don't have to spend much time talking about should off leash dogs be allowed in Purgatory Park. Um and the the answer to that was unanimously yes. So uh um I think we don't have to spend much time but but then then we get into kind of the money question is um um you know I mean the the the remaining questions are you know okay how many acres and kind of when because I think there is a time element here that has been introduced that we we said that maybe the rule should be different in the near term versus the long term. So, you know, any So, I'm just uh interested in people's thoughts on um uh on the rationale and and uh you know, how to how to build consensus around um the facts that we have um based upon the mentter voting, if you will. So, anyone if any would like to comment, uh feel free to do so. Gizzy, thank you, mayor. I would say um for me it's um if we have 11 to 20 acres, I'm okay with that. But um if we're going to wait 18 months and we're going to look for other space and other parks, I'm willing to say, "Yeah, we could have 40 plus acres." Um because I think if we plan on to pull some acres back once we identify other places and other parks, I think that makes sense. But if we're going to take extended amount of time um to find the places, I guess um longer than the 18 months, then it's like maybe we should limit it to 11 20 11 to 20 acres. Um, I'm okay. That's kind of where I stand at on it. But if we're going to have the 40 plus acres, is there somewhere in the park where we don't have that um like the savannah and areas where it's not um going to farther damage, you know, erosion to the um the natural spaces. So, that's kind of where I'm at. If we can find that 40 plus acres in a space where we're not going to farther increase the natural space. So Rebecca, thank Kimberly. Oh, I couldn't see the light. So, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. Um, you know, I kind of backed into this question in, you know, I think there's consensus here about the high value natural resource area and, you know, I've talked with a lot of people over the last week and kind of all the stakeholders and I think there's a consensus even among the stakeholders that um, taking the high value natural resources off the table is a concession that is reasonable. And so, you know, for me, I start by backing that out. And I, you know, I had a thought and I shared this with Mike that I think purgatory is big enough to be a little bit of something for a lot of people. So, there's really the high value natural resource. I think, you know, there's opportunity for a fairly significant size um off leash area where folks can really walk trails with their dogs. And then I frankly, you know, we've got unused land as well. And whatever that if that's for the dogs or if that's an opportunity to give people who really have concerns about dogs a place where they can walk without dogs being present, you know, that may be an opportunity there as well. So, you know, I I think 40 is a lot. I thought the category I would have wrote wrote the categories differently but you know in my mind I was kind of in a between 20 to 30 acres knowing kind of what the topography was and from a permanent perspective. So have that be and as we you know develop something maybe we've we increase that for the time being and then as we develop more we we retract and kind of have a we're going to arrive at this final destination. So, um I'm less hung up on how many acres it is though and more focused on where the right opportunity and you know I recognize that I should say with some sa some safety precautions as well because I think I'm I'm very concerned about the safety but I think we can do it. So that's where that's where I'm at. I'm at the 20 to 30 acres probably. And then I'm going to go to Kimberly and then and then Paty. Um yeah, similar to where Rebecca is. So I think to to Kissy's point. So my understanding like this is how much for the permanent and then the later question is if we if we add on more we decide that later. Um, so I I answered 11 to 20. I'll I'll break the anonymity. 11 to 20. Um, that falls in line with the with the amount that staff had recommended. And when I took the minty, only four had answered. And so two of us had said 11 to 20 and two people had said 40 plus. So I thought, oh, well, maybe we can meet in the middle at around 30. Um, so I would be okay with going up to 30 if we can find the right areas that are not impacting the the um the high quality areas or the wetlands or you know all the environmental concerns. So yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. And then Paty, thank you Brad. Um the the one thing that that kept occurring to me is and I I'll break it to to 11 to 20 because I was wondering is this I know that if if it is 40 acres or even 30 acres are we going to have it in other parks as well and that seems like a lot of acreage for one city to have um off leash dog areas. Um, and that was my concern and that was one of the things that I was thinking about um, when I answered this question like does this mean that we're going to, you know, like what does that mean in terms of, you know, 11 to 20 acres in in all the parks to to me? I would not vote for that. You know what I mean? So, um I could I could live with 11, you know, I guess 20 to 30 based on, you know, not high quality areas and safety, but also I think um I wouldn't I I don't want to have that in all the parks and and we need to figure that out. And I think I think the scope of the question here is we're really talking about Purgatory Park. There are other things that will happen down the line, but let's not try and solve all the problems tonight or we're not going to get and we're not going to get anywhere. I think we should focus on Purgatory Park. Those other parks will influence things. Then if that's the case, then I would stick with 11 to 20. Very good. And then Paula. Yeah. Thank you. Um, Brad, I guess I have a couple of of questions and then following up on Pat's, I understand your your question on this because if we're talking about making purgatory and then, you know, larger and then taking away acreage as we add it elsewhere, then it does kind of beg the question, how many acres are we willing to have in Minnetonka as a whole? And in my mind, we should be doing that at least at the very least in any park based on comparables um with other cities. Otherwise we become and have become a regional park destination. Um so for me you know that is a question I agree you know I was 11 to 20 acres I think in any one park and we can decide how many parks that would be but otherwise you know as a municipal park we have to think of budgets we have to think of other things about why you know how and why we should have these parks. Um, and then for me, another prime uh question that makes it hard to answer this question unless we know to a certain extent is should they be fenced or unfenced? Um, and we're going to get into that into a later question. But if we're talking about public safety and other things, then I mean, we can get into this later, but it seems I'm having trouble wrapping my arms around how we plan for public safety, especially in light of recent incidences, including a 20-year-old one year old or 21-month-old toddler getting attacked. How do we protect public safety in the absence of hard barriers when especially considering that no other city uh municipal dog park has they're all fenced fully fenced? So, um I'll just bring those uh up as as questions that are kind of percolating for me as we decide. Um the total acreage, you know, kind of depends on on those things that that again that total acreage that we want in Minnotonka and then kind of percolating on the side. Um you know, the comparatives and then and then the public safety issue. And you know, I'm going to go to Dell, but I but I am going to comment that one of the things we want to do is we don't want to problem solve this tonight. What we want to do is strategically lay out where do we want to go? Then we turn over to staff say, okay, how are we going to get there? Um, you know, if we if we sit there and think, well, we got to have this, we got to have signage, we got to do all this stuff. We're not doing that tonight. Tonight is how many acres and where. Those are the things those are the things that we need to focus on. And then um when we have a a direction, then we turn to staff and say, "Okay, we need a plan." And we're not voting on a plan tonight. We're we're providing direction to staff. So, excuse me, Deb. Thanks, Brad. Um so, as as we move forward in this, it is a culture shift. It is it's it's it's going to be a difficult adjustment for a lot of people. And you know, I think about human nature and human behavior and um compliance and enforcement. Um, for me, you know, for there are many people that have had sort of free rain uh in most of the 155 acres and um to limit it to 20 um will probably feel pretty painful and um not enough. I'm one of those people. I think we should try to find as many places as we can for those people because there would still be 75 acres if we cut it in half um for um people uh to protect our um high value areas and so forth. The other thing I was thinking, I I walked the park yet again yesterday and I was on a lot of bootleg trails and to create more area for off leash dogs there. There's a lot of lowquality um highly invasive infested areas of the park that actually would benefit in some ways by um you know getting rid of the buckthornne and you know creating more spaces for the dogs. The only the o my only caveat is that one of the criteria that staff had come up with was to direct dogs closer to the interior of the park where really so many of the high value areas are. And so that is kind of a conundrum and it also gets to the um fencing question to make sure that dogs aren't going into neighborhoods they normally wouldn't go into or if they're in the red barn area not running into um excelsier. Um but there is a lot of room I think a lot more room than we think um to create more um off leash dog areas. And the the other only caveat is people are used to just letting their dogs go and staying on the un unmaintained trails and those those areas of the park are not contiguous. And so um but I do think that I'm I'm sort of a higher than 20 person. Um I I was kind of a cut the baby in half kind of person. So um I just think there's I think there's a lot of room for acreage for off leash dogs. I just think it needs a lot of remediation and I don't know what the time frame would be on on that. And the other thing that I noticed and I think it's important to think about is there are areas in the forested areas that are being restored and have been forestry mode and so forth. And it's so interesting because they opened up the tree canopy, opened up the understory, and now people are creating bootleg trails because now you can walk through. You're not blocked by buckthornne. So, it's creating sort of its own problem. Um, you know, sort of an unintended consequence of restoring habitat. Um, but I do think that we can um I'm sort of leaning towards more acreage um there because I think there's a lot of room um to do it. It would just I think need a lot of public input because it will be more on the um periphery of the park. All right. Um, well, I've got a few thoughts and could I ask um from the staff report um or maybe it's a supplemental report. Could I'd be interested in pulling up um the uh park board recommendation on page 11. Um there we go. So when I when I started thinking about this, you know, I you if if you recall from the the first time we talked about this, I I I was doing a lot of acre counting and this chart was helpful to me. And just to keep things simple, I picked the midpoints of all of these ranges to so I could have hard numbers. And so, you know, I thought my my quick and dirty solution recognizing that um um you know, the execution may be more difficult than I would prefer was um but I was convinced by some of the conversation too that we we want to we want to protect the highest value are areas. And then I did talk to some park board members too. And you know the the um the master plans um that that informed the park board recommendation have been vetted pretty thoroughly by by the park board and by the council and we we accepted those master plans. And so I and so I trying to trying to find a world of compromise because I think we are going to have to compromise. If we if we walk out here tonight and say well one side wins and one side loses we've failed. There has to be real compromise. So what I thought was you know what if we take area one 49 acres and say that's off leash I that's that's protected. We are we are going to put hard barriers around area one as pictured on on this map. Um and then we um say areas two, three, four, and five are going to be off leash areas. So you have a north off leash area and a south off leash area. Um that's 57 and a half acres. So we, you know, because as I look at this, when you consider it from a dog, a off leash dog person's perspective, it's not all about Purgatory Park. It's the entire city. They're losing all of the acres in the city that they've had access to um before and now we're putting them into Purgatory Park and we're and we're putting you into a little corner of Purgatory Park. And so my view is cut it in half. We've got 108 acres. Um we you know we go we go basically if we if we area one is 49 acres or so 4950 acres or so and say that is that is off limits that covers most of the um of the high value areas. I thought it I thought it did um I I thought we got all of them but then on page 10 of the staff report so this is page 11. So if we go to the next one and we see there if we the the one area of high value is down in the lower right corner on the other side of the trail. Um if you can see where I'm talking about. Um keep going down and then to the right to go up a little bit more there. There's that area to the no up go straight up there. So that's a high-value area that is on the other side of the trail that would not be included. So that was the one highv value area that this plan would lose. But we um but we would we would have we would preserve most of the high value areas. Um highv value A, not high highv value B, but um all but that small section would be preserved. And then and then basically, as I said, it'd be about 49 acres of high value area or or adjacency that would be preserved. And then we'd have a lot of um um a good amount of off leash dog area um in the north and south portion of the park. And then we um um as we as we look ahead um because implementing that it's easy to say, it's very easy on paper. There's a lot of a adjacency with with um private homes. Um there's um you know with um excel um um roads and so forth, it would take more fencing. This a fairly expensive proposition. But I think if we did that in the near term and then we figured out what it's going to cost and I would even say we've got passionate groups on both sides. We've got pause for parks. They've organized well. Congratulations. What I want to say to you, pause for parks, help us raise some money. And I'm going to say the same thing thing for Friends of Minnotonka Parks. They're well organized. They're passionate. You want to protect your area? We're going to need some fencing. Raise some money. I'd like to say that the city will implement this based upon a cost share basis. So the city will contribute 50%. And the the act the the proponents of these various solutions would save say would pro provide half the funding and maybe we could work out a loan so that they'd have time to uh to uh raise the money but but I think it gives people the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and um and not hit the taxpayer harder for an expensive solution. But to me that provides a lot of acres. It protects a lot of value property and I think it um includes real compromise. So I throw that out as a straw dog. I like silence. I like the the fundraising idea because I really, you know, when I was Thank you, uh, Matt for including some like hard cost numbers because, you know, um, but I I I I'm kind of of like mind. So, Council Wilburn, Kimberly, excuse me. We're former informal. Either one. Um, so that that's an interesting idea. I'm not seeing how that's going to decrease interactions between off leash dogs and people who don't want to interact with off leash dogs. The public safety part of it, right? And and I and I don't have an answer for that question. That's a legitimate question. Um, and I will say like um there are other parts of the the Purgatory Park master plan that weren't part of the the scoring system like um protecting the wetlands um and some other things. So like I guess it's I I I appreciate the the trying to to do half of the acreage. I'm not sure. And that certainly is is a simpler way, an easier way to to divide things up. I'm not sure that I'm 100% on board with it. Well, right now it's it's one person's opinion. Yeah. Well, yeah. Paula, thank you. Um, yeah. reacting to it. I think, you know, it has merit um in terms of the idea and I like the segmentation of users like having areas uh well kind of the north and south southernmost parts of the um uh park, you know, kind of being segmented. So, you have off leash dog people going one way, you have everybody else going another way towards the central area. I would like to see those high value areas excluded from um the dog areas regardless. So I think we can you know that's something that could be massaged. Um my issue again uh to follow up on on on Kimberly's point is without hard barriers. I mean you know I put this in a followup to the staff report. you know that the voice control definition. Juno Alaska has their ordinance that says competent voice control means your dog must be within your sight and under verbal control at all times regardless of distractions, wildlife, other dogs food or other park visitors. If not, you know, basically um if the dog will not consistently come back to you immediately upon command, your dog must be leashed. And so I guess if we accept you know if we were to accept this definition um you know and this is a question to staff I guess and my my colleagues. Do we agree with this definition? And if so do we believe that a significant number of off leash dogs in purgatory are or are not under complete you know voice control. you know, do we have an approximate percentage based on, you know, recent incidents? And so, you know, depending on that, do we think that, you know, anything besides hard barriers, you know, will be most likely would likely or not likely to be effective for, you know, a significant portion of dogs. And so for me, you know, kind of looking at a plan like this or any plan that contemplates having an off leash dog area in a multi-user park, it's really hard for me to get around that public safety piece because what we had happen um the other week was lucky. Um you know, the dog was found after a half hour and you know, to my knowledge, no rabies are present. So this toddler don't doesn't have to. I haven't heard an update on that, but I'm assuming the nose news is good news. The next time we may not be so lucky and something tragic could happen. And if we know the comparables, we know what other cities are doing. We even know that national parks and state parks don't allow off leash dogs for environmental reasons as well as safety reasons. If we know all that and we allow and say, "Okay, multi-user community park, not a special designation park, a community park." And we all allow off leash dog areas that are not fenced in opposition to every other municipal park in the metro region, then if something does happen, it's it's on us. So, I just, you know, really want to make that clear for me as a mom, for the moms and non-moms, you know, here and in the audience, you know, that that's sobering, you know, to know that that that kind of tragedy could hit um and that, you know, in my for me it it would be on this council. So, I'll have to say that. Um Rebecca, thank you. in an effort to try to move the conversation forward in a productive way. I I'm going to just put out a couple ideas. I mean, I think I think there's we're getting some traction here. I think I'm willing to I' I've got a high tolerance for concession on my position if it means we can start enforcing the ordinance in other parts of the city sooner. I think that helps. um us mitigate future problems. So, you know, I I would like to see I ideally, you know, in the next few weeks, a scenario where we are perhaps starting to roll out an enforcement plan, even if that means temporarily, you know, dogs are off leash and all of Purgatory Park while we work through this to try to narrow that down. As far as what we do within the park, I think we need I mean to Paula's point, we need it to be very clear that people are entering the park, whether it's the whole park or certain areas, and they are entering an off leash area. We have, I think, in my opinion, a legal obligation to do that, to put people on notice that this is what is happening in this park. I also think that if we can I I'm not if we can kind of designate some areas and I think part of Brad's suggestion does this maybe imperfectly but where we've got we've all agreed we've got the high value areas protected. Okay. Check. Now, we need to identify um you know, help people identify where can I safely walk with a leash dog and where can I safely walk and maybe not encounter dogs. And if we can identify those areas and then allow dogs in the other areas and figure out how to do that safely, um I think that moves moves us towards another end. I'm not and I'll say just a brief comment which is I'm not super concerned about additional areas within the city except that I think we need to have especially if we're taking the prairie off the table somewhere elsewhere probably a fenced in urban style dog park where people can have dogs chase balls cuz that won't be here and so you know that's probably somewhere else in the city I think we have to think about where we're going to offer that and try to accelerate that. As far as three, four other places, I'm less worried about, but I would like to see us land on even an outline of a plan that allows us to move enforcement forward faster than 18 months. If we want to get it perfect and we want a city-wide strategy, what we're looking at is the problem we were faced two weeks ago, which is then we're just suspending enforcement indefinitely or doing a new ordinance and we're kind of right where we're at. Yes. You know, 6 months ago. So, um hopefully that helps us kind of hone in on where the exact areas are. I think we maybe can agree that area two seems to be on the table. Um, area four and area five seem to be on the table. The real question is area three, area three, right? I mean, is that the question Kimberly? So, kind of combining what everyone had said. So, I was in favor of area 4 and area five um and having fencing so that like you you get you you drive into Purgatory Park, you get out of your car, off leash people go through a fence, through a gate into the off leash area. Everyone else goes a different direction um so that it's clear. Um, and I'm certainly willing to consider area two, areas two and three, but one, I think again you need some sort of fencing where it's clear you're entering an off leash area and and on the other side of the fence off leash is not allowed. And again, I I guess we could get staff's input on would that increase the traffic on Stoddola Road more than what it is now and and cause a problem with that. And then I think Mike wanted to make a comment. Yeah, thank you, mayor. Just maybe to I just want to recognize the time. So, it's 4:52 and we're going to be done at at 5:20, just so we know. And and I just want to maybe um add to what's been said. So, thank you, council. has been really helpful. I think one of the things that I I want to maybe pull your attention back to number of acres and and why that's important I think to identify today is I you're talking about already trying to identify area four versus area five. I would suggest that what would be helpful is understanding how many acres and because going back to that at least the notes I have a couple of you said 11 to 20 a couple others have said 20 to 30 and some have said higher that is important because that needs to be determined first before we can even begin to talk about area 4 area 3 versus area one and so if we can get I would suggest coalesing around again the acreages because really I think the next step would be as you as you determine acreages, then the idea then would be, I think it was mentioned earlier, Brad, turn it back over to staff because then we'll have some good direction because if you today say, I'm just going to pick a number. If you say, you know what, we could live with 20 to 30, then what staff will do in the next 30 to 60 days is bring back to you a a plan of what that 20 to 30 could be based on the criteria that Matt presented earlier. Uh, in that slide that Matt presented earlier, the the best areas are areas one and two. So, if you said 20 to 30 acres, we would look at areas one and two. And Matt, could you go to that slide quick? Or whoever's got the most. So, we could look I'm sorry, area one and two. So, we could look at areas one and two. And if we if we need more acreages, then we'd turn our attention to area five because that becomes the next area. So, we would lay out a plan for you based on acreages. You would say, "We know that you've said say out of the high priority areas." You've indicated that you're comfortable with soft and hard fencing. So then we would come back to you with planned acreages, what a game plan would look like in terms of fencing, what it would look like in terms of where that would be located. We would talk about enforcement of those areas, proximity to the parking lot areas. So that's all helpful. I think as staff works with you on trying to executionalize what your how many acres you want or how many acres you think would be important. So I think just and I'll go to Deb next but um so kind of paraphrase what you just said it's not about where it's about the number of acres and then you come back to us with a plan that delivers against the number of acres that uh that we're recommending. Is that a fair paraphrase? I'm trying that's a suggestion again trying to help help you get there because I also sense that you're wanting to get there sooner than later and um so I think that's one way of helping you get there sooner than later is if you gave us good direction on number of acres a general sense of some areas you're looking at some of the other criteria I think has been identified and we could come back to you with a a more robust plan that you can see in terms of signage and where signage will go and the communication strategy and fencing and just depending on those areas will determine whether it's more hard fencing than soft or maybe it is all hard fencing but at least we can bring you back some ideas on that um and then you can further vet that out that could happen in the next talking to staff we think 60 days most where we could bring something back to you and then in the interim we could talk about enforcement of the ordinances then in the interim until we bring something back but I'll I'll stop there and leave it with you. Thank you. Just just a few more points of clarification because what I've heard so far and correct me if I'm wrong is that if we if we again look at the map that has the um the park board recommendation the area one there you know that's roughly 50 acres and if we and I think I'm hearing everybody say that we take that out of the equation. Okay, take that out of the equation. according to my arithmetic um all of the area all of the area in the park board recommendation other than that I mean there's 108 acres total in pink on that on on on that um u map if we take area one out which is roughly 50 acres 43 to 58 I said 49 so 50 acres we've got 100 we got 58 acres left and Um, I think my arithmetic is correct. Yeah, it is. Well, you're shaking your head. My Yeah, the arithmetic is correct. There's 58 acres left. That's for us to decide um what we, you know, what we want to turn over to staff in terms of um how many of those um taking where what we've agreed to so far, how many of those 58 acres do we want to say are are off leash is kind of the question I'm I'm posing. So, we all have opinions on that. Perhaps I understand what people are saying about safety. I think everything that we do moving forward is going to take a lot of education. I think it a lot of it is unfortunately going to fall on our law enforcement officers and possibly some park staff. But I, you know, this is going to be an educational process. this. I know we're not problem solving for the entire city, but because there are many places where people have their dogs off leash, concentrating it in one park in a small part of the park may not be um the best solution for a for a variety of reasons either. Um because people that have gone to other areas now will go here if they don't have any place else they can go. So, I'm of the mind of to find other places in the city in terms of the acreage. I'm one of the people that that wants more acreage and I leave it to staff to come up with a solution. I fully respect and totally understand the um rationale about wanting to peel off leash people off to the north and having everyone else um go in the other direction. and I understand the rationale, but I also understand that there are people that have been using this park a particular way for 30 years and that changing human behavior is going to be extremely difficult. Um, and so I'm also trying to be a realist. And um, I think one of the things that's that, um, we've heard over and over, it's kind of a lifestyle thing. And this is this is a shift and, um, I think everybody's going to have to be a little bit flexible. I I am 100% on board with the whole safety issue. I understand that fencing is going to be a part of this. I did talk to Friends of Parks about habitat fragmentation through fencing and I think there are solutions for that and so do they and um so I'm I'm still kind of divide the baby and so I might be an outlier on this. I want us to come to consensus so I'm not going to draw a line in the sand but that's that's how I lean. Kimberly. So I think like part of the reason I'm struggling on coming up with an acreage because you know I was in the 11 to 20 camp but willing to consider more but not everywhere. So that's why that's why we're kind of going to well could it be here? Could it be here? Could it be here? because I don't want to just say do 50 acres and then, you know, have all of the all of the wetlands affected. So, that's that's that's where my struggle is. Paul, um, just really respect the conversation and and respect everybody's point of view. Um, I just want to bring up a a couple of points that I'm considering is that I don't want to be an outlier in terms of what we're providing um, compared to other cities because I think that heat map that was helpfully provided um, the cobalt study in the packet um, what's to me just really surprising is that 60% of the um, Purgatory Park users are not Minnitonka residents. So, you know, I think if we decrease, you know, our acreage and if we become more in line with what other cities are providing, um, that number may change. Now, we may have more numbers coming in from other Minnitonka parks, but hopefully we would have far fewer coming in from outside of Minnetonka because we're not such an outlier in terms of um, our parks. That really floored me. Um, and I think I mentioned to Mike that actually um I uh noticed that um in fact it's 60 over 60% and not over 70% as it appears because they had mislabeled um 55391 as Minnotonka Beach. It's actually Weisetta and Minnitonka. It's Weisetta and Minnitonka. So about half of those people are actually probably Minnotonka residents. So that kind of instead of 70% as the study kind of um illustrates, I don't have the page in front of me, it's it's over 60% of Purgatory Park users are coming from outside of Minnetonka. So again, you know, as we we look at this um you know, thinking about the acreage in any one particular park, I don't know what we do elsewhere later, but in terms of um any acreage we do in one particular park, I think we need to, you know, keep that in mind that purgatory has essentially become a regional park um destination. So, do we want to continue to have that? And especially so it's especially a destination because the number of acres and also because we're the only one that has unfenced acres in this type of park. Um, and I do like the idea again of having, you know, we talked about um, the staff plan, but what I really liked about Brad's plan is that, you know, this segmenting of users of an area four and five or even area two if we were to provide parking inside the park boundaries off Stodola Road, that could work to provide another area there, three. But again, going back to that um acres in any one park scenario, I think we got to be really careful about that unless it's a specially designated park. And again, going back to the public safety, that also comes into to play here. So, you know, that said, um, you know, the number of acres in any one area of any one park, um, I think we should be really careful about becoming an outlier Kissy. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to make a comment. Um, I this this weekend, um, I know we had the in incident on I think Sunday was I, um, but then there was another incident that my daughter told me about. She was walking her daughter on Saturday. She was walking her do her dog. She has a very small Chihuahua and she had her um two-month old baby in a stroller and she said and she was with a couple kids and she was with a friend and she said a dog ran up to her and basically was trying to attack her Chihuahua. She said she got really afraid and she hit the person that she was with and started screaming, saying, "Pick my dog up." And she said because she had her baby, she had to like rush over there herself, let her baby go to save her dog. So I was telling her, I said, "Yeah, this incident happened on Sunday." And so she said, "Mom, it really is a problem in Perogatory Park." She said, "I didn't realize how much of a problem it is." She said, "But there was dogs everywhere on Saturday and they were running everywhere." And so at this point for me, I'm okay with saying, "Yes, we need to do something and we need to do something quickly because this is it's happening more frequent. People are not talking about it." And I don't mind being that person to say, "Speak truth. This is what's happening. people are um being impacted by it. It put people at risk from dogs to people. Safety is a problem in prerogatory park. Now, I'm not as fearful. I've seen dogs do the same thing to me. I can handle it, but sometimes people are not in a situation where they can, and it's a problem. If you're not controlling your dog, then there has to be barriers put in place. So, I personally said um 11 to 20. I'm okay with if you even if you went up to 41 or um made it a little bit bigger, but um far as the area, I wrote down two and four, five and three. If you're going to make the space bigger, then I think there should be hard barriers. I don't even like the idea of having a fence going up in um along the east side of the park. Um, in area one, I don't like it. It's It's probably not going to look nice. It's not gonna feel the same. I mean, I even talked to my daughter about she's like, "It's not gonna feel the same." But at this point, it's not about what it looks like. It It's about the safety part of it. Like, we can't worry about the looks if we have a safety issue. It's people over looks. So, that's kind of my thought process. Um, that's it. All right. And Rebecca, and I'm going to process check. We're going to be done at 5:20. So, we got 12 minutes. Okay. So, let's uh let's each get our licks in and try and bring this to some conclusion and and I would say let's put that mentter acres thing up again so we have that as our reference. Um um Rebecca, excuse me. Thanks, Brad. Okay, very quickly. I think that you know, I hate to do this to us or suggest it, but um you know, when we did the mountain biking trail, we did, you know, council member Happy at the time was very adamant about reviewing it in the future and perhaps, you know, we could push ourselves acreage wise um with the understanding that we'll keep we'll monitor it very closely. We will review it a in some period of time with a end date for the real review and understand if something becomes a problem we as a council or whatever council exists at that time has the authority to make those changes. So if we make decision now in 2025 it doesn't mean that the decision in perpetuity behavior is bad then we have to be more restrictive. I perhaps I think we are a little bit struggling with location and what this would look like, what 50 acres would look like, what 20 acres would look like. And maybe if we kind of had a 25 acre option and a 45 acre option that we could really visualize and make decisions from there. um that might you know even if it's 20 20 and 40 or you know somewhere in there maybe that's how we could help make incremental progress here Paula y thanks Rebecca I like that um for me I could definitely see you know kind of that compromise in terms of those larger areas but for me and I think for a number of other council members we feel like the fencing the hard barrier is going to be key in a multi-use park you know okay if we have areas is you know whatever four five and three then they should be separated from the rest of the park and then you by doing that you don't have to so much fence off the high value natural resource areas and in terms of cost I get that that you know we should ask um the different stakeholders to participate however I would also say when it come when it comes to public safety fencing um you know we spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on uh fire and police and their equipment. I think putting a few hundred,000 in to make sure we're protecting the public. I don't think that it should even be at a debate. Passing. I'm just going to say that I would be a definitive yes on that 25. That's that acreage. Does that make sense? Does that help? Yeah. BR Paty and Brad. Yes. I Well, I think we'd want a little more consensus. So, I think it's been suggested by Rebecca. You've said that's a good idea. Maybe look for others is we could run some comparables on 25 and either 40 or 45. Did I hear that correctly? Yeah. Sort of what it would look like. Pick a number. I think I think what it would look like. And the other thing that I'm I mean I'm all about I think the hard barriers are necessary to really separate people that do not want to interact with dogs. I also feel like if we have fenced in dog areas, off leash dog areas, and everyone else is on on leash in the middle of the park, we may not need that hard barrier on the east side of the prairie because dogs won't be running in there anymore. So, it there there may be some visual benefits from that. Um, I I really like what Rebecca suggested just because I think we're trying not to we're trying not to um problem solve it. We're just trying to give you some basic direction and it's hard to visualize. At the very least, I think, you know, we're looking at north and south. The the north part, there's a there's a lot of consensus in what is it areas four and five. Um, and then down in the south of the park, I I do wonder about enforcement issues if if we're spreading it out, but I also feel like the there there will not be the contiguous acreage and I'm I'm not as concerned about it becoming regional destination. Um, I do think that it's a huge culture shift in Minnitonka and um, I think we're going to have to spread it around the city and I'm not cons I don't like being a huge outlier. I also don't mind being a little bit different from our neighbors on certain things. So, any other comments? Um, I've got I've got a few thoughts as I look at this. you know, um the uh the 11 to 20 looks like well, it's got the most votes, but to me, if if I look at that in terms of acres, you know, the the 21 to 40 to me looks like kind of the best compromise on this on this chart. Um that's my that's one person's perspective. But I but I think you know trying to look at things in the entire context. We need to have enough space for um off leash dogs to because we're not just talking about little dogs like my 14lb Snower. We're talking about dogs that that need to get outside, need to get some exercise. people who have hunting dogs and so forth, they they those we you know, we've got we're trying to we're trying to cover a lot of bases here and and I think that um you know, I've said many dozens of times public safety is job one in cities. I believe that. At the same time, um, I've also said, let's not have the perfect be the enemy of the good because we are not going to ever have laws that cause us to never have accidents on our roads, to never have kids be have face bad circumstances in school, or never have uh a dog an unfortunate interaction with a dog in one of our parks. That is not going to happen. So let's not establish unrealistic expectations. You know, we um we have laws not because um 100% of people disobey them. It's the 2% or the 5% that spoils the the the the barrel for everyone. And so we we would not need laws if um if we didn't have the 2% of the people who were going to ignore them and create problems. Um, but the fact of the matter is human nature is there's a certain percentage of dogs and a certain percentage of people that require us to have laws and law enforcement. And so I think let's not we we're not going to find a perfect solution here, but let's find a solution that's workable that shows some consideration to both sides of this the issue. people who are passionate about off leash dogs, but people who are also concerned about using Purgatory Park or our parks and let's have a compromise. I mean, part of the responsibility if you're deathly afraid of dogs, well then with all due respect, maybe you should be careful about going to places where you know there's dogs going to be. Maybe you'll maybe I I don't want to say well you shouldn't go to Purgatory Park, but there might be other better parks for you to go to. That's part of your judgment. Uh we can't solve the problem perfectly for everyone. Similarly, uh we are a city. Uh one of the data points that I would like and and um is that um when we compared ourselves with other cities, uh one of the data points that would be helpful to me is how many square miles are each of those cities. We're a 28 square mile city. I'd kind of like to have some context on the acreage versus the size of the city because I think it's relevant. Um if we're if we're a large city um uh area wise, well then um it may look like our parks are more regional parks than they would be if we were um Excelsier, which is one square mile. Their parks are not going to be as big as ours. We we have we probably have some parks. So we have more parkland than Excelsier has city. So you know, I think context again is is relevant. But I think staff is looking for a number of acres. And I I think let you know let's let's get there, but let's understand that we're not going to solve this problem perfectly. I talked to a mayor of Minnetonka who was a mayor 30 years ago. You guys can figure out who that is. Um and he said, you know, nothing's changed. We've been talking about this thing since I was mayor 30 years ago. Have we solved it? No. And I'll guess what? I'm not going to be mayor next year. And I'll bet it's not solved next year. I think we're going to make pro improvements. We're going to make progress. But but if we think um if we think we're going to solve this problem by a decision that we make in our next council meeting, we're talking to ourselves. This is going to be an ongoing challenge because people aren't perfect and dogs aren't perfect. And um and so we're but we want to provide a context and an opportunity that fairly treats people on both sides of this issue and demonstrates that we're working hard to get this answer correct. So, you know, I think we we owe staff um not locations, but how many acres do we think we should target? Um you know, I I I think it should be 40 or so. I think that's enough space in Purgatory Park. Staff can tell us where those should be. I think these maps show that there are some good locations. Some are better than others, but you know, that's one person's vote. and I I turn it over to council members. Share your thoughts on what we should do in terms of uh the number of acres that we have in in Purgatory Park. Kimberly Mike wants Okay, excuse me. Go ahead. Well, thank you Brad. Maybe to help summarize I so maybe I if I summarize this maybe hits on a little bit everyone's talking about and that is again staff was looking for acres. So we appreciate this conversation. It's been a really good conversation. It's a tough issue as we all acknowledge. We maybe think of it in this way that we'll run two different scenarios. One at 25 acres. Um I know others will want more but I think this is how this comes into play. So we could look at one scenario at 25 acres thinking putting into perspective that could be maybe where you ultimately land if other areas are found. That is a decision you don't have to make today. But knowing that perhaps 25 acres is the at least the base minimum. We can run another scenario at 45 acres. And if you go if you whoever got the mouse go a couple slides please because the other mentor meter question was right there. If you went beyond those initial acres could we look for additional acres in a transition and you said yes. And so if we kind of look at where this lands another 20 perhaps 20 acres for a transition plan. So we'll look at a 25 acre scenario and a 45 acre scenario. bring those back to you within 60 days with all sorts of with those two scenarios, but we'll look we'll flush out with both those scenarios things I already mentioned. Fencing, we we've heard your comments on fencing. Uh we'll look at safety concerns, proximity to parking lots, proximity to neighborhoods. We'll we'll put that all together for you. bring that back to you within 60 days and then at some point you can decide as um as noted earlier eventually the park board and Matt Kuma will look at other areas and if there are other areas in the city that are identified you then can decide if you ever want to pull back on that 25 or 45 or keep it at 45 or maybe pull it back to 25. You don't have to decide that today but we'll run a couple scenarios that puts us in motion um and I think can get you at that next step in the discussion. In the interim, I'd like to given our time, if we could, Brad, I know you want to get other comments from council, but um have uh Rachel Mihan, our captain, just talk about if you if we decide that this is a good path where you uh direct staff to run these two different scenarios that'll take 60 days, what we would do as terms of enforcement in the interim. So, I'd like to have Captain Mi just briefly talk about what that looks like for you, Rachel. Um since we're on a firstname basis, uh go for it. Thanks. Welcome. I also just wanted to quickly address the question about enforcement. And while hard barriers are are always the best, um it's certainly not always an option for certain areas. And so for us, it's more about that the boundaries are clear so that a reasonable person um would see those boundaries, know that they're clear. Um and when the dogs are outside those clear boundaries, then we can write a citation, take it to court, and show the judge that the boundaries were clear and that everybody should have been aware of it. That's the problem we run into now is that the boundaries are just not clear. Um so the tickets are very difficult to um take to court. So um as far as next steps forward, we recognize the complexity of this issue and one option is that we can pause issuing citations just for section subdivision 1D of 1135020. So, what that would do is that we would not issue citations for dogs at large in the unmaintained areas of the parks. Um, but we still would enforce any issues where the dogs are harassing park visitors or employees, interfering with their property, or not cleaning up after your dogs and every other part of that ordinance. Thank you. Um, any questions for Captain Bian? So in in just a summary, so what I think what Rachel is saying is we'd keep So we have an ordinance on the books. So we keep that ordinance on the books and then more administratively from an operation standpoint, the police department would just pause those that part of the ordinance until 60 days are up and then at 60 days we when we come back to you as staff, you might decide maybe we continue to pause the ordinance or we might need to make an ordinance change at that time. This buys us about 60 days under the current scenario, under the current ordinance. Great. Thanks, Mike. Rebecca, thanks. Brad, is it would it be possible? I mean, I'm very uneasy about having an ordinance that we're not, you know, that we're publicly indicating we're not going to enforce. Um I is it possible to parse that down to just certain you know for for instance we're not going to enforce it in Purgatory Park but we're going to enforce it in the rest of the city. Yeah absolutely. We could just um not issue citations for that in Purgatory Park but then leave the ordinance in place for the rest of the parks in the city which would make all other parks in the city on leash only. Um and just we also can and will continue our education in Purgatory Park um about what those ordinances will look like in the future so that we can be out there more um and maybe just more of our visible presence presence will solve some of the issues that that we're seeing down there too. Um just a question. Okay. Thank you, Brad. Um, so I'm just was hoping for a little clarification because both in the staff report and then also I think in our meeting from 512 last week um there seemed to be an indication that um enforcement was primarily this was going to be a complaint-based system. So are we now saying am I so am I now I'm hearing that there's going to be some presence in actual active enforcement instead of just kind of complaint based passive enforcement. Is that the plan? Chief Scott, excuse me. Yeah, good evening. I I can answer that. And most of our ordinance violations regardless of what it is are complaint based. You know on occasion we do see in this case an uptick in in potential issues. So we we do pour we do put more resources into that area, but then beyond that it based on just our limited resources we do have, it's most likely would resort back to complaintbased, but obviously up leading up to that point, there's there's a need for increase enforcement, education, things like that. But that's typically how we address these issues. Thanks. Thank you. That's helpful. All right. Is there anyone else otherwise? Um Kimberly, no, that's good. Oh, good. Not a problem. just really quickly. So, wasn't the plan anyway to to start with education um if the ordinance went into effect and not start citing people right away? Yes. And and you know, if for those of you that were in the discussion years ago when we talked about the mask mandate, it's very similar where we had an ordinance for masks. However, our approach was more enforc was more education and trying to gain compliance through through just uh um you know being being a good person. And so I think the same thing would happen regardless of what we do here uh going forward. Thanks Chief. And and I I was just going to comment you know I mean we ask our officers to use judgment. I mean their judgment is very relevant. And I look at our at our statistics when you share them with us from time to time or or if I go online and look at them, you know, then I'm just going to use speeding as the example. Um we pull x number of people um over for speeding. We have traffic stops. And of those, what proportion of them get uh speeding tickets? It's not 90%, it's not 80%, it's not 50%. It's closer to between 20 and 40%. um you so you've got a 20 to 40% chance of getting a ticket if you've been pulled over. That's based on the judgment of the officer and that's the way we operate and that's the way we're going to operate here. It's going to be judgment and circumstances and education is a key part. And I'll tell you what, after I get pulled over, I drive a lot more carefully. It's just funny whether I get a ticket or not. Um and you know, and that's just it. So I think, you know, we have to respect our law enforcement to provide the judgment necessary for the circumstance. And as time goes on, we'll probably get a little tougher than we do at the very start. And if you if I got that wrong or misspoke, let me know. But I think I think that's it. We have to trust our law enforcement um um and and our staff to to utilize judgment in in these circumstances. All right, council. Anything else? I mean, do we have a plan? Mike, do you have the direction that you need? I think so. Can I may I summarize it again? It may sound repetitive. Uh, so what I hear direction tonight is that you're wanting to see two different scenarios. What 25 acres would look like and where and all the all the ancillary issues surrounding that that I've already talked about. Same thing with 45 acres. We will bring that back to you within 60 days and start to lay out a more solid plan of what that looks like. And so you have an opportunity to look at what staff brings forward uh and further decide on, you know, what that fencing looks like. Again, we understand as staff how hard that is because it's you need to look at the area in the park where that pu uh specific acreage will be what are the outlying areas around it. Can you use natural barriers? Yes or no? And so we understand how hard that is and I think as even as staff pulls that information together hopefully become clear for all of us on what the right plan is. Maybe it ends up being all hard, maybe it ends up being all soft or a combination, but we want to and I think I don't want to speak for the council on this, but you know what we want is effective barriers. And you know, if we could do it, if we could have effective barriers with all soft barriers, I think we would all support that. It it looks nicer. It's probably less expensive. Maybe not, but but chances are we're going to need hard barriers and but we're going to we're going to defer to the experts to tell us where we need hard barriers rather than try and decide it here. So that's the general premise. The one thing I want to circle back on is and then understanding that in the interim before staff brings this back to you again um I think we can get this confidently back to you within 60 days. In the interim we'll continue we have the new ordinance that takes effect today. We will start our educational campaign and then our staff will work on how that is best enforced until uh further decisions are made when staff brings us back to you. Um the other thing I just want to get clarity on if I could mayor and council is area one. So area one as noted um by staff was an area for consideration. It does consist of u a high priority area. So staff wants to be understand from you if area one is completely off the table or if you're okay considering area one knowing that certainly high priority areas would not be included in that. So, a little clarity around area one because there are parts of area one that could be considered for for an off leash area, right? I you know, I mean, when I when I spoke to the park board map, I was kind of talking about the whole middle area um because that was just simple. Um I don't know if anyone else has other other opinions because clearly not all of area one is on as on page 11 of the Yeah, right there. um the uh area one um there are parts of it that are not um high value. So uh but I was saying that whole area just for simplicity but I I don't have a strong opinion beyond that. Yeah. Just looking for clarity because that northern part there is there is areas in that northern part if we can properly staff can identify ways to separate that and that's what we're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um I think the high value I think most of us seem to really value kind of taking the um high value natural resource areas off the table especially the super rare ones like the you know savannah prairie. I think the northern one in area 4 is trees if I'm not if I'm recalling right. But the question is area one I mean this area that's not in the high value is I think the question is no I think the question was was whether you know we are interested in having high value natural resource areas and talking about areas four and five. No. Well even if it's then just one I think all of us have pretty much then stated that um we're interested in excluding the high value natural resources. No, that's where I stand. I'll just clarify because I do think there you're talking about kind of the north where the dogs come into the park right now, that area of area one. And I think I'd be willing I mean I I'm really concerned about the the prairie for me if we're protecting that then if it bleeds into that north part go up. So, so area one is this entire pink area. And so the question that I'm want clarity on is within area one which is goes all the way up into here. You see that in my mouse, right? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The that high priority area is this dark red line that we've identified. The question is, you know, this is what about this area? This is area one, but is outside of the high priority area. So the question is, do you want all of area one off the table or are you okay with consideration for perhaps, you know, I I think I'm going to throw out I throw out something. You know, I think that um the council looking at the maps has the amount of information that's available on these maps. Um in reality, um I don't think we're talking about specific borders. I mean, I could see where given where the parking lot is and things that you could create an area involving part of area one and area four, but the challenge you have is that then you've got the trail cutting through that and that's that's challenge. But that's executional. You you come to us with recommendations avoiding the high value areas and recognizing sensitivity toward the prairie and then make some recommendations. We're not going to hold you to every square foot or square inch. We don't want to be executional. We want we want directional uh so that so that we can provide we can protect the high value areas while also making an adequate number of acres available for off leash dog use. Kimberly or Kizzy I was going to say that I think the northern part of area one um only thing I I started thinking about instantly was how are you going to protect that area? Are you going to put a fence there? So then that's kind of to be determined. Yes, I would. But then I would say no. Okay, I think we're pretty good. Unless there's other feedback and then the chief has one more question on enforcement if we could. Just a quick follow-up question. So, we have the option to limit this just to purgatory and allow the ordinance to be in effect in other parks. I guess that I would ask for that clarification. Is this a desire for purgatory park only and leave the other parks alone? And then second to that is if if this were to be drawn out more than a few months, we would then possibly revisit the actual ordinance because if this is going on, it makes it more challenging. So just a little clarification on just purgatory alone. Yeah. You know, I think I'll I'll speak up and correct council. You correct me if I'm wrong. I I think we're talking about Purgatory Park. Um because um getting this transition made, the the muddier we make it in the other parks, the more challenging it's going to be to put in place. So, let's be clear. The new ordinance goes into effect now for all of the parks. Purgatory is a special case and we were going to we're going to hold off enforcement purgatory um until we have our plans more definitively established in terms of acres and locations and things like that. Thank you. Is that is that clear council? Any push back on that or good? No push back, but it would it would really help. I mean, just to be very crystal clear that no, you know, like even when you're doing the education piece like in Purgatory Park that it is nowhere else in the city right now can there be off leash dogs, right? Except for Purgatory Park, like to be included when you're doing the education piece, Rachel, too. Very good. All right. Um, we went beyond our our deadline, but I'm going to adjourn this meeting and uh our regular meeting counts uh starts in 25 minutes. So, thank you all for being here.