Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. study session meeting of the Minnotonka City Council and we'll start with introductions. Miranda >> Miranda Dominus, assistant city manager. >> Eric Nelson, city attorney. >> Darren Nelson, finance director. >> Mike Punk, city manager. >> Kimberly Wilburn, uh, at large. >> Rebecca Shack, mayor. Kizzy Kley, war. >> Sarissa Saraki, senior management coordinator. >> Peter Leman, company. >> Kelly OD, recreation director. Kevin Fox, fire chief. >> Scott Borbin, police chief. >> Will Manchester, public works director. >> Julie Wishna, community development director. >> Kristen Pmentel, manager of the marsh. >> Sarah Westy, assistant recreation director. >> Jason Tate, deputy chief, police department. >> Derek Mezer, deputy chief fire department. >> Andrew Whittenberg, communications manager. >> Joel Mary, assistant finance director. Kevin Ringhoffer, W two resident. Tom Stalker, resident. >> Great. Okay, thank you everybody. We do have um a we have Deb Calbertt on the phone. She'll be just listening in. She's cannot participate remotely in this way. And we have a two other council members absent who had um urgent things come up. So, it seems like we're light on council members, but everybody's committed to listening to the meeting one way or another. So, they send their regards. Um, so we will get right to it. Mike, do you have anything or should I go right to Sarissa? >> All right, Sarissa. >> Thanks, Rebecca. So, we have Peter here to give the 2026 community survey results. Just a quick reminder on the process. So, back in January, staff or the directors visited the questions um and thought of themes and made any adjustments to the 2025 survey. And then the survey was brought to city council in February and you all gave your input and the themes and questions you wanted to be included. And then after that meeting, directors came back together and it made those adjustments. And then Peter and his team also created the questions based on your input and they conducted this survey in March I believe. And that was just a quick recap and you will officially accept the results at the next council meeting. So I will just pass it to Peter. But before I do that, Mike, do you have anything to add? >> No. Thank you, sir. The only thing I would add uh mayor and council is I just want to shout out and appreciation to Sarissa who helps really champion this effort. There's just a lot of time behind the scenes that goes into working with Peter and his team and terms of getting all the questions formatted and getting all the questions in order that we've all talked about. So that gets vetted really across our organization starting with mayor and council then certainly staff uh participates into it. You'll the directors are here for two reasons. not only the budget conversation but also the survey results because the survey results do get utilized by staff and so all of our team members look at those survey results. They're also part of our merit pay program and so they get utilized more than just the results. So I just want to make sure I press that upon that everyone that the survey is a big effort and those results and the and the information behind it is used in a way that enhances all of our service efforts. So with that I'll just turn back over to I think Peter who will kick us off tonight. >> Super. Oh, sorry. One more thing. And quickly as Peter's talking about the questions might kind of touch on this, but these are the questions that were in the report. So, simply if you have any questions about the survey and then if there are any results that the council wishes to further discuss or consider for a future study session and then finally, are there any budget impacts that should be considered? >> Right. There you go, Peter. Super. >> Peter, thank you. Thanks for being here. >> Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here with you to go over this this year's survey. Just to review, this is pretty much the same thing that we've done for almost 30 years. Uh I believe going back into the mid 90s. Uh it's a 400 sample across the community. Interviews were conducted between March 23rd and April 8th. Average interview time was 26 minutes. Uh we had 10% on the phone with us for an hour or longer. Um those those are your historians. Um, and they don't do simple one-word answers, especially on open-endeds. Uh, non-response rate was 6%. Uh, projectable to plus or minus 5% in 95 out of 100 cases. Uh, starting to put up some demographics than cell phoneon households were 62%. Still 1 and 10 landline only households and then both landline and cell phones were 28%. Uh, if we look at the demographics, the demographics are two uh serve two purposes. First, we can look at updated census information to make sure that the survey uh represents the community as a whole, but then we can look at differences. How do homeowners feel versus renters? How do households with seniors feel versus households with children? So, first off, how long has the resident lived in the city? Uh 27% have been in the city for 5 years or less. Well, 27% have been in the community for over 20 years. Uh, so the typical residents been here for about 9 and a half years. 28% have a senior in their household. 31% have a child under the age of 18 in their household. Just over one in four are renters. Um, and we have the the typical resident, the the largest chunk of self- assessed home value falls into the $400 to $600,000 home with 25% at over $600,000 home. 18% are 18 to 34 year olds while you do have 26% that are over the age of 44. It's definitely or uh I'm sorry over the age of 65 with 42% over the age of 55. So it is an aging community and you do have though you see the the previous slide you do though have a lot of new folks coming into the community over the past decade. Also, the ethnicity, 73% white, 11% African-American, uh 7% AsianPacific Islander, 6% Hispanic, and to 3% indicated they were multi-racial. Uh women outnumbered men by 5% in the sample, and then you can see the geographic distribution by ward. That's based on registered voter counts to establish the percentage within those uh each of the four wards. So once again, this is a consolidated. We're not going to go through all 150 or 60 questions. Um kind of the highlights uh the traditional ones that we share uh with the group, but then also with some of the new questions, especially with the local option sales tax that you're exploring. Uh so what do folks like most about the community? It's always been the small town aspects here. Um, it's the lake, it's the friendly people, it's the housing and neighborhood, it's the safety, it's the schools, quiet and peaceful, trees and nature, open spaces, parks. Then we get to the suburban response. Only 6% are saying, "Hey, it's just a convenient place to live." Um, your folks definitely value what the the the more traditional uh things that people value outside of the sevenount metro. Typically, you live in the seven county metro, it's much more con for convenience than anything else. Now, if we ask what they like most, we always follow up with what's the most serious issue facing the community. And this is I did a statewide in February. Um, and so just to establish some new norms, especially post November 15th last year when everybody got their property tax statements and property taxes is going to be outside of the issue of fraud at the state level, taxes is going to be the major issue of this election. Uh, 21% indicate it's high property taxes. Traffic congestion is up u no doubt with what's happening on 394 right now. uh really kind of the epicenter of the the pinch point there. Uh that's more than double uh lack of diversity. We looked at the lack of sidewalks that actually came down from last year. We had that blip last year. So we were going to monitor, you know, you need three data points to have a trend. Um so it did come back down, but still one in 10 folks are looking at the lack of sidewalks. Uh but then if we go down to the bottom, your booster core, uh one in four, there are no problems in the city of Minnetonka. It is perfect here. Um and that is triple of what we're seeing right now in 2026. Uh we're down to about 7 7 8% generously. Um in the sevenount metro, um before the pandemic, we would have 12 to 15% typically, but the pandemic has made people find things that they're unhappy about more so than ever before. Now the overall quality of life last year it was 98% this year it's 96%. Um this has been consistent and this is extraordinarily high in 2026. Right now the quality of life rating uh in Minnesota in their community is at 78%. >> Um what has happened is there's been a shift from good to only fair. Uh, and traditionally I always said you don't live in a community that you think is only fair or poor for very long. You're going to look for a new community because you want a positive have a favorable quality of life. Um, so with the norm at 78% but then also your excellent rating it went up statistically significantly. It's at 44%. That is the high in the last five years post pandemic. The excellent for the quality of life rating right now is at 11%. across the state of Minnesota. How welcoming is the city? Uh, extraordinarily so. 95% say either very or somewhat with a flat majority, 55% indicating very welcome. We started testing a few years ago um some statements uh about uh uh the welcoming inclusive nature of the community and we asked folks uh to rate excellent good only fair or poor. Uh I've collapsed because you had so many people indicating uh an unfavorable response. Um so I thought it was just interesting to look at the intensity of the position. Um in 2023 people were very much more intense. They were very uh they were everything was excellent. Um it the excellent drop but it just went into the good. There's not been a conversion to an unfavorable position. So welcoming the community for all 83%. Treating all residents with respect 89%. Treating all residents fairly 89% and providing services to residents of all backgrounds is at 83%. City services across the board extra remain extraordinarily positive. You've always kind of set the the benchmark on this. There is one uh service that went up in the unfavorable um and I always hesitate this is just one data point and it's the one data point that's the most fluid especially when you do surveys over the course of the winter and that's street repair and maintenance. um the 32% unfavorable the norm for uh street repair and maintenance when we look at the the data from November until April is at 45% unfavorable. So it still compares favorably. It's something to watch. I remember years ago uh when John Ganu was city manager and the unfavorable rating went up on the pavement repair, but it went up a couple years and then the whole discussion first time I'd ever heard of mill and overlay was meeting in in the council chambers in order to start to look at how to um fix the concerns that residents had. I think that this is just you put an asterisk by this and look and see where you're at next year because this one is very fluid. All the others extraordinarily high ratings. >> Quick question. >> Yep. >> I was asking Mike about this this morning and when it says that the services like did they parse out your questioners whether it was the fact that the repairs weren't enough or that people were too by street repairs. >> Um we follow up >> okay >> and ask so um you know what changes or improvements would you make fix potholes faster? >> Okay, got it. Thank you. >> Yep. >> The value question has changed a lot in Minnesota. It has not changed here. Um because when you think of value, there are two inputs that go into a value proposition. What are you getting? the services, the quality of those services, and what you're paying. Well, what we know across Minnesota now is there's a very big concern on property taxes. So, when you look at the value of city services right now, yours was at 88%, it's at 81%. This has dropped down to the high 60s as a norm right now. uh because not only you are buoied by the fact that you have extraordinarily high ratings on city services, you know, people can rate something positively on the value even if they I think they're paying a bit too much if the quality brings it up. And that's what you have here in Minnetonka before the recession of 2008 2009 this question uh people that they didn't understand inflation. Uh 20 years later it's baked into everybody's equation on it cost more to provide the same thing yeartoyear. And so do residents at a time where they're concerned about taxes, are they willing to see a tax increase to maintain city services? Absolutely. And this is typically somewhere between 70 and 80% across the state. What we don't have, we don't ask in your survey that we ask elsewhere is would you support a tax increase to expand or enhance city services? Uh that right now is at about 30% agreeing for that. So, they're willing to invest into maintain what they have. And that is absolutely the case here with four out of five. How would they prioritize a 1% property tax levy increase? Um, you could see the streets went up a little bit. That matches the concern that they have. Uh, police and fire, parks and trails, 11% point to another service. Uh, 9% said no, no more at all, and 2% are unsure. So this time around it's it tips more towards street maintenance than the other city services. Now the new section we tested five projects and we asked folks if they would support or oppose a half cent sales tax for each of these projects. The first project that we tested is for fire fire station number two and we told folks uh it would allow the the increase would be used to rebuild fire station number two located off of Hopkins Crossroad near Riddale. That has 83% support. Project number two was the fire station number three located in the opus area in southeast Minnitonka that has 83% support connecting trails to business districts, schools and neighborhoods and other regional trails 81%. Upgrades to the marsh including exterior interior building systems, mechanical improvements to the pools and sauna areas and renovate program spaces 79% support. And then the final one would be used to add a park and open space areas next to the light rail station in the Opus area. 76% support. Um this is pretty consistent. We've done a lot of surveys across the metro area on local option sales taxes. Folks really like this idea. It's because it's seen as a solution to get things done in the community that doesn't require a property tax increase. Now, we couple that with we asked we told folks about the U of M study which projects that 52% of new sales tax revenue would come from people who live outside of Minnetonka and use city services. Does this make you much more likely, somewhat more likely, less likely, or no difference? Um, it has an impact of 67% but it's almost a one for one. Basically, the argument operates in the echo chamber of support. It just makes you a stronger supporter. It doesn't change anybody's mind. Um, so I think all five there's not, you know, I've done this before like Bloomington, there was one item that was much more difficult uh back was that three, four years ago. Um, across the board, they're all within the plus or minus 5% uh support level. There's there's not one that doesn't make sense to residents. Would folks uh support additional regulations on short-term rentals? Um, this one at this point, you do have a majority. 55%, 35% say no, and 10% uh want more uh facts. You know, what will be the uh additional regulations on short-term rentals? So, right now, you have a working majority uh for a discussion on the short-term rentals in the community. ebikes. 15% of their households said they owned an ebike. 22% said they have concerns about the use of ebikes in the community. Uh how concerned are they about this issue? 35% are very concerned. 62 are somewhat concerned. So the very concerned contingent, it's 35% of 22%. About 7% of the community indicate that this is a major concern, but 75% of the community have no concerns at all. As always, when we look at the environmental and sustainability actions, um they're all important for the city uh to undertake. All of them have a majority. Um there's a clear hierarchy though if we look at it. Go from top to bottom. uh water conservation 84%. Energy conservation 81% reducing waste 75%. Improving storm water management 67% climate change 63% and expanding mass transit options 60%. >> So you really the community saying by at least 60% going all the way up to almost 85% that these are all important for this city to undertake. quite it's not realistic to be able to take on undertake all six, but this does give you a clear sense and this has been pretty consistent uh with the top four kind of shuffling over the years and the bottom two uh shuffling for fifth and sixth. You've always though had a majority and all six indicate that they're important for the city to take action on. How about programs for teenagers? 62% indicate you have about the right amount. 22% say too few. Uh 3% say too many and 13% are unsure. Uh the 22% that say too few is consistent. We asked this question for the first time last year. Um and that is the majority of households with children. Um so they would have the highest level of awareness of whether there are programs. uh you know, keep in mind that you have 70% of folks that don't have children at all. Input into zoning and development decisions. You can see the the one blip was back in uh 2024. I can't remember what the issue was. Um but you the the yes uh dropped down to 73%. Um it's now bounced back. 2025 we saw it go to 88 and 86%. Um so whatever that issue was in 2023 um it is dissipated as a concern uh with the vast majority almost 90% over the course of the last two surveys saying and this is this is important because this is about input into zoning and development decisions and oftentimes motans um confuse the ability to provide input with the ability to get your way. um have a say versus have your way. Um and I guarantee you 86% of people who have given input did not have a go their way, but at least they had the ability to be involved in the decision. Job of city staff, 35% indicate that they have had quite a lot or some con firsthand contact with the city staff. Um how do they rate the city staff? Um, last time it was 90%, this time it's 89%. Um, just extraordinarily high, just right at the top. And it's just been consistent throughout the years on city staff. When we break it down a little bit further, 31% indicate that they've had contact with city hall during the past year. Uh of that 31% we were asked they were asked four performance measures rating the city on ease of reaching help 90% courtesy 92% 90% on efficiency and 97% on professionalism. Um the norm on this we always look at is we want 80% in public sector uh customer service uh satisfaction. You're at 90% or higher on all of them. And then finally, how are folks getting their information? The Minnetonka memo, as I've stated before, has its own brand. Um, it is just when you have 43% and we differentiate because we have the city newsletter down at the bottom. If they say the Minnotonka memo, it's noted as the Minnotonka memo. Uh, if they say just say the newsletter, that's down at the bottom. So, a flat majority, 51% indicate it's the primary source of information. The city website did drop six points. At the same time, social media went up 50%. From 8 to 12, this is something I'm going to dive in more in the statewide that I do in we do in the summer because I'm starting to see a growth whether it's school district or city. For some reason, more people are willing to admit that their primary source of information is social media in the past 12 months than ever before. Um, it's one of those things. You don't tell somebody you don't vote. You don't tell somebody you don't recycle. And you don't tell a stranger that you rely on social media as a primary source of information. We have more people. There's one city to your north that social media is the second highest pe or people are saying it's their principal source of information. So there is this shift where I'm seeing websites go down and social media increasing nowadays local newspaper at 10%. Uh the good news is the grapevine social media is a grape vine uh just a different form of it but your so your word of mouth is still in single digits and that is due completely to the fact that you have extraordinarily strong city newsletter uh because as communities as communities if you look at the southwest metro area as those newspapers have disappeared um what's taken over is the grapevine um especially for older folks who would tradition traditionally read the newspaper, they're not going to go on social media. They're not going to go to the website. And if you don't have strong print going to those houses, the grapevine takes over in the community where there are some communities with the number one source of information in the metro area being the grapevine currently. >> So I think across the board, another extraordinarily positive, this is always a bright light in Minnesota, even during difficult times. um you are particularly insulated uh from a lot of the concerns in Minnesota. That's not to say that they're not there. You saw the property, the taxes as a concern. It just it hasn't impacted how they feel about the city and the services and the relationship they have with the city. Uh because you bridge that connection by providing highquality services to residents. So I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, Peter. I mean, as usual, a great source of pride for me. I think all of us here and staff and the work you do is just so valuable to informing how we um make decisions here. So, council questions for Peter. Anybody? >> I guess I have one question. I had talked to Mike about this earlier today. Um I was asking about the council. Do the council ever get the random questions? I know he said everyone's included. Um, and I've never been like asked any of these survey questions. I know one council has recently and I was like maybe because she's so recent like she got picked um through the random selection. So I was just curious about that. >> It's it just I tell the database to spit out 400 numbers. >> I actually called the superintendent secretary. I just got an email coming here >> that said, "Boy, you did a great job. She's interested in a job." I I didn't do it. I can't do what my foreers do, but it is just it's it's it's all random. And I and I said, I'll have, you know, council members, schoolboard members, they'll say, "What do we do if we're if we're contacted?" I said, "You have to do what you want to do. In my opinion, you were randomly selected and you're a member of the community. Please take it." Um, some I've had a superintendent in the past say, "I'm just not going to take it." Uh, it's so like you're a voter uh and you can impact, but u it's pretty but yeah, it's just complete luck of the draw. Well, I h I just the one thing, you know, I noticed an improvement pol specifically on the police department and I thought it was maybe a statistically significant like six points >> y >> um favorability and did you see I I guess that some of that has to do with our tempered response on operation metro surge. I mean, did you see that coming out of the winter and the surveys that you did over the winter as a factor in any of the responses? >> Not. I mean, people com compartmentalized um for the most part what they thought of the city, their city versus what happened with the state and the feds over the course of the winter. Um, I do think though, I mean, the police department here has always been extraordinar well regarded. the the each city's individual police department. I always say with police departments, it's kind of like politicians. I don't like politicians, but I like my politician. >> Um, and so even if you do have concerns, even coming out of 2020 into 21, if you ask a general in our statewide general perceived question, the perceptions on policing was very different than when you asked how do you rate the job your police department's doing? Um and so you know all of those things you know crime policing it crosses borders and it gets it and it changes people's perception at a macro level but people unless there's an instance uh in the community specifically um everybody always feels really good about their public safety department. >> Very good. All right, council. Well, the next discussion question is, is there anything that's that we wish to discuss further or consider in a future study session stemming from the survey? >> I guess for me, I guess the um what you stated about the programs for the teens, that kind of caught my attention because you said 70% of the people don't have children in Minnetonka, but 22% of the household that does are asking for um feel like we don't have enough programs. So I'm just cur I would like you know the question um for a future study session because I've always kind of question the programs for because I have a team and so I'm always thinking about more programming for teens. So that really caught my attention. So that's something that I would like to consider for future study session. Um even though I know um during the year um when we show um um Kelly OD had showed how many programs we had for teens and it seems like people were okay with the programs but in the survey result it shows that we still need more teen programs. So I'm just kind of curious about that. Where is kind of what's the discrepancy with that? >> I would I would suggest I mean it's it's one of those things. It's what you know and what you don't know. And the vast majority of people saying not having children, you're going to have a lot of people saying it's about the right amount because they they haven't heard about it. I would suggest for next year we change this up. And not to discount non-parents, but on this one, I think you probably instead of asking the question generally, we'll follow up into the demographic section if you have kids >> and and break it down into that level because that'll give you a better depth. Then we can even go, you know, perhaps what types of programs are you interested in or, you know, in some communities, do your children enjoy passive versus active recreation, those sorts of things. But perhaps maybe go a little bit more in depth. But I don't think the general broad question to the community as a whole provides the level of detail. I think it's time to dive down a little bit into the specifics with the user group, shall we say. Anything else? Council Kimberly. >> Yeah. And I don't know that this needs to be a study session, but um Mike and I discussed some things that I think that maybe um based on survey results, there could be some more education done like on the importance of storm water management. Um, and that I didn't actually mention this to him, but I did notice like for the um the questions about organic recycling and one of the reasons people gave for not using it is that it costs too much and so they're not aware that they're already paying for it. So that's that's something that we need to try again to communicate to people that hey, you're already paying for the service. You can use it. >> You're not you're not getting anything. Yes. Yes. >> Paying for something that you're not using. >> Exactly. Instead of not using something, hoping I'm not paying. >> Yes. Yeah. >> All right. Anything else on number two? Not seeing any. All right. Number three. Are there any budget impacts that should be considered? Um, can you Mike or Sarissa? I mean get explain what you're looking for with that question >> and maybe we could also tee this up after into the next u segment when we talk about the budget. The intent of that question was is there anything in these survey results that would uh prompt um some sort of budgetary conversation? So, for example, um I will I'm going to I'll pick on will like the potholes like is there a something in the budget that we should be focused on as a result of anything that you saw in the survey results >> is kind of the intent behind it. >> So, we'll get two stabs of this. So, if you don't have anything top of mind now, we can kind of regroup because I think we're going to have a similar question at the end of the budget conversation. I just one quick comment maybe or putting a marker in it for future as Mike and I talked about this this morning regarding um communications of the memo for uh for sure which is great that we have so many people who love the memo um it's just that with postage prices going up and everything um you know it's $25,000 or so to mail out every month for that. So, at one point, you know, do we want to maybe think about, you know, trying to wean people off of the printed and or mailed and go more towards um like email um letter. I know we have a lot of pe newsletters. We have a lot of people who still, you know, only want to do the print, but um you know, just maybe thinking about that for the future. Yeah, I I I think that's a good point particularly considering the question where people seemed favorable on maybe cutting back on the number of >> Yeah. >> additions, right? So maybe there could be a, you know, we talked about this, you know, for those people who want to have more information, they could get the additional like maybe it goes to every other month or every quarter and then there's an electronic version that is put out more frequently for people who want, you know, want to keep up with volunteer opportunities or other things or want to have a comprehensive source of information in one place instead of maybe getting the individual newsletters. >> Yeah. I mean, you had 68% of Minnetonka memo users willing to talk about because of those costs in order to scale back. >> Great. >> And I would just add I think I had Oh, mayor, if I can Yeah, thank you, mayor. Uh I think I shared in my conversation with all the council today just that very conversation on the cost of the newsletter. Um and I turn over to Andrew over there. Andrew and and leadership has talked about the cost of that and I don't know that we'll go into that depth here this evening but certainly in the coming months as staff pulls together our operational expenditures that is something we are talking about and exploring other options u because it is expensive uh and Paula just mentioned for example the cost of the postage uh I think we're hearing that postage is going to go up to a dollar per parcel or per per mailer and you know we're mailing out to 22 22 23,000 households. So that's just mailing costs per month, let alone the the printing and and the pulling it together costs. And so it it's expensive. Right now that expenditure lives within the cable fund and just with cable and so it's not so right now property taxes are not paying for the newsletter. It's coming out of our cable fund which is franchise fees still paid for by the residents but it's just another it's a just collected a different methodology and as people are disconnecting from cable we know that cable revenue that that franchise fee is continuing to decrease and migrating those costs out of cable TV over to the general fund. So that's where it will have more of a property tax impact and then looking at those options um to best serve the community. And it's it's like everything that we do in my opinion a balance between communicating because we also hear from residents that want more information. Sometimes we get um we hear from folks that think we're not communicating enough or not putting out enough information. So it's putting out the information and doing it in a way that's reaching people and is cost effective all at the same time. >> Great. All right. Any anything else on this last item? We'll talk more about it. Okay. Well, Peter, again, thank you so much and we really appreciate and I I mean, I haven't heard you present to any other councils, but I will say I always think is he just uh pumping us up here, but I'm going to just understand that we are shining light in Minnesota. >> We're going to take that. >> Yeah. No, I mean, I go back to most people are overall satisfied in the community they live into. They live in. It's always a to what degree are you satisfied? Are you enthusiastic or is it just the place to be? Um people have always been enthusiastic here and that's definitely not the case in a lot of other communities. >> So let's go to Lake Wagon. Everybody's above average. >> Well, yeah. Well, your your former city manager long ago asked my business partners um because I think at that time this was in the 90s, you were the second or third. And they're like, create a list on the quality of life rating with all the communities. And so we put that together and gave it to Dave Charles and he proceeded to share it with everybody from Mama. And then we got calls from all the other city managers. So then we just named the top five and everybody else was A through Z on the ratings. So it's always bore out that you're at the top. It's just, you know, that battle at the top. But no, uh, it was Yeah, the ones at the bottom definitely knew they were at the bottom. >> Yes. >> All right. Well, thank you. >> Thank you all. >> Okay, so we are um shooting to get everybody home by the start of the second period of the hockey game. Um, no, we're we're Mike and I talked where we're going to shoot for we said an hour and a half on this agenda item. So, let's do our best to make that happen. And um so on to the next item which is I close my with our granicus problems. I'm I put my agenda. Oh, here it is. Um budget kickoff and that is Mike. >> Yeah. Thank you mayor council. Let's see. Do I have Thank you. >> Oh the Sorry. >> Give us 30 seconds for the transition. >> Well, you're using your own time. >> I know. >> You have it open. That's fine. Thank you. >> All right. Uh are we ready? >> We're ready. >> All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. As as I noted earlier, uh council, tonight is our budget kickoff and as you introduced mayor, the budget kickoff. I also recognize that we have many of our staff members here tonight. Uh just again, not only here for the survey, but participating in hearing the conversation on our budget. Just to kick things off here for this evening, this is tonight's agenda. Uh we do have a number of slides that both Darren and I will walk through here this evening. Oops. So Darren really wants to make it to the second quarter. So >> sorry I shouldn't have mentioned it. >> Uh so this is kind of our outlay for tonight. So we have our uh overview. So I'll kick off the overview. I'll kick it over to Darren. We'll highlight the financial management plan. That document was in your packet. We'll highlight some of the budget drivers uh preliminary budget drivers. Again, it is, as I remind you, it is already May. Uh, but there's a lot that will change between now and the end of the year. So, we want to highlight tonight what information we do have and and what we think will be driving the budget for 2027. We'll talk a little bit on facility planning. So, we'll have a slide coming up just talking about all of our assets and the facilities that we've been talking about the last year, year and a half. Uh, Kelly, I believe, is going to talk a little bit on the recreation and do a recreation overview on our facilities. Then after that, Darren will highlight priority based budgeting. So, you're going to get a real glimpse into the work that's been happening the last six months by staff in regards to how we've been uh teeing up this conversation regarding priority based budgeting. I think it's pretty cool and I think you'll as we dive deeper into it um beyond tonight, I think you're going to see just the the impact of and the power behind what this will do in terms of prioritizing. We'll end it with our Q&A and then we'll have an exercise at the end to really walk through then council priorities and then those questions at the end. >> So with that, uh these are the questions. So just keep these questions in mind again. The old >> we're on the screen again. >> What's happening? >> There we go. >> Okay. Or you're clicking. That's why. Okay. Never mind. >> We were both clicking so that's why. >> Is that what happening? Oh, okay. There we go. >> So these are the com these are the discussion questions for this evening. Uh so keep these in mind as we go through the presentation. And the first question and I talked to all of you today uh when we connected and that is what priorities do you have for 2027 not including but not limited to our operations, our capital improvement planning, our programming, anything dealing with our economic improvement planning, any initiatives that come to mind. This is really we want to hear from you on anything about the budget. So, it's not just general fund operations. So, we just want to hear from council tonight. Um, I think we're just diving deeper into that question this year more so than I think even previous years because it's I think a lot easier. It is a lot easier for staff on the front end uh before we start putting the ingredients together for our our cake, if you will, our proverbial budget cake. So, as we have just your your um feedback here this evening, that will be help helpful before we start actually putting that cake together and even putting it in the oven. And not that we won't have other touch points along the way in the coming months, but it's a lot easier tonight just to really understand that from you. So that's question one. And then question two is just really regarding our facility improvements and what projects are your highest priority. Again, Darren will touch base on that here uh with a slide coming up. And really uh at the end of it, we have a two-part question there for you just in terms of what's preferred, what is that looking like for you, and then a real pointed question, if you will, is about the community center. and just working with Kelly OD and his team. Uh I know you know that's been in the queue for many years and we need to know a little bit direction from the council on our community center and where that is in the priority list. Um because for Kelly and his team, it's about scheduling. And so we already start getting calls about weddings in 2027 and other events being held at the community center. So we need to know if we need to reserve or block time off for those improvement projects. So that's the real planning effort that will need at least some direction tonight. It's not final direction, but it is some sort of guidance on what that's looking like for you. So that in mind, uh this slide you've seen before and that is our 2027 budget development. We are really here in that third bullet line down the May 11th uh budget kickoff. You see you saw this slide at the last study session. So I don't I won't go through it here, but it does outline for you all the dates coming up in terms of when we have different touch points with our budgets. Um, I'll pause there real quickly. Any questions about the timeline? >> I know. >> No. >> So, you again, I know you've seen it and it's also for those that might be in attendance here this evening or at some point listening online. Just knowing that's the schedule for this year and when different parts of our budget will be discussed. Uh, the next slide, and again, I know this is a repeat, so that's why I'm being pretty quick on it. Uh just to remind everyone our budget, this is the 2026 budget and I mentioned it's 124 million. So if you ever ask what's the city's total budget in 2026 it was 124 million. That will certainly change as we develop for 2027. On the left hand side of this are our governmental funds and the governmental funds are those that are supported by property taxes. Those are the four buckets if you will. Starting on the top is the special revenue accounts. There's a number of special revenue accounts. Not all those are supported by property taxes except for we do have um money toward excuse me towards the marsh and the other one is for the uh affordable housing trust fund and which is really through the HR levy. And so those are a couple funds with special revenues uh supported by taxes. Moving around that diagram is the capital improvement funds or the CIP. That's where we fund all of our streets, technology, equipment, parks, trails, etc. And then we have debt service. Those are principal and interest payments on our outstanding debt service. And then our general fund where a bulk of our expenditures lie just with our general fund operations. So those are all again property tax supported. We have then another category of funds called our enterprise funds. Those are enterprise in the sense that they are not supported by property taxes and fees are the main source of revenue. So those would be like our water and sewer um utility type accounts. Uh that very right hand graphic really kind of again illustrates the breakdown of the property taxes that are collected. 81% or that darkest blue area is towards the general fund. So again a majority of our property taxes collected pay for our general fund operations. 16% is for capital and then two and 1% are for the special revenue and the debt service. Hi Deb. >> Hello. >> So we take a real systematic approach and I a reason I show this slide is that there are a lot of moving parts that go into our budget process. That's why it takes us uh almost seven to eight months to pull together. But it starts with our mission, vision, and values. And I I won't read through those here this evening. You know what they are. uh but that is really the structure by which we get to our budget. So the vision is important, our mission and then our values again and then our strategic plan. All of that feeds into our strategic plan which then really drives our budget and where I'll pause here on this slide is on the values. When I I think from a staff perspective, from my perspective as I work with staff in pulling the budget together, the values is really important and those are noted there on the right side. I know it's probably you have to squint to probably read those, but they are important in that the city's values are grounded in uh we are committed to a beautiful, sustainable, and healthy environment. The next one listed there is delivering excellent public services and providing affordable opportunities. The third value is ethically upholding community trust through proactive inclusive public engagement, transparent communications, and careful stewardship of our financial, natural, and capital assets. Then our last value is being able to nimly lead our city into the future by anticipating community needs, pursuing service and innovations and other technologies to find efficiencies in what we do. And a lot of this is grounded also in collaboration. I mentioned those values because it is important in terms of we identify what our values are. They lead and again are foundational to then what's noted here is the priority based budgeting and we're going to get to that. That's been kind of the newest initiative in terms of how we're approaching our budget. When you look at priority based budgeting, it's solely grounded again around the vision, the mission, the values, and our strategic plan. So it takes a look at all those elements. And then again, I don't want to get too far ahead of Darren and we'll show you what that looks like in terms of how we get how we pull that together with the strategic plan. Again, just backing up to that previous slide with the strategic plan with our strategic priority financial strength. I do want to point out the three desired outcomes. The first one is improve alignment between service expenditures and identify priorities. That's where priority based budgeting comes in. That's the real action step and the actionable item behind that desired outcome. Uh the second is expanding sources of revenue for capital improvement projects. Again, that's been part of our conversation around the local option sales tax possibilities, the grant writing that we've been doing and other revenue generating um identifying other gener revenue generating sources. Then last strategic priority with financial strength or excuse me desired outcome is the high level of credit creditworthiness really maintaining our AAA bond rating etc. Uh we have a clickable link there for a community dashboard. We won't spend time on that. Uh but we if we have time if anyone's interested we can go back to that later. The next slide then in setting the stage for tonight's conversation is to again give you a sense of our last 20 years levy. Uh, as Peter noted here a few minutes ago, property taxes are on the minds of residents. That has always been the case. It's even more so today. And really just want to make sure that all of you are um reminded of where we are positioned compared to our peer cities. Uh, this dates back the last 20 years and takes again a look at our peer cities and Minnetonka is in the middle of all that. And you think about our for me I think about our values and our strategic plan and our priorities and so um we're not and maybe to put this in business terms we're not the Walmarts of the world and we're not the uh Nordstrom's and so we're kind of in the middle of the pack in terms of the value of community services we provide we're investing in those services investments in services do take uh those revenue sources and and so I think from my perspective um as a city manager as we look at where we've been the last 20 years and again how we position ourselves as a city and meeting the needs of our community that yes, property taxes we are very aware of and how we compare ourselves. We're we're right right below the average of all those cities. Uh the the 20-year average is at 99%. We're at 96%. That's what that line represents again. So we've been positioned really kind of in the middle of our peer cities. You heard some of this uh from directors uh last month and that is some of the challenges. So as uh as staff as we start again pulling together the numbers in the coming months and as we ask you those questions at the end just reminding you of those challenges and potential opportunities. Uh we are uh Darren will touch base on a slide here in a few minutes on the public safety master plan so you get a sense of where we're at in terms of uh that timeline. Uh we have con just looking at the future of the EMS service delivery. You've heard both from Chief Fox and Chief Borboom recently just about the challenges with EMS, the everchanging environment around EMS services and how we uh fit into and accommodate that changing landscape. Uh the recreational facility study, again, we've been talking about that. We'll have a slide coming up on the facilities, our fire station analysis and remodeling. So, we're feeding uh fitting people uh and buildings together. So that has to be coordinated in terms of the staff that we're bringing on as we as we transition to more of a full-time model and then having the facilities to accommodate that as well. Uh the Opus Park uh again not new to you but certainly looking at funding for Opus Park uh the implementation of the the CAP which is the climate action and adaptation plan and making sure we have the right funding available to carry out those initiatives. Our CIP has been a challenge. Again, you'll see in a slide coming up where our CIP levy has been pretty flat the last number of years and as we know with inflation and with other budget pressures uh especially with tariffs now just costs escalating exponentially and so being able to keep intact our fiveyear CIP knowing that expenditures are rising and again with the with the budget pressures and the levy pressures then certainly with our ERP and HC CM upgrades. Those are software upgrades for our um HR HR software as well as our financial software upgrades. Something that that we know is coming and has a bigger price tag to it. With that, I'm going to turn over to Darren. We're going to transition into financial management planning. So, hopefully I kind of set the stage a little bit for you in terms of what's coming up. Um, as I turn over to Darren for financial management planning, I would just say that just it's such an important exercise when we look at our financial management planning. You know, we're a city that just doesn't look one year at a time. We want to make sure we're looking out for the next five years. Certainly, there are assumptions that go into that in terms of projecting salaries and benefits. Uh, our capital improvement planning is important element of that. Our economic improvement planning is an important element of that. our debt service planning, facility planning, all of that is so important into our long range planning and that's important as we look at our financial health of the city to make sure that we're positioned well uh moving forward. So with that, I'd like to turn over to Darren and he's going to kind of walk us through the financial management plan, the elements that go into the plan. I know I've kind of covered some of that here in my statements. We can probably go on to the next slide. >> I too am thinking about the second quarter. So we're >> So with that period second period second period get my sports straight. >> All right with that uh turn right to Darren. >> Thank you Mike. Good evening Mayor Council. Um yes so the financial management plan uh we included in the packet as well. I think last year we included it for the one of the first times that we kind of reviewed that in depth. Uh there are a number of items that that go into that as Mike mentioned. Um we're looking forward for forward throughout the next five years looking at our revenues, our expenditures, making several assumptions on those as well. Um but we also help utilize that to help with our capital improvement pro program as well too. So we make making sure that we have sufficient fund balances not only within this general fund piece of it that you see that's here. We also have those same plans for every one of the capital project funds that go out as well too. And so we have long range forecasts for not just a general fund but for all our capital project funds as well too. Um and making sure that those levy projections that we try to get those where they're manageable. We're not seeing those spikes up up and down from year to year on that end of it. And that's where we've been um u fortunate to have some healthy reserves that we've been able to u move over to different funds um throughout the years um and we're able to in this year as well too to continue that that process. And so that helps us um kind of moderate the levy um for not only just this upcoming year for 2027, but for all the next five years as well too. On that end of it, um the financial management plan includes a lot of the onetime costs. Um as Mike mentioned earlier, it is early. It's only May. Um so there are lots of items in here that we still need to go through and get all the details on that aren't the the 30,000 foot level um projects or or um programs at this point in time. And so one of those big ones is is the public safety master plan. We've been working on that for the last um three years or so on that end of it. Um that's programmed in here trying to get that where we got some manageable levies as well too. Um some of the things that aren't in here um are those like the fire station improvements. If we were to build a couple new fire stations, those um aren't in this financial management plan at this point in time. um that's given that kind of holding our breath that maybe sales tax pays for that or is able to help finance that to a certain extent. And same with kind of the recreational facility improvements as well. With one caveat, we did um with last year's budget set aside about $45,000 as kind of a first year of a two-year plan to set aside some dollars for potential bond issuance in the future, whether that's for a fire station remodel or community centerwist remodels or something to that nature at some point in time. that kind of helped us generate a little bit of a savings account um for future steps on that end of it. Um so for 2027 consideration so in the public safety master plan we have programmed right now um and these are obviously just preliminary but we have six full-time firefighters with April one higher dates for 27 um with a cost of about $800,000. And I should put a caveat. I did notice this afternoon that I my numbers in the report were wrong. I think I had 1 million or 1.1 million in the report. It is actually um 795,000. So I apologize for that error. And then there was one other I think on the capital improvement program amount is 500 million or 500,000 I should say. Um so we're looking at the six full-time firefighters for 2027. We did not hire we do not have are not plan to hire any in 2026. We took a little bit of a break there from um our 2025 hires. Uh, one other item we have under the public safety master plan is additional operator to cover extended hours in the real-time operations center. So that would be for our drones as first responder program to help um man that um station outside more than our just normal business hours right at the moment at this point in time. So we have about $140,000 budgeted there. Not sure if that's a a correct amount, but is uh probably more than enough at this point in time, but um it's a placeholder for now. And then uh we also have related to the public safety master plan is the drones first responder program that the council approved and we um initiated that lease in 2025 at a cost of $300,000 annually. And so we paid for that first year uh 20 26 out of the capital improvement program and then years two through 10 are going to be move over and transition being paid for out of the general fund out of the police department operational budget. So that'll be a $300,000 increase to the general fund piece of that. uh we had sufficient funding and a kind of reserve balance that's in the capital improvement or the public safety fund which is a capital project fund to um cover that first year on that end of it. Uh what else what else is in the budget is the second year of that facility levy funding. We talked about that $45,000 a little bit ago. This is that second step of that and so that would get us to $810,000 which would support a $10 million bond issuance for facility renovations across the city. um continuing restoration of our capital improvement program. As Mike mentioned, our CIP levey's been right around $10 million. It's actually been a little bit less than that. We decreased it a little bit last year to help um reduce the levy impact last year. And so trying to restore that a little bit. Um so we have right now programmed for the CIP to increase $500,000. I'll show you in a minute kind of where we're projecting that to be at this point in time. Um and then kind of a plan over the next number of years. And we've kind of had a plan every year, but it seems like we always at the last minute try to we reduce that CIP a little bit to try to moderate the levy a little bit, but um at this point in time, we have a a restoration in there of $500,000. And then we have a couple unknowns as well too. Our health insurance um you know, we had a fairly substantial increase last year was just under 10% I believe it was. Um but it sounds like our insurance renewal might be um pretty significant this year. We we don't have any numbers yet. We just know that our experience rating hasn't been great on on that end of it. So, not expecting um good numbers on that end of it. And then we have four of our five unions um their contract expire at the end of December here. So, uh we'll be in negotiations with them for wages and and you know, healthcare costs and those types of things coming up as well. So as we look at the 27 budget as well too and this is a slide you've seen before as as well but there are a number of different documents and plans and programs that go into the budget. Um this is kind of where that strategic plan along with all these types of programs build that budget and build those priorities across across the organization. So we have as we mentioned the CAP plan, the climate action adapt adaptation plan um to the strategic plan to the public safety master plan and so on and so forth on on that end of it. So as we take a look at the financial management plan and I know this is small um just want to highlight maybe I can Amanda or Miranda can I grab the mouse from you? Excuse me. Just want to point out a couple areas. Maybe not. >> Showed up a sec for a second. >> Did anybody see it? >> I saw it for a second, but >> Oh, there it is. >> It's moving too quick. Okay. So, if we look at 2025 actual, we're still working on the uh we had our our auditors in a couple weeks ago. We're working on our financial report. That's getting pretty close. These 2025 actuals are are pretty much going to be final at this point in time. But as you can see, at the end of 25, we had a really good um 2025 year. We had $4.1 million of of revenues over expenditures. Uh then we had programmed out just below there in the orange, you can see we programmed out 900,000 and an additional 178,000 as transfers out. So, we netted about just over $3 million of excess revenues over expenditures, which is great. Um, that allows us to use those excess reserves for future levy reductions in the our capital project funds on on that end of it. However, I will note that I wish I could see this mouse easier. My eyesight is terrible, but um you can see the expenditure line where it says $55 million and you look at 2026 column where it says $60 million. So that's an increase of $5 million and our fund balance policy requires us to be in that 30 to 50% range. And so say we're at 40%, we want to keep our fund balance at 40%. If our expenditures go up by $5 million, that means we need to increase our reserves by $2 million just to maintain that 40% um base on that end of it. So in reality, if we have $3 million surplus, really means that we have a million dollar surplus that we're able to reallocate to um other capital project funds at this point in time. So, and obviously we don't expect our expenditures to increase at that rate moving forward. So, it won't need as much excess fund balance in the in the future, but there is a need on every year as your expenditures increase to in hopefully have a little bit of a surplus there to cover that fund balance requirement piece. But we don't at this point, right? Is that I mean the projections look look see it going under 40%. Is that correct or am I just >> that's a baseline and so you can be 30 to 50. Um 40 is kind of that middle point of that >> that we try to hit >> right that we try to hit. Anything over that 40% you can reallocate out to capital project funds from the current year. >> We're under we're trying to restore it. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Um couple other other items to note. So the capital transfers out. So this is the projections going out um utilizing that fund balance in the out years. Uh basically what that excess reserves did was allow us to add some transfers out going into 2029 through um 30 and 31. It allowed us to to add some additional transfers out on that end of it. So that's where we utilize that that fund balance. And then if you look at the 2027 column, this is really where we're projecting where our expenses are going to be. Um our revenues we're projecting based off of um kind of what we know at this point in time and expenditures are based off of um just kind of just uh kind of wages and our benefits and other cost assumptions that right now we get it at about 5.5% just a lot of that's unknown because of the unique contracts and things like that at this point in time. Um, we have a little bit of levy that's dedicated to the ice arena into the marsh. It's about 450,000 on that page. And I think I got some more stuff on the next page that I want to point out. Here's where we're where we're projecting the capital project fund levies. And here you can see we're projecting at this point in time, and we're still got a month before our CIP study session, but $9.8 million of of the levy dedicated to capital projects versus 9.3 this this past year. And then you can see it kind of escalates going out into the future um pieces of that. Um here we have our debt service 1.4 million and here's this 810,000 that we talked about of that little savings account or not little but on that savings account utilizing for um future facility improvements. Um the blue lines here are the public safety master plan related to police department. So, here's that $300,000 for the Axon for for DFRS and then down here is that $140,000 for the extended um coverage in the in the operation center for that. And then the red line is the fire department's request for personnel here. So, gosh, I lose this mouse so easily. I'm sorry. So, that $795,000 that I mentioned earlier is there. So, looking out into the future. So the public safety master plan we started this is year going to be year four and 27. 28 has a request. We need six additional firefighters beyond the the six that are called for in 27. And we would um hire those at is projected like an April 1 deadline or hiring date at that point in time which means that in 29 we would have a little bit of leftover or carry forward to cover that first three months of the year uh for 2029 as well too. But then we would be wrapped up um with the public safety master plan implementation obviously outside of any building facilities anytime anything like on that end of it and such. And so you can see at 27 our levy is 6.84% and within that levy of 6.84% is the police and fire levy impact of 2.08%. which includes this $935,000 here and then this $300,000 up here for the axon for the DFRs on that end of it. Um and then here's our projections moving forward into the out years on that end of it. So, and if you recall, um in December our projections were significantly higher. Um we had the the promise that we would come back and have a better look at those numbers when uh we got past the first of the year here. we did take a a closer look at these um and and it's coming in at a better pace than what we had projected at that point in time. So that's good news on that end of it. Um obviously it's still very early. There's things that can come into play, but um we're hoping that we have them captured in some of our assumptions um to this point in time on on that end of it. Was there any questions on the financial management plan before I go on or should I just keep plugging away? >> Yeah, let's keep going and we >> Perfect. >> Yeah. >> And here is just a 10-year history. You've seen this chart many times. Um just shows our our last 10 year history. The um blue part on the bottom is our CIP. As as we kind of said, that's kind of stayed pretty flat over the years on that end of it. Our operational section is the orange and at the very top that gray section is our debt service debt service piece of it. And then here is the projections moving forward. Taking it from that financial management plan and moving it over to a graph for for a little bit of ease of seeing. Um our our levy for this current year in 2026 was 7.91% and then we're projecting that out to 6.84 for 2027 at this point in time. And then your future years are there and that uh circled in there is the public safety master plan. Um those are the years that are impacted by that um by that plan implementation. So starting back in 2024 and then ending with a little bit in 2029 at this point in time. Uh and I don't know if we want to go over this or not and probably save some time here. This was just some of the community survey results um of the kind of the tax impact piece of that that I kind of take a close look at on that end of it. I'm sure you did as well too. Um I just I included 25 and 26 in here for the same kind of questions just so it was a little bit of ease of kind of seeing that. But um really the needle didn't move a whole lot from year to year on on some of those questions as well too. But um can definitely take a peek at those if if you want. And I had um added this survey question here as well. talked about the uh I believe it was sustainability and or conservation, sustainability, those types of things. And then the bottom question there is on 68, would you be willing to see a property tax increase to fund that that work there? And there's a strongly a strong yes and a yes of about 77% for this year and it was 68% for for last year. So on the same same type of stuff. So, and this one. >> Yeah. You want me to take this one? >> I I'll let you take this one, Mike. >> Okay. >> This one's hot off the press. >> I'll grab the mouse here. And so, transitioning um from what just A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A Darren talked about this um as I teed up earlier is just about facility planning and there's just a as we know a lot of different moving parts right now. really just try what this outlines is on the left hand side of this illustration uh in the red font are the projects that we've proposed for local option sales tax. So we have the fire station 2 noted as a rebuild, fire station 3 is a rebuild, the marsh uh is noted there, opus and then trails. So that was in our original sales tax proposal and the projects that we've been talking about uh alongside and then we also note the community center and Williston fire station 4 and fire station 5. So in our challenges, one of the things that you know you as a council and along with staff have been talking about is identifying these long-term plans, these long-term projects, uh trying to manage our assets, what are the potential funding sources and then the potential timing of those. So along with listing out these potential projects, uh these are the current estimated costs in that second column. Uh then what we wanted to do and at least try to illustrate for you is just some different scenarios that could happen. Uh this is the last week of session. Uh it's too bad we didn't have this conversation maybe a couple weeks from now. We would we would know a lot more. Uh this being again the last week of session, assuming it doesn't go into what they say overtime, it's supposed to end actually uh well Monday is the last day of session, but I think Sunday night at midnight is the is when all bills have to be completed or agreed to. Uh and so just knowing that these are the different scenarios. So scenario one really takes a look at if the city received their state full bonding request. And so, as you know, we had submitted as a city $5 million for fire station number two. That's currently being considered as a bonding bill. Again, we're not going to know until next week if there is going to be a bonding bill, if so, if we're going to be in it, and if so, to what extent. This first scenario assumes that we would receive the full 5 million in our bonding bill. and we receive the state legislator legislature granted the city's local options sales tax authority. Now granted, we would have to go to to the voters, but this assumes that we've got the authority. So, what are the potential funding sources under that scenario? Uh, with the fire station number two, uh, we would utilize that $5 million in bonding. Now granted, it's a close to $13 million project, but we would use the 5 million from the state bonding. And then the the difference or the delta would be in the local option sales tax. Uh I'll come back to this second line item here. Fire station number three rebuild. That would again part of the local option sales tax. Same thing with the marsh. That would be a question posed in November. So you'd see between the state bonding request and the lowc cost and sales tax uh that would be the revenue source for those projects. Uh opus right now we do not have an identified funding source uh because uh the legislature did not uh include that at least as of right now in the bonding in the excuse me in the uh sales tax proposals. It's only in the Senate, excuse me, it's in the House but not in the Senate. So, we're still unclear of where uh the Opus space would shake out at this time. Same thing with the trails. Uh and then in this scenario, the other two uh projects with the community center and Williston uh that you as a council would have then the ability to use that $10 million bond issuance that Darren talked about a few slides ago that we've now built into the tax levy that you could utilize that $10 million for the community center and for improvements to Williston. And that's really what this salmon colored pink shaded box illustrates in these next couple examples as well. So that's one scenario. The other scenario is if we get what happens if we get partial state funding with our bond ask uh excuse me with our state capital bonding ask uh we had to fill out a questionnaire here recently. The state asked the city um well what if you don't get the full amount what would you accept? So it's kind of a loaded gun question. uh we had submitted uh to the state that two and a half would be something anything would be great um obviously but uh we we submitted 2.5 million. So if we didn't get the full five we would obviously accept anything but hopefully we would get up to 2 and a half million. So it's really kind of a similar situation. So this scenario number two uh really only impacts really fire station 2 rebuild. We would use that $2.5 million in state bonding and then the the delta or the difference would be made up in the local option sales tax. The other columns would remain the same. What happens if we get no state bonding and but we got the local option sales tax authority. Uh fire station 2 rebuild would be all sales tax. Same thing with fire station three rebuild would be all sales tax. Same thing with the marsh all sales tax. Still unclear at this point with opus and with the trails. And then again the council would have the flexibility to use that $10 million uh levy for a a general obligation bond. So go means general obligation bond. And then another scenario is what if a sales tax or excuse me what if a tax bill didn't come to fruition which is a possibility as well. So, if the legislature did nothing on our bonding bill and did nothing with sales tax, what are the council's options? That gets a lot harder because everything at that point would fall on a general obligation debt and that would be a whole another conversation. Um, and timing and sequencing of that would look a lot different because that would be all on a property meaning a property tax all on property taxes >> and in that scen Yeah. So, it'd be all basically geo bonding projects and levy >> and levy levy increases. >> So, this really just want to highlight that for you uh just given some of these different scenarios and perhaps that I teed up at the beginning that we'll tee up at the end is kind of the council's um opinions, flavor if you will, on community center and looking at that $10 million potential general obligation bond issuance to utilize towards the community center. Yep. Assuming we can get uh the local option sales tax authority and assuming we can get some level I guess some level of bonding state bonding >> with the fire station. >> Oh yeah. >> And then there is uh with fire station 2 there was an option for a remodel as well. And so we have been talking about a full rebuild uh with fire station 2. in the study it did uh there was an option for a remodel that was at two and a half million certainly that's a conversation I think as we I think as we understand uh what happens at the state legislature how all that comes into play and what potential funding funding options are available if we go down that route questions there I'll pause there real quick >> not seeing any >> it's just been a tricky one as We're just waiting to see what's happening. The legislature will really probably chart our course for for these projects. >> Rebecca, I have I have one question and it's just I mean based on sort of our experience so far at the legislature and what we've been hearing from the tax chair, I mean what's what's the prognos what's the prognostication I should say about um this year? Nobody >> I don't think anyone I I don't know that anyone's willing to put >> uh >> I think it is it is truly unknown. Um I in from what I'm hearing from our lobbyists. So we have golf publiclix our lobbyists. We have staff uh have a virtual call with them is it every other Friday? So we're getting updates from them. I think everything they've heard we've heard from them is that with bonding it's you're reading it in the newspapers too. Just in terms of bonding bill and the appetite of a bonding bill, um I think there's going to be a lot of negotiations that's going to happen this upcoming weekend. We'll determine the bonding bill. I'm probably a little more personally a little more optimistic around local option sales tax in terms that there'll be a sales tax that there'll be some version of sales tax. That's I'm more optimistic on that than the bonding. Staff, are you hearing? I think that's agreed. >> Yeah. momentum seems less optimistic than you. >> Is that right? >> Okay. Uh moving on. >> Just >> Oh, this we want to kick it over to Kelly. Kelly wanted to give just a refresher on the community facilities um >> from a couple years ago. Absolutely. >> So, back in 2023, you probably all remember, we did a community facilities study, looked at a number of recreational facilities. So, I just wanted to take a couple minutes and look at a couple of the facilities. So, whoever's got the click click. Uh, so first, community center. When we looked at this, the assessment was, you know, there was definitely some some things we could improve upon here. Uh, wayfinding throughout the facility. Uh, that lobby reception area is kind of tucked back, so it'd be nice to have a more visible reception area. The restrooms are, I would say, in need of some attention for sure. And in general, it's a building that was built in the 80s. And so, I think the general finishes were something that we would be uh looking at improving. uh talked about already, you know, Darren and Mike covered this a little bit, but uh the plan is, you know, the recommendation was to continue with the previously planned renovations. So, back in 2020, early 2023, late 2022, uh we actually bid the project and had some favorable bids. So, the the recommendation is to continue with that. Uh we talked about the dedicated levy that uh was approved in 2026. I know there's a lot of whatifs, but there are some dollars there. Uh and as Mike mentioned, the biggest key for us with the community center is scheduling. And we do have a window in early 2027 that we think would work. So I know we're we're definitely eager to hear what you all think about the community center. Next slide is the Williston Fitness Center. So when we looked at Willist, Willist is, you know, a building that's 50 years old. We renovated Williston. It's already been 15 years if you can believe it. Back in 2010, 2011. So that building uh has gotten a lot busier, too. When we first renovated, we had 2,000 members. As of this month, we have over 11,000 members at at Willison Fitness Center. So, Willis is really busy and you can definitely tell some of the hightraic areas are are taking a beating and so the locker rooms, the front desk area, there's some hight traffic areas that we think we could appro improve upon. Um, when the recommendations came out, it was kind of an alle cart option where we had options from $200,000 to $26 million which included pickleball courts and things like that. And so when staff kind of narrowed it down, those hightraic areas came in at about a 5 to6 million renovation. And so, um, you know, as we talked about, uh, you know, a lot of things up in the air, but potentially, uh, looking at the geo bond as a potential, um, funding source, uh, dependent upon a lot of things. And then the last is the marsh. And we just I put a few uh numbers up here just so you all aware of how the marsh is doing. The marsh is doing well, by the way. Um, as you can see, that top right number in the chart is the average members. So the average amount of members monthly members at the march currently is over 8,700. We're averaging that here in 2026. Now with that said, the two lines below that would be the silver sneaker members and the Renew Active members, which the Renew Active is a similar program to Silver Sneakers. So of the 8,700 members, you know, 6800 are from those two programs. Um the average monthly visits are 19,000. So we're seeing, you know, 600 to 700 people in there every day. That doesn't even include people who are coming to the cafe and who are coming to the the market and the spa. So, we're seeing uh good traffic through the building. Definitely. Again, probably 800 up up to a thousand people per day, which is uh really really fun to see. We have over a 100 classes uh every week for group fitness. Uh a number of different classes too like sound healing, healing. Um women on weights has been a very popular class. We had the farmers market last year. We had 13,000 visits at the farmers market and we really have seen an increase in personal training uh which has jumped up over 50%. I would say in that threeyear span a lot of our numbers have doubled or even tripled uh especially members visits things like that. It's a little hard to see but the plan for the funding um is that local option sales tax that was mentioned that was a $35 million ask for the state. Um and fingers crossed on that. So just wanted to give you a brief overview of the three facilities. Again, I think we're looking for, you know, specifically community center. Would be interested to hear what you have to say about that. So, turn it back to you guys. >> Very good. >> Do we comment on this now or are we waiting for this? >> Yes, let's get through the whole thing. >> Only a few more slides, I promise. Um, so we'll kind of shift gears here a little bit. Um, priority based budgeting. So, we talked about a little bit that about the beginning. Um but yes, we have undertaken kind of this um whole rethinking budgeting concept that Min or not the Minnesota GFO but the National GFOA um National League of Cities and I think the um ICMA as well too is is kind of undertaking this whole different kind of throwing government budgeting upside down a little bit and looking at it more on a programmatic base um rather than a line item basis piece of that and really tying your programs to your strategic plan, tying your um programs to what's important and priorities within your community on that end of it and such. Um, so here's I think I covered most of that. Um, so program with priority based budgeting by identifying our programs and associated costs with the re relevance to the strategic plan and the community serve the city can focus on providing a higher level of service um to its highest priorities. And so we talked about that with our strategic plan when we built that a couple years ago or revamped it is that we were always adding programs. So, we're getting wider and weren't necessarily lifting them up. And our really our focus is is to focus a little bit narrower and provide those services that we that are really a high priority, provide them at a really high level. And that's exactly what we're trying to do um with program budgeting. And this application um through party based budgeting through um Tyler um Tyler is an application that allowing us to do that in a very short order um to undertake program budgeting um which has been around for decades on that end of it. To do that by hand basically or manually is probably a five-year endeavor and it just you're not going to get good data out of it. You're not going to get relevant data. um this program has um reinvigorated that whole process and made it something that we can do in six months versus literally six years on on that end of it. And especially with limited staff, uh we wouldn't have the the staff or the capacity to dedicate um staff to doing this full-time on this end of it. And this has really been a a a pretty eye openening experience to this point in time. And I'm really looking forward to kind of our next steps in it as well. Um, and this really ties to the strategic plan is that we're aligning those resources with our with our desired outcomes for the that financial strength priority. And so what I really want to do is show you around in priority based budgeting a little bit. And so so here is what we have been doing. So we as a city, we started what six months ago on this deal. And so we our first step was to identify all of our programs throughout the city. And so every director was given kind of a list of like, okay, sit down and develop what your programs are throughout your department that you um can identify within within reason. We want to don't we don't want to have it where we have 1500 programs across the city. We want to have it. So we have well we happen to have 300 programs across the city that we've identified. It doesn't go down and take and break down every program into a minutiae piece of that because there are areas where we could break down it even further but it really gets timeconuming and it it doesn't really provide you with a whole lot better um data on that because it just you're just kind of splitting splitting hairs at that point in time. And so the first step was identifying the programs. Then we went back and we um we entered the budget into into this um this pro into this program. And so we allocated out the 2025 budget across every one of these programs. And a lot of these programs cross departments. And so if you had a program that was in between police and fire, if it was um mental health response or something to that nature or whatever, if you had time, if you had a combined program like that, you would charge your time um to each to the each of that pro or each department would charge time to that program and so it can cross departments and it really doesn't look at departments at all. It looks at the program. So departments kind of go out the window a little bit and so it kind of it's hard to think about when you think about directors and each department being kind of siloed a little bit. Program budgeting looks at it from the program and how it's supported by personnel across the city on that end of it. So we went through and we did that that cost allocation and then we went through and did the scoring of it. And so the scoring of the programs is really that priority based budgeting piece of it. It's not just program budgeting. It's uh measuring that program across, you know, how does it relate to your strategic plan? Who is the or how much of the public is served by that program? Are you serving a big portion of the city or is it a very small sector of the of the community being served? Is there a an increase in demand for that program or has it been stable or is it declining on that end of it? So you measure those types of things and is it mandated or not? A lot of our programs are mandated by state federal government on on that end of it and such. And so there are a lot of things that we would love to get out of the business of but we we literally can't um on that end of it. So those are all those different attributes that you measured against. You put it in the computer and it joubles it all up and it comes out with some of these initial results. And I'm going to say initial because this is just our first delve at the data coming back and we haven't we just got this data back in the last week and a half here. So a lot of directors haven't seen this page at all yet. So this is news to them as well. Um and one thing I should say is that each director went through and scored it. Um my assistant finan director Joel Mary's been integral in this process as well too. We went back and kind of reviewed each of the programs and the scoring at a very high level. Um, but really what we want to do is get to a point where we have a peer review of a certain number of people looking at every program to make sure that scoring is consistent and accurate from program to program because everybody can look at it in a little different lens and relate things um differently as it relates to the strategic plan or um you know can the service be done by another partner or something to that nature on on that end of it and such. And so looking at some of these results. So this is one of our landing pages. This is for an internal dashboard on on our end. Um but if you look at safe and healthy community, these are are selected priorities. And so these are the pillars that we see in the strategic plan. These are basically what they call community priorities. These are outward facing strategic priorities. There are governance priorities as well too. And that's really our Oh, it's not going to take so long, is it? Okay, that's our financial strength pillar. And so that's the only one that really looks internal. And so that might be something we look at down the road is like when we redo our strategic plan, we may have to look at more internal operations because we only measure um the financial strength one against a couple outcomes on that end of it and such. But so we really want to kind of focus on the community priorities piece of it um for the most part. I'll just go through this pretty quickly here, but here you can see if I can interrupt you Darren. So if you across the top of those six pillars like Darren mentioned, if you could just quickly um highlight the dollars noted. So safe and healthy community even make it bigger a little bit. >> Um >> so >> so it takes our budget as Darren mentioned and then it spreads those costs against our strategic plan. So it's it's a way of looking at our numbers differently because as you know with the way that government accounting works it's done by departments and as Darren noted this now breaks down those costs and aligns it against our strategic plan. So you this is where you really start to understand as one of our goals is to make sure we're aligning our costs aligning our expenditures to the goals that you establish in our strategic plan. That's why that strategic planning is so important. And it's important and that we demonstrate how those costs then tie back to each of those strategic plans. And so I don't know if Darren can blow that up. I'm also kind of looking carefully here. So safe and healthy community like 74 million. Uh livable and well planned development 72 million. Infrastructure and asset management can't read it. uh >> sustainability, resilience, and natural environment. Someone's going have to help me out. I can't read that either, but 32 or 52. One of the two >> 52. Sorry. So, and I want to put a caveat in there, too. So, up here in the corner is our total budget. It's $99 million. And then I know Mike mentioned before that our budget was aboutund was it 15 or 20,000 or million before. >> U this is only programs. And so this doesn't include like our capital project CIP type of dollars. It includes our water and sewer utility fund because that's an enterprise fund. So that's got some capital in it, but it doesn't include like our street improvement fund or those types of things. So this is kind of just operational. And so if you add up our total budget is 99 million. They've added up all these across, it's obviously much more than that. that really indicates that a lot of our programs cross pillars and that it's it's um providing a bigger impact than really what that $99 million is. It's providing, you know, a $200 and some million dollar benefit basically to um those programs on that end of it and such. So, thank you. You're good. Okay. So, I want to just take a peek at um maybe we'll drill drill down into fire. So, we're on safe and healthy community. um you ranked every program against each of the priorities and so if it had a relationship to that you would rank it higher than if it doesn't have a relationship to um that department. So fire the darker the the darker the little square in here or rectangle is the higher the correlation to the priority that you're clicked on at the moment. So safe and healthy community fires got a dark dark blue on here. police. The same thing. It's got a a little sh little lighter shade of blue, but still very dark. The size of the tile is really the size of the budget or that pro the number of programs within that area. And so these are all the different, we don't have it broke down by department. We got it kind of broke down by department division across the city. So these are our 25 or so different areas that we got it broken down into. So if I click on fire, they have these are the programs within the fire department. So, we have probably there's 16. >> Where did I see 16? I saw that >> before you collect it. 16. >> Um, so they're all very very dark blue on that end of it. Um, maybe not a great example. Let's go back and get to a different department here. Let's go to the police department. I know they're not all dark blue. So, they got a couple that are lighter shade. And so K9 um they're a little bit lighter blue colored compared to um some of the other programs on that end of it. And that was really kind of related to how some of the scoring came out on how they how they did that. And so they got some other areas. Police records management um probably doesn't provide a direct relationship to public safety. Um obviously it's something you have to do, but there probably isn't a public safety true benefit to that to that piece of it. Um what one that I noticed when I did the finance department one and that's obviously an internal um governance program is that I really related it to our strategic plan and so if it didn't the programs I have our accounts payable accounts receivable treasury management if it didn't relate to um increasing or keeping our AAA bond rating or um what are other action steps u increasing our revenues um across different areas those types of things that didn't have a correlation there. So, if you look at the finance area, there isn't strong blues in there other than in a couple areas and the rest of it's white because it's a lot of it's mandated things that you have to do, but it doesn't really relate to um increasing the um ability or the strength of your strategic plan on on that end of it. So, you can drill down into so if we drill down in police investigations, you can see what makes up all of this. Um community inclus is is a medium alignment. infrastructure and asset management. No alignment, no alignment for livable and well planned communities and the very high for safe and healthy um community pieces of that. Um you then you can look down, we can look at all the line items associated with that. Um so obviously we have uh we have personnel costs, non-personnel costs, all those types of things on that end of it. And so everybody's time is allocated out. So even if a director isn't directly overseeing it, they are actually overseeing that program. So there is a little bit of every director's time that's going into every program and so there is a cost to those those programs that over time that kind of build up as well. And if you if you could Darren so again this is police and so the with the with the programs these are the obvious ones right you've got patrol investigations traffic enforcement so that's where it gets into the the real distinguished programs I think as we've outlined uh previously what's different with priority based budgeting is that you have a police budget and this really then breaks down the activity within that police budget and I Darren if you just want to click on I don't know like investigations for a which is right there. I think the other thing that's notable here is you get into the more granular what's that cost of that of doing investigations. So, we're able to really now understand what is the cost of investigations uh the employees that are tied to it and we're able to do that across all those 300 programs that Darren mentioned. And certainly tonight is again that high level overview. We're going to be spending some time after tonight really diving into all the all these 300 programs, the specific costs of those programs. Um I think the other thing Darren mentioned is the peer review because we want to make sure we're accurate and so we'll doing some peer review on this the accuracy of it um before we bring this back back to you and we dive deeper into it at some future study sessions. >> Yep. And I just want to cut just a couple other tabs on here as well as information as we get more and more information and we get it fine-tuned with that kind of peerreview piece of it. It gives you some information you can kind of share with that we can help tell our story as well too is that um kind of gives you some cost comparisons like our here's our total population and our total budget and what that cost is per resident. And then here's that kind of that escalator that we we showed that the priorities that um cross programs cross priorities on that end of it. So here's our our multipliers 2.2. So we're um escalating that investment um not just within one program but within multiple programs on on that end of it. >> Excuse me. Is that kind of like an ROI for when you say the the multiplier? I'm sorry. >> Yeah. Oh, not necessarily >> is it that >> they kind of they kind of look at it as a an amplifier and so it's >> for every dollar spent, >> right? So if to do this program, you're achieving um a safe and healthy community on this piece of it, but you're also crosspollinating to a different priority as well too. And so it's it's providing a benefit to that priority as well. >> Got it. Thank you. >> So >> thanks. >> It's from what I gather my limited knowledge on that end of it. >> All right. Thanks. >> Um and then here's another one down here as well too on on where your dollar goes. Innesota every dollar 23 cents goes to infrastructure and asset management and 22% for safe and healthy community and so on and so forth um community inclusive 13 cents on that end of it. So some information that help us kind of tell our story of how we're allocating our resources towards our our programs across across the city. Then we have one other one that I know Miranda really likes this one but this is where you can kind of show what programs are providing your your biggest bang for your buck, providing the biggest impact and then conversely some of the ones that maybe are um can be done by other agencies or something of that nature or it could be um need to look at revenue sources on that end. But that's where priority based budgeting really triggers that as well too. It's not just about resource allocation, it's about revenue enhancement. And so, um, I think we had looked at one, it was down here was our paper shredding event or something of that nature. We popped out. Where was that? Well, anyway, it was a a paper shredding event. And so, the cost of that was like $16,000 that we provide. And so, that's, you know, our cost. Is there is there an opportunity to partner with somebody? Is there other businesses throughout the community that do paper shredding events? Is there banks that do that from occasion or whatnot on that end? Or is there an opportunity there to charge somebody a couple dollars for a banker's box of of paper files or something to that nature? So, it's it's not saying that if they're in the lower left of this that we're going to cut them and be done with them. It just gives you a better opportunity to start looking at those problem or programs in a different um lens and really start to analyze, you know, what is the importance of it? What part of the community are we impacting? Is it a is it a a program that still brings lots of relevance to lots of people or is it something that can be um potentially reallocated to someplace else or something to that nature as well. So, um lots of data here, lots of data to still go through and and see where we're at on everything, but um it's some pretty cool stuff. And so there's another screen as well too that we haven't got into yet um that um takes AI and utilizes and provides some areas with gives you some opportunities to what other communities have done to um either reallocate resources or to increase revenues and those types of things. And it's pretty crazy the resources that are out there that um I just took a a quick peek at some of the stuff and just cities around the area, cities around the state, cities around the region or even country that um have exact or similar programs to what we have and what they've done to enhance revenues or to um you know look at resource alloc reallocation, those types of things on on that end of it and such. So this is a quick overview of it. Um, happy to answer any questions on that, but I think this is >> so I'm going to interject with just a suggestion on this. I think for me too dense to try to absorb in this setting. I think maybe this is a good opportunity for a three grouping council member um meeting to kind of get the a better feel for it particularly once maybe the peer review piece happens because it it looks cool. It's a little bit >> No, it can feel overwhelming. It's it's a lot of overwhelming data >> I think in this setting. Yeah. And you can't it's microscopic. You can't really read it from the seat. >> No. Yeah. >> Completely understandable. And I just we just wanted to get it out to you. We've been talking about it for a while and just wanted to um show you a little bit of the results that the preliminary results that are out there a little bit on it and and kind of go from there. So, uh but definitely we'll be utilizing this to help us with this upcoming 2027 budget and um to help better align our our programs with our priorities. Go. >> All right. I think that >> So, thank Mike. I think we're back up to two on that. Um, >> we're back to the questions. >> The council. >> Yeah, >> we also had the council at the beginning. council inquiry or questions and answers and then uh >> where was it? Little overview. >> Okay. So, I have a request for a break and I think we went a little longer than anticipated on this. So, sorry to tell you we're going to shoot for the third period now to make sure council has the opportunity to answer these questions. So, let's take a twom minute, three minute break and we'll um come back and try to hit these questions, but I want everybody to have an opportunity. >> Very cool. >> So, did you have to manually enter or >> Yeah. I mean to the PB. >> We had to cuz our system is a little bit archaic. So, >> okay. All right. Let's get to let's get like get back to it here. Um so we're gonna go I think our um first >> okay >> opportunity is to ask questions. So just general questions. We've got kind of the three big issues the overall budget the financial management plan. We've got the questions about facilities specifically are that the facilities discussion and then um if there are specific priority based budgeting questions although I think that might be um a a better a more productive conversation for once we've gotten maybe a little bit deeper into it. So who wants to start with their questions? Anybody? Kelly, you had a question about facilities, I think. >> Um, just the marsh. Um, I just wanted to check what I make sure I heard correctly. So, Kelly, we have 8,700 approximately members, but almost 7,000 of those are the silver sneakers type programs. >> That is correct. >> But personal training is up 50% from >> previous year. >> Previous year. Correct. >> Okay. >> Y >> All right. So the silver sneakers have we I assume at some point there's going to be kind of a cost analysis of you know membership versus people swinging for silver sneakers and all of that. >> That is correct. Yeah. The contract doesn't allow us to talk about the dollars and cents publicly but it is a per scan uh membership type of situation and yes we will have to evaluate >> okay >> the benefits of that for sure. >> Okay. Yeah. I know the the our former mayor was very uh interested in in those numbers and >> and you probably you heard it in the news that other fitness centers have talked about this and and it's challenging discussion for sure. >> Yeah. Okay. Just wanted to check my numbers. That was a pretty high number or percentage of folks. Okay. Thanks. I have a follow-up question on that which is is there a way to identify additional revenue generated from silver sneakers members specifically. So can we understand you know how many silver sneakers are paying for >> women on weights or you know personal training to un which would give us a better picture on >> is it the and I'm making up a number the $5 per scan my madeup number but or is it really but that person's also adding all of these other things. >> Uh yes there is we do not have that number currently but that is something we could get. um we would not be able to tell what they're spending with the contracted services like the market or the cafe, things like that. But within our programming, um TRX programming, personal training, Pilates, those are extra charges to membership that we could look at and see if those silver sneaker members are purchasing those or not. >> That might help with that. >> That's a good idea. >> All right, other questions. Okay. So then I think the next thing is council priorities. So the idea is and this was stressed in the the packet. We want to know, you know, are there things looking at as staff puts together this budget that we want to make sure it includes or we'd like to throw in in the ring that it includes. And so I think Manda's going to take some notes. Um Mike and I talked about probably the most productive approach to this is to go down the line and people can identify what their um what what their priorities are or what they would like to consider for the budget. So I'll start if it's okay Mike you have anything to add. Um, I'll start Paula with you and then Miranda's gonna take the notes and then we'll just go to Ky and on. >> Um, okay. Yeah. Um, all right. Um, some things that I had identified just quickly. Um, was funding for Cullen. >> So, >> Cullen Nature Preserve. >> Cullen Nature Preserve. Seeing if we can get that. Oops. Sorry. Need to get this on. Um, so just uh maybe are we just listing them, kind of ticking them off and not talking about details at this point? >> If you've got if you've got a little overview you want to include, by all means, >> you know, just looking at how we can get to I think we're looking at maybe Well, I know the park board um recently said they wanted to they were wanted to recommend funding for this. Um, I think we're looking at 900 to $950,000 to fully fund it, if that's correct. Um, you know, so just how do we get to that so we can actually get it open to the public instead of, you know, kind of hopefully not dribbling and drabbing it. I think that would be great. Um, and that may mean some, you know, kind of prioritization of some of our other programs if we need to to get to that. I don't know what we can use whether you know community investment fund park education whatever um you know looking at you know do we need to do the ice rink still at you know the commons you know what do we what's we might have to look at our priorities for that in my view you know I would love to see this this funded um other things looking at not having seen you know kind of the full CIP um for this and and some of the budget it yet. So, I don't know if this is already in there. Um, you know, looking at, you know, probably some potential set aides for possible, um, fencing for an off leash dog area. Um, depending on, you know, kind of our June study session. Um, I did see somewhere, I think it was in the park board packet, uh, mentioned that, you know, there was nine acres of fencing for Gillum in the CIP at $65,000. So, you know, maybe, you know, we can relook at what those numbers were um, as presented last time >> and um, then I guess SA in the park. So would love to have more information on that and how how we can figure out how to kind of continue to expand that program. Um you know in terms of things to look at playgrounds reconsidering the number and replacement schedule for playgrounds maybe doing a usage study if that makes sense. Um yeah those are the main things. a multicultural fair. Um love to see you know us do something uh in that regard. So we maybe kind of bring together the entire community and um you know kind of bringing together m all the cultures that are represented in Minnetonka. I've talked about this I think previously last year and I know bandwidth and budget might be have have been difficult but hopefully there's a way to kind of fit that in there with our expanded staff. there might be a little bit more bandwidth um for that. And then in terms of um climate and sustainability is uh finding maybe some budget, some way to do um city electrification or other you know rebates for switching to clean energy devices like you know electric lawnmowers or you know uh just other ways to rebate similar to what some other surrounding cities are doing such as Hopkins and some others. So, those are I think my my main ones right now. Great. Oh, and urban fence dog parks, which wouldn't be a big um driver if we use them for like use skating rinks. Um because I know a few people have been asking, well, what about my small dog? I I don't want them in an unfenced area. I want it in, you know, where they can't be a flight risk. and you know how do we provide for those people especially now that we have you know um kind of less space for that now >> so um I talked about >> well hold on Kzie go ahead >> if I could that's just really helpful and just just to summarize those real quick um put like in the park that be a CIP item playground you should have a CIP rebate >> and the fencing would be potential you know it's just kind of putting a place marker in there if it's needed. >> For clean energy, Julie, that be a >> we just got the grant for that actually. >> So >> would they be operational an operational >> operational? >> And the reason that we're noting it that way is I think as Rebecca teed up tonight, these are really good examples just to where staff can come back. So I think in all of these, you know, we'll start with Colin as a good example. It's a CIP item. the CI is coming to you in June, I believe. So that June and so with everything that's noted here, we'll look to bring these back to you with either it's maybe already in there. I think Colin, we're already trying to figure that out. Um and then there if there's something that staff will can comment on, well, we it's not in the budget and here's what the resources would take and then then the council will need to provide further direction on on where to take all of these uh throughout this whole process. But it's really getting really helpful to understand, as I said earlier, understand what you're thinking about so we can look at ways to incorporate that. >> All right, Kenzie, take it away. >> Okay, so I'm always thinking about Walt program budget around Walt um how we can better utilize some of the funding that we're um you know, giving to Walt. Um thinking about the pathway program. I talked to Mike about this earlier today. um you know with the cost of our housing um purchasing homes in Minnetonka is really expensive especially for people of color even though we are giving the 75,000 when you know lower or people of color income does not meet that where you have to qualify for 578,000 for medium house in our city. Um is there any other way that we can get a little bit more deeper? Um, and I don't want to do the property taxes on residents, but maybe looking at something else that we can help um, make sure that people are um, diversifying people who come into our community. So, thinking about that and then um, something Paula just stated about um, the multicultural affair. I remember I spoke um, for last few years about open streets. Um, they do open streets in Minneapolis and St. Paul. uh not St. Paul, but in Minneapolis, South and North. I participated in one of those programs where um you're bringing um multicultural folks to our city and and making it more easier for people to like small business owners to be able to participate in our community events. I think um that's something that I would want to see happen in our city. Um so kind of aligning with the multi multicultural fear and then um programs programs for teen I mean I I had kind of left it alone but then when Peter said you know the 22% I'm like okay do we really have enough programs for teens so that kind of just point that back to me. So >> thanks Ky. All right Kimberly. Um so I have more uh more more hired so like I don't have specific programs. Um so like my priorities are uh uh implementing our climate action and adaptation plan. So, um, in particular, climate mitigation, climate, uh, um, what's the word I'm looking for? >> Resilience. Um, and then, uh, kind of in line with what Paula was talking about, but, also offering uh, programs to our residents. So, help with implementing solar or other uh um you know, potentially winterizing your home. So, those those sort of helping our helping our residents be more uh more resilient, more climate friendly, etc. Um housing. So, again, our uh affordable housing. Uh so both in our home home buyer home ownership as well as uh rental assistance um or hope you know or what's the word stimulating uh affordable housing through tiff or all our all of our programs that we've got going Um and then finally I just just an overview of equity. Um making sure that we are being reaching as many people and being as equitable as possible in all of our program uh programs that we put forth. Great. All right, Deb. So, since I wasn't I was only able to listen to the survey, I'm going to be an outlier and say that um based on how people use it, the age of our population, um I actually am would like to uh keep the monthly um Minnetonka memo in part because of the transparency issues I think we will be running into or the perceived uh issues that we'd be running into um because of the ADA transition plan. You know, we got we got an extra year to get up to speed with it, but there are still um real challenges getting information to the public because of it. And so I just think that this might be a not the correct year to do that. So I'd want to keep the investment in that. Um I agree about the um finding ways to make the community and our residents more climate uh resilient and responsible. Um and of course housing. Um of course equity. I love the idea of a multicultural fair. I mean, open streets is great. The only thing is we don't have a main street, so it that might make it just really challenging. Um, and uh, in terms of sort of budgeting priorities, it's always public safety. So, whatever we need to do to get the fire stations where they need to be, uh, that's important to me. And the other thing is looking at um we always have safe routes to schools in mind. Um, and there will be the trail going in on Baker Road and there, you know, just if there is a way to collaborate with the partners on that project to get a few extra sections of sidewalk around uh the middle school, I think it would make a lot of a lot of sense because uh Orchard Road is very narrow. Um there's not really any place to walk between Baker Road and the um driveway going out of the parking lot onto Orchard Road. Um and people um people are parking on the sidewalk sometimes. Um but just there are just a couple little sections that um they're very short. So, it just seems like it would make a lot of sense to sort of complete that sidewalk section. Um, other than that, more trees, um, spending money on, um, tree replacement, our tree program, um, and, uh, the our water quality efforts are really important to me, too. But, um, there's nothing specific other than that. I forgot to to add that I was the continuing to see the public safety master plan. Make sure we continue with that was also priority. >> All right. Thanks, Deb. Um, well, I will say, you know, I've been pretty ardent about being careful about max maxing out our capacity both financially and staff-wise. So, I want to be conscientious about um a wish list, although I'll most everything on there certainly worthy. Um for me, I just have a couple things that have bubbled up to the top for me. One, I think we've put a lot of um public facing effort into Cullen and and money and commitment. So, it's important to me to get us to a point at least where we can start having the public invited in. So, that is a priority. Um, I'd like to really focus on some of the things that we've undertaken so far and making sure that we're maximizing those things. So, when we go to and I I think this is going to show up in the budget, but making sure that we can use the drones more expansively. So funding that additional um staff member to to for the operation center is a is important to me. Um also making sure whatever we know we've started and we've got to finish at least or get to it in an interim point on the dogs. And so whatever that is, that's probably going to take some capital um in getting that piece right because I don't think we've been able to thread the needle quite yet on that. Um so those are those are kind of the top things for me. I think there's a lot in here I I can appreciate that I think we're already doing. It sounds like we've got some grant funding coming for something. So I think this is a great list. Um it it see some of it seems a little like a wish list but you know we gota >> this is where we throw it out. >> Yeah, we got to start somewhere. So um is this Oh, I will just say one thing. I'm very very sensitive given the investment in parks on the north side of town and I I don't want to be too prescriptive to staff on where money comes from, but I'm very sensitive to not using park dedication fees for Cullen. Um because we have devoted so much money and park dedication fees on the north side of town and so much of our developments on the south side of town. want to be conscientious of that. Um, Mike, is that what we're looking for here? >> Yeah, it is. Thank you. This is very helpful. Hopefully, you'll find this helpful. So what we'll do as staff appreciate this as we now begin to take your comments tonight as I work with Darren and our team where we can bring this conversation back to you because you're going to have to make some decisions because I think as you noted mayor it's going to be probably challenging to get all of these in the budget but that's decisions you're going to have to make in terms of your priorities and I think some on here just some of the things you've mentioned are already in the works. So I think there's some that we can say yep there's these are happening and there's conversations that we're having with staff already con's a good example I think you already mentioned that already the dog fencing and that's something currently we had a we bring the CIP back where is that you know fencing fitting that's a conversation we're going to have in June at the study session regarding purgatory and follow up on the purgatory park and perhaps fencing is involved there's the ones that are general funds certainly that come back in terms of when it's operation It's just a matter of what are the resources more more importantly staff resources. So what current programming do we have? Can we add more programming? What does that look like? Do we cut something to make something else happen? So I think that's part of this program program based budgeting as well. Taking a look at how we utilize our staff time or is it being allocated today? Can it fit into some of the things mentioned here? And and so again, this is the first step in that whole process. This is helpful. Thank you. >> Great. Thanks everybody. I'm good. I it's clear that people gave this some thought before coming in today. So that's very helpful. Very appreciative. >> And Rebecca, I just quickly and tonight's not doning night. As I said earlier, this is it's helpful to have this conversation tonight, but as we progress the next few months, something else might pop up. And that's okay. And and so when you have something that does come up, make sure you're we're stating it in this budget meeting so that way it gets considered, it gets vetted, and that way we don't have lost opportunities along the way. >> Right. Thanks, Mike. All right. So, it looks like we've hit number one. So, we're we're on to number two. We're clipping right along. So, this is specific to the facility improvements. Um, and that includes kind of Mike's sophisticated chart that he developed today. Um, so fire stations I think are part of that conversation, right? Um, so regarding facility improvements, are there specific projects the city should consider as the highest priority? So I guess that's the first first question and the sub questions are if yes, are there this is I think a tricky question. Preferred financing methods, time frames or other prioritizations that we should consider. And then there's the really hypers specific into the community center and that's really driven by that scheduling piece. So, um, anybody want to start want to start? Go ahead, Kimberly. >> Um, I would say the the fire stations are the priority um and in the in the order that they've been presented. So, fire station two um and then is it fire station three? >> Um, and um I really kind of believe that fire station needs to be a a a new facility as opposed to a remodel. Um, which of course is more expensive. Um, preferred financing methods. I would would love if we could get local local auction sales tax um for for the fire stations and the marsh as well. Um and then bonding if we get any bonding money that would also be great. Um those are beyond our control at this mo at this point. Um I don't know about time frames. I mean I well I said yeah the fire station two first fire station three um marsh if if we uh if we can get the if if local option sales tax is approved for for the marsh that whatever whatever staff feels is the is the best timeline for that. >> Any thoughts on the community center? Um, yeah. So, it would be really nice to know that we these other thing like if we're getting if we're getting bonding money and local option sales tax for these other projects than um I'd be more willing to jump in and say yes, let's do the community center. I mean I I I think it does need obviously we were ready to ready to do it and then then the Mars purchase came up. Um so I get what again what's the funding source for the or the identified funding source for that >> the b the bond issue. >> So we have the $10 million. So we um in our financial management planning really looking again long longterm part of that long-term deal with these facility improvements was to utilize general obligation bonding as one mechanism just given these priorities. And so it's really maybe another way of rephrasing the question or is how best do you want to use that $10 million bond issuance is at your fingertips. It's been set up to be used again. be dependent on the sales tax and the bonding. And maybe the way to think about it is if if the city receives low cost sales tax authority and if the city has some level of bonding, is there an appetite to to look at utilizing that $10 million being flexible 10 million towards the community center? >> Okay. And to be sure I understand what a general obligation bond is, is this um >> borrow we're lending money to ourselves or No, we're borrowing money from >> Got it. >> Okay. >> Okay. Um, so yeah, I would say definitely if we if we get funds, you know, bonding bonding and andor sales tax uh money for our other project for these other highlighted projects. Um, then I would I would say yes, let's look at uh using bond using bond money to do the community center. >> Great. All right. Who wants to take a crack at it next? Deb. >> Uh, yeah. I kind of agree with um Kimberly's uh assessment that fire stations are number one, fire station two for sure. I mean, preferably, you know, my my aim is to not raise the levy to the extent that we can avoid that. Um, and so of course, you know, I'm I'm hoping and praying for a miracle at the state legislature for some bonding dollars and um approval to put uh sales tax in front of our um voters um to see if we can leverage some money for these many projects. Um, and there's just so many I I feel like we're kind of um feeling our way through a tunnel in the dark um trying to prognosticate and figure out Yeah. I mean, of course, we have put off the community center for a very long time. And if you go to other communities that have newer community centers, I mean, we don't have to keep up with the Joneses necessarily, but there is something to be said about there would be a return on investment in my mind if we refresh the community center because it would be more attractive to people that would rent our spaces. And so I I'm attracted to that. And so I would be inclined to if if everything falls in place to expend some some uh general obligation bond dollars for this building. It needs it. And um so um I mean that I think that's kind of it in a nutshell. >> Great. All right. Thanks, Deb. All right. Who wants to go next? >> I can go. Um I overall support what uh council member Wilburn and um Calbert has stated. Um one thing different for me with fire station 2 um I know uh Wilburn said um brand new a new facility. Um if we're able to um have that facility where because I know it was about having more firefighters and being able to have space. Um, I'm not sure if we had enough space for new firefighters. So, if we were able to remodel where we can add like maybe some, you know, structure on to the building or something that creates space, then that's one thing. But if it's not doable and it makes more sense to do new structure, then I guess new structure, but I don't know if that's necessary. My main concern was the the equipment handling like the way the setup now is >> decontamination >> the decontamination um setup and I I think it it's difficult with the remodel to and the way where the living areas would be to have that be safe. >> Yeah. Well, I I don't know. That's what I'm saying. If you know we're not architects. So if the architect can come up with ideas then maybe I'm just saying whatever is more costefficient but um yeah >> great >> thank you Ky followup >> um I'm going to start with the B and so is there to consider improvements that are again um dependent on state bonding and sales tax or I mean sales tax because you know considering this is probably fungeable money we only have so big a pot and And just for the people who might be listening um just in case there's questions, state bonding is basically a grant that we get from the state. Bonding when we do it from the city is when we borrow money. So just in case there's any confusion about that. Um so in terms of the um priorities in terms of specific projects um Mike we talked about this today. I still have some questions about, you know, 24hour 247 staffing of, you know, the fire stations and the needs there. So, I think we're going to go through that that on Thursday. So, I can't really answer that right now. Um, obviously, I'm hoping for the marsh and then I would be Williston next. I think though both are probably equally important. Um, and I would probably put those ahead of the community center just because they serve more residents. Um, although we do use rent out space here, but we rent out space a lot in the um, marsh as well, which is um, generating some revenue and has the potential to generate more. >> Can I say one more? >> Let's make sure you go ahead. >> Oh, I wanted to say something about the community center, too. Um, I I do support the community center for 2027 because we keep putting the community center off and I really feel like the community center does need more work than the march just visually looking at the march versus the community center. So that's just my thought on that. So all right, thank you. Um so you know I guess my perspective is I pessimistic on state bonding and you know more hopeful on sales tax and so making those comments based on the sales tax and that would obviously if we can get approval and then it passes that does address those high priority facilities and with that assumption you know I'm very comfortable spending on on the community center, especially spending more time here during the week and understanding how much use this building gets on a daily basis and that the restrooms are not adequate and not accessible. Um, I think we would see bookings and revenue really increase with that change alone because if I were considering an event, that would make me second guess having an event here. And we have significant use by seniors. Uh, we have an aging population, all of the things that we've talked about. And this is space that with an investment, it's flex space as well. We can use it a lot of different ways. And I think it's it it's just necessary. We also do a ton in our main community room for uh appreciation for boards and commissions and it starts to feel a little tired and like here we are in our 1980s room. And um so I think for for a whole wide array of reasons I think that's really important. I think we have to assume hope today that and I think we'll know more even by the time we're here in June. But um based on what happens at the legislature, I think if we don't get anything, if we if there's no tax bill and we aren't able to pursue the sales tax, we probably have to regroup a little bit. But assuming that that's on the table, then I I'd say we block it out for now. I mean, that's my opinion. Um, we're going to have really really difficult conversations later in the year if we are in that position about all of the facilities. Obviously, fire is number one priority. You know, I think it's I'll I'll close with this. It's easy to think that what is one or two minutes of response time difference if it's going to save us a bunch of money unless you're the person that needs the response time and your life depends on it. I mean, I'm less worried about your property. But, you know, we're we're talking about people's lives where one or two minutes is life and death. So I I don't want to be too cavalier about how we consider some of the the fire station and we know that we we've seen how once the fire stations are staffed 24 hours the significant reduction in response time that we're seeing out of that. So to me that's a major that's a major priority. All right, Mike, did you get what you need from us? >> I believe so. Yeah, this is very helpful. >> Okay, do you have any? >> Oh, yep. All good. >> All right, so then our last item, and we've alluded to this several times, so probably don't have to spend much time on it, is the June study session. Mike? >> Yeah, thank you, mayor. Uh, yeah. So, for June, we will come back with the CIP and then the Purgatory Park off leash dog review. So some of the items you've mentioned tonight earlier on that as Miranda's taking notes, we'll bring those back and we'll have conversations on the CIP staff has been working on that here the last Darren and others the last month. Uh and then certainly getting that filtered down here in the last week or so has been some good exercises here among staff. So we'll be ready for the CIP and then purgatory. I think I touched base with most of you on where we're at with purgatory. So we'll be ready for some recommendations and conversation in June. And then in July, and whoever said that earlier, we did split up the CIP and EIP this year. So July will be the EIP. And I think as Miss Wishnack usually says it's all things housing. So we'll have housing conversation, developer refinancing policy, zoning code, rewrite conversation, and some subcategories uh in all of that as well. I think even and I think we've talked about data centers also being kind of the subcategory in that conversation as well certainly as we talked to about the zoning code rewrite. So that's the next couple months. Uh then August will be the really big night on the general fund and coming back also with priority based budgeting. will be a lot more further down the path on that and be refined. And then to your point, Rebecca, we'll look at staff to schedule some some group meetings as we get you more um inundated with what that looks like. >> Excellent. All right. Well, thank you everybody and we will adjourn and we'll see you next week.