[Music] greetings everyone um I'll call this meeting to order Miranda are you ready you're good we're good okay um first item is um introductions and roll call so I think we'll go around the room and everyone just uh introduce yourself and we'll cover everybody in the room and um Miranda why don't you start please Dam assistant city manager Ken heiney City attorney Darren Nelson Finance director Mike Funk city manager KY Copley city council W four paty Foster boltson W One Rebecca sha W two Brad weon mayor Kimberly Wilburn at large Deb Calver at large Paul ra Ward three C ful Senior Management coordinator Scott bin police chief Kevin fox fire chief k Recreation director Jason Tate Deputy Chief of Police Julie wish community development director Sarah Westy assistant Recreation director Phil olon city engineer will Manchester Public Works director Mike huno Deputy Public Works director Kevin ringhofer Citizen Tom stalker citizen all right I think that's it so I'm going to kick it over to Mike um he's got a couple of comments on our agenda yeah thank you Brad uh good evening again Council and staff uh there's an agenda for your consideration this evening so we will need a motion to approve that normally we don't take action in study sessions but what's unique with this one is we had two things uh we had two email correspondents that came in uh between the agenda being posted last Thursday and today so there are two emails for your consideration so that is the one item in the agenda and then the second is is um adding an agenda item we'll call it 3C which will and then we'll move 3C will become the new 3D and so that agenda item is in front of you uh later in the meeting to have a discussion on 2025 meeting Logistics so a few uh questions we want to POs to the council um as we prepare for next year's calendar so with that mayor what we be looking for is a motion to believe accept the agenda and the agenda item all right um I will ask if anyone likes to make that m motion um Deb Calbert thank you Brad uh I make the motion to accept the agenda as amended with the addendum very good is there a second Rebecca I'll second all right we've got a motion by Deb Calbert and a second by Rebecca sha um oh color yeah please call roll oh thank you yes kley here us yes yes yes I'm sorry Foster volton yes sha yes Wilburn yes Calbert yes R yes weome yes motion carries so the agenda is amended as noted so then that brings us to the next items on the agenda which are business items and um item 3A is a strategic Plan update uh regarding a safe and health community and um let's see is that Mike I'll let you take it and then if you turn it over as need be all right thank you mayor uh so I'm going to turn this over to both of our Chiefs in public safety both Chief bbom and chief Fox they will provide a highlight and update to the Strategic plan profile regarding safe and healthy Community as you know this is I think our fourth one we've been now doing and so we have a couple more to go those are scheduled for the next couple study sessions uh before I do just I think a little bit different here this morning or this morning this evening is that both Chiefs will give a little bit of a highlight dating back to the public safety master plan I think just a good little refresh considering we're talking about this uh strategic plan profile and also give some more you help put some context as we get into the budget in the next agenda item so with that really just want to turn over to Scott and to Kevin again they're going to highlight a little bit of the Strat excuse me with the public safety master plan and get kind of a good refresh where we were where we're at and and kind of where we're where we see ourselves going with that so with that if it's okay turned over to I think Scott's going to kick it off and then I have one thing to add when Scott goes through um the four outcomes we did add one outcome originally there was three now there's four we realized that Recreation was missing in the Strategic plan so you did add a fourth outcome that is about Recreation programs and Facilities so we had had one and they and he took it away because he said they had covered it with their stuffff so it's back it's back okay all right very good so we did try you have such a good memory all right Kimberly gets you know her effort is duly noted thank you well good evening everybody and yeah this this uh safe and healthy Community is a is involves police fire and Recreation so it is a very you know there's there's a lot that it covers and during our Retreat uh as Dr Wilburn mentioned she was sitting in our group and uh um we had a lot of great discussions that we'll bring forward here um but a lot of what drives our outcomes are is is contained in our Public Safety study and I know I it's might be U repetitive but we covered it back in um March but it I think it it it's important to maybe bring it back because I think it's good to hear um some of the information that's contained in there um because a lot of it has to do with the outcomes as well and so we did we did bring it back and I didn't I'm not going to cover everything there's some things that aren't that are not covered but this is really um areas that are that are that impact the budget there's a lot of recommendations that are cost neutral or don't cost anything that we have implemented um and so you know I think it's something to keep in mind is that not everything comes at a cost when we did this study it was a full assessment of not only police but fire and it's not uncommon for cities to do this uh every so often and prior to this study in 2022 there was a study in 2010 and from that study for police and fire there were recommendations and findings and for the next five six seven years police and fire implemented those changes now things have changed in the city in the last you know 14 years we have we have population growth we have uh you know Redevelopment in areas and you know that looked quite different in 2010 specifically in the Opus area and Ridgedale community expectations are a huge driver um times change expectations change and so when the study was concluded it really focused on that is setting us up for the next five to seven years with light rail with with uh population growth and making sure your police and fire departments have adequate Staffing have you know procedures in place and and are really Meeting those those expectations and so again I'll cover kind of high level but I think it directly will impact some of our desired outcomes and hopefully provide a little bit more information for you as as a council and just a quick overview uh I already covered you know for police and fire I looked at all of our operations our staffing and made sure you know you know the types of calls we're responding to um you know how quickly to respond to those calls Staffing is obviously a big area and it's one that impacts our budget um and you can again I'll kind of go through this as quick as I can but feel free at the end our plan is this is that we're going to go through this entire document we'll go through the desire outcomes and then turn it back to the council to ask any of us questions and then we can then answer the questions at that time um you know some highlights from from last year's discussions that were implemented this year if you recall for police uh we had requested four officers to create a Powers shift we we track our call load and we knew between you know 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 pm Monday through Friday our car our call load spiked and we needed to staff up to make sure we had adequate resources uh during that time period so we wanted to add a Powers shift we added a sergeant um there there our policies are changing State statutes there's there's there's so many things that change uh today that you know the last few years more so than ever and so we have a person who really oversees all our training we have a new a lot of new people making sure we're in compliance with all the latest best practices Crisis Intervention intervention training uh I believe as of now every single officer in the department has received the 40h hour uh gold standard in Crisis Intervention training uh mental health data collection we've been tracking our Mental Health Data and some and some new technologies with our camera trailer and I I shared that um earlier this year for 2025 this is going into next year uh is a request it's in the budget um is to consider adding a case detective we track case load we want to make sure that we have a balance of amongst our detectives um we we do thorough investigations but they should also be timely and when we start to overburden a detective those cases can draw out for several months and and quite frankly it it's it's not fair to the victim um we should be wrapping these things up as quick as we can and so we have been tracking and then for the 2025 uh budget there is a request for a detective uh to help manage that uh case load and whether I'm talking about cases or police calls for service just the the time on scene for an officer the cases the calls are more complex I mean we were on a call today with somebody in crisis and I think we had our entire shift and maybe other departments and we were there for about two or three hours on Baker Road and so we deal with this deal with this more often now than we had five six years ago where some of these calls that were're on take several hours to resolve and I think that's a good thing I mean we don't we don't need to be quick we we really uh focus on slow it down take a deep breath and we can we can get the resources there we had cope out there we had mental health professionals out there it took time to get them there but in the meantime we had our staff tied up for ours and so I think that's that's a good thing when we can slow things down but there something to be aware of um these calls are are more complex than ever before and we're on scene um longer than we used to so that was for 2025 for police was the request for one additional detective and just as we think forward into 6 and 27 um there is uh in this is in the public safety recommendation this was a 5 to sevene plan we have to be somewhat Nimble and fluid and so the really the goal was to come back to the council in like April of next year to look at this to see one is it still needed and two if it's not what do we do what are other options for us we're not here to we don't think adding staff is always the best solution are there technologies that we can utilize can we tap into other resources other agencies we Mutual Aid is a big deal for police and so um I'm here to tell you that when we when we put this in the forecast it's really just best case scenario knowing that we're going to have a discussion about is there a need in 2026 to have two more detectives at Rich we'll have that discussion there might be options how do we partner with ridg Del Mall um those are all things that I would bring back for the 26 discussion so just keep in mind that we are very uh we're very flexible and very Nimble um and then 27 and 28 um there is a recommendation in the study that we uh we add an officer to the Traffic Unit right now you have two officers assigned to the Traffic Unit and then uh in 2028 mental health response is is creating a full-time mental health unit and having two uh officers work in that unit I'll have a little bit more discussion when we get into our uh outcomes with mental health response because I had mentioned this in the last couple years is that I I think spending those dollars uh tapping into other resources police officers aren't probably um they're going to have to respond to these calls but for a unit uh I think we can tap into other resources whether it be fire or other professional staff and not have officers uh going to these calls period that's that's our goal and I'll kind of share some ideas uh coming up here and then our property room specialist we actually already resolved that one of our full-time uh Records um employees we have assigned that reassigned in that position to take on some of those responsibilities and so again we're being fluid we're being flexible we're looking to see is this actually needed because we recognize that there's some there's some there's some other budget implications that occur here every year and we're mindful of that and it it's you know and something we we take seriously um and so just kind of a quick recap of the overall um addition we're down the 12 the other thing in 24 which I I didn't mention is that there was actually a u recommendation we added a second Community engagement officer to really uh help out our other community engagement officer but if you recall we partnered with hopen County for that joint police partnership and you're going to meet Olivia she started with us a few weeks ago so that is a partnership with the county we pay a fraction of the cost of having an officer and quite frankly she's phenomenal and so you'll meet her and I think uh she's coming to a council meeting to kind of talk about what she does and so we decided you know what we don't need that and secondly we actually have other officers that want to do it so in addition to their normal duties they also want to do some some events so we have probably six to 10 officers that will go out with Olivia to participate uh at certain events we expect all officers to participate in engagement but sometimes they their their their you know work um obligations they're they can't do it so we have dedicated officers that will work with with different groups so that's kind of a quick um like a snapshot of I I would say the budget implications of the study is this uh right here and again mental health unit I keep it in there only because we need to have a backup plan if we don't have something in place one thing I see happening too often in public safety is we stop something before we have a plan and we create some unintended consequences and so now I'm going to turn over to the fire department on um on there you want me to TAP through for you you yeah you can tap through it all right thanks Chief so with the fire department and the the citygate study um they reviewed the fire department and our deployment and overall they found that the department was well organized but they did have recommendations that should be uh implemented over a period of about 5 to seven years with the most significant issues facing us are our response performance our staffing capacity and then the physical limitations of our existing fire stations you can go um overall they had 21 key findings with five recommendations uh the costs mainly associated with personnel and fire stations uh they were recommending a total Personnel of 24 additional full-time employees and then uh other recommendations included policy decisions made by the the city council specifically as it relates to uh response objectives so um overview of the recommend ation is the council adopting a service level objectives uh Staffing all five of our fire stations and then hire the career firefighters for their Baseline Staffing and then continue to work with their paid on call portion of the fire department to maximize that capacity and then address any of the emerging EMS issues that are that are we're facing on a national level um so as far as the updated deployment policies uh we're in draft stage right now with our service level objectives that we hope to bring to the council either early this fall or early to late fall um that the council would be able to adopt and that's really what our response plans uh and our staffing is is really going to hinge on because we'll be able to see in real time the changes we make how they affect those overall performance measures um and it's all based on measurement of time um off of National standards through the NFPA that's laid out in the uh study that they did but essentially it's putting our effective response Force depending on what type of call it is on scene in a certain amount of time go ahead so in 2024 we're bringing in those service level level objectives we did hire three career personnel in July um so they are on board and really uh that adds one firefighter per day and that helps fill the gaps that we're seeing in Staffing from our paid on call side and then uh engage with with Architects on the fire station needs assessment we have that draft back and are making some adjustments to that and that'll be brought to the council uh before the end of the year also um so for that like I mentioned 2024 adds one firefighter daily uh it also transfers the primary first response to the fire department as the police department continues to to get busier and busier we're picking up a lot more of the uh day-to-day EMS calls the the not so much ALS but the the basic life support the the sick calls things like that and then that brings us to 262 fulltime 70 paid on call so in 2025 the recommendation is to hire nine additional full-time uh that establishes a daily minimum of eight hiring nine so to stand up one station or to staff one fire apparatus uh requires six people um that's cuz we run three shifts and a minimum Staffing on a truck is two Personnel so uh nine allows us to not only staff up either a third station or at minimum another truck but the the other three help establish our vacancy capacity right now uh we have no capacity for vacancies so if somebody takes a day off and it and we only allow one person per day to be off we have to backfill that with overtime um with with the nine firefighters and and the three uh extra on top of the additional truck that allows us to have a minimum Staffing each day where we can have some vacancy without having to bring people back in overtime and help uh manage our overtime costs on there and then uh that would then bring our staffing to 35 and a half FTE total was still a target of 70 paid on call currently we sit at 56 or 50 7 so 70s are authorized strength but uh we're well below that right now so in 2026 then we would look at hiring potentially another six additional uh firefighters that would staff up another station or one more truck and the goal would be to potentially staff station two that works towards our erf which is our resp effective response Force um which uh laid out by NFPA and it shows in the U the consultant report that depending on what the call is essentially we'll use a structure fire for an example uh it shows you got to have 17 firefighters on scene within 11 and a half minutes and the first unit needs to be on scene within 6 and A2 minutes and that's the time that the Dispatch Center receives the 911 call until the time we arrive so there's a number of steps that occur in there uh to to meet that overall time and then in 2027 we would look at potentially another six full-time firefighters that would potentially staff up our station 4 further reducing our response times throughout the city and that at that stage would meet our effective response Force that's laid out in those documents and that would bring our Total Staffing to 47.5 FTE it's and again 70 paid on call would remain our Target at least within this time period and so some of the logistics with fire implementation obviously the cost of personnel and station is the is the primary uh driver here uh there's going to it's going to take time to ready some of the stations currently uh three of our stations can accommodate full-time 24-hour Staffing two cannot um and then uh we did look at and and it's still being discussed the possibility of consolidating our stations 2 and five up on the North End of the city to maybe somewhat more of a central location in the Ridgedale area which remains uh the busiest call areas for the fire department at least uh during our our peak times and then uh what is the future of our our paid on call as as recruitment uh remains difficult for us uh our firefighters are becoming a lot more busy you know it's we we tell them when we hire them that this is at minimum a part-time job and and sometimes more than that it's it's it's Prett demanding with all the training and the duty crew shifts and the call backs and it's just becoming more and more difficult for them so um we're going to continue to look on that at that we're going to continue to recruit as as aggressively as we can we we typically right now Target a once uh once a year higher on those and we did just bring on eight uh this spring so they're currently in in training now and should be coming online probably by early fall once they finish their EMT training um so that'll help quite a bit and then uh we look at the mental health response with the police department on putting something together with that and then continue to monitor our service level objectives and outcomes and again we're going to have to be very Nimble on this because some of it may uh have to do with when can we get the stations up online depending on what we we do with them and particularly station two and five up on the North End there so that's just the summary right there we did uh three this year now we did apply for a safer Grant that's the federal FEMA grant for uh firefighter Staffing they just started awarding those last week um so we're we're hopeful on that but it really is a lottery nowadays I think they had 2,700 fire departments apply for it this year for a share of 35ish million but um you know if we were awarded that that's uh funding for 18 firefighters right away so and that's a three-year fully funded Grant so uh we we will continue to watch for that and hopefully hear some positive news and then 9 in 2025 six and 26 and six and 24 or 27 excuse me well Chief just quick question on that last chart the um so we pushed off six and that's why it would have been six a year but then um we pushed yeah so we had originally asked for six for last year yeah well for higher this year right and yeah we trimmed that back to three and so then that's why uh next year is nine yeah CU you're correct it would have been six every year right thanks all right so I'm going to take it back um so that was a lot of information a lot especially this is these are these are like you know major budget implications but I I I you know I think it's it was a it's a five-year plan but it's an aggressive plan I mean you're adding a lot of people and so we recognize that and so how we weave it into our strategic priority in fact you know even before we changed our our definition and some of our outcomes we always were working off of the plan that is our road map is really it's providing guidance to police and fire on the next five to seven years knowing that hopefully upon completion we're we're setting a ourselves up for to be in a pretty good place ready to take on any any sort of uh issue and so as I weave it into here I'll I'll I'll talk about what we designed here and then Circle back with the council to then open it up to just discussion even covering what we just talked about if that works okay um so when we did meet again it was a very it wasn't we didn't spend a lot of time on our Retreat talking about this I think we had maybe a half hour but I think the consultant really um got us to focus on outcomes on what was our desired outcome and provided some some direction and scope and so there was a change to the to the definition and I assume that's part of the discussion right to make sure we're all in alignment with what we kind of designed here for for instead of saying a self a safe healthy Community which is somewhat redundant to what the priority is we added uh some language and you can see it there create initiatives to enhance Community well-being engage residents to build trust and prioritize programs education hazard ation and emergency response again it's not just about Public Safety it's it's about well-being of the community and that's why you see Recreation um in in alignment here as well with some of the some of the work that they do we do have four desired outcomes the first one is where it's it's focused heavily on the public safety uh master plan and you know that again is something that is impacts our budget so it's important for us to to to report report on that and what you see as a performance metrics there is that you know overall numbers and so when you see Staffing request you may Wonder well where we at now and where we need to go and how how does progress look what does it look like in 24 25 and 26 so that's one of the metrics and then response time for fire and EMS and as I mentioned before you know one thing we want to make sure is we balance workload if we have detectives and make we track um their their cases and we want to make sure we balance that out uh Target obviously is uh for us is to to meet that recommendations meet the recommendations as as as indicated in the public safety master plan um fire has some service level objectives that I think um will come forward at some point to the council and then you know our our goal if we're adding detective would be to decrease case load for other detectives and so it's good to have a goal 10% I I mean I think it's fair um but um so that's that's that first desired outcome is really focused on the public safety master plan the second one and we it was somewhat um it talked a little bit about this in the prior definition but it's ensure Public Safety Readiness for the Opus Area Redevelopment and with light rail we meet regularly with uh Metro Transit making sure um we have um you know procedures in place for how we're going to handle the rail who's responsible who's jurisdiction we work with st l park Hopkins e Prairie I know fire has their own training working with you know what about an emergency with a rail fire a hazardous material um and so that's been ongoing um but we also want to monitor you know anytime we have an area like Opus that there's a lot more people that live there and so we have more people falling down there's more accidents there's more activity so as you can imagine if you increase um housing in an area there's going to be more costs for service and we've seen that increase we've adjusted our district maps and you know so the car that maybe used to come up to minona Boulevard now has to only come up to Highway 7 because I need that car stay further south because we have we have uh more call volume in the Opus area and so one of the areas we want to monitor is the call volume to make sure that we uh you know adjust as needed and then as we recognize the development the number of units I mean there are studies out there that'll tell you if you have you know 300 units this is the impact of Public Safety um and it's not all driven by crime I mean let's make I'll make it's not it's Medicals it's lift assist it's my neighbors got the music too loud um I'm not going to say the phrase shared walls when you have shared walls there's more more nuisance quality of life issues and that's just that's just the way it is and so as we see that numbers increase we we respond accordingly and so we want to make sure we track that so when it does open in 2027 um you know we're ready and then we also looking for opportunities to partner whether it's a starfront with with uh looking you know leaning on Community Development if they have a developer if we could gain some square footage and put a star front so we have visibility we have you know easy uh access to the to the the trail system and so we're looking for those opportunities to so that's all kind of embedded in that in that desired outcome the third one is enhanced uh medic uh medical mental health and I want to spend just a few minutes on that because it's an area that you know in law enforcement we've recognized is you know is it's it's it's those you know it's it is a low occurrence we we may deal with four to 500 mental health calls for uh for um calls a year but that's a call that you make you need to make sure you have the right resources there and so I'm a little uh you know disappointed that you know some of our County um Partners haven't really stepped up there's been pilot programs in other cities that have been very effective in reducing repeat calls for service use of force um and and yet it seems like there's a it seems a little slow to pick up some momentum in the county and so we want to really maybe take this more inhouse and what I so as you know we have a embedded social worker from henpen County in 2023 we pay about $74,000 for that agreement in 20120 it's going up to 88,000 next year and I have no uh no control over roles and responsibilities and and really job description and so timing is everything for us and um we're looking at bringing on our full-time social worker as a city social worker that can not only help uh us uh design a program that has fire uh correspond with mental health professionals whether it be our mental health our social worker and really taking police out of the equation really take the model of other cities that have done this and not waiting for the county to to do this and and bringing it inhouse I I said we pay about $888,000 I can tell you the salary isn't much more than that to have our own social worker it also benefits other departments uh right now it's a it it it's more of a um a follow-up care so officers get a Call of a person in crisis they go they they handle it they submit a report to the social worker social worker the next day will come in and look at it see if they've got a casew worker reach out and do that work this actually takes it more on the proactive side so the Call Comes in it gets triaged and then we send either fire staff or our social worker to the scena and we're not sending police and so for me to do that I I would like to bring her inhouse and and have some control over the roles and responsibilities and so we are looking at terminating that that contract like soon um again we're paying quite a bit of money for it already and I just think it would it would provide provide um a better resource for us here especially um Citywide so that's that's where we're at with that one and some of the areas we're tracking are uh mental health calls and and ideally I'd like to say we're going to reduce mental health calls by percentage that the truth is is not going to happen but we know that we can we deal with some folks who are repeat calls um for service um we're dealing with one right now that I think we've been out there maybe a doz times in the last few days um we want to try to stop that because we know if we continue to go at some point that's where the an encounter could go in a different direction and we don't want that and so we're pretty um happy with the progress we made that we can reduce our repeat calls for service and I know just from from talking to her I mean um you know if you know Kelly I mean she's she I mean just an example she worked with a single adult male who struggled with opiate use he's being evicted while in treatment overhouse he's uh losing his his housing and she's working with him directly she's driving she's driving him around and she does this and I she's within her parameters as a County employee but I know she could be doing a lot more outside those restrictions that she has and so that's just an example of what she does right now and she'd like to continue to do that so uh use of force related to mental health calls so anytime an officer uh puts hands on somebody when you think of use of force people think of like you know like um they're using a taser or some sort of baton if I were to use my hands and physically grab Kevin and walk him we track that as a use of force and I know from studies especially in Brooklyn Park they were able to reduce that by 40 some percent I can tell you anytime we can keep our hands off people that's that's that's a good outcome and so when I hear that they're reducing their use of force they're reducing the repeat calls for service by you know 40 50% that's pretty impressive and I want to do the same thing park or Brooklyn Brooklyn Park yeah and so um that's a pretty heavy Focus for us is really enhancing that and so I thought I um we wanted to make sure we include that um and then the last one is uh is Recreation and their outcome is to expand participation and a membership and Recreation program and facilities and an area that they'll they'll they'll track is the program participation and membership numbers and they have a Target to improve programming mbers and March membership by 5% so you know there's only there's four there but each one of those contain a lot of like we would call action steps to get to that desired outcome so I think I'll stop there and turn it back to all of you yeah for questions and then one of us will whoever is directed to will answer great Council questions for either Chief or both anything I guess I got a question KY go ahead I got guess I got a question when you say um hiring a full-time social worker um the social worker will be used to respond to um calls that don't require police and I'm I'm just wondering um you know not a social worker but like when you think about the need of the calls will we have enough will will one social worker be enough to respond to that many calls for one city um because that's that's I mean I just can't see where one social worker would be able to provide enough Services um for our city when we have different calls that don't require police I know um as being part of the 60 member organization that deals with this um this pilot program in Brooklyn Park in St Paul um they are triaging the cost to several different places and police is not coming but they're using multiple different resources and so I'm thinking about is the social worker going to be triaging calls or will the social work could be responding to calls yeah that's a great question and qu you are absolutely correct you cannot staff enough social workers 247 because our calls don't end at 4:30 absolutely correct so what the Brooklyn Park Model was a grant and they had a community paramedic that was a North Memorial paramedic assigned to a social worker and there was more than one they were shift they had shifts and I don't know if they would work 247 but they had multiple shifts and so they would resp so the call would come in 911 911 would just send them send that and they that worked out well and I think it's phenomenal it's great um I I think you know when you partner partnering with like uh North Memorial or uh hopen Healthcare the cost of a paramedic is is expensive or you know when you contract with them and I know this from talking to hopen County so our our design is somewhat kind of like a hybrid so Kelly our social worker would design a program train fire staff we always have to have police trained because there is so much overlap however if if if the social worker is working and they can respond in real time absolutely they should go but as I See Fire bring on more staff and those folks are trained and some of his folks are EMTs and have quite high level of training at in medical so why wouldn't we partner with somebody who we already have on staff that's being paid paid for by the City versus me Contracting and having a paramedic and so that's kind of a it's kind of a hybrid kidy um but so the difficult part is we don't own our own dispatch so there we have to figure out when a call comes in can we triage it from our level and then direct the right resources and this might just not be at mental health this could be just in Medical Response in general um and really triage it from our level and send either fire Trin staff or a combination of our social work if she's working with fire and we may have to have officers we have a we have a mental health unit now so we have a group of officers who do after care that go out because um Kelly can't go out to every call by herself there are some sometimes she has to go with an officer just for reasons like you know could be a variety of reasons and so we we will have um but the goal is to remove police from that initial response okay and as best we can without hiring a whole bunch of social workers because they may sit all night long and not get a call and so it's yeah it would be nice to have more but there's also money is not endless um so we're trying to and there's a couple cities down south that have done this um with their fire department here in Minnesota it's been more partnering with the medical like North or hennipin and then the social worker I don't that so it's kind of a high more to come but we that's why I want to bring Kelly on in how that way we can say hey I want you you help Design This we need to figure out what this looks like how what kind of training can you provide what kind of resources who are our our uh local Partners who can we tap into whe you know there there's a variety of things we can do but right now we just have some restrictions because her she's a follow-up U embedded social worker that really her job description is not that okay thank you follow up um Rebecca yeah I would just kind of piggy back on all that I guess what I would Envision and I I anticipate maybe this is what staff has thinking is that as this starts to evolve there's going to be more overlap where some professionals are going to have a Social Work role but they're going to already be in the budget as a fulltime fire or some version of the community engagement officer or whatever to try to meet that like the role of Public Safety is now starting to be more malleable and it's not like a hammer for every yeah every problem so I think this is a good first step and I'll just quickly say I mean I think this I I like everything on this part of the profile I think the description is a little wordy but I yeah I've been thinking about it it's it's okay um otherwise it looks good to me yeah do that's why in 2028 mental health cops I would rather see that need go if fire picks up that responsibility then I don't need two cops I mean that's what that's what we're looking at is something like that because again we're not I see we've always worked very well with our Public Safety Partners I just think that as we see fire ramp up and have more um accessibility and more resources why wouldn't we you know utilize those resources and I I appreciate you uh talking a little bit about dispatch because we it I mean since I've been on we had our own dispatch and you know just wondering how the whole uh how the assignment would work you know out of dispatch since we can't control it and so I I still wonder about that a little bit but so yeah I I was the chief that got rid of dispatch but we were looking at remodeling it was very expensive but we do lose a little control when we don't have our own dispatch and so for examp if we had our own Dispatch they could easily treat AG it would be seamless um I have um you know I hav sever ties with hopen County uh Social Services with our social worker I mean we're in the but once that happens I'm confident that the sheriff's office will maybe work with us on what that could look like if someone were to call I mean we always can find Solutions you know when the Call Comes we could always say Okay pause for let's see who can go fire can go um ideally it'd be nice if they can treeage it from the county from our Dispatch Center I just I'm going to have that conversation with them once I make this once we move down once we take this next step um but it is but it is a hurdle and we'll look through it but I think the I think we're working in the right direction Kimberly yeah um excuse me so Mike already shared with this this with me but I assume it's going to come up when we when we get to the budget so can you tell us how much the what percentage of the salary for the social worker we're paying now from manin County yeah so right this year it's about $75,000 in in 2025 it goes to 88,000 her salary is about 98,000 okay so it's very close now we have benefits there's some other additional but right now we pay for the social worker and we pay some administrative because they have their own oversight they've got a supervisor who over oversees the work that she does so we're paying for part of that and so when we started to look at that we have all that oversight I just I see um the value in the in the Citywide I mean it's not just police that deal with folks in in need it could be Recreation with senior services may have a need to to uh you know work with somebody on housing I mean you there's it just opens the doors and and I think this provides us the opportunity to to to Really take advantage of those yeah py um so this has to do with fire and so you said based on the hiring that happened it was essentially one firefighter per day for uh 2024 yes and so um do we know like how that has affected response time I mean uh so far it's hasn't been so much to do with response time as it's been to fill gaps um so right now our our staffing is what we would call a minimum so if somebody is off we have to fill that with overtime and then when we hired these three not only do they help fill the Gap if somebody is off but we also are seeing gaps on our paid on call S side so we had for instance uh in the first or second quarter here this year we had uh see 77 shifts that were not filled uh by our paid on call so okay then if those aren't filled we either have to drop down a truck so normally we would try to staff three trucks between our fulltime and our paid on call so if we don't get those filled with our paid on call we either have to shut a truck down and go down to two trucks or we have to call in for overtime so these three that we hired helped kind of fill fill that Gap so we can uh keep that third truck in service cuz right for the second quarter um 38% of our calls were overlapping which meant we had two or more calls going on at the same time and if we only have two trucks on duty that means they're both tied up and we don't have anything available for any other calls that come in so and then um like so obviously overtime is a lot of it's expensive so that's what I kind of want to find like get a sense of of so you filled that Gap so how much money have we saved uh that we I don't have the answer to yet um I I I have an answer for that yet I mean just a general idea would be like not now but to know this like how that yeah I think by next year we'll have a better understanding of of how the hirings affected our our overtime um we're so new into this realm still that uh I think last year was the first year we even had an overtime budget okay um because we never needed it previously so um going through last year and this year and then I think by next year we'll kind of have a benchmark as to what were our overtime costs then we'll be able to see a correlation once we bring the Staffing level up on on what our savings are you know there's always going to be some overtime but uh we'll have a lot more flexibility because we won't have to auto trigger it every time somebody takes off well we'll have uh some wiggle room that we can have one or two vacancies and not have to necessarily fill those back okay other questions Paula thank you um yeah you were talking about overlapping um calls that were happening now are those fires or were those medical calls and how many of each are we looking at for 2024 so far how are we um so they're all our calls so any any call for service so you know we're in all hazards so we and then when you say trucks is that mean that that's fire trucks that are responding yeah it's a staffed apparatus so it could be a rescue it could be a pumper truck it could be a ladder truck um but they have to everyone has to be staffed with at least two that's our that's our minimum Staffing okay okay um so I can tell you in Quarter Two I don't think it breaks down what the specific calls were that are overlapping okay but uh yeah 38% of the time we have two or more calls going on at the same time okay and so and so we don't know how many of those were fire versus medical not the overlapping okay and then just in general what was do we have that information yes I can go off our so off our 2023 data okay um last year was 3,900 emergency medical calls we had a 176 motor vehicle accidents 53 rescues um between fires in our city and mutual Aid incidents we were sitting at about 150 we had 635 service calls 246 hazardous materials calls or hazardous condition calls and then 531 false alarms and so I'm sorry harm many you said 246 hasm so like that required like a truck I guess what yeah so it's anything from a gas leak to a fuel spill um any type of Hazards U we go to respond to some of our manufacturing facilities when they have incidents there y okay so the vast majority are ems calls it looks like yeah about 75% 75% okay thank you m I was going to mention there is for a lot of detailed information in the annual report so any of those can be found online so on our website um if you want to take a deep dive into any of the annual police or fire reports those are available or it breaks down all the calls so there's additional resources yeah thank you and I and I want to be mindful of time because we we do have a few things on the agenda so but but these reports have been helpful is there there any other pressing questions anyone has otherwise we'll we'll keep moving um the questions that we have for this let me just make sure that mayor right there okay very good they're here too but thank you so you know these are the things that that U staff wants Direction on you know affirm the description um for the safe and healthy Community um you know the stuff that was on our our grid does um do we affirm the four desired outcomes and um do we um affirm the performance metrics and targets so um they've been reviewed and um anything from this that uh you have any concerns about or um or comments on or do we all want to affirm I'm going to make one quick comment um you know on the desired outcome on the middle of the page here you know ensure Public Safety ready Readiness for the Opus Area Redevelopment when I read that I thought well that sounds kind of tactical it's only one part of the city but but it's clear that is the most dynamic and Chang in part of our city where where the revisions for service are really going to be most significant so I I kind of came to terms with that but I thought it was worth mentioning that it initially to me it felt a little tactical but then I realized no that that is the most dynamic part of the city that and and of course Ridgedale um in terms of its activity but but I I I settled my concern with that thought so I don't know if anyone else has any other comments that you've uh got so other than that then I think I think I think we're ready thank you we we're we're in the affirming mode yeah so thank you very much so I think that's our strategic Plan update um that takes us to the preliminary 2025 budget review and um I'm going to turn that back to Mike and to Darren and um I think you guys have a report so yeah thank you take it away than you keep us up we have a PowerPoint for you this evening I'll take things off go through the first half of the slides or so and I'll turn it over to Darren but just before I start just to just high level observation and comment just certainly want to thank Darren Nelson our finance director Joel Mary our assistant Finance director uh Zack Heckel our accountant or senior accountant just for a lot of the work that they've done leading up to tonight and then of course all of our staff that are in the room here tonight as you know our budget process is nine months long it takes a lot of effort not just from myself but from Mr Nelson the finance team and all of our directors and a lot of our managers are involved in really pulling together a lot of the detail that goes on into the budget process again we're covering tonight the general fund but in total when you look at our general fund our Improvement budget that we discussed a couple study sessions ago our economic Improvement plan uh you know our budget exceeds $100 million so there's a lot of a lot of work that goes into making sure we balance and that we're fiscally responsible because we do have a big responsibility uh as stewards of the taxpayer money and so as we go into this conversation many of these slides and charts you've seen before so but it is updated uh from the budget kickoff information that you saw uh earlier this year and it's even updated from the packet that was sent out on Thursday um so you're going to see some revised numbers and I think in our conversations today Council I chatted with all of you about uh a change in the levy just based on some new data that was um unearth if you will the last couple days after the packet went out and to the good and so tonight is really again a starting discussion uh Darren we'll talk about the timeline here in a little bit but just keeping in mind that in September you will need to approve a preliminary tax lby and you've heard us say this before that is the ceiling if you will so by December you'll need to approve a final tax levy that could be lowered in that final decision in September but it certainly cannot be increased and so that new ceiling oops on to the next slide is over on the right hand side a 9.30% increase in the in the staff report and in the packet that was sent out it was 9.66 so as again we our staff is continually revising numbers exploring um operational expenses revenues as well and always F tuning where we can and so again since the packet went out we were able to find savings really in salaries there was a a calculation that was adjusted as we and was adjusted in a way that we had overestimated for salary structure throughout the city and so we're able to reduce uh that expenditure by about 300,000 which then projected our new projection is 9.30 so with that in mind again you want to go look kind of f first through what are the the budget drivers and that's usually a phrase that we use is what are the main budget drivers um before I do that certainly I'm going to skip over to oops I'm sorry I had my mic off so I'm going to skip over to the center part of that and really again set the stage for property taxes and in the middle of the graph there are three components that really Drive property tax it's our operations our capital and then Debt Service and in that's Illustrated on the circle graph over on the left hand side the biggest piece is 78% which is our general fund operation so again the bulk of our expenditures related to property taxes are in our operations which we'll get into here in a little bit the second component is the capital or CIP Capital Improvement program is 18% and then the existing Debt Service that's tied to the general fund is 4% so have a breakdown of where our property tax dollars fund and and where those dollars go now as it goes back to on the right hand side 99.3% and I just mentioned budget drivers so the main the three main budget drivers are is they often we use buckets I'll talk about three different buckets the first bucket is in our general fund operations just our Mouse can use the mouse here those break down that 9.3% uh operations is 7.23% that's what we're estimating today further breaking that down is General operations at 4.98% and I think just for the discussionary purposes the rest of the way through I'll say mainly 5% so really 5% of that 9.3 is for General operations that's um doing business in 2025 as in 2024 just in a different um inflationary environment so it's it's really the same operations as we see today there's in a staff ad that we'll talk about later but in the general sense it's really um funding what we're doing today for next year that's at that 5% uh the other component is the public safety master plan so as we heard here in the last hour both Chief Fox and chief waroom recapped the public safety master plan and we are in year two or this would be year two next year and 2025 again that's being at this point a budget impact of that 2.25% and that takes into consideration the positions that were discussed again this last hour there are no changes to the capital Improvement part of the levy so our CIP dollars even though we have expenditures um resulting next year in our CIP no um increase needed in the levy for Capital and you'll see a slide coming up on that in terms of debt uh what is being projected Ed is a 2.07% and that would be Debt Service for potential Community facility improvements and that is go back to the study session a few months ago where we had staff and our Consultants lay out um some options for the council consideration regarding improvements to the marsh to the community center Willison and then there' be the repayment of the initial purchase so that debt service is estimated at 2.07% we'll probably get a little more details here in a few minutes in terms of what that looks like uh that thatt issuance would is tied to a potential potential bonding issuance of 37 million again those are numbers that we saw in a recent study session at 37 million principal interest payments estimated today if the debt was issued would be a little over 3 million a year and so to pay for that principal interest payments it really requires a 6% Levy increase and so what this estimates is then phasing in that tax levy the next three years with year one being 2% certainly we could talk more about options in terms of what that might other options here later on so it gives you just some background into the three categories or buckets as theyve called them in terms of what are the those main budget drivers that same information is laid out in a bar graph and that's Illustrated here on this page dates back to 2016 the purpose of of showing you this is to highlight dating back almost the last 10 years again those three different categories the blue is the capital Improvement programming I know you've seen this before many times Council so we're looking at 2025 again very reflective of 24 into 25 very similar I just noted zero really a 0% increase or decrease in the levy for Capital uh operations is the biggest driver uh in next year and again we'll cover that more detail in the coming slides and then with the debt service again being unless we um this factors in that 2% um L the increase for The Debt Service if we were to fund the facilities uh breaking down our cap Improvement program so I again mentioned our CIP there is a 0% impact going to 20125 what this graph illustrates is with with many of our different funds that are where Capital Improvement dollars go you can get a sense of where where um the biggest bulk of our CIP tax levy goes to those are reflective in the blue colored areas in each of these bars so for example we have a street Improvement fund which primarily fund stre improvements obviously as the title suggests uh the largest portion of our back up here for one second so think of 9.87 million in Levy needed to fund cap Improvement project where does that 9 roughly 876 go towards uh the major share of that over 6 million goes to Street Improvement funds another share goes to Capital replacement as gener rece equipment so squad cars fire trucks uh dump trucks payloaders skers so really a lot of our equipment falls into that cap rep placement account we also have a technology Development Fund that pays for all the techy really across the city so we do break that out through that PCH fund Public Safety has a separate um Capital need really related to equipment so radios and armor and helmets is what you would find jailing Public Safety dollars and then Trail Improvement is there's a small portion of the tax lever that does fund Park and trail improvements and then the last piece would be forestry so there's some dollars that go to our forry fund uh there are other lots of other funds in the city we have roughly 40 in total but these are the ones that are most reflective of where tax levy dollars go breaking this down a little bit further is what's Illustrated on this next slide and so as you heard me say just a few minutes ago 4.98% is really dedicated towards um as we say kind of continuing the business and maintenance of the city as we are in 2024 carrying that over into 2025 and oops sensitive Mouse if you look at the budget drivers with in that 4.98% I'm just going to quickly go through these 0.5% to roughly 250,000 is for the last year of our arpa Levy reinstatement and Mr Nelson's talked about that numerous times in past years in study sessions um how we use the arpa dollars from the federal through Co and the federal funding so this is our last year that Levy component of 250,000 excuse me yeah 250,000 and then the rest is really related to people uh roughly 80% of our general fund budget is related to people as you know we are in the service industry and so what we have reflected in here is then our annual cost of living adjustments market rate adjustments both in our Union and non union contracts and then non-un employees is the biggest share of that so again salary adjustments going into next year we have the staff report we we talked about some good news on that front that our increase was minimal at around 6 and % um we've had seen more double digit increases the last couple years so health insurance is going into 2025 has been lower than previous years but nonetheless there's still a impact to the city and there's a cost share between the city and staff as it relates to premium increases the city share is roughly 284,000 for health insurance uh we had a an increase in Workers Compensation Insurance uh this year to the tune of 475,000 which is almost a percent of our entire l just due to workers compensation premium increases uh and and then the new position that's being requested is you dii specialist that is 95,000 that would be a midyear higher I should say first first quarter April higher so right at the end of first quarter and the second quarter higher and that has a levy impact of 2% so that's a summary of 5% so really 5% is is really driven around again salaries and benefits and one position being recommended Ed for next year um as I noted again the other piece is the public safety component 2.25% the community facility improvements are that Debt Service uh which would generate about a million dollars for um more interest payments in year one is 2% again which gets you to a projected Levy of 99.3% we'll also talk about HRA U we've been consistent over the years with an H Levy of 00,000 so no adjustment we recommended there uh one of the things that this next graph illustrates is um a little bit of a look back and then projecting future tax levies and you see Mr Nelson prepare our financial management plan and in that planning effort uh we take a look at where we where we've been and then we project out where the potential tax levity could be in future years uh so a lot of um assumptions going into that modeling but we take a look at current operations we use inflationary factors we consider what Staffing costs will look like uh we also consider what Debt Service might look like uh in future years uh really everything from A to Z regarding City expenditures we try to do that forecasting and modeling to understand what what what could potentially happen with our tax levy in again out years my apologies very sensitive Mouse um so again in 20 as we just noted 2025 we 25 at 9.3% uh projecting out in 26 and 27 some significant increases primarily driven around the public safety Master planning and the implementation of the public safety Master planning and we start to see some easing in the tax levy further out in 28 more so in in 29 and we're going to talk about in some again some upcoming slides some other considerations that we need to be planning around uh in the next five years um Beyond some of the the things that we're talking about here already this evening so at this point I'm going turn over to to Mr Nelson talk about what's in the budget what's not in the budget and then as we get towards the end of the presentation we have questions for you and then we've got one of the slides coming up on are there ways to reduce the levy U from 9.3 to something lower and so we have some suggestions and recommendations for your consideration so we look forward to vetting those out with the council here in the coming minutes that I'll turn over to Darren and we'll continue with our presentation thank you Mike grab this here real quick want I just go back real quick and just on this graph here uh looking at 26 27 and 20 26 and 27 um that also includes Community facility potential bonding issuances there as well too so um it's Public Safety master plan and then the comm's facility Bond um issuance stepped into over a three-year time frame that's why the three years are a little bit higher than it backs down in 28 with Public Safety still there and then 29 where it's it's all gone at that point so um so what's in the budget uh looking at these bullet points I think we've talked about some of these already so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on these um we got the first bull here is to talk about the the public safety master plan we' talked quite a bit about that already tonight um there obviously as we stated there's a request for nine um firefighters and one um police officer investigator um within this budget uh looking at the community facility improvements um there again we've kind of talked a little bit about that uh that would be a bond issuance potentially in 2025 this would be ly25 to pay for interest on any bond Bond issued for Community facility improvements um that we we talked about earlier as well so um and that would be stepped into over three-year time frame as as mentioned earlier uh we have one other other new position within the general fund and that would be a Dei specialist and that would be funded obviously through the general fund and with our with tax dollars on that end of it we do have three uh non-general fund Personnel requests as well two we go through those personel requests in a little bit more detail in the second here um other than the public safety ones um we are implementing the second year of our comp uh of our class and compensation study plan we had done a study last year to get all of our non-un employees into grades and steps um that was a big project and now we are we've got them all in there and we are are working on um continuing the implementation of that plan as we uh move forward on that end of it so that is built into the budget here as well along with all of our Union contracts and their um projected increases there workers compensation as Mike mentioned um is increasing quite substantially for this next year we're seeing the increase of about $475,000 which is substantial for workers compensation uh it's kind of twofold on this end of it we are seeing increasing rates across the state for different classification of classifications of workers and then our mod Factor as well to increase last year from 69 to 087 uh mod factors it's kind of a tech technical term on that end of it but it's the multiplier basically on what you put on uh your insurance workers comp insurance premiums and so anything below a 1.0 is good that reduces your premiums um so our 69 was outstanding we were actually I think the year before we were actually was either it was lower than the 0 69 was either in the 05 something on that end of um and has kind of now gone up a little bit but it's now at 087 which is um 32% increase from 69 to 87 but that's still in the good category we could easily be um cities are at a positive but they're at 1.2 and something to that nature so we could see significant changes and so um we're implementing our our Safety Committee in hopes of you know part of that is the hopes of bringing that down hoping that um mod factors and classifications across the state um try to moderate as well too so that's a big hit to us but um overall we're still in in a good good setting it's just uh it's just a bigger increase from our reduction from last year so it's good just not as good as it was right right um so our new Staffing requests I'm not going to go into these in details um both Chiefs did a great job of that we obviously have one on the on the police side of it and nine on the on the firefighter side of it I do see I have to update the um the first bullet under the nine full-time firefighters that's for additional 18 I think we're I think that number needs to be tweaked from from that going forward but Kevin and I will uh get that squir away moving forward on that end of it um so those full-time firers will give us allow us some staffing flexibility and U be able to staff up station five on that end as well and then our de specialist I think I'll spend a little bit more time on that one is that um Dei continues to be a top priority for the city um Council and staff and we are seeing some um lots of Demands on our our current senior um Dei um P person and so um he's we're seeing him going in a number of different directions on that end of it and I was kind of wanting to expand that and provideed additional Outreach and such like that um there is a need for some some additional Staffing on that end of it and I know mik Miranda can touch more on that if you need more specifics on on that end of it so U then looking at out some of our non-general fund FTE we do have a request for three positions there we have do have a request for one public service worker two out in the utilities water and sewer division um we do have our water meter replacement project that is kicking off now that's going be a four five six year program on on that end of it that'll be a big uh need for us there along with uh inspecting critical infrastructure doing our sewer televising those types of things um and that position would be funded from the water and sewer Utility Fund itself and not um from the tax ly dollars themselves then we have a request for one program and event coordinator at the marsh um this would be needed to operate various programs the the facility users are requesting so we're getting lots of requests for um programming um but also handle a number of rentals and special event requests that are coming in out there as well um and this was this position was um recommended in the community facility study that was presented to the council um at an earlier date I don't remember if that was the spring or when that was no but um that position was there and then one other position is one senior Fitness coordinator and that would be kind of a split between the the marsh and the Wilson Center we currently have one position now that is split and so we this would allow us to have one position at both the marsh and the Wilson Center obviously funding would fund one position Wilson would fund one and the marsh would fund the other position at this point in time uh they are seeing big numbers in in in programming needs and as long as um as well as health and wellness programming there as well too so so those are the non-general fund FTE and those would be both funded by both the Wilson Center and the and the marsh as a special Revenue fund uh we do have some non-personnel budget U adjustments as well too I know Mike mentioned um in that graph earlier it showed basically it was all Personnel um there are a lot of kind of ins and outs or um ads and deletes itions across the other services and charges areas of the budget outside of the Personnel area and so we do have a couple requests that were in there as well so we have $100,000 for um it subscription licensing we're seeing large increases every every company's moving towards a subscription service and so with a subscription comes basically an annual 5% increase because it makes it easy for them so um that we're seeing that increase at kind of astronomical rates across the board on that end of it uh we also added another 100,000 for electricity charges um as you may recall pu and Excel Energy um my I'm on the record of saying that I think they're in In Cahoots with one another but um they had a change to their uh Community solar Gardens and their rebate on that and so that's going to reduce our rebate by about $100,000 for next year so we'll have excess additional costs for next year on on that end of it we're also including $100,000 for a potential zoning code uh rewrite that I think is a two-year potential project on that end of it with potentially some funding coming back from back Council in the second year of that project and then we have 40,000 for replacement of some permitting software and then some additional increase for ammunition costs that are that are increasing then um increased Staffing there as well that c affords that but we do have some reductions on on this as well too and so I think I've talked with Council a little bit about our um State Fire Aid we have kind of come to to a tenative agreement with the Fire Relief Association that um now that they are moving towards being at the cap at the max for the state pension allotment um which is $115,000 a year per year service which comes out of their pension um funds on on that end of it um they're willing to allow the city to take half of their um State Fire Aid that we receive once a year on that end of it so um now that growing on the fulltime fire department side of it or fulltime firefighter side of it we have pension costs there as well too with p and such like that and so as long as that Fire Relief pension is at the at the max um they don't necessarily have a need for it they are overfunded so I think they're at about 120% give or take a couple percent um funded and so um they're gracious enough to kind of share that with us with the city um to help our funding needs on our end of it so we will be bringing in September we bring the preliminary budget forward the plan is to bring um that agreement to city council as well to to um ratify that that agreement so look for that in the future um we also are eliminating um we had in the the preliminary budget kind of up until late this in July time frame we had added $250,000 into the budget for operating the marsh um initially our purchase agreement went through 203 and 24 and we had a we had some dollars in there to help us get through Opera for 23 and 24 and so we thought those dollars would run out by the end of 24 um operations at the at the marsh are are are better than anticipated on that end of it and so we are not going to need that additional that initial $2 million operating cost piece of that we can extend that through 2025 at this point in time so we won't need any additional operating Subs at the marsh beyond what was initially there with the purchase um purchase op option on that end of it so that's realiz savings there which is good and like to see the the operations continuing to go there um we have $60,000 from the savings from our Erp our finance and HR conversion project um we are we're not expecting to be paying Oracle for the new um Erp project next year and so our we'll be reverting back to our original costs on that end of it which is about $60,000 um annually there and then we're looking at um our fuel savings as well too we're seeing um significant fuel Savings in the PD side of things especially with um being able to house police vehicles now with our new facility and such like that we're seeing um Vehicles aren't idling as much as they used to be and I think SC Scott and his staff are being a little bit more strategic about the patrolling piece of that and things like that so we're able to um save on some fuel costs on that which is significant as well too and then lastly we um talked with Public Works a little bit and will and and Darren Allon on on some of this stuff about um salt inventory and so um had a good conversation with Darren out there about um salt inventory and how we have to account for it at the end of the year um and him not necessarily realizing that we as accountants come in at the end of the year and we actually measure how much salt is there and you can have swings so one year you may have $500,000 in salt being used and the next year you may have $200,000 in salt just because your end of your inventory is adjusted and not necessarily consistent from one year to the next so we had a good conversation about that he learned kind of what we do on our end of it we understand what he does on his end of it and so we're going to try to control that inventory at year end on a a little bit better um basis now obviously year end is difficult because it's December and that's when you use Sal but um if we can try plan as best we can uh we can realiz some savings there in in the long run so we just just jump in there I think we didn't I just add up the add up the top and bottom of that so Illustrated that we're adding adding some components as Darren mentioned but we also scrutinize our expenditures and so I think when you look at um Those ads and we look at where we're seeing savings that is washing out and so going back to my earlier comment really our that 5% first bucket driver of general fund operations is Staff even though we are adding cost into the budget for the items noted we're also having savings that that really kind of wash that out so here is just the breakdown of the general fund uh services and kind of into the category of our programs and so we have as you can see our largest sector this is just within the general fund it doesn't include capital or CIP or anything to that nature so this is just strictly operations as you can see Public Safety that includes um police police fire and legal and environmental health as well um that's accounts for about $ 24.2 million of our operating budget or about 44% of our total general fund operational cost um the other areas in there are all fairly equal on that end of it Street and Facilities so that's our streets departments um so that'll be the just Personnel cost there for um all Street related activities and facility and facility activities is about $8.5 million or 16% um parking environment so that's Trails or that's parks and that's natural resources there again that's about 9% and Recreation is about the same at at $4.4 million about 8% um and then you got development and general government is there as well too and so General government is admin Finance assessing um all those types of things as well so so we look at the homeowner impact um and we look at values over time so this kind of this table here comes from the assessing report that was out back in March you can see the growth for the overall overall city was 2.7% which is the lowest that's been in the last couple years on that end of it um single family or single household residential is 1.5% um the average median value home increased about 1.15% so went from about 495,000 to 52,000 last year for this current year uh we are seeing a little bit of still seeing some increases in apartments um a lot of that is probably is still related to some new values coming on board there as well um and then you can see the commercial is pretty flat so a lot of our our commercial value is flat which is um not uncommon across the Metro on that end of it um we're not experiencing big decreases at this point in time so that's that's good we're seeing reuses um in lots of different areas so that's encouraging there as well too um but this impacted a 99.3% levy increase would have a annual tax impact of about $185 on an average median valued home and so that's you know $15 a month or so somewhere in that ballpark so a little bit bigger but it's a little bit bigger Levy than um we've had the last few years as well too so um so here's the another chart that comes from the assessment report that kind of shows a shift in valuation between residential commercial industrial and apartments and so we saw some big shifts a few years ago when values went up that 15 16% we really saw the shift to residential which then pulls property taxes away from the commercial industrial and apartments and moved them over towards residential and so we haven't necessarily seen that shift go back the other way it's been kind of holding pretty pretty steady over the last three years um we still see a little bit of growth in the on the apartment side of it which which helps reduce that a little bit in obviously seeing the commercial and and Industrial kind of Hold Steady a little bit over the last three years but has shrunk over the time if you look at it over the last 10 15 years on on that end of it and such so um there again it's just a redistribution of how property taxes that are just spread across the city now compared to how they go over over a number of years on that end of it so here's our U potential 2025 didn't relabel this header on this one my apologies um here are some of the the potential Levy increases for some of our comparable cities I don't have three of them um we're thinking a couple of them might be pretty high and they don't want to really disclose that yet so they're holding tight to the vest on some of those um but take this with a little bit of grain of salt this year we did break this down a little bit um different with minaka so we broke it down between kind of that operations that Public Safety master plan and then the uh Community facility um debt that as well too so you can see there's the 5% or the 4.98% kind of how that compares to the rest of it um in other cities out there and just take it with a piece of or a grain of salt is that every city is unique every city is in a different situation um and know Apple Valley Edina have some bonds going on as well too Edina is trying to get rid of special assessments which is a like a 10-year plan for them to kind of phase that out with some Equity pieces in there and such like that Bloomington I know has some fire St that they're remodeling as well so they have some depbt in there as well but um it's just kind of a piece to take it take it for the information that it is and and uh compared to where it is and I will say that kind of heard it through a gra Vine but I think evened Prairie's time at at the bottom of this chart is the days are probably numbered on that end of it so um they have a public safety master plan too that they're looking at so um they will welcome to the club welcome to the club is right so and here's a chart that I would put in I know there was a request when we talked at either the CIP or the budget kickoff earlier this in May is we were kind of looking at that Community survey question where we asked the public you know would you support a 1% increase in your property taxes and we wanted to see what that Trend was over time had had it been the support been increasing or had it been decreasing because we just look at the community survey and we see a one-year snapshot and so we went back since 2010 and graph those responses out um and it surprised me when I when I got the graph I was expecting it to be going the other way like there would be less support for a potential tax increase um and obviously 2010 was a different time that was you know coming through some of the Great Recession stuff on that end of it um but you can see that over time it's been pretty strong support for for that piece of it so here again it's just some information that's that's out there just wanted to get that in front of you and kind of follow up on a close loop on that on that question I would just I mean I was the one who pushed for this and and and I would call this a very encouraging chart I mean because you know I was concerned maybe you know may we're getting to a Tipping Point on that question and you know the data suggests that that is not the case it's um you know I think that speaks to the fact that our residents perceive us as providing a reasonable value for what we charge them even though we know it's not low but I I found this I was very encouraged when I saw the trended data so thanks very much for doing that absolutely I would say just quickly that if we we I know we always laugh when the too many charts get overlaid but if you overlaid the levy increase corresponding with the response even in up years the response has still been very positive so I mean I I don't want to put too much Credence in that cuz we can push it too far but it is encouraging so here's where we kind of wanted to move maybe I'll let sure jump in okay yeah thank you so this slide talks about really kind of outlines for you some options uh for Levy reduction consideration so if the starting ceiling is 9.3 what are some options for you to consider in terms of trying to lower that to something else one consideration is to delay Community facility improvements uh as we talked U that would be a $37 million debt issuance um there's nothing really pushing that timeline other than we we were encouraged to do the facility study when you get a good handle of where we were with our facilities we hired a consultant they came back with recommendations like we're we were all excited to see what that might look like and those possibilities and so then we explored what would what would a Deb issuance look like how could we um tackle a potential project um and some ways to to pay that back so one possibility is to again delay Community facility improvements perhaps it's operating the March another year looking at what those operations look like in a year from now and then perhaps considering a project in the future so there's one way to reduce the levy and that's again kind of holding back and cusing on any type of capital Improvement project on our on our facilities the need certainly doesn't go away um I know the community center was one of those important aspects because if you recall before we got into the Mars discussion we had bid the community center project we had rejected those bids because they came in high uh we Reb bided after some modifications to the project scope we had some really favorable bids and we were close as a as the council those were presented to you and we ended up rejecting those bids to go through this process so certainly delaying the community facility improvements um I know had some consequences I know I think we're anxious also to look at certainly the community center and other potential minor upgrades in the facility in in the in the community another potential conversation for you is uh elongating the public safety master plan I again earlier you heard from our Chiefs on uh recapping uh the study where we're at where we're going uh we've had our kind of five-year plan in place as noted next year 2.25% that includes the addition of the nine firefighters and detective and so certainly a conversation is is could that number be altered is there something Less in terms of hiring belonging that instead of a fiveyear implementation a six-year or or longer so certainly staff is here to answer questions on what that might look like in terms of delaying some of those hires and what those potential impacts might be to the goals that we're trying to achieve through those recommendations uh the other uh Levy reduction consideration is talking about the de position certainly Miranda and I can go a little bit deeper and Miranda also can can chime in as Dei became a priority for the city as it is one of our pillars in the Strategic plan regarding Community inclusiveness our goal is uh hiring that position we now have Jace we started with one person now we have Jace on board that position's been doing tremendous work but we're noticing that position is stretched very thin as relates to um uplifting new Dei commission so there's a a body of work and working with a new commission working with them on getting a work plan pulled together our senior de coordinator also does all of our in-house training so certainly a pretty regimented training schedule where all of our staff are being trained on BI efforts and there's external facing of it of the position as it relates to um doing events and we've coordinated one event there other events planned in the community we do have de inters that did help Jus last year but certainly I mean he's he's expressed uh the workload is is difficult and especially trying to continue to move the needle with our de goals and objectives so but we could delay that position so um we are recommending to fund a position to help in our de efforts but certainly we can look to either delay that position higher until 2026 or to make that part-time versus full-time so there's there's some other options in there so those are uh a couple of the considerations for you maybe before we kind of dive into that conversation mayor and and questions we have a couple more slides to we finish up our conversation the other the other thing just want to mention is in future proor considerations I mean as you as we go back to that earlier graph where we project out the next couple years Levy uh we know there's there's pressures there's pressures that we've talked about here this evening some other things that are on our radar screen in terms of planning efforts in the coming years is the fire station modeling and so Chief Fox talked about that earlier that yet this year you're going to have that report coming to you and we're going to begin a conversation on what what that looks like in terms of fire station improvements and certainly we know there's going to be costs associated with some likely upgrades to our to those facilities we've also talked about Opus Park and so we know at some point uh we're going to be make need to make investments in a community park in that area we've gone to the legislature the last two years uh for bonding dollars we recognize that could be a PO project of upward of 30 million and so really trying to plan for that station opening in 2027 knowing that it that in our in our planning efforts having those Community amenities uh in that area and then last uh in talking with Mr Manchester uh we have a lot of Street and utility infrastructure needs coming up um some more Street and utility projects as our infrastructure is aging and so we're going to be mindful of other potential projects uh as you know last year was our largest last couple years is our largest infrastructure project in history $30 million in the in the street Improvement Street Improvement project um just in Tonka Boulevard and so we have other future needs that are identified in our CIP that are unfunded so I I really share that with you because just being mindful of where our priorities land U there's a lot of budget pressures that we talked about earlier and then being mindful of how do we continue to look at these potential expenditures and fitting those into into um into our projects and then also being mindful of of the tax L thank you Mike and just to finish up a couple more quick slides here just looking at the H Levy a little bit as well too um no real changes here from what was presented with the EIP dollar-wise um it's it's still at $300,000 as what was presented in June the Ed though has however recommended a a shift in how that $300,000 is allocated there I believe they don't have any homes Within Reach projects um scheduled for this year from what I understand balance or they have a balance in their in their fund with homes Within Reach and so uh edac is recommending moving $100,000 of the $125,000 over to the pathways program and remain $25,000 with the homes with the reach program for kind of administration costs those types of things on that end of it and then would look to reconsider that in future years if there's a need or um change in housing ties or anything to that nature so still $300,000 request on there just a shift in how the allocation would be between homes within reg and the pathways program on that end with more dollars directed towards the pathways program um just a little bit about the communication the feedback of the budget uh last year was the first year of um communicating the budget through minutka matter soliciting feedback on that platform and so that seemed to work out well we will be doing that again um and we always encourage feedback from the public and that seems like that's the best engagement tool for that and so we look forward to that um obviously truth and Taxation notices will come out in um Mid November and so that'll be dependent upon the preliminary Levy that the city council sets so whatever number that is derived at that point in time will get calculated into those truth and Taxation statements again that's the maximum Levy that you can approve at it for this year and then you'll have a final Levy obviously in December that you approve at that point in time um we have articles coming out in the minuta me Memo obviously on that end of as well too um and then we will share any comments that we received with the council as well like we did tonight as well so and then just a quick timeline on where we're at kind of just went through that as well too so obviously we're at the August 19th we're looking at the operating budget at this point time that September 23rd is when we'll bring this back to the council for um preliminary Levy approval and then um we will have another budget study session in November we'll look at um obviously a little bit of the levy we'll look at the Enterprise funds look at utility rates at that point in time as well and then December 2nd will be the public uh meeting piece for the budget and that's typically where we have the approval done as well and if by chance that doesn't fall on that night we would fall back to December 23rd couldn't we do it on Christmas Eve well with with a special meeting you can yes we have all up until like the 30th first I think so maybe New Year's a fun night for me even the 23rd it probably it probably be short right right so that's kind of where we're at so um obviously it's a long process we we're halfway through but uh we got a lot of the L work done and so um still a little ways to go but um it's coming up quicker than we than we' H so and then here are just the discussion questions that were in the the council packet as well too about you know the base operational Levy support piece of that at the 4.98% um Public Safety master plan at that 2 and a qu% um Community facility study at you know 2.07% and then the HRA piece of that at 300,000 so I'll let turn it back to you to the mayor than and so I I'll ask Council first any any any questions other than these that you have that you'd like to have asked so um C Kimberly and I have some I have a couple of my own and then and I'd like to address some of the emails that we received so when you talk about the marsh special fund that would pay for the um position that's that's the money we've already allocated for running the marsh um yes and no it's it's still from so the marsh runs as an as almost like an Enterprise fund right now it's not a true Enterprise fund it's it's a special fund it's a special Revenue fund so it has unique revenues which is its membership fees it's other fees that um are charged for uh rentals those types of things on that end of it and such and so any subsidy needed would come from if there was a deficit there and so we have enough initially when we made the purchase of the March it was 4 27 4275 Mike got off the top of his head and then we had a $2 million in there for operations for the next two years and so I have those funny those funds set aside so at the end of each month we look at and say okay are you plus or minus and we'll transfer those dollars over if we need some um those dollars have been projected to go through 2025 at this point in time so any new positions that are in the requested in the budget are coming from that performa basically of here's our revenues here's our expenses what's our bottom line coming out out at so so I mean is that another way I mean essentially those those positions are largely paying for themselves because because they're also Revenue generators they're Revenue generators exactly thanks yeah so my other question is like when we um when we look at some of these bonds and and the and paying them back and and that affecting Lo is it possible to take out like a longer Term Loan so that you're paying back less every year and I know you end up paying more but then that's less that's going to the levy yes is likely possible um I would have to talk to our our financial adviser on that I know we made the the initial Bond payment runs on 20year Payback on that end of it um I'm sure you can go to probably 25 um potentially even 30 on that but um I think you you know we probably have the the less time you the shorter the bond the interest pay over as too better interest rates you receive so a little bit of a Tipping Point on that end of it but obviously the final numbers aren't there um the initial runs were done you know earlier this spring early summer type type time frame uh we don't know what interest rates will be at so typically we do those pretty conservative so hopefully we would issue something and the bond comes in at a better rate than what we had anticipated but it's still not like the last Bond we issued back in so good old days right or the bad days good interest yeah I just like when we start looking at 11% increases it it's not that's not good um okay so um this this one email and I'll just read this um so the suggestion was not to transfer 900,000 to project funds and retain it in the general fund and use general fund reserves to buy down the levy to a more acceptable 4 to 5% um so can you like answer that what your response to that absolutely and I I'll kind of show you in this slide right here and so we can absolutely use those general fund reserves to buy down a levy in the current year but you're then setting yourself up in future years to have to recoup that if you want to maintain your service levels and so typically what we've done in the general fund is that if we have excess reserves there we scheduled those out in our financial management plan for our CIP and so we take those and we schedule them out for the next five years and say okay we have realized excess fund balance in our general fund we're going to use that for onetime projects and not necessarily ongoing supplemental pieces of that like we did for the arpa dollars that we received a couple years or three years ago now we used I think we bought it down was it a million dollars the first year and then 2 $50,000 the second year and $250,000 in 2024 now um when we went from that million dollar to 250 we had to Levy back $750,000 even though it saved our in the the grant scheme of things it saved our taxpayers dollars but you just have that hit of going back up to that Levy increase going back up to where you were so absolutely we can do that I would advise that we we don't do that and move it use it for one-time projects in the in the capital Improvement fund but um those are all you know the viable option and I would just add to that too the in a way we are buying down the levy because with that transfer corre wrong we are buying down the levy because with that $900,000 transfer that's excess fund so it's fund balance so by transferring over to the capital Improvement fund for those onetime purchases that Darren mentioned if we didn't do that we would have to Lev 900,000 in the CIP for those purchases almost 2 you're really using that 900,000 it may not be in the general fund but you're buying down the capital Improvement Levy that's how we got to 0.0 for for this particular 202 and if you remember back to our June CIP session I mean over the last four or five years we've had been able to transfer large dollar amounts over to our plan transfers over to our CIP and we're not seeing those big excess reserves projected in our general fund anymore and so we're not going to be able to transfer make transfers over to our CIP as much as we had in the past and so that's going to impact our Levy in the CIP future years as well too okay PA are you do you still have more yeah she sorry so last um we received email from former council member sheppy there's a lot in there so um but I want I want to I want to address so first of all when he talks about um firefighter and our our pay rate for the uh part-time firefighters that are that it's a that it's on the low end um so can you speak to why we pay our part-time firefighters that and um is that do you think that's the reason you're having trouble with recruitment uh no I think so the hourly rate that we PIR fire Fighters really doesn't paint the whole picture of what their overall package is so they get an hourly rate which is what we advertise for and it's 18 something I think Darren but that doesn't include uh when they're working the city puts an additional $3.7 an hour into their Deferred Compensation Plan plus they have their pension and so you know they actually end up with two pensions plus their hourly rate while they work and and I wish I still had it Mike did a really good breakdown of that uh a a while back but when you when you look at the numbers over their career and what they can earn in both their pensions and their hourly rate they're actually making about $37 an hour which is on par with with what our career firefighters make because they get certain benefits that the career side doesn't get and but we don't paint that whole picture when when we advertise because it it's easier to explain it when they come in and so when we recruit and people come in for our information meetings we kind of lay out the the whole package so okay um and then uh talks about the the city manager um fund and the increases and so Mike could you just tell me tell everyone what you told me sure um just go back to Kevin's response he spoted on so I think I think it's important to note that yes on Face Value the firefighter paid on call is is that base rate as noted but again there there's more there's more um benefits to that fir fighter they actually earn the $18 in cash up front their bigger benefit is when they retire that and so when you calculate out their hourly rate it is close to $40 an hour um and then as noted in the city manager um so in our budget 's uh departments and so we have the admin Department within the admin Department budget there are different divisional budgets one of those is called the city manager budget and so um there are salaries contained in the city manager budget which would be I think there's four of us so it's myself Miss Dam as the assistant city manager Miss Faulk as the Senior Management coordinator Mr Alexander is our senior Dei coordinator so there's four Sal contained in the city manager budget why that percentage is higher than others is that's where that new D position is being recommended so if the council supports that additional position that position would be I guess housed in the city manager budget and so that's why that percentage increase is more the other thing that it accounts for is um also funding two interns and so we did have interns as last year as noted but we're able to fund those interns on some other savings but we want to make sure we built in some interns in future years so there's a little money in there for a a full-time position and the interns and there some additional supplementary dollars roughly 20,000 to help assist with Dei efforts so there's a lot of Dei activity that's accounted for in the city manager's budget um if you took out that position in the interns and some of the Dei support the percentage increase is around that 9% like you SE in the other departments okay and then I'll just it's already been up for discussion whether or not we we do the the facilities uh improvements or or wait and assess later later on I just wanted to State like I don't agree with the assertion that staff has sort of pushed the March decisions and and Council has just gone along um it was it was a council decision to purchase the marsh and it was a council decision to operate the marsh and try and see if we could get to a point where we're where we break even or make money and so I feel like I mean yes we have followed staff recommendations but I don't feel like we've just been like led by the nose yeah led by the nose on on that um and so I will give others a t all right thanks thank you Kimberly um Deb do you have it or I had I had one question um on that same page where it gives the percentage increase for city manager way up the top it says uncollectible taxes reduced by 50% and I I my question which I forgot to ask I I ran out of time with Mike because I I was sandwiched by other meetings but I said how do we know uncollectible taxes will be reduced so I I was just really curious about that absolutely thank you um those are council member taxes huh the never mind that was a little that was little attempt at humor okay so if you look at the the Revis or the agenda that was sent out there's a revised page for this summary budget piece of that and so that number has now been restored back to $200,000 and historically it's always been $200,000 um prior to us finding some additional dollars ear late last week on that end of it we were skinning things down as in any way we possibly could and that was one area that I didn't want to but I did reduce it down to $100,000 at that point in time um knowing where the market is at now with cuz that petition has come out of there as well too so if we have a a commercial property that files a petition and they um are awarded a refund on property taxes that's the line that that goes into and so I'm knowing it's a little bit volatile environment I wasn't necessarily 100% comfortable doing that um on but once we found our our correction some for some additional funding there I I restored that back to $200,000 so um it's it's where it's at and it's historically been there it's good to have that nowadays because of of the uncollectible taxes just with a general economy along with the petitions that are out standing there as well too so that that was one area that we were we were squeezing as best we could to to make things fit into the we appreciate the the 9.63 so right then Paula you had questions yeah first of all I just wanted to thank staff um I know you guys have done a lot of work in terms to try to squeeze things as much as you can and and so just know that we recognize and appreciate that um even as we ask questions um it it's it's just part of the the process but I think we will all really see tonight in another time effort and and you know that you're putting into to trying to make this a workable budget for our residents and so much appreciated um I had a couple of questions first of all talking about the uh facilities uh bonding so I'm just a little bit um trying to understand how this happens if we step into something by you know a 2% over the each of the next three years what happens on year four if we do do that General bonding how does that work um so if you could help me understand that a little bit I'd appreciate that y absolutely you take it no you take it so um so the as I said earlier the that estimated Bond issuance is 37 million and so if you look at strictly an amortization schedule and you would to pay back principal and interest immediately that would be about $3 million a year which requires a 6% Levy increase and so certainly you as a city council can like if you decided to do the the project we could do it it would be a 6% Levy increase to fully fund that principal interest right away and so and I'm sing a little repetitive and so the strategy is to ease into that because I don't I mean heavy a 6% Levy increase in one year just for that deance would be difficult and so it's it's phasing it in um structuring the debt so you get to that in year four that full payment but once you build in the levy for three years on year four you've now got that Levy built in so then there's no other Levy increase needed at that time you still Levy for the principal interest you just don't have to Levy anything above it yeah we're talking about increases we're talking about increases not costs from the Bas so so year one you pay a third of the interest year two you pay another third twoth thirds and year three you're fully loaded you're paying 100% of the interest because you load it in each year but then the following year you're still paying the interest but you're not increasing it at all so it's it has no growth impact thank you that makes oh sorry about that yep perfect I I have another question so we one of the suggestions about bringing the levy down was deferring uh was it 2 point it was 2.7 2.07 um for Community facility improvements um and so my my question is you know just knowing what things cost and you know inflation's going down but that just means that price the increase of prices is slowing so you know I was just wondering if there are any thoughts about you know do we actually even save money if we defer because the price of remodeling or whatever tends to go up over time and never really comes you know never really comes down and so I'm just wondering I mean it you know it looks like a bright shiny object but is it really not not all that Glitters Is gold as they say so um I couple comments I guess on on that I I think that it all depends I I would say construction you don't necessarily I mean there are es and flows in construction but generally it's it goes up over time I think the one area that you may see some savings is that interest rates may come down um in a year or so um you don't know how much or if it does or what but it might have some savings there on that end of it then I think um I think I talked about a little bit in the report is I think there's some financing options down the road as well too I know um you know potentially a sales tax option might be something that's you know we're not allowed to do that now but maybe that changes and and maybe that's not even on the table down the road but at least it's looking at all your options potentially as well too so um there's some things that are out there but that again the price of construction made I I also had a question and it's a small amount because the ammunition was only 10,000 bucks but I started thinking about it like fuel you know sometimes fuel prices go down you can frontload the purchase of fuel and I was just wondering you know if there was you know some big sale on ammunition you know can we you know do a budget amendment or something that you know if prices come down and just get it when prices go down and you know just have a surplus for a while or what and you know we we've been tracking the increase has been going on for years it's just with all the hiring and the training we're we're at the range more often than not and if there was all of a sudden a fire sale we have a large enough budget to absorb that and I think that's what we've done in the past is just say you know what but I think to we're finding oursel with all of our everything costing more money that that buffer is not there as often as it used to be and so we're kind of pushing our you know our full budget every year um so it was just it's a it's just well the new hiring the increase but it's we need to we we we would buy more if we had to we kind of pay as we go okay and also storing it is not easy yeah mayor y p it okay so back to the delayed Community facilities Improvement um because it seems like we wouldn't be able to delay it just one year right because we would we would come up against this problem even more so because it's going to go up I mean based on this projection which you know nine you know it's going to the interest the increase is going to go up next or to 2026 it's 10.4 Z or that chart yeah so so my point is that if if we delay that if we delay it until next year that's going to even be a worse problem so pretty much right the same it'd be the same it would be the same but I mean like it would it wouldn't so in 2028 the increase is 7 point it's it's less you're just kicking the can down the road exactly so we would have to kick the can down the road four years right it seems like to because it doesn't seem to make sense although if interest rates Dro m then that could be offset some of the okay so could we like go well the interest rates aren't dropped yet so let's push it again you can do whatever you make these decisions each year yeah so you what you do next year is up to the council that's in place next year which I would assume would be pretty much the same as this one okay Paula I just like to chime in there um there's a couple of things in in that we may you know look at the other alternate funding there you know next legislative session bonding there might actually be a bonding Bill uh next year and know maybe the following year there might be you know prop or sales tax um options and then the third thing is obviously we're in second year looking going into second year with the public safety so in several years we'll be able to back that off so right now we're looking at a double whammy it seems to me we've got the public safety and we got the community facilities is it worth looking at delaying a year and looking at those options I'm still on the fence about that but I you know it get the point it's a good question um but you know or 10.24 possibly next year but looking at 7.39 the following year and then going down hopefully after that and I'm assuming that's after the public safety um is fully implemented so just some food for thought food for thought you know and and I do have a question to on the on on the police and fire um you know we've we've talked at some length about the fact um or maybe not at some length but we never overspend our budget as a city never as long as I've been here we've never overspent our budget and and we always and and we we establish a policy that's been talked about whereas when we underspend the budget the underspending goes into the CIP and that was a decision that we've made and so um but one of the reasons we neverend the budget is because we um there are things that we intend to do that don't get done as quickly as we intend them to get done hiring being the biggest example because hiring is hard and so you know if we looked at the public safety increase um and said you know what chances are we're not going to get all those height made as quickly as we say we are because hiring is hard we we know for paid on call everything else so why don't we bet on the come a little bit and say let's put less money into the CIP next year and say you know what we're going to we're going to do we're not going to change the plan but we're going to change the levy increase from 2.25% to 2% or you know take a take a little bit of it out because our experience has been that we never hire faster than we expect to we always hire slower than we expect to so why don't we just anticipate that a little bit and reduce the levy because chances are we're not going to need all of that money for because we're not going to get as much hiring done as quickly as we intent we're not going to change the number of people we're not going to change the target we're going to do our best to hire on the schedule we've laid out but experience shows that we never quite get it done that fast and so I think there might be some Flex in there and maybe you've already maybe you've already taken that Flex out already but but I think you know because I know you're squeezing hard but but I I know that I you know I've been doing this for over 20 years and we have never overspent our budget and so could we you know and and we found a way to deal with that by putting in the CIP but in reality that's no one that's not the ideal way to fund the CIP the ideal way to fund the CIP is say what do we need in terms of capital and budget that much and um let's get as close to a you know as close to over UND spend overspending the budget as we can without actually doing it so I th it's a little bit of a rhetorical question but I think there might be some space in there to you know particularly when we know the the area we're doing the most hiring is um is Public Safety maybe there's there's an opportunity to not change our plan but to squeeze a little bit tighter recognizing that reality is probably going to be closer to that lower number yep I would I know you said it was rhetorical but I just going to comment just a little bit on that and I think absolutely a lot of in the past we've done a lot of our hiring as January 1 hires M which probably in the grand SCH things doesn't make a lot of sense because you approve a budget in December we're not bringing anybody on January you don't have job descriptions written by that right and so what's the reality they come on you know they come on board into q1 Q2 somewhere in that ballpark um last couple years last year was the first year that with the public safety master plan or the current year that we brought those on as midyear hires and so we were able to then plan for the first half of the Year get those ready to go and they came on July 1 or very close there thereafter um on that end so your delivery's been better than I've been giving you credit for so in the and that's okay that's okay sorry mayor yeah so in the kicker part is that that works out well then for the first year because it helps reduce those gets those actual costs closer to what their actual is right now for next year now we have to fund those three firefighters for the full year which adds to the levy as well too and so we're doing the same thing this year with the nine firefighters for 25 funding them as midor hires knowing that that's going to have an impact then for 2026 as well too so um but and kind of to the the point too just one last point on not making or not coming up to our budget amounts being underspent historically on that end of it um we were squeezing the budget this year and that was one of the items that we brought into the budget is that we in the police department specifically because that's got the greatest number of of employees is that we are we have the right number funded or right number accounted for but we are funding basically saying okay you're going to have a vacancy historically off throughout the whole year and so we're reduced the ANP my question okay good job I mean that's good I mean that because I think that's what we need to do we need to be creative as we look at bringing the number in line with what we want so are there any other questions otherwise we can actually get to the questions we have on the list but go ahead Rebecca well I I guess mine's probably more of a comment so okay all right well then I'm one more minor question is just when we transfer access funds from the general account um general fund over to CIP what is that paying for in CIP is that all Trails what or is that various project it's across across the board a lot of it goes to Capital Equipment Street Improvement fund got it um parks and trails technology fund it's it's kind of wherever we see a need in one of the capital project funds and so or the greatest need we kind of great thank you massage it across the across time so each of those each of those CIP funds have their own balance so we look at where that need is where the balance is and put it where it needs to go so K have question I guess I got a question um you stated that um the medium price point for homes is $52,000 about $15 a day um annually 185 when you look at the lower price point for a house in minetonka what is that number when you do compare um annually in in per day yeah no absolutely great great question on that end of it um and I should note too is that U there was a change for property taxes payable 2025 with the homestead exclusion piece of that that's increasing going up um this year as well too and so if I look at so say say the 25th percentile which is a home at $415,000 that's going up $124 or $124 a year if I look at say 3 $10,000 that's like $80 a year so what we're seeing is that with that increase in Homestead market value exclusion um that only that increased the dollar amount of the exclusion and it also increased the value of the homes that it included and so we're seeing bigger increases in exclusion for the lower valued homes all the way up until that median valued home still received a little bit of exclusion as well too so all the way up to 57,000 or so on on that end of it and such so really what that does is then it it's more tax relief it's tax relief for affordable more affordable housing on that it shifts it but it's it's more affordable for more really for affordable housing yes one more question um when you think about like um I'll just say the retire retirement population of folks in our city who maybe bought their homes I guess in the 50 60s um I'll just use my neighbor you know been in a house for 40 50 years um I guess homes paid off but when you think about like retirement and comparing their income um to what the property taxes are the increases of the property taxes what kind of impact are we having on I guess folks who's retired and living in their homes and the increasing the property taxes cuz I'm I am you know worried about you know lower income families um I'll I'll use me I always use me and then also um retired just the fix F that's in their home fixed inome and having not to yeah continue to um increase the property taxes and how's it impacting folks like that in our city I mean how well yeah obviously taxes are nobody wants to have the TA have taxes but it's it's it's kind of the necessary evil on evil on that end of it and such but I would recommend and they always try to promote as many of the tax the state tax programs that are out there the tax saving programs that are out there property tax relief programs um I know I do that I I do my taxes and I do my mom's taxes the only taxes I do is a a inactive CPA on that end of it so um and I do the her property tax relief every year and I'm amazed at um the amount of income you can have but yet you still get U property tax relief on that end of it so um and it's it's pretty substantial on what that relief is so we try to promote that in our you know Min TKA memo we've tried to do a lot of that and I want to make sure that the more people that know about that the better and I hope that they're getting it done when they get their taxes done or they're being aware of that those programs that are out there because they are substantial and they they do benefit lots of people on of it and so we promote it as best we can as as often as we can but um we can't we can't do it for them on that if I may Darren a related question um you know we I mean I'm I'm at City Hall quite a bit I'm in the community center quite a bit I know that starting January 1 January 2 um we have uh people from AARP here to do seniors taxes and are they fully apprised do we talk to them at all in terms of ensuring that they are informing our residents who come in to have their taxes done that these these senior tax because these are all seniors who are coming in um you know is there is there some things that we could do and I don't know if we are and chances are they know chances are but on the other hand what if they didn't and we're missing an opportunity and they're right there right downstairs maybe we should make a point of you know talking to the senior center and and just making sure that that information is is shared with those tax preparers that are coming in as volunteers to help seniors because there is a little bit of timing difference on some of that you you you need your property tax statements while those don't come out until April right you know March April time you know March I guess the time frame on that end of it and so if you do your taxes early maybe you don't have that information and then you don't go back and you still have till August of at my house but uh doing early but but it could be if you you know you forget to go back and do it then or something of that nature so yeah um that's something we can definitely follow up you more Kelly so U just kind of question clarification so when we say $185 a year additional tax for you know your medium price $52,000 home in Minon for 2025 I just want to make sure people like don't think that's all because city taxes are but less than about 30% maybe a little bit less of your overall tax levy so I just didn't want to make people that hear oh my taxes are only going to go up you know $185 this year even with this Levy because this is just a part we are one taxing jurisdiction so just wanted to kind of clarify that absolutely cor Y and and the the three primary ones are the school district the county and us and they each take about the same amount roughly right so so 185 if that's the average become 540 565 so we've got discussion questions here um and uh you know let's just take them sequentially um you know comments on um the base tax levy of of 5% 4.9 98% pardon me any comments thoughts to me that seems like the no-brain I mean that's the easy one it's it's Personnel you know there's no fat in that we could quibble about the Dei position I think the result of delaying that would be to probably you know risk losing our our one di employee that we have for from burnout and then we're back at square one and we've probably we shot ourselves in the foot so and then we're out of bullet because we shot ourselves in the foot that's right um repace that well so I I I'm not interested in bringing you know the levy down. one% to you know on that piece so I guess I'm good on that other comments anyone yeah what what Rebecca said the only thing I want to add to what Rebecca said is that we as the Council made the commitment that we supported a Dei commission and to sit there and start saying okay well we uh we support it but we're kind of kidding and we're not going to adequately staff it for it for it to do its work I think that that's a bad precedent for us to set um it's not just adding a person it's we made a commitment to Dei as a city and um and we we said we support that commission we need to support support the Staffing that goes with it so I I think it's um pretty straightforward all right moving on um the uh second question support the 2.25% base Levy increase of 4.9 excuse me um does City support the exe additional 2.07% for new debt service related did I you right 2.25% okay the 2.25 for the implementation of our Public Safety master plan thank you I was I was jumping to the wrong bullet point I apologize so 2.25% of our base Levy increase going specifically to implementation of the public safety master plan and we we got into the details of that comments and thoughts on that um yeah I mean I I we always I think the mayor always says Public Safety is like our number one deliverable yeah and so you know I'm loathed to to not fund our Public Safety and the whole nine versus six um f you know I want us to to be fully staffed to be able to have people you know take a vacation or take it have a day off and and not be paying overtime um so yeah that's what I was getting at when I asked that question about does it is it cost effective even I mean to have to not have enough staff because overtime is expensive so it seems like it's it seems like we should fill those positions because it's wasting money and we got that burnout issue too like if you're right if you're you know working so many overtime hours right and then we lose staff then you're paying over time because you don't have enough so and not to take anything away from Mr Alexander but I mean if he doesn't you know if he doesn't do overtime nobody's going to die but um if we have you know if we have people in public safety that are compelled to do over time they're either burnt out or we not adequately staffed either scenario isn't really great and the other thing that I you know sometimes you just have to rip off the Band-Aid I mean I was talking to my parents today and I just moved them here and you know I was telling them sort of what we were considering tonight and you know not happy I mean they may not vote for me if I run for reelection at this point so you know not your it's your fault DB you uh the thing is that Public Safety is our not is really our one real mandate it's it that's at every level of government and um I just want to make sure that we are adequately staffed and I just feel like if we defer and we're not we don't have full coverage at the fire stations that we need to have full coverage nothing bad's happened and we've muddled through but I just feel like we've been muddling through and if we we delay it we're just you know sort of prolonging the the wound you know from just kind of letting it fester for a while that we're not really you know treating the what's what's wrong and I and I agree with that and and I'd like to add a couple thoughts because um one I I I made my my best shot at seeing if we could squeeze that 2.25 down a little bit I'm satisfied with the answers I've gotten but the other thing is that when a number of years ago and and and I know that we both love and hate those neighboring City comparisons I mean they they they they hold us accountable in some ways and they also um you know create some challenges for us but I looked at Staffing per capita um particularly in police but you know for years we have been a very leanly staffed police department and um and and so you know we we were doing with less per on a per capita basis we were doing with less than Plymouth was than Eden Prairie was then Idina was I mean we have really really skinni that down to the degree that we can and as public say as we Kimberly said it for me um you know job I mean if our residents don't feel safe they need a different city council they certainly need a different mayor I mean we our residents need to be safe and and it's not just the people who live in Lake minaka that need to feel safe it's every resident of our community who lives whether they live you know in in Opus whether they live in you know a you know uh $300,000 affordable home every resident deserves to feel safe in our city and we have to deliver that and we're and really we're only delivering it to the degree that the the most at risk people feel that safe if if we if we only if we're segmenting on our safety we're we're doing the job wrong so I really believe that we this is an investment that we have to make I'm very pleased that we have the public safety um master plan I support that and you know what I mean chief fox in the challenges he's got in in terms of recruiting and and and getting to that 70 paid on call while we make this transition this is hard work and it's really important so I just I I will not support you know cheating that at all I think it's it's vitally important to our role as leaders and may I also say just knowing sort of the background on paidon call versus uh full-time firefighters that what happens in cities with paid on call is that we spend the same amount of money training PID paid on call Firefighters as we would a full-time firefighter and then we lose them to cities almost invariably that will hire them full-time and so we are basically just training the paying the training costs for other cities and not reaping the benefit of keeping them for ourselves and this this is part you know this will help address that um because that is hugely expensive even if you just think about other positions even administrative positions that need minimal training if you are constantly hiring people that you have to train over and over and over and it's not even you know as demanding a job as firefighting you know or very technical with all kinds of you know special rules it's very expensive turnover expensive you know that's that's part of what makes me feel uh okay I mean not thrilled but like this is probably what we need to do any other thoughts I don't want to I agree with everything that's been said okay well I you know again I think I mean this public safety master plan I mean it's a little bit like my comment on the um the Dei decision we made that commitment to the Dei commission and we need to support it and when the public safety master plan came out I think we had broad agreement that that's what we need to do the challenge is how are we going to do it and we're answering part of that question tonight not the whole question we don't know what we're going to do next year but but I think we committed strategically that this is the right thing to do for our city and so we have to figure a weight to deliver on that any other thoughts or comments okay so there's another 2.07% hanging out there does the city council support an additional 2.07% for a new debt service related to community facility improvements for a total Levy increase of 99.3% who wants talk first I'll talk first Rebecca so I've spent you know at months tortured about this this cuz it's you know really difficult decision I mean it's in in some ways personally it's like yeah I I'll pay it I'll do it you know but I I have to think for the whole and not you know the individual um I want to do this I think there's a way to do it down the line but I think we've had I will say I've been on the council since 2018 and really since 2019 we've had our foot on the gap the whole time we have really done a lot and I'm I'm glad we've done it all and I'm glad that we we purchased the marsh and at this point that to see the numbers surpassing everything that we anticipated I think that there's a way to continue to see it grow um but I just think it is irresponsible in this moment to push forward with this and commit ourselves now and future councils to this without having more flexibility I we know we have things that are non-negotiables we know we have infrastructure issues that we just can't negotiate I'm really worried about the facility the fire facilities and I just can't I mean I hate it I can't I I feel like I can't even look at Kelly cuz he's put heart and soul into this but um I I think something's going to come together I'm I have faith and maybe as the membership grows and we can see how part of you know I don't want to put too much stock into you know how numbers will make this happen because I don't think that's going to be the the way it completely gets done but I just I think it would be irresponsible to go for forward with this in this way um this year and I think we should continue to watch the growth I think there are opportunities probably even as is to generate more Revenue I you know I'm not going to say that I think the dues are too low but I think the dues are too low even considering the mediocre state of maybe the conditions of the the facilities so um that's my thought today you know I want to go back um to the state on bonding ask I mean I want to continue to push to get this done but I just don't think we should we should keep blazing the head without a better way to pay for it thank you are there other comments well I mean I think we were talking about you know you know as we defer things that that you know I asked the question about you know cost go up but it I do you know me I'm a little black cloud I I I never have faith we know that yeah keep going but I do feel like interest rates are going to come down and I think that will benefit any effort that we put into this if if we can be patient and I mean frankly I'm still really upset with the legislature how they're dealing with things like you know kind of limiting what we can do and you know not getting their literal their one job done with the bonding bill so I I feel like we have an opportunity to hold their feet to the fire because it's their one job and so I feel like let's put our effort into that I you know I don't want to defer it for too long and you know having gone through the facility study there were great suggestions in there you know things that I do totally feel that we need to do but putting it in context of real priorities I think Public Safety is really the priority and nobody's going to die if we don't get to the changes I I feel you know I think we provide we have such high standards that we're used to just being so outstanding and every way and we just hate not to make everything perfect and I'm a perfectionist but I do feel like you know seeing three years in a row of N9 9.5 10 point something it it just it's not it it's not sustainable for people I think we've had the benefit of the study showing of the survey sort of giving us some latitude but I do feel like we're starting to push the envelope at this point other comments py I have to say that I'm relieved because I was nervous coming here thinking oh I wasn't around when the marf was bought but this is the thing that I would like that I agree with everyone and I was like oh I hope uh you know because I was like you know I think we should suspend any kind of um facility improvements and I'm sorry Kelly but also it feels like it feels like but it does feel like you know the fact that that that we needed to hire somebody to because of events there there are more events and stuff that that need to be scheduled so that that that alone seems really good and so it's it's improving already and um so I feel like I I just wanted to say I'm I'm relieved and I totally agree thank you py any other any other comments Paula yeah comments question question agree with everything that was said and Kelly great job and so it kind of feels like hard because we were like you've done a great job bringing this back we'd like to you know kind of keep lifting that work but um totally agree with everybody else I do have one question though because part of the talk about the facility study was you know kind of needing roof and you know things like that is that something that you know is going to be okay for another year or something or is that something that you know we don't want the roof to fall in on people definitely yeah great question I think you know I don't think the roof is going to cave in I don't think I think there are going to be some small expenditures for an example a pool heater things like that will go out and we're going to need to put $8 to $10,000 into into expenditures like that we're hoping we don't have to put1 to $200,000 in so um we're fingers crossed correct yes anyone else help KY um my thought process I know we talked about it before um well we toured the facility it was one of the things that I thought that we probably could have slowed down on um I know we purchased the building and the marsh and I know that we needed to put money into the marsh but it was one of the things that I thought from the beginning um as I start to understand the increase of the taxes and how it was going to impact um our property taxes and just just the thought process because when I think about not having something a need versus a want um even though I love the marsh but in my mind when we're comparing to the cost of people living and eating and some of the other things to me that is a want and not a need and now that I'm convinced because Kelly o just said the roof is not going to fall in cuz that's what that you know you promise you know like cu no we we were that was that's that's what the conversation was about like we need a new roof and so now that we know and we're clear that we can go another year her bucket budget may have to go up but it's not going to fall in so I I I do um you know to watch support what everybody else has said and um the only the only I know that when when we were talking about this two we understand that to attract people to have events in some of our spaces would take a little investment too and so there is a little push me pull you in me about that that our spaces really don't attract certain kinds of events that we might be able to get to pay rent that that we're not you know if we're not going to invest in the spaces so that was the my only but I mean this just might not be the year couple I'm not going to disagree with much of what has been said tonight um on this topic I mean you know I'm not going to deny I'm a I'm a supporter of the marsh I'm glad the city bought the marsh but Mike gets tired of hearing me say you know Mike we got to make the marsh Break Even we've got to have it be an Enterprise fund I mean i' I've said it once I've said it a hundred times and he's getting sick of hearing it from me even though he does have to admit that yeah that's right whatever who's counting but you know I think the marsh is important for the community but I also agree with everything that's been said tonight that you know looking at a 99.3% levy looking at some uncertainty that we have in the interest rate environment that looks promising looking at you know um looking at the at the building environment I mean the one thing if we say okay we're just we're going to do everything and we're going to put it off a year Well labor is going to go up in a year MH um materials may I mean lumber prices have have cascaded downward from the um post or from the the U Peak that they had during and so there are there are deflationary pressures on on construction um that that we you know we know we can't bet on that okay we're going to we're going to hold off because it's going to be cheaper to build next year that's not the argument but you know the markets for for money and the markets for materials are Dynamic and I would say there's as good a chance that that those costs are going to go there's going to be costs that go up and there's going to be costs that go down but I don't think we're going to face the dramatic acceleration and cost that we've had in some you know in recent history so I think from a cost perspective I'm comfortable with with holding off um you know there I mean this is not just the marsh because you know we've we've really kicked the can down the road on um on getting the community center upgraded and I know that I believe I don't want to put words in Kelly's mouth I know that he would really like to get that done I know Mike pavela would really like to get that done but I think KY kind of used the right word is this a need or a want and while I think it's it over the longer term it's probably a need for our city and for our brand and for our delivery of what the EXP expectations of our residents have for us I think it's enough of a want that if we if we put it off for a year and consider it again a year from now it's not going to be a it's not going to be a huge cost from a hit perspective uh a huge hit from a cost perspective and and I and I you know I think we'll just feel better about ourselves saying you know what we're going to be we're going to be at 7.2 not 9.3 I mean I just think it's more livable place for this Council given some of the things that we've confronted I mean the you know all the AR ABS absorption will be will be gone next year I think that um you know I just think that we'll be in a better place and then we'll also have more information on some of that down the road stuff that is not a want it is a need it's Public Safety related and so forth so I think our you know I don't want to act like I'm not committed because I am committed but I think the picture will be clearer and I think that we'll be in a better position to you know position some of these things um um if if we're not coming off a 99.3% increase I I think from you know from our credibility with our with our residents I think that's important so I I'm supportive of holding off on this as much as I understand that there's some pain associated with that can I say one condition if we find out and three weeks that we get the safer Grant yeah then we may want to revisit would this conversation so that's the one condition because I didn't hear anybody say we don't want to do this I heard people say that in the scheme of priorities it's got to be lower than our other priorities right is that a fair summary yeah yep all right we're getting to the end here any other um any other comments anyone wants to make otherwise I'm going to turn it back to Mike so that we can H oh yeah well the the H is unchanged I did have one question on that if I may when Darren this for you when does the 75 $75,000 the 10-year commitment of $750,000 for light rail end because I think we're getting toward the end of that I think 25 is the last y year of that I think okay so then J confirming okay so that's that creates okay all right I just wanted to know because I remember when that was decided and I'm not it was decided so all right I wanted to give a little background on some something that I think it was Mike talking about um or Darren was talking about what the edac recommended and uh in in terms of use of homes Within Reach dollars and part of what they are seeing is that um it's so difficult to find homes within the price range to purchase that they that they felt that looking at the success of the pathways program which was more successful than people were anticipating that that just seemed to be sort of an easier way to reach home ownership in our community and with the added benefit that people make full equity on the homes that they purchase through the pathways program and also recognizing that through homes within reach there there were other benefits with homes Within Reach including uh Financial education and so forth that that some new homeowners would benefit from so I think they're taking a really weit and see approach in their recommendation but that's sort of how they got there thanks Deb all right any other comments or questions all right and did I miss any okay otherwise I'll turn it back to Mike and we can uh we can talk about the sub September study set well that know 3C is um talking about um maybe changing uh the way we do our our uh council meeting schedules yeah I think you right um this is the point where we let directors off the hook and they can go if they want although I'm sure it's riveting and you want but you don't have don't feel obligated to stay you don't have a power no don't we take just a couple minute break okay we'll be done in the next hopefully 10 or 15 minut a break is a good idea pardon me thank you we're on okay well I'm I'm going to just hand hand it over to Mike all right well thank you Brad um so really just teeing up this conversation U because each October staff brings forward a resolution that outlines the subsequent Year's calendar so coming up in October I think is a second meeting October which is the 28th for that regular meeting staff will bring forward that resolution has we have the calendar laid out for all of 2025 so if there's if there are thoughts or proposed changes now is the time to kind of flush that out a little bit because then we're then another year away for 2026 and so a couple things I I think I'd mentioned recently at a study session and it's in front of you I did repair obviously a big staff report really just want to pick your brain on three things um one is does the council desire to move meetings on a different night and the only reason that I asked that question is um our packets get long um they can be as you know anywhere from 200 to 800 Pages there's time that you spend as a council on weekends getting acclimated and getting ready for a council meeting um I think what's come up Le what been questioned a question to me in the past has been well can we get the packets out sooner instead of Thursday can we get them out on a Wednesday or can we get them out on a Tuesday there's just a lot of gymnastics involved in in doing that um we just have such a routine in place of how everything's are structured to get packets out on a Thursday so moving that would be difficult but the other option is well do you want to move it to perhaps meeting still Tuesday night there are many cities around us that do a Tuesday night Plymouth does and I didn't do extensive research so just anecdotally as I talked to my colleagues in other cities Tuesdays are also a pretty common night for for meetings that would give Mondays another another day for the council to prepare for a council meeting so that's that's the only that's the first question is do you want to move uh meetings from a Monday to a Tuesday if the answer is yes we would need I need to work with a City attorney because we need to change the rules the charter not the charter it's the council rules of procedure so it's a different document there might also be something in the ordinance in the ordinance we'd have to look yeah so we' have to put some structure into place and some other approvals in place to make that happen but and we the unintended consequence of that is um we do have other public meetings on Tuesday night so we'd have to look at shifting around perhaps I think it's planning commit is not planning let's yeah sustainability me on Tuesdays Dei meets on Tuesdays so there's some other gymnastics involved in that as well yeah just to kind of move things along does does anyone love the idea or is it an idea I mean because I think I mean I think there's a lot of things that would have to change if somebody is really thinks boy that would that would improve my life a lot let's hear about it if it's if it's kind of Come See Come sa it's kind of there's I'm just asking the question if there's interest great if not staff doesn't have I will say I haven't long enough sense of History it used to be that packets came out by noon on Friday we didn't get them on Thursday afternoon we got them by noon on Friday so that was less time still had Monday meetings but that's just a little history perspective yeah any thoughts I'm just goingon to say personally like I would just get to the packet a day later if I had that extra time it's not going to I I don't like if people want to change the meaning I I'm willing to entertain that conversation but I don't think for this reason that it's enough to go through all the stuff that we'd have to go through to make that change and and I will say even though I don't have a day job anymore but when I did having a Monday night meeting and being able to travel the rest of the week I could always work my travel around a Monday meeting as we think about as we think about a different council at some point in the future when we have people have full fulltime jobs or or work for businesses or whatever um I think I think having the meeting on a Monday is a huge Advantage if you have any travel um expectations if you don't it's not a big deal you can switch but I I think that's a big consideration um as we consider attracting diverse people excuse with diverse backgrounds to our Council I I know that I mean I I've been on the council for a while but I remember what it was like being new and I know that my colleague to my right you know it was a lot you're drinking through a fire hose and you know new council members often ask you know can can we have an extra day can we move can we move when we get the packet but you get used to it I I've acclimated and I I just feel like it would be so much shifting for staff to have meetings on a different day I mean unless staff really was like you know Hallelujah finally they're going to change it to Tuesday I'm I'm good where we are I feel that way even though I I like Monday Night Football I will admit that and I miss that quite a bit but it's not it's not the driving thing in my life okay all right good that's one okay got one all right thank you um and no to your point staff does not have any drive and desire it was just merely as we get ready again for preparing the calendar if there was a a desire to move it Now's the Time to to think about and and just a comment understand that preparing that City calendar is no small task it is that's a thankless thankless big job I mean I would be um hip to starting it earlier is that what you said yes well that's the next opportunity that's you're moving us right along P you py we're mov on so the next question is well it's it's kind of one and so two two and three are really interconnected so the the second question asking you is do you wish to have study sessions the same night as Council meetings so that's kind a question to yep no I I can't it's too long I can't do it oh wait not the same night the same night same night the same night as Council Mee Let Me Clear yeah s before their Council and and their study sessions only last an hour yeah no no it get too long our our city council gets too longtime so the the reason I pose that question is we do have meetings three Mondays a month and so there are other there are there three you have you have a commitment of three Mondays a month and and for staff too the staff impact is we're preparing three packets a month so that there's a lot of again work that goes into preparing those packets but if you had two meetings a month instead of three you free up on Monday night and other cities you know there are many examples of other cities that do this combination of start a study session perhaps at 5 go go to go to 6:15 for a study session take a 15minute break refresh your break start your meeting then start your regular meeting at 6:30 and go till whenever so you do like your study session is very limited to an hour and 15 minutes and and the other thing is the other thing the cities that I've talked to have done it then that means they have a study session every time they have a council meeting so you sit there and think well we we we can't we've never completed a study session in an hour and 15 minutes but essentially it's 2 hours and 30 minutes if you if you use the schedule because you'd have two of them and you break break the schedule up and so it's it's an option to say okay we're going to adjust the time and we're gonna have a study session every week but we only have two meetings a week that means you get two you know you get two Mondays a month off I mean it it's a different Dynamic um and I'm not saying one's I don't I don't have a strong opinion but Mike and I were talking about this and they said well let's let's talk about different Alternatives any any opinions I I find that very appealing to me it's it keeps us on task because we have to end the study session at 6:15 right turn into a pumpkin Y and freeing up that time but I also think option three is a good option too but I really think also talking about staff who are waiting to the tech from you know and we're directors usually so this is a little more flexible but their technical end of their work day is 4:30 and then they're waiting until 6:30 for the meeting to start and that's a demand on them that we could help alleviate it as well I don't know I think the council meetings get really long sometimes and to have I mean the study session and the council meeting on the same day I mean I guess if the study s session stays at an hour and we don't have a long agenda on for the city council because I I I usually take a nap I'm just going to tell you I take a nap during the day so like if we're going to do something like that and have a long city council meeting I mean like that seems like a lot to me um I I guess I didn't sign up to like have long days all the time like to me I guess if it's shorter yeah so if it would be yeah I get it plus it would be less prep because the prep for study sessions are way more now that if it's only once a month we have to cover a lot more things right so then the right it would be right it would actually even even be smaller than half the packet size well the tone yeah I think the tone and you know I mean I think it's a different Rhythm it's you know and and I but I think that you know I mean you're doing it twice a month and um the other thing is that okay after an hour of study session and then you get into I mean you're going to have more incentive to be more efficient in the regular meeting I think too just because you know you're having two meetings back back and I'm not I'm not saying one's better than the other I I I I just think it's an interesting idea and you know there's pros and cons with each there this tradeoffs yeah I think I think it has pros and cons I also know that like for the days St Paul is is in a um return to office mode and for me to hustle up and get from St Paul to get here by five some days would be it would be hard so I'm thinking about you know people who do work and they may not have have that flexibility um you know if we get any new members I think that's a lot and then we have to understand that we're basically adding an another packet's worth of material to what sometimes is a really long packet that we only have that much time to read um and if it's if it's a really difficult uh agenda where we have a lot of community engagement and you know even if we make efforts to make it be efficient it just can't always be short I think that gets really hard um you know as I listen um correct me if I'm summarizing wrong but to me it sounds like it's an intriguing idea that we're not ready to pull a trigger on yet and I think that but I think before we had this conversation nobody was really or few few council members were really thinking about this so we need to make a decision because we need to get the schedule out my recommendation would be let's not change anything at this juncture other than if we want to talk about changing a start time from 630 to 6 if people would um I mean we could talk about that a little bit but but other than that I think changing the structure um is not something we're ready to do but I think we should put that on the table and it's something that we could consider next year so then we can you know we can really think through the pros and cons and have some really good conversation but I think suddenly changing it I think would be a problem I think it's really intriguing I just think it warrants a deeper conversation yeah I think it does too and then and then I just raised the question are we are we satisfied with the 6:30 start time or would would an earlier start time be preferable I don't think we talk about a later one earlier yeah I'd say earlier too any anyone six o'clock would people like to start at six o'clock I mean food ready at 5:30 if and take on some things I guess I said I got to give and take on some things so I guess yeah that's fine I mean with the idea that this is that we're not just adding on another half hour like yeah so we don't stay the same amount of thing like we don't stay we don't the legal requirements to extend a meeting happens at midnight we that we still want to avoid that at all we have to be here at what time what time would we have to be well if we started the meeting at 6 you know normally we'd probably if dinner would be probably available at 5: and most people would come at 5:30 yeah yeah you have to be here at 5:55 right okay that's fine yeah right you don't have to you don't have technically you want to be here by 6 o' yeah is there what is it edac meets at 6 yeah you know all the start edacc is the only one that starts at six I know when we talked in leadership about this if council did it every all the other leaon we're hoping to follow okay and is that something that staff would appreciate I mean would they PR what staff what this of the two questions we posed to I think this one would be very welcomed by for what you've already said you know our technically our day ends at 4:30 and so we have if you can compress it the better compress it and nobody likes staying late I mean the sooner we can get done the better but we also want to get our work done so I think that'll facilitate that I think that's positive I have one more ask can we if we don't need to approve the budget on December 23rd can we please try to um manage the agenda so we could maybe cancel that meeting yes thank you yes absolutely well well you know and that's that that's another question that I've talked to Mike about and there there was a time a few years back where in the summer I think it was in July and August we tried to have only one regular meeting a month just to reduce the number of meetings and you know then things come up and you do get into the 60-day rule and things like that but I think with care um you know and understanding what the agenda item is I I'd be interested maybe not formally making that change but be interested in if staff can make it work out that we could cancel a meeting in because our agendas are typically lighter in the summer so would have the flexibility to say okay we can we can get all our work done in one regular meeting in in July and August and maybe even September I mean you know and have that opportunity and you know have the opportunity to cancel a meeting rather than rigidly have to have a meeting because that's that's what our our procedure calls for how do you feel about that if we can get away with fewer meetings in the summer would people like that because those two July meetings we had this year could have been one meeting yeah except you know then you might have you you might have an application you know we don't control that but an example of when we could have done that and so the idea is not that we're getting rid of a meeting um but we're going to look at it opportunistically now I don't know legally you know we have to put a certain amount of um notice and so forth but I think I I think if we had a general attitude that we'd like to get away with only having one regular meeting in you know two or three months of the year to the extent possible I think that would be positive and I don't think the public process would be damaged so I throw that as a thought it we likely scheduled it like we normally would for July August but yes staff will be um aware of trying to condense it to to one making that an objective all right and then we green and I will look at the ordinances if we have to whatever we have to do to change the meeting time from 630 to 6 we'll bring that forward okay so then that brings us to our final item is our next our our um study session plan yeah I got to look myself here what we have coming up September Community Inus how to engage volunteer groups oh um oh right it's kind of light 30 minute free time 30 minute free time so we have uh let's see here it should be a pretty manageable agenda so I Randy anything think you want to talk about the city manager review process process yeah we're going to bring a speaker in just to talk about how to score and give a review to an executive position and then just walk through the process for our newer members on the uh Council so that'll be fairly short conversation uh then we'll talk about roles and responsibilities for volunteer community interest groups now now when we say that what um cite some examples I mean is that like the friends and and things like that or what I just want to make sure I'm clear on what those groups are correct I think this was when we developed this study session work plan for 2025 rewind the clock last year I think it was a more heightened issue just how do we work collaboratively with some of the more special interest groups like The it's not just the friends but we have other like there's a housing yeah there's a housing advocacy group um we there's been another group that's I think recently formed about environmental climate and so okay yeah how do we interact and where do they fit into the decision- making process um so just just kind of having that conversation uh we'll have the community inclusiveness strategic Plan update and then we built in 30 minutes open time we tried to do that every quarter again we start at 6:30 study sessions were meant to be done at 9: and but we do have I think some free time so if there's something that's there's a burning issue there I think there's space on that agenda to bring something up have we scheduled my extra um in October so if you look at the uh look at October Kimberly I think that's the we have the worker Protection Law conversation okay and did we decide on talking about the tree ordinance or not didn't we decide that that was a more complicated issue we're going to talk about next year yeah I just I can't remember what the final decision was around on it I put it on one of the lists that I maintained I think so so as we frame up the 2025 study session work plan that is on that that list Y and I think that that's I agree with that because I think it's an important issue but it it's going to take some it's going to take some effort okay so all right is there is there anything else Paula do we have to wait until next year to start moving back our study sessions to 6 p.m or is that that has to go into back starting next year or does are we talking about starting this sooner it would be for 2025 so the start time the to clarify good question the six o'clock start time is we'll again I'll work with Karan on what that official change looks like whether it's a resolution or ordinance or policy change we'll we'll explore that bring that back to you but ideally the start that would be for starting in 2025 and that's all Council meetings both regular meetings and study session correct got it correct thank you all right anything else okay we didn't get done by 9:00 but it's not 10 o'cl so we'll count our blessings thank you Council great conversation on the budget