I appreciate the fact that that our city is doing everything necessary to make this a successful project and even though it ran over budget and we're required to approve these additional change orders on the project, u the city went ahead and did the necessary work to address groundwater issues, storm water, and uh other factors that came into play when they dug up the ground out there in Cedar Lake Road.

We've got one deputy police chief, so he's now union. And I appreciate the fact that we've got labor peace right away in that uh human resources department again was able to successfully negotiate a contract with union representative and work out a uh uh commensurate pay deal with the uh deputy chief for the next three years.

I love how many people in our community um contribute toward this and what this is a program that allows um uh uh lower income families or families with lots of children that they want to get registered to actually have a discounted rate. and um and we had 114 members of our community make contributions to that that fund this year.

Staff's recommended action is the motion to adopt resolution granting city support for the preliminary layout for the Henipin County Minnotonka Boulevard reconstruction project and authorizing staff to continue to work with Excel Energy on relocating the overhead utilities underground.

We feel that concept B was the one to move forward because it provides us the best all ages and abilities network for both pedestrians and bicyclists. Eliminates the need for cyclists to cross Minnitonka Boulevard depending on travel direction. Uh maintains a large green space that supports new tree plantings. does not require the city to hire additional full-time staff to main the current levels of service and minimize operational impacts. Offers lower implementation and long-term maintenance costs and strikes an effective balance between mobility and maintenance needs.

You are talking about overhead wiring. Is this or has it been considered and I'm probably going to use the wrong term part of the erat? In other words, it it's the logical fence that surrounds the Jewish community if you were to take those wires down because they it has to be a continuous uh I'll call it a barrier or or at least surrounding a community. Will that cause any problems with the air rot?

But honestly, I'm I'm disappointed in the bikes infrastructure situation. I'm going to support this because overall I like it. The probably 95% of it I think is fantastic. I think this looks great out here. But when I I spoke to this before when I when I first saw it when it was finished, I was underwhelmed with the bike and ped infrastructure that we have.

To to Council Member Bodwin's point, uh, there's no perfect infrastructure project in an already built up city. We're trying to retrofit in more infrastructure than we had before in that we're creating the bike and pedestrian pathways in the same footprint and it's really difficult to do and I think we're doing a pretty good job of it here.

I certainly didn't survey the whole of this phase one section, but I did ask a lot of residents in Ward One who frequent that as that area of Minnotonka and heard a lot of positive feedback about the shared bike and pedestrian path. Um, I think once the initial shock of what who is this for, um, is overcome, I think, uh, it was fairly wellreceived and and folks have had little issue with the shared path.

is the idea that would there be a stop sign in front of the trail facility or would the stop sign, you know, so for a, you know, a regular stop sign coming into uh Minnotonka on the side street, would the stop sign be in front of the trail facility or would it be at the intersection? ... So the cars technically should stop in front of the trail.