I will note the uh one of the items is approval of the appointments for election judge in the general election and our elections run smoothly because your neighbors are willing to put in 14 hour days.

Uh item number five is a resolution approving the eth amendment to a contract for private development relating to Central Park West. U the it's the 20 West End property that was slated to be developed as office buildings and uh we're we're granting them an extension of time because the office building market is very tight right now.

Some of the key drivers behind the rate changes uh include rising capital and operation costs across utilities. This includes inflation. Um also the variability in water consumption patterns. Um, if we have a dry summer, we pull in more revenue because everyone's irrigating. Uh, however, if we have a wet summer, we're not really bringing in much revenue. So, we kind of have to balance that from year to year.

I heard from a couple constituents that um were interpreting those increases as cumulative, so that the total amount of the increase would be um 19.5%. And I wanted to see if you could clarify whether or not that's the case. It would not be cumulative. It would be a let's say the 3% increase on whatever their bill is currently.

They're necessary. We have to do it to continue to provide the highquality utility services that are that our customers, our citizens have become used to. And I think staff's done a really good job of of trying to balance it out and and maintain healthy reserve funds so that we can deal with the aging infrastructure on a steady and regular basis and also in emergencies when we need to.

And I would just like to remind residents that you do have a little bit of a choice in kind of where you land as far as usage of all of these utilities. Um I myself, you know, as soon as we we heard this a couple weeks ago, I I started particip Well, earlier this year, I started participating in the organics program, realized with my husband, oh, we're throwing a lot of last trash out. And so I realized, oh, I can decrease my the size of my trash receptacle and get on kind of a lower uh a lower tiered pricing for trash uh utilities.

And also to note that a significant part of the water increase is we have aging uh water manes. Our engineering departments worked really hard to identify which ones are closest to uh end of life and are doing a lot of the replacement in conjunction with paving projects. So, you only need to tear up your street one time.

So to further define the uses that are allowed in this uh specific instance, we would add a condition that limits the use to dental care, eye care, physical therapy, family practice care, prenatal care, counseling, acupuncture, and uses similar to that. Um basically the intent is to allow uses that have minimal impact on adjacent properties. The flip side of that, number three, is to identify activities that would not be allowed in this category, which would include surgery, radiotherapy, magnet, magnetic, resonance imaging, or other activities that may generate hazardous waste or impacts to adjacent properties.

Just wanted to thank you, Gary, and also other staff members and the planning commission um, for all the time that you all put into um, working with Liz and Sarah as they were going through this uh, application process. Know they plan on opening up uh, or relocating actually a prenatal collaborative that has been running in Hopkins for a while. They were expanding and wanted and thought to of St. Louis Park to come and bring their business. So, I think that this could be really good opportunity to to be to be more bis business friendly.