over a hundred people lost their homes and their belongings in a matter of hours on Friday evening.

The St. St. Louis Park Emergency Program has set up a mechanism for making donations specifically to help people impacted by the fire.

And again I was talking with Chief Hanland a little bit when it was a little bit of downtime during it. Not really downtime but where he could talk to me when I wasn't in the way. and just witnessing his leadership in in a very scary and dynamic situation was um something I've never seen before. So, thank you, Chief. Um we are we are blessed with an incredible fire chief.

It is my sincere pleasure to present an award of excellence from the programming and events category to the city of St. Louis Parks and Recreation Department for the winning program rolling at the ROC. This program was created after St. Louis Park's longtime indoor roller rink closed in 2021. With the nearest rinks now more than 15 miles away, Rex staff wanted to restore an accessible roller skating opportunity to the community.

Uh, first off, uh, thanks to our, uh, professional, uh, communication staff. It's always great work. if anybody's interested in seeing their award-winning uh content, it is in the uh the URLs are in the uh packet uh this evening. Uh secondly, to our professional staff, you know, a lot of times when you're the person, they want you to, you know, go be in the video. It's not always uh the most comfortable thing in the world, particular if they want you to get in a kind of a a goofy costume. Uh so you know to our professional staff that helps uh you know do the acting and uh you know make our uh content special uh thank you very much but uh outstanding work and welld deserved.

Paige Beckers...she's not just a big deal here. She is one of the top premier women's basketball players in the world... she's particularly uh just someone who's always out there giving, giving, giving. And so we are the you know have the benefit of um this donation from she grew up here in St. Louis Park

I had the uh honor of meeting Paige Beckers at at the dedication of the basketball court 5 years ago... donated the money necessary to totally re build that basketball court 5 years ago. And uh inspired a program there that day that brought hundreds of young ladies out to the park.

staff proposed reducing the low end of the density ranges for the medium density residential and highdensity residential land use designations to maintain flexibility in the types of housing that are allowed throughout the city.

Parking minimums in the historic Barker Lake overlay district are proposed to be removed in their entirety. So this means a couple of things. Existing parking lots can now be converted to another use such as an addition outdoor seating or even landscaping and new construction does not have to meet any minimum parking requirements

one of their concerns is with the compression of zoning types that the south side of Excelsure. So think Miracle Mile up the street from Miracle Mile to Panic and Husse now zone for up to six stories, maybe some additional stories if you get your height bonus. And I think one of the things as a council, as a city, as we plan is we need to give some consideration to how we make that transition from higher density housing to our residential neighborhood. So, there will be people that literally that apartment building will be right out at their uh at the end of their backyard. And, you know, to all of a sudden have a six-story structure blocking your sun, blocking your uh view, you know, having this monolith hanging over your uh what you know was a single family residential uh property uh certainly uh diminishes the character of our residential neighborhoods.

I just want to say I'm uh I'm I'm kind of excited about this change. I think it's going to offer a lot of flexibility um and open up a more wide variety of types of housing, which is something we've been hearing from many many people that that they want that I believe in myself. Um and uh yeah, so I'm just um I'm excited that uh we're going to be we're going to be doing something that I know is also being talked about nationwide that that people are saying cities should be begin to look at uh because there's equity issues involved in this and um and so it's just a great opportunity for us to diversify our housing, which is something that I know we've been talking about for years.

I'm a little disappointed to not see kind of more broader parking changes and am eagerly anticipating uh hearing the outcomes of the study session from the planning commission. Um I think we pride ourselves in being forward thinking and um kind of doing things that maybe other folks are a little afraid to do and we want to continue to be forward thinking. I think being really radical about how we approach those parking minimums and how that could im influence development of our space especially the commercial spaces which is why I would love to have seen it with this but I know takes some time so uh we'll patiently uh but eagerly await to the outcomes of that study session from and the recommendations from the planning commission and encourage anyone in the city who is passionate about this to participate in that process.

A comprehensive plan is a long range policy document that provides the vision and framework for a community and it's used to guide decisions for the next 20 years. State law requires communities in the 7ount metro area to update their plan every 10 years.

Past St. Louis Park comprehensive plans have been very long and textheavy like 500 page plus. So the goal of the 2050 comprehensive plan update is to create a digital and interactive plan that's easier to read, to use, and update.

The good news is it's getting reconstructed. It's making progress in the next two to three weeks that should be substantially different over there. But meanwhile, the businesses that reside there, the 13 14 small businesses plus Walgreens are suffering substantially because of the lack of access or the difficulty accessing those businesses... It's really important to support these small businesses.

I would also add if you come upon those local traffic only signs that are sitting there about, you know, a mile away from uh Louisiana on Cedar Lake, just ignore them. Keep driving. You can make it all the way through.