[0:09] Hey, welcome to the next edition of [0:11] Mayor About Town. I'm Andrew Mullen, [0:13] mayor of Weisetta. Uh the show that [0:15] focuses on the people, places, and [0:17] organizations that make Weisetta [0:19] special. Today's show is about public [0:21] service and meeting some of the leaders [0:24] in our community here. On the show [0:26] today, we have Council Member uh Chef [0:28] Parkill. uh Council Member Ken Sorenson [0:31] and chair of the planning commission and [0:33] park and trails board uh Blake Cameron. [0:36] Uh my first guest today is uh Council [0:39] Member Jeff Parkill. Uh welcome to Mayor [0:41] About Town, Jeff. [0:42] Thank you very much for having me. [0:44] Yeah. So uh you know, we're talking a [0:46] little bit about uh public service and [0:48] uh you know, you you've uh had I think [0:51] over six years of public service here in [0:52] Weisetta. Um, tell me a little bit first [0:55] about you like for those who don't know [0:57] you, give me a little bit of your your [0:58] background. You know, who who is Jeff [1:00] Parkhill? [1:01] So, I uh grew up in Illinois. We lived [1:04] in um Chicago for 20 years. My when I [1:08] got married in 1995, 1994, sorry, Karen. [1:12] Uh I uh um we were in Chicago and I was [1:18] in corporate America and at that time I [1:21] about I started investing in real estate [1:23] on the side in Lincoln Park, a kind of a [1:26] cool area of of Chicago [1:28] and I just started making more money on [1:31] the side doing that than this full-time [1:33] corporate gig. Yeah. And so I switched [1:35] over in 2000 to be a full-time real [1:38] estate developer. [1:39] Okay. And I was doing single family [1:41] high-end single family homes, condo [1:42] conversions, and uh buying multif family [1:45] property. [1:46] Okay. [1:47] And um and then in 2011, uh Karen pulled [1:51] the rug out from under me and we moved [1:53] to Dallas for 5 years. [1:55] Okay. [1:56] So I still had projects back in Chicago [1:58] and um we lived in Dallas for 5 years [2:01] and then came to Minneapolis in 2016. [2:05] Okay. And so, uh, did you why did you [2:07] settle in Weisetta? [2:09] Well, we looked in the city. We were [2:10] kind of thought we were going to be city [2:12] people, but really what brought us out [2:14] to Weisetta was we had friends out here, [2:16] number one, [2:17] that were lifetime friends. And number [2:20] two, um, we couldn't find uh, uh, five [2:24] parking spots at a house in the city [2:26] that we liked. [2:27] Sure. My boys were 16 at the time and we [2:31] had a uh some help at home and so we [2:33] needed five parking spots and there just [2:35] wasn't any place to have that. [2:37] Sure. Sure. [2:38] So So Jeeoff uh I think you're just [2:40] finishing your sixth year of public [2:41] service here in Weisetta. What what drew [2:43] you to public service in the first [2:45] place? And then specifically why did you [2:47] choose to sort of contribute your time [2:49] here…