okay we're gonna start I just want to welcome everybody and thank everybody for coming hope that you gets enough to eat and feel free they'll be bringing coffee around for you but I just want to welcome everybody and introduce the council we have Dave McClung Titan over here in the corner we have Fran Holmes in the back and we have Steve Scott over there and also just around the corner we have Steve Scott's wife who is our representatives for beyond the yellow ribbon our veterans group in the city and so if anybody needs any information or wants the information beyond the yellow ribbon she's right back there I think they introduced not Dave Perrault right now uh-huh but sue Polk our city administrator our sour City okay sorry I got that our public works director sous stand up sue oh you were sai-san up oh you did okay if everybody saw her and Dave broth is in the back he's our city administrator he spent here with us almost a year now but he was with us for a long time before working there we have Gail Allman and she is not here oh she's at a conference she's our finance director and she's doing a great job a wonderful job and we have a new engineering tech who is starting October 1st his name will be David he will be helping sue because as you can see all the projects across the city have pretty much been a wear and tear on her all year with all the issues going on with the roads and we have Don Skelly she's way in the back she's our new communication person she's the one who's going to be doing our website upgrading it working on the newsletter she's just doing a great job and we have jolene jolene czar deputy clerk who makes sure we all follow the rules of the law and does a wonderful job doing that so I want to welcome everybody we also have MnDOT staff here you guys can introduce yourself later because they'll be speaking and telling you their role construction projects and we have Ramsey County here and we also have a member of the National Guard the office of Defense Mary is here she doesn't have a slide but I'll be talking about the new Readiness Center for the Red Bulls it's a brigade I know it's not a brigade headquarters sorry not being military I don't have it's a division headquarters for the red balls that will be going up up on TCAP up there where the National Guard is off a hand once so that's a really big thing for our city 230 14 13 thank you Steve this year we're gonna do something a little different we're gonna instead of asking questions from the mic and doing interrupting the the speakers and stuff we're going to have you all have index cards on your tables so we're going to ask you to ask write your questions on the cars and then we'll answer those at the end sorry it just gets we have so many slides and we want to get so much information down you that we want to do it fast so our last 15 minutes we're gonna do four slides I'm gonna go kind of fast because again we have more than 40 slides and we want to get you out of here on time and not bore you so the first slide I have is is about the tea cap update right now most of you know that we're partnering with Ramsey County and a lattice to develop the former twin city ammunition plant nothing has really changed on that tea cap is still planning to go ahead with retail office and light industrial a town center neighborhoods and with architectural features a variety of housing options that will serve multitude of young families empty nesters families and seniors we also have trails and parks that will be going in up there and other site amenities we're still continuing this the city just got into the negotiations in May with a lattice and the county so we are looking at hopefully finalizing a master development agreement this year which would have every single detail in it for us to follow and for the development to go forward a public forum 40 caps since there's so much stuff going on we really need the residents input about taxes and how to pay for stuff it's gonna really affect us so we are having a public forum November 15th and it will be at the Ramsey County maintenance facility the Marsten room we've had several other meetings there so hopefully everyone will know where that is and we're trying to get feedback on that also in the original agreement the developer have given the city of 1.6 acre site for a civic use and we formed a committee and the committee was formed from two members of each of the existing city committees and they are looking at different processes or what we really need in our community what we're missing to come up with an idea for that building the developer has now come forward with it some other ideas so we are busy working together to come up with ideas and we're hoping at the November 15th meeting you come with your brainstorming ideas on what you'd like to see happen in arden hills once the mdaa sign there it's going to be site work starting mostly the grading and then next year then would follow with the infrastructure and construction in 2019 that would be the big major roads and then commercial development would probably start in fall of 2020 there's a lot that has to be done on the grading and there's lots of land that has to be moved and dirt so it takes a while not those of you who lived on the steering project knows nothing happens that fast because of it Fran will be giving our next part of the presentation oh there you go didn't see you you moved good morning everybody my name is Fran Holmes from the Arden Hills City Council I like to personally welcome everyone who's at this event today I'm going to be talking a bit about the new and expanding businesses and what in what we affectionately call current arden hills what's going on right now the first one I wanted to talk about is the Land O'Lakes expansion Land O'Lakes is our large fortune 500 company now ranking 216 headquartered in our city so we're very value it's we value its presence here in arden hills and that Land O'Lakes in May opened up its second building on its campus and the campus is located on Lexington and County Road F which everyone effectually knows as the closed Road but that will be ending soon we'll hear about that later the building provides a collaborative efficient workspace and there's now room on the campus for 2,000 employees that building constructed a four-story 155 thousand square foot office building and the new site is very up-to-date and includes on-site daycare wellness and fitness centers a newly remodeled Credit Union a cafeteria technology assistance and other amenities for their employees so we're real pleased about that another expansion we have is the expansion that you've been seeing up on Lexington and redfox Road the Lexington station phase two that will be completed by the end of the year this will include a 17,000 foot multi retail and office building which will include a number of restaurants one will be old southern barbecue smokehouse and we will have pateros Mexican Grill and Orchard vietnamese so a variety of restaurants up there there will also be some businesses including State Farm Insurance club Pilates fitness center & pet evolution which is a grooming and supply store with dog washing stations so that will be fun boxing sensation is owned and managed by Roberts Management Group and this is the second there will also be two more phases phase three is in the progression that will include another multi-tenant and sister building and we'll look forward to seeing what phase four will will be in the planning stages in September Robert's management at the Lexington station had there an open house with family fun activities the next one is expanding a new and expanding business and that's our Health Partners clinic which is up on North Woods Drive - south of 694 they've expanded their facility and they now include additional patient rooms ultrasound expanding specialty services including adult and pediatric dermatology and pediatric endocrinology this has been Health Partners have been up there for a number of years so we value their presence and Arden Hills as well they serve family seniors and community members and we will we appreciate those additions to our community right right around the corner here we have the new Dunn's Brothers which has opened west of west of Lexington here on County Road II as well and it's a new coffee shop 4,200 square feet which includes a drive-thru conference rooms a family area and an outdoor patio we're always pleased the the coffee shops in every area are so popular and this one is getting to be a new destination for the the students that love to go to coffee shops as well as all our other residents and one of the unique aspects of this particular business coffee shop is that there are coffee beans roasted on-site for people to purchase we're just starting to see some activity at the Marriot Spring Hill Suites which would be our new hotel up up by the Health Partners clinic also in North Woods Drive south of 694 it will include one hundred ninety 139 Suites an indoor pool a fitness center and a business center and the building permits have been secured and we're hoping it will that groundbreaking will be starting take about a year to build once the the groundbreaking is done so we're looking forward to that we have two more areas where our where we've had expanding businesses to of our corporate campus areas are growing and being filled up right again right west of here is the North Park Corporate Center it is now full and it recently signed its last tenant and so this is an area where we're going to have a lot of activity and and traffic and so we're looking forward to that there's a health partner clinic and some other businesses there as well and then finally we're excited about up at the old Smith medical building on 1275 gray fox Road we're now having a new business called entry con its headquarters in arden hills it's recently added 30,000 square feet for manufacturing and this expansion will include robotic assembly of medical components and systems an expanding company molding business and includes body-worn devices such as hearing aids so we're looking forward to their presence now here in arden hills and so there's a lot going on as as councilmember Holden said a lot going on in the city with the economy booming we're seeing all sorts of activity so now I will turn it over to Dave for excuse me councilmember McClung to talk about his presentation thank you thank you Fran I mean councilmember Holmes good morning everyone thank you for coming I'm Dave McClung one of your City Council members I just wanted to thank you all for being here and thank you very much for tavern grill for hosting this they are a wonderful asset to our community so thank them on the way out I have a two very exciting topics to cover with you today civil defense sirens and budget and finance so you may want to shift in your seats a little bit there page-turners so we have had this year an important update for us it will defense sirens our emergency siren updates for sirens were replaced in 2018 with two upgraded sirens they are located at 4250 old highway 10 and Arden place and Snelling Avenue sirens on Ingerson Road and New Brighton Road were eliminated now there's new technology which allowed coverage to be expanded from to cover the entire city from these two sites versus the four sites we used to have that didn't cover the entire city and this also provides better backup coverage as well the old sirens that we had were decades old technology and those of you who lived in the northern part of the city mayor of remembered a couple years ago there was a software glitch that set the siren off and one o'clock in the morning frequently so those of us were waking up wondering what was going on well we're not gonna have that anymore next slide I also want to talk a little bit about finance and property taxes in 2018 as a City Council we work very hard to keep your taxes low that's one of the things about arden hills is we are constantly in the lower tier of County cities in Ramsey County in terms of our stewardship with the your tax dollars but at the same time we also do quite a bit with the money that you give us to manage the city monthly taxes on a three hundred and thirty three thousand eight hundred dollar home are about sixty nine dollars per month your tax dollar buys you forty two cents worth of public safety services twenty five and this is out of every dollar forty two cents worth goes to public safety services 25 cents for general government 14 cents for park and recreation and 11 cents for public works so as you can see we run a pretty lean ship here in arden hills we also have transfer to fund economic development activities and capital improvements next slide please if I can get mine Chung in addition to paying for city services your property taxes go to Ramsey County so 46 cents of that dollar goes to Ramsey County maple excuse me the Mountain View School District or Roseville school district depending on where you live in the city in which district boundaries you are in account for 25 cents of the dollar as you can see 22 cents comes to the city of Arden Hills while 7 cents is sent to other agencies and you can see from the graphic up there it kind of breaks down the county portion in the city's portion the school districts portion and other agencies metropolitan mosquito control Metropolitan Council things like that I want to talk just briefly about our 2019 budget the 2019 budget will be finalized in December following the annual truth and Taxation hearing that's gonna be our at our first council meeting in December and I hope you all come out and listen to the presentation and and get some information about how we are spending your money proposing to spend your money in 2019 and we the City Council want to hear from you the city has set a preliminary levy increase of 5% Arden Hills is one of the lowest tax rates as I said in Ramsey County but also in the Twin Cities metropolitan area so that says something about us we're adding because even though we are small we are doing to add programs and activities for a city our size we do pack quite a bit of punch in we're adding two new staff positions this year including a recreation programmer for our growing Parks and Rec program which is important for both our kids and our seniors and a senior engineering technician to assist our director of engineering and public works because as councilmember Holden said our problem works director su Boca has been doing a fantastic job but with everything that we have going on in the city you know she needs some assistance in order to meet demands for our street maintenance we've also added an additional $100,000 to that budget line item we want to be good stewards of the roads when you pay an assessment to help us put the roads in we want to be good stewards of trying to maintain and keep those roads up and make them last as long as we can possibly do lastly the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office is incurring additional costs as you know we contract for services with Ramsey County for our police protection with Lake Johanna Fire Department for our fire protection so we don't have our own Police Department or own fire department and have all those costs we share the costs among multiple cities by contracting with those agencies that being said there are some cost increases for the Sheriff's Office's here and that is reflected in an increase in our in our contracted fees that we have to pay and with that I think I missed a slide actually I didn't so at this point I'm going to turn it over to Brenda and she's gonna talk about the 2014 comprehensive plan thanks Dave you didn't make that real interesting so no I did you just want to point out that council member Holmes talked about a Lexington Station Nick Roberts is here today so if anybody has any questions on Lexington Station he's weighing back Nick if you want to raise your hand so we he's a great asset to our community he does sponsor a lot of events too so it's been great and the positions that councilmember McClung talked about adding they were originally in our budgets years ago but as time came we didn't have use forum and now we're getting you so they're new for next year but they have been in the budgets for years and we hire people when we need them and we try to save money by keeping positions empty if we're not going to utilize the staff I want to talk about the 2040 Comprehensive Plan every 10 years and what the comprehend plan really is its land use land use and arden hills so every 10 years cities in the metropolitan area that are under Met Council have to update their comprehensive plans in alignment with what the Met Council's regional development plan and thrive is so if Met Council has goals for us we need to make sure that's covered in the up in the comprehensive plan first the comprehensive plan is put together by staff with input from the City Council and then it goes to the Planning Commission of Planning Commission all has an open house and solicits input and they draft amendments to it and then we put together the chapter of the whole Council of the whole Metropolitan Council 2040 comprehensive plan and we approve it then it goes to the City Council and the City Council approves it then we have to submit the plan to adjacent communities so everybody has to approve it on the Jason's and provide us comments so ours is with Shoreview miles view Roseville New Brighton and after we get their feedback and everyone else's feedback it goes to other entities too like sheriff departments and stuff it comes back to the council and we go through all the input and we may make changes we may not make changes depending on what the input is and then we approve it at the end of the year hopefully this year we'll the deadline is December 31st so we're trying to get that done before then there is a draft of the Comprehensive Plan on the website so feel free to look at it if you want to know what the land-use is behind where you live or you're concerned about if this is really a park or just open space and who owns it so that's all out there on the comprehensive website so it is available to you and it is an important thing people all the time say well I didn't know that that person could build on that lot next to me and the Comprehensive Plan addresses this and that's that's kind of our guiding principle once we get going with development and who can build what where and what the land uses so next is going to be Steve come to member Scott good morning my name is Steve Scott I'm the newest member on the council prior to coming on the council I was on the city's parks trails and Recreation Committee for approximately eight years we call that the PTR see that's a volunteer group of community members that serves as an advisory role to the City Council and with us here today as the chair of our P TRC mr. rich strowman way in the back so mister mister trail he's he's very enthusiastic trails in fact yesterday morning I actually met with the county commissioner Blake Huffman for breakfast and he related an incident where he and Lyle and rich were out around the building 189 area in the north part of TKE happy and rich said hey let's go take a look inside Commissioner Huffman says well that's got a fence around that we can't go with it oh yeah there I know where all the holes are so they they did get in they toured the building that building will eventually be repurposed as part of the TCAP redevelopment but the PTR see every year they go out and do a physical evaluation of all the city's 14 parts that are maintained they assess the condition of the playground equipment the trails the surface areas athletic amenities and the playground equipment and from that they'll make a recommendation to the City Council what to prioritize for repair or reconstruction and that combined with the Public Works Department who maintains physically the parks the City Council will prioritize which projects are due for reporter reconstruction the following year so 2018 we had an interesting project on our Johanna Marsh Park and that's a smaller Park located on old snelling ave it's kind of tucked away it's located on a marshy bog which is why it's called johannem but it has a hard surface tennis court that because of the the soft soil there was very difficult for this city to maintain so we had a really wanted to use that park in the future so we met with the area residents several occasions to get their input of what they wanted to see so the younger families they of course wanted the playground equipment emphasized the I'm not going to call them older but more mature residents they like the natural area they wanted a trail with like an overlooked area so they can enjoy the the scenic amenities of that part so what we eventually did is arrived at a compromise so we're just finishing up the construction of that there is a nice playground area we've seen a lot of turnover and the families a lot of younger families are now moving back into the city with their children so we have the playground equipment for them to enjoy and there's a trail with an overlook so the mature people can enjoy the the physical scenic attributes of that area we also started on an ambitious extension of our trail network this city the trail along North Snelling Snelling Avenue North which starts that lindy's steak house runs up north past Bethel University and goes west on County Road e to were scheduled for a major implementation so that's what a lot of that construction that you see over there is is is happening the Xcel Energy is also performing some replacement repair and replacement of their major gas infrastructure so in conjunction with the city construction you'll see a lot of disruption they've just caused by Excel energy so the we're real excited to have the North Snelling trail extension opened up now that'll lead up to some future projects that'll hopefully tie in the rest of the trail network city the residents enjoy we're out there all the time and residents will come up to us and explain how how they enjoy our our system the trails were kind of an active area of the country people value their health their ability to use the trails eventually there's going to be a network of trails that you couldn't be travel from the Mississippi River over to the st. Croix River so we work a lot with the surrounding communities and the county Ramsey County to coordinate with their plants so next up I'm gonna call up councilmember Fran Holmes again she's going to update you on the methods best message stuff how to contact city staff this section is really two parts this has to do with our website and we've had a number of residents and committee members say that it's difficult to figure out how to get in touch with city city staff from our website and we're fortunate with our website because it will take you directly to the name and number and website of the city staff some some cities you just have to send a general email but we have a direct contact with our city staff so if you want to contact them you can do that directly from our website but if you don't know how to do it those are three ways you can do it they're not super intuitive so if you look at the slides it will show you there's all the all the ways you contact on the website it says contact us so at the bottom of the website of the main page of the website at the bottom and it's circled up there it says contact us so that's the first way you can do it just hit contact us at the bottom bar on the website you can also contact us the city staff from to drop town down menus and and it's under about arden hills a drop down there's another bar that says contact us so you can hit that to contact us the third wine is also a drop-down menu which is I want to help Center you hit that it will also say contact and then there's a bar for City Council and city staff so once you figure it out it's very easy to use because then it takes you to this next page which is our staff directory and you can either look at it through a department or if you know the person's name directly this makes it a lot easier for you to call people directly you can get their voicemail if you need it you can also call the general number but a lot of people like to kind of streamline their their contacting the our city staff so that's just a brief tutorial oh and then you can also there's another website that is called report a concern request tracker and this is the requests tractor tracker where we actually keep track of your request so if you have an informal call you want to do something quick with a with a staff member you can just call them but if you want if you have a specific request and you want to track so we make sure we address it you can go to the website and you can do the request tracker and these are then that has a menu for specific requests that you have such as general city feedback nuisance concerns the park maintenance concerns anything you see in the city that you want addressed potholes street lights are out traffic signals are out this way you can do it you can do it on this menu if you would like to write out sometimes people write out fairly long detailed concerns that they have and that's important for us to know about so that's another way to contact our city staff with a specific request we also are going to be starting a new website we're working on a new website that's going to come out in January of 2019 this website will be done with our vendor Civic pluses of website that most are a vendor that many cities use throughout the country and we have up here on our Green the the website for actually Hopkins and this ours will be similar to this our website was last designed back in 2012 so we're updating it just like all technology things need to be updated on a regular basis and it should have easier navigation more intuitive and it'll be for our important audiences which are geared towards the residents and our businesses are individual residents and our business residents it will be easier to complete certain tasks people are using the website a lot for paying their water bills and for paying signing up for programs for youth and Park and Rec programs so that will be part of what we're going to be enhancing on the website it will also be more usable for mobile sites mobile use such as your phone and tablets not just for computers so it's going to be specially designed so that if you get on with your phone or your tablet it'll be easier to use and it will meet the Americans and disability Americans with Disability Act requirements which is important as well and so this website will go live in January and our web address will remain the same city of arden hills org so now I will turn it over to you Steve mister councilmember Scott thank you hello again my segment of this presentation is transportation and construction updates everybody's favorite headache each year so city maintains approximately 29 miles of city streets each year city staff goes out and conducts an invaluable of those streets they score them and assign a priority for scheduled repair and reconstruction efforts so the worst are come to the top of the list and there's several levels of repair and maintenance activities that take place the I want to add that the county and MnDOT also do their construction during the summer months you know as soon as the snow goes away the mosquitoes come out and that's when the orange cones come up so I don't know if there's any correlation between the two but both of them seemed to be kind of major inconveniences so this year we identified several areas for Street maintenance and repair the left-hand slide do we have that up there for the streets okay I see it so the left-hand side is the blueberry Park Shore and wedge would drive on the western part of the city those were scheduled for a reclamation which is kind of a moderate level of repair and restoration that is now completed then they moved down to the lower left a lower right-hand corner of the map and that's the floral lane Gale circle James circled normal circle areas that is a full reconstruction since we're doing that extensive amount of reconstruction we decided it was also advantageous for us to go in and replace the water and the sewer mains at that time so we only have to do all that work once and hopefully we'll be set for another 20 years or so so they are just finishing up or starting the pavement I think on the lower right hand section of floral and Gale and James circle enormous circle they are doing some final grading on the upper right corner which is the Indian Oaks and Indian Oaks trail and they'll be putting the preliminary of level of paving on that that will stay for the winter months the next spring they'll come up and put a final layer of asphalt paving to bring that up to final grade but that areas was prone to some drainage issues so they're getting full curbing gutters drainage there was another project that was drainage related and that ran from Indian Oaks Court up through Colleen Avenue and that has been laid and there's now being a restored for the for the landscaping the community members came forward to a presentation listen to the plans voice their concerns and whatnot and I have to say the feedback that we've gotten back is the construction crews have been very responsive to the residents during the major part of the reconstruction of course you can't get in to access your driveway so they had a park on some surrounding streets but everybody seems to be cooperating with that and hopefully and another month we'll have those projects wrapped up so I think at this time oh I do have some more slides here I was handed a new set of slides so along the ODE Snelling trail extension we also decided to upgrade the water main infrastructure on that we had seen a number of water main breaks in that and when the crews are out to repair they looked at it and the condition of the existing water main was much worse than they had expected so long with the trail extension construction we decided to go ahead and replace those water mains and then I think at this point I will turn it back over to counts Mayor Pro Tim Brando home Brenda hold it and I just like to say that the new blacktop trail there's a new blacktop trail on County Road II from freeway part to Snelling old Snelling from Connie Road e - E - that's been finished up there just in the last parts of cleaning up the mess and Connie wrote e to a Cleveland to New Brighton we kind of had small segments that weren't all put together so now we have one continuous sidewalk in this area and coming up this fall we're hoping to replace the old Snelling bridge when you're trying to take Snelling to get or when you're trying to take old snowing to get onto 51 there's a there's a bridge there that isn't up to par and we're going to replace it and we did get a couple grants to do some of the work on that so that will be happening this fall I believe so is it this fall we there's yep still this fall so that will be don't plan on taking that for a couple weeks when we're because we have to dig up the old culverts and replace it so right now I'm I just want to tell everyone to that every three years we go around the city and we do videotape and stick a camera down into the sewer lines and videotape the sewer so that we know what the extent of if there's roots in there if there's damage and we make sure we do that every year and we've been in a really extensive lining of the sewers I know my neighborhood up by County Road D like Johannah Boulevard New Brighton Road our we're clay pipes and they were well over my house was built in 50s so very old so we have lined those and so we don't have a lot of leakage now out into the system up to the dirt around it so we are working on that right now if anybody has any questions for City you they're gonna come around and collect the cards so feel free to write those cards up and we'll get those collected but next we're going to go to MnDOT mark Lindberg one of our favorite MnDOT guys is he's got all the answers so he likes he likes it thank you yes I am mark Lindberg with the Minnesota Department transportation and I'll just gonna talk briefly about a couple of fun and exciting things that has residents of Arden heals you'll get to experience for the next few years first I'm going to talk about a project that you've seen before I think I've brought it forth the last couple of years that we've been here it's the construction project where we're going to add a second exit lane from 35w southbound to go east onto us ten I'll got an overview of the project right there you really can't see a whole lot of it so we'll be zooming in on it but I wanted to show you kind of the whole magnitude of the project as a part of the project right MnDOT is going to be doing the roadway work included into that project the city is going to be replacing a water main and then repaving the frontage road on the on the side of the road but kind of in front of big tenant and manufactured home community and then the homes there and then work that projects slated to be let in November construction will begin in the spring of 2019 so as we zoom in on the on the picture a little bit you can see where if you're headed southbound on 35w we're gonna widen that ramp include two lanes as you come off a 35w come up around the around the curve I'll wait for the picture to come back connect in with with county road 10 and get ready to go over 35w as we proceed to the east we've got there will be three lanes of traffic now in that eastbound direction we're also going to be constructing a right turn lane to exit off into sure brothers that exists today just beyond sure brothers we're gonna have an acceleration lane for their trucks to get out onto us ten get up to speed a little bit that is in conjunction with a right turn lane to exit to get into the manufactured home community and or big ten then as we look at the third and final slide for that project we're constructing a right out from Big Ten onto us ten this picture doesn't reflect like I said where we're going to be repaving that whole frontage road but we are and then we're also going to be taking that frontage road down connecting it in to the ramp that's the eastbound exit to County Road 96 excuse me so that is that project again that should all be done in 2019 a small little project that we've got beginning now is a two hundred and eight million dollar 35 W min pass construction and repaving of i-35 W essentially from 36 up to sunset in Blaine so that project was it's a design-build project 12 miles long where we're gonna be adding min pass repaid repaving all of the roadway I've got the project website on the slide I think it's the last bullet point so you can always go out there wonderful if you did go out to the website sign up for construction updates from the project you'll get them you know throughout the life of the project it's slated to be a three or four year construction project still working on the exact information from the contractor so we know exactly what's going to happen we are out on 35w right now where we've got some construction going on we're kind of tearing off the shoulder on the inside we're going to be adding some pavement up there we're doing that this year to get ahead of construction next year so that when spring comes next year we can hit the ground running with construction we're really hoping that that will help construction get done in a faster time frame than if we didn't do that and then we're also building the construction crossovers so as we shift traffic from one side of the roadway to the other again that just helps us in our schedule hopefully getting construction done quicker another part of that 35w min past project is as I'm going to be having a contract a separate contract from the construction contract for the public engagement so this project like I said is 12 miles long it goes through eight communities in two counties and there are multiple other County or cities that are real close to that corridor with that many different partners involved into the project no two cities are going to want information provided to them the same way so MnDOT made a determination that we're gonna let a separate contract so we can hold the public engagement outside of that we can hopefully have a lot more flexibility we can work with the cities the counties and provide the information and in multitude of different ways whichever way any city wants us to do it hopefully as twists and turns come up in the project we're able to work with our contractor and get things done a lot quicker and a lot easier so hopefully you'll see something a little bit new hopefully it will be productive and you know I'm just gonna say exciting because you know let's all believe it this construction is nothing but excitement for all of us so maybe it's a little different approach we're gonna give it a shot and hopefully it's real real successful and with that I do have the project website on this slide I'll leave that up well we transition if I give it back to you to move on thank you and marks here and he's sitting right back there so after the meeting if Amy uh you all know what he looks like now if anybody has any questions for him after I mean that's their big complicated stuff and they take a long time so it's important to get your questions answered for your business next will be Ramsey County presenting on theirs I sorry I have to take my glasses off to read and I can't they don't want to put him on and off so obviously I'll let the gentleman he's new to Ramsey County and we're really looking forward to working with him thank you hi good morning Ted gennaker the new Ramsey County public works director for those of you that have been with the you know engaged in the city for a while you probably remember Jim tolis Jim tolis was the public works director for and county employee for over 40 years so Jim retired at the beginning of this year and so I've got about nine months under my belt here so I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to you about some of the transportation projects that are going on in arden hills here so again new guy I get to look at things I get to understand things just little background tidbits here it shocked me for a community as small as relatively geographically small as are in Hills is we have 15 distinct county roads so we have a pretty significant transportation impact within your city on those roads anywhere from a thousand to about 25 27 to 28 thousand vehicles per day so you get on some of our smaller county roads out there up to our County Road 96 or Lexington Avenue that are pushing high volumes of traffic through your community as you look at this slide here I'm not going to talk about t kappa t kappa was mentioned earlier from the county side of this business significant transportation investments have been made already to prepare for t cap interchange at county road 96 and 35w interchange at highway 10 and 96 county road h 35w county road i-35w the thumb road from county road h up to county road eyes so a lot of planning work on the transportation side as being put in place or as currently in place to get ready for that development to occur am i pushing buttons there we go every MZ county we like to push buttons so I'm gonna talk about some of the two of our current projects that we have going on in the community the first one is County Road 96 this was not a pavement job it wasn't a capacity job it was to address more the pedestrian mobility aspects along that whole corridor so two components of it I'm going from Snelling Avenue on the west side all the way over to highway 61 in White Bear Lake the main aspects were the traffic signal enhancements so adding the flashing yellow left turn arrows that allows us flexibility to turn those on and off depending on traffic volumes depending on safety times so at peak hours they may operate like they are today where it comes up as a green arrow yellow arrow red arrow does not allow that left turn to happen during higher volume higher traffic times we get into those off-peak hours off-peak times that flashing arrow comes up so you're not sitting there waiting wondering why am i waiting here well there's no one coming so the opportunity is there for you to make that turn and then another piece of that is more for the pedestrian realm the accessible pedestrian signals so that's the push buttons that you see there individual per movement where you're crossing they beep they countdown timers those things to help people with disabilities are the physical visual hearing impairments the other piece was the curb ramps the American with Disabilities again somebody who's visually impaired crossing the road giving them an opportunity to know when they're walking from that sidewalk out into the roadway environments if you're wondering when the flashing arrows are coming like our financial officer at Ramsey County who keeps bothering me about it we are working on the signal timing plan right now and implementing the flashing arrows hopefully within the next month here we've heard a lot of comments about country or deaf this seems to be the hot topic out there yes we know it is not open yes we want to get it open as quickly as we can it's it's one of those projects that you look at on the surface and you say it's it's a half mile in length all you're doing is widening it doing some pavement stuff it's not that big of a job it equated to once you start doing work in your house you open up the walls and suddenly you start finding out what's behind the walls that was a little bit of what this project was a lot of coordination with private utilities Excel has been doing some major work in there we actually coordinated with them early so that they were moving their utility poles out during the winter which is from our side of the world and what we do that's a great accomplishment to get a private utility in there actually early before we start to get them doing stuff so this was one again where we opened up the road and they started working and the the level of effort that they needed to do I'll say on Excel side and then we also had fiber-optic communications with the different communication providers getting in there and then having our contractor coordinate with them work around their systems last thing we want to do is have somebody come in hit a power line you know it's a safety issue but then I'll suddenly we have major businesses residents without power we have communication lines going down so our contractor is being very thorough and very deliberate and their activities around there we had a communications meaning project meeting yesterday as of yesterday if our rain decides to stop here in September I think I heard the statistics the seventh wettest September that we've ever had here in the Twin Cities kudos to us for getting nice aquifers back refilled but that doesn't tend to help construction projects especially when your soils are made of clay tends to turn the soil to mud not good working conditions but we are anticipating they should be out doing the concrete curb and gutter concrete work here next week what comes after concrete work is the paving work we're anticipating midweek mid-october here having that road back open to traffic so great for the businesses great for residents who are trying to reuse that road to get you know to and from home or businesses or activities I know I do I'm ready for it to be open to so we're looking forward to that coming soon let's talk about future projects this is the big one this is a big one that we have in our transportation improvement plan we've been talking with city staff at Arden Hills and Shoreview about this we've just selected a consultant to begin the project development process this is Lexington Avenue from County Road II up to 694 big potential impacts of that construction but it's work that needs to be done we got growing congestion happening in the area looking at access management's and again what are the safety options for that roadway the pavement condition again you drive down it it doesn't look that bad but we are getting some significant rutting with the volume of traffic that's out there with the truck traffic that uses that to access the retail businesses up there and so we will be starting that process here very soon once we get that consultant on board we are gonna have major public involvement public engagement stakeholder engagement for this project we know that again this is a heavy retail corridor with a lot of people coming in and out of it we want those businesses to be successful during construction after construction so we'll be working closely with those businesses in there with future developments that are coming in to make sure that we are looking at everybody everybody's needs in that corridor and then on the smaller side of this similar to the city we have a pavement preservation program we look out five years in our transportation improvement program we identify projects or roadways that are starting to show that deterioration it's pretty flexible actually we identify them every year we assess them actually this past summer we have a van that around that goes out and does that assessment for us we do visual assessments we re-examine that every year because one one winter to the next can significantly change your road and so right now we have two roads identified within that five year program the firt one is old Snelling from highway 96 down to County Road II and the other one is County Road D basically down on the city's southern border down there the one other I don't item that I don't have in here and it was referenced we are we're starting to work with the city potential intersection improvements at County Road II and old Snelling they're right by by Lindy steakhouse one last thing that I would add in this is that similar to the city for all of our projects we do have specific project webpages underneath the Ramsey County website I would suggest you go there that gives you some project information on what's occurring when it's occurring potential detours potential impacts that also gives you a point of contact for that so that you can hear directly from us and we can hear directly from you concerns questions that you may have on what's going on where are we we appreciate you calling City Council members and staff they typically are a middle person in this and they'll either tell you what they know and sometimes it's changing day to day but I would encourage you to reach out to us directly we welcome that that helps us be better at what we do too so I appreciate the time here to the best of my knowledge it wasn't but I'm the new guy and I get to say I don't know I'll go back and ask and see if that's in the program anywhere thank you so so the question was wins the race Street bridge over 694 gonna be replaced we should be letting that contract here in November getting construction starting early next year so I'm gonna call all of Council up to answer questions since this is a joint project we each get a little segment but the one thing I wanted to bring up was the National Guard the 34th interest read Division Headquarters it's it's a you're going to be a hundred and thirty six thousand square feet it's gonna include us an assembly hall a auditorium already Bay an outdoor ceremonial center a calm calm commander Suites classrooms and it's gonna be about fifty million dollars worth of building that they're putting in our community and with the Red Bulls are thousands and thousands of people so it will make an engine major impact on our community and again yellow ribbons around the corner we need to support the veterans that will be in our area so the question that someone had asked was it was there any plans to upgrade New Brighton Road whoever asked this question if they contact me afterwards I will make sure that Ted gets back to us and then I can give you that answer one question was what's the exact date for the F opening I think Ted answered that mid-october but hopefully by November first will the asphalt be done on Halloween baba on Indian Oaks trails the answer is yes well we will try our best of course if it rains or snows that really defeats the purpose of laying asphalt days so yes yeah it's been a cold fault but the it's anticipated to have the asphalt on in the you know extreme by then um here's a card that says why do we have to have low-income housing in arden hills well part of that is metro called council has provided that each city has to apply so much of their housing for affordable and part of it is that society has we have people that work in they're not minimum pain your honor but but lower-income jobs that are doing two two three four jobs to make it by and they need a place to live so Met Council does not want people to keep expanding out lower-income people don't have the newer vehicles to drive hundreds of miles or 20 to 30 miles to make it to to their jobs and out here we don't have buses we fight every year with Met Council to get buses out here but it's again it's a met council rule if anybody has issue they should call Met Council we we do what we're told and we're happy to I mean my whole neighborhood the Connery would be neighborhood up there those houses are affordable houses according to the Met Council raw Indians in our city I think it's a house that's valued at two hundred and thirty-five thousand or less discounted as affordable could be up to 250 now I don't quote me on that if things are done properly there shouldn't be but met counsel is from your legislature if you want to get rid of my counsel you should call your legislator I know councils have their opinion on that and individuals have their opinion and why aren't the codes being enforced after people complain we try Arden Hills tries we have one code enforcer we try to do that there's a lot of issues where I get a lot of complaints from one person but if the code enforcement goes out to that I can think of one house and but then the code enforce is out there and he sees that the person who's complaining has like 15 code enforcement rules too so if we're gonna go around and somebody's complaining about peeling paint or something the person next to them may have peeling paint too so they try to do the best they can again my thing is if you have an issue with this call a City Council member and a city council member can follow through don't don't call staff call City that's the one thing I always tell people call City Council member because we'll make sure it's logged and followed through on we had a question regarding volunteer opportunities in the city where is the best place for citizens to go to check on or how to learn about volunteer opportunities what answer that we have multiple social media presence besides the city website the city maintains a twitter account that they post to they also have their own Facebook page you can subscribe to and if you haven't already I would recommend highly you know to follow both of those venues there is a section on the website that describes each of the committees and commissions and pretty much lists the current members on there you can always contact city desk to inquire about opportunities to serve on any one of those committees or commissions second as the city send out periodic emails or notices the upcoming volunteer opportunities they will typically post activity or ongoing things on either one of those Twitter or those Facebook feeds and it's also in the newsletter which comes out which comes out monthly so I would advise you know getting involved with the the social media the the print media and if you have any remaining question there's always the telephone you can reach out and grab and anybody who is currently and on one of those committees or Commission's would be more than happy to answer any question about a prospective volunteer coming up right okay I have two related questions regarding transportation first we kind of already touched on this what bridge is being redone in the old Snelling honey road 51 exchange so that is the current bridge it's kind of hard to tell you're going over a bridge but you are just north on old Snelling from 51 there is a box culvert that is a bridge that is as councilmember Holden mentioned earlier deteriorated to the point where it needs to be replaced the city for many years attempted to get grants to assist with the reconstruction of that and we were successful and that will happen soon ah did this fall will begin so I think did I answer the question adequately to whoever had it okay and second related to this and Ted kind of mentioned the North portion of this will you be upgrading the blacktop on old Snelling Avenue next to Lindy's steak house and the answer is it is in our city program so when we're talking old still and we're talking from old Snelling from County Road East South 251 across that bridge that's being redone north of County Road up to 96 is a county responsibility correct Ted and as he mentioned that's in their their future plans in terms of pavement rehabilitation for us I think it's currently in our 2020 PMP and Sue is nodding yes so hopefully that answered that question friend I was given a question about Elections and I'm going to let our deputy city clerk Collini answer it because she has all the details on that thank you thank you one of my responsibilities as the deputy clerk is to deal with elections and so this year the biggest change that we have is that there will be no voting at City Hall so pre election voting and on Election Day of course you'll go to your precinct between now and October 30th you can do absentee voting by envelope at two locations either at ninety West Plato Boulevard in st. Paul that's the Ramsey County facility or you can go down to the Ramsey County Public Works building which is at the intersection of Highway 96 and Hamlin and you just take a right-hand turn there turn into Paul Kirk will drive they have a lot of signs up there you'll be needing at your identification proof of residency here in arden hills and they'll have a paperwork form for you to fill out while you're there they'll give you a ballot you'll complete it fold it back up put in the envelopes that they provide for you and turn it into them in the envelope if you want to vote by ballot and actually put it through the ballot reader you'll need to wait until the week before elections so starting October 31st you'll be able to vote by ballot and put it through the actual reader but again at those same two locations in st. Paul or at the Ramsey County Public Works building which happens to be in Arden Hills so if you have any other questions about that certainly feel free to call City Hall talk to myself or Julie the city clerk will be happy to answer them all of this information is also on the city website as well as on the Ramsey County website real quickly earlier I thought I had missed a slide and actually I did so it's something we're really excited about so I didn't want to leave without talking about this standard and poor's one of the nation's bond rating agencies upgraded this year the city's bond rating for general obligation bonds to triple-a from double-a plus so those of you who know anything about bond ratings this is a big deal especially for a city our size so this is the first time in our history that we've received this bond rating arden hills shares his top rating with 22 other cities in the state and we are the fifth smallest city to receive this recognition so when we go out to do go out for a bond for a project it is a significant savings to the city so that's something we're very proud of also again as you've talked about in years past the city is received all three of the Minnesota government finance Officers Association Awards this year only seven other cities in Minnesota have received all three so we are in good company with only a small number of cities that have won all three awards and we have a long standing history of winning all three I think it goes back nine ten years so that says something about our staff and the council's fiscal stewardship so just didn't want to forget that thanks David for you who have never been to one of the tax meeting some it gets pretty lively discussed and discussed up there on what we're gonna tax people so um there's been a lot of fighting to keep the taxes lower get enough to what we do so that we earn this we're in this with blood I think one of the questions we had was what percentage increase is expected with t kappa t kappa some we are estimating a 60% increase in tax base but if you if you run a city it's different than if you run a County running a city we have to supply all the maintenance work we have to supply the maintenance to the parks the roads the sewers the water policing everything that you think of on an everyday basis so when you start thinking about an increase in your tax base it just means if you need a hundred dollars you have those additional people to get a hunt that hundred dollars from usually running a city is a break-even comercial pays a little bit more in taxes in property taxes then they spend residents usually pay a little bit less so having TCAP there I mean I always say well Minneapolis and st. Paul should be the wealthiest community is around but they get all that state money and stuff but again it costs us money and we try to break even in our increases every year in the levies has to do with staffing insurance increases in white safety yes so public safety and everything that has to go back to the human people getting raises and making sure they have insurance so as far as dollars we have no idea what kind of dollars we will be getting yet it's supposedly a seven hundred million dollar build-out project but that's it I just want to thank everybody for coming I really want to thank Ted for coming and letting everybody know who you are now so we know who to call and complain and feel free you've got his name married from a hats and the Department of Defense if anybody has any questions she put the Umbro sure's out right up here if you want to see what the ready readiness are the division headquarters is gonna look like and this is gonna be a change for the Red Bulls they've been in Rosemont for a long time so we really need to make them feel wanted here thank to mark mark always likes to come and do these presentations because we know we love road construction and I want to thank staff for putting the presentation together and again an effort by the council we all take a little part and we do it and we're here for any questions afterwards and thanks for coming and make sure you guys get something to eat a few and the tavern grill thank you [Applause] sorry I thought you