residents who have been living in this area for generations and decades have faced and had to carry the burden of this nearby industrial activity. Um, so being lots of dust in the air, uh, smells of burning smells, sewage smells, weird chemical odors, um, lots of noise and vibrations and the shaking of homes and foundations, um, and then heavy truck traffic due to the industrial activity that is in the area.

It shouldn't be a luxury to breathe in clean air or worry about what kids what my kids are going to breathe in because this issue is the main reason not the only one but one of the many that we have made the difficult decision to move out of our home.

The proposed ordinance has a really simple goal of reducing total suspended particullet, particulate matter, and dust from Southport Industrial to improve air quality and health outcomes for the residents of Southport.

So, we don't want to relegate this to a permitting procedure. We want to effectuate this MPCA rule with a specific city ordinance.

I really appreciate the story that you shared about your um about asthma. I mean, the additional the the much higher asthma related emergency visits in this area are really alarming. Um, and my son also has asthma and so I know what it's like to have to do a nebulizer every day. And I just want to point out that it's a lot of work and it's really expensive even if you have insurance. And so, as much as we can mitigate that for for our youngest residents, I really support that.

So, to be clear, the St. Paul Port Authority um created and helped create this the the the uh Southport properties back in 1964. We are a land owner. Uh, but we have leases with all the private sector tenants that are down on Southport. It is our expectation that our tenants do work with the MPCA who is the governing authority around dust mitigation uh on a complaint basis uh in the state of Minnesota.

our current city charter does not contemplate a separate and independent attorney for the city council that the city is seen as an entity by itself and that the city council that the city attorney acts on behalf of that entity.

identifying who the client is is the barrier for saying whether there is a conflict of interest and the client in this situation is the city of St. Paul through all its elected and constituent um members who make decisions.

I think that there's always it's always beneficial to us to hear about what they are thinking and what kind of questions they may have. um because these are folks that volunteer to be on the charter commission and I feel like sometimes interesting topics for them shouldn't be these big opaque topic areas that we're shy to go to the commission and ask the community what they think about certain things.

I'd be interested to know there's sort of a a subset of these 27 that relates to frequency of reconfirmation. Um, doesn't get to capacity, but does get a little bit to power.

I think to my mind really the foundational question is what obstacles are we trying to solve for um with any potential change and that's I think come up in council member Johnson and council president Akre you know there are capacity questions that have certainly come up there's sort of questions about being on an equal footing with the mayor there's I I think there are a lot of different things that we could identify even just from the last year where there have been touch points or frustrations