All right, let's call the meeting to order and start with the pledge. One nation indivisible for all. Any changes to the agenda? No, Mr. Mayor. Uh, can you get a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Moved by K. Second by Josh. Um, all in favor? I opposed. carries. Uh, we have one presentation. Sergeant Penning. Chief, do you have a presentation? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Josh Garis began his LA career serving seven years as an MP in the Army. I know what you're thinking, Mr. Mayor. Should have been the Marines. Following the army, Josh worked for the Browns Valley PD Traverse County Sheriff's Office for nine years. His career has always been about service and his nine years at Elco Market have been no different. You all know Josh is a subdued, quiet introvert like a fawn. Uh, hold on. Uh, different officer speech. Never mind. You all know Josh is outgoing and gregarious with a larger than- life personality. While he might get a little loud at parties, those traits make him a great ambassador for community oriented policing and for this department. What you might not know is all the sacrifice and contributions that Josh has made to the department and the city behind the scenes in the name of service. Whatever the department is needed, Josh has taken on, including becoming the department firearms instructor, use force instructor, field training coordinator, department armor, investigations oversight, and most importantly until this point, leadership without rank. If you like your police department and how it runs, credit Josh is a big part of it. If you don't like the police department, then do like I do. You blame the other chiefs. Josh has made many sacrifices for this department. He's rescheduled days off, extra long shifts, missed family outings, training new officers for months without a break, which I know can be really taxing. Um, once again, leadership without rank, etc., etc., all to keep the department running and to provide the service that the residents here demand and and um expect. Josh is a keystone in the foundation of this department. Nobody has done more to earn the promotion to sergeant. When I retire, I'll look back at some of the things I did that I'm most proud of, and promoting Josh to Sergeant will be one of those. I now invite Josh's incredibly patient wife, Angie, and his sons, Evan, Ryan, and Matt, uh, to pin on Josh's color chevrons. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I couldn't have done it without my loving wife and children. And I will do my very best every day to earn this leadership position because they are the best group of people to try to lead. And my real job actually is to try to stop Craig from getting all tyrannical and uh and uh yeah, dictatorial. So that's what I'm here for. Thank you very much. All right. Now, we're going to move on to public comment. Is there anybody that has anything to speak about that's not on our agenda? State your name and address. Jean Maker, New Market. Let's see. What was I going to say? Oh, mayor council. not as nervous, but there was a posting on Facebook by one of your council members and it was kind of main thing to me was it was asking what people thought about should they be in entitled to do whatever they want on their own property which you know you can't do any everything but and uh to me unfortunately these offenders you you I don't like Facebook I won't do social media if you don't align with their opinion they get pretty darn mean. But I will state my opinion here. I mean, if there's an ordinance, I feel it should be enforced. If it's not enforced, it shouldn't be. You know, plain and simple as that. Uh, a lot of you heard this from me, but the mayor hasn't. And I I'll say it again. There's a culture in this town where people think they're entitled to do whatever they want, and it goes beyond their property lines. Yeah. No, I was going to say one more thing. Whatever. Oh, this I don't like saying this. I know there's a reason for it, but uh I was going to say it. Oh, the city tends to nurture that culture, which can mean a lot of things. You know, it's like if you don't enforce an ordinance, it's just wishful thinking. Yeah, I'm done. That wasn't too bad. Oh, thank you. Martin S on 230 William Street, New Market. I just want to know what the situation on mailboxes were. Tim, do you like a followup or? Yeah, a followup. I can give you a quick update. Uh, so we met last week. Um, me, Tom, Rich, Renee, we're going to meet with the post office, see where they can go. Not saying who's moving them or who's paying for it or who's doing anything, but we're going to meet with them, try to streamline the process and see if there's a good spot to put them. Okay, that that's where we're at right now. I don't foresee anything happening right now, right? But we we are working on it. Okay. So once we find a spot, then we'll probably reach out to you guys and figure out who's going to do it, if they can be moved, where they're going to be moved, stuff like that. So we'll keep you in the loop. Okay. Thank you. Y anyone else? No. All right. We'll close public comment. We'll move to consent agenda. If everybody's had a chance to read it, we'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Now we'll move to public hearings. Does there is no public hearings. So we'll move to general business. And there is none. So we'll move to reports. So the one item we have under administration is discussion regarding the planning and park commissioner appointments. As the council knows, our commissioners serve three-year terms and they're staggered across the commission. So every year we have one or two commissioners on each commission uh whose terms will be coming up. Uh the direction we're looking for tonight is whether or not we want to post those positions and encourage any sitting commissioners that are at the end of their terms to reapply um or whether or not we want to reappoint. All of the commissioners that are up have indicated that they would desire reappointment to their respective commission. Is there any outside interest or is it just uh we wouldn't know until we until we post. Um we you typically don't get a lot of people saying hey I want to be on a commission the next time um it opens up and we never know what sort of interest we are going to have when we do. Can you remind me what we did last time? Last time we did ask commissioners to reapply. Um, based on the discussion at the time, I think the council indicated that you need to come in for an interview, but we're not going to make you resubmit an application. We already have one on file. Um, we've seen a host of different ways of doing it. Um the council's indicated their intent is to post every time for the last several years, but in reality the most of the time we don't because either we've had natural turnover because somebody resigned or left or we want to maintain a certain mix of experience and fresh eyes and minds on the commission. Um so that's why we always bring it back because the circumstances are potentially different every time. Do we want to reappoint or we want to repost? We want to consensus. Well, the people are you're at liberty to tell us who they are, correct? Yep. So, two of them are quite seasoned and Yep. So, currently on the um planning commission. The only person that up is uh Nicole um Krookman. He is the um chair chair currently and the second most senior um on the commission. Um on the planning commission it is um Andrew and Paul. Um both are relatively recent appointees like in the last few years. I'm I'm all for just reappointing if they've shown interest in redoing it. I'm fine with that as well. I've been like very impressed with Nicole and all the work that she's put in over the last over 10 years. So I don't know the parks commissioners as well, but I feel like I mean we all know all is all about the pickle ball. So he's he's invested in the parks. He's very passionate. That's for sure. Um, but I'm fine reappointing since they continue to have interest and I don't feel like we get that many applicants, if any at all. No. When we save admin a bunch of trouble by just reappointing. I think that's probably bad. I mean, my my I I I don't disagree with anything anybody says. I I think we should have a better policy like a better process um that we just follow um to make it consistent because I mean I would love to see more people get involved but I also don't want to not encourage and support the people that are invested and and do give up their time and have a great have been great to to do it. So I mean I just I would hate to stop others from wanting to jump in and get more engaged, get more involved. Um, do we have term limits or anything like that at all? No. So, I mean, I don't disagree. If everybody wants to reappoint this this round, I think that makes sense. But I think in the inter room before we get here next year, like we do every single year and have this discussion. We have a process so that we know and and then we can encourage, you know, more engagement and things like that and consider term limits and just more of a process. I would probably agree and just say I know that we all are elected andor appointed. Um and so I think it would be a disservice to others in the community if we didn't give them that kind of same opportunity to run for something I guess if you will for lack of a better term. Um and just give people a say. Can we make an announcement somewhere that we searching for or looking for? typically public announcement typically we do it as part of the actual appointments in the past and this is kind of a leap but when we've looked for hey are you interested in participating in the city we're looking at putting together a list we get almost zero response um I think it's more concrete that we have openings um and if you're interested apply would be more effective and I mean when they're when we post for them to apply I mean it's shared through social media. There's still very little if any interest, but I should put it on that Facebook page that he was talking about. Maybe that then I was going to say maybe maybe it's more of an opportunity for us to as council members and as a mayor to take that upon ourselves and and go an extra step further. And I mean, I've shared it out. I've sent people the application and the description like you would be a good fit for this. Put in your application. and everybody's just kind of hesitant. I mean, social media does not help that. But I don't know that I want term limits, but I think it could be like a maybe every other term if you're still interested, you have to reapply or something of that nature so that we have a consistent practice because I like that idea. I like that. That's a good idea. every two years. Yeah. I mean, and maybe it's kind of the sideways way of me like putting the option out there. So otherwise, it looks as though we're kind of controlling it. We're just reappointing and appointing and doing that kind of stuff because then they get thrown back on us to say, "Well, we never have the opportunity to engage." Well, no, you actually do, and here's how. And to put it out there in the newsletter, whatever, you know, a couple months in advance. Um, so we can really encourage that to give the opportunity. people will still choose not to show up to council meetings and choose not to engage. Um, and that's totally fine, but I I think giving the opportunity I think would maybe I'd appreciate that. So, but for this round, I mean, since well, since we're so late in the game, I like the idea of a couple months in advance, like January 1, say, "Hey, we're going to be having many seats coming up. Please, you know, save the date. this is when you can come get your application and come in and grab it and then we can kind of gauge from there how many people are well so a couple thoughts one there's always the challenge of you know is this a Supreme Court appointment you're there for life until you decide to leave or die in office so well right now kind of is though because now I mean we basically reappoint reappoint reappoint reappoint so there is no term limit or I I can tell you that okay yeah the other side is getting new blood And a lot of the reappoints, even when we've gone out for postings, we've reappointed the the same. So there there's just that whole idea of how do you get the best people in there, be fair and and respectful people that are there. How do you provide opportunities to politely take people that maybe aren't living up to expectations or reflecting the level of excellence that's expected, politely move them out? That's a challenge. What I'm hearing from the council is you guys like to have a more discussion on this. Um, so would you like me to schedule this as a discussion item either at a work session or under reports at a future council meeting? Yes. After the current cycle is what I'm hearing. Okay. Okay. And hopefully none of this is taken to any of those that are up for reappoint. I'm not saying that any of them are doing a terrible job and we want to reappoint them had they go gone through the process or whatever, but I think just giving that opportunity for others. I like that. Oh, one one other quick item. If the council can indulge, it's that time of your term where to order your city long and short sleeve city shirts. Um, if you can take a minute, we'll show you what the options are so you can see it firsthand because Linda needs your feedback for purposes of the orders. So, I will model the first one for the long sleeve. There's the There's the familiar gray pullover sweatshirt. Agreeable gray. Yes. Agreeable. And Linda has other samples. Please model. No. Here is the white short sleeve shirt. That shirt. The benefit of it is it's very clean. It's very reflective of the logo. It's bright. Makes you very recognizable, but it's semi see-through. So, you do have to wear some sort of undershirt. the gray which looks like the guy at the hardware store but it's not see-through. The official words are out there. We'll have uniform of the day when we do pump engagements for all matches the newly elected um get to order. Oh, sorry. Absolutely. Anytime. you fit in or that's just been past practice. If the council wants to change the rules, you certainly can. But it's been previously the council said you get a new short and long sleeve at the beginning of every term. So if the council wants to change it, you can certainly change it. Totally a joke. All right. Conclude your your portion. Yep. public chief is not here. Oh yeah, sorry. Enough formula. You're not the face I'm used to seeing. Yeah, I didn't know if you could tell the difference. I look right past you. Sorry. No worries. Uh, community development. Um, nothing in addition to what was in the packet. Parks. Um, no, Jake didn't have anything in addition to what was in the packet. CC, we are not meeting this month. Um, and I'm sure you got a report last meeting. Scale. Um, executive committee meeting uh was basically doing a lot of work on setting the agenda for the next several meetings. One of the themes for this year is taking a look at solid waste, how it's handled. Um it's one of those things that goes under the radar, but most people don't realize that a lot of our places that our solid waste goes are filling up and nobody wants to take the new ones. Um also there's the issue of costs and alternative ways of trying to reduce the demand on the landfills etc. So there was a lot of discussion about how do you present that in a format where you can reasonably educate the elected and appointed officials without getting too far into the boring weeds of solid waste. And so um there's expecting that will be somewhere between three and four presentations throughout the course of this coming year. And then there was a little bit of discussion about um the legislative committee and composition who's volunteering to sit on that for this coming legislative session. Did they come up with any names of who's going to sit on that? Um currently Mayor Costik from Credit River is on it. Um Jason Wedell from Prior Lake participates on it regularly. Um Brad Larson, the administrator from Savage, indicated that he had time free up and would be able to participate on it. And then um council member, another council member from Prior Lake, I believe, is currently sitting on it. Everybody's invited to attend and participate as they have, but they're just kind of the active core of that group. 35 I was not able to make it. I was there this morning. It was my first meeting. So, still kind of figuring things out there. Um, but this morning we had a really interesting presentation by a professor at the University of Minnesota talking about crash data and how important it is for us to encourage our police departments to report on that crash data because it directly impacts the monetary dollars associated with infrastructure. So, particularly with our bridge, probably we'll we'll catch up Chief Bell on that along with Renee who was there this morning as well. Um, but that kind of sucked up the majority of the time. We didn't talk too much about other priorities with I35. Um, I know there is a bill with um, Senator Duckworth and Representative Cosnik for the I3550 interchange and I'm working towards something for for County Road 2 as well. All right. Any uh we'll conclude reports. Any discussion by council? I would like to bring up um some conversations I've had with some um constituents as of late about our recreational vehicle policy. And maybe Tom, turn it over to you to ask you quickly um the last time that that full policy was reviewed by the council. So the overall current ordinance was adopted in 2006 with the merger of the communities and establishing a current ordinance. Um in 2020, the planning commission went through a fairly thorough review of that section of the ordinance related to RVs and exterior storage. Um, and at that time related to campers and RVs, we actually loosened the restrictions um to allow for seasonal parking where prior to that it was what I'd say old school ordinance where you've got 3 days to load and 3 days to unload otherwise it has to be someplace else. Just curious to know maybe if there's appetite by the rest of the council to have that be something potentially reviewed, not necessarily by us, but if we sent that back to the planning commission to see if there are other necessary updates that need to be made or kind of gaps in coverage, I guess, if you will. There is one item for sure that staff says we probably should we would was on the list of housekeeping items to revisit is maybe a little bit clarification with regards to how you handle the ice castle which doubles as two different seasons. Um so that would be housekeeping item that's been on the to-do list for a little while um already. Um besides that, I'm not aware of anything else major that's come up. No, I mean totally comfortable. I mean, I wouldn't want the planning commission to prioritize it above all any of the other development that's going on uh or potentially going on. Um and to what Jean had mentioned earlier, I mean, I don't want to cater to those that really just don't care about the ordinances and and want to bypass them altogether. Um, so if there's legit reasons like the housekeeping, like the clarification on is it a camper, is it a nice house, should that be year round? Um, but, uh, yeah, I was just going to ask in the conversations with that you've had with constituents, what is their main concern with that ordinance? Is there a certain piece of it that they're more concerned about versus another portion of it? I would say the seasonal piece and I recognize obviously we're we're not we're we're very unique. Elco New Market is not the same as Lakeville. We're not the same as Lonsdale, New Craig. It's hard to really compare apples to apples, but I think our community definitely attracts a lot of people that have extracurricular hobbies and tend to be good neighbors. And so I think the biggest piece is why are we restricting something for months out of the year when if it's not impacting the city's, you know, ability to keep other residents safe, it's not impacting, you know, your your neighbors ability to keep each other safe, that sort of thing, you know, it's not impacting snowplow routes, all that. Is it something that that maybe doesn't need to be there especially in in the case of you know having a policy on the books like we heard tonight maybe not being enforced then doesn't need to be there but I think this all came up because we were enforcing the ordinance correct the most the chatter correct and in my experience we haven't had a lot of questions about the seasonal aspect of this since we made the change in 2020, but these things tend to get attention draw to them when there's a flash point. So, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Um, but we really haven't had any um concerns expressed about it. Um, in my experience, you will see a range within communities. Everything from it's okay year round to have it as long as it's on a appropriate surface and out of right of ways and meet setbacks all the way to you have three days on either side of when coming and going to load and unload. It's a community values issue and taking a look at what the impacts might be on the neighborhoods. I can tell you that when we took the hard look at the exterior storage, that was in response to a dramatically growing amount of complaints we were getting related to that subject um within the community um coinciding with increased enforcement um related to it. Um so I would suggest the council be cognizant of that that part of the efforts of looking at it even though we loosened that particular restriction um we be we made other changes and we became more um diligent on the enforcement side of it because of what we were hearing from the community. So is enforcement right now pretty proactive or is it more like complaintbased? So on most of the on exterior storage, the most common um code enforcement issues that that are properly property related, we do what we call the clean sweep program every spring, early summer. We post it, we put it on the news in the newsletter, we put it on social media to let people know it's coming, the types of things we're going to be looking for so they have an opportunity to address it before we actually come. We've been doing that aggressively for several years now. Um, we've seen an actual notable decline in the number of violations, but it's kind of plateaued in my experience in my career. You just reach a point where there's a normal churn of new ones that pop up. And there are certain properties that you can almost guarantee you're going to get a notice every every year. Um, with regards to the rest of the year, um, we operate based on direction from council, which is if we get a complaint or it's an obvious. In the case of the most recent one, we had a staff member out that was doing an inspection in the park and this was very obvious and directly across the street. Has it since been resolved? I was going to drive by there on the way here, but I just ran out of time. I do not know if it's been resolved. I was out there yesterday and it was still located on the property in and actually in a location that was you could argue was a greater violation. Yeah, it was in the driveway before, right? It was partially on the driveway now along side of the house. Is it still there? Yeah. So, it was just moved into the yard alongside the house. So, again, that I mean, it gets back to I mean, intentional non-compliance that I have no like empathy or sympathy or tolerance for. So, I mean, I think we need to continue to enforce that fully until we make any changes. And uh I mean, but for the clarification and the housekeeping, I mean, makes sense. I mean, camper if you're going to actually use it year round or put a pad on, put a put put the the tar pad there. There's options or get get we just increased the size of ADUs and you can throw a thousand square foot thing in the backyard if you have room and everything for it and you can put it in there and comply. So there's options and I mean in that particular situation it's just yeah to know just putting myself on record I don't it was re-evaluated in 2020 changes were made and um adhere to the to the ordinance and with somebody with a a trailer that that large tar the side of your driveway or your garage where you can park it. There's options. It's just not changing an ordinance but there are options. Yeah. And in this I was just going to say I think kind of what Tom you're saying too is there's other pieces of the ordinance that might warrant a potential review by the planning commission. Not not us here on the council, but send it to them, have them take a look and see are there there is at least one piece that we staff believes needs to just be cleaned up a little bit or reviewed. Um not a high priority. It hasn't been a big issue, but it was on the list of to-do items for housekeeping within the zoning ordinance. Um, if the council wanted to send it back to the commission, you know, it would be time frame. I would say if you're to do it, it would just get added to the to-do list for this work plan for this year with the thought that if you're if there's any piece that is like that they think there's any piece that's going to touch the seasonality aspect that you'd want to wrap that up before you get to the end of the season, so to speak. But we're talking about pave surfaces. We do require the pave surface. But I think the issue that you're hearing about is the seasonal thing that there's a portion of the year I have to find someplace else to put it. I I don't want to take up the time of the planning commission. I'm fine with them doing the housekeeping items, but I don't know that they need to redig into this ordinance. Um I I feel that abide by the ordinance. There's places you can park right down the road in the winter. So, what is the direction of councel? Well, okay. So, sorry to We're talking about a camper and then what the planning commission is going to look at is if an ice house, which can be used year round, could be parked in the driveway year round. And I don't think it's going to be I don't think it makes any sense to allow one type of recreational vehicle to be allowed year round and not a camper. I don't know how to better explain that. I probably shouldn't even say this out loud, but I did not know that there was a seasonal restriction. I own a camper. Um, but it does not stay in my driveway simply because I would find it a nightmare to remove snow if I had a giant thing in the way. Um, but I don't know. That piece I feel like should be reviewed by the planning commission. I guess I'm hoping that it could just be like a small extension of the housekeeping that they're doing. So, I I think there's how you phrase the direction is, hey, there's this general section. We want you to just take a look at it and see if there's anything that needs to be done or we want you to look at these specific sections or we want you to change these specific sections in a particular way. So, it really comes down to the direction that you guys would be giving them. When I I would not I don't know I can't speak for everyone else, but I would not want to like push them in any sort of direction. And I just would want them to give an honest, objective opinion on this is where we're at. This is what, you know, might be unclear. This is what would make it more clear for residents. So, I guess that's that's where I'm at. I'm just I guess if they're going to be doing the ice houses, which can also be used as a camper, then you have to address the camper situation in the winter. So I I guess they kind of have to look at the whole gamut otherwise what's the purpose of just looking at the ice right if you just send it to them directly and just say hey revisit this they will decide what is relevant and they'll they'll use their own discretion and put it on a list and when they get to it they get to it okay and then enforce everything as it sits and that person can come Okay, agreed. Anything else? Nothing else. All right, we have a motion. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to interrupt. Second. All in favor? I I thought