locally based organization. To be clear, there are other youth organizations which have kids from our community which participate in them which is why we usually get scheduled by other teams. Their kids play traveling in New Prague or their kids play traveling in um Lakeville. We have kids. We're split between two school districts and there are associations and programs through them as well. But because this is the local one, they get priority scheduling up until a certain point and then after that then we open it up and where there are conflicts we have priorities and they are the only tier one scheduling entity that we have. So that ball team that he was talking about was a tier four which means their eligibility they scheduled much later. So in this situation, we've had it in situation, unfortunate as it was, somebody scheduled later in the season. They were a lower priority, but they had scheduled and the night that Mark wanted couldn't get the that field here. That happens. It's unfortunate, but what Mark would be asking for to be clear is he wants us to be ex be exclusive to who we provide fields for to teams that are predominantly and they would have to demonstrate kids that live within the community and we would not rent to anybody else cuz is that what you're asking for? >> Yeah, that or maybe we could work something out where you know if the play Okay, so we're going to get in the playoffs, right? Playoff games come first more than practice, you know, and that's >> well the problem is people their scheduling. We can't wait to schedule it and >> totally understand. >> So what I would suggest is there are things that we can do. We provide in past years. I don't know how it worked last year to be perfectly blunt, but the way the schedule was set up is that you guys provide us with your schedule even as best as you can through a certain date. We can have some discussions about when that date is, but we already have people waiting on your schedule. >> And I I don't know my schedule this year until later on, right? I don't I don't know what it's going to detail come to. >> Just >> we can have some offline conversations about how that works, but other groups are are starting to be able to schedule. So that might be a function of I don't know if it's a function of the association or the league that you're in, but we can hold it through a certain date. I know in past years we've provided you have x% of rain out dates that are also provided at that time that you can preschedu and use. Can't have infinite rainout dates. That's unreasonable. >> Well, yeah. Yeah. But the same thing could be that you could have x number of playoff dates that are available and then you have to notify us if you don't need them. That would free those up and then you'd have some guaranteed slot of available playoff time. >> Yeah, that it's totally, you know, it's just like ego view of fields, right? If we got practices going all the time and I tell my coaches if there's a game is going to come first due to a rain out or a playoff game. So then they just got to go figure it out where they're going to practice. >> Yep. And and that's that's fine within the association where you've already reserved it. You have the ability to move your membership around. >> But we have but there are others and the city has taken the philosophy that we would provide the facilities to to other other entities than simply market baseball. >> All right. So >> because you guys don't you guys don't even if you reserved it Monday through Thursday, you don't use it all of that time. >> Exactly. And I don't want to be the bad guy that the team doesn't show up to use it. Whereas, you know, the other team says, "Well, they they didn't use it." You know what I mean? Cuz I don't know. >> Yeah. >> And again, I'm sitting at 175 kids. Pre-COVID, we had 350. Okay. And we were using Musky's Park for the kids as well, right? Because there's not enough fields. So, we we got to figure something out because there's not enough fields. New Market Baseball. I Angela, I'm sorry I haven't met you yet, but background. New Market Muskies baseball has put $50,000 into Eagle View, the two fields, and we have the right to use those two fields, right? That's with the school district. >> Okay? >> And I maintain the fields, right? So, I'm just looking for more fields because if I didn't have those two, we probably still wouldn't have enough. You know what I mean? It it's just >> we get that >> with the base length and stuff like that. >> So we we got to do something. >> And just out of curiosity, Mark, how much has the association donated to the city over the years for fields? >> Um I guess I don't have that number in front of me, but uh you you must have the number. You brought it up. As far as in 20 years that I've been here, nothing except for bases and and accessories for the fields. >> You're talking the Wagner Park fields or >> any fields. So that the city >> I don't recall the city. I mean, they're definitely working with us for, you know, making the park, you know, very beautiful, you know, as far as everything that we've done down there. >> Yeah. >> You know, and as far as Elco baseball, same thing. I mean, the entertainment value that the two baseball clubs provide this city >> Oh, absolutely. is unbelievable. And same with racing for kids. There's a lot of local stuff that happens around here for our kids. So, I'm I'm done with the the people that come from outside our city. And I get it. New Prague does it. And I've you know, I know New Prague wants to come over and use the fields. And so, I've called the city of New Prague. Hey, I want to use the two parks, two fields at at uh the fields in New Prague. Yeah, no problem. So I I can tell you from my experience, Mark, that that situation where there's a ball team that was down here that had absolutely nobody on it is rare. Most of the most of the time when we're having a call on it, somebody has a kid from our community has a kid on that team. So it may not be the majority, but there there are kids on the most of the time. I think I could feel comfortable saying the majority and probably the vast majority of the time there are kids from our community on those teams. That's how they're aware of the parks because usually usually a team completely outside the community doesn't want to drive this far. >> Well, they meet in the middle. I I mean the parent that I talked to was from Rochester down at Wagner Park >> and I asked how many kids from New Market are on the team and she said no. >> Yeah. And I'm just saying that's an anomaly. It's probably not the norm. >> Just >> So are they are they reserving the field? I'm confused as whether they're reserving it or they're just coming and using it. No, they're reserved. >> That was that was it sounds like that was a reservation. I'm not familiar with the specific instance, but they called and reserved the field. >> And Brandon, I'm sure they're they're the ones that are calling right now from what you're >> I don't know who Jake worked with last year. I don't think it's it's not a softball. No, >> but they do have pe they do have at least one child from open, >> but that's I didn't mean anything by the email. I meant was to >> I meant to do it as a gesture as a please give me your thanks. You guys get >> totally understand. But I normally come here to these meetings anyway to ask, you know, and I'm sorry. I know I'm out for my time and I apologize. I cannot stick stick around tonight. >> With regards to future fields, as you know, we get land for parks when we have development. If there's no development going on, we and and our parks right now are developed. So with regards, you say when are we going to get future fields? We will have more opportunities for fields as the community continues to develop. We do have new parks coming online. One park that we are hoping comes online has capacity to have a little league field in it and that will be a decision by this group as to what facilities are in that field. And I'm sure they'd like to hear from you on that. But that's when we get the opportunities. And even if we get the land, there's still the cost of developing the field. So just doing a little mini neighborhood park cost us around $300,000 um to do a field a park that we're kind of talking about and it's not even the fully developed park but a portion of the ultimate park half a million dollars. So in which assume that would assume a ball field. So it's there's a question of getting the land but there's also the question of funding the um construction of it right as well. >> Yeah. And I totally understand the cost of building that. But again, I've been doing this youth program myself for over >> a long time. Yeah. >> I mean, I've been doing a long time, guys. >> Y >> and I'm one of the oldest guys in the city that still is a member. So, I I just, you know, I care about these kids. >> The program for the benefit, the program wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you, Mark. >> Yeah. Yeah, but I mean we definitely, you know, it's the parents that volunteer their times, you know, so we just got to go out and get them to volunteer, too. But >> Okay. Well, I appreciate it. Normally, I stay for every meeting for the length because I appreciate every one of you guys' time, but I do have another commitment for tonight. So, >> yep. >> Okay. >> Um, >> thanks. >> Brandon will reach out to you when we start talking. We've been talking. >> But about that new park, when we get to that discussion, we'll reach out to you. As for this year, Melissa did get back to me with her Excel sheet. So, >> okay. >> It just showed the games though, so maybe you want to let her know to add the practices in there, so we can assure get those in there, too. >> Okay, sounds good. >> And that might be something just as a suggestion from my experience. You might want to dictate to the coaches when they're scheduled for their practices um that you your team has practices on these nights >> and we do that, you know, it's just like like right now. I mean, not a big deal, but we're paying 550 a night Tuesdays and Thursdays out at the school to use the school at, you know, when it's cold out. So, it's >> something that we're giving the the kids, you know. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Awesome. All right. >> Thanks, Mark. >> Thank you. Enjoyed. >> Okay. Um motion to approve the minutes from the March 11th meeting. Anybody have any any changes to it or anything? First of all, no. I get a motion to approve the minutes from the >> So moved. Second, >> Andy. All in favor? >> I I Okay. All right, general business. Uh, so the first item under general business tonight is the appointment of the chair and the vice chair. Um, so we do this every year um in the April meeting usually unless it's canceled. Um, so I just would ask the commission to deliberate amongst yourselves and decide on who you want to be the chair, who you want to have as the chair and the vice chair for the next 12 meetings. >> Is anyone interested in being the chair? I know Paul had reached out to me. >> Well, I wasn't. The only reason I reached out to you was >> Yeah. >> You had mentioned something at the last meeting when we were walking out the door. >> Right. >> Kind of. >> Well, you >> and I took it I took it as you didn't know if you wanted to do it anymore. >> Otherwise, >> I'm not >> Right. Right. Right. No, no. I'm just saying I I didn't have a chance to get back to you. So, >> yeah. No, that's >> But that is totally, you know, if everybody I don't have a problem with that. if someone else is interested in being chair or want, you know, I that's absolutely throw it in the ring and I mean I'm not this isn't something that I have to be or whatever. I've just kind of fallen into it and I don't mind doing it, but if someone else feels like they >> Has your community service ended? >> What's that? >> Has your community service sentence ended? Are you still required? >> Exactly. So I misunderstand you and I'll put it that way and that um I would >> gladly >> continue your position >> as the park. >> Sure. >> Chairman, I would >> I appreciate that. >> No, I'm busy at stuff, too. So I I don't put as much uh time into it as I used to. You're retired, so you probably have more time to uh look at things outside of it or whatever, too. So, but that's Angela, you're new, so you obviously uh don't know >> the ring, >> but you certainly could. Absolutely. Right. >> I would throw my hat in the ring for vice chair if nobody else wants to do that. So, >> and that, you know, it's only this spot. It's really we're all a group, right? We're all pretty much equal. It's just somebody here kind of running things. So, it's not like >> um you know, I don't >> I always consider that we're all equals just because I'm the chair. >> You've got a great you've got a great history of the city and the park system and all that. I mean, you do an excellent job and just the way you >> dealt with Mark here example. >> Me and Mark go way way back. >> It's a lovehate relationship. >> This is getting recorded now. Yeah, I was I was reprimanded last time. Be careful what you say. Remember? >> Right. Right. No, he he knows. He know he he know he's been dealing with me for a long time. And >> the the sad part about, you know, off track a little bit with Mark is he comes back and forth and back back. There's there's and I told him that one time, unless we do something to build more fields, there's nothing else we can do but except do the best we can with what we got. >> Right. >> Yeah. So, >> and he he knows that. We've said that before and I said we've talked about it and then >> and when we build the next the next phase, we've talked about those two new developments that we're going to combine and we can get a baseball field out of that probably going to be a USiz field, but it's probably going to be three or four years from now before it's constructed. So, >> I I I feel Mark is just he's advocating for his organization, making sure he shows up. But I did want to ask the commission, did you guys have any concerns with regards to the responses that I provided to his concerns or any or the way that I inter how that was handled at all? >> No. >> And and I and I totally understand because we've been here a long time dealing with Mark. So knowing that, you know, we yes, we want to provide to our local too, but we also we give him the opportunity to reserve those fields and he's throwing things at us that >> it's like apples and oranges to me kind of. Um, you know, he's saying, well, if he had this playoff game and we already had it given to somebody, reserved it for somebody else. That's not our problem, right? Well, that's not anything that we have done wrong. That's his organization's thing, right? That's and then he then he kind of backed off on it, right? So, >> there are a couple just as a side note, there are a couple things we've learned since we originally set up that policy. Well, there were a couple things. one, the original ask and the way that it had worked is they had exclusive use of it and they would just set it up to we have blocks of time and then the coaches would schedule themselves based on their work schedule and when it was convenient for the kids and yada yada yada. It was a little more loosey goosey and it was much more coach friendly. as the program grew and it was um grew in nature um there was kind of a need to and we're starting to get and we expect in the future a growth in other organizations that want to use the fields that we had to limit it to the time that they were actually using it and so we had arrived at a date in the past that they needed to submit it that they had first dibs as a tier one organization which is >> I think I think that's where the problem lies because this is my first year doing it but >> that date is March 14th, which is a month or two before any of them have their schedules. So the so the issue that we have is that the league that they're in, which is kind of the small town >> recreational league down this way, it's like Vessel and Montgomery and New Prague and and us and um uh >> Union Hill, >> Union Hill, St. Patrick, etc. kind of the down this direction geographically is they that organization runs behind where a lot of other organizations are at this point in the year and I think they do legitimately struggle that they don't even have team assignments and have a game schedule from the league until a certain point which is beyond that date. Yep. >> In fairness, um the there's also the other way though is they also have not been at they're not historically and they've gotten better at it historically have not been like most other youth associations where they're like they they know how many teams they have. They may not know what kids are on them. may not know who's coaching them, but they know that they have team A at this age group and team A has they've already scheduled out their practices, you know, and internal and internal games where they're playing each other. That stuff's all been mapped out. So there to a certain extent there was a amount of internal organization that they could and have made improvements on over the years. Um, I I do think it would be fair for us to maybe look at maybe a better date, although it's possible that that date may be unreasonably too far into the season as well, but we can at least find we can at least have a conversation with them. That would be my suggestion. Um, Brandon and I have talked about this that maybe we need to take a look at that date >> for it to be meaningful. has to be a little bit further out. But there is the possibility that to be meaningful, it may be like way into way into the season compared to when other organizations may be looking to to schedule >> schedule. And >> well, I think one of his issues too be one of the other meetings that they wouldn't show up and there'd be other teams playing on the field >> and you can't it's hard. We don't have policemen standing out on the field knowing who's coming down there to play. That's that's that's been there, done that kind of thing. Right. >> Yeah. And I just know from my own experience, he said, "Well, I had this team and somebody was from Rochester." I honestly don't know what the situation was there. >> I I find it hard that a team from Rochester would drive up here if there wasn't somebody local. You can find places. >> It could have been grandma came down to watch a game. >> Could have been the But I do know from past experience, it's usually my Hey, um it's usually We were just talking that maybe we should have some discussions. >> What? >> We're talking about your questions. We're talking about maybe some discussions we should have with you. >> Sure. >> So, >> but but um as we were talking I what I've seen in the past is that it's usually and it's probably not the majority of the players but my daughter plays traveling softball for Lakeville softball association or for the speed or for something on a club team or something. So, one or two or three of the kids and a lot of times what you find is they're the coach or the manager and they're like, I'm gonna I'm extra practices and I want to schedule it where I live. So, they will schedule practices down here. So, it's I Mark's probably right. The majority of the kids on some of the the majority of the kids on when they're coming from outside probably aren't from here, but there are some otherwise it wouldn't be happening here. Otherwise, it wouldn't be happening here in the first place. only youth organization that's market or is there another local? >> So the weight so um as you know from your experience Angela usually your youth sports associations are largely tied to school districts to a large degree. We're in a unique situation um this we're in a situation that's evolved over time. So obviously we're split between those two school districts and and this goes back be before the current organization. Um and you'd have people would have to drive to New Prague or you'd have to drive to Lakeville because that's where the fields were. That's where things were scheduled and there wasn't much and they didn't schedule down here with these fields. And probably I want to say 35 years ago, maybe 40, a local couple couple, the basses, they had kids and they're like, "Nope, we just want to have a simple recreational league locally um that you don't have to drive to and is very low cost. So low entry, low barrier, recreational just to give it's not for the competitive kids." And they did. So they had a checkbook and they collected enough for t-shirts and people donated bats and brought balls and gloves and it was super low, very entry level. And they did that for years, but their kids got older, their kids were like getting married, getting, you know, full adults and they're like, we just can't run it anymore. And they tried to find somebody to take over the organization. And again, the primary motivators for it were you don't have to drive far, low cost of entry for people to play purely recreational. And eventually through a lot of turmoil and trying to find people and sustainability issues, um the Huskies, one of the local ball teams, they took it over basically as a parent organization. They established the New Market Baseball Association. And um I feel confident saying that if Mark wasn't involved, it would not exist and it would not have stayed alive. He put so much time into it and he's super passionate about it. And there there's a hand, as with all associations, there's a handful of parents that really run the whole thing. and um they took it over and they've actually elevated it quite a bit from a technically not a legal entity with a checkbook to an actual entity um with an association that has a lot more structure and they've continually improved it and it has grown with the community with regards to participation. But way back in the day, they didn't even schedule the fields. Nobody else was using them. They just showed up as we grew and as we had more demand and as their needs grew. Um there was a period of time where it's like, "Nope, you guys just get the fields. Everybody else gets kicked off, but then we started having inquiries from other people who wanted to have access to the fields and we didn't know if we could let them use the fields." We literally were saying, "Show up at the fields and if there's a youth there, then you can't use it." So, we started getting into more scheduling. That was a little bit of a culture shock to them. Um and but at the same time they still there isn't a lot of competition at this point in time for the fields right now. We get how many inquiries have you had so far? >> One today >> for like two two days. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's like it's a handful a year of of competing uses. So, in part, the structure of the policy set up for something that we expect to develop over time, and in part, it's not as big of an issue that Mark talks about because the actual number of reservations we have that aren't them during any season is relatively small, >> right? >> Um, >> maybe later in the season as other >> as you get later in the season, people are looking for playoff game locations, people are looking for extra practice, that type of stuff um as well. So, I know it was a lot, but we have new face and I figured bring everything up. No, that's okay. That's okay. >> So, >> refresh. You bet. >> Well, you you asked the question about how much they contribute to the city for the use of fields, >> right? >> So, we don't charge zero. >> We don't charge for the use of fields, >> right? >> And just, you know, and you know, but my kids played traveling baseball. My oldest played all the way up played up into high school. I was a coach. I sat on the board for a number of years. Our public works director is the assistant varsity coach for Farmington for their softball team. He coaches club team. He's like super softball guy, right? Um and we've both been involved with associations. Um, and I've been involved with football association and all that kind of stuff with my kids growing up. Everybody else charges for fields. Maybe not a lot, but they charge. And if you want to get be on the good side, your association generally donates a crap ton of money to make sure that you one, the quality of the fields is good and which is good for the kids, all good reasons, and that um you get a level of that. When I was in Farmington, um we traded level of donation, annual donations to the school district to get scheduling priority level two right below the teams, the actual high school teams to be able to get access to district facilities. It was a lot of money. I'm not saying they should, but we don't charge anybody for the the fields. They have done stuff on the fields. They've bought like bases and stuff like that over the years and and made donations, but I do not recall at any point that they've made any donation or have ever offered to pay for fields. We maintain them and it's not high. We drag them every day during the season. That's pretty much what we do. Um and then we maintain the other infrastructure. It's not a big demand either. Um so when Paul are going like what do they they have not I'm sure he's going to go look somewhere and see if somebody said they don't. just, you know, Angela and I both have probably worked in places where they >> So, you guys are familiar with associations have a lot of money and they they build storage buildings and >> so I can tell you they don't score but they put the money in >> because they're committed to those notes but as more competition comes It still takes our staff time to talk and then I don't know how it works later but they maintain like supplement >> and those other cities have the advantage of having 20 to 30 fields available too. So right there was always >> and we used to maintain the eco few we had a joint like powers >> we mow we didn't maintain the field >> fields okay >> he still maintain the field >> m the school trim mode we did the majority of yeah right >> and the school the school paid us to do that >> oh they did that contract >> this will be our second summer >> has been that longer I Last year was our first first year. >> Second year without it maybe. >> Yeah. So this would be the third summer. >> This will be our third summer. >> That's my school. >> Yeah. It was just one of those deals. They had difficult they didn't have a good place to keep equipment. The cost to bring the equipment from New Prague over to here or store it here. And at the time we felt we had capacity to be able to, you know, we've got mowers that are 16 feet wide. We can mow a lot of grass really quick. And they had a little more. So we entered into agreement for oh was a while. We had it for a number of years um where we did the mowing, but we just got to a point where we didn't have a it for us to what we'd have to charge them flip the numbers and it was fine. It was all agreeable and they just decided to move in to maintain fields them. >> What was he talking about on the uh was that a gym rental when they have to go inside? >> Yeah, >> I think what they're talking about is spring training with the kids and work camps. I think we're stuff. >> Yeah. They they used the gym for >> limited activities, but they >> pay through community yet, I bet. >> Yeah. Not sure. >> Yeah. >> And just to clarify, as for the coaches, I don't know why Jake was doing that last year, but I'm not I didn't allow it this year. It's I have they have one contact from the from the Muskies who reach out to me now. It's Melissa is her name. And >> so I just work with her and she works with the coaches. >> I I want to clarify that too. And I don't know how where it ended up last season, but when we set it up, when Jessica set up the system the way that you guys had approved it, >> right, >> is they have to provide their schedule. Their scheduling person has to call us if they want to change that scheduling time. >> Yeah. So what we because we were we were running into initially is their coaches would be calling us to schedule stuff and it was just a >> a mess and we also >> Yeah. Exactly. So this year that it's not an issue. It's one point of contact. >> Yeah. >> So >> which I think was the intent. >> Yeah. >> So and now unless he's referring to and >> her name is Melissa >> Dur once we get into the season they may call back but again not the coaches. It would be somebody from the association that would say, "Hey, we've got a coach that wants an additional field, etc." And I'm assuming with you guys who've worked that that was been my experience, too, is the association had a designated scheduling person or two that would take care of all the scheduling. So, >> so basically we do give them Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, don't we? I mean they pretty much have the whole all the fields every night >> week Monday through Thursday and like well the the issue arised because you know he said can I just start with Monday through Thursday each each Monday through Thursday for every week until I get the schedule and I said no I can't allow you to do that and that's how this conversation came about today essentially but yeah >> there like I said there's there's things depending on how accommodating you guys want to be and what level of um preference you want give them maybe it's like no we're we are going to give them unfettered exclusive access to X date and then they have to give us a schedule after that. I don't know. We I think we need to talk through it a little bit more and we have to parse through what the realities are um of the situation um not just the conveniences of it as well. Um, but I would also suggest that whatever we do, we want to keep in mind what the future might look like because it's hard to claw back a level of um deference that you give um as we've experienced in the past then rather than give it. That being said, and I know we're going back and forth, there isn't a ton of competition for the fields at this moment in time. Like I said, there's a handful of other formal scheduled stuff that happens during the during the year based on >> surprised how many people they lost through co how many kids they numbers went down >> 50% or >> 50% they lost during CO that's >> we might want to go back and look because I'm wondering what their but what I don't know what the number was prior to CO said 350 >> he said they lost it coming out He said it went down 350 to 175 >> at CO went down >> after. So yeah, CO between the 350 and the 175. >> Yeah. I just I don't know if that was if it peaked during CO or not. I don't remember >> like like CO caused it to go up and then go back down. I don't know. >> And the first time I came to a meeting, Angela, he was he was here the first meeting I ever attended wanting more fields. And I'm going where how are we going to do that? I I said it to him. I said, "We don't have the land and we don't have the money to build more fields." But basically the land, you know, >> and we've said that to him before. It's like >> he doesn't >> Yeah. I feel like we've had >> to us and let us know what we could do to help you to >> we'll do the best we can with what we got. That's >> You're not giving us anything either, right? >> I think he knows that we don't have the space for it. I think he just wants to make sure that when we do have the space for it, he's the first thing we think about. It's he he's good intentionally squeaky wheeling to just make sure that when we have opportunities >> they get first consideration for for a facility. So >> it might just work. I don't know. So, but >> we'll have those conversations going in the next couple years here because we do have the land coming in now. So, >> nothing that needs to be decided today. And I think that this might not even be an issue this year because the other group that reached out to me is not going to qualify. So, I'm gonna say they can't use the fields anyways. But, I just wanted to schedule. So, um, >> I just want to ask Tom, too. What do you drink at the Squirt, the Dr. Pepper, or the GZero? >> Triple fist. >> This one's done. This one's halfway. And this is my backup. So, >> it's quite the combination. >> I know. Squirt to G0. >> So, um, do we want to talk more about baseball or should we go back to vice chair? >> We should probably get back on task. I wouldn't mind it. >> That sounds good. >> Sorry, I helped take us down. >> That's right. No, it was a good It was a good conversation. >> Don't bring up water towers. >> Do they to go back to baseball, do they use Rowena? >> Yes, that counts as one. >> So, they use all three of our fields. >> Yep. Okay. >> Yeah. >> He just said the two at Wagner. That's I thought >> I think he thinks it's the same park. I think half the city thinks that's all one park. >> It's not. >> Nope. >> Sometimes. >> All right. So, back to does does anyone want to throw their hat in? Do we want to do vice chair first or you want to do chair? >> You could do it as a single motion if there's if it's a undecided straight ballot. Yeah. >> Yeah. For straight ballot. Okay. >> I'd like to make a motion that Mr. Stutton remain as a >> What is this title? President. >> Chair. >> I'm reading your thing. It says park commissioner. We should have commissioner on there. Chair of the of the >> I will parks committee >> then vice chair. >> I made a motion though. So you get somebody second. >> All right. All in favor? >> Okay. Vice chair. >> Who all wants to throw their hat in? >> Paul, you said you wanted to throw your hat. >> I do it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> That's like being a vice president. You know, I was vice president my senior class. I didn't go to one meeting. I but I had I had the title. So, so you get sent out to do all the crappy jobs and get none of the credit. Is that what you're saying? >> Does that mean you won't come to meetings anymore? >> Is anyone else >> interested in the position? It's a tough one. >> I mean, I guess Paul wants >> Paul wants it. All right. Anyone want to make a motion? That's Paul for vice chair. >> I'll make a motion vice chair. >> Okay. Second. >> Second. Andy. All in favor? >> All opposed. >> This is going to look good on my resume. >> All right, Paul. >> I'm gonna have to switch seats around again. >> Don't you ever get sick. >> Wait till we go live stream. I don't know which one of us has more seniority. Which one of us is sworn in first? >> Yeah, that's right. >> Oh, that's right. >> Yeah. >> Senior. >> Yeah. >> Highlands at Eagle View. >> Yeah. So, this is a two-parter. Uh part one is let's pick a name for the park and part two is your opinion on the layout. So, um I think we just do them as completely separate items and motions. >> Okay. >> So, um would you like to start? I'll start with with the naming and I recommended Highlands Park as the as the name for one main reason and that's it doesn't have the words eagle view in it. So everything up there is Eagle View. Highlands at Eagle View as the development. The name has to have something with the development in it essentially based on our policy. So to me that's the logical option. I would you guys can think otherwise that's fine. But I'd like to start with that as my recommendation. So >> I think we actually brought that up at the last meeting, didn't we? And thought that's a great idea. I feel like we did. >> Yeah. >> So, do you want a motion on that? >> Either that or since there's two parks going with high that are Eagle View in the name. >> Can we call them one of them Eagle Park, the other view park? >> Be funny. >> I've been out there a lot. I haven't seen an eagle. I saw one at my place. >> Spell it backwards. It's wive and el jaw. All right. So, someone want to make a motion that we go on naming the park Highlands Park. >> Second. >> Second by Andy. All in favor? >> I >> I I would say Highland and not Highlands, >> not make a pearl. Just Highland Park. >> Yeah. >> Which one do we want to go with? >> You have to re guys. How do you You have to re >> the development. Highlands >> at Eagle View. >> With an S or without >> with an S. >> Yeah, >> I would say we should probably go with the S then. >> Okay. >> And that's what we already >> that's we already approved. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> All right. Um for the layout, I'll I think maybe I'll just share it on the screen. The layout that we I got sent and we can just talk through it. So, the layout that you're about to see here um was sent over to us by the developer. So, it we told them what we wanted in the park and they put the components in there as they see fit. Uh the only discrepancy is they're showing a full basketball court there where we only budgeted for a half court. So, I would like that specified whether you guys would like a full court or a half court and then your opinions on just the overall layout. >> Can I speak to that quickly >> from experience? From experience, >> we uh in one of the cities, a couple of cities I worked at, we quit calling them basketball courts to begin with. We call them hard surface play areas, right? Even though there was one basket at one end, people could use them for other things. We actually painted four square in one of the corners and we did and u and and it's and but we did have a basket a hoop at one end and there's more of a 3/4 size than a than a full-blown, you know, 90 is that a 90footer? Yeah, that'd be about junior high size. So yeah, I think uh one of the reasons we did that because people were asking about well can we if it's a basketball court can we you know still go play volleyball on it if we want to or set up a bad mitten or the kids um I think the only thing we did was put a on a some someone put a free throw line there because if we didn't the kids would use the spray paint and put the free throw line on on the thing but we did you We didn't uh I I don't think we need a full-size basketball court. Typically the kids are most of the you see a lot of tournaments now and a lot of it a lot of it's half court games. is I mean there's big time half court basketball and a lot of movies you see they're playing half court basketball and full court just um taking up a lot of green space and so thinking that the other half of the court could be green space so you can go you know here I go again playing catch and you know with the kids and having a little green green area to uh have a have a little impromptu soccer game or whatever you want to do on that other the green space, but that's a lot of lot of black top um there. That's that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. But anyway, >> maybe throwing a thought out is what is the nature of the park? If it's a mini park, which it is, um who is your who's your primary audience? Is it a park that's intended to attract people from other neighborhoods with in facilities that are of that nature or is it facilities that are intended to primarily serve, you know, your people within a quarter mile type of thing, which is going to be mostly those families? >> Yeah. And so there's that's that's just my I don't think we need a full court basketball court there. I think we it we'd be better to just have some nice green space for people to play on and picnic on and you know they can you know do a lot of other games there. >> The trail through the center to the shelter on the buminous pave. >> Yeah, it's a sidewalk. >> That'd be Yeah, concrete sidewalk. >> Concrete. Okay. >> Through the center at least. The outer bike path is the Yeah. Puminous asphalt. >> Yeah. The dark gray is Yeah. patuminous and then the like splattered is sidewalk concrete sidewalk. >> That's a pond under >> where? >> Yeah, that would be a >> Oh, yeah. Storm water >> to the south. Yeah. >> So, we have two other basketball courts in other parks, right? How heavy of use do they get? Very. From what I hear, they >> Yeah. >> Um, Little Windows gets a lot of usage. Rowena. I don't venture that way as often, but that one, you can tell it gets used. >> And then that's where the pickle ball court is, too. So there's >> it gets some, but most of the time when I've seen kids, people there, they're playing on one half. They're just playing on one half, >> you know. So that's >> I think I think with the kids that are in the community as of today, Windows gets used more, but that one's consistently being used. >> Absolutely. I think the other thing that that you see is if you drive around Rowena, you will see in a twob block area probably 10 back boards either on houses or in driveways or in the streets. So that's kind of the kids play a lot of when they're shooting with their neighborhood buddies. They're uh playing at home a lot with mom and dad or whoever. But that's >> and I'm just throwing this out because I know I don't look at but back in the day I used to play a lot of pickup ball when I was in college and and in high school. Um I was never but I like playing pickup ball. Um and what I noticed in most more mature communities is they would have parks where they would have full size or three quarter size but two-ended things, but that's where you would go for the big games where you just go and show up. And then most of your smaller neighborhood parks usually just had a undersized half court or a half court in um I'm just asking so that was my experience. What's everybody else's experience with regards to the hierarchy of outdoor basketball courts within a community? >> Do they have any other suggestions instead of basketball court? Um I don't know why that they put a full court in there. They But the basketball court was something that was outlined by the city council as yeah as a facility. So there will we are required to have at least a half court >> and the same can be said about the shelter in the play area as well. Those are we can't remove those features. We can just move them around. But someday we have to talk about shelters too and and whether they're really a necessity in the in all of our parks because that shelters are 25 to $35,000 and that's a lot of money that could be put into a play into the playground too. So that's just I'm just throwing that out there just knowing that >> yeah that for for Angela's background because the the and for Dan's background but Andrew and Mike were here for that. So that's kind of the new model that we established based on community neighborhood feedback when we did the Boulder Heights Park when we talked to the neighborhood about what they wanted that was one of the aside from the that was the second we want a playground and we want a shelter and we want a shelter large enough to be able to accommodate multiple picnic tables with power available to it. That was like the two most important things that that neighborhood wanted as a developing neighborhood because they wanted to be a focal point in the neighborhood where they could go and they could gather. So that has kind of become like the model for as basic elements of a of parks is creating that gathering space element. Paul's correct. They're not cheap. But that was kind of the basis for why it's kind of, how would you say it's it's planted in the psyche of park design at the moment was based on our experience there and it's been common in some of our other parks as well. the problem with we try to keep Boulder Heights ADA compliant too. And um we've got I think six picnic tables under that shelter now and it's not ADA compliant. I mean if if you if you really wanted to make it 36 in, you know, you'd have you could only have four tables in there. So, it's that's just and I >> I think Paul's right. It was originally designed for four. >> Yeah. >> So, >> but again, that's >> that the the one in Boulder Heights, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It was originally designed to accommodate four tables. So, >> yeah. So for a large community group to get underneath that shelter and shelters, you know, some shelter is nice, but you can do all kinds of different designs without having a picnic shelter. I mean, you see the new some of the new style things over picnic tables or over benches and stuff like that. So people can get out of the sun if they want to, you know, but do you know how many houses are supposed to be in the neighborhood? 148 >> 148. >> You got to take it. Remember, we almost didn't get this park. >> Well, I think >> they were going to >> I think we originally I think we voted not to have >> No, we voted to have it. The planning commission voted it down. >> It was split. You guys voted for a park. Planning commission said no. City council said yes to a park. >> Yeah. And aside from other comments, there was only three people that showed up on the planning commission that night. So, >> but to be fair, it was split. So, like it this isn't the full parkland dedication. There was some combination of cash and loot and parkland dedication. >> So, it's a little bit of both. We get a little bit of land and we get a little bit of cash, >> but we were lucky to get this >> and there's still enough room for all that. Like that's what I'm having. >> Yeah. And we have we have the funding earmarked for it for this year. whe they keep that there. I think that's a safe assumption. Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend making the shelter any bigger. But a follow-up question is if you chose the half court, how would you want it aligned in this Uh, I would do the north half because you never want to have the sun behind the the backboard. You want to have it to your back. >> So, I would say that you leave the north half of it. >> That's a good point. But that's assuming that the commission is cool with the rest of it. >> So, it's just green. You're saying just grass. Is that whatever was contemplating? >> I think those are the two options. either an extra a full court or half of it. >> Couldn't be some other type of amenity. >> Um I don't know if it I don't know if I'd say it can't be, but we wouldn't be able to pay for it this year. >> Expansion. There'd be an expansion slot, Mike. >> So, >> but if we laid the groundwork, it could be say pickle ball court. No, >> we could stripe out a pickle ball court on the basketball court and people can bring their own nets. >> But if I guess what I'm hearing is throwing it out there. I'm not >> We could do everything except for the full court and it would leave room for either open space or if you wanted to potentially another facility to be determined in the future possibly. >> There's nothing wrong with preserving some green space. That's that's the thing too, you know. I think that that's maybe the best approach is we wouldn't want to put we wouldn't want to determine another facility that can go in there today. I think we leave our options open. Yeah, I think leaving it open so people can throw a ball around or kick a soccer ball or whatever is a good idea >> or put up their own volleyball nets or whatever they want to do, you know. >> So, there's enough in that budget for playground, the shelter, the half court, and all the sidewalks. There's not much left after that, but yes, but that's that's what the that's what the park dedication funds are for. So again, I'd like to I wonder how many bays are in that swing set. That's four bays. So is it four swings? It seems since I used to design these things, it doesn't it seems pretty big. So, >> we we get down to that once they >> once we get some proposals from >> proposals. Yeah. Yeah. >> Which I'll start on right after I get this recommendation here. >> Work on getting some people in here to show us what some options. >> And if you if you really needed to make a little more room for the playground, you can push it out a little bit side from side to side. But it sounds like you guys are supportive of this as the conceptual layout less the southern half of the basketball court. >> Yeah. What's the distance from the uh hoop to the road up there? >> That's pretty good. >> So if you >> So if they miss the ball's not out in the middle of the road. >> No, I'd say it's well >> a fair amount >> because you got a distance to the sidewalk and then you got Boulevard beyond the sidewalk. >> Say about 50 feet maybe. >> 50 ft. Okay. That's a my estimate just based on how big the if you put that little 20 foot shelter in there that's about 30 to the edge of the property then you got like Tom said boulevard. >> Okay. >> That would be my only other as a driving instructor. >> It's good to keep the the students on their toes though. >> That's right. >> Got tell the kids they got to make the baskets to coach them. recruit Dan to go up there and roll roll it out in front of your students as they come by. >> Awesome. >> Second. All in favor? >> I opposed. >> And just a couple of things I want to th throw at you guys quick before Tom gets into the capital outlay is one if you look at the YouTube video I forgot to record it until like halfway through Mark spiel. So sorry for that but I'll still reflect what he said in the minutes. Um and also I don't think anybody told you this Angela but um the mic you just need to talk and then off. >> It Oh it is the green light does mean it's on. So >> you're fine. I just didn't know if it was on. >> It is. It just missed the first five minutes. >> You thought I was perfect. >> That's okay. >> So, all right. >> Mike was supposed to tie, too. I don't know. >> All right. All right. So, we'll just go through this presentation here and then just have an overall discussion about capital outlay planning. >> So, just a little bit of context for this discussion. So, we're coming into our budgeting cycle for the city. I always joke that we have this nice break from the from January 1st until about midappril where we're not doing budget otherwise we're in the budget process and during that window and overlapping Kelly's working on year end and audit so um this is can is a big portion of our year from a cycle standpoint typically what happens is in May we're putting together a the working draft of the budget Um, Kelly and I are collecting information from parks commission, the various departments to put into a working budget for our discussions in June with the council about budget goals and priorities um for the upcoming season. Typically in July, Kelly and I are putting together the draft budget. Council sees line item draft budget in August. They approve preliminary budget in September and then we have September through December to basically work through full refinement on the budget before budget adoption. So generally what we're looking for tonight from this group is initial feedback on the capital outlay of the budget. If you look at um you guys are advisory to the council on those budget items and there's really two parts in the budget. There's the operational side, which I say there's not much for you guys to give feedback on. It's this is how much you spend on chemical. This is how much you spend on maintenance for the equipment. That stuff's going to be driven by trends and feedback from Derek. Um on the capital side, that's different. That's where we're budgeting money for repair and replacement of the existing park system and not historic and potentially future parks. So capital parks dedication going towards new parks is also within the capital outlay. So that's where we're looking for feedback. So um I'll show you the example of what the capital outlay looks like the actual workbook, but I want to go through and provide some background and context so you guys are all on the same page when we're having the discussion. So first um funding for our parks um for the existing park system and development of the park system comes with three sources. One would be park dedication. The other would be charitable gambling capital outlay and I'll talk through those in a little bit more detail. So first is park dedication. So, we can require, we have statutory authorization to require that a developer provide us with land or um cash um following a formula as part of their development. Right now, what we require is that they provide us 8% of the net area if we want to park in that or 8% of the value of the property if they're paying full cash or some combination there too. Um, according to our 2040 comprehensive plan, our preference, the stated policy preference is to acquire park and trail land through dedication, purchase or donation. And in the areas that we've identified, park search areas. um when it's not advantageous to accept parkland, meaning it's outside of one of those search areas, the property itself is too small to provide land in any meaningful amount or it's within a certain distance of an existing park, for example. In those situations, the idea is that we would take cash and then that cash will be used to help us fund the development of the parks where we do receive the land. you guys will talk a little bit about later, but to remind you guys, park dedication alone is not sufficient to build out our park system. The cash that we would get. Okay, next one. Charitable gambling. So, in Minnesota state statute, if charitable gambling organization, so this would be like the fire relief with their pull tabs or the Burnsville hockey association or the Elco Express baseball team. But if you're a charitable organization, um the city can under statute require that a certain percentage of their net proceeds for the year are dedicated to the city. Um that was put into my understanding that statute was actually put into place because you had organizations that were state, nation or international such as the Lions where they would come into charitable gambling and all of the money left the community. charitable gambling um which is a vice is allowed for charitable gambling purposes because the idea is that the money stays and gets reinvested in a philanthropic way back into the community. And so this was a way that under statute cities could guarantee that at least a percentage of that money stays in the community. We currently require that um 5% of the net charitable gambling money that's raised by our organizations, primarily the relief association, a little bit of Elco baseball, a little bit of I think maybe a hockey association gets donated Lions gets donated to the city. It's not a huge dollar amount on an annual basis. However, under state statute, when you receive those dollars, they're dedicated or special fund. You can only spend it on certain things. So when we collect that dollar annually, it goes into a fund. You can spend it on things like youth sports. You can spend it on public safety related items and so on and so forth. You see down here things are like food programs, community and public art programs, um funding, water quality monitoring programs, wildlife management. Historically, our city has decided that we would take those dollars and spend it in the parks. Next slide. >> Back it up one. Charable gambling funds the city receives must be spent for defined charitable purposes. >> Yep. >> So that includes all recreation programming. Is that considered or is that >> qualifying qualifying programming? So there the there's very specific this is a summary but there's very specific criteria on what you can spend the money on >> and one of those is one of those for example like we're using charitable gambling this year to fund historic Elco Park replacement >> because that's primarily used by people's under the age of 21. >> Yeah. >> Y so you can't use it for let's say a bench at a ball field because somebody over 21 may sit on the bench. So you but you can use it on things that are designed for or intended for qualifying youth um activities and facilities. Um again, we could spend it on other things. The council could decide that we spend those dollars on public safety measures, donations to supporting the food shelf, those types of things. But again, historically, uh the city's made the decision that those dollars are going to go all go to parks. So in our model that we have um for capital outlay, we assume that all the money is going to parks and that it would be used for um we have to assume that those funds are not guaranteed because we don't know if those organizations are still going to continue to function or at what level how well they're going to do on their gambling revenue. So we don't know how much we're going to get. It's a an assumption. Um, we have assumed in the model $10,000 per year. That's a conservative number that we're pretty sure we're going to get year in and year out. And we may get more and that's great because then we have more to play with on hand when we make decisions about what to do with what's on hand. But in the model we've in the past made decision 10,000 is a good base number that we can assume that we will be getting into the future. Any questions on that? Okay. Capital outlay. So we have money we get from development. We have money that we get from charitable gambling organizations and then we have capital outlay. Capital outlay is funded by property taxes. So this goes directly into the tax levy. Um and then that can be used for repair maintenance and operating expenses. Historically we have used capital outlay to maintain the existing system and have relied on capital or park dedication revenues to build the system if that makes sense. Now, if we go back more than five years ago, our capital outlay was just a number. The council said, "We can squeeze x amount out of the budget for you guys. Do what you can with it." And it was pretty much a cash in cash out system. The commission would go there and say, "Okay, we've got so much cash on hand. The council's told us they're going to give us this amount of cash, which wasn't nearly what it is today, and we'll do what we can with it." So the best way to describe it, there wasn't a long-term plan of maintaining the system. It's like we have this amount of cash, this is what we can do with it. So I describe it as the little Dutch boy in the dyke. Highest priority, highest priority, how much cash we got? Oh, we can do that. This is going to have to wait another year. And that's how we did it for decades. Well, five years ago, um, we made the change to having a rather than a, um, priority cash in, cash out based approach to a needs-based approach where we took a look at our existing system, what we really should be budgeting and building in reserves to do repair and replacement on that perpetually going forward, what we need to be putting in on an annual basis to do that. And what we found, to no surprise, is that we were behind the curve. And the recommendation from this body to the city council was that we would budget increase how much we were budgeting by $5,000 a year up through 2020 >> 2027. So next year um and then it appeared based on the size of the system at that time that would be sufficient to fund the system going forward for replacement. So when we need to rework Romina Ponds Park and replace the play system, there should be cash there to be able to to do that. So everybody kind of tracking so far. So capital outlay was really to build existing s to replace the existing system. Um how next slide. So this is what I had talked about. Um in 2023 we had reviewed our all of our parks and we looked at the equipment. So this is the big stuff like we have a slot, we have a play system, we have um a building, we have a backs stop. It's those fixed capital assets that we need to replace. Now things like ball fields, once you build a ball field, it's just a maintenance item going forward. So we don't budget to replace a ball field. So it's primarily those larger expensive fixed assets and it's for repair. It's for replacement of those normal day-to-day. If a swing breaks, that doesn't come out of there. That's an operational maintenance item that, you know, Derek and his team will take care of. And then we plug this into the model. The best way to think of it, I'll use a truck. Let's say public works needs a new truck. It cost $10,000. I know that's not nearly, but you need an item. It's $10,000 and it has a 10-year lifespan. You need to put away $1,000 a year. So, you have $10,000 10 years from now. It's as simple as that. And I'll show you how it works. But if you assume a play system has a lifespan of 25 years and it costs $250,000 to replace, that's probably overstating, but then you need to put away $10,000 a year to be able to replace it. So, that's the basic structure of how we figure that out. Any questions on that? Okay. Um, the one thing that we want to make sure that we propose is that it does not include future assets. So right now it's based on what we have in the city right now or what we know that we're going to be building right now. So we're not taking a look at ah some point in the future we need to be putting money away for that huge athletic complex that we might have 10 years from now. That's not into the mo that's not put into the model. So in the simplest terms when we bring a new park on we then insert it into the model going forward. So, as the park system grows, we will have to budget for the replacement of those new parks or in the future, the assets in those parks going forward. And we'll see how that plays out for Highlands. We've got cap, we've got our park dedication dollars to build it, but then the model has also incorporated making sure we're accounting for replacing the basketball court, the um the shelter, the playground equipment, swing sets, the concrete curbing, all of that stuff. Does that make sense? Okay. Um the long-term go back one utilizing the capital outlay budget allows us to be able to make sure that we are building those revenues. So if you think about it, you might have builded revenues for a park, but then you have to replace the pavilion goes down and then your building reserves. So when you look at it at any point in time, it's not what you have in a point in time. It's do you have enough on hand when you need to make the expenditure if that makes sense. And we'll show you on the charts how that kind of works. So the current funding amount as we talked about for this year is $70,000 um in 2026. Um, and we'd made a recommendation to the council, which they agreed with, that we should increase that $5,000 a year between 2024 up through 2027. That ultimately will get us up to this plateau of $75,000, which at the time was anticipated what we would need to be budgeting going forward to be able to fund the system at that time. Now, we do need to modify it, revisit this on an annual basis. There's a couple of reasons. one time frames and assumptions related to when we replace stuff may change. Um, a big example is we adjusted the time frame when we felt that we would have to replace the Winger Park pavilion. We moved it actually out a full decade and that actually bought us a lot of flexibility in the model um in in the near term. Uh the other things that we need to point out is that the capital model outlay as we talked about incorporates all existing parks. Highlands Park because that's parkland we have that's a project that's happening this year and the estimated cost associated with Highlands in the future. It does not include the Eagle View Meadows Park that is likely to happen because we don't the plat hasn't even been approved. We don't have the land yet at this time. Next slide. So if you're to look at it, I'm going to stand up to point this out here. The utility fund model as we built it or excuse me, not the utility fun capital outlay models build essentially cash flow model. It says this is how much cash I have on hand and each of our three funding categories capital outlay park dedication and gambling. It says this is how much I think I'm going to get for revenue into that particular funding source that year. Tax dollars, dollars from developers, money, $10,000 a year from the gambling organizations. Then we project those expenses that were from each of those parks. Yep. In 2028, we're going to have uh x amount of expenses associated with x parks. Boom. heavy draw down. Now we only have $94,000 in that year. Does this make sense? So it's just a running balance sheet of where we're projecting to end up every year. Go to the next slide. So if we put this in a graph um with park dedication relatively flat because we don't with park dedication to a large degree when we run the model we budget based on what we have on hand because we don't when the development is going to happen. A lot of, you know, we can't say, "Oh, we think there might be a development over there five years from now, and we're guessing that they're going to give us this much cash. Heck, we don't even know what the cash is because it's based on the sale value of the property, which we don't know what it's going to be five years from now." >> So, if you go back to the other slide, there's a there's a column on park dedication. >> Yep. >> So, is that a shot in the dark 28 or is that just a >> No, we have this today. >> Huh? >> We have 37623 today. Okay, >> we know that we have already projected some expense in there, >> but we don't have other projected expenses at this point because we don't have the money to project aense. >> So the 288 23 going down the line is a >> projection. We control capital. We can decide what we want to budget. So we can project them. >> Gambling, we have a reasonable expectation based on past experience. >> This is hit or miss over time. We can't control it. So we we're on these we'll do two in the bush. This is bird in the hand is more than two in the bush. We don't know what we're going to have and we're going to have >> understood. >> So the reason that 28 keeps running is because we are assuming that we're we're conservatively assuming we're getting zero dollars from any park dedication and that's that's what the balance would be left over. >> Okay. Okay. I got you. >> Is everybody tracking that? >> So capital is the best. You can see the bill reserves have big expenses in that year. Build reserves have another big expense. Build reserves have another big expense. The idea is you don't want this line to drop below zero. Actually zero plus some amount of contingency because things some point something cost more than you expected over time. Um you'll notice with gambling again that's just increasing because if you're going to buy a playet you're only getting $10,000 per year. If your place's $100,000, that means you need 10 years of family revenue to be able to pay for it. So right now, as we approach an intended use, we may target it and that'll pull it down. But right now, other than >> park, we don't have plan because that will suck that down low. It'll take time to build up the reserves to be able to do a sizable project. Does that make sense? So we're taking a conservative approach. So from a staff budgeting standpoint, this is kind of our flexibility. If we get to a point where we have enough and we can use it to replace a piece of equipment or play system or another qualifying expense, it frees up capital outlay and gives us some flexibility down the road and also gives us a little bit of cush where we can use it on qualifying expenses. Does that make sense? Next slide. So um I'm going to show you what the model actually looks like here. So Brandon, you want to stop sharing? >> Do we want to go through the few slides regarding Eagle View Meadows first? >> Um, let's come back to that. I'll bring up the other M. I'll we'll bring the model back up. Here we go. Come on. There we go. So, the best way to think of this is let's say we take um I'll pick a random park, Wen Park. Here are all of those capital replacement expenses. You know, we got to replace the blue swing set. We got to replace the seessaw. We got to replace the hover net. We take the year it was last purchased. We take the estimated replacement cost and the lifespan and we know that we have to replace it in 2047. So we run out here to 2047. Tada. There it is. That's the replacement cost budgeted in 2047. Make sense? We do that for everything. Then what we do for all of the parks is we roll them up. So here's each park with that rolled up with their rolled up expenses and in a particular year. So in 2027, we expect that we're going to have a $1,900 expense in Wagner Park. If you look at it, we're projected to have $63,000 in park dedication. Um, we're expected to get a little bit off of Highlands. We take the expense of $1,900. Boom, boom, boom. Here's your remaining park dedication fund balance. Does that make sense to everybody? >> And I just want to clarify one thing. So, because we just said that we don't incorporate future funds from park dedication, but now we show that we are. This is just for purposes of this. This isn't like the actual thing we use. >> This isn't the actual budget. >> So, all those highlighted tabs are actually zeros in the real one. So, for example, capital outlay projected balance 166,000. Um, we know that we're recommending to the council and the council has been committed to $75,000. We have no expenses. So, the balance is going to go up by $75,000. But the following year, we get another $75,000, but we have $44,000. We have $221,000 worth of expenses. that sucks that balance way down and now you're down to $94,000. Is everybody tracking with how this generally works? And the idea is as you're going into the future, you want to have positive balances and ideally that positive balance should be some reasonable contingency amount above zero. So, hypothetically, let's say we had some additional park here. We'll call it sample park. and we're projecting in 2028 that we're going to have to replace um $100,000 worth of equipment in that park. Boom. We puke out. We start climbing out of the hole, but we don't have a lot of breathing space. So, that's how this helps us project what we're budgeting today. Is that enough for what we might need 10, 5, 10, 15 years from now? Does that make sense to everybody? Okay. So, I'll back that out. So that's how it works. And I'll stop sharing if you want to bring up the >> So if something breaks that you didn't plan for where you just pull out of the money that you have and something will probably get put on the back burner next. >> So let's say you have a catastrophic failure on a capital piece of equipment, >> you may have to replace it early. And that's why we also update on a regular basis. And that's also why we want to have a certain amount of contingency funds there because sometimes stuff fails earlier or you have a COVID where all of a sudden the cost of stuff just jumps significantly. >> There's a there's a line item repairs and maintenance of that $43,000 that would that would be able to repair some playground >> equip that if I believe that's public works. >> Yeah. So that's like the swing the swing seat broke. It's not the replacement of the piece of equipment. It's or a major component of a play system. It's it's >> Yeah. It wouldn't be for the slide. It would be to replace the bolts on the slide. >> It's it's just it's maintenance. It's not replacement. So, uh can you back up one, Brandon? So the discussion that we're looking for initially is being asked to provide a recommendation related to the city's parks capital outlay plan to be incorporated into it. So when we do the budget the council does for capital outlay does a five-year budget upcoming year. So this case for the budget we're recommending for be 27 and then the four subsequent years. So it's a fiveyear window. Um and they update it every year. Does that make sense? Um, so if no new parks were constructed, the current levy of $75,000 once we get there in 27 as projected and we go forward is sufficient to cover everything. And that includes the replacement on Highlands Park, which is new. And the reason we can do that is because we bought ourselves some additional capacity when we moved the W Wayer Park pavilion, which is a really expensive asset out another decade. It gives us time to be able to build reserves to go to other things. So that additional elbow room allows us to add that park to the system without having to increase the capital outlay. Does that make sense? >> Okay. Now, here's where we start getting into starts getting more complicated. Um, Eagle View Meadows Park. We don't have it yet, but we want to make sure that we're illustrating this for the for you guys when you're making recommendations. So where if you recall where that park is located, we are projected based on the preliminary plat that's currently going through the process to get six just under seven acres of property. They will be fully meeting their part actually they're over their park dedication requirements. So we are going to get um no cash from that development and it's an 80acre development. So its development would have to rely on other sources. So gambling dollars or capital outlay or whatever we have in remaining balance and park dedication funds based on what we think is likely and not guaranteed. Um approval of the preliminary plat will begin later this year. Actually it's projected to get approved Thursday night. Um so tomorrow. Um and then final plat later this year. We would not expect to get the land based on when they would get to it within the development until they get to phase two and that's the earliest would be 2027 probably more likely 2028 if every if the market stays good and everything proceeds normally. >> So is that b that's based on their projections for the construction of the homes as they go along. >> We haven't seen a phasing plan. So, we're just using we're we're speculating at this point that that seems likely and reasonable. >> Yeah. And we know that they have to start on the west side. >> Okay. >> So, this makes the most sense. >> And this is in the middle of the development. Yeah. And it's probably going to be a three or four phase development. So, the they likely would not based on the timing they the earliest I would say that we would get possession of the land would be 2028. >> Who's the who's building who's the owner of that? We don't know yet. >> Well, we we know, but we don't know. So, >> uh we we believe we who's most likely to be the builder, but I don't want to publicly talk about it because it hasn't been confirmed by the developer yet. So, >> but they're building a lot of homes all over the place. >> We're primarily being dominated by nationals. Yeah, it's likely to be national. >> Um, so any questions on that? >> Okay. So then back to the So if we want to look at what we should start budgeting for at some point, the replacement cost of the infrastructure, Brandon went out and said, "Okay, based on concept plans, and you know, here's some reasonable guesses of what might go into that park." One would be a parking lot. It's a large enough park um to justify it because it's not just the seven acres, but we have the ability to get additional acreage from properties to the south when they develop. Could be 5 years from now, could be 15 years from now, could be 25 years from now, but at some point, but a parking lot. The number also assumes uh a set of three pickle ball courts. We're assuming $165,000. We just know when we researched this previously, it's $50 to $55,000 per court for pickle ball courts. Um pavilion $40,000. Play structure $60,000. Little league baseball field $150,000. Although there's a wide range on that depending on how much you put into it. So we're not saying this should be the budget, but we needed to have a basis to illustrate our conversation point. So ballpark half a million bucks for the for that park. um >> a pavilion enclosed or would it be like a shelter? >> Shelter like we're talking about. >> Yeah. >> So if you run this out into the future um if you assume those costs and these lifespans, you know, parking lot 25 years before you got to replace it, pickle ball courts 20, pavilion 25, play structure 25, you're looking at a total of $395,000. You're going um you notice the baseball field is 30. That's for the like the fences and the back stop and that stuff. You don't have to replace the other $120,000 worth of field development. So your replacement cost in today's dollars 25 years from now is like $395,000. So remember the simple math. You take 395, you divide it by 25. That means that once the park is fully developed, you should be putting away about $16,000 a year to make sure you have cash on hand to replace that stuff when it's due. Everybody still tracking? Okay. So, to go back to where we were at the $75,000 a year that we're talking about, we can accommodate reasonably with updates over time the replacement for Highlands. We don't have enough money to replace an Eagle View neighborhood uh that neighborhood park, but at the same time, we don't have it yet. We're just putting it out there as part of your consideration for your recommendations to the council. So, there's a couple of things that you could do with regards to this additional park. You could say, "Fine, we'll wait until we actually get the park. We know what we're actually putting in it and what it actually costs and then we start budgeting at that time for each of those elements when it occurs. Or we know it's going to cost money. We know it's going to be a lot of money and maybe we should start recommend to the council that we start budgeting continue to increase by $5,000 per year after 2027 because in all scenarios we're going to need addition some amount of additional money and we can refine that dollar amount going forward. Um even if you recommend and the council decided to put it in 2028, it wouldn't affect the levy for the upcoming year. It's a those additional four years are for planning purposes. So there's a couple approaches. I don't know quite honestly if one's so much better than the other. They both have their merits. So staff doesn't have a strong opinion as to which approach would be best. So this would be again um part of your recommendation. Should we stay at 75 until we know about the additional park or should we start telling the council you should be planning in future years to at least start working into the assumption some additional amount of money. So, your replacement costs um say 15 years down the road, you're increasing that by a percentage of today's costs. I know you don't really know, but >> No. And that's that's great. Thank you for asking that. It comes up every time we talk about capital outlay. So, if I'm the federal government, I go, I'm going to replace this desk in 15 years. I'm going to assume that it increases by 8% per year over those 15 years. So, I'm going to assume that when I place this $100 desk, it's going to cost me $15,000 or whatever in the future. That is a legitimate approach to doing capital. Um, the downside because you're taking into account increasing costs. The downside is that you don't know how much things are actually going to increase and there's a greater chance that you are going to build fat into your projections because you're going to ma make sure that it's enough or it's going to be too little but you're building something in. The approach that we have taken is the other option is that we regularly update our projected costs based on what things cost today and then we play a little bit of catch-up over time. So um that traditionally outside of COVID where everything massively increased in cost but even a projected percentage escalation would have covered that would not have covered that that has served us very very well because what we found is as a whole within your capital outlay system things don't increase 5% year in and year out. Um and we've been able to stay current largely by updating and then playing a little bit of catchup as we go along the way. Both are legitimate. The approach that our we use in our capital outlay within the overall city is that we just regularly update the costs and make adjustments as a as appropriate. So it's a great question. Both are legitimate approach. So whenever we're talking about costs, we're talking about today's cost. >> So same question. So there's no inflation included in those numbers. >> That was essentially the the question. Yes. >> Questions? >> Yeah. >> No, we don't. We update the cost regularly and then we adjust what we need to put away to account for it. We feel that historically that's worked out better because we don't build in projected fat. Were being tightly tuned the whole way. Is there a risk that you get caught short? Absolutely. Um the philosophy has been that that's the better approach than and maintaining a little bit of contingency or making sure you don't zero everything out is better than building in the 15. you know, it's five 10% perpetually because historically we found that that doesn't materialize and you're actually over charging yourself for that future expense. So for the amount that we budget for capital outlay every year um could that instead of increasing by you know a certain fixed amount 5,000 a year or whatever could we index that to inflation you know to a it say like a fiveyear average of inflation or something. >> You you could do that. The council is going to be looking for a number so you in your own mind can adjust it for whatever you think it should be. But purpose but the purpose for the model is it ties out to actual expenses. >> So >> otherwise the other thing I thought about for the budget amount is um increase based on if we had a neighborhood park increase by this much 10,000 or something. If we add a mini park increase it by 5,000 something along along those lines. >> So what we've done in the past is is essentially that if you add a highlands you now have your projected replacement costs. you work into the model what you need to be putting away over time to make sure you do it. So, we're essentially doing that already, but it's based on the actual cost for the actual part for the actual assets that are built when they're built. Does that make sense? >> So, the two options that we've presented, and there's variations of this, is a the 75,000 basin staff's opinion is sufficient to fund everything we have today. And that's assuming that Highland is a real park because we have the land and we know we're going to be doing it in the next 12 months. Um, but the question is, should we be making a recommendation right now for some additional monies for that future park that we don't know when we're getting it and how much it costs at this point. The advantage to starting to put a little bit additional away is that it helps you, right? If you're increasing by so much per year, that's a compounding amount. Because if you have 5,000 this year and you increase it by 10, it's now 10,000. That's a total of 15. And then the next year, it's now 15,000, which is now 15 + 10 + 5, so it's 30,000. So starting early, we go back to basic finances. It's that that compounding effect is helpful, but the reality is we don't know when it's going to be built, how much it's going to cost, and so on and so forth. And that has to be dedicated to that specific or is it just in the fun? >> It's going into the pool to make sure the pool is sufficiently large to accommodate that and other things. We don't have a crystal ball, but the way I'm seeing things happening in this city now with the amount of development that's going on and the amount of homes that are being built and the amount of demands that are being ball fields. I mean, I'm just just shooting from the hip on here a little bit, but um it'd sure be nice to have I was told never use the word slush fund, but it be sure would be nice to have more than you need. >> Well, >> when the time comes because sometimes you get caught short. I mean, >> well, that's what option two is essentially saying is we don't know exactly what the demand is going to be, but we're saying you sure as heck should probably keep in escalating it at least this much for right now until you know what you really need. That's that's an option. And that's a legitimate that's a legitimate approach. Um the other one is like the other one's just the opposite side of the coin. We don't know exactly what we need. So we'll come back and tell you what we need when we get there. >> I think with um the fact that we know Eagle View Meadows is coming. Uh last month we just voted to um that we want land at the new Boulder Heights edition that's going in. Um there's going to be other stuff coming like the land across two from Quick Trip sold to developers. Uh we know we know more parks are going to be coming. I think continuing to increase makes a lot of sense. >> I do want to >> clarify that um city council went the other way on Boulder Height South and went cash. >> So, >> all right. But even without that one, we know more more parks are coming >> taken. Yes. Um >> but I agree. I think keeping it um incremental and escalating it, it won't put us behind the ball because I'm afraid if we don't >> then and I've seen it happen in other cities that they try to make up for it. And so versus doing a little at every time is less painful, especially for the community versus, oh my gosh, what are we going to do now? >> Yeah. I think having that sudden catch up is going to be a lot harder for people to accept and then they're going to deny, you know, what we really need and then >> we're going to be really trying to figure out how to extend the life of everything. >> Yeah. a little bit over just my experience with budgeting little bit over time pro um staying with the curve um is better than playing catch-up because then you get into the decisions of do we hire a new police officer or do we do the parks both are important but you you you get caught in those types of budgeting conundrums would it be fair to say I'm kind of hearing a sentiment that we should recommend that at least for now until we have better information we should recommend to the council that they continue that $5,000 a year escalation for purposes of the 2027 budget and that can be refined later, whether it needs to be more, less, whatever, but that's probably prudent within the 2027 budget. Is that a fair statement? >> Yes. >> Yep. >> It just doesn't seem like a lot of money. >> 5,000 isn't a lot. I'm almost I mean instead of asking for like a set dollar amount like asking for a percentage instead as far as you know >> a percentage of >> the full budget that the city get you know >> I'll just I'll I'll be real honest with you that is not going to work because the council's dealing with actual an actual number to when they're making decisions about tax impact. that because I mean here in this room we're like going well hell as a taxpayer I'd pay an additional whatever per year for the park system except then there's the need for that new cop. Oh wait we have to issue debt for that replacement fire truck. Oh wait we have road projects that we have to do to keep rebuild the roads that are falling apart. Oh wait oh wait oh wait it's a death by a thousand cuts. And so when you're looking at a dollar amount they're looking at this amount of levy translates into this tax impact. So, you can recommend it, but they're always gonna they're always going to roll it back to a dollar amount, and they're going to want that dollar amount to be justified because they have to make decisions about where their priorities are. So, it's it's great in concept, but in practice, it it doesn't work. >> Well, it's I mean, kind of what you're talking about, you know, getting too much fat over time. >> Yep. >> It just to me would just give us more you know, more of a guarantee as we're growing instead of just a $5,000 set where what if one year we get three extra parts, you know, >> I think we already have to plan for an extra 15 on this one. >> I think that's why it's important we bring it back every year. >> That's >> because if we do get three parks in a year, you're absolutely right. The 5,000 is not going to be enough, >> right? So then at that point, say if we do get three parks and we have this conversation, it'll be a lot easier to justify to the council why we need 20,000 more next year rather than five. >> But that 20 is going to have to be congruent every year, right? >> Usually within capital outlay, you're looking at a relative at a gradual increase or a fixed amount that you're projecting into it. you can change that base over time. So if um Derek's team's like we need another plow truck once we get that and that's how it works. We have another plow truck, we now have to adjust our capital outlay to account for the replacement of that plow truck. Does that make sense? So as we get new parks and I think that's what Brandon's getting to. You have three new parks. You now have to start budgeting for the replacement of those three new parks in the future. And that's going to jump the what we're going to have to be putting away for outlay at that. >> It' be like back in 2023 when we first started this increase when we did a $10,000 jump and then dropped it to 5,000 a year. If we had a bunch of parks so we came out in the same year, we could do another jump and then go back to 5,000 after that. And those are the and and again within context um just to give you an idea within the budget I'll give you real quick numbers. Every change of in last year's budget of $30,700 change in the levy is a 1% tax impact to the typical home. That's about $17. Right? When we do our budget, we do projected budgets. Um we know that um uh we project a year plus one and year plus two to see where we are so the council can do a little bit of leveling between budget years etc when they're going forward. Based on that projection we're looking at a 9.2% increase in the levy. We don't know what the tax base change is going to be but if the tax base remained exactly the same that would be a 9.2% 2% increase in taxes without any change in levy. And that has things like police officers, road projects, those types of things that need to be done. It's not saying parks are important, but I'm saying it's the council when they're looking at it, they're taking your recommendation and priorities, and they're having to weigh against everything else against what they think is a reasonable levy um to the taxpayer to treat them fairly as as well. So, while I guess while looking for you guys to say what you think is necessary, um if you want to maintain credibility with the council, you also have to use some judgment on what's needed. Um not just a wish list, if that makes sense. >> Well, and if you add on say three, four, five parks, you're going to need more staff, right? I mean, and you gota that's you guys are probably stretched thin now. >> Yeah. So, as we see growth as a community, it's it's a compounding. Now, that growth also brings with it additional tax base. Um, but usually there's a what I have found is that there's a lag between when the need and when you actually start to see the resources off of it. You might have that new park scales different, but let's say you have new streets and park and you need a new public works person, but it may take that development five years to build out. And usually from the time the building permit is pulled till you see full taxes off, it's two years. So you can see there's a way in revenue from when you usually start to see the the needs associated with development. So the council has to work through those pinch points within the budget um over time. So they're not placing too much of burden on the existing taxpayers while at the same time they're trying to meet the needs of all the new stuff that of the growth at the same time. Because if that was the case, if you if new growth punish existing taxpayers. They're going to say screw that. I don't want any additional growth in the community. So there's so there's that type of balance. >> But speaking from experience, parks is usually at the bottom of the budget pool. >> Nice to have, not a need to have. >> When it comes to police, fire, public works, parks usually ends up down at the bottom of the of the pool. So >> and I think that's >> that's just that's reality. And I and I think that's where the model we brought in helped this group successfully lobby the council for a pretty substantial adjustment in park budgeting because it was needs based and you could demonstrate the need and demonstrate the need over time as opposed to something a little more abstract like we have parks coming or we should increase by a percentage. It was very needs-based and quite honestly they were like yes. The other thing I should point out, Paul's true, I've seen that. That's been my experience in my career, but our council's actually put a lot of emphasis on parks and cultural programming and community festivals and stuff. That's one of the areas of the budget that has seen some of the from a percentage standpoint, some of the largest growth in the last few years within within the budget. But there's limits to it. I would I would agree. If you get down to, well, we need another police officer or we need 5,000, we'll figure out how to make the parks stuff work, that's where I think if you're looking for incremental over time, it doesn't to get to Dan's point, it's felt less in the budget over time and it's easier to work. So, if you guys are recommending that proactive approach, I think the c my guess is the council would be receptive to that. Um, because all you're saying is we're just going to stay on the same thing we've been doing for the last few years. We're just saying do it forward into the future and do it proactively until we've got a better idea of what the actual needs are >> plan. >> Okay. >> So to Dan's point, so if we said 5,000 this year and then next year increase of 5% onto that 5,000, you know, whatever that another 250. Is that something kind of crazy too or is that that's like a double? >> I would This is my opinion. Yeah. So, take it for what it's worth. >> If you're just saying just continue the increase of $5,000 per year after 2027, the council will probably be really receptive to it. One, because it doesn't actually affect the 2027 budget, but it does plant the seed and it's a level of intent that we're getting into the budget and it starts moving to to get to Angel's point. It's moving the it's moving the needle um a little bit proactively and I believe the council would be receptive to that rationale for that assumption in the projected budget. Now to do more than that they're probably would be looking for specifics. you need to if we're going to move it by 10,000 in 2027, you know, five to 10, they probably would be looking for a little bit more substantiation to the recommendation would be my would be my guess. This is the >> meaning what do you what do you need this money for? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Where right now we're saying in the f just on the course you're on in those future years and we'll come back to you and refine it when we got more information. there's really no cost to them to do that and it's consistent with what we've done. I think they'd also be fine if you just said we don't know what we need right now. Stay the course at the 75 until we have a better idea of what we need and we'll make the adjustment there. But to Angela's point, anything helps with regards to I love this analogy. You're flying a plane at a mountain. The longer you wait to pull back on the joystick, the harder you have to pull, you know. And um what you guys what I understand you're recommending is let's just start pulling back a little bit. Even if we have to pull back hard in the future, it's not going to be as hard as we'd have to pull otherwise. Is that a fair representation? >> Okay. So I'm gonna we're going to add one more layer of complication which isn't directly which is related. So if you want to quit sharing Brandon. So, let's go back to our capital outlay that we were working with earlier. So, remember we talked about that park that's $515,000ish just for conversation purposes. I got to share my screen. Um, we plug it in. We now have Eagle View Meadows Park. We're just using that as a working name and we plug it in in that $515,000 in 2028. Even if we assume make some reasonable assumptions about collection of park dedication dollars between now and then, we puke out. And not only do we puke out, there isn't enough dollars in other places to still fund that park. And if we run that out in the future, we're puked out, you know, for a long time. And if we start borrowing from capital outlay, that means we're not properly funding that either. So the point of this is that um even if we get the land in 2028, we still have to figure out how we're going to fund that park. So is it we build it as we can as we have dollars coming in and what would be our priority facilities? Do we need to find some other funding source? Now let's say we go well why don't we this is what we're just talking about council. We need $345,000 in 2028. Let's just put it in the levy. Well remember the math we did a minute ago. We'll just do this real quick. If you take $345,000 345 and you divide that by it's $30,700 for every percent increase, that would be an 11.2% increase. Boom. Right there. Just for that park for the taxpayers of the city. So, if you times that by 17 bucks, that's almost $200 increase in people's property taxes for that park. Um, >> not including anything else that needs to be added. >> Not including anything else that we would need to do. >> Yeah, people saw a pitchforky >> if we increase the levy to be able to pay for it in one year to pay for that. Now, let's say, wait, but we know it's coming. So, let's ask the council to split it between 27 and 28. Okay. Now, it's not $200. Now, it's only $100 for that park. And you have to keep in mind the politics that the council has when people are going, "My property taxes went up by whatever percent. What drove it?" Well, the majority of it was to build the new park in the new development over there. the 98% of the taxpayers over here are going to be why are my taxes going up to pay for the new park in that new development. >> Well, why are my taxes going up to pay for Lakeville schools? >> I don't know. Ask Lakeville schools. >> But is this is this why it was recommended to take cash instead of land in Highlands and like Boulder Heights to fund a park that you don't know but know is coming. >> No, it's more consistent with the philosophy that um you want to put parks at scale and strategic locations and a strategic number. So you can use have at least a partial revenue source to pay for that future park. >> Some parks will be four blocks away from each other, >> right? Um because even if it gets down to yeah, you can use the dollars, but then even after you have the park, you have to maintain it. We just looked at what that this park would require a $16,000 a year increase for every additional park you have. That dollar amount increases again and again and again, not only for the day-to-day maintenance, but also for the capital. So, it's a general philosophy on how you do your park design. There's a financial consideration that's related to the efficiencies of the use of the park. Um my the council's decision was we got to park a sixth of a mile away. We don't need additional property here for a park because we already have one close enough to serve that area was the general gist of the the discussion um on that one. But the one thing we do have to keep in mind is we done an analysis and admittedly it was a high level swag but those of you that were on the commission at the time will remember we did an analysis where we said okay let's assume we get park everywhere that we're planning to in the park plan and we get the maximum acreage that we're off of those properties in those general areas and we get the parks that we want etc. and we assume that we're going to get cash from everything else and we expanded out to our 2040 growth plan and we had to make some assumptions about what um the cost of those parks would be to develop. I would say that our estimate on that cost was probably understated um and we had to make assumptions on what the value of cash we would get which was also probably understated. So, it probably washes out, but we figured we would, this is a big swag, but it illustrates the point. We'd only get through park dedication cash only about 16% or 17% of what we would need to fund that future park system. So, park dedication dollars helps and depending on the scale of the parks, you can collect money from here to do that. We're doing it right now. We've been doing ever since we started seeing development uptick. We're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. We get cash from this to pay for this park and then you have this development over here and then you wait for the next development to pay for that park and then you wait for the next development to pay for or developments to pay for that park. So we're chasing it. So for Boulder Heights, for example, we were only able to develop about half of the facilities in that park until Niagara platted and then we took the cash from Niagara to finish that park out. Um, with cash that we got from Eagle View Estates and other stuff we have and with what we will get off of Highlands, we have enough cash to develop the Highlands Park, but we've kind of emptied Peter's pocket to pay Paul. And now when we start getting to Eagle Meadows Park, we we would need if we're using only park dedication dollars or we wait, we have to wait until other stuff develops. Now, is there other stuff on the horizon? Absolutely. Um, the Deutsch property has had multiple national developers looking at it. >> No, which one is that? >> North of the track. >> Okay. >> To the east a little bit. >> That's how many acres? That's huge. >> 100 acres, but it's a lot of wetland in there. >> Yeah. >> So, um, we know, as Andy indicated, the, um, property across from Quick Trip, the Degross property, we know that changed hands. Do we know what's going to happen and when? No. Um, but if that develops, we would get and there's no actual parkland in there or limited parkland, we would get cash off of that. So, right now, we're in a mode where we're doing this. The answer, I don't know that there's an answer for that tonight except to the extent if you want to ask the council to do something in the capital outlay to address that. But my previous point was to illustrate that the amount that you would have to ask them to change it to have a meaningful impact on these numbers would be a lot. So, >> well, and um it'd be one thing if if the park I know you said there's a parking lot, but if it's like a destination park, so it's not just a neighborhood park. I mean, that would justify it more like if it's if we have a park at some point that's several acres that Yeah. It's not in your neighborhood, but you can go there and do a lot of things like a gem type park. >> It's be better. >> Yes. I I think everybody would agree that if you're asking the taxpayer to pick up money for a park that serves the community as a larger hole as opposed to a park that serves just a specific neighborhood. Yes, I would agree. So if you have facilities like ball fields and pickle ball courts and those types of things that are serving the larger community, the larger community is probably more receptive to contributing towards that through their tax dollar. >> A community park essentially >> that's what it's supposed to be. What is the act? Is it a community park classification >> or is it neighborhood park? >> I think it's depends how much we get >> ultimately. Um The first phase would be a neighborhood would be a neighborhood park. So >> if you think a full-blown community park then you're talking multiple facilities, athletic facilities and a parking lot and you know all the other playgrounds and big large I mean >> enclosed pavilion. >> Yeah. Something with a little more meat. >> Isn't it a minimum 60 acres or something? What is that classification? >> That scale where you're talking full community size parks or athletic complex >> 60 80 acres >> or usually at least 40 >> at least 40. >> Yeah. The the >> do you want a softball wheel? >> Yeah. >> And all those other amenities and concessions and all you know all of the other things that go along with it. >> Yeah. So based on our comprehensive plan a neighborhood park is 3 to 10 acres. So this one is seven. So it'll be, you know, at the end of the day a little over 10. So then if it's over 10, it gets the community park 10 plus and then that larger community SL like playfield complex that's 40 plus acres. >> So this one will at the end of the day will be a community park as defined by our comprehensive plan >> on the lower end of the range, but it'll probably >> crack the threshold. So, we wanted to bring that up as part of the discussion in case you wanted to incorporate anything into your recommendation to the council. But the way the numbers work, $10,000 on 300 isn't going to get you much. 20,000 isn't going to get you much um in a timely enough fashion. Um, but it illustrates some of the points that we're talking about is that we have future expenses coming down the road and we have finite resources to to pay for it. >> And one of some of the who you can blame for some of this is the Minnesota Homebuilders Association because we used to get a thousand dollars per house that was built. They've had to put that under permit. So, we'd get a thou we not we get the land, we get $1,000 per house to build the park. It was it was a sweet deal. And I hated to see it go away, but they put more pressure on the state legislation said, "No, we're not we don't need to be." But that, you know, the people that paid that extra thousand dollars on their permit probably never even knew what they're paying on there. If you've ever p and and the other thing is if you told them that money is going to build your neighborhood park, they go great. We love parks. Nobody's ever asked for less or you know smaller parks or less fewer parks. Never heard it. But we if we get into the situation which Prior Lake got into just recently, what was that? $61 million. They're asking for the referendum because when I was there, we did a referendum. We rebuilt the whole park system. We had just a beautiful facility, trails, I mean, everything. And a library was included in that. And all of a sudden, now they got to a certain point, they didn't have the money to refurbish anything and they went to the public, you know, so everything went to hell on them. They didn't plan well enough and they asked for $61 million referendum from the neighborhood. the identified need was over 120 million. They figured if they asked for half as much as they needed, it might actually pass and they still didn't pass. >> Yeah. >> I I spoke with them a little bit about that because it was mentioned at a >> recent meeting and I did a little little bit of followup on it and basically it was a combination of things. One, they took Park land everywhere. So they had a they have a much they have a very high number of parks. So that's additional capital outlay. That's part one. Two, they didn't fund the capital outlay for all of those parks. That became exactly what you guys were talking about that it became it was it's what got sacrificed in the budget for a long time. And while they have built that back up in recent years, that number going towards capital outlay, they now have all these parks which are reaching the end of their lifespan and they don't have a pot of cash to do it. So, they had the only way they could do it was to go out through a park referendum which taxpayers are going Nope. We don't want to pay it. That >> some of those they had so many parks. Some of them they when it take came time because the equipment's too old, they made them natural green areas. >> Yeah. >> Because the the neighborhoods were aging out so you didn't need that. So then you put all this planning into it and put all that infrastructure and then 20 years down the line like oh we got to take it out because we can't really afford to put new equipment in and hey we'll just make it natural and there's just like so many of them that I think at at this point Elco new market if we plan smart now that we don't have to get to that. >> Yeah. I remember talking to communities back in the 2000s when there was the big housing boom and you saw a lot of communities a little bit further out that were seeing development like they'd never seen before and they're getting all these new parks, but then they couldn't build them. So, they'd get the land, but they couldn't build it out. And it took them years to get the funding to build out some of those parks. In a meeting I was in some of the Lakeville or not Lakeville Prior Lake leadership, they were talking about they were exploring how they might eliminate some of the parks in their system because they simply can't if they can't afford to replace them and the voters aren't going to aren't going to step up to do it. They're kind of they're faced with an economic reality and there was some discussions that they're poking at or at least some council people are asking them to poke at ideas of how could we basically repurpose those parks to something completely, you know, to something else. >> Once they're dedicated, once they're dedicated, they're not they can't sell them. They can't do anything with them other than make them a natural area, you know. >> Correct. >> Yeah. >> They can still call it a park, but they don't have to have playground equipment and trails and all that stuff. the trend has really gone away a little bit in in the profession away from playgrounds and the typical parks and shelters as we know it and uh I did a little research on this and it's going more towards natural areas and picnic areas and and trails is very trails are very very popular and so it's the trends kind of going away from that same old typical >> cookie cutter >> cookie cutter yeah and that's the way we >> young families want to play that the older they get, the older people get, the more they want trails and and those types of more passive activities. >> So, this was mainly forformational purposes, but is there do you guys want to change or modify your previous recommendation based on this new information? >> How do you feel the council would look at that? like if we increased from 5,000. I mean, we don't we want to have a good rapport with the council, but if it's something you're like, you know, they just don't have an appetite for it. And >> so, again, this is this is Tom's speculation, >> right? Y >> um and and to be honest, the when we start getting into some of these projection stuff, they go like, Tom, >> what do you think? So, some of this is my opinion, but I'll be honest, this is one of those cases where my opinion probably would carry a little bit of weight. I'm going to tell them five or 10,000 is not going to put a dent in the type of dollars we're talking about. We're talking about whole new types of revenue streams. We need big money coming from development and we'll have to be patient until we have the money or we're going to have to find another way to do it like a bond referendum. But, you're probably not going to get the community to pass. Something on that scale might make sense. we might need in until we get another couple of parks and you know they might need to put more meat on the bone. Those are all strategic discussions. I also know that we are potentially getting into a these are a couple considerations just to give you that I will be advising the council. One, if you look at polls related to property taxes there, this goes through cycles over time and we're moving into a cycle where there is increasing resistance to increases in property taxes. There are points in time where people are like, "Yep, I'll pay more for more services or whatever. you're starting to see trends like we saw back in like the late 90s where people are starting to go no I the it's it's inversing where I don't want to pay more property taxes that doesn't mean it's true exactly here but we also have to keep in mind and part of this is being driven by the fact that coming out of COVID most levels of government had to increase looked at notable increases in their tax levies because the cost of doing business just simp simply skyrocketed based on increased costs coming out of out of COVID in our community. We have out of the last not this year but the previous two years we saw notable increases in our property taxes. My guess is that the council is going to be sensitive to that >> and and other needs that we have. So while saying hey we should continue on this trend I think that it would be it may be difficult against other needs that are that are known even today um to balance that for a significant jump in this. I think they're going to look at no we need to look at we either need to be patient or we're going to need to look at alternative funding streams. >> It seems like all we're talking about is is housing and housing and housing. Industrial commercial industrial and commercial properties pay a ton of taxes. So >> you got to get them first. >> What? >> You got to get them first. >> You got to make sure they don't give them tax breaks to come here. >> That's >> So just so you guys know, as taxpayers, Niagara came on full taxes for or mostly full taxes for the 2026 cycle. We saw roughly a 10% increase in our tax base. The council was able to accelerate by years a lot of stuff that we would be able to do with a very limited tax impact. >> That is not going to happen next year. >> So, nobody's talking. I mean, nobody's proposing anything that you know of industrial commercial. I know we got enough >> well >> properties. you hear rumors about it, but other than that, >> so to use Paul example, if we had another major, let's say we had um XYZ Corporation come in and they're going to build a 400,000 square foot building similar to Niagara and it generates that kind of tax increase. That would be great. Then knowing that that's coming, the council might say then from a priority standpoint, we may want be able to accommodate these things within the budget like they did last time like we're going to add an addition. We're going to advance our expansion of the police department to try and get to full-time coverage and we can absorb that because of the growth in tax base. They could do it for the parks, but remember from the time that thing is built till you see those property taxes is >> yeah, >> two years. So that would be the patients part. And it might not just be residential development. It could be commercial development, but you're basically having to live within a certain amount of means until you have that revenue starting to to come in. And it and and to your point, Paul, it's not just the park dedication dollars. We do get additional tax base, but also to your point, because we've had this discussion, when you get commercial, they usually don't create the same additional demand on services that you do from residential. So it's more, you should say more extra cream on top where when you look at residential they you have additional parks, you have additional streets, you have additional all the services we provide to each one of those individual houses where a Niagara plow the 300 ft in front of the >> Yeah, we plow the street too. >> Plow the street in front. >> Well, the demand is is small because they have a real small staff there. It's amazing how they run that operation with so few people. It's all mechanical. It's all robotic. It's really really >> Well, they do have 60 employees, >> huh? >> They have 60 employees. >> 60 >> around 60 55 to 60 >> employees. But still, it's it's a major major >> production. It It's huge. He took me on that tour of that plant and I was just amazed. >> Yeah. But we have four meters in there. We have one service going in. So we don't we don't do anything there. It's you know >> for every house out here we have a meter and a service going to it. That place has one service >> and they pay 50 50% more roughly per per value 50% more taxes per value than a single family home does. So they pay more per value and generally you that type of a use utilizes less services. Now, if it's a a gas station or a grocery store or a truck stop or something like that's more heavily retail oriented, they pro they generally demand more resources from the city. But large self-contained industrial users are great for the tax base because they don't generate as much increase in budget for services and they pay they pay a lot in property taxes, especially on that scale. Um, so yeah, to Paul's point, that could be another revenue source as well. If we had another big user go out in the industrial park or we started to see an uptick in commercial development, which if you start seeing houses, you will see some increase in commercial development. Um, those are other revenue sources as we go forward. We did have a presentation from the county assessor um just at the last council meeting and Michael indicated that they're showing u a notable amount of increased construction. Big surprise, right? So there that and new construction is actual grow real growth in tax base. So that will help offset any increase you need to have in your levy to some degree. Um but we won't know what that is until we get deeper into the budgeting process. And it's not going to be it's nothing like Niagara is like a once in a generation kind of impact to your tax base. So So >> anyone just a motion to continue on with the >> correct and then we'll take it up again next year in the budgeting. >> Yeah. To make a motion to ask >> does that make >> does the chair mind if I kind of a little bit >> off that >> and and I don't know that at this point well I probably should the motion is to recommend to the council that we um increase the budgeted parks capital outlay $5,000 a year 2027 or following 2027 through 28 29 30 and 31 And then as we get that would be the official and then I would provide explanation to the council in the budgeting process the rationale behind it that we need to start putting that money away. We know we're going to need it and then that recommendation next year may >> may be different based on better information of what our needs actually are at that point in time and they understand that. >> So who wants to make the motion as Tom? You can't make a motion. Who wants to make a motion? As what um just >> I'll throw my name on the bus. >> Okay. Second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Okay. >> Are we done on that? >> I think we're done. >> You got what you needed, Brandon? >> I think so. And yeah, that puts us at what? 95. If assuming that goes through, we'd be having 95,000 a year starting in 2031 if I math's right. So that's a 20,000 increase from the 75 now. So that would incorporate the 16,000 needed from for me. So I think the justifications there and >> just think back in when we merged in 2007, our entire capital outlay was $10,000. I know that answer probably didn't help about the 515 we're going to need for that other park, but I feel like if we ask him for any more, we're not it's right now it's kind of hard. >> Well, I think this from what the rumors that I've heard, this city council, the mayor and city council want to keep the tax base >> tax as low as they possibly can too. >> Always. I would say that that has been true of every council that I've I've worked for here. >> But I would say that in more recent years because of a lot of the analysis we've done on projected needs, the council has >> objectively ripped the band-aid when they needed to. >> So, um >> are they aware of I guess the projected numbers? not the specific numbers, but they are fully aware of the issue of park funding. >> Yeah, they they they get it. Um, >> they're waiting for you guys to find a magical tree somewhere that >> I've been looking for jars in my mom's backyard for years. She kept claiming she had them buried back there. >> If we had money in ash trees, we would have been rich. you know, it's it's a big issue. They're they're familiar with it. Um they got the full report when we did the capital outlay, so they're aware of the issue, and I've every time we come back, they it's the same message that this is coming. So, they're they're familiar with it. They know that we're having this conversation. Um uh and I think they're just waiting to see what you guys are are recommending. Um I I can qualify it that you know you guys are recommending this as a reasonable approach and if they can you know see their way to squeeze any more out. Um so are we on updates or reports >> ready? >> The only update I wanted to say is that we installed the basketball hoops last month. So, because we were getting a lot of inquiries about it. So, >> um pretty slow month parkwise. >> Yeah, we didn't do a whole lot. >> But, >> well, not parks, but >> we'll be ramping up now that spring is coming though. So, >> paint city hall. >> Yep. City hall got new carpet and paint and all the offices. >> Did you get that spot behind you? No, this is a different color than by much, but it is a different color. >> Kudos to public works that that work was largely done. And I don't know if you know if you guys are familiar with the space, but it was a lot of um Chinese fire drill, so to speak, with with furniture and everything else to do the painting and then do the carpeting in that area. And they did a fantastic job to get that to get that done. Just so you guys know, that room had not been painted in 20 years and the carpet was 40 years old. So, >> there was one spot where a desk was moved and it wasn't painted behind the cabinet, so they put a poster over it. >> Nobody had the paint to match it. So, >> um I do have a quick update on water towers. No, >> no, no, no. But do you guys have any questions on anything else that's going on? >> Mike's going, "Don't ask. Don't ask." >> Any other new development? >> What was that? >> Any other new developments that are rumored? >> So, um, Brandon mentioned there's obviously there's the Boulder Heights South, the future phases. Um that is going to be they submitted their application for preliminary plat for the first phase no for annexation excuse me. So we'd annex the entire property. Once that's annexed we would expect that we'd be getting an application in very short order for preliminary um plat for the whole for um a good chunk of it and then probably either concurrent or immediately after final plat for the first phase of that. So, I expect that project to start moving dirt this year. We have at this point no reason to suspect otherwise, but we probably won't see a lot of actual building permit generation till probably earlier next year would be my guess. >> Um, >> the second phase of that is going to be apartments, town houses or the combination of the two. >> Yeah, it's it's zone medium density. So, >> okay. >> Attachments of eight eight attached units or less. >> And that's contingent on the two counties in the city coming to an agreement on 86 access. They can't move forward until we complete a transportation study to decide what's going to happen with Beard Avenue. Is it going to have to get realigned or not? So that right now what they'd be coming in with is what they can do that wouldn't be affected by those types of decisions. >> That study should probably be done by midsummer, which would then give them the ability to maybe make some decisions about the rest of it. You said >> well >> final say at this point I guess >> well the planning commission can overrule us and then the council can overrule us >> right >> so >> everybody we we don't have any power. Well, you guys you guys were tight. You guys were tight split yourselves and the council >> was how should I put it? The conversation was split. Final decision was a little more on the majority side, but they had they had the same conversation you guys had um at the end of the day and ultimately just ended up that they decided to go with the the cash. So, um but yes, that is their prerogative to not always take your final. >> Yep. >> No, >> because it wasn't the road part of the develop. >> Yeah. So, there'll be a finalization of the actual development and how it aligns in the shape of it, but not as per the question of cash or land. >> Y the planning commission can vote us down. This is this is unusual because it went to the planning commission first and then it came to us. >> Yeah. And then it went to the city council. I And I thought it was supposed to come to us first, then >> normally in practice. Yes, >> that one just happened to not happen that way. I don't plan on making it a habit. I wasn't a fan of it either, but that's just how that one worked out. >> Um, any other questions? Good question. Oh, other developments. So, um, we're aware that there are properties that are changing hands. that's usually a sign that something might happen. Um, there's the Lee property. So, if you go out towards the school, as you take the turn on James Parkway to head towards the school, there's that 35 acre field just on the north side of the road. That property has been held by an investor for a long time. He's in jail. You know, you shouldn't kill people. >> Is that the Is that next to the G? >> Yes. >> Is that right by the gas? >> Yes. The town station is in the southwest corner of that property. >> That make a nice park >> and that's that's planned. You know that Eagle View Meadows, this is the southern half of that park, that development. >> So, with regards to that one, um we knew there were some title issues associated with it uh based on the town station and how that was paid for and whatnot. And we knew it would take time to clean up. Um, uh, the property was bought to clean up the title and then that entity was getting the title cleaned up, but they weren't a developer, so they turned around and sold it. We knew it was bought by somebody. We don't know who because it was bought by some generic holding entity with a generic name with a corporate law firm address with the corporate attorney named as the officer for the corporation. So, it's clearly somebody's just holding it away um uh in a way that they don't want to make it apparent necessarily or don't care, you know, to put it out there. >> That was in foreclosure for a while, wasn't it? >> No. >> No. >> Bruce Bruce wanted to farm it. He tried to get the rights to to farm put some property. >> Yeah. Bruce didn't buy it. Um >> well, he didn't want to buy it. He wanted to farm it. >> So, we based on that, somebody bought it. There clearly is an investor. So, it's either a developer, you know, a build a big national builder bought it and they're going to develop it, an investor bought it so that they could flip it to a developer or an investor bought it just to hold it for a period of time and and flip it. We don't know. Nobody's come and talk to us. Um, that tells my opinion, the people that are working in town are pretty communicative and I don't think they would have bought it unless they talked to us about it. So, I think it's some another player that we're not aware of and so we don't know intent. Um, the Deutsch property um did have a developer looking at it. M&I Homes who's doing the project just north of City Hall was looking at that property that did not come together. We are aware that there are other builders looking at the property. Don't know if those will come together, but there's there's interest out there. And then the de gross property which is 150 acres but that's a mix of land uses um from commercial to high density residential. Um we know that that recently closed um nobody called us the next day and say hey this is what we're doing. So we'll have to wait and see what what's proposed there. Um, and then there's always other contacts that we are having with various commercial, industrial, and residential um, development entities that are contacting staff regularly. >> There's that corner property that's been for sale since I've been here on Dakota right on two in Dakota. That corner property there that's across from the bank. >> Yep. >> How come? Nobody's >> no commercial. Have you looked at the price? >> No. No. I wasn't interested in buying it. I was I was thinking about that coffee. If I answer your question though, >> that coffee and ice cream shop would look nice there. >> If you build it, they will come. >> They will come. >> Coffee ice cream. >> I did get an inquiry from a coffee shop owner potentially wanting to move into the strip mall. So, we'll see. >> Spot. >> Yeah. See how that goes. >> Awesome. That would be great. Everybody talks about it, but nobody's been able to >> try to get Subway. >> The best thing for commercial development, industrial is its own entity, but for commercial development, the best thing that can help us is rooftops and projected rooftops. Then you'll start to see that investment. >> Yeah. But you Yeah. But it's kind of a cart before the horse kind of thing, too, that >> you got to have the homes to get the stores. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the stores attract people, too. >> There is a syn There is a synergy there, but they won't make the investment if they're not if the market's not there and that future market isn't there for them. >> So, >> all you need is a Taco Bell. >> Oh, you know, up north they got a Taco Bell and a Subway together. >> There you go, America. >> There you go. any updates on the 35 interchange or the county 02 and Xerxes intersection. >> So on the interchange, as you guys know from previous updates, we did get $7 million from Mandot um for con reconstruction in 2030. So um Andrew said he'd pony up the other 30 million and we're good to go. No. So we're in the process of trying to get the additional money. Um it's a complicated project because there is no additional money that's formally allocated. So interchanges usually take a little bit from this pot of money and a little bit from this pot of money and a little bit from this funding source etc. The county has indicated in the past and they have capac they've indicated they have capacity within their funds raised through their transportation sales tax to pony up their required portion for it. and we've had discussions with them that they would be targeting around that 230 time frame. Um, MDOT does not have anything targeted for it. So, that's I'll be honest, that's a straight up lobbying effort to get them to commit certain funds. There are other funding programs like regional solicitation. So, there's the region decides what money that they have a certain amount of money and they decide where they're going to put it within the region. Um, for us that becomes difficult because we are the smallest fish in the biggest pond. Um, where I have been told informally by people involved with the state that if we were two miles that way, we would have had a new interchange a while ago, right? Um, but we're we're competing against, you know, fixing 494 and 35W and the bridges in Burnsville and so on and so forth. Um, we have made a lot of progress in recent years with regards to elevating the need and getting traction. Um, you may have seen the Facebook post. We got deputy commissioner from Mindot down here to visit um and other senior staff. We're getting traction. So, now it's I think you know you're we've moved past the point of getting people to understand the need. Now it's getting to okay, how do we how do we fund it? Um, I think we'll probably be putting in uh a bid for the regional solici solicitation. That's just another pot of money. We'll probably go to whoever ends up being our state representative and state senators and say when we get closer and say we need this much money to help fill a gap from the feds if we can. Um, just because there is what they call uh legislative discretion dollars. Historically, it's just straight up pork barreling. you get so much money to put to projects in your district and that's decided by the legis by the national congress at the time we probably go after monies like that and then we may just go straight up special legislation um from the state or state bonding dollars. Those are all possible but there have as you can imagine it's a highly political environment to do that and given where the legislature is currently that's going to be difficult. The one advantage we have is that the last two sessions the co-chair in the house has been our state representative which is a huge advantage in that arena and I suspect that his connections because of that position have have helped elevate the visibility of our situation. So um on Z season two there's nothing specifically proposed at this point in time although um our traffic studies that have been done along too especially associated with like AUS and stuff uh with the Adelman property and also looking at the interchange it's expected that there will need to be some sort of a traffic control adjustment there probably a roundabout in the future but I don't one I don't think we've hit that threshold and right now there's no funding identified for something like that. >> Yeah, I was looking at the Scott County road construction plans for the next year and I'm starting to wonder if they realize that we're part of the county still. So, >> mill and overlay project on county road two is slated for >> next year. >> Next year. >> Yep. >> So, that'll be from Idaho to >> interchange. >> The interchange >> they're going to do a mill and overlay on County Road too. So next year basically repave it next year >> from where to where to the >> Idaho. So the gravel road on the west side of firehouse >> restaurant all the way to the interchange. The county will be out this year doing all their covert work. >> What's so sorry I I'm old. I had to go to bathroom but my doctor told me to drink a lot of liquids. So the roundabout on Xerxes and two is that >> it's up in the air right now. >> Wishful thinking. Oh, okay. >> At at this point it's Yeah. wishful thinking some point in the future. There's no specific project. >> Use the other roundabout. >> No, that's my intersection. >> Yeah, >> I don't care. >> So, all good questions. Anybody else have any other questions on anything? >> I was just wonder I was I was I have watched the two there though. I always thought why don't they just add like we did on on the uh west side on the east side. So, force people if you want to go left, force them to go right and go down to the roundabout and come back. want to know what everybody does. That's what I do. >> Pretty much, but >> that's what I do. >> But I mean alleviating that that is there's going to be some major accidents there. >> You mean from like over >> coming over the bridge heading eastward. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So >> yeah, I don't envy anybody coming from the south on 35 at certain times of the day. You want to take a left. >> Yeah. You have to you have to go right. >> Yep. You have to go down to um Dupont going down. go to that intersection, turn around or go down the roundabout. >> Yeah, because the >> that's just like Xerxes and two. Like I go to Glenboro and I'll take a bite on to 91 and then hit the roundabout. Like it's you're guaranteed to get out on Xerxes. >> You could be there for a while. >> Yeah. >> Well, you used to be able to go through that the automotive place. >> Yeah. I used to go and turn around in there. especially on what was >> coming home on a Saturday night when the race got out and like there was somebody that was trying to make a left and I finally got tired of it and I went through there and came around and they were still sitting there. >> The problem we run into with Mindot is just competing within the region. But I mean they don't have enough money to repair the stuff they've got and so they're constantly playing triage and their goal in their bridge division which we hear exists. We never get to talk to anybody in the bridge division, but they hold a lot of power and they're somewhere within the organization, but they have but you can never get to them directly. Um, but little commentary on my part, but um, they want to maximize the physical life out of any, not the functional life, the physical life out of any particular bridge. And so that bridge physically will stand for another 10 to 15 years. So they don't want to put money into it if they don't have to. So there's also the possibility out of our current efforts with Mandot that they might look at interimm improvements like okay maybe we put stop lightss or roundabouts that will likely also be part of our current efforts. We just had a discussion with Mandot staff not long ago and I think MIDOT now is is stepping up to the point where they want to take a closer look at what get what what would it look like? Would it be the diverging diamond interchange that we talked about and as part of that I think they're going to want to look at interm improvements too. So, if it just comes down to we just don't have the money, what can we do besides putting a stop sign in that's going to actually improve stuff? >> Interum improvement that would be pretty cheap is they could find it in the budget to put three stop signs on the east side of the bridge for people coming off of the northbound side. That go a long way. >> Um, we just talked about that the the other day. >> Did you guys talk about it yesterday at the engineering meeting? I >> Okay. >> Yeah, you weren't at the meeting. So, were you were you listening? >> I was not listening to that part of it. >> I guess I was the only one that was there. >> You weren't there? >> I wasn't there for that section, but I I I was >> physically. Yes. Mentally, no. >> Right now, um surveying is going to go down and get it all staked out so public works can get a better idea of on constructibility and what they need to do. One of the things that public works is running into right now is when we originally started talking about this almost two years ago, the idea is that we would do it primarily inhouse. You know, we'd have to bring somebody in to pave it, but we could do the subgrade work. We could do the grading, do a lot of that work inhouse. And now there's two there's a concern of possible cost escalation in the interim, and there's also concern about bandwidth within the department given with all of the increases we've seen in development and other things that are putting demand on their time. So that's not So they're working through that right now, but it is scheduled to happen sometime this construction season, but no specific date yet. >> But they still got to like survey it and like figure out exactly. >> Yeah. When we were first told about it, we were just putting a path through a park area. Now it's ditching and culverts and tile lines. And so there's a lot more that's going into it than was originally expected. So now they got to survey it, give us a plan, see what we can do from there. >> Some of that translates into cost, some of that translates into complexity for constructibility. So >> it's going to be a little tricky coming out of there park. >> You still got to be ADA compliant and there's a lot of things you got to meet. >> If we're getting stretched thin >> employee wise, then it gets harder for us to do it in house, too. >> Paul's got a lot of time on his hands. He can grab a shovel back >> first. Can you buy us a back hole? >> No, I stayed away from I I did do well on a back. >> That's one of the cost escalations is some of the work we have to do now now requires equipment we don't have. So, we have to rent it, which increase project cost, those types of things. So, um, devil's in the details, but right now the plan is it would still happen this year and we'll get her done. >> The neighbors are all cool with it though, right? Because you had the meeting or >> I don't know if they're cool, but >> I think >> Did you go to that meeting? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, >> there's a couple that were rather upset about >> grudging acknowledgement. Maybe >> it'd be interesting once they survey it to put the, you know, put get the stakes in, get the flags in. That's see what they say. >> It's always not in my backyard. >> We'll see if their house goes up for sale. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I don't think I think once the trails in and they see it didn't change their lives at all that they'll be fine. >> Oh, there will be more vandalism and everything on that trail. It'll be terrible. >> I think there's a lot of people excited about it though as well. >> It'll be terrible. It'll be good for the kids leaving Wagon Park. >> It'll be It will be good. >> Any other questions? Those are all good questions. >> Keith Hill sign >> waiting on uh pictures. Waiting. Rene is very very busy and I it's hard for me to bug her with much. >> We've bugged her a lot and it's it's hard. >> Did you see the sign? >> I thought Renee showed it to us. >> Yeah, that was a >> That was a draft made by Chad GBT. >> That was a draft I made with Chad GPT. >> It did look good. It looked good. It wasn't quite the right information and pictures. Then we met with a granddaughter and great granddaughter of Pete's to get better information and more pictures and then >> I'm waiting on Renee to write it up and then I will send it to our son. >> I got a thumb drive I'll give you because it's got all of this stuff and the guy that lives up the hill from me, Jean, he had this thumb drive. He gave to And I looked at it. It's got all of this nice pictures and I'll give it to you. >> She got we Renee got pictures from the descendants of he that um they asked us to use. >> We're pretty >> and they they I think they were good photos of >> past generations of the canes and family. >> I don't have no need for it. I >> Yeah, it can only >> we'll take it just because it's good historical and football if you want. >> Um which does remind me I should mention to you. So, we talked about Renee and Brandon being strapped. So, as you guys know, we're operating at 60 60% capacity within the department currently. So, um with Jay's resignation over a year ago, we've been running at twothird staffing for over a year. So, and development is continuing to pick up. So, we are stretched. >> And Stephanie left too, right? >> Yes. >> I just found that out. Yeah. My neighbor told me. So to that end, um we are in the process of interviewing a candidate for community development director position. So that person would be the new department head. Um they we have an interview with council tomorrow night and depending on how that goes, we may move them on the background. So there's a potential that we could have if they make it to the finish line, we could have somebody starting June possibly. So >> what's community development director and planner? What is the title? >> Community development director. >> So they would be if for those of you here that have been here. So I keep doing that because Angela's new, but um so the department structure um previously was we had a senior planner and two planners. Um Rene is a senior planner. Brandon and Jake were our planners. Jake went to Prior Lake. That gave us an opportunity to take a look at what we needed to do in the department. Rene's close to retirement. Um, and so we needed to take a look at how much runway she likely had left and succession planning within the department. So rather than placing replacing Jake with a another planner, we decided to replace him with a senior planner to provide some greater expertise in the eventuality that Renee retires. And then when Renee retired, we evaluate what we might need to do in the department, which could be another senior planner, a community development director at that time. Spent a year looking for a senior planner. Didn't get one. So, the decision and the runway was even shorter. So, the decision was to pivot to hiring a community development director position. Um, and we do have a strong candidate at the moment for that. And so, that would get us back to three people in the department. And then when Rene retires, we'll decide whether that's six months from now or six years from now, probably something in between those two. Um, we would then make a decision about what our needs are in the department at that time. Um, and it also provides uh the having a department head because right now I'm the deacto department head. So that's one thing I can move off my plate. So >> So we can keep Brandon in this spot. If you're lucky >> with us with us, right? Run them out. >> I didn't say right here. I mean, >> you'll be over there. You'll be >> those those decisions ultimately would be made by the new community development director, but Rene is not really in a position to do it given what her role is going to evolve to. So, I think the likelihood of it being different than Brandon would require the community development director to say, "I am a big parks person and I want to do this and I'm gonna take it from you, Brandon." So, >> Brandon's just gonna >> he's sleep. >> But, uh, I I don't think that's um likely because that role is going to have a lot of other stuff on their hands. So I guess they're gonna say is Brandon. >> You've been doing a good job since your baby, man. Parks takes a lot of my time. >> Let's keep Brandon. All in favor say I. >> So >> over can't resign. >> That's right. >> That doesn't matter. >> We need to cancel some meetings. It's fine. >> I know. I haven't cancelled one on you guys yet. I bet you're waiting for a break. See? >> So any any other questions? You guys are full of good questions. A lot of >> guys are >> Have we bought any more houses in town? >> Well, there's one up in Pete's Hill. It's kind of on that dead end street. It's the first one in on the north side. >> Condam it demand. >> I saw that that old house got torn down next to the old garage. >> Nope. They just took it down. That hasn't been habitable for years. >> So, does the person that owns that garage own that house? >> Yep. So there will be a >> they tore it down for re resale basically I think. >> Oh the house. >> Yeah. >> More than likely that property those those combined properties will be redeveloped into something. >> Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. That' be a nice corner. >> Yeah. Throw a motion at the wall, Mike. >> Yeah. The current owner of it has indicated their ultimate goal would be to potentially redevelop it or sell it to someone that's going to redevelop it. >> That's where our new pizza Italian restaurants go in that corner. If you build it, they will come. >> There you go. Second.