Um, Gav, should I What should I >> No, I I'm good with that. I mean, it's >> Oh, we'll go Chris. >> Yeah. Yeah. Oh, one minute. One minute. >> We're just waiting on a gavvel. Can't do a thing without a gavvel. Good evening and welcome to this Prayer Lake City Council meeting of Tuesday, January 27th. If you would please uh join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Well, it is wonderful to see a full council chambers this evening. Um, the first item on our agenda this evening is the public forum. the public forum is that opportunity for anyone in our council chambers that would like to come before council and share with us items uh that you would uh ask be called to our attention. The only exception is uh we would ask that no testimony for a hearing that's either been scheduled um and or for one that has passed that that would not be uh taken at this time. So with that one exception, is there anyone that would like to come before us this evening? Seeing none, council, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Oh, before I go there, uh, manager Wedell. Thank you, Mayor and counselors and members of the audience. Uh, for tonight's agenda, I would ask the addition of one new item. It would be item 9A under new business. It would be the approval of the pay equity compliance report. It was something that we didn't quite get into the packet before it went out this past week. Um, but it is due at the end of the month. So, I'm asking that that be added under item 9A this evening. >> Thank you, manager Wedell. With that modification to item 9A, would you entertain a motion to approve the agenda with that change? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Motion by council member Brad, second by council member Helier. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. That motion carries. Bringing us item 4A on our agenda this evening, council. That is the approval of the January 13, 2026 city council meeting minutes. If no changes or modifications, again, we'd entertain a motion to approve as submitted. >> I will make a motion to approve the minutes. >> Second. >> Motion by Council Member Lake, second by Council Member Churchill uh to approve those minutes. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. That motion carries. Bring us to item five this evening, which is the consent agenda. Go ahead and turn that item over to Manager Wedell, as well as those items before us um this evening. Manager Wedell. >> Thank you, Mayor and Council members and members of the audience. So, our consent agenda is those uh for those items that are considered routine or non-controversial, they're placed all together uh on the consent agenda. So, unless uh the mayor or a council member asks for an item to be removed for separate consideration, they're all approved together under a single motion, second, and a vote. Um if an item were to be removed um from the consent agenda, it would be placed under item 10 u on the agenda. So, tonight we have the following items on consent. We have the approval of the claims listing. Uh receiving bids and awarding a contract for the north water tower rehabilitation project city project 2026-06. A resolution receiving quotes and awarding a contract for control panel replacement at three city lift stations. A resolution declaring costs ordering the preparation of the proposed assessment role and establishing the date of assessment hearing for the Northwood Road area phase 1 project city project 2026-01. Resolution approving a work order for the Memorial Park master plan. City project 2026-10. Resolution authorizing final payment for the Well 6 and Wilds booster station generator replacement. Approval of the animal control services report for the month of December. A resolution accepting donations and grants to the city during the fourth quarter of 2025. Resolution authorizing final payment for the county highway 21, county highway 87, and 170th Street construction project, city project 2020-29. resolution electing the non-waver of statutory municipal tort liability limits and declining excess liability insurance coverage and finally a resolution approving a temporary liquor license for the prior lake association >> council um are there any items on the consent agenda this evening that you would ask be removed and undertaken under item uh 10 this evening if none I would entertain a motion to approve the list as submitted So moved. >> Second. >> Um all those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. That motion carries. Council, are there any items this evening uh that we just approved under that consent agenda for which you would like to make comment? >> I have one. Um I would like to extend um a sincere thanks uh to the SMSC for their uh generous contribution um that goes um towards our public safety efforts. um and thank the uh the tribe for the partnership and um their support on those efforts. Um council member or excuse me, manage wood. >> Uh mayor and council members and members of the audience. I did want to make a comment uh related to the approval of the claims listing. So this is the first city council meeting where we've done this where the actual claims listing itself is being provided to the city council as a separate document and it's available for public viewing at city hall upon request. But we've transitioned from actually including the all the detail in the claims listing in the council packet that goes online. And the reason we're making that change is we're seeing increased opportunities for fraud and and bad people trying to use that detailed information in our claims listing to uh submit phony invoices to the city and trying to do some things. So in an effort to avoid that fraud, we've had to make this change. But just wanted to make that um verbalize that this evening that that was something new as starting as of tonight. >> Thank you, manager Woodell. Um and an unfortunate commentary on where we are today. Um with that, it brings us to a presentation this evening um which is item 6A, which are police and fire updates. And uh we look forward sir to your uh presentation. >> Thanks for the opportunity. We'll go through our fire updates. The chief uh is conveniently out of town on vacation and so I was volunte. So 80 died. So this is just an overall view of our still our staffing. We still have fire chief Rick Steinhouse, myself, assistant chief Jim Rosika. Jake Tyson started January 1st as our second assistant chief and fire marshal. Uh we still have our three full-time captains, nine full-time firefighters, and now our paid on call staff is up to 28 members. Um just a quick overview of what we've got going on this year. The bathroom remodel at station one. Uh if you remember that station was built in 1996 and this is kind of the first update to those bathrooms they seen in a long time. Right now we're in a punch list so they're very very close to being finished. Um we did add a new RMS system this year trying to take advantage of all the metrics and stuff and be able to run our department a little more efficiently. So, that started and we're actually adding a community connect module coming in April or May that will give the public more interaction into our RMS and see what's going on and the ability to add information that they want to that system. Um, fire inspections. Jake's got 20 life safety inspections already completed this year. He's going to get 20 more done and now he'll be caught up and he'll be on a two-year rotation for all of those things. Um he's got 350 pre-plans in our system, which means this gives our firefighters the knowledge of what's inside a structure when we go there now. So, not everything, but we're getting very close. Uh burn permits, that was kind of a big switch for us starting January 1. We used to handle all those in house and now the state's taking them over. I don't know if Rick is happier than Jake or Jake is happier than Rick. I'm not sure. >> Um, for the events attended, we attended 55 events as a department with approximately 7,100 contacts with the public this year. And these are our numbers from 24 to 25 from July 1st of this year to the to December 31st. Um, up a little bit. Um, and this is our total coverage area. So, this is Prior Lake, Spring Lake, and Credit River Township. And this is our total numbers for the year for just for these incident categories. So, when we get to the total sheet, you're going to see they don't add up, but this is only three categories of these are the major fire categories here. Um, so here's our from the breakdown from the townships from July 1st to December 31st. Um, and you can see there it kind of goes up and it there is no rhyme or reason to the number of calls. Um, sometimes the townships are up, sometimes Credit River is up, sometimes the city's up. So overall, I think this was our busiest year we've ever had. Uh, 2289 calls. I think we were 2004 calls last year. So trending up. Um although where we're at this month, we're actually trending down. So we won't know until the end of the year. And with that, any questions? >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Assistant Chief. Uh good evening uh Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'd like to give you some information just on the quarterly update for the police department here. And I don't know, Jeffrey, if everything is working on your side there. So, um in terms of staffing, we have a new officer that started just in the end of 2025. Uh Brady Gable came to us from the city of St. Cloud. as we have been fortunate over the years to pull officers who have uh got experience and decided they wanted to move to another agency. Again, we've been fortunate to be able to uh bring staff and talent like that. While we're always looking for new and energizing uh energy, uh we've been fortunate for Mr. Gable to start. We've got two additional officer uh prospects just finishing through some of their background information and processes and we're hoping probably within the next four weeks to identify a start date uh for those two that'll bring us up to full staffing compliment. I have no wood to knock on here uh because as things go these days staffing is uh continues to be a struggle in the police world but we're fortunate uh to have identified good candidates to this point. Uh we're also looking for an additional uh staffing position that uh has been already provided uh in terms of an evidence and records tech. We'll talk a little bit about that uh in uh our award uh section in just a few minutes here. We have a sergeants promotion process that'll be beginning probably in the next couple months here. Uh council supported the addition of a seventh sergeant. Our current sergeants corps has six. They are consistently and constantly stretched to the edges. And so we're appreciative the council has supported that promotion. We'll be looking for that from within the current ranks here. And we also had uh a new records position starting. Stacy Ty joined us uh just a matter of a couple weeks ago, has been doing fantastic for us already. She came to us from the city of Egan, a longtime police 911 dispatcher uh there. She's a Prior Lake resident. We love bringing Prior Lake residents uh in house uh to continue to serve the city here. Uh and as I said, we're we've just finished interviews and identified our finalist candidate for that uh evidence uh tech and crime analyst position. That'll be a new hybrid position that council again was so uh excellent to support us in and we'll look to identify that person starting pretty quickly here. Uh in terms of operations update, uh we're continuing to work uh in terms of uh our technologies primarily. Um drone is a first responder. DFR is something council may have heard of. Uh it's started in a couple cities in the state of Minnesota here. Essentially, the process is a larger drone than our patrol drones. Is the first responder to an incident. Uh it literally launched from a remote location. Uh responds over to the scene and provides intel for officers and fire uh medics and so on. Uh tremendously valuable has of course with it technological concerns, privacy concerns, financial concerns, and so on. And so we're continuing to evaluate what the uh potential uh deployment might look like not only in the city of Prior Lake, but we're exploring ideas to work in joint powers agreements with other cities so that we can extend that technology not just within the city uh itself. In terms of uh facility updates, uh the the mayor and uh manager Wedell and a number of us have been working in terms of what the future of the regional training facility might look like. This has included discussions with our county partners and Scott County entities as a whole. Um, this has been a struggle certainly not only to continue to honor the financial obligations, but what does the future look like? And so, while I don't have an update for you, I would say there are constant conversations going on with local and uh county partners in terms of what the future might look like for a training facility. Um in terms of uh departmentwide, we've been looking uh and this has started previous to current uh social uh and city events and uh throughout the state, we've been looking at conducting what we call premortem crisis plans. And that is looking at if an event were to happen of any sort of nature, whether it would be um a high a high level crisis for police department or for fire department and then playing through those. You've historically heard them called tabletops. The premortem concept is the thing has already happened and then we're reverse engineering how it might have happened and how we might answer for it in the future. And so 2026 is going to be a big year for the city and the police department to to look very deeply at that. Uh and then strategic planning. uh the the police department, we are already starting to bust at the seams. Uh and so what we're looking at is what in the next couple months, couple years and beyond. What might it look like for us to intelligently plan uh for structural needs, for departmental needs, and so on? What are the financial obligations those would carry with it? How can we responsibly use what we've got? Uh and then continue to look to the future there. So those will be conversations that'll continue this year. Uh as far as statistics go, no real uh changes at all. We've looked for council's thoughts on what information you might like to see or where our residents are concerned. So, we select simply just a few of those pieces. By no means more or less important than others, but we certainly haven't seen anything as to what I would call a spike in the criminal uh areas. Uh, however, and I know there may be a question or two of clarification, you will notice in the DUI or DWI in Minnesota, those are interchangeable, DUI and DWI. you will notice uh quite a spike which uh maybe I'll I'll wait for a question if there is or I could anticipatorily uh speak to that. Um I I will say uh one of our our honore tonight, one of our honores tonight is almost single-handedly responsible for said spike in those numbers. Um and maybe I'll maybe I'll just go ahead if it's okay, Mr. Mayor, council members. um the DUWI spike. Uh I'll start by saying this, a real passionate area for myself and so statistics become really specific to the context behind them. Uh for those that don't know, Scott County uh in 2025 became the third deadliest county in the state of Minnesota behind Henipin and Ramsey counties. And when I say deadly, I'm talking traffic involved events and incidents. Uh impaired driving is a large part of those fatalities. Uh and while that's certainly a scary thing to think about, there's actually good in knowing that information that provides everywhere from traffic engineers to police departments, first responder agencies to start to figure out how might we tackle this issue. Um I would tell you that uh in 28 years in this job, uh driving under the influence has been an epidemic since the very beginning of time and now in Scott County, it's just hitting a little bit more closely. And so when you see the number of DUIs uh jump up in terms of enforcement, very honestly uh this last year that was the efforts of officer Mandandalay and her partners getting out there and paying a little bit more heightened attention to potential impaired drivers stopping those potential impaired drivers, evaluating them, and then arresting as appropriate. Not that they and we weren't paying attention before, but as things go, if we start noticing, as we were told by the state of Minnesota, there is a larger problem in Scott County, of course, then we start to shift some of our attention appropriately to those areas that we're concerned with. The true realities about that number is that number could be 300 or 400% higher than it is. Our staff just simply don't have enough time with all of the calls for service to dedicate to that. And I would give you a point in example having nothing to do with me. However, uh this past Friday into Saturday, I came out and worked with our overnight officers at 35 below, which they do every night. Uh and uh within I was working for about 3 to four hours. Within about 45 minutes of actually looking on the street, I had a DUI driver directly in front of me. Ended up stopping that person. Uh they are a local person, were consuming alcohol locally, and were more than twice the legal limit. Uh nearly crashing a couple times. If the chief of police within a couple hours is finding impaired drivers, the reality is they're everywhere. It's no reflection on our residents or on our businesses. They're fantastic residents, excellent businesses. It's a reflection more on the reality as to just how dangerous and prevalent impaired driving is. Uh and even personally myself, having been struck and injured by an impaired driver and having a loved one killed by an impaired driver, I'm telling you, it just is exactly the way it is. It's it's a danger. and to officer Lelay and her officers, her team's credits. Uh they're doing increased work in that area and that would be why you see that number uh increase there. So hopefully that might answer preemptively any questions, but I'll certainly answer any more if there are after. So uh that's as far as uh the stats there go. And Jeffrey, I apologize if there was any more. Uh if there are any specific questions on the police department updates, I'd certainly be happy to answer them. >> No. Thank you so much, Chief. And appreciate the preeemption. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. >> With that, um, we now have, um, the wondrous item before us of a Prior Lake uh, presentation. Prior Lake Police Officer and Sport Services of the Year award presentation. Chief Dugen, please. I'll beg everyone's uh apologies or or grace for being in front of you a little bit more than normal, but this is this is just the absolute best uh evening that we have generally when we have council chambers full or uh maybe a greater chance that there might be a contentious issue or thing to discuss. And so, and I'd like tonight to see not only uh retired officers and staff here, but we've got uh team members from the police department here on their own time. Uh we've got fire here and then family and friends. This is just a fantastic uh time for us to be able to celebrate. Um, and I'd be remiss if I didn't thank council and city staff support in our teams doing exactly what they do as they do it. So, thank you for that. If you have uh met uh any of our officers or met any of our uh professional staff, if you and I have met uh for any number of time, any number of minutes, you've heard me use the term people first and mission always. The police department's mantra is just that. Uh there is always a mission that we have and in those missions uh we are guided by putting people first. The team of the Prior Lake Police Department made up of civilians and sworn people uh lives that every single day. There are some days we don't live it as thoroughly as we maybe should and that's why we talk about pursuing better. Not pursuing perfection or right but pursuing better. And in that mantra, the culture we use to reach that, if you will, is a culture of, as we discuss, accountability and celebration. We try and develop a culture where we can account for the things that we do. We hold each other accountable to do the best we can. And on a night like tonight, we look to celebrate the small things our people do and then the very big things. Tonight, we're going to celebrate two of our team members. one former team member, and we'll get to that in just a second, uh, who really exemplify not only that mantra, but exemplify what the Prior Lake Police Department and City of Prior Lake team is. So, we're going to start with our support services person of the year. Uh, Heidi came to us in February of 2023, almost made it to a six-year anniversary, but the reasons for almost, I'll get to in a second, are just the best. She was hired as our first full-time property and evidence person. And undoubtedly, and I can say this from experience because I started in that room when I got here, she inherited a room in a system that was getting better, but certainly was nowhere it needed to be. And if you could just see our property room from years ago, you would see a room that just had collected stuff and was everywhere. and ultimately in a police organization the highest liability is the property and evidence that we collect. Uh Heidi what I will say affectionately stepped into the nerdery uh an area that literally has no windows, no connection to the outside world except a computer and a phone and that's by design. Uh she stepped into that and absolutely went to work from minute one. Whether it was creating a detailed instructional guide for processing and handling our evidence through critical assistance in many investigations, including homicide trial prep, her meticulous work has earned her praise from not only inside our agency, but outside the city as well. Heidi would go above and beyond every single day, not only in her area, but in looking to assist others, no matter what that assist role was. There was nothing above or below not only Heidi's skill set, but her desire to be part of the team. She goes above and beyond in everything, even finding a time or two to literally save another person's life in her off time. I'll let Heidi tell you the story. It involves a band concert and jumping off of the risers to save a life. It's not a big deal. It's just what she does. Positive, warm, super nerd, and quirky are some words that would describe Heidi. And I say those with the most the most tremendous level of appreciation, praise, and thanks because she is exactly the person we needed with exactly the skill sets we needed at the time we needed it. She has been a tremendous asset to the team. She's already sorely missed as she has moved on to far more important roles that are focusing on an uh preparing for an expanded family. commitment, integrity, a standard of excellence, and one who has strengthened our team and community. It is our honor to recognize the 2025 support services person of the year, Miss Heidi Burton. We'll take we'll take pictures uh at the end. I should have mentioned uh all Prior Lake team I want everyone to stay to the end. We're going to get some photographs for everyone else. We'll do the same too. There's also going to be as always there's always food over at the police department and everyone is welcome there uh at the end. So uh we'll get a chance for some photos then. Okay. Officer Amanda Lelay came to us in March of 2020 and Mr. Mayor and council members again I will just say it out loud. The entire Prior Lake team works really uh uh hard in what they do. Amanda Lelay is almost single-handedly responsible for that double-digit increase in the DUIs, and we'll get to that. Team player, passionate, focused, and committed would be some of the words that nominees uh made for her. Her teammates call her Fredo, her last name being Lei, and I'll let you figure out why that namesake is. Uh that is what her teammates would call her. Impaired drivers would call her someone they should worry about. And that is true. Our citizens would call her a blessing and a lifesaver. Literally, while she works diligently for the Prior Lake PD team every shift, whether it's on domestics or crashes or everyday calls, Officer Lelay set herself apart in this city and in fact in the state of Minnesota in 2025 with her dedicated focus on getting impaired drivers off of the roadways. Officer Lelay finished the year with 52 arrests for driving under the influence. And I'll take a side step here just to let those who don't know. Simply the fact of stopping a vehicle and then recognizing they might be impaired is going to put into play a 10, 15, 20, 30 minute evaluation process. Making an arrest then could easily be a number of hours. So there's a side parallel here that when one officer makes a DUI arrest, the rest of the team steps up not only to support that arrest, but then to cover the street for calls. That truly is a team effort, and it's a dedicated one that the arresting officer needs to be prepared for. Those are 52 deadly and dangerous drivers who made choices to risk their own lives and the lives of everyone on our streets. Officer Lelay understood the risks to all and spent time each and every shift looking for the signs and indicators leading to excellent arrests. She was sworn at, run from, fought with by some of these suspects and still continued with her level of professionalism. And if you stop to think of the times when you or I surrounded by family or friends who may have had one or two more than they should have, just think about the patience that it takes in that one moment. Officer Lee and her partners pursue and experience those moments every single shift for 280 hours a year. Officer Lelay and her partners encountered that consistently, but again remain professional and dedicated in what they were doing. The citizens in Prior Lake are in a better place because of Officer Lelay, and it is it our honor to recognize her tonight as the 2025 Prior Lake PD Officer of the Year. Uh, Mr. Mayor, if I could, I would turn it uh over to you if you would like to take a recess so we can uh take some photos and congratulate everyone. >> Indeed. At this time, I'd like to call a recess at 7:28 p.m. The council is in recess. Council, I'd like to call the meeting back into order at 7:36 uh p.m. Uh with that, council, we're going to move right along to our item on the agenda, which is council member Leia is on it. Oh, oh, oh. Look at the the agenda change. No, >> item 9A. Yes. If I can >> turn this over uh to city manager Wedell and the pay equity uh report, please. Manager Wedell. >> Thank you, Mayor and Council members and members of the audience. So, tonight we're asking council to approve a resolution approving the city's 2025 pay equity compliance report. So, per state law, which dates back to 1984, the state legislature passed um an act which requires all public jurisdictions to eliminate any sexbased wage inequities and compensation. So, each local government must um commit um submit a current pay equity report once every three years using state approved software. And there's a process that we review job classifications. And really the goal is to look at our job grades and if if there's a certain job that tends to be more female dominated, but they're at the same grade level as a more maledominated job that we're paying them equally. Right? So that's the whole basis of the report and I'm pleased to say that we are in compliance with our pay equity requirements. Uh we've gone through the the study. So now the next step would be for council to approve it and then we submit it to the state for final approval. So tonight we're asking the the county or not the count the city council to approve the 2025 pay equity compliance report for the city of Prior Lake. >> Thank you manager woodell councelor are there any questions? Seeing none I would entertain a motion to approve the pay equity report. >> So moved. >> Motion by council member Helier. Second by council member Churchill. All those in favor say I. >> I. I >> and if I may go back to to uh item 11 on our agenda. Is it where are we on our agenda there? Yeah, 11, which is Council Member Le on updates. Uh Council Member Helier, please. >> Thank you, Mayor and Council. Uh pretty late week on Friday. Had my uh agenda review um with Mayor Briggs. >> Thank you so much. Uh Council Member Helier, Council Member Lake. >> Thank you. Uh my report is as follows. On the 16th, I attended scale executive meeting. On the 21st, I attended the uh transportation transportation advisory board policymaker working group. Very long name. Um and then on the same day, I attended the TAB general meeting. Um and then on the 26th, I had my agenda review. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Council Member Lake. Council Member Churchill. >> Thank you, Mayor. On the 15th, I had the quarterly um meeting with Scott County and on the 20th was the Prior Lake Spring Lake watershed district meeting and I had my agenda review on the 23rd. >> Thank you so much, Council Member Churchill, Council Council Member Braid. >> Mayor, members of the council, on 115 there was a Scott County quarterly. I want to say thank you to Mayor Briggs for stepping in for mystead. And then on uh 126, I attended my agenda review. >> Thank you so much, Council Member Brad. And um my wife just texted me my homework as I left my updates. So first thanks to my wife Heidi uh for covering me this evening. U my lays on report on the 14th um attended the prayer league savagerary school's annual critical response training which was very well attended um by by many. Um thank you for that. On the 15th, again, as Council Brad and Council Churchill said, we had the quarterly meeting with our Scott County Commissioners. Um on the 19th of January, attended the Municipal Legislative uh Commission Housing Subcommittee meeting. On the 20th, uh Representative uh Congresswoman Angie Craig's office uh provided uh local um cities, municipalities an update on constituent services. And then finally today um really a wonderful um event in opening up Hopes Portage which is 14 unit apartment for those suffering from housing insecurity and giving them a pathway and a transition to their homes. And the comment I would like to make to council this evening, my words were really around in times like these where finding agreement across jurisdictions, across levels of government, hopes portage was made possible really with uh the shock community manague community, Scott County, Scott County CDA, um CAP agency, um and uh shepherd of the lake church. So, faith, community, service-based organization, tribal nation, city, county government, and also, lest I forget, our school districts who shared with us just how many families in our community, and in prayer, it's 15 families um do not have a place to call home every evening. Um so, Hopes Portage uh right here in our community and thanks for all that made it happen. With that, Manager Wedell, is there anything that you would like to add this evening? Uh, mayor. No, I have nothing further. Thank you. >> With that, I would like to call for that final item, action item. >> I'll make a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> We have a motion by councelor Brad, a second by council member Lake to adjourn the PL city council meeting. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> I. That motion carries. The meeting is adjourned at 7:41 p.m.