The the issue is that county. So, um it'll be it'll be pretty much a process driven by Lake Elmo to get that permit through.

I mean, the other alternative is to say, no, if the developer wants that piece of land, they can put in the sewer. But I I think that as a an entity, we're probably better served working with the railroad ourselves.

I think there's also a logic in if we can do it at the same time, we we obstruct the traffic flow on that road just once rather than a couple of different times. And there's some efficiency in terms of mobilization, demobilization costs that we could achieve if we work with the county on it.

does the council support hiring a commercial broker for parcel one. So that would be someone who could give us uh broker price opinion. They could give us a good idea of what the market looks like. Um feel all the interest on the property. Try to maximize the value of a property knowing that their commission is going to be two to 3% as a seller.

I'm 100% on board for that. That's I mean there's things that government does well and things that government doesn't do well and I don't know that we've we've got that expertise. No offense anybody, but that's not that's not what we do on a on a daily basis.

What I want to bring up here is this is one opportunity for an RFP where we can look is at doing a um more traditional neighborhood development, something that's more walkable and trying to get almost like a new urbanist approach to this one site.

But moving forward fairly soon in April, starting to announce the project, working with Kathy Story in the Fresh, doing our website update. We actually have a page for this project. We just need to build it out, you know, add the report, do things to the page. Um, so working on that in April and then moving into community input. We're looking at an online survey.

because one of the things you have to worry about an online survey is someone going on 25 times to slant the results. And usually when they do it on a contract basis, they'll look at the URL where it's coming from or the numbers anyway. And if there's duplicates from the same computer, then they will only accept the first one and they discard the others.

we've recently with the Boulevard Tree program, we've used um an EZRI product like ArcGIS called survey 123. This was just a form. So, I can look into see because I know we can block like duplicates and set it up a certain way. So, I can kind of run that past you and see if you think it's something we already pay for with our GIS.

The problem we h we have here is is multiple multiaceted. First, let's talk about depreciation. When we buy an asset for the storm water utility, we take it from some funding source, utility, bonds, whatever. It doesn't come off the income statement. There's no line for capital expenditures on the income statement. The depreciation charge is recovery of the cost of that capital asset over time, over the life of the asset. And so when you look at an efficient utility, whether it be storm water, electricity, sewer, water, you name it. You want your operating funds to cover all your operating costs, including depreciation. You want to establish what's the minimum amount of cash that we need to have in this fund to cash flow for the variation expenditures and revenues that occur over time and to replace you know a certain amount of your capital assets going forward. When we look at the storm water fund correct mayor in 2016 17 and 19 the bonds that were issued for the city included bonds repaid from the storm water utility. We've issued, you know, we've issued bonds and every year we've issued bonds except 20 and 25, we've had those portion of those bonds repayable from the water utility and all but three years we had portions paid for from the sewer utility. So in our other utilities, we finance those capital assets and pay for them over a 15-year bond issue. In the storm water, we've been doing two things wrong. One is well, we don't pay for them from the storm water fund. We include them in the bond issue and levy a tax to pay for them. there's no free ride. So the taxpayers are paying for storm water utilities and taxpayers and storm water utility customers are not the same people. They're different people. And so the taxpayer gets a disproportionate burden of paying for storm water costs that benefit tax exempt entities. And so to straighten this out in a way that makes the most sense, we need to set our stormwater utility up so you know everyone that contributes to storm water pays their share of that contribution. And when you put it on a tax role, there's no rational nexus between the value of a property and the storm water contribution. You can have a expensive property that has less storm water impervious area than a cheaper property. That's why you set the utility up in a way that provides equity. So I suggest in this case we take a look at these capital assets and say if we pay for them over time as part of our geo improvement bond issue, you know, what would it look like? We have to raise a rates. There's no question. I think, you know, Clariss has done a good job of looking at that, developing a plan. We talked a little bit last year about we can't double them overnight. We have to find a way to phase them in and subsidize them in a way that makes sense. And we're going down that path logically. We're going down the path on the street side where we where we don't have a utility or enterprise funds to pay for them a little more aggressively than than I thought maybe we should, but you know, we're still going down the right path. We have a plan to reduce our debt to half over the next 10 years, which makes sense, but we need to step back on the storm water utility and take a comprehensive look at that. You know, what if we come in and say we raise our rates gradually to bring it up where it's paying all of its operating expenses, including depreciation over a 10-year period of stock, would be just fine. It's a plan, right?

So then would you then create those bonds as a storm water payment? There would be geo utility geo um revenue bonds. So, so as part of your argument saying separating out bonds to pay for the storm water stuff and have the storm water fee pay back those bond versus the taxes. Okay.

we did not assume um that we would be funding it with debt. How hard would that be to change at this point, Nina? Easy. Yeah. So, we could do an email about that.

the current ordinance that you're currently working under was developed during a period of less of less cooperative council and while a current council might feel they don't require impediment stated in that ordinance it does not meet future councils will be as accommodating. We need to have ordinances um if you change it that can function not only for a well well-run council but also a council that has challenges getting along together.

Staff can add something to the agenda that or make a change agenda the day of the meeting. It's an elected official. It can take anywhere from three weeks to seven weeks to get something on the agenda. That just seems completely mind-boggling to me.

Maybe we strike a comp I think you went down a path that that maybe is a good compromise that a council person can vote to add something to the agenda for discussion. And four people have to agree that we should add it, but we can't take any action on it that night.

My thought was on on that was to appoint a committee to come back and talk about what should be the 250th anniversary. I know we have the Fourth of July parade. I wasn't looking to upstage that. I don't think it has to be on the 4th of July. what does a community want, if anything, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country?

I 4th of July this year 250th year of the USA uh lands on a Saturday. Yeah. And I just generally in Minnesota it's uh they they go to their cabins, whatever. Right.

I actually really like that idea. Kind of like the weeklong celebration, a different theme each night that supports the local businesses and the mayor has to give a speech every night.