We will call this meeting of the Oak Park Height City Council to order. The first item is Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Okay. And then we need approval of the agenda. Do we need to do anything with A or just fix it when we get there? A in new business. We can fix it when we get there. Okay. I move approval as presented then. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Um council and staff reports. Um I just have two things. I attended a couple ribbon cutings for businesses in in our community, Frontline Roofing and Restoration and Bank of America in the last couple weeks. I have the Middle St. Croy Watershed Management Organization meeting on Thursday. Since I might not be able to make it, Mike has graciously volunteered to make in my absence. And that is it. All right. And Councilman Bar, I've got CVB tomorrow morning. All right. Uh, city administrator, uh, council members, I encourage you to check out, uh, Covert Park. So, our landscaper was over there, um, taking care of, uh, all the weeds and overgrown brush and the fence, uh, that you had authorized. Uh, it looks great. Uh, once the grass grows in, um, I think it's it's going to look awesome there. Just think the park is so much more welcoming, you know, with that fence down and with some of that cleaned up. So, appreciate your support of that initiative. Yeah, looks very nice. Okay. And police chief, thank you, council. Uh, couple of things. Nerf gun wars are back in town. Um, as we come to our attention, started Friday. It's all high school teams. Um, I believe it's 10th grade and up. There are numerous teams and they are uh causing us a lot of extra calls um because the nature of the the tournament, I guess, let's call it. But, uh, we're aware of it. We're dealing with, we have three administrators and our school resource officer is talking with them as far as safety concerns that are being addressed already. Uh, also, we have a severe weather awareness week with that. This Thursday, our tornado sirens will go off at 1:45 and 6:45. So, obviously different from our normal um, monthly one on Wednesday. And then uh we're looking at hosting at city hall our drug takeback. That's a nationwide event on the 26th which is a Saturday. So in the years past we've done it at Botwells. This time we're planning on just doing right here at city hall and we'll get a lot of advertisement for that as well. And then of course our winter parking restrictions is off. So hopefully it stays the drug takeback. That's when people got expired. Yep. Medications on. Yep. It's all if you have your expired uh medications, if you want to bring in the really good stuff, the or illegal stuff, you can do that, too, I suppose. But uh um it's for all the uh unused prescriptions. Um we'll take all those and combine it with the counties and get those all put into an incinerator. So, it's a nationwide event. Yep. Thanks. and city assistant city administrator. Yes, Mr. Acting mayor, members of the council, I have three items for you this evening. First, your recycling award winner. The first winner for the month of April, Mark Johnson at 5847 Oak Green Avenue North. He had his recycling out, so he is um receiving an award and he just needs to give us a call and let us know what he'd like for his choice of award. Second item is our cleanup day is Saturday, May 17th, 8:00 a.m. until noon. That's in the Anderson Corporation Southwest parking lot. We'll be accepting general household waste, large bulky items, furniture, construction materials, and yard waste. We won't be accepting appliances, electronics, or hazardous waste. Third item I have for you is we have started planning our party in the park. We had our official kickoff meeting today and party in the park will be Thursday, June 5th, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Brackie Park. All right. Thank you. All righty. And now we'll move on to visitors and public comment. Um, this is a time for people to address the council on anything that's not on the agenda. And we do have a first up with the Still Water Oak Park Heights Convention Visitors Bureau annual report presentation. [Music] Thank you, counselors. I'm going to start by passing around some literature and then we'll get started. Awesome. Yeah. Gotcha. There we go. All right. Can you go to the next slide? All right. Thank you. As was mentioned, my name is Kelly Nyard. the president CEO of Discover Stillwater, which is our local convention and visitor bureau. Our mission is to increase the economic benefit of tourism with an emphasis on overnight stays for Oak Park Heights and Still Water. We are funded, for those who are unfamiliar, by lodging tax, which is collected at the bottom of every short-term rental within the city limits and turned over to the city to administer and then pass on to the convention and visitor bureau. It's not funded by residential tax. It's exclusively funded by those visitors. We are a 501c6 nonprofit and we work collaboratively with both city councils and the chamber of commerce. Quick overview of what we'll be discussing today. We'll be looking at some video which is very exciting. We've got some new video assets. We'll discuss our lodging tax collections, some accomplishments. We'll look at our print digital report, what types of campaigns we've done throughout the year, partnerships, and what's next. Kicking off is with the exciting stuff, some new video. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] This new video will enable us to run streaming ads as well as traditional TV. We also have taken to doing more nimble vertical video which you might see on social media platforms and this is less structured, less formal. So we can be a little more aware and reactive to trends. Yes, I do. She told me my head was so high. I need a teacher. I want to bang on. We can use that vertical video to be fun and whimsical and up on current trends. Or in the case of our next video, we can use it to help tell a story and promote our area businesses. This is a two-part series where we did showcase all of the local shops. [Music] What makes you go like you make it look [Music] easy. Focus your eyes. Focus your eyes. [Music] And you can find those and a lot more if you follow us on our social media platforms. All right, let's get down to brass tax and lodging tax collections. You can see that we saw a large climb right after CO and since that point, we've remained relatively steady. We're within 2% of last year. How does this impact the local economy? Well, tourism tax revenue accounts for 18% of Minnesota's tax revenue, 20% of Washington counties, and in Still Water. I know we're in Oak Park Heights, but it's safe to say that there's some carryover impact, 33%. Tourism is our largest local industry. In Washington County, nearly 12,000 jobs are created by tourism. And in order to replace that economic impact, local households would need to would need to pay an additional $1,02 if the lodging tax wasn't here and being generated by local visitors. For every dollar spent, it's estimated by the state that $38 comes back to the area. We run a comprehensive marketing campaign using both traditional and emerging technologies and strategies and campaigns. So, you'll find that we've got visitor guide production, um, photo, video content, promotional items, trade and travel shows, digital campaigns with geo fencing and SEO, newsletters, website updates, billboards is something new we did this year, social media, tourism event grants, and hosting content creators. As our brands continue to go grow, we're reaching new audiences all the time. Our industry stats far exceed comparable industry pages. In fact, in the state of Minnesota, we are the third largest DMO beat only by the state itself. And duth, you can see that our discover still water website traffic is 350,000 annual users. We're over 52,000 Facebook followers, 25,000 Instagram followers. Our e newswsletter subscribers are 46,000 and growing. and we distribute 70,000 visitor guides annually bringing people into our community. We've also listed who our top acquisitions to our website are. You'll see Chicago, Minneapolis, Duth, St. Paul, Rochester, Oaklair, Winnipeg, Fargo, and St. Cloud. All areas where we've made investments in the last two years. UE should have a copy of our official visitor guide, NAP, and our trifold. We updated the format two years ago and we think that that's been a success and we'll stay with that format. It's an annual production that's encompassing of all tourism facing businesses. We distribute that at the Mall of America, the Minneapolis St. Paul airport along the IR35 corridor in the Quad Cities throughout Still Water and mailed nationwide by request both on our website and the Explore Minnesota website. for campaigns. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but we've done streaming TV ads, broadcast TV, we've done print ads in various publications, targeted emails, geo fencing, and impressionbased campaigns, paid social, newspaper inserts, content creator partnerships, familiarization tours with meeting planners, activations. At the lower left corner there, you can see we went to the St. Paul Saints game and we brought everyone's favorite lumberjack with us to get people engaged and over to our booth and as we saw earlier those new video assets earned media we are constantly working with area media sending press releases nationwide regionally and beyond this year that garden Midwest living twin cities living is doing one right now and we were in the Smithsonian this year we've had quite a year of accomplishments in the Oak Park and Still Water CVB. We launched the Discover Still Water Treats Trail, a fun rebranding of assets and businesses that were here when we realized there were nine ice cream and candy stores. And trails are a popular amenity. Much like Kentucky has the Bourbon Trail, we have the Treats Trail. We launched a new website. We updated 360 tours of our venues. We did activations, as mentioned, at the St. Paul Saints and the De Mo Wild. We had two billboards. We awarded $85,000 in event marketing grants supporting 14 events locally. We worked with state, local, and national media. We were nominated for two Minnesota awards for Explore Minnesota tourism. We created those new assets. We ran all sorts of campaigns across five states and into Canada. Last year, we did 22 Tik Toks or reels, 423 Facebook and Instagram posts, respectively. We represented Discover Still Water and Oak Park Heights across the state and nation. We managed a successful photo contest and we worked with content creators to give a firsthand account and expand our audience. So, what's next for Discover Stillwater? We're going to continue doing those familiarization tours with meeting planners to try to fill our spaces Monday through Thursday and increase our our economy when it's a little softer and we have opportunities for growth. We're implementing new software that will help track where the people are coming from. Not just who's on our website, but where our actual visitors are coming from so we can better calculate ROI on investments and target more strategically with our advertisements. We're supporting corporate events. We have new video assets as you've seen. Explore Minnesota Film and TV has a new program where you can be a film certified community. We are working towards that certification which will create opportunities for our area. And we have plans to apply for the 2026 Governor's Fishing Opener, which that new boat ramp you guys have just installed will be a huge asset for. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. With that, I do want to pass around the latest swag. We mentioned we have some new promotional items that we're using with those meeting planners and bus tour groups that we've just met with. I just got back about an hour ago, not even from Deuke where we were meeting with bus tour planners to try to bring those groups here Monday through Thursday as well. And these are one of the items that we give to them and would like to get to you as well. And then I'll ask if you have any questions. I'm happy to stand for those. You've been on the road, huh? Yes, I have. Would you take one and pass? I will. Yep, you got it. What I'm passing out is the deck of cards. On one side, it has an image of our visitor guide. It matches that. And on the back side, every image is a reason to fall in love with our area. So, there are 52 reasons to love Oak Park Heights and Still Water. And so, as those people are playing their cards with their friends and their family at night, they'll be reminded of all the wonderful reasons that they should book a trip or bring a group to our area. With that, if you have any questions, I'm happy to take them. Not a question. I just want to compliment your social media. It is I follow it religiously and it has given me so many inspirations of where to spend um time on the weekend. So I appreciate it. We appreciate that. Yeah. Any other questions? Say tomorrow. We'll see what you have tomorrow morning. Well, we appreciate your support and continued collaboration with us and we'll look forward to seeing you all again next year. But always feel free that you can call, email, or ask any questions that you have as it relates to tourism and the work that we do. We appreciate you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks, Kelly. Anybody else? All right, then we will move on to the consent agenda. Probably got to find my numbers. All righty. Consent agenda. Approve bills and investments checks six uh 71,000 613 to 71662. Approve city council minutes from March 25th, 2025. Approve kennel permit for Tara Kensley. Appoint Jennifer Van Djk to the planning commission for a one-year term extension. I will move the consent agenda as presented. Second. Roll call, please. Council member Johnson. Yes. Council Runk? Yes. Council Dherty? Yes. All right. And that passes. Now, moving on. We have no public hearings. So, we have an old business employee handbook and drug, alcohol, and cannabis testing policy. I'll take this one. um acting mayor, members of the council. Uh you recall back in July of last year, you authorized um staff to start working on combining some of our policies, getting some of our personnel stuff out of the city ordinance codes and working on an employee handbook and a drug testing policy. So, what we're bringing you tonight is the handbook and the policy after working with the attorney's office and department directors to refine and make sure that these this new handbook and policy um take into account the existing policies, the existing ordinance um and incorporate federal and state laws that need to be incorporated into these documents. and we're presenting to you the final draft for approval, comments, whatever you might have for us. And council members, I'd just like to add um the assistant administrators done a good job of kind of shephering us through this process. Um certainly appreciate the the feedback and participation from our our department director team. Uh it's been a pretty, you know, significant lift for us and not always the most glamorous um thing to do either, but uh appreciate all the the teamwork uh that our that our team shown and work. The repeal of city ordinance 203. I'll second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. I had one question on the repeal. Do we need need to do a publication with changing the ordinance? We do. Do we need to do a motion to summarize that versus Good question. Um, and you know, looking at this, I what we probably really need is a a separate document that's signed by the mayor and city administrator that says the council is repealing this section code. that would be what's published, the actual ordinance document that's signed that says this is a repeal as opposed to I mean we don't obviously have to republish all the code that's being repealed as part of the process. So um what I think I would recommend is we can bring this back at your next meeting with that additional document. Um and I think it'll be short enough where we don't really need a summary publication. Okay. Um I think we with how you explain it, we probably could just direct you guys to have that executed with the mayor and it doesn't need to come before us again. Yeah. And certainly you've given us the direction that this obviously this entire section of code is is being removed. Um and I'll give some thought whether or not we can just administratively have that ordinance be drafted and signed versus bring back the actual ordinance. Okay. Okay. Cool. All right. Okay. In that case, we'll move on to new business. Um, in business, um, item A, approval of an agreement with what is that per for PAL? For PAL. Yeah. Sounds and really that's the only thing we're doing, right? Correct. Okay. Correct. Yep. Uh council members, as we discussed in our work session, uh our staff, our public works staff have been dealing with a very complicated uh main break in the vicinity of 6400 Lookout Trail. Uh this is probably option seven or eight. Um where we're at, uh they've gone through all kinds of different uh scenarios and options of what makes what is in the best interest of the city. We've got some complicating factors that we're dealing with as far as topographical challenges. There's a lot of old roaded uh in this vicinity. Um we also uh to there's a a residential garage that's just adjacent um to this uh water main break. And so our recommendation uh here what we're proposing in option one is a cured in place pipe. Um, so we've uh identified a contractor that's done work um in the state before uh that is able to uh produce this cured in place pipe which essentially would give us a new water mane. We do feel confident that uh this will work. Obviously there's no guarantees until they get into the field and and start working, but we do feel very confident in our staff's conversations uh with that contractor. So the uh the quote that we have is for I believe roughly uh $178 uh,000. Uh that will be reduced though. Uh there's work that uh we can do in-house to reduce that cost. There's also work that our normal excavator Miller excavating can do that uh are at a lesser cost than the contractor. So with that said, we are recommending to move forward uh with that uh contract. And as uh rightfully said, the other agreements that we have on the agenda, um we'll set those aside uh for now and uh move forward with this agreement with uh FPAL. And I'd be happy to answer any questions that the council may have. That sounds like a best option to going and I think in the long run it's probably the cheapest one. So I think I'll make a motion that we approve the agreement with Furpow with the understanding that the city administrator's discretion to select and move forward with the agreements most advantageous to the city. Second. And I sounds like Jake, we don't have an official quote in hand yet at this point. We we have a rough draft I guess I'd say of a quote. Um so I don't know, Attorney Sandstöm if you wanted if we need to do a not to exceed number. Yeah, I think that'd be my preference because we don't really know the exact amount that you're technically approving here, but if we can improve uh proceeding with work in an amount up to $150,000. So, we know the parameters there, but understanding that this is still somewhat a work in progress, but we there is some urgency to it and wanting to move forward um without having to bring this back um at another council meeting. And and just to clarify, up to 178 is where we're at right right now. I'll accept that friendly amendment if Mike. Yes. Okay. One concern on that 175. Yeah. Less than 175 because that is the statutory limit at which you are mandated to go out for public bids for uh any manner of work. Okay. I will accept that friendly amendment if Mike. Yep. I was going to ask that cuz I know we ran into that and passed. Yes. All righty. We have a motion. Any more discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. And motion passes. All right. Then we have item B, an agreement for managed information technology services. Yes. Acting mayor, members of the council. In January of this year, you authorized staff to send out an RFP for managed IT. We've uh had the same IT company for roughly 20 years, and they um they've done a wonderful job, but they don't have the public safety background that we are looking for that we need with the technology that public safety has. And so, we went out for for RFP. We received 15 responses, um very competitive responses. And as a team, a committee consisting of myself, the chief of police, and the city administrator, we narrowed down to two finalists, called them in for interviews, and now further narrowed it down to one. And we are requesting approval tonight from you to move forward with an agreement with CIT, that's Computer Integration Technologies, Inc. based out of Woodbury, Minnesota. and that would be contingent on um favorable re recommendations from their existing clients and final review of the agreement by our city attorney. This um you'll see on the council action that um it is slightly over budget. So u any remaining um expenditures above the budget would come from fund balance. And I'll add mayor and council, we we'll do our best here to um try to keep those costs down that that first year. I think that that my goal uh with this is get them in. You know, if there's anything immediate, you know, we keep you apprised of that and correct those immediate issues. you know, the the goal is to build a, you know, five-year plan, a roadmap for them where we can start budgeting for projects um that that have more urgency, you know, and handle those within the first few years. But we'll do our best to to pinch that number as much as we can. And again, I appreciate the assistant administrator's help with this and running that process. And um really excited about getting someone on board here that has that uh that knowledge and capacity from a public safety perspective because that's really where our technology is is in the police department has changed as you all know over the last 5 10 15 years. It's just gotten a lot more robust and so we need someone with that expertise in there. City Hall is pretty straightforward. I mean, computers and printers. Um, but we need that expertise uh in our police department. So, appreciate your support of of this initiative. You you mentioned that you're going to check with some of their other clients. I mean, have we got any of the police departments that you that you're familiar with, Chief? Yep. Thanks, Council. Um, we've already checked on some of those. They they provide us a bunch of list of their IT contacts and I went ahead and contacted their chiefs of police. Um these are local as of right across the river, River Falls, Hudson, uh Somerset, uh Rosemont. So we've got some solid they have I believe it was 19 government entities that they serve. So that's really uh it's really good news. And then um all of them so far have been positive feedback. I've talked with them on the phone. So Okay. I feel very comfortable with that moving forward. Okay. Then I'll make a motion to uh authorize the staff to sign an agreement and managed information technology services with Computer Integration Technologies, Inc. I'll second pending the uh favorable recommendations from references and subject to the final attorney review and approval. Now I second guess better get it all in. Moved and seconded. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. All righty. Um are there any other council items or announcements? I move we adjourn. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. We are adjourned. Thank you everybody.