[Music] to order for two for tuesday june 22nd this meeting will be conducted in person at city hall council chambers and by video telephone conference due to the ongoing coven 19 health pandemic this meeting will follow the provisions of minnesota statute 13 d .021 and hopefully we don't have a problem tonight that everything will go well if we have to if we have any glitches we will take a recess and um try to get things back working okay but just to give everybody a forewarning next is the approval of the agenda is there any item any items to be added or changed the move approval a second motion by councilmember dougherty second by councilmember johnson um roll call eric cults remember doherty yes councilmember johnson yes counselor member lodge agreement yes council member rank yes mayor mccumber yes next is council staff reports i had quite a few things i attended the league of minnesota city's board of directors meeting last week where they recognized the outgoing board members which i was one of them attended the national league of cities uh small cities meeting and i was asked to be a panelist for small cities month attended the minnesota association of small cities annual meeting um and then the coalition of utility cities annual meeting over the next couple days i'll be attending the virtual league minnesota city's annual conference and then on thursday is the minnesota women in city government annual meeting and that's going to be a special one and i've been asked to do a state of the cities at bautwell's landing but a date has not been set yet and then the league of minnesota cities and metro cities policy committees are starting up as well as the minnesota or the midwestern governors association the continuing meetings with that and then i'll be attending the national league city summer conference coming up here in a couple of weeks and that's all i have council member dougherty yeah i attended the coalition of utility city's annual meeting last week on the zoo that's all i got thank you councilmember johnson yesterday i attended our parks commission meeting as well as the parks walk through we also established the community garden so there's two active beds one other person is signed up and they're all up at city hall and then we have been working on the walk run we've had nine percent nine participants so far thank you council member lil degran uh i attended the lake elmo airport advisory committee that was the end of may i believe the 26th um was our first advisory council at first advisory committee meeting just going through um kind of their role and and how it's going to uh to play out uh in the future fairly short meeting um and then our planning commission meeting was uh canceled for june thank you councilmember runk yes i attended the middle st crime watershed meeting this month and uh we got final approval on the lookout trail work that we're going to be doing um cvb didn't have a regular meeting this month that's because next monday they're holding a um all-day retreat so they can do some of their future planning thank you are there any other staff reports one if i could um i didn't mention i wanted to mention the city is working with the county economic development authority about a worth a for a deed application um we do know that uh zintel will zintel um that weight on properties is is anticipating a 30 000 square foot expansion um and so if our application is successful the um the city would receive a grant it might be in the 200 000 range um and then when that is repaid or the city would receive the dollars we would then loan it to um the applicant potentially the zintel or weight industries and as they reimburse as they pay back the loan the city is able to keep a large percentage of it so we'll just have to see if that uh application pans out but we also know that the the zoning and the plan development is slated for your july planning commission meeting two and a potential review by the council on the on the zoning elements too so this all might come together next month thank you any other staff reports then the recycling award jennifer mayor and council tom and lisa thiefs at 5655 peller avenue north and dennis mcguire at 5831 oak green court north where your recycling award winners for the last uh for june and for yes for the month of june i'm sorry thank you next is the visitor public comments section this is a time for anyone that might be in the audience or on zoom that would like to address the council this is a time to tell us what you think jennifer is there anyone on zoom nobody other than sorry about that nobody other than your presentation that's already on the agenda okay and is there anyone in the council chambers okay so then we'll move on okay we'll move on to the presentation by washington county uh for state trunk highway 36 transit feasibility study i believe this is joe ayers johnson actually mayor i'm going to kick us off okay yes thank you for having us mayor council emily jorgensen i'm a planner with washington county and the project manager for the highway 36 trains or highway 36 corridor transit feasibility study uh which is a mouthful um but something that we've been working on over the past year which is looking for transit improvements along the highway 36 corridor between the greater stillwater area and minneapolis um we have our commissioner gary creaso with us here today this really was his baby one of the initiatives that he's kicked off for us um and so i will hand it off to joe ayers johnson who's my assistant project manager who looks like he may need ability to screen share so we can show you all our powerpoint um i don't know yeah thanks emily um yeah it's saying i cannot screen oh there we go i got it thank you whoever made that happen can you all see my screen okay okay so we know that this will be a lot of new information so we're going to start off with some study background and scope of the study we will touch on the study goals and give a high level summary of the public engagement results then we'll introduce the transit scenarios that we looked at for consideration how we evaluated them and ultimately get into the study recommendations and next steps some important context for this study is that uh commissioner kriesel frequently hears from community members and stakeholders and we as staff often hear the same thing uh is that there's a real need for better transit options in the 56 corridor between minneapolis and the oak park heights bayport and stillwater area what we'll kind of refer to as the greater stillwater area sometimes as well as a for better transit around the greater stillwater area itself so commissioner cressel and the county board tasked us with finding out whether it is feasible to bring transit out to the greater stillwater area and improve transit options in the highway 36 corridor and if so what the general look feel and cost of that might be so the purpose of this study is to identify transit needs and recommendations that reflect the corridor today uh what and what we anticipate for the future and as part of the study we were considering transit and transit facilities that would provide alternative travel options for folks throughout the highway 36 corridor before we move on i do want to note that we didn't go into the study with any particular transit solution in mind and the study is not necessarily determining what is going to happen it is just looking at what is feasible which is really the first step toward any transit improvements in the corridor the study was led by emily myself and our project consultants in coordination with the project management team which had members from washington ramsey and hennepin county as well as mndot and the met council the process also featured ongoing coordination with two technical advisory working groups or tags the city tag consisted of a staff representative from each city along the 36 corridor and the operations tag had a staff representative from mndot metro transit and washington county's community services and here i just want to shout out eric johnson he was an you know an active participant represented representing oak park heights in meetings and helped review the deliverables as they came up and get the word out about the study so thank you for that i won't get in all the study goals here in detail but when we were developing the goals we wanted them to be goals that would address the issues identified during earlier phases of the study and and we know that when we think about the future we need to be sensitive to existing context so we recognize that there's a lot of growth planned in the corridor but that some communities prioritize their existing character and do not anticipate changing much so we wanted to ensure that that was captured in the goals as well we'll get a little bit into the public engagement here while covid changed most of our initial engagement plans we were able to shift to a lot of online engagement we conducted things like virtual focus groups we hosted and attended virtual meetings and we created digital content like self-guided presentations and fact sheets that we distributed through our city partners like eric johnson and one of the key ways that we were able to reach people living working or going to school in the highway 36 corridor was through online questionnaires which yielded over 1200 responses which at least for us is rather a lot and we wanted to learn about people's pre-covered travel and transit habits what their interest in transit is and why they may or may not be taking transit today we've tried to summarize all that engagement into the following three bullet points which are that the question there revealed that 73 percent of respondents are interested in taking transit you know this wasn't once or twice a year for a twins game uh folks were indicating that they were interested in taking it up to five times a week for things like work for recreation for commerce and shopping so they were interested in in incorporating it more into their lifestyle uh that of more importance to folks of most importance to folks in in the corridor where traffic congestion along highway 36 improving mobility for people who rely on transit and improving the convenience of traveling without a car in this corridor and then in both focus groups and questionnaires uh two needs emerged and there's that need for east west travel throughout the highway 36 corridor and that connection to the larger transit network but there was also a need for travel within the greater stillwater area so we'll start taking some transit scenarios here that we looked at uh but before we do i do want to review the different types of transit service that we looked at during the study um and again you know we haven't locked in any particular type of service yet but what you see on this slide have all informed what has become a tren you know a suite of transit options and the recommendations that have emerged so the first one bus rapid transit or brt as we typically call it uh it's a higher train a higher amenity higher investment transit option that operates as sort of a hybrid between light rail and your standard bus route um it either operates in mixed traffic or in its own designated lane um it is typically all day frequently uh bi-directional service that that has infrequent station locations that's designed to move lots of people quickly this next one is express buses you know that's your typical park and ride service that you're probably familiar with they operate primarily during peak morning and afternoon periods and they're really designed to serve commuters at the start or end of their work shifts then there's local express buses which are more like your regular route bus service but with more spacing between stops they have fewer amenities but then because of that they're also more flexible in their service timing and stop spacing and then this last one on demand public transit this is an emerging service type that is gaining a lot of traction both nationally and locally and it refers to a type of service that will respond on call and travel anywhere within a set geographic region sometimes even providing door-to-door service and this is something that we're going to get into a little bit more here on the next slide so recall that there are those two needs that i mentioned that emerged during the study there's the um the east what the need for east west travel throughout the highway 36 corridor and then the need for travel within the greater stillwater area on-demand public transit was was identified as a potential recommendation to better meet that second need the travel within the oak park heights bayport and stillwater area and it's not a perfect analogy but some people think of on demand public transit as dial ride meets uber or lyft and it's really been carving a niche for itself as a transit solution for areas that that need transit but where fixed route options have not been successful and are not necessarily sustainable long term there's no formal route that it circulates instead communities designate a specific service area and users can request a ride via app website or phone call so looking at the screen right now you see like there's a little bit of a blue kidney shape around the stillwater oak park heights bayport area that's just an example of a service area that could that could be developed for something like on-demand public transit unlike the uber lift comparisons these vehicles are ada compliant and will sometimes pool riders they can accommodate bikes or other mobility devices and there are no price surges meaning that the fare is reliable there are also more reliable hours of service and more accountability with the drivers so with the stage properly set i will walk you through the transit scenarios that we looked at there are four transit scenarios uh three of which include all the transit types that we just talked about uh brt that bus rapid transit is the green line commuter express uh the commuter express bus is the dotted yellow line local express bus is the purple line and then that on-demand public transit is that like i said that blue kidney shape uh there on the on the end and the fortune and the four scenarios vary primarily by where the eastern terminus of that bus rapid transit is located so for example here in in transit scenario one uh brt would run from downtown minneapolis through the university of minnesota up highway 280 to highway 36 and then stop at rice street at rice street there would be a connection to that local express bus service type that would then connect out to the oak park heights bayport stillwater area and then to address that peak period commuter need from a commuter express would run from the greater stillwater area directly to downtown minneapolis and then an on-demand public transit service area would be established around that oak park heights bayport stillwater area to serve the travel needs within within that area and also to connect folks to other transit options trans scenario two uh only differs from transit scenario one in where that eastern terminus is so that eastern terms of the brt has moved from rice street to maplewood mall but all other aspects of this transit scenario are the same likewise in transit scenario three that eastern terminus has moved from maplewood mall to hadley avenue the only other difference here is you'll notice that the brt does not go along 280 it goes directly 36 to 35w and that's because in preliminary analysis um the further east you go in the 36 corridor the less of a connection there is to the university of minnesota so we just wanted to test out what that would look like to maybe go 35 instead of 280. and then this last scenario differs from the others and in that it only includes brt and on-demand public transit and that's because you know in this scenario the brt is going all the way from minneapolis uh all the way up to stillwater and in that case it'd be a little redundant to run that commuter express and the local express as well so this is a little bit more of a streamlined option um but it it does include that on demand public transit aspect as well so these are the four scenarios that we're looking at and again i just want to be clear that you know none of these are being advanced as a preferred alternative to move forward to engineering you know these scenarios were all developed to test for feasibility of transit in the corridor and to really be compared against each other as to which ones perform best in terms of ridership and cost so one of the ways we evaluate these scenarios is through developing and comparing ridership forecasts uh operations and maintenance costs and capital costs and this is where we really start to put numbers to some of these scenarios and what we found was that all four scenarios uh are actually very comparable to each other i'm looking at this chart here you'll notice across the top you'll see the different scenarios that we talked about down the left side of the chart you'll see the different evaluation measures and just starting with ridership you know while ridership varied slightly by scenario in the transit world these are all still quite comparable and you can see that there's really a fair amount of overlap in the ridership forecast ranges so one of the key takeaways here is that you know while while scenario 2 has the highest projected ridership there is not one scenario that is clearly head and shoulders above the rest they all feature ridership within a similar margin and that's really the story across all these metric metrics with regard to operations of maintenance costs we also see a lot of similarity generally the further east the brt goes the higher the o m costs but again we see that no scenario is really head and shoulders more expensive than another and then when we talk about capital cost estimations that includes things like right-of-way buses stations and associated infrastructure and these aren't final costs but they're used just to get an order of magnitude you know what are we talking about cost wise here and and again it's the same story all four scenarios are are really very comparable to each other um when broken out like this but the heart at the center of our study was uh our transit improvements along highway 36 between the greater stillwater area and downtown minneapolis feasible and the answer is yes we see that transit investment along the highway 36 corridor is feasible we see that specifically brt that higher level investment along the highway 36 corridor is feasible we see that transit investment all the way out to stillwater is feasible um and so then the question arises you know which which scenario is best uh and the answer is we don't know and i can understand uh that that may be dissatisfying but it wasn't really the goal of the study to identify a scenario to advance the goal was really to determine whether transit in the corridor could be feasible and get some early evaluation numbers to put to that identifying a preferred scenario for the corridor would come in future phases uh and and would also include more opportunities for the highway 36 communities to participate so with that i'll hand it off to emily here to walk through some of our recommendations all right thanks joe let's go to the next slide perfect um so your head might be swimming we showed you a bunch of maps at with different comparisons of different transit types we talked about on demand public transit and then we told you that they're all essentially the same um so you may be kind of wondering what are we doing here and what is the county up to uh so before we get to our recommendations which will be laid out kind of chronologically we felt it was really important you know as we talked to our our quarter partners that we kind of acknowledge our the context that we're all operating in and all of the challenges um that we're having right now and including the challenges that impacted even conducting the study so starting with quote fit 19 we know that there are still going to be financial challenges and constraints that's for that's for the county that's for all the counties that's for our city partners it's for the state it's worldwide we know that there's going to be uncertain changes to the transit market so it might be a little funny right now that we're talking about transit at a time when folks are just beginning to get comfortable going back to transit right for the past year or so it's been please take your car please walk please don't be near other people and here we are talking about transit um another challenge that would be ahead of us is county participation so while this is a good priority for washington county we have to acknowledge that this uh washington county was the only funding partner for the study um and moving forward we would want to see some more participation from hennepin and ramsay but they have their own competing transit priorities right now washington county also has the gold line which we're working on delivering um ramsey county has rush line which is not far behind gold line so there's a lot going on in the transit world which leads us to our partners at met council and metro transit who have their own financial constraints their own frame uh their own competing transit priorities so when we pulled together all of our recommendations we wanted to acknowledge kind of the um challenges that are ahead of us and our partners as well as all of the unknowns which really helped us to kind of form all of our future asks and when we want to ask them and being strategic and sensitive to what's going on in folks live so let's move to our next slide um so we'll start with our near term recommendations and as i said all of our recommendations are ordered um chronologically so near term is a zero to two year time frame and really the theme of this of these recommendations is focusing on washington county uh so given the context and challenges of our partner agencies we want to focus on the items that washington county can control in the near term so this would be to study and consider a pilot for the on-demand public transit service which is that blue kidney that you saw and that study would allow us to identify best practices and figure out funding options if that service is something that the county decided would want to pilot and then we want to continue to prioritize maintain and invest in mobility management so we have a wonderful woman in washington county community services her name is sheila holbrook white she does all sorts of mobility management um right now for the county which is really connecting folks um to where they need to go so if they have a court date at the government center if they need to get to the wic clinic uh but they live in forest lake it's sheila's job kind of by by plane by boat by taxi by foot whatever she helps folks get to where they need to go because we do know that transit options right now are limited and folks who are unable or unwilling to drive have very limited options when it comes to transit um in the greater stillwater area and so with her work we can kind of continue to make invest in that work and also um track that data so when we do uh bring more transit more options uh to the greater stillwater area we know that we can really serve those needs because we'll have the numbers behind it and then let's move to our next slide so these are midterm recommendations um and this will be three to five years out and this focuses on creating what would be called a highway 36 corridor commission um this would be a joint powers board of sorts and this would hopefully be long enough after the covet 19 pandemic that we would have an understanding of the future of transit and the demand but also at a time when our partner agencies wouldn't have so many competing competing transit priorities um so we'd recommend that the commission would identify funding sources probably be a joint powers board and then scope out future studies and projects so as joe said you know we're not advancing the preferred alternative out of this study but it'd really be up to that corridor commission to commission a study that would kind of identify a preferred alternative and that would have kind of all of the corridor communities involved so they would be able to kind of vote and really have their say as as the study moves forward um and then we'd also want to work with metro transit and st craig county i'm monitoring a need for essentially park and ride service and seeing we know that at least pre-pandemic we had a lot of folks from wisconsin crossing in the river and coming and using our services and using our buses and they continue to kind of move dirt on the other side of the river and grow quite quickly so there might be an opportunity once we're three to five years out from the pandemic um that we might want to look to see if there wouldn't be need uh to capitalize on that investment and get some service out there as well let's go to our next slide and these are our longer term recommendations and so this would really be when we would develop those corridor plans and um and focus on those partnerships as well so do you want to do some planning for mobility hubs those are kind of one-stop shops within your um within a kind of a brt area or a bus area where you might have a park and ride you might have electrical vehicle charging you might have shared bikes or shared scooters really all that first mile last mile trip needs will be met kind of a one area um we'd want to partner with cities and develop small area plans so if a prt was brought forward we want to make sure that around the station area we'd have some great transit access we know that that's really good for economic development and really kind of supportive of the city and we want to partner with mndot and the quarter commission to develop what's called transit advantages and really those are bus only shoulders uh so we know that as we get out into suburban communities where folks maybe choose to take the transit but don't need to if we have the time travel savings by using a shoulder that's quite persuasive in getting those folks out of their cars and into the bus um so those are about five to eight years away and then we can move into our ongoing strategies or recommendations and this is really similar to what we're doing right now is kind of continuing their engagement with our corridor cities we know this is the first time you all are seeing this but we want to keep chatting and keep keeping a pulse on what you're hearing and what your needs are um and then we want to keep doing things that we know um help to support transit so that would be partnering with cities in mndot as it comes when it comes to our bike and pet infrastructure finding grants finding good um funding opportunities for those we know that when an area is bicycle pedestrian friendly it's also transit friendly um and we know for folks who maybe have a one-car household or a zero car household if we can make it easy for them to bike and walk up to it they're more likely to access the transit um all good stuff there and so that's the end of our recommendations which is just a lot of information to give you um and so i would be happy to answer any questions that you might have particularly interested in your reactions to bringing more transit to the oak park heights areas thinking about how what we're showing maybe aligns with what you've heard as city council members anything you'd like to share with us question where you're going off of 280 is that following um university avenue by the um the u and going basically following the light rail line the green line do you want to go to um that scenario joe i think it's scenario one or two either one says that follow it comes down 280 so does that follow university evidence um it does show that it would follow university on here what's important to keep in mind is that we these are just testing for to get a sense of of ridership to get a sense of travel time um so even if you know perhaps we were to advance scenario one um we wouldn't want to get too into the weeds on what roads it's actually following at this point because it's just there were about six phases of study away before we would know the actual alignment of road that it would follow okay thank you i really like this plan the one thing that i would i'd like to see and i'd like to hear your thoughts on is personally with looking at the bus rapid transit the farther out east to me looking at people with working families with kids you might get back for a family emergency the further out east that bus rapid transit goes i think the more likely that will impact families in a good way yes excellent feedback thank you scenario one scenario two would have been very helpful a long time ago when i went to college because i drove 36 280 to the university every day i'm sorry i don't i can't really hear councilmember rank that's because i shut my mic off i said scenario one and scenario two would have been handy a long time ago when i went to college because i said i used to drive 36 to 280 every day so are there any other questions well emily and joe i'd like to thank you very much for the presentation it was very very enlightening thank you for your time thank you and thank you commissioner kriesl for spearheading this information for us thank you mayor if i could just uh close my comments by uh appreciating and thanking city administrator eric johnson who's representative clark heights as staff and the city technology technical advisory working group throughout the study he's provided great input uh from the oak park heights perspective and has helped to fine-tune study recommendations uh but i'm i'm particularly interested to hear uh the council's reaction to the concept of on-demand uh public transit serving or in oak park heights i think that's there's been a real lack for that and that i don't even remember how long ago there was a bus that used to go around the city um and it was you it was used quite a bit um so i i think you're probably having that on demand i i bet you it would be used quite often i think so anyone else any comments looks like you put a lot of work into this and a lot of thought uh thank you uh mayor uh cucumber uh emily and joe are doing a great job leading us through this study so thank you thank you for your time to come today you betcha there's no other comments then we'll move on to our consent agenda which is approved bills and investments check six nine three two to six six nine seven two um totaling two hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred sixty one dollars and seventy five cents and then check six six nine seven three two six seven zero three two um in the amount of three hundred ninety seven thousand forty dollars and forty cents approved city council work session notes from may 25th 2021 approved city council minutes from may 25th 2021 approve regular premium option for workers comp compensation insurance from 7 7 20 21 through 7 6 20 22 authorized repairs to the city hall hot water circulating system an approved proclamation recognizing june 2021 as small cities month i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda second motion by council member dougherty second by council member littlejohn eric councilmember sure councilmember doherty yes councilmember johnson yes council member lil dragon yes council member rank yes mayor mccumber yes um and tonight we do have a public hearing it's public hearing on a request regarding noise ordinance for a concert at stillwater bowl on july 16 2021 jennifer yes mayor and council randy erdo from stillwater bowl who is here present in the council chambers this evening is filed an application with the city for an outdoor concert on friday july 16th with a rain date of july 18th and he's requesting the council consider authorizing extension of one hour to uh for the noise ordinance to allow the concert to go until 11 pm that would be a deviation from the noise audibility matter that's in ordinance 1109.04 point f 0.6 a a notice of this public hearing was published in the stillwater gazette it was mailed to neighbors within a 500 foot radius of stillwater bull and it has been posted at city hall the city council may consider a reasonable deviation under the city special event permitting process for the event to deviate from the noise restrictions if the city council does desire to grant that one-time request for this event staff is recommending that the following conditions be placed on the applicant's permit that the applicant must provide a security safety plan that is acceptable to the chief of police by july 1st 2021 and that the applicant must provide a force forecasted attendance maximum attendance number to the chief of police by july 1st 2021 the applicant must provide the chief of police in updated expected attendance including actual total ticket sales five days prior to the event with a final updated security plan accounting for the expected attendance and the plan must be must include the sold and forecasted continued ticket sales and door sales that the applicant shall ensure that all designated security personnel are non-drinking and sober that evening that the city police presence is reque that city police presence is required if deemed necessary by the chief of police and that such costs are the sole responsibility of the applicant that a cash deposit of one thousand dollars be made to ensure payment of above police costs and or possible penalties stemming from violating the permission granted herein that all outdoor music and or operations cease at 11 pm and that above ordinances are strictly enforced at 1101 pm that the applicant acknowledges that the city may re revoke the permit if granted at any time should the event post any undue risks to the general public well thank you i'll open the public hearing jennifer is there anyone there that would like to speak to this request mayor and council there is nobody here other than randy ertle himself and we did not receive any written comments as well okay does randy orton want to would he like to say anything regarding this is that a no that isn't no as you recall he did do this concert in 2019 and 2018 and it's he's following this similar process this year and as i recall there was no issues with it at that time from the last one correct okay i'm sorry okay motion by council member rank second by council member dougherty eric councilmember daugherty yes councilmember johnson yes council member loadregrin yes councilmember rank yes mayor mccumber yes council is there any discussion regarding this um request my only question i couldn't recall if there hasn't been any issues with this before has it no is the timeline the same as it has been yes i mean the alumni clock same same size crowd and anticipation might be a little bigger this year your people want to get out yeah and you have no uh problem this is for randy he has no problem with the uh the stipulations that are put down here no okay i make a motion that we approve um the request second questioned by councilmember dougherty second by council member littlejohn eric councilmember daugherty yes councilmember johnson yes councilor member lodge yes councilmember rank yes mayor mccumber yes okay we have no old business tonight so we'll move to new business which is a joint powers agreement between saint croix county sheriff's and the oak park heights police department chief thank you and good evening mayor and council so here we are a couple years down the road and we find ourselves as the new gateway into minnesota with the new bridge opening up and uh with that comes with some assistance is for public safety from time to time and we are already finding ourselves crossing the bridge and you know as soon as you get to a certain point you're already committed along with that we're finding calls for service increasing and as well as maybe not the direct area um this i've had conversations with the sheriff we've kind of gone back and forth a little bit on this jpa power joint powers agreement um we both agreed we think it's a good idea that we just more or less solidify this we already assist each other in the capacity for emergency assistance it does open the door as well to assist uh if there's an officer that's or a deputy over in sanctuary county that's requesting help we are the closest agency um and it's we're not going to let our own park squad that one thing just sit there and watch on the other side of the uh of the river or a mile away from us and same vice versa they can come over here in which they've already done that 95 percent of this is going to be bridge related no question about it and we've already had seen a variety of calls from people in crisis to traffic accidents to debris on the highway state patrol of course is great if they're in the area but they are overwhelmed and it is a delayed so most of this just centers around us stabilizing the situation waiting for sanctuary county to get there and vice versa if they need help and so that's what this um joint college agreement is asking for basically uh just putting this more obviously together and saying that if we're over there we're responsible for our own people and vice versa as they are for theirs and um there's no question so that's what i'm asking for the approval of this uh tonight from council that's pretty much one more thing here um the version of the contract that's in your packet is actually somewhat outdated um there was so there was a lot of back and forth with sanchor county to try to get a a workable agreement in place that made sense to staff over in saint craig county as well as staff and old park heights but then and as you can see in your packet the um synchro county was clearly comfortable with it and they went ahead and signed it but then kind of right at the same time uh chief ran the proposed draft of the contract by the league of minnesota cities with respect to insurance related issues and insurance claims uh under this sort of contract and the league actually had a handful of proposed changes that they thought made sense particularly from their perspective on insurance related lawsuits uh claims and lawsuits that might stem out of such an arrangement um primarily i think the change if you're looking at the contract that's in your packet the second page of the agreement um numbered paragraph five the the league basically so under paragraph five of this agreement we had drafted this in a way that essentially said uh oprah heights and sinclair county are each going to be responsible for their own conduct in in response to any sort of joint call and if someone sues either one or both of them that basically each one is going to be responsible for any liability that comes out of their respective officers actions in such a scene but the league suggested that someone different provision that essentially would call for whatever party has requested assistance to take full responsibility for whatever happens on that scene from a legal claims perspective including so for example if sacramento county were to make a request for assistance over in wisconsin and our officers went over there and then some sort of unfortunate incident occurred that resulted in a lawsuit being filed against saint craig county and or the city uh from those officers actions that essentially sancri county as the jurisdiction where the issue happened and the party requesting assistance they would be fully responsible under their insurance policy provisions to deal with that claim and so we the league recommended that primarily so that there would be only one insurance policy involved in any particular lawsuit and stemming out of a particular event and also that the result would be then that a single lawyer working for that insurance company and that entity could represent both parties in that lawsuit and so the league recommended that they thought it made sense to them and was preferable from their perspective and so we have reworked the language and set section five um to account for that and i think chief have you said that i'm a sinclair county at this point if they have it um we've been playing phone tag today but we have not made verbal connection today on it so and so and i certainly could screen share that that revised redline version that's been kicked around that the league has recommended uh but essentially what we'd like to do is um and i can let me see if i can pull it up here for my file so are you advising that we should uh table this to the next meeting or um well what what we were going to advise what staff thought made sense was that the council's comfortable with it even though these redline versions have have not been approved by sancri county with a handful of changes from the league essentially this council could approve it conditionally subject to sanctuary county agreeing that the the format of it with those changes are acceptable to saint croix county and that way we're not kind of holding up the the approval process of this i think the chief wants to get it uh done and in place and so the short of it being and i again up i i'll go ahead and screen share what this revised version looks like i would think with the league being our insurance trust that if that's the language that they're requesting i think we should be comfortable with what their suggestions are so can everybody see my screen at this point yes and so we're looking at the redline version of the contract here um and what we see is a handful of changes in paragraph four and paragraph five which essentially relate to legal claims and who's responsible for what and what this redline version provides is that um each party's still going to be each party will be responsible for their own workers compensation claims for their employees and so that's made clear in this section four that if our officer gets hurt responding over in sacrament county to for some incident we're still going to be responsible for a workers compensation perspective but again the main claim basically being section 5 uh being deleted in its entirety with a new version of language recommended by the league and again essentially saying that whatever parties requested assistance their insurance policy and their entity will be responsible for the legal claim that arises out of that and then there's one additional paragraph as well again at the very end recommended by the league and this is an additional provision that essentially so under the original concept of this agreement there would not be any charge um going one way or the other uh when one party requests assistance from the other it's basically each party is paying for their own staff their own equipment to help out the other party and there's not going to be a reimbursement but what the league pointed out is well if there's some major natural disaster and fema comes into play then fema has reimbursement rules that go along with it and essentially if there was some natural disaster or we had to go over to wisconsin and provide assistance um and fema came into play then technically under fema rules saint croix county would have to uh we'd have to invoice syncret county and then sacrament county can request reimbursement through fema so what this says is for major disasters lasting longer than eight hours uh a party's gonna be able to build the other party for assistance being provided and again that's primarily for fema reimbursement purposes so those those with those changes that the council is comfortable with those red lines what we'd recommend as a conditional approval of that agreement subject to sanctuary county's review and any minor tweaks by staff that arise out of that did they get specific about what is a disaster is it natural disasters it's not specific and in fact it doesn't even say natural disasters it really just says any sort of event that requires assistance for more than eight hours eight continuous hours and so it wouldn't have even technically necessarily have to relate to any disaster uh if there's just some really major event that is going to require police assistance for hours and hours on end there's a potential for reimbursement there going each way but if it's less than eight hours the expectation will be that each party just is gonna basically providing assistance for free okay so basically on those changes that go both ways we request both ways that they're mutual provisions that it it just depends on which side of the river things are happening on and who's requesting assistance from whom but it's completely mutual in terms of the benefits and detriments that occur under this contract i'd make a motion then that we accept the joint powers agreement with the changes laid out by the attorney and other minor tweaks that may be needed to get the thing signed i'll second that a question by council member dougherty second by council member rank eric councilmember doherty yes councilmember johnson yes council member lil degran yes how to remember rank yes air mccumber yes next is trail connection norwich parkway from autumn hills neighborhood um all of you have seen the letter that i received from teddy seabright and met with him and his family up at city hall and he gave uh gave me a description and the chief was there as well of what his request was and you see the map inside as to where the potential problem is and it's adding a safety crossing coming from the autumn bridge neighborhood going to autumn hills park and staff has looked at this is and um putting in a crosswalk there you know with the connections and everything that we've had in other places and the cost is estimated to be about seven thousand dollars to put in you know the flashing you know pedestrian crossing type thing and we do have money in the park dedication fund for that and considering that it's a new trail connection so to speak that it could be covered under that and i'd suggest putting it in because it you know that is right where the entrance to the park is and that's where cars are pulling in and pulling out so i would suggest going ahead with this i really love location x i think a lot of people that go and use that trail then go and make that connection and cross in that direction so if if it's one or the other i would highly recommend looking at x but i like the idea i do too and i just think it is really wonderful that a young man who's five years old was so innovative to come up with this idea and bring it up to city hall and meet with us and he had so much fun up at city hall he was telling me all about it what could you say went on a tour to the police department and he uh they found the candy drawer did he take a walk across the street to talk to his neighbor across the cul-de-sac he told me all about it when he was biking around yeah well they had a good time and it was just delightful to have them come up and and be be so assertive my question well um go ahead and question i have is uh what are we talking about doing here i mean talking about putting in a crosswalk is one thing but now i'm hearing flashing lights on that and i'm like well andy has taken a look at this and has come up with some suggestions as to what would be there you know potentially like what we've done with um you know on 58th street say by uh nova scotia you know where there's a cross cross right there that you can see i would say if we're going to add any lights anywhere i'd almost put it down further past the pond near the town homes because then you have that curve and you also have individuals that might need the additional time more than right at the park entrance but i like the idea of looking at that i'm going to defer to andy kegley and his staff because they know where the locations will be but they have the idea of where the crosswalk or the crossing should be perfect i think i could go at this point i could go for let's put the crosswalk in and we'll look at the lights in a later is that a time sure a second motion by council member wrong second by councilmember johnson eric uh councilmember doherty yes councilmember johnson yes councilor member lil degran yes councilmember runk yes mayor mccumber yes okay now we have approved purchase agreement for city-owned property located at 5416 stagecoach trail eric thank you mayor council as uh your last conversation uh was in closed session about this topic uh staff could not move forward with um getting a purchase agreement signed relative to the the property 5416 stagecoach trail but we did take that feedback we received and communicate back with our contracted realtor mr zeller and outlined uh the price of 150 000 with the additional conditions noted in the in the report that basically requires um the buyer to produce an application to you by september 1st with potential approval and closing by december 31st which would include a developer's agreement and all the expectations of connection fees or i should say that a site plan review and some of the more typical planning reviews this is not significantly unlike your process with the potential hotel a couple years back with that buyer city basically wants to know what the developer is proposing and the sales contingent on that plan so kevin was kind enough to help develop this language and communicate with mr zeller and i think you've got a good product in terms of the purchase agreement terms it gives him some time to develop those concepts doesn't make him do it in 30 days but it gives them you know some reasonable timeline and if you think this is acceptable we'll have it executed and the developer will be tasked to give us a plan it's nice to see that land finally getting some movement on it any questions from the council regarding this is there a motion to approve a second motion by council member lil jagren second by councilmember dougherty eric uh councilmember daugherty yes councilmember johnson yes council member lol jagran yes council member rung yes mayor mccumber yes um then we have the american rescue plan act resolution to accept and direct funding eric thank you mayor and council again um the uh as we talked about in your work session the uh city will be receiving approximately 525 dollars from the american rescue plan act um over the next uh two years or so we do have a timeline to spend those dollars and as those dollars come forward to us as a city the um it's helpful for staff and i think everybody outlined where those dollars would be targeted um the resolution outlines a number of specific things including allocations to the chamber convention visitors bureau the youth service bureau valley outreach community thread some commitments to your staff who did a fantastic job in in looking back and during the during the pandemic but ultimately the largest allocation of of the lion's share of the dollars would be to your water meter replacement all these funds do have pretty significant restrictions compared to past funds received in terms of the covid um cohen money from last year so uh the language is a guide for us and if something changes we'd come back to you but this really helps staff target where those dollars are coming in with that we ask for approval of the plan is there any discussion about the recommendations no i move approval of the resolution well second question by council member johnson second by council member rank eric um excuse me council member rank yes i apologize councilmember daugherty yes councilmember johnson yes councilmember lil jagrid yes there you go council member wrong yes mayor mccumber yes and then i mentioned this i missed one did you want to go back to approve resolution supporting submission to the state of minnesota for funding and the upcoming 2022 bonding bill um for the excel energy king plant eric oh yes mayor council so um as the city is actively pursuing bonding dollars um for redevelopment opportunities at the l s king plant um part of that process is the submission to the office of management budget for inclusion in the 2022 bonding bill they do have a fairly extensive submission requirement about what those plans need to include and and cost estimates so those additional requirements outline that a resolution is required by the council to clarify its support for the application in this in this round we're asking for 4.6 million dollars to basically extend the utilities largely to the perimeter of the site um and in the packet you do have a memo from a stantec um and and some and very high level uh images of where those utilities would go um although if not exact but would they would they be a very preliminary feasibility study for lack of a better word so the obligation city has is to pass a resolution it does not commit the city to any internal or self-funding portions of this you recall the narelle roundabout the city did and have its red did happen its resolution a a local match it's always encouraged but considering you're losing 35 percent of your tax base one of the provisions we're asking for at the end of the day is going to be waive that local match consideration if not requirement um and that is going to be part of the application so what we're asking for is you to approve this resolution we would then forward this to our friends at the state thank you is there any discussion regarding the the resolution is there mostly to approve so moved second motion by council member lil jagran second by council member johnson eric how's remember doherty yes council member johnson yes councilor member loandragon yes council member rank yes mayor mccumber yes and uh set closed session for discussion of acquisition of property councilmember wrong yeah at their last well when the agenda came out for the last school school board meeting they uh one of the items was the fact that they were going to have a couple of what they deemed excess properties that they were going to put up for sale one being the withdrawal school but the other one being about three acres that they own in the kern center now this property originally was given to the to the school district by mrs curran at one time and the school district apparently had looked using it for several things over the time and they found that it really wasn't workable for them because of the size and the fact that part of it is encumbered by the fact that there's uh power lines over it i said when i saw this i said i thought about the fact that since it's a piece of property that currently is not drawing any taxes from to us anyway and we've looked for a location for a possible third well and at times the council looked at sites like down near the um down near valley view park and that but the problem with down there was the fact that uh the plume from lake elmo and bay township and but this would be out to the west and we currently have a piece of property out there but that's these property that we just soon get back onto the tax rolls and this would be a piece of property that uh we'd be able to acquire and i know i talked with andy kegley and then i talked with eric about it and in fact then i also talked to councilman waldron who in very basic terms that even i could understand explained how how it works and how the draw area works and i think that this would be a very good long-term investment for us to buy this piece of property the fact that it would serve a purpose it wouldn't reduce our tax base in any way and it would solve a long-term process problem that we have but in order to do this we'd have to have a closed session of the council namely to discuss strategy price i know the at the meeting that the uh school board that mr drummerhausen was the person that was given the presentation said that they had actually they actually have had had a assessed assessment i mean i'm trying to come up with the right word the appraisal on the property so they kind of know where they are and we kind of have to figure out how much it would be worth to us and have our staff kind of look at it to make sure that it would function so i'd like to set up a closed session of the council sometimes it was convenient um are you talking a virtual closed session or you know our next council meeting or prior to that i'm thinking that we'd probably we don't meet for another five weeks so i'm thinking that maybe we could uh move it up move up and have it uh the dates i had were possibly the 13th which would have been when we normally would have met one other thing was i know i talked to eric about the possibility of talking with betty because we have some budget issues to that we were going to deal with on the 27th and um the other thing is council member johnson is here and the 27th happens to be when her next scheduled meeting happens to be when she's taking her bar exam so i thought for that convenience if we could move it up to either the 13th or the 20th move the council mean to the 13th and 20th and then have a closed session at that time also to deal with this issue i i yeah i i would have a conflict on the 13th now i think it's an earlier meeting or something i'm i won't be in town either the 13th or the 20th um well is there anything else we can the 21st would work for me well then we can just stay with the 22nd if we're going to do the 21st so you're going to stay with the 27th you mean what i'm going to say yeah okay 21st consoles yeah i could do the 21st uh the wednesday my schedule flipped how about that chuck 21st would work for me work for me as well mayor can you give me just one second i'll be right back okay i just need to double check okay everybody's got to check their calendars okay hey jordan this is working pretty well i think so far this is working better than i expected yeah oh now it's all gonna follow yeah yeah that's part of my plan chuck you know only thing i noticed was like when jenny was speaking and that the mic kind of went in and out but i don't know back to them i could hear it too it sounded like they were like there was like i don't know i could hear too i didn't know if it was going in and out or i didn't notice on this end okay good good and it's you can hear us well yeah awesome so you're saying wednesday the wednesday yeah the 21st that's what yep that should be fine okay do we want to have the closed session at five o'clock and then the regular meeting that well no let's put the closed session after the meeting because we'll meet with betty at five o'clock right so we'll have a workshop for uh finance i'll make this a motion that we move the meeting to july 21st that we meet at five o'clock with the finance staff and and staff to deal with budget issues in workshop then we our regular meeting would then be at six o'clock and at the conclusion of the regular mean we would have a closed session to deal with the real estate item that makes sense okay motion by council member wrong second by council member johnson to move everything to the 21st eric councilmember daugherty yes councilmember johnson yes councilmember lolgrin yes council member ronk yes mayor mccumber yes um are there any other council items or announcements move we adjourn second question by council member rump second by council member little giant eric uh house remember doherty yes councilmember johnson yes councilman member loadregrin yes councilmember ronk yes mayor mccomber yes have a good night everyone thanks thank you thanks everybody good went job [Music] 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