Therefore, I Ken Zabel, Mayor of Oakdale, Minnesota, do hereby proclaim May 4th as International Firefighters Day and May 17th through the 23rd, 2026 as Emergency Medical Services Week to recognize the value and accomplishments of firefighters and emergency emergency medical service providers in our community.

in reading through the scope of work, — there were some areas that — I was concerned I was concerned with. I know another council member had some concerns as well. And so, keeping with our long tradition here in Oakdale — of wanting to have a conversation with our colleagues at a workshop setting, — I'm asking for us to table this consensus motion — to a date to be determined.

Yeah, for the third time since I've been on this council, my son is being offered a job with the city doing seasonal work for uh public works. So, I will recuse myself from this vote.

amendments to the management of turf grass and vegetative ornaments chapter uh 24. Um as you uh recall, we had a couple of recent workshops on this item. One of the things was to uh make some changes, uh increase the height of allowable turf grass um maximum from 6 to 8 inches in line with peer cities. There is also some uh uh need to comply the ordinance with state statutes that allows people to have more flexibility within their own private property uh for landscape options.

I just want to make one I want to say a big thank you to staff um, as well as our environmental management commission. Um, you know, this is one of those topics in the city code that a lot of departments have feedback on. — obviously there's a safety component with um, plantings in the right of way. We want to make sure that uh, cars can see around corners. — there's the personal property rights element with this. There's the environmental element with this.

Recreational vehicles is it's not just the typical RV camper, it's also boats, ATVs, uh snowmobiles, the like are included in that definition. — council did settle on a um uh raising of the the total amount of vehicles that you could have to three vehicles. — adding a registration and ownership requirement for residential occupants meaning that you can't lease out space on your property to someone else to store your vehicle. And then clarify uh that a recreational vehicle, if it's stored on a trailer, that would count as one recreational vehicle. And adding a height um limit of of 20 ft um maximum.

I also want to say a big thank you to all of the residents that reached out after we um posted this for adoption at our meeting about a month ago. Um had residents reach out, provide really uh feedback that um encouraged council to take it back to our workshop, incorporate some of that feedback uh into changes to this. — The ideas that residents put forward um really made substantive and important changes in this. And so, hopefully, you know, we can straddle that line between private property rights and allowing people to — have recreational vehicles on their property while also avoiding that nuisance element that — we strive for in our city.

our bids came in for the new police and city hall and they came in a little bit higher higher. Much of it is because of um steel and the situation with the economy now. The council is aware of it. We have to continue our value engineering, but we will have to award this contract for the maximum price.

this is bid package two. We did bid package one couple months ago and that came in um a little higher also because of precast and a few other things. Um this this one is um Uh uh this is only part of it. That one was almost $8 million, I believe. And then there's additional stuff like FF&E and so on and so forth to get up to this amount, site, so forth. Um so, this is the second round of the two major bid process processes and this one is only $22 million only. It's $22 million 800,000 for this [snorts] one. For this part of the project.