I'm going to call our council listening session to order. Today is Monday, April 28th. Thank you all for coming. We had a number of people call ahead of time and a couple of people were tentative. So, I'm going to throw this out as a potential order of speakers. Uh Joseph Reynolds is Joseph
here. Okay. So much for my well-crafted uh list here. Uh, Elizabeth Camp. We can't hear. Yeah. Little. Can you be louder? I I will. Uh, Joseph. Is Joseph Reynolds here? How about Elizabeth Camron? There's Elizabeth. Thank you.
Uh, Gary Big. I got Gary. David Hogy. David. Uh, Sue Weber. Oh, Sue, you are here. Very good. You were one of my tentatives. And then Arnold or Suzanne Arnold Fleon or Suzanne August, are you here? All right, why don't we go with uh
the order as I as I discussed. We'll start with number two. If Joseph shows up, we'll get Joseph in there as well. Uh but why don't we start with uh Elizabeth, why don't you come on up. What I'm going to need from everybody uh introduce yourself as you start so we have your name officially on the record.
You can sign in after you're done. And we uh we have a fivem minute time limit on our presentations. And if I cut you off, it's not because I'm mean. It's because we've just gotten to the five minutes and I want to make sure everybody has the same amount of time. Okay. Wait until everyone have one. Everybody has one. Go ahead.
My name is Elizabeth Camron. I live at 9825 Newton Avenue. I'm here to represent my family and many residents on both Newton Avenue South and Morgan Avenue South. I'll be speaking on the imminent changes that will be forced upon our neighborhood for the Community Health and Wellness Center. Council
member Lman is my uh district representative and I look forward to him activating for us. In your current design, you have a parking lot that does not meet your own city code for required parking spaces. On peak operating hours, parking will be sparse and overflow parking will inevitably be on West 100th
Street and Morgan. Our quiet, clear streets will be crowded. Where will our friends and family park when they come to visit us at our homes? Who will enfor excuse me, enforce these parking rules? For years, there have been no parking signs on both sides of Newton. Yet,
every sport season there are cars lined on each side. the block. Um, they block residents mailboxes, driveways, and fire hydrants. City police have not enforced the parking rules even after residents have complained. Are the police ready, willing, and able to enforce these parking rules when the new building is
running? In addition to parking concerns, we fear that the traffic flow will be an afterthought. Where are your traffic studies? How much money has been spent drafting plans without taking a bird's eye view of this city in this area? Refer to the map and you'll see that the only entrance and exit from the
parking lot is on Newton. Newton is a residential size road. Is it really equipped to handle 300, 400, 600 cars entering and exiting a day? Now add public transportation and Metrobility. I encourage you to ask the fire department how many times per day a fire truck or
ambulance races down Newton to help residents at the Presbyterian homes. Will emergency vehicles get through increased traffic and parked cars in the winter with snowbanks? On the map, you'll see I've marked two places where there are railroad tracks. These also happen to be the only two ways out of
the area if you want to go east. Only two ways directly east, excuse me. How many of the visitors will need to go back to East Bloomington or get to 35W? The trains come through frequently and pass by slowly. In addition to the train, exiting the area from Morgan
Avenue onto Old Chakapei Road is time consuming, especially if you're trying to cross four lanes of traffic to go east during rush hour. How do you plan to mitigate that congestion? I also want to bring uh concern for how this will be affecting our quality of life. The parking lot entrance and exit are all
facing the front of homes on Newton. This will mean car lights and noise in our windows at extended hours of the day, seven days a week year round. The lights and noise will bleed through to residents windows and Morgan as well. This will be noise and light pollution that is detrimental to our health and
wellness. Our roads and front yards where our kids and pets play will be unsafe. There are no sidewalks for residents on Morgan. The only sidewalk on Newton is on the west side, not the residential side, but the side that will allow parking. Our driveways will be used by public to turn around when the
intersection is the intersections are clogged and the streets will be dangerously busy. There are no alternatives for our kids or pets. The soccer and baseball field at Creekide will be paved over and that we have no park within walking distance. We need better options. With increased visitors
and varied demographic comes an increase in crime. Who will be in charge of the security at this new community center? Have you worked with the police department and a plan to prevent crime and enforce lawlessness? Our homes values will go down. Right now, our homes are on quiet streets neighbored by
elderly living, a soccer and baseball field, and a modest community center. When all that is replaced with a busy um street and parking lot, our market value will decrease. In light of all this, I and many others are asking for a complete and a complete pause and
reconsideration in planning this community health and wellness center. As I conclude, some may be asking why now? There have been opportunities to bring this up in the past and to have a voice in early planning stage. A lot of us participated in those, but I want to state this for everyone that may be
listening. From August to August 2024 through March of 2025, eight of us homeowners believed that the city intended to purchase our homes and make a big parking lot to accommodate the new community center. Those eight of us weren't worried about the effects on our home. It would be demolished anyway. The
rest of us thought parking and traffic wouldn't be an issue with the additional parking entrance and exits. We have only known this um additional parking was not happening for a little more than a month. So, here I am representing my neighborhood um bringing concerns as
soon as we could. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your thoughtful response and working with any city staff necessary to find a solution. Well, thank you. Thanks for uh bringing your concerns forward. We do appreciate it. Uh I'm going to ask staff to respond
or at least connect you up with a few folks. Kirk Roberts and our parking and uh transportation departments to be able to answer some of your questions there. Uh in terms of fire and police, I know we can get response from them as well. And I I know the project itself uh for
all that they've been looking at in terms of ingress and egress and so on and parking. Uh I I'm assuming I haven't seen but I'm assuming that there the conversations have taken place in terms of how to handle the crowds that are going to be coming in and out because yes, we hope it's a very wellused
facility and it's uh to be an asset to the community. I sure hope it is and we'll we'll connect you with those folks who can answer some of these questions and have these conversations with you. Okay. Okay. Yep. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I may, I also suggest I don't know if you've ever gone there,
but Harrison Park is literally across Chaka and it's only a six-inute walk from the community center to Harrison Park. So, I hope that that feels a little better in terms of access to a you know, a park in an area where your kids can play. Yeah, I should clarify that it's within walking distance
without um without crossing a busy intersection. Sure, I can clarify that. Understood. Thank you. Appreciate it. Uh next up, Gary. I certainly appreciate Elizabeth's uh presentation because I thought maybe with the kids they were going to be
arguing that what we needed is this community health and wellness center long ago and it's past due. Um, I'm arguing that we need to keep Creekide as a senior center. Richfield has a senior center. Adina has a senior center. I don't know how many other suburbs have a
senior center. Creek Side is ours. And as best I know, it's very well used. Um, the current plans, as I understand, would take Creekide offline for two years. Um, again, these are seniors. In
two years, some of those people aren't going to be around. Um, the other is that I was among the people who voted for the sales tax increase to fund the three projects, you know, the ice garden, the trail, and and creek side. But I didn't see all the details that
now are coming out about, you know, it's going to have swimming pool and it's going to have locker rooms and it's going to have this and that and that and that. And seemingly a lot of those facilities already exist in Bloomington. Um, and rather than spend $100 million
on demolishing Creekide and building this new complex and taking a bunch of homes off the property tax roles, we won't be taking any homes. We've already made that decision. There won't be homes coming off the property. Okay, good. Good. So, we're clear on that one. You know, again, it just seems like we
could update Creekide uh for a fraction, maybe under a million dollars at least, and use the rest of that money to improve the amenities at other facilities within Bloomington so that
all these things that we hoped would transpire at the community health and wellness center would still exist and and so on in Bloomington. But again, we wouldn't have to take Creek Side offline for two years. Um, wouldn't have to spend all that
money on the thing. I guess that's that's the gist of what I wanted to say. Yep. And I appreciate your comments, Gary. I do. And I uh I think through the process and it was a it was a long process. This
discussion about a a community center, new health and wellness center has been on going on for a while now. And uh frankly, I thought uh our staff and and the communications plan did a very good job of laying out the the realities that yes, Creekide would be going away. And
we we talked all along how we would have to find room for senior activities in different places in the interim. We've done that. I mean, we here at Civic Plaza, uh I think there are other uh locations as well. I think 95% of the current activities are going to be
replicated somewhere else. And so is it the same? No. Are those are those activities still available? Yes, they will be. A good good majority of them would still be available. And so, uh, it was something that I think, as I said, I think we talked about it pretty clearly,
pretty frankly, and, uh, and quite honestly, the the voters of Bloomington thought this was a good plan and a good way to move forward and, and yourself included. Yeah. And yet, like I say, I didn't have the details and so I'm guessing most the other voters didn't have the details to hear what all was
planned for Creekide. Mr. Mayor, I think and I think we were we were clear from the start that Creek Side was going away. We we made that clear from the start that that building is long past its useful life to uh I mean uh the the notion of putting a million dollars into
it that would be a it would be lipstick on a pig, but b it would barely start to address a lot of the uh issues the deferred maintenance and the issues that are with that building. So council member yeah just a couple more cls of
information. I think um uh first off, we didn't spend a lot of money to design the building before the voters voted on it because the last time we did that, we got yelled at by our voters who because we went through an entire design plan and everything for Valley View and a lot of people didn't like that either. So,
we said we're not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a building. We're going to see if something this is something that that voters want and then if it's something that voters want, we will design it accordingly. That's why the com the organizations and the individuals have been involved for the last year in the
design and schematics of this building. The other thing I will tell you, you said I think a lot of people use it. I can tell you exactly how many people use it. There are 25,000 give or take a few seniors in this city. Uh I am one of them by the way just in case anybody's wondering. I'm 55 years old so I
qualify. Uh 1,600 unique individuals used that center all of in 20 in all of 2024. So, we need to encourage more people to go to a community center. We want to we believe strongly that what we're doing there is going to encourage
lots more than 1,600 people to show up. I hope that helps. Well, again, I think if you could get more seniors involved there, that'd be great. But I don't see the need for trying to get teenagers and young people and on and on when there's
other facilities in the city. And to spend again hund00 million It's going to be a wellness center, too. Remember, our public health department is is being you is going to use the facility as well, which which serves an entire region of people, more than 180,000 people across Richfield, Adina, and here in
Bloomington. Yeah. And they have the existing that facility is also as old as Creekide and should not be used for public health anymore. That's the whole reason it's called Community Health and Wellness Center. We put them together. Yeah. Gary, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to cut you off. We're at our time here, but thank you for coming in today.
Greatly appreciated, David. Could I give the two council members that second? Sure, that'd be fine. Thank you, David. Please. Please go ahead. My name is Dave Hogy. My wife has a business on 7837 12th
Avenue. And recently we had two cars uh to go to our private parking lot by the city. Sorry microphone get a microphone. We'll get one next. Thank you. We'll get one next time. We
we haven't had a full house in the past. So these cars that we had were were purposely put there on private parkery in a commercial kind of light industrial zone for it to be used as training vehicles for young people the summer and um some point during the
winter time or the last 45 days I guess uh the city was called maybe a complaint was filed or something and the process went through to have these cars towed and when I was out of town they were towed I come back and they're gone and I'm looking through the
regulations and it looks like we you know, we should be able to have vehicles like this because we're running a car service. We have a maintenance facility for these cars and these cars are here for training purposes. So, I'm here looking for a little guidance on
the regulation 8.16 of open storage. And I in here they talk about licensing. So, I stopped by the offices of licensing and see if there's any special licensing that we needed. and they said there wasn't any. I stopped by Melissa's and Adrienne's office and asked her if we
could get a little guidance on this because it sure looks like we should be exempt from this and we should have cared. The city inspector or whatever his title is Ty told me that there was
an anonymous complaint filed. He also towed had a a a snowfl from another business that's in our facility that does plow towing because his tabs were two weeks expired and this was in March along with
he's got six other sto. So the question is you know according to the according to the thing it says or unless the vehicle is stored on private property which it was in connection with duly licensed business or commercial enterprise operating conducted pursuant
to the state laws of this city and the city code where storing abandoned operable vehicles an essential portion of that lawful business. So, there's a whole bunch of things in here that I kind of look at and say, "Well, especially the plow truck that wasn't abandoned. It wasn't
junk. It was in. It just happened to be out of season and he hadn't updated the license on a truck that he's not going to use for a while." Um, so, you know, both of us kind of in a a
crappy spot and and these vehicles that I have were old. They haven't been licensed for a couple years. One of them has had the motor pulled in and out a few times. I towed them down from Duth specifically for
this and um and the inspector saying, "Well, you don't have new tabs on it, so we're going to" And unfortunately, both the titles for both these cars are titled to residents that are like three houses ago. So the mail didn't get forwarded in
time so we didn't see it and they got to So I'm looking for some guidance on this and how do we avoid this in the future? I I think the guidance that I'd give you and I'm sorry to hear that and and I will tell you if you if you need a crummy car, you don't need to go to Duth. You can just come
and stop by. I'll be happy to let you have uh but I I I will I'm going to refer you to to our city attorney. and refer you to our our public health folks who who do this kind of uh this kind of thing and and I would like to have you connect
with them and see if we can't reach a resolution. I would I would agree that uh you know there is the there is the the the part in the the law about expired tabs and the inoperable and so on and the towing that does happen. But as you've as you've explained, uh, if
it's in a if it's in a maintenance facility used for training, that type of thing, we we can probably do a better job of trying to figure that out. Yeah. I I I tell you the one thing that kind of I thought was unusual about the situation is one of my guys had said,
"Hey, there was this guy from from the city here in the parking lot and said he's looking at cars with tabs." And I didn't pay any attention at all. All of our cars have got brand new tabs on them, which we've got like 12 of them and we're on top of that because we run
a car service business. And I didn't think anything of it. And at any point he could have just said, "Hey, do you know who owns those two cars sitting there?" No, I I can't disagree with you. And so we'll I'm going to ask our city attorney and our and our folks internally here to
reach out and have this conversation and see if we can't come to a resolution because I I do that that might I I would agree that's a bit punitive and I'm sorry that had to happen. Where did you say the address was again? 7037 12th Avenue. So it's uh right next
to the Holiday Inn. There's a little larat office park there. It's kind of white industrial. Yeah. Thank you for coming in. We're five minutes from an hour. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Make sure you sign in so we we can uh we can find you if we need to.
Uh Sue, Mr. Mayor, if I may, um I have also contacted the city in regards to that a week ago. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, can I have you can I have you slip out of the chair there and
you can sign in, but do it next to Thanks a lot. Good enough. Thank you. Thank you. supposed to state my name? Yes, please. Susan Weieber. Um I'm a base figure after reading the article in the Bloomington Sun Current about the um community center. I've been a taxpayer for 50
years and I assumed that when we got this community center that there was really going to be a real focus on seniors. I really did. Our not only is our Bloomington population getting older, but the world is there's older people. And I when I saw that article
realized that they don't even have I thought it would all the things that were at Creekide were going to be available at the new community center and to see that they didn't even have room for a boutique and and then they talked I'm not a woodworker so it doesn't affect me but I've heard I mean
according to that article they're asking Bloomington people to go to Eden Prairie to do their woodworking. I don't understand that. I think we need to make as much um need to have as many things for seniors as possible. So I that article really really upset me that
there was such a low emphasis on seniors. And I'd like to ask of the people that are here, how many of you feel that the seniors were kind of have been neglected in in preparing for that. Um and there's not that many people here, but the people that are here, look at the majority of them feel that way.
So I think I'd like to see that there's going to be an emphasis on that. There's going to be some in the design that they're going to make room and for the senior needs. Member Dalo. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, did you read the article that I wrote the
week before about the community center? Because I feel like I feel like we pick and choose the things that we want to see. And I'm not suggesting you're doing that, but I I worked really hard to write an article that would give you all the facts because there are people that have feelings and I appreciate them and I understand them, but I I could go
through Pam Palmer's article and I could cite contraria facts about some of the things that were published. So, we could do that offline and I'd be very happy to share those with you. But what keeps happening is people keep keep taking something that is um accurate on the
merit um and distorting it to indicate that we here as a council don't have an appreciation for our seniors. As I just mentioned earlier, two there are 25,000 seniors in this city. If you qualify me as a senior because I'm 55, okay, that's a quarter
of our population. You're absolutely right. It's going to go up. Okay. Um, 1600 individual people went to the senior the Creekide Senior Center last year. I know that to be a fact. That's Do you think if we had a nicer community center, more seniors would go? I can't
make a hundred million dollar bet on that, right? We got to go with the facts and the information that we have plus the needs of our entire community, not just that 25% of which only 6% showed up at our community center which has been there for 30 years. So, I have 30 years
of data about seniors and how they use a community center. And I have data from other other people and other areas of the bank of the um of the city and the and then the region. Plus, we have the voters indications plus all the
constituent groups that we've done and everything that says this new community center will meet their needs. Those are the details that we're weighing over time. the the challenge that we have is that we can't build a senior center on that property
um and and have the staff meet our our requirements as a city council. We've given them several requirements. One of which is that this this center has to operate 90% or better costneutral. What that means is we expect it to pay for itself
operationally over time. Okay? Why? because we know that otherwise would be putting even additional tax burden on on the community. Now, what we're not going to do is we're not going to stop the almost $400,000 of yearly investment that we
make in senior community center activities. That already happens today at Creekide and that will continue. So there's $400,000 of everybody's taxpayer dollars that are going to go into this communicate this community center every year going forward specifically to serve
the senior population of this community. We've not made a single change to that other than to increase the activities. That number will probably also go up because to your point we'll need to meet more people there. So I really want us to just operate on some facts and and I
it may not be for everybody. I understand. Yes, we are going to offer woodworking at at Eden Prairie School where they have it and we're going to pay to bust people there and back again for the first three months to get to garner interest. We're also talking to
the city of the sorry the school board in Bloomington to see if we can open up the wood shop in the Bloomington schools to seniors. But over the course of the last year, only 15 or so people use the woodworking facility. So, it's a lot of money that that people are asking us to
solve for problems that exist for a very small number of people. And we don't have the luxury of saying, well, if we build it, they might come. We just don't have that because because we have an obligation to all residents of this city to try to do our best fiduciarily.
Is there going to be a dedicated place for knowledge to go play cards? Is there is there going to be a So, there's going to be a bunch of and we can look at the I know we're going to be at time. So, we're going to look we can take this offline. We can look at the plans. There are several dozen multi-purpose rooms that are going to be set up and they're
going to be programmed for those activities. So, yes, dedicated space, meaning every Wednesday at 2:00 or whatever, there will be cards for seniors and that'll be true, right? Can I tell you exactly where in the community center that's going to be just yet? No, because it's not built yet. But
yes, is the short answer to that question. And between 9:00 a.m. and 2 p.m., seniors will probably have the run of the place because most people are either in school or at work. And so we expect that there'll be a lot of activities for seniors. And there's actually more being added, including
arts and crafts and uh education, even a driving school. So there's a whole lot going on that I think if we if you just give us a little bit of time, I think we'll be I'd like to read your I didn't read your article. I will I would like to do that as the same place as Pam's just the week before.
Okay. Thank you. No, I appreciate it. Like I said, let's take this offline and let's get the facts in front of you so you can make the decision. Yeah, I'd like to meet with you and thank you for your input. Absolutely. My pleasure. And Sue, thank you for coming this evening. Appreciate it. Uh the other folks we had Joseph
Reynolds, Joseph, are you here? Yeah. And then the other folks we had tenative were Arnold Fleon or Suzanne Gustoson. Anybody? No. Are you Suzanne or No, I'd like to speak if no one else is. Uh, we we can do that, but we're down to three
minutes. So, we need all I need. Bring it on. Three minutes. We'll do that. Thank you. Take all the fun nights to show up here. So, I'm Robac Fremont Avenue. I'll sign this. Um, I did speak with you guys back in like what early March. I showed you
this card. I said this was how many people were parking on the street. We're this side and the other side. Those are all individuals that are parking at that apartment building. And um obviously I got this petition together and I guess my one question is
at this point if the petition we got the survey if we get no parking on the east side of Fremont which is what we're talking about there's no parking on the west side I can't get an answer can city staff just arbitrarily change that west side without a council meeting
let's say the petition gets through assuming that happen I think regardless if a petition gets through my guess is my my belief is that it has to come to the council for for ultimate discussion and decision on that. Primarily because for something like that when we uh implement or take away a no parking
zone, we like to have a public hearing. We like to have people come forward and both sides of the issue to be able to talk on this kind of the fear is that based off this letter that we got the last paragraph and I didn't read it to you real quick. The last and this is what was disheartening is that you know
the effort to go in and talk to neighbors and get every educated. It says note that the public on street parking policy is current under review and that is there a chance that this may result in changes of the parks on the west side of the street in this area in the future. So what we weren't clear was is this the the idea the staff are bringing to you guys eventually about
changing all of it throughout the city or was it just if you get the east side no parking we could make the west side open? Are are you asking because of the the petition or just Yeah, because if you make no parking on the east side, can
can staff just say arbitrarily we're going to open up the west side because that was brought to us. I understand early on and we don't want this to but it's very disheartening when you are like if that could happen and I only say that because after this weekend Yeah. illegally parked on the wrong side
of the street. Somebody left a shopping cart in the street. I have photos of that. Somebody parked their pickup truck next to the apartment building on the lawn. just drove it up there. Y garbage in the street and then this morning that shopping cart ended up down the street in the tenant the building north of them
on their property. Got it. So this is instances like that somebody parking on the on the grass called the police. They were called and and the thing is and I have to talk to this officer. I think I witnessed a vandalism on one of the vehicles at 3 in the morning. Somebody slashed a tire I believe. Yeah. So,
being out there at this time, 2 3 in the morning, it's if there's restrictions on the street right now, I cannot imagine if you open up one side of the street, how much worse it's going to get. And like I said, this is just random vehicles that are parking when they can. And and that's it's a conversation that
we we would have to have with staff. We'd look at a staff recommendation because they're looking at they're trying to look at it in its entirety. I will say I mean folks bring petitions all the time but you can bring a petition that says we want no property taxes and you know that ain't going anywhere. Exactly. So I mean it's worth the discussion. What we need to do is
have the discussion then as a council based with uh based on uh staff recommendation and the conversations that we have. But just so I leave with neighbors because some of them were not happy about that last paragraph and I'm trying to be mindful of your time. Thank you. If this petition goes through and it sounds like everybody's happy with it. If we do have to go to a council meeting about the east side of the
street, okay, and it passes and now we have no parking on both sides, it has to come to you guys in order to say we're going to open up the west side. Correct. I don't know if that's correct. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know if it's the has to I think a lot of times we prefer that we
prefer to have the public hearing if if we do something like that. Okay. And that's what we need to know. Uh and I can't get an answer from anyone. So I really need to go back. If you make sure if you've signed in there, we will I I will I will make sure our staff gets back to you. Thank you. Did Kirk call you yet? Kirk didn't call you yet? No.
Okay. I just emailed him yesterday. He said he was going to reach out to you. So this week you should hear. And there's a lot of anxiety because the surveys are due. They said May 5th, which is next week. And it's kind of anxiety like after this weekend honestly. And I have photos I'll show the officer. If there's if there's no
restrictions over there, it's I'll talk to you guys. I appreciate you getting me in here. Thank you for keeping short. really do appreciate it. Council 616, I look for a motion to adjurnn so we can head down and get to our council meeting. Second. Motion and a second to
adjurnn. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. We are adjourned. Thank you. Don't worry.