new class. We'll call the meeting to order at 602. Sounds good. The first item is to adopt tonight's agenda. I'll make a motion to adopt the agenda as submitted. All right. A motion's been made, seconded to adopt tonight's agenda. All
in favor say I. I. I. Motion passes. Next up is the oath of office. I think it's me, right? Yep. All right. Well, want to stand up, raise your hand, and read aloud. All right. I, Bill
Zimmerman, do solemnly swear to affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and the state of Minnesota and faithfully discharge the duties as a member of the city of East Bethl Park Commission in the county of Enoka and the state of Minnesota to the best of my ability. So,
help me God. Amen. Thanks for another term, Bill. Thank you. We voted you in as our chair. Yeah, I heard that even after as good as Denise has gone in my absence the last couple months. All right. Item four is to
approve the minutes from the April 8th meeting. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from April. I can second that. All right. A motion's been made and seconded to approve the April 8th meeting minutes. All those in
favor say I. I. Motion passes. Item five, park financial information. First page is our two capital funds. Um nothing has changed. We haven't spent anything out of there yet. Um we do have the under the park capital fund. We had
the uh Baton Street Trail uh planned for this summer. Um I'll kind of go over it on the bus, too. But I've got some engineering estimates and this thing's getting pretty expensive. We might have to scrap that part of the trail and look at I think we had about
140,000 budgeted and our engineers estimate has it at um somewhere between 3 30 and 392. We can't do that. Wow. which is a lot of money you spend on a quarter mile trail. So, yeah, no kidding. You could build a pretty nice park for that much money.
Wow. What What isn't what what's in that trail segment that maybe we'll drive by and look at it, but it's uh a lot of it's elevation stuff and I guess some of these agreements with the property owners included uh replacing like brand new fencing for them for the whole property. Um there's some big retaining
walls that had to go in stuff that our staff can't really do in house that have to be contracted. That's a big part of it, too. Like that last section we built for $15,000 and this one's going to be quite a bit more. So, we could look at that connection through the back part of that neighborhood. Again, that's always still
an option. Um, that would be pretty cheap. We could do that ourselves. But I I got that on our tour if we have time at the end to kind of swing through there and look at that. So, other than that, uh, nothing on the park capital funds. On the second page is the park maintenance fund. Um, there again, we're
on pace at 33%. So, any questions on either one of those? All right, nice work on that. Anybody have anything else? Okay. Uh, item six, park dedication,
Cliffs Anderson acres. Consider recommendation on park dedication to the city council. The property consists of approximately 19.44 acres and is located within the rural residential zoning district. The proposed subdivision would include three lots. With any platted property, the
park commission can recommend 10% of the land be dedicated to parkland or recommend a park dedication fee in lie of land. The park dedication fee for this development would be $2,000 per lot or $6,000 in total. Staff is seeking a recommendation from the park commission to city council on acceptance of
parkland or park dedication fees for the proposed development. And we've got a sketch there on there. I realized too there wasn't didn't say where this was, but um it's on a county road. If anybody knows where the u Buddhist temple is on the on the edge of Lynwood. This is right across the street from there. So
it's on a county road. Um there's really no houses around it at all right now. And are they just putting three homes on it? They're splitting this 20 acres into three homes. Yeah, that's what it was. There's some question with the planning commission on whether or not they can do
that. It might only be two homes because one of part of our code says you can only split one acre per 10 lots. Oh, okay. Um, so they're they're still working on that part, but this was all came to us as a concept plan of three lots. It doesn't really make sense to
have them put a park on it. I mean, for Yeah, I think we Where is I'm thinking we'd want the the Sorry. Where is the nearest park to this? Um, dear Haven Park is kind of just behind this one. Um, if you look on the map on the
picture here, you can see this dirt trail going down the right hand side. Yep. That is the um access road for the Gordy Mickelson Wildlife Area. So, this whole area back here is a big green preserve. I didn't have my computer and I could show you I suppose but it's a
it's a big natural area that's that will never be developed and then that's this is the border of East Bethl would do then. So how you said Deer Haven Park is the Deer Haven Park would be the closest. How far away is that one?
It's probably half mile north of there as an actual develop park. Like I said, this is all kind of green natural public area right here too, next to it. Sure. The Gordy Mickelson Wildlife Refuge. If we put a park on this, I mean, how
many people would we be drawing from if there's a a wildlife place right behind it? Well, there's a what's his name? Lee Hannon. He has that development up by Gordy Mickelson.
You know, they put new houses in there. All right. That's That's actually Lynwood. So, we'd be building a park for Lynwood residents. We wouldn't want Well, right. The only homes along here are there's a few single homes on the county road that you kind of see in a like a rural county
road strip where they're just long deep lots. There's no platted subdivisions in this area. Okay. How about the people from Did anybody talk to the people from the temple there? You know, they have those huge gatherings every summer. I don't know
what goes on there, but yeah, they do those on their own. They might have their own property. You know, they have a big walk way in on their side, but we know. Would it service us at all to put a trail along there? I mean, just a what trail or that would only serve the one
lot or in the front portion of that? Yeah. Alongside the where the wildlife is? Um, so that dirt road is public road access train. Okay, catch it. Gotcha. So, anybody can drive down there. A dirt road anyway. Yep. And there's a little
parking spot in the north in the corner, the northwest or northeast corner up there. If they do two lots, would we or two buildings, two houses, would that 6,000 go down to 4,000? Correct. Yep. If the planning commission only allows two,
then it would only be 4,000. I guess I lean towards taking the the money. That's what I think so too. It makes more sense to me. Yeah. Well, especially, you know, it's it's secluded. It's got the the nature area around it. Y um and the bigger lots, you
know, I feel like people if they have dogs, their dogs can run and, you know, they can put up playgrounds or whatever. Y So, and with that little bit of money, how much could we even put up? Yeah. That would be 10% would be 1.9 acres. So, we're kind of trying to avoid the
real small neighborhood parks. That's the reason I mentioned a trail if there was a any reason to take a strip and Yeah. throw a trail on one end. But yeah. Well, should we make a motion to um take
the park dedication fee, whatever that would be based on the houses. Is that a motion? I make a motion as I second it. All right. A motion has been made and seconded to take the the money in lie of the land for the park
dedication. Um, any more discussion? No. Hearing none, all in favor say I. I. I. Motion passes. Cool. Item seven, council report and other information.
Mr. Tim, wasn't that quick? Yeah. Yeah. I'll try and be quick. There is so much going on in the city right now. Uh congratulations, Bill. Uh the city's lucky. This this committee is lucky to have you. I feel that way. Uh first and foremost, last night we
unanimously approved the two uh 26 park capital improvement and the street capital improvement. Both were unanimous. Both were 50 votes. Uh that work that you guys put in uh went over well. So great job. We're looking good in the next year or two. I mean, uh,
work you put in is being recognized and being approved. Uh, we also have a new fire chief and emergency uh, manager uh, director uh, Chief Jeffrey and I hope I don't butcher his name too bad, but Salacea. Um, the process was Jerry
Striker, Mayor Anderson, Jim Smith, and administrator Matt Luck. They had nine solid applications, four of which were called in after the review uh after an intensive interview process. Uh one stood out dramatically and that was
Jeff. He's got a ton of experience both on the fire side and on the medical side because he's an EMT. Uh he's going to be a great member. He's going to be someone who's really going to uh help us go in the direction that we want to go with the fire department. And uh he's going
to fit in well. He's been received well by the guys up there so far and we really look forward to many many years of having him lead our departments out here. Uh that move allowed us to take uh one of our firefighters, Ben Newton, and he's been promoted to deputy chief. Uh
he's he's been a standout during this time. He's got a world of experience. He's well respected within the department and it's going to be a nice one-two punch to have on during the days. um what we're doing now in terms of the inspection process. He's still going to
handle the inspecting, but it's going to be more day-to-day operations, uh supporting the chief. Um and we're going to use more of our personnel who are qualified to do inspections to help all too. So, people are going to be filling in different spots and people are going to be doing what they were trained to do. Uh so, we look forward to that. Uh
there will be some more changes coming up, but as they become available and as they roll out, I'll be certain to update you with everything that's going on up there. Uh the EDA is going through some changes. We're actually going back to the original form, the way it started with council members up front.
Um the EDA has had three meetings last year and they've had one meeting so far this year. uh based on what we're doing with those meetings, we need to get a different direction going on for the development
of this city. We've got 236 businesses in this city. We've got uh a workforce that has dropped recently. We went from 6,900 down to 6,600 according to the census. That's almost a 4% drop in what we're doing
here. Our average commute for the people in this city is 33 minutes to drive to their job. National average is 26. That's quite a hike. It means people like living here, but we have to attract more business. We have um the majority
of our business is made up of manufacturing, construction, also health services. Uh we need to identify that. We need to start looking at roads. For example, uh take 65 and 237. You got 20,000 cars going by that corner every
single day according to the traffic study. You got 3,900 cars going across it the other way. That's a lot of traffic. But these are things we have to keep in mind because what they're doing right now with the 65 corridor and building that up. And when they finish that, it's going to be something that we
need to be ready for. We need to stay on top of the kind of traffic that's driving down there. We need to stay on top of the kind of jobs that are available. And those kind of things lead to development. Uh look at Ramsey and look at the things going on over there. We want to be prepared. We don't want to
miss this opportunity. Um sorry. We need to start getting ready. We need to start getting together with more businesses and more opportunities. We need to work with our current
businesses on a regular basis. And that's part of the reasons for some of this change. Um it's easier for the council, for example, to have meetings right after their other meetings so we can keep a monthly thing going and have meetings and talk about ideas and keep
moving forward because we're going to have a great opportunity in this city to develop that corridor when that is finished down in Blaine. We don't want to be behind the eightball with this one. We want to stay on top of it. We want to make sure that our businesses not only have the research and the knowledge to to grow and expand, but we
want to be able to bring other ones in at the same time. And knowing all this stuff that's out there, um it's it's it might be trivial information for some, but knowing that we have 127 farms in this city. We've got 12 lakes, 15 parks. These are things
that we need to dominate and stay on top of and and push forward because we really do have something special and we want to keep it that way. Um, other than that, I look forward to this tour. I'm hoping my expert can come with and check out some of the the playground
equipment. He's going to let me know what he thinks about it. All right. And um, appreciate what you guys do. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks. You ready to board the bus? Yeah. You got anything for us or anything? We'll uh be doing enough talking here. Do parts tour and then we adjourn later,
right? We get journ right from the bus. We don't we won't be coming back in. So, if you want to take anything with you. If if you have to leave anything, you can. I can unlock it. But you don't want to lock