call a meeting the um city council special work session uh for today February 6th 2025 at 5:00 pm. uh let's do the role um mayor huin is absent right now council member Jackson is absent council member EGU here council member Risser here council member Pierce here and to today's meeting um is really
giving a deep dive on budget um as deep as we can in the time that's a lot so we'll review every service um and have each department head U be able to talk through their services how it's structured and the general cost structure um so with that I'll turn it over to you thank you council member Pierce we are are going to pick up kind of where we left off um from Tuesday night uh for folks who are uh going to listen to this recording um I do want to reference that there was something that
we did Tuesday night U very similar to what we're doing tonight with police and fire um but there'll be two different recordings so we'll uh we'll start this we've got um AR you the timekeeper too I I do have time all right so let's uh we're ready to begin with Parks and Rec tonight Perry uh thank you Mr Neil uh again Perry veter Parks and Recreation director I will walk you through our department our service levels and the activities that we provide uh as indicated on the slide the Parks and
Recreation Department uh takes up about 133% of the general fund and really that is in four core areas that's Parks Administration uh our Recreation programming area there's a very uh small amount in the arts and culture um very very small and then Park maintenance which is probably the largest contributor to our budget and also one of our largest staff uh when we look at all the additional services that are not included in the
uh general fund that includes Brar golf Brar Arena Centennial Lakes Park the dining Aquatic Center Edinburgh Park e liquor and the Art Center uh when we look at Parks and Recreation and we look at what our mission is to the community it's really to be inclusive and creative we want to be sustainable and responsible and we want to be collaborative and whenever I say the word collaborative and this now I say when possible right because we have a lot of Demands uh from the community and
to tie that back in is a majority of what we do or that we respond to is community-driven um um we always indicate that we are also in competition for people's discretionary dollars we do charge fees and uh charge revenue for our operations so we are always in that uh business-like mindset um I'll probably use a couple of other words tonight and that's priority use um who gets what when and where um carrying capacity that's a big thing for me is how much can we EXP expect a facility a park or
an operation from a caring capacity standpoint and then just as we get through just kind of expectations and differences uh first is just a kind of a um we looked at or that prior slide we have 68 full-time employees so we look at how those are assigned where are they assigned we really kind of have three main um division heads and that's Tom Swenson he's the assistant director of parks and natural resources and his role
is to oversee Park maintenance forestry and natural resources uh Tracy Peterson Tracy is the assistant director of recreation programming and our recreation facility Enterprises and then Josh Furbish and Josh is our general manager of Edina Liquor operations there are a lot of other additional people that uh contribute to our administrative effort um Janet Canton and Sabrina Clark they provide uh administrative support for our entire department and as well as cure cin McMan she's uh she works in
marketing and she assists the Enterprise divisions for the recreation side and E din liquor and there's a small indirect and we always want to point out one of PA's great staff and that's mallerie jensvold and mallerie is very integral to our operations she's a financial analyst her title's probably changed um but you'll see her as well um we work um quite closely with with mallerie um when we look at the park maintenance and natural resource division under Tom clinson again we have
uh some key key people in that aspect Rachel finberg I'm sure you've known her um throughout this process she is assisting on a lot of the local option sales tax projects a lot of our general fund projects um taking those through the planning process um another one is Brian dristy he's our field supervisor and Luther Overholt our city Forester uh we also have an additional 14 Park uh service workers within the park maintenance Division and Laura Baris is our assistant
Forester uh Tracy span of control is a little bit wider um when we look at that it's probably a little tight to see um but Tracy overseas with two divisions she oversees programming so that is all of our activities events uh special events all the classes that people register for and that's mainly planned by four individuals um there are four Recreation programmers uh Amanda Clark Rachel Walters Nicole Gorman and Laura
Fulton and they kind of each have their own um mix and Specialties that they oversee and then on the Enterprise side um I'm sure you've heard uh Joe Abu U overseas Brar Gulf Jesse bual overseas our Arena and sports dome um we currently have no one assigned as a general manager of the art center um as you know we're in a transition period and Laura Fulton um she specializes in art programming we'll talk about that a little bit later but that from a
programmatic sense and not necessarily from an Enterprise sense uh Tiffany Bushland is our general manager at Centennial Lakes Park and Patty McGrath oversees both Edinburgh Park and the dino Aquatic Center with her team um for the Edina Liquor operation obviously there's that again indirect line with mallerie and Kirsten um Megan Lundberg oversees the Grand View store Kyle Fernandez overseas 50th in France and Tim Heen mule overseas South DEA
operations so to start um with our service level in um uh Provisions um wanted to start with the uh Park Administration one of the first one that's been keeping us probably the most busy lately is our Park planning efforts obviously we are working um on not only the local option sales tax the D Aquatic Center um a number of our playground Replacements um and um U and the uh the Art Center hen County projects so really
that um does require you know a high level of Engagement um requires additional project time resources and te techniques to kind of reach out and get all that put together uh one thing that we do have our mind on um we've not discussed it as a as a policy decision yet but it's really about longer term Revenue opportunities related to pursuing sponsorships and naming rights I know um a number of you have talked about philanthropic efforts that's also part of that as well um but a number of
communities um we talk about best practices are starting to test the waters on naming rights of their facilities so Elk River Bloomington Maple Grove are all testing the waters on that so again something to think about more long term um we do have a number of liaison duties within our department um we liaison with the Edina Garden Council the Historical Society uh 14 different athletic associations there
is a Brar golf club uh the morning side athletic group uh Veterans Memorial that's doesn't actually take a lot of our time um but that is one long-term historic item that we would need to figure out um the Veterans Memorial right now Bob Coen is still heading that up and he is looking for a successor for himself and I don't believe he's been able to find one um we do meet with Community Education a lot of people get us confused a little bit in the community or um as part of our role and we really
try to Not Duplicate efforts with Community Education we've talked about that early on there's no sense in both of us offering a half full yoga class so we do have a good um uh relationship with Community Education that comes down to space types of programs things of that nature that we really try to ensure the Community Serve but we're not overlapping with each other uh we do work with the 4th of July committee as well as our staff that works with the Ed B Park Associations the Centennial Lakes
Park Associations and the Susa band um so those are kind of those external associations that we Le ason with on a quite regular basis in addition our department also has staff Liaisons to the arts and culture commission and the Parks and Recreation Commission um we do spend uh in War of time on special events um primarily our own but also in supporting CommunityWide ones as well um often times those do uh require a lot of work for us to help pull off and um it's kind of again about
Community expectations and some of those special events are trying to go into locations that quite frankly are too small to host that venue however um the best thing a community event can do is to grow year-over year and then what does it do when it gets too big or the resource inputs that we have to put into it um we are also looking a little bit um forecasting wise about why are we getting so many requests and we do believe a lot of those local organiz maybe were hosting their their event in
a prior community and they are moving to Idina for a little bit more of that support security um aspect as well so we're very mindful of that but when we do look at some of those venues that they're trying to use really you know a lot of those facilities shelters buildings were really kind of the primary design was for neighborhood resident use so it's a challenge to not get a picnic shelter reservation for your graduation party because it's a special event um so we do try to balance
those aspects out uh we publish uh three activity directories per year and that gets sent to every residential unit in E so not just like one per duplex or one per aplex or one per apartment building but per unit so the expectation we have with the postal service is If U we're sending that directory out it gets to every apartment unit um other communities you know we kind of
listed that as a a best practice other communities have gone away from that kind of as a cost cutting measure um there was a very funny intro in the Plymouth activities directory this year was um we heard you we're bringing back our full directory um it's not going to be just posted online anymore so it's really again when we think about how we fund a lot of our activities based on registrations is to get that into households so that is a a great input
that we have to try to get that um we have registration next Wednesday that will be a several $1,000 Wednesday for us that is our entire um the start to our summer registrations so those are our big days in our office um I think the the council's aware of some of the Safety and Security things that we work on um you know our big things are um fire and chemical you'll hear throughout this presentation about some of the chemical um uh safety concerns that we
Monitor and are trained for in some of our Enterprises we think about ammonia chlorides etc for a pool for the arena um we talk about fire and severe weather we talk about active shooter and then lately we've also been talking a little bit about the social disruption things that we've shared with the council um we also provide you scholarships and we've kind of had an ongoing dialogue with the ud Community Foundation about trying to raise those limits and I know the prior executive
director dick Crockett was always a little hesitant on could he raise um additional money to provide on those scholarships um we've been in a good position where we've not run out of scholarship money from the ad Community Foundation however we do know that as programs exceed um additional children try to get additional um access to programs that is one area where where we do see um U kind of a a a something to solve for the future I
guess you'd say so that's a little bit about our Park admin area uh the next we kind of talk about programming and again um part of that is we have uh one person who primarily uh works with Our Youth Athletic associations and we think about those 14 associations they're all using either our facilities or our parks and that's where it kind of gets into priority use is how do they fall within that priority um if you um are involved in Youth Sports I hope you take this with a grain of salt I don't want to
insult anyone but the days of Sandlot sports are over um we are not seeing um which is kind of sad we're not seeing that independent pickup I mean it does happen but we are seeing kids more and more um um pushed into Athletics and now those Athletics are going year round again those 14 associations they're all private um associations they are nonprofits but they do get priority set our parks and why we want to deal with one Association so we don't have
Splinter organizations we don't want to have Edina basketball West and Edina basketball East that we have to find gym space for both we want to find for just one um but that is something and I you probably hear about it is just caring capacity of our Parks why our Athletics in this park those are all growing they're looking for more space again about uh you know demands on that uh we do do adaptive inclusion programs and services so we do our own uh programs and services for the
community uh we do look at that as a little bit of a micro Regional we partner a lot with uh Richfield Bloomington Eden Prairie when we can we also hold a contract for reach resources and they provide uh one-on-one uh uh support for any of our participants um our athletic association's also pay into that as well so if there was over a time on a youth softball team when we needed a sign language interpreter uh because of a participant in the program we can
get that immediately from reach for resources we can provide that service and connect it immediately uh to help those individuals um again we do uh senior programming we always say we do 8 to 80 kind of that 8 month to 80 um I always joke the worst thing you can do for a senior center is call it a senior center um because it's really it's active it's not just um you know you kind of get this picture in your head of congregate dining and defensive driving and things like that um but these are field trips
they clubs they're um puzzle clubs um our staff tries to connect um seniors to youth um we just had one volunteer come forward that wanted to build bird houses for our park and we kind of asked them hey would you want to do that in conjunction with a lot of our service requests from scouting organizations so we can connect a mentor to someone younger than the child and we can make that connection um so we maintain that we do all of our park building and
shelter rentals um through through our office um as you know we don't rent all of this um you know just based on facility condition and type so there really isn't an equitable approach throughout the city of where those are they are mainly those newer shelters that we do rent um for people and again those all have size requirements and different times of the day and rates and then we do um outdoor ice skating and that's been um really in in the last several years but a little bit
more evident rately is um I'll talk a little bit throughout the presentation about uh climate impacts climate change and that is really uh something that we do need to kind of keep in mind I always say I do not want to be the Parks and Recreation director that you know backed off on hockey right that's not a good thing to say in this community but it's it's a reality that we are seeing these Trends and it's not just us so um which kind of leads us into the park maintenance division um again Tom Swinson's area um we do a
lot of things this area disease tree and weed inspection that's one of our um State statutes so if you remember the first meeting in January the the mayor is designated our weed inspector for the city and then we delegate that task to Tom that comes from a state statute so that is really enforcing that ordinance of long grass disease trees things of that nature I thought that was a joke it's real it came up that good know every city innesa
has I'm not sure when it started or what the rationale was but um we also do tree protection ordinance review obviously that's um in conjunction with the with the building department as part as permitting uh we do do tree storm damage removal again when we talk about climate change this was a very rough summer for tree damage um and those high winds wet soils um is is something that we're really looking
at uh we do do our own forestry programs we were grateful as part of the arpa funds to do the Next Generation tree program that planted a thousand trees uh within our park and Open Spaces areas um and then again we do turf management building management and also playground safety inspections just to make sure you know that um that is one thing you'll see at the end that we have um um invested in our staff in to conduct those there are certifications to to conduct those about age type
structure um fall hazards Etc and we do have um um additional staff that are trained in that so not only are we inspecting existing but also as new Replacements are coming in to kind of do that verification to stay uh stay up on those um yeah can you just briefly context for parks of uh what you're considering best practice when we read
through these yeah um so there aren't a lot of Industry standards they're very localized so when we look at turf management there isn't a a a prescribed thing that says um which what we do as a best practice is we do um chemical treatments for um weeds only on our athletic fields and our high priorities we do not do them in neighborhood parks
one for an expense side but also from um um putting down chemicals so there's no industry standard that says that but for us that's a local best practice um when we look at playground safety inspections um you could do that once a year and be compliant we do them on a much more frequent basis not only when we repair but also in advance so and so things like that where where there are standards but there's not a set one
executing above and beyond whatever the various standard may or may not be or customize to your local area okay thanks um one thing that not a lot of communities do is we do operate a greenhouse um it's very valued by theana Garden Council um we are in the process we have U an employee who after 41 years of really operating the greenhouse is retiring this spring um so we'll be transitioning on that that's a big change for us to um have a new person come in and and work with that
organization uh snow plowing of parks and trails so we really do only uh the trail system in Edina uh Public Works takes care of the sidewalk system but we do local Trails uh we also do Park buildings Park shelter parking lots Etc so that's kind of in addition to that that hockey ring season so so Saturday is going to be a rough day for all of us I think cuz we're going to try to get things plow or we're try to get rinks open so it'll be interesting um ice
skating rink maintenance again um a best practice of ours um which is not what other communities do is we maintain ice seven days a week um not a lot of communities do that some only do it 5 days a week some do it six here in Edina we do do it seven days a week um and then just one that's it's really hard to put in a chart but it's just really about operational capacity for our staff um and can we'll talk about it at the end with one of the studies we have but
um if you can imagine a a two bell curves one a little bit shorter and one a little bit bigger and I always say those bell curves for the shorter one is our winter season the taller bell curve is our summer season that's really about the responsibility we have the tasks we have is summer is so much higher than winter so we try to set that operational capacity kind of around that Winter level and then as you carry with our full-time staff as you look to Summers
then we have to supplement that so that's either through contracts hiring seasonals Etc um the one thing that does worry about that I do worry about in that sense is with some of these changes in our climate is you know we used to I always the joke is we wouldn't let people on athletic fields until we mowed once and that was always miday now that bell curve is so much wider so instead of thinking we can do that in May it's really early April and that other bell curve is not just
you know Labor Day it's getting into October and those shoulder Seasons as we call them are getting busier and busier when we don't have access to those seasonal staff so that's one thing from just an operational capacity that does worry a little bit long term is you know those seasons are getting earlier you know I think we've opened up the golf course in early April we've opened it up in late March we've had Athletic Field use in late March so those things which used to be May are now coming earlier
and they're staying later um then we also do athletic field maintenance as well uh rmar golf um so now I think we hit the the term where we're no longer in the general fund um about our service levels is Brar Gulf um again that's maintaining our course conditions the at aity the horiculture all at Brar Gulf um really for the Championship 18 the academy 9 and the driving range and then
uh three main buildings that we do maintain out there so the the course clubhouse itself the academy 9 building and then the golf dome building um and then we also maintain the courtyard as well um as part of kind of some of the programming aspects out at the the golf course as well is we do have a series of golf professionals out there that really have grown our um our our lesson programs they've grown
our youth programs and it's really been a a it was a good decision to move them from contracted staff to internal staff so there's no longer a disconnect between who's registering who who's got lessons those types of things so it's really uh done well uh we also do community programming at the golf course so it might be Lawn Bowling Lawn Bowling um we do a lot of um Family nights out there as well we tried to do some Snowshoe this winter we had it scheduled
they turned into hikes um maybe after this weekend we can go back um we also are a a league host facility so we have 18 different leagues at Brar Gulf and we have condens them um we did condense some of the non- internal groups so we always had internal leagues um that we didn't oversee but they were kind of the traditional ones a lot of those private leagues we've um phased just to um create additional capacity
for tea times that was one of our uh great complaints was um people could not get on the course so we did make some of those changes to allow a little bit more Public Access in addition to that but um and then we've capped our leagues because we kept seeing like well if I can't get on the golf course I'll just join a league so um um we're also a u um we do golf retail um we do host a lot of outings a lot of those um for our priority are nonprofit so think of the Chamber of Commerce and other events that we have
out there and then we do hold a food and beverage contract at Brar golf we do not do food and beverage ourselves so we hold that contract with with Red River Kitchen through Lancer catering uh RAR Arena obviously operating the building in Dome um we do our own equipment maintenance uh we do program and event coordination I think maybe you saw it in the the Friday report a couple of nights ago um the Ed High school girls team set the the
record by having the most um um um people come to a game it was like 2, 149 people per game um that was on a Friday night just to let you know Saturday and Sunday were busier I mean when when those events happen that puts a tremendous amount of stress on the the the infrastructure and the staff um and then just uh we do our own concessions we do our own snow and ice removal and we're very mindful of energy man management out there we worked um very closely with with Chad staff in the past
on Just Energy Efficiency upgrades and monitoring those use um and that's one just when we kind of get to you know priority use expectations um when we kind of talk about the arena that is one thing that um we we do need to have kind of that long-term dialogue is you know from our perspective we are set to operate an arena when it comes to our users they would like to see more of that event center operation right so when we see these events and tournaments coming come in that we are a host for that does put a lot of um stress on that
system um just to continue just again the Safety and Security when we look at um emergency protocols we have a tremendous amount at the arena just because we are um a facility that uses ammonia so um we no longer have any natural gas um equipment that was a phase out so everything from zambonis to Shavers are all electric now so we have to worry about that um and then again
just um you know maintaining ice and Equipment um next we'll jump over to Centennial Lakes Park um we did do a deep dive with the council a couple of years ago on that but again um probably our um you know everyone has their own Crown Jewel I think you know most of us kind of feel that Centennial is the crown jewel of Vina um you know that staff there works on tree and turf maintenance they maintain that building um one of the um you know major um
programmatic senses the putting course down there um so just maintaining a natural grass putting course conditions um one of the big things down there too that people really appreciate is the horiculture investment that we've made over the years and then um again like everyone else snow plowing and walking trail maintenance um a little bit more about uh Centennial Lakes um the skating rate maintenance I'll talk a little bit more
about um how how they're being impacted by that as well um we do do an entertainment series down there um so we do about 85 concerts per year at Centennial Lakes Park and we do offer a small stip in to some of those bands um you know anywhere from $150 to $200 um to bring them in so um we won't solve the starving artist uh quote but um we do feel like they do bring a great
value to the to the community down there um and we also do paddle rentals if you've been down there um over the last year we've added to the fleet through the arpa program we now have uh swans and I don't know if the gray ducks are there yet or if they will be unveiled next spring but are really popular this year they were extremely popular yeah um every Thursday night in the summmer in the growing Seasons we have a farmers market we always try to pair that up with music as well food trucks um that
is very popular um building rentals uh we still do a fair number of those as well um the wedding industry as itself has changed it really changed after Co um you know kind of in the midst of that things went small things went very intimate um now it seems to be that we are not a big enough venue for weddings big weddings are back again so um it's always kind of a little bit of a moving Target um as well as corporate rentals uh more corporations I think
because they are not hosting all of their staff in one location anymore aren't doing as many team building or meeting um events that they have or through their corporate headquarters they've invested in their own system so they're not coming on site um so that is a little bit of a change and then we do um have a lot of public art stations in Centennial Lakes Park they are not all full um we've had a number of recent donations by members of the community to add art
to Centennial Lakes Park U but that is something that we're always kind of keeping our eye on and that is for um when it comes to public art the staff that U hosts that piece is responsible for the maintenance of that piece so um I know CLP staff right now is working with a number of artists to have them come back and repair um some of those pieces that have going on uh the next is the D Aquatic Center um to this point everything has kind of
been that year round operation the D Aquatic Center is a short very intense operation so when we think about you know June into August um you know that 12 13 we period that is um very intense for us so um through State Statute we do have um ways that we are required to handle chemical operations I think we don't need to revisit it the the condition of the pump room you've discussed that over
the last uh last month or so um but we do do our own um cleaning custodial functions the decks the grounds um we do charge admission there so um we do season passes we do daily passes last year we introduced a pass package so um we always heard about can we have a half a season or a quarter season pass and it just never really worked out um so this year we or last year and this coming year we'll actually have a pass pack so
you can buy x amount of admissions um this way you can take um your cousin that came into town to visit you Grandma and Grandpa want to take you you don't have to be on a season pass so it's kind of in um a way to kind of U get people to continue coming to the Aquatic Center that don't want to buy a season pass and we don't want to lose them long term by relying on just a daily admission so looking at that um for safety and lifeguarding um there is no state statute on that but there are two
mechanisms that you can use and that's Red Cross or LS lifeguarding and because of the type of Aquatic Center we have the type of amenities we have um we use Ellis lifeguarding standards which means uh we have to do annual training um not just um over a 2-year um training session and um the techniques are wildly different than Red Cross so Red Cross is kind of the traditional I watch a pool I watch people swim um Ellis lifeguarding because of the uh the deep water slides
the flower if you're at the Aquatic Center you will see our staff scanning and moving um if they're on the Zero depth area you see them walking to scan and move so we have some people in um uh stands we have other people moving and walking so that rotation is required by the type of Aquatic Center we have so we do see you know um a greater challenge in recruitment because we have to also put people through training um and that training does last for the One season
um um and again we'll talk about seasonal staff but that alone we hir about 60 to 70 lifeguards a year so when we think about that amount of people to hire for that short window of period it is intense um we do do rentals there so um we've tried to do uh group free Friday um but we do Monday through Thursday so various other YMCAs Community Education other nonprofit groups will come and and come into there we do own concession operations we do our own programming we do try to do a
lot of events for our season passholders and adjacent to the equatic center is um the the the playground on top of the hill that is connected so that staff does maintain that site uh the art center um obviously without real uh the the U facility functioning to where we want it we are just doing art programming at this ense so um we're using only the first floor
of the art center um we're not doing pottery and we are uh Distributing our art programming across the community so we've um hosted art camps at Fred Richards we're using a lot of the park buildings and shelters we're doing things at the senior center um so we're not just relying upon one location right now but we're Distributing programming throughout so that has its own challenges about you know trying to get easels to one location make sure we can have them right now we're not using the park Shelf because they're warming hoses so then we'll go back in the spring so
just until we can get to um you know having an operating Arts Center that's where we need to be um and then um Laura also works a lot with public art and the arts and culture commission so when you think about some of the things they've done in the past through um the art and culture commission's virtual Gallery um doing the utility box wraps Etc throughout the community that was kind of all spirited under here uh next is Edinburgh Park and just a
reminder Patty and her team oversees the Aquatic Center and Edinburgh Park um so just they do those building operations um it is a very unique facility when you think about just the structure of it it has three shared wall Partners from the corporate center to the assisted living facility to the former hotel now apartment so when you think about it those are all shared walls and shared associations that we we connect with um there's the gym the pool the track um
and then the play park and um and the amphitheater um again mechanical and chemical operations because it's a chlorine facility we have special protocols there um we also do um public use so we do do uh swim club rentals there so that's one of our associations they do use that as a as one of their I wouldn't say primary locations but one of their locations for their Association um we do a lot of birthday parties um
there's a lot of frosting and a lot of um uh cake to clean up at the end of the night but that is um really what what um what you can expect there is we do have a couple of plateaus in the building we do a lot of birthday parties again an entertainment series um throughout the year there's daytime youth there's um Sunday night adults it's a big location every year for the Susa bands concert um we'll do our exterior grounds and maintenance again with three shared walls and partners we always try to keep
those lines clean um um for who's responsible for what and then we also do community programming there um you know we don't necessarily have a community center in Idina per se for Parks and Recreation to use but we do use uh nbor Park to try to do that so we'll have a variety of programming there uh tonight there is a um an activities Expo there so we are hosting all of our associations Community Education a lot of the
nonprofits in Edina to have a table um people can come see what they're offering for the summer whether it be classes camps programs and get a better idea so not just our own programs but what's in the community so you can expect a lot of things like that that also happened um at Edinburgh Park um e liquor that is one of our additional State statutes um so one of the one of the four things that are there and I always remind staff of why did um Municipal liquor come to Edina and
that was um when the referendum vote to have that came on is people were concerned about the um compliance verification and safety controls right and that was one of the messages during the the referendum about 75 years ago so really that's that's our main driver there is age and eligibility verification compliance so um we often get calls about I'm well over 21 years old why did you card me and and you know there's a new state statute if you flip it over a lot of um people don't know
that but there are certain individuals that are are U not allowed to purchase alcohol and they would have that on the back of their identification card so it's not just about age it's also about eligibility for us um we do offer e-commerce so that's online ordering and delivery um um very straightforward retail sales um again we follow state statute on how we go about doing that um we have those three store locations of cran view Southdale and 50th in France
um we sell beer wine spirits THC drinks non-alcoholic and related products and then something that we do um um really as a kind of a quality of life thing in the community um we do tasting and educational events so you know we do the um the holiday event where you can taste wine and you can order we do a summer sip we'll do whiskey classes types of those things and kind of special events and education
program um the next is just kind of getting into those um cost drivers and kind of a um a little bit of a reminder this may not look familiar to you but this was um we did kind of that deep dive on Centennial Lakes Park and that is um the HRA contracts that were established in the establishment of Centennial Lakes Park so as a reminder those were 30 years with an automatic tenure renewal um those would be on the horizon then for expiration um and a
number of those continue based on the timing and um I do believe the um the Coventry homes voluntarily extended um out to 2040 um however some of the the major ones the South Office Park the retail Plaza uh Pinstripes and the medical office building no longer have an automatic renewal um so that would have to be negotiated if they were to do that but those go through 2028 and then um
and then they would expire um so just a reminder on that one as part of this presentation uh the next is in 2021 um Public Works uh facilities and park maintenance um overtook a an organizational assessment of kind of needs and changes so from uh the park maintenance and park side of things um one of the one of the things was to improve our turf management and rink maintenance and
um for for our entire division not just in those two areas um was to add three FTE we've not done that since 2021 um another recommendation or three other recommendations were to look at our winter ice rink maintenance calendar um how we schedule we did make modifications to that um we did purchase the equipment and again I kind of mentioned it before but we did invest in training for our playground safety inspection program um defining our Park
Maintenance and Service levels that's kind of an ongoing um we don't ever want to kind of um establish that and rest we're always looking at new ways new standards or what those impacts are and then really to um you know monit monitor our forestry Staffing as we look at the tree ordinance and and its implementation so um so one we haven't checked off uh three we have two are kind of in a continuous um Improvement review uh and then the last is just one slide
but it's got 12 things on it so um I'll try to go through um is really just some other things that um we really kind of want to make sure you're aware of and really I don't think you um um need need to spend a lot of time on this but just facility condition and our aging infrastructure I think you've seen all those presentations um but just one thing I wanted to make sure that if you didn't know but our Enterprise rolling vehicles are not in the fund equipment replacement so those have to be funded
by the Enterprises um as you know lot of those are targeted for um um you know to break even or less to be supported um so a lot of that equipment is not being replaced um if you remember a couple of months ago um the arena bought a bobcat from the public works division so we brought that to you as a as a purchase request um so just as you as you go through this a lot lot of those are not included in that um I know you are all very supportive about looking at those alternative funding
mechanisms whether they be philanthropic um or other types of things I did mention you know a lot of communities are looking at some of those long-term sponsorship naming rights aspects so monitoring that um climate change um you know I think we were in probably a meeting a while ago and it was like we are no longer preparing we are being impacted um so just a couple of things that you should know of how we are impacted and and what it means to run something on revenue and when you
can't so the last two years um our highest um Revenue weeks for Centennial Lakes Park are always between Christmas and New Year's kids are off of school people are taking time off it's a very busy time the last two years we did not have ice um we had open water so it wasn't like we weren't ready we had open water um we normally net about $70,000 per week over that time frame so the
last 2 years we did not generate $140,000 skate rentals concessions all the types of events that are down there so just so you know those are the types of things that we can no longer count on you know it's kind of going to have to be a variable um also at Centennial Lakes Park this year um well just first um I know we all felt it cuz it was kind of like what happened to the temperature and now why am I not wearing a long
sleeve jacket was we had a 65° temperature swing over 9 days in January and centenal Lakes Park had 15 in of ice underneath the pedestrian bridge on January 27th we measure ice daily and this is why what does that mean uh we drill a hole and we measure how much ice thickness we have to make sure it can support people or equipment if we're maintaining okay on January 27th we had 15 in of ice the next day we
had open water so that's why Centennial Lakes Park is not open for skating because we don't have it frozen solid enough um so when you think about that change not just that 65° but that allowed runoff to come in high chlorides we have moving water underneath the ice because it's a a living body there's Organics that are off gassing under there so again that climate perception of what's going on is
there um and you know we're always working with Brian and his team Every Spring we're kind of in this um you know is the creek going to overflow or where are we going to put water and where's it going to go you know for us that traditionally means we're canceling games we're pushing back on a schedule um you know our Fields aren't ready so that always happens kind of in that spring time and then the last couple of Summers by August you know we he you know the DNR got us on a watch list do we need to shut our irrigation off right so um so that real that push and pull is
is really happening to us um Frontline seasonal Staffing um that is a huge thing for us is to continue to be able to recruit those those people um I you know you can't just say it's kids anymore right cuz we're 7 days a week sometimes 18 hours a day um we are some people's second job and we recognize that um right now when I open up my um my employee um dashboard we have about of
the we have about 330 people that are on active payroll right now they don't all work every day they don't all work every week um but you know you take off our 65 full-time staff that gets into that 200 plus just over the winter you know um people working at the gulf Dome at the arena at Edinboro um ice rink attendance that number can swell up into that 480 um in the summer so thinking about again we work with Kelly's team quite a bit um
just on and um you know paperwork getting people activated we work with Jennifer's team on employee um recruitment efforts so it's really um we we are you know reliant on that but Frontline seasonal Staffing is the big thing for us and getting them trained um you know we're we're grateful we're working with the Axel group on our social disruption our Safety and Security blueprint um that's going really well uh predicting future use patterns right I get this question all
the time what's the next pickle ball what do we need to be ready for and I don't know yet um but it'll be here and we'll find out right um growing demands and perception gaps you know I talked a little bit about you know the arena and how you know we operate an arena but at sometimes we're an event center um we do get that from our associations all the time and that is um you know kind of said a lot of our stuff is Community Driven we get a lot of Demands from that you know um and that translates into requests you know that that come up to
you um again servicing and prioritizing residents partners and patrons we always want to take care of them right I'd rather have that graduation party for someone that lives here than a special event right so how do we prioritize use um again the importance of Municipal liquor they support a lot of our operations um another thing we're looking at again is those Art Center operations not for 26 but that latter half 27 going into 2028 um you know it's not in the near term but eventually will have to replace the
U artificial turf at pamel and Brar those are holding up very well um we do impact attenuation testing every we do it twice a year at those locations so while we may infill you know the crumb rubber um you know those turfs are holding up um one of the concerns though longterm is Minnesota has um very stringent past rules and that is a major hiccup in the uh Turf industry right now because um
you have to prove that P was not artificially added to the process and no one can determine with the Minnesota PCA what certification you need to show that it wasn't artificially added um the national Recreation and park association with the state of California did a u multi-year study in artificial turf and they've deemed it safe from an impact standpoint from a crumb rubber standpoint everything it was a a very comprehensive study we were all waiting for but here in Minnesota we're not
quite sure how to navigate this new law on Pest and then again eventually um not anytime soon but we will have to replace the the sports stone at Brar Arena so that's kind of a quick overview that took an hour um of of what we operate um at you know six different locations throughout the city um and some of our you know long-term concerns and and drivers that we see on
Horizon so when we have the subsequent conversation um are we going to be able to see you know which of these are Revenue generating and which ones we have like a net loss on so that we can start to like stacking those numbers too yeah we actually use um two numbers and their um we do a a management cost recovery and a total cost recovery and it's really you know the the management
one is what you can control um you know your Staffing costs your revenue and then the total cost is everything else that goes into the Acer you know the pension liability Central Services investment income things of that nature so okay thank you and we do call out those factors in our quarterly Financial reports I know there's rules about what we can and cannot do for fundraising as a municipality but um
just thinking about overall sustainability and yeah that Dome is going to have to be replaced and we do need to replace the pump I is there any way there could be a sign at the pool saying your dollars do not go to much needed maintenance or so I don't know I mean it just seems like this is a huge issue and we need to raise public awareness of it I would agree we have a
lot of expensive infrastructure probably not as much as these to take care of but it's specialized it's Unique and a lot of it is in need of repair um I'd have to look to see what that would partake you know I don't know how I know City staff cannot try to fundraise right ex pretty clear right but as you know the council's mentioned and the Parks Commission is looking at is what does that look like from a you know a philanthropic effort and you know I
think you know former mayor metel said it well is in a of crime prevention fund for the parks yeah I think the the underlying principle though is on your first slide you had 68 FTE those 68 FTE are supporting Regional services and bryar is one of those right and so as a community we're funding and keeping up those services that are
providing a regional benefit and so absolutely after we go through this process and we've made decisions on services and the revenue model here and there and how we're going to fund different things we are going to come out we have to come out with a story so that people understand why we're making certain decisions and I think what you're bringing up right fits not only here
you've got a lot of these Enterprise services but those aren't the only ones we have so one thing that's not there that maybe should be is how much we're doing right now with the sales tax too and longterm how do we you know replace that in the future is that another Regional supported initiative or is it something that locally we have to figure out how to do Capital maintenance on so that's just that's not a short term but think about that long term too of what the
sales tax is benefiting the system hopefully for a long time yeah I you know I said this before in my careers as I would love to get to a point where it's don't ever let this happen again right um and how do we set up that long-term mechanism so it doesn't happen again because we can't keep doing it this way and I really I appreciate the information that you provided and also that we got at um at the work session however I mean I feel like this
is information that should be made available to the public as a whole you know maybe under some very easy to access um site and this is really incredibly basic information and we're going to in order to you know we're staring at a potential 177% property taxs and um I know budget is not I wish I knew what you two knew about budget processes cuz I know I feel
like I'm a little out of my area but I as I get this information it's helpful on a super super General level but how do I get from this super super General level to where I need to be to make those decisions and that makes me a bit nervous also the idea and this was presented at the work session that we're supposed to hold our questions until the March Retreat I don't understand that yeah no no I don't think the goal was to hold questions if you have clarification
ones we wanted to make sure that we're going to go through and we TimeWise to get through all these presentations to make sure that we're not here until after midnight um and the goal was to if you instead of you saying right now Perry I want to change the ice rink flooding schedule that type of like feedback hold the feedback but if you have a question about how something works we we should ask that and and we'll also have the opportunity after we're done with this then we're going to we're going to have like a followup
conversation to get some feedback from you of what are the things that you want to talk about more in March um in the interim so because but that's good because the dialogue has to continue it can't just be truncated and then oh remember back in February oh yeah no not okay good all right yeah because I wouldn't be able to answer a question right now of how should we replace the Dome fabric 9 years from now right so I think it's more the let's get there let's build it or we
should move on to public works right you see yeah I already have it the clicker there you go yep okay well this is an interesting slide and I just wanted to make sure to point out that um the 8.28% that's in general maintenance is really the Staffing component of our operation and the reason I say that is because what I'm going to talk about in a in a
second is um that general maintenance is not necessarily so what happens is we we do snow and ice removal um when we do snow and ice removal they code their time to snow and ice removal and then it gets built to that in the budget it's originally in the general maintenance and the reason I say that is because um and I like the term that Perry used oper operational capacity our operational capacity is based upon our winter use as
well our full-time complement is based upon our snowplowing ability to to plow uh 486 Lane miles of of streets uh and sidewalks and um parking ramp maintenance um every single time it snows the one thing I will say about snow plowing it is the only emergency service that we provide that touches the lives of every single resident every single time it happens um and I think
that's why they've dedicated so much time and and energy um and equipment and manpower to make it happen um our snow plowing is second to none in the state of Minnesota and uh is comparable in the top 10 in the nation uh we are very good at what we do I'll talk a little bit about our organ organization um we have two assistant
Public Works directors uh one that oversees uh his name is Dave Gorgon oversees the asphalt and concrete Street supervisors as well as the two administrative support Specialists we have a receptionist at at uh front desk that of Public Works that handles all the incoming traffic uh from all of the 3D departments that operate under the park and Public Works maintenance
facility um we have 12 public workers uh that are asphalt Street primarily uh we have um seven Public Service workers that are in the concrete division three Traffic Safety Specialists uh and 14 utility operators um 70% of our total costs are paid for by the Enterprise facilities uh the storm water water and and um
sanitary sewer utilities and so even though they don't have a direct impact on the general fund I wanted to make sure that I included some of the services that they provide as well snow plowing as I mentioned um our mission statement is to provide the best public service that we possibly can um and do that as efficiently and effectively as possible we currently
have 25 plow routes for 486 Lane miles of streets we have um five sidewalk routes that handle um let's see where did that a total of 71.5 miles of uh sidewalks and uh so that's a total at 25 + 5 and then there's two uh staff members that do the parking ramps down
at 50th in France um it's hard to say that each snow event is got a certain number of hours after we start to when we Complete because every storm is different and so in a 2hour um time frame or I mean a a 2in snowfall event takes us about 6 to 8 hours to get through the entire city with with that Staffing level um when
you talk about um 6 to 8 maybe 8 to 10 in snowstorm which doesn't happen terribly often but it it generally prior to these last couple years it was happening at least three or four times a year um those types of events would require us to be out there for for probably 14 to 16 hours to get it complete um I worked in a community that had a service level like that prior to here I
won't mention any names um but I can tell you that the number of phone calls that we got when people went to work came back and still hadn't had their streets plowed uh was astounding and um so I will tell you that Idina does it correctly and uh bases all of their full-time staff complement on the snowplowing service and so what I'm telling you a lot of what we do is seasonal in nature um one
of the reasons why Terry I mean Perry and I had a conversation about climate change was because it doesn't necessarily impact us from from a revenue producing perspective it just means that we can't be as efficient as we typically are because we might be doing pothole repair in February because of the change of temperatures um and so again it doesn't necessarily mean that we uh aren't busy it means that
we're just doing different seasonal activities so I want to talk a little bit about equipment maintenance and Fleet repair There is five mechanics that we have we actually have a sixth mechanic right now uh that will be that is one of the biggest challenges that we had we had about three people that departed our equipment Operations Division through retirement and or internal transfer it took us nearly 2
years to get those back in place uh the one challenge that we had was that the private sector mechanic makes way more than the public sector mechanic and we went through interview processes month after month where we'd have one candidate one candidate um it just um didn't didn't wasn't very easy so we do have a sixth mechanic at this point uh we put him on because we know that there's a retirement coming up and there was two pretty good uh potential
employees and so we capitalized on that because we knew we had to catch up because there was um period of almost 2 years where we had limited amount of mechanics and we were falling way behind so the intention is when when and if someone leaves uh we will not replace that mechanic so it wasn't mentioned in here the fuel Consortium we purchase fuel for
all of the Departments of the city uh we we enter into the fuel Consortium the fuel Consortium is run by the state of Minnesota but it requires us to have a monthly volume that we uh get minimum monthly volume that we get we have two 10,000 gallon tanks down at the public works and park maintenance facility we generally have 40 500 gallons of diesel that we order every month and 7,000
gallons of unlet fuel and so we again we provide all of the the fuel for uh the city departments Street Maintenance as I mentioned there's 486 Lane miles of roads in the city uh Street Maintenance includes pothole repair it includes crack sealing um street sweeping our Mill and overlay program our Millan overlay program I can talk at um greater lengths near the end when I talk about
some of the challenges but also some of the successes that we've had um so the mill and overlay program I guess I'll get a little into it right now um we have and I'm going to jump to the the last slide when I first came here in 2012 our our pavement condition index and this is both the same year that Chad started uh we kind of put our heads together and we
looked at our pavement condition index pavement condition index is based upon a score from 0 to 100 uh our score was 51 um there are a few people um that think 51 is a good score in a chemistry exam in college uh but we certainly didn't think that that was a a good score and so as you can see on the the graph on the right um or upper right that's when
our infrastructure was originally installed uh at at year zero um we are currently in the uh decade or the generation where we need to commit to reinvest because they're coming due of age and need to be replaced um which generally means that it needs more maintenance until it gets replaced uh Chad and I kind of put our
heads together and um our theoretical Street pavement life goes year zero construction year 23 is when you do the first overlay year 41 is the second overlay and then that gets you to year 55 to 60 um in the past they were uh doing overlays in the worst Street uh because that would decrease the amount of potholes that they would have
to do but it was like throwing money away and um we knew that um the asphalt in a street is no different than the asphalt on the top of your roof um it you can put another layer on top you can put another layer on top but finally you got to rip it all off and start over again and so um we've made significant um strides in this and in fact 200 this is an older graph in
2024 we had a pavement condition index of 78 so that was why we recommended reducing the budget for a half mile but still continue on with the mil Mill and overlay program again our operational capacity is based on winter um in the summer we have the same challenges as Perry does in terms of hiring seasonal staff that seasonal staff um we're finding is
much more apt to get a job at McDonald's than shovel asphalt for the for the summer um sometimes I don't blame them for that because it can be quite a a hot experience but um we literally um are having a really hard time getting people during the summer so I'll continue on with uh service summary
um we do retaining wall repairs again we're kind of in the reactive mode with retaining wall repairs uh because we have retaining walls that were normally built along with our infrastructure um at at this point we are reactively repairing the walls that are failing uh we do have some CIP uh dollars uh that are allowing us to proactively replace some very big two-tier walls uh and walls that we
wouldn't be able to impact with our budget and um and so we're we're doing some good things there sidewalk maintenance as we've talked about there's 123 total miles of trails and sidewalks of that 71 miles are maintained by US 24 almost 25 Mi maintained by residents uh 13.28% by other departments primarily the park and maintenance Division I will mention that uh in terms of our snow and
ice removal I think Perry didn't mention that they do provide one of our um employees to do the streets I think that's been for the last 40 years or so um and that was a bargain that was struck long long ago when they were talking about who was going to do like the arena we we go through there with with some big frontend plows um to try to get as much as we can out of there so
that they can get people in as quick as possible just in the main parking lot um but at the end of the day uh we do Trade Services back and forth and work together in regard in that regard sign maintenance um as with 486 mies we have thousands of streets um that have I'm sorry thousands of of signs that need to be replaced or repaired when
accidents occur or um are just simply not reflective enough um you've probably seen signs as you're driving down the highway that sometimes are splotchy or at night are hard to read um that's because the Retro reflectivity hasn't been replaced um the coating on the signs needs to be taken off and replaced um unlike some communities especially smaller communities we have the ability
to make our own signs the only signs that we really buy are the signs that um that are mass-- produced like stop signs and uh yield signs and and you can get them cheaper than you can make them U but we do have our own sign making machine and we do have the ability to make every sign that's included in the manual and uniform traffic control devices pavement marking maintenance again when I first started
here we ended up we were painting everything in latex um latex paint is good in that it's easy to clean up and it and it uh looks good fresh when it's installed uh but it doesn't last nearly as long as uh other uh versions of paint um so what we've started as a program there were times where we would literally have to replace crosswalks that are painted in
latex um three sometimes four times a year in the high traffic volume areas we have over a thousand crosswalk blocks in the city of Edina and we continue to rise with that number uh because of the different sidewalks that get installed and making the community more walkable um now we use thermoplastic thermoplastic installation requires a lot more upfront time and effort because you grind that that U plastic if you
will down into the pavement so that it doesn't get taken off with the first s plow and it's so it's recessed a little bit and it's melted right into the top layer of of the uh asphalt that allows us at least 5 to 7 years of length of time before we have to replace it again which means then we're not going back to the same location over and over and over again minor Bridge repair and minor parking ramp maintenance um minor Bridge
repair revolves around uh crack ceiling on the on the the deck um it it involves some guard rail replacement occasionally uh but mostly it's graffiti removal it's um painting over graffiti maybe putting a Fresh coat of paint on on a guard rail um or vegetation removal around the base of the um the
bridge minor repair boulevards and sprinklers due to plow damage I would love to say we never hit anybody's sprinkler system or uh sod but I know that's not the case we do put out um curb markers and areas where there's significant curves that wouldn't be expected but we can't put them everywhere and and uh there's just depends on the depth of the snow that we
have when we originally go out generally later in the season curb lines are already defined because they've been plowed multiple times um but it happens we do hit private property and and uh um and sprinkler systems so we spend the first month of the season um doing doing a repair of those boulevards resident requests we handle those in a daily day-to-day basis uh those can rank
or they can be anything from a sign got hit to um s damage that needs to be repaired in the spring to um oh I got them somewhere oh could be yeah there they are sign obstructed so if vegetation grows across to sign it has to be um taken down clear clear view
obstructions uh we get a lot of D day-to-day service requests from the utility area um the utility area is mostly like a low water pressure um water meters that are um they feel are vibrating or they're could be a lot of different reasons why they call us in from the utility perspective catch basins that are failing flooding localized flooding a lot of those
things so again I I mentioned that I was going to me or talk a little bit about the the Enterprise facilities in that they do provide snow plowing of the 14 plow or of the 14 public Ser service workers that are on the utilities Division 10 of those do a plow route um the mechanics provide back up to both the streets and and utilities side too so they they can have as many as three
or four as backup um and streets there's 22 total street street employees and with 35 37 different plow routes that we have it it is clear that we cannot do the job just with concrete or asphalt Street employees so of those 22 employees there's only four that can sign out during any any week during the winter months between
November and April um and then it's all all and it's all waited on seniority sewer cleaning uh we have about 180 mies of sanitary sewer main uh we te we televise and I'm sorry we clean a fifth of those um sewer m every year and we televis a tenth of the sanitary sewer Mains so 18 Mi of televising and
almost 36 miles of sanitaries we're cleaning every year that is also a spring summer activity uh can't be done in the winter because it requires a significant amount of water and then with that water comes freezing um we do H hydrant flushing water main U flushing to keep the pipes clear of iron and manganese iron and manganese is a naturally occurring element that is in our water supply um
we don't have the entire system treated with iron and manganese treatment uh only four treatment plants in the city uh as you know we've talked at Great Lengths about a fifth to um get to a point where the vast majority of our water is treated for iron and manganese but we know that we can't treat that all of the water that's in the water mains isn't treated so we have
to sequester that iron and manganese um and what that means is it turns to Flakes and it goes to the outside of inside of the pipes um because of the pressure in air pipes and so that's why the water M flushing is trying to get those when waterers flow in a certain direction the flakes of iron and magnes stay on the outside of the or the inside of the pipe but when we do water main flushing we reverse the direction of
flow so that we actually catch those particles and we throw them out um into our uh into our water bodies there is completely safe practice but we do that in the spring and and fall we offer water shut offs and that generally happens when a contractor um is working on an internal plum issue and they can't turn the valve off and they need to shut the water off
kind of ASAP so those are those are um definitely emergency situations in most cases um so we normally have to drop what we're doing to go and turn those Waters water shut offs water main brakes Water Service Repairs um as you can see here we get about 20 20 5 to 35 water man breaks annually uh about 50 to 60 Water Service leaks
annually um people ask me a lot when how do you know that there's a water main break um the stratification of the soil is more dense as you go deeper and less dense as you go as you go up towards the surface and so that water actually finds the surface in the path path of least resistance which is generally straight up most of the time water main brakes are very noticeable and they um are easy to locate that's not always the case
sometimes there's soil conditions that make it follow the pipe um but in in 90% of the cases it comes straight to the surface in water service leaks uh same thing um but generally it is is really easy to determine whether or not it's a resident responsibility or a city responsibility uh if the leak is on the homeowner side of the valve when you turn the valve off
the leak will stop that means it's their responsibility if if it keeps on going after you turn the water off that means it's on the city side and then it's our responsibility to repair most of those we do with our own staff members um there are times where we use contracted services for those repairs when they're in areas like France under France or um those really really busy areas or there might be a lot of infrastructure in the way um one of the things that I'll
mention in in a few minutes is um is the fiber installs that are happening throughout the city uh fiber is really difficult to dig around um because you can't it needs to be supported at all times otherwise it could potentially break and um we've had a consider amount of fiber being installed which is a good thing from a connectivity perspective but for us in
terms of uh we're we're just managing to get through um even just the the locating of our existing utilities for the fiber projects is becoming quite a challenge normally we have one guy that does about 50,000 separate locates per year um those are normally sewer water and street or sewer
water and sanitary sewer so when I say 50,000 that's really about 177,000 actual tickets that he gets um but he'll have to locate all three utilities um it it becomes quite the challenge when our our number of miles of utility locates went from about 25 miles to 105 miles and so that's one of the reasons why we've asked for um a position that was a
approved in the budget uh in 2025 we normally have one guy that does our utility locates this last year we had three guys doing utility locates um which means there's other things that we can't get done because of that in about five minutes I can do it in 5 minutes we're almost there Che sewer backup response if anybody wants to come to a sewer backup uh and help help us respond we'd be we'd
welcome you uh it's probably one of the most volatile situations that we get in um and certainly there's a there's a lot more than 10 to 15 the 10 to 15 that's mentioned here are generally only um the ones that are our responsibility somebody cleaned out their sewer and left it in the sewer and block lock up sewage um Upstream of them and we can't be out there every day we we have a we
have a the league of Minnesota cities has a a goal of making sure that you're there once every 5 years if you're there less than 5 years you're not liable for that that happening although a lot of times we have relationships with contractors that allow the ability to go out there because they say hey we just cleaned a line we go out there and and clean it even though it's
not due within that time frame I mentioned catch Basin and manhole repairs um as I mentioned also the uh full-time Staffing complement is based upon our snow plowing ability um since 2016 we've added 16 m of City maintained sidewalks sidewalk maintenance on private sidewalks is not included in this
budget talked about seasonal label labor already um the Staffing analysis that was performed in 2021 that Perry mentioned uh we did end up adding three full-time staff members but it was because we had three full-time elect Ians and HVAC Specialists that were taken out of they volunteer voluntarily
got out of the 49er Union so they didn't have the ability to do any snow plowing and so we replaced those positions with the positions that were recommended in the Staffing analysis again those three positions were uh increased sweeping um we have one guy that where we used to do uh full City sweep in the spring full City sweep in the in the fall uh now we
do full City sweep in the spring full City sweep in the fall and we have that guy sweeping all year long um and so we have about 30 extra miles of increased frequency of once a month so we continue to add that as we see as time permits as we've increased our response time with service requests to one day
sometimes even less than that because we do City Works City Works allows people to um put in their pothole request we'll just use potholes as an example they'll put in their pothole request the way it used to work is they would accumulate all of those service requests um over the course of two or 3 days the supervisor would then Dole them out to their staff members and um then they would go out
and do them the next day so it could be 3 to 4 days before you had your pothole repaired but now it's all electronic somebody can take a picture of a pothole they send it our guys have um tough pads in the in their trucks so they can see it and sometimes do it within an hour um that's great but the next time that Resident is going to expect that kind of service and we can't necessarily guarantee that but we do um say that we
will at least respond within a 24-hour period and a response in that case might be a email acknowledgement it might be an email acknowledgement it might be uh you know where we've we've we've gotten your request uh we're going to put your in the in in as a work order and we'll get to it as soon as we can uh I want to briefly talk talk about equipment and I know that that's one of the topics for the March meeting so I don't want to get too far in depth um
but I I thought it was really important for you to understand that um during postco uh because we do most of the service requests or vehicle replacement requests or at least provide assistance with Richard to uh other departments um there was an article that was written about Post Service vehicle replacement
cost and between 2020 and 2023 and now I lost it so that's okay I can remember it um total equipment replacement costs are jumping about 20% in a 3-year period the costs for trucks alone have jumped from March 2020 to Mar March 2023 they've raised 33 % in in just the 3 years postco um construction equipment is very
similar it's 24.9% increase over a 3-year period so I understand the desire and the and the the thought process behind um trying to decrease our cost in vehicle replacement but if we don't have these vehicles to do the job we can't do the job so that's that's I think where we're going to leave it uh the one thing uh I put on
here that we can talk about at a future date um but we I know there's been some conversations with certain council members but pfas um PFA is the forever forever chemical we know that that's coming up um it is one small portion of the total uh problem that's being defined at this this point there's six different chemicals that are protected um or regulated now by the um the feder
the federal government and um we are in some lawsuits um class action lawsuits we continue to monitor that we know that there'll be some money coming our way at some point in the future but it's not yet and we have 5 years to implement those things the problem with our system is that it's a decentralized system so it's very difficult because we we don't have one centralized uh system so we can't like automatically do water
softening or filtration for uh pfas at one place it has to be at all all of them so that's it we're going to do Chad's presentation and then we're going to take a quick 10-minute break I know that's not on the schedule but I decided that I think it was necessary to just do a quick one but we want to get through four hours without a break yeah I'm I'm really on paper I very efficient okay all right engineering take a stand break if you
need stand up um it's always nice when you get the big green scissors away from Perry once in a while your project they're sharp Shar they are Shar uh we're 9% of the budget and we'll run through all the various divisions and services we have so we have 27 people in our department broken off in five different divisions we have 11 in facilities and it's very unique we share Services again between parks and public works so of the 11 we have one person at 50th in France we have one that does
Park shelter Maintenance Cleaning operation custodial we have one here at City Hall that does the PD side of custodial Services um and then the uh project managers like DK Goten runs that group and you know those individuals Aon ditler manages our street reconstruction the design and construction division you see him at meetings and know those Services Transportation side Andrew skion is the manager and we have Nick Ballard does Traffic Safety requests rth Bitner
Engineering Services that's GIS water resources and permitting um there's four individuals in that Division and then sustainability Marissa Bayer and Matthew gab in our sustainability group uh Services summary we have the street reconstruction local and Municipal state aid so there's just a difference in the funding there um it's not statuto required it's really a quality of life we want to be able to be able to plow streets and not throw gravel in people's front yards uh it's a combination of inhouse we do some work in-house and
Consultants just like number two the storm sanitary and water utility projects when do we replace those pipes and Rehab those pipes and that's kind of a combination of various quality of life health and safety statutory uh and again we do that with combination of In-House and Consultants The Pedestrian encycl safety fund so there are some service and staff members here that are not paid out of the general fund this is a franchise fee uh item just like the Cass with the
sustainability Services um that's really quality of life The Pedestrian and bicycle facilities sidewalks but that's a high resident demand service people want better safer streets with more sidewalks more bike Lanes same thing with traffic safety requests every year we give you a summary we come to Council in the spring and give you a summary how many requests we do um and again that's a high resident demand Service uh residential permitting I'll lump these next three Al together when I talk about residential site permitting commercial
site permitting and the rightaway permitting there's a whole combination of some statutory some quality of life some Council Direction you know 10 12 years ago when I started there was a storm water and residential Redevelopment was happening storm water being pushed on neighbors and there was quite of a concern and we tightened up those regulations in our local uh local rules and regulations with that but the demand is way greater than staff capacity on those two two combined we have one person and some assistant from me and Ross on that Andrew does a lot of
those so we do have bring consultants in in the summer when the big wave comes through for RightWay permitting with the fiber projects Brian was mentioning and also those when construction happens on commercial and residential sites and then Water Resources flooding and drainage really Jessica's work um that's again a combination of that statutory quality of life and health and safety you think of female think of the water sheds we have in town and managing first floor elevations with car's work and homes that go in um those kind of
things clean water lakes and ponds uh that's a little bit statutory a little bit quality of life that's where people ask for services for their lakes and ponds we manage that work but then they pay for it so it's not coming the service isn't paid out of the general fund um we also have our own City permit our ms4 is a PCA permit that we're required to do uh certain things which street sweeping accounts for some of that uh there a whole list of items that
we have to do and manage that permit and that leads right to the the clean water and clean Lakes natural resources management the Landscaping uh this is another kind of crossover between engineering and parks with some of the park property uh quality of life you know there's the the Landscaping practices on what we do at the parks around this building we've made some changes we're making more changes I got the golf course where we have natural Landscaping really storm water and climate action plan related those
Services private Wells we have a well head protection plan so Jessica really helps with the private Wells documenting them where they are and we're trying to get them all sealed up so they don't allow contaminants into our drinking water supply um that's a statutory health and safety issue roughly how many how many private Wells uh want to take a number but I mean a majority of people built before the 1950s had a private well so how many properties were developed at that point
we can get you a number if you want doesn't have to bect I was looking for like 100 like in place operating some have irrigation I bet there's 100 operating today but there's like more so when a home gets demoed hey there used to be a private well on your site and they say yeah there's this little metal thing in the corner we don't know what it is we don't know what it is so we get the PCA out they review it that's a private well we don't let them develop till they seal that up properly so there's not contaminant so really that review is triggered by residential
property Redevelopment commercial property Redevelopment we look through all the old records and just y there was one there and I don't have a record of a sealed well it is somewhere they'll take a house down and some find sometimes find that metal well pipe because it was in the basement or in a corner like that potentially hundreds in that realm still in town I think there's probably yeah hundreds maybe more that sketch plan that you reviewed last Tuesday they have a well on that side yeah there's one for that okay thank you we have a website
and so there's a PCA you can see what what's in your yard and go check it out it's in my backyard it's really fun you look it up online have you gotten it sealed no I don't have one but I go on the what's in my backyard thing just to see like what's in my backyard my backyard has nothing interested the website's called what's in my backyard at the PCA then you can see if there's tanks or Wells um Clover ride that's to service the council that's a strictly Council directed policy to provide one day a week service bus service uh mostly
around the Southdale area then we got two commissions so Andrew helps with the Transportation Commission quality of life again if there's commissions or not that takes some staff time they want faster implementation of bike and ped facilities you hear that they got reports on that um energy environment commission Marissa helps with that group and again they want much faster implementation around the climate action plan um and then we have the climate action plan that was many many actions over 10 years we're about halfway you're
going to get a good update from her later the spring uh but again that's a high resident demand service but it is a quality of life it's not a requirement and then the climate action fund is a fund we we D dedicate some of the franchise fees to Residents to do work right to to make those initiatives to do solar or improvements on their mechanical systems or ebikes or we had a first year was a little slow last year we got through all the we have 100,000 donate dedicated to that kind of projects and it all went out the door
which is good people are doing work in town and then a lot of sustainability and Outreach Matthew's position um when you think about green the go carry out bags building benchmarking climate action fund energy assessments telling that story telling people what we have for resources for them takes a lot of time at different farmers markets and different events and also working with our communication staff on a lot of that stuff Matthew's main role was grants and
funding uh two million doll plus already in less than about a year and a half uh for sustainability and infrastructure related around the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act so really great work there bringing in uh money leveraging our current funds there's usually a match but we can we can do that with the cast fund now we get more into that facility management with that team of 11 Derrick's team it's really decentralized we help all the other Enterprises if they got an issue we come out and try to troubleshoot some stuff um we do have
like like Brian mentioned we have four electricians and HBS in a union and they help again with various facilities some we manage entirely like City Hall Public Works and the fire stations the Enterprises we're a resource for them we did that Staffing study that was already mentioned a couple times and and just by the square footage of our buildings it said we should have three more additional staff in facilities to help manage it and really is the plumbing and the carpentry and stuff like that Brian
derer is at 50th in France he does snow and ice removal and garbage and Landscaping and paver maintenance and works with Brian's crws when they do the uh parking ramp snow removal uh public works also helps with some of the big planters and stuff like that where we need bigger pieces of equipment to help move around there so again it's that chairing of work I mentioned the park shelter custodial we have Nate Johnson and then we try to get seasonals to help clean the shelters and after different events there it can not only cake
there's a lot of other stuff after some of those events that need glitter no glitter glitter whatever and uh and damage a lot of Park shelters are damaged NE notifies proper people and then we look for staff in both these departments too parks and Public Works help repair some of those things mentioned yared is here on City Hall the police side for custodial Services mentioned the Union and then right away vacations is just another statutory thing that you see me do once in a while every few Council meetings we seem to
have one of those um but it's a service we have to do and then cost drivers and other important information um I think Zoe's working on a ft count over the years potentially at some point but there was an increase in 2020 engineering went from 14 to 24 and that was just from a shift of Staff uh facilities shifted out of Public Works in the engineering and sustainability shifted from admin engineering it wasn't that we added 10 new staff members we did add new staff
members and that was three positions since that time two for facility project managers and then the sustainability specialist again that Staffing steady says we're a little short on the facility side Etc e want faster adoption right that's a on both the bike and ped master plan plan and then also the climate action plan funding challenges we've talked about these quite a few state aid
funding doesn't keep up with our state streets um so that's a concern for me moving forward Street lighting we've made some progress with the franchise fees in 23 we're going to be back with a discussion here real soon around franchise fees again in 25 but Street lighting we have like the Grand View District's been basically dark for many years and we're starting to do little pieces of it but Street lighting is expensive uh Brian brought up the permitting and RightWay locates it's greater demand than staff capacity so our electricians
do some of the locates on the fiber and electrical and stuff like that but we can't keep up we actually have to hire a locating firm to help us with those locates um because we feel their their skills are better used to help troubleshoot in buildings and our own infrastructure than doing locates out in the field so we hire a firm that helps with that stuff um and again there's some initiatives that are approved that get very little uh either enforcement or staff time green the go the bag fee it's just
approved and really not monitored I know we've is that the right way to do a policy or not it's just a question to throw out there you've heard a lot about aging infrastructure climate change uh for me climate change is weather weather Seasons bigger storm events how's the storm system is going to handle that the flooding protecting properties you'll see homes raised up that's part of the thing address climate change um and then Consultants we do hire a few and they most likely cost more than in-house
staff so I think we're doing a great job of the things we do in-house we got a great value with our in-house staff um and we have some of the same Staffing challenges that these guys have mentioned well I got you back on schedule and now she's going to put a break in there I am I am let's break until 7 and then we can we'll dive back in
all right Community Development we are made up of a planning Division and assessing division most of the planning division you're familiar with the vast majority of them appear before the city council um so in word of Ed seven in each each division the planning department we've got three planners myself and then the affordable housing
manager and economic development manager on the assessing side there's the City Assessor we have three residential appraisers and two commercial appraisers so first talk about the planning services and a lot of these are really both statutory and quality of life um we respond to developer and residential requests for information
that's kind of a constant phone calls and people stopping in asking about setback regulations um anytime a house clo this is mostly on the commercial end but when there's a commercial uh closing we do what they call a a um land use letter that that um provides the seller and the buyer kind of a history of of what happens on the site um we review uh all building permit applications that come
through both residential and Commercial so that takes up quite a bit of time for the the the planners um probably get anywhere from 5 to 10 per day so again we're just reviewing those for Code Compliance for setbacks um buildable area those types of things and then of course when someone doesn't comply uh with our ordinance um regulations then they can make an application for a variance and those are the the ones that the Planning Commission mostly sees the
residential variances you do get a few appeals um we also review all signed permits so anytime a business is changing out its sign uh they need a a new permit and we re review that for Code Compliance we also provide uh land use reviews so this is our layson work with the Planning Commission um site plan reviews variances conditional use permits the rezonings everything most of those um end up with city council so
we're um we send out notices to all Property Owners gener depending on the type of application between 500 and 1,000 ft we get the projects posted on better together um most of our time the planner side of it that is spent on um all of that work uh so the planning division we support the the staff laysons to the Planning Commission the Heritage preservation commission HRA and the Dina housing
Foundation another big part of our work is long range planning so as you know comprehensive plans um are updated every 10 years um small area plans are tied into that so as we're gearing up for another one in a couple of years here on the affordable housing side again we provide the lays on to the Dina housing Foundation do home rehab
programs uh housing preservation program the 4D Noah preservation community in uh internet for those that are Income qualified for for free internet and the come home to Edina second mortgage program as you saw probably recently the um they're out of money out of funds in that it's been in the last two years we probably had 25 to 30 loans um which is we've never seen numbers like that so we're going to need to pause we just
don't have the money to um so it it's a recycling fund they they pay those loans back so this and it goes back to Centennial Lakes back in the 80s so it's the recycling fund um which means it's a it's a successful program but um kind of reached its temporary uh end uh on the economic development side so this is the the bill new andorf position he's the lays on to the 50th and France
Association he's the city's connection to Edina businesses um and developers um development Finance with all of the tax increment financing proposals um um spark funds abatement those types of things he also oversees the public parking facilities the permit process at um 50th in France and assessing so um the assessing
Department assesses every parcel of land both commercial and residential again three residential appraisers two commercial we have a high number of Tax Court petitions that's a commercial property that is disputing its assessed value we're going through that right now with the Macy's uh store at saltdale they're disputing their assessment it's pretty routine for Macy's to dispute that it seems like every couple years all over the country yeah yep um so uh
that's where the commercial appraiser and the city assess assessor deals with that do Target do it I don't recall them saying Target in the past but Ms do Simon does um it's pretty common Park people that own strip malls yeah are they doing the Macy's furniture site too they have in the past um but right now it's the the Southdale site interesting uh they are the the um the
Board of Equalization appeal and equal Equalization that's where residents can dispute their assessment and then U make their case before that board and the residential appraisers help with that that's a once a year uh once a year function so the big cost drivers for us is just the Staffing to provide all of those Sur Services uh Consulting fees for comprehensive plans and small area plans kind of a specialty item that
comes before the council every so often we do have consultant fees for um to assist staff with historic reviews in the country club District that's usually in the $155,000 a year range so it's not a it's not a huge number um credit card fees in assessing division when people pay their assessments with a credit card um that's a big issue for them that's a big cost driver and we believe that the zoning uh code update
will provide some efficiencies if we get it right in the end um in our development review process that's it for Community Development as you'll notice these presentations are going to get smaller and smaller because the portion of the organization is getting smaller and smaller so um I have the first Department that is both um a operating Department there's some external services that we provide but we're also
a supporting um uh Department which means we provide internal we are also your department so um and that a lot of uh uh I'll say this again at the end but one of the things that's most important when you think about the admin department is not only are we a department with some services that we provide specifically to the organization as a supporting but we also oversee the whole organization so it's kind of a it's a little bit hard to explain in
that way but it's both so um we I'm going to skip and just kind of Dive Right In here so we do data practices and records retention so we are the first stop with those um data requests that come in and we're also responsible for training our staff um and making sure that we're compliant for records retention purposes so uh some quick stats we had 43 six data requests in 2024 that is up 97% since 2021 um so when you think about not only
is that impacting our department but depending on how long of a period of time that data request comes in that's impacting other departments so getting it together our job is to be able to one ask the Departments to pull it together but two make sure we're not giving out any information that we're not supposed to be giving out that might be private or sensitive uh another thing that we do is liquor licensing we have um 60 licenses in that area we do charge for this service um and that and that there's multiple departments involved when it comes to the enforcement and
aspects of the liquor licensing I have a general question about any of these that we charge um a fee did those fees cover the cost of doing that or is the fee set almost by the statute and there's no flexibility and what the feed rate is that it I I'm going to say it depends because there are some where there's limitations on how much we can charge so for instance like we can charge for data practices but it's really limited on what we could charge but there are some
areas where we do try to cover our fees and that's one of the things that that we need to look at through our budgeting process is making sure that we are trying to be as consistent as possible to cover all of our costs going into those fees but but there are statutory limits around around how much we can charge right we we can't charge to a profit making level there has to be a Nexus between the cost providing that service and and the permit itself yep I'm sorry I was deep in concentration on
something for about 3 hours and I just missed it welcome we're happy to see you um so next thing is massage licensing we do the licensing portion of portion of this but the fire department and the health department actually does the inspection portion portion of this we have 23 of them it's a quality of life um aspect um from and it's really kind of a Health regulation is why we're um licensing those features it's not something that if you ask me to stop doing massage licensing it's really going to impact our um overall stuff but
it is something that we spend our time on and I think that's important to note with all sorts of permits that we provide um there's some data here about how many we're providing for these various things we also do elections um so one thing that's going to be kind of a change um for you guys is that due to the school district changing we're going to be moving to um the odd years we won't have elections hopefully unless there's some sort of special referendum or special election that happens um so in those odd years in the even years
that's a significant impact on the organization not just for the admin department but um for all of our departments we require and we ask for a lot of help and support from facilities um public works every everyone in the city to help us to to make sure that process is as efficient as possible uh city code management um so this is making our ordinances are updating making sure that what we have an imun code helping you guys if there's um anything that comes down from the legislature that requires us to make any changes or modifications um guiding
staff through what that process looks like if they have questions about how to get a city code update special events uh again another piece that really touches everywhere in the organization we had 15 special events in 2024 um multiple departments involved um especially from a safety perspective the the process of doing those special events has changed sign significantly we just need to be a lot more Mindful and and they take a lot more time for us to be able to review and make sure we truly
understand what's going to be involved um in that and scope it out so we also do city council that's you guys um we support you and we do meeting Management on all of the the aspects that are involved in that we do strategic planning and financial management that's this budgeting process and thinking about your Visionary documents that we're helping you out on uh we do organizational development and performance um management type work um something that performance measures is an area someday in the future we'd love
to have more capacity to be able to dive into deeper but uh we do try to Monitor and do the best that we can with what we have um board and commission management so this um some of it from a statute perspective depends on the board and commission that that we have whether or not that's a quality of life or or a statute requirement um this includes the recruitment the administration of training that goes into boards and management and and the recognition program that we involved in board and commission management uh Community
engagement um and a diversity equity and inclusion both of those are um different programs that we offer but I I don't think of it as like we're the only people in the organization doing that work that work is really something that the fire department is working on community engagement every day um the police department with their Cadet program is thinking about how do we get more police officers things that we're doing that are really approve Performance Based how do we make sure that we're providing the best quality of services for all of our residents and all of our staff um human rights and relations
commission currently is a human rights and Equity task force so they're um evaluating we do the staff leison work for that um one area is the Human Services Task Force I do think this is something that we probably are going to talk about more um there's um money that's associated to that goes to 10 providers right now the Historical Society this is where their money currently comes from and so that's something for a future Conversation Piece for you guys probably we have special projects um this a lot of times
when something either comes from the state or something you guys want to do like cannabis is an example of something that popped up where it either starts here maybe and then we figure out okay where does that need to go in the rest of the organization or maybe it's something that o this is a problem we need to help out with that that thing and try to give that staff more capacity to be able to dive deeper uh we have Legend islative work that we do we um work on putting together the legislative agendas and then um all sorts of work on that side legal um the legal budget is housed
within the admin budget um there's also contingency budget it's a $200 million organization there's times where things come up especially for setting a budget two years in advance that we we just need to make sure that that we're able to react to those um the cable commission so this is something that um some of you are involved in these next um items that are on the the thing these are uh boards and and different groups and external kind of regional um groups that we're we're part of so we oversee
the cable management um and then we have Regional we have all sorts of Partnerships that we're working on with the school district um airports railroad um any other Regional met Council that type of work Partnership liaisoning if there's something that pops up South Metro uh Public Safety facility so this one is also a little bit in um because we're not only doing the meetings we're the Fiscal Agent but we are the managing partner of that so we are actually providing that the staff is under our umbrella and we provide
those Services actually to on behalf of other um jurisdictions but they're paid out of a separate fund yes um ad Chamber of Commerce um so that and and a lot of these things that are listed here there the reason they're listed is a lot of the stuff we do pay for we pay a membership fee annually to be part of these organizations um so when you think about um our participation levels and and what we get a lot of these um groups do a lot of intergovermental relations um work for
us and then our our contract um with Katie sun is in here as well uh in summary I these are the things are kind of my takeaways for you um we're both a department that oversees day-to-day operations and strategic planning um we department and we oversee the day-to-day operations and strategic planning and oversight for the entire organization which is 11 departments um it includes Council legal and city-wide budget items so there's all sorts of stuff like invis which is our progress
portal things like that that that um go through that platform elections moving to every other year uh that is a s that really does impact what we can accomplish on even years a lot of the time um and that's just kind of a reality of thinking about um our work and our work plans on kind of an even OD year basis is something to um it will be more and more especially now that we don't have to have ode elections and we're sort of the miscellaneous catch all so when something comes up or you
ask us to try to figure something out um oftentimes that means that we're the people that will try to figure out whatever that new thing is it doesn't mean it's going to live with us forever so for instance sustainability is an example that something that lived in the administration department but now has found a I I think a better home for it uh over there uh with engineering so that's all I have I'm pass it on to it all right well we don't have a lot of time but fortunately for all of all of us here uh a lot of what it does you've
already heard uh some pieces of it is responsible for the systems that run many of the projects initiatives and uh other systems that you've heard about already so um uh we have a team of nine that nicely breaks into three divisions GIS we provide um strategic GIS direction for the city we're not the only GIS area in the city we also have GIS in engineering but we provide the
Strategic and Direction on that on that work uh second group I'll talk about is our support group which is typically those staff that are at the desk setting up systems uh responding to uh most day-to-day uh problems and the third group would be the systems group servers networks and that that sort of work and we'll start there servers systems and storage really uh this uh this area of service revolves around keeping that
those systems up and running for those various applications running in all the different departments um integr data with one data center uh two actually yeah and then we also work closely with logis so as a backup um backup location as well and user support uh as as everyone knows there's increasing pressure on this uh on the end user uh area of mobiles mobile technology is everywhere and we're we're working our as fast as
we can to make sure that those uh staff in the field have access to the technology they need and access to the data they need when they need it uh Network infrastructure we have 52 sites with some sort of networking uh UPS uh backup batteries where needed we have roughly 20 mi of fiber um a lot of what we heard about earlier with fiber is not necessarily City owned fiber it's those companies coming in to lay fiber uh in the area what's the
scope of the city-owned fiber then uh any any most buildings that have staff have fiber to them in addition we're growing to more and more utility sites to make sure that that we have secure and fast connections to that those water utility locations okay so it's really the fiber more or less to connect the 52 s that early thank you GIS I mentioned that strategy admin
uh regular maintenance um that group is uh responsible for some uh the census and redistricting work security is obviously a a an enormous area of uh Focus for us not just cyber security but physical uh physical security with card access we're responsible for card access we're responsible for cameras all over the city Telecom desk phones obviously cell
phones analog phones running certain pieces of equipment 911 lines coming into the building and again fiber Public Safety Vehicles we are responsible for an increasing amount of technology in ambulances fire trucks and squad cars um other uh other other Public Works Vehicles as well are starting to add some more technology license plate readers are going into more squads key secure and Med vaults basically just uh
pie pie uh lock boxes for uh narcotics or nox box uh nox keys to open up uh buildings around the city uh Enterprise applications we are this is an area that's growing for us Tyler Public Safety is a just a fantastic piece of software that running dispatch uh records mobile for both police and fire City Works handles our asset uh
Public Works and Engineering assets energov is public health um licensing and Tyler munus is our city-wide Erp system software support uh this is one area you will likely hear more about um we have roughly well more than 175 applications around in in different city departments it doesn't pay for many of those it typically will pay for those systems that are those pieces of software that
are used by everyone departments that have Department specific software often will pay for that themselves uh Regulatory and uh audits we handle a lot of that work uh payment card industry we have to do monthly uh quarterly and yearly compliance uh reporting um we have yearly audits with the BCA yearly audits for finance and uh yearly audits for license plate reading as
well external map applications you've likely seen development tracker and Park finder point of s system this is a huge uh amount of work for the for the IT staff around the city we have roughly 42 terminals 14 sites and five different Point of Sales Systems and that doesn't include the online payment systems that we we also handle some P more PCI work for but really it's those different systems you know a lot of organizations will have you know one but we have so many different and varied lines of
business we have multiple systems to to uh that we have to keep uh up to date on mentioned security cameras and card access roughly 341 cameras around the city and 266 doors secured at 40 different sites Microsoft 365 is uh key to our business as as many businesses nowadays um can do incredible things uh but it takes an incredible uh
skill to make sure you do it safely securely uh for your organization and we have a couple of members of our staff that are very skilled at it and are doing a great job keeping that moving forward Enterprise GIS tools obviously we re use ezri arcgis and that a lot of dashboards are created and field data collection is taking place with those tools inter agency connections other departments have talked about some of the some of the
connections they have with other uh agencies henen County for um some of the things happening in police um Eden Prairie we're connecting to them for some CAD to CAD uh keeping police uh up to date at what's happening at each other's agencies and Richfield obviously we uh handle uh dispatching for Richfield and other police applications some of those connections inter inter U intergovernmental can be complicated and
take a lot of uh a lot of finesse both with our internal staff their intern internal staff and logis as I mentioned earlier election support we have staff that uh are running around the city helping with the iPads uh on Election Day typically as well as um computer setup printer set up day-to-day operations of some of the elections of equipment here at City Hall our group is on call 24/7 because of the because of the public safety um
Services we offer as well as those weekend Enterprise uh Enterprise facilities that are open we handle ecovery and document management both the ecovery both for legal hold and um forye requests or records records requests staff training we are responsible for we we we have some systems that help staff
uh get get trained we work with HR on the L new LMS system as well as uh we require staff to get cyber security training every year we provide support to auxiliary organizations specifically South Metro uh Public Safety Training Facility historical society and Minnesota task force one that most of those organizations don't require much of us but when they do uh we're we're there to help them out utility support um ska systems
networking alerting billing tools a lot of a lot of different aspects of the utility billing process um it is involved in AV support we have roughly 20 rooms that we consider you know AV AV equipped many many more um room with a single piece of equipment that we're responsible for but aren't would would wouldn't necessarily rise to the level of an AV equipped room display boards um HVAC and building
automation support we help with a lot of that monitoring around the city get those systems online and get our staff able to connect to them both from in the office and when they're uh remote for those emergency after hours calls and obviously just general Innovation I I think um all most of our departments invol us early when they're looking at new systems look to us to help them come up with the the most
efficient way to help them get their get their task done there's in it there's so many different ways to do things some things are incredibly expensive um we try to we try to find the most efficient way to get from point A to point B while keeping our uh sometimes that's enhancing our existing tools or using existing tools and make tweaking them to make them work and sometimes it is with a new tool cost drivers quick question yeah um actually for the entire administrative
area um this is the first time I've seen required in the statutory or quality of live column so we had it on the services you provideed R and then on these so what's the context around that how do I we see just like uh required there's really no way to to run the operation if we don't
have the you know some of these basic um primary systems is kind of the way I looked at it okay so we can't run a City without network infrastructure you're saying but it's not in your case it's not a statement about how that service gets provided but that you need that service okay storage management is a per example right we can SS are getting uh surprisingly more expensive not less expensive so cloud cloud begins to look more and more
attractive okay thank you yeah uh cost drivers new projects in uh and initiatives often have a technology component and it resource needs and it seems every year there's more and more um more and more likely to uh new projects are likely to have some impact on it integration are becoming are becoming necessary we we try to we try to consolidate on single systems whenever possible it's not always possible and those Integrations have to be created
and maintained mobile devices and AI technology are changing changing the landscape quickly for US security again also changing fast um the increasing cost of the subscription model it used to be that we could pay Microsoft $50,000 for our primary software and then we'd be good for 5 10 years that's not the case anymore now it's it's four times as much every year or maybe not four times but it's you know $150,000 every year
instead of what you know the old the old model um obviously that comes with a lot of new features and a lot of new services but that's that that that subscription model changes thing for things for us uh those Capital expenses are expenses are escalating seemingly every few years extensive list of software and services again we have to we have a we have a group that has to be pretty Nimble when it comes to software has to be pretty uh good at picking up new software helping our staff move with it
or work with it better te uh keeping technology um Specialists uh both from a salary and talent standpoint seems difficult uh we are pretty confident if we lost staff as of today it'd be tough to replace that person with a similar salary it's like everyone else we're busy it's tough to find that time to get to get those staff trained on the new on what's
next really that's all we got any questions got a couple for you so when you think about all the responsibilities that you have and what's coming in our world as we um seem to get more technologically proficient all the time what do you foresee for a Personnel need over the next 5 years I could potentially
see potentially I I would say two but probably one might be one might be required but two would be would held what kind of increased cost you foresee from a system cyber security standpoint we try to insulate ourselves from potential exposure and attacks uh in our in our security budget
right now I don't foresee a big increase in that where I would see more of an increase on on the system side of what you mentioned um just that automation uh getting systems to to talk some of the more advanced features of Microsoft 365 that would potentially um help help leverage some of those Ai and and more um workflow processes that could that simplify existing tasks I think and that could be you know that
could be another couple couple hundred thousand per year have you seen yeah you just read an interesting point have You' seen anything so far that you've observed would help make us more efficient by the through the use of AI yeah yeah answer is yes most of what we're looking at today obviously is the things to make staff more efficient at those administrative test help me write this email help me brainstorm ideas for
this upcoming event help me some of those thing some of those categories I think are the the low hanging fruit of AI it's that next step and taking it Taking taking it that taking that next step um and using agents to automate real processes and take real work away from a real the more mundane tasks completely automating it is the is that next step that we're we're not there yet uh but
looks to be coming quickly KY all right Kelly curtain HR Director I don't get in front of you very often so thank you for allting me to share a little bit about a ch um so we are a department of six full-time employees we also have two part parttime employees um that work in the department right in here so a lot of what we do is really determined by state and federal um law and regulations so I
just have required here it's really legality just thought i' sh it with you first um along with like legal Frameworks that govern employee or employee relationships so many of our services we um we have to do so there's not a lot of negotiation in compliance compant benefit strategy so we've spent a significant amount of time researching and that we Remain competive the marketplace definitely have been an
increase there payroll and Reporting so just to give you a little context we um issued 1,155 W2s for 2024 so while we have the 360 some full-time employees we employ a lot more people whether it's seasonal part-time election um and such Labor Relations so we collect a bargaining grievance and dispute resolutions we currently have six collective bargaining um agreements so we negotiate fire and dispatch on even years and then we have
four contracts on odd years so this is a big year for negotiating um and roughly 46% of our employees are in a union so Minnesota is considered very labor friendly um if you didn't know that benefits and leave them absences so aside from just the strategy part of that there's a lot of there's a heavy um administrative role just making sure we're complying with leaves of absences and things like that um risk management so risk and safety manager Amy Murray if
you haven't met her I hope you do she's she's a fireball um she's done a phenomenal job bringing um job safety awareness to different departments and employees um she's been here a couple years she's really done great key functions of risk management include safety workers comp and Osha Osha compliance uh Recruitment and election so making sure we're non-discriminatory in our hiring practices partnering with Dei manager Thomas Brooks to making sure that we're compliant to our own he
discrimination and then oh for that and then in addition to what we're sort of required to do some of the service services are just best practices um they enhance organizational Effectiveness they increase Employee Engagement um and retention so um employee relations and Performance Management making sure that we can um we check in with our employees we recognize them for years of service or for doing a job well
done and then employee recognition I just kind of touched on that but appreciation is also um important to us we want to make sure that they feel appreciated that helps with the retention and then we also are responsible for the wellness program so HR facilitates and our Wellness Committee in place and focuses on five dimensions of wellbeing being um career so training and development emotional Community social financial and physical talk a little bit about our
challenges so we you've heard a lot of it um it's a tight labor market in addition to that it is tough to get seasonal workers especially when you have Target paying $18 an hour um why would they as Brian mentioned why would they want to work in streets would they go work at Taco Bell um turnover so historically our turnover has been pretty good we have good retention um some to some degree turnover is good especially if it's you know because of retirements in lot um we have a lot of
long tenured employees I'm not concerned about turnover but we do want to be prepared for succession planning as this as the years go on some of the cost drivers I know we've talked about this in the past a little bit but health insurance so how do we keep it affordable for Recruitment and tension purposes we've had 10% increases in our health insurance um renewals for the past couple years very impactful in our benefits budget um we recognize the importance to educate employees and to well to be responsible
healthare consumers but how can we be more Pro proactive in that um I do feel some of this is out of our control right so the cost of Labor and hospitals and doctors and whatnot but we do have a role in that and we plan to do our best we can there property insur property insurance so both residential and commercial property insurance is increasing our property insurance I believe went up 10% um you heard a lot of this through the LA fires it's just through you know climate weather
situations um labor attorney costs I think I have our labor attorney on speed dial the past couple of years um we've navigated a lot of new territory with regulations from covid from new laws are upcoming um so it's definitely been an increase in labor attorneys um and then the need and cost for HR related technology is increasing part of what Ryan was saying we need to think about you know the work that we do and how can we do it more efficiently um oftentimes that's with
technology um we have a couple of new Minnesota leave laws so Minnesota earns sick and safe time that is a new law that went into effect last year so January 1 of 2023 where we are required to give 1 hour of paid time for every 30 hours um worked and this includes seasonals and part times so that was a big shift in how we you know provide those benefits and there's I'll talk about in a second in addition there is a
new Minnesota paid leave starting January 1st of 2026 where employers will pay a 44% um payroll tax to fund this this program and this excludes the cost of the administration side of it um what this lead provides is partial wage um replacement if an employee is unable to work for seven days or more it offers them 12 weeks of Parental leave 12 weeks medical leave you can combine the two up so you can have up to 20 weeks off now
and it's um it applies to all employees essentially so that's impactful as you think about seasonal employee working at the Aquatic Center for two weeks and now they need you know 6 weeks off so that'll be something we are um starting to plan for um wages I'll talk so I've showed this slide to you in the past but um our the city comp strategy is
really to ensure that we can attract and retain High perform employees we want to make sure we have flexible job design internal Equity external competitiveness and fiscal responsibility I'm go a little bit off Tucket but it it applies to Future slides so I want to differentiate between equal oop sorry between equal pay and pay Equity so equal pay is really focuses on the same job so if you have an account male accountant and a
female accountant you need to pay them similarly they can't pay the female one lower and that's a federal law pay Equity is paying paying fairly for work of equal or comparable value so it's a little bit different you may have they may have different jobs similar value Fair pay um there is a Minnesota law that um the Minnesota pay Equity act it's created to ensure public employers both state local government provide equal pay for equal work regardless of gender um
some of the provisions of that is that we are required to um conduct a pay Equity report every 3 years and submit it to the state we actually just wrapped our Zips you'll be seeing that on the council in the next couple weeks or a signature um and then it also requires us to have a comparable worth plan which focuses is on ensuring equal pay for jobs with comparable value um one component of a comparable worth
[Applause] plan um a component of a comparable work plan is a job classification system so all jobs um in the city are given points based on various factors such as qualifications decision making problem solving Etc you can think about engineering um the requirements for that job may look different than our receptionist um so all jobs are evaluated we did Implement a classification system in
2012 um and then other considerations um Market changes so we have SE really seen an increase in our Benchmark cities which are listed on the right there doing um or completing comp studies so we've seen a ton of movement with compensation um where we're starting to fall behind a little bit in our compensation um Union negotiation negotiations you heard Brian talk about
like the electricians or the mechanics sorry the mechanics were actually in the union they were being paid the same as a streets workers and it's really hard to recruit for so that's why they stayed vacant for a while they weren't paired comparably or paid comparably to you know mechanics in the private sector and whatnot so through negotiations we were able to increase that show the need for that in order to recruit um but Union negoti negotiations does play a role with that we've seen a lot of movement and pay for police officers and firefighters um significant changes so
if we don't respond when the market changes um we won't be able to recruit quality candidates so it's very important um our comp strategy so we should be reviewing or we do generally review our comp plan every 3 to four years really benchmarking against our other cities um but we should be doing a full class in comp um study every 10 years I will say since we haven't done since 2012 we are a little bit behind but you will see that for sure on the next budget um work plan and yeah it's
just it's important we routine are good employees we value them and we we don't want them to leave so and it's tough tough tough staing out there that's all we have hold on just a second let me ask a question can you go back to that slide where it was um Family Medical Leave Act
Right yeah I wanted to ask you about um what the Minnesota paid leave act that goes into effect on January 1st next year how does that interface with the I take it that we've had some kind of a paid leave situation here in our in our structure we do so we are that been interfaced with what we have to do with the state yes so we haven't determined all the decisions yet um we did increase our paid parental leave to from two weeks to 6 weeks
um there are some options if you pay so if you offer if you pay a full 12 weeks um paid parental leave you may not have to pay the 0 44% if you offer the benefit of what the law is going to require you can maybe get away from that 44% but we haven't started we're just starting to happen those conversations of what to do at a minimum I assume we'll do the0 44% it's actually 44% for the employer 044 for the employee it also though on the other side means that
people might take the 12 weeks if they weren't taking the 12 weeks previously most of the time when when somebody goes out on on parenting leave they're going to take as much time as they possibly can for good reason right but that is something that organizationally will also have impact outside of just the cost dollar it'll be an operational impact right that analysis it just it's just starting it's just starting goes rules have been slow coming from from the state so we anticipate some change obviously possibly with election or
whatnot but um yeah it'll be interesting to roll that out for sure we haven't talked a lot about it but we need to start planning for it for sure does that 0 44% affect both the public and private sector employers um same rate yes yes okay it was. 3 they were guessing it was or 38 or something they were thinking it was going to be that now they're like no we need more money sort of operates like unemployment where you get a portion of
your um wage so you get like 23ds of your wage or whatnot when you go out um we could consider covering the rest of it but again those we haven't had those discussions big operational but that's a good point Kelly that what we're showing you as 044 today that it's possible that could raise during the year as as they get as the state gets more and more precise about what they're going to do so we we'll make sure we tell you how that changed if it changes yeah I really just want to introduce it because I think there'll be plenty of conversation
going forward but it'll be a big impact to operations too so all right Finance um our finance department is made up of 10 FTE total uh of the two of the 10 FTE there are two of the 10 that are funded by our utilities fund um as some stats up there Finance is about 3% relyant on the general fund uh Levy and makes up about
3% of the general fund expense but if we were to take a look at all the all the uh adopted budget funds so this is your governmental your Enterprise and your internal service funds we make up about uh 89% of the entire this is that 220 million budget number next please Ari if you flip through the slide for me that'll be great so I don't forget um I'll start here uh Finance we
are a support department like already mentioned earlier so what this means is a lot of the stuff that we do they are sanctioned either by Minnesota State Statute or either by quality of life depending on the service that we're providing our finance service for so I'll start us off with the uh annual comprehensive Financial report or the AER um the AER is the acronym for the uh financial report that we publish uh annually and this comes out after our annual audit um with the annual audit um
it it's it takes from it starts in December runs until June it's one of our biggest lift uh in the year in uh besides the city's budget and CIP process um the act for a little note on that is to be to receive we're required by State Statute to have an audit uh and to provide Financial reports to uh our stakeholders and then to get the gfoa award it's not required but um getting
the award means um we meet high standard standards of the program which includes demonstrating a constructive Spirit of full disclosure of our financials to clearly communicating our financial story um to motivate potential users and user groups to read our report um the certificate of achievement is the highest form of recognition a government entity can receive U for its governmental accounting and financial reporting and it just represents
accomplishment of its government and its governing board so that's a little bit on what the AER award is um in terms of the uh I call it the easierto read version of the AER is the popular annual financial report we also published this through our addition Edina that we partner with Communications Department to put about um this is also dependent on the annual audit and we bring that in house other entities they do it outside but for us we do it in house and as
again we go out for the path Award with the national gfoa or government Finance association with us getting this award we have to first apply for the afro award and with us receiving the paer award um it means that this report has been reviewed by judges made up of other city government officials like Finance directors or whatnot who evaluates this report based off of um reader appeal understandability distribution methods so find uh for Edina we have it on the web as long as as well as printed
versions and then our creativity and other elements of reporting out um the other thing that we also do as a finance department is we are in charge of the Bal budget or the budget for the city of Edina um this is uh a statutory requirement but then also I put quality of life because we not just only put together a budget we also go out for the budget award through the national gfoa um to in to be able to receive this award we have to satisfy
nationally recognized guidelines to what is an effective budget prep presentation right so there's different guidelines we have to um that we are assessed against in our budget development from uh what type of policy document it is to the financial plan we present to um the operation value as well as how we communicate it um so when we receive this award it means we are proficient in all these four categories plus 14 other mandatory categories that we have to
show to receive this award so um I am very proud to say our finance department has been Triple Crown winners with the national GFA for applying for these Awards and obtaining them for the last couple of years when I say couple I think it's been like over 10 years that we have received this award so uh that is another uh uh thing that Finance does in addition to our banal budget we also are in charge of our Capital Improvement plan we work alongside all the different departments and putting this Capital Improvement plan you're well well aware
of it we just finished our last one for 25 through 30 it is a 6E plan and it is required by State Statute um in addition we uh have Utility Billing like I mentioned um the city of udina we have three different cycles that means we bill monthly for um each C uh monthly and alternating between the three Cycles what this means is there's involvement in uh how we do move in and move outs if uh uh users move in and
outs we have to work on those work orders with public works there's Title Company request whenever our home sells um and then at the end of the year we go through a certification process if there's any outstanding delinquent utility accounts in addition we also have an uh because we're a support service fire runs the uh Edina ambulance service but sorry fire runs it but Finance provides to FS Finance provides the financial supporting side of it we do contract out
to a third party vendor to do our billing um and collection of the revenues from the service however um we are required to um do the reporting within our financial system to match up the books in addition we also have a service through the Department of Revenue um which which is a to the city has to be the one as we are the entity or the owner of the service to administer this Revenue recapture program this is let's say uh ambulance
bills are outstanding um for a period of time we can go and intercept any revenues um that the recipient uh receives from the state on behalf of the city to pay for these bills and so uh with that that's through the Minnesota Department of Revenue um in addition to that we also have to complete audit with the Department of Revenue every 3 to 5 years along with this ambulance service finance also has to uh report a Medicare reporting uh we report to this date um once every year in March for this
Ambulance Service that we provide in addition um we are also like mentioned earlier the physical agent or the chair for the South Metro Public training facilities so what this means is we are uh I'm the treasurer of the finance department is also responsible for the treasury operations so this comes in from budget uh the budget creation to AP and AR all the same functionality that we do for the city we also do for South Metro Public uh
training facility um now moving on to debt management so this is a statutory requirement of the city as we issue debt we are obligated to pay these um obligations or issuances back what that also means is that there's an invest There's an opportunity for Investments as as we write out the high uh yielding interest rate markets so what this means is um I we get the opportunity to put these investments into earning uh yields
but then also at the same time what this means is it could um create a positive Arbitrage reporting uh so that means that we have to pay back the feds with any positive Arbitrage we earn on any of these issuance so that's also another tracking that we have to do we do of course hire out for the Arbitrage reporting but then in terms of the reporting out to the feds the city is responsible for doing that with debt management that comes also spending down the different bond issuances that we have there's Milestone markers when we issue debt that we have to spend down by
specific time and then of course we have to pay ourself back um when we issue any debt so the city usually fronts the payments and then we have to draw it down from the issuances that we issue or the proceeds all right so before I talk about the EAD housing Foundation similarly our H we also do um I just want to mention that H we also do the treasury or the financial keeping for this entity as well that goes from um
the uh financial reporting to um the Tiff reporting uh Finance along with Community Development we oversee those operations now for Adina uh e Adina housing um we are also the treasurer on this we do Financial monitoring and there's also an annual audit that we we have to complete uh towards the end of our City's audit that we are we need to uh file a 10 990 tax filing for now apart from all this we also do
the Minnesota Task Force One um as we are uh the host city so we do treasury keeps for that as well as um paying the the their bills to reing receiving their checks as well as um reviewing their claims before they submit it to the state for reimbursement um Enterprise Financial so all the different Enterprises that the city has Finance has a hand in every operation that goes in and out of the Enterprises from all the different POS systems to reconciling that to our Main
Financial system to making to doing analytical analysis on all the financials um to providing quarterly reports on different Enterprises to upper management um the Southwest cable commission uh we are also the chair on that sorry treasur uh on that so we have to do reporting financial reporting for that as well uh accounts payable and accounts receivable um this is I kept it at the
end because other than just cutting the check and paying uh paying the bills and depositing checks there is more to what we do um there's purchasing cards the city credit cards that uh we oversee the program here's vendor invoices like I mentioned to employee expense claim reimbursements to any requisitions for purchases it all flows through Finance before um it comes in front of you and then accounts receivable we do uh the city's General billing for uh one of the
programs that Perry mentioned earlier was our Park maintenance fees that's one of the programs that we uh bill out for and we track and then um of course there's the bank reconciliation duties that Finance uh is required to do other stuff I want to call out is because we are a support department aside from analytical reconciliation and POS interface um between the sub systems and our financial system we are required to also um file any reportings to the state
level to the county level or um to the feds depending on what um the funds or the monies is for so an example will be the arpa dollars financers required to gather the data and file that annually um do next one so in terms of cost drivers for finance um I would say Staffing uh to be able to provide quality service um retention training and development is key in our department
um for the purpose of segregation of Duties and the needs for checks and balances um that's why we have the number of Staff we have to do the work that we do for the operation of the city uh operational cost of course there's the rising cost of um technology like Ryan mentioned earlier with Finance utilizing the Erp system um being one of the main user that is becoming one of the it's an Erp system so it's expensive
for future of that program and Ryan can probably talk a little more about it is with every system moving to the cloud that's one of the programs we know that in the near future we have to consider that I put down debt management as of course there's obligations for us to make debt payments for any issuances that the city makes um I put down utility bilding infrastructure as one of our cost driver or we have a utility infrastructure that we got to keep um maintenance on and so hand inand with
that is of course the utility rate study which we have in our work plan for 2025 to uh start on um and then I have Capital Improvement plan I talked a little bit about that earlier but one of important thing or cost dyer for that is um as you have noticed in the last CIP there is a volume of aging and existing infrastructure needs that we need to consider as we build our budget and our CIP and then of course with funding gaps as we have this list of um uh Capital
Improvement projects and Equipment replacement needs we need to uh come together and put down a sound budget that uh will work for the future and with all of that Community engagement through our reporting um quarterly financial reporting to our uh annual audit the different variation whether that's the AER or the path or transparency in our financial pres right and last but certainly not
least we've got Communications thanks I think most of you know I had part of my neck reconstructed two weeks ago today and it's been really uncomfortable for me to look I'm going to stand if that's okay um so Best For Last um I'm proud to represent the Communications Department um we are a team of seven full-time people um and I kind of describe our work as being in
five buckets those buckets are media and public relations digital Communications print Publications video production and advertising and marketing for our general fund activities so who are those seven people besides me you have our city hall receptionist Lynette beuno we have two full-time Communications coordinators um one is senior Communications coordinator Lauren c benal um and the other is digital Communications coordinator Britney Bader
we have a full-time graphic designer who works on all of the pretty things that you see come coming out of the city um and we have two full-time um video production staff one is video production manager Scott Denfeld and the other is community television administrator Dan Carpenter you've heard a lot tonight about the Southwest Suburban cable commission for which we serve as Fiscal Agent and manager that includes one part-time staff member Dan gets a
full-time check from the city of Edina but half of his pay is for work that he does for the um the five member cities um and Edina residents who have Comcast complaints he's the guy that takes all those complaints when someone is unhappy with their service and Edina our budget um in the general fund is just under 1% so let's talk a little bit about those buckets of work um for media relations that is what it sounds like um we're not
the gatekeeper we do we don't do every interview with the media but we're issuing press releases you see those every time we issue one we're helping the media find the right person on City staff to talk to we're helping staff prepare talking points um or prep for interviews believe it or not not everyone is comfortable talking with the media so we help and Coach where we can um and then we're proactively looking at risk Communications issues and trying to cut those off some of our best crisis
Communications work is work the public never really hears about right um for public relations I want to first point out that our receptionist is a big part of the city's public relations not every city anymore still has um a central um Telephone operator they might have a telephone tree for each building we still have Central telephone operation where you can call a general line and she will help triage those calls and get
to the right facility or Department of course we also have centralized reception here at City Hall a big part of that is for security reasons um but Lynette is our we say the voice of the city and sort of that first that first face for most people when they're seeking services um other public relations efforts are coordinating award and recognition programs those are things like both the mayor's accomodations in the spring and Hometown Heroes one of our strategies um
in Communications is to tell the story of city government through the people who use our city services not here's the who you know just the basics on the Organics recycling program let's find someone who's a real Champion for Organics recycling in the community and that generally excites their friends and neighbors to be more interested in in a program like that uh we also help develop any Communications plans and we oversee all of the logos and trademarks for this city our next bucket of work is
print Publications [Music] um this is this is an interesting one and I think it's Unique um to Idina um I've been here a long time now 25 years and when we do that annual quality of life survey um I keep thinking oh this is going to be the year that the website um is more important to our residents to get City information than our Publications and even though we've had a
website since 1999 it's still not there word of mouth is always number one and probably always will be number one but the other tools are active Communications tools things that come directly to a person that they have to do something with so that's going to be print Publications direct mail email text things that come come to a person we are not an entertainment website your friends and neighbors are not going to
come to the city of edina's website to just see what's going on in their local government when we've done um some uh work with ascendency research on our on our website they're all blind studies people come in and we say what do you expect to find on your city's website and they say things like when are you going to pick up my garbage and when are the 4th of July fireworks going to be that's the general experience people have with their with their local government unless something's really in their backyard
right so it's important for us to focus on um those active Communications tools so print Publications we produce an annual report about town um that for a long time was produced as a magazine um and then we during Co we discontinued it as a quarterly magazine and it's just become an annual report we produce addition as a newsletter that comes out every month of the year there are a few issues that are double issues um eight
pages instead of four P mentioned one being the popular annual financial report in the summer um the other two Publications that our department produces that are mailed to every mailbox in the city um are the Public Works pipeline for the public works department uh they Drive um the content for that publication they tell us what they want in it we simply edit it and make it look good and send it out uh the other is the parks and W catalog the
activities directory uh that one comes out three times a year um we also produce one other publication that does not go to Every mailbox in town and that's the senior center newsletter that only goes to subscribers of of the newsletter and the Senior Center handles uh the mailing component for that one um another bucket of work is video production um the we were probably the last major
Metro City to be uh filming our meetings of city council and some boards and commissions when this building opened in 2004 the city the sitting city council at that time said we're going to start televising our meetings at that time and so um since 2004 when this building opened we've been doing that that's the bread and butter of our video production um we didn't start doing it ourselves until 2006 the first two years we
contracted with the city of Bloomington they came in and provided staff for us to do that uh now we provide that service um um to the Metropolitan airports commission we film all of their meetings for them and then we are also on contract with other cities for speci projects including the city of Eden Prairie and the City of Hopkins besides the the meetings that we televise we create some original programming fore din TV we create short
videos and reels for social media and the website we create internal training videos um and if a group comes to city hall or another city facility and would like that event taped things like candidate forums we do that we charge them for that service and then we provide them with the media for them to air or broadcast in their own ways um another part we've already talked about a lot is administering the public and education access channels free din Eden Prairie Hopkins minona and
Richfield and supporting the access producers who live in those five cities uh that's besides Fielding those Comcast complaints that's the other part of Dan Carpenter's job as Community television administrator digital Communications is a big and it's a growing um part of communications you know when I went to college we were uh taught you need to know how to do radio TV and print and you've got you've got the World by the
tail um there are so many Communications methods today and the the digital realm is where we're seeing new vehicles new methods being introduced each and every day and probably if we went around this room today each one of you would have a different first choice for how you want to receive your new and information um so that for us that means we're administering the city's primary websites Edina mn.gov and better together.org including e-commerce on our
primary website um we also have a website for employees um we administer the city's social media channels and we oversee the city's email and text subscription programs um beginning in April of 2026 we have have Federal ADA requirements for our digital Communications um so this this goes from just best practice in Industry standard to having some federal uh law around how we provide those
services for advertising and marketing for general fund activities um I want first we do sell some advertisements um our department overseas a contracted advertising sales representative who sells the Dasher boards at Brar Arena um golf cart ads advertisements in the senior center newsletter anything that we want to advertise or sell sponsorships for she's a single point of contact for the business Community last year she sold about $200,000 in those um
advertisements for the city um but we also create our own ads um for general fund activities a lot of those are you know we're not looking to sell a product in the general fund but things like the carry out bag fee that was a that was a marketing campaign um the all of the materials related to the referendums on the local option sales tax those are other examples of that others are
Traffic Safety uh crime prevention fire prevention those types of campaigns fall into that work um and then internal Communications is really in all five of those buckets but I do call it out because we have a lot of employees and to retain employees and keep them happy here and you heard that a lot through these presentations that we've got to retain employees we've got to make sure they're getting information they need to feel good about and make a connection to the city of
udina okay so what are some other things I want to share with you um again I want to point out that not not all of our 1% comes from the general fund um all of our video production equipment is paid for with PEG fees um the the cable TV bills have two charges there's a cable franchise and then there's these Peg fees that we collect the cable franchise fees just go into the general fund but the peg fees under that contract have to
be spent for broadcasting equipment so we sort of set that aside so that we have that piggy bank so when we need to uh purchase equipment for video production or we need to retrofit the council chambers that sort of thing that money exists for that reason um again Dan uh say Gallery half of that is paid by the commission um we do have some other small Revenue sources in the form of video production servic as and a tiny bit of sales from Edina branded
merchandise and history books um again I want to point out that this is every day some new thing pops up right is the city going to get on threads is the city going to start blogging on Reddit are we going to do this are we going to do that so we're constantly looking at those things and seeing where our residents are and where we get that return on investment it's also important to note that um traditional media is shrinking um we do rely on the media to
get out a lot of information we issue a lot of press releases a lot of our press releases are picked up but the size of your local newspaper the size of even your Regional newspaper is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and um in some parts of even the metro area there isn't a local newspaper anymore so my peers in other parts of the country are finding that residents are looking more and more to their City to provide provide news we're well positioned for
that we're strong writers we're already producing a lot of content um but I think that trend is going to continue it's also important to note that other than Word of Mouth there are no free ways to communicate um everything we do uh cost staff time at a minimum but even things like social media sure it's free for us to have a social media account for the city but because of our records retention requirements we have to
subscribe to a service that's archiving that data for us so that if we get a records retention request we can we can respond to that in uh a quick manner instead of going through years and years and years of posts and comments um just just this week we found that because of our success on social media we've been paying about 5,000 uh dollars a year for that archiving solution for all of our
social media accounts because we're seeing so much activity uh they want to double that because we're seeing so many people comment it's not just the number of our posts it's the number of comments or engagement on that post so Britney's been working really hard this week to renegotiate that since we don't have another 5 to give them but it's just an example like people think social media is free um but we do have Associated expenses with that we also find people say well just post it on social media
that's free post it post it post it again post it again but the more we post if there's not engagement that hurts the algorithm so then other people don't see our post we have to be very strategic about when and where we post um translation services are not cheap um several years ago as part of our Dei effort we began translating our major Publications in SM Somali and Spanish um we do have um a limited
English proficiency policy that requires that any vital document like a form um that someone needs to fill out to get a service that we translate into any language that that person speaks so that they can get service translations services are based by the word so it just depends how long the document is um but no departments really budget for translation service but it's a growing need in our community um you'll see like
the school district has its website translated I think into five languages now we're still just focusing on Spanish and Somali um we're really committed to this um we think we think it's important we're seeing um those QR codes on the Publications increas increas each year the number of people who are accessing in those um languages and then finally I just point out that um though the city services and projects have continued to grow um and we're supporting all of that
new stuff our staff size has remained stable the last five years any questions excellent thank you for your time and that brings us to the next steps which is the end um so this process we want you to process the information that that you've received there's a lot of it we're going to email this out to you guys all I did upload this whole presentation on to the
website as well so if anybody from the public wants to get it and and dig in we're going to ask you I'll reach out and I'm going to send this all an email so you guys don't need to remember everything but um to provide up to five areas each that you want to focus in on and learn more about we just the the reality is we've spent a lot of time on this there's no way for us to get to the depth of really getting digging in without narrowing the scope a little bit and so we're going to ask that and then during this in month interum until we get to retreat in March uh we're going
to get that back from you Scott's going to review it and he's going to go through and he's going to say maybe all five of you all agree on here's the top five I doubt that's going to be the case um but maybe there's actually 25 items that we receive so Scott's going to then narrow down based off of what he thinks will have the most budget impact um so maybe you're going to pick something and it's actually by cutting it it might actually increase cost because that's something we charge for the service for so we're going to try to narrow you down
a little bit in that way so um we'll combine that and then we're going to bring that list of Scott's recommendations to the March Retreat you guys then will talk about it if you disagree with what Scott's recommending and there's one of them that you really want that didn't show up on the list that's the time for us to kind to figure out what those things are then we're going to Deep dive into whatever those areas are it might take time the reality is is depending on if you picked five things that are all Parks and Recreation guess what Perry's team is already really busy with a lot of last projects
he's going to have to prioritize and it's going to take some time in order to be able to get you the data and information that you need so we'll kind of figure out what a schedule looks like to be able to to narrow in to get you the information that you need then we'll have another conversation in May after March so this is going to be an ongoing conversation on the back end just as a reminder our staff is all going to start working on actually putting together their operational budgets so we haven't started that part yet so we can't really give you the exact numbers of things these people haven't looked at what their contracts are um how those
contracts are going up any of that other stuff yet we won't really have that data and information even internally we start to gather it in May or is in May is when we start to gather it then we combine it we really produce that document in about July um and that's just the reality of timing but we're going to continue this conversation with you because there are big significant areas like Debt Service stuff like that that we're going to dig into that that really play a big impact in how we see our projections do you
guys have questions before we end anything that you want us yeah so that's not what I thought we were doing okay um I I don't think it makes sense to ask us which five areas we should look at to reduce costs if you're saying give you five areas that we want to learn more about and that's what you said at first that makes sense uh but I would rather
the Departments meaning Scott come back and say now that we've shown you everything here is how we think we get to our our Target I agree with James entirely and I I mean we've heard a lot of information but to put it on us to say I mean and and I I get the idea like there might be five
areas we're curious about but that should not lead the process at all um it's you know you're given this data the overviews without the data right and so I think that that's probably big part of it is um let's give where we have questions focus a lot of the conversation on that but then also pair it with your
recommendations okay yeah say that again we can we'll still identify like what are the areas we want to learn more about y but then Scott's coming back to us with the recommendation so kind of miring the two you're going for the CER yeah yeah more more info cuz at the end of the day I love my colleagues but we don't know how to save four to5 million do out of this budget I mean you've given a couple of examples of well I'll
use one that we've talked a lot about we get emails where people say you're wasting money on E dying of liquor you should sell it or get rid of it well can't do that you can't do that right and two it's still funding some of these other services so if we don't have it right and so I there are just intricacies like that that we don't know um and so I would much rather you
come back with here's how we think we can get there and then we can have the conversation around all right then what does that mean what's the experience that people are going to have and then have a discussion around that can I ask a question CU there's four four of you here not five so this is not binding or anything but when you say how we get there what do you what do you guys mean as a as a group when you say how we get there because I just want to know are you all in the same place of what what there is or are we are we
making up what the there is that's a really good point and I kind of want to focus I mean we did see the 1% reduction that was proposed and we approved that at our last meeting and I kind of feel like this could be a starting point for kind of figuring out where the bar is going to be because I'll be honest when I look at
eliminating the cost for um the elections that just I don't understand how that could even be considered a way to reduce the budget because it was a cost that shouldn't have even been included in the budget and so if it was you know not something that was relevant anymore removing it from the budget seemed nonsensical to me and I'm still trying to understand that
but we need to figure out how to get to their which is we're looking at 177% increase in property taxes we're not and well that's what the projection is and so uh and I know there are a lot of people on fixing incomes and it's really you know beginning to compromise you know you talk about affordable housing well for a lot of people it's becoming Out Of Reach because of property taxes and you know all the years that it keeps
coming so um I'm going to stop because I don't really know where I'm headed but you inspired me James so you have to pick I I got to be clear though we are not proposing a 177% increase in the general fund Levy for next year we're just not that was that was a demonstration of of a working tool um but we're not going to make that we haven't made a recommendation to you yet so that's not coming yeah so I I also I give points
there and so I'm glad to hear you repeat that I would have said we did propose 177% what was in the presentation exactly right however we all also said there's no way that's sustainable and we're going to do all of this work to figure out what that's going to be right just I don't want to parse the word propose too much yeah yeah yeah but we
didn't propose that but what we showed you is what would be necessary from a general fund tax levy standpoint if we went forward with all the services at the service levels that we have 100% And that led to this process and we said we're going to go through this now rather than waiting till the fall so I think we're we're all on the same page there um you when you ask the question I would say we're talking about the
general fund right you talked about other Revenue sources those are great um but we're talking about what impacts that 8 8.44 per for this year so that's the general Levy and and I just and I've mentioned this before I just did back of the napkin and I said I felt like we needed to reduce by5 to7 million but that's just on the back of a napkin I
said you know we tell us how to get there and the there for me was to be in alignment with our sister cities which I think means that budget needs to be somewhere between 8 and %. but I am also saying I don't know how to get there cuz like my the last budget I led for Cargill was $250 million and
if somebody told me to reduce that by 20% I could do that but that's cuz I knew the services I don't know these services to that same degree of intimacy so it's really difficult for me to to be able to say to you if you force me to do it you know what I'm going to do I'm going to start at the ones that have the biggest share and that is the most asinine thing to
do but that's what I'm going to that's the only way I'd be able to do that um and then you'd have to come back and tell me well here is what doesn't make sense so I would much rather you come back with here's how we get there and there is what I have in my head all right and there is something I have been thinking about that I think is proving costly and very ineffective for the city of Edina that I can send an
email about that topic so I guess I mean I do have something to contribute that I think could actually be relevant um but I wholeheartedly agree with what James is saying and I think it would be Reckless to put us in the driver's seat of this endeavor really um but but we can contribute and we are the link between the community and so you know people out there listing if you have ideas please
contact you know and let us know because and I would visit with anyone who wants to sit down and talk about the budget and their ideas um but going back to the mission you know we're supposed to be providing sound public infrastructure Premier public facilities um you know and I think that's got to stay in our heads as we go through this process and we are so far
behind on deferred I mean we've got so much deferred maintenance that that does literally keep me up at night so and I think that's why for me it's hard to put a number on it I know I don't want it to be 17 right but to even say something like in line with our sister cities that can be hard too because we have so many very large Capital Improvement plan items that are
right in front of us and so it might not be feasible but or I guess the the answer we might have to cut a little bit more steeply into some of those services so it's going to be a cut a trade-off balance regardless um so it's some of that layer of information that I think would be helpful well one thing I can say unequivocally if you don't start you can't finish and
so I'm sitting here saying number in my head is between 5 and 7 million what member agu just said is completely true but I just feel like if we don't have some kind of Target then we're never going to get there um and so I'm totally cool if you come in and say this is what the target needs to be but we don't we don't have that and we got to
force well we got to force everybody to be reasonable and I I'll just share this um in the um Council when we voted on the 8.44 right we had the Lewis Ridge in there and I said hey if I want to do Lewis Ridge too but we can't afford it now so if we're going to do it we got to figure out how to fund it and I got
nasty emails and voicemail messages from people saying you don't care about the kids and I'm did you hear anything I said so we got to be disciplined enough to have the conversation and then we're going to have to make tough decisions as well as the residents are going to have to understand what some of the decisions we make they're going to experience something different and we have to be
able to articulate what that is and it's just not I mean it's not a pleasant thing to do but so we generate a Target or maybe a couple of them and then Associated associate that with um a budget kind of big line item kinds of things and talk to you about what that means and what that might mean for the experience of living in a dinina for people that are paying taxes here yeah that's the approach I would take is is to run a
preliminary budget forecasting next year with a 6% increase in Revenue 8% 10% maybe have three different options N9 you know whatever the numbers are but have several different options tell us what that looks like from a budgetary standpoint and how that potentially affects service I think Kate made an interesting point is you we know from the police and fire presentation we had um on the 4th couple days ago that
particularly with respect to fire that we do things that no one else does it's and it's because our residents want those services so um you got the challenge of trying to figure out what to do around delivery of those services at the level people expect them at and and not maybe affect that budget as much as it you affect the rest of it so there are things that uh are at play here from
a citizen demand standpoint that we need to be mindful of as we work on this budgetary I agree pathway too but in in the defensive what James said earlier I mean I'm looking at you because when move work on the budget you said well here if you don't come in at 133% then next year you got to be at 17% and that's when we said no no we're not we're not going to you maybe I didn't I took that out of context from the way you meant it but that was a message that
was delivered to us that if we wanted to deliver the same level of service and everything else we're going to have to be at 17% well that certainly caught all of our attention and and we know that that can't be and and we know you know that can't be we got a figure out what we're going to do here and we're not different from any other City every other city is facing the same problem yeah the same challenge escalating costs you know just the article the
addition D which was just a a great article about the conversion of the equipment in public works to to natural gas I think it was you know in there you could see that to buy a replacement electric vehicle for something that we have that's been uh uh internal combustion powered was like three times the cost you know so we really appreciate the fact that people are being mindful of those things and trying to figure out ways to do
things in an economical way while at the same time having in that instance a great reduction on greenhouse gas production by what 100% reduction on greenhouse gas production after the conversion is complete it's really quite a remarkable story but uh it's a good illustration of what you can do when you start getting creative then for me too I I'd look at the revenue side are there some other ways we can Garner additional Revenue that we haven't been thinking about something that's created for a city yeah that would help us and are you
going to say something earlier you were working on a slide that show the Enterprise services against the FTS and you were doing that with I'll say the sister cities I don't remember all the ones that there but I felt like that set a really good context for that would be great for the community um in a broad sense to understand that you can't quite
compare the to Eden Prairie or what have you because we have Regional services in here that we are funding um from an FTE perspective we run those services but they do generate Revenue right and so I think that that was a really good picture uh for people to see yeah it's always been working super super hard on getting like super hard when you see it you'll you'll understand the level of depth cuz it's I
mean this is even even getting the data we it depends on us getting it from our neighboring communities and then trying to figure out okay what is actually comparable and what isn't that's to come we're still working on getting it updated for this year but um so Ence is super important we don't want to put the wrong get too sloppy then we all start chasing each other around trying to find the right numbers and then the last thing I had mayor mentioned it I think the revenue side is is huge and so if
you wanted us to send you some of these other ideas that we have that makes a ton of sense um and so I'll I'll I have a few that I'll send so maybe that's what we'll do is I'm going to send a followup email with the present and then ask you for any of your thoughts um ideas I might try to have you limit them down a little bit to not give me you know 100 things because he's got to figure out how to sort them all out by March I got three for okay that's good
that's good so um all right thank thank you thank you