Alright. Good evening, and welcome to the City of Falcon Heights regular council meeting on Wednesday 02/25/2026 and we'll call this, leading to order at 07:03. Roll call. Gustafson. Here. May. Here. Elke. Here. Logan. Here. Wattenberg. Here. Linehan. Here. Alright. Next step is approval of the agenda which we have amended. We've added a policy item two, approval of a resolution for appointing a member to the Parks and Rec Commission.
With the amendment I so move. Okay. Moved by moving. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed same sign. Motion carries five-zero. Presentations don't have one tonight so that's kind of nice. Although we usually learn something when somebody gives us a presentation. Approval of minutes from the 02/11/2026 City Council workshop meeting. Any changes to those that haven't been sent on to staff or reflected in here? Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes of February 11 City Council workshop.
So moved. So moved by Melkin. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed same sign. Motion carries five-zero. Next we do have public hearing for the consideration of approving the resolution twenty six fourteen revoking a municipal business and, massage therapy license. Administrator Linehan, can we follow-up on what all this public hearing may or may not entail? Yeah. Thank you, mayor council. So on January 29, the city received a letter from the Minnesota Department of Revenue,
for a notice of license revocation for French Maid Inc doing business as Crocus Hill Acupuncture, which is located at 1579 Hamlin Avenue North. So essentially, we get this letter from the state. And so to hold a business license with the city of Falcon Heights, you have to be in good standing with the state of Minnesota, and also they have to be in good standing with the city and have a valid license. And so through this process, it is something that's been reviewed by our city attorney. If you recall, we had to almost do this before, I think, about a year or two ago for another business in Falcon Heights.
They ended up getting us a, certificate that they were, in compliance prior to the hearing. So we ended up pulling it off the agenda. We have not received, as of today, this certificate of compliance. So we do need to go forward as one of our responsibilities, kind of as the license, administrator. And so what we would do is we would have a public hearing today, kind of defining the fact that this business is not in good standing with the state of Minnesota due to outstanding, obligations owed to the Department of Revenue. We'd host this public hearing, receive public testimony on it, and then, we would have to then move forward with this process meeting the state's thirty day
requirement. So they send the letter January. We have thirty days. So February, we'd have to do this. We are having it, and this is through the state as well, would be official as of March 11. So if, let's say, tomorrow we receive a letter saying they're in compliance, their business license would not be revoked. The revocation will happen on March 11, if we do not receive that. We do have a council meeting that night, and so we can also take further advisement from the city attorney where we can also then further delay, suspend whatever we might need to do at that point as well, if we need to.
But that is where it stands today. So next step, the council would open this up for a public hearing, and then discuss kind of that option and then make recommendation to, adopt the resolution. Okay. Everybody understand the process? Alright. So for, what we'll do now is we'll open a public open the public hearing. This would be public hearing, just to have a number that we have to, public hearing f one, here on Wednesday, 02/25/2026. We'll open the public hearing at,
07:07 and proceed from there. What, what we have in front of us is the the state of Minnesota has asked us to revoke a license for on payment of taxes not being in in the way. It affects both the massage therapy license and the municipal business license, which the municipal business license had had been granted previously. They're still we haven't formally passed the 2026 massage therapy license because they hadn't met
all of the requirements for that license at that point. Or is that just in process and got delayed because of this request from okay. No. No. We were to though we were in process as we're moving forward with this, it still needed additional inspections. It got delayed a bit with the new procedure towards requiring the fingerprints. The fingerprints and the background check. Yep. So we're just taking it it was taking more time anyways, and so we would recommend that we would, not issue if that Not issue that. Until until compliance is met.
Okay. So do we have anybody, from the public who would like to speak, speak on this matter of the business license revocation? Open that up for comment a second time. I'll make a third and final call for, discussion from from the public or the affected parties to, come and speak before the council. Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and proceed to to follow the resolution. Does the resolution need to be read into the minutes, or we just need to acknowledge that,
what you had, you had said. If there's Right. Right. Correct. So the resolution would not need to be read. It would be kind of in record as part of the adoption of a resolution. Okay. But again, kind of, you know, there therefore, you know, the licenses, you know, revocation is accepted if the city does not receive a tax clearance certificate from the Minnesota Department of Revenue on or prior to March 11. So that creates a little bit. And, again, if we end up getting the certificate in the mail, you know, that that would That would satisfy satisfy this and then we would would be We
would not be would not be doing it and then we would essentially treat that as in they're in good standing. So, we could then still bring forward their other licenses as as needed, but we would not go forward with the revocation. Okay. Yeah. I Yeah. Questions from counsel. I I do have one, technical question for for administrator Linehan. The, notices of license revocation from the state, both site license expiration dates of 12/31/2025, so did we automatically grant ones for 2026? Because those are the ones that are listed later in our packet.
Or are we just saying we won't issue the ones for 2026? How's that working exactly? We have issued. So we issued their business license as of January. So before we received the letter, we'd already received that. Mhmm. And then also their, 2026, massage therapy, we have not issued that one. And so that's what they're referencing so that their license is moving forward. Okay. So they were just they were referencing last year's licenses, maybe not knowing whether we had issued new licenses to them or not. So Correct. Yep. That they had that on their file, that there was a license. Yep. We had a number for it, and that,
you know, we need to revoke it. But, yeah, they didn't have our new one listed. But we haven't listed we haven't, issued both of them. So one we might be revoking, one we would be then failing to issue. Right. Yep. We still call it a revocation just to kinda make it more official. Got it. If they haven't received the license, if it's pending and we're working on it, it's neither issued nor denied, essentially. It's existing. Alright. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification. Okay. Further questions, clarification needs from council? Everybody understand that we'd be voting for
resolution 20 revoking a 2026 municipal business license and 2026 massage therapy license issued to French Maid Inc, Crocus Hill doing business as Crocus Hill Acupuncture on Hamlin Avenue. I'd like to make one correction to that, for the made the spelling of made in our resolution will need to be changed to m a d e if it fits the state's documents as well in our our other ones. So this has MAID for French Maid Incorporated.
Just spotted that. You're writing three documents. It's m a d e and then on. Yeah. And then on including our, our licenses to, to the The title. To the business. Yeah. They are m a d e. Yes. M a d e is correct. I see it's in the title incorrect. Oh, I see. Yep. So Is there other spots in the resolution that I'm missing? Because otherwise it does say MADE but Yeah. Otherwise it says MADE elsewhere in the document but not in the title so My apologies. I'd I'd amend the title of the resolution to reflect MAED
as a friendly amendment. Typographical error. Fine. Okay. So just the spelling you consider pairing with the word French? Yeah. Yeah. I thought that it was misspelled by the state when I then looked at those documents. The, okay. Do I have a motion or should I just make the motion? I'll well, I'll well, actually, call for a motion. I'll call for a motion on, resolution twenty six fourteen. So moved. So moved by Wossenberg. Further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of, revoking the municipal business and massage therapy licenses as effective March 11,
Signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. Motion carries five-zero. Tonight we've got four items on our consent agenda. We have a general disbursements through February $239,905.44. Sorry. Payroll through February 12. Wire payments through February 12.
Two, or consideration ordinance twenty six zero two, assigning a new street address for PID 1521529233400082, otherwise known as, Garden Community Church. Three, approval of resolution 26 six-fifteen, authorizing out of state travel requests for senior maintenance worker Dave Simmons to attend the Elgin Pelican Street Sweeper Mechanics School in Elgin,
Illinois. And four, approval of resolution 20 six-sixteen appointing Signe Nesta to the Community Engagement Commission. I'll move the consent agenda. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. A Same sign. Anybody wanna make any comments on the consent agenda? Congratulations, miss Nussingan. Yeah. I'm excited to have Signe join the commission. Join the commission. That'll be good. And the, I also wanna comment on the new street address. As a city attorney in Central Minnesota City,
it we worked on changing an address for, like, six years, and this is much easier. I'm not sure why it took us so much longer. Yeah. This is going to it's kinda kinda slick. So Falcon Heights Church, which has joined and changed its name to, Garden Community Church. Garden Community Church with its entrance on Garden Avenue, will be, because the old church before they remodeled in 2000, early thousands, May, whatever, They used to enter off of Holton and so but that that door isn't used
anymore. So now people will be able to find them at 1440, Garden Avenue and MapQuest will bring them right to the front door. And, in a kind of kind of a bit. So good move on on there on the community church, effort there. And it'll be good to get our new street sweeper going and have Dave know how to take care of it. Yeah. Yes. So the policy items tonight we've got two of them before us. The first is approval of resolution twenty six seventeen establishing a Les Bolstad Golf Course
Redevelopment Community Advisory Committee. For those that have watched our discussion on this in the last two workshops and the, we did a little bit of conversation on it at our last meeting. I can see what's involved. We've got it, following tonight's workshop where we've worked on the process. We have some changes. I should, follow protocol and I'm gonna call on administrator Linehan to, guide us through the, this, this effort. Yeah. Thank you, mayor and council. So the mayor did cover that we had continued this from our workshop earlier.
Got additional feedback. Kind of clarified some of our outstanding questions. And so tonight, the ask would be to adopt the resolution. So we know we need to work on the, continue to work on the application. A subcommittee of the council, consisting of council member May, council member Wassenberg has been informally appointed by the city to kinda help work on that process, help us kinda with this solicitation and review. But what we would do is we would, if if adopted, this new resolution with the corrections that are made, and I'll make a comment on those in a second,
would go out. Once we have the applications, we could start soliciting and kind of begin this process to get these members with a goal, ideally, of getting up and running, by April. And so this community advisory, committee, what they would do is they would help kinda guide the master plan process as the next phase. They'd be one half of kind of then there'd also be a technical advisory committee made up of, staff, partner agencies, etcetera. Helping the consultant work through the challenges that they'll face with the watersheds, with MET Council, etcetera. And so this process is very important for the redevelopment,
or the development of the golf course. And it would be kind of the next phase as we work towards the eventual approval once a buyer's identified. The changes that were made to the resolution tonight, there were two changes, specifically in the beef. Therefore, it resolved under membership. We changed item two a one. Now it says one Falcon Heights resident appointed at large before it designated who was the chair. We'll determine that later. And then the second one was one representative from the Grove neighborhood, now will be kind of solicited from the entire Grove community.
So those changes to the draft were made, following the workshop. So tonight, we'd be seeking approval of the full resolution to allow us to kinda begin, the next phase of this process. Okay. Questions, comments from counsel? Can that our process in the workshop went by pretty fast. I had two additional small wording changes. Is that possible now? Sure. One was on the, purpose and duties, point one, b. I thought we should include that, this committee will provide input and recommendations,
and there's a whole list of things. But I'd also wanna put impacts of the development on differing demographic groups. This is in point b under purpose and duties? Yeah. Provide input and recommendations to the city council regard regarding land use concepts, environmental considerations, infrastructure, housing, community amenities, and and related develop redevelopment matters. And I I just thought we should include, what impacts it might have on the residents of Falcon Heights.
Can I suggest that that might be more appropriate at one c? And if you can propose specific language that you would add? The the c is sort of the identifying part, then the b is sort of, what they do, more of the the the the Okay. Identify impacts on in the in the what they do in the c. Put that down in c even. That I'm suggesting that it more appropriate in c, and I'm I would suggest that you actually Sure. Provide us with the language that you'd like to have in there. Yeah. Identify community priorities,
concerns, and, concerns, and impacts on Falcon Heights residents. Why don't we just say that? Okay. So do you identify community priorities, concerns, impact on Falcon Heights residents. Impact on Falcon Heights residents. Falcon Heights, on Falcon Heights residents, comma And opportunities. And opportunities associated with redevelopment. Yeah. Something like that. Sure. Impacts on the people, basically. And then I thought we should also add a point e, our expectations for
commitment or attendance to majority of the monthly meetings over a period of one to two years. Could could I recommend that we put that under item four, where they talk about meetings? Sure. Or under five duration, one of those two? Sure. Mhmm. So meetings should generally occur monthly at Tuck Nite City Hall unless otherwise determined by the committee in coordination with staff. Meeting shall comply with the Minnesota Open Meeting Law, and then we could do c. C members are expected. Or or under member yeah. Yeah. Members are expected to attend, as many meetings as possible
or to attend all meetings and if attendance, fails would be subject to removal from the, from the commission or or from the committee. Committee. Yeah. Probably fits under number four the best I would say. Yeah. Yeah. It could be c under four. It's this be similar wording to what we have for our commissions. Commissions. Yeah. Which is, like, I think, 25% in the space of a year or or the space of six months or something like that. Just yeah. Make it clear what our, what the commitment involves, what we're expecting. Do you wanna do a yeah. Number. So, see, members are expected to attend
the majority, but that's kind of that's one over half. Right? You know, is it I can't remember the exact wording of our what our commission statement is, but it's something to the effect of. Members are regular attendance is expected of the members. Missing more than 25% of the meetings is grounds for potential removal from the committee. I can So I about the food. May I Yeah. If you can. Council member May, I I appreciate the the the the meaning. I kinda hope that we can we're we're picking people that are responsible. And maybe if we just put a more general statement in here saying that members
are committing to, represent the city throughout the two month two year process or something like that. Yeah. That's kind of where I was thinking. As opposed to specific requirement or something. And so I was that's why I put it under purpose and duties. I mean, I'm okay with whatever everybody decides, but, the purpose and duties of members of this advisory committee are that we expect that they'll attend most all the meetings over this period of time. Or commit just as can we can we say something like members are,
members are expected to commit to, representing the city or they're representing their represent represent the participate in the committee, for the full two year period. Yeah. Something like that. And we can being parallel. It started with the verb and just say commit to participating in meetings for a two year potential two year period. Yep. That's fine. K. So item c, members are expected to attend or are sorry. I'm trying to No. We put it under e back under purposes.
We went back to e. Okay. Or it should be letter e for a potential two year period. So letter e would read Commit to participating in meetings for a potential two year term. Do you wanna call it a term or period? Whatever you wanna call it. Duration? Duration. Duration. Perfect. Commit to monthly It's not gonna be monthly. Oh, you don't always active participation. Yeah. Commit to actively Commit to actively participation. Participate in meetings. Yep. I have nothing further to add to it.
Okay. Up like, up to two years? Or yeah. Up to the Yeah. Up to our two years. Up to Yeah. Up to two years. Period. K. Okay. Thank you. And then I guess the last one since we're creating here, do is there any other further discussion I wanna do on the name of the resolution and then also the further naming? You know, do I use redevelopment for development? Yeah. I I like the name and I understand that during workshop there was some discussion about development or redevelopment. This is not green space. This is not, It is technically green space. Is brown this is brown. So it's green space. This is brown. I just wanted us to pick one and use it consistently.
So I think it should be redevelopment. Oh, redevelopment. I agree. And We'll use community advisory committee as its name, we'll know what it is, but more just that general, like, what is its purpose? Yeah. It's a community advisory committee for redevelopment of Les Polstead, right? Yeah. That's we know that that's what they're about. Okay. With those amendments, Mr. Mayor, I make the motion to accept, Resolution 20 six-seventeen. Okay. Further discussion? Hearing none, we've moved approval of resolution 20 six-twenty 16 establishing a Les Bolstad Golf Course Redevelopment
Community Advisory Committee. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. Cool. Policy item number two would normally appear under consent agenda because it's appointing a member to the Parks and Rec Commission that was vetted by the commission chair and the staff liaison and received under under that. So this is approval of, resolution twenty six eighteen, appointing Chuck Long to the Parks and Rec Commission. If we appoint him tonight, then he can be a full participant at the meeting on Monday.
And then so you didn't finish your sentence. Is it because it came in late that's why it's under policy and not consent? Because the position closed, there, and then the the interview didn't happen before last Friday to, to get it to get it in the packet. Yep. So the interview happened since the packet went out. So it has to be in the policy. So it answered we had well, it could have gone under the, under consent, but it didn't appear in the agenda. My my call was put it under policy so that You need your attention to
it. So that well, one, we wouldn't have to retitle all of the documents in the of all of these resolutions that that then followed that would have followed in there or our other ones. And it saved a lot of staff time for having to renumber and make certain that, pieces fell into place. So hence it's under policy because one, it didn't appear in consent agenda Okay. Prior to, publication. Yeah. Yep. That'd be kind of our our interpretation too. Is and it's something, you know, having we'll figure out a consistent way to kinda take these amendments and stuff as
they come. You know, a lot of the stuff we do, there's no like, we don't have to call it out in a certain color. These are just things we do because we wanna be transparent that, hey. We're doing this. We're not just throwing stuff on. Here's our reasoning as, you know, not our best practice to throw somebody on last minute, but here are the reasons why we're we're doing that. And so just a chance to call it out. So consent to the idea, it's there's no science for us of, like, what's consent and what's policy. It's really based on what I think that everyone feels I know that there's consent on and that they you've had an adequate amount of time to that there's no
need for further discussion. Got it. Got it. And then the numbering is a big beneficial part to us too. Because a lot of times, if we move something from consent to policy, then all of our resolution numbers get off. So So moved. I served with Chuck on the Parks Commission back in 2006, twenty years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same or whatever. Okay it's moved all those further discussion all those in favor of appointing Chuck Long to the Parks and Rec Commission signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign motion carries five-zero.
Next we have information and announcements. As we cook along here what, which I forgot what direction we went. We went this way last time. We went that way this time. Let's go this way this time. Yeah. Let's do that. Well, alright. So, the only two announcements I really have are, I think, our, planning commission did meet on Tuesday. There was a light agenda. We were actually out in record time. And basically, they just reviewed the CAC plan, and, we recruited some people to apply for the CAC. So that happened. And then two weeks ago, and then Randy can update this even more,
attended the Ramsey County Local League of Government, legislative update. It was very informative, interesting to meet some of our neighboring I, obviously, am just starting to get to know some of our the mayors and council members from the area, so that was helpful, as well as hearing, from our legislators, which, of course, had the opinion that very, very, very, very little is going to happen this year. And so, that's unfortunate, but, at least, no. It's unfortunate. Mhmm. That's all I have. Community engagement commission met, and we're continuing to work on just reimagining it and working on goals and missions,
it was emotional just to learn all that staff is doing to and volunteers to support our students. And then today, I was at the capitol, for, I testified on behalf of Homeline to help get more funding because they need more funding with their increase of volume of phone calls that they're getting to add more staff so they can respond quicker. So I was there representing myself just testifying and, just how valuable they've been for our residents and for,
also providing education with the tenant workshop sessions we've held. Cool. James? I have no announcements, mister mayor. Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright. Let's see here. I've I've got a backlog. I forgot to mention last time that I attended a day and a half League of Minnesota Cities training, so I did it. And then, also an update is that our, environment commission met with the parks and rec commission, and one of the outcomes of that was advertising this lottery, for the, remaining garden spots. So I encourage everybody to who wants a garden spot to apply because that also
helps us assess demand for new garden spots and whether we should build out, additional community garden space. And then, lastly, with, Paula also, I I met with the Roosevelt area schools, meeting with the local governments. It is emotional, because, our staff and teachers and and residents and citizens are working so hard to ameliorate the, impacts of ICE, immigration, so called enforcement, on our students who are, very vulnerable to, the stress of of this,
enforcement. The other thing I've learned from it is, you know, that, we as as local governments, can do what we've done, and we're doing everything we can. But it's really the residents stepping up, the legal observers and the staff and the teachers who are are are filling in all this needed work. And there's just hundreds of people doing this and I so appreciate what our community has been able to do. Thanks. My yeah I had the pleasure of being at the Ramsey County Legal Local Government's
session. It's really good to hear from the legislators. We've got really good legislators here in Ramsey County that serve us. And and we heard from, heard from them. The dean of the the group, John Marty, was there and tried to be positive that maybe a bonding bill might somehow happen, that a lot of, a lot of our communities in the area are do have bonding proposals that that haven't advanced and have and and they're they're working on, we heard, some of those pitches,
as well. It's interesting what people are working on and and great to, to get together to know that we're all kind of working for our local governments and trying to make it work for the people who live in our neighbors. So, yeah. Good stuff and looking forward going to the Capitol on the eleventh and I'll report back that day because it's a council meeting day, representing as part of, league at the hill. So and Jack or administrator Linehan, I apologize for being informal.
I see Jack. What else is happening in the city? Yeah. A couple interesting stuff. So public works kind of a little quiet time. So they you know, one of our challenges, small city, we outsource our tree trimming to, third party. Usually, it's been uppercut. It's been our our tree trimming. You know, it gets difficult to kind of coordinate that. And so Public Works, you know, kind of, senior maintenance worker Dean Pope has been going through getting more and more arborist training in house. And so the goal has been that we've been trying to take on more of the tree trimming in house. And so one of the other limitations is we don't have a bucket truck.
So Public Works rented a bucket truck, for a week last week, went through and got some kind of low hanging limbs, stuff that we could get helps kind of save and help maintain our, budget for that. So they were working out doing that, doing various repairs. And then the last thing to watch too, so our administrative intern, Ainsley Brown, she is working on we're doing a discover Falcon Heights series. So kind of finding information about different things in Falcon Heights, kind of using her journalism background to kinda make some videos. So she went out to Curtis Field and tell has a video coming out tomorrow
on the city's Facebook page, talking a little bit about the history and kind of the significance of, the whole, and kind of everything dating back to its original use as an airfield. So watch for that. That's interesting. And, yeah, staff's just doing a lot of cleanup and other stuff right now. Cool. Alright. Ice rinks are closed due to the weather. Ice rinks. Yes. And, it's happening. I did get out on the ice in Arden Hills on Sunday. I can started to walk better today. Old men shouldn't be playing broomball. But anyway I'd open this up for a community forum for anybody who'd like to
address the council. Take three minutes of your time to let us know what you're thinking and new ideas and there? Anybody want? Okay great to see you here tonight though you want to come up and talk? Yeah Yeah. Yep. Oh, yeah. Because so that then everybody can hear you because, one of the benefits of, appearing here at city hall is you get to appear on nine North, television broadcast and, so that you can talk to your neighbors and those that are be tuning in later online to see what went on. Okay. I just on behalf of Garden Community Church,
I just wanted to thank you for, approving our new street address so that we can contact the post office and get it all squared away with them. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Anybody else? Alright. Well at that I'll close community forum. I'd like to thank everybody for coming out on a wintry night in the February to attend City Hall and council for your work between times. We're, you know, we want to maintain that buck 50 an hour for compensation. So get our money's worth.
Get our money's worth here. So Make motion to adjourn. All right, all those in favor of adjournment signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed same sign. Motion carries five-zero. This meeting is adjourned.